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[Music] The answer to your energy crisis. A message by Dr. Bruce W. Thielman. [Music] And first, a personal word from Dr. Thielman.

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Years ago, in Tsarist Russia, it was the custom on Easter morning for the Tsar to throw his arms around each of his servants and say, "The Lord is risen." The servant hugging the Tsar would then reply, "The Lord is risen indeed." And then, after that brief moment of fellowship and joy, they would return to the roles of Tsar and servant, the ruler and the ruled again. And there would be no more fellowship between them until the next Easter.

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Easter should not be like that for us. It shouldn't be something which thrills us one moment and is forgotten about the next. I want to share with you about Easter energy. About an energy which is not only for the day, but for forever. And I hope that as you learn of this Easter energy, you will be blessed. Happy Easter, my friend. We begin with the 28th chapter of Matthew.

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"Now after the Sabbath, toward the dawn of the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the sepulcher. And behold, there was a great earthquake, for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone and sat upon it. His appearance was like lightning and his raiment white as snow. And for fear of him, the guards trembled and became like dead men. But the angel said to the women, 'Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified.

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He is not here, for he has risen as he said. Come, see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples that he has risen from the dead. And behold, he is going before you to Galilee. There you will see him. Lo, I have told you.' So they departed quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy and ran to tell his disciples." And now picking up the reading in the 20th chapter of John's gospel.

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"So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciples, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, 'They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.' Peter then came out with the other disciple, and they went toward the tomb. They both ran, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first.

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And stooping to look in, he saw the linen cloths lying there, but he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came following him, and he went into the tomb. He saw the linen cloths lying and the napkin which had been on his head, not lying with the linen cloths, but rolled up in a place by itself. Then the other disciple who reached the tomb first also went in, and he saw and believed."

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And finally from the gospel according to Luke, reading from the 24th chapter, the end of the Emmaus road experience. "So they drew near to the village to which they were going, and Jesus appeared to be going further, but they constrained him, saying, 'Stay with us, for it is toward evening, and the day is now far spent.' So he went in to stay with them.

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When he was at table with them, he took the bread and blessed and broke it and gave it to them. And their eyes were opened, and they recognized him, and he vanished out of their sight. They said to each other, 'Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the scriptures?' And they arose without a moment's notice and returned to Jerusalem.

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And they found the eleven gathered together and those who were with them, and they said, 'The Lord has risen indeed.'" And may God bless to us these readings from his word. Amen, and please be seated. Let us pray. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. This is a glorious day. It's a glorious day because the sun is shining outside,

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and it's a glorious day because the only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, has risen from the dead. It's a glorious day, and I feel very good about it. And if you feel that way, I want you to say, "Amen." Some of you didn't say anything. Did you ever notice how in the Easter story, everybody's moving?

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Magdalene gets to the tomb, discovers that it's empty. She runs to tell the others. Two men are going to Emmaus, that's seven miles from Jerusalem. They walk the seven miles to that city. They have an experience of the risen Christ, and it says, "Without a moment's notice, they hurry at fastest speed back to Jerusalem."

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Seven miles back again, on the move. Peter and John, they get the word that Christ has risen. They run to the tomb, one outrunning the other. Easter has a way of getting people moving. Easter has about it a dynamic drive. People have tried to identify Easter with a particular sound.

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Some have said it's the peeling of bells. Some have said it's the trumpeting of lilies. Some have said it's the sound of an earthquake. Some have said it's a rolling stone. I think the sound which best typifies Easter is the slap of sandals on Dawn Street streets, because Easter made everybody get moving.

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Easter was the source of a tremendous enthusiasm and energy. Now, we hear a lot of talk today about an energy crisis, and we ought to talk about it. It's a serious matter, and very likely it's a matter with which we're going to have to be concerned for a long, long time, indeed, perhaps for as long as this old earth of ours keeps spinning.

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But what concerns me this morning is an energy crisis that is far more serious. It's the energy crisis which exists within the heart, the soul, the mind, the body of the individual who does not know that Jesus Christ has risen. That is an energy crisis which is far more serious than any shortage of gasoline.

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And that is an energy crisis which no one has to learn to live with. It's an energy crisis that can be triumphed over simply by receiving Easter's energy into yourself. Now, I think everybody in life wants to get somewhere, even those people this morning who couldn't get up enough gumption to say "Amen."

