The Significance of the Resurrection

The resurrection of Jesus is a great victory for us. There is so much that depends on the success of Jesus' life and especially in the event of the resurrection. When we think of Jesus' life, oftentimes our culture finds the most significant thing to celebrate is his birth. But in the days shortly after Jesus left, his birth was a very insignificant event. The celebration of Jesus' birthday did not occur in the Christian community with any significance until much later. What was the point of their celebration was the Easter story, the story of Jesus' death and primarily his resurrection. We seldom mention this except on the day of Easter, and it is not a huge celebration for us except Easter egg hunts because people do not value the event of resurrection like the scripture sees the value in it. It is such a significant thing that I want to turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 15 where Paul talks about the impact that the resurrection has on our preaching and teaching. Chapter 15 of 1 Corinthians verse 12, Paul tells us that everything in the whole story of Jesus' life hinges on the resurrection, not his birth and not even the crucifixion of Jesus but the resurrection. But if it is preached in verse 12 of chapter 15, but if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead? There were some who were obviously teaching this or saying it, so Paul is directly attacking the attitude that would reject the idea of resurrection. Resurrection is an overwhelming idea. It is hard to imagine that someone could be raised from the dead. We are used to thinking of it that way because we have it. You have to remember up to the time that Jesus was raised, no one had ever been resurrected from the dead. No one. There had been some people who had been resuscitated from the dead and came back to live in this world to die again, but no one had ever experienced what Jesus did. And when you have never had this ever happen in the history of the world, to begin to claim that such a thing took place was astonishing to them. So even some of the followers of Christ weren't able to accept the idea that Christ was raised from the dead to live forever. So Paul is trying to address that issue. If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. He is arguing for the reality of resurrection itself. You remember the Jews were divided on the idea of whether or not a person could be resurrected. The Sadducees denied that reality and the Pharisees affirmed the reality of the possibility of resurrection. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless. He places such significance on the resurrection of Christ that the proclamation of the gospel, everything that Christ said and did, is useless unless the resurrection really occurred. Now why would it be useless? Because Jesus said, I'm going to die and after three days I'll be raised again. How can you rely on the worthiness of somebody's preaching if what they've said about this significant thing actually never occurred? So the validity of the preaching of Jesus is tied up in the reality of what he said was going to happen to him really being the truth. If he's not raised, our preaching is useless and so is our faith. The faith that we have is in Christ and we realize that Christ's presence in our lives by means of the Holy Spirit. Remember when Jesus said that he was going to be leaving, he said, I'm sending you the Holy Spirit and he will continue to teach you the things that I want you to know. The Holy Spirit does not teach the things he thinks of, he is teaching the things that I have said to you while I'm here and I'm guiding you through the Holy Spirit even after I'm gone. So our trust in Christ, if he's not alive anymore, has no value whatsoever for us to be able to live. More than that, if those aren't bad enough, more than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God. If we have said that he was raised from the dead, then we have become liars instead of preachers of the truth. So our message, the message that we preached about the resurrection and his being alive is a lie. For we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But if he did not raise him, in fact, the dead are not raised. So if Christ's resurrection has not occurred, then there is no resurrection for anyone. For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile, or it's idle, or it's useless. The same kind of idea that's found in the word up here, the preaching is useless, it's a different Greek word, but the same kind of idea. It means it's useless, it's used in the first one, it's translated the same in that way. Here it's translated futile, in some translations it's translated futile in both places. But here it means there is no value to it, that it doesn't have any consequence. And you are still in your sins. Now, when we think of Christ dying for our sins, we think that his death on the cross is sacrificial for us, and that is what makes it able for him to forgive our sins. But here Paul ties the death of Christ to the resurrection. If there is no resurrection, then his death on the cross is useless with regard to our salvation, so that the sacrifice for ourselves is made because Christ dies on the cross and is raised again to enact the forgiveness. For if you trust in Christ, if you say I give my life to Christ, and he's not there, who are you giving your life to? There is no Lord to be able to receive you after you've transferred your life's control to him. So we are left in our sin without the hope of finding a different kind of life. Then those