Welcome to the For the Gospel Podcast, where we provide sound doctrine for everyday people. I'm your host, Kosti Hinn, and wherever you're listening or wherever you're watching, please be sure to subscribe if this podcast has been a blessing to you and leave a review on Apple Podcasts if you're listening there so that others can be encouraged to listen or watch. And if you haven't already, you can now take advantage of this podcast in video format on our YouTube channel. So for loads of free content and to get the video version, you can go to our YouTube channel at ForTheGospel and click subscribe, and everything is there. Today I want to begin our next mini-series looking at Easter in order to help you prepare your heart and your home for one of the most important moments on the Christian calendar. Now, the history of Easter is a fascinating subject and one that I will dedicate an episode to one day in the future. But for now, it's important for us to reflect on what Easter is all about, regardless of its origins or when Christians set the date. Traditionally, in the Christian calendar, Easter follows Lent, which is the period of 40 days, not counting Sundays before Easter, which traditionally is observed by acts of penance. People will do fasting, people will give things up for Lent. And I'll mention that more in our first point today. And then Easter is preceded by Holy Week, which includes May Thursday. You have people call it Ash Wednesday, you have then Good Friday, and then the day of Jesus' crucifixion being that Good Friday, and then Holy Saturday, and then you have the transition between the crucifixion and the resurrection into Easter Sunday. And so Holy Week into what is a holy and sacred weekend for us, and Easter Sunday is the high mark of Christianity. It is the resurrection moment. And there is no Christian faith without the resurrection. Our Lord's power over death marks the promise of eternal life for us. And Easter is not just important, it's a holy and sacred time of worship because of the resurrection. That is linked to the power that is behind our salvation. If Jesus did not raise from the dead, then he has no power over sin, no power over death. And how could he offer us eternal life if he could not himself be raised back to life? Now, yes, we should exhibit the kind of enthusiasm we do on Easter every single Sunday. But like Christmas, Easter is a season to set our hearts on the Lord for an extended period of time. It's a season to renew our minds, to reestablish our commitments and our priorities, and to center our hearts on the one who saved our soul. Unfortunately, this is not the typical American approach to Easter. Easter gets hijacked. And to help you think through this, I want to walk you through three ways in which the world hijacks Easter in this episode. And then next episode, I want to talk about how to keep the main thing the main thing during the Easter season. And with the timing of these episodes, they'll be real time. And so as the Easter season comes upon us and leading up to it, I pray they'll be an encouragement to you. All right, the first way that the world hijacks our Easter is what I'm calling tradition over truth. Tradition over truth. This world has all sorts of traditions that have become a higher priority than the truth. People who don't care about Easter, they're not even thinking deeply about Christ will do Lent, and Christians will do this certainly, and I think lose sight of what Easter is all about. They'll do Lent and it's kind of like a game, and they'll give up chocolate or TV or fried foods or video games, but their hearts are still cold and stale towards Christ. These can be good things to give up, like sweets. It can be a good thing and a spiritually beneficial thing to fast. And depriving yourself of indulgences and excesses can certainly be spiritually beneficial to people, and only as much, though, as it frees you to find your satisfaction in Christ. I think of one example that has been sort of a crash and burn thing, and it's a diet that can help people, but it's sort of just an enterprise now. Rick Warren's famous, really infamous Daniel fast. You have, you know, modern day churchgoers, we're going to do a fast and we're going to lose weight together, and then like a typical fast, you know, everybody just puts the weight back on, but we feel really excited and we get all caught up in the hype. And it's sort of quasi-spiritual because it's from the Bible. But in the end, how does this cause us to exalt Jesus all the more? I think it's just a modern ritualistic tradition. It just has a new face and it simply puts on an external righteousness or an external hype, all under some spiritual guise. Similarly, Lent has become this tradition of giving something up. And it's fine if you want to give up sweets or give up video games or give up TV. But my question to you, and here's my challenge to the concept of it hijacking your Easter why are you doing it? Is it for the hype? Is it for the social media posts? Is it for the self-satisfaction that you get from the discipline of it all? This is not the purpose of abstaining from something. This is not the purpose of fasting. This should never be the purpose of someone who practices Lent. It is only that you would abstain from something that is interfering with your relationship with God and your affections for Christ. If you're ever going to give something up, give something up and then replace that thing with affection and time and devotion to the Lord. You can diet and get in great shape. You can give up sweets and exercise discipline. You can do it with a community of people and have lots of fun encouraging each other and getting all caught up in that thing. But friends, hear me and hear me clearly. The world will hijack your Easter and the enemy loves it when he can get you to buy into these sort of spiritual things and get you more focused on the hype of it than affection for Christ. Be careful the way you approach these practices. Make sure the heart is right. Number two, eggs over exaltation. Another hijacker of your Easter. Churches will headline news stories, they'll litter neighborhoods with their invitations to their enormous egg drops. I saw one church come in with a helicopter and drop eggs everywhere on the kids. And look, there's acres and