Sermon Tone Analysis

© April 17th, 2022 by Rev. Rick Goettsche EASTER

Holidays are times that we set aside each year to remember something important.

In the United States, the 4th of July is a time when we celebrate the freedoms of our nation and those who have helped secure that freedom for us.

We celebrate Thanksgiving each year to remind us that we have many reasons to be thankful.

We celebrate birthdays to remind us of the treasure that our friends and family are to us.

We celebrate holidays to remind us of important things.

Easter is no different, though I suspect many people don’t understand why Easter is such a big deal.

But for Christians, Easter is the most important holiday because we are reminding ourselves of one of the most important truths of the faith—the resurrection of Jesus!

Even if you know that Easter celebrates the resurrection, you may not know why that matters.

That’s what we’re going to talk about today.

At the end of the gospel of Luke, we read about two men who were walking with Jesus after he had risen from the grave, only they didn’t realize who he was.

They were distraught over all the events of the last few days, as you might expect.

Jesus started explaining to them from the scriptures that everything that had happened had been God’s plan from the beginning!

We don’t know exactly what Jesus told them, but today I want to take you on the same journey Jesus took these two men on.

I want to look at how everything in the Bible was ultimately pointing toward Easter, which is why Easter should be a day of great celebration for Christians everywhere.

Creation

The story begins with God creating the world.

He created Adam and Eve and placed them in the perfect garden of Eden.

Adam and Eve had a perfect and unblemished relationship with God.

It was, in a sense, truly heaven on earth.

But Adam and Eve fell prey to the lies of Satan, who told them the reason God had given them a singular rule (not to eat the fruit of one particular tree) was because God knew that if they ate from that tree then they would become like Him.

Satan convinced Adam and Eve that if they wanted true fulfillment, they needed to rebel against God.

Sadly, that’s exactly what they did.

They ate the fruit God had told them not to, and in so doing they destroyed their relationship with God.

Adam and Eve were banished from the garden and lost the close fellowship with God they had enjoyed before.

Because of their sin, all of creation became subject to frustration and ultimately death.

But even as God told them of the consequences of their sin, He still offered hope.

When God spoke to Satan, He said,

15 And I will cause hostility between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring.

He will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.”

(Genesis 3:15, NLT)

God was telling them there would be a descendant of Eve who would ultimately crush Satan.

Satan would wound this descendant, but his wound would not last.

Satan, however, would not recover.

This descendant God spoke of in the garden of Eden was Jesus.

Satan would attack Jesus, but his attack would be unsuccessful.

Jesus, however, would crush Satan.

From the very beginning, God had a plan to save humanity from our sin.

Abraham

Much later, after the people had grown in number and spread out across the earth, God spoke to a man named Abram, whom He later renamed Abraham.

Abraham did not yet know the Lord, but when God told him to leave his homeland and go to a place He would show him, Abraham went.

God promised Abraham that he would have descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and through his offspring all nations would be blessed.

Abraham and his wife had been unable to have children and were very old when God made this promise, but God miraculously caused them to have a child in their old age.

God said that it was through this child that He would fulfill His promise.

“I will make you into a great nation.

I will bless you and make you famous, and you will be a blessing to others.

3 I will bless those who bless you and curse those who treat you with contempt.

All the families on earth will be blessed through you.”

(Genesis 12:2-3, NLT)

The significant part of this story is that God’s promise to Abraham was that all families (or nations) would be blessed through this future descendant.

God’s promise of blessing did not merely apply to Abraham, or even to his direct descendants.

Instead, God was declaring that He had a plan to bless the entire world, and that He was going to use Abraham’s family to bring this blessing to the world.

Jesus was one of Abraham’s descendants, and He provides salvation for not only the Jewish people, but for everyone who believes in Him in every corner of the world.

Through Jesus, God has provided a blessing to all nations—even you and me!

Egypt

Eventually, Abraham’s descendants, the family of Jacob (who was also called Israel) ended up as slaves in Egypt.

The people of Egypt oppressed the Israelite slaves, and God promised that He would deliver them in miraculous form.

He chose a man named Moses to lead the Israelites away from Egypt.

God sent a series of plagues upon the people of Egypt as a way of convincing their leader, Pharaoh, to let the people go.

But Pharaoh was stubborn and refused to listen to Moses’ warnings.

As a result, Egypt experienced 10 plagues on their land.

God told Moses that there would be one final plague that would cause Pharaoh to submit and let the Israelites go.

The firstborn son in every household in Egypt would die in a single night.

God said that the only way people could be spared of this plague was to slaughter an unblemished lamb and spread its blood over the doorposts of the house.

The people living in that house would then be spared, as God’s judgment would “pass over” them.

And it happened exactly as Moses said.

The Israelites put the blood of these innocent lambs on their doorposts and they were spared this final plague.

The rest of the people, including Pharaoh, however, experienced exactly what Moses said would happen.

Their firstborn sons all died in a single night.

After this, Pharaoh finally relented and allowed the Israelites to leave once and for all.

The Israelites commemorated this event every year with a celebration called Passover, reminding themselves of how God had delivered them in the past, and believing that God would deliver them again in the future.

It is fitting that the day Jesus was crucified was the day before the Israelites were to celebrate Passover—because Passover was actually pointing toward Jesus all along!

In the Passover celebration they remembered how God delivered them from slavery through the blood of an innocent lamb.

For years, the Israelites reenacted this scene, remembering God’s faithfulness.

When Jesus was crucified, He was the ultimate Passover lamb.

By his sacrifice, we are delivered from the slavery of our sin.

Even as God delivered the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, He was pointing forward to an even greater deliverance that would come through Jesus’ death and resurrection.

The Law

After the Israelites left Egypt, God promised that they would have a land of their own and become their own nation.

God gave the Israelites laws they were to follow.

There were many moral laws (many of which we still follow today, including the Ten Commandments).

But in addition to the moral law, God also gave them many ceremonial laws they were to follow.

There were lots of specifics to these laws, but there was one overarching theme—these laws were to remind the Israelites of their need to be saved from their sin.

God commanded them to offer unblemished animals as sacrifices for their sin.

The Israelites continued carrying out these sacrifices regularly, even up to the time of Jesus.

The sacrifices reminded them that their sin stood between them and God and no amount of trying to be good enough could erase their past failures.

Their only hope was someone unblemished and innocent sacrificing themselves in order to save the sinner.

Many times, we can think that if we just do enough good things, it will balance out the bad.

But the Bible tells us that sin always leads to death.

The sacrificial laws were in place to remind the people of their need for a perfect sacrifice.

Unlike you and me, Jesus had no sin of His own.

He alone could serve as a perfect, unblemished sacrifice for our sin.

Jesus offered himself as the sacrifice you and I need.

The laws God gave the Israelites pointed forward to when Jesus would become that sacrifice for all who would believe.

David

Once Israel came into the land God had promised them, God raised up leaders for them.

One of those leaders was King David.

David was a good king and he desired to serve the Lord and to lead the people of Israel in the way God told them to go.

David was far from perfect, and failed in many ways, but God still made him a promise—that one of David’s descendants would be on the throne forever.

“ ‘Furthermore, the Lord declares that he will make a house for you—a dynasty of kings! 12 For when you die and are buried with your ancestors, I will raise up one of your descendants, your own offspring, and I will make his kingdom strong….