Robert Jeffress - Life's Most Important Choice
On Easter Sunday we celebrate the miraculous resurrection of Jesus Christ from the grave. And while the Easter story centers on the death of Jesus, it also holds an important lesson about our own death as well. Today we'll see why Easter should remind us that life is fleeting, and we only have a limited time to prepare ourselves for eternity. My message is titled: "Life's Most Important Choice," on today's edition of "Pathway to Victory".
You know, one positive thing I'll have to say about the pandemic has been that it's forced many people to come to grips with their own mortality. Some for the very first time. I remember at one particularly low point during this last year, Amy and I realized that we didn't have a place to be buried. And we wondered, "What would we do if we died from this virus"? And so we literally spent an entire day searching for and then purchasing our cemetery plots. And the men, I've got a word of advice to you. If you're trying to take your wife or girlfriend out on a date, don't spend the day looking for cemetery plots, it's the ultimate buzz kill for romance, it really is. But I digress. And the fact is, all of us are gonna die from something.
Famed pastor, Tim Keller, founder of the Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and he had to come to grips with his own impending death. In a recent article for the Atlantic, he said, "I spent my lifetime counseling others before my diagnosis. Will I be able to take my own advice"? Keller went on to observe, "Our beliefs about God and an afterlife, if we have them, are often in the abstract. If we don't accept the reality of death, we don't need these beliefs to be any more than mental assents. But, a pretend battle in a play or a movie requires only stage prompts. But his death, the last enemy, became real to my heart. I realized that my beliefs would have to become just as real to my heart or I wouldn't be able to get through the day. Theoretical ideas about God's love and a future resurrection had to become life-gripping truths or be discarded as useless".
Have you come to grips with the fact that you are going to die one day? Somebody has said the statistics on death are quite impressive. One out of every one dies. We're going to die. And if that were not terrifying enough, the Bible says following our death comes our judgment by God. Every one of us is going to stand before a holy God and be judged. Hebrews 9:27 says, "It's appointed unto every person once to die and then the judgment". So let me ask you this morning, what truth are you holding on to? What are you banking on that will help you survive your inevitable death and your judgment by God? Some people say, "Well, I'm trusting in the fact that I'm a pretty good person. I'm not perfect, I have my flaws, but I'm good enough". No, Romans 3:10 says, "There's not one righteous among us, no, not even one; for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God".
What are you trusting in right now to see you through death and help you survive the judgment of God? In the passage we're going to look at today we're going to discover that the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead make him the only object worthy of our faith. If you have your Bibles turn to Acts chapter 2, as we talk about life's most important choice. Acts chapter 2, let me set the scene for you in Acts 2. We're in Jerusalem at this point. The Jews from all over the world had come, hundreds of thousands of them to Jerusalem to celebrate the feast of Pentecost.
But as they came together, the city was still buzzing about what had happened two months earlier. People were still talking about the crucifixion of this man Jesus of Nazareth who called himself the Messiah, the Son of God. The city was talking about his alleged resurrection from the dead. Over the past 40 days, people had actually seen him alive and reported on that. And if that weren't enough, ten days before Acts chapter 2, Jesus had been with a group on the Mount of Olives, and thousands had seen him ascend into heaven. Before he ascended into heaven he had told his followers, "Now go to the upper room and wait for the coming of the Holy Spirit. But once the Spirit comes, you're to be my witnesses throughout the world".
When we get to Acts Chapter 2, ten days later, it's the day of Pentecost and the disciples gathered together in the upper room, received the baptism with the Holy Spirit, and once they receive that baptism, their first instinct was to go to the temple area where there were hundreds of thousands of Jews gathered together. And Peter, the leader of the group, stood up to preach the first sermon ever preached in the newly created church. And we find a record of that sermon in Acts chapter 2, I want you to look at the heart of the sermon, beginning in verse 22. "Men of Israel," Peter said, "listen to these words: Jesus the Nazarene, a man attested to you by God with miracles and wonders and signs which God performed through Him in your midst, just as you yourselves know, this man, delivered over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and you put Him to death. But God raised Him up again, putting an end to the agony of death, since it was impossible for Him to be held in its power".
Isn't it interesting that the first sermon ever preached by the church was a sermon about Jesus Christ? And it wasn't a sermon about Jesus, the great teacher. It wasn't about Jesus, the great moral example. It was about Jesus, the Savior of the world. And Peter boldly said to that group, "You can't ignore what has happened here these last two months. You've got to make a decision, a choice, about who Jesus is and what you're going to do about him. Was he just a lunatic? Was he a liar, or was he Lord? And if you believe that he was the long awaited Messiah, are you ready to accept his message? Are you going to reject his message? Are you going to neglect the message"?
