Sermon
Easter Sunday Message
April 3-4, 1999
Pastor Donald Sheley

Many years ago a minister walked to his pulpit on Easter morning. This is the way he opened his sermon. He said, Easter day is a day on which the best Christians are hardly in a mood for a sermon. Their hearts are full of joy and they've come to church as they would go to a wedding to make their congratulations, to utter their hymns of joy and praise to the King of kings on the anniversary of His great victory. Their hearts say more than any fellow man could possibly say, and much of what their hearts tell them cannot well be rendered into human language, and for this kind of reason I suppose that it has been said that a sermon on Easter day requires an apology.

To some degree the old preacher may have been correct. But not all of us live in those highlands of spiritual triumph and not all of us come to a church service like this with songs radiant upon our lips and thrilling our hearts; because to us, life is more real here than the possibilities of heaven. For we are children of time and eternity seems so very, very far away. We're entangled with life and all of its difficulties and we have to battle with weakness in our wills and with darkness in our understandings. So we've come today and we need to hear the word of the Lord. We need to refresh our hearts in the great truths of our Christian faith so that we too can add our voices of rejoicing in true victory and true celebration. At the very heart of our Christian faith is the truth of the resurrection. It is not merely an article of a creed; it's a fact of history. 

In fact, one of the most easy, one of the greatest facts of history that's provable is the fact of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. I'd like to talk to you about Paul's argument for the resurrection. I think it's possibly the most brilliant argument for the resurrection in the entire scriptures. Join with me in your Bibles at 1 Corinthians 15. Paul has written this letter to the Corinthian church and the Corinthian church has a real problem. Some of them in the church have rejected the idea of a physical resurrection of Christ. They did not believe in physical resurrections. Their Greek philosophy said it can't be done. Now, Jesus may have appeared to His disciples, but most likely they say, His body was spiritual or it was a phantom, but it wasn't for real; it wasn't His resurrected body. And so you have a church that's divided.

Corinth had people in it that said, I don't believe in the resurrection, and others said, I do. So Paul writes this letter to correct this deep heresy within the church. Notice what he says in verse 12. 1 Corinthians 15:12, Now if Christ is preached that He has been raised from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? Now Paul commences his argument here with a question, and he is saying listen, if we preached this to you why do you question it? And for sure this was the gospel that Paul preached when he came to Corinth. 

Go back to verse 3 of the same chapter. He said, For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures. Paul says you had it preached, we preached to you, that's the gospel. Notice verse 1, Moreover, brethren, I declare to you the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received and in which you stand, by which also you are saved, if you hold fast that word which I preached to you - unless you believed in vain. He said the foundation of your faith there in Corinth is premised upon these great truths; Christ came, Christ died, Christ was buried, He rose again. That's been preached to you.

Notice what else he says in his introduction before he gets to his argument. Not only did He rise again on the third day according to the Scriptures, but He was seen by Cephas, then by the twelve. After that, He was seen by over five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain to the present, but some have fallen asleep. After that He was seen by James, then by all the apostles. Then last of all He was seen by me also. Paul has simply said, he's witnessed His presence. 

And it's fascinating to me, just in moving along these verses, you notice in verse 5 it said He was seen by Cephas. That's another name for Peter. We all know Peter. Peter was that one on that Good Friday when, within the precincts of the temple, he's confronted with the possibility of his association with Christ and he makes a forthwith denial; I don't even know the man. And finally the third time he begins to swear and then he hears the cock crow, and then Jesus looks at Peter. You remember he went away weeping and it says that he wept bitterly. Isn't it interesting that one of the first persons to whom Jesus revealed Himself after His resurrection was the fellow who openly denied Him. 

In fact, in Mark 16:7, when the angel is announcing the celebration party up in Galilee to all the disciples he said, you go tell my disciples, and he's telling them to go to Galilee because they're going to celebrate, and make sure that you tell Peter. Heaven was extremely interested that Peter, who went away weeping bitterly even though he loved his Master, at the moment he couldn't take a stand. Jesus in His love and His graciousness comes to him first. That's interesting to me. Then it says He was seen by over five hundred. When did that take place Pastor? 

Well most likely that was on the mount of transfiguration just before He left. And then it says that He was seen by, which, of course, many of those he said have already fallen asleep. That's the scriptural way of saying they died. And after that He was seen by James. You say, who is James? We've got Peter who is mentioned personally, five hundred, and now James. Well, after Jesus was born in the home of Mary and Joseph, the Bible is very clear that Mary and Joseph had children; and those children are listed for us. Their names, I think, are in Matthew chapter 13 and in another part of the gospels. They list four boys at least that were born in the family and it says sisters so we know that at least two girls were born to Mary and Joseph after the birth of Christ. 

