Well, happy Easter everyone. My name is Steve Jeffrey. I'm the senior pastor here at St. Paul's
and what a fantastic day for you to be tuning in to St. Paul's and to be engaging with the
wonderful news of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. This is a day that marks all days. This
is the day that celebrates, that remembers the most significant historical event ever.
This is the one that changes the course of history. And yet I acknowledge that for some,
that is not the case. In fact, a Sydney newspaper printed an article in its Easter edition a number
of years ago now. And the author, a social commentator made this comment about Easter and
about the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And, you know, it is a positive comment. It says
Christians celebrate new life at Easter, but in a religious sense. The focus of their festival
is the belief that tragedy and grief symbolized by the crucifixion can give way to new life,
which is symbolized by the resurrection. And that pain and loss are essential steps on the journey
towards enlightenment. And so the author suggests there that Easter is a festival of hope, a celebration
of faith in the future, a reminder that despite our failures and our frailties and our flaws,
personal resurrection is a possibility for any of us. And so for the author of that article,
a positive article, the resurrection of Jesus is in fact symbolic. Whether it happened or not
is irrelevant for him. It's an example. It's a metaphor for life, for new life and growth
through suffering. And so for some, a day like today is a great day, a metaphor for hope beyond
potentially things like coronavirus. The author represents the view of many in our society when
it comes to the resurrection. And it appears to be an intelligent, conciliatory and a rational view
for them. The resurrection is a myth that it's okay to believe if it happens to work for you.
If it helps you in life, then believe the resurrection.
Now, if you've tuned into us today, I want you to know from me right from the start,
that as I look at the Bible and as I speak about the resurrection of Jesus this morning,
I'm not merely putting another alternative in front of you. I'm not putting in front of you a
support system for life. The resurrection of Jesus is not for me a satisfying myth that helps me
interpret life and helps me live life so that it becomes livable and even enjoyable.
When I look at the Bible, when I speak about the resurrection this morning,
Easter is about real persons, historical events and divine intentions that actually happened.
The resurrection is more real and it's more exciting and more terrifying and more life-changing
than any myth or any other truth claim in the history of the world.
That's my starting point.
This Easter, the celebration of the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, he's alive.
He's not a memory.
A mere historical figure like Caesar or Shakespeare or Abraham Lincoln.
He is back from the dead with a glorious eternal body.
He's alive and he's reigning right now as the king of the universe and he's making this offer
of real, genuine, eternal life and hope to everyone who hears me speak these words today.
You.
So, I've got three things in mind this morning.
This is my introduction.
Three things in mind and if you've got the St. Paul's app in front of you and if you haven't,
I'd encourage you to get there.
Go to St. Paul's app and open it up and you'll find some outline there for my message today.
I've got three things in mind.
Three things that the resurrection does for us from Mark that just read out to us.
It changes our minds.
It challenges our minds and reshapes our worldview.
It changes our hearts and it gives us hope and it changes the whole course of our lives.
So, first of all, challenging minds and reshaping worldviews.
Now, the challenge to our mind about the resurrection is there in Mark chapter 16 verse 6.
Right there.
Don't be alarmed, he said.
You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene.
He was crucified.
He has risen.
He's not here and see the place where they laid him.
And so, the challenge for our minds is that Jesus, who was dead, came back to life after he was dead.
Now, the fact that he was dead, the fact that Jesus was crucified, that's not unusual.
You know, around Jesus' time in first century Palestine, there were dozens of these little movements where there was a leader who gathered a bunch of people behind him and they declared that they were the savior of the world.
And, you know, it sort of worked for a bit until in every other case, including the case with Jesus, the leader was killed.
They were executed.
And in every other case, except for the one with Jesus as its head, they just collapsed and went home.
The movement's finished.
With the leader dead, everyone just simply went back to life.
Except this one led by Jesus.
Only one movement didn't collapse with the death of its leader.
In fact, it exploded with the death of its leader.
Within 200 years, Christianity was dominant in the Roman Empire.
And to this day, right now, it is the largest and the most widely spread culturally and geographically of all religious faiths.
So what's the difference?
The Bible says the Christian church has maintained and claimed for 2000 years that after Jesus was killed, he came back to life and he appeared to his followers and many others.
That is, the resurrection of Jesus is what changes everything.
The Bible says that's why Jesus' followers didn't go home.
That's why Christianity exploded and continues to do so.
But this is the year 2020.
You know, I live in Chatswood.
It's one of the major centers of the secular city of Sydney.
And most people around me don't believe what I've just said.
And, you know, I get that.
I understand that.
You know, this is a challenge to our mind and challenge to our worldviews after all.
And so, let me just say, I want to say this gently.
It's really important not to be intellectually lazy at this point.
Dismiss the resurrection as implausible.
