Easter Sunday

This morning, I wanna start by telling you a little bit about a wonderful work with the imposing title called "The Disciples Peter and John Running to the Sepulchre on the Morning of the Resurrection." That is its full title. More often than not, it's referred to by a shortened form, just called "The Disciples," or in the French in which it was originally created, "Les Disciples." Now this work, this piece of art, won't be found in the Louvre.

It won't be found in the Met or the National Gallery of Art. It hangs tucked away in an old railway station in Paris, now called the Musée d'Orsay, on the left bank of the Seine River. This work of art was painted in 1898 by a relatively well-known Swiss artist by the name of Eugène Bernard. Eugène Bernard. An artist who, even in that day and age, was something of an old-fashioned artist, a realist at a time when all the cool kids were embracing modernism.

The painting itself didn't make a splash. It didn't get any headlines when it was first exhibited. Bernard's style was already considered old-fashioned by the eighteen nineties. But today, if you are to see it, as some have already done, if you take your time to sit in that old railway station, people who see it come away thinking that they've experienced something of a spiritual experience.

I wanna show you that painting and give you an insight why. See the first blush of light early in the morning against the clouds. The pinks and the blues and the purples coming through. Peter on the right, John on the left, running towards the tomb of Christ. I've been told by Mary Magdalene, as we just read, that she and other women had found the tomb empty, empty, that Christ had risen.

Her words are still ringing in their ears, but their faces and their bodies reveal that they aren't sure if they can believe her. John, on the left, the younger of the two, is wringing his hands together anxiously. He had been with Jesus by His side at the cross. He was the last to leave. He looks as if he can barely bring himself to believe that Christ might be alive again.

His face is an expression of deep desperation and hope. And then there's Peter. Older, more aggressive, wears emotion on his sleeve. Peter. If John had been Jesus' only faithful disciple at the end, Peter was His most faithless. He had been the only one to verbally deny even knowing Jesus in His darkest hour, denying Him three times.

In this picture, Peter also has a desperation of hope on his face, but there is also fear, there is also shame and there's a little bit of worry. His hands grasp his chest as if feeling for courage, the courage that had deserted him hours earlier. And look at their body positioning. They are leaning forward, rushing, eager to get there as soon as possible. This obscure painting crackles with kinetic energy, with movement. It is a study of what desperate anticipation and aching hope looks like.

If you look at this picture, what does it evoke in you? What does your heart reflect on this Easter morning as you step through these doors of ours? Does it come with desperate anticipation to find an empty tomb? Do you have a hopeful heart that this might indeed be true? And if you think it might be true, is it true for you?

Is the empty tomb true for you? The apostle Paul, sometime later, we're talking years later, writes about this event, the resurrection, to a Christian church in a place called Corinth. He explains to them the centrality of believing this very thing we reflect on and think about today. He says that this, the resurrection, it is what Christianity is built upon. Without it, there is no Christianity.

No resurrection, he says, means no need to believe in Jesus. So we're going to read his line of argument from 1 Corinthians 15, and we will throw that on the screen for you, but you can turn to it in your bibles. 1 Corinthians 15, and we're gonna read the first eight verses, verses 1 to 8, and then just skip forward a little bit to verse 12. 1 Corinthians 15, verse 1. Paul writes this: now, brothers, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, this was many years ago, which you received and on which you have taken your stand.

You have accepted this. This has been made yours. By this gospel, by this good news, you are saved. If you hold firmly to the word I preach to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain.

For what I received, what I received, I passed on to you as of first importance. That Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, that He was buried, that He was raised, and on the third day, on the third day according to the scriptures, and that He appeared to Peter and then to the twelve. After that, He appeared to more than 500 of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep, meaning some have died. Then He appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all, He appeared to me also as to one abnormally born. Then we skip ahead to verse 12.

If it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you now say that there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. So far our reading. Paul begins by saying that, guys, our faith, Christianity, at its very core is useless and without any warrant.

If there is no resurrection, if the resurrection doesn't exist for us, then it didn't exist for Jesus. If it didn't exist for Jesus, it doesn't exist for us. He says not only will we look very silly, and me of all as an apostle, not only will we look very silly, but more importantly, the whole Christian hope falls flat. Later in verse 17 of that same passage, Paul writes: if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile. You are still in your sins.

We've seen this portrait, this painting rather, and there's a few things that we can reflect on as we think of that regarding the resurrection. Why is the resurrection of Jesus so central to the Christian message? Well, firstly, it changes lives. Jesus' resurrection changed the lives of His disciples.

After Jesus was crucified, the disciples scattered. They went and they hid like cockroaches under a fridge. They ran as quickly as they could. The disciples, remember, had seen Jesus performing incredible miracles. They had heard Jesus speak with an authority that they had never heard before.

They had been receiving from Him amazing insights into the human condition and about their lives. But when Jesus died, when He breathed His last, when He was put in a tomb, all those things ended because He became in their minds like any other man. Under the same curse, under the same fate: death. But when they saw a resurrected Jesus, they knew that all that Jesus had said, all that He had done, all that He had promised would be true because this was also one of His promises. That He would die and three days later, He would rise.

