Category: Rise!

In the scriptures we read

“Where, O death, is your victory?     Where, O death, is your sting?”

The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. 57 But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. (1 Corinthians 15:55-56)

When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. Then he placed his right hand on me and said: “Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last. 18 I am the Living One; I was dead, and now look, I am alive for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades. (Revelation 1:17-18)

Thinking about the future one word often brings fear – fear of the unknown, fear of losing control fear of what lies beyond the grave…but on the eve of Resurrection Sunday we have this hope in Christ who has conquered death and we no longer need to be afraid. We are no longer a slave to fear because of the resurrection of Jesus…

Today in the life of the church is what we call Resurrection Sunday. Easter is the word we use to mark the celebration of the resurrection of Jesus from the tomb on the third day after his crucifixion. This is the fulfilled prophecy of the Messiah who would be persecuted, die for our sins, and rise on the third day. (Isaiah 53). Remembering the resurrection of Jesus is a way to renew daily hope that we have victory over sin and death.

The Resurrection Challenge

The resurrection is incredible. It strains people’s belief. It is certainly a claim by the church that leaves little room to be indifferent. If I was new to Christianity – this historical claim of the resurrection of Jesus challenges me in a lot of different ways…but most of all it leads me to say this – The resurrection of Jesus, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.

I need to confess that this is a an adaptation of C.S.Lewis quote – but it succinctly states the matter before us.

So let us consider what we are calling “The Resurrection Challenge”

 

Our Culture Says All Ideas Are Equal

What I find amazing as I listen to our culture is the place where now we have come to. It seems that what everyone thinks has equal validity. Everyone’s ideas are acceptable…and as long as you don’t try to do anything to intervene with my life than you can go along and believe whatever you want.

When we refuse to say that some ideas have more merit than others in our everyday life – what we have done is make all ideas about life lose their value…what we are really saying is that it really doesn’t matter. Just believe what you want because really what difference does it make?

What Happens When We Die?

This statement is perhaps no more true when you ask people their ideas about this big question. “What happens when you die?” It is amazing the responses you get. It is amazing what our culture and media tell how to think about such a grand reality.

To make it simple let’s look at three typical ideas people have about this question – “What happens when you die”

 

This is it – the hard core materialistic view of life. That makes this life the ultimate. Get everything you can while you can because this reality called life is short – and make whatever meaning you can out of this life – it is up to you.

One of the great differences between the different religions of the world and the different ideologists of the world, as well, concerns their version of the future. Is there any future? Is there any hope in the future? There are some people who offer no hope at all. They lapse into existential pessimism and deep despair.

I think for example of that otherwise great and brilliant man Bertrand Russell—Lord Russell. He once said, “When I die, I believe that I shall rot, and that that is the end.” Then he went on, “All the labors of the ages—the inspiration, the noonday brightness of human genius—are destined to extinction. The whole temple of man’s achievement must inevitably be buried in the debris of a universe in ruins.” In other words, there is nothing in the future to look forward to.

Woody Allen is another. Do you remember what he once wrote or said: “The fundamental thing behind all motivation and all activity is the constant struggle against annihilation and against death. Death is absolutely stupefying in its terror, and it renders anyone’s accomplishment meaningless”?

Here is a profound question – what are the names of all of your great grandparents – eight people – who all lived just over 100 years – this is your family – death wipes us all away.

So there are many people who have no hope for the future. There is nothing to look forward to. Others think of history not in a line that’s going to end in a climax, but in a circle, so that everything is going to be repeated continuously in an endless cycle of reincarnations and there is no escape except extinction.

I don’t want to think about it – these people are pleasure oriented escapist. Death is too overwhelming. It is easier to distract yourself with whatever drink, or other pleasures than ponder the the possibilities of what happens to each of us when we come to the end of this life. People would rather live in a world of distractions.

I’m wishing on a star – the sentimental optimist. I just want everything to work out. The best of everyone lives on inside of us. If there is a God…well He will make it right. How will He make it right? I don’t know…I just gotta believe it will all work out. What will work out? Look – just gatta hope and wish

When you wish upon a star
Makes no difference who you are
Anything your heart desires
Will come to you.

