Sunday - Day of Resurrection

There are four major world religions that were founded by famous leaders. Those four are Judaism, Buddhism, Islam, and Christianity. Of these four great religions, with millions of followers, only one of them claims that its founder ever rose from the dead.

The founder of Judaism was Abraham. He died and was buried in Hebron. You can still see his tomb there today—it is called the tomb of the patriarchs and the Arabs and Jews constantly fight over who’s going to be in charge of his bones. No resurrection was ever claimed for Abraham.

Guatama Buddha died in India at the age of 81—his body was cremated. His ashes have never risen from the dead.

Mohammed died in the year 632 A.D. After his death, the caliph who succeeded him said “He who honors Mohammed must know that he is dead.” Mohammed was buried in Medina, Saudi Arabia, and millions of Muslims visit his tomb every year. None of them have ever claimed that he rose from the dead.

Jesus Christ died and was buried in a tomb outside the city of Jerusalem. But he only stayed buried for three days. He rose from the dead on Easter Sunday. The tomb of Jesus is empty. That’s what Easter is all about.

The resurrection is at the center of the Christian faith. In fact, the NT says that if Jesus Christ didn’t rise from the dead, then our faith is futile, and we are of all people most miserable, because we have believed a lie.

But I thank God this morning that Jesus did rise from the dead. And his resurrection is the foundation on which our faith is built.

Why is the resurrection of Jesus so important to a Christian? The Bible gives us seven reasons. And I would invite you to think about those seven reasons with me as you fill in the blanks on the sermon study notes that you’ll find in your bulletin this morning.

The first reason that the resurrection is so important is that it proves that Jesus is the Son of God.

The Apostle Paul, in Romans 1:3–4 tells us that Jesus is both man and God. As far as his humanity was concerned, he was a descendant of David. You could trace his family tree all the way back to King David. And as far as his deity was concerned, he “was declared with power to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead”.

Several months before he was crucified, Jesus said “The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life—only to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again.”

I have stood by the bedside of hundreds of sick and dying people in the hospital. I have conducted dozens of funerals over the past twenty years. I can assure you that no mere human being has the ability to lay his life down and then take it up again. But Jesus did because he is the Son of God.

Not long before his crucifixion, we read in Luke 18:31 that “Jesus took the Twelve aside and told them, “We are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written by the prophets about the Son of Man will be fulfilled. He will be handed over to the Gentiles. They will mock him, insult him, spit on him, flog him and kill him. On the third day he will rise again.”

No ordinary human being could ever make a prediction like that. Jesus knew precisely, in detail, what was going to happen to him. He knew that he would be crucified. But he also knew that he would rise again. The resurrection proves that he was the Son of God.

Secondly, the resurrection is important because it confirms that the Bible is the Word of God.

There are many prophecies in the OT which predict that the Messiah—the anointed one from God—would be killed and then be brought back to life. Prophecies like that made by King David in…

Psalm 16:10 …you will not abandon me to the grave, nor will you let your Holy One see decay.

Now David was not talking about himself. David died and was buried. You can go and see his tomb in Jerusalem today. No, David was not speaking about himself—he was looking ahead to the Messiah and predicting that the Messiah would rise from the dead.

The great prophet Isaiah, who lived 700 years before Christ, told us how the Messiah was going to suffer and be offered up as a sacrifice for sin. Yet he wasn’t going to stay dead…

Isaiah 53:10 …it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer, and though the Lord makes his life a guilt offering, he will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand. After the suffering of his soul, he will see the light of life and be satisfied.

There are many other prophecies in the Scriptures concerning the death and resurrection of the Messiah—prophecies which were written hundreds of years before Jesus came, yet prophecies which were fulfilled down to the smallest detail in the life of Christ. In fact, there are over 300 distinct predictions in the OT which were literally fulfilled by Jesus.

Now the mathematical odds against all those prophecies being fulfilled by chance in the life of just one man who lived several hundred years later are astronomical. It’s impossible that these things happened by chance. God had his hand in it. And the resurrection confirms that the Bible is the Word of God.

Third reason for the importance of the resurrection: It announces the coming judgment of God.

Most people believe in God. But the God they believe in is a distant God who is not necessarily interested in the day-to-day details of their lives. He’s remote. He’s disinterested. He’s got other things to do. At least that’s the way most people live and what most people would like to believe.

But that is not the God that the Bible presents to us. The God of the Bible is a very personal God. He is vitally interested in all of the creatures that he has created. And he is a moral God. He cares very much about justice and good and evil. He has the highest standards for these things.

And the Bible says that one day, he is going to judge us on the basis of how we’ve lived up to those standards. And he’s going to let Jesus be the judge. Listen to this verse from Acts 17:31…

For God has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising that man from the dead.

You know who he’s talking about, don’t you? He’s talking about Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ, who has risen from the dead, is going to come on that appointed day as a judge. And the Bible describes that judgment day in Rev. 20…

Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. (That would be the judge) Earth and sky fled from his presence, and there was no place for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books.

Now I don’t know how you feel about that, but to me, that sounds pretty scary! How would you like to be standing there before a holy God having him examine everything you ever did? Every thought. Every action. Every word.

Do you think your life would stand up to that kind of scrutiny? Do you think you’d pass? Do you think you could offer some excuses for why you did the bad things that you did? Do you think you could talk God into maybe accepting the idea that your good deeds outweighed your bad deeds?

Listen, let me tell you—the fact that there are any bad deeds in your life makes you guilty in His sight. We all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

None of us will “pass” the judgment of God. So you don’t want to be standing there on that day. You don’t want to be standing before God’s great white throne of judgment. How do you get out of it? You get out of it by becoming a child of God.

