[Machine transcription]
Christ is risen. He has risen indeed. Alleluia.
The angel said to the women,
Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified.
He is not here. He has risen.
As he said, Come see the place where ye lay.
Then go quickly and tell his disciples that he is risen from the dead.
Amen.
Amen, in the name of Jesus, amen.
Dear saints, Jesus is risen from the dead.
We rejoice in it.
It gives to us such a fantastic joy and peace
that we are sustained in this life
and carried through all the troubles of this life
and brought at last to the joys of heaven.
We have the wonderful privilege today, really every day, but especially today of meditating
on this great victory of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is risen from the dead, and who has ascended
and sits at the Father’s right hand.
And as we begin, I want to try to press into the joy of the resurrection of Jesus by talking
about the problem that we have, that humanity has, and that is death.
There is, and this has been something that has occurred to me multiple times over the last few weeks,
as we watched the news of the coronavirus before, as it was a rumor in China,
and then as it spread over to Europe and then started to come in amongst us.
And all of the charts and the growth rates and the graphs,
and one of the big questions that was being asked was, what is the mortality rate?
How deadly is this? 10%? 3%? 1%? .1%? What’s the mortality rate?
But the thing that occurred to me, as people were talking about this, was that the mortality rate for being human is 100%.
We might not die by a disease, or by a heart attack, or by some other pestilence, or by
an accident, or simply by old age, but all of us, if Jesus does not return, all of us
will die, one hundred percent.
And there’s nothing that we can do about it.
I mean, there is no vaccine, there is no medicine, there’s no doctor who can stop you from dying.
soon, death will come to each of us. It’s so normal that you think that we would be
used to it by now. Generation after generation, after all, has died. And each of us, if we
pause simply for a moment, and maybe this is one of the advantages of this time of pestilence
is that it causes us to pause and reflect on this fact that all of us are going to die.
But we know it, and it comes to us over and over,
and you would think that we would be used to it.
And in fact, the world tries to tell us
that we should be used to it.
There’s a phrase that I think I saw at one time
on some PBS special that was talking about evolution.
There’s a phrase that’s pandered to us and given to us
that says that death is natural.
Or maybe it’s often said like this, death is part of life.
It’s the Lion King Elton John song,
the circle of life. You’re born and then you die. So we should come to grips with it. But
even though we know that death is coming to us, even though we know that everybody dies,
there’s still in each one of us something that knows that that’s not right. Something.
Even in the most hardened atheist and the most distant unbeliever,
there’s something that echoes in our hearts and our minds that tells us that this is not how it’s supposed to be,
that we’re not supposed to die.
Death is natural, but we know better.
Death is not what we were made for.
We were made for life.
But what are we going to do about it?
We know we’re not supposed to die,
but we know that there’s nothing that we can do
to stop death from coming to us.
So we just simply have to resign ourselves
to the fact that death is coming,
that you live and then you die,
that this is the way of all flesh
until Jesus comes.
And He assaults death and wins.
He assaults the grave
and has the victory. Jesus takes on all three of our ancient foes, sin, death, and
the devil, all three of them, and he destroys them all. Sin forgiven, the devil
destroyed, and death is now gone because of his resurrection. Jesus is that thing
that we are longing for, as we recognize that death is not natural, that death is not the
way that things are supposed to be.
Jesus is the thing that we’ve been hoping for.
Jesus is the one that we’ve been looking for, and now his resurrection has come.
God be praised that Christ is risen.
He is risen indeed, hallelujah.
you, the ancient foe, death, who won every previous battle, now has lost to our Jesus.
I want to say three things about this, three maybe realms of meditation on the fact of
our Lord’s resurrection.
The first is the fact of the resurrection.
St. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15, which is, by the way, your homework this week to
read 1 Corinthians 15.
The whole chapter is a beautiful meditation on the resurrection.
And Paul writes in verse 16, if the dead do not rise, then Christ is not risen.
And if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.
Jesus, then also those who have fallen asleep in Christ Jesus have perished.
If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men the most pitiable.
But now Christ is risen from the dead and has become the firstfruits of those who have
fallen asleep.”
The resurrection of Jesus is not mythological, it’s not a story, it’s not a
fable, it is an historic fact. The empty tomb stands as proof of the divinity of
Jesus and not only of his divinity but also of his goodness, of his mercy
and his love. I heard some time ago a report, it was a it was one of these
survey questions where they were surveying various Christians and one of
the questions they asked was, would you still be a Christian if they found the
dead body of Jesus? In other words, if the resurrection could be disproved, would
you still remain in Christ? Would you still call yourself a Christian? And
something like 85, 87 percent of the people who were asked the question said,
yeah, I’d still be a Christian.
Dear saints, that is the wrong answer.
