The Intersection of Heaven and Earth
Easter Sunday, April 17, 2022 – Brad Bailey
Earlier in service… video (Easter Morning: Mary at the Tomb (2015)) followed by reading
of narrative text John 20:1, 16-22 (NLT) ?
Intro
I want to express a wide welcome today.
My hope is that we may dare to consider that it is God who welcomes us. He is the One who ultimately invites us here.
He invites us to join those who recognize that in the risen Christ… we are encountering the very intersection of heaven and earth.
And that may begin with shaking off the cultural nature of what we call “Easter.”
For those of us gathering today… this timeless moment that divides human history… became a holy day …which becomes a holiday… and like all holidays… it becomes a part of our cultural lives… our cultural traditions ...traditions that become …by nature…familiar … and sentimental.
Christmas becomes a …time associated with family… anticipation of gifts… the magic of lights….and God coming into the world… becomes part of the backdrop.
I suppose the same can happen with Easter… it may become associated with special Spring-break… with flowers blooming… with a special brunch… with chocolate bunnies… and eggs.
We need these holidays… and all the sentiments that create special seasons in life.
> But what we gather around… it’s more than sentimental… it’s shocking.
What we engage today… is rooted in the farthest thing from a tradition… it was transforming.
As we heard in one of the accounts read earlier… and across the various testimonies…
They didn’t see blooming flowers or bunnies …. They saw Jesus…who had died and was buried…3 days earlier.
They didn’t walk… they ran.
They didn’t sing… they shook.
This didn’t fit in their understanding..
For those who first engaged that Christ…had risen…they were faced with something that changed everything. The found themselves at the intersection of heaven and earth
It shook them to the core of their very being… and then it changed the very nature of their whole being.
And not just those who were the first witnesses.
Jesus was now risen and ascended to heaven…but sends the Holy Spirit to bear his living presence.
Among the great voices that speak out is that of the Apostle Paul. He had … but then is… he realizes that he had missed what God was doing… in the name of religion… he had been a part of using religion to contain God in a way that would serve his own ends.
He was fighting God. And now he is faced with the reality of God. And it transforms him.
As he describes in the Biblical Scriptures ….
1 Corinthians 15:1,2, 3-10
Now, brothers and sisters, I want to remind you of the gospel … By this gospel you are saved…
What I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. 6 After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, 8 and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.
9 For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. 10 But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect.
Into our lives overloaded with endless information… Paul declares that... this news is ‘of first importance.’
Many things in life may seem important…but there is that which is of first importance.
He is saying that amidst everything that we can choose to give our attention to… there is something that is of first importance… something that matters most.
Every one of us living in these days of information overload needs will do well to pause and consider that.
We have nearly endless messages that come at us… which we can give importance to.
At the end of 1992… just 30 years ago… there were ten websites online… today… 30 years later…there are over 1.9 billion websites
There are 252,000 new websites launched every day… 10,500 in the next hour. [1]
And there’s no limit to the social media platforms we can follow… from WhatsApp to Instagram to Facebook to WeChat to TikTok…and of course Twitter…
500 million Tweets per day 2021… Broken down even further, that equals 6,000 Tweets per second
The problem we face isn’t the platforms… it’s perspective.
When everything matters… nothing matters.
The most important question is to ask ourselves… is:
What really matters?
“Our modern lives can engage so much information and interaction that we become ever more shallow by nature… losing the ability to allow anything to provide true weight in our minds and souls.” [2]
Into this world of everything that seeks our attention…everything we use to distract ourselves… Paul declares that there is something of “first importance.
Life is meant to be centered in what matters most. What matters most is what gives meaning and perspective on everything else.
The is why Jesus said… Seek first the Kingdom of God…and everything else you need will come.
> If you seek God first…everything else will come.
C.S. Lewis
"Put first things first and we get second things thrown in; put second things first and we lose both first and second things."
If we know what is at the center of our existence….the source the value it gives us…everything else is enjoyed for what it is. If we don’t grasp that which is first…everything that is secondary will try to be primary…and we will actually lose the ability to enjoy what it could be.
So the first truth to take in… is that…
1. The Resurrection of Christ is of Real Importance (“First Importance”)
This is what Paul is stating. God has been at work…and He spoke through prophets of sending a Savior… a Messiah… and of his suffering… and death…and rising from the dead.
