Resurrection Hope

This program contains portions from the following episode:

"Why Easter Means Hope"

"The Resurrection of Christ"

"Finding Hope at the Grave of Juliette"

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Dannah Gresh: This weekend we celebrate the most hope-giving miracle in all of history. “Is there any need to worry?”

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: Listen, if Jesus is the resurrection and the life—and He is—what do we have to fear? What’s the worst that can happen to you? You say, “I can die!” Well, the good news is that He has overcome death.

Dannah: That was Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth. Welcome to Revive Our Hearts Weekend. I’m your host, Dannah Gresh, and happy Easter to you! On Friday we observed Good Friday, when Jesus was crucified, and now this weekend is Resurrection Sunday, the day He rose from the dead. 

Now, unless you’re brand new to Christianity (and if you are, welcome!), you probably know that the gospel—the good news—centers around the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Here’s how the apostle Paul put it in the opening verses of 1 Corinthians chapter 15:

Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received . . . For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures. (vv. 1, 3–4)

Today Barbara Rainey, Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, and Laura Booz are going to help us see the “So what?” of that truth. What difference does it make that Jesus didn’t stay dead?

Sometimes we take things in life for granted, don’t we? Have you ever done that? You get so used to something existing that you don’t realize how much it affects your life until it gets taken away. 

I think of that every time we have a storm and we lose power. Even a few hours without electricity, and we start realizing how much we rely on it for everything! And that happens a whole lot for me and Farmer Bob! We live out in the country and, well, let’s just say our neighbors—though not all that close—have a texting hotline for when our electric fizzles out. It’s just something we live with. And even though it happens often, I’m always like “Hey, life without lights is kind of a big bummer! And don’t get me started on how hard I pray they get it working before I have to haul off the meat in the freezer to my moms house!” 

Well, the truth of the resurrection of Jesus from the dead is even more life-changing than electricity. Let’s listen as Barbara Rainey talks about it with Nancy. On this particular occasion, they were discussing many of the miracles that took place around the time of Jesus’ death and resurrection.

Nancy: The ultimate miracle of Passion Week and Resurrection Sunday is . . . the resurrection itself.

Barbara: It is. It’s the pinnacle. It’s the final moment of all that God’s been doing. He’s been writing this grand and glorious story since the Garden. He has been working the redemption tale since Adam and Eve for us.

The pinnacle of that story, the climax of that story, the ultimate high point of that story is the resurrection. The disciples all thought that it was over. They were standing there watching, thinking, This is not what we had in mind. This is not what we believed. We believed He was going to deliver us now on earth. We believed He was going to take care of us, and now He’s gone and gotten Himself killed . . . and killed as a criminal.

We know the story. They ran; they hid; they disowned Him. He died alone. Yet now God is saying, “Yes, He died alone, but that was by My design. That was by My plan.” All of these miracles, all of these tiny little details were a part of the grand script, the story that God was writing.

Now, on Resurrection Sunday, He says, “This is it. This is the final picture that I want you to see.”

Nancy: That resurrection was tied in, as were all these other details to symbols, festivals, and feasts that the believing Jews were already familiar with. They celebrated the Feast of Unleavened Bread on the day when Christ went to the cross.

They celebrated the Feast of First Fruits. Talk about how it ties together.

Barbara: For the Jewish people, the Passover was a combination of three feasts. One way I like to think of it is, at Christmas, we celebrate Christmas Eve, Christmas, and New Year. We sort of celebrate them all as a unit.

For the Jewish people, those three feasts: Passover, Unleavened Bread, First Fruits, were all celebrated together sort of as a unit.

The third feast was First Fruits. That was when Jesus rose from the dead. God was saying when He raised Jesus from the tomb and Jesus came out alive, “This is the first fruit of the harvest that is coming. Jesus is inaugurating a harvest of souls for the Father by His resurrection.”

He is showing us that He is going to bring many with Him into the kingdom. Jesus was the first one to do that and thereby, opening the door for us to follow.

Nancy: And in that sense, what we celebrate this coming Easter and every Resurrection Sunday is just a foretaste of something that still lies ahead.

