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Most Easter Sundays started early for me as a teen. The church youth group always had a sunrise service. We’d drive a few miles north of town and sit on the rim of a canyon cutting through the sandstone. The leaders encouraged us to spread out, so we wouldn’t talk, hoping we’d think about the meaning of Easter, and maybe, just maybe, even talk to God about it a little. It must have worked.  

I didn’t like getting up early, and I didn’t like sitting in the cold, but there’s something about watching the sun rise that makes the inconvenience worth-while. The reddish-orange hue on the horizon as that glowing disc approaches and then cracks the skyline never fails to impress. The light that begins to dispel shadows, pushing the darkness away, brings everything it touches into sharp focus. As it begins its march across the sky, the sun takes on a golden yellow glow, spreading warmth and bringing the promise of a new day. Sun rise. Son Rise. The play on words is trite, it’s old, it’s been used a kajillion times, but it’s still meaningful. On that first Easter Sunday the sun rose and the Son of God rose, and as He rose the light of His gospel spread, illuminating truth and dispersing the shadows of lies.

Sun rise brings the promise of a new day, but each day is fleeting and quickly comes to a close.

Son Rise – the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead – is the promise not of a new day but of a new life; a life lived in the very presence of the Lord Himself. A life that is not fleeting, that will not pass quickly, a life that is everlasting!

We have to remember there’s no Easter Sunday without Good Friday. There’s no Son Rise without the horrible, unjust, yet wonderful sacrificial death of Jesus. The juxtaposition is poignant; the indescribable fettered agony of the cross and the pure ecstasy of freedom in the resurrection.

But why did Jesus have to die, especially in such a cruel way? A good question we all have to answer, even a teenager sitting in the cold dawn of an Easter morning. We all have to come face to face with our own sin and the realization that we cannot justify ourselves before the holy God Almighty. We need a savior, one who can and will pay the price for our sins. Jesus was able and willing and that’s why He had to die. He was the only one who could redeem us, and for that He endured the cross.

Culturally sin is passé, but it’s still an accurate describer of what fills the heart of man. We are all sinners, we all need a savior, we all need Easter; not the bunny or the eggs, we need Jesus. We need amazing grace and He provides it – in abundance.   

Without Easter the past has no meaning, the present has no purpose and the future holds no hope. Have you seen the Son Rise on Easter morning?  

“Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?”

As we look towards celebrating the resurrection of Jesus, it is certainly the pinnacle of our lives leading into eternity. For us, that joyous morning looms large. But let’s look at the evening of that momentous day when Luke tells us about two sad people walking away from Jerusalem, disheartened that the Messiah had not come, and perplexed at all the happenings of the previous week: the arrest, suffering and death of their hope. Jesus came alongside them unrecognized and began talking to them about the events of the previous days.  

He enlightened them about His purpose in coming into the world, and how scripture pointed towards Him from ages past. When they stopped for the evening, the men recognized Jesus in the breaking of bread with Him, and joyfully and excitedly returned to Jerusalem to tell everyone. They said to each other, “Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?” (Luke 24:32)

Were those two just lucky beyond measure, or unusually blessed, getting a Bible study from Jesus, or are we the ones most blessed? Unlike the walkers, we have the opportunity every day to open the scriptures and to learn about God’s plan for us, and hear His purpose for our lives through our prayers. God has provided us with the gift of His written Word, so that we never need to be uninformed.

The two were walking physically, and had been trying to walk spiritually with Jesus. Have we realized the promise of the resurrection in our lives? Are we walking in the light of Jesus in all that we do, or are we swayed by the world around us? They were listening to Him; are we? The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shone.  (Isaiah 9:2) 

The walkers were excited that their teacher, friend (and now Savior) was not dead, but alive forevermore. How much more can we rejoice than them, because the power of the Holy Spirit dwells in us, and we experience that power every day. They told their friends the Good News; do we share with all those around us the hope of eternal life which we have? 

So, let’s rejoice that the tomb was empty, but let’s also look forward, like the walkers to Emmaus. Jesus has not only risen indeed, but He lives forevermore, and wants to walk with us and help us grow in knowledge of Him. If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Colossians 3:1

Faithful Christians and equally zealous nonbelievers can agree on the following statement: If Jesus of Nazareth didn’t rise from the dead, then the entire Christian faith is worthless. The Apostle Paul agreed when he wrote that “if Christ hasn’t been raised then our faith is in vain…. and we are of all people, most to be pitied” (1 Cor. 15).  The veracity of our faith boils down to a single event that either happened or didn’t – a single event that is open to the tools of historical investigation.  If we can encourage skeptics to overcome their biases and to investigate this event for themselves, many of them will awaken to the plausibility of the historic Christian position. This alone won’t save anyone – but it illustrates one of the ways apologetics is an important part of evangelism in the modern (and postmodern) world.

As a graduate student studying Physics in an environment overtly hostile to Christianity, God took me down my own path of discovering the bankruptcy of the default skeptical positions assumed in that culture.  Once I realized that theists and non-theists alike believed in “miracles” (what’s a bigger miracle than the Universe coming into existence out of nothing?) it gradually became clearer to me that God existed, and could therefore intervene if, when, and how, He wanted. Yet, before experimenting with prayer and ultimately placing my faith in the God of the Bible, I had to become convinced of the historical plausibility of the resurrection myself.

Do you know what I found? A remarkably high number of even non-Christian professional historians agree on dozens of historical facts that can be arranged into three broad categories: 1) The discovery of Jesus’ empty tomb by a group of his women followers. 2) The postmortem appearances to several individuals and groups. 3) The origin of the disciples’ belief in Jesus’ resurrection. The task of the historian is then to compare all the competing hypotheses according to certain criteria for the best explanation (see graphic inset).

