Celebrating Christ’s Resurrection

A message based on John 20:11-18.

If you examine world religions you will find they have certain things in common.

1. Prayer to something greater or higher than themselves.  They may pray to ancestors, many gods, or just one God.
2. Most if not all practice fasting in some form or another.
3. They have sacred buildings such as churches, synagogues, temples, mosques, etc.
4. They have altars – a place to offer prayers, sacrifices, offerings, or burn incense to God.
5. Most have moral codes, behaviors considered right and wrong, and a way to get right with God usually by human effort. 

We have a God Who Experienced Death on Our Behalf

What makes Christianity unique among all the world religions is that we have a Savior who died for the sins of His people, and three days later rose from the grave.  In Jesus, we have Emmanuel, “God with us.”  A few other religions of the world will claim their leader rose from the dead and ascended into heaven, but they offer no proof.  We have the witness of the people who watched Him die and then saw Him alive.  He walked among them for 40 days before they saw Him ascend into heaven. We have an open tomb that has been empty since Jesus left it.  Jesus broke the chains of death and opened the door to eternal life with God.

In most religions, you must pay for your sins in some way.  Some religions teach that if your good deeds outweigh your bad deeds you will go to heaven but you can never know for sure that you will go to heaven.  Some religions have an endless series of reincarnations until you get it right.  God tells us these ideas are dead wrong.  He pronounces us all dead in trespasses and sins so that He can have mercy on everyone who will put their faith in Jesus.  God the Father laid all of our sins on Jesus, God the Son, and He took the punishment for our sins.  No other religion has a god like that.  We do not depend on our work.  We depend on the work Jesus Christ did on our behalf.

We Celebrate a God Who Saves Us Forever

We celebrate Jesus Christ who crushed the power of death, hell, and the devil. Hebrews 2:14-18 tells us that He became human so that through His death He would break the power of the devil, who held the power of death.  Jesus came for the express purpose of destroying the works of the devil and setting his captives free.  He is the one who saves us. The devil held the power of death, but Jesus took it away from him by His resurrection.  Jesus said in Revelation 1:18, “I am the living one. I died, but look—I am alive forever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and the grave.” – NLT. 

Many people have tried in vain to deny the resurrection of Christ from the dead.  But the evidence is overwhelming. Some have set out to disprove Christ’s resurrection and have become disciples of Jesus because the evidence was overwhelming that Christ rose from the dead.  They’ve written books from scholarly and journalistic points of view and proved beyond a doubt that Jesus Christ rose from the dead. St. Paul shared this evidence with the Christians in Corinth as some were saying there was no resurrection from the dead.  (Some say that today too.)  “I passed on to you what was most important and what had also been passed on to me. Christ died for our sins, just as the Scriptures said. ⁴ He was

buried, and he was raised from the dead on the third day, just as the Scriptures said. ⁵ He was seen by Peter and then by the Twelve. ⁶ After that, he was seen by more than 500 of his followers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. ⁷ Then he was seen by James and later by all the apostles. ⁸ Last of all, as though I had been born at the wrong time, I also saw him.”  (1 Corinthians 15:3-8 NLT.) Because Christ arose from the dead, we know that even if we die, we too shall rise from the dead to new life.

We Celebrate a God Who Is Personal

After Jesus rose from the dead, the angels asked Mary Magdalene at the Garden Tomb, “Woman, why are you crying?”  She explained why she was there, turned, and saw Jesus but did not recognize Him.  He asked, “Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?”  (John 20:13, 15.) Thinking He was the gardener, she asked if He had carried the body away.  Then Jesus speaks her name, “Mary.”  She recognized Him immediately when He called her by name. She recognized the sound of His voice when He called her name. Jesus knows each one of us by name.  In most religions, God is distant, aloof from the world and we have to work to get His attention.  But in Christ, we have a God who reaches out to us, personally by name.  He loves each one of us as individuals.

God chooses to dwell inside us. In ancient times people thought their gods dwelt in temples.  God commanded Moses to make a Tabernacle for their wilderness journey.  Later, God moved upon the hearts of David and Solomon to build a magnificent Temple in Jerusalem.  But God has a different temple that He desires.  He wants to live inside of us, both individually and corporately.  Jesus cleared the Temple of the money changers and merchants in John 2:13-22 because they were cheating the people trying to worship God.  The Jewish leaders demanded a miracle to prove that God had given Him that authority.  He said to them, “All right. .. Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” He was speaking of His body.

1 Corinthians 6:19-20 tells us, “Don’t you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself, for God bought you with a high price. So, you must honor God with your body.”  – NLT.  God wants to dwell with us and in us.

When we come together as a church, 1 Peter 2:5 says we are living stones built together in God’s spiritual temple.  It is a corporate reference in that God lives in us, both as individuals and as a group. The temple God wants most is to dwell within our hearts by faith.  Our God is not distant but closer than we can think or imagine.

Conclusion

Christianity is unique because we have a wonderful God who loves us individually, calls us by name, and offered Himself as a sacrifice for our sins so He can have mercy upon us and give us eternal life.  Christ is unique in that He experienced the power of death, defeated it, and now He holds the keys of death and Hades.  Jesus opened these doors for us so we can live forever with Him.  This is why we celebrate Easter. 

Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright ©1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.