And you have to come up with an alternative explanation as to how this one little movement exploded like it did and penetrated globally into all different kinds of socioeconomic groups and cultures and languages.
But the others didn't.
Many want to dismiss the resurrection without coming up with a historically plausible alternative explanations for it.
So, one historical tactic is to accuse the original texts, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, which we've read from a couple of them this morning, as being unreliable.
Some prefer to call the historical documents legends.
And our Bible reading, which is read out to us from Mark 15 and into 16, challenges that too.
So, if you've got that open, that would be fantastic.
Three times in eight verses, I want you to see this.
Mark 15 verse 40.
Mark 15 verse 47.
Mark 16 verse 47.
Mark writes down the names of the eyewitnesses to the resurrection.
Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome.
Why?
Why three times?
Well, the answer of one New Testament scholar is that this has all the marks of the way that historians did history in the first century.
These women are clearly described here as eyewitnesses.
Have a look at the text with me.
At Mark 15 verse 40, some women were watching.
And again, 15 verse 47.
Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joseph's saw where he was laid.
16 verse 4.
When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had been rolled away.
Then in verse 5.
As they entered the tomb, they saw.
And then in verse 6.
See the place where they laid him.
It's pretty obvious that Mark sees these women as clear eyewitnesses to not just the death and the burial, but also the resurrection of Jesus.
But let's not forget this is first century Palestine.
Really crucial for us to keep it in its context.
And this itself creates a problem.
You see, one of the early arguments against the truth of Christianity and the accounts of the resurrection of Jesus is that it's based on the eyewitness testimony of women.
A first century Greek philosopher named Celsus was one of the early and probably fiercest opponents of Christianity.
And he wrote that the resurrection was clearly a lie because women were the eyewitnesses.
And women, according to him and the culture of that time, were regarded as hysterical and unreliable.
And so the question is, if Mark is making all this up, and Matthew, Luke, John as well, if they're making it up, why would they have put women down?
Why would they have recorded women as the only eyewitnesses to Jesus' empty tomb?
The only way to account for the women being recorded as the eyewitnesses of Jesus' resurrection is that they were.
And that they were writing history, not legend.
Mark has written this as an historical record of actual events.
Events that challenge the way we see the world.
Now, at this point, it's easy to go, well, okay.
It may have happened in their mind.
You know, ancient people, a little bit gullible when it came to miracles.
They don't have our modern, developed mind.
And we've learned a thing or two in the past 2,000 years.
See, it's easy to assume that their worldview was different than our worldview.
Like, in the first century, they were gullible.
And they were open to the idea of a resurrection where we're clearly not in our modern, developed mind.
And again, if you look at Mark, got that text in front of you, you see that Mark challenges us not to be too quick here,
to jump in and conclude that they were ignorant and gullible.
One thing you'll notice as you read through Mark is that Jesus himself tells his disciples quite earlier on, quite clearly,
that he will die and that he will rise again on the third day.
He does it in chapter 8 and he does it in chapter 10.
And the weird thing is the third day comes after his death.
It arrives.
It's the third day.
And it seems that no one is expecting the resurrection.
The men are sleeping in or something.
And the women have bought spices in their Woolworths home delivery.
And it's a traditional thing that you did.
You went and anointed a dead body with spices.
And so they've got the spices.
And even the disciples of Jesus aren't sitting around at breakfast time,
eating their Weet-Bix and going,
Hey guys, you know, it's the third day.
Do you think we should just go and have a look?
Just check it out.
Just in case.
Even as these women are going to their tomb,
they're wondering who's going to open the stone.
Who's going to roll it away from them.
They've prepared everything except how to get in.
The resurrection, the point is,
the resurrection took everyone by surprise.
The resurrection was just as impossible for them to believe as it is for us today.
Even their first thought at seeing the empty tomb was not that Jesus had resurrected from,
had been risen and come back to life.
But that someone had stolen the body.
So I just want to say to you,
wherever you're sitting now,
is that if you doubt the resurrection of Jesus,
I want to say,
so did they.
So did they.
But they did allow the evidence to challenge their worldview.
We need to be careful of what the Oxford Don C.S. Lewis called chronological snobbery.
It's where we think that those have gone before us,
especially those who have gone a long time before us,
were just naive and gullible and stupid.
They just believe anything.
We need to be careful that our chronological snobbery isn't an excuse for intellectual laziness
and narrow worldview assumptions ourselves.
Doubting the validity of the resurrection is okay.
But at least have an open mind to the evidence.
But also, if you want to write it off as implausible,
then at least for integrity's sake,
come up with an alternative, historically plausible reason
why this little group exploded to all corners of the globe
and changed the world for over 20 centuries.
It did not die with the crucifixion of Jesus.
The Christians, the Romans, and the Jews all agreed
that the tomb where they laid the dead body of Jesus
was empty after three days.
