This is the Chip Ingram Sermon Podcast. Brought to you by Living on the Edge. In this podcast, you'll hear Chip's teaching unedited and from beginning to end. Here's Chip with today's message titled, You Gotta Die.
Well, as most of you know, Easter is kind of the high day. the pinnacle of uh Christianity. It's a message that you've heard, you've sung, it's about life. It's about hope. And it's about peace.
And if there's ever a time, I don't know about in your personal life, but in the world that we need life and hope and peace, I would say it's about now. I mean, it's easy to kind of get focused in on your world and my world and my email and my little kind of relationships, but. The world is a messed up place right now. I mean, we're living in pretty historic days. I mean, did you ever, ever dream that there would be a group of people, a small group, a minority, who would think that.
You know, they get an A from the God that they worship by killing people they've never met. That's the world that we're currently living in. And we got to get our heads out of the sand to realize If there is a message that's real about life and hope and peace, the world needs it now. But it can't just be some religious little experience. It's got to make sense.
The flip side of that is sometimes you don't even have to. Watch CNN or Fox or the network news to see what's happening in the world. All you have to do is kind of look in your own home. I don't know a lot of you very well. But if you and I could go get a cup of coffee somewhere and say, hey, you know, tell me how you're really doing.
And I promise not to tell anyone. Just what's really what are the biggest hurts in your life in the last nine to twelve months? I will guarantee you I would hear about the divorce or separation you recently went through. The baby that you lost, or someone who found out that your wife or husband is having an affair. I wonder how many people here you'd say.
I haven't told anybody that I have an addiction. And whether it's prescription drugs or whether it's porn or Cocaine. I mean, I can just tell you, oh no, that's not it. It's my aging parents. No, no, no, no, no.
It's my I lost my job. They foreclosed on my home. Our business went under. I mean, that's the world that we're living in. And here's what I wanted to do in our time together, because it's really important.
I grew up in an experience where people had what I called God talk and talked about hope and life and peace, but it was like spiritual, religious, mumbo-jumbo over here. And then I would go back into the real world, and I never saw the correlation, and it didn't seem to make sense in their life. And so, I want to talk today about how do you really find life and hope and peace in a world that's really messed up. There was a um A man many years ago named Frank. And Frank had uh everything that we would think would bring life and hope and peace.
He lived a carefree life. He inherited a great amount of wealth. His house would be nestled up into the hills. He would have a couple luxury cars. His kids had high SAT scores.
I mean, his life would just be amazingly wonderful by all our standards. And he lived that high life, but he found there was an emptiness about what really brings life and what really gives purpose. He did something crazy. He heard the words and the teachings of an itinerant preacher that had lived roughly 1,200 years before he was born, a man named Jesus. And as he read the words, he thought, this is so radical.
But I've got money, I've got wealth, I've got it all. And I'm empty inside, so I'm going to take this person. And he follows these words of Christ in a very literal way and left everything. And he found a small little band of people who would say, Will you leave everything with me? Why don't we try this out as an experiment?
Let's radically love people. Let's not worry about material stuff. Let's just go after it. And they did. That was almost a thousand years ago.
And his little group is still going on. And they live by a motto. It's a prayer that he wrote. I think his name was Frank when he started off, but Later when he got to be more famous, people started calling him Francis. And his prayer and his motto of how to live for life and hope and peace was: Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
And where there is hatred, let me sow love. Where there is injury, pardon. Where there is doubt, faith. Where there is despair, hope. And where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much listen to the counterintuitive. Grant that I may not so much seek. To be consoled as to console. To be understood as to understand. To be loved.
as to love. For it is in giving that we receive. That's counterintuitive. It is in pardoning that we are pardoned. And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
The Franciscans almost a thousand years later are doing what? helping the poor. living out his prayer. You may not agree with all they're doing, but I will tell you what. have experienced a life that's impacted millions upon millions upon millions of people in the things that money can't buy.
And as I read that, I thought to myself, where did he get those crazy ideas?
Now, I know he got them from Jesus. But how does it really work? Secular scholars say that the Apostle Paul was probably the greatest mind of the first century. He was from Tarsus. It was a nice town.
