Celebrate Easter Big -- Lent: Day 22

Scripture:  Hebrews 2:9

Why would we “celebrate Easter big?”  Because the ticket for heaven which JESUS obtained for us by His blood is the wiping out of all our sins, covering them, bearing them in His own body, so that they can NEVER bring us to ruin—can NEVER be brought up against me again—NEVER!  That’s what happened when He died for us.  Hebrews 10:14 says, “For by One offering He has perfected FOR ALL TIME those who are sanctified.”  Perfected before GOD for all time, by the offering of His life!  That’s what it means that He died for us.  Hebrews 9:28 says, “So Christ also, having been offered once to bear the sins of many . . . .”  He bore our sins.  He really bore them (Isaiah 53:4-6).  He really suffered for them.  They cannot and they will not fall on our heads in judgment.

All of this was accomplished once and for all through the redemptive work of GOD in Christ JESUS at His death, burial, and resurrection!  So I say, yes, Christian, celebrate Easter big!  Celebrate that your sins really were covered when JESUS tasted death for you.  Celebrate that your guilt really was removed when JESUS tasted death for you.  Celebrate that the curse of the law really was lifted and that the wrath of GOD really was removed, and that the precious faith that unites us to all this treasure in Christ was a gift purchased by the blood of JESUS.

JESUS is Risen . . . !

Richard Holloman

Celebrate Easter Big -- Lent: Day 21

Scripture:  Luke 15:11-32:

One of my favorite pieces of art is The Return of the Prodigal Son as depicted by Rembrandt.  I have a large framed print of it in my living room and have spent hours of worship as I have gazed upon it.

                                        

It reminds me of how the Father through His marvelous grace rescued me from the life of a prodigal son and how, later, he delivered me from the life of an elder brother that I had begun to embrace through my legalism.

It is truly a powerful picture of GOD’s grace, forgiveness, and redemption.  It is a picture of Easter.  JESUS, sent by the Father, came into the world for this purpose . . . to forgive sinners and to redeem us from an existence of law bearing.

Our salvation is something to celebrate as the father in this story did when his prodigal son returned home.  As we fully embrace His grace we are protected from the elder son syndrome.

But if we fall victim to this legalistic horror there is still the possibility of forgiveness and redemption as we see in this story.  The father went out to find him (v. 28).  He didn’t holler from a distance and command his son to come into the house.  He goes out to his son.  And the father began “imploring” him, which means he was wooing, appealing, and pleading with him.

In verse 31 the father called him “my child” which in the original language was an intimate and tender term.  He told his son “you have always been with me every day and every night; everything I have is already yours.”  There are so many in the Church do not have hearts for the father.   He is not their treasure but they are just as worldly as the prodigal.

Easter is the Father’s invitation to come in from the foreign country of misery and to come in from the front porch of hard-earned merit.  Both are deadly.

JESUS is Risen . . . !

Richard Holloman

Celebrate Easter Big -- Lent: Day 20

Scripture:  John 12:20-36

We are now in the third week of the Lenten season.  Are you beginning to see it?  Are you beginning to sense what is coming?

In verse 31 we read that the coming death of JESUS will become the decisive dividing line between the condemned and the vindicated.  If you trust JESUS, you are united to Him and His death is your death (Galatians 2:20), and His condemnation is your condemnation (Romans 8:3).  If you never trust JESUS, you then stand condemned both by your sin, and by your rejection of the Messiah.

Also, in verse 31 we read that the ruler of this world will be cast out.  Satan was making a final move against JESUS in the hope that he could possibly make his final hours so bad as to destroy his faith and obedience, and thus undermine the whole work of salvation.

He failed!  And in failing, he himself was judged and decisively defeated.  Satan experienced his decisive defeat at the cross—not the final defeat, but the one that secures and guarantees the final defeat. 

JESUS bore our sin.  He stripped Satan of the one weapon that he had that could damn us:  namely, the valid accusation of our unforgiven sin.  In JESUS we have no unforgiven sin!   The blood of JESUS covers our sin—all of it.  Therefore the cross was the decisive defeat of Satan.  He cannot succeed.  The victory is ours through faith in Christ.  This is what John was saying in Revelation 12:11:  “They have conquered [Satan] by the blood of the Lamb.”  The blood of the Lamb strips Satan of his one condemning weapon, our unforgiven sin.

In verse 32 we read, “And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to Myself.”   In other words, when JESUS died—when He was lifted up on the cross—He actually secured and guaranteed the home-coming of His sheep, the ingathering of his children.

And finally, in verse 36 we read, “While you have the Light, believe in the Light, so that you may become sons of Light.”  If you believe, you don’t just see the Light, you become children of the Light.  This means you share His bright and holy nature.  You shine forth that very Light because the resurrected living LORD is now “life-ing out” His life in you and through you.

JESUS is Risen . . . !

Richard Holloman

Celebrating Easter Big -- Lent: Day 18

Scripture:  Luke 15:

We read in verse 2 that Jesus "receives sinners and eats with them."   Luke uses this word "receive" six other times in his writings and every time it means "eagerly await or expect and look for."  Jesus is not just receiving sinners; he is looking for them and eagerly awaiting their coming.

He is saying: I welcome sinners because I am the incarnation of God's love pursuing the lost. I am the shepherd seeking the sheep. I am the woman seeking her coin.  I am the father who finds a lost son and celebrates with all his house. 

