I heard about two preachers who were driving together to a preachers' convention. One was a Black Pentecostal, and the other a white Presbyterian. And the Black Pentecostal said to the Presbyterian, "You know, you white Presbyterians need to get more rhythm in your music, because up in heaven, all they sing is Black music." And the Presbyterian rolled his eyes, and he said, "Why in the world would you say that?" And the Pentecostal said, "Because God is Black, and He likes soul in His music." And the Presbyterian said, "That's ridiculous. Everybody knows that God is white, and He likes traditional hymns with melodious organ music." They got in a big fight, took their eyes off the road, had a horrible wreck. Both were killed. The Black Pentecostal made it into heaven. Surprisingly, the Presbyterian did too. And they were walking down the streets paved in gold when they suddenly heard a lot of praise music, and angels started coming around the corner. And the Black pastor turned to the white pastor and said, "Now we're going to find out if God is Black or white." And just then, God came around the corner, and she said, "Buenos días, señor." [applause] And I just tell you that because God is full of surprises. He surprised everybody by coming down from heaven, becoming a baby in a cave. Who would ever make that up? And then He surprised everybody by forgiving those others wouldn't forgive, like prostitutes and tax collectors. And then the big surprise was He rose from the dead on Easter morning, just as He told His disciples. [applause] Now, I think what is often overlooked about this is no one was waiting outside of the tomb for Him to rise from the dead. Did you ever think about that? He told the disciples He would, but on Sunday morning, they were not outside that tomb expecting Him to walk out. They were hiding, hoping that they wouldn't be the next to be crucified by the Romans. And when you think about that, that's a pretty embarrassing thing for the disciples to explain the rest of their life. Can't you imagine how it went? "You mean He told you He would rise from the dead, and you weren't there waiting on Sunday morning? Why not? He told you." You see, that little element, among others, shows you that this is not a fiction story, not something made up. It's the way it really happened. Because if you were making up this story, the last thing you would do as disciples is insert this piece in there, that you weren't there. Jesus surprised everyone, even the disciples. Gandhi said all religions are the same. They are merely different roads to the same God. He was wrong. This is a very common, popular, politically correct thing to say, but it's just fiction. It's wrong. No other religion has a leader who was crucified to pay for our sins. And no other religion has a leader who rose from the dead. Amen. Can you name one? No. Not all religions are the same. The crucifixion of Jesus for our sins and His resurrection from the dead are unique to Jesus and Christianity. All other religious leaders say that they are not God. They make it very clear. If you fell down and worshiped Muhammad, he'd cut your head off. That's shirk in the Muslim religion. They made it clear they were not God, but they pointed to God. Jesus, on the other hand, says, "He who has seen Me has seen God." He claimed again and again to be God. C. S. Lewis got it right. You either decide He's a lunatic, or a liar, or He is who He said He was: God. The one option He does not give to you is to say He was a very good man and a very good teacher. He has not left that option open to you, because repeatedly He claimed to be God. He was either a liar, a lunatic, or who He said He was. And everyone has to decide that. Every other religion says what you must do to go to heaven. Only Christianity says it is what Christ has done that gives you life after death. Every other religion says, "Do these deeds, do these rituals, and that's what's going to get you into heaven." Works. Jesus says, "No, it's grace, pure forgiveness from God." And they cannot be reconciled. A lot of people want to say, "Well, I'm good enough to go to heaven." And we need to understand that when we say, "I'm good enough, that's how I'm going to get there," we are discounting the crucifixion of Jesus and saying we don't need it. "We don't need You to die for my sins, because I'm good enough." Today, I want to encourage you with what the resurrection of Jesus can mean in your life. Couldn't you use a little encouragement? Everywhere I go, people are discouraged: about politics, world things, crime, the economy. Just discouraged themselves. Marriage. Couldn't you use a little encouragement? I want to show you encouragement in the resurrection. Stanford did a study of why some people seem never to get discouraged. They studied Vietnam POWs. Why didn't they get discouraged as they were mistreated? They also studied gravely ill people. So many gravely ill people are not discouraged about their sickness. And then they studied 49ers fans, on why they never get discouraged, and they said, "We don't know." So let me encourage you with Easter. First, at Easter, Jesus surprises us by forgiving what everyone thought was unforgivable, and what others will even tell us is unforgivable. When the disciples ran to the tomb, they found it empty, except for an angel. And the angel said, "Jesus wants you to come to the Sea of Galilee and meet with Him." And then he adds these words: "And bring Peter, too." Can you imagine what Peter thought when