 

The Resurrection of Jesus Challenges Every Idea

But then the resurrection comes along. It is recorded as an historical event. It is part of the message of early right from the beginning. Again if I was skeptical I would at least have to admit – If it is true then it really doesn’t matter what my ideas are about death. What would matter is what does the resurrection of Jesus tell me about death. If is it is not true – than I can back to speculating with everyone else. But if Jesus raised from the dead – I need to pay attention to Him and everything about Him.

But how can I say it really happened? Let’s watch this clip from ALPHA Film Series about the questioned – “Did Jesus really rise from the dead?”

 

What a God we have! And how fortunate we are to have him, this Father of our Master Jesus! Because Jesus was raised from the dead, we’ve been given a brand-new life and have everything to live for, including a future in heaven—and the future starts now!  God is keeping careful watch over us and the future. The Day is coming when you’ll have it all—life healed and whole. (1 Peter 1:3-5, The Message)

Because Jesus was raised from the dead –

It challenges everything.

The Resurrection of Jesus tells me that there is more to life than just this life. I simply cannot say this it. Jesus says for those who believe in Him I go and prepare a place for you. (John 14:2) Jesus says, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?” (John 11:25-26)

Funerals take on a whole new reality

Gone From My Sight

I am standing upon the seashore.
A ship at my side spreads her white
sails to the morning breeze and starts
for the blue ocean.

She is an object of beauty and strength.
I stand and watch her until at length
she hangs like a speck of white cloud
just where the sea and sky come
to mingle with each other.
Then, someone at my side says;
“There, she is gone!”

“Gone where?”
Gone from my sight. That is all.
She is just as large in mast and hull
and spar as she was when she left my side
and she is just as able to bear her
load of living freight to her destined port.
Her diminished size is in me, not in her.
And just at the moment when someone
at my side says, “There, she is gone!”
There are other eyes watching her coming,
and other voices ready to take up the glad
shout;

“Here she comes!”
I am standing upon the seashore.
A ship at my side spreads her white
sails to the morning breeze and starts
for the blue ocean.

She is an object of beauty and strength.
I stand and watch her until at length
she hangs like a speck of white cloud
just where the sea and sky come
to mingle with each other.

Then, someone at my side says;
“There, she is gone!”
“Gone where?”
Gone from my sight. That is all.
She is just as large in mast and hull
and spar as she was when she left my side
and she is just as able to bear her
load of living freight to her destined port.
Her diminished size is in me, not in her.

And just at the moment when someone
at my side says, “There, she is gone!”

There are other eyes watching her coming,
and other voices ready to take up the glad
shout;
“Here she comes!”
And that is dying.

by Henry Van Dyke, a 19th Century clergyman, educator, poet, and religious writer

The Resurrection of Jesus shows me that the future has purpose and meaning.

John Stott’s reflections hold true:

The Resurrection assures us of God’s ultimate triumph end of history. Christians are confident that Jesus Christ is going to come back at the end of history, not in humility and weakness, as in his first coming, but in stupendous power and utter and sheer magnificence. The second coming of Jesus Christ is altogether beyond our wildest dreams and imagination when he comes in power and glory.

And when he comes, he will bring history to an end. He will raise the dead, and he will regenerate the universe, and he will make everything new. That’s the Christian hope: that the whole creation (that is at the moment groaning in its bondage to decay and death) is going to be liberated into the freedom of the children of God.

The groans of nature, Paul writes, at the moment resemble the birth pangs or birth pains of a new order; a new world is going to be born. There’s going to be a new heaven and a new earth in which righteousness dwells, and on that day we shall be new people with new bodies in a new world.

There is a Christian author by the name of Joni Eareckson, don’t you? She was that athletic teenager who broke her neck in a diving accident in Chesapeake Bay. Let me quote something she’s written: “I have hope in the future. The Bible speaks about bodies being glorified.” (By the way, she’s a quadriplegic.) And then she says, “I know the meaning of that now. It’s the time after my death here when I, the quadriplegic, will be on my feet dancing.” We’re going to have a new body with undreamed-of powers.