That’s the fourth reason why Jesus’ resurrection is so important. It guarantees the salvation of the child of God.

Jesus died to cover our sins. He took our guilt, our sin, our punishment on himself. He stood in our place before God’s throne of judgment. He was our stand-in; he was our substitute.

But just knowing that as a dry theological fact doesn’t do you any good. You have to accept it as applying to you personally. You have to take that fact off the page of the Bible and into your life personally. And you have to start believing that Jesus’ death is the only thing that’s ever going to cover your sins in God’s sight.

That’s what it means to receive Jesus as your personal Savior. The Bible says “to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.”

Have you ever done that? Have you ever told God that you want to trust Jesus to be your Savior? You can do that right now, you know. You don’t have to go to church a certain number of times per year. You don’t have to clean up your life, first.

That’s the whole point—Jesus wants to clean up your life for you. And what he’s waiting for is for you to hand him your life. Would you like to do that right now?

Now you might be saying, “Okay, I see why Jesus’ death is so important to my salvation. But why is his resurrection so important to it?” Well, I’ll tell you.

When Jesus died, remember, he died as a sin-bearer. He was carrying your sins, and my sins, and the sins of the whole world on his shoulders. He experienced what it meant to be separated from God.

Now if the whole story ended there, and Jesus died and was buried and never rose again, what would that mean? It would mean that death had beaten him. Even though he purchased our forgiveness, and got us off the hook with God so to speak, the cost of doing that was just too much for him, and so he died and stayed dead.

That would mean that death was victorious. And if death was still on its feet at the end of the fight, that would mean that death would still have power over us, wouldn’t it? I mean, if it got Jesus, it would surely get us.

But that’s not what happened. Jesus not only paid for our sin—which is the whole reason death came into being in the first place—Jesus triumphed over death, too. He rose from the dead, and broke its power. And that means that we will one day rise too.

Our salvation is guaranteed. It’s not just for this life. It’s for eternity. Jesus left nothing undone. He took care of everything for us—our sin, our standing with God, and our ultimate victory over death. We don’t have to worry about death anymore.

That’s why the Bible says “if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

2 Corinthians 4:14 because we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead will also raise us with Jesus and present us…in his presence.

So our salvation is guaranteed, and so is where we’ll spend eternity. That’s the fifth reason why the resurrection is so important—it assures of an eternal inheritance with God. Listen to what the Bible says—I’m reading from 1 Peter 1:3…

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade—kept in heaven for you…

When Jesus rose from the dead, he took his seat at the right hand of God—the place of privilege and authority. That’s because he is God’s appointed heir as it says in Hebrews 1. Everything that belongs to God belongs to him.

And the exciting thing is that he wants to share all that with you and me. God says that he has made us co-heirs with Christ.

Romans 8:17 Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ.

I don’t know about you, but I’m looking forward to my inheritance! But what about us in the meantime? Is being a Christian just good for later? Is it just “pie in the sky by and by?” Or does Jesus’ resurrection have some present benefits to us? Well, the last two reasons are all about that.

The sixth reason that the resurrection is important is that it is the basis for our access to the throne of God right now.

When you pray, do you ever wonder if God is listening to you? How do you know for sure that God is hearing your prayers? The Bible tells us how we can be sure. Listen to what it says in Romans 8:34…

Christ Jesus, who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.

The word “intercede” means “to step in on behalf of someone.” So when we pray, as children of God, it is not only our prayers that are going to the throne of God—Jesus is there praying for us, too. The Bible says that He is our priest, our mediator. We don’t need a human priest to pray for us. We don’t need the saints to pray for us. Because Jesus is praying for us.

He always lives to intercede for us, as it says in Hebrews 7, and he always lives because he rose from the dead. He has a permanent priesthood; a priesthood that is based on the power of an indestructible life.

Isn’t it good to know that Jesus is praying for you? Sometimes we fail in prayer, but Jesus never fails. He is always keeping us before the throne of God.

Finally, Jesus’ resurrection is important to us today because it enables us to live victoriously for God. The Christian life is a life meant to be lived with Jesus’ resurrection power in us. The Bible says in Romans 8…

And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you.

Jesus’ resurrection power gives us the power to live life the way God wants us to. Remember when Jesus rose from the dead, he left the old grave clothes behind? Peter and John went into the tomb on Easter Sunday morning and that’s all they found—the grave clothes.

In the same way, when you become a Christian, you are born again. You are made alive with Christ. But we don’t lose our grave clothes right away. The old ways, the attitudes—the habits and behaviors of the old nature still cling to us. They are like old grave clothes. But with Jesus’ power, we can put them off and put on the new grace clothes that he has for us.

That’s what Paul meant when he said in Ephesians 4 that we must put off the old self and put on the new self. And the only way to do that is with the resurrection power of Christ.

We’ve learned that the resurrection of Jesus is vitally important because:

• It proves that Jesus is the Son of God

• It confirms that the Bible is the Word of God

• It announces the coming judgment of God

• It guarantees the salvation of the child of God

• It assures us of an eternal inheritance with God

• It is the basis of our access to the throne of God

• It enables us to live victoriously for God

And all these things are tremendously encouraging. But it may be this morning that, in spite of these wonderful truths, you find yourself discouraged. You look around you and you see that the world is still a painful place. The headlines in the news this week confirm that there’s still a lot of heartache and suffering out there. Maybe you’re going through some of it yourself.

I want to remind you of something—the resurrection marked a great turning point in the story of what God is doing in our world. But the story is not over yet. There’s still more to come.