He’s ALIVE!

Welcome

Isaiah 52:7 NRSVue

7 How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger who announces peace, who brings good news, who announces salvation, who says to Zion, “Your God reigns.”

Today is the celebration day. Today on Easter Sunday, Resurrection Sunday is

THE

CHRISTIAN HOLIDAY

Today is the day that all other Sundays are based off of.

We as Christians celebrate on Sundays because of the Events of this day a little over 2000 years ago.

This day changed History forever, the world has never been the same because of the events of this day!

Because of Easter, because of the resurrection of our Lord Jesus, New Life is here!

Tomorrow does not have to be a repeat of Today!

Death holds no power of fear over us

Satan and Sin have lost their power

Our hope has tangible evidence in the person of our Lord and Teacher Jesus Christ who defeated death.

We know our Future is secure because of what happened on this day!

Easter is amazing, it is what we are all here for!

But we need to roll the script back a bit, we need to explore what happened and we need to explore why it is important!

The Story so Far

So we know at this point Friday was not the best day for Jesus and the disciples.

I want us to imagine ourselves in this story, so as a bit of a mental exercise, just place yourself there and listen.

It is fair to say that if you and I were there…we would have spent Friday and Saturday just in a flurry of emotions.

We just watched our Teacher, Lord, Master and dear Friend betrayed by one of the men we called brother, we watched him be dragged away and we watched painfully over the next 20 hours their hopes and dreams being slowly and brutally dashed to pieces.

So remember Saturday was a Sabbath so everyone would have been stuck inside basically with nothing to do but think about what had just happened.

I am willing to bet that was also a rough day.

How often do we start to catastrophise things in our mind. I bet wherever they were, it was not a good day for mental health. I am certain that many of them were just exhausted as they would not have slept much, and were just super traumatised.

I mean we all would be.

So what happened on Easter morning?

So after a day of what I could only assume would be a full day of despair, the women go out and do something, I’d imagine they did this for a number of reasons, not the least of which to get away from the brooding men, again I am sure where ever they were holed up was anything but cheerful.

So they go to the tomb that Jesus was laid in. Now remember at this point the religious leaders, the Priests and the Pharisees (think popular pastors and local leaders) they went to Pilate the Governor and had them station Roman soldiers at the tomb.

So the women go to the tomb which was sealed and guarded and they see the stone rolled away.

Now this stone is huge and heavy, not easily moved and would take multiple people and usually a lever.

So if you had just had an awful couple of days, not a lot of sleep and now you find the tomb of your Master desecrated…you are going to tell people.

So they run off and tell Peter and John, so Peter and John race to the Tomb and go see for themselves, they inspect the tomb and see all the valuable grave clothes left and folded, kind of like someone who has stayed over night in a hotel and made their bed in the morning.

So again, imagine, no sleep, everything is terrible and now this…they thought…yep, I am done, I am going home.

So obviously everyone is super distraught and Mary one of the women following Jesus is just super upset and the story says this:

John 20:11–18 NRSVue

11 But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb, 12 and she saw two angels in white sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. 13 They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” 14 When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. 15 Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” 16 Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni!” (which means Teacher). 17 Jesus said to her, “Do not touch me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’ ” 18 Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord,” and she told them that he had said these things to her.

So she goes and tells the disciples…and they just don’t believe her. It is all too much, everyone is having a hard day…they just aren’t having it.

Around this time while they were all discussing this, another couple of disciples come running up, exhausted, out of breath and all they are saying is, He is Risen, He is Risen, we’ve seen Him…we were walking on the road and this dude came up, it was abit weird, He started explaining all the scriptures and when we sat down,

IT WAS JESUS,

it was Him, we swear it

Now keep in mind that the disciples were in a bit of hiding at this point because their teacher has just been executed as an enemy of the state, so they are having this discussion behind locked and closed doors mind you.

Then all of sudden

JESUS JUST APPEARS!!!

Just shows up saying Shaloam and everyone is just terrified as is rightfully so, the story goes like this:

Luke 24:36–38 NRSVue

36 While they were talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” 37 They were startled and terrified and thought that they were seeing a ghost. 38 He said to them, “Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts?

I feel like my response would have been something like this:

I’ll TELL YOU WHY I AM FRIGHTENED, WE HAVEN’T SLEPT, WE HAVE BEEN STRESSED OUT OF OUR MINDS, PEOPLE ARE SEEING ANGELS, EARTHQUAKES ARE HAPPENING, WE ARE HOLED UP IN THIS ROOM WHICH IS STILL LOCKED BY THE WAY BECAUSE WE ARE ALL ENEMIES OF THE STATE THANKS TO YOU, , JUDAS IS DEAD, YOU WERE DEAD AND I AM NOT SURE I’M NOT INSANE

So Jesus does the most natural thing to do in that situation…eat.

Luke 24:39–48 NRSVue

39 Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see, for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” 40 And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. 41 Yet for all their joy they were still disbelieving and wondering, and he said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?” 42 They gave him a piece of broiled fish, 43 and he took it and ate in their presence. 44 Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.” 45 Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, 46 and he said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day 47 and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. 48 You are witnesses of these things.

