Rick Warren - Easter Means It's a New Day of Mercy—Part One

Hey, everybody, thanks for joining us today on Pastor Rick's

Daily Hope, the Bible Teaching Ministry of Rick Warren.

Well.

Today we're starting a series called the Miracle of Mercy.

Rick's gonna show us how God's mercy can lift your guilt,

heal your wounds, and transform the way you live. So

let's jump right in for part one of a message

called Easter Means It's a new Day of Mercy.

Now this week, all around the world, literally hundreds of millions,

hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of millions of

people are going to get up in the dark before

daylight and go out to attend an Easter sunrise service.

Easter is the only holiday that we celebrate at the

break of dawn. Why is this because it was at

the break of dawn on a brand new day that

we heard the news that Jesus Christ had raised from

the dead, and it changed everything. Now it's Easter, so

let's just start with the Easter story. Look up here

on the screen, let me read you part of the

Easter story. Early on Sunday morning, as the new day

was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the Other Mary went.

Out to see the tomb.

This is where Jesus had been buried after dying on

the cross three days earlier. Suddenly there was an earthquake

when an angel moved the giant stone away from the

opening of the tomb. This is one of these walk

in kind of tombes, not under the dirt tomb, and

then sat on the stone. Now, the Bible says, the

angel's face shone like lightning, and his clothes were brilliant white.

And when the Roman guards saw this happen, they shook

with fear and fainted. Well, I guess so, so then

it says, then the angel spoke to the women who

had gone up there. I don't know, to bring flowers

or whatever. Don't be afraid. I know you're looking for Jesus,

who was Crucifer, but.

He isn't here.

He's been raised from the dead, just as he said

would happen. So you know, come on in see for yourselves.

There's no body in this tomb. So the women get

to walk into this tomb. The big door has been

moved the stone, and then the angel says, now go

quickly and tell his followers that Jesus has raised from

the dead and that he's headed to Galilee, and that

he'll see all of you there. So the women ran

quickly from the tomb. Now they're scared, but they're also

filled with great joy, and they rushed to give the

angel's message to the disciples. Now here's where it gets interesting.

As they were going, they run into Jesus. Okay, that

would be a little do do do do do do

do do do.

Do, And I love Jesus' response.

Good morning, says Jesus, like as if nothing's happened.

Good good morning.

Now the women came close to him, they touched his body.

In other words of goo, this is not a ghost.

We're not having some apparition here, this is not a vision.

This is not some.

Kind of emotional you know, we're imagining this in our mind.

Virtual reality. You know.

They came close to him, they touched his body, and

then they worshiped him.

Then Jesus said to them, don't be afraid.

Go tell my brothers to leave for Galilee and they

will see me there. And as you know the rest

of the story, Jesus hung around Jerusalem for another forty days.

He didn't just like appear on Easter Sunday morning and

go back to heaven. No, he was hung around for

the next forty days and actually met with people, had meetings,

preached one time, spoke to a group of five hundred people,

had dinner, cooked the disciples breakfast one time out by

the Sea of Galilee. And that's why by within a

few years, about half of the city of Jerusalem had

become Christians. Because in a city about two hundred fifty

thousand people, one hundred and fifty twenty five thousand people

had become believers.

Because so many people had seen Jesus.

It would be strange if you were the you know,

the Roman centurions who crucified Jesus, and you're walking down

the street one day and there comes that guy walking

towards you. He's back, that would be that would be strange. Now,

why is Easter important? Because it proved that Jesus Christ

was telling the truth. Jesus Christ made outrageous claims, claims

that no good man would make, claims like I'm the

Son of God, i am God in human form, i

am the only way to Heaven.

I'm the Way, the truth and the life.

Now, lots of people throughout history have claimed to be God,

and Napoleon and a lot of other things. But this

difference is Jesus was the only one to prove it.

A lot of people claim to be God. Jesus said,

I'm going to prove it. I'm going to let them

put me to death. I'm going to die for the

sins of the world, and three days later, I'm going

to raise myself back to life, which is exactly what

he did.

And that's split history and the And now every.

Time you write a date, any date in history, you

are using Jesus Christ as a reference point. In fact,

your own birthday, the number of days, the month, and

the year of your birthday is from in relationship to

the resurrection of Jesus Christ. This is the most important

event in history. It's split history. God came to earth,

died for the sins of mankind, and this weekend, about

two point three billion people in the world will be

celebrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Now, it happened at

the dawn of a new day. But this Easter, I

want to talk about a new day in your.

