I'd like to wish you all a blessed Easter! This is a day late, but better late than never.
This one is the last of the series in the Holy Week series I have been sharing with you.
Have You Found What You’re Looking For? (Easter Sunday)
Like children scattering around a yard for Easter eggs, you and I are on a hunt.
We all hunt. Our thirsty souls rummage through every nook and cranny
of this world, in search of shiny pleasures and saccharine delights.
Every such joy seeker, in pursuit of treasures that will not fade or
rust or break or be stolen, must pay careful attention to Easter — not
with a nod-off-through-the-sermon kind of attention, but with a real,
earnest, eager attention riveted on Christ. If we miss the significance
of the resurrection, we scamper past the greatest joy in the universe.
The Joy of Jesus
As the dark shadows stalked the soon-to-be crucified Christ, he
turned his attention to joy. Throughout this Holy Week of his
crucifixion, Jesus had foreshadowed his death for his disciples who
struggled to make sense of it all. He addressed their concerns directly
in
John 16:19–24.
Jesus knew that they wanted to ask him, so he said to
them, “Is this what you are asking yourselves, what I meant by saying,
‘A little while and you will not see me, and again a little while and
you will see me’? Truly, truly, I say to you, you will weep and lament,
but the world will rejoice. You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will
turn into joy.
When a woman is giving birth, she has sorrow because her hour has
come, but when she has delivered the baby, she no longer remembers the
anguish, for joy that a human being has been born into the world. So
also you have sorrow now, but I will see you again, and your hearts will
rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you.
In that day you will ask nothing of me. Truly, truly, I say to you,
whatever you ask of the Father in my name, he will give it to you. Until
now you have asked nothing in my name. Ask, and you will receive, that
your joy may be full."
We rewind Holy Week to hear Jesus forecast the changes to come in his
resurrection. He wanted his disciples to anticipate Easter Sunday as
the cataclysmic dawning of true joy. And here’s what it all means for
joy seekers.
A Blood-Bought Joy
Jesus spoke of this joy as he faced the torture of Good Friday. He
faced denial, faced betrayal, faced beatings, faced splinters and nails
and spears — he could not stop talking about joy! Only joy would keep
him going. Joy was on his mind, joy was on his tongue, and joy was
drawing him, not away from suffering, but
into it (
Hebrews 12:2).
Jesus went to the cross for joy: to buy joy, create joy, and offer joy.
As the world celebrated the savage killing of God, out of this sea of
foaming rebel hostility emerged a blood-bought, inextinguishable joy.
An Unbreakable Joy
If the killing of the Author of life could not extinguish this joy
Jesus speaks about, nothing can — and nothing ever will. No opposition
from the world, no opposition to the gospel, and no cultural despising
of Christ, will overcome the resurrection joy of Jesus.
As we have seen this week, the unquenchable joy of Easter was birthed
in the greatest trauma and tragedy and evil the world has ever
unleashed — the murder of the Son of God. Death, the Devil, demons and
the coordinated rebellion of mankind all allied together cannot stymie
this joy. Persecutors cannot steal this joy away. No power, no event, no
enemy, can sequester the resurrection joy of Jesus Christ that burst
out of the tomb with him.
Worldly joys are brittle in comparison. Sickness and poverty crumble
joy, and the long process of aging and dying slowly strips life of all
its worldly pleasures (
Ecclesiastes 12:1–8). Death recedes all our joys, save one. Only one joy cannot be thwarted by death, because only one joy was purchased by blood.
A Newborn Joy
The resurrection joy of Jesus escapes the clutches of death because
it’s the joy of the new creation, a joy broken free from the evil of
this fallen world.
And this makes Easter breathtaking. As Jonathan Edwards boldly
declared: “The resurrection of Christ is the most joyful event that ever
came to pass.” And rightly did Charles Spurgeon say: “No man shall ever
take from me the joy that Christ rose from the dead.” The resurrection
is the most joy-filled divine event in biblical history worthy of our
eternal adulation and awe and wonder. But it’s more than a breathtaking
historical spectacle.
