HE IS ALIVE!

Text- Revelation 1:9-18  (*vs17-18)

Introduction

What does Easter mean to you?

For some people it may be just another day of relaxation.

For others it may be a day when the family gets all dressed up and goes out to dinner.

For children it may mean hunting for Easter eggs.

A grade-school teacher asked her fifth grade class to write a composition on “what Easter means to me.”  One student wrote, “It means having to go to church.”  Another student wrote, “buying ugly dresses.”  One of the boys in the class wrote, “Easter means, egg salad sandwiches for the next two weeks.”

To Christians, Easter means celebrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

But, before there could be a resurrection, Jesus first had to die on the cross.

This last week many people have been focusing on the death of 39 people who were members of the heaven’s gate cult and took their own lives in a mass suicide.

While these people took their own lives in an attempt to gain something for them, Jesus gave his life so that we could be forgiven of our sins and have eternal life in heaven with him.

But this could not be possible if he had not also been raised from the dead.

We do not worship or serve a dead savior, but one who has risen from the dead and is alive!

One night during the 1991 Persian Gulf War a mother was at her home in Kansas when she received a telegram from the pentagon that her son had stepped on a land mine in Kuwait and was dead.  This of course was a great shock to the entire family.  However, three days later, she got a telephone call.  The voice on the other end said, “hi, mom! I’m alive!” at first the woman couldn’t believe her ears- it was the voice of her 21 year old son whom she had been mourning for the past 3 days.  However, when she finally realized it was truly her son she began to jump up and down completely overwhelmed with joy.

As Christians, that is the kind of joy we too should have when we realize that Jesus is not dead, but alive!

This morning, I would like us to consider five things that Easter or the resurrection of Jesus should mean to us.