The Word That Changes Everything

[Below you'll find live stream video of both Easter worship services from Living Water Lutheran Church as well as the text of the message shared at both services. Jesus Christ is risen from the dead!]

Matthew 28:1-10

Easter is the most important event in the history of the world.

Easter works differently from the way things work in this cosmos, though. Here, everything starts with life and ends in death. This is why the novelist Ernest Hemingway said that every true story ends in death. In this though, as in most other things, Hemingway was wrong. We know this because the true story of Easter begins in death and ends in life…and not just for Jesus! This is what makes Easter so important.

God’s Word says, “[Jesus] was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.” (Romans 4:25)

We are born sinners mired in sin and self-absorption, turned away from God, thinking first of ourselves and acting accordingly. For this, we deserve death, condemnation, and everlasting separation from God and others.

On the cross, Christ, truly God and truly human, Who was sinless, bore the sins of the whole world, including yours and mine: all the ways we fail to love God and others, all our idolatry, murderous thoughts and actions, all our contempt for parents and others in authority, all our theft and greed, all our gossiping and injustice. Jesus took all this sin into Himself.

He was delivered to death at the prompting of God the Father, taking the punishment of damnation and everlasting isolation from God that you and I deserve.

But after Jesus died on Friday, the first day, laying lifeless in the tomb on Saturday, the second day, God the Father raised Jesus on the third day, Sunday, Easter day.

He did so for our “justification.”

To be justified means to be declared innocent, righteous, verified, able to leave the solitary confinement of hell, acceptable to enter into life with God and His people, now and forever.

To be justified by God is to be declared innocent despite all the evidence to the contrary.

A person who has been justified by God’s charity–that is, by God’s grace–through God-given faith in Jesus can say, “I’ve been made right with God, forgiven, brimming with new life from God, just if I’d never been a sinner, never had a sinful thought, never done a sinful thing!”

Jesus has taken our old dead bodies into His own and gives us His new, sinless body!

And so the Word tells us: “[Jesus] was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.”

This Word also tells us that Christ is the end of the Law’s condemnation for us, because Christ has already borne that condemnation. Christ fulfills God’s promise given through the prophet Micah, centuries before Jesus’ birth, to hurl our sins into the depths, never to be seen or heard of by God again.

God has called you to be here this morning, whether through family expectations or traditions, a nagging family member, or through heartfelt desire on your part.

He called you here not to deliver information like, “Jesus died and rose” to you. Even Satan knows that Jesus died and rose. Mere information won’t save you and me from condemnation and hell.

No, God has called us together on this Easter Sunday for the same reason God calls His Church to regular worship Sunday after Sunday.

God calls us to worship so that we can be immersed in His Word–read, spoken, sung, or given in, with, and under water, bread, or wine–and so that we may here and now be crucified, convicted of our sins, and be raised again to face another day, week, month, year, a lifetime, and eternity itself with the certain hope that nothing can separate those who trust in Him from the love of God given to us in the crucified and risen Jesus Christ.

The Gospel Word that Jesus was delivered to death for you and raised to give you everlasting life comes to you not as data to be filed away and forgotten, but as your deliverance from the grave, your gift of joy and certainty in a lost and uncertain world.

Matthew’s account of the first Easter Sunday is well known to you.

According to Matthew, Mary Magdalene and another Mary, presumably the sister of Lazarus, go to “look at the tomb.” (Matthew 28:1)

They have no expectations. They just want to look at the tomb.

They live in a dark and fallen world. Even the One they once hailed as the Messiah, God’s own Son, has died.

But Matthew tells us that an angel, a messenger from God, is sent to the tomb and creates an earthquake. He rolls away the stone that has covered the tomb from which Jesus has already risen, then sits on the stone.

The angel’s appearance indicates that he’s just come from the presence of God in His bright glory.

Just like all the hard-hearted and closed-minded of the world–people like I used to be when I was an atheist, the Roman guards placed at the tomb by Pilate are not happy to see this ambassador from God.

They’re terrified, becoming like what they are–like what we all are without the forgiveness and new life God gives through faith in Christ–dead men.

The angel tells the women that Jesus isn’t dead anymore. “He has risen from the dead,” the angel says, “and is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him.”

The women run back to Jerusalem to tell the other disciples. This is good news to be shared!

