This morning we celebrate Easter; we celebrate the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ from the tomb that could not hold him over 2000 years ago. Over the years, as with any religious holiday and observances, the reality and the significance of what we are celebrating can get lost in all of the glitter and excitement of the celebration itself. Easter has become, for some people, just another holiday, a chance to get stuff and to give stuff and to get a few days off of school. It’s become about bunnies and chocolate, and colored eggs in fancy baskets but we know that those things don’t tell the real story of Easter. With all of the trappings and all of the different holidays to keep track of, it’s easy to get confused sometimes.
A Sunday School teacher asked her class of children what Easter was all about. She got a bunch of answers ranging from candy to the Easter Bunny to having to dress in fancy clothes. She wasn’t getting the answer she had hoped for so she pressed on. What does Easter really mean, what happened on the first Easter morning? A little girl raised her hand and said that that was the day that Jesus had come out of his tomb. Sighing with relief, the teacher smiled at the girl and prompted, "Jesus arose from the tomb, and what does He do for us?" The youngster replied, "He looks to see if he can see his shadow, and if He can, he goes back in for another six weeks."
Lost in all of the confusion was the real meaning and the real message of Easter. Easter is about one thing really. When you take away all that we’ve made it, Easter is hope. The death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus on that first Easter morning gave man real hope for the first time in history.
Hope is a word that we like to kind of throw around. I hope this works, I hope you feel better, I hope for this or that. The true essence of the word gets cheapened sometimes. Webster’s defines hope as: to cherish a desire with anticipation of obtainment. To the world, hope is to long for something, it’s to anticipate something that you want with all of your heart to be fulfilled. We have to have hope in this life.
Someone has been quoted as saying: We can live forty days without food, eight days without water, four minutes without air, but only a few seconds without hope.
We need hope in our lives, and while the hope the world offers is based on our wants and desires, things that don’t satisfy and things that will fail us, the hope that Scripture talks about is different. This hope can be defined as this: an expectation based on the promises of God. This hope is different! This hope is eternal and won’t fail us. Hebrews says that:
Heb 6: 19 We have this hope (talking about God’s promises and purposes) as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure.
The hope that God offers is something to build on, it’s an anchor, it keeps us from drifting after this and that, it is the rock on which the Christian stands, one that cannot be moved or shaken. This is the hope of God, and this hope is forever bound up in the resurrection of Christ that we celebrate today. That work that took a cross, the very symbol of death and despair and a tomb, the epitome of hopelessness and turned them forever into symbols of life and hope for the believer, that whoever believes in what was accomplished upon that cross and believes in who it was that walked out of that tomb would be saved. That’s the hope we have. As Peter writes:
1PE 1:3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,
That’s the Good News of the gospel, Jesus Christ is risen today! Hallelujah there’s hope for us!
No one believed and hoped more than Christ’s disciples until that day that hope was taken away from them.
I. The Removal of Hope
Anything that we’ve hoped for in this life that has let us down, those times where we’ve been overwhelmed by those feelings that come when hope is lost or when we’ve found ourselves in a hopeless situation those times pale in comparison to what the disciples went through on that dark day that Christ was crucified. That was the day that their hope died. The disciples and Jesus’ followers had all of their hopes pinned up in this man called Jesus. They had left everything to follow him. Homes, families, jobs, possessions, everything was left behind because of the hope of the message this man proclaimed. And they believed Him. They watched as the crowds flocked to Him. They listened as He taught in a way that no one before Him had ever taught before. Not as one with simply a knowledge of the Law, but as one with the very authority of God behind His words. They watched in awe as blind men received their sight, as the deaf heard and the lame walked. They saw a man with a shriveled hand stretch it out to wholeness again at the command of this man. They saw demons flee and tremble, they saw the crashing waves stilled by a word from His mouth. They had been the ones holding the baskets of left-over fish and bread after Jesus had fed 5,000 people with only a small boy’s lunch. They watched as He talked with the Pharisees in a way that no one else had dared. They themselves had been given the power to heal and to drive out demons in this man’s name.
And then there were the claims He made about Himself. He claimed that God was His father. In fact, they had heard God’s voice proclaim that his was His son. He claimed that He was one with God and that He had come to usher in God’s kingdom on Earth. They longed to be a part of that kingdom. They longed to be freed from the nations that had oppressed their people for so long. They had seen so much, they had heard so much, their lives had been so radically changed that this man had to be the Messiah that was promised, the Deliverer of His people.
