Resurrection Sunday 2022
Notes
Transcript
Resurrection Sunday
Resurrection Sunday
1 Now, brothers and sisters, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. 2 By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain. 3 For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: 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, and then to the Twelve. 6 After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, 8 and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.
What an odd group we are.
We are a group that has gathered to celebrate the resurrection of the dead.
Part of me thinks that so much our frills that we add onto the Easter holiday is because at it’s core, it’s really weird to celebrate dead people coming back to life.
And we certainly are celebrating that,
we celebrate our Lord striding out of the grave
We look with anticipation to a day when those who are found in Christ will do the same...
But in addition to these things we are proclaiming that the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is nothing short of a
cosmos altering, storyline disrupting, death defeating, curse reversing victory.
It is day 1 of the new creation.
The passage we read today is one that was written by the Apostle Paul to a church that was riding the struggle bus.
They were riding the struggle bus all the way to struggle town.
Now, our church is not encountering the same struggles.
But we’ve got our own.
So let’s appropriate this passage for ourselves and listen to the message that Paul would undoubtedly preach if he was here with us today.
1 Now, brothers and sisters, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand.
I want to remind you of the thing that is the continuity of your entire faith.
I preached it (the gospel), you received it (the gospel), and you’ve taken your stand on it (the gospel).
This word “remind”, really has a sense of “clarify” to it.
This is a gentle rebuke coming from Paul.
You received this, you took your stand on it, but maybe you don’t understand it fully.
Now he doesn’t define it yet, but tells them
“by this gospel you are saved. if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you.”
What Paul hands them next, is nothing short of the doctrine of the resurrection.
3 For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: 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, and then to the Twelve.
“For what I recieved I passed on to you as of first importance.”
For Paul, he saw one thing as being of first importance.
And in this we see what we might call an apostolic pattern for preaching.
He wasn’t really interested in telling jokes.
He wasn’t interested in laying out nice little sermon series for the people of Corinth on
“How to realize your blessing”
or
“7 steps to being a better husband.”
or
“How to conquer your Goliath”
He didn’t even hit them with impressive apologetics proving that God is real.
No.
He told them at the beginning of this letter that there is one thing he’s interested in talking about.
And if Paul was here today he would tell us the exact same thing.
1 And so it was with me, brothers and sisters. When I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. 2 For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.
He’s not interested in the fluff.
Just yesterday I saw on Facebook a man with an entire online ministry set up where he calls himself and apostle and then preaches live on FB with his cashapp tag linked in the description so that you can “sow your blessing”.
A. That man is not an apostle
B. What he’s feeding people is demonic.
Paul actually is an apostle and he’s interested in one thing.
He’s interested in handing people the cornerstone.
Imagine that you are the foreman at an important job site where an impressive skyscraper is going to be built.
It is your job to provide all the other builders with the piece that will serve as the base and cornerstone of the whole building so that it will have strength.
Imagine then how foolish you would be to hand your builders a cardboard box.
“No one will be able to see it anyway just throw it in there.”
Do you know what people will see?
The whole building coming down.
Paul understood this as a church planter.
If you don’t offer the cornerstone, the church will fail.
So for Paul, Christ crucified was key, and linked with this in a unshakeable way is the resurrection of Christ.
Paul sees the resurrection of Christ as being completely necessary for the gospel to be complete.
In fact he puts it this way in chapter 15 of the letter
16 For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. 17 And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. 18 Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. 19 If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.
We of all people ought to be pitied.
Why?
Because we’re pinning our lives on something being true.
Following Christ means sharing in the sufferings of Christ.
I read this quote this week from George Macdonald
“The son of God suffered unto death not that men might not suffer, but that their sufferings might be like his.”
If Christ has not risen from the dead then our suffering is meaningless.
If Christ has not risen from the dead than neither will we.
We need the gospel like we need blood in our bodies.
SO
“I recieved what I passed onto you as of first importance.”
This is all Paul wants to talk about.
Let’s dive into this statement that Paul makes.
“Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures.”
This statement has the entire biblical story packed into it.
As we read the OT, we see it pointing over and over to the need for a better prophet, a better priest, a better king.
This need for a king is really the heartcry of Israel.
Even their greatest king David brought them sorrow at times.
When Paul says “Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures” he has the enthronement of Jesus as king in his view.
“The first and most important thing to say about the cross in the gospels is that all four gospels see Jesus’s crucifixion as the moment when, and the means by which, the creator God wins the victory over all the forces of evil.
Jesus is crucified precisely as ‘the king of the Jews’; and one of the first things revealed by the resurrection is that this crucifixion was in fact his enthronement.” NT Wright
When Jesus is dying on the cross he utters one word.