He was a Roman citizen, which was a big deal. He had wealth. And his life wasn't making sense. And he tried so hard, so hard, so hard, so hard to be good. And then he encountered the living Christ.
And he realized that he had to die. He needed to stop trying, stop working, stop attempting, stop trying to prove. Pose. And he met the living Christ. And in the midst of a world, here's what you got to understand: sometimes we think it's really, really bad now.
You ought to study church history. I majored in history in college. You ought to study what Rome was like and what it was like to grow up there. You ought to study and look at the culture of what the Greeks taught, and there were gods on every corner, and there was an immorality that makes our triple X porn look mild. The poor had unbelievable injustice.
Greed and power ruled. People got crushed. Women had nothing. And in the midst of all that, this brilliant intellect said, I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live. Yet not I, but Christ lives inside of me.
And now, this life that I live day by day in this physical body, I live by faith in the Son of God. Who gave himself for me? And what he was saying was: listen to that word: I'm crucified with Christ. He said, I had to die. I had to die to my agenda, my selfishness, my greed, my demands.
I had to die. And Francis picked that up and he put it in that prayer that he prayed. And that prayer that he lived. The gateway to the deepest relationships. Peace that won't go away, and hope that you can have when you find out someone you love has cancer, or when you find out someone you love has hooked up with someone else.
Begins with a death because when there's no death, there can't be resurrection. In one sentence, the Apostle Paul Sodom's letter to the Galatians chapter 2 verse 20 says this is how it works.
Now here's what I want to do. I want to step back and ask, how does that really play out? And so we can ask four very basic questions. Question number one, well, how did we get here? How did the world get this messed up?
There's chaos out there, and there's chaos in here. And what I want to tell you is the world This world that we live in now is not the world God created. The world that God created, the eternal creator of all that it is, who spoke the world into existence, created an absolutely perfect world. And he created human beings that he placed in a perfect world. The ecosystem was perfect.
The weather was perfect. No hurricanes, no tsunamis, there was no death. There was no pain, there was no sorrow. There was no conflict, there was no wars. There was God.
and the human beings that he made in perfect fellowship. But God in this perfect world that he made Wanted to have a very real relationship with us, and there's a price for freedom. See, you can make robots and have them bow down to you or say words to you, but robots don't have the freedom to say yes or no. They're programmed. God wanted people that would have a real authentic relationship with him because They had to be able to do what free moral agents can, say yes to him or say no to him.
And so what we find is the great price of freedom Was that we, mankind, said, God, I don't want you. I'm going to do my own thing. I think I know what's best for me. The world that God created revolved around him and his son. Then there was this coup, this rebellion, and each one of us tried to get the world to revolve around us.
It's me, and it's mine, and more, and gotta have. And there was devastating consequences. The theologians call it the fall, or when sin entered the world. And the impact was it separated us from God, it separates us from each other, and it separates us even from ourselves. You cannot imagine how many people deeply, deeply do not like themselves.
Because they see who they are. and who they pose and pretend to be. And the scripture says that even the globe, the actual earth, The fall impacted. It groans. It's like the coup happened and then the entire planet got this cancer, this deteriorating disease, and so there's earthquakes and there's tsunamis and nothing will be made right until the Savior who came once will come back as a judge and make everything right.
But that's how we got here. And so there was a need. There's a tremendous need. If God cares, what are you going to do about this? See, if God made the world the way as it is, He's not a very good God, He's not a good God, He's not a kind God, He's a cruel God.
But the world that you live in is messed up. God didn't mess it up. We did. But he cares. And so the question number two is where is God in the chaos?
Not just in the suffering that's happening in places around the world, but where is God in your chaos? And the relationship that isn't going well, and the anger and the bitterness, and the people that have talked about you, and all the junk. Where is God in the chaos? Here's the message of Easter. Get this down.
Easter is about a divine intervention. Anybody here know what an intervention is? Anybody had a friend or a relative I have? That's either a crack addict A sex addict, an alcoholic, a prescription drugger. Cocaine ad any Well, I have.
I've been involved in intervention when my mother did it with my dad, with us kids. You know what interventions are? Interventions are people are living in destructive ways that are killing them and ruining everything and everyone around them. And we watch the devastation, we watch the pain, and then someone gets the courage to say, I'm not playing in the system any longer. And you get all the friends, and you get all the family, and usually find a pro who's done this before because you need to know what you're doing.
