Happy Easter! We’re glad that you’ve come to celebrate Easter with us today. Although we celebrate Easter in the spring, Easter really has nothing to do with the season. Easter has nothing to do with rabbits or eggs. In fact if you think about it rabbits and eggs have nothing to do with each other either. What is Easter all about? As believers, we celebrate Easter to remember the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the most profound event in human history. Jesus was crucified, pronounced dead, laid in a tomb and three days later rose from the dead.
How do we know that Jesus rose from the dead? We have multiple eyewitness accounts with original documents within a few years of the event. Hundreds of people saw Jesus alive again. The apostles went from men overcome with grief at the death of Jesus to courageous proclaimers of the resurrection of Jesus. We have multiple extra-biblical documents that validate the resurrection. We have the simple fact of the empty tomb. The enemies of Jesus went to great lengths to protect the tomb from any tampering. They would have loved to squelch Christianity by producing the body of Jesus, dead, but they couldn’t. Peter spoke in …
Acts 3:15 (NIV) You killed the author of life, but God raised him from the dead. We are witnesses of this.
Jesus rose from the dead, never to die again. He’s alive today. The tomb of Confucius is occupied. The tomb of Buddha is occupied. The tomb of Mohammed is occupied. Of all the religious leaders that have ever lived, only Jesus’ tomb is empty. Today, my message is entitled “The Resurrection Changes Everything.” We’re going to be talking about the significance of the resurrection as the most important event in human history.
Romans 1:4 (NIV) and who through the Spirit of holiness was declared with power to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord.
The resurrection lays to rest the fallacy that Jesus was just another man. There is no other man with an empty tomb, Jesus is one of a kind. The apostle Paul in this verse says that the resurrection declares and proves that Jesus Christ was the Son of God. Today, we’re going to look at how the resurrection changes everything for you, right here in St Louis in the year 2014. Whatever you’re going through this morning, whatever problems or difficulties you may be facing in life, Jesus’ resurrection can give you hope and confidence. The resurrection brings hope for your past, present and future.