Life's most important choice: what are you going to do about Jesus? And Peter said, "Before you reject him or neglect him, consider three aspects of Jesus. First of all, his miraculous life". I would say to those of you watching today or listening to this message, you cannot ignore the miraculous life of Jesus. Go back to verse 22. "Men of Israel, listen to these words of Jesus the Nazarene," that's how Jesus was known. That was his hometown, Nazareth, in the northern area of Israel. Remember when Philip found Jesus, he said to Nathaniel, he said, "We have found him, the one of whom Moses wrote, Jesus of Nazareth". And Nathaniel said, "You've gotta be kidding, Jesus of Nazareth? Are you telling me the Messiah of the world came out of that two bit town, Nazareth? Can any good thing come out of Nazareth"? Peter said, "He was more than just a man from Nazareth. He was a man attested," that word means proven to you by God with miracles and wonders and signs.
Peter said to that throng of thousands that day: You cannot ignore what Jesus did as signs and miracles. The feeding of the 5,000, later on, the feeding of the 4,000. The casting out of demons, walking on the water, and who can forget raising Lazarus from the dead? You can't ignore those things. He didn't do those miracles in a closet somewhere. He did them where everybody could see. He did them in your midst, just as you yourselves know, he added. In other words, he said to the crowd assembled together. He said: You, listening to me today, you either saw some of those miracles yourself or you know somebody who did see them. I mean, Israel wasn't that big of a place. Everybody knew somebody who had seen a miracle of Jesus.
How true it is that Jesus Christ is the central figure in the world. 2,000 years later, the unholy, the unrighteous are ridiculing him and believers are still trusting him for salvation. You cannot ignore Jesus's miraculous life. But Peter doesn't stop there. He says, "Consider his atoning death". Verse 23, "This man," Jesus, "delivered over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death". Now you wanna talk about guts, Peter had guts. Here he was standing before the very people who just seven weeks earlier had cried out for the crucifixion of Jesus. He said, "You godless people, you nailed him to a cross". But then he said, "It was all according to the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God".
Jesus Christ died for our sins according to the scripture. Peter said, "All of this was a part of God's plan that had been prophesied hundreds of years, and in some cases a thousand years before the fact". Did you know every detail about Jesus's life, death, and resurrection was prophesied in scripture? None of these things happened by accident. They were all part of the plan of God. Why did he have to die? Because when Jesus, the perfect Son of God, hung on that cross, in some inexplicable way he received the punishment from God that you and I deserve. And that's why Isaiah the prophet said in chapter 53, "For he," Jesus, "was pierced through for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities; The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him. All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned every way into our own ways; but the LORD has caused the iniquity of us all to fall upon Him".
Jesus came to die to pay for our sins. And by the way, it was no accident that he died when he died. On that, what we call, Good Friday, hundreds of thousands of Jews were in town for the Passover meal. You remember Passover. It commemorated what had happened 1,400 years before the time of Christ, when Israel was in bondage in Egypt, and remember, God said, "I'm going to send the plague, the final plague, the death angel, and he will kill the first born of every household, both of Israel and Egypt. But if you want to escape my judgment," God said, "you take a lamb, a blameless lamb without blemish, kill that lamb, take its blood, and put it on the doorpost of your house. And when I see the blood, if I see the blood on your house, I will pass over you in judgment". And of course, all of that was foreshadowing of what Jesus, "The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world," John said, what he would do for us on that Good Friday.
Now, when you came to Jerusalem to have your lamb slaughtered for the meal, there were only two hours on that Friday you could have the lamb killed. From 3 to 5 p.m. on that Friday afternoon. Do you think it was an accident that as those lambs started to be slaughtered throughout Jerusalem that Jesus, the Lamb of God hung on the cross. And at 3 p.m. he died after saying, "It is finished. Tetelestai," paid in full. That's what Jesus Christ did for you. He paid the sin debt that you and I could never pay. Love's redeeming work was done on that Friday afternoon. Before you ignore, before you reject the life and death and resurrection of Jesus, remember his atoning work for you. But the story doesn't end there, in addition to his miraculous life and his atoning death, consider his supernatural resurrection.