“Suddenly,” Matthew says, the risen Jesus meets them.

In part, Jesus is going to give them the same message the angel gave them. “​​Do not be afraid,” He says. “Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.” (Matthew 28:10)

But before saying that and before the women fall down, grasping the feet of Jesus’ now-living body, and worshiping Jesus, Jesus says something else.

He says one Word.

It’s a single Word that changes human history.

A single Word that transforms those who, by the power of God’s Spirit to work faith in us, receive it.

It’s a Word that changes us from God’s enemies to God’s friends, from the damned and dead to the favored and living, from the guilty to the justified.

Jesus’ first Word, His Easter Word, to the women and to you is this: “Greetings.” (Mattthew 28:9)

Disappointed?

You have a right to be.

The translations in all of our English version Bibles of this Word are anemic. None of our common English translations do this Word justice. None of the translations are bad, per se, it’s just that none of them really deliver the good news–the Gospel–that Jesus wants to give us here this morning!

According to Matthew, who wrote his gospel in Greek, the Word Jesus spoke to the women, that He speaks to you and me today, is Χαίρετε.

That was a word that in common usage had come to mean little more than hello, just like a word that once meant God bless you in English has become nothing more than goodbye.

But what this word Χαίρετε, from the word for  God’s grace, His charity, for sinners, means coming from Jesus at this moment is this. Listen: “All My grace, all My favor, the blessings of Resurrection and of new and everlasting life, the reality of the forgiveness of your sins, all the joy of heaven belongs to you who turn from sin and turn to Me.”

All of that is what Jesus means when He greets the women!

In other words, Jesus is telling the women and you, “Resurrection to you! My victory over sin and death to you! You thought that death and darkness were all that were left to you. You thought all you could do was look at a tomb. But I’m going to raise all who believe in Me from their tombs to live with Me forever!”

And, friends, that is Jesus’ message for you this morning!

He is no longer in the tomb.

He sits on the right hand of God the Father and through God the Holy Spirit, His grace and power have been set loose in this dying, tomb-pocked world.

Wherever Jesus isn’t received, there is death, condemnation, uncertainty, fear, furtiveness, and fatalism.

Wherever and whenever He comes to us in Word and Sacrament, there is forgiveness, grace, joy, peace, and resurrection.

These are the gifts of the risen Jesus.

His Word gives these to you once again today and they belong to all who receive Him and His gospel with the faith His Spirit and His Word give to those who hear it openly.

“[Jesus] was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.”

He died for your sins and rose for your justification. You can trust in Christ for this.

A blessed Easter to you, friends. Amen!

Easter Worship from Walburg

This the Easter Sunday worship service at St. Peter Lutheran Church in Walburg, Texas. The pastor is someone we know fairly well, my wife and I: our son, Pastor Philip Daniels.

Easter: Fear, Joy, and One Consoling Truth

Below is today's Easter Sunday online worship service from Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. Lower on the page is the manuscript for today's message. God bless you!



Matthew 28:1-10
For several years after I came to faith in Jesus Christ, the people of our home church had been telling me they thought God was calling me to be a pastor. Both Ann and I were resistant to the notion. 

Highly resistant. 

We were both deeply involved with our church. 

We both wanted to honor the God revealed in Jesus. 

But neither one of us saw me as a pastor, especially after I’d gotten a job that I thought would be a stepping stone to the political career I’d always wanted to pursue, working for the State House of Representatives in Columbus.

Eventually, though, the call of God to pastoral ministry became irresistible to me. 

I applied to seminary. On the day I was admitted, while retaining my full-time position, I took a part-time job in the office supplies department of a local Sears store. 

During my first night there, a woman purchased a file cabinet. As I rolled the cabinet with a two-wheel dolley to her car, she asked me about myself. I told her about my wife, my full-time job, my call to start seminary in a few months. 

After I’d loaded her car, she held out two-dollars to me. “Oh, ma’am,” I said. “We’re not allowed to take tips. This is just part of the job.” “I don’t care,” she told me. “You’re going to need every penny you can get and I want to support you in following God’s call.” 

I thanked her and rushed back through the sales floor where I worked into the stockroom. I was shaking, tears in my eyes. I felt as though God, through that woman, had reached out to me and said, “You didn’t imagine this call. It didn’t just come from the people with whom you go to church. It came from Me.” 

