Where S Your Easter Joy?

Easter Sunday – April 16, 2017

Where’s Your Easter Joy?

Matthew 28:8

So the women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy, and ran to tell his disciples. 28:8

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus,

“Bing.” It’s your cell phone. What message could you get that would make you jump for joy or go into a happy dance? Your son just out of college just got that new job. Grandma’s cancer is gone. Your best friend just won $300 million in the lottery. How about “Alleluia, The Christ is Risen!” (He is risen indeed. Alleluia!)

If you got that on your text message, you might smile, it might bring a bit of joy to your heart, but it probably won’t get you jumping up and down in joy. Why not? For us, it is not something brand new – it’s a message that some of us have believed and celebrated since childhood. And we gather here on Easter to share that joy with one another, and sing Hallelujahs as the sun rises on an early Easter morning (with a large crowd), and it builds up an emotional joy in our hearts to have this special day together. With or without donuts (breakfast).

But what happens after Easter is over? Later this afternoon, will you be less than joyful? How about Monday morning and you’re going back to work or school? What happens by next Sunday? Would you prefer to find a bit of happiness at Disney or the beach instead of here? Nothing wrong with those kinds of joy, But the true joy of Easter doesn’t come in vacation spots. It doesn’t come on your cell phone. Where’s Your Easter Joy? Can you find it only in church on an Easter morning? I don’t know about you, but I need more. I don’t want just a happy Easter, I want the true joy of Easter for every day. Let’s find it, on the first Easter morning.

It was about 5 AM the first Easter morning, when a handful of women left the comforts of their homes. I’m sure they had not slept very well since Friday. They are emotionally-drained. You would be too if you thought your Messiah and Savior had not only died, but had been mistreated and crucified, in the greatest miscarriage of justice you’ve ever seen. It’s hard to believe it has all happened, but you know he’s dead. It’s been painfully obvious ever since you saw Joseph and Nicodemus take his body down from the cross. Now it’s time to finish up his burial preparations, and that’ll be it.

You’re an emotional wreck. Your faith is numb. For if Jesus is dead, who is the Messiah? How am I going to get through life? What about all the promises he made? Where is life when you see only death? Where is heaven, if it ends at the cemetery? Have you ever felt that way when it seems like life has crashed down on you?

But on the way to the tomb, the unexpected happened. There was a violent earthquake. 28:2. Now keep in mind, this is the second earthquake in 3 days! The God of the heavens and the Creator of earth jolts the earth with seismic activity alerting us to the two most important days on earth: The day Christ died. The day Christ lived again! And look what happens next

An angel of the Lord came down from heaven and going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it. Can you imagine the excitement among all the angels of heaven, when God picked two of them out and said: I want you to deliver the Easter message? The angel rolled back the stone, not to let Jesus out, but to let other people in! And that’s exactly what the angel did: 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.

“Come and see the place where he lay,” the angel said as he invited the women in, to check it out for themselves. But then this angelic messenger reminded them: “He is not here; he has risen, just as he said.” Remember – he told you often that he would be crucified and on the third day rise again. Now you can believe it.

And that dear friends is our confidence too, because we could not be there and we have not seen the empty tomb with our own eyes. Do not believe that Jesus rose from the dead simply because I said so. Or because your grandparents told you. Believe it because Jesus said so. He had been saying it for a long time and His predictions always come true.

When Jesus said He was going to raise Lazarus from the dead, the prediction came true. When He told the disciples they would find a colt in the next village to use for His Palm Sunday parade, that prediction came true. When He said He would go to Jerusalem, be rejected by the religious leaders, handed over to the Gentile rulers, mocked, spit at, and killed, that prediction came true. When He said, “On the third day I will rise again” (Lk 18:33), his prediction came true! Alleluia! The Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

And when you believe that you can have an Easter joy that will carry you throughout the most trying of circumstances. So much of life is filled with uncertainty and doubt. Do you know what will happen for our country in the next year? Do you know whether your health will remain or fail? Do you even know what tomorrow will bring? Here is one fact that we do know. Jesus was raised from the dead and now lives and reigns forever and ever. And because that is true, you can carry an Easter joy with you, no matter what the world throws at you.

Matter of fact, I think we appreciate it more when life gets tough. Throughout the history of Christianity, Easter joy and faith has thrived when Christians have been persecuted and have to stand up for their faith.