And you all create this place, and then usually have to trick them to get them there. And he walks in. And he goes, oh, what's going on? And they say, we love you and you have a big problem. And whether it's your alcoholism or whether it's your drug addiction.
or whether it's your logging on habit. We care so much. We refuse to play the game. We're intervening now. And we want you to know there's hope and there's a path that you can take.
But we won't support this any longer. And I'll never forget the day my mom did that with our family. after my dad was an alcoholic for about 25 years. And she said, You can have this bottle, or you can have me and the kids, but you can't have both. And you got 24 hours to figure it out.
That was before we had all the technical stuff that we have now, and counseling and. My dad is a Marine. He's a smart Marine. Twenty-four hours later?
So I'll choose you all.
Now, I wish he would have got some counseling and got some help, but I'll tell you what, radical change in his life. came to Christ after that. But you know what Easter is? God looking down from heaven, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Of seeing all people of all time simultaneously in all of our needs and seeing the chaos and the destruction both personally and globally.
And the sun sang, I'll go. Let's do an intervention. Let's help them see that they are messed up and they are selfish and they need to die and receive life so they can be resurrected. And so Jesus came and he did the intervention to rescue us. His life mission, he said, was, I came to seek and to save those which were lost.
And so the first thing he offered was life. Because we're on death patterns. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever underlined the word believe in him. should not perish, but have everlasting life. Circle the word have.
Have present tense the moment you believe. And then the very next verse. was probably as m Life-changing for me is the first one. For God did not send His Son into the world to judge the world. But he sent a son to save us.
God's not down on you. God's not down on me. He's not this angry God whose arms are crossed with a big club, who has a lot of rules and just waiting for you to mess up, to bang over your head, or knock you on the knuckles. His invitation is not get religious, get more moral, try harder, pull up your bootstraps. That's not it.
It's an intervention where you say, How you're living your life doesn't work. It's bringing death to you and death to others. I want to give you life. There's a gift. And what we're going to learn is, he went to the cross and he died on the cross for you.
He intervened and said, What you can't do for yourself, I'm going to do. And he literally paid. That's what the word redemption means. He paid for your sin and paid for mine, and then he rose from the grave and says, Look. Free gift.
But he says, not just life, I'm going to give you hope. The very last night, he looked into his disciples' eyes, and he could see the fear in their eyes. And they'd seen him feed the poor and raise people from the dead, and they knew he was the Messiah, but it was like, how is this going to work? Because you keep talking about your checking out. And he said, do not let your hearts be troubled.
You believe in God? Believe also in me. In my father's house are many dwelling places, and if it were not so, I would not have told you. And then listen carefully, for I go and prepare a place for you. If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and I will receive you to myself, that where I am, you may be also.
Do you get it? It's about relationship. It's not about morality. When the relationship is right, the morality always changes. But he says you need hope You need hope when your marriage is falling apart.
You need hope when you find out someone you love has cancer. You need hope when your parents are totally messed up. You need hope when your biggest dreams were to get into that school and you didn't get in. You need hope when you based all your life on that athletic career and then, boom, it's ACL and nobody wants you. You need hope when life doesn't work, but guess what?
There's gonna come a day And the research is in. 100% of the population at some point in time dies. It's true.
So you know when you need hope? You need hope. That there's someone who's personal and real, and who's the God of the universe who made you, who is preparing a place. and wants you with him. Once you're with him.
Because he loves you. And then knowing that in a fallen world, Yet yet you need peace. I mean, you get anxious when you don't have enough money. You get anxious when, you know what, you used to have a house, you don't have a house. You get anxious when you don't have a job.
You get anxious, and you know what he says? Don't let your heart be troubled. And then he goes on to say, look, I want to give you peace. In the world. You will have tribulation, but Be courageous.
I want you to know I've overcome the world and the peace that I have. I'm in control. Hey, it's awful at times. It's difficult at times. I'm in control of the big tsunamis and the little tsunamis.
