http://www.preachingtoday.com/media/podcast/preaching-during-easter.html?start=2

It’s a sermon called “The Up-to-the-Minute Relevance of the Resurrection.” This is a clip from his intro so let’s listen to that and then we’ll break it down.

John Stott: I think it’s important for us to be quite clear on what we’re talking about. We’re not talking about Jesus’ survival, as a result of which we can say, “Well, he’s alive,” or, “He is living.” No—we can say that about anybody who has died. When President Makarios of Cyprus died some years ago, his followers spray-painted the buildings in Cyprus with the words, MAKARIOS LIVES ! He hadn’t risen from the dead, but his influence was still living. In Latin America, there are many students who have such confidence in Che Guevara as one of their leaders that they often sing and chant, “Che lives.” Or, if I may mention D. L. Moody, he once said in New York in 1899, “Some day you’ll read in the papers that Moody is dead. Don’t you believe a word of it. At that moment I shall be more alive than I am today.” But Moody was not talking about having been resurrected. He simply meant he would survive death. So the Resurrection is not just the survival of Jesus.

Next, the resurrection of Jesus is not just his resuscitation. It doesn’t mean that, having died, he was brought back again to this life, only to die again. C. S. Lewis expressed his great sympathy for Lazarus, who was resuscitated by Jesus, brought back to this life. C. S. Lewis said it was very hard on Lazarus, because he had to do his dying all over again. But Jesus didn’t. We are talking not about his survival, nor about his resuscitation, but about his resurrection. God performed a dramatic act by which he arrested the process of decay, decomposition, and corruption; rescued Jesus out of the realm of death; and transformed his body into a new vehicle for his personality, so that he had a new power and was now immortal, never to die again. That is something new that never had happened before and has never yet happened since.

I bought Stott’s sermon: Stott-Resurrection-pt079a.mp3