So Jesus continued to show Himself to them like this and once to even 500 people at one time over the next 40 days.

That seems like a lot, why is this Important?

As I said earlier, this is the most important event in history, it will only be rivalled by when Jesus comes back.

As I see it there are three reasons why this is important:

Jesus coming back to life vindicates everything He said and did.

Jesus coming back to life is why we follow Him and not someone else.

Jesus’ resurrection body is the evidence of New Creation and the anchor of our future hope.

Let’s unpack this

1. Jesus coming back to life vindicates everything He said and did.

So we all know that in a sports game or anything when someone calls their shot before doing it, it is very impressive. This is because most of the time, it doesn’t actually happen or the person who says what they are going to do before they do it is just so far advanced than the other people it is unfair.

That is kind of what what is happening here. Except the opponent, in this case…is death… who is no slouch, up until this point, death has been undefeated, like perfect winning streak, even if you consider the couple of people in the Bible Enoch and Elijah who basically stopped playing the game and the couple of people that God resuscitated like the widows son, Jairus’ daughter and Lazarus, they eventually died again. That’s not the same thing, Jesus went into death and defeated it at its own game. He brought death to death.

Peter said it this way:

Acts 2:24 NRSVue

24 But God raised him up, having released him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for him to be held in its power.

Death just wasn’t strong enough.

Here that again…death, who has been the greatest opponent that humanity has ever had…didn’t hold a candle in this fight.

Most things that people are afraid of are empowered by death.

Think about it, people will say, I want the good life…and I want it now…why because of death.

I am afraid at night because of burglars…because of death.

I am afraid to tell the truth because that might kill a relationship

Death wasn’t strong enough to hold Jesus.

Death has been way stronger than us forever, but compared to Jesus, it has no strength.

We have been making decisions and living our lives based on our fear of death, how much more should we be making decisions and living our lives because of Jesus?

Said another way, if someone, is bullying my bully…I am going to make friends with that person.

So if someone, says that they are going to defeat death. They say they are going to die and it isn’t going to take. They should be laughed at and not taken seriously, which by the way is essentially what happened to Jesus. Dead people don’t come back, we all know, we all know it now and they knew it then, don’t need science to prove that.

So then when it happened…that changes everything. When the impossible happens and you responsible for the impossible happening, and it wasn’t an accident but intentional…then everything else you said has a whole new level of authority and truth to it.

There is no other logical explanation, in order to defeat death you have to be life itself, life incarnate…you have to be God, you have to be the Creator. The Creator is the Creator because the Creator created Life. Which among many other things is exactly what Jesus said.

And we really can’t deny that He came back because of the sheer amount of eye witnesses, I mean 500 at one time, the amount of time in which He was showing up, and the biggest smoking gun of them all is the vast number of Christians 2.65 Billion right now, who testify to having an active relationship with Jesus. To my knowledge it is impossible to have an active relationship with a dead person. I actively pray, He actively answers, He is working in my life in a number of ways and I have seen Him act in the lives of others…it simply is not possible for a dead person to do this.

So if He told the truth about defeating death, which was impossible, then I have to believe that all the other things He said were true regardless of how possible they may seem.

If Jesus says living a certain way is the way to life, I am inclined to believe the man who proved He was God by defeating death. The proof is in the pudding.

2. Jesus coming back to life is why we follow Him and not someone else.

So building on the previous point, people sometimes ask, why are you a Christian instead of any other religion. Usually that conversation then quickly devolves into an argument moral superiority, document this…blah blah blah.

Here is the real, using my example from earlier, the person who bullies my bully will be my friend, not all the people who have a theory and opinion about how to stop my bully. I follow the Strongest, if Jesus was resurrected by someone else…I would follow that person, because they would be God. The reality is Jesus is alive by His own power…therefore I follow Him.

Again the proof is in the pudding.

Let’s count a list of all the relevant people who didn’t manage to defeat death:

Muhammed

Confucius

Buddha

Zoroaster

Caesar

Pharaoh

Any Government Leader in history

Any random author from the self-help section

They all died or will and they have all stayed dead.

I don’t care what they have to say, they are not more qualified than Jesus. Jesus came back from the dead proving that He is the Creator. That means He built all of this:

Colossians 1:16–17 NRSVue

16 for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. 17 He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

Not only did He make it all but He sustains it all, He proved this by defeating death.

Since He is the Creator, He is the progenitor of all knowledge and wisdom…all of it, there is nothing that we humans have come up with that Jesus did not give us, no invention, no Mathematics, no discovery, nothing. He has given it all to us.

We struggle to produce enough electricity to supply our energy needs, yet we think we are more qualified to say what truth is than the person who supplies the energy for all of creation?

Of those people I discussed earlier, who are they to say? What qualifies them over and above Jesus? Jesus proved to us who He is.

So why would I follow less qualified leaders when I can follow Jesus? It wouldn’t make logical sense.