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They want to get somewhere. If you ask them, "Are you satisfied with where you are, and do you want to stay there the rest of your life?" No, they want to get somewhere. The trouble is they don't have sufficient faith, they don't have sufficient wisdom,

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they don't have sufficient courage, and they don't have sufficient vision to get anywhere. All of these things come, you see, when Jesus Christ enters into a heart and gives the gift of Easter energy. Now, the first thing that Easter energy does to you is this. It lets you know just how wonderful you really are.

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There's a little story about some grubs that were living in the slime at the bottom of a swamp. Periodically, some of them would crawl up a leaf of grass which extended from the bottom of the swamp above the surface of the water. But none of the grubs that ever climbed up ever came back down again, and the other grubs used to wonder about this. And one day, one of the grubs was seized with an uncontrollable desire to find out

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why none of the grubs that ever went up came back again. So he began to wind his way up one of those pieces of grass until he got above the surface, and there the warmth of the sun hit him, and he fell into a deep sleep which extended over a long length of time. And one day he wakened, and when he wakened he felt new.

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He felt as if he was reborn, and he looked at himself and he discovered that he was new. That instead of being a slimy little grub from the bottom of the swamp, he had glorious iridescent rainbow wings. He felt like he could fly. He felt so much like he could fly that he did fly. He had become a magnificent dragonfly, and in that moment he understood

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why no grub that ever had that experience ever thought for even a moment of going back down into the slime again. Now what Easter does for you is this. It speaks to the secret hope in every human heart that you are made to fly, and that there is to be a rainbow as part of your life experience. Have you ever stopped to think that if there were no Easter, then life itself would not be worth living?

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What would there be of value in working if the end result of all your work was for you to moulder in a grave? What value would there be in dying for your country if your country's death was inevitable and the death of all your countrymen was a sure thing as well, and that would be the end of it? Why study to illumine the mind if one moment the light of your mind is going to be turned out,

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never to think another thought again? Why bother to love if every love affair is going to end with a tearful farewell that is forever? Why bother to beget children if they will end rotting as you yourself will end rotting? If life is all there is to it, then God is some kind of cosmic jokester who has fashioned us for his own amusement. We have our three score years and ten and then it's done.

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But Easter is the announcement that God considers us to be of sufficient value to give to us the possibility of all eternity. And when suddenly you grasp that, then not only all eternity opens up for you, but all kinds of possibilities in life open up for you too. God believes you're important and that does wonderful things for your self-image.

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I think it's interesting to notice that in the Gospel of John, the Holy Spirit is recorded as having three functions. He is to convict men of sin, he is to convict men of righteousness, and he is to convict men of judgment. I don't think you have to work very hard to convict men of sin. I think most people are overwhelmed with their sense of guilt and shame.

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But the Holy Spirit has a more difficult job in dealing with us, convicting us of our righteousness once we have accepted Jesus Christ. For the Gospel is that when Jesus Christ enters into us and with us, all the energy that Easter is, then we know that we are of worth and value to God and do not have to fear any judgment. For life is ours and life hereafter is ours as well.

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And that puts a song in your heart, a song that announces your own worth. You know, some of you here are only here once a year. I'm not going to knock you for that. I'm glad you're here even once a year. And I want to wish you a happy Easter and I'm delighted that you're with us this morning.

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But you know, throughout the course of the year when I talk to folks who only make it out one Sunday a year, you hear a lot of different reasons why they're not here. The one you hear most often is this, "I only have one morning a week to sleep in. One morning a week to build up my energy again."

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Now, I want to ask you a question. Wouldn't you agree, you don't work any harder than anybody else? Oh, I mean, there are times when we all feel that we work harder than anybody else on the face of the earth. But let's be very honest about it. We all work pretty hard.

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I don't think any of us really work that much harder than everybody else. You don't work any harder than anybody else. And yet, a lot of people manage to get to church on Sunday morning. They don't seem to need as much rest as you do.

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Why is that? I would submit to you that the reason they don't have to stay in bed as much as you do is because they get a tremendous infusion of energy every time they are reminded of their extreme and supreme worth to Almighty God.

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And that's what happens every time Easter people get together to proclaim Jesus Christ and the truth that He lives and because He lives, we live also. All of that, you see, is Easter energy. It puts a song in your heart.

