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00:00:00 [Music] Church, can I ask you to please stand with me as I read the word of God and you focus on the verses on the screen. Today's scripture reading is taken from 1 Corinthians chapter 15 vers 50 to 58. I declare to you, brothers and sisters, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God. Nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Listen, I tell you a mystery. We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed in a flesh, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the
00:00:57 dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true. Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, O death is your victory? Where, O death is your sting? The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But he gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my dear
00:01:49 brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain. This is the word of God. You may be seated. Well, blessed Easter to all of you. Let's give the uh choir, they've practiced so long, another applause for their hard work. When you come for Easter service, they're not singing about anything that you don't know. Same like the sermon. But as the words come out from them and it filters through all of
00:02:43 us, it reminds us of the hope of Easter, which is what we're going to be focusing on for the next 40 minutes. What is the hope of glory? You know, on the road of life, it's paved with only one word. It's hope. Hope is the essential ingredient of life. From the moment you wake up in the morning to the time you put your head on your pillow, you got to have some hope you're going to wake up tomorrow, right? It's there. It's there all the time. So, you know, it is a single most important predictor of well-being. There
00:03:25 about 2,000 studies to date that looked into the issue of hope in mankind and all of them have said that this the most important predictor of mankind and that's what we're going to talk about in Easter today. So let's pray. Father Lord, we ask this morning that you reignite hope in our hearts. Hope that perhaps has been put aside, covered with dust. the dust of the pain of life, difficulties, problems, issues, dysfunction in our families. But we pray as we meditate upon your word that today again we will live again through this
00:04:11 hope that you've given us through our Lord Jesus Christ. May your words resonate in our hearts and give us hope. We ask for Jesus sake. Amen. You know years ago very famous psychiatrist Victor Frankle who wrote that book meaning for life he was a psychiatrist put into that famous camp called outswitch during World War II. He describes a period of time between uh Christmas 1944 and new year in 1945. A short period of time which suddenly you know people die in the house switch all the time from sickness, malnutrition,
00:04:54 torture from the guards, gas chamber but at that short period of time 25th uh of uh December to about 1st huge numbers died. And you know why they died? Because it was 1944 Christmas, they were expecting because of news from World War II that the Allied armies were coming and they would be released and they would go back to their old lives. Christmas Day came and went. Nothing happened. The war still dragged on. It seemed hopeless. And suddenly large numbers died. You know why? They gave up hope.
00:05:37 You see, Frankle tells us hope is a choice. You you wake up in the morning, if I can con convince myself that tomorrow will be a better day than today, then I'm more likely to work harder. If I work harder today, then I will have more reason to hope that tomorrow will be better. Right? That's exactly how hope works in our lives. But let's look at hope. or what the Bible says in this passage, we have a hope of glory. And three things that we see from this passage. Number one, hope cannot be built on flesh and blood. Hope must
00:06:15 overcome death. And hope must transform life. First of all, hope cannot be built on flesh and blood. Paul says, I tell you this, brothers, flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. He's stating an absolute ontological fact. This how creation is configured. You know, farmers are one of the most hopeful people in the world. Why? Because you put a couple of seeds in the ground, it looks horrible. You can't even see it. And you expect in 12 months later on all
00:06:50 the corn, all the wheat, all the patty and in between you don't see very much happening. And that's why if you are a farmer they're the most vulnerable in the end in the past in India past 20 years 300,000 farmers have committed suicide. Why? Because hopes have been dashed. If you look at a developed country Australia 45% of their farmers have thoughts of self harm or suicide and 30% have already attempted suicide. Remember that famous Greek poet Hessot who who wrote theoggony and the works of day of days. He wrote of in the old days