I’m sure that hope was reinforced as Jesus entered Jerusalem to the shouts of Hosanna, Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord. The disciples knew that their hope was about to become reality, Jesus was walking towards what he had come to do, their salvation was at hand.
And then the bottom fell out. Jesus was taken from them and tortured. He was condemned to die upon a cross like the worst of criminals. He was accused of blasphemy and all sorts of crimes and as they led Him to His death, the disciples scattered. Some watched form a distance as they hung Him from the tree. There He was, their Messiah, facing death. Maybe as they watched, they still held out hope that He would be delivered. Maybe they expected angels to pour out of heaven and rescue Him. But then it happened, Scripture tells us that with a loud cry, Jesus breathed His last. With that cry, their hope had died. As darkness descended on the land, these disciples and others whom Jesus had poured His life into looked on in shock as their world came undone. Today we call it Good Friday, for those followers, it was anything but.
They didn’t understand that this had to happen. If there had been another way, certainly God would have gone that route rather than to subject his Son to the horrors of the cross. For man to be saved, Christ had to die, the love and justice of a Holy God demanded it. As Jesus prayed in the Garden before His arrest, He cried, "My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will." This was the only way.
Understand this, God did not have to save us at all. He could have left us to the consequences of our sins and rebellion. But he loved us and because of that great love, hope had to die for a time. Christ was the perfect one sacrificed for the imperfect, His blood was the blood of a spotless lamb that would cover the sins of mankind forever.
Christ had to die. And just as he had to die, he had to rise again. Hope was resurrected.
II. The Resurrection of Hope.
What set Christ apart as a sacrifice? Death could not hold him, by the power of His resurrection, that sacrifice that he made became the only one we would ever need. Christ did not have to sacrifice himself again and again. When he walked out of that grave, the penalty for our sins was paid in full, once for all.
Hebrews 9:24 For Christ has entered into heaven itself to appear now before God as our Advocate. He did not go into the earthly place of worship, for that was merely a copy of the real Temple in heaven. 25 Nor did he enter heaven to offer himself again and again, like the earthly high priest who enters the Most Holy Place year after year to offer the blood of an animal. 26 If that had been necessary, he would have had to die again and again, ever since the world began. But no! He came once for all time, at the end of the age, to remove the power of sin forever by his sacrificial death for us.
Hope was alive again, without that truth and reality, we have nothing.
1 cor 15:17 And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins.
In John Chapter 20, we read about the resurrection of this hope.
Here we see one of His followers coming to get some closure, to put the finishing touches on the burial and to anoint Christ’s body with spices that they had prepared. She went to mourn the dead. Instead, she found life. We’re told that as she approached the tomb, she noticed that the stone was rolled away and she immediately feared that the body had been stolen. She runs and gets some of the disciples who come and look around the tomb and, they see that Christ is not there. They look at the grave clothes and poke around a bit and then we’re told that they return to their homes. But Mary stays. She sees a man that she thinks is the gardener until he speaks and says her name, and in that instant she knew that her hope had been well placed all along and that hope was now standing in front of her, in the flesh, everything that He had claimed to be and that He had claimed that He would do was now a reality, salvation had come. She had watched him die and yet here He stood before her. She ran to the disciples with the good news, I’ve just seen Jesus! Hope had returned, hope had risen, hope had conquered death, and hope had called her by name.
As with Mary, our hope is bound up in the person of Jesus today. And its in those times when we feel the most hopeless, those times when we feel that we can’t stand, that we need to remember the resurrection of hope and see that he’s calling us by name and asking us to hope in Him, the risen Savior.
Whatever it is that you’ve placed your hope in this morning, it cannot compare to the hope that Jesus brings. Not a temporary or fleeting hope, but an eternal hope, one that we can stand on and base our life upon.
III. This is the Reality of Hope:
A. Christ gives us the hope of freedom.
When I was at Nyack, in the off-season for soccer, we would meet a few times a week to train together for the coming season. One of the ways that we would train was with a parachute. We would strap this parachute onto our back and run as fast as we could across the field. This was frustrating, it was like a dream where you’re running as fast as you can and you’re not going anywhere. The parachute would slow your progress to almost nothing!
That’s the way many people feel today in life. This is what leads to a feeling of hopelessness for even some Christians today, they’ve got the weight of their past strapped onto their back and no matter how hard they try to move forward, it drags them down and halts their progress.
Christ came to free us from that burden, his resurrection provides the hope of freedom from our past and from the mistakes that we’ve made. No one knew this better than Mary. We’re told that Christ had driven seven demons out of her, he had delivered her from a past of bondage and given her the hope of freedom. That’s the hope that offers to all of us today.