I'm sovereignly in control of all that there is, and I will take even all the evil and all the people and all the bad stuff. And for those who would turn from their sin and say, I want a relationship with you, I will do an intervention and we'll do life together. And I want to love you. That's the message of Easter. And the question you ought to be asking is: if that's the message of Easter, what gives this Jesus the right to make that outlandish offer?
Don't other religions have offers about peace and life and hope? I mean, what what makes you think this one's real? Right? That was my question. Jesus makes this offer based on four things.
First, his life. Sinless. Revealing God's character. If we could have found, if his enemies could have found one sin, the message of Jesus and all of his claims go out the window. But instead, Jesus said, Look, here's the deal.
I've come to do an intervention, and you have death. Life. You want to see what life looks like? See the poor, I feed them. See the hungry, I feed them.
See the people that have lost, I raised them from the dead. If you have seen me, you've seen the Father. You want to know what God is like? You see this prostitute and the messed up life she's had and the four partners. Go and sin no more.
You see this lady whose heart's broken, and this guy that's just lost his daughter, I raise her from the dead. These people don't have purpose and these religious people and all their pious stuff I shoot it straight with them and say, quit pretending. Quit posturing. Quit being a hypocrite. He's his life.
I mean, it marks AD, BC, all of life is around the single solitary life that's changed the world. And second, his death. Colossians chapter 2 makes it clear that when he died, He didn't just physically die because he was fully God and fully man. Being man, he could die. Being God, it could be a perfect sacrifice.
And he covered sin. He broke the penalty of sin. He conquered death. and destroyed the works of the evil one. His life, his death, and finally he proved it all with his resurrection.
Read the book of Acts, chapters 1 and 2. This isn't some weird religious philosopher that had dreams and told people there's a new way to God. This was someone who was outrageous. He said, I'm the savior of the world. I'm truth incarnate.
There's no other way but me. He's either right, wrong, or a lunatic. But you can't even admire Jesus as a as a teacher. What kind of teacher would lie to you? The resurrection proves that what he said was true.
God visited the planet. You talk about an intervention? He visited the planet and suffered and lived the perfect life. For you. For you personally, for me.
500 eyewitnesses for over 40 days. They could touch his hands. They had meals with him. There's a reason we're sitting in this room. It's not because we're on the salad bar of the philosophical religious views of our day.
We're sitting in this room because a real God visited a real planet and died on a real cross and came back to life and walked around for 40 days with eyewitnesses, and their lives have been completely transformed. The tragedy is we've taken that and made it religion. Because the final point is It's our union with him. What God has always wanted. The reason he did the intervention.
I mean, you don't do an intervention so that people end up in a treatment center and their message is, hey, I go to treatment centers. I go on Mondays and Wednesdays and Fridays. I go through the 12 steps. It's a great treatment center. Have you ever been to a treatment center?
I love treatment centers. Let's be treatment center people. What you want them to do is have an intervention and get whole and come back and love you and be connected to you. The tragedy of our day, and the reason that I opted out of Christianity as a young person. All they wanted to do was talk about their religion and telling me that I wasn't moral enough.
I knew I wasn't moral enough.
Okay? Give me a break. God's not trying to improve your morality. God is not trying to get you to be more religious. He wants you to be in union, in relationship with Him.
And when that happens, life, I am crucified, so you gotta die. I'm crucified with Christ. Nevertheless, Paul would say, I live. How? Christ lives inside of me.
Well, how does that work? I put the verse in it. 2 Corinthians 5, verses 14 and 15. The Apostle Paul, the same one who gave us the secret counter intuitive means. To life and hope and peace says this.
The love of Christ controls us. Having concluded this, That one died for all, that one Jesus. Notice the result. Therefore, All died. Why?
And he died for all.
So that those who live Might live no longer for themselves. Do you feel the dying? It's not about you. Can you imagine living a life that it's not about you? It's not about your dreams and your goals and what you can get and who you can impress.
One died Jesus. Therefore all Died. And he died So that we can live no longer for ourselves, but for him. who died And rose from the dead. Therefore, If any man or any woman is in Christ, he's a new creation.
The old things pass away, behold, everything becomes new. He wants the old you to die. And he wants to allow his spirit to enter your life and take up residence in you and make a brand new you. That little word in Christ. Or in him happens 200 times in the New Testament.
