Isaiah 53: 2-10
Of
the two main Christian Holidays, I enjoy Easter the most. This is partly because I prefer Hot Cross
Buns to Christmas cake. It’s partly
because Easter is far less commercialized than Christmas. Mainly
however, I like Easter because of the Easter story. The Easter Story is an Epic! By any standards it is crammed with all the
ingredients of an epic drama. It’s got friendship,
betrayal, sacrifice, cowardice yet ultimately redemption. Today
however, I’m not assuming you see Easter the same way as me. You may not even be a follower of Jesus
Christ – you may be wondering why Christians make such a big fuss of Easter. If that’s you I hope that what follows might
change not just your view of Easter but of Jesus himself.
*
All
great epics have a “backstory”. To enjoy
the Lord of the Rings, it helps to have read The Hobbit. To enjoy the Return of the Jedi, you have to
have seen Star Wars. The Easter Story also has a backstory only
many don’t appreciate it because they find the Bible quite a daunting
read. So let me simplify it for you:
I’ve heard it said that the Bible is nothing
more than an account of God’s rescue mission for the lost soul of humanity. Of
course, many people today reject the notion that we need rescuing at all! Yet
the story of Adam and Eve (Genesis 2 and 3) explains why this “rescue mission” was
necessary in the first place. On the one hand we get a picture of what life
looks like when people are living in right relationship with God. On the other, we get a picture of what life
looks like when people seek to control their destiny apart from God. Their Sin
literally separates them from the God who created them.
Centuries
later, an apostle named Paul wrote to the church in Rome stressing how Adam and
Eve’s rebellion against God didn't just
affect them but the entire bloodline of humanity as well. He explains that:
Romans 5: 12 Sin
came into the world because of what one man did.
Paul
goes on to write that because of this:
“There
is no one who is righteous (by righteous he means acceptable to God), not even
one. All have turned away from God…
Paul
then talks about the consequences of this sin as well:
And
with sin came death. OR PUT ANOTHER WAY (Eternal separation from the God who
created them)
So
to summarise - every human, belonging as he or she does to the bloodline of
Adam, has been corrupted by Adam’s rebellion.
This corruption means that everyone has sinned which means – as Paul
reminds us - that everyone must die – face an eternity separated from God. This
is all pretty gloomy isn’t it? – But it does help explain why God has a rescue
mission.
It
also explains why this rescue mission involved sending his only Son. I mean, can you think of a better way of getting
someone to trust you?! A story by author Phillip
Yancey really sheds light on this. As a
boy, Yancey used to maintain a tropical fish tank:
Maintaining
this tank was no easy task. I had to run
a portable chemical laboratory to monitor the chemical levels. I had to pour vitamins and other goodies into
the water to make sure that the coral would grow and that the fish would be
healthy. I filtered the water regularly
and exposed the whole tank to ultraviolet light to kill any germs that might
breed there.
You
would think, in view of all the energy I put into my tank on behalf of those
fishes that they would be at least a little bit grateful! Not So! Every
time my shadow loomed above the tank they dived for cover into the nearest
shell. They showed me only one “emotion”
– FEAR. Although I opened the lid and
dropped in food three times a day, they responded to each visit as a sure sign
of my designs to torture them. I had no
way of convincing them of my true concern for them!!
I
suppose in a way, to these fish, I was like a God. I was way too large for them; my actions –
all meant for their benefit - were too difficult for them to understand. It’s no wonder they kept diving for cover! I began thinking about what I would have to
do to change their perceptions or experience of me. I realized that there was only one thing I
could do – though it was actually impossible. If
I were truly to reach out to my fish I realized that some sort of incarnation
was needed – If I was to convince my fish of my good intentions, I would
actually have to become a fish myself – be able to “speak” and relate to them
in a way that they could understand
So this is the backstory of Easter. God is on a mission to rescue humanity. This mission first begins with His
“connecting” with us through his son Jesus - speaking our language – walking in
our shoes – facing all the temptations, struggles and trials that we humans
face. But most importantly, doing all
this without sinning the way we do
Hebrews 4: For we do not have a saviour who is unable to
empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every
way, just as we are
… yet he did not sin.
