Easter Sunday

This morning, we're going to obviously be looking at resurrection. I don't know if you've heard of this, but James Cameron, the director who directed Titanic and Avatar, these really big movie blockbusters, directed a documentary a few years ago called The Lost Tomb of Jesus Christ. In it, he argues that 10 ancient containers have been found in a suburb of Jerusalem. This was actually a long time ago they discovered these containers, in 1980, to be specific. But he argues that these containers contained the bones of Jesus.

In fact, the astounding claim is that not only Jesus, but His entire family. Jesus had a wife, had kids, His mom and His dad, everyone was buried in the tomb there. This claim is astounding, critics say, because Jesus' family was famously poor and to have your own family tomb was something for the wealthy only. But in it, in the documentary, he says that one of the caskets bears the title "Judah, son of Jesus". So, you know, obviously, He had a son called Judah.

The movie claims that the very fact that Jesus had a burial box contradicts the Christian belief that Jesus resurrected from the dead and ascended into heaven. Now, archaeologists have actually known about this for a long time. And James, sort of, you know, in light of the whole da Vinci Code and so on, you know, gets a little bit of attention and he can make this really astounding claim. But archaeologists, real scientists, have actually debunked this version of history and they've said that the movie that James Cameron has directed is something that can be and should be heavily criticised. But imagine this morning, if the resurrection never happened.

Imagine if someone out there found positive proof that unearthed the bones of Jesus of Nazareth. What would that do to your faith? What would that do to your faith? I recall a long discussion that I had with a friend of mine at Bible college one time. Those debates were very interesting.

And we discussed: what if, what if Jesus didn't really rise from the dead on Easter Sunday? What if he stayed in the tomb? We ummed and we aahed and we said things like, well, he'd still be God, right? He still did die for us.

He could still have given the same teaching, and I could still believe in Him, couldn't I? All those things I could still technically do. We felt that we could somehow hold on to our faith even though Jesus did not rise from the dead, if he hadn't risen from the dead. But Paul gives a very different answer to the question in 1 Corinthians, the passage that we just read out of. In 1 Corinthians 15, verses 17 and 19. This is, in summary, what Paul says.

If Christ is not raised, your faith is worthless. Maybe I should have read that before we had this discussion. You are still in your sins. Verse 19: if Christ did not rise, we are of all men most to be pitied.

We are to be pitied more than any other man. Why does Paul say that? What was wrong with my response in this debate? What was wrong with my angle on this whole thing? Why is the fact of the resurrection so central to Christianity?

The answer is to be found in the New Testament. So this morning, I want us to focus on a passage that Paul gives in his letter to the Philippians. If you have your Bibles with you, let's turn to Philippians 3:4-11. Now Paul is not directly talking here about the resurrection, but he moves to the height of his argument and he uses it here. So we're going to have to have a look at that.

From verse four in chapter three, we're to start from halfway through verse four: "If anyone else thinks he has reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more. Circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for legalistic righteousness, faultless. But whatever was to my profit, I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things.

I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. Then our text this morning: I want to know Christ and the power of His resurrection, the fellowship of sharing in His sufferings, becoming like Him in His death, and somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead. I want to know Christ. Paul says, I want to know the power of His resurrection. Do we know the power of the resurrection this morning?

Paul's primary desire, he says, everything in my life, up to this point, has been rubbish. Everything I strive for, everything I worked towards is nothing in comparison to the power of Christ, the power of the resurrection. Paul's main desire in life is to know the living, the resurrected Christ, to know the power that is associated with that resurrection. You see, if Jesus wasn't raised from the dead, if His bones are still buried somewhere in Palestine, then we cannot know Him, Paul says. We cannot know Him.

We might read about Him, we might revere Him, we might respect Him a lot, but we cannot know Him. Furthermore, if He is not raised from the dead, then Jesus has no power today. Absolutely no power. He is dead. His words, though they might have sounded good, have no influence.

They shouldn't have any influence. And so, this is why the resurrection is so central to Christians, so central to us and what we do week in, week out. Christianity is not a religion based on abstract principles. Christianity is a relationship with a living Saviour. A Saviour that we can know.

A Saviour who infuses our life and empowers us. The Saviour who transforms us into His likeness. But what does Paul mean when he says he wants to know Christ? What does that mean? What does that look like?

What is the power of the resurrection? We're going to be investigating that this morning. Let's have a look at the first section in that statement: "I want to know Christ". Paul writes, "I want to know Christ", but what does that look like on Easter Sunday today? What does that look like?

