Easter 2026: Clearly Jesus
Notes
Transcript
Bookmarks & Needs:
Bookmarks & Needs:
B: 1 Cor 15:1-8
N:
Welcome
Welcome
Again, welcome to Family Worship with the church family of Eastern Hills: People helping people live out the unexpected love of Jesus every day. Thanks to our praise band, Worship 4:24, for their dedication in leading us in praise and worship this morning. Thanks to Owen, Austin, and Jalene in their testimony of Gospel in their song. And I also need to say thanks to Deanna Chadwick and all of her Family Services Ministry team and the Yees for all that they have done this weekend to bless the church family.
If you’re a guest or visiting this morning, we would really like to be able to thank you for being here today, and to be able to do that, we have to get a little information from you. Could you please just fill out one of the Welcome cards that you’ll find in the back of the pew in front of you? When you’ve done that, you can return it to us in one of two ways: you can drop it in the offering boxes by the doors as you leave when service is over, or I’d appreciate the opportunity to introduce myself, so after service, I’ll stay down here, and I invite you to come and say hello and give me your card personally. I have a small gift to give you to say thanks for being here today. I promise it won’t take long. If you’re online and visiting today, you can just go to the I’m New page on our website and you’ll find a communication card there.
Announcements
Announcements
AAEO ($18,052)
Video: Jordan & Jessamy Adams, West Lafayette, IN (Purdue University)
Opening
Opening
Our theme for this whole weekend has been “Clearly Jesus.” This theme is drawn from our focal passage this morning (and which Joe and Trevor also made reference in their messages on Good Friday and Sunrise service, respectively...thanks for leading those services, guys). But the truth is that it’s really easy to muddy the waters and make Easter about something other than Jesus, especially in church life! It’s really easy to make this weekend about the “stuff:” the services, the meals, the egg hunt, the visitors… all the “extra” things that we do to commemorate and celebrate what Jesus has done. But this weekend is about Jesus—about the hope of salvation that we have because of Him—the message of the Gospel. We need to see Jesus clearly.
It’s so great to be able to come together this morning in this place to rejoice in and reflect on the truth of the Gospel. So let’s dive into the Scripture. If you are able to do so, please stand in honor of the reading of the Word of God, and turn in your Bibles or your Bible apps to the 15th chapter of 1 Corinthians, where I will read the first 8 verses:
1 Now I want to make clear for you, brothers and sisters, the gospel I preached to you, which you received, on which you have taken your stand 2 and by which you are being saved, if you hold to the message I preached to you—unless you believed in vain. 3 For I passed on to you as most important what I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the Twelve. 6 Then he appeared to over five hundred brothers and sisters at one time; most of them are still alive, but some have fallen asleep. 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. 8 Last of all, as to one born at the wrong time, he also appeared to me.
PRAYER
One of the human frailties that basically everyone has to deal with sooner or later is the frailty of our eyesight. Some people literally can’t see at all. Others are born with the need for corrective lenses in order to be able to see things clearly. Others, like me, generally have good eyesight, but it deteriorates as we age, to the point that we need assistance to see well, especially details.
I want to show you a picture of something that you’ve likely seen before, but to which I have applied a severe box blur in Photoshop: This is half the severity of what the blur could be. We have here a kind of greenish rectangle. I made a video of this photo becoming increasingly less blurry over one minute of time. We’re going to start that video and when you are certain of what the picture actually is, raise your hand, and keep it up until the end of the video.
DAISY FOCUS VIDEO: Let it play, and it will advance to the clear still picture automatically. Just leave that up until the first point.
Even when you could make out what the picture is, that still doesn’t mean that you could see it clearly. Notice how long it was from the time that you raised your hand to the time the picture reached maximum focus. Even though you knew what it was, there was still more to know, still more to see, still more of the picture to understand. And just got clearer and clearer as we went.
In our focal passage this weekend, we are seeing how Paul is making the Gospel more and more clear to the church at Corinth. They had understood it and believed it, but either their view had become muddy through distraction or false teaching, or they still had more to learn (probably both, actually). They had seen, and even had believed, but were still seeing a blurry Gospel in some ways. We can always use more clarity, more understanding, or even just another reminder when it comes to the Gospel.
