Resurrection Sunday

RESURRECTION SUNDAY

John 20:1-10

Today has been declared by the Christian world to be Easter or Resurrection Sunday or the Paschal.

And it is the day that people who consider themselves to be Christians celebrate the resurrection of Jesus.

You may already know this but the date for Easter is determined every year by a complex set of calculations that take into account the lunar cycle, the date of the Jewish Passover, the Jewish ancient calendar, the Gregorian Calendar, the Julian Calendar, and the vernal equinox or the moment when the sun crosses the celestial equator marking the start of spring in the Northern Hemisphere.

Because of all these different calculations Easter or Resurrection Sunday is referred to as a “movable feast and celebration” and therefore does not have a fixed date like other holidays. It changes from year to year. (Last year it was on April 9; 2022 on April 17).
And, in spite of all the complex calculations, the Eastern Orthodox Churches celebrate Easter on a different day than the Protestant or Catholic Churches; Eastern Orthodox – May 5; so there is no continuity.
And it is primarily celebrated only once a year.

Now, I may be wrong, but I believe that those who determine through their complex calculations what day of the year Easter or Resurrection Sunday is to be celebrated, that they have completely missed the point.

It seems to me that they have gone to all this effort to figure out what day it is to be celebrated; that the exact day is what is important; and they have forgotten WHO is to be celebrated what is really to be celebrated, what is really significant.

What took place on the original Resurrection Sunday is without a doubt the most amazing, the most incredible, astonishing event to ever take place in human history; especially in the history of human redemption.

All four gospel writers, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John record the events of the original Resurrection Sunday and the fact that they do indicates the importance of what took place that day. (If one says it, it is important; if 2 say it, that is more important, if 3, well you better believe it; if 4, you can most assuredly know it is important).
And even though they were inspired by the Holy Spirit words cannot fully express what took place that day and our limited minds fall way short in comprehending the events that unfolded.

The original Resurrection Sunday is not just a feature of Christianity, it is the main event!

Without the resurrection of Jesus the whole of Christianity crumbles into nothing but a baseless fairy tale and all who name Christ as Lord and Savior are without hope.
Without the resurrection of Jesus the dead will not be raised; your Bible can be recycled into paper bags, and you can turn this building over to the pigeons, and as the apostle Paul says in 1 Cor. 15:19, “If we have hoped in Christ we are of all men most to be pitied.”

The resurrection of Christ is the main event! When God raised Jesus from the dead He simultaneously secured our resurrection to an eternal glory.

Look at this in 1 Peter 1:3:

3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you,

The original Resurrection Sunday says, “because Jesus lives, we will live.”

And it is important that we believe this. Remember what the apostle Paul said in Romans 10:9-10?

Paul said, “If you confess Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.”

When God raised Jesus from the dead He “declared Jesus to be His Son” (Romans 1:4), He validated Jesus’ work on the cross and Jesus became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey Him (Heb. 5:8-9), and there is no salvation for anyone who refuses to believe in His resurrection.

Look at this found in 1 Cor. 15 starting in vs. 1. The apostle Paul says: Now I make known to you, brethren, the gospel (good news) which I preached to you, which also you received, in which also you stand (abide; your foundation, don’t move off of it) , 2 by which also you are saved, if you hold fast the word which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. 3 For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures,

If you or I or anyone else fails to stand; if we move off of, if we reject, or refuse to believe, that Jesus was raised from the dead, there will be no salvation.

But God doesn’t want us to do that. God intends for us to stand solidly on the resurrection of Jesus and that is why we do not assemble on Friday, the day He was placed in the tomb, or on Saturday, the day the tomb was sealed, but on Sunday, the first day of the week, the day of His resurrection; Rev. 1:9 John calls it “the Lord’s Day.”

Sunday in not simply the day we “go to church”; it is the day that we come together to remember and celebrate His resurrection.
And that is in part of why we take the Lord’s supper. It reminds us that He died and has been raised from the dead and will someday return; 1 Cor. 11;26.

So we assemble on Sunday to celebrate His resurrection: we talk about it; we sing about it; but what is interesting is no on saw it!

No one saw His resurrection. No one was in the tomb when it happened.

But it’s not something that needed to be seen.

All that needed to be seen is the Person who was dead and who is now alive, and there were many witnesses who saw Him.
Paul says in 1 Cor. 15:5-6 that not only did His disciples see Him after He was raised but over 500 other people saw Him as well.

There is no doubt that, in spite of the best efforts of the Jewish leaders, and the Pharisees, and the Roman governor to keep Jesus in the tomb (Matt. 27:62-66)…

In spite of the fact that the highest human authorities at the time sealed that tomb…
In spite of the fact that a lie was propagated and a bribe was paid to deny it (Matthew 28:11-15)…Jesus was raised from the dead.

Now, as I mentioned before, all 4 gospel writers, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John record the actual history of the resurrection, but none of them try to explain the physiology of it; or the pathology of it.

The body of Jesus was wrapped in linens and spices and lying in the darkness of the tomb; and when life came back into His body what moved first: did His chest begin to rise and fall as He breathed; did His finger twitch; His eye open; did He gasp for a breath?
How did He remove the wrappings?
No one knows and the Bible doesn’t tell us.
But that doesn’t matter.

What we do know is it happened; it was a supernatural miracle like all the other miracles that our Lord performed.

And that is the point; the resurrection happened because God willed it to happen in order to proclaim that Jesus is His Son and to reassure us that because of our faith in Him and obedience to Him we too will someday be raised from the dead ourselves.

The main event is not trying to figure out the date to celebrate His resurrection from all of these complicated calculations.

The main event is that Jesus was raised with power, and declared to be the Son of God, so that just as He lives, we can too!

But then there is another reason why God raised Jesus from the dead. Look at this found in Acts 17.

Here in Acts 17 the apostle Paul is in Athens and he is speaking to some individuals who were very religious, individuals who worshiped gods of all different kinds; vs. 23.
They have even created an altar to an “Unknown God” who they worshiped in ignorance.
And so in vs. 24-29 the apostle explains to them the character and nature of the real one and only Jehovah God.

Now, look at vs. 30. In vs. 30 the apostle Paul calls these individual to repent; to repent of their ignorant, pagan ways.

And look at why they or anyone else should repent; look at vs. 31: … because He (God) has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead. ”

The resurrection of Jesus calls, pleads for everyone, including those who are “very religious” to repent; to turn away from their ignorance, their worship of false gods, to turn away from their lives of disobedience and sin and seek after God.

Why? Because God has “fixed”, “set, appointed” a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness (It will be a just and righteous judgment unlike what we see sometimes in our culture).
And the proof of that judgment is the resurrection of Jesus.

Every Sunday, every first day of the week is a reminder of the original Resurrection Sunday.

Each Sunday is a day when the faithful assemble and take communion.
And as we participate in the communion it is a reminder to us that He was crucified, laid in a tomb, and was raised to sit at the right hand of God, and each time we take communion we are reminded that He is coming back.
And for salvation sake, we must be ready, washed in His blood, when He does.