It was a moment of fear at the enormity, power, and reach of this living God we know in Jesus, a kind of terror in knowing that the Creator of the universe was intervening in my life. Who was I? How could I, a sinner, possibly survive being in the sight of God Almighty? 

It was also a moment of joy at the thought that this same God cares to reach us, love us, and affirm us even in retail parking lots and stockrooms. 

All I could think, as I excitedly paced amid the shelves of boxes, shaking, was to pray, “Thank You, Lord. Thank You. Thank You.”

In our gospel lesson for this Easter Sunday morning, Matthew’s stark yet theologically fraught account of Jesus’ resurrection, we’re told that after Mary Magdalene and another Mary left Jesus’ empty tomb, where an angel told them that Jesus was raised from the dead: “the women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy, and ran to tell his disciples…” (Matthew 28:8) 

Let’s be clear about why the women were afraid. 

They weren’t afraid of the things of this world. 

They weren’t afraid of men or nature.

They weren’t afraid of hostile soldiers or empires. 

Nor were they afraid of the ills of this world, like suffering, disease, plague, or death. 

They had seen first-hand just a few moments before that nothing--not men, soldiers, nature, disease, or death--can stand up before God. 

They were afraid of this good news, the Easter news, the greatness of God, and the privilege of being the first people to preach the Easter message to the world.

Matthew tells us that the women had gone to “look at the tomb” (Matthew 28:1). In the Greek in which Matthew originally wrote his gospel, the word he uses which is here translated as “to look,” is θεωρῆσαι (theoresai). It’s where we get our word, theory. 

When we’re confronted with tragedy, things we can’t comprehend, we want to have a theory of the case. 

That’s why some people ignore facts and are open to concocting or believing crazy conspiracy theories, as is happening today with the coronavirus pandemic. They want to make sense of an often senseless world. 

Grieved, their hopes that Jesus had been the Messiah, God the Son, seemingly dashed, the women go to the tomb to look, to theorize: Why did Jesus die? What will they do now? Jesus’ death makes no sense to them.

Then it happens. 

Verse 2: “There was a violent earthquake, for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and, going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow. The guards were so afraid of him that they shook and became like dead men. The angel said to the women, ‘Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples: “He has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him.” Now I have told you.’” (Matthew 28:2-7) 

An earthquake, in this case, a convulsion of the cosmos as God intervenes to save the human race--to save you and me--from sin, from death, from futility, from separation from God--occurs on this first Easter Sunday just as one had occurred on Good Friday when Jesus drew the final breath of His earthly human life. 

On Good Friday, Matthew tells us, the earth shook, rocks split, and tombs broke open, allowing those who had trusted in the God Who had come into this world in Jesus, to walk free of death. 

When the earth quaked again on Easter Sunday morning, the women no longer needed a theory about why Jesus died. 

They knew why. 

Heaven revealed it to them, just as God reveals His truth to anyone humble enough and desperate enough to hear it. 

An angelic being, His appearance beaming with the brightness of God in His heaven, told them that Jesus was alive. 

He had died to save us. 

He died to be raised by the Father so that all who repent for their sin and trust in Jesus to save them, who become His disciples, will have the same resurrection victory gained by Jesus on the first Easter Sunday!

Jesus had earlier told the disciples that after He had died and risen, He would meet them back in Galilee. “After I have risen, I will go ahead of you into Galilee,” He had told them. (Matthew 26:32) The angel now gives the two women at the tomb their mission; they are to go quickly and tell the eleven remaining apostles so that they could make their rendezvous with the resurrected Jesus. 

Without seeing the risen Jesus, the women believed that He had risen and they run off to do as the angel says, “afraid yet full of joy,” just as I felt in the office supplies stock room at Sears, just as I have felt countless times since: 

• when I’ve heard God’s Word, 
• when I’ve received the Sacrament, 
• when I’ve sat with faithful fellow believers in prayer and fellowship. 

Anyone to whom God has brought the gift of faith in Jesus knows what it means to be in the presence of Jesus, the crucified and risen God, and to be both afraid and full of joy. 

You know that You’re not worthy of the sacrifice of love Jesus made for you on the cross. You know your sin. 

But You know that His death and His empty tomb testify that, no matter your sin, God thinks that you are of infinite worth and value. 

