Pastor Rick's Daily Hope

Guest (Male): Hey everybody, thanks for joining us today on Pastor Rick's Daily Hope, the Bible teaching ministry of Rick Warren. Well today, we're starting a series called "The Miracle of Mercy." Rick's going to show us how God's mercy can lift your guilt, heal your wounds, and transform the way you live.

So let's jump right into part one of a message called "Easter Means It's a New Day of Mercy."

Pastor Rick Warren: This week all around the world, literally hundreds of millions of people are going to get up in the dark before daylight and go out to attend an Easter sunrise service. Easter is the only holiday that we celebrate at the break of dawn.

Why is this? Because it was at the break of dawn on a brand new day that we heard the news that Jesus Christ had raised from the dead. It changed everything. It's Easter, so let's just start with the Easter story. Look up here on the screen. Let me read you part of the Easter story.

Early on Sunday morning, as the new day was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went out to see the tomb. This is where Jesus had been buried after dying on the cross three days earlier. There was a sudden earthquake when an angel moved the giant stone away from the opening of the tomb. This is one of these walk-in kind of tombs, not under-the-dirt tombs, and then sat on the stone.

The Bible says the angel's face shone like lightning and his clothes were brilliant white. When the Roman guards saw this happen, they shook with fear and fainted. I guess so. Then the angel spoke to the women who had gone up there to bring flowers or whatever. "Don't be afraid. I know you're looking for Jesus, who was crucified. But he isn't here.

He's been raised from the dead, just as he said would happen. Come on in. See for yourselves. There's no body in this tomb." The women get to walk into this tomb, the big door's been moved, the stone. Then the angel says, "Now go quickly and tell his followers that Jesus has raised from the dead and that he's headed to Galilee and that he'll see all of you there."

The women ran quickly from the tomb. They're scared, but they're also filled with great joy and they rushed to give the angel's message to the disciples. Here's where it gets interesting. As they were going, they run into Jesus. I love Jesus' response. "Good morning," says Jesus, as if nothing's happened. "Good morning."

The women came close to him. They touched his body. In other words, they realized this is not a ghost. We're not having some apparition here. This is not a vision. This is not some kind of emotional imagining this in our mind or virtual reality. They came close to him, they touched his body, and then they worshipped him.

Then Jesus said to them, "Don't be afraid. Go tell my brothers to leave for Galilee and they will see me there." As you know the rest of the story, Jesus hung around Jerusalem for another 40 days. He didn't just appear on Easter Sunday morning and go back to heaven. He hung around for the next 40 days and actually met with people, had meetings, preached, one time spoke to a group of 500 people, had dinner, cooked the disciples' breakfast one time out by the Sea of Galilee.

That's why within a few years about half of the city of Jerusalem had become Christians. In a city of about 250,000 people, 125,000 people had become believers because so many people had seen Jesus. It would be strange if you were the Roman centurion who crucified Jesus and you're walking down the street one day and there comes that guy walking toward you. He's back. That would be strange.

Why is Easter important? Because it proved that Jesus Christ was telling the truth. Jesus Christ made outrageous claims, claims that no good man would make. Claims like, "I'm the Son of God. I am God in human form. I am the only way to heaven. I'm the way, the truth, and the life." Lots of people throughout history have claimed to be God, like Napoleon and a lot of other things.

But this difference is Jesus was the only one to prove it. Lots of people claim to be God. Jesus said, "I'm going to prove it. I'm going to let them put me to death. I'm going to die for the sins of the world and three days later I'm going to raise myself back to life." Which is exactly what he did.

That split history into A.D. and B.C. Now every time you write a date, any date in history, you are using Jesus Christ as a reference point. In fact, your own birthday, the number of days, the month, and the year of your birthday is from in relationship to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. This is the most important event in history. It split history. God came to earth, died for the sins of mankind.

