He’s Alive

He’s Alive

Matthew 28:1-10

I’d like to go back to the last point in our message “The Revelation of Easter.”

As I think about this special day, I wonder what has happened where it’s stopped being a sacred assembly. The truth is that we have been invaded. Not by a terrorist organization or a foreign nation, but rather by a bunny causing the meaning of Jesus’s resurrection to become a little bit fuzzy.

The word Easter is derived from the Anglo-Saxon goddess of the Spring known as “Eastre,” and our current celebration with the bunny and eggs comes from the festival that was held in her honor during this time. But this goddess worship goes much further back to Diana of the Greeks, or even earlier to Ishtar of the Babylonians.

But this leads us to the question, “How did such a pagan holiday become so entwined with the Christian celebration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ?” And the answer isn’t pretty.

When Christian missionaries went into other countries to evangelize, they encountered celebrations from the religions of those particular areas. And what these missionaries did was to incorporate these religious celebrations into the holy days of the church in order to evangelize the local population.

In this case they connected the day Jesus rose from the dead, what we call Resurrection Sunday, with this pagan festival of Eastre, which was held during this time.

But this is not the way the first church celebrated this day.

Today Easter is more about a bunny rabbit who lay decorative eggs. And what has always bothered me is how did they get a bunny to lay an egg. Now, I’ve laid an egg, metaphorically speaking, but a rabbit?

Actually, this goes back to a German myth where the goddess Eastre changed a bird into a bunny, therefore it could lay eggs.

But whatever happened to the day where we celebrated Jesus’s resurrection, where He died upon the cross, was buried, and on the third day rose from the dead., which is what we are celebrating here today.

So, what I would like to do in our time together is look at what the angel said on this very morning almost two thousand years ago. He said, “He’s not here, He’s alive.”

Read Matthew 28:1-10

Now, on this day the early church would greet one another with “Christ is Risen,” and the response would be, “He is risen indeed.”

Yet, today, such a greeting is hardly if ever heard, rather it’s “Happy Easter,” and I even catch myself saying the same thing because it has been so ingrained in our culture.

The problem is that most people don’t believe in the resurrection, but they do believe in a bunny that lays eggs. Go figure. But the modern-day celebration of Easter has no connection with the empty tomb and the miracle of the resurrection.

The real reason we celebrate this day is because Jesus Christ was crucified and died upon the cross. His body was laid in a tomb, and three days later He rose from the dead and is alive.

The resurrection miracle is Jesus’s triumph over death. The tomb is empty. Jesus is alive. This is why we gather to celebrate. And in full accordance with Jesus’s command, we are to tell the world of this great and glorious event.

This was the message of the early church, and it is the same message that needs to be told today. The Apostle Paul sums up this message in his letter to the Roman church.

“Just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.” (Romans 6:4b NLT)

What I’d like to do this morning is to look what the two essential truths Paul speaks about in this verse.

Two Essential Truths

1. Christ Rose from The Dead

“Christ was raised from the dead”

Some may question my use of the word, “truth.” First, can I say that the resurrection is a fact? Did Jesus die and rise from the dead? Some say its superstition, supposition, or a theory, but not the truth.

What I’d like to point out at this juncture is that in the entire New Testament the resurrection is never debated. They knew that Jesus rose from the dead. You’ll find no lengthy defense of this fact, nor any attempts to vindicate the details of the gospel account by the early church fathers. Both friend and foe alike accepted it as fact.

If there had been some question concerning the truth of these statements, then those who did not believe could have easily gone and produced the body, or at least questioned the eyewitnesses to find either fault or flaw. But there was nothing, and that’s because it was true and not some lie or fantasy.