JN 8:34 Jesus replied, "I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. (that would be each of us in here)35 Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. 36 So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.
It doesn’t matter where you’ve been or what you’ve done, if you’ve been trying to run against the weight of your past, there is hope for freedom found in the Lord Jesus.
B. He gives us the hope of a relationship
I moved from a little suburb of Akron, OH to the city of Syracuse in the middle of 7th grade. I can remember that first day of school like it was yesterday. It was an inner city school and it was like no place I had ever been before in my life. I remember going from class to class and being by myself, no one would talk to me. I wanted so badly to make a friend, just one. Then lunch came. I walked into the room and had no idea where to sit, I looked for an empty table and saw someone wave to me. This kid had been in one of my classes and he invited me to sit with him and his friends for lunch. What a difference this made in my day. I had a friend, I had made a relationship with someone so that I didn’t have to be alone.
Loneliness is a terrible thing. The feeling that no one understands you or loves you or wants to be with you can make life miserable. There are many who feel that hopelessness of loneliness on a regular basis. We are made for relationships, we are created to interact with others. No one should be alone. We are also created with a longing to know God, to understand who he’s made us to be and how we relate to Him. Christ came to make this possible. He died so that none of us had to be alone again. With his resurrection he brought the hope of a relationship with God through a relationship with Christ. This was radically different than things had been. This was not ritual and rules and empty religion, this was a relationship with our Creator made possible by His Son.
Eph 2:12 In those days (talking about before Christ came) you were living apart from Christ. You were excluded from God’s people, Israel, and you did not know the promises God had made to them. You lived in this world without God and without hope. (that describes so many today) 13 But now you belong to Christ Jesus. Though you once were far away from God, now you have been brought near to him because of the blood of Christ.
The blood of Christ, the resurrection of hope, has brought us near to God. It has given us a relationship with Him that we cannot have apart from Christ. A relationship in which He has adopted us as sons and daughters and loves us like a father and has promised us an inheritance that is beyond our wildest dreams.
1 peter1:4 and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade--kept in heaven for you,
That’s the promise of this relationship that hope gives us. We never have to be alone, we have a father who loves us and our inheritance is secure. In that inheritance we find the third reality of this hope we find in Christ.
C. Christ gives us the hope of life.
I want you to hear first-hand the hope of life that Christ brings. I’ve asked Renee Warner to share a little bit of her journey with God with all of you this morning.
Life can be hard. This life can offer little in the way of hope, but for those who believe in Christ, we have hope for life, both this life and the one to come.
1. Now
Christ has given us hope for this life. Ask 25 different people and they’ll tell you 25 different reasons for living, 25 different things that are worth hoping for. Money, fame, success, love, power, all of these are the hope of millions of people each day. They put their faith in these and may be satisfied for a time but there will always be an emptiness, there will always be a longing for more. Some of the richest, most powerful, most successful people in the world are the most miserable and they’d trade everything to fill that emptiness inside. Hope for this life comes through Christ. There is nothing else, there is no one else who can fill our need for Him.
1TI 6:17 Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment.
A fulfilling life is found in Christ. It may not be an easy life, it may not be a comfortable life, but when we focus our eyes on Christ and the hope he gives us, and stop chasing after empty things that the world says will satisfy, God says we will have life to the full, the way He intended for us to have.
And the most amazing reality of the hope that Christ brings is that he offers us hope for the future. Now I’m not talking about next week or next year, I’m talking about forever.
2. Forever
On the cross, Christ brought us the hope of eternal life.
Titus 3: 7 so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life.
Titus 1:2 a faith and knowledge resting on the hope of eternal life, which God, who does not lie, promised before the beginning of time,
col 1:27 To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.
That is what it boils down to. Take everything else away, the bunnies, the candy, and the eggs, this is Easter, Hope. Christ in us, the hope of glory! That’s the Easter message. The hope of eternity. Through a relationship with Christ, we have hope for life when life on Earth is done. A life free of pain, sickness, suffering, and evil. A life spent in the presence of God and of the Son he sent to bring us this hope. We have the hope of glory.
When Mary saw Him that day she knew and she believed. She knew that hope had died, and she stood in the presence of hope resurrected, and over time she learned what the reality of that hope was and what it meant for her. What are you placing your hope in this morning? Today you have heard the Good News, you have heard of life and of the only Hope that satisfies, and that Hope stands before you and calls your name. Will you believe?
Benediction: RO 15:13 May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Hope for Freedom
Hope for Relationship
Hope for Life are all found in the risen Christ.
