After The Resurrection (Part 1)
Scriptures: Luke 24:44-53; Isaiah 53; Romans 10:17
Introduction:
Have you ever participated in a sporting event where you competed against others and made it to the championship game and won? Maybe you did not participate, but your school team or your favorite college or professional team did. Do you remember the day of the event and the celebration that took place after the win? Do you remember opening up the newspaper the next day to read about the event? DO you remember coming into contact with friends and acquaintances and everyone was talking about what had happened the day before “in the big game?” When KU was eliminated from the NCAA tournament, it was in the papers and on the news for several days following. When the Super Bowl is played, the city of the team that wins celebrates for days following the game. You cannot open up a newspaper or turn on the TV without someone talking about the winners and how the game was won. Today is the last day of the Master’s for those of you who follow golf. Regardless of who wins, tomorrow there will be something in most newspapers and on every sports station about the winner and Tiger Woods, regardless of whether or not he wins. All of these victories are celebrated for days following the event and people who follow the events talk about it for days, weeks and years later if they were the victors. Some people go to their graves decades later relishing in the memories of that one important victory. They did not just celebrate it and remember it on the day it happened they talked about it whenever the opportunity presented itself. They were proud of the event.
Now let’s go back to last week. What did you do on Monday morning? Did you get up and start you day as any other day? Were you dreading what was planned for the day as you thought about your calendar and your to do list? What did you do? Let me ask you another question. Did you tell anyone about your celebration on last Sunday on Monday? What about on Tuesday? Last Sunday everyone of us in this room celebrated the most important day in our lives. Last Sunday we celebrated Christ’s resurrected which opened the door for us to have eternal life. We sung praises to God with raised hands as we celebrated. With all of that celebration going on, for some of us it started on Sunday morning and ended on Sunday afternoon. Unlike when we win the big one, we do not talk about this victory with our friends and neighbors. This victory does not get reported on the news on Monday and if you searched every newspaper in the country you would have a hard time finding an article on the celebration happening after Easter.
In the weeks leading up to Easter, there is a lot of “Spiritual” activities. We see people fasting and giving up other things temporarily as they prepare for their Easter celebration. Some start this period 40 days before Easter, a time known to some as “lent”. On a secular basis, the stores gear up for Easter by bringing in their new spring line of clothes with bright pastels signifying that spring is here. During the weeks before Easter many people go out and shop for new clothes to wear to that special Easter morning service. When Easter morning finally arrives, we dress in our new clothes and head to Church to celebrate Christ’s resurrection. We celebrate the newness of our “resurrected” life in our new clothes with an emphasis of enjoying a highly spiritual-lifting worship service. During the service we think about what Christ’s resurrection means and we are glad that He chose to die for our sins. The music is special and we get our Easter sermon from the pastor. Leading up to Easter the pastor may have started a special series that covers Palm Sunday and what Jesus experience on His way to the cross, but on Easter Sunday, the special Easter sermon is preached. Sometimes we sit in the audience and think about all of the other sermons we have heard on Easter and about the resurrection as we patiently give the pastor his/her due and listen to the message. When the service is over, we fellowship with our fellow members for a little while and then go to Easter brunch or home to enjoy a great dinner with family and friends. We relax and enjoy this time of internal reflection about what it means to be a Christian and to have had Christ die for our sins some 2000 years ago. When all of the celebrations are completed, we go to bed and wake up to another Monday morning. Another Easter has passed. Another holiday has come and gone. Another season of buying new clothes is behind us. Now it is time to return back to the daily routine of living. After the resurrection celebration, we go back to normal and we do not take the celebration into the days and weeks that follow.
Does this sound familiar to you? This morning my message is titled “After the Resurrection – Part 1.” I want us to focus on what happened after the first Easter and compare that what happens today. Last week when you wore your new clothes to Church, remember how you felt? If you did not wear anything new, think about the times when you have purchased new clothes that look great on you. Do you not feel different as you wear the clothes? Do you not stand a little straighter or casually admire how you look when you pass by a mirror. You are still the same person, but you feel different in those clothes. When Monday morning rolls around, you would like to put the same clothes on again, but alas you cannot because people would talk about you. But you do look forward to the next occasion where you will have the opportunity to wear the clothes. Now apply this to our lives being changed because of the resurrection. When Christ rose from the dead, we changed clothes. We went from wearing the dark clothes of sin to the white clothes forgiveness. When we changed clothes – it was noticeable and those around us could tell we were different. This change is what we celebrate on Easter. Christ’s resurrection changed us forever – and yet we are quiet about the most important victory we will ever experience.