This weekend about 2.3 billion people in the world will be celebrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It happened at the dawn of a new day, but this Easter, I want to talk about a new day in your life because the Bible says this. If you'll pull out your message notes inside your program, look at the second verse there on the outline.

Luke chapter 1 says this: "A new day will dawn on us. A new day will dawn on us because our God is loving and merciful." Circle the word merciful. This Easter we're going to start an eight-week spiritual growth emphasis called The Miracle of Mercy because most people don't understand how merciful God really is.

That's why they're afraid of God. That's why they avoid God. That's why God is distant to them. They don't understand the mercy of God. When you understand the mercy of God, your anxiety will decrease and your peace of mind will increase. Your stress will go down and your stability will go up. Your frustration in life will be diminished and your satisfaction in life will be increased.

Let's just start with the definition of mercy because we're going to look at it now for several weeks. There on your outline, mercy is really undeserved forgiveness and unearned kindness. That's the way God treats you. Undeserved forgiveness. When somebody forgives you and you don't deserve it, that's mercy. And when someone shows you a kindness that you have not earned, that's called mercy.

The Bible says that God wants to show you mercy. Now you're going to need mercy every single second of your life. The air you breathe is from the mercy of God. The water you drink is from the mercy of God. Everything you have for life is because God is a merciful God. In fact, you would not be alive, you wouldn't have been born if it wasn't for the mercy of God.

God made you because he wanted to love you and he wanted to show you his mercy. If God hadn't wanted to love you and show you his mercy, your heart wouldn't be beating right now and you wouldn't be taking breath. Everything in your life is a gift of the mercy of God. What I want to do this Easter is simply two things. I want to ask two questions.

First, when do I need God's mercy in my life? And then second, what difference does it make? How's it going to change me? How does my life get better? What are the benefits? How does it transform me? For this series, not just this week but for the next six weeks, I went and I studied every single verse on mercy in the Bible. It took me about two months.

I found about 100 different examples of when God says he wants to show you mercy in different areas of your life. Today I just want to look at three: when you are ashamed, when you are angry, and when you are afraid. These are three emotions we don't like. Guess what? God doesn't like them either. And he doesn't want your life being filled with being ashamed, with being angry, and with being afraid.

We're going to look at this today. Now let's just get right into it. Jesus' ministry was all about mercy. In fact, he showed mercy to everybody. There's no person he did not show mercy to. And what we're going to look at today is three stories of Jesus encountering people and show how this relates to your life. When you're ashamed, when you're angry, and when you're afraid.

First, when I'm ashamed. You might want to write this down: I need God's mercy when I've messed up. I need God's mercy when I've messed up. Now that includes all of us, particularly me. None of us are perfect. None of us bat a thousand. I stopped being perfect at about the third breath of my life. I don't measure up to God's standard, much less my own standard, and neither do you.

Now this is not really debatable. I've never met anybody who actually claims to be perfect, to have never made a mistake, to have never sinned. We've all made mistakes. We've all sinned. We've all flubbed. We've all had failures in our life. The Bible says it like this: all have sinned. The Bible says if we say we have not sinned, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.

In other words, we're just being self-deceptive. Everybody else knows you don't have it together. You might as well admit it to yourself because you're in self-denial if you think you're perfect. The Bible says there's not a just man upon the earth who doeth good and sinneth not. In other words, nobody gets it right all the time. We all mess up.

James chapter 3, verse 2, look on the screens. The Bible says, "We all stumble in many ways." Does everybody want to agree with that one? Have you ever stumbled with your words? Said something you wish you hadn't said and you got in a lot of trouble for it? Yep. Have you ever stumbled with your attitudes? Yep. Have you ever stumbled with actions? Yep. Have you ever stumbled with emotions and you had the wrong emotional response and your wife didn't like it?

Yeah, we all stumble in many ways. Now when you stumble, you get tripped up. You fall into a trap. And we get trapped by the same sins, the same mistakes over and over and over. I do, you do, we all do. It's no big deal. We all get caught in the same old traps. We mess up. Now the question is, how does God respond to me and you when we mess up?

