A Change Is Coming, Jesus’s Resurrection Is Greater Than COVID-19
4/12/2020 John 1:1-20 1. Corinthians 15:1-8
Change is something that happens to everybody. We can have things going our way one moment, and wondering what on earth happened the next. Some changes that come our way, we do not see them coming until they have knocked us down. How many boxers have been in the ring who have been sure of winning this fight, only to miss seeing a coming left hook that knocked all of the fight of them.
The coronavirus has been throwing us all some left hooks, knocking some of us down, and knocking some of us out. But if you think about it for a moment, the changes resulting from the coming of the virus has put us in a better position of understanding how the disciples must have felt on Easter or Resurrection Sunday.
Just a week before, they had been among the most popular people in Jerusalem. They were in the in crowd with Jesus. People wanted to know them, because they knew Jesus. Everything that could go right was going right. They were in the right place, at the right time, and it all felt good. They had forgotten the warning that Jesus had given them, that a change was coming.
He had told the twelve disciples flat out, in Luke 18:31-33 (NIV) 31 "We are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written by the prophets about the Son of Man will be fulfilled. 32 He will be handed over to the Gentiles. They will mock him, insult him, spit on him, flog him and kill him. 33 On the third day he will rise again."
The disciples didn’t understand Jesus’ message because it had some bad news in it. Sometimes when we hear bad news we miss the good news, because you have to accept the bad news for the good news to make sense. If you can’t accept the bad news of Jesus being insulted, spit up on, whipped, beaten, and then killed. Then you miss the good news that in three days I will rise again.
If we can’t accept the bad news that Jesus gave us when he said, in this world you will have tribulations, then we can’t understand his good news “to be of good cheer for I have overcome the world.”
During the time from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday, the disciples world had been turned upside down. So many of the hopes they had for themselves had simply vanished as a vapor into the air. Some of them had watched the nails being driven in Jesus’ hands and feet and as they did they saw their dreams being hammered away.
Some of them saw the beating he had taken. Some of them saw him, when he cried out it is finished. Some of them saw the tomb where they placed his body and the large stone rolled over the entrance to keep anyone from getting inside.
Think about it. For the first time in the past few years, some of the disciples are now unemployed not knowing how they will pay their bills. Jesus had taken care of all that before.
Their money and their savings are gone. Judas, the disciple who betrayed Jesus, had taken their money and left out in the middle of the night. To make matters even worse, he went and committed suicide without telling anyone where the money was.
There were ten of them locked inside a house. They were afraid to go outside because death was threatening them. The people who had crucified Jesus would love to get rid of them, since already by Easter afternoon rumors were floating around that they had stolen Jesus’ body while the soldiers guarding the tomb were sleeping.
They knew the possibility of death was real. The crucifixion of Jesus had taken away from them someone they loved dearly as a leader, as friend, and almost as a family member.
This Easter is unlike any other that we have experienced thanks to the coronavirus. Many of you can’t remember a Sunday when you were not in a church sanctuary on Easter Sunday. Like the disciples, we too have quarantined ourselves behind locked doors. We too have found ourselves without a job. We too know of someone whose life has been taken from them or someone in intensive care fighting for their lives on a ventilator.
But I want you to know, that in the midst of the fear going through the hearts of the disciples, Jesus showed up to bring about a change. I don’t know how he passed through a door that was locked. All I know is that when Jesus is trying to get to us, nothing can keep him out.
Jesus was coming to them to bring about a change. A change in the way they viewed him. A change in the way they were thinking about tomorrow. A change in the way they considered what was the most important thing in life.
Jesus shows up in our situation with the same words of comfort, that He gave to the disciples. He said, “Peace be with you.” He knew they probably thought he was a ghost as they did the night they got caught in the middle of a storm on the Sea of Galilee and Jesus came walking toward them. They had cried out, “It’s a ghost.”
So he went a step further and showed them his hands so they could see where the nails had been. Then he showed them his side to convince them that he really was who he said he was.
In other words he is reminding them of what he said inJohn 11:25-26 (NIV) 25 , "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; 26 and whoever lives and believes in me will never die." Then Jesus asks a question of us. Do you believe this?
Do you believe that because I have risen, you too shall rise from the dead. I am living proof, that the dead are coming back to life. I’m telling you that a change is going to come. My rising from the dead is for the purpose of getting you ready for that change.