00:07:30 in Greek mythology Zwis created the most beautiful woman in the world. Her name was Pandora and all the gods gave her gifts and one of the gifts she was given was curiosity. And so Zeus wanted to sabotage mankind. So he gave her a box, a golden box with a golden key, knowing what are her characteristics was always curious, very part of want to know something. And she had the golden key and she thought about it for a long time. And what Pandora did was put the key in, opened it, and out came all the
00:08:11 evil of the world. Pain, suffering, loneliness, addiction, they all flew out at evils. That was terrible time. time and she quickly closed it and then she looked at the box again and then curiosity got the better. Put the key there. Not enough. Opened one more time and you know what flew out? Hope. A lot of scholars have discussed what does this mean? Was hope the evil that finally came out and you get false hope and that frustrates mankind or was hope the one that came out to save us from all the evils that had been
00:08:52 released. So hope has a two-edged sword uh Maria Popova is basically a Bulgarian essist. It writes critical thinking without hope is cynicism and we got a lot of that in the world today. People wake up and they're cynics. But hope without critical thinking is naivity. Which means you're too naive. If you have hope without critical thinking. The nature of hope, you look at psychologists, they will tell you Snider, there are only three components. Goal, pathway, and will. If you don't have any of these three, you will not
00:09:29 have hope. I was reading very interesting this uh Canadian woman called April Hubbed and she's got chronic pain at the age of 39 born with spinobipida so she can't move much which is why she's in a wheelchair and later diagnosed with tumors in her spine uh that cause intractable pain but they are not going to kill her and she said I could live for another 30 years but I plan to die why why would a young 39 9year-old want to die. My suffering and pain are increasing. I don't have the quality of life anymore. And that makes me that
00:10:06 makes me happy and fulfilled. You see, her goal is to be happy and fulfilled. If she doesn't see a pathway there, it doesn't matter whether it's one year or 30 years, then she lost the will to live and she wants the Canadian government to allow her to kill herself. She doesn't have a terminal disease. Her terminal disease is life. She can't take the next 30, 40 years with this current quality. I know of a young woman same age sitting in a Koala Lumpo hospital today who basically has a medical catastrophe and
00:10:46 when they've done the blood studies on her brain, there is no blood to the brain, but yet she's kept alive because of the ventilator and the brain stem is not involved yet. Now it's been weeks and the relatives do not switch off the machine. Why? Because their goal as long as she's alive, even though there's no pathway and they are very very rich people, they have the will, but if there's no pathway, it's actually hopeless in that sense. You know, we were very excited some weeks ago. They brought back the
00:11:27 wolf that used to live 10,000 years ago. It's called the dire wolf. If you read this article in the Time magazine, but the trouble is it's not really a 10,000 year old wolf. They took the gray wolf which has got 2.4 billion base pairs. They edited 20 areas in the 14 genes and it came out like the dire wolf. It's not really the same. It's the same as saying that if I can do to chimpanzeee, I just alter a few genes and chimpanzeee becomes human. Can't because it sounds reasonable. Chimpanzees have 98.8% of
00:12:03 the genome is like us. But it doesn't work that way. We can extend life if you're a worm or fly, but human life very difficult. I remember Victor Chang when I was in Australia. He was that great uh heart surgeon, first one in Australia that actually done heart transplant. He was actually killed by a Malaysian stickup at Chinatown. The stingy fellow won't give up his bo wallet. So they killed him and they actually started a a research fund called the Victor Chan Cardiac Research Foundation. And now today instead of
00:12:43 preserving your dead heart for about few hours you can preserve it for 14 days. It's called the heart in the box. Even better you can have an artificial heart. This artificial heart developed in Australia first one that actually beats in your heart and you can be discharged from hospital. No patient has been discharged from hospital yet. And but the trouble is it works on a battery. the battery run out, your heart runs out. You know, if you go all over Europe, I went once, there's a picture taken from Milan. You notice
00:13:20 young people everywhere and the thing is the same here. You're taking selfie of yourself. When old people go overseas, they take selfie of the book of the of the food. They never take of themselves. They don't take the food. which shows you we understand that there is a difference. Uh there are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies. The glory of the heavenly one is one kind. The glory of the earthly is another. There's one glory of the sun, another glory of the moon, another glory of the stars. For stars differ from star
