Why Easter is a Bigger Deal Than Most People Realize

My kids love the chocolate.

I love the chocolate. Yeah, we tend to overdo it at Easter. All the colored eggs and the baskets and spring dresses, it's all so pretty. Keep an eye out for the Easter Bunny. I mean, what kind of holiday doesn't give you a day off? Easter's like the beginning of spring, a time of renewal. Oh, yeah, and there's a special service at church, I think. Well, Easter is this Sunday. I wonder how your family is going to celebrate. Colored eggs, lots of chocolate, how will the deeper meaning of the holiday come out? Welcome to another edition of Focus on the Family with Jim Daly.

I'm John Fuller. John, it's fascinating how the story and influence of Jesus Christ continues to permeate our culture. It's kind of evidence of who he was, right? I mean, the fact that we still recognize what he did, many people, inside the faith and outside the faith.

But I think oftentimes, especially around Easter, a lot of people don't understand what it is. I remember going into a Blockbuster. Now, that's going to date me a little bit.

Okay, that was a while ago. In the 90s, and this woman, Jean, and I went in to get an Easter video, something about Jesus. And we said, do you have any Easter videos? And she looked at us like, hmm. I could tell she was a little lost.

I said, you know, about Jesus. And she goes, that's what Easter's about? She goes, I thought it was about the Easter bunny.

I mean, and my jaw went down. I went, wow, here's a 25-year-old who has no clue what Easter is about. I think that is far more prevalent today than we realize, don't you? Yeah, I think there's a general misunderstanding about the roots of why we celebrate, and also some repulsion. I mean, you're celebrating the death of this guy? Actually, no, we're not. We're celebrating his resurrection. And our life, our eternal life, right?

Yes, yeah. So I am looking forward to our discussion today with Bob Lapine. And I think we'll be really enlightening, especially for people that don't know what Easter is about.

So this is a great way to talk to that woman at, well, it wouldn't be Blockbuster anymore. But, you know, to talk to that person and say, hey, here's a little book for you that you can know more about what Easter is about. Yeah, and the book is 12 Things You Probably Didn't Know About Easter. It's a terrific little resource. We've got details about it on our website. The link is in the show notes, or give us a call.

800, the letter A in the word family. And Bob Lapine is the teaching pastor at Redeemer Community Church in Little Rock, Arkansas. He's a longtime radio host and now hosts a podcast for pastors and church planters.

And he's an author and speaker about a number of topics, including family and faith. And you can learn more about Bob in the show notes. Bob, welcome back to Focus. It's good to see you again. Great to see you guys.

Thanks for the invitation. That story I told about Blockbusters, you weren't able to respond to that. But you mention in the book some British survey that describes something similar. Yeah, they surveyed schoolchildren in England and asked them, what's Easter all about? And most of them thought it was about either the birth of the Easter bunny, or they thought it was about eggs. Some of them thought it was about the invention of the Cadbury egg, the one that served at Easter time.

The only real chocolate. Most of them did not know that it had anything to do with Jesus. And in fact, most British parents are making plans for a holiday at Easter time rather than any kind of religious observance. It's a spring holiday, but most people don't understand its connection to the Christian faith. And you know, you stop and think about it, Easter, in our view, is a bigger day than Christmas. The only reason we celebrate Christmas is because of Easter. Had there been no Easter, the birth of Jesus would be lost to history.

It really would be. I mean, Easter is the resurrection of Christ, which is what defines the entire story, right? And that's why we as Christians believe in him as our Messiah.

In that regard, let me ask you this question. I hadn't thought about it too deeply, but where did we lose it? I mean, how did Christians lose kind of the understanding globally about what Easter is about? It's not about a bunny. I mean, it is kind of weird to think of that.

Like, how did that happen? In fact, one of the fun things I did for this book was to go and say, well, why are there bunnies, and why are there eggs, and why is there chocolate, and why do we have hot-crust buns and marshmallow Peeps at Easter time? And dug in, interestingly enough, a lot of these have some kind of a connection to a spiritual theme that got lost along the way.

Well, let's inform people. Like, for example, the Easter bunny. Where does that come from? So, this goes back to, actually, it's a German tradition. They had kind of their own version of an Easter Santa Claus, a large bunny, who they called the Easter bunny, who would come and give gifts to boys and girls, candy gifts to boys and girls. It was part of their folklore. And of course, bunnies are, we see bunnies starting to hop around in the spring after a long winter, where there have been fewer bunnies around.