You might be thinking, “you know if I had of been there at the crucifixion, maybe I could accept this whole story about the resurrection, because I would have known it was coming. After all, didn’t you say that Jesus told them about it in advance?” Yes, but even though he told them three times, they didn’t accept it.
Nobody had any idea that Jesus was going to rise from the dead. When Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to the tomb they fully expected to find a dead body, that they could pour some perfume on it out of respect. Jesus had been buried so quickly after his death, they didn’t get to go through the usual procedures of anointing the body.
They were amazed to get to the tomb and find that it was empty when they went inside. An angel appeared and asked them, “Why are you looking for the living among the dead. Jesus is not here, he has risen indeed.” This gave the women hope that a change was coming.
When Mary Magdalene grabbed on the Jesus to worship him, she did not grab a spirit. There was an actual body because Jesus told her to let go of him, because he had not yet ascended into heaven.
But their celebration was short lived. They ran to the disciples to tell them the good news only to be told, they were confused. They were imagining things. The stress and strain had gotten to them. What they were saying was foolishness, and that they had lost their minds. But the women were strong enough to let them know they knew what they had seen and what they had heard.
Peter saw the women would not change their story, so he took off running to the tomb to see for himself. John took off after him, and being in better shape and a little younger than Peter, he got to the tomb first. They both looked in and saw that the tomb was empty.
It had to be empty. They were looking for somebody alive, where dead people hang out. You don’t expect to find living people lying around in coffins and caskets but that’s what they were doing. Jesus didn’t have time to lay around in a tomb even if it was a new tomb. He had gone back to the Father, to check in, before checking out to come be with the disciples.
While they were sitting in a room with the doors locked tight, trying to figure out what was going on, because not only did they have the testimony of the women and the viewing of the empty tomb two other disciples had arrived and claimed Jesus actually, walked and talked with them on the Emmaus road. They even said Jesus broke bread at the table and poured some wine for them, and they recognized him and he disappeared.
What should have been a reason to believe a change had come, instead led to a debate on who side are you on, on this issue of the resurrection. Jesus didn’t bother to knock on the door, or to pick the lock, he just showed up inside the room. He showed them his hands, and showed them where the spear had went into his side. They then recognized that a change was coming and joy filled the room.
One of the proofs of the resurrection is that nobody believed it was going to happen, even though Jesus had told them, in three days he would rise. There are four different books in the bible that tells about the resurrection. They are written by four different authors about 20 to 30 years after the resurrection.
People were alive who saw the resurrected Jesus when the books were written. If it had not have been true, the books Matthew, Mark, Luke and John would have all been discredited as false books made up of legend and lies. But the books stood, because people were alive testify to them.
People will often try to compare the bible and the Koran. The Koran was written by one person over a 22 year span. He claimed that the angel Gabriel told him everything that he had written down and that God never spoke to him.
The bible was written by 40 authors, on the continents of Africa, Asia and Europe over 1500 years who claimed that God was speaking to them throughout the period. Jesus Christ Himself testified to the truth of the Old Testament, which predicted that he would come and pay the penalty for our sins.
The disciples had a reason a reason to believe a change was coming after Jesus appeared to them. They went from a group of scared men and women who did not want to be associated with a dead Jesus, to men and women who would die, before they would say Jesus was not alive.
The Resurrection of Jesus was not simply a story made up. We celebrate an actual event in history. There was an actual Roman Empire. There was an actual Roman Emperor by the name of Caesar.
There was an actual crucifixion at the hands of a Roman official by the name of Pilate. There was an actual place called Golgotha or Calvary. There was an actual burial of Jesus Christ in a tomb owned by Joseph of Arimathea.
There was an actual resurrection of Jesus Christ. Jesus did not appear to just a group of his own followers in secret. There were a group of Roman soldiers who were paid to deny that Jesus had been resurrected, and that the disciples had stolen his body.
There were a group of 500 people who Jesus appeared to all at once. The disciples were arrested, thrown into prison and beaten and told they would be punished more severely if they kept talking about a resurrected Jesus. They told the leaders, you do what you have to do, but we can’t stop talking about what we have seen and heard.
Christianity does not depend on whether you believe some story is true in the bible or not. Christianity depends solely on the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Jesus told his enemies, “destroy me, and in 3 days I will rise again. He told his friends, “I will be turned over to my enemies and killed, but 3 days later, I will rise from the dead.” He didn’t try to run away from death. He faced it head on.