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And Easter energy does something else for you also. It tells you again how marvelous Jesus Christ is. Now, Jesus said many wonderful things. "Come unto me, and I will give you rest."

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"If you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, all things are possible to you." "Blessed are the meek, they shall inherit the earth." "Love your neighbor as you love yourself." "If you believe in me, you will never die."

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Jesus said many wonderful things. But the most astonishing thing that Jesus ever said was this, "I shall rise again from the dead." That's the most amazing thing that He ever said.

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Now, did it ever occur to you that if Jesus could be proven to have been wrong on any single thing that He ever said, we would be justified in doubting the validity of anything else that He ever said? Suppose, for example, take the most astonishing thing He ever said,

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"I shall rise from the dead." Suppose He had been wrong there, that He did not rise from the dead. Then what would it mean for Him to say, "Come unto me"? That would mean come into the grave.

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What would it mean for Him to say, "Blessed are the meek"? He was meek and He ended up on a cross. Is that the way you inherit the earth? What would it mean for Jesus to say,

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"If you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, all things are possible to you"? He's dead, moldering in the Syrian sands, long gone. That shows how true that was. What value is there to love your neighbor?

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He loved his neighbor and look where it got him. And this thing about, "If you believe in me, you will never die." Well, if He's dead, then not much validity in that either. The plain fact of the matter is that if He was wrong when He said that,

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then He was wrong in almost every other significant thing He said. But the joyous truth is that this Sunday, millions of people around the earth, 2,000 years after the event, are heralding the fact that He wasn't wrong and that He rose from the dead.

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That the most astonishing thing He ever said came absolutely and literally true. And if the most astonishing thing He ever said can be understood to be true, then all of the other things that He ever said can be understood to be true. And once you believe that, man, that gives you energy.

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Then you see, you can believe Him when He said, "Lo, I am with you always." You know that His presence is real in you. Those two men walking to Emmaus that day, they listened to Jesus teaching them the Bible all the journey through.

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And there's no evidence that they got particularly excited. But then, when suddenly they became aware of the fact that He had risen from the dead, their hearts flinged within them and they ran all the way back to Jerusalem. That was the trick, you see.

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When that reality was established, everything else fell into place. About four hours from now, I'll be on an airplane heading east to undertake a preaching mission in one of our Presbyterian colleges this next week to speak to some Presbyterian ministers from eastern states.

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And when we take off, those great engines are going to lift that steel airplane up into the sky. And in a matter of a few hours, we will cross all America. We'll fly above any storms that might be there. It'll be a smooth ride. It'll be splendid in every way.

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You know why? Not only because those engines have power, but because those engines are synchronized one with the other. They are in harmony.

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If they were not in harmony, they would vibrate that plane until it fell apart and we would tumble from the sky. But because they are in harmony, because they are synchronized, they will soar, and I'll soar with them.

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Well, as long as we keep in harmony with this Christ, whose Word can be trusted, who said, "I am with you," and who is with us, as long as we listen to Him for guidance, as long as we move through life guided and directed by His perfect, invaluable counsel,

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oh, man, that gives you all kinds of victorious energy. It was back in Cincinnati, Ohio, some years ago for the Congress on Evangelism. Cincinnati was jammed with people. And we were in the Netherland Hilton Hotel for dinner one evening.

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And evidently, one of the waitresses got sick or didn't show up for her job. And there was one black waitress, an older lady, who was taking care of one half of the restaurant. Just a tremendous job, and she was rushing back and forth.

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She had a beautiful smile on her face, and she was just being as kind as she could, but she was terribly overworked. And she came over to our table, and I was sitting right next to Pat Matriciana,

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who at that time was the director of the Christian World Liberation Front that was operating in Berkeley, a very aggressive witness on that campus. And he looked up at her and he said, "Did you hear the secret?"

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She said, "No, what's the secret?" He said, "The secret is that Jesus is alive." She said, "Oh, honey, I know that secret. "If Jesus wasn't alive and living in my heart,

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"you don't think I could take care of all these folks, do you?" And she was right on. She had Easter energy. She had a voice in her ear, and the voice in her ear was the voice of a risen Christ.