Every month in Chicago 20 to 30 unclaimed people are buried.  People who have nobody that knows or cares.  They just die.  Someone finds them on the street or in a park or in an alley or in a lonely tenement.  The officials search for relatives.  The Medical Examiner’s Office waits and holds the bodies.  No one comes forward to claim the body.  A hundred-eighty-foot long trench is dug at the cemetery and the wooden boxes are lined up next to each other and buried.  No stone.  And no marker.

This is a picture of lostness.  Not a single person seems to know or care when they die.  But ultimate lostness is when one is cut off from GOD.

Easter is about the love of GOD coming into the cities and suburbs of our world to find lost sons and daughters.  It’s about the identity of JESUS and the meaning of His mission in the world. 

This is what JESUS’ birth, death, burial, and resurrection is about!

JESUS is Risen . . . !

Richard Holloman

Celebrating Easter Big -- Lent: Day 17

Scripture:  Matthew 21: 33-43, 45-46

Years ago Charles Colson was in India.  The crowds he spoke to wanted to hear the testimony of this Watergate criminal turned prison evangelist.  Here’s the way he described his experience:

I had many opportunities to tell what Christ has done in my life.  The thousands of faces in those predominantly Hindu crowds would not and smile as I shared my experience.  Hindus believe all roads lead to GOD—if JESUS was my guru that was fine.  They all had their gurus too.

But when I spoke of the reason for my faith, the resurrection of Christ, the nods would stop.  People’s expressions changed and they listened intently.  The fact of the resurrection demands a choice, one that reduces all other religions to mere philosophies.

Christianity socks you between the eyes because it is a religion that says:  The really marvelous things in life are not the feelings of the heart but the facts of history.  There is a world of difference between a subjective religious disposition and an objective resurrection from the dead (John Piper).

The message of the GOSPEL OF JESUS is different from any other religion on earth!  “Because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead” (Acts 17:31).

The faith we embrace is not acceptable in a polite, respectful dialogue about religious experience.  Discussions about the relative value of religious experience and declarations about someone’s resurrection from the dead are just not in the same category.  That’s why the Indus stopped nodding at Charles Colson.  That’s why the Athenians mocked Peter.  That’s why Christianity is offensively unique in a pluralistic age.  For us everything hangs on a marvelous fact in history, not a marvelous feeling in our hearts.

JESUS is Risen . . . !

Richard Holloman

Celebrate Easter Big -- Lent: Day 15

Scripture:  Mark 10:35-45:

James & John had no idea what JESUS meant about “drinking the cup that I drink, or to be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized” (v. 38).

The cup was the death He was about to endure.  If you want to rule with JESUS in His glory then you must die with Him—you must drink the same cup.  The baptism JESUS was referring to was that His death was not only as a bitter cup to drink but an immersion—a baptism—in suffering.  JESUS was saying, My pathway to glory & to kingship is through suffering & death.  If you want to share in His honor & glory, you must follow Him in His suffering & death.

In verse 45 JESUS gives an example of what He means, “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, & to give His life a ransom for many.”  This is JESUS’ radical call to discipleship.  If you desire to follow JESUS, be prepared to suffer & die (Matt. 7:14; Mark 8:34).

Here’s the shocking surprise:  This is not a call to serve JESUS, but a call to be served BY JESUS as we serve others & to be ransomed by Him from death.  This is the Son of Man serving me!  Ransoming me from my sin & my death!  JESUS is refusing to be served by me.  Insisting on being the Servant & the Savior in my life!

He is saying: Yes, drink my cup. Yes, share my baptism. Yes, serve others. Yes, be the slave of all. This is what it means to be my disciple. But don't serve me! I have not come to be served. I will not be served like this. I will be the servant. I have not come to be served, but to serve. In your relationship with me, I will be the servant. I will serve you. I will work for you.

Do you think you can drink this cup without my help and service? Do you think you can endure the suffering of my baptism without my serving you & helping you? Do you think you can become the kind of person that renounces fame & human status to serve all other people without my serving you—day & night all the days of your life? No you can't.

JESUS demands your life; all of it. He demands that you take on a life that sacrifices everything for the sake of serving others (Luke 14:33). This is hard. In fact, it is impossible.  That is what verse 45 is all about. The great UNLESS . . . Unless the Son of Man is serving you day & night.

Celebrate Easter Big -- Lent: Day 11

Read Matthew 5:43-48

Love your enemies and so prove yourself to be what you are—a child of God. That is, show you are a child of God by acting the way your Father acts. If you are his, then his character is in you, and you will be inclined to do what he does. God loves his enemies—the evil and the unrighteous—in sending rain and sunshine on them instead of instant judgment. Love your enemies and so show that God is your Father. 

 

JESUS said in Matthew 5:16, “Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven.”

Notice two things: one is that Jesus speaks to his disciples and calls God their Father. He does not say, "He may become your Father." He says, "He is your Father." Second, notice that when people see the good works of the disciples (like loving their enemies); they give glory to our Father. Why? Because our Father is in us helping us and enabling us to do the good works. If we did the good works on our own so that we could then become children of our Father, the world should see our good works and give us the glory. So Jesus not only says that God is already the Father of the disciples, but this is the very reason that they can do the loving works they do. The light that they let shine IS the light of their Father's love within them.

JESUS shared the parable of the prodigal son. And the point was: I don't eat with sinners because I like sin. I eat with sinners because I am the love of God welcoming home poor, helpless, diseased sinners—forgiving them, cleansing them, making them new, and sending them out to love in the power of God.

 

During this Lenten season we wildly celebrate the resurrection of JESUS because we were the helpless, diseased sinners GOD welcomed home as He forgave us, cleansed us and made us new.  And we can celebrate because He calls us out to share that same Good News with others like us.

JESUS is Risen . . . !

Richard Holloman