who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men. This is a powerful instruction about the importance and significance of the resurrection. Paul ties everything that we think about, the forgiveness of sin, our life forever in heaven, all of these things are tied to this issue of the resurrection. Now let's go back to Matthew chapter 28. In chapter 27, a great effort has been made to make sure that Jesus' death and burial are secured. There is a test given to him to make sure that he died, he wasn't still alive. They put him in a tomb, and the tomb was sealed, a stone rolled in front of it, and it was sealed so that it would be evident if anyone rolled the stone away. The Jewish people had heard about Jesus' prophecy that he would be raised from the dead, and they wanted to make sure that there was not any way in which his own soldiers or his followers could capture him, take him out of the tomb, and take him off somewhere and claim that he was still alive. So they went to great effort, the Jewish people, to make sure that this couldn't happen. Now you can see the significance of God allowing that to take place. He wants to have every kind of evidence possible in the world to say that the resurrection actually took place. He wants his enemies to be able to say, it happened, we don't like it, but it happened. So all the way through the last part of chapter 27, there is one thing after another to verify this. He has proven that he is dead, people, soldiers test him. Now someone comes to get his body, they are going to put it in a tomb, and they are going to seal the tomb so that no one could get in there and get his body and take him out. And then his arch enemies go to Pilate and say, now we want you to take some soldiers and station soldiers there all the time so that no one can take him away. What God is doing is allowing their opposition to him and their fear of what might take place if Jesus was still alive to provide an authentic certainty that the resurrection actually occurs. What they thought they were doing was making absolutely certain that they could not take his body out and they could prove that he was dead. But their efforts to do that becomes a tool for God as a way by which even the most blind of the pagans and the most ardent enemies of his would have to say, Jesus is no longer here, he has risen. Now verse chapter 28 verse 1, After the sabbath had dawned on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb. You will notice at the end of chapter 27, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary were sitting across from the tomb watching it. They were the two people, not the twelve disciples or apostles who were there, the eleven. They were not there watching, but here are two women sitting looking at the tomb could be on the lookout and would not stir any kind of concern about them being the people who are trying to steal it. If some of the disciples had been there watching the tomb, the soldiers would have said these are the guys that are going to try to get him and it would have caused some disturbance. But the two ladies coming there would provide a cover so that they could watch and be sure that nothing takes place and yet know what was going on. If the disciples had wanted to have a testimony about Jesus' resurrection, the very worst thing they could have done was to have sent women to guard the tomb and to come and testify openly that Jesus was raised from the dead. In the biblical times, the testimony of a woman was not allowed in court. They were seen as unreliable witnesses. So the two ladies that were there could not have been part of a scheme by which the disciples were going to say as soon as the resurrection takes place, we will bring our star witnesses in here to say to you, yes, this resurrection actually occurred because their testimony would have been of no value to them. But they are here to witness what is taking place and they are here to let us know what did occur and they are in this story to show us that the idea of the disciples doing something to make this resurrection appear to be real would have been very phony. It is not the way you would do it. But there they are looking at the tomb. It is an interesting thing that the first people of the disciples that Jesus appears to are women. The Bible continually shows us that women played an important part in the life and ministry of Jesus. We talked about in chapter 27 how the women who took care of the disciples and Jesus were there. They traveled apparently with them. Not only were they caring for them in their life but here at the last days of Jesus' ministry, his time here on earth, the women are a significant part of the story of Jesus' ministry. The Bible is going to be a powerful force all through world history to bring an attention to the value of women. In the countries where Christianity is powerful and strong, the social standing of women is always elevated because the Bible pronounces this as being a part of God's plan. Both man and woman are made by God and seen throughout the scriptures with equality. So here in this story, remember now this is the most important event that ever took place in Jesus' life. Paul is saying the women are the key ingredients in discovering the resurrection. Verse 2, it says there was a violent earthquake. Now we don't know exactly what happened here. If you look in chapter 27 verse 1, verse 51, at that moment a curtain in the temple was torn in two from top to bottom and the earth shook and the rock split and tombs broke open and the bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. They