No Morning Was Ever Brighter, Part 2

Sometimes it takes a contrast in values to see something more clearly, and that's certainly true of Easter. No day was darker or sadder than Good Friday when our Lord was crucified. In contrast, no morning was brighter or happier than Easter. Today on Insight for Living, we'll resume a message Chuck Swindoll started last time.

He's teaching from Mark chapter 16 about the historic events that revolutionized the world. Our hopeless, sinful condition was dramatically transformed into a bright, hopeful future. Chuck titled his message, No Morning Was Ever Brighter, and we begin with prayer. We do give you praise, our Father, because Christ the Lord is risen, and it's on this day we acknowledge it, and we say hallelujah, praise be to your name. Sons of men and angels say hallelujah. We are to raise our voice and triumph high. We are to sing as they do in heaven and on earth, reply hallelujah, praise be to your name. We pause on this glorious resurrection morning to thank you for giving us hope beyond this life. Remind us, our Father, that we are really living in the land of the dying, headed for the world of the living. Reprioritize our lives, our Father, and take us to that place where we see and understand that we are to seek first the kingdom of your heaven and your plans and all the other things of this life will be added to us as they are needed. We're grateful, our Father, that we find in Christ the risen Lord hope in this life and hope for the life to come, and because of that we give with great gratitude and generosity as your people.

In the name of Jesus who has been raised we pray, and for his sake alone we give. And everyone said amen. Hallelujah! You're listening to Insight for Living.

To study Mark chapter 16 with Chuck Swindoll, be sure to download his Searching the Scriptures studies by going to insightworld.org slash studies. And now the message from Chuck titled, No Morning Was Ever Brighter. Christ the Lord has risen today, hallelujah, hallelujah. You know we have been singing that for 275 years. Well, we haven't, but the church has been singing that for 275 years. Charles Wesley wrote it way back then. I'm sure he had no idea that it would be sung decades and decades beyond his own life and death. And there it is.

So why? I mean our moms and dads sang it in their era and our grandchildren will sing it when they are adults and they gather for worship. But if you come to church only once a year and Easter is your Sunday, you probably are wondering about now, is that the only song they know? What's the big deal? We'll ask a guy named Paul, not first century Paul, but one of our own contemporaries, a golfer, who by this time had reached the zenith of his career. He in fact had become by then the number two money-winning golfer on the tour, Paul Aisinger. I heard Paul tell his story in a gathering a number of years ago, and he was by then a man of enormous celebrity, incredibly gifted and able to carry his own in whatever may have been the particular course, but he began to feel pain in his shoulder. He told us about it as he gave us his story and he couldn't get past it. In fact, it affected his swing and he finally realized that he needed to see a physician. When he did, his life would never be the same. He heard the words of bone lymphoma, big words for cancer. He said to us in our smaller gathering, much smaller than this, after I heard the physician say that my first reaction after I left his office was to go directly to the men's room and throw up. My whole world capsized. He was on a roll.

He was moving ahead. Family was doing well. He was known all through that sport, and other people who were fans knew the name Paul Aisinger. In fact, Paul knew the song. Christ the Lord is risen today, hallelujah. Sons of men and angels say, hallelujah. Raise your voice with triumphs high, hallelujah. Sing ye heavens and earth, reply, hallelujah. And he sang that song as he had never sung it before, because now he realized because Christ was raised having trusted in Christ, he too, regardless of what happens with his cancer, he too will be raised and made like Christ. That's what Paul Aisinger would say.

You may not have heard the word lymphoma connected to your name or your body yet, but imagine what it will be like if in fact it happens that you and I standing before our physician hear the word lymphoma, your bone cancer. Paul says when all of that began to land on him, he really could think about life and a whole new set of priorities, and he realized what the chaplain had said in the previous tour now made sense. He had said, we think we are in the land of the living, going to the land of the dying. We are in fact in the land of the dying, headed for the land of the living.

If you don't know the song and if you don't know the one about whom the song speaks, you haven't looked at it like that. Lives again, our glory is given, our glorious king, hallelujah, where o death is now thy sting, hallelujah. Dying once, he all doth save, hallelujah. Where is thy victory, o grave, hallelujah.

It's time to give him praise. It isn't what we would have planned or expected or had wanted, but when God has his way, you turn to what has anchored your soul in life. That's why we gather. That's why we celebrate.

That's why the day is significant. Paul writes of all of this in 1 Corinthians, chapter 15. If you've marked your Bible there, please open to that 15th chapter. It is the greatest chapter in all the Bible strictly addressing the resurrection. Many other chapters mention it, but this one develops the thought and follows it through. Paul sums up the gospel, the good news, at the beginning of the chapter and takes us all the way through to the point of resurrection and victory over the grave by the end of the chapter.

Look at how he begins. Let me remind you, dear brothers and sisters, of the good news, the good news I preached to you. You welcomed it then and you stand firm in it now. Verse 3, I passed on to you what was most important and what had also been passed on to me.

