Give me some symbols of life. What comes to mind when you think of the words alive, living, and life? Personally, I first thought of my baby. She is a new life in this world. Speak out some of your answers. (Give short time to talk about it). How about the green grass outside? It was brown and dead for 3 or 4 months and now look at it; vibrant and alive, so alive that you now have to mow your lawns again. Freshly laid eggs are a good reminder of new life. They could become a little chick one day. Look around all of nature, especially in the spring, and you will find life. Yet, did you think of perhaps a coffin or a seed buried in the ground? Your first idea probably wasn’t something we normally associate with death.
A short story follows this same logic. A teacher at a Christian school asked the kids to do an assignment shortly before resurrection Sunday. She told them to take some plastic “Easter” eggs and put something that represented life in them. Well, one young fellow who was literally retarded never seemed to get the assignments right. He always seemed to fail and the kids ridiculed him. Once the children had come back from their weekend break, the teacher asked them to bring up their eggs. She started opening them one by one and found grass, leaves, and even a butterfly. She finally found herself with the last egg, given to her by the little boy. She opened it and found nothing. She naturally assumed he didn’t understand the assignment and so went to help explain it to him again. When she asked him if he didn’t understand with the other children laughing in the background he said “The tomb was empty… wasn’t it?”
You wouldn’t normally associate the tomb, a casket, a funeral, or even the death of a seed with life. Christians or even pseudo-Christians walk around with crosses hanging on their necks. Why a cross? Why not an empty tomb hanging our necks? Christians walk around wearing a symbol of death about their necks. Jesus died. We even witnessed that last week. Satan had gotten his way with Judas, Caiaphas the high priest, and even with the life of Jesus. Satan enticed the mobs and the priests into such an evil action. Many who had hailed Jesus as a prophet and a king now mocked him and laughed at Him. They requested that he come down from the cross of His own power. Yet, he hung on the cross and died. Death isn’t a good thing so why did he do it? Death is a tool of Satan and yet he succumbed to it. Why? Check out Luke 24:46-47. “Thus it is written, that the Christ would suffer and rise again from the dead the third day, and that repentance for forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in His name…” He did it so we could be forgiven. He did it so that we could have a life we never dreamed of. He did it so that we could have hope. He rose for you and me!
He rose to eliminate my sins. – Lk. 24:47; Ps. 103:12
“… that repentance for forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in His name…”
“As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us.”
Jesus Christ came, died, and rose again because he loved us enough to want to save us from our sins. By sins, I mean moral failures. Places in which we have crossed the line on what is right and what is wrong. Transgression means to go outside of the laws. We transgress the law when we speed or when we fail to report income on our taxes. At one point you have made a decision to go beyond the law and because you have gone beyond the law, you will face punishment in the form of a fine or even jail time. In the same way, since we all have moral failures according to God’s law, we will face judgment and sentencing. We have transgressed God’s law along the way and now find ourselves separated from Him.
This is where the resurrection of Christ kicks in. Since we have been separated from God by our failure to obey His law, Jesus chose to bridge that gap by making a way to get rid of our sin. Sin requires death and so Christ died for us. Anyone can die however, so what would it matter if Christ died? He rose to prove himself perfect and blameless. He rose to prove He is God and cannot be confined by death. He rose and defeated death and sin. He conquered sin which gives us the ability to conquer sin through him. Now, when we repent, Jesus is faithful to forgive our sins and cast them as far as possible from us. When we repent, we turn away from our sins and begin walking towards holiness and purity. We reject the values and opinions of this world and accept that God’s law and rules are correct. We accept that Christ rose from the grave to forgive our sins. Jesus rose to eliminate our sins!
He rose to remove your old selfish ways. – 2 Corinthians 5:17-19
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.”
Christ rose to remove the old ways we did things and to give us something worth much more. Our failures have corrupted our souls to the point of death. Our souls are dead until Christ renews them. He breathes a breathe of fresh air into our eternal souls. Whoever chooses to follow Christ, has been recreated into a totally new person. That means each Christian no longer lives by the former values they used to live by.
London businessman Lindsay Clegg told the story of a warehouse property he was selling. The building had been empty for months and needed repairs. Vandals had damaged the doors, smashed the windows, and strewn trash around the interior.
As he showed a prospective buyer the property, Clegg took pains to say that he would replace the broken windows, bring in a crew to correct any structural damage, and clean out the garbage. "Forget about the repairs," the buyer said. "When I buy this place, I’m going to build something completely different. I don’t want the building; I want the site."
Compared with the renovation God has in mind, our efforts to improve our own lives are as trivial as sweeping a warehouse slated for the wrecking ball. When we become God’s, the old life is over (2 Cor. 5:17). He makes all things new. All he wants is the site and the permission to build. – Ian L. Wilson.