came out of the tombs and after Jesus' resurrection they went to the holy city and appeared to many people. Now we know whenever there is a major earthquake, and the word violent here is a word that describes a powerful and strong, is like any way we could say violent or powerful or strong. We know that any time there is a very strong and powerful earthquake, there is always something else whether they call it an afterquake, aftershock. So what is probably described here is a violent earthquake that takes place on the day of Jesus' death and then this at the time of resurrection is another aftershock that comes that is also very powerful. So in this powerful event, the first one that took place, the tombs were opened and in the second one, the aftershock that takes place, the tombs are opened again. Now remember often times we see a picture of Jesus' tomb as if it is in a cave and there is a big rock like a wheel that is rolled in front of it. More likely what was placed in front of Jesus' tomb was a giant round rock or a rock shaped in some way like that so it was rolled up to the front of the tomb and it was sealed around it. So whenever the ground would shake violently, it would be more likely to be able to roll away from the edge of the opening of the tomb. So the violent earthquake occurs. Now the violent earthquake that spoke about earlier was one way of authenticating or showing God's reaction to the death of Christ. It was like God is in heaven and he says you have killed my son and he takes the earth and shakes it like he is upset about it. That's what it kind of indicates. Here again this event reflects God's attention to what's going on. Here is my son in this tomb and I shake the earth again. It's a way by which the Bible lets us know that God is actively engaged in what is going on in this event so that the natural order itself, you'll look many times in the Bible where powerful things are done by God, he uses this order in times and ways to show his own presence. And here he does the same thing. And why would he do this in the natural order? Well we don't know how to make earthquakes. You can't make one if you want to. You can stomp your feet, you can jump off the roof of your house and the earth does not quake. These acts in the natural order are God's way of saying I have done this. We can't figure out how to make an earthquake even with all the advanced technology we have. Maybe fracking is getting us there but we are not even sure about that yet. But God is saying here is something I am doing. And God rolls back the stone like he did it with his own hand. Now the tomb is violently shaken. An angel of the Lord now comes down. An extraterrestrial being, someone that is not a human being in this scene, a messenger from God, the word angel simply means a messenger, so God sends one of his own personal people down to be there in the event of what is taking place. Everything around the resurrection focuses on God's presence and action. Now here is an oddity about the resurrection. We have no clue in the stories about the resurrection or in the Bible about how it happened. As critical as this event was, we have no idea what took place. Now if we were writing this story, we would want to see the tomb roll open and a man bound like a mummy and all this cloth tottering out there and breaking his bonds loose like a hero would do. It would be the most dramatic and powerful thing in the world. But God does not let anyone see this take place. He lets us see the result of it. A dead body is no longer in that tomb that has been sealed and nowhere it could go. We don't know, for example, if Jesus was brought to life inside the sealed tomb and then taken to heaven or moved out of that sealed tomb or after the stone was rolled away if somehow or other he got out that way. We have no idea. And the Bible doesn't talk about it and the people that write the scriptures are not even, it seems, curious about this. What we do know is that he was laying in the tomb dead. Everyone knew that he was dead. The people who were soldiers from Rome testified to that. The people who wrapped his body testified to that. Soldiers who stabbed him testified to that. And now his body from the sealed tomb just isn't there. That's all we get. And the Bible doesn't write now that he was dead or what happened. We have no idea. The resurrection is a divine act of God in which we have not been given any information about the how-to that God used to make it take place. God announces through the natural order that something is being done by his power. He sends a messenger from heaven to come and be there in the event to announce it. The angel sits on the stone that's been rolled back. His appearance is like lightning. Oftentimes in the Bible the angels come and they have an appearance that's different than people. A bright light or a shining person is sometimes described as the way the angels appear to be. Sometimes the angels come and they're simply like people. But sometimes they come and they have this extraordinary otherworldly appearance. As a way of marking they're not ordinary people. Sometimes they do come and they're only known as ordinary when they talk or when the event is over. But in these God is wanting to announce, I am here and I am doing something that is extraordinary. So the angel now in this circumstance is bright like a lightning, hard to look at. All of this around what the ladies see when they come. The guards who are set to guard this tomb were so afraid that they shook and fainted like they were dead. Now here's the irony of this