Primary Importance

When it comes Christian holidays, none is of greater importance than Easter. “What about Christmas?” some will say. Really? Oh, I love Christmastime too. It’s a wonderful time of year! The most? Well, Easter makes Christmas, Christmas. The Word becoming flesh and dwelling among us is of eternally great importance and should be celebrated, but in the grand scheme of Christian Holy Days, Easter needs more props than it gets, for the right reasons, of course. Not bunnies, eggs, or chocolate (although dark chocolate is a blessing from God!) Other holidays—indeed our faith—are meaningless, without Easter.

Critics will say Easter has no significance or worse, ungodly significance. They trace its roots to pagan practices, idolatry, the spring equinox, the heathen holiday “Ishtar,” while taking great pains to discredit the correlation between the Resurrection and Easter. Have you heard that stuff? I tell the naysayers, take a chill pill! Use this season to focus on the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, the most important event to which we can point in reaching people with the good news of Jesus Christ!

Is resurrection really that important? I’m glad you asked! Evidently the writers of the New Testament thought so, as did the Holy Spirit, Who inspired them to write it. No less than 126 times in the New Testament we find the term “resurrection” and it’s related words, “resurrect,” “raise,” “raised,” etc., referring to bodily resurrection from the dead. Few topics are more important.

Resurrection is one of the original concepts in Scripture. The Book of Job is thought to be the most ancient book of the Bible. Job makes a statement that only makes sense in light of the truth of resurrection:

“As for me, I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last He will take His stand on the earth. Even after my skin is destroyed, yet from my flesh I shall see God; Whom I myself shall behold, and whom my eyes will see and not another. My heart faints within me!” (Job 19:25-27 NASB)

Only through resurrection could one whose “skin is destroyed” see God “from his flesh” at the last! Job had been inspired to know he would be raised from the grave to see his Redeemer sometime after his physical death! Better yet, despite Job’s woes, his spirit was obviously uplifted—greatly overwhelmed emotionally—by the concept!

Since Christ’s Resurrection, billions of souls have been uplifted by the truth that Jesus was lifted up from the grave. So, what better time than this, Easter—when millions of people who wouldn’t normally darken the doorway of a sanctuary, or fill the seat of a pew, flock to our hallowed halls—what better time to really showcase the thing God made a priority in His revealed, written Word and a reality through His only begotten Son? There is no better time!

The fact that Jesus actually lived, died and rose from the dead has had a genuine impact in the world in which even the most ardent skeptic lives. Furthermore, the sign—the event—that Jesus Himself said would be the evidence for which His critics were looking, was His Resurrection:

“Then some of the scribes and Pharisees said to Him, ‘Teacher, we want to see a sign from You.’ But He answered and said to them, ‘An evil and adulterous generation craves for a sign; and yet no sign will be given to it but the sign of Jonah the prophet; for just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea monster, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth’.” (Matthew 12:38-40)

Join us this Easter Weekend as we take a close look at the reality of what Jesus did to convince His critics and conquer death—THE RESURRECTION! Help us celebrate Easter at Living Oaks! You’ll get to see and hear from some people who have expressed publicly the raised to life experience in their own lives. We hope you’re encouraged and uplifted by their stories and every other aspect of the most important event in history.

“For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures” —1 CORINTHIANS 15:3–4