he heard Jesus wanted him to come? "Me? I'm the one who denied I knew You three times on the night before You were crucified. Me? Oh boy, am I in trouble." You know, denying Jesus three times. "I'm really going to be in trouble on this." Shakespeare, in his play Macbeth, after Macbeth kills King Duncan, has Macbeth say all the water in the ocean could not wash the blood off his hands. There are things that are unforgivable. So Shakespeare said, and he's wrong. We think things that we do are unforgivable, just like Peter denying Jesus three times. But the surprise is He forgives Peter, even of that. Just as He forgives King David of adultery, and the woman caught in adultery, and all of us, and even me, of the sins in my past. Surely some of us here this morning think they are damaged goods. Doesn't anybody have a stain on your life from the past? You know, a stain, something that you have done that's like red wine being spilled on a white dress. It just won't come out. And you are reminded of that stain. Maybe you have people in your family, sisters, parents, who remind you of the stain in your history. Or you just remember it, and it's like something you have never been able to cleanse. Sadly, some judge others simply because they sin differently, don't they? Their sins are just different, but they judge you. I want to encourage you with the resurrection. Where I live in Idaho, there are a lot of geese, and I've found them to be fascinating. I didn't know that if a goose is wounded or shot and drops out of formation to the earth below, wounded, two other geese will drop out of formation too and go guard that goose until it's able to fly again. I wish people were more like that. People tend to shoot other people, especially if they think they're sinful. There is no one who is damaged goods to Jesus, no matter what bad things we've done in the past. And Peter is proof of that. And so is Paul, the murderer. And so am I, with the stains I had in my early years, now cleansed. And it can happen to you this morning, too. Be encouraged. You are not damaged goods. You don't have to stay damaged goods. You can be cleansed of whatever stains are in your past. It's hard to imagine, isn't it? Because there are people around you who won't let you forget. You've got to ignore them and let Jesus cleanse you. My daughter is married and a mother now, but she played first base on the Salinas High softball team. And I spent a lot of time hitting her grounders and working on her hitting, especially not to swing with stiff arms, you know, to use your wrists into the ball. And I always took my video camera to the games, you know, memories and all. I have miles of video. I remember one game in particular. Jenny was up to bat. The bases were loaded, and I watched her take her practice swings at the plate, and I turned to Susie and I said, "If she connects, that ball is out of here." And sure enough, on the first pitch with the bases loaded, she swung like Barry Bonds. She snapped that bat into the ball like a lion tamer's whip. That ball took off like a missile launched. Up, up, up it went. It was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. [laughter] And the left fielder thought so too, because she just stood there watching it go over. [laughter] But Jenny and her teammates were off like rabbits around the bases, and she was across home plate with a grand slam before the ball was back in the infield. I got it all on film. The next inning, there was a sharp hit to the shortstop, and the shortstop was very athletic. She gloved it on the run, and then, on a dead run, threw across her body a strike to Jenny at first base. It was beautiful. It hit Jenny in the glove and dropped to the ground. The runner was safe, and it was an error. That's not on the film. It used to be on the film, but I backed it up and erased it. [laughter] Because I don't think anyone should be forced to watch their errors the rest of their life. That's a true story. And it really is what Jesus, the risen Jesus, rose from the dead to do for you: to back the tape up and erase it, instead of you continuing to rerun that tape, or to listen to people around you who want to rerun your tape. You've got to learn to ignore them, to take control of your heart. [applause] First John 1:9 promises, if we confess our sin, Jesus will forgive us and cleanse us, erase all unrighteousness. All. That means there's nothing unforgivable. There's nothing in your life that has to remain a stain. A lot of you don't know that. A lot of you aren't living that way. The stain is still there from a year or years ago. It doesn't have to be that way. Isaiah 1:18 promises, "Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be washed…" what? "White as snow." The red wine out of your white dress. Why leave this morning with a stain still in your life? Why leave that way? Secondly, be encouraged that Jesus gives us second chances. He will empower us to conquer attitudes and behaviors that sabotage our life. Mark Twain said that he had more trouble with himself than anyone else he knew. And isn't that true? We have more trouble with ourselves than anybody else, with our attitudes and our behavior. Pascal said we're like the moon. We have our sunny side and our dark side. I just finished reading a biography about Cary Grant. His picture's on the screen. Now, a lot of us have never seen a picture of Cary Grant, but I want you to know that he was, in the history of America, more admired and envied than anyone except Clark Gable. Frank