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The scripture reading of the morning is taken from Paul's letter to the Corinthians, the 15th chapter. I begin the reading at the verse numbered 51. Lo, I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound,

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and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable nature must put on the imperishable, and this mortal nature must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written, "Death is swallowed up in victory." O death, where is thy victory? O death,

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where is thy sting? The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain. And may God bless to us this reading from his holy word. Pray with me.

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In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen. My Lord, what a morning. That's the way the spiritual goes. My Lord, what a morning. My Lord, what an Easter. And you, quite frankly, are one of the best parts of it. You know, when I was in seminary and knew the answers to all theological questions, I decided that what I would do when I got into a church

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was that on the hottest day of the summer, on the snowiest day of the winter, and on the rainiest day of the fall, I would pass out purple tickets to all those who came to church. And no one who did not have three purple tickets would be able to get in on Easter. Well, it was a very stupid idea, because the fact of the matter is, this is a great day, and the music is exciting, and the

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beauty is exciting, but you are the best part of it. And I'm not saying that in order to drive some wedge into your consciousness, or as a rhetorical device to gain your attention, or a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down. I am really thrilled and delighted to see you, because you're here either because Easter is true, or because you hope it's true. You're

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here either because Easter has claimed you, or you are thinking very seriously about claiming it. You're here either because Christ has found you, or you want to be found by him. I'm convinced you're not here just to show off the new clothes, and not because grandma's in town, and I don't believe it's just because of tradition. I think you have either found the life which is able to

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defeat death, or that you are hoping that in Jesus Christ you will be able to discover the life that defeats death. And I think that's very exciting. And so I thank God for the fact that you are here today. When anyone turns away from death and starts to look at life, that's something to be excited about. My Lord, what a morning. There is, of course, a lot of death in the world, and we

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must acknowledge that. You know, years ago they wrote books about this time, and said that when we got here we would be in utopia. Well, we're here, and the books they're writing about this time now are full of despair and pessimism. Did you know that every hospital in the land is jammed, and seven out of every ten beds is filled by a person who is unable emotionally to cope with

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the events of the 20th century? And think of all the discord in the work world. There's no longer a company man. People move back and forth laterally from company to company and don't think much about it. Unions are unable to claim the allegiance of their members, and the general quality of workmanship is not what we remember it to be. And I don't think people are as much in

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love with glamour as they once were. I was reading an article about Beverly Hills the other day. They said they don't have as many tourists there as they used to have. I used to live very near Beverly Hills, and one of the interesting things I discovered about it was, although it's a rather small municipality, living within the boundaries of Beverly Hills are 1,200 lawyers, 32 detective

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agencies, and 172 psychiatrists. And people aren't so charmed with that anymore. And I don't think the world of the intellect charms like it used to, at least. W. Somerset Wong came to the end of his life and said he thought the whole thing was wretched. And Malcolm Muggeridge, that marvelous wit and great Christian, says that he sees life as a kind of pigsty. And you remember

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that poster that they made of Ernest Hemingway? He was super macho, you remember? And there he was with his short trim haircut, looking out with this strong expression on his face, and the caption on the poster was "Endurance." And you remember how Ernest Hemingway died. He committed suicide. There's a lot of death in the world. And of course, at the end of whatever kind of life, there is always

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death. We try to deny it. We don't talk about death. We say people passed on or that they kicked the bucket. We have soft lights in mortuaries. We use cosmetics. Oftentimes the corpse is the healthiest looking person in the room. We don't like to think much about death, but death comes at the end of life. And a lot of people seeing that announce it to be the ultimate futility.

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They say Michelangelo might just as well have carved in ice, and Raphael painted his Madonnas on Kleenex, and the Parthenon been built on quicksand. Whenever you hear someone say, "I feel more dead than alive," that's nothing to smile about, because most people do feel that way, and they have felt that way ever since Eden. And then comes Easter, and a rumor begins to move

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about. And some know that the rumor is true, and others come to places like this to discover whether the rumor is true. Like Thomas, they come seeking additional information, and the word that is given is a word of very great hope. So here's the Easter announcement. It's just this simple and just this wonderful. Jesus is alive, and death is destroyed. Now I do not present that as an

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argument. I present that as an announcement. I'll admit it's quite fantastic to believe, yet people have been living and dying for it for 2,000 years. Some women one morning went to a tomb. They didn't notice it was morning. The sun had gone out of life for them. All they brought with them were their pain-brained drains.