And here it is. Christ died for our sins just as the scripture said. In my Bible, I've highlighted the words Christ died. For there's no resurrection if you haven't a death. If you can prove he never died, which some skeptics would love to do, you have no miracle in the resurrection. He must die. He must be a corpse.

Now, that's important. I mean, what good is a phony resurrection if there was a phony death? Some believe he just sort of swooned and came unconscious and then inside the tomb he came back to a consciousness and he moved this massive more than a ton weight of stone away from the inside and slipped out into the night and faked a resurrection. I think it takes more faith to believe that than he just was raised from the dead.

But there are some who say that. But if you don't have a dead Christ, you don't have a miracle resurrection. To prove that he died, he was buried. He wasn't buried alive. He was buried dead. They wrapped him as you would wrap a mummy.

They put the spices in to cover the stench of a decaying body in the days to come. And they hurriedly placed him in a grave because the Sabbath was upon them. They got him in the tomb. They laid him there with all the wrappings, even a little wrapping around his head called by one of the disciples the handkerchief that held the jaw closed. And there he lay.

Had there been any sign of life, they certainly would not have gone through the process. But he died. And Paul writes of it, Christ died and in proof of his death he was buried. But that's only half the story of the Gospel. Next we read he was raised. Raised from the dead on the third day.

Just as Scripture said. How do we know he was raised? Among other evidences, please observe, he was seen.

It wasn't just a gossip that spread among the early believers. No, he was seen by Peter. He was seen by the 12. And then after that he was seen by more than 500 of his followers. Some would say it was just an aberration, just a figment of their imagination. 500 figments of imagination?

Hardly. 500 followers at one time saw him alive. And then verse 7, he was seen by James and later by the apostles. And last of all, the apostle writes, I saw him. Now you might think, what if there were no resurrection? Let's just assume for a moment that all of this is a hoax. And all the Christians down through the centuries that have gathered on Easter Sunday to sing this song that really has a hollow ring to it because there really is no resurrection.

Let's just track that for a moment. Paul does, in beginning at verse 13. If there is no resurrection of the dead, let's go there.

And then he puts a list together that sort of takes your breath away. Then Christ has not been raised. If there's no such thing as resurrection, number one, we don't have a resurrected Christ. Number two, verse 14, then all our preaching is useless.

Just a lot of hot air. Some of you believed that a long time anyway. And it proves now that all the preachers down through the centuries have just poured out a lot of useless garbage. It's not true information. It's useless.

Let's go further. Your faith is useless. And we apostles would all be lying about God. All the apostles are pack of liars. They said this.

They wanted us to believe it, but they've lied. Your faith is useless. We read down in verse 17, you're guilty, still guilty of your sins. That big pack is still on your back. That's still heavy weight that you carry, that addiction you can't get rid of, those habits that haunt you, the rage that builds within you, the lack of forgiveness toward others, the wrongs of your past. They're there. They're there to beat in your ear as you lay on the pillow at night, pounding, pounding away, like Edgar Allen Poe writes of in The Pit and the Pendulum. The guilt comes back, comes back.

In that case, look at this one. All who have died believing in Christ are lost. Paul Azinger is believing in a hoax. The Willis couple that had set their hope on the fact that they would see those children one day, that those children are no longer dead here, but living there, they're all lost. Betty Haughton, Billy Haughton, and the couple you could name, they're all lost.

In fact, he ends with a statement that's so true. We are of all people in the world most to be pitied. We're to be pitied. We have no hope. We have no song to sing. We have no message to declare. It's all got a hollow ring to it.

No. In fact, I love the way verse 20 begins, but in fact, only Paul can write it like that, but in fact, so much for the what ifs, so much for the condition if there is no resurrection. But in fact, he states, Christ has been raised from the dead. He's the first of a great harvest of all who have died. So you see, just as death came into the world through one man, that's Adam, now the resurrection from the dead has begun through another man, and that's Jesus.

Just as everyone dies because we belong to Adam, everyone who belongs to Christ will be given new life. How good is that? How can he say it's a fact? How can we say that? Well, the evidence is overwhelming.

Overwhelming. We have just seen that he was seen by all of these people. Furthermore, the tomb was empty.

The stone was rolled away, which was a physical impossibility. Seen by others and their lives have been transformed. By the way, no one has ever found his corpse or his skeleton.

Believe me, they've looked. In no part of the Holy Land have the remains of Jesus been recovered. I was reading just late last evening the words of Donald Barnhouse, the late Dr. Barnhouse, pastor of the church in Philadelphia for well over 20 years. He writes in his wonderful volume on the letter to the Romans these words. The fact of the resurrection is attested by a host of witnesses, begins to name some. The change of the day of worship from the Jewish Sabbath, Saturday, to the first day of the week, the Lord's Day, is one of the mightiest proofs of the resurrection. The astounding psychological change in the disciples. Think about that. That can be accounted for only by the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, from a group of hiding cowards. Overnight they were transformed into a company of indomitable men, fearing neither life nor death. All of that in the matter of a day.

