Happy Easter!!! (or Happy Resurrection Day, if you prefer to call it that).

He is RISEN!

I watched the movie “The Invention of Lying” last night. It’s a really great movie with lots we can learn from it, except for one major fault – it claims that the existence of God is a complete myth, a lie and for one five minute period it mocks him terribly.

Without God

However, there is something that the movie admits and that is that without God there is no hope, nothing to look forward to, no reason for existing other than to die and be turned to dust.

The premise of the movie is to explore what happens when lies are introduced into a society that can only tell the truth, a society that has no concept of lying, that doesn’t even have words for truth, fiction and lying because those concepts don’t exist. If someone says something then everyone else accepts it as absolute truth.

For example, the central character (after learning how to lie) walks into the bank and asks to withdraw $800. The teller tells him that the computer says he only has $300 in his account and then instantly decides that the computer must be wrong, because a person can’t say anything but the absolute truth.

In this society it is ‘known’ as absolute truth that there is nothing after death. They have no concept of God because they ‘know’ he doesn’t exist.

When faced with imminent death, the main character’s mother tells him that she is afraid to die. With his heart breaking for his poor mother, he makes up the ‘lie’ that there is an afterlife, that everyone she knows and loves will be there and that she will be happy forever.

That news quickly spreads around the world and everyone wants to know more.

Hope for the Future

Suddenly they have hope.

Where previously there was just empty nothingness, now there is hope, something to look forward to, something to give life meaning. People clamor to find out more, to know if there are rules, to solidify their hope.

Although the movie treats it as if this reality is a lie (which I am convinced it is not), it simply cannot escape the fact that life is meaningless and hopeless without God.

Without God there is no hope for the future, no assurance, no peace for the sick and dying.

Without God there is just… nothing.

We Have a Certainty – a Blessed Assurance

I found it particularly poignant to watch this movie on the eve of Resurrection day the day when hope became set in stone, the day when hope turned from just ‘hope’ into certainty.

I understand why we use the word ‘hope’ but I don’t have hope, I have certainty.

I have that wonderful assurance. There is no doubt in my mind, no question, no ‘hoping’.

One day I will be with my savior in paradise. Death has lots its sting. The victory is won, the promise given.

I AM saved.

I hope and pray that you have that certainty this Easter day, that you are not just hoping with your fingers crossed that everything will turn out OK in the end. My hope is that you know the assurance that comes from being a child of the Most High God.

If you don’t – ask one of us how you can find that assurance today. There’s no better time than right now!

“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 thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Therefore, my dear brothers, 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.

1 Corinthians 15:54-58