They've been hibernating for the winter. So, when you start to see the bunnies in the spring and the little baby bunnies, people start to go, oh, there's new life happening here. And it is that connection to new life that both eggs and bunnies point us to that cause people to go, what has been dead, it's been like the earth has been dead through the winter, but now it's coming alive again. So, again, there's kind of, even in nature, there's a spiritual message that's coming through to us about life coming after death. And that's kind of the core of it, right?

Even rooted in, yeah, that idea of life, life giving, a new life, et cetera. Even fertility is mixed into this, right? Which is all kind of— That's where the eggs come from. Yeah, the whole fertility rights, yeah. So, that idea of the colored eggs, the egg rolling, describe some of that as well.

So, that's going on. Actually, there have been colored eggs. There's been an Easter egg roll at the White House for more than 100 years. I saw like 1868 or something. Every year they go out and do these Easter egg rolls at the White House.

It's become quite a tradition. And eggs go back to, again, the whole idea of life. You look at an egg, a child looks at an egg, it's motionless, there's nothing happening. Life is forming inside, but we don't see it. But there's one day when that egg breaks through, and it's a picture of a stone being rolled away, an obstacle being removed, and life coming out of what was unanimated, in our view. So, eggs have that symbolic representation to what's going on at Easter, and I think that's why eggs and Easter have gone together for years. Yeah.

Bob, let's turn to the more serious, you know, the spiritual side of things. I'm intrigued by your observation. I've actually never heard this, and you would think, once I say it, people will say, wow, we should know that.

But you studied this, I assume, and found that 18 different Jewish laws were broken during the trial of Jesus. Yes. Have you heard that? I have not heard that before. That was really interesting to me.

How did you discover this fact? Now, Bible scholars have looked at this and looked at what happened from the arrest up until the crucifixion. And, of course, the Jews had a judicial system. There were trials.

There was a Sanhedrin. Their case would be pleaded before the Sanhedrin. There were procedures that had to be followed because justice mattered to the Jewish people. And so you needed everything to be confirmed by two or three credible witnesses. You needed to have, in Jewish law, there needed to be a period of time between the presentation of the evidence and the adjudication of the sentence, so that there could be a cooling down, so that passions could slow down.

Well, think about the trial of Jesus. He's arrested in the middle of the night. We don't know what time. Sometime around midnight, one in the morning, the Roman guards and the Jewish temple guards come to the Garden of Gethsemane. He's arrested. He's taken to a trial in the middle of the night. Actually, there were four different trials that Jesus went through in the middle of the night. Before sunup.

Yeah. Caiaphas, the high priest, he went to him. Then he was taken before the Sanhedrin. Then he was taken to King Herod, who was the Jewish king. Then he's back before the Sanhedrin. Then he's moved to Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, for adjudication.

But all of this is happening in the middle of the night. The witnesses who were brought forward contradicted one another in their testimony. They were obviously paid witnesses who were there giving uncredible testimony, and the sentence was pronounced at the same time that the testimony was heard. So all of this combines together to give us a picture of what was really a sham trial and a violation of Jewish laws.

The Jewish authorities wanted Jesus done away with before the Passover began because they were concerned that during the Passover his followers would come and that there would be a revolution that he would lead. And that's why they wanted him taken care of immediately. And the people had just kind of honored him as he rode in on a donkey and waved palm branches and yelled, Hosanna.

Right? So that probably put a lot of fear into the leaders. They saw that and they thought, he's popular among the crowds. The reports of his miracles, their power base was being threatened. Their authority, their livelihood was at risk. And that's why they wanted this to happen in secret.

They wanted it to happen quietly out of the limelight of the events. In fact, there's been a lot of talk about the crowd that was there the morning that Pilate came out and said, do you want Barabbas or do you want Jesus? And the crowd said, we want Barabbas, crucify Jesus. And people have said, these were the same people who were cheering him on when he came into town.

I don't think that's the case. This is before sunrise on the first day of Passover. I think most of the people who had come to town for Passover are still having breakfast or just getting up. No, the Jews had gone out and they had brought in their mob who was chanting, crucify him, crucify him. And so everything from the arrest all the way to the crucifixion was orchestrated and it was a complete violation of Jewish law. Actually, Pilate didn't want to put Jesus to death. He looked at this whole situation and he said, this man does not deserve death.

