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Christ is risen! He is risen indeed. Dear saints, we rejoice in that fact this morning and I’d like to… I’d like to meditate on it, the resurrection of our Lord Jesus really in two ways. And if you’re just thinking “oh wow, only two things,” well, the second point has three points, so really four ways. But we’re going to divide it this way: the fact of the resurrection and the hope of the resurrection.
The first is, the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ is not myth or allegory or story or parable or wishful thinking. It is fact. It happened. This day, 1,993 years ago, our Lord Jesus walked out of the grave. It was found empty because he was alive again. His spirit entered back into his body and he would live and never die.
Pastor Davis mentioned this last night that every Easter there’s these surveys of Christians that ask if you could be shown the body of Jesus and proven to you that Jesus didn’t raise, wasn’t raised from the dead, would you change your faith at all? And so many Christians answer, well, it wouldn’t change anything, and that’s wrong. It changes everything. Our faith is built on this fact: if Christ is not raised, then we are still in your sins. That’s what St. Paul says. If Christ is not raised, then we are, of all people, the most to be pitied because we have put all of our eggs in this one basket, all of our hope in this one promise, all of our faith in this one incident that Jesus on the third day is raised from the dead, destroying sin, death, and the devil. So we need to have this locked in, that it’s a historic fact.
And I think one of the things that helps me, I was thinking about it a lot, in fact, this year, is that the disciples of Jesus were not expecting it. Even though he told them, I mean, three, four times Jesus prophesied his resurrection. He told his disciples that on the third day he would be raised from the dead. In fact, he says it so clearly, we’re going to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man is going to be handed over to the chief priests and scribes to be beaten and killed, and on the third day be raised. In fact… So known was this teaching of Jesus that he would be raised on the third day that the Pharisees knew about it. Remember on Holy Saturday they went to Pilate and they said, that liar said that he would be raised on the third day, so we better send a guard and seal the tomb so that they don’t break in and steal his body and pretend like that’s what happened, and the later deception be worse than the first deception. So even the Pharisees knew that Jesus had promised to be raised on the third day.
But here’s who didn’t expect it: Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Joseph and Salome and Joanna, who on this day, so many years ago, woke up early in the morning before the sun came out to go to the tomb, not to see if Jesus was there or not, but to finish the work of burial. They, in fact, as they’re walking probably from Bethany back over to Jerusalem, carrying all of these spices, realize halfway there, wait a minute, who’s going to open the tomb for us? Who’s going to roll the stone away so that we can finish that work?
And Mary Magdalene, who goes and sees the tomb rolled away, runs and tells Peter, she doesn’t say Christ is risen, the grave is empty. She runs and tells Peter and John, they’ve stolen his body. Peter and John run to the tomb, and John leaves believing, he tells us, but Peter leaves wondering about these things. And then when Jesus appears to the women who are wandering around town, and they finally find the disciples, he tells them, Mark says they didn’t believe it. Even after the two on the road to Emmaus come back and say, we talked to Jesus today, they also don’t believe it.
And then when Jesus appears to them in the upper room and shows them his hands and his side and convinces them that he’s raised from the dead, Thomas, who wasn’t there, comes into the room later and refuses to believe it. In fact, Matthew tells us, and this is maybe 25 days after the resurrection, 30 days after the resurrection, after Jesus had appeared to him three or four times already, and they meet him on the mountain in Galilee. Maybe this is even after they sat and had fish with him on the shore. They come up to the mountain and they fall down and worship Jesus, and Matthew says, but some of them doubted.
Now, here’s the point that we, I think, are tempted to think, oh, you know, back then, people thought that you could be raised from the dead, but we know better now because we’re so enlightened. They, everybody always knew that. The disciples always knew that, that you couldn’t just be dead and then alive on the third day. That’s why they’re so astonished. That’s why Jesus has to prove it. That’s why he says, touch me and see that I’m not a ghost. I’ve got flesh and blood just like you do. Almost every time he sees them, he says, do you have anything to eat? I don’t know if Jesus was hungry. I don’t think so. I think he was just proving the point to them.
Look, I’m back in my body. That body that was nailed to the cross, that bled and died, that body is raised from the dead. It’s a true fact. It happened. It changes everything. So that’s the first point, the fact of the resurrection. And that leads us to the hope of the resurrection. I want to press this hope into your hearts in three different ways.
The first is, the resurrection of Jesus is our justification. It is the forgiveness of sins. This is what St. Paul says in Romans chapter 5, he was raised for our justification. And we can think of it this way. When Jesus offers himself on the cross on Good Friday, he is paying the price for our sins, paying the price to make satisfaction to God for us. And on Easter Sunday, the Lord indicates that he has accepted the payment, that it is good, that this sacrifice is sufficient to forgive the sins of all of the world so that the resurrection of Jesus is our hope in this life, our hope for the forgiveness of sins.