And for some in this room or online this morning, the clarity of the Gospel for you is like how the picture of the daisy started—you don’t know what it is at all. My hope and prayer is that this morning, the Holy Spirit will speak through me and through the Scriptures in order to bring you a place of being able to see Jesus clearly, as you come to understand and believe the Gospel.
So what we need to see completely clearly this Easter is that: Jesus saves; Jesus died and rose; and Jesus is alive.
1: Clearly Jesus saves (1-3a)
1: Clearly Jesus saves (1-3a)
The Gospel didn’t start with Paul. He didn’t make it up and then go around telling people about Jesus. Instead, the Good News of salvation through the blood of Jesus started at the crucifixion, was proven in the resurrection, and then revealed to Paul both by Christ Himself while Paul was on the road to Damascus and by other believers who were eyewitnesses of what Jesus had done. When Paul set out to make the Gospel clear for the Corinthian church, this is where he began:
Bill: 1-3A
1 Now I want to make clear for you, brothers and sisters, the gospel I preached to you, which you received, on which you have taken your stand 2 and by which you are being saved, if you hold to the message I preached to you—unless you believed in vain. 3a For I passed on to you as most important what I also received:
Paul had apparently heard that there was some problem in the church at Corinth (more on that in a moment,) and decided that the best course of action was to go back to the beginning—back to the basics of what he had taught them when he first visited them, a visit which lasted nearly 2 years, as we have recorded in Acts 18.
The Gospel message is what they had heard, they had received, on which they had taken their stand, and through which they were being saved. In fact, according to Paul, the message of the Gospel is most important—literally of first importance. This is not to say that there aren’t other things that are important—it’s to say that there is no message more important for the church to believe and to preach than the message of the Gospel.
In Acts 4, Peter had been clear about the importance of the Gospel:
12 There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to people by which we must be saved.”
Everything about the church—why it exists, who and what it is, and what it is to do—is based upon the foundation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Everything else flows from the Gospel. If we aren’t grounded in our understanding and declaration of the Gospel, then we are eventually going to go a wrong direction, whether out of confusion, or ignorance, or sin.
This is what was happening to the church in Corinth. Paul wasn’t questioning their loyalty to the Gospel. He was concerned that they were confused about a central tenet of the Gospel—the resurrection. Not necessarily the resurrection of Jesus, but the resurrection of those who believe in Jesus. Paul’s argument through the whole chapter is that if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ was not raised either, the whole message of the Gospel collapses, and believers (actually, anyone) have no hope for salvation.
12 Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say, “There is no resurrection of the dead”? 13 If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised; 14 and if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation is in vain, and so is your faith.
So here, he’s setting the stage for this argument by telling them that either they believed the true Gospel and are being saved by it, or not. If Jesus was not raised from the dead, then the Gospel is not good news, because the message Paul preached (that Jesus was indeed raised) would be false. If what the Corinthians believed and taken their stand on was NOT the true Gospel (such as believing that the resurrection is not true), then whatever they have believed, they have believed it in vain, because a false gospel is no gospel at all. And if they do not hold to the true Gospel of the resurrected Christ, it shows that they never believed it in the first place—that they believed in vain.
14 For we have become participants in Christ if we hold firmly until the end the reality that we had at the start.
This isn’t to say that we prove our salvation by believing the right things in our strength. It’s to say that the reality of our salvation proves itself through our holding firmly to the truth of the Gospel in the power of the Spirit.
But what are the basics of the message of the Gospel that Paul seeks to ensure the church is seeing clearly? Paul uses a verbal formula of the day in the beginning of verse 3 to explain that he has faithfully passed on accurate information about the Gospel as a trustworthy messenger. He had received it, and he had told them the exact truth about the Gospel. He summarizes that message in the next couple of verses, saying that clearly, Jesus died and rose again:
2: Clearly Jesus died and rose (3b-5)
2: Clearly Jesus died and rose (3b-5)
Paul’s basic formula for the message of the Gospel has four components, two of which are backed by Old Testament Scripture. He lays out the components in the rest of verse 3 through verse 5:
Bill: 3b-5
3b ...that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the Twelve.
