Matt Chandler - He Is Risen

If you have your Bibles, go ahead and grab those. We’re going to be in Matthew chapter 28. It’s my inclination on Easter to always move towards the historicity of the Resurrection. Maybe that’s just how I’m built, but what I want to do is show you the stunning volume of evidence that Jesus of Nazareth was crucified by the Romans and came back to life three days later—not as a matter of faith, but as a matter of historic fact. In fact, the volume of evidence—around nearly 7,800 eyewitnesses to that Resurrection—along with all sorts of ancillary evidence about that Resurrection, is compelling. This is just my bent; it’s the thing that excites me a little bit. Just to say, hey, there is a stunning amount of evidence that this thing happened. This is not a fairy tale; this is not Greek mythology. The way you and I can judge fact versus fiction today can be applied to the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, and the evidence is overwhelming that it happened, that it is true, and that it has changed everything about the world since. So that’s my kind of bent; that’s how I like to argue. Yet, I think a better use of our time, rather than getting into that, if that sounds like something you’d love to dig into, is to commend to you «Jesus and the Eyewitnesses» and a 500-page book by N. T. Wright that’s simply entitled «Resurrection.» If that’s what gets you excited, you can dig into those two books in particular and see the stunning amount of evidence surrounding the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

However, what I wanted to spend our time doing today, for the next 25 minutes, is thinking about the implications of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. So if Christ has risen from the dead—and you’re in church on Easter Sunday morning with no surprise, we believe he did—then there are significant implications of what that means for your life and for my life. With that said, let’s read my favorite version of the Resurrection. Not that you’re supposed to have favorites, but in the four gospels, here’s my favorite: Matthew 28, the first 10 verses.

Now after the Sabbath, towards the dawn of the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. And behold, there was a great earthquake, for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven, rolled back the stone, and sat on it. Now, I don’t know why, but I just like the fact that he rolled it aside and sat down on it. It just feels like a boss move to me, right? Just roll away the stone, bam, and sit on it! And then I’ve got to keep reading; my voice won’t hold. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing white as snow. And for fear of him, the guards trembled and became like dead men. But the angel said to the women, «Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for he has risen, as he said.» I love that little «as he said”—that Jesus keeps his promises. „Come and see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples that he has risen from the dead. And behold, he is going before you to Galilee, and there you will see him. See, I have told you.“

So they departed quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy and ran to tell his disciples. And behold, Jesus met them and said, „Greetings!“ And they came up, took hold of his feet, and worshiped him. Then Jesus said to them, „Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee, and there they will see me.“

So here’s what I want to do: It’s a little bit of a sleight of hand preacher trick. I’ve got two implications, which are really more like four implications. The way you do that is you state one implication with two sub-implications under it, and then another implication with two more. That’s the plan, but I want to highlight these things as they are. Really, if we can get these things down in our guts, they can affect the type of life we’re living—even if the life we’re living right now is full of victory and vibrancy. All the more, this is good news if you’ve come in here feeling a bit jaded, stunted, or stuck. So I want to just dive in.

Here’s implication number one: If Jesus resurrected from the grave—and we believe that he did—then our rescue, or our victory, is complete. Here’s what I mean by that: Death rules and reigns because sin entered into the cosmos. In fact, maybe I could say it like this: the zombie apocalypse is viewed very differently by the Bible than it is by our modern sci-fi writers. So if you think about „Pet Sematary“ or „The Walking Dead“ or anything like that, it’s pervasive in our culture. What they view is that death is natural and resurrection is unnatural. Well, the Bible comes at it the opposite way: that death is unnatural and resurrection is natural, since death was not in God’s original design.