But the resurrection of Jesus is also hope in another way. It corrects our bad doctrine and especially the idea that the body doesn’t matter. We live in a Gnostic age. I mean, I think all people have always lived in Gnostic ages, but we especially live in a Gnostic age. Remember, Gnosticism is this philosophy or religious ideology, it’s a false doctrine that says that spiritual things are good and holy, but physical things are bad and evil, so that the Gnostics thought that it was the devil that created the world, not God, because this material world has to be evil and bad.
Do you guys remember, this was, oh yeah, this was maybe 25 years ago, that they were at Easter time talking about this Gnostic gospel of Judas. Do you remember that when the gospel of Judas came out? There was this conversation between Jesus and Judas. And in this gospel of Judas, he’s the hero because Jesus says to Judas, you are the one who will set me free. That is Gnostic. Because the Gnostic understands our body is a prison. And when you die, your spirit gets to finally go free from this body.
So that we live in a particular age that has that same idea. We even hear people talk about it being trapped in their bodies, or they’ll talk of their bodies like their meat suit. And the idea is that when you die, now you finally leave the body behind, and your spirit is finally free. This is true only for a moment, but our doctrine confesses the resurrection. And this is the point. That body that you have, you will have for all eternity. Death will separate you from the body, but the resurrection will put you back together.
Jesus is the first fruits of the resurrection, but your resurrection will follow. Now, some people say, but Pastor, what if I don’t want this body forever? Could I exchange it? No, you cannot. It is you. Your body is you. But on the last day, when your body is raised from the dead, it will be perfected. All of the effects of sin that are now afflicting you, that are now troubling you, will be gone. All the pains, all the sickness, all the afflictions, remember Jesus is the one who heals, gives sight to the blind and hearing to the deaf, and he makes the lame leap like the deer. All of that is a foretaste of the resurrection when your body will be finally perfected.
But here’s this thing that we have to cling to, that your grave and every grave on the last day will be as empty as the grave of Jesus. Heaven and eternal life is not some sort of vague spiritual existence. It’s a real physical existence that the Lord loves this created stuff. And that’s why He took His body on Himself. And that’s why He took that body back into Himself forever. Just like Jesus, who is flesh and blood into eternity, now and into eternity. So you will be flesh and blood into eternity. This matters. We have to have this for our theology of the body to think about what it means to be human.
And maybe this is the final point, the hope that we have in the resurrection. Because when we think about eternal life, we want to think of it as a real life, a walking around kind of life, a looking around, a smelling kind of life, an eating kind of life, in the new heaven and the new earth. But even though this seems so far from us, this resurrected existence is our true self.
All right, let me do a little bit of theological work here. So in the time of the Reformation, there was a false teacher named Oceander. And Oceander taught this idea that humanity is sin, that we are defined by sin, that the essence of humanity is sin. And the Lutherans, Oceander started Lutheran, then he had that idea that kind of messed him up. But the Lutherans responded to that argument and said, no, that can’t be the case for four reasons. Number one, God created humanity, Adam and Eve, and he didn’t create sin. The second reason is that Jesus took upon himself humanity, but he didn’t take upon himself sin. The third point is that Jesus redeemed humanity, but Jesus didn’t redeem sin. He redeemed us from sin. And the fourth point, this is why we’re talking about it this morning, is that Jesus is raised a fully human person in the resurrection completely without sin, and he is truly human.
In other words, sin is not what it means to be a human. Sin detracts from our humanity. We had to think about this when we were talking about the temptation of Jesus, who never sinned. And some people say, well, look, if Jesus never sinned, then he really wasn’t human. This is the opposite of the case. Because Jesus never sinned, he was more human than you and I are. Your sin and my sin take away from our humanity because we were never meant to sin. We were never meant to break the law. We were never meant to be sinned against. We were never meant to inherit this corruption. We were never meant to die. So that on the last day, when you are raised like Christ, when you are made like Him, when all death and sorrow and corruption and sin is taken away from you, you will finally be your full human person. That’s how it was meant to be.
Now, I think this is important. And we’ll maybe end with this, but I think this is important because I at least am tempted to think of heaven as a far-off reality. The new heaven and the new earth seems way out of reach for me. It seems like this is real life and that’s sort of imaginary. But here’s the point. That is real life. That is what we were meant for. That is what we were made for. That’s what we’re destined for. And that’s where the Lord is bringing us to that joy, to that peace, to that life that never ends, to that existence where there is no temptation and no sorrow and no tears, no threat of death, no temptation of the devil. None of the effects of the fall are there. It’s all taken away.
And that joyful resurrection is what waits for us because Jesus is the first fruit. And if he’s raised from the dead, he will raise us from the dead and give us that life of his that never ends. Dear saints, this is our hope, and this is our confidence, and this is our comfort, and this is our peace. May God grant it for Christ. Christ is risen. He has risen indeed. And now may the peace of God, which passes all understanding, guard your hearts and your minds through Jesus Christ our Lord.