00:13:51 in glory. There are two kinds of bodies and it's not possible. However much you hope like that woman in the ICU, it is not possible for this life to extend into the next. It's completely different body. You could fix up your fat around your tummy or your wrinkles around your eyes, but it's completely different. In fact, the Dean Charles Brown of Yale University said, "There are three things that I could never believe. Number one, that God could create a world like ours and turn his back on it. That he could
00:14:28 create man and desert him at the grave. That he would plant a desire for immortality in the human heart and failed to provide a realization of that desire. That hope for eternal life is actually viable. It makes sense. But the hope must overcome death. Behold, I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep. We shall be changed in a moment, in a twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. The trumpet will sound and the dead will be raised, imperishable, and we shall all be changed. Paul says it's not the same body. Heavenly bodies have
00:15:09 different glory from a human earthly body. We shall be changed. You know, Ecclesiastes, the smartest man in the world who ever lived, is not Elon Musk, no matter what you think. Then I saw the Solomon that there is more gain in wisdom than in folly, as there is more gain in light than in darkness. The wise man had his eyes in his head, but the fool walks in darkness. Yet I perceive that the same event happens to all of them. Then I said to my heart, what happened to the fool? What happened to me also? Why then have I been so very
00:15:49 wise? Imagine all our high school students thinking like that. They would give up, isn't it? Because the same thing happens to you whether you're a PhD or you just went to primary school. The hope is the hope of glory. Something more than just living your life. All right? You want to have lived your life in a life that mattered. Recently, they managed to reconstruct the Titanic, that great ship that thought they could never sink. And this is a picture of it. And you actually found out at the side where
00:16:25 there's a gash or you know the size of the gash from the iceberg. And that if you had four compartments gashed, that ship would not have sunk. Unfortunately, there were six. It is sank to the ground. Imagine you were in the Titanic in those days and the sink and the ship is sinking. What would you be doing? Would you be hugging or would you be mugging? Which would you be doing? If you're hugging, that's fine. But what if you're mugging? Someone puts a gun onto you and says, uh, knife, you know, uh,
00:16:59 money or your life. What's choice? What difference does the choice make whether you're hugging or mugging? All right. Because in the end the ship goes down, you die either way. It life does not make sense unless you got a proper hope. Which is why Ernest Becker in years ago he wrote a denial of death. You see if you have death it makes life meaningless. Okay? You can face it rationally. A rational person facing death will be terrified just like April Haret. I mean, why live 30 more years? After all, I'm
00:17:38 going to be suffer. Die means die. I might as well die now, right? You save yourself the suffering. That's rational thinking. Absolutely rational thinking. She's not stupid. She's rational. What is nonrational is the rest of us. We are nonrational belief that uh death is an illusion. So, we can cover over death by doing certain things. We've got this immortality systems in our brain. We we we fool ourselves to say, "Oh, uh many religions have life after death. If I can have a lot of money, I can live on
00:18:11 by passing my money along or I can have a big family and I or I have art or build the twin towers and I can live through that." It's called immortality systems where we actually delude ourselves that we could live on in the things that we create. No different from ancient human beings. If you look at the Assyrians and the Babylonians way back as far as time began for the history began, they they have sacred hymns that talk about life after death. The Egyptians have a book of the dead. They reckon that if you
00:18:46 die, they put the book of the dead into your coffin, you know, and then that will guide you when you you're dead to go to the blessed place. Sort of like ways. Imagine you put waste in your coffin and then you wake up and it'll tell you where. In fact, they they have this thing called uh a a boat called a solar ship. The first solar powered ship or instrument in the world. Here you have a picture of Rah sitting on the solar powered ship. And they actually discovered this ship in the tomb of the
00:19:20 Pharaoh Kaps which is 5,000 years old. They put it in this big museum and you can see the solar ship. This is better than Tesla, right? It'll take you to that forever land. You see, even ancient people think it doesn't make sense. There must be something before. The Chinese are very smart. So, okay, we we have uh uh not the ship, but we have a car. The only difference that we burn it up. I don't know why. And then we got people come back to eat. uh Dante's Inferno that that famous 14th century narrative actually brings home the point