The four components of Paul’s summary of the Gospel: Jesus clearly died for our sins. Jesus clearly was buried. Jesus clearly rose (on the third day). Jesus clearly appeared.
Jesus died for our sins. Jesus was buried. Jesus rose. Jesus appeared. I think that if we memorized these four components, they would be a big help. Can we say them together?
Notice that each component depends on the one before it, with the exception of the first, which assumes that Christ lived (no one would have even attempted to dispute that fact in the first century). Jesus being buried depends on His actually dying (they would not have buried a living person). His being raised depends on the fact that He was actually buried, because He was actually dead. His appearing depends on His being raised: if He wasn’t raised, He couldn’t have appeared.
Also, Paul mentions that the fact that Jesus died for our sins and that He was raised are “according to the Scriptures,” meaning the Old Testament as I mentioned. These passages confirm that Jesus is the Messiah of the world, promised by God to His people centuries before:
Paul’s declaration that Jesus “died for our sins according to the Scriptures” is likely recalling passages like we find in Isaiah 53 (which Joe made reference to on Friday):
4 Yet he himself bore our sicknesses, and he carried our pains; but we in turn regarded him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted. 5 But he was pierced because of our rebellion, crushed because of our iniquities; punishment for our peace was on him, and we are healed by his wounds. 6 We all went astray like sheep; we all have turned to our own way; and the Lord has punished him for the iniquity of us all. 7 He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth. Like a lamb led to the slaughter and like a sheep silent before her shearers, he did not open his mouth. 8 He was taken away because of oppression and judgment, and who considered his fate? For he was cut off from the land of the living; he was struck because of my people’s rebellion. 9 He was assigned a grave with the wicked, but he was with a rich man at his death, because he had done no violence and had not spoken deceitfully.
Jesus died “bearing our sicknesses, carrying our pains.” He was “pierced because of our rebellion, crushed because of our iniquities.” He was punished for “our peace...for the iniquity of us all. He was the Lamb of God who was led to His slaughter without complaint, cut off from the land of the living because of our rebellion.
It doesn’t matter how “good” of a person you are. The Bible tells us that all of us have sinned. Did you see it in Isaiah? “We ALL went astray like sheep, we ALL have turned to our own way.” We’re all rebels against God. So Christ died for our sins, as the Scripture said He would.
The Gospel is the only solution to our lostness, because all of us owe the same debt of rebellion. But Jesus, being God the Son, never rebelled against the will of God. And since He is also fully man, he could die on our behalf. Paul would explain this in a couple of other ways in His writings:
13 Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, because it is written, Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.
8 But God proves his own love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
25 He was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.
This brings us to the other component of the Gospel that Paul said was supported by or “according to” the Scriptures: that Jesus rose. Likely the “according to the Scriptures” refers to the fact that Jesus rose from the grave, not necessarily the “on the third day” part (though maybe he is: Hosea 6:2 “2 He will revive us after two days, and on the third day he will raise us up so we can live in his presence.” ). Paul here is likely thinking about passages such as Psalm 16:9-10
9 Therefore my heart is glad and my whole being rejoices; my body also rests securely. 10 For you will not abandon me to Sheol; you will not allow your faithful one to see decay.
Jesus actually died, and they actually put His body in the grave. But He was not abandoned in the grave—His body never saw decay because He was raised to life! Death is the curse that we all deserve because of our sin, but as we saw in Galatians 3:13, Jesus redeemed us from that curse, because He didn’t owe the debt of sin. Death could not hold Him!
24 God raised him up, ending the pains of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by death.
What’s so amazing about this is that Jesus knew this was coming—He predicted the whole thing several times in His ministry before His crucifixion:
21 From then on Jesus began to point out to his disciples that it was necessary for him to go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders, chief priests, and scribes, be killed, and be raised the third day.