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I practiced this last night, too. [laughter] All they brought with them were their pain-drained brains. [laughter]

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Really wasn't worth all that effort, was it? [laughter] And then they went, having discovered that he had risen, they went and told others, ordinary men, who came running through the streets. All you could hear was the slap of their sandals on the

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sidewalks. And these relative nobodies, they were peasants and fishermen, went and told others. And all of this happened, mind you, in a run-down little province in the corner of a tottering empire. But what happened tipped the throne of the Caesars. It wasn't the Sermon on the Mount that did it, and it wasn't any miracle of Jesus that did it, and it wasn't any parable that he told,

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not even the most perfect of them, and it was not the cross. What tipped the throne of the Caesars, what turned history upside down, what made things move from B.C. to A.D., was Easter, the acknowledgment that Jesus is alive. Let me give you a one-minute Greek lesson. In the Greek language, whenever something is in the past,

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you can speak of it in one of two ways. You can use what is called the aorist tense. Now, the aorist tense means you're describing something that happened only once, and after it happened, it never happened again. It is a snapshot of something out of the past, one instant captured and then gone. You can also use an imperfect, and an imperfect is something

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which happened yesterday but which continues to happen. If the aorist is a snapshot, the imperfect is a motion picture which continues to move for us to see. Now, Paul says to the Christians of the first century, "Jesus died," and that's an aorist, "once." "Jesus was buried," and that's an aorist, "once." "Jesus rose," and that's an aorist,

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"once." "Jesus appeared," and he appeared to his disciples a number of times, but all in the past, and each time only once. But then, Paul says, "Jesus is raised to life," and the verb he uses, a gergotai, is an imperfect. That is, it isn't something just that happened yesterday. He is alive not only then, but he is alive now. Jesus is alive. Now, I know that no argument can convince

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you of that, and no philosophy can convince you of that, and no ideology can convince you of that. The only way that you can know that Jesus is alive is to encounter his living presence in your own life. Now, many in this room have already had that experience. There is a joy about them. There is a calmness about them. There is a deep,

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diapasan note of positivity about them. There is an absence of fear in them, which can be explained by only one thing. They have met, and know, they have traded hearts with the Jesus who is alive. It's great to meet people like that. I was in Chicago, Illinois. I had just come from a service. I was very, very high after the service, and I was sitting there, and a black lady was

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waiting on the table, and I said to her, "Do you know the secret?" She said, "What secret?" I said, "Jesus is alive." She said, "He lives in my heart." Amen. I was in a market in Squirrel Hill the other day, and the fellow working at the counter had a PTL button on him. That means "Praise the Lord." I said to him, "Jesus has risen." He said, "Jesus has risen indeed." Squirrel Hill.

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I read something three weeks ago which will interest you. This comes from Czechoslovakia. In one of the principal educational institutions of Czechoslovakia, a lecture was being presented to explain the fact that the resurrection was a fabrication and not true. Students came by the dozens. They crowded out the room, and this learned lecturer attacked the concept of the

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resurrection. Now, they brought an Orthodox priest, and they said that he could have a five-minute rebuttal. The original speaker spoke over an hour, but this was allowed to have only a five-minute rebuttal. You wonder what they were afraid of, don't you? And the priest got up and said, "I don't need five minutes. All I need is five seconds." And he looked out at all of these

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students, and he said, "Christos anesti." Now, that's the opening phrase with which an Orthodox worship service on Easter begins. "Christ is risen." And immediately, thundering back from all of the students sitting there came the words, "Aethos anesti." "Truly, he is risen." You see, those who have met him, encountered him, those who know him to be alive,

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they need no other convincing. Let me ask you a question. How would you like to be able to do this? To, at the end of each day, tear the page off the calendar and not think another thing about it? I mean, roll it up in a ball and toss it away, to be utterly free of yesterday, to not have to worry about anything that drags behind you as some kind of shadow falling on your todays,

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something that comes out of yesterday. How would you like to be in an experience, well, like a land of beginning again, where nothing from the past chased you and reminded you of the unfortunate and the sad and the failure and the sin of it all? How would you like to know that? That can be known when the light of the power of Jesus Christ shines into a life, because, you see, the back of guilt

