EASTER: Raised to Life

Pastor Steven Osborne
Transcribed by PulpitAI (with edits)

“Could it be true?” I shout in joyous ring.
I’ve heard the news, the empty tomb, that death has lost its sting.
As Mary trusts and Thomas doubts
The risen Savior walks about.
Satan’s minions hide in shame, this sacred morn that freedom shouts.
Peace and mercy be thy token
O Lamb of God, made for us broken.
All of this done in our place
Hands once pierced now gift us grace.

I believe some of my family will be watching this morning from South Africa, and especially my mother-in-law, so in honor of my mother-in-law, I’ve got a little small sermon illustration here for us. And so this is to all the in-laws:

A man took a vacation to Israel with his wife and mother-in-law. [I don’t know about that. Vacation, mother-in-law, yeah.] During their time in the Holy Land his mother-in-law unexpectedly passed away. The following day the husband met with the local undertaker to discuss funeral plans. “In cases like these there are a couple of options to choose from,” the undertaker explained. “You can ship the body home for five thousand dollars, or you can bury her in the Holy Land for just $150.” The man took a minute to think about it and then announced his decision to ship her home. The undertaker, intrigued by his decision, said, “That’s an interesting choice. Can I ask why you would pay five thousand to ship your mother-in-law home when you can easily bury her here for $150?” The man promptly replied, “About two thousand years ago a man died and was buried here. Three days later he rose from the dead, and I can’t take that chance.”

If my mother-in-law is watching. I do love you. I’m not saying we’re gonna go to Israel on vacation.

Looking For a Sign

This is such a profound morning for us, and as we think about the meaning of Easter Sunday. And a lot of times, if we have doubt—you know, I think most believers, all of us at some point experience doubt, right? And we wonder, “Is this story actually true? It sounds too amazing.” And we’ve all asked that question. You might even ask the question this morning, just even sitting here and checking it out or watching online, and say, “What is this Easter Sunday all about, and what does it mean that Jesus died on the cross and that he was resurrected on the third day and that he’s now in heaven?” There’s actually a passage in Matthew 12:38–40. It says:

Then some of the Pharisees and teachers of the law said to him, “Teacher, we want to see a sign from you.”

He answered, “A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a sign, but none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the son of man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.”

There’s a passage, I think it’s in Hebrews, where it talks about that the Resurrection is a sign for us. And so what this passage is telling us is to say, “Hey, all of us want a sign.” I don’t know if you have done this in your life. We say, “Well Lord, if you just give me a sign, then I will believe.” Right? “If you just do this.” I know that there’s big research going on to try and find the ark of Noah, right, and people have been doing all these expeditions over the years to just—“If we can just find the ark, then we can prove that the whole story, that the Flood was real, and that the Bible is real.” And Jesus is communicating a very important message. He’s like, “Man, you guys are always looking for a sign.” And then he talks about Jonah, and he says “At some point, I am gonna die for three days, right, and that will be your sign.”

And so, church, this morning, I just want to let you know—you know, we can look for more signs to actually believe and to say, “Okay, if I only see this,” but what if this is our only sign? Right? This should be enough. And this morning, just as a church, I want to encourage you to say, don’t look for any other signs. This morning is an invitation and a call for us to have the faith and to say, “I believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. If I see no other signs until he returns, then that is good enough. I will believe, and I will throw all of my heart and mind behind this resurrection story. I’m not gonna be like the unbelieving world.” I am so proud of all of you even being here this morning in church, and may this be always true for the church. I long for churches again to be full, not just Easter Sunday but every Sunday, because we are so excited about this message of the Resurrection Sunday and what Jesus Christ did for us, and that it’s alive in us, that it is so powerful in us and to say, “This needs to be part of my identity, that this will drive my faith every day of the week, that I can’t wait to be with God’s people on Sunday to worship him, to lift him up, because he did such an amazing thing for me.”

Thank you for the amens. I pay well for amens, so you can have a good Easter lunch if you say enough amens.

The Importance of the Resurrection

But it is. There’s at some point in our lives as believers where we just gotta walk out and step out in faith and really grab, hold on to the Resurrection story and what that all means for us. We actually see in Acts chapter 1, verse 3, it says:

After his suffering, he presented himself to them and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the Kingdom of God.

