1. Easter morning assures us that resurrection is possible—Fact of Jesus’ resurrection provides confidence in future resurrection (20)
2. Easter morning assures us that resurrection is necessary—Sin came in through one man—victory over sin comes through one Man (21-22)
3. Easter morning assures us that resurrection is guaranteed—Those who are in Christ are the ones who will be made alive (23)
1 CORINTHIANS 15:20-23
A pastor gathered the children of the church in front of the congregation one Easter Sunday for a children’s message. He got them all settled down up front and asked them a question. He asked, “Why do we celebrate Easter?” A bunch of their little hands shot up in the air. The pastor called on the first little boy. “Because of the Easter bunny!” The pastor shook his head and called on the next one. “So we can hide Easter eggs!” He shook his head again and called on another one. “So I can get a big basket full of candy!” He didn’t think it was going to be that hard and was ready to give up when a little girl’s hand slowly raised from the back row. The pastor thought that he’d give them one more shot, so he called on her. “Easter celebrates Jesus coming out of the tomb.” His confidence was restored, so he asked her what that means for us today. She said, “It means that if He sees His shadow, we get six more weeks of winter.” Well, that might make sense on a snowy day like today. But she was confused, wasn’t she? She had missed the point. There are so many competing thoughts about Easter, it’s easy to miss the point. It’s time for the spring sales at the mall. It’s time for bunnies and eggs and big family dinners. Oh, yeah—it’s time for dressing up in special clothes and going to church. But is that what Easter is all about? No—Easter is about the resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Now, most of us know that. We know it on a head knowledge level. But does the fact that Jesus is alive today make a difference in our lives? Does it affect the way we live? Jesus’ resurrection on that first Easter morning is the essential basis of our beliefs. Because Jesus is alive today, we can live in the assurance that He is able to keep His promises to us. That’s what I want for us this Easter morning. I want each of us to see Jesus as our risen Lord. I want us to leave this place knowing that we are His. And that one day he will raise us up just as He was raised. In order to do that, we will look at three assurances we have because of that first Easter morning. The first assurance is in verse 20:
1 CORINTHIANS 15:20
Easter morning assures us that resurrection is possible. How many times in your life have you ever seen something dead? If it’s been a while, follow me home. There’s dead stuff all over my road home. Seeing dead things is just a part of life. Now, how many times have you seen any of those dead things come back to life? Never. And that doesn’t surprise us. Because based on our experience, it’s impossible for things to come back to life once they’re dead. From a physical standpoint, things die. They turn to dust. Then they’re gone. If all we had to go on was our personal experiences, that’s all we could hope for. But thank God we have so much more than personal experience. We have actual, literal history recorded for us in God’s Word. And God’s Word tells us that after Jesus was crucified, He was raised on the third day. In John 10:17-18, He promised that it would happen: “Therefore doth my Father love me because I lay down my life that I might take it again. No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down and I have power to take it again.” The Easter narratives describe it happening. And a few verses before our passage in 1 Corinthians, Paul reminds us how well attested the resurrection was. Look back to 1 Corinthians 15:3-8
1 CORINTHIANS 15:3-8
The fact is that He who was dead now lives again. And He lives that we might live again also. Resurrection doesn’t make sense. But Jesus predicted it. He fulfilled it. And many people saw it. According to all the laws of nature, resurrection can’t happen. But Jesus created that nature. And He is more powerful than that nature. And He stepped out of that tomb, victorious over death. Because Jesus is more powerful than nature... and because He was victorious over death… we can have hope. We can have hope that death doesn’t have to mean the end. It doesn’t have to mean a terrible end of suffering and destruction. Because of that first Easter morning, we know that resurrection in Christ is possible. We have assurance that resurrection is possible, and we have assurance that resurrection in necessary.
1 CORINTHIANS 15:21-22
Easter morning assures us that resurrection is necessary. I read an article a few weeks ago that talked about a great discovery that had been made. James Cameron, the academy award winning writer and director of the movie Titanic made a documentary that showed on the Discovery Channel. The subject of that movie was a discovery of some bone boxes in Israel. The movie claimed they were the bones of Jesus. Of course we know that’s not true. Even for those who don’t believe the Bible, his claims are ridiculous. His archaeology was shoddy. His science was baseless. His history was fabricated. And his conclusions were pure fantasy. Anybody that was paying attention could tell that. The fact that he made such ridiculous claims wasn’t the disturbing point. Those seem to happen all the time, so we’re kind of used to them. The disturbing part was the response of some so-called Christian experts. There were actually people who said that it didn’t matter if those were Jesus’ bones in that box. That it wouldn’t have any bearing on Christianity if, in fact, Jesus was not resurrected. How sad. Back up in verse 14, just a few verses before our passage, Paul wrote, “And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain and your faith is also vain.” He goes on in verse 17: “And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain—ye are yet in your sins.” Ever since the Garden of Eden, death is a fact of life. When Adam sinned, his sin didn’t die with him. He passed it on to his lineage. That’s you and me. We have each inherited a sin nature from Adam. If you were born of a man and woman, guess what? You have a sin nature. You have inherited the curse that resulted from original sin. I don’t care how good you think you are. You can be the best person you know and still be in sin. You can be a good worker, help your neighbors, and give people the shirt off your back. Without Jesus, it doesn’t really matter. You are in sin and you are going to die. But that’s why Jesus came. He knew we were born in sin. He knew that the only thing we deserved was death. And