And he would have let him go. But the Jewish leaders went to him and they said, you know, Rome has put you here to keep peace. And if you don't do what we say, we're going to report back to Rome that you're not keeping the peace and you'll be in trouble with Caesar. And that was ultimately what caused Pilate to say, okay, I'll let you have your way, even though he's innocent in my eyes. He washed his hands and said, do with him what you will.

You know, Bob, you're a pastor and this is, again, some evidence that helped me in my early 20s to really, I think, more concretely cement my faith, if I can use that metaphor. I think it was one of the leaders who said, if this is of man, it'll rise up and then die out like every other uprising has happened. But if this is of God, first of all, there's no stopping it.

Right. And secondly, you're going to be found fighting against God. Do we want to go against God? Now, what caught me about that prophecy, really, was that he was declaring in that moment, during that trial, you know, when all that was happening, he was warning them to be careful about what they're going to do with this man called Jesus. And 2,000 years later, we can look and say, well, was it of man or was it of God? Well, that's the point. His words rang true. Right. And that's, to me, again, as a 22-year-old, I went, wow, there's evidence of something in there.

Stop and think about it. The Roman guards who, under penalty of death, were supposed to make sure that that stone was guarded, they were nowhere to be seen on Easter morning. They had fled because of what had happened. All of Jesus' followers, who were frightened when Jesus was arrested, were now declaring to the crowds, he is risen, he is risen. And they continued that proclamation until their own death. I remember Charles Colson, who was involved in the Watergate conspiracy in the Nixon administration, and he said, I know something about conspiracies. He said, most conspiracies don't hold up because somebody will finally say, okay, we were making that up.

Somebody finally cracks. He said, here were 12 disciples who went to their own death without any of them refuting what they had seen. Because when you have seen a risen Jesus who says, you will be with me, they say, what does death matter to me? I'm going to go to be with him.

And that's where they long to be anyway. Bob, let me ask you this. We as Christians refer to today, Good Friday, as Good Friday. Some people I've talked to, they've often said, outside of the family of faith, like, why do you Christians call it Good Friday? That's when Jesus was, you know, tried and killed. Explain the good part of Good Friday. And as we gather together, as we will tonight at our church for a Good Friday celebration, it will be a sober mood that we will have because we'll be remembering. You set the tone of what that day meant 2,000 years ago.

And it was a brutal, excruciating death. The suffering that Jesus went through is not to be minimized. When we talk about Good Friday being good, we're not talking about the events, we're talking about the outcome of those events. It is not good because of what happened to Jesus, the torture, the abuse, the death of Jesus.

The reason it's good is because of what it accomplished for us. He paid in his death a price that we owed, but we could not pay. He had lived a life we could not live.

He paid a debt we could not pay. And in going to the cross, he brought about our salvation. The Bible says it this way, God made him who knew no sin to be sin for us so that we could become the righteousness of God. We don't have righteousness in ourselves that we can come before God and say, hey, look at my righteousness.

Don't I belong with you? God will say, well, no. As we look at your righteousness, it's deficient. You don't have, and any of us who look honestly at our own lives would have to acknowledge I don't have righteousness that entitles me to a position before God. Jesus had perfect righteousness, and God made the one with perfect righteousness to be sin on our account, to take our sin so that we could then have the righteousness that belonged to him put like a robe over us. And now when God looks at us, he says, oh, I see your righteousness. He's really seeing the righteousness of Christ covering us, and that's why Good Friday is Good Friday.

Yeah. Bob, let me dig into this a little bit because I've had a family member who recently came to the Lord after decades of the rest of us being Christian. And one of the things that she told me, she struggled with that concept. I didn't kill Christ. Why do we talk in terms like he had to die for me? Almost in an understanding of guilt.

You know, like, I don't want that guilt. I mean, I didn't ask him to die for me. Just unpack that as a pastor a little more slowly for people who struggle with, I didn't send Jesus to die for me.

Why do you say that? The breakthrough in my thinking, because I'd grown up hearing Jesus died for your sins, and there were two breakthroughs that happened for me. First was the acknowledgement that my sins were a bigger deal than I realized they were. I'd always thought, I'm a mostly good person who's done a few bad things. And the Bible had to correct my thinking and say, you're a mostly self-centered person who cares only about you and who adjusts everything around your life to orbit around you. That correction made me see, oh, it's a bigger deal than I realized.

