Sermons from Moorpark Presbyterian Church

 An End Run on Enron

by Dave Wilkinson

1 Corinthians 15:16-28 Romans 5:18-12,21

Easter Sunday, March 31, 2002

People's retirement funds and life savings seemed to be doing fine -- even increasing. Then, in one shocking meltdown, they were gone. Enron, the energy giant, the seventh largest corporation in America suddenly declared bankruptcy.

Who could have guessed that this apparently rock-solid company could turn out to be worth nothing in the end? So many have been hurt -- so much has been lost.

The ancient words of King Solomon in Proverbs 23:5 sound as if they were written in the last few months: "Cast but a glance at riches, and they are gone, for they will surely sprout wings and fly off to the sky like an eagle."

It almost makes you wonder if there is really any such thing as financial security. But then, is there really any earth-security that cannot, sometimes overnight, "sprout wings and fly off"? People who are our security can be suddenly gone. Economic upheaval, betrayal, abandonment, sudden change, a health crisis, a breakup, a funeral -- they remind us how vulnerable, how "losable" our life- anchors really are.

That’s not a bad thing to learn. For many of us, that's when we start reaching for something we cannot lose. We need hands to hold our future that won't drop us, go bankrupt, leave us or die on us. And we'll never be secure until we find those hands that will never let us go, never let us down.

Hands like those are within your reach . You'll recognize them by the nailprints in them. It's Jesus - and Jesus alone - who can keep the promise - "Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you." How do you know you can trust Jesus? Those nailprints - they show how much He loves you -- and how much you can trust Him.

Now I made the initial notes for this Easter sermon one morning over breakfast. I was in the Lobster Trap Restaurant at Channel Islands Harbor.

Few places could be more peaceful than the harbor. The day was clear. The water was smooth -- only disturbed by a flock of pelicans diving for fish and the wake of a sailboat headed for the ocean. The low background music at the restaurant was a woman crooning a very mellowed-down version of the old Kansas song, "Dust in the Wind." "Dust in the wind all we are is dust in the wind."

And that may be true. But, to be honest, in that place, at that moment, I didn't feel very dusty. I was living the good life.

But life has a way of bringing us down. Great promises of happiness can lead to great sorrow. Lives, as well as a budget surplus, can be swallowed up in a sudden terrorist attack. You can be sailing along through life when the doctor calls and says, "We need to talk." A person you trust lets you down. Even beautiful surroundings like where I was at Channel Islands Harbor can only accentuate the pain we sometimes feel inside. That’s what depresses many people at holiday times. Everything around them says "celebrate" and they just feel empty.

Well, if you have ever experienced the ruin of your expectations, (and who has not?) there is a great message for you in Easter.

The message is this: God has greater plans and expectations for us than we have for ourselves.

It is for this reason that we are able to rejoice in God even when our plans are shattered and our expectations confounded because we know that God is working for our good, even when we don't see how good can possibly come except through the eyes of faith. We can have hope because, in spite of it all, we are Easter people

As the Apostle Paul declares in II Corinthians 4:16- 18: "Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer person is decaying, yet our inner person is being renewed day by day. For momentary light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, while we look not at the things that are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal."

Listen to a powerful message about the resurrection from the word of God from I Corinthians 15:16-28.

15:16-28

In this passage, Paul declares that there is a divine necessity to the resurrection because resurrection is the only way to the final overthrow of the last enemy which is death itself. When the final enemy is defeated through our resurrection, then God becomes "All in All."

"If Christ is not raised," Paul declares in verses 17- 19, "then the consequence is disaster for both the living and the dead. Believers are still in their sins and the dead in Christ have perished." If Christ took our sin to the cross but didn't rise from the dead, then sin won, and we are not forgiven.

"But in fact," Paul joyfully declares, "Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep." The point, as we will see a little later, is that those who have died in Christ will not perish, but are destined for resurrection. As Jesus promised, "Because I live, you shall also live."

The resurrection of Jesus Christ has determined your and my existence for all time and eternity. We do not merely live out our time on earth and then have the hope of resurrection as an addition. Rather, as Paul makes plain in this passage, Christ's resurrection has set in motion a chain of events that absolutely guarantees both our present and our future.

In verses 21 and 22, Paul writes: "For since by a man came death, by a man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive."

Let’s explore this hard concept.

Whether you treat Adam as an historical character or as a symbol of humanity -- for the name "A- dam" is the Hebrew word for mankind -- the impact is the same. People fell from a whole relationship with God because they desired to enthrone themselves in God's place. They heard the words of the tempter, "The day you eat of the fruit, you will be like God," and decided that being like God was worth an act of disobedience. Self-enthronement was the root of the first sin, as it has been at the root of every subsequent sin.

Romans 5, read earlier in the service, is a parallel passage to this part of I Corinthians 15, Here Paul also talks about Adam and declares that "That death came through sin and that death spread to all because all sinned."

Paul is very careful to maintain human freedom. We have a choice. Paul does not say in Romans: "And death spread to all because Adam sinned," but "Death spread to all because all sinned." We judge ourselves by our own acts of self-enthronement -- done in the same spirit as Adam's act of self-enthronement

We have a choice. But we do fall -- every last one of us.

That’s why we need to know that God always has a "However." God's "however" is Jesus Christ. For when Jesus came to earth, He came to start a whole new thing in human life. Paul says that Jesus came to begin a new humanity.

What happens to you when you put your faith in Jesus? The Bible describes it as a change in the inner being. In 2 Corinthians 5, Paul says that "If anyone be in Christ he or she is a new creation. The old things are passed away. Behold, the new has come."