But you say to me, “Isn’t that wishful thinking? Isn’t that Christians’ just whistling in the dark in order to keep their spirits up? Is there any evidence for this fantastic assertion that the universe is going to be reborn and resurrected along with us?” Yes, my friends; thanks for asking those questions.

There is evidence. The evidence is the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is the guarantee of the resurrection of our bodies and the regeneration of the universe, because, you see, if I may put it like this, the resurrection of Jesus was the beginning of the new creation of God. In the resurrection of Jesus, the first bit of the old material order was redeemed and transfigured, and his resurrection is the pledge that the rest of the material of creation is going to be transfigured one day.

And that means that how we live today does matter – we are either building our house on sand our our house the rock – we are either participating in the kingdom of God matters that will endure or we waste this life because we were not about the things Jesus wanted us to be about.

The Resurrection of Jesus means I don’t have to live in fear. We are no longer slaves to fear.  Because of Christ his resurrection tells me he is a living Saviour. And he is one who I need to say because He lives I can face tomorrow because He lives He is the way the truth and life.

We can only claim this promise of life after death when we look to Jesus. I am the way the truth and the life. Just think, every promise God has ever made finds its fulfillment in Jesus. God doesn’t just give us grace, He gives us Jesus, the Lord of grace. If it’s peace, it’s only found in Jesus, the Prince of Peace. Even life itself is found in the Resurrection and the Life. Christianity isn’t all that complicated … it’s Jesus.

Do you believe in Jesus?

 

Bear up, and don’t give way to angry grief;
Nothing will come of sorrowing for your son,
Nor will you raise him up before you die.
(Homer, The Iliad, 24:549–51)

This line from Homer’s Iliad where Achilles speaks with Priam about the death of his son Hector sums up what the ancient world thought about resurrection. Namely, it doesn’t happen.

One of the many parallels between the Greco-Roman people of the 1st Century and people of our own century is that the idea of a person coming back from the dead — when they are really dead — is preposterous. Every person in the ancient world knew that when you were dead, you were dead. Part of the mythology of greco-roman world was that once you entered Hades — you had to stay. Even the gods of Greece, if they ate the food of Hades, they were required to make it their home.

There are myths of heroes entering Hades to rescue a loved one only to fail and remain lost in that realm themselves. While Euripides wrote a play about Heracles fighting Thanatos – the god of death — and freeing Alcestis (Ἄλκηστις) from Hades — it was a play — and wondrous and impossible things happen in fiction — for the ancients as much as for us. Today it may be about alien visitors or inter galactic space flight — but essentially it is the same– ideas that exist only as a distant hope among a people who know the difference between fiction and reality.

We are not unlike the ancients. In our world, we all know when we die, we die. Every one of us knows that the great adventure of life is an adventure with a beginning, a middle, and an end.

For people in our time and culture, death is the ultimate ending.
Christianity teaches a very different idea. Christians have believed from the very beginning that Jesus rose from the dead. It is an idea that is not natural in the modern world. In fact, it is opposed to the nature of the modern worldview. This is why it is important to start by saying that the resurrection actually happened.

The Resurrection — It really happened!

When we survey the New Testament, we see over and over again references to this core belief. Paul puts the Resurrection of Jesus at the very centre of our faith. In 1 Corinthians he says:
If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.” (1 Corinthians 15:19, NIV)

For Paul, the resurrection of Jesus was lynchpin that held together every other idea about the Christian hope. Without it everything fell apart.

In Acts 2, we see Peter speaking to a very large crowd and his words are as clear as they are barbed for his audience.

“This man was handed over to you by God’s deliberate plan and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross. But God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him.” (Acts 2:23–24, NIV)

In John’s Gospel, the reality of the resurrection of Jesus is made clear in chapter 21, when Jesus meets his disciples on the beach. It is a strange story for a modern reader — we get it when Jesus reinstates Peter — but the whole breakfast thing is a bit odd. To an ancient Jewish reader, the meaning is clear. It was a pervasive belief that spirits or ghosts do not eat physical food. So when Jesus shares a meal of bread and fish with them, he is broadcasting that he is in the physical world. That he has a physical body. They may have started by thinking they “saw a ghost” but with a meal — it was clear to everyone that Jesus was actually there in flesh and blood and that the Resurrection was real.

