Easter Sunday
April 12, 1998
INTRODUCTION
28 years in a cave. That’s how long Shoikoi Yokoi was in hiding. 28 years. Near the end of WWII, as a Japanese soldier, he was stationed on the island of Guam. In fear that defeat would mean capture by American forces, he ran into the jungle and hid in a cave. He later learned that the war was over by reading one of the thousands of leaflets that were dropped into the jungle by American planes.
Still, fearing for his life, he stayed in his cave. 28 years, living on frogs, rats, roaches and mangoes. It was only after some hunters discovered him that he was convinced it was safe to leave the jungle.
The world around Shoikoi Yokoi had changed completely. But because of his fear, his lack of confidence in what that world would be like, he remained tragically isolated, and wasted a good portion of his life.
Everything had changed, and he didn’t realize it.
Jesus Christ is alive! He is no longer dead! The war with sin and the punishment of death is over! And we have won. It’s safe to come out of our cave.
A. Everything for us has changed because of the resurrection of Christ.
B. THESIS: Because of the resurrection of Christ, we can now display the certainties of Easter faith.
TRANSITION: When we display Easter faith we show the world that…
I. WE ARE SURE THAT GOD RAISED JESUS FROM THE DEAD
“But God raised him from the dead…”
A. “The resurrection was an actual occurrence in which Jesus Christ rose bodily from the dead, and that sets him apart as clearly unique among all human beings who ever lived.” (Millard Erickson, The Word Became Flesh, p. 482)
After the crucifixion, the disciples of Jesus were a frightened, discouraged and disheartened group. But somehow from that defeated handful of followers came an incredibly powerful movement. Their timidity was changed to boldness, aggressive belief and commitment.
Belief in the resurrection of Jesus Christ is what led to the rise of Christianity. Belief in the resurrection of Jesus Christ is what , tradition tells us, led to the untimely death of each of the apostles. Belief in the resurrection of Jesus Christ was the central thrust of their message. But what led to this belief?
Even the most skeptical critic has to point to something that led to the fervor of the early church, and that has remained to this very day.
What led to their belief in the resurrection of Jesus Christ? Obviously, we would say the actual bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ led to their belief that Jesus rose from the dead. They saw him! They saw the empty tomb!
It’s important for us to realize that not all people who claim the name “Christian” accept such a statement as truth. It’s a shame that many Easter sermons are being preached today in churches all across the country by ministers who don’t believe that Jesus physically rose from the dead. When they speak of resurrection perhaps they mean that we resurrect Jesus in our memory each time we think of him. Or that the biblical account is a metaphor to give us hope for a spiritual life after death, because of the revival of Jesus’ spirit.
As William Lane Craig puts it, if today we were told that someone had died, was buried, and then rose from the dead, “only a theologian would think to ask, ‘But was his body still in the grave?” (In The Word Became Flesh, p. 492, by Millard Erickson)
B. There will always be some that say Christ was not raised from the dead.
1. How do we know that the tomb was ever empty?
The tomb was clearly empty – This is actually one of the least contested points in the issue of the resurrection
You would be hard pressed to find a very serious scholar, secular or Christian, who would deny that Jesus died, that his body was placed in a tomb, and that the tomb subsequently became empty. Practically no one today denies that these events are historical. It is fairly universally agreed that Jesus’ tomb became empty after his death.
2. Maybe the body was stolen
This is the most ancient of all arguments, coming from the Jews during the New Testament period itself. The Bible says that the Jewish leaders paid off the Roman soldiers who were guarding the tomb so that they would say the disciples came at night and stole the body while the guards were asleep.
How could this have been? The difficulty of moving a large stone, the noise involved might have caused sleeping guards to wake up. Why would trained soldiers fall so deeply asleep when their lives depended on staying awake.
Why would frightened men now risk their lives for a lie? The body wasn’t stolen.
