Easter MORNING MESSAGE: John Cline
Text: 1st Corinthians 15:1-5
I became a Christian when I was 19 years of age. I had grown up in the church, my father was a pastor, and I always enjoyed the pageantry and festiveness of the two major Christian seasons, Christmas and Easter. But that first year after becoming a Christian everything changed for me. First, Christmas had meaning beyond gifts and food in a way I had never realized before. I realized for the first time, the miracle and necessity of Jesus’ virgin birth, that God had sent His only son to us so that we could be experience salvation in this life, that Jesus had promised to be with us at all times, that we could enter into God’s presence at any time with no hesitation of embarrassment or feelings of guilt, and that salvation would mean spending eternity in God’s presence in heaven – each of those theological truths hit me in new and powerful ways that first Christmas as a believer. After that first Christmas as a Christian, I thought nothing could beat it. But I was wrong for three months later, though, I heard a speaker at a Men’s Breakfast say things that changed my life entirely. I am not quoting him verbatim but here is what he said: “The most important day in the Christian calendar is not Christmas just as the day the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 in WWII was not the most important day in human history, nor was the day in 1492 when Christopher Columbus discovered the Americas, nor was the day William the Conqueror of France conquered England in 1066, nor was any other day that people normally point to as being all important. No, the most important day in the Christian calendar, and the most important day in human history, was that first Easter Sunday in 33 A.D. when God raised Jesus back to life from the dead. Before that day, humans were stuck in slavery to sin, entrapped by their own guilt, attempting to please the gods by doing all sorts of oblations or bringing all kinds of offerings, or doing good deeds in the hopes of satisfying the Almighty. But their lives were pitiable, without hope, stuck in cycles of despair. The resurrection of Jesus changed all that and people’s lives, and the world itself, were transformed, and that is why Easter is the most important day in human history.” I was blown away. Nic Bertsch wrote:
“It is a sad reality that the culture in which we find ourselves is extremely ignorant about the most important event in human history. The resurrection of Jesus started a movement that has impacted more people and cultures and countries than anything else. Starting in Israel, Christianity spread like wildfire. By the 300’s A.D., the pluralistic, thoroughly depraved Roman Empire was converted, without any bloodshed except that of the Christians themselves. The spread continued across the Middle East, Europe and the entire world. It came to be the foundation on which our western culture was shaped. All the freedoms and values we have come to enjoy are based on Christian values. Things like religious freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of association, women’s equality, and social justice don’t come from Islam or Hinduism, and they certainly don’t come from atheism. All these things are rooted in a Christian worldview, and that worldview comes from the fact that 2000 years ago, Jesus was raised from the dead and a group of his followers radically proclaimed that truth.” Nic Bertsch continues on, “Many radical skeptics of the resurrection, once they were able to put their anti-supernatural bias aside and stop assuming that it couldn’t have happened, have come to believe it actually did happen. It seems to me that accepting that the death and resurrection of Jesus as true is not as hard as people claim it is. We believe all kinds of things with much less evidence than we have for the claim that Jesus rose from the dead. The people Jesus had trained to follow after Him could have said He had been raised “in spirit”, or that He was alive “in their hearts”, as many people today do in an attempt to diminish the importance of Christ’s resurrection. But Jesus’ first followers didn’t do that. Instead, they claimed Jesus was physically alive. They claimed to have seen Him, talked to Him, touched Him, eaten with Him, and they challenged people to prove them wrong. All that they and their spouses and children got from their claim was persecution, hostility, and even death. The early followers of Jesus – over 500 of them – saw Jesus in his resurrected form and they were willing to die for that truth. They never recanted their story. They earned absolutely no financial gain from this faith; indeed we see just the opposite, they lost everything except their joy and the hope of heaven. After the resurrection, they lived for Christ with reckless abandon. As a reward for their efforts those early Christians were, stoned to death, thrown to the lions, tortured and crucified. All that they had to do was admit that their claims were not real, that they had made it up. But they wouldn’t, because they couldn’t. And it wasn’t just the disciples of Jesus either. Hostile people like Jesus’ brother James, plus Saul of Tarsus said the same thing. There was no reason for this at all, unless they believed Jesus had actually risen from the dead. When Jesus appeared alive three days after being executed, it showed His disciples several things. It showed them that He was God as He claimed to be. It showed them that death was not the end. And it showed them that the price had been paid for our debt with God, and that all we needed to do was accept the pardon. It was that understanding that transformed them into men and women who would proclaim this message to their dying breath. It was that message that started the movement that changed the face of the world. That is why the death and resurrection of Jesus is the most important event in human history, and that is why Easter really matters.”
