Jerusalem reverberated with the aftershock. Jesus of Nazareth had just been crucified. That dark Friday can only be called good because of what happened on Easter. A day which gives a tentalizing clue to the riddle of the universe. Easter opened up a crack in a universe winding down toward entropy and decay.
sealing the promise that someday God will enlarge the miracle of Easter to cosmic scale. May I suggest to you that if a man should ever live and in his time on this earth, he would say, “I’m going to be executed, but don’t worry about me because 3 days after I’m executed, I’m going to come back from the dead.
” Now, if somebody said that to us today, we would look at them and say, “Well, he probably doesn’t need to be executed. He needs to be put into some place where they can take care of him. [Music] One of the most amazing miracles of all history is that Jesus predicted what would happen to him. And it happened to him exactly as he said.
Sometimes people say, “Well, I don’t think Jesus even thought he was going to be resurrected.” Oh, yes, he did. Over and over in the New Testament, Jesus predicted his resurrection. Every time he predicted he was going to die, almost in the same breath, he predicted that he was going to come back from the grave. [Music] This doctrine of Jesus coming out of the grave rests on strong historic evidence.
John 20:1 says, “Now on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been rolled away.” And ladies and gentlemen, what is the first day of the week? It is Sunday. Acts 20:7 says, “Now on the first day of the week, the disciples came together to break bread.
” Sunday is an amazing testimony to the resurrection. The early Christians, men and women, were devout Jews who became Christians. They were fanatical in their observance of the Sabbath. The Jews feared breaking the Sabbath like they feared nothing else. And if they violated the strict laws concerning its observance, they could be killed.
Yet something happened that caused these Jewish men and women to turn their backs on all the years of religious training and tradition. They changed their day of worship to Sunday in honor of the anniversary of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Can you think of any other event in history that is celebrated 52 times a year as the resurrection is? Every time we come to church on Sunday, we’re saying he is risen.
He is risen indeed. Two days have earned names on the church’s calendar. Good Friday and Easter Sunday. Yet in a real sense, all of us live on Saturday, the day with no name. What were the proofs that Jesus used to demonstrate that he was resurrected? Well, let me simply ask you. If you died and you were resurrected and you wanted people to believe that you were resurrected, what would you do? You would show yourself to them as alive.
And that is exactly what Jesus did. Jesus first appeared to Mary Magdalene by the tomb and to the other women returning from the tomb. He appeared to Peter later that same day and to two disciples on the road to Emmas. Twice he appeared to the apostles inside a locked room and once again when Thomas was present and once when he was absent.
