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Remeber Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, descended from David. This is my Gospel. 2 Timothy 2:8
Easter seems to be a lot about color.
The colors of that very first Easter were not so bright and cheery as our colors are today…at least it didn’t seem so cheerful. The first Easter started off cold, callous and oppressive.
There was a feeling of death that first Easter. It had been a bloody, cruel Friday outside the walls of Jerusalem. It was anything but a Good Friday.
Three men had hung on rough Roman crosses. Two were known criminals, but the One in the middle had done nothing to deserve capital punishment. Even the Roman Governor had stated, I find no fault in Him. But under pressure from the Jewish religious leaders and the people he had allowed the crucifixion to take place anyway.
Quite a few people had truly believed this third crucifixion victim was the long-awaited Messiah. Yet here He was dying a criminal’s death.
When the One on the middle cross had died a small group of followers took His body from the cross, quickly wrapped it in burial cloth and then laid the body in a borrowed tomb close to the site of crucifixion. They closed the tomb and walked away. Later Roman guards were posted in front of the tomb to make sure nothing would happen to the body. Quite a lot of to-do over a common criminal, wouldn’t you say?
That is how the first Easter began – as a dark, cruel, depressing Friday. But Easter changed everything, even the colors.
Just before the sun rose that first Easter morning the earth shook, the stone covering the entrance to the tomb rolled away and Jesus walked out of the grave ALIVE! And when He walked out of the tomb it changed everything
We’ve all heard of Scratch and Sniff. Well, this morning as we consider the colors of Easter we’re going to take a sort of Taste and See approach. You’ll be given a packet of M & M’s and they correspond to the colors we’re going to discover this morning. So if you are adventurous I invite you to eat along with me as we work our way through the colors of Easter.
All the colors of Easter fit together to tell a wonderful, compelling story of Jesus’ power. And the colors follow the following words from the song Lord I Lift Your Name on High by the Katinas:
You came from heaven to earth to show the way,
from the earth to the cross my debt to pay
from the cross to the grave
from the grave to the sky
Lord I lift Your name on high.
1. The first color of Easter is
yellow/gold
-
You came from heaven to earth to show the way
- This is the color of
royalty and reminds us that Jesus is really
God.
Remeber Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, descended from David. This is my Gospel. 2 Timothy 2:8
For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. God did not send his Son into the world to condemn it, but to save it. John 3:16-17
I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. John 14:6
2. The second color of Easter is
red.
-
From the earth to the cross my debt to pay
- This is the color of Jesus'
shed blood and reminds us of Jesus'
payment for our
sin debt.
Two thousand years ago Jesus Christ hung on a cross, bled and died for a purpose: that purpose was to bring us forgiveness of sins and a wonderful, eternal life with Him.
SIN - it hurts, it separates, and it pays a huge price
And if we accept what Jesus did on the cross the hurt, the price and the separation of sin can all be forgiven.
For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, and raised on the third day according to the Scriptures. 1 Corinthians 15:3-4
3. The third color of Easter is
brown.
-
From the cross to the grave
- This is the color of the
tomb and it reminds us that Jesus really did
die.
Brown reminds us that Jesus really did die. He had to. It was His death that paved the way for what would happen on Easter morning.
4. The fourth color of Easter is blue
-
From the grave to the sky
- This is the color of the
sky and reminds us that Jesus really
rose from
the dead.
Jesus came back to life and eventually returned into heaven to prepare a home for us for eternity!
Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!”
So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. Then Simon Peter came along behind him and went straight into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, as well as the cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus’ head. The cloth was still lying in its place, separate from the linen. Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. (They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.) Then the disciples went back to where they were staying.