The only way for Jesus to rise from the dead, was if he was the actual Son of God as he claimed he was. If Jesus is the son of God, then whenever somebody disagrees with Him, the person or persons are wrong. If Jesus was not the Son of God, then there is absolutely no reason to listen to him, because He would have lied to us.
The only reason for rejecting the message of Jesus Christ is that you have found some overwhelming evidence to prove that Jesus Christ did not rise from the dead. It’s got nothing to do with a preacher not living right, or you know some Christians who lived some wild lives.
God already told you that was going to happen. What evidence do you have in the face of history to prove that Jesus never rose from the dead, and that Peter and Paul and the other 500 did not see the resurrected Jesus.
Jesus informs us, that the whole world has disobeyed God and the punishment for that disobedience is spiritual death and darkness for all eternity. Jesus tells us more about hell than anyone in the bible.
Jesus tells us, that God so loved the world, that God has made a way for everyone who wants to have a changed life and to be put in a right relationship with God can have it. It is by putting your faith in the resurrection of Jesus, that you can have a new life.
Jesus Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures. We have a reason to celebrate and to expect a change in the future., because thanks to the resurrection, our sins have been paid for by the death of Jesus Christ. We will not hear the words, “Depart from me, into the place prepared for the devil and his angels.”
God has put the thought of eternity in all of our hearts. We know intuitively that there is something beyond death. We may differ on what we think it is, but we know there is something. The older we get, the more quickly we feel pulled toward that thing.
We think that time seems to be going faster. No, we actually are running out of time to prepare for the world to come. Our bodies are trying to tell us, we need to prepare to move out of this body and into another one, because this one is wearing down. It cannot handle eternity.
When you look at eternity, everything else becomes almost insignificant. So what if you become a billionaire. When you die, you will be just as dead as the dollarnaire. You will both stand before God broke. So what if you become President of the US. Do you really think that’s going to impress God in eternity?
So what if you are a great athlete or even a professional athlete, there is no team after death that will need your athletic ability. I don’t care how beautiful you are today, it too is going to past. Your career no matter how great it becomes, is going to come to an end. You are going to die, and then you are going to live forever. It might not be the coronavirus that causes your death, but you’re still going to die. Are you ready for the change?
The resurrection of Jesus Christ proves there is life after death, and that all of us are going to experience it. For it is appointed once unto us to die and after that comes the judgment. Many people walk around in their arrogance and defiance, but they can only do it because God is merciful. Their declaration that there is no God or that Jesus is not the Son of God, is only possible because God loves them.
God voluntarily restrains Himself from giving us what we deserve, with the hope of winning us with His love. For some of us God is willing to wait right up to our very last breath for us to declare that Jesus is Lord. The sad thing is, some of us will go into eternity having held on to the attempt to create God in our own image. The moment we die, we will recognize that Jesus was right all along. But whatever decision we choose before death, will be ours for all eternity.
Some of us are thinking, one day I’ll get saved, but not today. One day is not on the calendar. There are a lot of bad things that can happen to you on one day, but there is none worse than one day leaving this world and not having known Jesus as your Lord and Savior. The coronavirus has taught us, we can’t really plan our future because we’re not really in control.
Easter or the resurrection of Jesus Christ is proof that anybody who wants to be saved, can be saved. The Scriptures tell us, there is no other name given by which we can be saved than the name of Jesus.
How do you see yourself today? Has the resurrection of Jesus Christ taken the sting out of death for you? Do You know where you are going to spend eternity when your change comes? Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior or do you need to come back home to him.
The resurrection of Jesus Christ makes all the difference. God is not just going to change where your life is headed once you die. God is going to change where you are headed right now in your life that you are living. The same power that God used to raise Jesus Christ, will be used to change who you are now, into the person God wants you to become.
The power of the resurrection sets people free from addiction to drugs and alcohol. It frees people from the bondage of bitterness and unforgiveness. It gives people power to deal with crisis in their lives. It puts homes and relationships back together again. It heals bad tempers, pride and arrogance. It removes guilt from things you know you should have never done. It offers another chance to those who will admit they need God in their lives.
God is going to give you a totally different reason for living. I can warn you, that it won’t be easy, but it will be worth it. Anybody can live for themselves. Only the brave and courageous can actually live for God. It’s a lot harder than you think. But with the Holy Spirit at work in you, it’s a change that you can make.
