by Dr. Chuck Jarvis, Senior Pastor
Valley View Community Church
This Sunday is Easter. Each year at about this time, we gather in our churches as believers in Jesus Christ to celebrate the wonderful truth of the resurrection. But this year will be different. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, our services have been cancelled. The worship we offer together, the fellowship we look forward to having with one another, will be largely absent from this Easter’s experience.
But we need to remember that Easter is much more than just a Sunday service each year. Easter is much larger than any disruptive force that makes its way into our lives. Easter is about a miracle that transcends the worst of situations we may find ourselves in. Easter is about the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Easter is about God in the Person of Jesus Christ conquering the scourge of death and securing the promise of eternal life to all who believe in Him.
The Apostle Paul speaks of the promise in the resurrection in Acts 13:32. In his sermon to the people of Antioch he declares that even though Jesus Christ was rejected and crucified on a cross, “God raised Him from the dead” (verse 30). That resurrection was the “promise which was made to the fathers”, “glad tidings” he calls it, by which God “fulfilled … for us” the “promise” as well.
He calls the promise “the word of salvation’ that “has been sent to you” from God, the heavenly Father (verse 26). It is the word of deliverance from the condemnation of sin, “the forgiveness of sins” (verse 38) because of the sacrifice that Jesus made in our place on the cross. It means we are declared righteous before God, “justified from all things from which you could not be justified by the law of Moses” and realized only by those who “believe” in Jesus (verse 39).
Finally, the promise ultimately is the guarantee of eternal life when we die, an unending existence in the presence of our Savior. No more suffering, no more pain, no more disease, no more death. It is this promise that we must cling to amid the uncertainty and difficulty that has engulfed our lives in recent weeks. As believers in Jesus Christ, the promise in the resurrection is knowing that whatever we face in this life is swallowed up in the certain hope of our eventual resurrection to eternal life.
This Easter Sunday, think on these wonderful truths from the Scriptures. Ask God to calm your heart and confirm in the depths of your heart the promise in the resurrection. “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son (Jesus), that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).
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