This new nature comes to us the same way the old nature came to us -- by our own choice and our own participation. We participated in Adam's sin by our own sin. And in the same way, the way of renewal is open to those who participate -- by the conscious choice of putting faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior -- in the gift that God has to offer -- the gift of new life.

C.S. Lewis observes, "Jesus did not come to earth to make us into nice people. He came to make us a new creation." This changes has nothing to do with positive thinking. It is not realizing our full potential for living. Rather it is being infused with a new potential for living through the power of God.

Now in our passage from 1 Corinthians 15, Paul speaks of Christ as the "first-fruits of them that sleep." Paul is thinking here in terms of a picture which every Jew would recognize. The feast of Passover had more than one significance. It commemorated the deliverance of the children of Israel from Egypt. But it was also a harvest festival. It fell just at the time when the barley was harvested. The Law of Leviticus laid it down. "You shall bring the sheaf of the first-fruits of your harvest to the priest; and he shall wave the sheaf before the Lord, that you may find acceptance; on the day after the Sabbath the priest shall wave it."

Until this was done, the new barley could not be bought and sold in the shops and bread could not be made from the new flour. The first-fruits were a sign of the harvest to come; and the resurrection of Jesus -- which took place on the day after the Jewish Sabbath -- is a sign of your resurrection and my resurrection which is to come. Jesus is the first fruits. We are the rest of the harvest. Jesus Christ is the first fruits and those who are His will be raised at His coming. Eternal life for Christians isn't a hope. It's a fact.

At the center of our faith there stands a tomb that is empty. For Jesus Christ is risen. He is Lord not only of life but He is Lord also of death.

Now it is obvious that we do not yet fully experience what this means. We don't always feel or act like a new creation. But we are part of a community -- the church that God intends to bring into glory.

Some of you may remember a bunch of years ago how the world watched as gray whales icebound off Pt. Barrow, Alaska, floated battered and bloody, gasping for breath at a hole in the ice. Their only hope was somehow to be transported five miles past the ice pack to the open sea.

Rescuers began cutting a string of breathing holes about twenty yards apart in the six-inch-thick ice. For eight days, they coaxed the whales from one hole to the next, mile after mile. And finally, with the help of Russian ice breakers, the whales swam to freedom. That as one of the first signs of the end of the Cold War when the Soviets literally helped break the ice.

In a way, regular Sunday worship is a string of breathing holes the Lord provides His people. If you think you are only here for Easter, let me encourage you to come back next week. You need it. So do I.

Battered and bruised in a world frozen over with greed, selfishness, and hatred, we rise for air in the church, a place to breath again, to be loved and encouraged and reminded until that day when the Lord forever shatters the icecap.

And it will be shattered. Global warming in the most wonderful sense is in our future.

A Greek legend has it that the Sphinx, a creature half woman and half lion, used to lie stretched upon a rock at the entrance to a city. When anyone approached the city, she would put a riddle. The riddle was this: "What goes on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and three legs at night?" And if the traveler could not answer the riddle, she would push that traveler off the cliff to death.

Then one day Oedipus came, and Oedipus answered the riddle. What goes on four legs in the morning and two at noon and three at night? People. In the morning of their years, they crawl on all fours. In the noontime of their lives, the middle years, they walk on two feet. At the end of their years, they walk upon two legs and a cane. And the story goes that when the sphinx heard the explanation of her riddle, she herself leaped to her death.

Death has been the sphinx that has been stretched out across the pathway of all human experience. Death has been the riddle, the enigma. But then Jesus came and in Jesus we see death itself die. We see the last great enemy defeated. We see that one thing that could stop us is able to stop us no more because Jesus is alive.

As Harry Blamires expresses our Christian reality in his book On Christian Truth, "to become a Christian is to accept an extra dimension of reality. From the Christian's point of view the notable thing about the unbeliever's world is how much smaller it is. The unbeliever is imprisoned in a decaying universe."

But with the resurrection, everything is different. We are forgiven! We are reconciled to God! We do have a sure hope for a new world and for eternal life! History is not out of control! The lover of our souls has the last word! And we live every moment in the companionship of the risen Lord.

In the words of Romans 5:8, "God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us." Most people know Christ died - and how He died, nailed hands and feet to a cross. But the discovery that can literally change the rest of your life is why He died. He died for us. He died for you.

And it turns out that His death is our only hope for ever having a personal relationship with our Creator, for ever having the ultimate security - knowing where you're going to be when you die. Without a relationship with God in our unpredictable, sometimes unbearable, lives, we are like ships adrift without an anchor -- and with no safe harbor from the hurricanes.

And today - in a world whose headlines scream with reminders of vulnerable we are - Jesus is extending His hand toward you. He's ready to introduce you to His "never leave you, never forsake you" love -- to secure your future forever and to care for you every day between here and eternity.

We spend so much time, so much effort, trying to secure our next thirty or forty years. But that is a blink of the eye compared to securing our eternity. To neglect your forever is life's most costly mistake. And to grab the waiting hand of Jesus is to find what you can never lose.

You can belong to Him this very day - just tell Him, "Jesus, I've run my own life long enough - I'm Yours beginning right now. You died for me. You rose again- I'm putting all my trust in You."

In a very uncertain world, you can know your life and your future are in hands that will never hurt you, never drop you, never let you go.

Note: The introduction and conclusion to this sermon were adapted from Ron Hutchcraft in "A Word With You"