23 They will kill him, and on the third day he will be raised up.” And they were deeply distressed.
And Paul’s ministry included a defense of this truth wherever he went. In fact, Luke recorded in Acts that Paul “proved” the things that he preached about Jesus:
2 As usual, Paul went into the synagogue, and on three Sabbath days reasoned with them from the Scriptures, 3 explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Messiah to suffer and rise from the dead: “This Jesus I am proclaiming to you is the Messiah.”
In fact, the record of his first visit to Corinth, the church that he wrote this letter to, says this:
5 When Silas and Timothy arrived from Macedonia, Paul devoted himself to preaching the word and testified to the Jews that Jesus is the Messiah. ...
8 Crispus, the leader of the synagogue, believed in the Lord, along with his whole household. Many of the Corinthians, when they heard, believed and were baptized.
So Jesus died for our sins according to the Scriptures. He was buried, He was raised again on the third day according to the Scriptures, and He appeared to Cephas (Peter), then to the Twelve. We will cover this more deeply in our last point, but by way of a transitional verse, Peter actually said in Acts 2:32:
32 “God has raised this Jesus; we are all witnesses of this.
This last part of Paul’s four components of the Gospel—that Jesus appeared—is the basis for my last point this morning: and it’s all coming into focus:
3: Clearly Jesus is alive! (6-8)
3: Clearly Jesus is alive! (6-8)
This is really what this day is all about! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! The key here is that Christ didn’t just rise from the grave. Could God have done things that way? Yes. But He didn’t. Instead, the Bible records that Jesus appeared several times, to lots of people, and said and did lots of things, for forty days following His resurrection.
6 Then he appeared to over five hundred brothers and sisters at one time; most of them are still alive, but some have fallen asleep. 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. 8 Last of all, as to one born at the wrong time, he also appeared to me.
The fact that Jesus actually appeared to people and did some of the things that He did proves not only that He rose, but that He is alive! In fact, in Romans chapter 6, Paul writes that Jesus can never die again, because death no longer has any mastery over Him since He has defeated it:
9 because we know that Christ, having been raised from the dead, will not die again. Death no longer rules over him.
Now, the appearances that Paul lists in our focal passage are there for another reason.
The order of appearances seem to be chronological, but not comprehensive: Paul doesn’t list every single person that Jesus appeared to over the forty days. He doesn’t include the women at the tomb. He doesn’t include the two guys on the road to Emmaus (at least not that particular appearance). The Gospels record Jesus’s appearing to Peter (Luke 24:34), to the Twelve (minus Judas) (John 20:19-23, 26-29), and to Paul. We can guess at the appearance to over 500 brothers and sisters at the same time (Great Commission?), but we don’t have a specific record of that. I think it is included in what Luke describes it in Acts 1:3:
3 After he had suffered, he also presented himself alive to them by many convincing proofs, appearing to them over a period of forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God.
Jesus’s ascension is likely the place where Jesus appeared to “all the apostles,” as recorded in Acts 1:6-8:
6 So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, are you restoring the kingdom to Israel at this time?” 7 He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. 8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come on you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
We don’t have a record of when Jesus appeared to James (the son of Joseph and Mary, so the half-brother of Jesus). However, James did not believe that Jesus was the Messiah during Jesus’s earthly ministry, so either James came to faith and then Jesus appeared to him, or Jesus appeared to him, and he thus came to faith. James would become the leader of the church in Jerusalem, according to Galatians.
And finally, Paul says that Jesus appeared to him. Paul’s conversion was late and sudden. He didn’t go through a process of walking, understanding, and believing like most of the apostles did. This is part of why he says that he’s like one “born at the wrong time.” He’s an apostle—just not an apostle like the rest of the apostles as far as his conversion is concerned. More on that in a moment.
But Paul’s point wasn’t to list all the folks who saw Jesus after He rose. He’s showing the chain of the Gospel: Jesus appeared to Peter, and to the Twelve, and to the five hundred brothers and sisters, and the apostles, and to James, and to him. The appearances of Jesus weren’t a part of what Paul received by revelation. Instead, they are part of what he has “received,” and now has “passed on” to the Corinthians. This is part of the proof of the Gospel: the people who saw the risen Jesus alive told Paul about the experience, and then Paul told the Corinthians, and by us reading their mail, he has told us.