The message of the gospel, the message of Easter, isn't. This is what I grew up hearing. If your good deeds are more than your bad deeds, I guess you get in. And since we're all in denial, no matter what I did, I thought, well, It's getting kind of close, but I think I'm doing pretty good. Right?
God says, let me give you, I am holy, I am pure. One single bad deed, one single thought, because I'm absolutely pure in my holiness, you can't have a relationship with me. I don't want you trying to get better. or to prove or to perform. I want you to be connected to me, and I will do for you what you could never do for yourself.
Let me give you a picture. This has just helped me so much. Imagine, if you will, this is a bolt. Got that? Imagine this bolt is you or me.
And there's certain properties, there's a nature to a bolt, correct? It's made out of metal. And let's imagine that this little fish tank, I think, is what we've got here. And this water is staying on top of the water, is being a good person, a righteous person, a loving person, a person that cares about others, a person that's pleasing to God. Left to yourself and your power and your effort, when you try and do that.
Does anybody have any predictions about where this bolt's going?
Okay, let's check this out to make sure. Yeah. It's down there.
Well, hold it. Oh, no, no.
Well, maybe we should paint it. Or maybe we could put a little cross on it. And maybe the bolt could go to church now and then. Or it could really try, maybe give away a little money. You can do all kinds of little things with the bolt, but okay, let's pretend it's painted and it's really pretty, and it's even religious.
Oops, gotta still got a problem. Because the nature of the bolt in and of itself is powerless. The here's the intervention. The intervention is the very life of Jesus, fully man, fully God, who died. And says, when he died, when a person by faith trusts in him, you died with him, you're buried with him, so you could be resurrected with him.
Now what's the nature of wood when I put it in the water? Predictions. It's the fundamental property of the wood. It will always float.
Now, get this. This is The gospel. This is the good news. The good news is not. That you can try hard, become religious, read the Bible, go on a missions trip, give some money, and try and earn your way to God.
The gospel is none of that can ever work. But by faith, you can turn from your sin and you can be united with Him. See this rubber band, this blue one here? It's faith. It's that moment in specific space-time history.
When you hear and understand that God in the person of Jesus Christ died for your sin, rose from the dead, and offers you new life free of charge that you could never do. And you turn from your sin and you say, I can't live this life, but I want to be connected to you. And you said, whoever believes in you could be connected to you. I want to be in union with you. See The scripture says very clearly: he that has the Son has life.
He that does not have the Son of God does not have life. These things I have written to you, the Apostle John would say, that you might know that you have eternal life. And so when you have relationship with him, all the properties now and what's true of Christ. becomes true of you. When you turn from your sin, ask Christ to come into your life, you're atoned or forgiven.
The Spirit of God enters your life. He begins to form the life of Christ in you. He seals you with the Spirit. He takes you from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light. He breaks the power of sin.
Death forever never can reign over you again. The moment you die, you will be ushered into the very presence of God forever and ever. But you are crucified with Christ. Nevertheless, look, you're living. But it's not you, it's Christ in you.
That's the message and the offer. And so The question I have for you is do you have the son? Do you have the Son of God living in you? If you do, you have eternal life. If you do not, you do not have life.
Notice, I didn't say, do you go to church? I didn't say, are you moral? I didn't say, did you read the Bible? I didn't say, if you give to the United Way. All those things may be very, very good.
But none of them have the power to give you eternal life. And just like when you make a major Union with another person, it's not just for a certain day or a point in time, it's for a new life. There's a new path. It's not about coming to some service and realizing, oh, I need to be united with Christ. Oh, Father, please forgive me, and then go off and live the same way.
No, no, no. Uh I died to my old way of life. And I said to a cute little blonde-haired girl, I would like to be united with you. all the rest of my days and be on a new path with you. I did not say, honey, I want you to know for this day that I'm giving up my old girlfriends.
And I want to be married to you and be united to you and thank you. I'm glad we're married.
Now I think I'm going to go kind of do. She would have not been happy with that. Nor me, her doing that. What I committed to was a new life that gave me new power to be on a new path. And that's our final question.
