Why The Resurrection Matters

Here is the revised sermon transcript, corrected for grammar, spelling, and punctuation while preserving the full content and paragraph format:

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Well, I'd like you to turn in your Bibles to Luke chapter 24. Initially, I want to read Luke's account of what happened on this morning. We'll read the first 12 verses. One of the things I love about the gospels is we get these different accounts, different perspectives, different and unique insights into all that happened on this morning. And Luke tells us this: that on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they went to the tomb taking spices that they had prepared, and they found the stone rolled away from the tomb. But when they went in, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. While they were perplexed about this, behold, two men stood by them in dazzling apparel. And they were frightened and bowed their faces to the ground. And the men said to them, "Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you while he was still in Galilee that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified and on the third day rise?" And they remembered his words. And returning from the tomb, they told all these things to the eleven and to all the rest. Now it was Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary the mother of James and the other women with them who told these things to the apostles. But these words seemed to them to be an idle tale, and they did not believe them. But Peter rose and ran to the tomb, stooping and looking in. He saw the linen cloths by themselves. And he went home marveling at what had happened.

This is what we celebrate on Easter Sunday. This is why we call it Resurrection Sunday, Resurrection Day. It's the fact that Jesus, who was crucified, rose from the dead. And I'm going to assume that you wouldn't be here if you weren't aware of that, if you didn't at least have some notion that the Christian faith centers on Jesus Christ crucified and risen from the dead. Even if you do tend to associate in your own mind Easter with chocolate bunnies and colored eggs and things like that, you know that for Christians Easter is sort of the high point. But maybe you wonder what that has to do with our lives when we walk out of this building this morning, when we go into the world and we live our lives. What does the fact that Jesus rose from the dead have anything to do with that? How does that affect our lives in any way? And I want this morning to consider with you three ways the resurrection directly impacts your life.

The first one — maybe the most important — is that it solves our biggest problem. Our biggest problem is that God is holy. That might seem like a strange thing to be a problem, but because God is holy, that means God is fair. And what that means is that he will give us what we deserve. And that's not as good a thing as it sounds like initially. God is holy. That means he's perfect in every way possible. And what the Bible tells us is that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. What that means is that because we have transgressed God's law, we have sinned against him — from Adam and Eve right on to this very day, all of us are sinners. Because of that, the Bible tells us that the just penalty is death and eternal separation from God. And the other thing that is bad news about that is that there's nothing we can do about it. There's nothing we can do to change that. We're stuck. Adam and Eve ate the fruit and God removed them from the Garden of Eden, separated them from that. There was no way for them to get back into the garden, no way for them to get back into that relationship and that presence they enjoyed with him. They knew that separation from him in a very real way — maybe even in a more tangible way than we do — because they at least experienced it for a little while. But for many of us today, maybe we find that hard to believe because the full realization of what that means, we haven't really experienced it yet. We haven't really experienced yet what it means to be completely cut off from the grace of God. We still live in this world, and so we're still operating under a kind of umbrella of God's grace in our lives. We are maybe a lot like the guy who jumped off the skyscraper and as he passed the 18th floor yelled out, "So far so good." We haven't hit the bottom yet. That's where reality really strikes us.

Paul tells us in Romans chapter 10, verses 9 and 10, he says this: "Because if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved." That's the good news — that even though God is fair and God will administer justice in a perfect way, there is a solution. Even though we can't undo the problem of our own sin, God can undo it. And that's exactly what he did. That's what we celebrate when we celebrate the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. It's the crucifixion of someone standing in the place of sinners and taking that punishment on himself, paying that debt for someone else. But what Paul says in Romans chapter 10 is that you need both the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ for the work of redemption to be complete. Our faith is not just the idea that Jesus died, but that he rose from the dead. It's a package deal.

And to explain that, we're going to take some time and pick our way through 1 Corinthians chapter 15. We're not going to cover the whole chapter — we're going to hit some selections of it — but you can turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 15. And I want to begin by just reading the first few verses. In verses one through six, Paul says, "Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ Jesus died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the twelve. And then he appeared to more than 500 brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. And then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles."

What is so significant about that? First of all, Paul outlines in probably the most succinct way possible the basic components of the gospel message — that Jesus Christ lived, that he died for sins, that he rose from the dead. This was in accordance with scripture. That's what he's saying: this is what was prophesied, this was what was promised, and he did that. And not only that, there is validation, there is verification, in that he's telling the Corinthians all these people saw him. In fact, if you doubt what I'm telling you, you can go talk to these people. He names specific names. Go bring it up with them. See if they confirm what I'm telling you — that Jesus Christ has risen from the dead. They were able to do research that we are not even able to do today, and he lays it all out for them.