They knew not only now that He was the messiah, but that He was the son of God. God incarnate. God in flesh. They knew that they now had to receive Him as Lord and King. He wasn't just a man now.

He wasn't even a great teacher now. He was something far more than that, and He demanded their respect. The disciple Peter after the resurrection of Jesus was a changed man. He was a changed man. Never ever would he deny Jesus again.

Never. Not even to the point where he would be crucified like his Saviour, but upside down. Jesus, in his mind, was not a victim anymore. He was a victor. Jesus did not lose that day on the cross, as he thought. He won an incredible victory over sin and death.

The resurrection is the gold medal to show that the victory had been won. And this changed their lives. The resurrection therefore changes our lives as well. The second thing is that the resurrection of Jesus gives authority. No other religious leader has died in full view of thousands of people.

And then at the hand of trained executioners and trained guards, being put into a tomb, sealed off, guarded and kept safe against any potential tomb robbers. And yet, the gospel message goes that 500 people saw Jesus alive. This is what the apostle Paul says. I pass this on to you as I've received it. 500 have seen this. 500 can tell you.

He says some of them are still alive. Some have passed away, but some are still alive. You can go and ask them. No other person has made these claims, even today. Not even the most inspiring prophet. Buddha did not rise from the dead.

Confucius, in all his wisdom, could not rise from the dead. Mohammed did not rise from the dead. We know where his tomb is. It is in Mecca. Even the recently departed Christopher Hitchens, the promoter of a very, very strong militant atheism who died only a few years ago, has not risen from the dead.

Jesus Christ, attested to by witnesses, physically rose from the dead, and it means that only Jesus has been able to conquer this thing that we all fall to. So if I was to ask, why would you trust anyone in this world? If a person claiming to be God had died, came back from the dead three days later, would you be intrigued to find out more from Him? Would you be interested in what He has to tell you? Would you listen carefully to a man who had experienced something like that?

Christ's resurrection makes us sit up because the resurrection itself gives authority. It makes our ears prick up. Then, lastly, the resurrection provides perspective on what is good and what is bad. There might be some of us that are really wrestling with this idea of the resurrection. Even as a Christian, you may ask the question: can it really be true?

It is pretty hard to believe. But I wanna tell you this morning that even if you can't believe it, even if you can't accept that this is true, you would want to have it to be true. Just like the disciple John was wringing his hands with that, just that hope of desperate, yeah, that look of desperate hope. Please let this be true.

You should be wanting it to be true for this reason: because the resurrection holds out the hope that this world is not the final stage of life. That there is something more to this life than what we see. We all experience pain. We all care about pain.

We particularly care about pain for those of us who those who we love. We care about the things that are bad in this world. We care about people that are going through suffering in this world. We care about the injustice. We care about the pain of the needy.

We care about our mates with depression. Many of us are very generous towards charities that look after people in this sort of pain. But if you care about any or all of these things, then I want to hazard a guess that you would also want to believe that the resurrection is real. Why? Because if it was real for Jesus, if flesh and bone could come to life again, if a flatlined heart could start beating again, then the resurrection of Jesus says that death is not the final stage of this life.

That something beyond death exists. Jesus promises that He would have all of us be resurrected one day. That some of us, having put our trust and our faith in God, our dependence on Jesus and His work on the cross, that some of us will be resurrected to be with God. But there's some of us, those who do not believe, who do not trust wholeheartedly in God and in His saving work, that they will also be resurrected, but to an eternity away from God. And if all of this is true, Jesus claims, then what we do here and now matters.

Our decision to believe in God. Our decision to make Jesus Christ Lord and King based on His authority, based on what He has said, what He has revealed about Himself. The decision about that here and now is important. But secondly, Paul says in our passage, if the resurrection of Jesus never happened, then we don't have the resurrection for us. And if we don't have the resurrection for us, then there really is no hope for humanity. There is no hope for humanity if the resurrection isn't true.

We kid ourselves into thinking that our life purposes then really matter. It doesn't. We may do a lot of very nice things. We may look after some very needy people, but once we die, our work, our efforts, our strivings are either forgotten or rejected or destroyed. But if Jesus' bodily resurrection from death is true, then it means it can be true for us as well.

This is why Paul says in our passage in verse 20 later that Jesus Christ is the first fruit. He calls Him the first fruit. What that means is that He is the first one to have this new existence, this new resurrected body. And like the first fruit of the season, our apples or our mangoes, we pick those first fruits to give us an indication of what the tree is going to be like. A good first mango indicates it's gonna be a good yield.

It's gonna be good fruit this season. Good good apple, crisp apple, beautiful, juicy apple indicates that the tree is good. And Jesus is the first fruit. He is the first to be resurrected.

He's the first of us as in His human state, in His human body to go ahead of us. Paul is saying that in Jesus' resurrection, we see God's plan for this life. Death is not how the story ends. Eternal life is what God wants for humanity, and this changes the way we do life today. You see, the resurrection changes our perspective on what we do because it changes the scope of what we do.