Think about it. The night he was arrested, they scattered like rats on a sinking ship. They all fled into the night, into the shadows. But after the resurrection, why, they flood down the steps on the day of Pentecost and they stand in the street even though it was illegal and they pronounced and proclaimed the name of Jesus having been raised from the same men. He adds, it's totally impossible to explain these things apart from the fact of the historical, literal resurrection of Christ from the dead. And in proclaiming the fact of the resurrection, let it be well understood we're not talking about a resurrection other than a literal one. Jesus rose from the dead in the same body in which he died, only this one was glorified.

C.S. Lewis of Cambridge, in one of his more notable books, answering the argument that the resurrection might be considered as spiritual, replied the resurrection of Christ was as literal as broiled fish. Why would he name broiled fish? Well, the Lord Jesus appeared to his disciples broiling fish on a fire beside the Sea of Galilee and ate that fish with them. It was a real resurrection after a real death, the death of a man whose heart had been pierced with the spear thrust into his side.

He arose from the dead and he still lives. Think of it like this, think of two worlds. We live in one that is around us, we're born into it, we exist in it, we die on it, this world, and then there is another world that is beyond us. I put it in this simple statement, embracing the reality of the world to come radically alters everything in the world in which we live. Again, embracing the reality of the world to come radically alters everything in the world in which we live.

Instead of living in the black doom of everyday life on this planet where people die in automobiles every day, where heart attacks happen every few seconds every day, where people take their lives every day, where heartbreak and disillusionment gather around all of this existence every day, when you know the song, your life isn't limited to this world, but focuses on the one to come. Peggy Noonan was for the longest time a correspondent for CBS. She later became a speechwriter for President Ronald Reagan and then later President Bush senior. She still writes in the Wall Street Journal and other documents she releases. She writes good stuff in my opinion. This particular piece she wrote for Forbes magazine, in it she almost sounds like she's a biblical prophet.

Listen to her words. I think we have lost the old knowledge that happiness is overrated, that in a way life on this planet is overrated. We have lost somehow a sense of mystery about us, our purpose, our meaning, our role. Our ancestors believed in two worlds.

They understood this one to be the solitary poor nasty brutish short one. And we are the first generation, she writes, that actually expected to find happiness in this world. And our search for it has caused such unhappiness. The reason, she continues, if you do not believe in another higher world, if you believe only in the flat material world around you, if you believe that this is your only chance at happiness, if that is what you believe, then you are not only disappointed when the world does not give you a good measure of its riches, you are despairing. You are despairing. Think about it.

She's right. In fact, I think one of the reasons for the heartbreak and the despair and the disillusionment of this life is to bring us to our knees where we acknowledge we can't make it on our own. We haven't the strength. We haven't the power. We haven't the ability.

Sometimes our expectations for life are entirely unrealistic and wishing for happiness or a comfortable lifestyle, we often set ourselves up for disappointment. To learn more about this ministry, please visit us online at insightworld.org. Well, there's much more teaching in Chuck's message ahead. He titled this sermon, No Morning Was Ever Brighter. And you can purchase a copy of the complete message by calling us.

If you're listening in the United States, dial 1-800-772-8888 or go to insight.org slash store. As we conclude today's message, we thought you'd be encouraged to hear this first-hand story from one of your fellow listeners. It reinforces that people around the world are using the teaching they hear on this program to point them to the hope of Easter. This note came from Nigeria on the continent of Africa and said, sir, you are my radio pastor. You have trained me in the art of expository preaching. It started when as a young man, I would listen diligently to you on radio ELWA. Then I rose to be a preacher of God's word, serving as university chaplain for 25 years.

Thanks a million for your mentorship. And then on a more humorous note, listen to this wife's comment. Chuck, God used Insight for Living to bring my husband to Christ.

Until you helped to save him, he called you Czech swindler. He worked for a very large car company and after coming to Christ, he had every radio program to Insight for Living. God bless you. You are dearly loved by the Lord. Well, if you're among those who financially support Chuck's teaching ministry, rest assured, God is using your generosity to touch lives. We couldn't reach men and women around the world without your partnership. As God leads you to give a donation, we invite you to call us. If you're listening in the United States, dial 1-800-772-8888 or give a donation online when you go to insight.org. Join us again tomorrow, Good Friday, when Chuck Swindoll guides us in the celebration of Easter right here on Insight for Living. The preceding message, No Morning Was Ever Brighter, was copyrighted in 2014 and the sound recording was copyrighted in 2015 by Charles R. Swindoll, Inc. All rights are reserved worldwide. Duplication of copyrighted material for commercial use is strictly prohibited.