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If Easter Did Not Happen

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Why is Easter Sunday the biggest day on a church calendar? Why is the celebration of Easter so important?  I speak not of bunnies of chocolate or imagination, or eggs of plastic found. I talk about the celebration of the resurrection. Asked another way, what if that first Easter Sunday never happened? Jesus Christ would not have been raised from the dead. This Easter, consider what our faith would be without the resurrection to see the importance of the resurrected Christ.

14  If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. 15  We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. 16  For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. 17  And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. 18  Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. 19  If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.  1 Corinthians 15:14-19

If there is no Easter or resurrection… Our preaching is useless vs 14 We have nothing to say and nothing worth saying. Christianity without preaching is baseball without a ball.  The whole thing would be a sham, smoke, mirrors and emptiness.  The apostles would be mere advice givers with absolutely no power behind their words, instead giving deadly, false hope.  If the resurrection was not, preaching the Christian faith is pointless. Flapping my gums about something that just is not true. Merely a Jew named Jesus, claimed to be God’s son, was crucified as a criminal and died and that was it. Period. Pointless, useless, vain.

Our faith is useless vs 14b, 17  If we take out the resurrection from our faith, your faith should fall flat on its face.  If your faith would be intact you do not believe the gospel. Your faith must rest on the resurrection.  Faith is irrelevant if not based on the cross and resurrection of Jesus.  Faith is not based on the good feelings I have when I do something nice for someone or pray or read my Bible.  Faith is based solely on Jesus Christ’s death for my sins and resurrection to new life defeating sin and death for me if I would believe in him.  Christian faith has no other foundation than the death and resurrection of Jesus for me.

We are liars about God vs 15 When we say that God did something that he did not do we misrepresent God.  That is a big deal. We have the wrong idea about God that could have eternal consequences, for us and everyone that we talk to. The writers of the Gospels and the Bible were not advice givers speaking of a nice kind way to live. They were not giving us myths, stories or cute little anecdotes about a great grandfather in the sky.  They are telling the truth about God.  Everything that the Bible says happened, actually happened. And the Bible says the, writers of the Bible say that Christ would be and was raised from the dead.  They had testified that God raised Jesus Christ from the dead.  If Christ was not bodily, physically, historically raised from the dead, they were false witnesses for God and so are we.

We are still in our sins vs 16-17 Think of everything you have ever done that is personally offensive to God and earns us the punishment, penalty and wrath of God.  If Christ did not rise from the dead then sin has won the victory over Jesus instead of Jesus winning the victory over sin. There is no sacrifice to pay for sin and we are still under God’s wrath.  Instead of Jesus drinking in every drop of God’s righteous punishment, we have to.  Sin would continue to reign victoriously over you and your life.  We would still be enemies of God. The death and crucifixion of the Son of man would have been pointless.

Those who died in Christ have perished forever  vs 18 So those who die believing in Jesus Christ to save them from their sin die and go to hell if Jesus was not raised. Death means that we die without hope and without God. Everyone is doomed to face the penalty for their sins on their own.  Those that went to the grave believing that Jesus saved them would have gone to their grave believing a lie.

We are to be pitied above all men vs 19 We wasted our only good life investing in a life that will never come.  If Christianity isn’t true, none of this is worth it.  We may as well milk every bit of life out of this world.  If Christ did not die on that cross and raise to life three days later, all the good things you are doing are in vain. Life is pointless. Faith is futile. Christianity is a big joke that isn’t funny.  We teach, preach, suffer, sacrifice, witness, pray, give, worship and work for absolutely nothing.  We above all should be pitied because we believe a lie. The rug has been pulled out from under us. If Christ hasn’t been raised we have nothing and all is truly lost.
Feeling hopeless yet? Consider verse 20 till next week, “But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead.”


In Christ, My Only Hope, Pastor Steven

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