And now it has come just as He said.
Paul grasps that the resurrection is the culminating demonstration to the power and proof of something larger.
The real news is that HE is risen… he who God said would come from outside time and space… would defeat that which has ruled over the nature of this world… that he would take upon himself all the weight of human separation from God… and then the death that it has led to…but then defeat it.
THAT is who has risen.
This is what he refers to as the “Gospel”…which is word that means great news.
Paul notes that this is the grand news… because this is about what can SAVE US.
This news can ‘save us.’ Save us from what? From being forever lost from the source of all life… lost from the very nature of life… lost from who we really are.
But God seeks to save us. He wants to save you. He doesn’t want anyone to perish; … and the Gospel is what he provides….it is His righteousness….which we can receive.
The Resurrection of Christ is of first importance… it really matters.
In our text Paul goes on to explain that…
2. The Resurrection of Christ is rooted in real facts.
Some of us may naturally wonder if this news is real.
We may find any claim of a supernatural event a little hard to trust.
We may assume that this simply has to have been made up… maybe because of wishful thinking… by people who believed in this sort of thing. Or maybe some people made this up at some distant future point….and for some reason… everyone liked the story.
Couldn’t this have just developed as a religious myth over a long period of time?
It’s become popular to say all sorts of this like this in the recent years.
> But now even the most skeptical of scholars are recognizing that the witnessing of the risen Christ… is at the very epicenter of this movement from the beginning.
The belief in the risen Christ is at the very root of the early community… it is what formed that community.
And this statement is part of the facts that cannot be easily denied.
There is simply a dominant recognition that the Apostle Paul wrote 1 Corinthians (among other letters)… and that Paul is clearly a scholar with a first rate philosophical mind …and that he was radically changed… and came to understand that Christ was the true fulfillment of the whole religious life he had once tried to live.
And perhaps most notably….that he knew those involved. Paul, who acquired his information within a couple of years of Jesus’ life and who actually knew, first hand, Jesus’ closest disciple Peter and his own brother James.
So let’s quickly recognize how the resurrection of Christ is rooted in real facts. [4]
Paul notes that every one of these main truths about Christ are “just as the Scriptures said”…or “according to the Scriptures.”
What is he saying by that?
FIRST. The Resurrection of Christ is…
Rooted in recorded PREDICTION
This is not some random event.
God had spoken through the prophets and writers…of the Messiah who would come.
Throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, the promise of a Messiah is clearly given. These messianic prophecies were made hundreds, sometimes thousands of years before Jesus Christ was born, and clearly Jesus Christ is the only person who has ever walked this earth to fulfill them. [5]
Every aspect of the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus the Messiah had been prophesied in the Hebrew Scriptures long before the events ever unfolded in the timeline of human history.
It may be reasonable to question whether some random claim about a random life is really true…but this is no random event. The nature of what was said long before about this life… and death…and rising… reflects that God, who exists beyond our time and space, has spoken into human history…and then acted in that history according to what had been foretold.
SECOND. The Resurrection of Christ is…
Rooted in historical WITNESSES
Paul is explicit here… this is real news…with real witnesses.
Notice he goes through the various list saying, “he was seen.”
All the accounts of the resurrection focused on not what they felt…but what they saw.
And elsewhere he describes how most of those lives who saw him were still alive even when he wrote this. They can verify it. Jesus was crucified in 30AD…and this letter is circulating in 54AD… so there were plenty of witnesses still alive…and plenty alive who could discredit claims of an empty tomb if it wasn’t true. [6]
But there is more…
THIRD. The Resurrection of Christ is…
Rooted in historical TIME
Notice what Paul says: “I passed on to you what had also been passed on to me.”
This is a common rabbinic phrase…that refers to an oral creed that was being shared. [6b]
When would Paul have received it? During his time in Jerusalem between in 37 or 38 AD…. as early as 7 to 8 years after the resurrection. Which means what?
It means that it was already a fact set into a creed being received within the very first few years of the death and resurrection itself. [7]
So the idea that this is simply a myth that developed generations later…is simply not true.