Life because the Bible says this.

If you pull out your message notes inside your program,

look at the second verse there on the outline Luke.

Chapter one says, this a new day will dawn on us.

A new day will dawn on us because our God

is loving and merciful.

Circle the word merciful.

This Easter, we're going to start an eight week spiritual

growth emphasis called the Miracle of Mercy, because most people

don't understand how merciful God really is, and that's why

they're afraid of God. That's why they avoid God. That's

why God is distant to them. They don't understand the

mercy of God. When you understand the mercy of God,

your anxiety will decrease and your peace of mind will increase.

Your stress will go down, and your stability will go up.

Your frustration in life will be diminished, and your satisfaction

in life will be increased. So let's just start with

the definition of mercy because we're going to look at

it now for several weeks there on. Your outline, mercy

is really here's a definition for you. Undeserved forgiveness and

unearned mercy.

That's the way God treats you.

Undeserved forgiveness, when somebody forgives you and you don't deserve it,

that's mercy. And when somebody shows you a kindness that

you have not earned. That's called mercy, and the Bible

says that God wants to show you mercy. Now, you're

going to need mercy every single second of your life.

The ere you breathe is from the mercy of God.

The water you drink is from the mercy of God.

Everything you have for life is because God is a

mercyful God. In fact, you would not be alive, you

wouldn't have been born if it wasn't for the mercy

of God. God made you because he wanted to love you,

and he wanted to show you his mercy. And if

God hadn't wanted to love you and show you his mercy,

your heart wouldn't be beating right now, and you wouldn't

be taken breath. Everything in your life is a gift

of the mercy of God. Now, what I want to

do this Easter is simply two things. I want to

ask two questions. First, when do I need God's mercy

in my life? And then second, what difference does it make?

I mean, how's it going to change me? How does

my life get better? What are the benefits? How does

it transform me? And for this series, not just this week,

but for the next six weeks, I went and I

studied every single verse on mercy in the Bible. It

took me about two months and I found about one

hundred different examples of when God says he wants to

show you mercy in different areas of your life. Today,

I just want to look at three. When you are ashamed,

when you are angry, and when you are afraid. These

are three emotions we don't like. And guess what, God

doesn't like him either, and he doesn't want your life

being filled with being ashamed, with being angry, and with

being afraid. So we're going to look at this today. Now,

let's just get right into it. Jesus ministry was all

about mercy. In fact, he showed mercy to everybody. There's

no person he did not show mercy to. And what

we're going to look at today is three stories of

Jesus encountering people and show how this relates to your life.

When you're ashamed, when you're angry, when you're afraid. All right, first,

when I'm ashamed, you might want to write this down.

I need God's mercy when I've messed up. I need

God's mercy when I've messed up. Now that includes all

of us, as particularly me. None of us are perfect.

None of us bat a thousand. I stop being perfect

at about the third breath of my life. I don't

measure up to God's standard, much less my own standard,

and neither do you.

Now this is not really debatable.

I've never met anybody who actually claims to be perfect,

to have never made a mistake, to have never sinned.

We've all made mistakes.

We've all sinned, we've all flobbed, we've all had failures

in our lives. The Bible says it like this, all

have sinned. The Bible says if we say we have

not sinned, that we deceive ourselves the truth that's not

in us. In other words, we're just being self deceptive.

Everybody else knows you don't have it together. You may

as well admit it to yourself, okay, because you're in

self denial if you think you're perfect. The Bible says,

there's not a just man upon them the earth, who

doeth good and sendeth not. In other words, nobody gets

it right all the time. We all mess up, and

uh James, Chapter three, verse two, look on the screens.

The Bible says, we all stumble in many ways. Everybody

want to agree with that one. Okay, have you ever

stumbled with your words? Said something you wish man, I

wish I hadn't said that, and you got a lot

of trouble for it?

Yep? Have you ever stumbled with your attitudes? Yep? Have

you ever stumbled with actions? Yep?

Have you ever stumbled with emotions and you have the

wrong emotional response and your wife didn't like it?

Yeah?

Yeah, we all stumble in many ways. Now, when you stumble,

you get tripped up. You fall into a trap, and

we get entrapped by the same sins, the same mistakes,

over and over and over.