But the other breakthrough happened. I remember I was sitting on a bus riding from suburban St. Louis to Jefferson City, Missouri. I was in high school, and I was reading on the bus The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, the first of the Chronicles of Narnia. And when I read about the death of Aslan on the stone table in the place of Edmund, the one who was the traitor, I closed the book and I said, that's what it means. Jesus died for my sins. He went to the place I deserved to go, and he took the death I deserved to receive so that I could be liberated from my bondage to sin and self, to my own passions, appetites, and desires. And that's where I found freedom in the death and resurrection of Christ.

Yeah, that was so, so good. You know, I think too, Bob, the other aspect of our culture today, we live in a very science-oriented, materialistic, prove-it-to-me kind of attitude. And, you know, some of that is good. The realization, though, is we're never going to attain salvation in Christ that way. Right. God requires it to be by faith.

Yes. Now, if you want to argue with him about that, go ahead. But there needs to be that element.

I can understand that. If it were so declarative and so obvious, it wouldn't be a step of faith. Well, and let's make sure listeners understand that faith doesn't mean that you just turn away from what's real or true and say, okay, I'm going to pretend like it's not real or true. Well, and that's where I was going, because when you look at—we've had great guests like J. Warner Wallace on the program, John Burke on Imagine Heaven. These people have really studied the death and resurrection of Christ. And there are many before that.

Josh McDowell, evidence that demands a verdict. If you have an open mind to the idea that maybe there is a God, I think once you read these materials, there's no other way to come out of it except to say, he is. Yeah, and I think that those who doubt can either find their rest and their confidence in their doubt and say, well, I'm just going to let my doubts be my foundation.

Or they can do this. They can go to God with their doubts. God does not turn away doubters and say, you can't come into my presence. Bring your doubts to him and say, prove to me this is true.

Josh McDowell did that as a young man. He had his doubts, and he said, okay, you're going to have to show me that this is true. And I think any honest observer who will take the evidence and lay it side by side and say, okay, either Jesus died, he was in a tomb, but they've never been able to find the body, and all of these people died knowing it was a lie. Do I really think that that's what happened?

Christianity is all built on this false premise that somebody died and people just made up a story about him coming back. Is that what I really think happened? The more you investigate, the more you find that the evidence supports the conclusion. Now, can you say, can I be sure? Can I be sure that this is true? That's where the gap between the evidence and faith comes in to say, can I be sure?

No, this happened years ago. There's no scientific way to prove it. But this is where I have to say, based on the evidence, I'm going to believe that's true, and God honors that faith. Give us two or three of those evidentiary points that come from the resurrection. Well, there were hundreds of witnesses who saw Jesus. He appeared before hundreds of witnesses who, at the time that the gospel stories were being written, were still alive, who could still verify, or who could have called and called foul on the whole thing. They could have said, nobody saw it. No, these were people who said, I saw it.

I was there. So you had witness testimony. To the resurrection.

Yes, you had nobody ever found. You had Roman guards who had fled the scene in spite of the penalty of death. You had the disciples who went to their own death because they believed that this was true. And ultimately, even the apostle Paul, who was trying to persecute Christians, he had committed his life to trying to stamp out Christianity, not believing that the resurrection was true.

God appeared to him on the road to Damascus, turned his whole life upside down, and Paul went to his own death because he had no other conclusion other than this must be true. God, part of the evidence we have today is the lives that have been transformed of people we know in our day. We've seen people who were headed in one direction, and they meet Jesus, and their lives get revolutionized and transformed. I can introduce you to person after person. I'm a testimony of that myself.

And so it's the lives of, the transformed lives of people in our day that I think offer great testimony to the reality of the resurrection. I like the challenge you mentioned a moment ago, because I think this is really correct, in that if you have your doubts, just go to God. Say, Lord, I don't fully believe. I don't know if you're there, really.

If you can show yourself to me, that would be helpful. I think when people do that, the Lord shows up. Yes, he does. I've never heard the other testimony. I've often heard, I prayed that prayer, and God showed up for me. You go sincerely and say, Lord, I want to know if this is true.