What is essentially in this package deal Paul is saying is this: while the cross is payment for the debt — on Good Friday we talked about the idea of Jesus Christ standing in the place of sinners, being a substitute, taking their place when he hung on the cross — if the cross is payment for the debt, the resurrection is kind of like the receipt, the proof of payment, the proof that the payment was accepted by God. The resurrection, in other words, validates the atoning work. You know how at some restaurants you can get your parking ticket validated? That proves you went to the restaurant, got your food, and then you get to park for free. That's a very trivial illustration, but it captures the idea. It's like that stamp showing that God has accepted the payment of Jesus Christ — that it is sufficient, that it is satisfied, and that nothing more needs to be done. And he victoriously rises from the dead, never to die again. It is God the Father's public declaration that the Son's payment was sufficient and has been accepted. It is a validation of that.

And so if you don't get anything else from what we talk about this morning, you need to understand that when you walk out the door, the resurrection means a great deal to your life. It means that the payment for sin was sufficient, that Christ has been victorious over it, and that the Father has accepted it — which means he can be the true atoning sacrifice for us. He can be the one who pays the penalty for our sins. And for those who trust in that, it is sufficient to grant them salvation and a return to fellowship with God. It solves our biggest problem.

Maybe you've never thought about this, but the resurrection also gives you a reason for living. Paul makes that case in 1 Corinthians chapter 15. In that chapter, he links the resurrection of Jesus with the resurrection of humanity, and he links the resurrection of humanity with the resurrection of Jesus, in the sense that he basically says: if Jesus isn't risen from the dead, then no one's going to rise from the dead, and if no one's going to rise from the dead, then Jesus isn't risen from the dead. The two are inextricably linked — they can't be separated. But if you look at verse 32 of chapter 15, he makes another statement that initially might make us chuckle. He says, "What do I gain if, humanly speaking, I fought with beasts at Ephesus?" We'll talk about that in a moment. But then he says, "If the dead are not raised, let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die." Initially that sounds like, "Oh yeah, let's party on, let's get after it." But it's actually a very dark and depressing statement. It's Paul's way of saying: if there is no resurrection from the dead, if Jesus hasn't risen from the dead, this is the best your life is ever going to be. Which is pretty scary, because there aren't many people who are super excited about the way life is going. If this is the best it's going to be, that's not a great thought.

In fact, what he's really saying is that after this, if Jesus isn't raised from the dead, there's nothing. The only thing that truly makes any sense is nihilism — meaninglessness, nothingness. If there's no resurrection, the only thing that's logically consistent as a way to live right now is hedonism and the exploitation of other people. You'd better get as much as you can right now, because after you die, it's worthlessness. It's nothingness. It's a complete vacuum. There's nothing of lasting value. So the pursuit of your own pleasure right now is the best that you can hope for. There's no point in worrying about building for the future, planning out great societies and civilizations. You're wasting your resources if you work for a common good or to build a culture or a community. It's all just nothingness.

If you were a child of the '80s and '90s, you might have had sea monkeys. Sea monkeys are basically brine shrimp. You could order them out of the back of comic books and things like that. My sister had some sea monkeys and she loved those things. And I made the mistake when I was a kid of trying to feed the sea monkeys when she wasn't there, and I accidentally dumped them all over the floor. Millions of sea monkey lives gone in an instant. You know what? It didn't matter at all. The sea monkeys didn't care. The little brine shrimp contribute nothing to the greater value of the world and the functioning of it. When they're gone, nobody cared. That's what Paul's saying. Your life is like a sea monkey if Jesus isn't risen from the dead.

We have these stories — like Project Hail Mary; I won't give any spoilers, I haven't even seen the movie, I read the book — but it's one of these humanity's-last-ditch-effort stories, right? We've got to save humanity, so we're going to pour all our energy and resources into figuring out this problem. But Paul says if Jesus isn't risen from the dead, those sorts of efforts really don't make any sense. How do you make them make sense if when you die, that's it? And there's another big problem explored in scripture by Solomon in the book of Ecclesiastes. Most of us instinctively know this because Solomon explored all of the things that this life has to offer — all of the luxuries and the self-indulgence, the money, the power, the sex, the pursuits of wisdom, the pursuits of building great things, accumulating power. And all of that he concludes is vanity. It's like vapor. It's fleeting. There's no substance to it. Because even if you fully invest yourself in these kinds of hedonistic pursuits, eventually you're going to die, and then what are you left with? Nothing.

