Easter 2007
Tom Shrader centers this Easter message on the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ, arguing from 1 Corinthians 15 that the resurrection is the pivot on which all of Christianity turns and that disproving it would undo the entire faith. He explains that Christ's victory over death secures eternal life for believers and calls the church to live as salt and light, making the invisible God visible through incarnational love toward others. A video testimony from a church family caring for a chronically ill daughter illustrates how the body of Christ serves as a tangible expression of the gospel in everyday life.
“Christianity is the only thing, religion, institution on earth that can truly connect you with the one true God.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Easter
Recorded: 2007 at East Valley Bible Church
Duration: 20 min
Themes: resurrection, easter, eternal life, hope, serving others, incarnational love, body of christ, salt and light, doubting faith, new believer, grieving loss, caregiver, parent of sick child, searching for hope, guest at church, questioning christianity
Scripture: John 20:8, 1 Corinthians 15, Romans 10:9
Theological Themes: bodily resurrection, 1 corinthians 15, soteriology, salvation, victory over death, gospel truth, incarnation, apologetics
Full Transcript
Welcome and Opening Prayer
Father, thank you for this Easter morning, for a time when we as Your people can come together to worship and praise You. We thank you for those that You have brought here today who are guests of ours. We pray that they understand what a privilege it is for us to host and honor them today. And we pray that You would use these few minutes to take our minds and to link them with Yours, that Your thoughts might become ours, and that the way You would have us behave is a way that would bring honor and glory to You. God, thank you for this day. In Jesus' name, amen.
Good morning — it is so good to have you with us. There is a bulletin that you received when you came in. If you are a guest, we would invite you to take that guest registry card and drop it in one of the boxes as you leave. We also have a special Connect One orientation to East Valley Bible Church meeting scheduled for next Sunday at 10:30. If you would like to be part of that, just mark it on the card, and somebody from the church will get in touch with you.
The Resurrection as the Epicenter of History
Today it is clear why we are here — we are here to celebrate the resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. It is the epicenter in the history of mankind, and it is absolutely crucial to our faith. Let me read to you what a couple of authors have written.
"Christianity rests on the certainty of Jesus' resurrection as a space-time occurrence in history. All four Gospels highlight it, focusing on the empty tomb and the resurrection appearances, and the book of Acts insists on it. Paul regarded the resurrection as indisputable proof that the message about Jesus as judge and as Savior is true. Jesus' resurrection demonstrated His victory over death. It guarantees the believer's forgiveness of sin and is the basis for the resurrection life in Jesus Christ for the believer here and now."
John Locke, the philosopher, writes this: "Our Savior's resurrection is truly of great importance in Christianity, so great that His being or not being the Messiah stands or falls with it." Another author adds: "Just as the heart pumps life-giving blood to every part of the body, so the truth of the resurrection gives life to every other area of gospel truth. The resurrection is the pivot on which all of Christianity turns, and without it, none of the other truths would much matter." Without the resurrection, Christianity would be so much wishful thinking, taking its place alongside all other human philosophies and religious speculation.
We celebrate today the central moment in the history of mankind — clearly, absolutely essential and critical to the Christian faith, to you and to me.
Where Christianity Is Vulnerable
Maybe you are here today and you are adversarial toward the faith. Somehow you just ended up here — maybe somebody promised you ham if you came. Or maybe you are ambivalent, not really sure, and you would love to figure out whether this thing is really true or not. I want to do something that typically would not be smart. If we are playing each other in a football game, I want to keep my game plan hidden; we scout out the other team to find out where they are vulnerable. Let me tell you where the Christian faith is vulnerable.
If you can disprove the resurrection, this whole thing comes tumbling down. Paul says that in 1 Corinthians 15, where he talks about the resurrection and says that if Christ did not rise from the dead, then all that we do is useless, vain, it does not make any difference. This would be just like every other belief, religion, or even club if Christ did not rise from the dead. So if you want to kick the legs out of Christianity, you simply attack and disprove the resurrection.
Now let me tell you why I am so comfortable telling you that is where we are vulnerable — you cannot do it. It is true. On that first morning, the tomb was empty. John records in his own Gospel, chapter 20, verse 8, that he came to the tomb, he looked in, he saw, and he believed. He realized Jesus was who He said He was — the Messiah.
Two Aspects of the Christian Faith
When I think about our Christian faith, there are two aspects I attach to this — one very obvious, the other maybe not so obvious. The first one is heaven. Man is in trouble, and we instinctively know it. We know we have issues, and we know it is not just us — it is everybody.
