Sermon Notes for Easter 2024
Several people asked for the sermon study notes for this past Sunday’s message. Here they are - and I hope they will prove helpful.
Easter 2024
Revelation 1:4-8, 17-18
We are celebrating the resurrection from the dead of Jesus Christ. That’s the truth Easter marks. Let’s be clear about the basics of that assertion.
Resurrection: NOT resuscitation or even afterlife… bodily resurrection that is incorruptible and glorified. Death has no more power over him.
Roman view - hades, shades; Teresias to Odysseus - “Why have you left the light of the sun to behold the dead and the place where there is no joy?” Afterlife was not news to the Romans. Resurrection from the dead, however… now that was news!
I know some doubt the historical reality of Jesus. For those who do, let me remind you that he is mentioned not only by Christians but by both Jewish and Roman opponents as well… Josephus...Pliny and Tacitus (no friends of Christianity) note that Jesus was put to death under Pontius Pilate… denounced as an illegitimate child of Mary and as a Sorcerer. No one in the ancient world debated whether Jesus lived.
“These abundant historical references leave us with little reasonable doubt that Jesus lived and died. The more interesting question – which goes beyond history… is whether Jesus died and lived.” - Simon Gathercole, Cambridge University, writing in The Guardian (April 2017)
Those who’ve tried to disprove the resurrection of Jesus -
Gilbert West (18th century) - atheist who became a believer and wrote, “The Other Way ‘Round”
Ingersoll (19th Century), had General Lew Wallace write - Got to chapter four, and became a believer. Wrote “Ben Hur”
Frank Morrison - Journalist/Attorney set out to disprove the resurrection and demolish Christianity. Halfway into his research, became a believer and wrote, “Who Moved the Stone?”
Lee Strobel - legal editor of the Chicago Tribune, Yale Law Grad, wife came to faith, and Lee was angry (bait and switch). Set out to write up a case against Christ and ended up writing The Case for Christ - especially in regard to the Resurrection.
Jesus at the center in the vision… where he is to be for us today.
He is the Living One who was dead and is alive forevermore.
He is the one who was, and is, and is to come
I. Our Past is Redeemed - 1:4-5
Who needs a new start?
My mother is a travel agent for guilt trips
Dance like nobody's watching but email like it may be read aloud in a deposition one day.
You can erase your browser history but the only way to erase your sins and change your spiritual DNA is through the resurrection power of Jesus entering your soul
“Out, out damned spot… will these hands never be clean… what’s done cannot be undone.” Or can it?
We can’t alter the past, but we can bring the past to the altar.
II. Our Present is Secure 1:6
John was in exile on Patmos - he and the church were going through immense persecution.
No escaping terrible trials; the issue is who will be with us in them and what will they accomplish in us and through us. For some people, cancer kills God… it kills faith. For many the fires of the Nazi death camps not only snuffed out millions of lives but the possibility of Faith itself.
The truth is that our suffering and service make the gospel believable and beautiful in a world that’s in the deranged pursuit of pleasure and power. The pain of the saints has always done more to open doors for the gospel than any amount of strength and success has. The suffering church— the church of the crucified—is what we are part of, and when it is our time to suffer, we must not lose faith but instead must offer our pain to God in praise and trust.
Young Polish man, a writer and athlete, felt God’s call on his life and entered seminary just after the Nazis invaded his homeland, launching WW2.
Secret Seminary… Nazis murdered his teacher and fellow students
He was hit by a car and nearly killed
He was finally ordained and began to serve as the Communists took over his country, imprisoning and torturing believers, closing churches, and barring the building of new ones.
He earned two PhDs in Philosophy and taught at the Nation’s most prestigious university, interacting with the most antagonistic of atheists, and under constant threat of arrest.
His name was Karol Wojtyla - John Paul II. He stared Fascism and Marxism in the eye and sent both packing. He knew that he was part of a bigger story than Poland, bigger than politics and violence in the modern world, bigger than his own life, even if they killed him - and they tried. The Communists sent an assassin who shot and nearly killed him. His response? He forgave his would be murder.
He knew the words of the Savior - Father, forgive them…
His first message as Pope was simple - Do Not Be Afraid!
III. Our Future is Glorious - 1:7
W Somerset Maugham - Appointment with Death
There was a merchant in Bagdad who sent his servant to market to buy provisions and in a little while the servant came back, white and trembling, and said, Master, just now when I was in the marketplace I was jostled by a man in the crowd and when I turned I saw it was Death that jostled me. He looked at me and made a threatening gesture. My master, lend me your horse, and I will ride away from this city and avoid my fate. I will go to Samarra and there Death will not find me. The merchant lent him his horse, and the servant mounted it, and he dug his spurs in its flanks and as fast as the horse could gallop he went. Then the merchant went down to the marketplace and he saw Death standing in the crowd, went up to him and said, Why did you make a threatening gesture to my servant and frighten him when you saw him this morning? That was not a threatening gesture, said Death, it was only a startling look of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Bagdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.
Jesus said, “I am the Resurrection and the Life; he who believes in me, even if he dies will live.”
Paul - There is laid up for the crown… 2 Timothy 4:6-8
“For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing.”
“No one knows what’s going to happen.”
No one?
There is One! The Death Defeater, the Sin Cleanser, the Slave freeing Savior, who died - and Rose!
Tim Keller “Out of Office auto-reply” email \
Conclusion
Resurrection -
Science? Won’t prove it. Not a repeatable experiment under our control
Philosophy won’t prove it. And Paul already wrote about that, too, noting that Christian faith is not a philosophical idea but a relationship with a person.
The early Christians sealed their testimony with their blood, not the blood of others…
If the resurrection of Christ occurred - and it did - and If immortality makes sense - and it does - then this person named Jesus makes sense because he deals with every aspect of my brokenness: BOTH SIN AND DEATH!
His death takes away my sin
His resurrection undoes my death in sin.
His reign secures me in the storm
His return will raise me to everlasting life
My sinful past is forgiven; my agonizing present will emerge in glory; my hope for the future is secure.
On March 3, 1974… 50 years ago today… I became a believer in Jesus.
Maybe today, on the fiftieth anniversary of my own coming to faith in the resurrected Son of God, you will discover the gift of his mercy as well. He is as real today as he was to John on Patmos. He says to you what he said to him -
“Fear not. I died. I’m alive. I have the keys.”