If Jesus hasn't been raised from the dead, life is super depressing. There really isn't anything for you out there. If Jesus isn't risen from the dead, you walk out those doors and you have nothing. It's all so temporary, all so fleeting, all so shallow. But Jesus did rise from the dead. That's why Paul mentions these specific people that his readers could go and confirm. Go talk to Peter. Go talk to James. Go talk to these 500-plus people who witnessed him. Go confirm the fact that he is not in the tomb anymore. He has risen. Go talk to them yourself. Remember, even Thomas — one of his own apostles — doubted. And Jesus shows him the crucifixion wounds, shows him the nail prints, shows him the spear wound in his side. And Thomas concludes, "My Lord and my God." I love the fact that Thomas said, "If I don't put my fingers in the wounds" — and then Jesus shows him, and he doesn't even have to put his fingers in, right? It's clear. And Jesus says, "Blessed are you, for you have seen and you believe. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believed." What Jesus is telling Thomas is: you've had the luxury of seeing these things and you believe, but that's not required. People can still have faith and believe.

The resurrection is proof that the promises of God are true. And so for those whom God, by his Spirit, has awakened to believe, obedience to him makes sense. It makes sense to go out there and live for God. It makes sense to go out there and live for the glory of God. Aiming to glorify him is a valuable pursuit because Jesus Christ has risen from the dead. Telling others about him is worthy of our personal sacrifices. That's why Paul in verse 32, where he's asking rhetorically what he gains if humanly speaking he fought with beasts in Ephesus — whether these beasts are metaphorical, meaning mean people at Ephesus who fought back against his efforts to bring them the gospel, or whether he endured literal attacks from wild beasts as he journeyed to Ephesus, it's not entirely clear — but either way, it is a valuable pursuit for him to experience that type of hardship if Jesus Christ has risen from the dead, because it's worthy of sacrifice to go and tell other people so that they too can hear the good news of Jesus Christ and believe.

Even showing up to church on Sundays is a worthy pursuit. If we come here with the goal of worshiping God — devoting ourselves even on this one morning weekly, setting it aside to sing praises to his name, to pray to him, to give our tithes and offerings in support of his ministry, to hear the word of God preached, gathering together with other Christians to worship him regularly and consistently — that is a valuable and wise use of our time. If Jesus is risen from the dead, Paul makes very clear that his resurrection is a foreshadowing of our future resurrection. Scripture is very clear and very consistent that it isn't just believers who are going to rise from the dead — everyone is going to rise from the dead. But there are two very different futures that await those groups of people. In the book of Daniel, Daniel says that one group will rise to everlasting life and another group will rise to shame and eternal contempt, eternal punishment. Christ's resurrection is proof of our future resurrection. So it gives us reason for living and it gives us a direction, a purpose, and a focal point for how we live.

There is a third reason that the resurrection has bearing on our lives today. It blesses us with an eternal hope. So it answers our biggest problem — it tells us how we can be rescued from the consequences and the penalty of our sin. It gives us a purpose for life. And then it gives us a hope, an eternal hope. Because Jesus' resurrection and his glorification are a taste of the future that awaits those redeemed by his sacrificial death.

You go all the way back to Genesis: Adam and Eve are in this garden. They're in this perfect environment. They have everything they could possibly want. It's better than we could possibly imagine. If we could go back there and live in that environment, we would want to. But they disobeyed God. They chose to reject him and his instructions. One simple condition he gave them — one simple thing not to do — and that was the one thing they decided they were going to do. And as a result, they were driven out of the garden, separated from God, and they became subject to the curse of sin. After that, sin was in their very nature, a part of who they were. It's a part of who we are because of that. Even the rest of creation — all of creation, the Bible tells us — was then subject to that same curse. It wasn't just relegated to Adam and Eve alone. Everything now had to deal with the reality of that curse because of sin. And so that's why when you look out at the world, everywhere you look you see pain and suffering and disease and death and ruin and brokenness. That's why you all seem to be praying for relief from weeds every day here in California — that's definitely one of the effects of the curse, I'm pretty sure.

Turn over to Romans chapter 8. Josh quoted from Romans just a little while ago. I'm going to read a few other verses in Romans 8, verses 18 to 23. "For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies." Paul is saying that creation's decay and then liberation are bound up in humanity's fall and then redemption. And these things are both directly tied to Jesus' death and his resurrection. And so we are waiting for the final fulfillment of this reality — of what it means that Jesus Christ has been raised from the dead.

So Paul points us to what that means for us back in 1 Corinthians chapter 15, verse 20. He says, "But in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death" — that's Adam — "by a man has also come the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. And the last enemy to be destroyed is death." Paul says that Jesus' resurrection is the first fruits of those who belong to him.

