"Celebrating the Empty Tomb"
Matthew 28:1-10
Easter Sunday
2005
Lord God, our Father, by the power that raised your Son Jesus from the dead, turn our lives around so that we might see and know Him as our Living Lord and Savior. Awake in us a constant awareness of His living presence – forgiving us our sins and giving us real life by your grace. Fill our lives with joy on this Easter morning – with joy of resurrection by faith in Your Son, Jesus, that we all may know and have the power of His resurrection in our own lives. In His victorious name we pray. Amen.
INTRODUCTION:
Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! A joyous, blessed Easter day to each and every one of you! What a glorious message we have today! And we’re here this morning to hear the Word and to proclaim to each other the Good News that the dawn of resurrection and new life has broken and that the night of death has been overcome! Isn’t that the reason we’re here today? We’re here – gathered together to celebrate an empty tomb and that death no longer has any power over us!
Now, we all know that that contradicts all logic and reason! I mean, anyone can see that the earth is just one huge cemetery. All you have to do to convince yourself of that fact is to just look around! Trees die here – sometimes after holding their heads high for hundreds of years – they finally fall to the ground. Animals die here after only a few years, and their bones lie glistening in the sun. Insects die here by the millions – often only a few days or hours after they’ve come into being. Death is here everywhere for everything!
People die here too! We’re born into this world for a short time and for most of us we’re gone before a century is done. We mark each others graves – try to preserve the graves, but even the graves eventually disappear. It’s a strong fact that death is here for everyone without exception!
On this coming April 15th we’re going to be reminded that nothing is as certain as death or taxes. Someone commented on that and said that "the taxes aren’t so bad when you consider the alternative!" "The wages of sin," the Bible says, "is death..." That’s the real reason why people die. Whatever people may think and say about death, they know in their bones that death doesn’t end it all. That’s why people fear it so much! And their fears are confirmed by God’s Word which says, "...man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment."
But today we celebrate the end of that fear! We celebrate an empty tomb! God sent His sinless Son, Jesus, to share our flesh and blood with all the limitations that each of us have as human beings. He came to take our place and to fulfill what all of us find impossible to fulfill. And His purpose was that through His death on the cross, He would break the power of Satan, who had the power of death. And by His resurrection to deliver those who have lived all their lives as slaves to the fear of dying (Heb. 2:14-15).
The Lord Jesus Christ went through everything that we have to go through. And for us, He even met that final enemy – death, head-on! But He emerged triumphant! They pulled His lifeless body down from the cross and carried it into the tomb. But on the third day, He walked out of that tomb, the risen, victorious Son of God – just as the angel had said to the women: "Don’t be afraid!" he said. "I know you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He isn’t here! He has been raised from the dead, just as he said would happen. Come, see where his body was lying."
ONLY CHRISTIANS CELEBRATE AN EMPTY TOMB!
In his book Therefore Stand, Wilbur Smith points out that of all the religions of the world – those that are based on personalities and philosophies – the only one that talks about an open and empty tomb is Christianity. Abraham, regarded by the Jews as the father of their faith, died 2000 years before Christ. Although he died with faith in God’s promises – he himself could lay no claim of his own to have power over death. In fact, his tomb is still carefully preserved in Hebron in southern Palestine. In the sacred books of Buddhism, it says that when Buddha died it was "with that utter passing away in which nothing whatever remains behind." Mohammed, the founder of Islam died at Medina in 632 AD and that’s where he’s buried. All of their bones lie in the dust of death! Even Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of the Christian Science movement – a theosophical cult – who claimed that there was no such thing as death, lies buried in a tomb outside of Boston, where thousands of her followers visit her grave.
There’s only One whom death couldn’t hold. He’s the One who said, "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die." We, this morning, have an empty tomb, a broken seal, a stone rolled away from the door of the grave. You won’t find the bones of the Son of God anywhere! He lives and He reigns to all eternity!
There was once a well-educated British lawyer by the name of Frank Morison whom you would never expect to see in church on Easter Sunday. He was basically a skeptic when it came to Christianity and he was proud of it. He was influenced by the German skeptics and by Dr. Thomas Huxley – a proponent of the concept of evolution. So one day, Morison set out to disprove the historic Christian belief that Jesus had physically risen from the dead, and he started to write a book about it. But things didn’t turn out the way that he had originally planned. He searched the manuscripts to find that chunk of evidence that would refute it all. But the more he examined the evidence, the more impressive he found it – and the more tired he became of his own explanations. In the conclusion of his book Who Moved the Stone? he wrote, "There may be, and as the writer thinks, there certainly is, a deep and profoundly historical basis for that much disputed sentence in the Apostles’ Creed – ‘The third day he rose again from the dead.’" Ultimately, after years of searching, he became a Christian -- a believer in the risen Lord Jesus Christ. He accepted the fact that Jesus lives and he even began lecturing on proofs for Christ’s resurrection.
