OPEN: In the last century, there was a very prominent British philosopher named Bertrand Russell who had a interesting view of life and death. He wrote:
“The life of man is a long march through the night, surrounded by invisible foes, tortured by weariness and pain, towards a goal that few can hope to reach and where none can tarry long. One by one, as they march, our comrades vanish from our sight, seized by the silent orders of omnipotent death.
Brief and powerless is man's life, on his and all his race the slow, sure doom falls, pitiless and dark. Blind to good and evil, reckless of destruction, omnipotent matter rolls on its relentless way. For man, condemned today to lose his dearest, tomorrow himself to pass through the gates of darkness, it remains only to cherish, ere yet the blow falls, the lofty thoughts that ennoble his little day.”
Wow. Talk about depressing. What could possibly have prompted Bertrand Russell to write such a thing?
Well, Bertrand Russell didn’t believe in Jesus. He was an atheist! He rejected God and denied the resurrection of Jesus Christ. For the atheist there is no back door out of the grave. Once you die, you’re dead, and that’s the way you’re going to stay. An atheist doesn’t go looking for the living among the dead, because for the atheist death is final.
(PAUSE)
Now in the text we read this morning, the angels at the tomb asked the women: “Why do seek the living among the dead?”
Why would the angels ask that question? Well, they asked that question because these women hadn’t come looking for a living Jesus. They’d come to this cemetery to seek the dead amongst the dead. When you go to a cemetery… that’s generally what you’re there for.
ILLUS: Well, almost always. I remember a girl in my home church who dated a guy who took her to the graveyard for their first date. When he mentioned it, she thought – this guy just wants to go make out. But he didn’t. He really wanted to take her to the graveyard, and they spent much of the evening reading the names and information on the gravestones. She was so intrigued by his novel approach to dating that she eventually married him.
But most of the time – people go to cemeteries to seek the dead.
Luke 24:1-3 says “On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus.”
These women have come to Jesus’ grave because He’s supposed to be dead! When Jesus died on the cross, there hadn’t been sufficient time to prepare His body properly for the grave. So they brought spices that they’d prepared so they can apply them to his corpse
The Commentary by Jamieson, Fausset and Brown says that the tradition was to bring “pulverized myrrh and aloes (and shake it) into the folds, and the entire body, thus swathed, (was) wrapt in an outer covering of ‘clean linen cloth’”
You see these women thought Jesus was dead, and they were simply trying to make sure His corpse received the respect it was due. These women weren’t looking for the living. They were looking for the dead! And without realizing there’d been a resurrection… the dead was all they expected to find.
Now, what Russell and numerous atheists understand is that without Jesus you can’t find the living among the dead. Because we live in A DYING WORLD.
Without Jesus all that this world can offer is a 6 foot hole in the ground.
• There’s no fountain of youth.
• Science might prolong your life but it can’t do anything about death.
• Plastic surgeons can make you look like you’ve cheated death but you won’t.
Everybody you know is going to die. As one person observed, “There’s nothing certain in this world but death and taxes.”
And without Jesus, death IS oblivion. It’s emptiness. It’s the end of all existence. There’s no hope for a future because (without Jesus’ resurrection) there is no life after this. For centuries, there have been philosophers and skeptics that have preached that kind of hopelessness
There were even some in the early church who began to believe that so Paul wrote this: “If the dead are not raised, ‘Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.’” 1 Corinthians 15:32
Without the resurrection of Jesus Christ… that’s about all you get in this world.
But then Paul wrote:
“But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.” 1 Corinthians 15:20
ILLUS: A family was watching the movie on TV one nite called "The Greatest Story Ever Told". All through the movie, one of the children was completely enthralled what she saw. Toward the end - as Jesus struggled under the weight of the cross - tears were rolling down her cheeks. She was absolutely silent and still until Jesus had been taken down from the cross and laid in tomb.
Then she turned to her parents, smiled, and said: "Now comes the GOOD part!"
Now comes the good part!
The resurrection of Jesus Christ IS the good part of the story.
It’s the good part of the story because: It is in the resurrection of Jesus that we have our faith. It is in the resurrection that we have our hope. It is in the resurrection that we have the promise of forgiveness and a new life.
In Romans 6:4 it says that “We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.”
God incorporated the resurrection into the very act that He designed for us to accept our salvation. In Baptism, God is not just teaching us that our sinful way of life has died and been buried… but in baptism God is also telling us that the grave cannot hold us. When Jesus comes again there is no tomb that will stop us from meeting Him in the air. We shall all be changed and we shall all rise from the dead to meet in Him in the air.
It’s in the resurrection of Jesus Christ that we are who we are. And it’s because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ that we have so much to offer the world.
• We live in a world filled with Bitterness and doubt… but the empty tomb speaks of Belief. We’re surrounded by people filled with Depression and Desperation… but the empty tomb promises Deliverance. To people filled with Fear… the empty tomb teaches us Faith. The Empty Tomb takes those bound by their Sin… and offers them a Savior. And it turns people worried about Punishment… into people focused on Praise.
No other religion offers this kind of hope.
(We showed a jpg from http://lgstarr.blogspot.com/2012/04/one-huge-difference-between-jesus-and.html)
• You can stop by the grave of Mohammed (he’s there). You can visit the grave of Confucius (he’s there).You can go to the grave of Buddha (he’s there). No matter what world religion you might think of their founders are all lying in the tomb… gathering dust.
