Dawn's New Light

And Lord, etched in every one of our minds this evening is the fact that we can only sing that because of this week, Lord, because of Calvary, because of the resurrection of Jesus, we have this wonderful hope. Thank you tonight, Lord, for what you're going to do in our hearts to further make alive that truth. In Jesus' name and every once in a while. Amen. Well, before you're seated, I know you want to die for that seat. I always think it's going to move. It never moves. It's right there. Let's make it easy on the children. It's probably easier for them. Kids, we love you. Now, parents, two things. Parents, listen carefully. If you have a third grader below, make sure they know where they're going and tell them to be very careful not to trip over anything. We don't want them to get hurt. And number two, if your fourth or fifth grader stays in, see that they are able to see and able to listen. All right? Clear? Great. Go ahead and be seated, everyone. Go ahead. Well, there's a lot of excitement in the air, and rightly there should be. I know you're going to be stirred by tonight's presentation, and we're all going to benefit. Before we get to that, I want to share a couple things, and I want you to be able to pray with one another, because how many of you have an idea that maybe being a pastor of a church like this, there's more than one or two needs that I don't get to cover, as much as I'd like to. I mean, there are people that say, you know, gee, I had this need, and you couldn't get there for me, and it's going to happen. But guess what? The good news? We can be there for each other. And somewhere in the Bible, I read that God's anointed every one of you to have just as much power as I do or anyone else that wanders up here, all right? That's the good news. And we're going to pray for each other in just a moment. Before we do that, I want the ushers to run up right now, and watch them run now. These folks have been working out, and hand out the little outline slash descriptors about the fast that's coming. Let's do that for everyone's benefit. It's sort of on a beige-y colored sheet. Let's do that. Now, we've only made enough of these for if you're one per household, okay? So this is a good chance for husbands and wives to snuggle and look. It may be the most romantic thing that happens to you in the next four days. Okay, one per household. Let's get some hands moving here. Let's get these distributed. First of all, while you're reading it, let's read it together. We might as well do that. Okay, let's not have any fisticuffs. If you didn't get one, put your hand up, and we'll come back to you. Dear Church, as you leave the service this evening, I would encourage you to consider the 36-hour fast to which we are calling the entire congregation. The reason for this fast is twofold. Personal restoration. During the season of fasting, invite the Holy Spirit to help you search your own heart. Use your mealtimes to read the Word of God with an eye toward examining your own motives, attitudes, and values. The fast will sharpen your hearing ear and open you to the Word of the Holy Spirit. How many of you have found that to be true in your personal walk? If you've never been on a fast, you'll be amazed how suddenly you're hungry for more than food. You want to hear what the Lord has to say to your life. Very exciting if you can risk that little venture. The second thing we're praying about is corporate unity. Let's pray that the strongholds of darkness that would sow destruction and discord in our body would be broken by the power of God's Spirit. Anyone want to say amen to that? And pray that critical voices would be silenced and that in humility and repentance we would begin to honor each other in true openheartedness. Boy, would that be a blessing, wouldn't it? So those are the two, the two, I want to say this right. How many English teachers are here? Is it foci? Oh, anyhow. I'm praying for both of those things. Now if you're personally facing a situation that does not relate to either of these, directly then I urge you simply to fast as an act of humility and dependence upon the Lord. Look, your fast should include something of the following ingredients as biblically described. Abstaining from all solid foods, again, you may not be able to do that but you don't know unless you try. Abstaining from most liquids other than water. Some individuals do drink fruit juices during this time as a means of some nourishment. Use your meal times as a season of prayer. Get away and pray for the half hour to hour that you would spend during a meal. I know that that's not realistic. If you're like me, I spend seven or eight minutes, all right? But spend that with the Lord then if that's what you do. Expect to feel a little uncomfortable, the symptoms that will come and then let them be a reminder of your dependence upon the Lord and expectation of his provision. I have to tell people when you get that first like headache, you're not going to die, all right? You think you are but you're not going to die. God's just, he's starting the process that's all the bad stuff in your body crying out for you to feed them. How many health food nuts will say amen? That's true. That's really, I mean, that's it. So then we will celebrate the breaking of our fast at the 6 a.m. communion service on Good Friday morning. Now, folks, all lightheartedness aside, I feel very strongly about