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Christ is risen. He is risen indeed. In the name of Jesus. Amen.
Dear Saints of God, death is not natural. It is not an inevitable part of living in this
world. It is not the great circle of life, like the Lion King would have us believe. Death
Death is not what happens to everyone, at least that’s not how God intended it.
The Bible comes and teaches us, and we have to know this first of all, that death is the
punishment for sin.
You were never meant to die.
Your husband, your wife, your mom, your dad, your grandmother and your grandfather, your
children and your grandchildren were never meant to die. We were created in the image
of God, that means we were created to live forever before God’s face. But the Lord warned
Adam and Eve, on the day that you eat of it, surely you will die. We’ll come back to that
verse in a little bit, but St. Paul kind of puts the nail in the coffin, if you would,
when he says, the wages of sin is death. The reason, the reason that we’re dying, that
you and I are dying, the people you love are dying, your neighbors are dying, the reason
we are dying is because we’re sinners. And death then is the great enemy. The grave is
the great consumer and it’s after us.
Ever since Adam and Eve
were expelled from the garden,
death was chasing after him and
the footsteps we hear in
the back of our own minds,
Adam and Eve then were buried.
Cain, Abel, Seth were buried.
And everyone since then has been buried.
Maybe two have escaped death, Enoch,
Mark and Elijah taken into heaven before they died. Everybody else has died or is dying.
Now this is a frightful state to find ourselves in, the valley of the shadow of death. It’s
a sad state of affairs, and I don’t doubt that death is closer in one way or one degree
or another to each one of you here. Every one of us, in one way or another, is mourning.
We’re mourning the death of those that we love. We’re mourning the impending death
of those that we love. We fear death for those we love, and even our own death. And we know
that every day is another day closer to our own grave. It’s chasing us down. And one
day we will face it. This gaping mouth of the grave that consumes and is never full,
that devours but is never finished.
Now, if there was ever anybody who should have been able to outrun death, outwit death
and escape death, we figure it would be our Lord Jesus Christ. After all, if the wages
of sin is death, surely this One who never committed a sin, who never did anything wrong,
who never broke any of God’s commandments, surely this One would be able to escape this
â escape the grave, escape breathing His last, but that is not the case. Jesus, commending
his spirit to God the Father, gave up the ghost. He was crucified, dead, and buried.
Jesus also, like everyone else, laid in the grave. He had a funeral. In fact, the women
come to the tomb on Easter Sunday wanting to finish that funeral, finish the preparations.
They brought spices and linens to finish the preparation for His burial. That’s what
they were doing that day. But they found that the tomb was empty. The stone was rolled away.
Jesus was nowhere to be found. And the angels announced it, you seek Jesus of Nazareth who
is crucified. He is not here. He is risen. See the place where He laid them. Now go and
tell His disciples, Jesus, your Jesus, has overcome death. He has come out of the grave,
the first fruits of the resurrection. And in that way, Jesus has made a way for us through
the grave, through death, so that we might live forever.
But we have to ask ourselves, what was the big deal about making us live forever? Now
And we know that it’s tough for us. Nobody, I mean, pursue it as we might with all our
medicine and all our obsession with health and all this sort of stuff. Pursue it as we
might. No human being can make themselves live forever. I mean, we spend hundreds of
thousands of dollars just trying to extend our lives a couple of days or a couple of
years maybe, but we can’t live forever. But the Lord had that sorted out a long time
ago. Remember in the garden? There was that tree and it had fruit. It was called the fruit
of life, and if you ate from that tree, you’d live forever. Your body would keep going,
never die. You’d never stop breathing. Your heart would never stop pumping. The brain
waves would never stop moving. That was easy. Why then, didn’t the Lord, if He wanted
us to live forever, why didn’t He just give Adam and Eve to eat that fruit? In fact,
He sends Adam and Eve out of the garden to make sure they wouldn’t eat that fruit.
Why not just bring that fruit to us and let us have that? The reason is because it’s
not just the death of the body.
It’s not just the death that we see.
That’s the dangerous thing.
There’s another death.
In fact, it’s there in
the Hebrew when the Lord warns Adam and Eve.
It’s hard for us to see.
The Lord said, on the day that you eat of it,
dying you will die.
There’s a double death.
There’s a body death, grave death,
breathing your last death,
but there is a worse death.
death, spiritual death. And if the death of the body is indicated by a tombstone, the
death of the spirit is indicated by Adam and Eve running from God in the garden and
hiding in the bushes from His presence. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine? Here comes
God the Creator in His glory, the most beautiful thing in a world full of beauty, and Adam
and Eve hear the sound of God, and instead of running to Him, they run away from Him.
why? Because they’ve lost the image of God. Because they’ve lost their original righteousness
and perfection. Because they’ve broken God’s commandment, and in that sin, they have made
God their enemy so that God would come to them, rightly would come to them, bringing
death, bringing destruction, bringing condemnation. And you see, that’s the real problem. Dying
you will die. It’s not keeping Adam and Eve out of the grave that is so much trouble.
It’s keeping them in the presence of God and keeping us there as well.
One day your heart’s going to stop. One day you’re going to stop breathing. One day you’re
going to be laid in the ground. Fine. That’s not the trouble. One day you’re going to face
the judgment of God. One day you’re going to stand before His holiness and His tribunal
And you’re going to have in your hands a pile of half-hearted good works, and you’re going
to have falling out of your pockets all of His broken commandments.
And it will not prevail.
And the only solution that God in His holiness, the only thing He can do with that is to send
you to a death that doesn’t end, condemnation and hell itself.
So, Jesus has a bigger task than keeping you out of the grave.
He wants to prepare a place for you so that where He is, you will be also.
That’s why He kept Adam and Eve out of the garden.
He didn’t want them to eat that fruit to live forever in their sins.
sins, he wanted another tree, the tree of the cross, with another fruit, his own body
and blood, so that eating that, you would not only have eternal life in your body, but
you would have the forgiveness of sins, a completely cleansed conscience, so that God
would take everything that you’ve ever done wrong, and every right thing that you’ve failed
to do, and pile it on his own son, and pour out all his wrath on him, so that when he
He looks at you, now this is the key, when God looks at you from His judgment seat, He
declares you to be holy, perfect, innocent, righteous all together, as perfect as His
own Son, as if you had kept every single commandment, never broken a single one.
He looks at you and He knows because of the death of Jesus that you don’t deserve life,
but that you, that you don’t deserve death, but that you deserve life that never ends.
I go, says Jesus, to prepare a place for you, a place before the Father’s face, a place
in eternal life, a place where you can live with me forever.
And He does that by His death and His resurrection, which is why every time Jesus runs into His
disciples after He’s raised, He has one word to say to them, peace. Not anger, not
judgment, not wrath, not the frown of God. Peace. Peace be with you, says Jesus. My peace
I give to you, not as the world gives. My peace I leave with you. Don’t be afraid.
There is a way out of the grave, and that way goes to life eternal.”
Dear saints, Jesus was crucified for your sins. He was raised for your justification.
He came out of the grave so that you could sit with Him in the glory of the Father.
And this is the good news of Easter.
Jesus wasn’t overcoming death to prove His own strength,
to show His own glory, to win His own triumph.
he was overcoming the grave for you,
so that he might have you forever.
God be praised that for us, Christ is risen.
He is risen indeed.
Amen.
The peace of God that passes all understanding,
guard your hearts and minds
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Aw, man.
