“Faith in Christ Makes Us New”
Matthew 28:1-10/ 2 Corinthians 5:17/ Romans 10:9
He is risen! He is risen, indeed! It is Easter Sunday. Churches all over the world are coming together to remember and celebrate the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The effects of the resurrection have reverberated throughout history. Jesus’ defeat of sin and death has changed everything. The same power that raised Jesus from the dead is available to us as well.
It changes us.
It renews us.
It breathes fresh life into us.
The key to this transformative power is our faith.
New life is unlocked as we place our faith, hope, and trust in the work of Christ.
But, in order for there to be new life,
there had to first be a death.
Years ago, I was hiking in Baxter State Park, near Mt. Katahdin with a group of friends. As we hiked up the mountain the landscape was breathtaking. There was a section of trail that we came upon, however, that was different from the rest. It was charred and black. A local hiker told us that a year before a large forest fire ravaged the area. It burned nearly 2,000 acres of forest. Everywhere we looked, all you could see was a burned landscape. What was so surprising was that if you looked closely, you could see little spots of green here and there, shooting up from the scorched ground. Oddly enough, the burned timber and underbrush had created a perfect environment for growth, and from the ashes, new life was being born.
Easter morning began with ashes. The Messiah was dead. Jesus had been arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane. He had been betrayed by one of his own friends.
He was beaten.
After an unfair trial, he was sentenced to death by crucifixion and hung between two thieves.
Within hours, Jesus breathed his last and died.
And with him, died the hopes and dreams of those who had followed him.
They believed he was the one who would usher in the Kingdom of God and make all things right, but now they mourned the loss of their friend. Jesus’ body was taken down from the cross and laid inside of a cold, dark tomb. It seemed like the end. It felt so final.
But, no one could see that it was just the beginning.
Three days went by. Some of the disciples had returned to their old ways of life.
Any hope they had had was buried behind a massive stone that was rolled to cover the entrance to the tomb where Jesus lay. But then Sunday came.
Matthew 28:1-8, “The Message”
After the Sabbath, as the first light of the new week dawned, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to keep vigil at the tomb. Suddenly the earth reeled and rocked under their feet as God’s angel came down from heaven, came right up to where they were standing. He rolled back the stone and then sat on it. Shafts of lightning blazed from him. His garments shimmered snow-white. The guards at the tomb were scared to death. They were so frightened, they couldn’t move.
The angel spoke to the women: “There is nothing to fear here. I know you’re looking for Jesus, the One they nailed to the cross. He is not here. He was raised, just as he said. Come and look at the place where he was placed.
“Now, get on your way quickly and tell his disciples,
‘He is risen from the dead. He is going on ahead of you to Galilee. You will see him there.’ That’s the message.”
The women, deep in wonder and full of joy, lost no time in leaving the tomb. They ran to tell the disciples.
The Bible tells us that at dawn two women named Mary traveled to Jesus’ grave. Other places in the scriptures tell us these women had come to anoint his body for burial. Suddenly a violent earthquake shook the ground as an angel of the Lord appeared and rolled the stone away from the tomb entrance. The appearance of these angels and their clothing was shocking, like lightning and bright white. The guards who were watching over the grave were terrified, as were the women.
But the angel spoke tenderly to them. He spoke a word of comfort that is pronounced over people nearly 365 times throughout the scriptures. He said, “Do not be afraid”. Easter is not a time for fear, but of joy. Though the women had come to care for Jesus’ lifeless body, he was not there. The tomb was empty. He had risen! The women ran off to find the other disciples, no longer filled with fear, but filled with joy.
Easter is meant to confront our fears and offer us joy. We live in a world where it is easy to find ourselves in a very similar place to these women in the story. Any given Sunday, there are people all across the world who come to church expecting to find a lifeless Jesus. Many are filled with anxiety and fear: fearful that their lives will never change, that their circumstances won’t change.
Anxiety and fear are their first response because their world is changing faster than they can keep up and the things in their lives are taking over. For too many of us, our lives are the same, dominated by anxiety and fear. Perhaps this morning the first thing you need to hear is the message of the angel at the empty tomb.
“Do not be afraid”.
Easter confronts our fears. The empty tomb reveals the mighty power of God that was not just a reality for Jesus then, but is a reality for us today.
Author and speaker, Beth Moore, says it so well…
“The power of the resurrection means that nothing but the tomb is meant to be empty.”
Easter is a source of great joy for Christians. We are filled with joy because, resurrection power is able to make everything new.
The empty tomb means your past can be made new.
The empty tomb means your hope for the future can be made new.
The empty tomb means your life can be made new.
Joy is a byproduct of hope, hope that if Jesus indeed has risen from the grave, then through our belief in him, there is nothing that is impossible for us either.