00:19:57 is about Dante going through a journey through hell brought there by the Roman poet called Virgil and in front of hell there is a sign abandon hope all you who enter in the point is after death there is judgment and hell and hope will be gone for this perish perishable body must put on the imperishable. Hope must transcend death. This mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, the mortal puts on immortality. Then the hope is grounded on the promises of God in Hosea. I shall
00:20:40 ransom them from the power of sh. I shall redeem them from death. Oh death, where are your plagues? Oh sh Where's your sting? Compassion is hidden from our eyes. This is what was written hundreds of years before Christ. And for this perishable body must put on imperishable. This mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on imperishable, the mortal puts on immortality. It's like Harry Potter. Harry Potter puts on a cloak. Anybody remember what this cloak does? Yeah. He makes it
00:21:26 invisible, right? It's it it's still Harry Potter. You know, you can see his face. But when he puts on this cloak, he becomes invisible. It's like what Colossians says, you have died, your life is hidden with Christ or cloaked with Christ. When Christ who is your life appears, you will also appear with him. So this cloak is the imperishable life of Jesus Christ which you put on. And in Easter we celebrate this putting on. The sting of death is sin. And the power of sin is the law. Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our
00:22:08 Lord Jesus Christ. You see, if hope is to be real, the real hope of glory, it must transcend death. And the Bible says the sting of death is sin. It's not just dying. You know, if you are an Epicurian, uh you you'll be saying, well, before I lived, I was nothing. So now I die, I'll be going back to nothing, isn't it? So it makes sense. Why worry about something that's nothing? But Paul is saying no the sting is death is is just that it's not that you don't exist and then you exist and then you don't exist again. What Paul is saying
00:22:48 the sting of death the of sin is death which means and death will cause what? Judgment. And once you go through the gates of hell at Dante's group uh uh uh gate of hell there is no more hope. Resurrection is a confirmation. It's proof that death is dead. Jesus Christ is the first one through the gate. He becomes the first fruits and we follow in his footsteps. Blessed be God, the father of our Lord Jesus Christ. One Peter writes, "According to this great mercy, he's caused us to be born again to the living
00:23:26 hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead." So today when we celebrate Easter we have a living hope and the proof is the fact that Jesus Christ rose from the dead. So hope can't be built no matter what how many times you exercise cannot be built on flesh and blood. It must overcome death and Christ has done that. But the third thing that we need to take home today is that hope must transform life. Right? This is a slab. There was a story told in in in Italy as a man who despite many efforts to evangelize to
00:24:04 him believed that he didn't believe in God. He did believe in Jesus Christ. He didn't believe he could be resurrected. You know what he did? He pulled a big huge stone slab. So when he died, they put the stone slab on him so that he can never be resurrected. He was so convinced. I don't know why he was a atheist. Doesn't believe in resurrection. Yet he still believed in resurrection because he put this big slab so that he will always be underground which where he likes. And then what happened to him was a little
00:24:33 bit of acorn fell inside. At over a hundred years the acorn burst through the slab and became a huge oak tree in Italy. Now brothers and sisters, if a tiny acorn can fall into a crack and break the slab of unbelief, what do you think will happen when Christ goes into the ground and breaks out in life for all of us? You see, therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounded in the work of the Lord, knowing that the Lord in the Lord your labor is not in vain. So there are consequences to the
00:25:17 resurrection. Therefore, be steadfast and immovable. And in this passage, Paul is actually addressing the fact that some of them have been shaken. They are starting to doubt whether the resurrection is real, whether the gospel is real. And he reminds them chapter 15:E1. I would remind you brothers and sist brothers of the gospel I preached to you which you receive, in which you stand, by which you are being saved. If you hold fast to the word I preach to you unless you believe in vain. He says because of resurrection you need to
