Hope is spelled E-A-S-T-E-R

1 Corinthians 15:12-20 (NLT) – “But tell me this—since we preach that Christ rose from the dead, why are some of you saying there will be no resurrection of the dead?
13 For if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised either.
14 And if Christ has not been raised, then all our preaching is useless, and your faith is useless.
15 And we apostles would all be lying about God—for we have said that God raised Christ from the grave. But that can’t be true if there is no resurrection of the dead.
16 And if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised.
17 And if Christ has not been raised, then your faith is useless and you are still guilty of your sins.
18 In that case, all who have died believing in Christ are lost!
19 And if our hope in Christ is only for this life, we are more to be pitied than anyone in the world.
20 But in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead. He is the first of a great harvest of all who have died.”

• I’ve got a home in Northern Arizona that the appraised value has dropped by more than 40%.
• I’ve got a retirement account that has dropped consistently for the last three years.
• I live in a state where state income has dropped drastically.
• I also live in a state where the employment rate has dropped to an alarming number.
• I’m married to a school teacher who received word this past week of a potential of 100 school personnel being laid off this coming year.
• I’m pastor of a church where some members have recently lost jobs, or received buy-out notices, or are on the receiving end of rumors and speculations of the loss of their job.
• I live in a country where confidence in the economy has slowly dropped over the last few years.
• I live in a country where most people think their children will be worse off than they have been financially.
• I live in a world where the outlook for the future grows dimmer and dimmer.
• I live in a world where, for most people, hope has slowly diminished and for many is extinguished.

I cannot think of an Easter in recent memory where there was a bigger need for hope, for something that would breathe life into the human spirit. Just a few years ago, so many people in our state and in our country felt like they were on pretty solid ground. We were in a boom economy and now we find ourselves in circumstances we never would have predicted.
A lot of people are feeling anxious.
We are facing pressures that we have not faced before.
There are people who regret decisions they've made over this last year. They wonder where things will stand a year from now.
Nobody ever wants to go through a season of hard times. And when hard times come, they have a way of making you ask:
What am I really counting on? Am I building my life on a foundation that's solid enough that circumstances beyond my control cannot take it away?
That's why Easter is so important. It is a time when we gather to remember the only hope capable of sustaining a human life through everything.
May I simply remind us that people have not gathered on Easter Sunday morning for the past 2,000 years to say:

• "The stock market has risen. It has risen indeed."
• They have not gathered to say, "The dollar has risen. It has risen indeed."
• Or, "The employment rate has risen."
• Or, "The gross domestic product has risen."
• Or, "Domestic car sales have risen."
• Or, "The value of your 401(k) has risen."

Here's the one hope that has held up human beings across every continent and culture for two millennia of difficult times of poverty, disease, pain, hardship, [and] death itself:

"Christ is risen. He is risen indeed."

(Thoughts adapted from John Ortberg.)

So what about hell?

This week (March 15), a leading pastor of one of the post-modern emergent churches released a book titled called Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived. In a video teaser for the book, this pastor made this troubling statement: “Will only a few select people make it to heaven? ... And will billions and billions of people burn forever in hell? Millions and millions of people were taught that the primary message, the center of the gospel of Jesus, is that God is going to send you to hell unless you believe in Jesus. So what gets subtly sort of caught and taught is that Jesus rescues you from God. How could that God ever be good? ... And how could that ever be good news?"
So how do we respond? What is important to understand is that God doesn’t send just anyone to hell, but only those who reject His revelation and choose to suppress the truth that He plainly reveals to them. In some ways, people choose to send themselves to hell by never choosing a saving relationship with God. Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill Church in Seattle put it this way: “Hell is only for those who persistently reject the real God in favor of false gods. To paraphrase C.S. Lewis, either people will say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ or God will say to them, ‘Thy will be done.’”
The thought that a loving God would be tolerant of our disobedience to Him can be taken to the ultimate extreme by arguing that if God was tolerant of everyone then he should also be tolerate of rapists, child molesters, pedophiles, and sex-slave traders.
But such an idea is really absurd because a God of love is actively at work protecting His children from sin and evil by separating them from it. As Driscoll puts it, “In this way, God is a father who is tolerant of all who obey Him … but … is intolerant of those who sin against Him and do evil to His children.”
Think about it – we live in a world where our culture does not tolerate those who drink and drive, steal, rape and murder. We separate those people from society by incarcerating them. So if God does not do this as well, such action would be shameful, unjust, and certainly not loving. It would almost seem like God was approving and supporting evil if He did not punish such actions by separation in hell.
As always, we are on a slippery slope that is slowly leading to the demise of Christianity in America. Until next time,
Pastor Sam