3. Perhaps the legend developed over time.
At first, some say, the idea of Jesus’ resurrection didn’t surface. It only came at a later time, maybe 30 years or so after Jesus’ death when the NT writings first surface. By then, some say, the resurrection story had become a legend. And the writers of the NT record this legend so that we have it today.
“For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve. After that he appeared to more than 500 of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep.” (1 Cor. 15:3-6)
The legend didn’t develop over time – Belief in the resurrection can be verified very early after the crucifixion. Paul was in Jerusalem no more than 6 years after the crucifixion. He was told of the empty tomb too soon for any legend to have developed. In 1 Corinthians15:3-5, he’s probably quoting an early confession of the church, dated before A.D. 40, which specifically stated that Jesus died, was buried and rose on the third day.
Julius Muller once challenged opponents of the resurrection to find a parallel situation where legend had taken hold both in the very region where the events occurred and within a period as brief as 30 years, that is, while eyewitnesses were still alive. The challenge has still never been accepted.
If we deny the resurrection, these are three of the best options on which to base a denial. But we are sure that God raised Jesus from the dead, meaning that
C. Christ’s Resurrection is the center of history and the center of the Christian faith
1. “If the coming into existence of the church, a phenomenon undeniably attested by the New Testament, rips a great hole in history, a hole of the size and shape of the Resurrection, what does the secular historian propose to stop it up with?…The birth and rapid rise of the Christian Church…remain an unsolved enigma for any historian who refuses to take seriously the only explanation offered by the church itself.” (C.F.D. Moule, The Phenomenon of the New Testament, pp. 3, 13)
I for one, am willing to stake my life, to bleed and die, if necessary for my conviction that Jesus Christ physically came back to life and lives to this very day.
2. I believe like the apostle Paul who said, “If Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.” (1 Cor. 15:14)
TRANSITION: With Easter faith, we are sure that God raised Jesus from the dead. Also with Easter faith…
II. WE ARE SURE THAT DEATH IS NOT A SCARY THING
“…freeing him from the agony of death…”
A. The agony has been taken away.
1. The word here for agony literally means birth-pangs.
Illus. A couple of years ago I sustained an injury near the base of my tailbone. My visit to the emergency room was probably the most unpleasant experience of my life. Due to the nature of the problem, the doctor told me that wouldn’t be able to numb the pain, so away they dug underneath the skin while I was fully conscious. After the ordeal was finished, I don’t know why, but the doctor told me that on a pain scale, what was just done to me approximated the pain a woman endures in childbirth.
Well at work the next week, several of us were standing around and they were asking how I was doing. Well, I thought that surely they ought to know what the doctor had said.
So to inform them of my high thresh-hold for pain, I said, “Well, I was told that pain was about the same as child-birth. One of the secretary’s, Paula Browning, looked at me with this disgusted look on her face, and said, “Trust me, I don’t know what you had done, but it didn’t hurt as bad as having any baby.”
Since that day I’ve made it a point never to argue with women about how much it hurts to have a baby – or even to make such a statement that I could come close to understanding their level of pain. I thank the Lord that I’m physically incapable of ever experiencing it firsthand.
But this verse says that God freed Jesus from the agony of childbirth level pain when he freed him from the agony of death.
2. This is “a remarkable mixed metaphor in which death is regarded as being in labor and unable to hold back it’s child…” (I. Howard Marshall, Acts, Tyndale Commentary, p. 24)
Easter faith says,
B. If God is able to raise Christ, and free him from the agony of death, then he’ll raise us too!
A bishop in the African nation of Uganda named Festo Kivengere has written an account of an execution of three men which he witnessed in 1973. “February 10 began as a sad day for us in Kabale. People were commanded to come to the stadium and witness the execution.
Death permeated the atmosphere. A silent crowd of about three thousand was there to watch.”
He and 2 other ministers had been given permission to speak to the men before they died. Three men were brought in a truck and unloaded. They were handcuffed and their feet were chained. The firing squad stood at attention. As he walked into the center of the stadium, he was wondering what to say. How do you give the gospel to doomed men who are probably seething with rage?