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Easter energy does something else for you. It shows you how magnificent your hopes can be. You see, when you have a song in your heart that asserts that you are worth an Easter to God,

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and when you have a voice in your ear that is the continuing counsel of an ever-present Christ, then you see you know that all the promises God has made are not just a rainbow-colored fog that comes and wisps from his fingers.

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They are realities, and on those realities you can build magnificent hopes and dreams. Now, I think the time will come when historians will sit down to assess the 20th century,

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and as they look at the United States of America, they will focus upon one man as being the greatest man in the 20th century in America. And that man will be Dr. Martin Luther King.

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I won't be here right now. I won't be here then to argue about it. But you wait and see. We'll look down for glory, and it'll be so. Now, there came a time when he was 26 years old that Martin Luther King, still a young clergyman,

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was thrown into the leadership of the bus boycott in Birmingham, Alabama. And he had a great decision to make. And the decision was whether he should break the law of the city in order to bring the truth before the people.

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It's an old decision, the same one Peter faced a long time ago. Do you obey God, or do you obey men? Do you go where men are entitled to go by a God who makes all men equal and free,

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or do you turn away from all those places that have been segregated and those who, by virtue of their skin pigmentation, think they're better than you are? He decided, like Peter of old, that he would obey God. And he announced that to his people in a church service.

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On the day before Good Friday, he was going to go out-- it sounds like such a simple thing-- to buy a glass of milk at a segregated milk counter. And when he came down from his pulpit and he started up his aisle,

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the people on both sides stood, and there was not a sound. It was a very dangerous act that could have cost him his life. And they watched him go. And it was just as he got to the door of the church

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that an older lady sitting in the gallery on the right-hand side of the sanctuary said in a voice loud enough for all to hear, "There he goes, like Jesus." Like Jesus, with a hope in his heart

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that he could tear down the greatest social curse this country has ever known. And he went out from that place to national leadership, international recognition for the Nobel Prize. I'll never forget when I sat at his feet there in Washington, D.C.,

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and heard him say, "I have a dream!" And that dream, that hope, that vision you see, was built on the reality that Easter is true. And because it's true, you can risk anything.

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That put a sword into his hand, and that sword was the courage of a great hope. I think Christians are the greatest people I know, absolutely. Christians do things all the time that businesses would never think of doing.

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We're putting up a building across the street that costs $2 million, and we don't have a single collectible pledge. We can't enforce, under the law, a single dime coming in to pay-- What business would ever do a thing like that? No business would ever do that.

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We send people out around the whole world to bring people to a knowledge of Jesus Christ and to make them free and independent. Now, nations don't do that.

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They go out and seek to get other people to depend upon them, but to make people free and independent, that's an unheard-of thing. We do that all the time. Don't forget in India,

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a long time ago the Salvation Army was conducting street rallies, and the Viceroy of India, a man named Lord Sutar, decided that wasn't such a good idea, because if all those Indians over there got the notion that they were free,

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they wouldn't be such good colonials anymore. So he ordered the Salvation Army to stop its street rallies. They were confronted with the same question that King a little bit later and Peter a little bit earlier were confronted with--

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to obey God or man. They decided on God. So there came that Sunday night when the Salvation Army, with all its brass bands playing and its tambourines whirling,

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started down the street. And they ran into literally hundreds of police and soldiers. And in front of them stood the Viceroy of India, Lord Sutar. And he looked at them and he said,

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"In the name of Her Majesty, the Queen of England, and the Empress of India, I order you to disperse." And the commissioner of the Salvation Army's name was Tucker. May his tribe increase.

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Because he stepped out to the front and he said, "In the name of Jesus Christ, the King of kings and the Lord of lords, I command you to stand aside." And they stood aside.

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And on they went. And they went that way because, you see, they knew their worth to God. They had the voice of Christ ringing in their ears and they had the sword of a great hope and a great courage in their hands.

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"Stand aside." And you feel like that. You get up in the morning and you feel like turning to your imaginary butler and saying, "Meadows, please lay out for me my suit of armor,

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the one with the golden chain mail and the purple plume." "Please turn your cassette to the other side." And Easter does one other thing for you. Easter gives you the promise of a fantastic future.

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And man, the energy that pours into your experience. You remember in Tennyson's "The Passing of Arthur." Arthur's a Christian king. Tennyson never says that Arthur dies.

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He describes him as passing. He boards a boat by a lake. The lake symbolizes religion. Three queens are on board the boat to minister to his every need.

