Jesus, the Resurrection and the Life
--John 11:17-27
Today is the holiest, most inspiring, reassuring, and joyous day in the Church year and for all human history. Regrettably for centuries our Western culture has secularized and obscured its true meaning and significance. As Christians it is we must always “keep the main thing the main thing,” and the main thing is the Resurrection of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
The Resurrection of Jesus Christ is the central tenet of our Christian faith, but it has become lost in Christendom and our secular world through the pagan practices associated with the day the world has come to call Easter. Our motives have been pure and innocent, but our practices often fail to give our Resurrected Lord the honor and glory which is His and His alone.
The very name Easter, along with its traditional customs, is rooted in pagan practices that have no kinship with the Resurrection of Jesus. In his work On the Reckoning of Time, eighth century English Historian The Venerable Bede explains the name Easter. Its etymology comes from Eastre, the name of the Teutonic Goddess of Spring to whom the month of April was dedicated.
The historic origins, however, go much deeper into ancient history, for Eastre had her counterparts in all societies. She was called Aprhodite by the Greeks, Ashtoreth by the Old Testament Syrians and Phoenicians, Isis by the Egyptians, Ishtar by the Assyrians and Babylonians, Diana by the Ephesians of the New Testament, Venus by the Romans, and Ostara by the ancient Norse and Germans.
As the goddess of fertility associated with bountiful crops and human procreation, her worship has always been lewd, immoral, indecent, lascivious, obscene, vile, and wicked. She has always venerated promiscuity, sensual love, depravity, temple prostitution, and sexual orgies. Because they fell into such sinful idolatry as this, The LORD allowed Israel to be conquered by Assyria and Judah by Babylon.
Today this same pagan Goddess of Spring is worshiped by Wiccans and Neopagans worldwide. It is from this background that our culture has incorporated the symbols of the Easter bunny and the Easter egg both of which are connected with fertility rituals and the Mother Goddess Ostara, Ashtoreth, Ishtar, Eastre, or what ever name she may be called. Wal Mart and Wall Street exalt the Easter bunny and Easter eggs, but ignore Him Who is the Reason for the Season.
Therefore, many contemporary Christians, including me as your pastor, prefer to designate today as Resurrection Sunday rather than Easter, for our sole purpose is to praise and worship the Only True and Living God for the Resurrection of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and His victory over sin and death. However, old habits die hard, and you still may hear me from time to time wishing someone a “Happy Easter.” The glory of this day belongs only to Him Who speaks personally to each of us as He did to Martha some two thousand years ago, “I AM the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in Me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die.” Today we celebrate the “Day of Resurrection.” This is our “Blessed Assurance.” This is the reason we must “keep the main thing, the main thing.”
When I was a student at Asbury College in the late 1960s, we used to sing the old Gospel Chorus:
Let’s talk about Jesus
The King of Kings is He,
The Lord of Lords Supreme throughout eternity,
The Great I AM the Way, the Truth, the Life the Door;
Let’s talk about Jesus more and more.
On His Glorious Resurrection Day let us glorify Jesus Who has conquered sin and death and exalt Him as THE GREAT I AM.
In John’s Gospel the pace of Jesus’ Journey to Jerusalem, the Cross, and His Resurrection begins to accelerate. In Chapter 11 Jesus resurrects Lazarus from the dead, a prelude to His own Coming Resurrection. John tells us at the beginning of Chapter Twelve, the occasion when Martha prepares a banquet for Jesus and Mary anoints his feet for burial, that it is now “six days before the Passover.” Then in Chapter Thirteen we are at the Last Supper.
In our text we learn that Lazarus has been buried for four days. Martha runs to meet Jesus upon His arrival and, somewhat disappointed that He had failed to come in time to heal Lazarus of His fatal disease but still declaring her faith, confronts Him, “Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that God will give You whatever You ask.”
Jesus comforts her, “Your brother will rise again.” Then He lovingly speaks these reassuring words, “I AM the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in Me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die.” Today we affirm that He “Is the resurrection and the life.”
In declaring, “I AM the resurrection and the life,” Jesus unequivocally asserts that He is truly God. Remember our Chorus “Let’s Talk About Jesus.” It affirms that Jesus is “The Great I AM.” There can be no doubt that in His encounter with Martha Jesus is acknowledging, “I AM the God of Israel that appeared to Moses in the Burning Bush.”
God revealed His Name to Moses in Exodus 3:13-15, “But Moses said to God, ‘If I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?”’ God said to Moses, ‘I AM WHO I AM.’ He said further, ‘Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’’ God also said to Moses, ‘Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘The LORD, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you’:
This is my name forever,
and this my title for all generations.”
God’s eternal name and title is “I AM.” Several times during His earthly ministry
Jesus professes that He is “I AM!”
I AM is the Old Testament Personal Name of the God of Israel in the Old
Testament. The Jews after the Babylonian Captivity considered it to be so holy and awesome that they would dare not pronounce it for fear that in doing so they would be guilty of breaking the Third Commandment, “No using the name of GOD, your God, in curses or silly banter; GOD won’t put up with the irreverent use of His name.” In Hebrew the Holy, Personal Name I AM is Yahweh. Except for the High Priest on the Day of Atonement, Jews could not pronounce it for fear of taking God’s Name in vain, but they could write it. In most instances where it appears in English translations it appears in English simply as smaller upper case letters as the LORD. Yahweh is “The Great I AM.”