Sinatra envied his poise and romantic appeal, and his unbroken chain of 50-some-odd movie hits that made him a rich man. And yet he never was a happy man. 500 pages detailing his wealth, and the five beautiful Hollywood women he married, all of whom divorced him. His biographer here says that he was a mass of contradictions. He could be loving, but cruel. Five marriages and divorces from Hollywood's most beautiful women. His biographer said he tormented the women who married him. I'll bet there's someone here who's being tormented by a person you're in a relationship with. I'll bet there's more than one of us. Attitudes and behavior. It doesn't have to be that way. The problem with him is he turns out to be a very judgmental and critical person. Negativity just dripped from his lips and his thoughts. If you realized how powerful your thoughts are, you would never allow yourself to think a negative thought again. No one can live a positive life with a negative attitude. I wish I could convince people of that, but I can't. People don't take seriously the value of the kind of thoughts they have. But the Scriptures say, as a man or woman thinks, so she is, or he is. No one can live a better life than the way they're thinking. And Cary Grant is proof of that. H. G. Wells said we all are a walking civil war. There's a civil war going on inside of us, between our best self and our worst self. Well, isn't that true? Then why do you argue with yourself? Don't you have arguments between your best self and your worst self about what you should do? Yeah, you do. Everyone has this civil war going on inside of them. And it depends on whether your worst self or your best self wins, the kind of behavior and the way you treat people. He was talking about sin. You know, you don't hear the word "sin" from the pulpit anymore. People don't like to hear that word, because they think it means they're really evil people. But that's not what it means. It's an archer's term: you miss the mark. And you know, we all miss the mark. We have this kind of ideal of being just, an ideal of being fair, an ideal of being loving. And we fail even to live up to our ideals. But we judge others for not living up to those ideals. We miss the mark. Sin really is the Bible's word for just cripplings. I like that word, "cripplings." We all have cripplings, attitudes and behaviors that cripple marriages, cripple our life, cripple our joy in life. The Bible here is saying, don't make the silly mistake of thinking that being a good person, which you are, means you're innocent. They're not the same. None of us is innocent, though I'm sure you're all good people. Years ago, a woman came to me for encouragement. She'd been living with her boyfriend and really dedicated herself to his happiness. And she became pregnant. He said, "Get rid of the baby. Have an abortion. It's either me or the baby." She wanted the baby, but she couldn't live without him. So she had an abortion. Then she found out that he was unfaithful to her. He had been cheating on her. And when she confronted him, he got really angry and said, "I'm just tired of your negativity and criticism," which wasn't true. But he left anyway and went to live with his other girlfriend. And when she came to me, I had rarely seen such hate in a woman's eyes. She said, "I hate him. I'll always hate him. I will never forgive him." Honestly, I said to her, "I don't blame you for this, but I tell you, your bitterness is giving him the power to ruin your life." I really want that to sink in. So many people, because they refuse to forgive, are giving the other person the power to ruin their life. And I'll bet that's happening right here, where someone has the power to ruin our life because of our bitterness and anger. Life is too short to live it that way. It's like going to In-N-Out Burger. I've been there a couple of times, but my wife, who's kind of a crazy healthy-food person, doesn't let me go there. I only go there on weekends, when I leave her there in Idaho. Don't tell her. She went back to the Sunday school, so don't tell her that. So when I go in there, I see people having those double cheeseburgers with the Swiss cheese dripping down, grease dripping out of those hamburgers, and they get that big pile of French fries that is just soaked in grease. The funniest thing is to see people bow their heads over it and pray for God to bless their food. I just start laughing. You're asking God to bless junk food? But we do the same thing with our attitudes and behavior. "Lord, bless my life. Bless my marriage. Bless my relationship with my children. My attitudes are just junk, but bless it anyway." That's why it's not happening. God cannot bless junk attitudes and behavior. I know that forgiving is hard and blaming is easier. So often in counseling, someone says to me, and I just hear this all the time, "I'm not the problem. She is. She's the one that's got to change." Or he. And I always say, "Really? You're totally, 100% innocent?" Now, some people living in La La Land say, "Yeah, I'm totally innocent." But the few people who are honest say, "Well, maybe 10% of it is me." [laughter] I say, "Great. That's a starting point. Draw a circle around yourself and work on your 10%." Because that'll probably change the whole marriage. Draw a circle around yourself and work on you, because you're the only person you can change. And a lot of you have proven that. You've been yelling at them. You've been nagging at them, throwing things at them, refusing things