As I shared with you last week, how you see Christ in your circumstance will determine where you are as it relates to the resurrection. You could be standing at the foot of the cross helpless and lost and thinking Christ is not with you; you could be standing at the empty tomb confused about where Christ is in your situation; or you could be standing in Galilee conversing with the Master knowing that your life has been changed forever. Wherever you are standing will determine how you respond to the resurrection and what you will do the days and years after you experience His resurrection. You see, Monday will always follow Easter Sunday, but it does not need to be the same old Monday.
I want to tell you a story. This story demonstrates how our mindset will determine how we respond to the days following the resurrection. “Two old friends bump into one another and one friend looks very sad. His friend asks, ‘what has the world done to you?’ The sad friend said, ‘Three weeks ago my uncle died and left me $40,000.’ His friend said, ‘That’s a lot of money’ but the sad man continued. ‘Two weeks ago a cousin I hardly knew died and left me $85,000.’ The friend said ‘Sounds like you’ve been blessed’ but the sad friend responded ‘You don’t understand! Last week my great aunt died and I inherited a quarter of a million dollars.’ Now his friend was really confused as to why he was said and asked him ‘then why do you look so sad?’ The sad friend responded, ‘This week I have not gotten anything!” Now this story would be funny except for the truth that it holds. Each year when we celebrate Easter, there is some level of excitement and expectation. However, when the hype of the celebration is over, we go back to our lives and place the power of the same resurrection that we were just celebrating on the back burner, waiting for next Easter. If you are a cook you understand what it means to place something on the back burner. The food you place there does not require your immediate attention and focus. God wants us to take the resurrection off the back burner and put in on the front burner on high so we must make sure we are focusing on it.
I. Faith Comes With Understanding
When Jesus appeared to His disciples, initially they were afraid (Luke 24:37) but they came to understand that it truly was Jesus who was standing before them. After He showed them His hands and feet, they still thought they were seeing a ghost so Jesus asked them for some food. It was only after they witnessed Him eating did they accept that He had risen from the dead. Once they accepted that He had risen from the dead, Jesus did something that we often overlook when we read the story. Luke 24:44-45 records “Then He said to them, ‘These are the words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms concerning Me.’ And He opened their understanding, that they might comprehend the Scriptures.” Verse forty-five says that He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures. In other words, Jesus gave them a history lesson so that they would understand that He was the one who had been prophesied about in Scripture. The disciples needed to understand the prophecies pertaining to Jesus in order to appreciate why He had risen from the dead and what that would mean for them. So Jesus took the time to reveal to them what had been hidden from their understanding. By revealing what had been prophesied about Him and helping them to understand from a historical viewpoint, the disciples were able to come to terms with the “why.” When Jesus was taken, they did not understand why He had to be crucified. Even though He had told them, their minds were not able to grasp the meaning and without this understanding their faith was at an all time low. You see, our faith comes through our understanding of the resurrection and our actions are based on what we understand after the resurrection. So Jesus took the disciples to the Scriptures.
The Old Testament is complete with prophecies about Jesus and He fulfilled every one. When Jesus taught His disciples after He was resurrection, He probably took them to Isaiah chapter fifty-three. This whole chapter is a prophecy about Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. Let’s read this chapter – it is rather short with only twelve verses, but it says a lot. This will give you a small understanding of what He taught His disciples that day.