That’s why Jesus died and rose for you. 

You know that by God’s grace through faith in Jesus, You are right with God for all eternity!

Soon after encountering the angel at the tomb, the faith of the women in Jesus and His resurrection is rewarded. Jesus meets them. “Greetings!” He says and the women, clasp His feet, offering Jesus the worship He deserves as God. 

Jesus tells them, “Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.” (Matthew 28:10)

Friends, on this Easter Sunday, 2020, when our world is reeling under the weight of a lethal disease that threatens all of us, the resurrected Jesus speaks these same words and others to us now: “Do not be afraid. I am with you always until the end of the age. I am going ahead of you to a place I am preparing for you for all eternity. There you will see me. There, your fears will be forever erased and your faith in Me will be forever rewarded. Go tell the world and make disciples!” 

Easter blows away all puny human theories about God, life, and death and replaces them with one, powerful, consoling truth: “Jesus is risen; risen indeed!” 

That’s news of joy worth sharing! 

Amen and amen!

[See here for information on the icon shown above.]

Are you willing to believe in the Resurrection? (AUDIO)

Here.

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. This was the message for yesterday's Easter worship services.]

Are you willing to believe in the Resurrection?

Matthew 28:1-10
When I was an atheist, as some of you know, one of the hardest things for me to understand about Christian faith was the resurrection.

I had known people who died. None came back from the grave.

I thought that the Easter proclamation that Jesus had risen and the Christian message that all who repent and believe in Jesus have eternal life seemed fanciful. I was a resurrection skeptic.

So, it turns out, were the first disciples of Jesus.

They’d heard Jesus say more than once that He was going to be crucified, then rise again. But when they heard Jesus speak this way, they seemed to ignore His resurrection talk, because they were horrified at the thought of His crucifixion.

So, on the Sunday after His death, Jesus’ disciples weren’t even thinking about resurrection. Jesus was dead and they were grieving.

This is what lay in the background of our gospel lesson for this Easter Sunday morning, Matthew 28:1-10. If you’re skeptical about Jesus’ resurrection or if you’re skeptical that a risen Jesus can give you forgiveness for your sin or life beyond the grave, nothing I say will make you believe.

But if you’re willing to listen to the experiences of those first skeptical disciples and note the way in which Matthew tells us about the first Easter, the Holy Spirit may pry open your heart, mind, and will to believing that the resurrection of Jesus and the new life that only He can give you are true.

Our lesson begins: “After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb.”

Unlike the other gospel writers, Matthew doesn’t mention the women going to the tomb to anoint Jesus’ body with spices. That doesn’t mean that Matthew and the others disagree; Matthew just doesn’t think it’s important to how he wants to tell us about the first Easter.

In fact, the way Matthew opens his account of the first Easter, almost makes you think that Mary Magdalene and the other Mary didn’t know what they were going to do. This jibes with Mark’s account of the resurrection. On the way to tomb, Mark says, the women asked each other, “Who will roll the stone away from the entrance of the tomb?” (Mark 16:3)

Under normal circumstances, you’d want to say, “Well, they should have thought of that in the first place.”

But, as I’ve learned first-hand again this past week, when you grieve, you aren’t in normal circumstances. It’s hard to concentrate. You can’t decide what you should do next. So, you just do stuff, including, sometimes going to the loved one's burial place.

That’s what Mary Magdalene, the woman from whom Jesus had cast seven demons, and another of Jesus’ disciples, identified only as “the other Mary,” seem to be doing on the Sunday after Jesus’ death. The last thing they imagine is that they’ll see the risen Jesus.

Verses 2-4: “There was a violent earthquake, for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and, going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow. The guards were so afraid of him that they shook and became like dead men.”

“That seems pretty far-fetched,” we might say. You can bet that the people in the first century who first heard Matthew’s gospel would have had the same reaction. It would have seemed just as crazy as it does to us. An angel descended from heaven, rolled away a burial stone, and struck dumb armed soldiers who were overwhelmed by the appearance of the angel.

If Matthew had been most concerned with convincing skeptics, he may have been well-advised to leave out all the details--earthquakes, angels, heavenly luminescence.

But Matthew isn’t interested in making an impressive argument. He’s only interested in telling you the truth. 