*
Now let’s return to the Easter story. Having
found a way of bringing us into His confidence, God’s plan now addresses that
stubborn problem of sin – the one thing that threatens to separate us from God
for eternity. And so…that same son who came to live
amongst us must now die for us. Many people however – even many Christians –
battle to understand just how
the cross could have dealt with our sin.
On the face of it, there was nothing that special about crucifixion - it was a common (if gruesome) method of execution
in those days. It was barbaric in the
extreme, designed to inflict as much pain and humiliation on the victim. But to
understand how it dealt with our sin we have to look beyond all the blood and
gore. This was no-ordinary death.
If you read the Gospels, particularly the
Gospel of John, you will see that Jesus is sometimes referred to as “The Lamb
of God”. In fact when John the Baptist
first sees Jesus, he says “Behold –
the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the World”. What is going on here?
Up to this point, there was a way the Jews would deal with their sins. It involved confessing their transgressions over a spotless lamb and then geting a priest to
sacrifice it on their behalf to make them righteous before God. This was never a once off event – it had to be
done regularly if a person was to maintain his relationship with God. But now Jesus arrives and what John the
Baptist is essentially doing is likening him to the same sacrificial lamb of
the Jewish tradition. With one important
difference: this lamb will now take on the sin of the whole world, not just the sin of those who happen to be
Jewish. This is a very important thing to understand
because while many will concede that Jesus was a great moral teacher – they
fail to recognize him as the Saviour of the World. So how did his death save us?
2 Cor 5: 21 God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in
him we might become the righteousness of God.
The great German reformer Martin Luther called
this “The Great Exchange” and here's what it involves:
- My Sin went to Jesus, His perfection went to me
- My unrighteousness went to Jesus, His righteousness came to me
- My condemnation went to Jesus, His Salvation came to me
- My separation from God the Father went to Jesus, Jesus’ reconciliation with the father came to me
- My death went to Jesus, His life came to me
The only thing I’ll say about the
resurrection is actually something said by Chinese evangelist Watchman Nee:
“Good Friday and the Cross of Jesus put an end to my old history. The resurrection of Jesus on Easter Sunday
marks the beginning of my new history”
And so this Easter Sunday, when we celebrate
Christ’s victory over death – we are also celebrating our victory over death!
(My death went to Jesus his life came to me)
“Where Death where is your victory? Where o grave is your sting?” – 1 Cor 15
Let’s spend a few moments contemplating the
benefits of this incredible rescue mission. I can think of no better way to do this than
by quoting the words of one of the great heroes of the faith – a German named Dietrich
Bonhoeffer who openly criticized Hitler’s treatment of the Jews and who paid
the ultimate price for doing so
“Why
are we so afraid when we think about death?
The resurrection has transformed death. For all we know, we may be shivering at the
most glorious, heavenly, blessed event in the world…He
who truly understands the resurrection will be homesick from that hour, waiting
and looking forward to being released from this bodily existence. He understands that life only really begins
when it ends here on earth, that all that is here is only the prologue before
the curtain goes up. Death is the greatest gift of grace that God gives to
people who believe in him. It is the
gateway to our homeland, the tabernacle of joy, and the everlasting kingdom of
peace.
Just months after writing these lines, Bonhoeffer
faced a Nazi executioner at Flossenburg Prison.
That day, April 8, 1945 he said to a fellow inmate: “This is the end – for me the beginning of
life”.
*
We’ve been reflecting on God’s rescue
mission. But there’s a sober footnote to
it all. God will only rescue those who
believe in his name and who treat him as Lord of their lives. By believing, I mean a state of dependence in
which we cling to, adhere to, trust in and rely totally upon Jesus for everything.
This carries huge implications as we examine
our hearts before Christ this morning.