this. We do it regularly, consistently at this period of time but I can't remember a time when I felt more of a need for us to join together in a corporate fast. If you have a question about that following the service, as always, elders, please, elders will be up here. They'll be happy to share with you some more details. If you're not tuned in to that, then I just invite you to please pray with us if nothing else for those two things that we shared. I believe it's very important in our life together. And if you'd like some scripture, let's just flash up there Isaiah 58. This is one of many scriptures you can read in your concordance but let's read this together, shall we? Read it out loud. Is this not the kind of fasting I have chosen? To loose the chains of injustice and to untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and to break every yoke. Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter when you see the naked, to clothe him and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood? And then your light will break forth like the dawn and your healing will quickly appear and then your righteousness will go before you and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard. And then you will call and the Lord will answer and you will cry for help and he will say, here am I. Amen. Now that is a promise to get a hold of. So let's remember that as we're praying and fasting together. Just to further kind of prepare our hearts, I want us to stand please. And we're, I sure as you did a wonderful job tonight getting everyone, I don't think I've ever seen a more packed in here. You did a great job and that makes, it's going to be a little tougher to turn and pray together. Which is okay. Here's what I'd like you to do just for a couple of moments. If you're a real person, there's got to be at least one thing you'd like to see God do in this Easter week in your life. Now what I mean by that is if you have nothing that, nothing in your life that needs to change, would you come up here and take this and just go on. Most of us have a list of things. The issue when we do this though is how real will I be? Will I turn to someone and say, well, you know, I need to put air in my tire. Would you pray for that? Someone will be real vulnerable and say, well, I'm having a difficult time at home right now or whatever it might be. But folks, we know God answers prayer and we can't go to each one of you, but we can pray together. So here's what I want you to do for the next just five minutes. Find someone next to you, around you, shift your body a little bit one way or another and say, pray with me. Don't need to have a long description. It can be a two or three words descriptor if that's all it is. I have a headache. Pray for that, whatever. Now, if you're a visitor tonight, we understand you may not be accustomed to this. Please don't be intimidated or fearful. You don't have to pray. You can just say, I'd like to listen. You'll never get out of the aisle, so don't try to get out. Just turn around and make room. All right, go ahead. Turn to two or three people. Tell them your name and say, I'd like to pray with you tonight. Go ahead. Turn to somebody. Hallelujah, Jesus. Lord, it's so easy to sing, so hard to do, to live wholeheartedly, Lord, as a sacrifice, holy and acceptable. Lord, what we hear and see and experience tonight, help us each one to move closer to that perfect will that you have for us. Lord, we're not here at all tonight to be entertained. We're not here tonight to watch, Lord. We're here to encounter you by your spirit. Speak to us, Lord, in Jesus' name. Amen. Let's all be seated, please. Now, what I'd like to do, so that the message, the brief message tonight and the drama, the drama, rather, excuse me, quietly afterwards, I'd like to do a couple things now. First of all, to all of our visitors, we're very glad you're here. I just want you to know that. And I recognize that this is a holiday time and many people come because something stirs. And I think that's very, very good. And we're very honored that you've come to be with us. And here at North Way, we have literature to give you. We have things to show you. We want to share who we are with you. Someone asked me once, I'll never forget this. Someone asked me, they said, is anyone else allowed to join that church? I'm serious. Now, this was because they thought there was some standard that they, you know. I said, well, sure, of course. So, we're not really here even to extend an invitation to join the church. We just want you to know we're glad you're here. And the yesers are going to come up with the baskets. We're going to make this easy for you. And these. So, we're going to take our offering in just a moment. Here's what we'd like you to do. If you're a visitor, why not just receive something, okay? If you lift your hand as the yesers come down, we'll pass you one of these. But all the rest of us, let's give the Lord, let's wait a moment, please. We're not ready yet, Bill. Let's wait just a moment. I'm just telling them it's time. So, I'm going to give them time to take their hands out of their armpits and put them toward their wallets and purses, okay? That's what we do at this time. We're not going to do it at the end of the service like we normally do. So, let's just wait another moment. In fact, while they're doing that, I have a better idea, Marilyn. Jim, are you ready? Russ, if you'll come