It’s up to you to decide whether you’re willing to believe it or not. 

And, if you are willing to believe, God’s Holy Spirit can help you to believe despite your skepticism.

This is exactly what happened to Mary Magdalene and the other Mary. They come to the tomb convinced that Jesus is dead. Soon though, open to the angel’s message about Jesus rising melts their skepticism into faith. This happens even though they have yet to set eyes on the resurrected Jesus! Watch out: That can happen to us when we attend to God’s Word with an open mind! 

When I started going to worship just to get my wife off my back for sleeping in on Sundays, Jesus grabbed me by the lapels and said, “Listen, you! You have no idea what you’re talking about when you say I don’t exist, when you say that the resurrection is hooey. Listen to the witnesses to My resurrection. Listen to the people who risked their earthly lives, honor, and income to proclaim the truth they knew and experienced!”

As Romans 10:17 teaches us: “...faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word about Christ.”

That’s what happened to me: I let the truth in God's Word do its life-giving, faith-creating work in me, the truth about a God Who loved me so much that He sent His only Son that whoever believes in Him will not be killed off by death, but will rise just as Jesus rose to live with God for eternity.

Folks, good news like that will change not only your eternity, it will have a direct impact on how you live right now. Verse 5: “The angel said to the women, ‘Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples: “He has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him.” Now I have told you.’”

In the Bible, the first thing an angel almost always says to the people they encounter is, “Don’t be afraid.” That’s because angels reflect the perfect righteousness and glory of God Himself. The angel says that the women shouldn’t be afraid and then says that, just as He’d foretold, Jesus was risen.

And then, the angel commissions the two women to teach the Church that Jesus was risen from the dead. “Go,” the angel says, “tell the others that Jesus has been raised from the dead. Then, they need to race to Galilee to catch up with Him!”

I’ve wondered why Jesus chose to meet the apostles sixty miles from His burial spot. Maybe this is the reason: After Jesus’ resurrection, some people said that Jesus hadn’t really died on the cross, only fainted or “swooned.” Muslims still say this. But try imagining a man who has fainted after being severely beaten and wounded, waking in a cave. He would still be weak, near death. Can you imagine such a sick, wounded person then tearing up to Galilee on His own?

Wounded men don’t run.

Dead men don’t run.

But Jesus, once dead, apparently now can do more the run. Jesus was living out the promise of the prophet Isaiah: “...those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.” (Isaiah 40:31)

“I’m running to Galilee,” Jesus is saying through the angel messenger, “tell the eleven to follow Me there and catch me if they can!"

I love verse 8: “So the women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy, and ran to tell his disciples.”

The women didn’t have all of their questions answered. They hadn’t seen Jesus face to face.

But they had heard the Word about Jesus and they were running to tell the skeptics what they now knew by faith in Jesus.

Listen: Faith isn’t knowing every answer. Faith is knowing the One Who is the answer.

And here’s what I have learned: When I act with faith in the risen Jesus Who I cannot see, He shows Himself to me in ways I could not have imagined.

The women have no thought of actually seeing the risen Jesus; they simply believe in Him and are intent on proclaiming Him.

But look at what happens next! Verse 9: “Suddenly Jesus met them. ‘Greetings,’ he said.They [the women] came to him, clasped his feet and worshiped him. Then Jesus said to them, ‘Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.’”

When Jesus says, “Do not be afraid” here, they are the same words spoken by the angel to them a few moments before. But I agree with Dr. Jim Nestingen that when Jesus says these words to the women at this moment, He means something different than the angel meant.

From what Matthew tells us, the appearance of the angel would have been terrifying. But from what Matthew says here, the appearance of Jesus seems to have been as understated and matter of fact as His greeting, just as it had always been throughout His earthly life.

That makes sense: When God the Son took on human flesh, He laid aside His glory. He entered the world as a baby. Jesus came into this world not to overwhelm us but to save us, true God AND true man.

I think Jesus is telling the women this: "Do not be afraid...of death; I have conquered. I have killed off its power over you. I’m alive and when you turn from sin and trust in Me by faith, you are alive! I give you a full share in My victory. Death can’t separate you from the resurrection life I have for you. Neither can sadness, adversity, family feuds, career setbacks, poverty, disease, instability, politics, economics. None of these things can separate us from God. This world may do its worst to you. But when you believe in Jesus as the risen King of your life, God will always have His best in store for you!"