Now you can see Jesus grew up in a home, but there was a tragedy that marked that family. They did not believe Jesus to be whom He said He was. In fact, when He started His public ministry one day the family came after Him because they thought He'd lost His mind. They thought He went crazy and they wanted to take and seclude Him and take Him out of His public ministry. On another occasion in John chapter 7, Jesus is getting ready to go up to the temple at Jerusalem to worship, and it was His own family that mockingly said to Him, Jesus if you want to get popular, you don't get popular staying down here in the sticks in Galilee, go up there to Jerusalem where all the people are. I mean if you want your name in the newspaper, get up to Jerusalem quick. And mockingly they jeered Him. Jesus told them to go and He would come later, which He did. 

You know to have those in your family deny you or at least reject you because of your faith is hard, but can you imagine Jesus having to deal with this issue of His own family not accepting who He said He was. It must have been a lonely moment for Jesus hanging there on that cross, only mother was there. There's no indication that the rest of the family was there. James should have said that's my brother because the James mentioned here was one of the brothers that grew up in the home of Jesus. And I find that very, very interesting that Jesus went to one of His own family to reveal who He was. That must have been a tender moment for old James knowing that all of these years he had lived in the presence of the Messiah and had rejected Him.

Paul writes to the Corinthians and says I want you to know that according to the scriptures He did come out of that grave. He appeared to Peter, the five hundred, then to James, then the rest of the disciples, and then he said finally he appeared unto me. And what Paul is doing is laying the foundation for his argument. There's proof. There're witnesses. I have met Christ. Because what he's saying is on the road to Damascus when he saw that vision from heaven, he said, Lord what is it that You want me to do?

Paul had had a personal confrontation with the Christ that he had done so much to destroy. And he goes to Corinth and he starts the church, and he said when I came to you this is what I preached. I preached that Jesus died, and I preached that He was buried, and I told you that He rose again. That's the foundation of your faith. Why is it, why is it some of you listen to the philosophers and believe Greek philosophy and you don't believe truth? So here's his argument, Now if Christ is preached that He has been raised from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ is not risen. And if Christ is not risen, then our preaching is empty and your faith is also empty. Why do you go to church, Corinthians? Because the Christ of the church is the risen Christ, and if you don't believe in the risen Christ, why waste your time? If you say there is no resurrection, your faith is futile and all the preaching you listen to has no value. Thus he starts his argument. 

Some years ago I went to a conference, a convention of preachers, in southern California and one of the speakers was a gray-haired gentleman. When he got up to talk he said my speech will be different. I must make a confession. He said for 35 years I was a pastor in a church and I was a liberal, that is, I didn't believe in the resurrection of Christ. I don't know how you can be a preacher and not believe the Bible. It's just like trying to be a doctor and not believing in medicine. But the church has those who stand in the pulpit and yet they do not believe some of the great truths that make our Christian faith real. And he said, you know, pastors, he said, for 35 years I pastored this congregation and hundreds of people came and hundreds of people went, and he said I never told them once that Jesus Christ came out of that tomb; never told them once. 

And he said I'll tell you, two years ago it came Easter day, and that's hard for a liberal when you don't even believe in the resurrection, and he said I had the task of one more time trying to prepare some kind of a speech for the congregation that I wasn't going to tell them that Jesus came out of that tomb. He said all of a sudden, I was in my office and I was reading the text one more time, and he said something happened. It seemed like the scales fell off my eyes and all of a sudden my heart began to believe; this could be true. And he said I got up out of my chair and I started walking back and forth across my office. He's risen. He's risen. He's risen. He's risen! 

And he said the more I said it the more faith welled up within me and I began to rejoice because all of a sudden, after 35 years of ministry, a truth that I had never preached became alive to me. And then after I said that for a long time, I began to weep. And he said I began to weep because I knew that for 35 years people had come to my church and I never told them the truth. And he said I'm going to have to meet some of those folks in eternity, and he said I'll live with the regret. But I'll tell you, he said, I'll never stop preaching the resurrection. He said after I had that experience in my office, I went to church on Sunday and it's Easter morning and he said I read the text with life and vibrancy, and he said all I could say; I walked back and forth across my pulpit, He's risen, He's risen, He's risen, He's risen, He's risen indeed! He's risen! And he said my congregation thought I'd lost my mind and he said half of them walked out on me. And then he said I began to weep again because I realized that for 35 years I hadn't told them the truth. 