And you don't set up and say, and for it to be true, I need sky writing on the wall. You know, you don't set up your own criteria, but say, Lord, would you confirm this for me? I think God sends those confirming signs, if we have eyes to see and ears to hear. I think about the man who came to Jesus with a sick son, and he said, would you heal my son? And he said, you must believe for me to heal him. And the man said, Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief. And I think he was saying, I have a little bit of belief, but I've got all this unbelief. So I'm here because of the little bit of belief I have. Would you help my unbelief? And Jesus healed his son, and that helped his unbelief. I think if you go to God and say, Lord, I have a little bit of belief. Would you help my unbelief? God will meet you there and will help satisfy what's true in your own heart.

Let's end here, Bob. You point people to an important question that Jesus asked Martha, who was the sister of Mary and Lazarus, about the resurrection. And the question is in John 11.25.

What is that question, and why did it make such an impact for you? This is at the scene where Martha's brother, Lazarus, has died and been in the tomb now for four days. And Martha comes to Jesus and she says, Lord, if you had been here, this would not have happened. And Jesus says, do you believe in the resurrection?

Do you believe in the resurrection? And she thought, he was asking, do I believe that people go to heaven when they die? And she said, of course I do. And Jesus says, I'm the resurrection and the life. And then he says, do you believe? She had to respond to that, that claim from Jesus, do you believe? And ultimately she claimed that. And of course she saw the miracle that took place when Lazarus walked out of that tomb after having been dead for four days. I love the fact that the King James Bible says, Martha had said, Lord, he's been in there four days. He stinketh.

Right? After four days. But he walks out alive again. He had been in there four days because no one comes back after four days. And yet Jesus says, Lazarus, come forth.

He comes forth. Martha said, Lord, I believe, and then God confirmed in the miracle of Lazarus that her belief was validated. I would say to listeners today, if you find yourself doubting, questioning, if you would take whatever little bit of faith you might have to God and say, Lord, I believe this, and watch what God does, I believe he will show you new life for yourself and for others around you. You know, I've always thought, isn't it interesting that we don't have a book from Lazarus in the Bible? Because of everybody you'd want to hear from.

This is what I've experienced. But again, the Lord chose not to put that in. This definitive four-day experience that Lazarus must have had after dying.

I think there are some things that belong, the secret things belong to the Lord, the Bible says in Deuteronomy. Well, Bob, this has been terrific. We started with chocolate bunnies and rolling Easter eggs. And look, I think this got right to the core point of who Jesus is and what he did for us. Thank you for this wonderful little book, 12 Things You Probably Didn't Know About Easter.

And that includes some fun stuff along with some spiritual truth. So thanks for being with us. Thank you.

Great to be with you guys. And man, if you want a copy of this great read, it's quick. And it is a wonderful handout to people who don't know the Lord in your sphere of influence.

What a great way to get the conversation going and move it from chocolate eggs to the death and resurrection of Jesus, which is the most important decision that person's ever going to make that we've made. Get ahold of us and make a gift of any amount and we'll send you a copy of this book as our way of saying thank you for being part of the ministry. Yeah, we've got details about Bob's book and also a free article you can download called Coming Home, which explains how you can become a Christian and why that is such a critical, vital, life-giving decision. We urge you to look for that at our website today.

The link is in the show notes or call 800 the letter A and the word family to learn more. Well, if your family has vacation plans this summer in our direction, please visit us here in Colorado Springs. We have such great history and spiritual encouragement for you and of course, natural beauty abounds.

Lots of fun for the kids to check out our website to learn more. And we hope you have a great weekend with your family and your church family as well. And plan now to join us on Monday for a conversation with Dr. Gary Chapman about how knowing your spouse's love language can really transform your marriage.

But if the love tank is full, that is your spouse genuinely feels loved by you. Life is beautiful for them and they're going to be their best person. On behalf of the entire team, thanks for joining us today for Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. I'm John Fuller inviting you back as we once again help you and your family thrive in Christ. Your marriage can be redeemed even if the fights seem constant, even if there's been an affair, even if you haven't felt close in years. No matter how deep the wounds are, you can take a step toward healing them with a hope restored marriage intensive. Our biblically based counseling will help you find the root of your problems and face challenges together. We'll talk with you, pray with you and help you find out which program will work best. Call us at 1-866-875-2915.