What emerged was coming forth from those who were there… what was believed and accepted from the start.
If Jesus’ tomb was not empty, the early Christian community could not have possibly preached the resurrection in Jerusalem where Jesus was buried.
> We have no record at all of any corrections or challenges to the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ from anyone: Roman, Jew, or other Christians.
FOURTH. The Resurrection of Christ is…
Rooted in a lack of compelling alternative MOTIVES
What am I referring to?
One reason to doubt the testimony of all these lives would be to identify a compelling motive for why they may have made it up.
There is no reasonable motive that makes sense. [8] There is no compelling self-serving motive. There is no doubt what they would face…utter rejection by nearly all…and ultimately death.
That’s not speculation… it’s fact. The same religious leaders and Roman government that crucified Jesus would find word of his being alive an even greater threat.
Those who declare the reality of the resurrection choose the same worst fate of tortuous death that both their religious community and the Roman Empire would bring.
Most of the disciples were martyred for their faith… they faced tortuous brutal deaths. They crucified Peter upside down, and he doesn't break. Another by the sword. Hundreds of other followers were slaughtered. But no one would deny that Christ has risen. Someone surely would have done so if they had even a doubt that the Resurrection was not true. [9]
FIFTH and FINALLY. The Resurrection of Christ is…
Rooted in it’s unprecedented IMPACT
What happened as a result of the resurrection is unprecedented in human history.
The power of these powerless became unstoppable. The religious establishment tries to silence them…and couldn’t.
The Roman Empire tried to dismiss them and discourage them…and they couldn’t.
This power of this resurrection overcame all the powers of this world to stop it …and changed the world.
Jesus had declared that nothing would stop what he had begun.
Whatever one may not yet be clear about… there is something that stands certain… “something happened.” Something happened that changed the lives of the disciples and the course of history.
If Christ had not actually risen …
How can we explain the unstoppable boldness of these lives?
If Christ had not actually risen …
How can we explain the most profound teachings the world has ever known?
The teachings of Jesus stand out as profound beyond earthly minds … not that which developed as the deceptive work of his few followers who were uneducated and socially powerless.
If Christ had not actually risen …
How can we explain the transition to gathering on Sundays.
They were soon commemorating the day of the resurrection …rather than on the Saturday, the Sabbath Day, which is a radical change from a tradition that would have been nearly impossible to change. [10]
“The resurrection of Christ rips a hole so wide in human history… and unleashes a force so unstoppable … that the response is generally that of alternative explanations that prove neither sound nor substantial enough to explain what happened … or that of a profound discovery of a larger reality that calls us to enter and align our lives with.”
This is the impact that flows from both reason and a relationship that reached out to us.
Paul goes on to describe …
3. The Resurrection of Christ brings real change.
1 Corinthians 15: 20, 22-23 (NLT)
In fact, Christ has been raised from the dead. He is the first of a great harvest of all who have died… 22 Just as everyone dies because we all belong to Adam, everyone who belongs to Christ will be given new life. 23 But there is an order to this resurrection: Christ was raised as the first of the harvest; then all who belong to Christ will be raised when he comes back.
When he describes belonging to Adam… in contrast to belonging to Christ….what is he saying?
What the Bible makes clear is that we all share the common human condition that was described about Adam in the Book of Genesis… which is the choice to go our own way…to exist outside God’s will. We’re all born in Adam. We all inherit from him a nature that exists outside God…and outside eternity.
The problem is SEPARATION...which is the ultimate form of death.
Jesus said he came to give us new life…. By reconciling us… and leading us into a life with God our Father.
When Christ came and was united with humanity… and then lived in the will of the father… and accepted the consequences of our separation and death….he said all who receive him… receive his position.
If we belong to him…we receive his position of life with the Father.
We embrace his death and his new life.
BAPTISM… one of those Karen Mrosko (Video or Live testimony)
This past year… amidst the pandemic… Karen began to help feed hundreds of lives through the Pop Up Pantry….and then grow in her life with Jesus through various groups in the life of this community.
And today she is being baptized. Today she wants to publicly identify with the new covenant… and we hope you will come be part of that public commitment.
And as our text declares…to Karen…and to all who belong to Christ… it is transition that brings new life.