Paul didn't want that situation to exist in Corinth, and he says listen, if Jesus did not rise from the dead, the church has no meaning, preaching is useless, and why waste your time believing? Follow his argument. Verse 14, And if Christ is not risen, then our preaching is empty and your faith is also empty. Yes, and we are found false witnesses of God, because we have testified of God that He raised up Christ, whom He did not raise up - if in fact the dead do not rise. Paul said, listen, we preachers are all liars, and those apostles who should have known better, they died for a lie. There's James who's given his head. There're others who have died. Dying for a lie? 

And you say if there's no resurrection then I; I'm a liar and I'm a false witness and everybody else who preaches the gospel is also, you call us all liars. Now watch his argument. If you don't believe in the resurrected Christ then there is no church, and if there's no church then preaching is useless, and if there's no risen Christ then your faith is futile, and if there's no risen Christ all you listen to is a bunch of liars when you come to church. Watch him develop his argument. For if the dead do not rise, then Christ is not risen. And if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins! If there isn't a risen Christ then there's no heaven and everybody goes to hell. You see, if there's no gospel of a risen Christ then there's no forgiveness. And he says we all still are in our sins, and if you die a sinner, you go to hell. That means heaven is empty and hell is jammed full. 

Paul said, if you say there is no resurrection then why the church? One of the greatest witnesses of all time is the Christian church down for the last 2000 years. Why listen to preachers? They're all liars, maybe some of them are, but not all of them are. Why have faith? And then he goes on to say, look at verse 18, Then also those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. We've had all these funeral services for nothing. We've talked about life beyond the grave. We've talked about the resurrection of life, and if Christ didn't come out of that tomb then everybody that's died has perished. Now he's brought in that dimension of eternity. 

You see, because we believe in the resurrection of Christ, you and I believe that one of these days, when life is finished here, we shall go to be with Him. It may happen in a moment, in a twinkling of an eye. But Jesus said that this body will, this corruption shall take on incorruption and this mortal shall take on immortality, and this weakness shall take on strength. John says, Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God. And it doth not yet appear what we shall be; but we know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is. 

You and I as Christians have that glorious hope that when life is finished here we're going to be like Him and we're going to share in the resurrection body. Paul said listen, if there's no resurrected Christ, there's no resurrection on the last day. And he said if in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men the most pitiable. And what he's simply saying, is if you make Jesus simply to be a teacher and you let His teachings affect your humanitarian activities, it may bless you in this life, but it has nothing to do with the life hereafter. I'm glad he didn't stop there, and if I would have been sitting in that congregation on that day when this letter from Paul has been read, if I were one of those guys that was telling everybody that Jesus didn't come out of the tomb, I think I'd have headed for the door real quick and wouldn't even have wanted to shake the preacher's hand. Because Paul's argument is terribly convincing. If Jesus didn't come out of that tomb, then how do you explain the Christian church? How do you explain the faith of millions who have died for what they believed in? How do you explain the great proclaimers of truth that have been divinely anointed and have won millions to Christ? 

Apart from the resurrection of Jesus Christ, ladies and gentlemen, there is no explanation. And even the wisest of historians, even secular historians, will tell us that one of the most provable facts of ancient history is the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Now that's amazing to me. In fact, when you pick up the writings of Josephus, Josephus was a Jewish gentleman hired by the roman government contemporary to Christ or just after Christ. He didn't believe in Christ as the messiah. He was a Jewish gentleman paid for by the roman government to write history. And yet in his antiquities he writes it very clearly, this Jesus came to life three days after His death. I'm not saying it exactly as the ancient man wrote it, but what he has said, it is a fact of history and we who have lived in this time know it to be a fact. If on the day of Pentecost, when Peter stood up to preach, and there are 3,000 people who came to Christ, if they did not believe that Jesus came out of that tomb, all they'd have had to say it Peter, just a minute, shut up. Let's go for a walk over to the tomb, because I mean they're in walking distance from the tomb. They knew. They knew that tomb was empty! I mean, it was a fact. 

And ladies and gentlemen our Christian faith is not built on a myth. It is not built on a fable. It's not built on a story somebody told. Our faith is premised in a provable fact of history, and when we put out trust in that Christ He transforms us. I disagree with the old preacher. I don't think a sermon on Easter needs an apology because the proclamation of the resurrection of Jesus Christ is the greatest truth this side of eternity. I will agree that, because I believe it and you believe it, we have a reason to celebrate; and we really have today, haven't we? We've celebrated our risen Lord. I want you to stand with me. Time is gone.

Lord Jesus, there's not a question in our mind. There's not an ounce of a doubt with regards to Your resurrection. Every one of us here today believe it with everything inside of us. And we've come to celebrate Your victory, dear Christ, over the grave. We love You. We worship You. And we want to serve You with all of our strength, with all of our might, with everything that we have because You are our risen Christ. And everybody said, amen. God bless you.