So what happened to the body?
Why did hundreds of people claim to have seen him resurrection
at the risk of their own life?
Why couldn't the opponents of Christianity produce the body?
Why did these early Christians joyfully give their lives
to see this message of the resurrected Jesus
spread to the ends of the earth?
So allow your worldview to be challenged.
If you do allow your worldview to be challenged,
then there's a word of mercy here.
Changing hearts and receiving hope.
There's a word of mercy and grace to your heart.
This is why looking at the evidence of the resurrection of Jesus
is so essential for us.
It's crucial for us.
This historical event is not just an intellectual exercise
of historical evidence that shapes our worldview.
It's about mercy.
It's about grace.
And it's about hope for your lives right now in 2020.
Look at this wonderful word of grace and mercy.
Have a look.
Mark chapter 16, verse 7.
Go tell his disciples and Peter,
he is going ahead of you into Galilee.
There you will see him just as he told you.
Notice what the women were not told.
They were not told, you go back there
and you tell those faithless, backstabbing,
cowardly disciples of Jesus
that if they pull their socks up,
they may well see him.
If they come back to him and they groveled to him
and they had better grovel,
if they have any hope of Jesus reinstating the movement,
then they better come back and grovel.
That's not what was said here at all.
Of course, that would have been warranted
given what they had done to Jesus in abandoning him.
But Jesus doesn't work the way you and I work.
He's forgiving them.
He's calling them back to himself
even before they had even taken any steps to repent.
You see, this is a word of mercy and grace and forgiveness.
But notice the biggest word of grace here
is simply the name Peter.
You see, there's a whole bunch of disciples.
But Peter gets a special mention.
And this is so incredible.
Peter, he's the one who said,
I will never disown you, Jesus.
I will die before I disown you.
And yet he denies Jesus three times in his hour of need.
Jesus is arrested.
And Peter, one of his keenest supporters,
abandons him.
It's a terrible betrayal by Peter.
He turns his back on God
and he runs to save his skin.
And so if the word to these women
was simply go and tell the disciples
and they had relayed that message to the disciples,
Peter may well have sat in the corner and gone,
this is not for me.
This is not for me.
My betrayal is too great.
And yet the word of Jesus
through these angels to these women,
to Peter is that I have plans for you, Peter, as well.
He was the biggest screw up.
And he becomes the biggest of the leaders
in the early days of the church.
His screw up the biggest,
his repentance the deepest,
and his grasp of God's mercy and grace to him
in Jesus the greatest.
And that is the good news of Christianity.
This is why it's mercy and grace to us.
This is the good news of Easter Day,
that salvation is by grace.
It's not by our works.
It's not by our effort.
It's not by our strength.
Salvation comes to us
by the witness of Jesus Christ dying on the cross.
Salvation comes to us by Jesus
when we admit our inability
and our weakness and our failure,
when we admit that we need a savior.
Jesus, the resurrected king,
is the savior that we need.
Forgiveness is offered to Peter.
It's offered to us
with the resurrection of Jesus.
You see, when a criminal completes a jail sentence,
they fully, completely, totally satisfy the sentence.
And when they walk out of prison,
what the law has no more claim on them.
They've paid the penalty.
They've paid the debt.
They are now free.
And Jesus Christ came to pay the penalty
for our crimes against God
because all of us are Peters.
We have all denied him explicitly
by rejecting him.
His right for his to rule over our life as our creator
or implicitly by going about our daily life
as if he doesn't exist
or doesn't in fact matter.
It's an enormous crime,
a huge crime against our maker
for which he holds us accountable
and the penalty is huge.
The sentence is death,
in fact, eternal death,
separation from our creator forever.
And Jesus stepped in for us on Good Friday.
He went to the cross for our sin
and he cried out from the cross,
it's finished.
The job's done.
He must have satisfied the penalty to its fullest
because on Easter day,
he walked out of the tomb free.
Death could not hold him down.
In Jesus, God has stamped paid in full
right across history
so that no one can miss it.
And because Jesus was raised from the dead,
God can come to us
with a word of mercy and grace and hope.
And so,
if you allow
the challenge to your minds
to change your worldview
and the word of grace
and mercy and forgiveness
to fill up your heart,
then finally,
the resurrection changes
the whole course of your life.
Easter day
does not just change our thinking
and fill our hearts,
it changes the way we live our lives.
The whole course of our lives
is reorientated
by that little word there,
go.
The resurrected Jesus,
the one who conquered death,
sin and evil
and is enthroned as ruler
of the universe,
now directs the course of your life
as your creator
and as your redeemer.
Live
with Jesus
as the gracious,
merciful,
loving master
of your life.
He sets the agenda.
He calls the shots
and he calls them
to go
and tell people
about the life
and the hope
that is available to them
in Jesus Christ.