00:25:49 remind you that you should believe in the gospel. The gospel Paul preached right in which you stand in which you hold fast. What is the gospel? The gospel is Christ died for our sin according to scripture. He was buried and was raised from dead on the third day. Three simple facts. As you hold on to these facts, then you can be steadfast and immovable. And this is the hope. When you talk about hope, biblical hope is not I hope to buy a Lamborghini tomorrow. You got no money on what you hope. Biblical hope is confident
00:26:27 expectation that this will happen. This the ground upon which our work in the Lord can thrive. There's a a study of about 89,000 American women looking at the suicide rates because suicide is associated with loss of hope. And they looked at women who had weekly attendance church service and those who stay home and watch Korean musical all right who don't. And they found that the suicide rate is five times less if they had some sort of attendance to service regularly. You see, hope makes a difference in how you
00:27:08 live and why you live. Isn't it right? So, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor is not in vain. So, the the fact that if you actually have true hope, you'll be steady and you believe the gospel. And because you believe the gospel, you will work in the Lord. And the reason why you work in the Lord, the reason why, this is the largest choir I ever seen. So many of them, they're not there because they want to look pretty and stand up here and everybody claps. They're there
00:27:42 because they know that their labor is not in vain. Because what they do matters. Every note which they sing matters because it glorifies God. You see that's what hope is about. This is a bea's tapestry. If you look it's in France it's 900 years old. It looks beautiful outside but you look at the back it's all sorts of threads there. And it reminds us of how hope affects life. This is uh Neil Burton psychologist. He writes, "At a deeper level, hope links our present with our past and our future, providing us a meta narrative or
00:28:26 overarching story that lends our life shape and meaning. Our hopes are the strands that run through our lives, defining our struggles, our successes, our setbacks, our strengths, our shortcomings, in some sense enobling them." You see, hope gives meaning to your life. It ties the past with the present and the future. That's why it's important. And it changes the way we see life. For none of us live to himself. None of us dies to himself. For we live, we live to the Lord. We die, we die to the Lord. So
00:29:02 then whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord. And so when the choir sings up here, whether they sing or don't sing, it's for the Lord. If you're sitting there, you're like me. Not a tune in my brain. If I don't sing, it's for the Lord. If I do sing, it's for the Lord. If I don't sing, I preach. All right. If you don't preach, you do AV. Every single one of us, our See, April Hubbed, the sad thing about her is that she thinks her life belongs to herself. And she's right. Because if life just belongs to herself, then it
00:29:43 doesn't make sense. you might as well end now rather than 30 years later on. Right? But Romans says we don't live to ourselves. We created in the image of God. And each of us has a story. Each of us has a calling. Each of us has a beautiful, glorious hope. That is hope that strands like the streams that run through the past, the present, and the future. The choir is not here because of an accident. God brought them here. Every single one has a story and every single one has a reason why they are
00:30:13 singing and you ask them and the fact that they're in choir now they look at the past they look at the present look at the future it binds it all together that's how we see our lives and every single one FBC this Easter if you want the hope of Easter it in your life you need to see that strand of hope that we no longer live for ourselves but we live for him. One of the controversial neurosurgeons in Australia. His name is Charlie, the Bak fellow there. He's a maverick. Maverick means, you know, you do like gunslinger. And he
00:30:51 used to operate a lot of folk who may not necessarily uh uh needed to have surgery. But one but this is a good story. It was is a lady called Fiona, which you can see in a picture there. and and she has a brain stem tumor, but that brain stem tumor is in the the remote control center in your brain uh is benign and and the the teaching at that time by the famous Harvey Kushing the father of neurosurgery 1910 you do not operate on the brain stem you operate brain stem they all die so she went to Sydney and uh and the neuros surgeon
00:31:30 said look we follow Harve Kushing we don't touch you know what to do. Seven years later on Fiona became quadriplegic cannot move the hands and the legs and she was dying. It'll be weeks before she died and out of desperation she saw Charlie chill and so look please operate on me. Charlie, even though he's a maverick, he's not stupid. Okay? He thinks very hard. Then he says to her, you know, uh, you you you are already quadriplegic. I can't reverse that. If I operate on you, then you go faster to