Barbara: That to me is part of what makes Easter such an amazing holiday to celebrate. We know it is about the cross. We know that it is about His death. We know that it is about His resurrection.

But I think we’ve totally lost sight of the fact that it is a picture of what will be some day.

Easter is all about the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. It is all about some day when we will be reunited with Jesus in heaven with the Father, and we have a feast like none other. We will be united with Him forever.

Not only is Easter the story of how Christ purchased our freedom in Him, how He accomplished our salvation on the cross. But Easter is also a foretelling of what we will experience one day in heaven.

He didn’t just save us to live on this earth. He saved us for Himself. It talks in the New Testament about how He has purchased a people for His own possession. When we believe in Christ, we become a part of that people. We become a part of His family. One day we will all be united.

Jesus by His resurrection showed us what our future looks like. One day we too will be raised. One day we too will ascend into heaven like Him. We will follow Him. We will all celebrate our oneness, our unity together with a feast, much like the feast of the Passover. We will celebrate that together in heaven and be forever with Christ in the heavenlies.

Nancy: My heart is saying, “Hallelujah, what a Savior!”

That’s what we celebrate this coming Easter. That’s what we celebrate every day of our Christian faith. But my prayer, and I know your hope as well, Barbara, is that this coming Passion Week, Good Friday, and Resurrection Sunday that each of our listeners will celebrate this holy season, this holy day, with new joy and fervor saying, “Hallelujah, what a Savior!”

Dannah: That’s Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, talking to Barbara Rainey about some of the hope we have because of the resurrection.

Do you find it difficult to remember this in the midst of changing diapers or shuttling kids to lessons or dealing with an attitude problem in a teenager, or maybe you’re the one with an attitude? It’s easy for us to get distracted and forget the truth, isn’t it? 

Well, let’s hear four more implications of the resurrection from Nancy. I think you’ll find them practical and encouraging. Here’s Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth.

Nancy: Number 1: The resurrection means there is hope in the most desperate circumstances. It means that God can make a way out where there is no human way out. It means that God is all-powerful and nothing is beyond His control. It means that one day all tears will be wiped away and all sorrow will be turned to joy. It means that He can bring beauty out of ashes and that He can cause even evil circumstances to bring Him ultimate glory.

Think about things that have been done to you or others that you know that have been such heinous, grievous crimes or circumstances, so painful—perhaps in your upbringing. Let your mind’s eye go back to the cross where evil men put Christ to death and realize that evil men never get the final word. God gets the final word. There is hope in the most desperate circumstances.

Number 2: The resurrection means that God always keeps His promises.

In Matthew chapter 28, verse 5, when the two women went to the tomb looking for the body of Jesus that was buried there, so they thought, “The angel said to the women, ‘Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here, for he has risen, as he said'” (vv. 5–6). As He said . . . Jesus had told the disciples that He would not stay dead, that He would rise from the dead.

So we think about how much stress and anxiety and fear the disciples had to endure all because they didn’t really hear and lay hold of the promises of God.

It makes me wonder how would our lives be different if we really believed, if we really heard and believed and laid hold of the promises of God?

Number 3: The resurrection means that death is no longer to be feared. Because Christ overcame death, our separations and losses are only temporary. In the last day, those who are in Christ will be raised from the dead. That’s an implication of Christ’s resurrection from the dead. Because He rose from the dead, that means that those of us who are in Christ will one day be raised as well.

You or someone you love may be facing a terminal illness, as is the case of a couple I spoke with on the phone a couple of days ago. The wife wrote me this week and said, "The nephrologist has told us that there is nothing else that they can do to help my husband. He doesn't know how sick he is." He's in the coronary care unit at the moment.

As I talked with this couple on the phone, to hear their hearts in this very difficult time, to sense the trust and the peace and the rest and even the praise we sang and we read Scripture (we had a worship service there on the phone) . . .

Listen, if Jesus is the resurrection and the life—and He is—what do we have to fear? What’s the worst that can happen to you? You say, “I can die!” Well, the good news is that He has overcome death.

