Easter Sunday

The Resurrection

“On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb.  
They found the stone rolled away from the tomb,  but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus.  
While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them.  
In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead?  
He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee:  
‘The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.’ ”  
Then they remembered his words. 
When they came back from the tomb, they told all these things to the Eleven and to all the others.  
It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the others with them who told this to the apostles.  
But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense.  
Peter, however, got up and ran to the tomb. Bending over, he saw the strips of linen lying by themselves, and he went away, wondering to himself what had happened.” 
                                                                                             Luke 24:1-12.
The resurrection of Jesus was an incredible moment in history. No other religious leader has ever risen corporally.
This was hard for the disciples of Jesus to believe when the women told them and they had spent three years under his teaching.
Jesus did indeed rise from the dead later on in Luke records in chapter 24:13-25, that Jesus appeared to two believers on the road to Emmaus who reported back to the Eleven disciples.
Later Luke records the following,
“While they were still talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” 
They were startled and frightened, thinking they saw a ghost.  
He said to them, “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts rise in your minds?  
Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself! Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have.” 
When he had said this, he showed them his hands and feet.  
And while they still did not believe it because of joy and amazement, he asked them, “Do you have anything here to eat?”  
They gave him a piece of broiled fish,  and he took it and ate it in their presence. 
He said to them, “This is what I told you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms.” 
Then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures.  
He told them, “This is what is written: The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.  
You are witnesses of these things.  
I am going to send you what my Father has promised; but stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.” 
                      Luke 24:36-49.
The Disciples seen and talked to Jesus, he ate some fish and he proved to them he was flesh and blood. That he had indeed risen from the dead.
To this point the disciples and others perhaps thought Jesus was a conquering Messiah that would lead them to victory over Roman oppression but Jesus was not a conquering Messiah. He was a suffering Messiah as he himself said,
“He told them, “This is what is written: The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.
You are witnesses of these things.”
This is the message true Christians are preaching throughout the world today. That Jesus died for the sins of each and every person.
C.S. Lewis wrote,
“He died not for men, but for each man. If each man had been the only man made, He would have done no less.” 
                           C.S. Lewis.
This is the message of Easter. That Christ died for the sins of each man and woman.
The call of Christ is the call of each man and woman to believe that Jesus is the one and only Son of God that by confessing our sins directly to him He will forgive them. That by accepting him into our hearts and lives we will receive eternal life.
To quote C.S. Lewis again,
“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” 
                                                                                                       C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity.
So the choice comes down to you the reader. Do you believe Jesus is the Son of God the Saviour of the world or not?
Please think about it carefully.