Gospel

AN EVANGELISTIC MESSAGE

by GLENN PEASE
01/07/22
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I am no miracle worker. I have only seen a couple of things happen that I would call miracles. Miracles are rare even in the life of a child of God. God works mostly both in the Bible and in history through what we call providence. Providence means that He acts by means of the laws of nature, the circumstances of life and the choices we make. But in spite of knowing this I can declare to you that I am here to see God do a miracle. A miracle is something a man cannot do. Only God can do a miracle, but I know it is God's will that a miracle happened here. Am I a prophet, or a psychic? No, I just know God's will because He has revealed it to us. Every one of us will be involved in God's greatest miracle. He has made it clear that the major miracle He is going to do at the end of history is raise the dead.

Jesus says it clearly in John 5:28-29: "Do not be amazed at this, for a time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear His voice and come out-those who have done good will rise to live, and those who have do evil will rise to be condemned." Every person in history will experience God's final miracle in the great resurrection. Contrary to those who say, "When you are dead you are dead forever," the Bible says that nobody is dead forever. God is going to do a miracle beyond our wildest imagination and raise up from the grave every person who has ever died. It is estimated that about 19 billion people have lived in history, and they will all hear the voice of Jesus, just as Lazarus did, and they will come forth from their place of death to be alive again.

I don't care how marvelous the special effects Hollywood can put into a movie, they will never match what God is going to do with the vast realm of the dead. But this great miracle is sometime in the future. It may be soon, but we don't know just when. The miracle I want to focus on right now is one that God is doing now. He is raising the dead every day, and every hour, and every minute somewhere on this planet, and it is His will that the dead be raised here today. You don't have to check your neighbors pulse to see if you are sitting next to a corpse. You are all alive according to our legal and medical definitions of life, but it is not likely everyone here is alive according to God's definition of life. In fact, it is almost a certainty that some of you are dead.

Paul says of the Christians in Ephesus that they were once dead. In Eph. 2:1 he writes, "As for you, you were dead in your trespasses and sins.." God said to Adam that if he sinned he would die, and he did sin and entered a death we call spiritual death. All sinners ever since are in Adam, and they are dead even while they live. This death is separation from God. To be out of fellowship with God, who is the author of life, is to be spiritually dead. Paul says in Rom. 8:6-7, "The mind of sinful man is death. The sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God's law, nor can it do so. Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God."

If you cannot obey God and live the life He wants you to live there is a simple answer as to why. It is for the same reason the people in the cemetery do not please anyone anymore. They never write or call. They never send presents or visit. They never do anything to please because they can't, for they are dead. People who are spiritually dead cannot please God. You have to be alive to please God, but sinful man is not alive, but he is dead in trespasses and sins. Just as we do not get any pleasure out of dead people, so God can get no pleasure out of those who are spiritually dead.

Here is the good news, however. God loves dead people, and those who are lost and dead in their sins. They are not shipped off to God's spiritual cemetery and left to rot for eternity. God sent His Son into the world to join this vast mass of the dead, and to die too. He entered the realm of the dead from the cross, and then He broke out of that prison of death in His resurrection. He smashed a hole in death's prison wall large enough for all captives to escape. We are told that many of the dead rose from their tombs after Jesus rose and they were seen by others.

Because Jesus conquered death He now has the power to release anyone from its grip. He has the keys of death and hell, and anyone who calls upon Him can be pardoned for their sins and be set free. In other words, nobody needs to stay dead and separated from God without any chance to please Him. All the dead can be made alive now. You don't wait till the final resurrection, for then it will be too late if you have not already been made alive spiritually. To be saved means to be made alive, and thus able to live in a way that pleases God. Dead people can't do this. Only those made alive in Christ can please God. This is the miracle that runs all through the New Testament, all through history, and the miracle that can happen here today if you listen to the voice of the Son of God. Those who hear His voice and accept His love for themselves can pass from death to life right now.

Listen to the words of Jesus in verse 24-25, "I tell you the truth, whoever hears my words and believes Him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life. It tell you the truth, a time is coming and has now come when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live." Jesus is talking here, not of the great resurrection at the end of history, but of the present miracle of the spiritually dead hearing the voice of Jesus and believing, and crossing over from the realm of the dead to the living.