I do you do? We all do.

It's no big deal. We all get caught in the

same old traps. We mess up. Now, the question is

how does God respond to me and you when we

mess up? Well, the answer is he shows mercy. Let

me show you an example that tells this story John

chapter eight. This is one of the books the Four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke,

and John tells the story of Jesus, and there's a

story of the humiliated woman.

And it goes like this.

One day Jesus was teaching a crowd outside the temple,

and some Pharisees brought a woman who was caught in adultery. Now,

Pharisees were religious scholars, they were legalists, they were judgmental,

they were hypercritical, and everybody hated him. They were self righteous. They,

by the way, hated Jesus. Common people loved Jesus. It

was the religious people who hated Jesus. And the Pharisees

hated Jesus. And they're trying to trap him. They bring

this Jesus is teaching to a large crowd. Pharisees bring

a woman caught in adultery. Now they put her on

display in front of the whole crowd, and then Jesus.

They said to Jesus, this.

Woman has been caught in the act of adult tree.

The law of Moses, said the stoner capital punishment. What

do you say. Now, they're trying to trap Jesus into

saying something that.

They could use against him.

Now, before we read the rest story, I want you

to notice a few things. First, if you're taking notes,

circle the word caught caught in trap. Caught caught and trap.

There are two traps being laid here. First, the embarrassed

woman is caught in a wrong relationship. And second, they're

trying to catch Jesus in a wrong reaction. What do

you get caught up in? It trips you up over

and over and over. What do you get caught up

in that keeps causing you to stumble? You know, you

can get caught up in an unhealthy relationship. You can

get caught up in a bad business deal. You can

get caught up in a secret habit that nobody knows about.

You can get caught up in an addiction. You can

get caught up in materialism thinking that money is the

whole purpose of life. You can get caught up in

trying to live to please other people. You're living for

the approval of others. That's a huge trap that a

lot of people stumble into and get caught up. They

live their entire lives for the approval of other people.

You can get caught up in competition. This woman is

obviously caught in a wrong relationship. Now here's what happens.

In verse eight six. It says they were trying to

trap Jesus into saying something that they could use against him.

But Jesus, I love this. Here's all this crowd here

the Pharisees. Jesus stooped down and started writing in the

dirt with his finger. Huh, he's doodling in the dirt. Okay,

he's he's writing in the dirt with this way.

He won't even.

Dignify this accusation against this woman. Now, they kept badgering Jesus,

demanding an answer. Finally Jesus stood up and said, okay,

here's my answer. If any of you has never sinned,

then you may throw the first stone. This is a

very famous story, and it says then he stooped down

again and continued writing in the dirt.

I love this scene.

Now, nobody actually knows what Jesus is writing in the dirt,

because the Bible doesn't tell us. For centuries, scholars have

debated what Jesus was writing.

In the dirt.

Some people think he wrote the Ten Commandments down. I'll

tell you what I think. It's just my opinion, just

a guess. I think he was writing the secret sins

of the accusers, and they were reading their own sins

in the dirt. And I think he was writing judgmentalism, arrogance,

self righteousness, hypercriticalism.

No, no, no, no, it could have been anything.

Spousal abuse, tax evasion, lying at work, pornography, it.

Could have been anything.

But I think he was actually Jesus, being God, knew

what their secret sins were, and I think he just

started writing it on the ground. And then he stands

up and says, Okay, now, which of you have never sinned,

you may cast the first stone. He's going right to

the heart of the matter.

Now.

One of the things I want you to notice is

that in the public situation, Jesus protected this woman's dignity

as she made a mistake. Of course, she cheated on

her husband, that's not right, but Jesus protects her dignity

in front of the judgmental accusers, and later on in

privacy of one on one he's going to deal with her.

He's going to deal with her sin very gently, but

he protects her dignity. And I don't want to spend

a lot of time on this, but I just want

to say this. If you call yourself a Christian, if

you claim to be a follower of Jesus, you must

treat every person with dignity. Doesn't matter who they are.

They may have a different religion, they may have a

different political persuasion than you. They may live a different lifestyle,

they may be involved in all kinds of gross sin,

evil what can mean, bad and nasty stuff. But you

still have to treat him with dignity, because that's what

Jesus did. Jesus accepted everybody. He didn't approve of what

everything they did, but he accepted everybody. Jesus accepts me.

