Easter Changes Everything

The Resurrection Changes Everything!

Easter Sunday, April 9, 2023

John 20:1-18

Some of you are here this morning because you received one of or several of our Resurrection Sunday Mailers. The last of them declared, “Easter Changed Everything!” And so I have taken that as our theme for this morning.

And I want to ask each of you here this question. “Has Easter, that is the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, changed everything for you?” I’m inviting you to answer that privately for yourself. And for some of you, I imagine the real question is this, “Has the Resurrection of Jesus Christ changed anything for you? Is it relevant at all to your life.” And if you’re really asking those kinds of questions and wondering how it is relevant for you, then I invite you to listen carefully this morning. Because this message is especially for you. I want to explain how and why it should be very relevant to you, and how it can change absolutely everything for you.

So, another question that you might be asking is this, “Well, how would it or should it make a difference for me?” And that’s a great question.

And I have two answers for that question.

The first answer should be obvious. Because of your mortality, the fact that you will one day certainly die. As I’m often fond of saying at this time of year, the last I checked, it’s still true, one out of one people die.”

Now think about this for a moment. You’re doing your best like all of us to make the most of your life, to not merely survive, but to thrive. And yet some day, despite all of your best efforts, despite all the advances of modern science, all the hustle and bustle of life, you know where your life is going to end up. Yes, in a cold hole in the ground. Unless there is some divine intervention of some sort, you, as well as everyone else you know and love is going to end up in the same tragic condition--dead.

And I don’t know about you, but when I think about that reality, apart from God and Jesus, you know what it makes we want to say. I want to agree with the pop singer Brenda Lee when she sang the song, “Is that all there is? Is that all there is? If so, bring in the clowns, amuse me, distract me, do anything to keep me from contemplating the tragic and seemingly meaningless nature of life.”

What I want you to know is that Jesus’ Resurrection can make all the difference in the world and in eternity with regard to the tragic and reality of your certain death. Because of Jesus’ resurrection, you can live again, and live forever if you respond as He wants you to.

The second answer to the question, How should Jesus resurrection make a difference for you, has to do with the human condition.

Have you ever noticed that life just isn’t ever quite what you hoped it would be? How rather than there being peace on earth and goodwill toward men, we have powerful nations the world over bristling with hostility toward one another so that today it appears were on the verge of yet another world war, just like 1914 or 1939. And now we’re sitting on a powder keg—many of these nations are armed with weapons of mass destruction. This time it could end civilization and human life.

And then on a more local level, how the moment we begin to believe we can get by without armed policemen, crime takes over, and in certain large cities in America, no one, or their loved ones or their possessions are safe.

Or on a more personal level, there are shattered dreams, broken lives, broken marriages and broken relationships.

What’s the problem? Well, it’s called sin. It’s human nature, according to the Bible. We could say, “We have seen the enemy, and he is us.” The unending self-serving pride that destroys human relationships continues to raise its ugly head in so many circumstances in our personal lives. .

And 2000 years ago there was a man who had all the credentials of the Son of God, who did the things that only God could do, who said only the thing that God could say, who in one weekend solved both of your and my greatest problems. He died on the cross to forgive and deliver us from the consequences and experience of our sins, and he rose again to defeat death, and prove that He was indeed the Savior of the world. His name: Jesus of Nazareth.

His resurrection alone was unique, but he was unique among the very few who have ever been resurrected in this way. He was the only man to ever predict his own resurrection and fulfill it—to the day. More than that, He was the only man in all of history to be raised from the dead never to die again. And finally, He was the only man who claimed that He was the source of resurrection life for every other man who would depend on Him, and He claimed his own resurrection, and the resurrections of others whom He resurrected proved this.