When Mary went to the tomb… and there the risen Jesus called out her name… it transformed her.
And as Paul explained… the risen Christ met him in a spiritual way… that changed his whole life.
When you realize God has come to rescue… it means we were made for more.
We have been living in the shadows …. Not in the true light.
Next week… going to launch a new series entitled: Made for More.
We can spend our lives never really knowing who we are. Do we exist with purpose? Do we ultimately belong? Do we have a destiny?
In the Biblical Book of Ephesians, we discover that we were made for more than what we have ever known.
In this series we will discover what Christ has come to make of or lives.
…And it begins by the working of God’s Spirit.
First, we experience the connection between our spirit and the Spirit of God. You may recall that in the Biblical testimony we heard at the start of the service… when Christ had risen and was present with his disciples, he imparted to them the Holy Spirit… as he does to all who receive him. And the indwelling Spirit is described as an inheritance of what is to come.
As Paul described in the Scriptures… and here paraphrased…
Romans 8:11 (MSG) ? It stands to reason… that if the alive-and-present God who raised Jesus from the dead moves into your life, he'll do the same thing in you that he did in Jesus, bringing you alive to himself? When God lives and breathes in you (and he does, as surely as he did in Jesus), you are delivered from that dead life. With his Spirit living in you, your body will be as alive as Christ's!
The connected life… in Christ we become connected to eternal life.
And when the creation comes under the full reign of heaven… . there will be the restoration of all thing that are united in God…and that includes the transformation that leads to spiritual bodies…..just as Christ was raised to a spiritual body.
As Paul further concludes…
1 Corinthians 15: 42, 44, 53-55 (NLT)
Our earthly bodies are planted in the ground when we die, but they will be raised to live forever. …44 They are buried as natural human bodies, but they will be raised as spiritual bodies. For just as there are natural bodies, there are also spiritual bodies.
…53 For our dying bodies must be transformed into bodies that will never die; our mortal bodies must be transformed into immortal bodies. 54 Then, when our dying bodies have been transformed into bodies that will never die, this Scripture will be fulfilled: “Death is swallowed up in victory. 55 O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?”
Paul would be the first to say that there is so much we can’t grasp about what lies ahead. We are finite… and can never presume to understand the infinite nature of God.
But what Paul does grasp… is what the risen Christ makes known ….which is that death is the intruder.
The resurrection looks like a miracle from this present state of the world... but from the other side… it is simply the eternal state as it is.
As Philip Yancey describes [11]…
“There are two ways to look at human history, I have concluded. One way is to focus on the wars and violence, the squalor, the pain and tragedy and death. From such a point of view, Easter seems a fairy-tale exception, a stunning contradiction in the name of God. There is another way to look at the world. If I take Easter as the starting point, the one incontrovertible fact about how God treats those whom he loves, then human history becomes the contradiction and Easter a preview of ultimate reality.”
?And Paul recognizes that we will be raised as he was…to a new form of bodily life.
Jesus spoke of heaven as His Father’s house… of feasts… of joy.
told his disciples he would see them again… eat with them again.
We do not cease to exist. We do not cease to be persons.
Let me ask you. Can you imagine yourself existing but not as a person? We can’t because we are persons.
We are fundamentally relational beings.
And we were created to exist in relationship to God… our very source of life.
That is the declaration of Easter.
When Mary stood outside the empty tomb…and wept… and then heard a voice call her name… it was it set off a change that had no end.
That is what Jesus held for her. That is what Jesus holds for you.
You were made for more than you have ever known.
Invitation / Prayer
Notes:
1. As of Mar 21, 2022, there are currently over 1.93 billion websites online. - here
More info from: How Many Websites Are There? - Last Updated: 05/28/21 - here and here
There are over 200 million active websites… and over 6 billion indexed web pages
From WorldWideWebSize, the web contains over 6 billion indexed web pages as of 2020.
2.This quote is actually my own. I would add to this thought another quote that I find striking “Information overload is a symptom of our desire to not focus on what's important. It is a choice.” - Brian Solis (Digital Anthropologist…author… speaker of digital innovation.)
3. From Letters of C.S. Lewis, p. 228 / The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Vol. III, Narnia, p. 111.