So, are you willing to believe in the resurrection?

Then, militate against your doubt and your skepticism.

• Act on your belief, however faint it may be. 
• Run (or walk, or hobble, or crawl, or drive) from this place and, today, this week, find someone to tell or some way to act that shows the truth that Jesus is risen. 
• Read one of the gospels and let their witness help you to know the risen Jesus intimately and well. If you will do this, I feel certain that you will do exactly what I did when I first started taking the gospels seriously and what I keep doing as I dig into them each day, you will fall in love with Jesus. To know Jesus is to love Him...because you know that He has loved you first.

I promise that if you’ll do any of these things in response to the Easter Word, you’ll meet the risen Jesus.

Don’t be afraid! Run with Jesus...you will never run alone. Happy Easter! Amen

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. This was the message for today's Easter services.]

Easter: Did It Really Happen? (2014 Easter Message)

[This is last year's Easter message. This year's will be posted later today.]

Matthew 28:1-10
On this Easter Sunday morning, as we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, I want to consider two simple questions:

• Did Jesus really rise from the dead on the first Easter? 
• And what difference does it make to us if He did?

We live in a skeptical age. The so-called “New Atheists,” people who not only adamantly reject the existence of God, but also reject all truth claims made by the Bible, are given great prominence these days.

Even within the Church, there are theologians who claim that Jesus was not physically raised from the dead, that what the first disciples called “the resurrection” was only their subjective experience of the dead Savior’s presence in their memories. Or, they say that the early disciples experienced a mass hallucination even though psychology tells us that such a phenomenon is impossible.

And truth be known, even the most pious and convinced of believers have their moments of doubt.

But let’s be clear: If Jesus didn’t actually physically rise from the dead, we may as well pack up, go home, and eat our Easter dinners right now.

And if we're part of the church just to feel good or to help us through this life, we've got it all wrong.

In the first century, the apostle Paul wrote this to church members in the Greek city of Corinth: “If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died.”

Through the centuries and still today, some read or hear the words of Paul or those of the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ resurrection and dismiss it all.

A then-fifth grader in my former congregation told me once that a classmate of his, no doubt echoing words he’d heard at home, didn’t believe in God or in Jesus. The kid said that Christianity was all a big conspiracy.

So, what do we say to such assertions? Is Easter and the faith that is built on it all a big conspiracy? Or is it the truth?

Let’s consider the evidence. Please look at our Gospel lesson for today, Matthew 28:1-10. (You’ll find it on page 698 in the sanctuary Bibles.)

Anyone who takes the time to lay out the four Gospels’ different accounts of the first Easter side by side will see differences: different women are named among those who went to the tomb; Matthew says that the women simply went to see the tomb, while other gospels say they went to anoint Jesus’ body; and there are other differences. But these differences shouldn’t bother us. They should, in fact, help convince us that the report of Jesus’ resurrection was no conspiracy, but the truth. As one New Testament scholar has said, “a calculated deception should have [caused the conspirators to agree on the details of the resurrection story]. Instead, there seem to have been competitors: 'I saw him first!' 'No! I did.'” That makes their common story that Jesus rose from the dead more likely to be true!

Now look at Matthew 28, verse 1, please. It says: “After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb.”

The Jewish sabbath, of course, runs from sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday. As our lesson begins, the sun is rising.

The women went to the tomb with no expectations of finding any good news. They had watched Jesus die. Like billions of people who have lost good friends or loved ones, they went to the cemetery only to pay their respects, to grieve and, maybe, to remember together. Jesus’ promise that He would rise again, if they thought of it at all, would have seemed like a fairy tale memory to them.

The fact that the women who went to the tomb didn’t expect to see evidence of Jesus’ resurrection ought to make us give credibility to their later saying that Jesus, once dead, was alive again.

Now look at verses 2 through 7. It says:

There was a violent earthquake, for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and, going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow. The guards were so afraid of him that they shook and became like dead men. The angel said to the women, "Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples: 'He has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him.' Now I have told you."

Notice to whom this news—the greatest news in the history of the world—is being given: women. In patriarchal, male-dominated first century Judea, the testimony of women wasn’t considered valid. A woman couldn't testify in court, because women were deemed by that society to be unreliable.