So the resurrection means that those who are in Christ no longer need to fear death. He has delivered us from Satan’s power who, for many years, held us in bondage to the fear of death—Hebrews tells us.

Number 4: The resurrection means that God has accepted and approves of the work that Christ did on the cross, and therefore He accepts and approves of us. Now this is something you may not have thought about a lot, but it is a huge implication of the resurrection.

The resurrection for Christ meant that His work was finished. The price for sin had been paid; no penalty was left. God's righteous anger against sin and sinners had been completely satisfied. There was no remaining guilt. The resurrection was proof that God had accepted the payment and completely approved of Christ’s death in the place of sinners.

Now, the Scripture tells us that we have been united with Christ in His death, burial, and resurrection. Ephesians 2 says that God “raised us up with Christ”—which means that God not only accepts Christ, but He accepts us. He approves of us as He approves of Christ.For those who are in Christ, that means there is no longer any condemnation for any of our sins—past, present, or future. Could I hear a hallelujah?! Amen!

Dannah: Those are some things worth meditating on! That’s Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, sharing four implications, four ways the resurrection of Jesus affects your life and mine. 

Nancy actually shared seven implications of the resurrection in that message, but we only had time for four today. If you’d like to hear the complete message, just go to ReviveOurHearts.com/weekend and click on today’s episode. It’s called “Resurrection Hope.” You’ll find a link there to Nancy’s message and all seven of the implications she listed.

There’s probably no better time to think about the hope we have because Jesus is alive than when we’re in a time of intense grief. There was a time in the life of Laura Booz when she also had to cling to resurrection hope. 

Laura Booz: If I learned anything from losing Juliette, I learned to place all my trust in Jesus, to turn my face upward and look for the resurrection of the dead. Nothing, not even this tragedy, can snatch me out of His hand.

Dannah: Laura is a dear friend of mine. She’s also the host of a podcast called Expect Something Beautiful, part of the Revive Our Hearts family of podcasts. In one episode, Laura shared about a time she was pregnant and heading to the doctor for an appointment to check on her baby’s growth.

Laura: We decided to bring the two big girls with us, because we thought they would love to see their little sister growing. 

So we all crowded in the ultrasound room. I wore a hospital gown and laid on the table. Ryan stood next to me holding one little girl in each arm. I remember that the technician adjusted the computer screen so we could see it clearly. She moved the ultrasound probe across my round belly, and an image flickered on the screen. 

Then suddenly, she turned the screen away from us. She got really serious and quiet. Then she said, “I’m so sorry, your baby’s stopped growing.”

“What?” I asked. 

“Your baby has died” she responded in a low voice, and she said she was so sorry. 

Well, the room was silent. My thoughts were spinning. Ryan leaned in toward me. He and the girls wrapped their arms around my neck, their bodies pressed into mine, and we wept.

Dannah: What followed for Laura and Ryan was the difficult process of delivering a lifeless baby. Laura described the emotions she felt as she came to terms with her own need to release little Juliette into the Lord’s hands, both that day in the hospital, and later, when her body was laid to rest.

Laura: I vividly remember standing by her grave, and instead of feeling bitterness toward God, I felt hmmm . . . what did I feel? I felt desperation for Him. Her short little life, and now us returning her body to the soil, it was so blatantly wrong. All I could think was that everything about Jesus then must be true. In my spirit, I clung to Him and said, “Lord, now it’s got to be true. Everything I’ve banked my faith on thus far, it’s got to be true.”

I thought about this verse from John 20 verse 9, and I don’t even know if this is what it means, in proper context. Its talking about the disciples, and it says, “For as yet they did not understand the Scripture, that he must rise from the dead.” That’s how I felt at her grave, I felt, “He must rise from the dead,” because I needed Him to do something about the grave.

It’s very common to say that our faith in God is strengthened by all the good things in life, when we look at majestic mountains or cuddle a little puppy in our arms. But if we’re honest, I think our faith in God can be strengthened just as much, if not more so, when we stand by the graveside of someone we love.

When Jesus was approaching the graveside of His dear friend, Lazarus, He told Lazarus’s sister Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.” And He asked her, “Do you believe this? She said to him, ‘Yes, Lord’” (John 11:25–27).

