Happy Easter

Sunday, April 4, 2010

HAPPY EASTER


Don't you love this day?!!
*Children hunting eggs
*Bright clothing and dressed up men!
*Trees budding...bulbs bursting
*Wintry winds losing their grip...and sunshine warming
*Good food...ham, right?
*Basketball madness
Yes...these are things we love...and well we should.

But happiness?
That comes at a far deeper level...not from great things outside, but from things right inside....and a deep knowledge that all is really well and our future is sure.

And our text today shows the way to a truly happy easter.

Matthew 28:1-10

the resurrection of Jesus shows us what really makes for HAPPY.

1.-
Resurrection is an unveiling of a new state of being.
Jesus is often called - the "firstborn from the dead" because He is the prototype of a whole new "gettin' up morning" race of people.
We're the resurrection bunch.

And his "getting up" from the dead is not to resuccitate and then eventually expire...but "he ever lives to interceed for us" - Hebrews 7:23-25

His gettin' up means that we don't ever really have to get down.

I don't write poetry...but at easter I get happy enough that I try a limerick...

Here's one...
There once was a young kid called Larry.
Next o' kin to Jesus' mom Mary.
When the sun came up fast...
He was jogging right past garden tomb...
And KABOOOM!!!.........

Now everything's new....very, very.

So we get happy this Easter remembering that because he lives (again, after death) we shall live also. It's the dawning of a new race of the redeemed.


#2 -
The state of death has changed forever for those who have walked in this life, with God. It has gone from being the shaddowy end, the gathering to the fathers,
TO being present with the Lord and awaiting the final resurrection and the reassembling of our mortality into immortality.
Kind of like, from the end of the play and lights out....to the end of act one and intermission until the final triumphant scene.


#3 -
And because death has now been shown to NOT be the end of our existence, Jesus, through the cross and resurrection has disarmed the evil empire by rendering its primo weapon insipid. "Death, where is your sting?"
The stealth weapon has been exposed and grounded.
"He has disarmed the principalities and powers and made a public spectacle of them" - no those aren't my words because I am getting a bit too happy. They are Paul's words to the Colossian church, taken from the parades in Rome when a conquoring general returned and paraded the vanquished foe in the street behind him.

The cross settled the cosmic legal issues...the resurrection was the celebration.


#4 -
And because death is not the end, resurrection puts meaning into everything we do in this life.
Heaven is for real.
Everything will work out in the end.
There will be justice and reward.
The temporal will put on the eternal.
What is sown in tears will be reaped in joy!
This is not "the peak time of western civilization" but the final throws of the night...and daylight is about to dawn.

II Cor.4:14-18 - He who raised Jesus from the dead will also raise us with Jesus and present us with you in his presence...therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all....so we fix our eyes on what is eternal.

#5-
Resurrection says, Celebrate! the way home is clear!
What Jesus came to do, he did fully!
He is the Lord, the sovreign one, the guarantor of every promise that he made.

Check out the text for today...and look at all the running, and high energy verbs in it. Yep...it really is HAPPY EASTER!

And Jesus stuck around for 40 more days of life...and Kingdom instruction.

Our faith is on solid ground.

Because he lives...we really can face tomorrow.

HAPPY EASTER.

David