The good things I do now will echo in eternity. The sharing of my faith with someone might echo into their eternity. The bad I do, the evil that I do, the hurt that I cause also echoes into eternity. And so what we do now, this side of death, actually matters. Why do I say you would want to hope for this to be true?

Because if you've ever experienced pain, if you've ever experienced heartbreak, if you've ever experienced deep, deep grief, you would want this to be true because if it's not, then there is no real justice for anyone. Through human history, we would have to count up how many people have gotten away with murder. How many would get away with oppression? How many have ruined lives and get off scot free today? If Bashar al-Assad, the dictator of Syria, who's taken the lives of potentially tens of thousands of people.

If he was cornered in his palace and he took his own life, where would be the justice for those people? If death was the final stage and he could take it himself, where is the justice for those lives? The resurrection says that death, however, is not the end. And then as a result, will not be an unfair escape for those who have sinned terribly and avoid justice here because everyone will be resurrected and all of us, all of us will stand before God to give an account. On Easter Sunday, we remember the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.

In that moment where God showed everyone that He is more powerful than the most powerful force we know, which is death. We fear death because it is that powerful. And this resurrection gives hope to those Christians killed in Egypt last week, in the Palm Sunday attacks, just for being at church. It gives them and their families unconquerable hope. Death is not something to be scoffed at because it does divide, it does take, it does rob. Yet, while death is the great divider, God has overcome it.

Because of this day, Easter Sunday, death will not forever be the divider. Death will not be final. Easter Sunday means that in a world where injustice and oppression and disease are everywhere, God is not tolerating it forever. He is not willing to tolerate it forever. If Jesus died to forgive our sin, if He was raised to life to conquer death, then we really have good news for the whole world to hear and receive.

Because it says that sin and death will not win. A few of us are new this morning. I don't know if you were at church on Good Friday. Two days ago on Good Friday, we reflected on Jesus dying on the cross, which says that I am so sinful that I am so flawed and broken that He needed to die for me. He didn't die His own death.

He died my death. And He had to do that because if I was to stand before God and give an account to Him, I don't have a leg to stand on. I do not have hope. Good Friday says that I am so flawed and so sinful that Christ had to die for me, but He so loved me that He was glad to do it.

But today, hear the message that says, God so valued and loved His son Jesus that He raised Him from the dead to show everyone that the mission that He was on to save mankind was accomplished, more successful. This morning, you may decide for yourself whether you want to enter this kingdom of God or not. I want to tell you that everyone will be resurrected. I want to tell you that all of those who put their trust in Jesus and His love and the cross that He put our sin and guilt on. That if you make Him your Lord, you will receive eternal life.

But this is a gift that you must receive. This is a gift that you cannot just simply have wash over you as you sit here. It's not simply a gift that you inherit because of your parents or your friends. It is something that you must receive. And I can't force you to take it.

And no one else can force you to take it. I cannot make you accept it by faith and trust. I can point you to 500 people that saw the resurrected Jesus. I can point you to the apostles Peter and Paul and James and John and their radically changed lives. I can point you to a church that was so broken and fragile and in a few short decades grew to be a massive movement.

Spurred on by a truth that made everyone very uncomfortable, but very, very urgent. I can tell you all of these things, but you have to move. You must believe. So this morning, if you are moved, can I ask you to do three things? Firstly, speak to someone about this.

Speak to the person you came with. Speak to the person who brought you. Ask them to pray for you so that you may understand if you don't. Ask them to pray for you so that you may believe even if you don't. The second thing is to find a church, to join a church where the bible, what we've read out of many times today, is shared and is spoken and is taught.

Join a church with fellow Christians, believers that are also on this path so that they can encourage you and that you can continue to grow alongside them. And then lastly, make a decision. Make a decision. Pray to God saying that you are sincerely sorry for that sin, this flawed life that He would have to die for.

Promise that you will turn away from your old way of life and follow Him as your Lord and King. And tell Him that you are ready to receive His forgiveness and His acceptance. Tell Him that. Friends, God is in the process of making all things new and it started with Jesus. He is our first fruit.

The desperate hope we saw in the disciples, Peter and John in this painting is now, friends, a realised hope. I wish he painted the other side of that empty tomb and to see their faces light up and the joy and the peace and the completion that they would have experienced. Friends, it means in the resurrection that your life matters because it is not going to end in a disappointing death. Your life matters. The resurrection of Jesus means that your sin has truly been dealt with.

And so this morning, again, receive the Lord. Make Him your King. The one who has conquered death. The one who has conquered sin. And so in our hearts, we may cry out, hallelujah, praise God for the empty tomb.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this truth. We thank you for the hope, the emotion, the urgency, the desperation we feel even in our hearts right now. Lord, we want this to be true so badly. Lord, give us the faith to believe it.

Give us the obedience to accept it. Lord, give us the courage to change because of it. Father, we thank you so much for this truth. It is a truth whether we are ready to receive it or not. It is a truth whether we can handle or understand all of it or not.

Lord Jesus, thank you that you died for us. And we are so thankful that you won for us. Lord, forgive us. We accept your love for us, Lord, and we promise that our lives will never be the same because of it. In Jesus' name, amen.