The Day of the Resurrection
- Terry Sweeney
- Apr 4, 2010
The Day of the Resurrection
April 4, 2010
The Rev. W. Terry Sweeney
Matthew 28:1-15
Good morning. Lean over to someone and say, “He is Risen!”
I pray this message finds a way into your soul – so Lord join us and capture our thoughts and hearts as we worship you today. Amen.
Religious pollster, George Barna, has recently estimated that almost 7 in 10 Americans consider Easter to be a religious holiday.
4 in 10 Americans associate Jesus’ Resurrection as a part of Easter.
These numbers may stun you – but listen to some other common responses – Easter is a Christian holiday, a celebration of God or Jesus, a celebration of Passover, a holy day, or a special time for church or worship attendance.
We may be surprised to learn that not everyone understands the significance of The Day of the Resurrection – Easter – the culture has been very good about redefining the importance of today.
Now not to be called a Grinch – I too like jelly beans and chocolate bunnies – but that misses the point of this day.
Now oddly enough, let’s take a quick look at the other side of the world for a moment and go to Australia..
The 2010 Global Atheist Convention was held in Melbourne, Australia, March 12-14 at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre
The event advertised itself in part by saying: The 2010 Global Atheist Convention will be the biggest ever atheist event in Australia’s history. This is your chance to hear world-class atheist speakers, and meet Australian and internationally acclaimed atheists, skeptics, humanists, rationalists and academics in one of Australia’s most vibrant and exciting cities. The bigger we can make this convention, the stronger the signal it will send to Australia's religious and political institutions that atheism and secularism are forces to be reckoned with.”
In fact what they are touting is that in Australia atheism is on the rise. I just want to share two quotes that I hope you’ll find telling:
"The number of churchgoers in Australia is about 9% and dwindling, the diversity of spiritual belief is flourishing and atheism is going off like a frog in a sock."
Catherine Deveny
Australia appears to be the perfect place to hold this convention and recruit new members.
"The enlightenment is under threat. So is reason. So is truth. So is science … We have to devote a significant proportion of our time and resources to defending it from deliberate attack from organized ignorance …"
Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion
The Enlightenment was the period of European history that roughly covers the 1700’s.
It had a huge impact on Western philosophy and intellectual, scientific and cultural life in which reason was advocated as the primary source and legitimacy for authority. The philosopher Immanuel Kant described it simply as freedom to use one's own intelligence
In case you’re wondering what or who “organized ignorance” is it’s us – the Church – those who have the conviction of faith.
There is also a fear that atheistic values are vulnerable to attack so they need to spend time and resources to defend them against “organized ignorance”.
Long replaced by the Industrial Revolution, Modernity and post-modernity Dawkins is holding on to a philosophy that puts reason and science on a pedestal as the answer to all of mans questions.
Remember their hope,”The bigger we can make this convention, the stronger the signal it will send to Australia's religious and political institutions that atheism and secularism are forces to be reckoned with.”
Please understand that science in fact can not answer man’s deepest questions and therefore those who cling to that notion will experience constant frustration.
The reason I bring to our attention this morning is that during the convention one of the speakers presented a 10 minute YouTube video challenging Christians to answer 10 questions that he claimed every Christian must answer.
In a way he was calling us out – to him Christians are fundamentally idiots – non-thinking, excuse making, weak minded, foggy thinking people, with muddled facts, who even if they are college graduates are mushy brained, deceived, delusional people who need to get with it and join the growing tide of humanists, skeptics and atheists.
I’m not going to list all ten questions but I will give you an example of two or three.
Why won’t God heal amputees? (grow back their limbs)
Why are there so many starving people in the world?
Why didn’t any of Jesus’ miracles in the bible leave behind any evidence?
What the heck – a couple more:
Why do bad things happen to good people?
Why would Jesus want you to eat His body and drink His blood?
I gotta read you this one:
How do you explain the fact that Jesus has never appeared to you?
The interesting thing about the 10 questions that every Christian must answer is that the root concern of all these questions seems to ask why isn’t God more obvious/visible and why doesn’t God give us undeniable proof of His existence.
Remember most atheists consider themselves to rationalists and enlightened humanists who depend heavily on the principles they understand to be science.
But wait - If you distill this down even further you end up with the question:
Why does God require faith?
To them faith is like a poison pill – it makes them crazy.
Now, I suppose I could add to this, “Why doesn’t God just give us some good hard facts to rely upon?
In fact he does – God gives us gobbs of hard facts to rely upon . . . today remembers the hardest of all the hard cold facts of Christianity:
Jesus claimed to be God. He didn't leave any other option open. His claim must be either true or false, so it is something that should be given serious consideration.
C. S. Lewis, who was a professor at Cambridge University and once an agnostic, understood this issue clearly.
He writes: "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 a 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."
Jesus Christ rose from the dead!! It doesn’t get any better than that!
There has never been a successful challenge to disprove this claim.
• 1st, Christ predicted His resurrection. The Bible records, "From that time Jesus began to show His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things ... and be killed, and be raised up on the third day" (Matthew 16:21, New American Standard Bible). Even though His followers did not understand what He was telling them at the time, they remembered His words and recorded them.
• 2nd, Jesus made numerous appearances to His followers. He comforted the mourners outside His tomb on Sunday morning. On the road to Emmaus, He explained things about Himself from the Old Testament. Later, He ate in their presence and invited them to touch Him. Scripture records that Jesus was seen by more than 500 at one time. Some may argue that a few people could have agreed to a deception, but how can one explain the collaboration of 500 people?
• 3rd, the unrelenting faith of the disciples convinces me of the Resurrection. Those disciples who were once so afraid that they deserted their Lord now courageously proclaimed this news, risking their lives to preach. Their bold and courageous behavior does not make sense unless they knew with absolute certainty that Jesus had been raised from the dead.
• 4th, the growth of the Christian church confirms the Resurrection. Peter's first sermon, which dealt with Christ's resurrection, stirred people to receive Him as their living Savior. Luke records the thrilling results: "That day there were added about three thousand souls" (Acts 2:41). And that group of believers has multiplied until now it reaches around the world. Today, there are hundreds of millions of believers.
• Finally, the testimony of hundreds of millions of transformed lives through the centuries shows the power of the Resurrection. Many have been delivered from addictions. The destitute and despairing have found hope. Broken marriages have been restored. The most conclusive proof for the resurrection of Jesus Christ is that He is living within believers today in all of His resurrected life and transforming power.
Then Lewis adds: "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 up with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to."
Comments
Log in