Even the most skeptical non-Christian scholars acknowledge that the earliest Christian hypothesis proclaimed by Jesus’ disciples, skeptics like James, and persecutors like Saul, was that “God raised Jesus from the dead”. This fact can be established using only Paul’s universally accepted letters, one of which contains the most primitive Christian creed proclaiming the resurrection (1 Cor. 15:3-5), which is dated to within a couple of years and possibly even months of the crucifixion (see graphic timeline).  This allows no time for legendary development or corrupted oral tradition assumed by alternative hypotheses.  The resurrection hypothesis benefits from several early and independently attested eyewitness accounts supported by many biblical and extra-biblical sources that overshadow every alternative hypothesis (various “conspiracy theories”, the “apparent death” or “mythological” explanation, the “Hallucination hypothesis”, and combinations of these).

The resurrection hypothesis not only holds its own under rigorous historical analysis – it appears to be the best explanation of the established facts*.  It’s a remarkable fact that alternative hypotheses have less traction today than they did 50 years ago among academic scholars in the relevant fields. When put into the context of the life and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth, the resurrection hypothesis not only fits the historical data the best, it also vindicates Jesus’ claims about Himself, and gives us our only hope. For God “has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead” –  Paul at the Aereopagus in Athens (Acts 17:31).

*for rigorous analysis of available historical data see any number of books, publications, and debates by Dr. Gary Habermas, Dr. Mike Licona, Dr. William Lane Craig, Dr. N.T. Wright among others.

https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/resurrection-jesus-christ/

I know one of the concerns of the children's music ministry is that the children understand what they are singing and that they mean it. And I share that concern for our people. In a moment the choir will sing a song called, "Hosanna, Hosanna!" And after that we all will sing a song which begins: "Hosanna in the highest!" So I want to give a little lesson in Greek and Hebrew, to make sure we all know what the New Testament means when it says in three different places, "Hosanna to the Son of David!" (Matthew 21:9, 15); or, "Hosanna in the highest!" (Mark 11:9, 10); or simply, "Hosanna!" (John 12:13).

A Lesson in Greek and Hebrew

You all know that the New Testament was first written in Greek, and the Old Testament was first written in Hebrew. Wherever the word "hosanna" occurs in the New Testament, do you know what the Greek word is? Right! It's "hosanna." All the English translators did was use English letters (h-o-s-a-n-n-a) to make the sound of a Greek word.

But if you look in a Greek dictionary to find what it means, you know what you find? You find that it is really not originally a Greek word after all. The men who wrote the New Testament in Greek did the same thing to a Hebrew word that our English translators did to the Greek word: they just used Greek letters to make the sound of a Hebrew phrase. I know this sounds sort of complicated. But it's really not. Our English word "hosanna" comes from a Greek word "hosanna" which comes from a Hebrew phrase hoshiya na.

And that Hebrew phrase is found one solitary place in the whole Old Testament, Psalm 118:25, where it means, "Save, please!" It is a cry to God for help. Like when somebody pushes you off the diving board before you can swim and you come up hollering: "Help, save me . . . Hoshiya na!"

A Shift in Meaning

But something happened to that phrase, hoshiya na. The meaning changed over the years. In the psalm it was immediately followed by the exclamation: "Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!" The cry for help, hoshiya na, was answered almost before it came out of the psalmist's mouth. And over the centuries the phrase hoshiya na stopped being a cry for help in the ordinary language of the Jews. Instead it became a shout of hope and exultation. It used to mean, "Save, please!" But gradually, it came to mean, "Salvation! Salvation! Salvation has come!" It used to be what you would say when you fell off the diving board. But it came to be what you would say when you see the lifeguard coming to save you! It is the bubbling over of a heart that sees hope and joy and salvation on the way and can't keep it in.

So "Hosanna!" means, "Hooray for salvation! It's coming! It's here! Salvation! Salvation!"

And "Hosanna to the Son of David!" means, "The Son of David is our salvation! Hooray for the king! Salvation belongs to the king!"

And "Hosanna in the highest!" means, "Let all the angels in heaven join the song of praise. Salvation! Salvation! Let the highest heaven sing the song!"

Two Kinds of Hosannas

Picture a Super Bowl game, and (believe it or not) the Vikings are three points ahead of the Pittsburgh Steelers. The Steelers are on their own 35 and have no more time outs. There are two seconds remaining on the clock. The Vikings' fans are going wild. The Steelers line up, fake a pass to the receivers on the left sideline, and run a wide sweep around the right end, and the quarterback breaks into the open and heads down the right sideline—40 - 45 - 50 - 45. The only hope for the Vikings is Willie Teal, the safety, cutting a diagonal across the field. And out of the Vikings' grandstand come two kinds of hosannas, the old kind and the new kind. One part of the crowd is yelling: "Catch him! Catch him, Willie!" (That's the old hosanna.) The other part of the crowd is yelling, "You got him! You got him, Willie!" (That's the new hosanna.) The word moved from plea to praise; from cry to confidence.

So when we sing "Hosanna" now, let's make it very personal. Let's make it our praise and our confidence. The Son of David has come. He has saved us from guilt and fear and hopelessness. Salvation! Salvation belongs to our God and to the Son! Hosanna! Hosanna in the highest!

DesiringGod. Hosanna. March 27, 1983. John Piper

https://www.desiringgod.org/messages/hosanna