First fruits were typically the best — they were supposed to be the representative sample of the yield. So let's say you had an orchard of fig trees and you offered up the first fruits of your figs. This is what you would present to show what could be expected from that orchard of figs. It was representative of the type and quality of the whole thing. Now I know none of you have ever done this, but I'm going to confess, okay? Sometimes when I'm at the grocery store and I see all these bags of grapes and I don't know if they're going to be good or not, I will occasionally — don't tell Derek this — eat one of the grapes. I know it's dirty and covered in pesticides and all that, but I've got to know: is it worth it to buy this bag of grapes? I don't eat the whole bag — that would just be insane. But every now and then I pop one in, and if it's good, I buy the bag. That's kind of the idea of first fruits, right? It's a guarantee to me of what's going to be in that bag of grapes. I've only eaten one. Similarly, if you're going to buy a house, you put down a down payment as a guarantee, and then you have to wait for the closing to go through all the paperwork and everything — but you expect to get that house at the end of that closing period. That's the idea: Christ's resurrection is a representation of our resurrection. It lets us know what is to come for us.

Even though we haven't died yet — I hope not; hopefully we're all still alive — it lets us know that the effects of the curse for us will be undone. There will be a renewal of our own bodies as a part of that resurrection. But as Paul says here, even the whole creation is going to be renewed, and Jesus Christ's resurrection is a first fruit of that as well. This new heaven and new earth described at the end of the book of Revelation, in Revelation chapter 21 — that is creation renewed and restored, and made even better than it was in the Garden of Eden. The end of sin, the end of pain, the end of death, the end of all of our efforts being frustrated by those things and by our own shortcomings. All of that coming to an end, and this glorious new thing awaiting us. Jesus walking out of the tomb three days after his crucifixion is the guarantee that there is a glorious future awaiting Christians.

The glory of that future is more, though, than just a renewed creation. It's that all of those who have been adopted into the family of God because of the work of Jesus Christ will also be glorified, and we will be with the Lord forever. If you're in 1 Corinthians, look at chapter 15, verses 51 and 52. "Behold, I tell you a mystery. We will not all sleep, but we shall all be changed — in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed." He's talking about the glorification of our bodies at that last trump when Christ returns.

The greatest blessing of all of this, though, is that we will finally dwell in the presence of God, unrestricted, forever. The separation that was instigated when Adam and Eve fell in the Garden of Eden will be done away with. John says this in Revelation chapter 21, verses 1 through 3: "Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, 'Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more. Neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.'"

When you think about the resurrection, when you think about Jesus Christ rising from the dead, I think many Christians will think about salvation and about the penalty and punishment for sins being dealt with by Christ — but we need to think a lot bigger than that. This has bearing on our lives for all eternity. And it points us to a day when we will not only rise from the dead, but we will be glorified as Christ's own body was glorified. And we will dwell with God in a place that is free from all of the things that make life here on earth so painful, so difficult, so depressing. That's the eternal hope we are waiting for. And that hope is not just wishful thinking — it's not wishing on a star or having our fingers crossed. That hope is a confident assurance of things not yet realized. They are out there waiting for us. We just have not yet reached the point in history where we experience them.

So if the resurrection solves our biggest problem, if the resurrection gives us reason for living, if the resurrection blesses us with lasting hope — how should we respond? How should we act when we go out these doors this morning? Well, number one: some of us need to believe. Some of us need to put our faith in Christ. We need to cry out to God and ask him to give us the faith to believe. That's the first thing. Some of us need to return. We have drifted in our devotion to Christ. We have grown lax in following him. We need to re-engage our worship of him. We need to commit to not letting Easter Sunday be a one-and-done for us — this is our opportunity to be reinvigorated to follow Christ and live for him. And number three, some of us need to be still. Because life can be so hard, because life can in many cases be very distressing and even overwhelming — and maybe for some of us it's not just occasionally overwhelming, it's overwhelming all the time. The resurrection, as we look forward to what awaits us, gives us reason even in the midst of all the chaos of our lives to be at peace, knowing that there is a guaranteed, glorious future awaiting the believer. That's how I think we can go from here and take the resurrection with us and have it truly impact our lives.

Let's pray. Dear Lord, it is such a privilege to know not only on a purely factual level the reality of the resurrection, but to know in the deepest way possible the significance of Jesus Christ risen from the dead — that his resurrection means more to our lives and to our future than maybe we are even aware of, and that it impacts us into eternity. May you help us not only to be grateful for it, not only to be in awe of it and to marvel at it, but help us to entrust ourselves to the reality of what it means for us. May you help us to use it to impact the way we view our lives and the significance that our lives have, knowing that our lives are eternal and they don't end when we die — knowing that there is a future promised for the believer that is beyond our comprehension, that is marvelous, too marvelous even for words, and that all of our attempts to describe it fall woefully short. And may that give us hope for living even when our lives are miserable, full of pain and suffering. Help us to have this perspective on life. May you help us to use it not only to impact the way we live, but to let it shine out of our lives and impact those who are around us. May you help us to live as beacons of your glory and grace because of the fact that Jesus Christ rose from the dead. Amen.