He Lives!

Introduction

Opening Story: Henrietta Lacks. She died, her cells live, and those living cells produce and enhances life in the lives of others. The resurrection!

Connecting to the Audience/Why Should I Listen? but what is the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and what in the world does it have to do with me?

To some easter is a nice time of the year filled with wonderful tradition. We dressed up. My mother still sends me money every year to buy our children nice clothes, and demands in the most passive aggressive kind of ways that we take a picture and send it to her. And I’m in my 40s!

to others easter is a complete myth, pure fantasy. My aunt Marion, saying she refused to go to church especially on easter because she didn’t want to be like those hypocrites she drank with…she didn’t even pretend it was true.

To others easter/resurrection was a historical event that really hasn’t transformed their lives.

(None of these captures the real essence of easter)

Paul actually says all of life hangs on the resurrection of Jesus Christ: “But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain”. Life is devoid of meaning without the resurrection.

Not only that, but Jesus is devoid of meaning, and his whole ministry is a hoax if there was no resurrection. Scholar Fleming Rutledge says that if Jesus had not been raised from the dead, we never would have heard of him.

But if the resurrection did happen, then that completely changes everything for our lives. See, this is why in Matthew’s telling of the resurrection he adds in the detail that as the women were going to the tomb a great (mega) earthquake happened. Quick analogy from my experience of earthquakes. The “unsettling” thing about earthquakes is that it completely disrupts what you counted on without thinking for your security. Earthquakes, more than any other natural disaster, jolt our foundations.

Application: What we leaned on for security prior to Jesus gets disrupted by the earthquake of the resurrection. What we looked to for hope…life…meaning...

Key statement: The resurrection of Jesus joyfully unsettles life as we’ve known it.

We see this in three ways

Hopelessness into Hope- Luke 24:1

Explanation: First day of the week = Sunday. Ladies go to the tomb with spices. Not Lawry’s seasoning salt, or oregano. By the way, if you know nothing of Lawry’s, don’t ever invite me to your house to eat. These spices, however, used to embalm dead people. In other words, they weren’t expecting to see a living Jesus, they were expecting to see a cadaver, a dead person. They were going to complete a duty completely devoid of hope.

Application: We’ve all been there, haven’t we? Elie Weisel, the award winning Jewish author of Night, has. He talks about being in the death camp of Auschwitz, this Jew who had been taught about God all his life, but at this moment he said it was that Night which murdered his God. No hope. Before we Christians get to hard on Elie, we’ve taken our spices to prayer. Every prayed for something really big, but you didn’t really pray with a sense of hope? There was a “yeah right,” in the back of your mind as you prayed that? You weren’t praying to a living Jesus, but to a cadaver. We’ve done this by coming to church. We all know what it’s like to do our duty by coming to church, and to carry our spices at the same time, devoid of any expectation of Jesus…Some of you are here today and would say you are not a Christian, and maybe you’ve come because the foundations of your life have been unsettled as if an earthquake hit it, and there’s hopelessness (loved one with cancer, break up in a relationship, money problems, etc).

Point- Oh their surprise when they discover dead Jesus doesn’t exist. he’s alive, and if he is alive there is hope!

Great great grandfather a praying slave. HOPE!

The songwriter summed it up this way: He lives lyrics! I can face tomorrow!!! See the hope! The resurrection gives hope! It means everything that’s sad will one day be made unsad.

From this Life to the Next Life- Luke 24:5

Explanation: While there they see the stone rolled away and no body. This has them perplexed. The word means “without resource”- their minds are blown! In the middle of this, “two men” in show up and ask them a riveting question, “Why are you seeking the living among the dead”. In other words, the central message of the resurrection is that death does not have the final say, because this life is not the ultimate life.

“when the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: Death is swallowed up in victory,’ ‘O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting’?

Bee Sting Illustration: Did you know a honeybee can sting you twice? In fact, when the honeybee stings you, shortly after it will die. See its stinger will rupture its digestive tract leading to a sure death. it can only sting once and then die. On the cross, the honeybee of death stung our Lord and Savior. but three days later he got up from the grave spelling death’s death! and at some point the honeybee of death will sting us, but it won’t sting us twice. For if we are in Christ, we will get up from death and live forever with Him.

Application? So what does this mean? it means that this life is not all there is. A Christian by the name of Tim Keller is battling cancer, and in the midst of his battle he wrote an article published in the Atlantic, and here’s a line that he wrote that is messing with me: “Since my diagnosis, Kathy and I have come to see that the more we tried to make a heaven out of this world- the more we grounded our comfort and security in it- the less we were able to enjoy it…To our surprise and encouragement, Kathy and I have discovered that the less we attempt to make this world into a heaven, the more we are able to enjoy it”- tim keller.

The resurrection says this place is not our final stop, so stop acting like it is. And if this indeed is the truth, then there will be a time where we will have to give an account...

From Lifeless Propositions to a Living Person- Luke 24:32

Explanation: But Christianity is not just a set of truths- though it certainly contains them. Christianity is a lived experience with a living person. We see this In Luke 24:32…Being a Christian does not shield or shelter us from problems. Christians get diseases too. Christians experience poverty. Christians suffer. what’s different is that Christians don’t do this alone, but have a Savior who is with them in life’s most difficult moments:

Moses begged for and experienced the presence of God

David- even though I walk through the valley…you are with me.

Jonah met with God while in the belly of a fish

Paul felt God’s presence in the midst of his thorn

Myself

For the Christian, the next life often feels most certain, when this life feels the most uncertain.

Gospel Appeal:

did you notice the predominate gender in our passage- women. luke’s obsession in his gospel with outsiders- the poor, sick, demon possessed (Mary M), the vulnerable, women. Message- Luke’s gospel shows how outsiders become insiders through Jesus. We are all outsiders.

Baptism instructions

Appeal