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is broken by the resurrection of Jesus Christ. When I was in California in January, a man came to see me in the hotel where I was staying. It was during a preaching mission, and he was deeply burdened. He explained to me that he had sinned, that he had confessed his sin, but that he felt no sense of release. Now, sometimes it is difficult to gain that sense, and I think that's because

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we somehow do it alone and by ourselves, and nothing seems to make it real. It is real, but we do not grasp it so. I took him to the scriptures, and I pointed to a verse in Matthew chapter 16. I said, "It says here that if someone who is a disciple of Jesus Christ forgives another of sin, then that sin is truly forgiven." And then I turned over to John the 20th chapter, and I said,

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"And here again Jesus said to his disciples, 'Whatever you forgive will be forgiven. Whatever you leave unforgiven, unforgiven it will remain.'" "Do you believe that Jesus said that?" He said, "Yes." I said, "Do you believe that I am one of Jesus' disciples?" He said, "Yes." I said, "Kneel down." And he knelt down, and I put my hands on his shoulders, and I said, "In the name

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of the risen Jesus Christ, I announce to you what you already know in your mind, but have yet to claim in your heart. You are forgiven." And even as I had my hands on his shoulders, I could feel him begin to tremble. And there was, it came welling up out of him, a sob that started at the depths and ended, and I've never heard this in all of my life, and ended with laughter. He was

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released by the power of the risen Christ. I didn't do it. I was only the one who acted it out, who visualized it for him, but the power was there. Let me ask you a question. How would you like to find contentedness and happiness in life? I was in Holland, Michigan, and a young man came to talk to me about going to seminary, very well dressed,

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very, very well spoken. I was impressed with him. He had a positive spirit. He had a radiant smile. There was a joy about him. He was so impressive that later that day, when I was speaking to the dean of the college he was attending, I mentioned his name and said how impressed with him I was. He said, "Oh yes, let me tell you about Roger." He said, "Roger was the ninth of nine children.

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When he was ten years old, his father murdered his mother. His father subsequently died in prison. He was raised by some neighbors down the street. He was known in the town where he lived as the murderer's kid. But look at him now. He is full of peace and poise and power." And why? "Because he has met the living reality of Jesus Christ, and that's made all the difference."

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Let me ask you a question. How would you like to find more motivating power in your life? Did you know that it's a matter of actual fact that Christians generally live longer than non-Christians? That's true. It's absolutely true. They get fewer head colds, too. Also less constipation. And, the statistics seem to bear it out, much less cancer and other

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debilitating illness. Now, there are probably many, many reasons for that which are beyond our exploration this morning. But what I want to say now is that when a person comes to know Christ in the risen fullness of his being, they not only have about them a deep peace and joy like that young man of which I've just spoken, they're not only rid of yesterday like that

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fellow who turned tears into laughter, but they also have in them a motivating power which enables them to accomplish remarkable things. How did the Gentile world come to know about Jesus? They were told by Paul and Jesus. Who opened Africa to the light of civilization and to the light of the gospel? Livingston and Jesus. Who went to Labrador and took medicine, medicine for

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the soul as well as the body, into that place? Grenfell and Jesus. Who went to the Alca Indians in Ecuador? Who went there even after they had taken the life of her husband and of her dearest friends? Elizabeth Elliot and Jesus. Who opened the door to discovering the cure to leprosy? Father Damien and Jesus. Who painted the Sistine ceiling? Michelangelo and Jesus. Who built St.

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Paul's Cathedral? Christopher Wren and Jesus. Who took the children out of the coal mines in England? Wilberforce and Jesus. Who wrote the B Minor Mass? Johann Sebastian Bach and Jesus. Who led the civil rights movement? Martin Luther King and Jesus. Who discovered the light bulb? Thomas Edison and Jesus. Who is cleaning up prisons across the length and breadth of our country? Charles Colson

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and Jesus. He is the greatest motivator in history, this Jesus. I've seen youngsters that were failing courses pass them because of an experience of faith. I've seen individuals who were unhappy in their work find new challenge and positivity in their purpose because of Jesus. I've seen athletes become better athletes because of Jesus. I've seen prostitutes begin to live like angels because of

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Jesus. I've seen jailbirds become spokesmen for Jesus Christ because of Jesus. I've seen alcoholics who couldn't get away from a bottle transformed not by those spirits but by the Holy Spirit of God which they met through Jesus. I'm not telling you about things I've read about. I'm telling you about things that I have seen with my own eyes, that I have observed, that is part of my own experience.