Tettelestai: “It’s all done.”
Verb in the perfect sense.
MEANING, the emphasis of the word is not so much on the past action, but on the current state of affairs resulting from the past action.
I think sometimes we conceive of the cross as only being about our sin.
It’s massively about our sin.
But as Paul said, Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures.
Does your gospel start and stop with,
“Jesus died for my sins.”?
Jesus death does several things.
It atones for our sin.
It liberates us from the powers.
As he is lifted up he is being enthroned as the king of the Jews, and the king of the world.
That’s why Jesus is commenting on the current state of affairs while he’s up on the cross.
The current state of affairs is now drastically different on the basis of his death.
Do you ever think of Jesus as your brother?
Like your real flesh and blood older brother that fights your enemies?
“I’m gonna go get my brother.”
“Oh yeah, who’s your brother?”
“The king of the world.”
“How do you know he’s the king of the world?”
“Because he descended into the pit for me removing my guilt before God and then stripped my demonic oppressors and bound them.”
Tetelestai.
It’s ALL done.
But here’s the thing about the gospel.
Remember Christ’s death is absolutely linked to his resurrection because in his resurrection we have the proof that it’s all done.
We have the proof that he has undone death and will extend this same resurrection life to us.
If Jesus is alive, that means he’s defeated the powers.
What does that mean for us?
This is why Paul makes a point of listing all the people that saw the resurrected Christ.
500 of them.
And he says their still alive.
If this was some hoax being pulled than the apostles would have been pulling some “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain” wizard of oz routine.
Nope!
Instead Paul says,
“Hey, in case any of you were wondering if you should stake your life on this Jesus fellow, there’s 500-1000 of us who saw him first hand, and most of us are still alive.”
Chuck Colson Bio - Attorney and special counsel to Richard Nixon, went to prison for his involvement in the watergate scandal. Bad dude.
Became a Christian right before his prison sentence.
Started powerful prison ministries.
He said this:
“I know the resurrection is a fact, and Watergate proved it to me. How? Because 12 men testified they had seen Jesus raised from the dead, then they proclaimed that truth for 40 years, never once denying it. Every one was beaten, tortured, stoned and put in prison. They would not have endured that if it weren't true. Watergate embroiled 12 of the most powerful men in the world-and they couldn't keep a lie for three weeks. You're telling me 12 apostles could keep a lie for 40 years? Absolutely impossible.”
Friends, the resurrection of Jesus Christ of Nazareth from the dead is the best news I could offer you today.
This news meets all of us exactly where we need it most.
For some, you need the balm of the gospel directly in your heart because you need to know, and you need to hear “your sins are forgiven.”.
You might feel like the thief on the cross next to Jesus who is just eeking their way into heaven.
Here’s the thing you need to hear.
There’s no eeking into the kingdom of heaven.
The thief on the cross died that same day as Jesus and then strode into the kingdom with all the authority of a king.
Why?
Because he did it?
Nope.
Because Christ strode out of the grave on strong resurrection legs.
And Christ is his elder brother.
And Christ is your elder brother.
Christ did it for you.
Your sins are forgiven.
And there’s others here who know that their sins are forgiven, but your’re just so, so beat up.
Friends, the resurrection of Jesus Christ of Nazareth from the dead is the best news I could offer you today.
For those in the pit, I’ll remind you of what we learned from Psalm 30 last week.
Christ is weeping with you.
But he’s not leaving you there.
He is undoing the sad things.
“At that moment they heard from behind them a loud noise—a great cracking, deafening noise as if a giant had broken a giant's plate.... The Stone Table was broken into two pieces by a great crack that ran down it from end to end; and there was no Aslan.
"Who's done it?" cried Susan. "What does it mean? Is it more magic?"
"Yes!" said a great voice from behind their backs. "It is more magic." They looked round. There, shining in the sunrise, larger than they had seen him before, shaking his mane (for it had apparently grown again) stood Aslan himself.
"Oh, Aslan!" cried both the children, staring up at him, almost as much frightened as they were glad....
"But what does it all mean?" asked Susan when they were somewhat calmer.
"It means," said Aslan, "that though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know. Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor's stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backward.".
Death itself has started working backwards.
We do live in a presently evil age.
But we live in a part of this age where the strong man, our elder brother, has already defeated our enemies, and he is subjecting every power and dominion under his feet.
Scripture tells us that the last enemy to be destroyed is death.
13 But according to his promise, we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness resides.
New Exodus
Just as God defeated the powers that were oppressing Israel and then brought them out to a new land,
Jesus has defeated the powers that were oppressing you, and is bringing you to a new land.
This new land is nothing short of the new heavens and the new earth.
13 But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness dwells.