Christian Pathway

It is always such a privilege to preach on Easter Sunday. Thank you to Carol for letting me and not pulling rank 😊. Honestly, I count preaching as one of the greatest gifts ever, the time to spend time thinking about God, and then the time to try in my feeble way to explain it as best I can

This sermon is sort of  from our most recent gathering as part of lent course, so apologies for all those who were at that meeting if the ideas seem familiar,

 but I think on easter morning they fit nicely.  

This is at its heart a really simple sermon, Its five simple points to make


Jesus knows you really well, better than you know yourself
Jesus did easter for you.
The reason he did it is to take away all your mistakes  and shame
Then replace that with his love so you can be with him forever.
To have all that, all you have to do is love him back

But I thought a 46 word sermon a bit short for Easter Sunday,  So really the rest of this sermon is just saying  why I think that.

So , really just repeating myself from hear on in 😊

The first thing to say is God knows you  more than you know your very best friend , or closest family,or spouse  or even yourself , that’s not some silly  thing to say , Our bible tells us this a lot, he knows you better than anyone. I can prove it using our bible, let me show you some of the places where the  bible  says this.


Psalm 139

For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.”
You know when I sit and when I rise;
    you perceive my thoughts from afar.
³ You discern my going out and my lying down;
    you are familiar with all my ways.
Your eyes saw my unformed body;
    all the days ordained for me were written in your book

Matthew 10:30

“Even the hairs of your head are all numbered.”

Timothy 2:19

“The Lord knows those who are his.”

Jeremiah 1.5

“Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you…

“I know my sheep… and my sheep know me.” — John

and in philipians “He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion…”

This means God knew you before you existed , he knows your past , present and future self .  He knew all the versions of you that needed saving , and all those that you could never be without him rising again,

The problem we have with us imagining that  is that we can’t think of more than about 4 things (That  physiological fact, )
Once you go beyond four, your mind sort of clumps them together.
God does not do that,  our scripture  as I just showed he knows you personally and everything about you , he knows every hair on your head as it says in Matthew.

So he knows you well,

But

 How does he do that well we turn to psalm 139 again.

How precious to me are your thoughts, God!
    How vast is the sum of them!
¹⁸ Were I to count them,
    they would outnumber the grains of sand—
    
That’s a lot, think of all the grains of sand in all the beaches and deserts of the world and god has more thoughts than them, so god can know each of us like a special person because he can think millions of things at once

We can hold 4.

So the bible says in lots of places he knows you intimately

So when he  came out of the tomb, That Jesus , That God had  that had died and come back to life  he did that for you. 
When we say that we mustn’t generalise that idea because We  do, we are dealing with God and he doesn’t abstract above 4 ,  he knows every hair on everyone’s head, every single  every hair of everyone one who ever was and ever is , and ever will be.  

You are loved, Not in a big clump together sort of way but loved uniquely and specially just the way you need to be loved.   So he did that for  you.

 Another way of proving this is in how he speaks to the people he meets in the bible

You can see that in Jesus meets with people. He says precisely what they needed to hear, and quite often he does that in a sort of unnerving totally without small talk sort of way. He knew the woman at the wells husbands, he knew the lawyer was trying to minimise the required level of love in the good Samaritan. All Jesus meetings with people show he knows precisely what they need and should do.  So he bypasses the problem of the question asked and goes to the actual need of the person, knowing them better than the know themselves,  he names the deepest need rest, salvation, mercy, life, love, forgiveness , transformation whatever, Jesus cuts straight to it. For example  The Paralysed Man in Mark 2:1–12 The friends bring him for healing, but Jesus’ first words are: “Your sins are forgiven.”

Nicodemus John 3:1–21 here the poor pharisee sneaks in in the dead of night to ask intellectual questions, but Jesus goes straight too “You must be born again.”

The lawyer in the good Samaritan , looks for the clause in the contract , the least he has to do to inherit,  Jesus tackles all his prejudice and limiting of love and tells him the story we all know

So every time Jesus  goes straight to the deeper need — mercy, restoration, forgiveness — before the physical healing.

So he knows whats inside us as well

Everything shows in the bible show us how well he knows us and what we need.  This means I can say with total confidence that God , Jesus knows you intimately , not in the way we know crowds of people at a sports event , but in the personal 1-1 best friend ever sort of way  and more than you know the person you love the most in this world, more than you know yourself. He knows what all of us need  so today he died and rose again just  for you. 

This morning  he rose again and when he did , he knew he had opened the gates of heaven for those of us willing to believe in him.  He made our future certain, he now knows we can be how he  he made us.

What does that mean, he knew we needed easter but  why?

From the moment he rose again this morning you are forgiven, all your little things and big things you do wrong are forgiven.

By Doing all the horrible stuff on good Friday, on easter Sunday he had paid the price and forgave you all your mistakes.  Not just the ones you have made up to now but all the future ones as well?

One of my  favourite people who thought about that is a guy named Jurgen Moltman. For Jurgen, the  truth about a person is not in the mistakes we have made in the   past but in the future God has promised them and what they are going to be when he  has finished helping them be everything he made them to be .  So god see’s us as how we are going to be when we are all grown up and safe with him. That’s his promise

And as we see all through the bible when God makes a promise, he keeps it. A promise for us is something we keep as best we can,  because however well intended things can happen, however God doesn’t hope for anything because he is already in the future and the past he knows you in all of them. So he knows you will join him, because of what he did today. He also knows you’re in this future
From today
You are free  from the burden of guilt, of shame, free from the chains of sin.  God Has forgiven you because Jesus took all the blame, hurt, guilt, anger everything and said to god blame me.

Like we don’t judge small children and forgive them their mistakes,   God forgives us like we forgive our children when they are having a bad day.  Like we don’t judge our children because we HOPE they will become nice loving responsible adults,  God Doesn’t judge us because of today because he knows we will one day be all he made us to be, intentionally made us to be because he knew you  “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you as it says in Jeremiah… So God knows we will come to him unblemished by this world through the act of Jesus dying to take all our sins on him.  That’s what he did today.

Then in in the very last book of the bible he shows us our future. A future with him and he knows you are going to be with him just because of what he did today , you are going to be with him just as he made you, forgiven all your little detours and exactly as he made you to be.  He gave us grace, today,  and allowed us into his world.  

All you have to do to share in this freedom, is love Jesus like he loves you

Today we celebrate the beginning of Gods Kingdom, he has shown us what its going to be like for us  😊 when he comes again. He knows he is coming back and he knows we are going to join him. He knows you intimately and he’s waiting for you.

as I said right at the start

Jesus knows you really well,
Jesus did easter for you.
to take away all your mistakes  and shame  and replace  those things with love so you can be with him forever.
To have all that all you have to do is love him back

Amen