That person has been reconciled to God. The idea of reconciled means “to bring into harmony or make compatible again.” Jesus rose from the grave to make us compatible with God again. The only way a person can possible become compatible with God’s holiness and purity is to become a new creation because the old body has already been corrupted. He rose to remove our old selfish ways.
He rose so that you would be accepted. – Acts 2:42-44 (the church)
“They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common.”
The church began to gather quickly after the day of Pentecost. Fifty days after the Passover, the people who have believed in Jesus Christ have begun to collect together and worship. Not only had they been reconciled to God but they also found fellowship among each other as well. Their sins were no longer keeping them from being accepted by God. Their genders, color of skin, home country, among many other issues were no being ignored in the name of Christ. They found acceptance in the presence of others who called themselves Christians.
“Keith Hernandez is one of baseball’s top players. He is a lifetime 300 hitter who has won numerous Golden Glove awards for excellence in fielding. He’s won a batting championship for having the highest average, the Most Valuable Player award in his league, and even the World Series. Yet with all his accomplishments, he has missed out on something crucially important to him -- his father’s acceptance and recognition that what he has accomplished is valuable. Listen to what he had to say in a very candid interview about his relationship with his father: "One day Keith asked his father, ’Dad, I have a lifetime 300 batting average. What more do you want?’ His father replied, ’But someday you’re going to look back and say, "I could have done more."’"” – Gary Smalley & John Trent, Ph.D., The Gift of Honor, p. 116.
God’s not going to go back into our lives and drudge up old things. He doesn’t expect us to be perfect. He accepts us the way we are and helps us change from the inside out. Jesus Christ died and rose again to make a way for us to be accepted by God and because of this we can have a closer fellowship with man.
He rose to satisfy God’s justice and wrath. – Romans 5:9, Ephesians 5:6
“Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him.” – Romans 5:9
“Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience.” – Eph. 5:6
God is an absolutely holy being. He doesn’t have any failures or sins. He hasn’t made any mistakes. He is absolutely perfect. He is also an all loving God. How does an all loving God and an all justified God exist together? How can a God who loves me condemn me to hell if I don’t live like he tells me to? His justice demands that we receive the sentence of death for our moral failures. His justice demands we get the full sentence. He satisfies this side of Himself by sending His own Son in our place. So that he could satisfy His own need for a perfect moral life in front of Him, He sent his perfect Son to take our place.
If you listen to the Christian station 88.5 you may have heard a short commercial of sort about a guy who dies and goes to the judgment. He begins talking to the angel questioning him and asks, “So, how many points do I need to get to heaven?” The angel then says, “1000 points.” Okay, “I am a doctor you know, I’ve saved many lives.” The angel then says, “Good, that’s three points.” “I’ve been a good husband and father, how many points does that get me?” “Good, that’s two points.” “I saved that cat from that burning building, that ought to get me some points.” “That’s two points.” “How many points do I need?” “1000.” “How many do I have now?” “Seven.”
Finally the angel tells the guy he could let Jesus take the test and cover his point total for him. Jesus Christ died and rose again to satisfy God’s need for justice. We couldn’t and still can’t do that. We cannot be a perfect sacrifice because we aren’t perfect. Yet, Jesus is perfect and so took our sins and the wrath of God away. Jesus died so that we wouldn’t have to die a second time. He died so that once we pass from this world we can live for eternity in Heaven instead of perishing for eternity in Hell.
He rose to enter your name in the Book of Life. – Revelation 20:11-12
“Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. 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.”
This is the fifth and last reason Christ rose, at least of those contained in this sermon. He rose to enter our names in the Book of Life. The book of life contains all the names of every single person who has accepted Christ. Each of us will stand before this book and if our name is found, we will find ourselves heading to eternity with Jesus. I can imagine the scene as something like this. God and Christ will be sitting in front of us on the Great White Throne and on every side we will see everyone we ever knew and billions of people we had never seen. Angels carrying many different books containing the records of our sins and the law of God that tells us how we failed will be speaking with each and every one of us. As we approach our turn in front of God, Satan will be standing there condemning us with each and every step. “Look at how he lied, cheated, stole, cursed out that person, cheated on his/her spouse…” God will be prepared to give a judgment concerning our sins and another person will appear. Christ will stand in front of me or you and when God looks down all he will see is Jesus and not me. God will see the perfect and sinless Jesus and will allow me into Heaven. All those sins I had committed will be blotted out by His blood. I will have my home in eternity while Satan curses me knowing Christ because he can’t condemn me anymore.
Jesus rose from the dead three days after he was crucified. He died and rose again. He rose to save you and I. He rose to eliminate our sins, remove our old ways, accept us into His presence, satisfy His justice, and enter our names into the Book of Life. If you check the first letter of each word, they spell ERASE. He died to ERASE our sins. [Play Video]