to them, trying to make them change. Have they changed? No. The only person we can change is us. And this morning, we've got to start drawing a circle around ourselves and start working on our junk, not his or her junk. If you want a better marriage, stop accusing, and instead draw a circle around you and work on your junk, because the only person you can change is you. Loren Eiseley is a famous naturalist, and his books are filled with terrific stories about birds and other animals. And I read him because he motivates me with these stories. And one of them is about bald eagles that he was studying in the Northwest. And he talks about this really big bald eagle that just ruled the skies. He was unchallenged. So he named this eagle. He named his eagle Boss. And he said one day he was watching Boss soar on the thermals in the sky. And suddenly he went into a steep dive straight to the earth, like a fighter plane on its target. And just before he crashed, he swooped up, and he had in his talons a badger, which is one of the most ferocious of all animals. And this badger was hanging from his claws. And suddenly Boss began to fly erratically, and then fell like a lead balloon to the earth. And Eiseley went out to find out what happened. And he found Boss dead and the badger dead in his claws, but Boss's stomach had been ripped open by the teeth of that badger. And he said, you know, Boss died because he wouldn't let go of what was ripping him apart, literally eating him alive. And that's us, isn't it? There are some of us here who are not letting go of someone who is eating us alive. Who is that for you, really? Who comes to mind? Forgiving, literally in the Greek, means to let go of. It's the best thing you can do for yourself. Otherwise, it's going to eat you alive. Why spend the rest of your life that way? People will say, "Well, I can't stop it. I can't help it." My encouragement is, I believe you. But if Jesus comes into your life, you start to be able to do what you couldn't do before, because of the power of the resurrection. Amen. Believing in Jesus and doing religious rituals is not the same thing as having a personal relationship with Him, and Him in your life. The devil believes in Jesus. You can believe all the right things but never have asked Jesus into your life, and you will not have the power. Why leave this morning without that power to do what otherwise you couldn't do? That's the encouragement of Easter. Third, let Easter encourage you that death is not the end of you. Emily Phillips died of pancreatic cancer, and she wrote her own obituary, which actually went viral. Her obituary said, "If you are reading this, apparently I have died. Everyone told me it would happen to me one day, but I didn't want to believe it. Once again, I did not get things the way I wanted. I am dead." And then she closed with this: "I was born, I blinked, and I was dead." Life passes so quickly. I read a U.S. News & World Report article about a huge survey of Americans on who they thought would go to heaven for sure. Mother Teresa came in second place. 79% of people said that she would make it into heaven. Who do you think came in first place, ahead of her, and ahead of Billy Graham, and Buddha, and all the others? We did. 97% of Americans said, "I know for sure I'm going to heaven." They beat out Mother Teresa. Your life is only a dot in eternity. And you see it on the screen. You're just a dot, and then forever happens. Where will you spend forever? You're a dot. Okay. You eat yogurt, and you're vegetarian. You exercise and run. You never drink a beer. What kind of life is that? But anyway, you live a long time. You live a long time. [cheering] And then you die, and you find yourself at the gates of heaven, and Jesus asks you, "Why should I let you into heaven?" What are you going to say? Most people are going to say, "I was a pretty good person. I was better than my uncle, and Madonna, and a few others." Where's the cutoff line? What if you're not good enough? Are you really sure you're good enough? Maybe I should ask your ex-wife. You know, the thing is, when we say we're good enough, we're saying to Jesus, "You died for nothing. I didn't need it. I didn't need anybody to die for my sin, because I'm good enough." Do you really want to say that to Jesus? "You were a fool to die." Our daughter's wedding is a highlight of our life. And she told us how her husband-to-be said to her that he loved her, he wanted to bless her life and spend the rest of his life with her. And then he asked, "Will you say yes?" Jesus is asking the same thing this morning. "I died for you. I want to bless your life. I love you more than you've ever been loved before. Will you say yes to Me and let Me come into your life?" You know, to say nothing means you don't get married. You've got to say yes. So will you say yes or no to Him? I'm not asking if you believe in Jesus. I'm asking if you've ever said yes to Him, for Him to be in your life. Will you admit that you're far from perfect? That you have some stains in your life, and you need Jesus to wash you white as snow? It's your move. Yes or no? Some of you became Christians, but you've backslidden a long way. And this is your chance to say yes again and to renew your vows to Him. I hope you will, because you may never have this chance again, never hear a sermon like this again, never be invited to Easter power. Lord Jesus, I pray You'd be working in our life right now, that we'd take the steps we need to take. Help us, Jesus. Amen.