4. Professor. Thomas Arnold, for fourteen years the headmaster of Rugby school, author of the three-volume History of Rome, and holder of the chair of modern history at Oxford, was well acquainted with the value of evidence in determining historical facts. This great scholar said,
“I have been used for many years to study the histories of other times, and to examine and weigh the evidence of those who have written about them, and I know of no one fact in the history of mankind which is proved by better and fuller evidence of every sort, to the understanding of a fair inquirer, than the great sign which God hath given us that Christ died and rose again from the dead.” Thomas Arnold, Christian Life, Its Hopes, Its Fears, and Its Close, 6th ed. (London: T. Fellowes, 1859), pp. 15-16.
For other sources exploring the evidence of the resurrection:
The Resurrection of Jesus (The Historical Evidence) by Inspiring Philosophy Published on Jan 22, 2016 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0iDNLxmWVM
5. Isaiah 52 and 53, the classic messianic prophecy known as the “Suffering Servant” prophecy, also details the death of Messiah for the sins of His people. More than 700 years before Jesus was even born, Isaiah provides details of His life and death.
Isaiah 52:13-15 (NIV) ?13 See, my servant will act wisely; he will be raised and lifted up and highly exalted. 14 Just as there were many who were appalled at him-- his appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any man and his form marred beyond human likeness-- 15 so will he sprinkle many nations, and kings will shut their mouths because of him. For what they were not told, they will see, and what they have not heard, they will understand.
Isaiah 53:4-12 (NIV) ?4 Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted. 5 But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. 6 We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
7 He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.
8 By oppression and judgment he was taken away. And who can speak of his descendants? For he was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgression of my people he was stricken. 9 He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death, though he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth. 10 Yet it was the LORD's will to crush him and cause him to suffer, and though the LORD makes his life a guilt offering, he will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of the LORD will prosper in his hand.
11 After the suffering of his soul, he will see the light [of life] and be satisfied; by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities. 12 Therefore I will give him a portion among the great, and he will divide the spoils with the strong, because he poured out his life unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors. For he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.
For centuries it was hard to imagine a figure who would fulfill bearing the sins of the world …such suffering for the sake of others…and then rise on the other side.
Nearly every little phrase has some unique aspect which was profoundly fulfilled in Christ.
God had foretold of the One who would come save the world… which is distinctly fulfilled in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus:
• He was rejected
• He was considered abandoned…stricken by God
• He was pierced
• He was actually bearing the weight of our sins
• He was silent in front of His accusers
• He was joined with criminals in His death
• He was buried with a rich man in his death
• He was raised and lifted up and highly exalted
• He was able to see his offspring and prolong his days
• He was One for whom the will of the LORD prospered in his hand.
After prophesying that the Suffering Servant of God would suffer for the sins of His people, the prophet says He would then be “cut off out of the land of the living.” But Isaiah then states that He (Messiah) “will see His offspring” and that God the Father will “prolong His days” (Isaiah 53:5, 8, 10).
Isaiah proceeds to reaffirm the promise of the resurrection in different words: “As a result of the anguish of His soul, He will see light and be satisfied” (Isaiah 53:11).
6. Jesus’ resurrection was as much a shock to the disciples as His death had been.
Thomas, known forever as the doubter, was merely voicing what most of them felt when he declared he would not believe in the risen Lord until he had done his own thorough investigation (see John 20). Everyone doubted it at first. Everyone. Matthew 28:17 says, “And when they saw Him, they worshiped Him. But some were doubtful.” Only one devoted to the whole truth would include such an incriminating statement in his narrative.
6b. In ancient days… far less was recorded in written form due to what was involved with the creation of parchment. It would be passed along orally…and then summarized in short creeds and hymns.
Most believe that the very words we read here are one such creed.
• Mnemonic structure with parallelism
• Less than 50 words
• An early creed to help root those with something they could remember
7. A good article on this text is “Analysis of the Pre-Pauline Creed in 1 Corinthians 15:1-11” by Ryan Turner
8. In addition, no one questions that these were not philosophically sophisticated lives who come create some brilliant story. They admit to having the same expectations as the religious culture of their day… which is that any Messiah would be more a political leader... who would overthrow the earthly rulers.