D.L. Moody tells a story about a bright young girl of fifteen who was suddenly cast upon a bed of suffering, completely paralyzed on one side and nearly blind. She heard the family doctor say to her parents as they stood by the bedside: “She has seen her best days, poor child!”
“No, doctor,” she exclaimed, “my best days are yet to come, when I shall see the King in His beauty.”
As Christians we need to remember, this is not our home.
Christ rose from the dead to guarantee that we too have power over the grave.
That is our hope.
The resurrection is the great antidote
for fear of homelessness,
for fear of not enough money,
for fear of sickness,
even for fear of death.
Nothing else can take its place, neither riches, genius, worldly pleasures or pursuits.
No matter where you find yourself today, the empty tomb pushes back against our fear and reminds us that the best is yet to come because Jesus Christ is alive!
You see, a proper response to Easter is not fear, but faith.
Faith is a word that is used a lot in the Church.
We have faith in all kinds of things.
But the kind of faith the Bible speaks to is a deep trust in something or someone that cannot be explicitly proven.
Once the tomb was found empty, it was unexplainable, but the women had a choice to make, as did the disciples. Would they have faith that Jesus was indeed alive?
This has been the defining question for 2,000 years.
Do we trust the resurrection?
Do we believe that the power of God raised Jesus then and can make us new now?
Paul addresses this question as he writes to the early church in Rome. He wants to make clear the proper response to the empty tomb.
Romans 10:9
“If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”
The way to experience the power of God that can make us new is a two-step process. Paul says, first you must declare with your mouth that Jesus is Lord. This means that we demonstrate that Jesus is our authority by the things we say and the things we do. It is the outward evidence of an inward conviction. Second, Paul says we must believe in our hearts that God raised Jesus from the dead. Our hearts must be convinced that the power of God is real.
The first step is an intellectual exercise.
The second step is an exercise in trust.
This can be illustrated using a chair. You are sitting in one now. We sit in one every day. It is an act of faith. You first must intellectually conclude that the chair you are sitting in is meant to be sat in and able to hold you up. You then must trust that it can hold you by putting your weight on it and resting in its strength. The same is true for our faith in Christ.
To celebrate Easter without making the fundamental decision to trust in Jesus’ resurrection power is to miss the point completely. You can be made new, and it is made possible through faith in Jesus Christ. Our faith ensures that we are found in Him. Our faith allows Jesus to take the old and make it new.
Paul speaks in a different passage about the implications of placing our faith in Jesus. After Jesus’ resurrection, there is an amazing transformation in the lives of the disciples.
They encounter Jesus in his resurrected form, and it causes them to go from being afraid for their lives to being bold witnesses to what they have seen and learned from Jesus. Paul expects this transformation to happen in the lives of every believer – even today.
2 Corinthians 5:17
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!”
Paul says that when people put their faith in Jesus, they become new creations. The first creation takes place in a garden in the book of Genesis. God created humankind without sin and they exist in a perfect relationship with Him. The Bible then tells us that after sin enters the world, everything is broken and in disrepair – humans could no longer walk in the Garden with God.
This is why Jesus did what he did.
It was his broken body and shed blood on the cross that pays the price for our forgiveness of sin and restores us. What is so interesting is that Jesus’ body was laid in a tomb in a garden. It was in this second garden that a new creation took place. All of our old ways of living are replaced with new ones.
Jesus takes our selfishness and replaces it with generosity.
He takes our anger and replaces it with love.
He takes our addiction and replaces it with freedom.
As president of Stepping Stone Housing, I am in charge of most of the renovations needed when we purchase a new property. We recently purchased a property in Nobleboro that needs a lot of remodeling. It has sinking floors, broken windows, beat up cabinets, and stinky carpets. Before any of the real changes can happen, we need to first tear out all of the old materials.
We call it the “onion effect.” No matter what we rip out, there always seems to be more that needs to be removed underneath. Unless we do the hard work of removing everything that was rusted or rotten, the new stuff that we plan to add will be wasted. Only once the removal is done should the replacement take place.
Easter is the time for each of us to consider what God wants to remodel. Jesus is alive and he wants to work in you. Invite him in your life to do the remodeling work that only He can do.
Easter morning revealed an empty tomb because Jesus had risen from the grave. The two women who first made the discovery had a choice to make. Do they trust the good news or do they ignore the evidence in front of them? The resurrection of Jesus was good news that changed the lives of the disciples and by their impact, the world.
We have the same choice to make as the woman did. When we choose faith, we are found “in Christ” and our lives are made new, by offering God the old and seeing Him make it new.
Let’s pray.
Dear God, we believe that the tomb is empty and Jesus is alive. We ask you to come into our hearts and make us new. Remove all of the sin in our lives and replace it with your Spirit. Jesus, we confess that you are our Lord and we believe that God raised You from the dead. Thank You for making us new creations. Amen.