He doesn't approve of everything I do. Jesus accepts you.

He doesn't approve of everything you do, but he treats

you with dignity. And he treated this woman with dignity.

And so he says to the guys, okay, if you've

never sinned, you can throw the first stone now in

verse nine. When the accusers heard this, they began to

slip away, one by one, beginning with the oldest, until

it was just Jesus and the woman. So all accusers

they skid out, all they leave. Now, why does it

say beginning with the oldest. I'll tell you why, Because

the older you get, the more you are aware of

how much you've messed up.

Okay, And the older you.

Get, you just get tired of pretending you just got okay.

I admit it. I'm messed up. Okay, I don't have

it all together. When you're young, you try to fake

it and pretend like you've got it all together. When

you get old, you just go, look, okay, I am

what I am? I messed up a lot. And so

the oldest start leaving. Nobody is more self righteous than

a college student because they think they got it all

down because their professor told the the truth. And it's

gonna take a few years of real life to figure

out life doesn't always work the way your professor told you, right,

And so you know, the longer you live in life,

the more you cut people a little slack. Doesn't that

make sense? Okay, So the oldest one, they read their

sin on the ground and they're they're leaving. Now Jesus

is just left with this woman and now, in a

one on one situation, what's he gonna do? At this point,

Jesus stood back up. I remember he's doodling in the dirt,

and he quietly said, dirt, where are your accusers?

Where are your accusers? Is there no one left here

to condemn you?

And the woman says, no, no one, Lord, she said,

And then Jesus said neither do I condemn you.

Neither do I condemn you. Now go on and leave

your sinful ways. He says, you're better than this, you

know better than this.

Come on.

That's all he needed he did, That's all he's gonna say.

He didn't pull out a ten point sermon on adult tree.

He just goes, hey, I don't condemn you, but you're.

Better than this. Go on now and don't do this anymore.

I love this.

This is why I love Jesus, because what Jesus did

when I come and I messed up, he does what

he did with that woman. He didn't condemn her. He

didn't condone her. He didn't say it's okay. It wasn't

okay for her to cheat on her husband.

He didn't condemn her, he didn't condone her. He changed her.

That's what it's all about.

And that's what he does in your life when you

accept his mercy. He doesn't condemn you, he doesn't condone

what you've done.

He just changes you. And that makes all the difference.

I don't know about you, but I am encouraged after

that message. And let's keep the encouragement going with a

letter from one of our listeners.

Here's Rick.

Have you ever taken a step of faith with no

idea what's next? Well, with the help of Daily Hope,

Nicole did just that. She wrote this note to me, Hello,

Pastor Rick. A close friend of mine suggested I listened

to Daily Hope four years ago, and while I had

faith and I loved the Lord, I was lost. But

Daily Hope rescued me. My relationship with Jesus grew in

ways and I never knew possible. I was soon baptized,

and over the next four years I grew in boldness

and in faith in the Lord, and I even left

a high powered and high salaried position to follow a different,

purpose driven path with the Lord's guidance. It's been a

literal step forward in faith without knowing the next steps,

certainly not something I was capable of years ago. And

already God is showing me his goodness. You know, as

my husband explores his own relationship with Jesus again, your

ministry is literally a God's sin. Your ability to teach

the good news and ways that are easy to understand

and apply, it is just amazing. We also follow your

suggestion to find a good local church, So thanks for

all you do for believers and those who are seeking

Christ around the world. Rick, You're loved and appreciated and

no doubt a vessel of God's grace and mercy. Signed Nicole. Well, Nicole,

I'm so glad that you've grown in your relationship with

Jesus and you've taken the important step of getting baptized.

What an important step this is, finding a church home,

really listening to the Lord, and living a purpose driven life.

All of that happens when you take time to listen

to God's word. I love how your friend shared daily

hope with you, and now you've shared it with your husband.

You know, any of you can do this. Anybody can

do this. You can share daily hope with your friends

and with your relatives and with people you don't even know.

And well, then watch how God brings life to others

through his word.

You know, I share Pastor Rick's daily hope all the time.

And whether it's a friend or someone you meet in

a restaurant, everyone needs hope and encouragement from the Bible

every day. So tell the people you know in love

about daily hope. Hey, be sure to join us next

time when we look into God's word for our Daily Hope.

This program is sponsored by Pastor Rick's Daily Hope and

your generous financial support.