When Jesus gives such testimonies as “Before Abraham was Born, ‘I AM,” “I AM the Bread of Life,” “I AM the Light of the World,” “I AM the Gate,” “I AM the Good Shepherd,” “I AM the Way, the Truth, and the Life,” “I AM the Vine,” “‘I AM the Alpha and Omega, says the Lord God, Who is and Who was and Who is to come, the Almighty,’” “I AM the Resurrection and the Life,” He is testifying that He is God Incarnate, come to earth in Human Flesh.”
“I AM is “The eternal, unchanging, self-existent God.” He “exists of or by Himself, independent of any other being or cause” [SOURCE: Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, © 1996, 1998 MICRA, Inc.]. I AM, Jesus, “is the only self-existent, eternal, unchanging being.” We owe our very existence to Him, because He is our Creator, Redeemer, and Coming King. Preaching to the philosophers of Athens, Paul testifies in Acts 17 that in the Great I AM, in Jesus, “. . . we live, and move, and have our being.”
Our Resurrected Lord reassures us this Resurrection Sunday, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.” The Resurrection of Jesus is the foundation for the bodily resurrection of our own loved ones who have died trusting in Him as their Saviour and Lord and our own promise and assurance that when we have repented of our sins and trusted Him as our own personal Saviour after our own physical death one day He will resurrect us from the dead.
Paul testifies to his certain hope that the Resurrected Jesus will resurrect him and all believers in I Corinthians 15:20, “But now Christ is risen from the dead, and has become the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.” One of my favorite choruses in Handel’s MESSIAH is “Since by Man Came Death.” It triumphantly sings Paul’s testimony that follows in I Corinthians 15:21-22, “For since by man came death, by Man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive.” Then in Philippians 3:20-21 he convinces us: “But our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. He will transform the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, by the power that also enables him to make all things subject to Himself.
Job most likely lived about the time of Abraham some 2,000 years before Jesus came to earth. In faith He looked ahead to the time His Redeemer would come. He understood that by placing his faith and confidence in Jesus, His Future Redeemer, even though he would die physically and be buried, yet His Saviour would resurrect his dry bones to live again. With confidence and assurance He bears witness in Job 19:26-27, “For I know that my redeemer lives, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: And though. . .worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God.”
Unless Jesus returns before then, one day each one of us will physically die. Our souls will leave these physical bodies. What happens then? According to Ecclesiastes 12:7, “the dust returns to the ground it came from, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.” Our physical remains eventually return “earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” but our real selves, our souls or spirits immediately return to God who gave them to us; but, “as in Adam all die, even so in Christ, shall all be made alive.” One day He will resurrect our buried physical bodies and transform them, conform them like unto His own glorious resurrected body. “In our flesh, we shall see God, and know that our Redeemer lives.”
We will die physically, for it is “appointed unto everyone once to die. . . .” If we have put our trust in Jesus, the Resurrection and the Life, we will live. Death for the Christian is not the end; it is a new beginning. Our souls enter into His presence and one day in our own resurrection, they will be reunited with our transformed, glorified body like our Lord’s, alive forever more; and everyone who puts their trust in Jesus will never die, as Paul assures us in Romans 14:8, “If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.” Those who put their trust in Jesus are “safe in His arms for all eternity.”
Jim Cymbal is Senior Pastor and his wife Carol Minister of Music and Choir Director at the Brooklyn Tabernacle on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, New York. The choir has about 300 voices, and ministers to people not only in New York’s Inner City but our entire Nation and world. They have won numerous Grammy and Dove awards. Concerning their choir, Pastor Jim says, “The choir represents all different walks of life and every kind of sin. You name it and we have someone who has been saved out of it, standing beside others who’ve grown up in the church. None of us would have met if it weren’t for Christ. Our backgrounds are just too diverse. But these are all people who have been lifted by Christ, so they’re singing—not about a theological position—but about things that have happened to them. It’s not a theory; it’s an experience.” Choir members include attorneys and street people, nurses and ex-crack addicts [http://www.gospelcity.com/dynamic/artist-articles/artists/28].
One of my favorite songs by Carol Cymbala and the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir is entitled “Resurrection Power”:
There’s a feeling in the air that God is everywhere,
And His resurrection power if moving in this hour,
That Jesus might be glorified!
[Repeat]
I will glorify the Name of the Lord!
I will glorify His Name!
And His resurrection power
Is moving in this Hour
That Jesus might be glorified!
Are you living in the Resurrection Power of Jesus Christ this Morning? Is “the main thing the main thing in your life?” Do you live in the assurance that you will live even though you are going to die?
Repent of your sin, trust Jesus our Crucified and Risen Saviour to save you, and stand on His promise in Romans 10:13: “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” Then even though you die, you will know that you will live forever. This is the true meaning and message of Resurrection Sunday that must never be lost! It’s all about Jesus, the Great I AM! Therefore, let us eternally rejoice and “talk about Jesus more and more!