After the resurrection of Jesus Christ, he didn’t just disappear and go to heaven. No, he actually walked this earth for forty more days where he was preaching and revealing himself to people. And you actually have that beautiful story where he actually appeared to Thomas, and Thomas was kind of doubting, and then where he invited—he told Thomas like, “Hey, come and touch,” right? And there is a lot of evidence about the Resurrection of Jesus Christ and the ministry that happened, like hundreds of people were able to see him, when you actually study the Word. And so all I’m saying to you this morning is man, we have enough evidence and enough proof to know that this story is real. I have seen all of the crazy stories that we sometimes believe, that we hear from the news, right, and the conspiracy theories. It’s like, hey, if we can believe that, then we can believe this, where there’s much proof about and evidence of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. This is not just a conspiracy theory.

Paul actually goes on in 1 Corinthians. He is trying to prove this point on just how important this day is for every believer. In first Corinthians 15, he says:

But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? If there’s no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is our faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead.

And so Paul—a powerful, powerful passage—he’s just saying, “Man, if Christ is not alive and if he’s not sitting at the right hand of God, then I’m pretty much waste all of my preaching.” Then I have wasted at least 23 years of my life preaching, because I preach the Resurrection, we preach Christ and say, “This is real, this is powerful in every believer’s life.” And so Paul is just saying, “Man, this is worth preaching. If this didn’t happen, then we don’t have faith, then we don’t have to worry about everything else that is happening after we are dead, because it just won’t matter.” But he is really trying to prove the point here, just to say, “This matters. This is why I am preaching the resurrection of Jesus Christ.”

Knowing Christ

It is my longing—and just like most of us, right, life gets busy, we get distracted, and we just we lose sight and we lose the beauty of Easter and what the Resurrection and Good Friday means to us. And a lot of times for some of us, you might only think about this in a year from now, right? But there’s this beautiful passage in Philippians that says:

I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participating in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.

And so it is this prayer for all of us as believers to say, “I want to know Christ.” Guess what, as long as you walk this earth, you won’t have a total understanding of Christ. It’s an ongoing process of learning, growing in your relationship with Christ, and the more you learn about him, the more you want to learn about him, the more he becomes real in our lives and the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. And it’s like, “Lord, I just want to identify—I want to become so part of you and be united with you in the power of the cross and the Resurrection. I want to experience that in my own life.”

And so this, then, isn’t just a once-a-year experience. This is a daily experience for us to just wake up and say, “Lord, I long. I long to know you more. I want to go deeper in my relationship, and I want to understand the Resurrection even better. What does that mean for me as a believer?” And it has significant implications for every believer. When you say yes to Jesus Christ, when you have invited him into your life, this story, the resurrection story, changes absolutely everything in your life.

And so here’s just several things what that all means for us:

• It means that we can experience justification before God. Once, before we were saved, before we accepted Christ into our lives, you know, we experienced the wrath of God. But now, when we give our life to Christ, we get to experience that we are justified through him. We are made righteous, amen? And that is so powerful. That should just wake us up early every morning and make us all excited and to say, “I’m gonna sing some sort of hymn and get celeb–” you know, as you do your breakfast, like “Hallelujah.” I can’t think of a hymn right now. We’ll just say “Kumbaya.”

• It means that you and I have victory over death, right? When we die on this earth, that’s not where it ends, right? We pretty much lay down our bodies, but there’s a whole ‘nother world that is waiting for us, a whole ‘nother experience, a whole ‘nother life for eternity, and that’s a life with Christ. And so we have victory over death.

• We have a union with Christ.

• A hope for eternal life.

• And then I love this, as we think about not just when Jesus returns, but in this world, in this life, we become a new creation, a new being. We lay down our old life, our sinful lives, and God does something new in our lives, where you and I get to experience the victory over sin, the victory over bondage and things that puts us into slavery, and God says, “No, you don’t have to experience that anymore because of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. You now have a new identity. You are now a new creation.”