Let’s go to Kiev, in the Ukraine. The year is 1930. A Russian Communist leader by the name of Nikolai Bukharin had come from Moscow to visit. During his day he was as powerful a man as there was on earth. He took part in the Bolshevik Revolution 1917, and became the editor of the Soviet newspaper Pravda (which by the way means truth). He had come to Kiev to address a huge assembly on the subject of atheism. He aimed his verbal artillery at Christianity, hurling insults and arguments against it.

An hour later Bukharin was finished, and asked "Are there any questions?" Deafening silence filled the auditorium. Then one man approached the platform. He surveyed the crowd first to the left then to the right. Finally he shouted the ancient greeting "Alleluia! The Christ is Risen!" En masse, the crowd arose and shouted like the sound of thunder: "HE IS RISEN INDEED! ALLELUIA!"

So what robs you of joy? So often we get hung up on the petty little incidents that irritate our minds, and they really don’t amount to all that much. What if you lived in an atheistic communist society? What if you were a Christian in Iran, where the Easter eggs came from? Or Mosul? Or anywhere in Syria right now? How would you cope if terrorists bombed two Christian churches in Orlando on Palm Sunday, like they did in Egypt last week?

The joy is this: Not even earthly death can rob us of eternal life. As Jesus said: I am the Resurrection and the Life. Whoever lives and believes in me will never die! Fear for our lives on earth is replaced by joy of knowing we have an eternal life in heaven. We have that joy right now, because there is nothing in all the world that can take that away.

Go back in time, way back to 125 AD, when a Greek historian by the name of Aristedes wrote this: “If any righteous man among the Christians passes from this world, they rejoice and offer thanks to God and escort his body with songs and thanksgiving, as if setting out from one place to another nearby.” Aristedes was not a Christian, but he could see the difference! Only because Jesus rose is it true for us what the choir sang: “And we are raised with him, Death is dead, love has won, Christ has conquered. And we shall reign with him, for he lives, Christ is risen from the dead.”

There was a little four year old boy who was hearing about the crucifixion for the first time, as his Dad read from a Bible story book. With a sad expression on his face, he asked: “Did Jesus die then, Dad?” Yes, he did, he died on the cross.” “Oh,” said the boy “He cannot love me now then.” When the father told others of the incident, he explained: “I never realized the true value of the resurrection until that moment, when with joy I was able to say: ‘You’re wrong son. He can love you now, because rose again on the third day and he’s alive forever!’” Love has won, Christ has conquered!

When you have true joy, you can’t help but share it. When the women left the tomb and the angel: So the women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy, and ran to tell his disciples.

There is true joy in the fact that Jesus rose from the dead, that we want to share with everyone. They might not believe it right away, like the men disciples who didn’t believe until they saw Jesus with their own eyes. But we want to share the joy so that perhaps some of it may stick.

There’s a lot of people out there who may consider themselves Christian, but are all tied up in trying to be that perfect Christian, and they just can’t do it. Take a young mother by the name of Sarah. She’s raising three young children, with a six month old in her arms. Sarah is doing her best to manage the family and make ends meet. Meals. Diapers. Finances. Housekeeping. A cleaning job on the side. Yet more often than not, bills go unpaid and the house is a mess. She’s at the end of her rope and there’s no joy in life. She’s ready to give up, because she has let down her husband, her church, yes, God himself. Many people just throw up their hands and say: What’s the use? But Sarah noticed a short video on Facebook that caught her attention, and it brought her to a Savior who is risen and ready to forgive any and all who come to him. And this really is happening through our Truth in Love Ministries in Utah. And it can happen when you share your joy on Facebook, or even better in person.

And you can still invite people here, because I will continue to share that Easter joy in the weeks ahead. Our theme for the next Sundays is: “Restoring the Joy” as we examine Paul’s most joy-filled letter, and he wrote it while was a prisoner in Rome.

So where’s your Easter joy? The world today is vastly different from 2000 years ago, but the problems are the same. Back then too, there were all acts of terror; death, and sickness, and pain, and sorrow, and despair, and heart break, and loneliness, and sin. But the joy is the same: it’s found in a relationship with a living and risen Savior who has promised to be with you always.

And should you start feeling a little depressed, a little down in your faith, a little out of control in life, a little unloved and in need of a spiritual boost. Go back to the cemetery. The tomb is empty, which means your heart can be filled with the joy of Jesus. Alleluia! The Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia! Amen