00:32:09 the grave, you die. All right. So, so you'll still be quadriplegic after I operate on you. What kind of quality of life? It's a quality of life issue, isn't it? Which is what April Hubard is talking about, quality of life. And Fiona was very angry. She turned and lashed out at Charlie. Who are you to say what my quality of life is about? I have two teenage daughters and I want to live long enough to impart my wisdom to them. That's my quality of life. And Charlie T was taken back. What he had done was taken his own ideas of
00:32:51 quality of life have ba ride motorbike and become neurosurgeon and then impose it on her and her quality of life is much less than mine. So therefore they she didn't deserve to be operated on. There's a good end to this story. He operated on her and miraculously she survived and she lived for years and years later on and she saw her teenage daughters grow up. You see, hope is a choice. You can decide how precious your life is only if you have a goal or what your life means. So you put April Hubbet
00:33:29 next to Joanie Ericson. If you look look at Joanie Ericson, quadriplegic at the age of 17 and April Hubard is only 39 and you look at them, one wants to give up life at 39 and one has lived 50 years on a wheelchair. we would have written her off years ago. and and and she writes, "She asked the Lord for healing and a no answer to my request for a miraculous physical healing has meant purged sin, a love for the lost, increased compassion, stretched hope, an appetite for grace, an increase of faith, a happy longing
00:34:15 for heaven, a desire to serve, a delight in prayer, a hunger for his word. Oh, blessed stern school master, that is my wheelchair. It is all to the praise of a deeper healing in Christ. You see, she's in a wheelchair and today on top of the wheelchair, she has breast cancer and she's lives in intractable pain, but because her hope is based on that goal and the goal is I don't live for myself, I live for the Lord. And so therefore you see in this woman sitting in a wheelchair the kind of strength that defies human reasoning.
00:34:54 Human reasoning will be April Hubbet. I'm going to suffer next 30 years. Uh my whole aim of life is to enjoy and fulfilled. So don't have I might kill myself. It makes absolute sense unless you have a different concept of what hope is and quality of life is. These two poor astronauts were left in space stranded for 286 days. No chance of kept getting them back. 286 days is really long time. And one of them was Butch Witmore. And they asked him, "How did you take so long and how did you survive?" He realized that B Butch
00:35:31 Witchaw was an elder of the Providence Baptist Church, Pasadena. And for him, the word of God every single day kept him hopeful and the Lord in the end brought him back to earth and he lives now to glorify his name. You know, brothers and sisters, we live in a time of of of the faith where only the strong are welcome, only the successful are looked up to. And that defies a loss of logic. The logic is I trust on myself. But when you got the hope of Jesus Christ in your heart, it doesn't matter whether you're
00:36:19 healed or you're not healed. Whether you're beautiful or you're ugly, whether you're fat or you're thin, you're old or you're young. You have an eternal hope in you. The Bible describes as a living hope pulsating all through you which you have to give to the world. And you are strong. You are strong not because of what you have. You are strong about what he gives you. So let's celebrate that hope in our lives. Father Lord, we declare as we have sung that there's only one song that will sing here and will continue to sing in our
00:37:03 hearts for all eternity. And that is the song that says, "I love you, Jesus. You are my beautiful savior. And you are beautiful because I am sinful. And despite my sin and unworthiness, you came and bled and died for me. And you put upon my heart right now a song that I can sing, that I can shout out to the world." Father Lord, your word says, "Therefore, my brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain." So as we
00:37:46 depart right now, brothers and sisters, I pray that this Easter would have these words stencled into our hearts that we do not go home and forget it, but that we because of our belief in you will be steadfast. We won't be shaken and will be active always abounding in work for you. Knowing that we do not love, we do not live for ourselves. We now declare we live for you. After a minute of silence, you are dismissed. And some of you who want to have us pray with you. May perhaps you you have never had this hope in your
00:38:29 heart. You never receive Jesus in your heart at all. You you live like April Hubard from day to day not knowing whether what tomorrow will bring. and it seems that life has lost its meaning then perhaps you may want to accept and think about Jesus and if you that's one of you then come forward for us the elders and the pastors are here to pray with you and for you and perhaps some of you who are tired and besieged with the difficulties of life and you want us to encourage you and pray for you please come forward you
00:39:08 may be seated [Music]