up, please. Mark. While they're doing that, why not give the visitors a head start? So, go ahead down. Visitors, we're so glad you raised your hand up right now. Let's walk them all. Folks, let's give them a hand. Go ahead. Visitors, wave your hand up. Thank you. Over here, thank you. Thank you, ma'am. Hold it up high. Anyone else? Thank you, dear. And visitors, right after the service, I want to encourage you to spend a few moments with us where it says Visitor Center. We have a brand new, and it's a brand new wonderful video that a friend of our congregation, Mark Johnston, produced for us as a love gift. I'm going to tell you about that wonderful thing. I want you to see it. It's only ten minutes long. It'll be right over there. Just come with the friend that brought you, or if you came on your own, join us for ten minutes. And our side-by-side people, I want to encourage you to be there as well to greet these folks as they come over. Okay? Clear enough? Now we can pray and receive the offering. Lord, as we give tonight sacrificially to you, I thank you, Lord, that it's enlightened giving, giving in light of the Word of God, giving in light of your promises, and giving in light of your gift to us, the unspeakable gift of your Son. Bless these offerings in Jesus' name. Amen. Okay, I think everyone's ready. Let's take a peek together at just one brief passage of Scripture. John 20, please. Kind of setting the stage for the presentation tonight. Now, on Easter Sunday morning, the Lord has put in my heart to share four things that Jesus said after he was raised from the dead, and I'm going to be elaborating a number of these things. I'm very excited about it, and I pray that you'll be here with friends and family members celebrating with us, rejoicing, but also ready to encounter the Lord as we gather. But I want you just to get a feel for the kinds of things that are going on. Look at verse 19 of John 20. On the evening of that first day of the week when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, Peace be with you. And after he said this, he showed them his hands and sighed. And the disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord. Now, verse 24, Thomas, called Didymus, was one of the twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. And so the other disciples told him, We have seen the Lord. But he said to them, Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it. Now, folks, what we see very clearly portrayed here and other portions of the Gospels are real people. Isn't that true? Sometimes I think we put them on a pedestal. But they're real people. They're like us. And because they're like us, they had two things in common with everyone in this room. They had two desires, common desires in life. Two things that every one of us want very desperately. You know what they are? Love and happiness. Love and happiness. Anyone here doesn't want love and happiness? Put your hand up. A unanimous vote. We want that. I mean, we live for love and happiness. And you see, the difficulty is we can't figure out why something as simple as that is so difficult to get hold of, can we? I mean, something as simple as that, but we can't seem to get there. So many of us give our lives to Jesus Christ and determine that he's the one that's going to bring us love and happiness. But are you like me and find that it doesn't come all that easily in the kingdom of God either? Still have my share of struggles? Let's get the holy looks off, okay? We do, right? I mean, it's still a battle. It's still something we try to work through. The problem, of course, becomes this. We start to think that, well, gee, you know, it's not happening the way I expected it to. The problem's out there. The problem is that husband, that wife, that boss, that neighbor. That's the problem. That's why I'm having such a tough time. That's why I can't seem to obtain love and happiness in my life. And so we begin to search and search, and then we decide, well, wait a minute. It's got to be them. I don't have any problems. And denial sets in. Have you ever met a Christian in denial? Are you a Christian in denial? What is denial? Denial is an epidemic in our nation. So many people deny so much about their own condition, don't they? I run into it all the time. It's like that 350-pound man I saw at the spa, I told you about a couple of weeks ago. He blamed everybody but himself for being enormously overweight. It's like the nine-year-old little girl who can't see the board but denies that she has problems because she doesn't want to wear glasses. It's like the 39-year-old woman who says, well, I know my husband's busy, even though I haven't seen him for the last three days. He certainly wouldn't be out with anyone else. It's like the Christian who hasn't heard the Lord speak into their heart for the last two years, and they say, well, I'm doing okay. It's like the non-Christian that you talk to and I talk to who says, well, I'm religious. I'm okay with God. How many of you ever talk to someone and say, I'm okay with God? But they're denying, though. They're denying. I mean, it's on their terms. What they're denying is God's own statement about them. And I see denial all around us in so many different ways. And, you know, this denial, if left unchecked, will absolutely paralyze our growth. We will not grow as Christians, as believers in Christ, if we do not come to terms with what's going on inside