Jesus employed a common birthing analogy to introduce a radical
cosmic birth. His death was the birth pangs of a new creation; his
resurrection was the arrival of a new creation into history. In his
resurrection, Jesus set in motion an unstoppable chain reaction that
will one day culminate in the resurrection of the dead and the
renovation of all creation.
Here’s the point. In the long history of joy in this fallen world,
after ages of unsatisfied appetites and hunger pangs in the hearts of
men and women and children, the resurrection of Christ marks a
crescendo. Never has joy found greater expression on earth. In
John 15:11, Jesus offered his disciples “full joy,” an invitation only possible from
within the final stage in cosmic history. Such a stage was born on Easter morning.
Jesus wants his disciples to thirst for a post-resurrection joy as
the arrival of a newly amplified joy, a long-awaited and
long-anticipated joy, a never before fully seen or experienced joy in
human history. The resurrection of Christ will bring the most
spectacularly joy-filled event
because it ignites an eternally abiding and forever unconquerable joy.
The Old Testament foretold of this joy, the birth of Christ announced
this joy, Holy Week seemed to extinguish this joy, but the resurrection
of Christ is the point in history when the unassailable torch of God’s
joy emerged from the sea of foaming rebel hostility, rose up and lit the
summit of an Olympic torch of joy that will burn for all eternity.
A Joy for the Asking
But as magnificently as this joy entered the world in this defining
moment in cosmic history, this joy presses close to us. So Jesus taught
his disciples to ask and seek for more of this joy. This is the open
invitation of the Messianic age.
And this joy makes sense of the logic of John’s Gospel. Jesus said he
must die and go to the Father, and would leave his joy with the
disciples. Once he was with the Father, Jesus sent the Spirit to dwell
in them (another unmistakable sign of the new creation). United to
Christ, the disciples would now pray by the Spirit, to the Father,
through the Son.
Easter reshapes prayer, spirituality, and joy. With this inauguration
of a new creation, the disciples became adopted sons who could pray to a
Father who is eager to pour out spiritual flourishing upon them in
every way, leading to a full and satisfying joy which nobody can take
away.
Which is great news for the disciples.
Inexpressible Joy for You
But Jesus’s bold resurrection joy promised to the disciples in
John 16:19–24 is now offered to you and me. We are promised the same “joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory” (
1 Peter 1:8).
In Christ, God delights to pour out this resurrection joy into your
life, a joy that fills, and a joy that cannot be stolen from you. What
do we do? We simply ask our gracious Father for more of it!
The Easter joy Jesus foretold has arrived, and it’s deeply personal.
The resurrection is both a cosmic event, and it comes intimately close,
reminding us of God’s work in our lives. “The point of Easter is that
God is in the process of clearing this world of all heartbreak” (John
Piper). Therefore, “Christ’s resurrection not only gives you hope for
the future; it gives you hope to handle your scars right now” (Tim
Keller).
Such a restoring and reviving joy was purchased for you and me in the resurrection of Christ.
Feast and Celebrate
Easter is for stark contradictions.
If Christ is still dead, death reigns, and all our joys are vain. So
hoard every plastic Easter egg you find, because whatever you find
inside is all the joy you have to grab. Or, as Paul says, “If the dead
are not raised, ‘Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die’” (
1 Corinthians 15:32).
But if death is dead, and if the dead are raised — if Christ is risen
from the dead! — brothers and sisters let us feast and celebrate, for
the dawning light of our inextinguishable and inexhaustible eternal
pleasures have broken into the darkness, offering us a life of joy in
Christ that cannot fade or rust or be stolen away!
Today, delight in the resurrection joy of Christ, pray it bigger in your life, and treasure it for all eternity.
This is the final post in Desiring God’s 2014 Holy Week series “The Final Days of Jesus,” inspired by the new book of the same title by Justin Taylor and Andreas Köstenberger. Holy Week illustrations provided in partnership with Crossway Books and Adam Greene. Previously in the series:
