Easter 2017: Jesus Wins - Holy Week

You're listening to the road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.

You will die.

All the surveys they've done have shown there's a hundred percent mortality rate.

Now, cats may have nine lives, but you'll have two.

You have the life here and the life in eternity.

When we give ourselves and we surrender everything to Christ, we choose to lose in order that we might win.

Christ comes.

There's two things you can't control in this life.

You can't stop sinning, and you can't not die.

At The Road, our vision is to raise up wholehearted disciples of Jesus Christ.

For more information on The Road, visit theroad.org.

We hope you are encouraged by today's message from Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.

Indiana Pacers forward Paul George told ESPN Radio that he wants to win the franchise's first NBA title, but would not guarantee that he'll sign a contract extension in the offseason.

As I told Larry, I always want to play on a winning team, George said on the program.

I always want to be a part of a team that has a chance to win it all.

That's important to me.

Say what you want.

I want to compete for something.

It's frustrating just playing the game for stats or for numbers or to showcase yourself.

Man, I want a chance to play for a chance to win a championship.

It's interesting that athletes and all of us as people want to be on a winning team.

Those that have been a part of a losing company or a part of a losing team know how that affects and demoralizes and destroys and debilitates your morale and even your own personal confidence.

What if I told you that every winning team has to lose first?

That losing is a part of the equation.

And what would you think if I told you that's not coming from a business journal and that's not coming from some Olympic manual on how to be an Olympic athlete, but it's actually a principle of the kingdom of God that you win, but first you have to lose.

Jesus Christ, when he was building the greatest winning team the world has ever known, recruited his team to lose at first.

That in being a winner, you have to first be a loser.

Today, not just this church, but churches all over this city and in cities across the United States, churches all across the globe are packed today.

I'm bullish on Christianity in America.

I'm bullish on Christianity around the world.

Because of the work of Jesus Christ 2,000 years ago, he recruited a team that changed the world.

You're joining over two billion followers, the greatest movement the world has ever seen all over the globe, that on this resurrection day, and in many cases just a few days ago at Good Friday, gathered together, hands up raised, singing old hymns and new choruses to worship the one who's risen from the grave.

That's awesome.

That's a winning team.

But when Jesus was recruiting his team, this is what he said to each one.

In Luke 9, 23, in your scriptures, Jesus said, If anyone wants to become my follower, he must deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me.

For whoever wants to save his life will lose it.

But whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.

For what does it benefit a person if he gains the whole world but loses or forfeits himself?

Here's what Jesus is saying.

You can't win with sin.

You can't win with selfishness.

By focusing everything in your life on yourself, you lose.

But when you begin to discover the reality of focusing on Christ and losing yourself, you win.

To deny yourself, to surrender yourself to Jesus Christ, you go from being a sinner to a winner.

Because in Christ, living his life through you, he begins to fortify what your heart already longs for.

And that's to give your life away to something greater than yourself.

It's kind of a conundrum.

Sin's sort of a conundrum.

Following Christ is a conundrum.

Because it's fun to sin.

It's exciting to sin.

It's sort of adventurous to sin.

It's exciting to be in an affair.

It's exciting to have sex outside of marriage.

And then the secrecy begins.

And then the conscience of our heart begins to sting at our thoughts and our ways.

And then hiddenness begins to occur.

And then you're not sure who you told the story to and who you didn't tell the story to, and you start to lose.

You see, sin, you win at first, and then you begin to lose.

When you lie and when you cheat, when you embezzle money, you win at first, but then you begin to lose.

The drinking parties on Saturday night.

They're so fun.

And then we hug the bowl on Sunday morning and you lose.

With Jesus, it's the opposite.

You lose at first, and then you start to win.

You deny yourself.

You surrender to Christ, the risen one.

You go to the cross, you take up your cross, is what Jesus said.

You start to take that cross, your affections, and your desires, and your hopes, and your dreams, and you surrender everything to Christ.

You lose.

And then Christ shows up.

Christ comes into your life.

Christ starts to take over the throne of your life where you've been seated for all those years.

And you start to win.

And your conscience becomes pure.

And you wake up on Sunday morning and you don't have a hangover.

And you start feeling better physically, emotionally, mentally, because your spirit is alive.

You begin to win.

And so the first creed.

Do we believe?

Historically, the first and greatest creed in the Bible is found in 1 Corinthians 15, which talks about the resurrection of Christ.

And here's what Paul wrote.

For I passed unto you as of, and I underline in my Bible, first importance.

I like wherever the Bible says first importance, or the greatest commandment, or the most important thing.

For I passed on to you as of first importance what I also received from others, that Christ died for our sins, according to the scriptures.

That's Good Friday.

And that he was buried, and that he was really dead.

The greatest executioners in the world were the Romans.

The Romans killed well.

He was dead.

The Old Testament preceded Christ.

The New Testament were the letters written about Christ after he had risen from the grave.

And so he's speaking of the scriptures of the Old Testament written hundreds, if not thousands of years before, predicting, prophesying of the resurrection of the Messiah, Jesus Christ.

Then he appeared to Cephas, which is another name for Peter.

And then to the 12 apostles.

Then he appeared to more than 500.

More than 500.

I had the glorious and beautiful responsibility as a citizen of the state of Colorado in El Paso County to be on jury duty this week.

How many of you have had the joy and the privilege of that?

All right.

I didn't just go and show up and get rejected.

I actually was on the jury.

So I went through the trial.

One of the things they talk about is the difference between circumstantial evidence and firsthand eyewitness testimony.

Five hundred people saw Jesus risen from the grave.

Even by any modern trial, that's overwhelming historical evidence that Jesus rose from the grave.

You will die.

All the surveys they've done have shown there's a hundred percent mortality rate.

You will die.

Now cats may have nine lives, but you'll have two.

You have the life here and the life in eternity.

When we give ourselves, when we surrender everything to Christ, when we choose to lose, in order that we might win, Christ comes.

And there's two things you can't control in this life.

You can't stop sinning, and you can't not die.

When Christ comes in, he gives us the power to stop sinning.

I'm not talking about sinless perfection, but he begins to give us this power from the Holy Spirit to say no to things we could never say no to before, and yes to the things we could never say in the affirmative before.

And death loses its sting.

And you have the opportunity of eternity with Jesus face to face.

This is what the Bible says.

Oh death, where is your sting?

Oh hell, where is your victory?

The sting of death is sin.

And he means living in sin.

But thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

When we choose to die to self and live for Christ, there's no longer any sting.

Because we have a forgiveness in Christ that sets us free.

We win by first losing.

And you are called, men and women, today to be a winner with Christ.

The Apostle Paul said this about our life.

Do you not know that all runners in a stadium compete, but only one receives the prize?

So run to win.

Run to win.

Live to win.

Each competitor must exercise self-control and everything.

They do it to receive a perishable crown, but we an imperishable crown.

Men and women run to win.

Live to win.

Jesus won.

Jesus wins.

And when we invite him into our life and we surrender and lose at first everything, we gain everything.

We begin to have an experience with him of his joy and his power and his love that you cannot manufacture.

And some of us today, you're here and you know Christ in a personal way, but your conscience bothers you.

Something of the sting of sin and the sting of death is in your heart.

You're doing some things you know are wrong.

You're involved in some stuff you know isn't right.

You may be in a relationship that's not fitting and not right for you.

You can become a winner.

But you gotta surrender that to Christ.

Some of you here this morning don't have a personal, dynamic relationship with Christ.

And Christ is calling you into a life where you really live.

Now, William Wallace in the movie Braveheart didn't really say this.

You'll say, William Wallace said, No, Randall Wallace, who wrote the script, is the one who wrote it.

But it's still a good quote.

So Randall Wallace said through William Wallace in a movie, while William Wallace was fighting for freedom in a movie about Scotland and England, said, Every man dies, but not every man really lives.

Some of us have so conditioned our lives.

Our glory, our success, our ways of doing things.

But what if there's a better way?

What if you could have a life coach who always wins?

Having a life coach now is kind of the cool thing.

I mean, if you got a little bit of extra dough and you want to, you know, kind of be successful, you have a life coach.

Some of you in this church are laughing because you're life coaches.

But you don't get it right every time.

I mean, I know you tell your clients that, but Jesus gets it right every time.

What if he became your life coach?

And what if you wrote a book?

I mean, what if you wrote a book that actually 90% of the time gets it right for you?

Now, the reason I say 90% of the time, because not every particular verse in all of the Bible is for you at that particular time, but I can tell you this: 90% of the questions you have are found there.

So he's always successful, he always wins, he conquered our greatest fear, which is death, on resurrection day, first day of the week, which was a Sunday, and he wrote a book.

God wrote a book.

It's a bestseller.

It's been translated into more languages than any book in the history of humankind.

It's still the greatest bestseller every year.

Even outsells John Grisham.

1 Corinthians 15 says this.

But now Christ is risen from the dead and has become the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.

For since by man came death, by man also came the resurrection of the dead.

Many women, what this passage is saying is that Christ, by rising from the grave, is a foretaste of how you who are Jesus' followers will rise from the grave.

You're not going to die but once.

And you're going to be risen up to a new life.

This life determines the second life, and what we do with this life determines where we go in eternity.

And he's the first fruits, he's the forerunner of what you're going to experience.

We lost our grandmother Ruth last year, Liz's dad.

Marcus's beautiful wife, Rachel, lost her father on Good Friday.

Some of you have experienced death of those who've gone before you who are believers in Christ.

You are going to have a glorious reunion.

You are going to see them again if you know Christ.

Isn't that exciting?

And at that reunion, it's not going to be jello.

No marshmallow jello at the resurrection when we come to meet with the saints of old.

I remember those reunions in the South.

Best thing going was when they had grapes in the jello.

Purple jello with grapes in it.

First half doesn't matter.

Second half does.

First half doesn't matter, second half does.

Ask the Atlanta Falcons.

Nobody keeps score in the first half.

Most of you here, unless you're some kind of Super Bowl expert, knows who is leading in any given Super Bowl, maybe the Broncos, in the first half.

Because who cares?

We care about the second half.

And you may have blown it in the first half of your life.

You may have blown it in the first third of your life.

Who cares?

Repent, turn from the old ways, quit living the life of a loser, and become a winner.

Quit hugging the bowl.

Quit hanging out with those friends that are going to get you in trouble.

And start becoming a winner.

Even if no one follows you, even if your family rejects you, follow Jesus.

And go from that first half of wherever it's taken you, where nobody keeps score anyway.

Come out of the locker room.

This is this is Pastor Steve's locker room talk on Resurrection Day.

I'm giving you a pep talk.

I'm so sick of hearing about those Russians.

Remember the movie Miracle?

I thought I was gonna think about it.

I'm so sick of the defeated life that many of us live when resurrection life is offered.

Today it's offered.

Jesus wins.

Well, I can't win.

Everything I put my hand to, every plow I put my hand to, I failed.

It's because it was you.

Give up on you.

Quit you and surrender to Him.

Surrender to Jesus.

And you may have been baptized as an infant.

I was.

I was six weeks old in the Lutheran church when I was baptized, and I was baptized in a dress.

You may have gone through catechism classes.

I did.

From six, I think it was like 14 to 16.

Many of you that come out of Roman Catholic backgrounds, you're baptizing an infant or Methodist backgrounds, you're baptized an infant.

You went through catechism class.

But I didn't really come to know the winning Jesus until I was 18 years old at the University of Georgia.

And there in a little chapel right up right across the street from campus, I gave my heart to Christ.

I became a loser.

I became a loser.

I surrendered my relationships.

I surrendered my dating.

I surrendered my fidelity.

I surrendered my Manipulation.

I surrendered my works of making Steve great.

And I surrendered it all to Jesus.

And I said, Lord, come into my life, transform me, and make me a new person.

And I didn't suddenly sprout angel wings, I can tell you that right now.

And Charlton Heston didn't walk in looking like Moses.

I didn't see angels floating around, but something happened.

There was a transaction in my heart.

And I went from being a loser to becoming a winner.

And I want to challenge you today to come to Christ.

Wherever you are in your journey.

Maybe you kind of halfway know him.

Maybe it's all up here.

Yeah, I believe.

I believe that Jesus died on the cross.

I believe he rose again.

And I believed all that too.

I said the Nicene Creed every Sunday for the first 18 years of my life.

But my heart wasn't born again.

It was not transformed.

It was head knowledge and not heart experience.

Would you like to experience Christ this morning?

The resurrection day.

Jesus said, I came that you might have life and might have it abundantly.

You would think, but the way the church talks about Christ these days, what he actually said was, I came that you might have life and it would be as boring as possible.

No, what Jesus actually said is, I came that you might have life and have it abundantly, that it would be full, meaningful, powerful, and life-changing.

Jesus said, For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, not perish, but have everlasting life.

Jesus said, Now this is eternal life, that they may know me, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.

Christ came to set us free.

Christ came to win.

Win over sin, turn sinners into saints, not perfect, but begin to experience a personal, dynamic, growing, vital relationship with the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords who rose from the grave.

You've been listening to The Road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.

We hope you have been blessed by today's message.

To connect with us further, visit theroad.org.

If you are walking through a difficult time, we want to pray for you.

Go to theroad.org, click on the ministries tab, and go to our prayer page to send us your prayer request.

Thanks again for tuning in today, and be sure to listen to the next edition of The Road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.