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Their names are Faith, Hope, and Love. And then the boat sets out from the shore. And it doesn't move to the west where the sun sets. It moves to the east where the sun rises.

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No sunset and evening star. Instead of that, a new sun rose bringing a new year. That's the last line of that epic poem. Now there are some who would say that the picture of the Christian going off to the rising sun is fiction,

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like stories of King Arthur. It's not fiction. It's not fiction at all. I've walked into a hospital room where a woman lying in a bed of pain with terminal illness

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looked up at me and heard me say, "How are you today?" And she said, "Physically, I'm terrible. And I know the end is very close now." But, and a great smile lighted her face,

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"In Jesus Christ, I'm absolutely tremendous, and very soon now, my Lord is going to set me free." And that wasn't fiction. I was there and saw that with my own eyes.

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I've been called upon in my ministry many times to tell people about other people who have died. I think the hardest one I ever had was to tell a 13-year-old boy about the death of his father. Sitting there in the living room with a group of other people waiting for the boy to come home, he came through the door.

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I can see him, like it was yesterday, swinging his tennis shoes with one hand and whistling. And when he saw the people sitting about the room, he knew immediately that something was up, and he looked at me. I was just in seminary at the time, the youth minister.

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And I, I walked over to him and I told him. And his face was a, a kaleidoscope of emotion that was hurt there, and unbelief there, and doubt there, and tears there, and sadness there. And then, all of this in, in less than a minute.

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But at the end of the minute, there came a beautiful, radiant smile. So beautiful and so radiant that others there in the room and I have commented about it many times since when we have been together for other occasions. The seed of faith which that boy's father had planted in him blossomed right before our eyes,

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and we saw it happen. And he went over and comforted his mother. "Don't tell me that's fiction, because I was there. I saw the light in his eye, the vision of eternity, which is promised to every Christian,

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what Peter and John saw that day that set them running." A few weeks ago, I had to go into the balcony of the new sanctuary, and when I got to the top of the steps, there was no floor between the top of the steps and the beginning of the balcony.

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All there was was a kind of an old board stretched across there, and it didn't look very strong. Now, I did a dumb thing, but confession is good for the soul. I should have gone down and around, but I decided I'd test the board. And I'm quite a test.

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So I put my foot out on it a little bit, you know, and then a little bit more and a little bit more. It was an old, beat-up-looking board. And I finally, you know, got out far enough that I thought I could make it in one big step. So I kind of leaped across, you know, just touching the board in the middle and on to the other side.

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About a minute and a half later, a workman came down the hall. Over his left shoulder, he had a great big roll of wire, and in his right hand, he had a toolbox, and he was a big man. And he came whistling, and he walked right across the board.

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Now, if I would have seen him do that before, I would never have been hesitant in approaching that board. I would not have had any doubts. Well, Christians, you see, have the promise of a Christ who has crossed over,

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and crossed over with the weight of a whole world on his shoulders. And when you grasp that, you see, a tremendous energy and power flows into you. You want to get somewhere? Well, if you want to get somewhere, that takes drive and enthusiasm and power.

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It takes energy. And to do that, to have that kind of energy, you've got to have a song in your heart, "Know what you're worth to God." You've got to have a voice in your ear, the present counsel of Jesus Christ.

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You've got to have a sword in your hand, the courage which comes from hoping in him. And you've got to have a light in your eye, a vision of all eternity which is opening up for you and those whom you love who are in Jesus Christ. Now, when you've got those things, you've got Easter energy,

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and there's nothing that can stop you. Nothing. Don't think there is. You know, for years, they never thought they'd be able to break down the Bastille in France. No one would ever be able to crack the Bastille.

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And one day, in desperation, they went after it, and they found only 30 guards were guarding it, and the whole place fell in less than four hours. Whatever you think this morning is holding you back cannot stand against Easter energy. It cannot stand against the power of a resurrected Jesus Christ.

00:32:10.000 - 00:32:33.000

So if you couldn't say "Amen" this morning, I invite you to give your heart to that Christ and to know the infilling power of that energy. And if you do that, this will be an Easter you'll never forget. Amen and Amen.

00:32:33.000 - 00:32:54.000

And the people of God said, "Amen." And the people of God said, "Amen." Amen. [BLANK_AUDIO]