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Christians live longer and they live better because it's an encounter with the risen Jesus. Let me ask you a question. How would you like to be rid of loneliness? Loneliness is a very heavy thing. I imagine there are some people in this room this morning who when they were dressing to come here today were thinking of the ones who used to come with them.

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But they are with them no more, at least in this life. And some people are in retirement and the telephone doesn't ring much any more and there's a certain loneliness that comes with that. And others who will be listening to these words later today over the radio or perhaps on a tape sometime months, years, decades from now might be confined to their homes as shut-ins and there's a

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special loneliness that comes with that. Jesus Christ will come into loneliness when he is invited. When I was doing graduate study in Scotland, the week after I had arrived in St. Andrews, the other students were not there yet, I was feeling dreadfully alone. I was farther from home than I'd ever been before and I had a long time ahead of me before I would see the shores

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of America again. No one about who had become my friend, I'd met practically no one at that point. And one night in my loneliness, I went down and I walked out on the King Edward Pier which shuts out on the North Sea. I walked to the very end of it and climbed up on a little stone platform at the end of that pier. It was a dark night but the moon was out and you could see the North Sea clouds

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moving very rapidly because it was a strong wind and the wind whipped the waters at my feet and they were white with foam. And I stood there with a very, very heavy heart and I prayed to be relieved of loneliness and suddenly I felt all about me the presence of Jesus. When sought in loneliness, he comes because he is alive. My friends, Easter is not something that happened yesterday.

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Death was destroyed but death is destroyed and the things of death are destroyed as well. Guilt and weakness and discouragement and lack of strength and power and loneliness, all of these things are taken away. Even physical death is transformed. You know, the Europeans dreamed for years of being able to go around the southern tip of Africa

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and move into the Indian Ocean and there come to India and to Cathay. But that passage around the southern tip of Africa is a very dangerous one. That place was called the Cape of Storms. Terrible climatic meteorological conditions. But eventually, one sailor made it. He and his ship, his name was Vasco da Gama. He made it to the far east and then came back to tell the story.

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And when he came back telling the story, they changed the name of that cape from the Cape of Storms to the Cape of Good Hope. And so it is known even today. And the Easter gospel is that Jesus rounded that cape and changed death, which seems to us from this side to be only a thing of storms, into what can only be described as the most wonderful of

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hopes. If I could have any wish today, I would wish that somehow I could bring to testify to you all of the saints who have now followed after him and know the glories of the kingdom of heaven. What wonderful things they would have to tell. How there's no more tears and no more pain. How there is great joy and wonderful service. How we can drink deep from the peace of God.

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I think they would say to those of you who are doubtful, "Only believe." I think they would say to those of you who are tempted, "He that endures to the end will be saved. So endure." I think they would say to those of you who do not yet know the reality of the living Christ, "Come unto him and discover the victory that is to be found in him." If you don't put stock in Easter,

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what else is there to put stock in? Well, you've already answered that. You're here this morning. And that's what's so thrilling to me. And the word I offer is an old word, but a true word. Don't be defeated. Don't be discouraged. Don't be deterred by anything that is of death, in life or at the end of life. Cast it aside,

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for death is destroyed. If those saints were here right now, I think they'd be chorusing, "Jesus is alive. Jesus is alive. Jesus is alive. Death is destroyed and Jesus is alive. Now, if you will harden not your heart, come to him and be saved. And then you will be able to say from the very depths of yourself, 'My Lord, what a morning!'" Let us pray.

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O God, we thank thee for this day of days, this day of victory, this day of triumph, when death and everything that has death upon it has been utterly destroyed. We thank thee for hope. We thank thee for power. We thank thee for the purpose which comes in Jesus Christ. We thank thee for the motivating strength of the Master. We thank thee for those who have come

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into this place. We thank thee for those who know his power and for those who will come to know it this day. We thank thee for those who will begin this day a life which is eternal now as well as hereafter. We thank thee for all of this. We thank thee for this morning. In Jesus' name, amen.