Look at verse 24. In that sermon Peter proclaimed, "But God raised Him up again, putting an end to agony of death, since it was impossible for Him to be held by its power". How do we know that Jesus was really resurrected from the dead? We've talked about that in many other passages. In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul says that, "The resurrected Christ was seen by over 500 witnesses at a single time". Or think about the amazing transformation that occurred in such a short period of time in the disciples. I mean, Friday afternoon they had scattered like rats off the sinking ship, they were scared to death, starting with Peter at their prospective arrest and death themselves from being followers of Christ. And yet, overnight, three days later, they were transformed into courageous defenders of the faith.
I mean, here is Peter seven weeks later standing before the crowd that he ran from earlier and saying without hesitation, "This is the Christ and I'm willing to give my life for him". How do you explain that change in the disciples? Or think about the changes that occurred in Judaism. I mean, Judaism had been practicing the same laws and traditions for 1,400 years. And yet, overnight, there was a seismic change in Judaism. They changed their day of worship, thousands of them, over a period of just a few days from Saturday to Sunday. They gave up many of the practices of the Old Testament. Sociologists tell us that it takes decades, if not centuries, to have changes in religious traditions, but it happened here overnight. How do you explain it? There is no explanation, except for something seismic happened, the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. What do you say about the empty tomb?
You know, people say, "Well, the disciples stole the body, that's the easiest explanation". That makes no sense. They had no courage to defeat a Roman guard unit of 16 minutemen. Other people say, "Well, what happened was the Jewish leaders or the Roman leaders, they stole the body". That makes even less sense. They wanted to keep that body in the grave. Remember the Jewish leaders came to Pontius Pilate Saturday, after the crucifixion? They said, "Pilate, we've got a problem. We've got to secure that grave where Jesus is, lest the disciples come and steal the body and say, 'He's risen from the dead as he predicted!' And the last deception will be worse than the first". And Pilate said, "Okay, you got your guard".
A guard unit, 16 men. They didn't want that body going anywhere, lest the claim that Jesus was the Lord be validated. No, the disciples didn't have the courage to steal the body. The leaders didn't have the motivation to steal the body, there's only one explanation for why even today, the body of Jesus Christ has not been discovered after 2,000 years. Only one explanation. And that is God himself reached down into that grave and rescued his Son from the jaws of death, and one day he'll do the same for you and for me, that is the only explanation. What does it mean that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead? Romans 1:4 says, "He was declared to be the Son of God with power by his resurrection". The fact that Christ was raised from the dead shows he was who he claimed to be. But there's another consequence of it.
Romans 4:25 says, "He was delivered over for our transgression," his death, "but he was raised for our justification". If Jesus had remained in that grave, it would have meant that he didn't pay for your sins or my sins, he paid for his own sins, like every other person who's ever lived. But the fact that God raised him from the dead shows that God accepted his sacrifice for us, that he declared us not guilty, justified in him, and we have the assurance of eternal life. The patriarch Job asked what perhaps is the most simple but most profound question of all time. "If a person dies, will he live again"?
Don't you agree that's the bottom line question? When you strip everything away from life, the real question that affects us all here today is: is this life all that there is, or is there an existence beyond death? If a person dies, will he live again? If my wife or husband dies, will they live again? If my child dies, will they live again? My father died 30 years ago, will I see him? Will he live again? 35 years ago today my mother died. Will I ever see her again? Will she live again? If a person dies, will they live again? If I die, when I die, will I live again?
It's the same question that Martha asked Jesus after her brother Lazarus had died. She blamed the Lord, said, "Lord, if only you had been here sooner my brother wouldn't have died". Jesus said, "Martha, your brother will live again". And Martha said, basically, to Jesus, "I don't want to hear any of that resurrection stuff, some future resurrection. I'm hurting right now and I need some answers. Lord, what about my brother? What are you gonna do to help me"? And Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live again". And then Jesus added, "Martha, do you believe me? You've been around me for three years now, you've heard my teaching, you've seen my miracles, but do you believe, trust in, cling to what I've just said"?
And that's the real question for you today. What are you going to do with what Jesus said? What choice are you going to make? Are you going to simply reject what he says? "I don't believe any of that stuff". Are you going to neglect and say, "I'll wait to another time to make my decision," or are you willing to put your entire faith and trust in what Jesus did for you to survive the day of your death and the inevitable judgment of God. My friend Erwin Lutzer says, "Five minutes after you die, you will have either had your first glimpse of heaven, with all of its euphoria and bliss, or you will have had your first experience of unrelenting horror and regret. Either way, your eternal destiny will be unchangeable".