9. “Perhaps the transformation of the disciples of Jesus is the greatest evidence of all for the resurrection. At the time of His death they were very much afraid. Peter went to the extent of vehemently denying that he knew Christ. But in a few days this same Peter fearlessly proclaimed the Gospel in the same city. Listen to his audacity: “The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of our fathers, has glorified His servant Jesus. You handed Him over to be killed, and you disowned him before Pilate, though He had decided to let him go. You disowned the Holy and righteous One and asked that a murderer be released to you” (Acts 3:13-14). There had to have been a sufficient reason for such a transformation.”
Reference: Taken from Basic Christianity by John Stott. Copyright(c) 1958. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press, PO Box 1400, Downers Grove, IL 60515, p. 58. www.ivpress.com. http://www.ivpress.com/cgi-ivpress/book.pl/code=3413.
The gospel narratives themselves are too counterproductive to be made up… as they testify that women were the first eyewitnesses…and women’s low social status was so low that their testimony was not admissible evidence. There was no possible advantage to the church to recount that all the first witnesses were women. It could only have undermined the credibility of the testimony. The only possible explanation for why women were depicted as meeting Jesus first is if they really had” (Keller, Reason for God, 205).
10. The Apostles did not teach that the church must meet on Sundays, but there is clear evidence that the shift did begin to take place very early.
Acts - The early church gathered on the first day of the week in celebration and remembrance of the resurrection. This is evident throughout the book of Acts (cf. also 1 Cor. 16:2 and Acts 20:7). Acts 20:7 is the clearest verse in the New Testament which indicates that Sunday was the normal meeting day of the apostolic church. Paul stayed in Troas for seven days (v. 6) and the church met on the first day of the week. For an extended study of how the day of worship changed, See The Origins of Sunday Worship in the Early Church by Thomas C. Hanson Sr at https://www.gci.org/law/sabbath/hanson
“From the Epistle of Barnabas, which was probably written from Alexandria, perhaps as early as A.D. 70 or as late as 132. He writes against Jewish sacrifices, fasts, circumcision and other laws. Those laws were types prefiguring Christ. He gives a figur a tive meaning for unclean meat laws, and then a figurative meaning for the Sabbath: “Attend, my children, to the meaning of this expres sion, ‘He finished in six days.’ This implieth that the Lord will finish all things in six thousand years, for a day is with him a thousand years.”[5]
Barnabas cites Isaiah 1:13-14 as criticism of the Sabbath, concluding, “Your present Sabbaths are not acceptable to Me, but that is which I have made, when, giving rest to all things, I shall make a beginning of the eighth day, that is, a beginning of another world.” He also mentions our present inability to keep any day holy by being “pure in heart,” and he concludes that we will be unable to keep the Sabbath holy until the end-time new world, after we have been made completely holy. In this passage, Barnabas does four things, which will be repeated by later authors:
1. He interprets the Sabbath in terms of moral holiness, not rest.
2. He associates the Sabbath with the prophesied age.
3. He associates the new age with the eighth day — which he then associates with the eighth day of the week: “Wherefore, also, we keep the eighth day with joyfulness, the day also on which Jesus rose again from the dead.”
4. He associates the Christian day of worship with the resurrection of Jesus.
Barnabas, with antagonism against Jewish laws, transferred the Sabbath command entirely into the future and, since the future age was called not only the seventh but also the eighth, could view Sunday-keeping as likewise picturing the future. Thus first-day observance was only indirectly related to Sabbath observance.
Justin Martyr
Justin Martyr gives us evidence from Rome, about the year 150. His comments probably reflect Christian custom in other cities, too, such as Ephesus, where he lived for a while.
On the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country gather together in one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read…. Sunday is the day on which we all hold our common assembly, because it is the first day on which God, having wrought a change in the darkness and matter, made the world; and Jesus Christ our Saviour on the same day rose from the dead.[6]
Justin is clear: It was the widespread practice of Christians to observe Sunday. “Perhaps there were some Gentile Christians who kept the Sabbath…but if so, they found no spokesman whose writings survive.” (Justin Martyr, First Apology, 67; ANF 1:186).
From here. Further exploration, though I cannot confirm the whole of what is stated, is here.
11. From Philip Yancey, The Jesus I Never Knew