This is a miracle that can happen to any dead person here. You can go from being one who does not care a thing about God to one who cares most about God. You can be one who wants to learn about the will of God and how to overcome your sins, and be pleasing to God. A Christian is not one who has conquered all sin. Sometimes Christians are the worst sinners, but they are alive. They know God cares, and they are striving to be what God wants them to be. They want to learn to pray, read the Bible, and become loving persons. They want to be part of the answer instead of part of the problem. They may not be better than you, but they are alive because they have a Savior who lives in them and gives them eternal life.

Often the dead use it as an excuse not to receive Jesus as their Savior that they are as good or better than some Christians they know. This is folly, for it is like a corpse in the cemetery feeling no need of life because it is as good or better than some of the bodies walking around the cemetery. Why do I need life? I'm dressed better than some of those slobs that walk passed by my grave. I do not stuff my gut like a glutton as some of them do, nor do I curse and get plastered and all sorts of things they do offensive to God and man. The corpse has a good argument, for almost all corpses are far better behaved than the living. It is still folly to be content with being dead rather than alive.

All of the arguments of the spiritually dead being better than many who are alive in Christ is equally folly. Your being better than some Christians will not save you. You can be a better person than any Christian and it will not make you alive, for you are not saved by being better. A messed up Christian who is weak and only has the faith of a mustard seed, and who is not half the person you are, is still alive and heading for an eternal life where they will be perfected. But when you are dead, no matter how good you are, you are headed for judgment and the second death, which is eternal separation from God. The point is, the goal of life is not to better than someone else. It is to be raised from the dead, and to get out of the grave of lostness and being separated from God. The only way out is by the power of Christ. He is the only one who can conquer death and set us free to live now and forever.

That is what it means to be saved. It is to pass from that state where we are dead to God to that state where we are alive and able to grow in Christ. Paul wrote in Col. 2:13, "When you were dead in your sins... God made you alive with Christ. He forgave all our sins." The difference between being dead and alive is not that the dead are sinners and the alive are not. The difference is that the alive are sinners who are forgiven. They are forgiven because they have trusted in Christ who died for all their sins. They may be worse sinners than some who are dead, but they are still alive because they have one who forgives their sin. The dead have no forgiveness. They will have to pay for their own sin, and the wages of sin is death, and so the dead stay dead forever.

Those who pass from death to life are still sinners, but they are now children of God. John tells us how he can know we have passed from death to life in I John 3:14. "We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love our brothers. Anyone who does not love remains in death." Love is the key sign of life. If a person does not love, he is still dead. The person who has really trusted Jesus as Savior will love the family of God. Life and love go together like heads and tails. If you are alive, you will love. If you love you are alive. Love and life are one, for God is love and God is life, and if He lives in you, you will have love and life.

Jesus says that when you ask Him to come into your life and be your Savior He gives you His life, and that is life that never ends. That is why He said to His disciples in Matt. 10:28, "Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the one who can destroy both soul and body in hell." Jesus is saying that death cannot touch the life He gives us. Killing the body is the worst thing that men can do to you, and it is no big deal, for you still have life that will go on forever, and He will provide the soul with a new body. So death is no big deal if you have life, but if you don't, and you are one who is dead in sin without a Savior, you have plenty to be afraid of. If you die while still dead in sin, you will stay dead forever and never be a part of the family of God.

Dead people are the ones who need most to fear death, for without life they are held by the jaws of death forever. They need a miracle to be raised from the dead. That miracle can happen right now, and dead people can live if they will ask the Lord of life to raise them up and make them alive in Him as a child of God. My mission here is to be grave robber. It is to proclaim the words of Jesus and His good news so that they dead can hear and come out of the tomb of their deadness and begin to live the life Jesus came to give. Nobody needs to stay dead. Nobody needs to dwell in the cemetery of their lost soul. Jesus died and rose again, and He sent His church into all the world to preach the good news that whosoever will come out of the darkness of death by trusting in Jesus can enter into the light of life. If you want to stay dead forever, do nothing, but if you want to live forever, ask Jesus now to come into your life and be your Lord and Savior.