The Bible time and again portrays the relationship between man and God as a personal one, as a dialogue, as a give and take. In the Old Testament, for example, the Israelites are always seen to be in relationship to the living God, as opposed to the other nations who worship dead idols, wooden objects, objects made of stone, dead things. The Israelites have a living relationship with the living God. Let's have a look quickly at Jeremiah 9:23-24. In verse 23, it says, "This is what the Lord says: Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom, or the strong man boast of his strength, or the rich man boast of his riches.

But let him who boasts boast about this: that he understands and knows Me, that I am the Lord, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth. For in these I delight," declares the Lord. In other words, knowing God in the Bible is more important than wisdom, is more important than strength, is more important than wealth. Now think about the people that we as a society admire today. They're admired for exactly these reasons.

They are wise, they're intelligent, they're, you know, well trained, politically astute, they are bright, or we worship the sports people, the ones with the strength, with the ability, with the skill, or we admire those who have power and wealth and influence. But the Lord says through Jeremiah that none of these are of great importance. What matters more than anything else is understanding and knowing the Lord. And this prominence of knowing God carries us into the Gospels. Jesus Himself, on the night prior to His death, prays for His followers in John 17.

And He sums up the Gospel in this: "Now this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent." This is eternal life, knowing God, knowing Jesus. For the Old Testament, the New Testament, the Gospels, Peter, Paul, John, they all agree that knowing God, knowing Jesus, is supreme. But what does it mean? How does it look like?

Well, one of the things is we have to get to know them. We can't just know about them. We have to get to know them. The first distinction in this whole thing about knowing someone, knowing Jesus, is that you can know a person and you can know facts about a person. There's a difference between a husband and wife knowing each other or a husband knowing facts about his wife.

For example, I can know a lot about Don Bradman. I can know his averages, I can know how many centuries he scored, I can know all those things, but I don't know him. I don't know Don Bradman. To know him, I would have to be in a relationship with him. So how do we know God in that sort of way?

While knowing someone implies more than knowing facts about them, it doesn't rule out the fact that we actually need to ascertain some knowledge of them. We actually need some tangible, objective, factual information about them. But I can hardly say that I know someone if I don't know a little bit about their life. In a sense, we actually do need to move towards an understanding of God, and that's why He gave us His word. Objective, tangible facts about the character of God.

How do we do this? In part, it's by listening to the instruction of God's word. It is by studying and reading it together as a community. Christians were always a community around the Bible. It's in part by witnessing the impact that God has on fellow Christians, the testimony, the feedback that we can share with one another about what God has done in our lives.

We know God as well through the Holy Spirit, the Bible says, who talks with us, who intercedes, who converses with us intimately. And so this knowing can be something objective, but it can also be this amazing personal thing. It's a personal relationship, personal getting to know Him. And that comes through prayer, that comes through meditation on His word, it comes through meeting with fellow brothers and sisters regularly in worship, exploring God's word together. All of these things cultivate a knowledge of God.

To know God is to follow Him, Paul says. The Old Testament talks about walking in the way of the Lord. Listen as you pray and read the Bible. Be willing to follow even when His commands are tough. Our faith depends on an amazingly robust knowledge of God, a knowledge that is gleaned from all sorts of different angles.

Prayer, the study of God's word, testimonies of other Christians, worship, and the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Knowing God in this way, coming to know Him, cultivating this relationship with Him, results in us knowing God. Not knowing about Him, knowing God. The second part of Paul's desire is to know Christ and also to know the power of His resurrection. And there are four aspects that we're going to be having a look at on the power of the resurrection, what it actually means when Paul says that.

The first thing is that the resurrection has the power to forgive sin. That's number one. The resurrection has the power to have sins forgiven. If you know your Bible, if you know the Old Testament, sin has the power to control us. We are slaves to sin in our brokenness.

Apart from Jesus Christ, we are like slaves to a master. And without God, we are absolutely absorbed by this sin. But Christ, through His death and His resurrection, frees us from the power of this sin. Paul puts it this way at the end of Romans 4: "Jesus was delivered for our sins and He was raised to life for our justification."

Christ died, in other words, as the necessary sacrifice for our sin. But Paul says He was raised to life for our justification, for our being right with God again. When Jesus died, the penalty of our sin was laid on Him and He was punished for it on behalf of us. And we talked about that on Good Friday. But Him being raised to life shows that that penalty was sufficient.

It shows that His death was effective. If Jesus' penalty, if His death wasn't enough, He wouldn't have been raised from the dead, in other words. So the resurrection shows us that our sins have been forgiven. And that's an amazing truth. That's an amazing comfort because if Satan comes to us and says, "Well, what about this sin in your life?

What about this thing that you are not dealing with? What about this thing that you keep failing at? All this awful stuff up in your life right now?" When Satan accuses us, we just say to him, "Jesus has risen from the dead.