Let me prove that to you. I will start a little phrase and you finish it: nobody's — nobody's perfect. So everybody is flawed, and the Bible calls it sin. Man is trying to figure out what to do with this sin, because we know we are not right with God. All of religion says, "I am going to make myself right with God, I am going to do something" — go here, do this, join Big Brothers Big Sisters, donate to United Way, come to church. Christianity says no, it is different from everything else. It is not sinful man trying to appease a holy God; it is a holy God reaching down to a sinful man. That is Christianity.
Susan was in the oncologist's office on Tuesday, in a fairly large waiting room with lots of chairs. There were people there at various stages of illness — some very sick, and clearly in all likelihood going to die, some soon; you could just tell by looking. Two very sick men were sitting in the middle of the room, and one said to the other, "What do you think happens to us when we die?" And then the nurse came and took him away. That is a huge question, and biblical Christianity is the only answer.
The Purpose of Salvation
That is true, because it's the only answer that has been given us by God Himself. So when I think of my Christian faith, I'm thinking salvation. I'm thinking Christ delivering me, saving me from my sin, living a life for eternity with Him, as certain of heaven as the saints that are already there. So maybe you came in today and you say, I'm not really part of this. I'm curious. I'm interested. What is it about Christianity? Christianity is the only religion, the only institution on earth that can truly connect you with the one true God. God has reconciled man to Himself through the person of Jesus Christ.
So if you come in today with a heavy heart saying, I have this sin, I don't know what to do with it, I'm looking for comfort, I'm looking for relief — you have found a place with answers. We go to the Scripture. But there is a second part of this. God did not just save His people to get them to heaven. That is certainly part of it, but if that were all He was concerned about, He would have taken us there right away.
He left us here for a reason. He left us here for a purpose, and that was to make Him — the invisible God — visible. If you have been around East Valley Bible Church for a while, we just spent eleven weeks on this. It is to let our light shine before men in such a way that they would see our good works and then glorify our Father in heaven.
Salt and Light in Your Sphere of Influence
The people that you encounter — we often use the term "neighbor," but that word has a somewhat geographic connotation. I will use the word neighbor, but what I mean is anybody who is in your sphere of influence. It could be someone who lives in Anthem but works alongside you, someone you spend a significant chunk of time with. That person is your neighbor, someone you are dealing with on a regular basis.
God left you here so that you would be salt and light everywhere you go. So that when people come into contact with you at work, they would see that there is something different about you. When you walk into school, the kids in the class, the teacher, and those around you would understand there is something distinctive and unique about you.
Here is what they see that is different: you are not concerned about yourself — you are concerned about them and others. We might say people would notice we are different because we pray, we fast, or because of various other practices, and yes, all of those things are true. But at the foundation of all of that is the fact that you are no longer moving through life asking, "What about me? What about me? What about me?" All of a sudden you have the mind in you that is in Christ Jesus, and it asks instead, "What about you? What about you? What about you?"
The Church as a Team
That is true of us individually, but it is important for us to understand that the Christian faith is not an individual activity. It is a team activity. It is a corporate activity, and that is why the church is so important.
I have run into all sorts of people who say, "I can worship God without going to church. I can worship Him on the golf course." Well, certainly Jesus is referenced out there a lot, but I do not know if it is in the context of salvation — though I know His name comes up frequently. Here is the point: you cannot minister to others the way you can through the church. He puts us together and saves us for this reason.
Dave's Story: Seven Years of Challenge
So I want to do something a little different this morning. I want to show you a six-minute video clip. I sat down with one of the men from our church — someone whose family has been through an enormous amount of challenge over the last seven years. It is a wonderful story of not just his hurt and pain, but of how God has used people like you to touch his life. Watch this with me.
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*Dave, thanks for coming in today and spending a few minutes with us. I want to talk about some things that are pretty personal, and I appreciate your willingness to share.*
*About six or seven years ago, your daughter Bonnie got sick. Tell us what happened.*
She was an avid ballet dancer, dancing every day for multiple hours, and she had developed some very subtle symptoms that progressively got worse and worse. It manifested itself primarily, and most significantly at first, in her heart beating very rapidly. She became weaker and weaker, and it ended up with part of her intestine shutting down in the hospital. It really perplexed the doctors.