Before the ministers could say anything, one of prisoners burst out:
“Bishop, thank you for coming! I wanted to tell you. The day I was arrested, in my prison cell, I asked the Lord Jesus to come into my heart. He came in and forgave me all my sins! Heaven is now open, and there is nothing between me and my God! Please tell my wife and children that I am going to be with Jesus. Ask them to accept him into their lives as I did.”
The other two men told similar stories, excitedly raising their handcuffed hands. The bishop felt that he should tell the soldiers in the firing squad, so he translated what the men had said into a language the soldiers could understand. These military men stood with their guns cocked and looks of bewilderment on their faces. In their dumbfounded state they actually forgot to put the hoods over the men’s faces.
The three men faced the firing squad standing close together.
They looked toward the people in the stadium and began to wave, handcuffs and all. The people waved back. Then shots were fired, and the three were with Jesus.
The Bishop says that in his district because of these men, there was an upsurge of life in Christ which challenges death and defeats it.
TRANSITION: Easter faith gives us the confidence to say that we are sure death is not a scary thing.
III. WE ARE SURE THAT JESUS IS PRESENTLY ON THE LOOSE!
“…because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him.”
A. The imagery of these words is that Jesus slid right out of the death grip.
Illus - When I was a kid in 4-H one of the popular events at our local county fair was the Greased Pig chase. Out in front of the grandstand on the horse track, a big pen was put up and a few 40-70# greased pigs were released for the 4-H kids to chase. If you caught one you got to keep it, take it home and raise it.
Problem was, with all that grease on their legs, you never could get quite a strong enough grip on them. Even with a death grip, they’d wiggle right out.
This verse says that it was impossible for death to keep Jesus in its grip. Jesus effortlessly slipped right out.
B. The reality of Easter means that Jesus is out there somewhere.
1. After his resurrection, Jesus turned up at times and in places that no one really expected.
He appeared to the disciples in a closed room, to a couple of guys on a road, and to the disciples again from the shore as they were fishing. Like the disciples, we never know when Jesus might turn up, how he might speak to us, or what he might ask us to do.
2. As Frederick Buechner says, Easter means, “we can never nail him down, not even if the nails we use are real and the thing we nail him to is a cross.” (The Magnificent Defeat, p. 86)
In the movie, The Fugitive, Richard Kimball is an innocent shackled prisoner, riding on a bus that will take him to a prison to serve a life-long sentence. But then the bus wrecks and when the U.S. Marshall, Samuel Gerard, arrives he finds that Richard Kimball is no longer in the bus. His conclusion – He’s out there! There’s a fugitive running around loose, and he has his crew will chase him, track him down and find him.
Jesus is also like a fugitive. Death couldn’t hold him, and now he’s out there – running free. But death will never catch him.
And he doesn’t have to be chased and tracked down by you and me. He wants us to find him! In fact he makes himself very plain for those who are looking. He’s right here today!
Easter faith believes that Jesus is out there, and he’s not hiding.
TRANSITION: When we display the certainties of Easter faith, we show the world, we are sure that God raised Jesus from the dead, we are sure that death is not a scary thing, and we‘re sure that Jesus is presently on the loose.
CONCLUSION
In July of 1994, Brian Kelly, who lived in suburban Detroit, suffered complications from surgery on his intestines. Knowing he was soon to die, Kelly told his family what he wanted done with his remains. His request was unusual, but his family granted it.
Kelly’s boss, Mary McCavit, at Independence Professional Fireworks shop, rolled up Kelly’s ashes in a 12” round fireworks shell. On Friday, August 12, at a convention of fireworks technicians near Pittsburgh, they shot that shell into the sky. It trailed 2 silvery comet tails as it ascended into the night sky, and then it exploded into red and green stars.
You have to admit, that if you want to go out with a bang, that’s sure tough to top. But it still doesn’t compare with the glorious promises of Easter faith.
A. The certainties of Easter faith hold within them a promise of a life that never ends.
B. People who know Jesus Christ have already started to live forever. Are living forever right now?