And I think that's why
verse 8 of Mark,
it's the last verse,
it's such a shocking way
for Mark,
his account of the life
and the resurrection
of Jesus,
it's just such a shocking way
to end.
Trembling and bewildered,
the women went out
and fled from the tomb.
They said nothing to anyone
because they were afraid.
They were trembling
and bewildered on Saturday
as their hopes
were dashed
with his crucifixion.
They can't
now
be trembling
and bewildered
that death
is now being conquered.
The resurrection
changes everything.
It changes the whole
course of your life.
The resurrection
is the answer
to every single
human being's
deepest longing
and that is
to live.
to live
life
well
forever.
That's why
the beauty
in the fitness
industry
booms.
It's why you
the baby boomers
are still wearing jeans
because you still
want to be in your 20s.
We want to be young
and vibrant
and healthy
because
those were the days
before the emotional pain,
the responsibility
and the frailty.
We want to live
and we want to live
well.
One of the reasons
why it's just
so hard
for us to suffer
in this world
is that we think
that this physical
world is it
and when you lose
it,
you lose the best
and the most
precious thing.
The resurrection
gives us hope
beyond that.
This is not just it.
There is more
to come.
The resurrection
means that everything
Jesus promised
is true.
God is going
to perfectly
rebuild
the world.
The resurrection
changes everything.
There is hope
for the wheelchair
bound,
for the person
with crippling
emotional pain.
No religion
in the world
except
biblical
Christianity
promises us
new
and perfect
minds,
hearts
and bodies
forever.
Only in Jesus
Christ
can people
find such
hope
for life
now
and for life
forever.
And so
when I read
of people
in an attempt
to being helpful
and positive,
turn the resurrection
into a metaphor
for new life
and growth
through suffering,
you empty
Easter of its
hope.
Can you
imagine
the first
responders
to the
resurrection
in the first
century
going to the
poor,
to the
slaves,
to the
outcasts,
to the
diseased
in society
and saying
to them,
let me tell you
about the
resurrection.
Jesus
is a
great symbol
of our
good
triumphs
through evil
and so
go and be
nice to
one another.
Can you
imagine the
crippled and
the diseased
and the
poverty
stricken,
the
tormented,
the
outcasts
in their
state of
despair?
That's
just what I
needed to
hear.
I just
needed a
positive message
like that to
help me cope
day by day
with my
crippling
pain and
loneliness and
hunger.
you see,
the
resurrection
as a
nice
symbol
has no
power to
change
anything.
It offers
us no
hope at
all.
The
message of
Easter
is not
we are
all in
this
together
and
together
we will
all get
through
this.
It's
not even
that Jesus
will support
us and
encourage
us to
get
through
this
together.
Even if
it is a
worldwide
crisis,
the hope
of Easter
is that
Jesus
Christ
himself
is the
answer.
He is
our hope.
He is
the one
who conquered
death.
He is
risen.
He sits
as conqueror
and Lord
and King
of Kings
of all
things.
He reigns
supreme
over life
and death
and every
circumstance.
He is
risen and
promises us
the same
if we
trust in
him.
He calls
us to
give our
lives to
him and
to experience
true joy,
true freedom
and true
hope.
You see,
the resurrection
makes you
free from
this life
enough to
be brave
and
courageous
and
sacrificial
and
patient
and joyful
no matter
what the
circumstances.
The
resurrection
means you
can face
the worst
things in
life with
hope and
with joy.
The
resurrection
means you
can give
yourself to
serving God
in this
world that
he loves
and is
redeeming
and remaking
through
Jesus
Christ.
So
friends,
if Jesus
did not
rise from
the dead,
he would
hardly even
get a
mention in
the history
books.
The
resurrection
of Jesus
changes
everything
in life.
It's
because
Jesus is
risen and
reigning
that we
have plastered
everywhere
at this
church
St.
Paul's
Chatswood
that we
treasure
Jesus
for God's
glory
and the
joy of
all people.
He is
our greatest
treasure.
And so
wherever you
are watching
this stream
from,
whether it
be in
North America,
somewhere around
in the suburbs
of Chatswood,
out in
regional New
South Wales,
in parks
or the
Central Coast
or Singapore,
wherever you
are,
this message
is for
all people.
Whatever
culture you're
sitting in,
whatever your
cultural heritage,
whatever your
worldview,
whatever your
belief system,
whatever your
upbringing,
whatever your
current circumstances
in life,
Jesus is risen
and he reigns
supreme over
all.
This is a
life-changing
message.
And if you
are not
someone who
is currently
a believer,
a truster in
the Lord Jesus
Christ,
can I call
you,
implore you
to come to
life in
Jesus this
Easter.
Let the
evidence change
your mind,
let his
word of
mercy and
grace fill
up your
heart,
and let his
call on your
life change
the priorities
of your life.
Happy Easter.