Well, by a long shot, Easter is my favorite holiday of the year. And on Sunday, we celebrate that by his resurrection, Jesus Christ decisively ended the terrible reign of heartbreak and sin in this world. There is freedom for those of us who trust in him. And for those believers, Easter is also a promise that Christ will break us free from the trappings of mediocrity in this world.

This is a point John Piper developed in the following excerpt from his 2001 Easter sermon on 1 Corinthians 15, verses 12 to 20. Here's what he said. I'm banking everything in the rest of this sermon on the fact that there's something in every one of you that has tasted moments where you've said, "I don't want to be like the run of the mill, living for myself, making a name for myself, making lots of money, just shrinking into a little nuclear family with a nice TV or a big sound system with big screens and a lot of games." He who dies with the most toys wins.

You know in your best moments, it isn't so. Here's my question. Paul lived such a life of cutting edge, sacrificial, risk-taking, perilous love. And I want to know how he did it. Let me just acquaint you for a moment with Paul's life. Verse 30 in this same chapter, Paul says, "I'm in peril every hour." He's in danger all the time.

Why? He explains in the second letter he wrote to Corinth. "I am often in danger of death. Five times I received 39 lashes. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked. In dangers from rivers, dangers from robbers, dangers from my countrymen, dangers in the city, dangers in the wilderness, dangers on the sea, dangers among false brethren.

I have been in labor and hardship through many sleepless nights, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure." And he asks just a few verses earlier than that paragraph in chapter 11 of 2 Corinthians, he says to this community, "Why? Because I do not love you?

God knows I love you. You may not know I love you, but God knows I love you. That's why I choose this life." So here we have a person doing what we, at our highest moments, long to do, namely live on the cutting edge of self-sacrificing love, and not just constantly thinking about maximizing our own private self-indulgent pleasures.

And now the question is, how do you do that? How do you live in peril every hour? How do you embrace risk and beatings and imprisonments and shipwrecks? Why do you make choices, Paul, that put you in harm's way over and over again? What is it with you? His answer is, "Love?

But how is that sustained?" Now, let's go back to verse 19. "If we have hoped in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied. If Christ is not raised, and I'm hoping for a resurrection, I'm stupid, living the life I'm living. My life is crazy.

My life is insane. My life is foolish. It's pitiable. It's nonsense, if I'm not going to be raised with Christ someday." Do you see? Are you, I'll ask you right now, are you living a life which is stupid if you're not raised from the dead? Wow! What an indictment of the American church.

What an indictment of the American church. How are your choices? They look like everybody else in the world. How much is it costing you to love people? Hardly anything? Hardly any risks? Hardly any dangers? Hardly any choices that would be called "imprudent"? And yet your heart, I believe from God Almighty, written on your heart is, "Oh God, there's got to be more.

There's got to be more. There's got to be more than this middle American way of prosperity that causes people to get just as sick with mental disease as all the sicknesses in the simple, undeveloped places of the world. There's got to be more than this." And Paul says, "There is more.

There is so much more in this life and the next." You know the great obstacle to living the life you dream about and that God has put in your heart as possible? It's 1 Corinthians 15, 32. "If the dead are not raised, let's eat and drink, for tomorrow we die." If you believe, tomorrow we die.

That's it. Zero. No resurrection. You will eat and drink. And you won't care about love. You won't care about people. You won't take any risks in order to make yourself a means to other people's joy because you're going to maximize your own private pleasures because you've only got one life to do it.

But if you've got 10,000 ages of years to do it with a Christ who will never let you be bored, this little prelude can be spent directing people to that and taking whatever risks it takes to get them there and you there with maximum joy. So, I'm done and I'm going to make a closing appeal to you to just think and pray and seek God in this.

If Christ has not been raised, the Christian life ought to look stupid. Which means that believing in the resurrection of Christ and of ourselves is the key to the highest, noblest, and in the long run, most joyful life. Jesus, for the joy that was set before Him, endured the cross.

For the joy that was set before Him beyond the resurrection endured the cross. Same thing with Him as with us. And if He has been raised, there is a power in the world and in this room and in the gospel that can lift you, both in this life and the next, to a level of significant living that God has written on your heart as beautiful and right and true.

And almost everybody in this room wants it. A few of you have checked out so completely right now, you're not even hearing what I say. I grieve for you, I pray for you, I long for you. But some of you, many of you, are feeling what I'm saying, namely, yeah, perhaps those dreams were written by God and perhaps the key that unlocks that dream is the Son of God and is the resurrection of the Son of God and is the freedom that comes from believing in the Son and the resurrection, my own resurrection.

Maybe that is the key, and I just urge you to press in on Christ. Come to Christ. Believe in Christ. He is the key. He is the answer. Amen. Who else will free you from sin and heartbreak and the trappings of mediocrity? This clip was taken from John Piper's Easter sermon from 2001 in a sermon titled "Pity Not Them Who Rise with Christ." You can download the entire message at DesiringGod.org.

Well, we are going to break for the weekend, this sweet and holy weekend, to be reminded of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ that frees us from the shackles of worldly contentment. From Pastor John and from me and for all of us at Desiring God, have a wonderful, worship-filled Easter weekend.

We'll see you on Monday.