Easter Sunday Youth Lesson 2020
Notes
Transcript
He is risen!
He is risen!
Good morning Dublin-Powell Youth! Well, if your Sunday sleep schedule is anything like mine during this pandemic, good afternoon! It is so good to talk to you on another Lord’s day and to say with confidence: He is risen indeed! Now for those who may not know left from right or April from March in this time of staying home let me remind you, today is Easter Sunday. Now, I’m making no judgement on the placement of the generally recognized date of Easter on the calendar, there’s been debate for centuries about whether or not the date commonly celebrated as Easter is actually the date that Jesus rose from the dead and honestly I just don’t care. We celebrate a risen Christ every Sunday when we gather around the table for the Lord’s Supper so it doesn’t really matter to us which of those Sundays is the one that Jesus actually rose. We do, however, generally know that Jesus was crucified around the time of the Passover, because Jesus celebrated the Passover together with His disciples on the night He was betrayed, so we’re certainly not far off from the time when everything went down.
Meaning of an empty tomb
Meaning of an empty tomb
Calendars aside, what are we celebrating when we celebrate a risen Christ? Well, first of all, we are celebrating an empty tomb!
But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they went to the tomb, taking the spices they had prepared. And they found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. While they were perplexed about this, behold, two men stood by them in dazzling apparel. And as they were frightened and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, “Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified and on the third day rise.” And they remembered his words, and returning from the tomb they told all these things to the eleven and to all the rest. Now it was Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary the mother of James and the other women with them who told these things to the apostles, but these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them. But Peter rose and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; and he went home marveling at what had happened.
For 2 days the cross and the tomb represented the temple elite killing the one for whom the temple was built. It represented the victory of fear, jealousy, self-righteousness, and greed over grace, healing, mercy, and love. The cross and the tomb violently shook the disciples awake from illusions of safety and salvation that they’d had while following this teacher who was just crushed by Rome, the kinds of enemies the Messiah was supposed to defeat once and for all!
For 2 days, the cross and the tomb meant failure, defeat, doom.
But on that third day, on that third day and forever more the tomb was found to be empty. The man it had held was no longer there. On that third day, the tomb became a place of victory.
Jesus is ALIVE! Which means that everything He has promised is TRUE! After He appeared to two of the disciples on the road to Emmaus, they returned to tell the others.
And they rose that same hour and returned to Jerusalem. And they found the eleven and those who were with them gathered together, saying, “The Lord has risen indeed, and has appeared to Simon!”
The Lord has risen indeed. That simple phrase holds a lot of weight for those who seek to follow Christ. In the Eastern Orthodox Church, it is an Easter greeting, like “Merry Christmas!” or “Joyous Passover!” One might greet another with “He is risen!” and the other would respond “He is risen indeed!” It may seem like an odd sort of greeting at first, you’re not wishing anyone happiness or health or a good holiday, you aren’t asking how they are or about their family, like the classic southern greeting “How’s yer ma’en’ehm?” But the more I think about “He is risen” has more power in those three words than pages of well wishes and “good morning”s and “good evening”s. If you were a disciple on or shortly after Resurrection Sunday, greeting someone that maybe you met while traveling with Jesus, who received sight, cleansing, forgiveness, healing from Him, and the last thing they had heard about the Lord was that he was brutally murdered by the Romans like a common criminal, how could you contain yourself from greeting them with anything besides the news that Christ. Is. Alive.
Serving a risen savior
Serving a risen savior
We serve a risen savior. Jesus is alive today. How should that affect the way that we follow Him?
First of all, the fact that Jesus died and was raised again means that our lives have been purchased. We no longer have any right to claim our lives for our own will because Jesus gave His life to purchase ours from the grips of sin. Trust me, it was a real good deal for us.
Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.
Also, we serve our living savior who resides in Heaven as His ambassadors on earth.
Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.
Which means we are the way that He currently wants to show His love, mercy, and grace to those who are still lost on earth. We are to seek out and serve those who have yet to hear the news that He is risen.
Kinda interesting, those two things, putting God first in Christ, and serving those around us do sound pretty familiar...
But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
Oh yeah… that one! Jesus is here for us every day as we work to serve Him here on earth. He is actively aware of every time we do well, and every time we fall short. He is here for us now, ready and willing to intercede on our behalf to the Father and to continually encourage us through the Holy Spirit. Jesus is not just someone who once walked the earth and will return one day to judge it. He is alive now. He is risen.
Announcements
Announcements
Don’t forget we have teen tuesday coming up this Tuesday night at 7:00pm! Come prepared with your BEST (worst) dad jokes!
I am adding a new resource again this week for y’all to check out. The Bible Project YouTube page https://www.youtube.com/user/jointhebibleproject is filled with carefully made videos covering everything from how to study the Bible to overviews of specific books to deep dives into particular characters or themes in the Bible, it’s a great way to get a little lost in YouTube while still learning about God and growing your faith! That link is in the description below.
Additionally in the description are all of our previous recommendations, “The Chosen” series on VidAngel which I couldn’t recommend more, the ReGen Harmony playlist on YouTube, and free access to the Dwell Bible audio app for the duration of this stay at home order.
That’s all I have for this week, friends, let’s close in Prayer
Closing Prayer
Closing Prayer