If the first Christians had made up the story of Jesus’ resurrection—if Easter was one big conspiracy, they certainly would have been shrewd enough to say that men were the first to meet the angel at the empty tomb and not women whose word would be automatically dismissed by that society.

It was poor marketing in the first century world for Christians have to admit that, in fact, women were the first to see Jesus risen from the dead. This too, is a powerful proof that there was no Easter conspiracy.

Please see what happens next in Matthew 28:8-10:

So the women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy, and ran to tell his disciples.  Suddenly Jesus met them. "Greetings," he said. They came to him, clasped his feet and worshiped him. Then Jesus said to them, "Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me."

None of Jesus’ first followers ever claimed to have seen the precise moment when the corpse of Jesus came back to life. Instead, they all said that they were shown an empty tomb and like us, were asked to dare to trust that the Savior Who had never once lied to them was good for a promise He had made, that He would rise again.

It was only after the women at the empty tomb chose to be open to believing and chose to act on the angel’s message that they saw the risen Jesus.

When it comes to faith in God, you and I cannot fold our arms and demand that God prove Himself to us.

Nor will God ever force us to trust in Him.

We must be willing to believe. It’s then and only then that we will begin to believe. It’s only then that God’s Holy Spirit can build faith within us.

In faith, seeing is not believing; believing is seeing!

So, did it really happen? Did Jesus really rise from the dead on the first Easter Sunday? The evidence, I think, indicates that He did.

But, even if we find the evidence for Jesus’ resurrection convincing, the resurrection will still be nothing more than a bit of trivia or a blip on our calendars unless we, like the women met by the angel at the empty tomb, dare to believe—to trust our whole lives to Christ—and dare to act on that belief.

And listen: As a former atheist myself, I can tell you that God will give you faith in the risen Jesus if only, like the women at the empty tomb, you are willing to believe.

In his book, The Power of a Whisper, Pastor Bill Hybels tells of being with a group of pastors and asking them how they had come to faith in the risen Jesus. One pastor said that he grew up in an non-churchgoing home, his parents deeply hostile to Christ and the Church.

Next door was a couple who believed in Jesus, were active in a local congregation, and sensed that God wanted them to invite their neighbors to church.

So, one day, they came to that young boy’s home and invited his family to worship with them. The parents were venomous in their response to the invitation, “We want nothing to do with your God…[or] your church…[or] you.”

But their son said, “Hey, Dad. I’ll go.” The parents thought to themselves, “Free babysitting!” So, they let junior go to church.

All through that boy’s junior high years, the neighbors took him to church Sunday in, Sunday out. While in high school, he surrendered his life to Christ.

Later, he became a pastor and started a church on the East Coast, which today welcomes thousands of worshipers each week, changing lives and bringing the peace of the risen Jesus Christ in facing and living in this world this world and the hope of eternity with God beyond the grave through the risen Jesus.

Jesus Christ is risen from the dead! It really happened and He can change the lives and eternities of all who repent, that is, turn from sin, and believe in Him.

If you’ve come here this morning, not really certain about what you thought of Jesus and His resurrection, and you find yourself wanting Him in your life, I promise you that He wants the same thing. He wants life with you.

If you’re willing to let Him in, He can be right there with you in all the times of your life--the good and joyous, the hard and sad, and every place in between. He can give your life meaning and purpose.

And, when, like Jesus Himself, you cross the threshold of death, He will be holding you and He will raise you to life again to be with God for eternity. If you want Jesus today, just tell Him.

If you’d like a little help in either getting started in a life with Jesus or in renewing that life, you’ll see people with blue lapel badges around today. They will be happy to pray with you, share a bit with you. They’ll also ask you if you’d like a call from me this week. If you’re not a Living Water member or you don’t live in this area, please know that I won’t be phoning you to try to get you to join this church, though people are certainly welcome to take instruction and check us out. Instead, we simply want you to experience the power and blessings of the risen Jesus every day of your life, the way we do day in and day out. We want you to have eternal life with God. It happens through Jesus, the One Who rose on the first Easter.

To paraphrase the angel at the tomb, “This my message for you,” the message of new life through the risen One, Jesus. It’s God’s message for you and all the world. It can change a life for eternity. Let it change yours. Amen!