The answer is, he shows mercy. Let me show you an example that tells this story. In John chapter 8, this is one of the books, the four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, tells the story of Jesus. And there's a story of the humiliated woman and it goes like this: One day Jesus was teaching a crowd outside the temple and some Pharisees brought a woman who was caught in adultery.

Pharisees were religious scholars. They were legalists. They were judgmental. They were hypercritical and everybody hated them. They were self-righteous. They, by the way, hated Jesus. Common people loved Jesus. It was the religious people who hated Jesus. And the Pharisees hated Jesus. And they're trying to trap him.

Jesus is teaching a large crowd. The Pharisees bring a woman caught in adultery. Now they put her on display in front of the whole crowd. And then they said to Jesus, "This woman has been caught in the act of adultery. The law of Moses said to stone her, capital punishment. What do you say?" Now they're trying to trap Jesus into saying something that they could use against him.

Before we read the rest of story, I want you to notice a few things. First, if you're taking notes, circle the word caught, caught, and trap. Caught, caught, and trap. There are two traps being laid here. First, the embarrassed woman is caught in a wrong relationship. And second, they're trying to catch Jesus in a wrong reaction.

What do you get caught up in that trips you up over and over and over? What do you get caught up in that keeps causing you to stumble? You can get caught up in an unhealthy relationship. You can get caught up in a bad business deal. You can get caught up in a secret habit that nobody knows about.

You can get caught up in an addiction. You can get caught up in materialism, thinking that money is the whole purpose of life. You can get caught up in trying to live to please other people. You're living for the approval of others. That's a huge trap that a lot of people stumble into and get caught up in. They live their entire lives for the approval of other people.

This woman is obviously caught in a wrong relationship. Now here's what happened. In verse 6, it says they were trying to trap Jesus into saying something that they could use against him. But Jesus, I love this, here's all this crowd, here are the Pharisees, Jesus stooped down and started writing in the dirt with his finger.

He's doodling in the dirt. He's writing in the dirt with his finger. He won't even dignify this accusation against this woman. Now they kept badgering Jesus, demanding an answer. Finally, Jesus stood up and said, "Okay, here's my answer. If any of you has never sinned, then you may throw the first stone." This is a very famous story.

And it says then he stooped down again and continued writing in the dirt. I love this scene. Now nobody actually knows what Jesus is writing in the dirt because the Bible doesn't tell us. For centuries scholars have debated what Jesus was writing in the dirt. Some people think he wrote the Ten Commandments down.

I'll tell you what I think. It's just my opinion, just a guess. I think he was writing the secret sins of the accusers. And they were reading their own sins in the dirt. And I think he was writing: judgmentalism, arrogance, self-righteousness, hyper-criticism. And on and on. It could have been anything. Spousal abuse, tax evasion, lying at work, pornography. It could have been anything.

But I think he was actually, Jesus being God, knew what their secret sins were and I think he just started writing it on the ground. And then he stands up and says, "Okay now, which of you have never sinned, you may cast the first stone." He's going right to the heart of the matter. One of the things I want you to notice is that in the public situation, Jesus protected this woman's dignity.

Has she made a mistake? Of course. She cheated on her husband. That's not right. But Jesus protects her dignity in front of the judgmental accusers. And later on in privacy, one-on-one, he's going to deal with her. He's going to deal with her sin very gently, but he protects her dignity. And I don't want to spend a lot of time on this, but I just want to say this: if you call yourself a Christian, if you claim to be a follower of Jesus, you must treat every person with dignity.

Doesn't matter who they are. They may have a different religion, they may have a different political persuasion than you, they may live a different lifestyle, they may be involved in all kinds of gross sin, evil, wicked, mean, bad, and nasty stuff, but you still have to treat them with dignity because that's what Jesus did.

