HE IS RISEN! There have been roughly 1,989 Easter Sundays beginning on that first Resurrection Sunday. Easter is celebrated by over 2 billion people around the world. The resurrection is officially celebrated in at least 95 out of 195 countries across the planet. We’re gathering today, both here at the sunrise, and possibly later at different gatherings, to celebrate the Rise Savior, Christ Jesus.
And like today, at that first resurrection people denied that it happened. On Facebook I have been getting a blitz ad for the last several weeks from Bart Erhman a notable agnostic New Testament Scholar, inviting me to attend his teaching on “Did the Resurrection Happen?” You can search books, publications, YouTube videos, all questioning, was Jesus really raised from the dead?
And you can find counter arguments on why the resurrection happened. I’ve done a series on it, and I know my fellow pastors in this town have spoken on the evidence for the resurrection. And you would think that given that God’s Word explicitly states that to disprove the resurrection would disprove Christianity, that in the roughly 1,989 Easter Sundays, someone would have disproven it by now. Yet, the same arguments against the resurrection that were given in the aftermath of Jesus’ raising, are still given today.
Jesus didn’t die, he swooned. Jesus didn’t die, he was replaced. Jesus didn’t resurrect, the disciples stole the body. Jesus didn’t resurrect, the disciples found the wrong tomb. Arguments that, time and time again, have been disproven, and yet persist.
Liberal scholars like E.P. Sanders, who do not believe in the resurrection, have to admit they don’t know what happen. Sanders writes, “That Jesus’ followers (and later Paul) had resurrection experiences is, in my judgment, a fact. What the reality was that gave rise to the experiences I do not know…Paul’s tradition that 500 people saw Jesus at the same time has led some people to suggest that Jesus’ followers suffered mass hysteria. But mass hysteria does not explain the other traditions…Finally we know that after his death his followers experienced what they described as the ‘resurrection’: the appearance of a living but transformed person who had actually died. They believed this, they lived it, and they died for it (https://jamesbishopblog.com/2015/06/29/jesus-really-did-appear-to-the-disciples-and-skeptics-after-his-death-40-quotes-by-scholars/).”
But this isn’t a defense of the resurrection. Like I said, those can be found anywhere. No, there’s no difference today than on the first day the resurrection of Jesus occurred. The Bible records in Mark’s 16th chapter, “9 When Jesus rose early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had driven seven demons. 10 She went and told those who had been with him and who were mourning and weeping. 11 When they heard that Jesus was alive and that she had seen him, they did not believe it.”
In the Gospels, we’re told that multiple women went to the tomb and found it empty. We’re told that they encountered two angels, one of which tells them to go and tell the disciples that Jesus had risen and would meet them.
Yet, Mark and Luke tell us that the disciples did not believe the women at first. In Mark we’re told that the disciples simply didn’t believe. But Luke informs us, that, “But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense (v. 11).”
Could it be that the disciples just thought the women were in hysterics? Could it be that they didn’t want to hope, where they believed there was none? I don’t know, but what we do know is that when the women told them that Jesus had been raised from the dead, the disciples’ reaction was disbelief.
Did their disbelief negate the reality of the resurrection? No! Just because someone doesn’t believe something, doesn’t make it untrue. And this is what we’re talking about today. About 1,989 Easter Sundays have come and gone. There was disbelief on the first Sunday, there will be disbelief on the last Easter that is celebrated before the return of Jesus. Countering disbelief is not the primary work of a disciple of Jesus. The primary work of Jesus’ disciples, of those who call themselves Christians, is to witness to the reality of the resurrection. Mary was told by the angel in Mark 16, “6 ‘Don’t be alarmed,’ he said. ‘You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him. 7 But go, tell his disciples and Peter, “He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.”’”
Before Jesus ascended to heaven after the resurrection he tells his disciples that, “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8).”
We need to be like Mary, witnessing to the truth of the Resurrected Jesus, no matter how the world responds. Whether the world responds in belief or disbelief, we are to stand firm knowing the power of Christ in our own lives and pointing others to the salvation he holds for them.
Because there will come a time when all will be witness to the Lord Jesus in his full glory. And on that day, those who profess to his resurrection will be joyful because they are heading into eternity with their God. Yet those who stand in rejection of the resurrection will be in sorrow, because they will miss knowing the Lord Jesus.
I want to challenge all of us on this roughly 1,989th Resurrection Sunday to take our call to be witnesses of Jesus seriously. We live in a dying world, yet we Christians worship a living God. We live in a world where hope is a limited commodity, yet we Christians rejoice in a coming King. There are many out there that our waiting to here the life changing words of the Gospel of Jesus. That though we have sinned and rebelled against God’s perfect created order, he loves us enough to come to us. To live and die for us. To pay the penalty for sin and wipe it away. That all who trust that Jesus is Savior will begin an eternal relationship with God that starts the moment we accept what he has done for us, and lasts eternally.
Let us who have already trusted in Jesus as our Savior be witnesses that the resurrection of Jesus is the proof that what God has said is true and we are in need of him.
Today, let us be joyful and in celebration of Jesus’ resurrection, which solidifies the work of the cross and the payment of sin, and points to his returning and re-creation of this world. And as we wait for that glorious day, when we will see Jesus coming on the clouds, let’s be about the work he has given us, to be his witnesses in all the world. Amen.
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