I can continue, lets keep going, count a list of all the so-called gods who never cared enough about their people to actually show up and do something:

All the Hindu gods who claim to keep coming in avatars and yet are surprisingly absent from real history and say they keep defeating evil…yet that is obviously not true, they are currently waiting for their 10th avatar…who wants to follow a god who fails 9 times?

All the Greek gods, or their rebranded counter parts the Roman gods, they never showed up, even in their own mythology they didn’t care for their people, why would I want to follow gods like that?

How about the Egyptian, Baal, African, Shinto, Taoism all of their plurality of gods.

They are all proven to be liars and frauds because the real God, the real Creator showed up, became Human, told us the real truth even though we didn’t want to hear, Sacrificed Himself to save us and defeated death for good measure and took His rightful place as King of Kings and Lord of Lords, sitting as King over the universe that He created. He proved it and He sits there this very moment.

So because Jesus proved who He was by what He did…that means all those others gods can not be who they claim to be…they are liars. They do not have the power they claim to have and they have no intention of doing good to those who follow them….they are frauds. So why would we listen or follow them?

Jesus is simply the better God, not only is He the real Creator, but He loves us and proved it by what He did and what He continues to do for us. He is better in every imaginable way.

3. Jesus’ resurrection body is the evidence of New Creation and the anchor of our future hope.

Continuing on Jesus providing evidence in the form of His body. As we saw it didn’t quite follow the laws of physics…He ate, but He also seemed to teleport, He was physical, He was touched and ate, but He was also able to shift into God’s space at will. He is obviously still alive and even more glorious as when John the visionary describes Him in revelation:

Revelation 1:12–18 NRSVue

12 Then I turned to see whose voice it was that spoke to me, and on turning I saw seven golden lampstands, 13 and in the midst of the lampstands I saw one like the Son of Man, clothed with a long robe and with a golden sash across his chest. 14 His head and his hair were white as white wool, white as snow; his eyes were like a flame of fire; 15 his feet were like burnished bronze, refined as in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of many waters. 16 In his right hand he held seven stars, and from his mouth came a sharp, two-edged sword, and his face was like the sun shining with full force. 17 When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. But he placed his right hand on me, saying, “Do not be afraid; I am the First and the Last 18 and the Living One. I was dead, and see, I am alive forever and ever, and I have the keys of Death and of Hades.

He is even more glorious. Paul talks about it like this:

1 Corinthians 15:35–38 NRSVue

35 But someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?” 36 Fool! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. 37 And as for what you sow, you do not sow the body that is to be but a bare seed, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. 38 But God gives it a body as he has chosen and to each kind of seed its own body.

He is using an agriculture metaphor that means that a seed does not look like the plant that emerges and that will be what it is like for us.

He continues:

1 Corinthians 15:42–49 NRSVue

42 So it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. 43 It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. 44 It is sown a physical body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body. 45 Thus it is written, “The first man, Adam, became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. 46 But it is not the spiritual that is first but the physical and then the spiritual. 47 The first man was from the earth, made of dust; the second man is from heaven. 48 As one of dust, so are those who are of the dust, and as one of heaven, so are those who are of heaven. 49 Just as we have borne the image of the one of dust, we will also bear the image of the one of heaven.

We will be like how Jesus was, it was similar but also very different, we can compare the difference between a seed and the full plant.

1 Corinthians 15:54–58 NRSVue

54 When this perishable body puts on imperishability and this mortal body puts on immortality, then the saying that is written will be fulfilled: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.” 55 “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” 56 The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. 57 But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. 58 Therefore, my beloved brothers and sisters, be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord because you know that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.

Paul uses Jesus’ resurrected body and the evidence of future glory as the reason that justifies all that we do as disciples of Jesus because we know we do not labour in vain because we know Christ has risen and everything He said was true.

John says it like this:

Revelation 21:1–7 NRSVue

1 Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. 2 And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them and be their God; 4 he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.” 5 And the one who was seated on the throne said, “See, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true.” 6 Then he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life. 7 Those who conquer will inherit these things, and I will be their God, and they will be my children.

Jesus said this to His disciples:

John 14:1–4 NRSVue

1 “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. 2 In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. 4 And you know the way to the place where I am going.”

Jesus has provided all the evidence we need. He is the first fruit and we will be like Him. When He was resurrected we know we will be resurrected like Him, but not just us but all of this, all of this will be brought into Glory.

Jesus did not lie about defeating death, He is not lying about what is in store for us and all creation.

Bringing it all together

This is why resurrection is so important.

Everything rises and falls on the resurrection.

Because resurrection is a thing…that means that tomorrow does not have to be a repeat of today.

Anything and everything can be made new. You, me, our situations, all of it.

Jesus has shown us the way, the way involves the cross, but death is not the end. I can safely take the road of the cross because I know only life waits for me.

We can, like Jesus did, walk through death and be delivered into life.

Parts of our lives for sure need to be crucified with Christ, so that we may fully live with Christ!

We don’t have to live in fear of anything but God alone, who adores us.

In short,

Because Jesus did what He said He would do and came back to life, we believe He is who He said He is, and therefore, we follow Him.