Jesus accepted everybody. He didn't approve of everything they did, but he accepted everybody. Jesus accepts me. He doesn't approve of everything I do. Jesus accepts you. He doesn't approve of everything you do, but he treats you with dignity. And he treated this woman with dignity. And so he says to the guys, "Okay, if you've never sinned, you can throw the first stone."

In verse 9, when the accusers heard this, they began to slip away, one by one, beginning with the oldest, until it was just Jesus and the woman. So all accusers, they skedaddle, they leave. Now why does it say beginning with the oldest? I'll tell you why. Because the older you get, the more you are aware of how much you've messed up.

And the older you get, you just get tired of pretending and you just say, "Okay, I admit it. I messed up. I don't have it all together." When you're young, you try to fake it and pretend like you've got it all together. When you get old, you just go, "Look, okay, I am what I am. I messed up a lot." The longest you live in life, the more you cut people a little slack. Doesn't that make sense?

The oldest one, they read their sin on the ground and they're leaving. Now Jesus is just left with this woman. And now in a one-on-one situation, what's he going to do? At this point, Jesus stood back up. Remember he's doodling in the dirt. And he quietly said to her, "Where are your accusers? Is there no one left here to condemn you?"

And the woman says, "No, no one, Lord." She said, and then Jesus said, "Neither do I condemn you. Neither do I condemn you. Now go on and leave your sinful ways." He goes, "You're better than this. You know better than this. Come on." That's all. He didn't pull out a 10-point sermon on adultery. He just goes, "Hey, I don't condemn you, but you're better than this. Go on now and don't do this anymore."

I love this. This is why I love Jesus. Because what Jesus does when I come and I've messed up, he does what he did with that woman. He didn't condemn her. He didn't condone her. He didn't say it's okay. It wasn't okay for her to cheat on her husband. He didn't condemn her. He didn't condone her. He changed her. That's what it's all about. And that's what he does in your life when you accept his mercy. He doesn't condemn you. He doesn't condone what you've done. He just changes you. And that makes all the difference.

Guest (Male): I don't know about you but I am encouraged after that message. And let's keep the encouragement going with a letter from one of our listeners. Here's Rick.

Pastor Rick Warren: Have you ever taken a step of faith with no idea what's next? Well, with the help of Daily Hope, Nicole did just that. She wrote this note to me:

Hello Pastor Rick, a close friend of mine suggested I listen to Daily Hope four years ago and while I had faith and I loved the Lord, I was lost. But Daily Hope rescued me. My relationship with Jesus grew in ways that I never knew possible. I was soon baptized and over the next four years, I grew in boldness and in faith in the Lord and I even left a high-powered and high-salaried position to follow a different purpose-driven path with the Lord's guidance.

It's been a literal step forward in faith without knowing the next steps. Certainly not something I was capable of years ago and already God is showing me his goodness. As my husband explores his own relationship with Jesus, again your ministry is literally a godsend. Your ability to teach the good news in ways that are easy to understand and apply it is just amazing. We also follow your suggestion to find a good local church. So thanks for all you do for believers and those who are seeking Christ around the world. Rick, you're loved and appreciated and no doubt a vessel of God's grace and mercy. Signed, Nicole.

Well Nicole, I'm so glad that you've grown in your relationship with Jesus and you've taken the important step of getting baptized. What an important step this is. Finding a church home, really listening to the Lord, and living a purpose-driven life. All of that happens when you take time to listen to God's word. I love how your friend shared Daily Hope with you and now you've shared it with your husband.

Any of you can do this. Anybody can do this. You can share Daily Hope with your friends and with your relatives and with people you don't even know and then watch how God brings life to others through his word.

Guest (Male): I share Pastor Rick's Daily Hope all the time. And whether it's a friend or someone you meet in a restaurant, everyone needs hope and encouragement from the Bible every day. So tell the people you know and love about Daily Hope. Be sure to join us next time when we look into God's word for our daily hope. This program is sponsored by Pastor Rick's Daily Hope and your generous financial support.