Jesus has risen from the dead. And because of that, I know I'm justified. Because of that, I know I've been made right." That is the power of the resurrection. The second thing that the resurrection has is the power to not only forgive sins, but to overcome it, to conquer it. Christ's resurrection empowers us to conquer sin in our lives.

In Christ, we are a new creation. His Spirit lives within us. We have been renewed. We have a new self. And the purpose of that new self is to be conformed to the image of Christ, to become like Him, to become righteous, truly holy, to become what God intended us to be.

Okay, but if that's the case, why do Christians keep on sinning? Paul gives us the answer in today's verse in Philippians, because we don't know the power. We don't know the power. The power of the resurrection is an amazing thing. In it, we have access to a power that overcomes our weakness.

And not understanding that can lead us to be like slaves to sin still. Satan deceives us. He makes us think that we are still his. He makes us think that we are still his. And he uses habits that have been ingrained into us for years in, years out.

And he uses that to make us believe him. Do you know Pavlov's dogs? Have you heard of that social theory? He was a behavioural scientist called Ivan Pavlov, who, prior to feeding his dogs, would ring a bell and then feed them. He did that over and over and over again till at a point, he would ring the bell and without seeing any food, without smelling anything, the dogs would start salivating.

The mouth would start watering as soon as he rung that bell. And we can become like Pavlov's dogs through the years and years of Satan's lies to us. The lies we tell ourselves either. We believe when someone hurts us, we should hurt them back. We believe when something tempts us, we can automatically turn to greed or to lust or to envy.

But in the resurrection, Paul says, God gives us the power to break those habits, to just cut them off at the knees. Donald Grey Barnhouse illustrates this point wonderfully. He says, imagine you are a prisoner of war in this whole spiritual warfare. Satan is your captor.

Satan is your captor. He's got a gun, and he tells you what you have to do. Whatever he says, you must do. He's in complete control. Now God intervenes.

Good Friday happens. Easter Sunday passes, and the whole thing is flipped upside down. Satan, does he go away? He doesn't. But now you have the gun.

Now you have the gun, and you don't have to obey him any longer. What does Satan do, however? Well, he tells us that that gun is not loaded. He tells us that the thing is faulty. It doesn't have any power.

He'll try to convince you to put that gun down. He'll try to tell you that you have to fight him fairly, hand to hand. He'll try to convince you that he has your best interests at heart. But you have the gun. That is the power of the resurrection.

We need to know it. We need to use it. We need to remind ourselves of that. In every situation where we find temptation, stress, anxiety, we have the gun. We have the power of the resurrection.

The third thing about the power is that it changes us to be God's agents of change. Christianity is not just about forgiveness and overcoming sin. It can become that. We can, you know, come to church every Sunday broken and completely guilt ridden, just dying to hear the Gospel of grace preached to us again. But that is not what Christianity is.

God has a positive purpose in our salvation. He has determined that we are to be agents of change in this world. God empowers us not only to defeat sin, but also to share and to display His loving message of Jesus to this world. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5, "Christ has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ's ambassadors as though God were making His appeal through us."

What a massive privilege. God could work in the world by directly zapping each person and situation He chooses. We've seen that. We know the story of Paul, radical change on that road to Damascus. He can do that.

He has done that. But instead, more often than not, He chooses to work to us, to grow us, to mould us, to shape us in changing this world. It is a massive privilege. It's a responsibility, but it is something that is just so amazing. Because we get to know God so closely, so intimately, when we are doing mission with Him, when we are preaching the Gospel with Him.

The fourth thing about the power of the resurrection and the last thing, we're going to finish on this, is that not only does it save us from our sin, not only does it give us the power to conquer that sin in our life, not only does it make us agents of change, but God is sanctifying us and conforming us to the image of Jesus. We are going to be like Jesus. Jesus is the first fruit, Paul says. In His resurrection, we see what the resurrection looks like for us. We are changing.

We are being changed into Christ's likeness. Can you imagine what that means? Think of everything that you don't like about yourself. All the habits, all the negative characteristics, the things that you've wanted to change, what we talked about, have tried to change, to change, but have failed to change. God will deal with every single one of those things.

You are being made into a perfect creation. You're being made into a perfect creation. Not just alright, not just thought of as good, perfect. It's our destiny. Becoming the perfect bride of Christ, spotless, blameless, loving, kind, strong.

That is the power of the resurrection. And so the resurrection is the most central part of Christianity. The resurrection must be true if we are to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. The resurrection must be true if we are to have access to a power that can forgive sin, to a power that can conquer and overcome it, to a power that can lead us to be effective agents of change, ambassadors of God in this world, and to be conformed into Christ's likeness, to be made perfect one day.