of us. There's a strong inclination in every one of us to keep playing the role. And listen, friends who've been here for 10 years or more, we need to be very careful that we don't just play along with it, you know? Just kind of keep looking around at someone else to assume that they're going to take responsibility. Folks, we have to take responsibility for the growth that we expect to see in our lives. You know, most everyone tends to live in hiding from themselves. That's what I find. They just tend to, you know, they're more content to pretend than they are to come to terms with what responsibility they need to take for their own life. And so they blame anyone that has authority or relationship with them. And the problem becomes, if we do that over and over and over again, pretty soon our own hearts deceive us. Jeremiah 17, 9 says, The heart is deceitful and wicked above all things, and who can understand it? Now, I'm laying a very heavy foundation here for one main reason. This drama is a heavy drama. I mean, it's going to really grip you. But when we leave here, the drama's over, but your life goes on, doesn't it? You're the real drama. Your life is the real issue here. The only reason we're doing this is because I believe it's a means of communicating what I think is the truth about you and me. And that is, there's some things in us that we want to see changed. There's some attitudes that need to come around. There's some forgiveness that needs to happen. There's some openness that needs to come out. There's some new challenges that we need to take. But if we deny it, if we don't see it, if we're blind to it, folks, it isn't going to happen. And it needs to happen. It needs to happen in me. I don't want Easter to come and go and just say, whoop, you know, throw up the balloons, have another great Easter. I want Easter to come and make an enormous change in my life. Because what we have here, what we have in these next days is the most incredible hope that the world could ever know. What you're going to see on this platform are some people who are gripped with what you and I struggle with, and that's, many times, hopelessness. Anyone here felt hopeless recently? Felt like a situation wasn't going to change, an answer wasn't coming, a person wasn't? Dear one, without the resurrection of Jesus, I can't offer you much hope. But with the resurrection, I can promise you Christ in you, the hope of glory. But it all begins with your willingness to face yourself. And what you'll see portrayed here are people coming to terms with facing themselves. And one thing's going to jump out at you. And that is that one believer helps another to come to terms with the necessary changes in their lives. If there's one prayer that I have, it's that as we go on from this Easter, 1992, into our next season together, I kind of mark our year here at North Way, Easter to Easter, because that's kind of when we were born, if you recall, that there'll be a whole lot more of one helping another face the need to grow in their lives, opening their arms of community and care and concern, and spreading out into the things of God together. Tonight, you'll see portrayed how one person or two people can help another one in the throes of despair and hopelessness find hope in Christ. I pray tonight that when we leave here, we'll be personally willing to examine our hearts, but second, that we'll also be willing to come alongside another. How many of you know one other person, maybe not here tonight, that needs some hope in their life right now? Anybody? I bet a lot of us do, and that's the joy that we can share together. Dawn's new light takes us right into the heart of what most of us are dealing with, and that is into our inadequacies and our struggles, but it points us beyond that to the hope that's in Christ. Now, it's important as we tune in here that everyone can see, and please be sensitive about standing and moving around and so. And then when we dismiss, I'm not sure whatever the Holy Spirit wants to do, we're going to let him do, but if we just dismiss, I'm going to expect you to do so quietly and not the normal hubbub, which is usually fine, but tonight, we want to keep it quiet because we want the Holy Spirit to work in our hearts. We may do something else. I'll just do whatever I'm led to do, but in any event, let's be willing, shall we, to listen carefully to what he would say to us. Let's pray together. Let's pray right now. Let's bow our heads, please. Lord Jesus, we come to present ourselves to you as the God of all hope, and the God who raised Jesus from the dead is the evidence that there was sufficient power to do all things in Christ. And Lord, as we watch this tonight, I pray that our eyes would be open to see, first of all, Lord, that if we'll face our weakness, face our denial, face our struggles, that you'll give us grace to get through them. And then secondly, Lord, if we'll help one another, we can change this community, we can change this city, and we can even change the world through the Holy Spirit in us. Do so, I pray, Lord, in Jesus' name. I hope you can see enough and have looked at your bulletins so you know exactly what you're seeing. There are five characters. Each of them has an important role, so understand their role as you see them come onto the scene. It will help you a great deal. So now, let's watch and listen and pray as we experience together dawn's new light.