These things: the death, burial, resurrection, and appearances of Jesus happened in actual history, in the near past to when Paul was writing. And the entirety of the truthfulness of the Gospel rests upon the fact that Jesus bodily rose from the dead. The Christian claim to the resurrection of Christ was easily verified or falsified. There were literally hundreds of people were still alive to whom Jesus had physically appeared at the time Paul wrote this letter. There is only one logical conclusion from this: That Jesus really did rise from the grave, and He really did appear to all of those people! This is what we celebrate on Resurrection Sunday: the fact that the tomb was empty because Jesus really is alive!
Let me speak just to those in the room or online who have never believed the Gospel for just a moment. You might have heard all of this and are like, “So what? What does that actually mean for me? Jesus being alive after being dead is cool and all, but where does it connect to my life?”
It connects here: according to Scripture, this means that if we believe the Gospel: that we believe that Jesus died in our place to pay the penalty for our sins, and we turn back from going our own way as we saw in Isaiah, and trust Him to save us, then we are saved. And since Jesus is alive, if we have surrendered to Him, we will also be made spiritually alive! We will live forever with Him in heaven!
14 God raised up the Lord and will also raise us up by his power.
But this is just a part of it. If we trust in Jesus, not only to do we have heaven to look forward to, but we are made spiritually alive right now:
13 And when you were dead in trespasses and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, he made you alive with him and forgave us all our trespasses.
Hope for now and forever. Joy in Christ for now and forever. Forgiveness now and forever. Freedom now and forever. True life now and forever. The very presence of God Almighty now and forever! Jesus offers this to you for free, though following Him costs us everything: Following Him is worth everything. Will you surrender to Jesus, even right now in your pew? Admit that you’ve sinned and you need Him, that you turn from going your own sinful way, that you believe Jesus is God’s Son, who died on the cross so you could be forgiven, and rose from the grave so you can have eternal life. Confess that you believe the Gospel, and that you surrender to Jesus as Savior and Lord of your life. It’s a response of faith to what God has done.
Closing
Closing
And I’m going to touch just a moment on one more verse. When we believe the Gospel, confessing that clearly Jesus saves, clearly Jesus died and rose, and clearly Jesus is alive, and surrender to Him, God begins an incredible work in our lives that testifies to the fact that He has saved us. Look at what Paul said about his own life in verses 9 and 10, just after where I stopped for our focal verse:
Bill: 15:9-10a
9 For I am the least of the apostles, not worthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. 10a But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain.
Clearly Jesus changes the lives of those who believe in Him. And He can change your life if you will believe in Him as well.
Salvation
Believer: This should encourage us! The Gospel is clearly the best news that there is—and we should share it. Say these points with me again:
Jesus died for our sins. Jesus was buried. Jesus rose. Jesus appeared.
Who can you tell this week about the Gospel?
Baptism
Church membership
Giving
Prayer
PRAYER
Closing Remarks
Closing Remarks
Neighboring:
I gave of box of Easter Candy to my garbage collection men. They pick up it up from my front yard, so I don't have to roll it out. It is a service by the city, but I very much appreciate it… I also invited my Catholic Neighbor to our Good Friday service. She has to work so I told her about the sack lunches so that she can go back to work. She thought it was a very thoughtful thing. Her husband just retired from APS as a preschool teacher and asked about our school…
Bible reading (Lev 8, Ps 9, Pro 23, 1 Th 2)
No Pastor’s Study tonight
Prayer Meeting
New Bible study class starting on the 12th in Grant Kitting’s class: a study of the temples (tabernacle, temples, heavenly temple)
Instructions for guests
Benediction
Benediction
4 Therefore we were buried with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too may walk in newness of life. 5 For if we have been united with him in the likeness of his death, we will certainly also be in the likeness of his resurrection. 6 For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be rendered powerless so that we may no longer be enslaved to sin,