What's the path? What's the counterintuitive path? That brings life and hope and peace. And it's summarized in Romans chapter 12, the first two verses. The same author, he says, I urge you therefore.
My brethren or brothers and sisters is the idea. In light of God's mercy, in other words, in light of what He's done for you, here's the path that you're on so that you receive life and you're going to get right back to St. Francis. Offer your body or present your body as a living sacrifice, wholly acceptable to God. Then get the last line.
This is your spiritual service of worship. Translation: this is what God really wants. Once you turn from your sin and receive the gift on a certain day at a certain time, are you ready for this? You gotta die. The reason there's so many Christians who say, I love God, and they prayed a prayer and done this and done that, and they lived their own life, and their lives don't resemble Christ, they never died.
You gotta die. You're going to say, God, not my will, but yours. Jesus died before he could be resurrected. In nature, if it doesn't die, it doesn't produce fruit. Unless a grain of wheat fall into the earth and die, it remains by itself alone.
If it dies, brings forth much fruit. Are you ready to die? You know what? God may be very gracious, but are you ready to die to some things that you think? Will make your life work.
See, any person or anything that your life revolves around? You know what that's called? That you orbit around. that holds you up. That's what you worship.
Some people, they worship their job.
Some people worship their mate.
Some people worship the fantasy of the success, the win-ben syndrome. When I get the big job, when I get the house on the hill, when we get the kitchen remodeled, when we finally have children, when I finally get married. When I finally make a lot of money, you know, if I keep working out, if I can look like this, then. And we spend our whole days answering emails and responding to voicemails. Oh, that's busy, busy, busy, busy.
Go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go. For what?
So I can. Own, control, Pose, pretend. and try in in my own energy Be good enough to get people to love me. And all the while The one who came to do the intervention is standing back, Jesus saying, I've watched this movie a lot of times. There's not a happy ending coming.
There's not a happy ending in this life. and there's a tragic ending in the next. Will you Allow me. to forgive you. and do for you what you can never do for yourself.
And will you allow me to come into your life. And after I do, Would you slide over? And let me drive. And I will tell you this. If I loved you enough to die for you, where I'm going to drive this car is better than you could ever dream.
The roads will not always be smooth. and they will not take the turns that you always like. But if you'll listen to what I have to say, You'll do some counterintuitive things like give and you'll receive. You'll love in your marriage and forgive even when it doesn't come back, and this bizarre thing happens. You get love back.
You'll live the kind of life that your kids will say. Wow, that's the kind of person, that's the kind of dad, that's the kind of mom I want to be. Guess what? You can't do this. Christ in you.
the hope of glory. Would you like to have eternal life beginning today? If so, I'd like to lead you in a prayer. And for some, let me tell you, I know, you know. Today is the day the Bible says of salvation.
You may not be ready. You know what? But I don't know when your next window's coming. An intervention occurred. Option A.
I will remain in denial. I'm doing okay. Everything's okay. I don't have a problem. Option B.
I'm sick and tired of living the way I am. And I need life and I need hope and I need peace that I can't get for myself. And I'm going to die to my way, and I'm going to ask God to come into my life so I can follow him. Those are your options. This is Living on the Edge Chip Ingramram.
Friend, for over 30 years, Living on the Edge has been committed to one mission, helping believers understand what it truly means to follow Jesus. not religious activity, not trying harder, but relational, practical, measurable Christianity that transforms every area of life. Messages like today's exist because partners believe this mission matters. When you give to Living on the Edge, you're helping Christians discover God's power, peace, purpose, presence, and perspective. You're investing in clear biblical teaching that moves people from confusion to clarity, from exhaustion to experiencing God's best.
Would you join this mission to day? Give online at livingonthege. org or call us at triple eight three three three six zero zero three. You can also mail your gift to Living on the Edge, PO Box three thousand seven, Atlanta, Georgia, three zero zero two four. Want more content throughout the week?
Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. Just search for Living on the Edge on Facebook and Instagram. And then for all of our video content, subscribe to Chip Ingram's YouTube channel when you're there.
Well, that wraps up today's episode. Don't miss the next Bible teaching message coming up here on the Chip Ingram Sermon Podcast. Today's program is produced and sponsored by Living on the Edge. Uh