*I have had a chance to see her a little at church and then in the hospital, and at times she has been very, very weak. I am going to make an assumption — correct me if I am wrong — that something like that has a real and potentially devastating effect on you, your wife, and the family.*
That is very true. It has been hard on the family, because suddenly what is considered normal life becomes non-existent. In the times she has spent in the hospital, Lynn or I — primarily Lynn — stay with her basically twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
*One of the things I want to hear about is how the church has been able to come alongside and help. Rather than have me say what I think I know, tell me what has happened.*
The church has done a lot of things over these seven years, and it has waxed and waned somewhat, but for the most part it has come and joined us in the struggle. I have had people come and support me when I have completely lost it. There have been people visiting Bonnie during her struggles — just visiting — and helping us stay grounded as a family through an incredibly stressful time, up to and including people coming to Boston when Bonnie had surgery. It was an amazing thing to have Bonnie supported in that way, and to have us supported in that way. Additionally, especially when Bonnie has lost her mobility — and this is a more recent development, during this past infection while she was in the ICU in Boston — her ability to walk
The House That God Built
She went from being able to walk one to two flights of stairs at least some of the time, to not being able to walk at all, and barely able to bear her weight in an upright position. Being that we're in a three-story house, that doesn't work very well. So we have purchased a new property that's one story, and the outside is great, because we're looking at what we can do to foster Bonnie's ability to live, her ability to interact with people, and an environment which is healing and spiritually nurturing. We found a property that does that, at least in the backyard.
The house was a mess, and once we got in there to see what was inside, we found it was more of a mess than we thought. As we tore into it, we found we were over our heads. What happened? The church just mobilized a ton of resources. Several people came alongside and said, "What needs to be done here?" We got some of the professional folks who deal with construction — sheetrockers, drywallers, painting, molding, flooring, electrical — all sorts of things. The aluminum wiring was badly wired and dangerous in places. We've had folks literally coming out of the woodwork, upholding us, coming alongside and working with us to help make this a great environment.
It makes it more special, because with all these people coming and with God bringing all these people together, that house is going to be a very visible reminder of what God does and what God provides. Through this horrific seven years — and we're going to be doing this for who knows how long until God calls us home — we will have a place where we see God all the time. Bonnie has dubbed the phrase: this is the house that God built. As we live there, we will see God's hands all over that place.
One of the exciting things for me is to hear stories like this, but oftentimes we just don't have a way to express them to the body. So here is your chance — what would you say to them right now? I would say thank you. Thank you for coming alongside us, for helping us both financially as well as getting your hands and feet dirty and helping us. It really relays back to what you were talking about this past Sunday. This is a visible manifestation of God — the invisible God made visible in a huge way. We have a story for which we can speak boldly.
Thank you so much for being willing to talk about this. I know this is tough stuff, and I know that in all likelihood this is a disease that will claim Bonnie's life sometime. I want you to know that the church, the men's ministry — we are here to help as much as we possibly can. Thank you for allowing us the opportunity to come alongside.
Why the Resurrection Changes Everything
That's pretty remarkable, isn't it — to see how God works. My point in showing you that is not for you to say, "Oh my goodness, what a church." My point is for you to look at that and say, "That's why God left me here" — to be involved in other people's lives, to preach the gospel for sure, but to come alongside people and to live a life that models Christlikeness. We do it individually and we do it corporately.
This is a significant Sunday for us. Jesus Christ rose from the dead. And I cannot say that without asking the question: so what? He rose from the dead — what difference does it make? Well, it makes this difference. Paul says it this way: "If I confess with my mouth Jesus is Lord and believe in my heart that God raised Him from the dead, I will be saved." What that says to me is, if I don't believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ, that is not biblical Christianity.
The first thing I need to hear — and these are sweet words — is that Christ died so that I could have eternal life. But He saved us for a reason: to be incarnational, to be His hands and His feet everywhere we go. That is our privilege. It is not, "We're saved, now let's get to heaven." It is, "God saved us — now let the world see that in our lives."
A Word to Our Guests
If you are a guest of ours, we are so grateful you're here. I know how this goes — it's enough to get your interest but perhaps not give you all the answers. We ask you to contact us using that card, and we would love to talk to you about East Valley Bible Church, and more importantly about what it means to know Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior.
What a wonderful day it has been. It's been meaningful for me to see people and hear how excited they are, and to really hear how God has transformed lives. You can see it on people's faces. Thank you for being here and allowing us to be part of this very special Easter morning.
Closing Prayer
Father, thank You for what we just saw. We saw You take people's lives and change them. We saw You bring us to a point where we understand that Jesus lived and died, and by coming to that understanding, we realize that we now have eternal life. I pray for those who are here today with questions — legitimate questions that deserve legitimate answers — and I pray that they might find them by talking to the people who invited them here this morning, or by calling us here at the church.
God, as I watch that video, it is a wonderful reminder of how You have called us to be salt and light in this world. We pray that we would live in a way that people would look at us and say, "There's something different about you," and that we would have the privilege of saying, "It's not us — it's Jesus." God, thank You that You didn't leave us helpless and hopeless and lost, but You provided us a way — the way — and that's Jesus. God, thank You.
He Is Risen
We say hallelujah to You. What a Savior. We pray in His name. Amen.