acres of egg hunts. And honestly, I'm not an anti-Easter egg apologist here who thinks that you know there's demons inside waiting to pounce on your children if they open up an Easter egg. Look, we don't fear the world. We just want to focus on Christ. You've seen probably, I have, the efforts to redeem the egg, and one such thing as resurrection eggs. We've done these before. They're not done demonic or evil. You have these eggs and you open an egg for a dozen days, and each one has an object that's linked to Passion Week, and you've got nails, and you've got a scourging whip, and you've got a crown of thorns. You've got a rooster for when Peter denied the Lord. And you have this creative way to redeem this concept that has become so consumer-driven and really just is uh in many ways a waste of time because no one is thinking about Jesus, and your kids aren't thinking about Jesus when they're just running around thinking Easter is about eggs, but the resurrection eggs have redeemed that, and you can do DIY versions, and it's great. And I appreciate the intentional way that people have sought to do that. And you also have fun backyard egg hunts at the grandparents' houses after church and kiddos running around and enjoying family memories. I'm not getting down on that at all. Look, none of that as well, for the people that say, well, careful, Costi. I mean, that's what the devil wants. These are pagan things, and we're introducing paganism. Look, none of that. Just going and running after an egg with a kid is not inherently evil. What I'm referring to when I say it's an it's a hijacker of your Easter is when these things take over the church. The church is supposed to be gathered for worship. And on that note, worship of the highest order, worship for the highest cause, the worship of God, the worship of Christ. It is not about us. And so we want to be faithful, we want to be careful, we want to be consistent. We don't need to be legalistic about these things. We don't need to get all caught up in and going off on everyone about all of them. And now you're not allowed to do this, you're not allowed to do that. That's not what all I'm advocating for. But understand, when the hype of all those things and they do take over, begin to infringe on your exaltation of Jesus and your model to your children of exaltation and your children's exaltation. Friend, the hijacker of the Easter egg hype has entered into your Easter rhythm, and it needs to be put back in its place. Third and finally, perhaps the most dangerous hijacker of them all in the church, entertainment over evangelism. Entertainment over evangelism. Easter is a time when we celebrate the resurrection and we make much of Christ. It's also the time when the message of the gospel goes out to a desperate and lost world. Jesus draws his lost sheep when the church is proclaiming the gospel. And many people are open to coming to church on Easter because, well, they're just willing. They say now the top three holidays in which people are willing to come to church Christmas, Easter, and Mother's Day, and not in that order. Easter is number one. And yet many large churches will use entertainment-driven strategies to use Easter as a way to draw people into their building. They want you to come and so they're going to make it awesome. They want you to invite your friends, so they're going to make it awesome. And they provide a great deal of entertainment, but no evangelism. One church I observed is monumentally influential, and they decided to put on a concert rather than a worship service. Another infamous church down in Florida, they go all out, and they really do this on a lot of their Sundays, complete with playing some of the latest secular songs in order to make the church more attractive to the unchurched people who are attending. And all of this makes my head spin. Maybe yours too, or maybe it's new to you, but perhaps no one is more grieved in this than the Holy Spirit of God, who calls the church and professing Christians, especially pastors, to be courageous and bold proclaimers of the truth. There's no room at Easter for wasted time and entertainment driven services and pagan gimmicks in the church. There certainly is no time to waste our efforts on being more attractive to the world by being worldly. To do this is to have a Christeless Easter service in the church. And my encouragement to you is to have none of that this Easter. Pray for your church, expect your church to conduct its Easter services in a way that bring honor and glory to God. Do not substitute evangelism for entertainment, and let us not dare call entertainment evangelism. The gospel is to be preached, and we are not to let these entertainment-driven gimmicks hijack our Easter. With these three hijacking moves in mind this season, my prayer for you and my exhortation is prepare your heart by keeping traditions and fun for your kids and your anxious hopes about friends and family coming to church and liking church in balance. Keep all of that in balance. Remember that the world is not really supposed to like Jesus unless they're being drawn to Jesus. Remember what Jesus said to his disciples that because they'd hated him first, they would hate you. So don't expect everyone to like it. The cross, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1 18, is foolishness to the perishing. Pray for the Holy Spirit to give you courage, pray that he would convict sinners, and pray that he would draw lost sheep home through the powerful and yet ordinary means of grace. That the word would be preached, that the prayers for the lost would be offered up to God, and that singing and worship and fellowship would be a pleasing aroma to our God. Don't let your guard down this Easter when it comes to the enemy. He would love nothing more than to make you think you celebrated Easter when all you did was go through the motions. It's about Christ. Let's fix our eyes on him in all things. Thanks for listening to this first episode. Next week we'll talk more about ways to capitalize or redeem and keep the main thing, the main thing this Easter. For free resources or to support our ministry here, go to forthegospel.org and be sure to follow us on social media at ForTheGospel Min. I'll be back next Monday with another episode. For now, keep on living for the gospel.