because we’ve all sinned, all we deserve after death is eternal separation from God and Hell. Jesus knew that. And He died as our substitute. And because He died as our substitute, He took our punishment. Yours and mine. He died as your substitute so that if you trust Him as your Lord and Savior, your punishment is gone. Paid for. Wiped clean. But dying as our substitute only takes away our punishment and sin. It did nothing to take away death. That’s what the resurrection did. The resurrection showed Jesus’ victory over death. You are born in Adam. But if you believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, you will be saved—born again in Christ. His resurrection is necessary because it makes it possible for those who are in Him to one day be raised as well. Sin and death came in through one man, Adam. Victory over sin and death comes through one Man, Jesus Christ. The One who showed that resurrection is necessary. Easter morning assures us that resurrection is possible and that it’s necessary. The third assurance of the resurrection is in verse 23:
1 CORINTHIANS 15:23
Easter morning assures us that resurrection is guaranteed. Did you know that the resurrection is one of the most well recorded facts of history? Some have said that there is more evidence that validates the empty tomb than there is for George Washington being our first president. The fact is that Jesus’ resurrection is a fact. No matter how many theories or speculations people can imagine, Jesus is risen. Of course the Bible says so. But besides that, an empty tomb is the only thing that makes sense. For years, there was the speculation that the women went to the wrong tomb. If that were the case, don’t you think the Jews would have immediately produced the body? Wouldn’t it have been a whole lot easier to do that than to try to get rid of them through persecution? If there was a bone box buried in a prominent tomb in Jerusalem like John Cameron says, don’t you think the Romans and Jews would have saved themselves a lot of trouble by pointing that out? Another theory was that Jesus wasn’t really dead in the first place. He was simply unconscious and woke up in the tomb. Now, let me see if I get this straight. You medical people help me out on this one. If someone is beaten to the point that their flesh is exposed all the way to the bone. Scripture says Jesus was beaten till He was unrecognizable. Then He was hung on a wooden cross by nails. Nails that were driven through His hands and His feet. He lost massive amounts of blood. His body was in shock and trauma. The way they hung Him caused Him to lose oxygen and actually suffocate. His wrists, elbows, and shoulders were completely dislocated and hyperextended. His side was pierced, piercing the pericardium and the heart. That’s what caused the blood and water to flow from His side. Now, explain to me how placing a person in that condition in a cold, dark, damp cave could revive them if they weren’t all the way dead? If it could have been possible for a person to survive that ordeal, the tomb would’ve killed Him—not revived Him. And then there’s the little matter of how a person in that kind of shape could have gotten up and rolled the stone away from the inside of the tomb. That’s impossible! What’s interesting is that the first argument was that the disciples stole the body. Nobody in the immediate time-frame of the resurrection was silly enough to deny the empty tomb. They just tried to explain it away. But if the disciples had stolen the body, would they have been willing to die for their lie? Every single apostle except John was brutally killed for their belief in the resurrection. Even though John wasn’t martyred, he was tortured and exiled. Many people are willing to die for what they believe to be the truth. But no one is willing to die for what they know is a lie. The fact is that it is an undeniable fact of history that Jesus Christ rose again on that first Easter morning. That is a guarantee of history. And because of that guarantee of history, we can rest assured of another guaranteed resurrection. Because of His resurrection, everyone who belongs to Him will one day be resurrected as well. 1 Thessalonians 4:16 says: “"For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first.” That is an indisputable guarantee. Just as Jesus was raised from the dead, so shall you be—if you have trusted Him as your Lord and Savior. Resurrection is guaranteed. That first Easter morning assures us that the resurrection is possible, that it is necessary, and that it is guaranteed. But what we celebrate on Easter isn’t just an event in the past. A man named Erich Sauer once wrote: “The present age is Easter time. It begins with the resurrection of the Redeemer and ends with the resurrection of the redeemed. Between lies the spiritual resurrection of those called into life through Christ. So we live between two Easters, and in the power of the first Easter we go to meet the last Easter.” The question for you this morning is not whether or not you have been called into life through Christ. Jesus has extended that call. Just like the resurrection, there’s no doubt about that. He has extended the call to “whosoever will.” Acts 10:43 says, “To Him give all the prophets witness, that through His name whosoever believeth in Him shall receive remission of sins.” He will wash away your sins and your guilt and your shame. Romans 10:13 says, “For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” He will save you. In John 11:26, Jesus Himself said, “And whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die. Believest thou this?” Because of His resurrection on that first Easter morning, you can claim that promise. His promise that you will be raised again to live with Him throughout eternity. You just have to believe. Believing in Jesus is not simply saying you agree with certain doctrinal statements. Agreeing that Jesus is the Son of God isn’t enough. Even agreeing that He is alive isn’t enough. The Bible says that even the demons believe and tremble. Believing—really believing—is acknowledging the fact that you have offended God. God demands perfection and since you aren’t perfect, you are a sinful creature. A sinful creature that only deserves death, the grave and Hell. But Jesus Christ came to earth as God in the flesh. He lived a sin-free life and died on the cross as your punishment. He died a death that He didn’t deserve to give you life that you don’t deserve. And He lives today to be your Lord and Master. To fill your life so you can live more like Him every day. That is the call. The call is clear. The call is to whosoever will. So, with Jesus this morning, I’m asking, “Believest thou this?” Answer His call today.