“Who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? For He shall grow up before Him as a tender plant, and as a root out of dry ground. He has no form or comeliness; and when we see Him, there is no beauty that we should desire Him. He is despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid as it were, our faces from Him; He was despised, and we did not esteem Him. Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteem Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned, every one, to his own way; and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and He was afflicted, yet He opened not His mouth; He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so He opened not His mouth. He was taken from prison and from judgment, and who will declare His generation? For He was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgressions of My people He was stricken. And they made His grave with the wicked, but with the rich at His death, because He had done no violence, nor was any deceit in His mouth. Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief. When You make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hand. He shall see the labor of His soul, and be satisfied. By His knowledge My righteous Servant shall justify many, for He shall bear their iniquities. Therefore I will divide Him a portion with the great, and He shall divide the spoil with the strong, because He poured out His soul unto death and He was numbered with the transgressors, and He bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.” (Isaiah 53)
Everything that Jesus went through was summarized in this one chapter by Isaiah some 700+ years before Christ was born. God revealed this to Isaiah so that once the prophecy was fulfilled; people would recognize Jesus as the true Messiah. But there is one point we all need to understand. In verse twelve of this prophecy Isaiah writes that Jesus would share the spoils that He took with us. Those “spoils” that He took was the power and authority that He snatched out of Satan’s hands when He rose from the dead. This power He is sharing with us – when we remember and walk in the power of His resurrection. Until this point the disciples had a limited understanding of the Scriptures, but moving forward they would now be able to be a witness for Christ in power. They would have confidence that they never had before. This confidence comes through their foundational knowledge and understanding of Jesus. After Jesus taught them, they faith grew. Paul hit the nail on the head when he wrote in Roman 10:17 “So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” Faith comes through our hearing the “Word” of God. Jesus is the Word so when we listen to Him, our faith will come. When we believe what we hear from Him, our faith will come. Once the disciples understood who Jesus was from a historical viewpoint the fear that they had operated in began to dissipate and was replaced with faith.
Let’s go back to the twenty-fourth chapter of Luke. When Jesus finished the history lesson with His disciples, Luke 24:46-49 records the following: “Then He said to them, ‘Thus it is written, and thus it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day, and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. And you are witnesses of these things. Behold, I send the Promise of My Father upon you; but tarry in the city of Jerusalem until you are endued with power from on high.” Before Jesus left His disciples, He blessed them and they returned to Jerusalem with great joy and were continually praising God. This was a radical change from where they were prior to them understanding that Jesus had risen from the dead.
II. Joy Did Come In The Morning
Earlier in this message I shared with you the story about the man who kept inheriting money when family members died. On the day that He met his friend, he was depressed because although he had received all of this other money the weeks prior, he had not received any that particular week. This man judged his life by what he was receiving. We do not know what he was like prior to him receiving his first inheritance, but we know what he was like afterwards. When he did not have the money, he was probably fine, but once he started receiving, he wanted more. This man’s existence became about what he was receiving externally versus what he had internally.
After the resurrection the disciples understood its meaning, the first thing they received was joy. Joy was one of the outcomes of the resurrection. Luke 24:52 records “And they, after worshipping Him, returned to Jerusalem with great joy and were continually in the temple praising God.” After Jesus ascended to heaven, the disciples were filled with joy. As I stated earlier, last week when we celebrated Easter, there was joy in the room, but when we got up on Monday morning, for some of us that celebration was already in the past and another Easter had come and gone. It was not so on the first Easter. Luke records that the disciples returned to Jerusalem with great joy and continued in the temple praising God – they did not stop on Monday morning. What they had witnessed on Sunday carried into Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, the next Sunday, the next month, the next year for the rest of their lives. Easter was not just an annual celebration for them; they lived in the Easter moment every day once they understood what Christ had done for them. Not only did they live in the moment, they took it to heart and went out to share it with others.
Where Are You?
Last week we celebrated Easter – we praised God for Christ’s resurrection. On Sunday afternoon many of us had dinner with family and friends as we enjoyed the holiday. On Sunday night, after a day of celebrating, we went to bed fulfilled and possibly tired. We may or may not have thought about the first Easter after we left the morning service, but at least for a couple of hours we did celebrate Christ’s resurrection. On Monday morning, unlike the disciples who got up and continued praising God for what had been revealed to them and the gift that had been given to the world; unlike the disciples who were filled with joy and understood that their new found faith could one day cost them their lives; unlike the disciples whose heart had once been filled with fear but was now filled with a burning fire; we got up and started our normal routine. We got up and started doing what we normally do on the first day of the week. The celebration was over. Easter had once again come and gone.
What would our week have been like if we responded to Christ’s resurrection the way the disciples did? Would we be here today thinking about everything we have to do this week or would we be praising God right now. Would we be late to work or school tomorrow because we woke up praising God and forgot to look at the clock? Where are you on this first Sunday following Easter?
I will continue this message next week. May God bless and keep you is my prayer.
