The Beginning

Psalm 24

Easter should mark the beginning, not the end of your journey

       What do you think about when you walk into a cemetery?  My dad was a funeral director.  I used to work summers, cutting lawns and trimming grass around headstones, spending my summer in a place most people try to avoid.  For most people, the cemetery is a place of defeat.  Its where Benjamin Franklin old adage about death and taxes catches up with us.  But do you know what I see?  I look at a cemetery and I see a place of victory.  This is the type of place where the greatest event of human history took place.  It was in a cemetery where Jesus rose from the dead.  It was a place like this that the King of glory mocked death and one day it is a place that is going to be empty when He returns and calls His people back home.  Now that’s a movie scene that Steven Spielberg has never shot.  But it’s a reality the disciples lived and an event that defines the beginning of our real lives.

1.       The Golden Gate

2.       You can’t travel to heaven on your own

--You don’t have the right credentials

                           Romans 3:23                                                     

--You haven’t earned the right to be there

         Romans 6:23

3.       Jesus has confronted your greatest enemy

--He has the right credentials

        Romans 5:8

--He has earned the right to be in heaven

       Romans 10:13 

4.       Easter is the beginning of your spiritual journey, not the end

--God has path set before you

      Romans 10:9-10

--The adventure of life comes through living with Christ