The apostle Paul certainly agreed. In fact, he said that the events of Easter are of “first importance”. Listen to what he preached & wrote,
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. By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain. For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas (Peter), and then to the Twelve. (1 Corinthians 15:1-5)
In saying the message that he preached was “of first importance”, Paul noted four aspects to that message: First, Jesus died for our sins according to prophecies found throughout the Old Testament.
Second, Jesus was buried. There is a Muslim sect which claims that Jesus, though he was crucified, did not die on the cross but merely passed out and later revived while in the cool air of the tomb. This is nonsense. Jesus’ death was absolute, and he was buried in the tomb of another man, a Pharisee named Joseph of Arimathea who had been a secret follower of Jesus until he witnessed his kangaroo court trial and shameful death, and it all made sense to Joseph of Arimathea. Jesus was indeed who he claimed to be: the Messiah and the Son of God. Joseph may not have realized it when he offered his tomb for Jesus’ burial but, as things turned out, the tomb had only been borrowed. It was used for a very short time as Jesus rose from the dead on the third day and so the tomb would have reverted to Joseph!
In the Greek language in which the New Testament was originally written, the grammar is very revealing in that both of those first two truths about Jesus, that he died and was buried, use the so-called ‘aorist’ tense, the tense used when referring to an event that happened one-time past event. But then Paul switches the tense when speaking about the third and fourth aspects to his message of “first importance” to the ‘perfect’ tense, the tense used when describing a past event that is also true today. Think about the sun in the sky. Let’s choose a random day, say, my birthday on March 11th – the sun shone on that day. The shining of the sun that day was true as a past event back on March 11th, but guess what? The sun is still shining today! That is how the ‘perfect’ tense works. It describes a past event which has a present reality. In other words, Jesus is still alive today!
The fourth aspect of “first importance” to Paul’s message was that Jesus “appeared” to over 500 people. Paul’s usage of the perfect tense means that Jesus is still appearing to people today, a truth experienced daily around the world, a truth I first experienced when I was 19 years old. Sometimes, he appears physically though most of the time he comes experientially, speaking to our souls but the difference Jesus makes in people’s lives when they truly encounter him cannot be overstated. If Jesus had not been raised from the dead, our faith would be worthless. We’d still bear the guilt of our sins. We would have no hope of God’s forgiveness. Eternal salvation and everlasting life would be just wishful thinking. The great music inspired by God within us would have never been written. Joyful assurance would be no more. Those blessings are real because Jesus died, was buried, was resurrected, appeared to over 500 people and is still appearing today. This is the message of “first importance”. All who have encountered Jesus cannot be dissuaded of these truths.
In 1930 the Soviet Communist leader Nikolai Bukharin journeyed from Moscow to Kiev. His mission was to address a huge assembly and his subject was “atheism.” For a solid hour he aimed his heavy artillery at Christianity, hurling argument after argument, heaped on top of ridicule. At last, he finished and viewed what he assumed would be the smoldering ashes of his captive audiences’ ruined faith. “Are there any questions?” Bukharin asked. A solitary man rose and asked permission to speak. He mounted the platform and moved close to the Communist leader. The audience was breathlessly silent as the man surveyed them first to the right, then to the left. At last, he shouted the ancient Easter greeting, “CHRIST IS RISEN!” The vast assembly arose as one and the response came crashing like the sounds of an avalanche, “HE IS RISEN, INDEED!” Nikolai Bukharin slunk away. There is nothing like Easter! It cannot be disproven or argued away for truly Jesus’ resurrection day was the most important day in human history!