Living It Out

Now we hear these things probably Sunday after Sunday or several times a year, but it’s a whole ‘nother thing to actually go and live it, right, and to apply it in my lives. And guess what? When we actually do it, it will really change our walk, and I believe that it will change our world as well. And so we have to learn Monday to Monday, how do we apply this, how do we live in these realities, in this truth and what Jesus Christ did for us? You see, when we actually believe it and when we apply it to our lives, it will really change our walk. It will really change the way that we show up on a Sunday morning. Right? And we’ll have a lot of excitement.

Just want to remind you this morning,

Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die.”

Resurrection Sunday reminds us that there is no other way to experience eternal life with Christ through faith in Jesus Christ. Romans 10 reminds us that we need—every believer, if you’re a believer this morning, if you believe that you’re going to spend eternity with the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, all of you at some point gave your life to Jesus Christ, where you invited him into your life and just said, “Lord, I confess that I am a sinner, and I receive what you have done on the cross for me. I believe what happened on that Resurrection Sunday morning when you arose, and what that all means, and that you are sitting at the right hand of the Father preparing a place for me.” Right? And we all had to say yes and had faith about it.

Now the great thing about all of this and the good news this morning is that we all can experience that. We can all experience salvation and eternity with Christ. It is not hard—at least that step, right? Christ made it really easy for us. Man has, over the years, have made it really hard. We’ve tried to add different things to it. It’s like, “Well, if I just show up on church, if I just give, if I serve in the community, then I will be good enough.” Nothing in us will ever be good enough to experience eternity. It is not about us. It is about Jesus Christ and what he has done for us and the way and the door that he has opened up for us to be that bridge so that you and I can experience the love of the Father, and so that we can experience all of these promises. But don’t, for one reason, sit here this morning and think that you can earn your righteousness. You and I have nothing to bring other than to receive Christ as our Savior. Amen?

And I want to really encourage you to do that this morning. Don’t leave this morning if you don’t know Jesus Christ as your Savior. Throughout the service, maybe during worship or at some point, I want to encourage you to just pray—even if you’re sitting at home—to pray. And it’s a simple prayer, right? It’s just, in faith, say, “Jesus, I am a sinner. Thank you for dying on the cross for me, and I surrender my life. Thank you for washing me clean by your blood. Thank you for your body that was broken for me.” Right? And so it’s coming in faith, like taking those steps of faith in prayer.

And then I want to encourage you, if you maybe took that time to pray that prayer this morning, we have a little booklet that says, “You Said Yes.” It will teach you what it means to be a disciple, because that’s one of the first steps, right? It’s an important step. But how do you now grow in your relationship with Christ? Well, this will help you, because we don’t want to just create followers or just babies in Christ; we want to see you become mature in your faith and actually become a disciple so that God can use your life as well, because you have gifts and talents that you get to share to this broken world as well.

Baptism

Well, this morning we have such a privilege to have several people that are getting baptized in the first service as well as in the second service. And I want to share with you one passage, Romans 6, verses 3 and 5 says,

Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. For if we have been united with him in death like this, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like this.

Max Lucado, a quote about baptism, he said, “Baptism symbolizes our union with Christ. His death, burial, and resurrection signifies our own spiritual rebirth.” So this morning you might ask, “Hey, why do  people need to get baptized? Why do we have people this morning that are saying, ‘Hey, I want to be cold and wet in front of a some front of strangers?’” Right?

Well, several things this morning as we ponder baptism. First of all, we identify with Christ in baptism. What does that mean? So this morning, even those that are being baptized, there’s beautiful symbolism, in a sense to say, as they go under the water, we identify with the death of Jesus Christ. And then, as they come out of that water, we identify with Christ and his Resurrection. Right? And how powerful is that, that we get to participate in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, especially on this Resurrection Sunday?

And then, baptism is a public confession of our faith. Right? To stand here in front of you, that takes a lot of guts this morning, and all the million people that’s watching online, right? To stand here and to say, “Hey, I am a follower of Jesus Christ, and I want to belong to this body of believers.”

And then, Jesus commanded us to be baptized. In Matthew 28, in the Great Commission, it says to go and make disciples and to baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, so that’s good enough for me.