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Job 19:
Job 19:23
Prayer
Prayer
Introduction
Easter has long been one of (if not the) most important Christian holidays.
I want to spend some time exploring why that is good and right.
Why we should, as Christians, celebrate Easter.
But to be clear, when I’m talking about celebrating Easter, I don’t mean giant egg-laying rabbits or egg hunts or baskets filled with candy or new outfits for the Spring – not that there is anything wrong with those things in and of themselves.
What I’m talking about is celebrating the Resurrection.
There is a reason Easter is an important Christian holiday.
Scripture
Our passage this morning is .
If you are able, please stand for the reading of God’s Word.
We do this to show appreciation to God for His Word and in recognition that these are the most important Words we can hear today.
I know that the passage is a little longer than normal, so please bear with me.
says,
“For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.
Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep.
Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles.
Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.
For I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.
But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain.
On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.
Whether then it was I or they, so we preach and so you believed.
Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?
But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised.
And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.
We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised.
For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised.
And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.
Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished.
If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.”
Thank you, you may be seated.
Sermon
In this passage of Scripture, Paul is writing to the church in Corinth.
A church that he spent over a year and a half at.
He knows the people he’s writing to and he loves the people he is writing to.
What Paul is doing, at least in the first part of the passage is reminding them of the truth that he had taught them.
And this is not just any random tidbit of information.
Paul says that this is of first importance.
That of all the things that He taught while he was with them, this was central.
It was core truth.
And, to add to that, Paul is clear that this isn’t merely what he had taught, but he was passing on the truth he had received.
I won’t spend much time on this, but many scholars agree that what Paul recites here in verses 3-7 is an early Christian creed.
Possibly the earliest Christian creed dating to within just a few years after Christ’s death.
All that to say, Paul is reminding the Corinthians of the basic, earliest, primary, most essential truths that Christianity has always held.
So, let’s unpack what those truths are.
There are two main points each supported by a secondary point.
The first point is that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures and the supporting point is that He was buried.
What would the Corinthians have understood by that statement?
They would have recognized and remembered that Christ had come as the fulfillment of the Old Testament Sacrificial system.
They would have thought about things like the sacrifices of the Passover lamb and remembered that the sin they bore – their own guilt was placed on Christ.
But even that truth needs some background context.
The mention of sin and guilt assumes that we know what that means.
It assumes the previous understanding that there is a holy God.
That God is pure, and we are not.
It assumes the understanding that as states, God hates all workers of iniquity.
All of us and everyone we know and love are workers of iniquity.
We are sinners to our very core.
We are not merely offensive to God because of the things we do, but because of the nature we have.
Out of our sinful nature flows sinful acts.
That might not sound like what we tend to think about God, but the cross makes no sense otherwise.
God cannot pour out his wrath and anger on Jesus at Calvary if God is just a giant teddy bear who doesn’t have wrath and anger.
Nor is there any need for us to be saved from our sinfulness if God doesn’t actually care about our sinfulness.
But God does care about our sin.
He hates it, and so we need to be saved from our sin – we need to be saved from His wrath.
That brings us back to this idea of Christ dying for our sins.
Christ died for us.
Just as the Passover lamb had the sins of Israel symbolically placed on it and was sacrificed – bore the death penalty to atone for the people’s sin.
So, Christ bore the sins of His people and atoned for their sin.
That is, He bore the punishment due to us and reconciled a sinful people to a Holy God.
As says,
God placed the sins of imperfect people onto the perfect Lamb so that we would be reconciled to Him.
But this is Easter Sunday, and so our focus is not primarily on the cross, but on the resurrection.
So, the second main point that Paul made was that Christ was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures.
That point is supplemented with the fact that He appeared to many who then became witnesses of these facts.
Again, I want to reiterate that from the earliest of times, the church has, at its core, proclaimed these two truths: Christ died for our sins and was buried, and He was raised on the third day and appeared to many.
We’ve already looked at why the cross – the death of Christ is so important, but why is the resurrection so significant?
Why do we celebrate Easter?
Because without the resurrection, the cross is meaningless.
I know that is a bold statement but bear with me as I explain.
Without the resurrection, there is no Christianity.
We would never have heard the name of Jesus.
He would’ve been forgotten to time just like the hundreds of other people who died on the Roman cross.
The resurrection shows that Christ was in fact who He said He was.
Jesus claimed to be the Son of God.
To be one with God.
If that was false, if Christ was lying about that, He would have been a blasphemer and insurrectionist and would have deserved the cross He received.
The resurrection affirms the cross.
What I mean is that God raising up Jesus shows that what Jesus said about Himself and what He said about God was true.
It shows that Jesus was who He said He was.
It also shows that God accepted Christ as the sacrificial payment due to our sins.
That is no small point.
Without the resurrection, there is no forgiveness of sin.
Verse 17 in our passage says that very thing,
1 Cor.
The resurrection is not just about our future hope of taking part in Christ’s resurrection.
If we are in Christ, we will one day be raised like Him and that is exciting and something we should hold on to in hope, but it also has real significance now – in our day to day lives.
The resurrection shows us that the guilt of our sin was laid on Christ.
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