And then when Lazarus’s other sister, Mary approached Jesus, she said exactly what I said to Him about my precious Juliette, she said, “If you had been here, my brother would not have died” (v. 32). You know how Jesus responded? He wept. He didn’t defend Himself. He didn’t tell her to grow up and get some faith. He wept because there is nothing natural or good about death, and there is no sense in pretending that there is. 

It’s an awful thing. It is directly opposed to God’s plan for humanity. His plan is that we would have everlasting life with Him. And then He said to everyone, “Didn’t I tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?” (v. 40). Like . . . hint, hint. I’m about to do something amazing. Then He lifted His eyes to heaven, prayed to His heavenly Father, and then He raised His friend from the dead. 

That’s one of the stories I think about when I stand by the grave of someone I love. But the other story, and the more important story is, the story of the day when God raised Jesus from the dead.

When Lazarus rose from the dead, he rose with a body that was still prone to weakness and aging and eventually death. But when Jesus rose from the dead, He had a body that was imperishable. He conquered death once and for all. He was what the Bible calls a “first fruit,” a new kind of human life. His body was perfect, no longer subject to weakness and aging and death. 

So His resurrection is extremely important to you and me. His resurrection makes all the difference in the world. His resurrection is why we look to heaven and wait for His return. His resurrection is why we keep on in our faith. 

Dannah: Laura Booz goes into more details in a gut-wrenching and powerful episode called “Finding Hope at the Grave of Juliette.” You can listen to it when you visit ReviveOurHearts.com/weekend, and click on today’s program.

Song: "Beneath the Cross of Jesus," The London Fox Singers

Beneath the cross of Jesus I feign would my stand.
The shadow of the mighty rock within a weary land.
A hope within the wilderness, a rest upon the way.
From the burning of the newtide heat and the burden of the day.

I take the cross thy shadow for my abiding place.
I ask no other sunshine than the sunshine of His face.
Content to let the world go by, to know no gain or loss.
My sinful self my only shame, my glory of the cross.

If you’re interested in more resources related to Easter, we’ve compiled a helpful list for you. It’s a great way to meditate more intentionally on the rich blessings we have because of Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection from the dead. I hope you’ll read an article or listen to a podcast episode that makes you have your own private time of worship! 

You’ll find a link to it at that same website, Revive Our Hearts.com/weekend. Click where you see “Resurrection Hope,” and look where you see “Resources related to this episode.” 

Next time on Revive Our Hearts Weekend, we’re going to start a series on prayer. I don’t know about you, but I can sure stand to grow in this area of my spiritual life. 

• Next week we’ll be discussing how we can do a better job of praying for God to move in us personally. 
• Then, we’ll do an episode on crying out to God for a move of His Spirit in a corporate sense, like what we’ve seen in our country in recent weeks. 
• And then in the last weekend of April, we’ll take a closer look at how we can grow in the spiritual discipline of interceding for others.

So I hope you’ll catch those upcoming episodes. 

Thanks for listening to Revive Our Hearts Weekend. Have a wonderful time celebrating our Lord’s glorious resurrection, and don’t forget about the hope you and I have because of it! I’m Dannah Gresh. 

Now, to close our program, here’s Barbara Rainey with a final thought from a well-known author of last century.

Barbara Rainey: This is a quote by A. W. Tozer quote. He wrote, "To the early Christians, Easter was not a holiday. We think of it as a holiday, but it wasn't even a holy day for them. It wasn't even a day at all. To the early Christians, it was an accomplished fact that lived with them all year long. They did not celebrate His rising from the dead and then go back to their everyday lives and wait another year. They lived by the fact the Christ has risen from the dead and they had risen with Him." And that should be how we look at Easter. It's not a holiday. It's not a one-day event. It should change our lives for the whole year.

Revive Our Hearts Weekend wants you to celebrate your freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

¹"Beneath the Cross of Jesus," The London Fox Singers, Christ the Lord Is Risen Today – Easter Hymns, Various Artists ℗ 2014 Classic Fox Records.

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