story. Jesus was in the tomb. The ladies came to see the dead body of Jesus but he was alive and gone. And what they found were men laying beside the tomb who appeared to be dead who had never been in the tomb. So the dead people were the guards and Jesus was alive and the guards were supposed to be alive to make sure the dead guy didn't get away. And the scene sort of flips for them. What happens in the story is a graphic description that the ladies come, they are eyewitnesses to something that only God could do. The earth shook, the stone rolled, and a messenger from God was there and the people who were the arch enemies dedicated to say this man has stayed in the tomb, we're so overwhelmed with what happened that we would say they were speechless, we would say maybe they fainted because of their fear or the terror of what was going on, but they were there, they observed everything that happened and they were laying as if they were dead. The resurrection has occurred. Everyone knows that Jesus was in the tomb but now everyone knows he's not there anymore. This is the critical message that Paul says is essential to us. What it means is that right now in our universe Jesus is alive. You can say Lord Jesus and he hears you. Now you can imagine that you're talking to yourself and people sometimes get to the place where their perception of reality is such that they talk to imaginary friends and some people will think that's what you're doing when you say Lord Jesus and you address him, that you're talking to someone that doesn't exist. But our personal experience, not just for me individually, I mean as I walk into a room and Carl's sitting there and he says, do you see that horse over there in the sofa? And I look over there and there's no horse and I say oh Carl's gone over the edge. And if someone else comes in a room and he says see that horse over there on the sofa and they look and we look at each other and say there's no horse on the sofa, we agree to that. It has verification to the absence of what he sees. We heard this morning from Chris talking about going on this trip with young adults and having God talk to him. How does he know it's God? He knew that. The same way many other people have experienced knowing that God is talking to them. And because of our vast repetitive experience, we can say it is verified by our own relationship with the risen Christ. I wanted him to tell the part about why he was baptized and he told me he wanted his family to come and watch him be baptized. Isn't that a good thing? Good thing. And he said I couldn't ever get my mother to come and my family to come all on the same day. And he said then I was thinking about this and I realized that I was putting this off and blaming my family for not coming. And I was putting off what God wanted me to do. I really would like my family to come. I really would want them to. But I realized that I was disobeying God by trying to do something good. Have my family come to see me baptized. So when I realized that, I knew what I had to do. See that's so important because it verifies for all of us that God does guide us. He is alive. He is here in this world and we can talk to him. The story in the scripture would simply be a story if it weren't true that we actually connect with Christ. He's living. So that the verification of this story is not found here in the way it was before the people but for us it's simply another one of those evidences that allows us to believe that we're not crazy. Jesus actually is alive and he talks to us. This story simply helps us to look back and say now we can see that even the people who were there and eyewitnesses can verify that he was dead and is now alive. And I know from my own experience that whether he was dead one time or not that he is now alive and talking to me. Our ability to find direction, the promise God makes, I will guide you, I'll provide for you, I'll protect you, all of those things are things that Jesus does for us. And we can't even claim the fulfillment of the covenant apart from a living Lord who is able to do for us what he promised he would do. So what Paul is talking about is the resurrection is the heart of everything we do. We have two women who were there to see what happened. We have two of his enemies who were there to see what happened. And we have an angel sent from heaven who was there to verify what happened. And we, in our own life of walking with God, can say it's true. Jesus Christ arose from the dead. Let's pray. What a wonderful encouraging thing this is. Sometimes when we read these stories we think, wow, what it would have been like to have walked with you by the water, saw you feed people with a little bit of fish and bread. But then, if we were at the backside of the 5,000 men trying to look over their head and see who you were and where you were, trying to get in line to say something to you, we just realize we have the best thing. Each one of us individually can talk to you. In each one of us, in this group, every one of us can talk to you and have a personal conversation. Whereas if we were humans and you were here as a human, we couldn't talk at the same time. Your resurrection gives us the guarantee of your living presence in every part of our life, everywhere we are, in every circumstance we face. So we come today to give thanks to you for this evidence that allows us to build on that, the reality. Jesus Christ, our Lord, died on the cross for our sins, and He was raised from the dead to live forever. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Both parents and a grandmother. Pardon?