“Jesus said to them, “Come and have breakfast.” None of the disciples dared ask him, “Who are you?” They knew it was the Lord. Jesus came, took the bread and gave it to them, and did the same with the fish. This was now the third time Jesus appeared to his disciples after he was raised from the dead.” (John 21:12–14, NIV)

Since the Gospels and Paul make such big deal about this we need to be clear about it. We can’t afford to misunderstand or avoid something that is so important to both Jesus and the Apostles.
The Resurrection: Let’s be clear

It did not take long after Jesus rose from the dead for alternative stories to begin circulating. In a way, that’s to be expected. When we hear something so out of the ordinary that we consider it impossible, we try to explain it in different ways. The first alternative explanation was by Jesus’ own disciples. When the women who saw him at the tomb told them what they had seen, they figured the women making it up — perhaps overcome by grief.

11 But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense. 12 Peter, however, got up and ran to the tomb. Bending over, he saw the strips of linen lying by themselves, and he went away, wondering to himself what had happened. (Luke 24:11–12, NIV)

Only Peter took the claim seriously and ran to the tomb to see for himself. The others — even though they knew Jesus and witnessed his miracles — were content trust in their own understanding of how things work. But Jesus challenges everything we know about how things works.

One of things things I’ve heard and read over the years is that the Resurrection of Jesus was spiritual — that his spirit went back to God but his body stayed dead like dead bodies normally do. Apparently this kind of spiritual resurrection is more acceptable to some people. I’m sure the Corinthians were hoping for to be true — then they could hang on to that Greek idea that the human spirit is trapped inside a flesh and blood body waiting to be released. I know that’s what they were teaching and that’s why Paul wrote a letter to correct their thinking.

It was that body-spirit dualism that allowed the men to keep visiting the local prostitutes — I mean it was just a bodily act and it’s the spirit that matters. It was also the reason those in Corinth who took the idea of holiness seriously began abstain from normal sexual relations within their marriages and once again Paul had to correct them that this was not a good thing. Anytime we separate body and spirit – we misunderstand creation. God created us as physical beings. God saves us as physical beings and he restores us as physical beings. Resurrection is connected to creation and is connected to God’s plan for us.

Jesus raised people from the dead — he raised his friend Lazarus (Jn 11:1-44) he raised the daughter of Jairus (Mk 5:21ff), he raised the only son of a widow from Nain (Lk 7:11–17). He raised them from death — but they died again. These were resuscitations — Lazarus after three days of being dead and the young boy long enough after that his body had been prepared for burial — clearly miraculous but these were different than the kind of event Jesus experienced. Jesus rose from the dead and did not die again. He experienced a different kind of resurrection.

When Jesus rose from the dead, he made a point of having breakfast with his disciples to demonstrate that it was a physical-flesh-and-blood kind of resurrection. It would be one thing if they misunderstood because of their culture and understanding, but Jesus made a point of sharing a morning meal with them. He made a point of showing them it was more than a spiritual resurrection. He even tells Thomas to reach out and touch where the nails and spear had injured his body. Thomas did not do it, but the invitation was real. Jesus resurrection was not just a spiritual resurrection but a whole-person resurrection – Physical/Spiritual – the whole person raised from death in a new way that no one had seen before.

The Jews condemned him, the Romans soldiers killed him — and they were very competent at killing — and God raised him up.

The Resurrection — It Changes Everything

Changes how we understand all of life – it challenges everything at the Worldview level.  The prime reason for this is that the resurrection validates Jesus. It validates his fulfilling ancient prophecy. It validates his teachings, it validates the “locus of power” behind all of his miracles, it validates Jesus’ understanding of his own death.

“The resurrection completes the inauguration of God’s kingdom. . . . It is the decisive event demonstrating the God’s kingdom really has been launched on earth as it is in heaven… The message of Easter is that God’s new world has been unveiled in Jesus Christ and that you’re now invited to belong to it.” (N.T. Wright)

The Resurrection of Jesus Christ simply changes everything.

2017 Brent Hudson