Easter > Holy Week Devotionals > Tuesday
1 CORINTHIANS 15:1-11
1 Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, 2 and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain.
3 For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. 6 Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep.7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. 8 Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. 9 For I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. 10 But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me. 11 Whether then it was I or they, so we preach and so you believed.
REFLECTION
Read the text slowly and prayerfully – How do these verses provide a window into the heart of God? The importance of the resurrection? The hope we have for the future? Then walk through the three reflection steps of Observe, Interpret, and Apply.
INTO THE EMPTY TOMB
BY DAVID BARRETT
“We both ran toward the garden. Then John ran on ahead, found the stone and the empty tomb just the way that Mary said. But the winding sheet they wrapped Him in was just an empty shell. Who or where they’d taken Him was more than I could tell...”
The early 80s Contemporary Christian Music pioneer, Don Francisco, wrote these lyrics in his signature song He’s Alive. For a genre that (rightfully so) gets a bit of creative criticism from time to time, this acoustic ballad set in Peter’s perspective on that first Easter Sunday holds up quite well in our produced age. The next lines of the song capture what Peter’s thought process might have been as he tried to make sense of what might have happened:
“Oh something strange had happened there, but what it was I did not know. John believed a miracle, but I just turned to go. Circumstance and speculation couldn’t lift me very high, because I’d seen them crucify Him and then I saw Him die.”
Peter walked into a cave that by all forms of logic and reason should have had a body, but it did not. I think that a lot of us, in a different way, are a lot like Peter. We have questions about our faith that just don’t add up. Maybe, like Peter, you feel like Jesus has disappointed or abandoned you. Or maybe you have disappointed Him. Peter had denied Jesus so many times that he might have felt like there was no hope they could ever put their relationship back together. As in, you’ve messed up so many times, you don’t even know the way back. Again, Don Francisco captures a thought like this well as Peter muses in the song:
“Back inside the house again the guilt and anguish came. Everything I promised Him just added to my shame. When at last it came the choices, I denied I knew His name. Even if He was alive, it wouldn’t be the same.”
I want to challenge you these next few days to be open-minded enough to consider the resurrection on its own terms. To walk with Peter into that empty tomb and really think about what happened. And consider that it may have actually been something like this:
“Suddenly the air was filled with strange and sweet perfume. Light that came from everywhere drove shadows from the room. Jesus stood before me with His arms held open wide and I fell down on my knees and just clung to Him and cried. He raised me to my feet and as I looked into His eyes, love was shining out from Him like sunlight from the skies. Guilt and my confusion disappeared in sweet release and every fear I’d ever had just melted into peace.”
Want to dive deeper into the evidence of the resurrection and how we can trust that Jesus really did rise from the dead? Check out the full article here!
Tonight’s Family Audio Story dives into Mark 11 where Jesus talks about finding our purpose in Him through a story of a fig tree! Listen here!