BUT – if you stop by the tomb where Jesus was buried… the body is NOT there. He is risen. Just as prophecy said He would be.
Speaking of the Messiah, David prophesied:
“… you will not abandon me to the grave, nor will you let your Holy One see decay.” Ps 16:10
In Isaiah 53 God declared that the Messiah would suffer and die. He would literally be sacrificed - as guilt offering. “… it was the LORD’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer, and though the LORD makes his life a guilt offering, he will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of the LORD will prosper in his hand.” Isaiah 53:10
So, prophecy declared the Messiah would not STAY in the grave.
He is risen. Just as Jesus Himself said.
He was the one that the grave would not hold.
The angels said “He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you…: ‘The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.’" Luke 24:6-7
Jesus told about His death/burial and resurrection several times during His ministry
• Jesus answered (those who challenged Him for a sign) and said unto them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." John 2:19
• When Jesus asked His disciples who they thought He was, Peter gave the “good confession”. And then Matthew 16:21 tells us that…
“From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.”
• Even His enemies knew about that promise. The reason a was guard placed at Jesus’ tomb to was that the Pharisees and Chief Priests approached Pilate and complained…
"we remember that while he was still alive that deceiver said, ‘After three days I will rise again.’ So give the order for the tomb to be made secure until the third day. Otherwise, his disciples may come and steal the body and tell the people that he has been raised from the dead. This last deception will be worse than the first." Matthew 27:63-64
So, it was well known, that Jesus had made this prediction. Even His enemies knew that He had declared that the grave would not hold Him.
Now what’s interesting is – that in the story we’ve just read in Luke - these ladies don’t seem to understand that.
These women have come to this cemetery to seek the dead amongst the dead. When you go to a cemetery… that’s generally what you’re there for. And they’ve gone there with the specific intention of preparing His corpse for death.
But when they get there, there’s no corpse. There’s no dead body to be “prepared.” The Stone’s been rolled away… and He’s not there. The Tomb is empty.
A famous preacher named Peter Marshall once said “The stone was rolled away from the door, not to permit Christ to come out, but enable the disciples to go in.”
ILLUS: A Sunday School teacher had just finished telling her third graders about how Jesus was crucified and placed in a tomb with a great stone sealing the opening. Then, wanting to share the excitement of the resurrection, she asked: "And what do you think were Jesus' first words when He came bursting out of that tomb alive?"
A hand shot up into the air from the rear of the classroom. A little girl leaped out of her chair she shouted out excitedly "I know, I know!"
"Good" said the teacher, "Tell us, what were Jesus first words."
Extending her arms high into the air she said: "TA-DA!"
The Resurrection is what Christianity is all about. If you take the Resurrection out of our faith all you have is a list of dos and don’ts. A guy named Arthur Ramsey put it bluntly: “No resurrection, no Christianity.” The resurrection is the core of all the promises of God. And they all hinge on the Triumph Jesus had over the grave.
(PAUSE)
So, tell me:
Do you seek the living among the dead?
Do you seek the living… or the dead?
Down through the ages, various atheists have tried to disprove the Jesus of the Bible. They’ve looked at history and the Bible record to try to prove He didn’t rise from the dead.
ILLUS: Dr. Benjamin Gilbert-West and Lord Littleton were from Cambridge. They were so fed up with Christianity they wanted to destroy it. So they took a leave of absence to study and write a book to refute both the resurrection and the conversion of Saul of Tarsus. As a result of their study, they too became ardent believers and wrote: "Reject not, until you have examined the evidence."
ILLUS: Dr. Simon Greenleaf was a skeptic from Harvard law school. He’d written 3 volumes on the law. In his classes he mocked any Christian that was there. But he was challenged by Christian students to apply his own book to the resurrection of Jesus. So, he took up the challenge, and found the evidence was so convincing, he became a believer. He later wrote, "The resurrection of Jesus is one of the best established facts of history."
These men sought to find a dead Jesus. Instead they found a living one. And that can make all the difference!
ILLUS: A friend of mine once told me of a funeral he performed for a biker. “Doug" was an 18 year old biker who rode with a rough crowd. The T-shirt they buried him in said it all - "Ride hard - Die hard". At the funeral, the funeral home was filled with bikers. Speakers boomed out hard rock music prior to sermon. The Casket held items felt important to Doug: A bottle of Jack Daniel's, and an abundance of Drug Paraphernalia.
The viewing after the sermon lasted 2 1/2 hours… the mourners filled the room with their crying and sadness several literally half lifted the body out of the casket hugging their dead friend. These bikers couldn't get over the fact that Doug was dead… (PAUSE) … and that he was never coming back. These mourners were filled with despair and hopelessness, because they’d come to see the dead… among the dead.
But Hebrews 2:14-15 says: “Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil—and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.”
So do you seek the living One… or the dead?
Have you come to seek the Living Jesus?
CLOSE: Paul wrote: “Brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep, or to grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope. We believe that Jesus died and rose again and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. According to the Lord’s own word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left till the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep.
For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever.” Therefore encourage each other with these words. I Thessalonians 4:13-18
As Jesus said: I am the Living One; I was dead, and behold I am alive for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades. Revelation 1:18
Do you seek the living One?
Do you seek the one who holds the keys to the grave?
INVITATION