If Christ is not raised from the dead,
we amongst all people are most to be pitied.
If Christ is not historically, really raised from the dead,
then we of all people are the worst,
propagating a lie, standing on thin air.
If Christ is not raised from the dead,
if Jesus is still in the grave,
then we should probably turn this building into a bowling alley, sell the
property, live it up. Because if Christ is not raised from the dead, all we have is
this life and there is nothing else. Eat, drink, and be merry. Tomorrow we die. But
Christ is risen from the dead, just as he said. His grave is absolutely empty. The
cloth that was wrapped around his face was folded and left where he got up.
He was seen by witnesses, by the women, by the disciples,
by over 500 at one time, and this stands as an irrefutable fact
that Jesus is raised. Second, the faith of the resurrection. So
the fact and now the faith. What does it mean
mean that Jesus is resurrected? What does it mean theologically? The best illustration
that I know to explain this comes from football. Some of you, if you’re old enough, might
remember the game football that we used to play. There was a question, here’s the riddle
for those of you who remember football. When are the points scored? If you have the running
back has a ball and he runs and he crosses the goal line, his work is finished. He takes
the ball, he spikes it on the ground, he does a dance, he looks around, everyone cheers.
That’s it. His work is over. The touchdown is scored. But is that when the points are
awarded? The points are not awarded until the official, the umpire, who’s standing there
on the goal line raises his hands and says, touchdown. Or now they go to the booth review
and they have to look at it for five. And then they say, touchdown. Now the point is, when
the points applied when the runner crosses the goal line or when the official accepts it and
says that it was good? If you could let me take that analogy to the resurrection, the resurrection
is God the Father saying to the death of Jesus, it’s good, it counts, the sacrifice is acceptable,
the victory that Jesus won on the cross, it’s finished, it’s his crossing the finish line,
and the resurrection is the Lord God
vindicating that sacrifice,
saying that it’s sufficient,
a sufficient ransom to pay the price for all sinners,
so that the resurrection of Jesus
puts the stamp of approval on His suffering and death,
on His cross.
It in fact, it lifts up the cross.
A lot of times people have this conflict
between the cross and the empty tomb.
They’ll see, for example,
a crucifix and say, but Jesus was off the cross and out of the tomb. Well, true enough, but the tomb
amplifies the work of the cross. The empty tomb is God shouting with a bullhorn that the death of
Jesus is a worthy death, is a sufficient death, is an atoning death, that his sacrifice is enough
to end all sacrifices, so we rejoice that Jesus takes the victory of the cross and carries
it up through death, through the grave, to the Father’s right hand.
And third, there is the hope of the resurrection, the fact and the faith and now hope.
And it is this, the Bible calls Jesus the firstfruits of the resurrection,
which means that there’s more resurrection to come,
which means that you will be raised on the last day.
It’s wonderful to think about that when Jesus was on the cross,
He alone was on the cross.
He alone was suffering there, the wrath of God.
He was our substitute so that he, as a single individual, was suffering all of these things
because of sinners. But when he’s raised from the dead, he’s not alone. When he comes up out
of the grave, he doesn’t intend to be alone. But he’s bringing you and I, he’s bringing us with him.
He’s the first fruits of the resurrection, which means that there are more to follow.
The picture is of a farmer who apparently in the ancient world, you know, you would
buy a batch of seed and you would go and you would plant your seed and you wouldn’t know
if the seed was good or not until the first seed sprouted and there it is, the first fruits.
And you know that if that seed is good, then the rest of the seed will be good.
Well so it is with Jesus.
When he comes up out of the grave, then you know that you also will be up out of the grave.
All people raised and the Christian raised to life eternal.
we are not Gnostics. We do not believe that the body is bad and the spirit is
good. We do not believe that when we die and our soul goes to heaven that’s it,
that’s the end of the story. No, but on the last day when Jesus comes back, He
will raise our bodies and join our souls and bodies back together. And for the
Christian who knows this victory of Jesus over sin, death, and the devil, we
We will stand before him, body and soul, forever in the resurrection.
And this is our hope.
I mean, especially as we see things falling apart in the world and as we see people dying
and as we check the news every night to see how many more people have died.
And as the whole world groans, we know that we’re waiting for something better.
And Jesus gives us the glimpse of that something better.
Here, one day, your grave will be as empty as Jesus’ tomb, and you will live before Him
in glory and righteousness and peace.
This is our hope.
Because just like everything that Jesus does, His death, His suffering, His bleeding, His
burial, His resurrection, His ascension, all of it.
All of it is for you, for your life, and for your salvation.
So, dear Saints, be of good cheer.
Christ is risen. He has risen indeed.
His resurrection, His resurrection is for you.
God’s peace be with you.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding,
guard your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.