There’s a best-selling book out called The Da Vinci Code -- a novel that tries to pass itself off as historical fact and asserts that Jesus of Nazareth was nothing more than merely a mortal prophet who’s dead and gone. The book is a cheap, thinly veiled attack on the person of Jesus Christ and on all of us who call Him Savior and Lord. Isn’t it amazing? It seems that the world is constantly trying to offer us an answer to the question of who Jesus is. But it’s never the answer of Jesus who said of Himself: "I am the First and the Last. 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 the grave." (Rev. 1:17-18)
Have you ever watched the classic MGM movie Ben-Hur? The story was originally written by a civil war general – General Lew Wallace, who as boy was raised in a Christian home but as a man was indifferent to religion. He was a dreamer, a romantic, and a seeker of fame and fortune. Wallace rose quickly to the military’s hierarchy. In addition to his many battlefield victories, Wallace was also a prolific writer. One of his writing projects dealt with a topic that fascinated him ever since he was a small boy: The visit of the Wise Men to Bethlehem. After he wrote his first draft, he put the manuscript in a drawer and forgot about it. Three years later, while on a train to Indianapolis, Wallace met the famed agnostic, Robert Ingersoll. After Wallace asked Ingersoll if he believed in God, Ingersoll answered "no" and then argued his convictions for two hours. When the men arrived in Indianapolis, Wallace’s thoughts were in turmoil. How strange that it took the arguments of an unbeliever to shake him out of his religious indifference. Ingersoll had challenged Wallace to prove that Jesus was the Son of God. Wallace took up the challenge. So he decided to expand his earlier story about the wise men to include Christ’s death and resurrection. Being a meticulous researcher, he read and re-read the Gospel accounts, and in the process of writing his book, Ben Hur, General Wallace accepted the claims of Jesus Christ and committed his life to Him as Lord! That’s the power of the Gospel! (Source: Focus on the Family, April 1998)
The apostle Paul wrote: "For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time." He is risen!
Friends, if the Easter Bunny led any of you here this morning in the spirit that "everybody goes to church on Easter," then let me disturb you enough to see that what we’re really celebrating here today is the empty tomb! And through the news of the empty tomb of the risen Christ, to call you to believe and to live in the reality of that empty tomb!
WHAT DOES THE EMPTY TOMB MEAN?
The empty tomb proves to us beyond a shadow of a doubt that 1. Jesus Christ really is who He says He is — that He "...was declared the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead." It shows us that His words are true! He said, "Destroy this body and in three days I’ll raise it up again."
2. What’s more, the empty tomb tells us that God the Father accepted the sacrifice of His Son for you and for me. Paul said, "And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins." But Christ has risen! "He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification." He did that in order to put us right with God, whom we can now call, Father.
3. And as a result of being forgiven for the sake of Christ, He says, "Because I live , you also will live." He hands to us the sure gift and promise of eternal life! "God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life." Jesus Christ broke through death! He broke down death! There is now no death for those who are in Christ Jesus! ""Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?" The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God ! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." Because of the empty tomb, you and I, by faith in Him, have life today and life forever!
Okay, we talked about what the empty tomb means, but WHAT DOES THE EMPTY TOMB MEAN FOR YOU TODAY? What’s it mean for your life and mine right here and now? 1. You no longer have to live your life "as if...." You know, if we’re going to be really honest with ourselves, each other, and with God, then we’ll have to admit that very often we live our lives as if Jesus Christ never came out of that tomb – as if the personal reality of the whole thing has never taken over our lives. We live a kind of "as if" life – as if Christ died for me. As if Christ is alive in our hearts and our homes today. Friends, do you really believe that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead and is alive for you today? Do you live your life in that reality?
I heard a story about a family that tragically lost three of their four children within just two weeks to a deadly, virulent disease. One child was left – a four year old boy. The family had buried the third child just two weeks before Easter. On Easter morning the parents and the remaining child went to church. The mother taught her Sunday School class about the resurrection of Jesus and the father read the Easter story as he led the opening Sunday School devotion. People who knew about their great loss wondered how they could do it. One family of the church were in the car on their way home after church when their 16 year old asked his father, "Dad, that couple must believe everything about the Easter Story, don’t they?" "Of course they believe it," said the father, "all Christians do!" The young man then said, "But not like they do!"
The empty tomb made the difference. It turns night into day, despair into hope, and death into life. "He is not here; He has risen, just as He said." He wants you to let Him live at the center of your life right now – giving you purpose and meaning, hope and healing, peace, pardon, and power in the face of everything else. He wants to be the risen Lord of your life!
2. Is He in your daily plans and schedules? Have you been trying to salvage a crumbling relationship with another person by just your own human means, or have you depended on Christ the Healer to restore you to each other? Have you agonized in loneliness and despair and wondered why God isn’t speaking to you, and yet your Bible stays closed and your worship life is neglected and ignored as the living source of God’s power by which He wants to feed you, uplift you, and comfort you?
But even though we might ignore Him, God doesn’t ignore us. That’s the kind of God we have and Jesus Christ is living proof of that! He Himself says to you as you wander through life..."Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you." He says, "Here I am! I stand at the door and knock . If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me." He’s a God who goes on loving us even when we’ve become unlovable! "This is what love is," said John the apostle, "it is not that we have loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the means by which our sins are forgiven."
That’s what Easter is all about! In that lies our joy and hope. We’re redeemed and forgiven people! And now in that joy and hope our risen Lord calls upon us to believe it and act upon it!
In the Gospel story, the angel told the women to 3. Believe it! – to believe that "He has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him." Here today, we see Christ again in the Real Presence of His body broken and His blood shed for the forgiveness of our sins in Holy Communion. And He calls us further to believe the promise that because of that empty tomb, we’re one day going to see Him face to face in His living glory.
But in the light of that truth, He also calls us to 4. Act on it! The angel of Easter said, "He is not here; he has risen...go quickly and tell." Celebrating the empty tomb this morning isn’t just an intellectual assent to some facts about Christ’s resurrection. Those who were the witnesses that day said, "...we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard." The love of Christ compels us to share with joy this Good News with those who surround us in our every day lives – the news that God has reconciled us to Himself through the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of His Son. That’s the commission He’s given us: To go and tell and make disciples! To bring people hope, healing, and new life through Jesus Christ!
And notice that the angel told them to go quickly. And they went quickly! So you and I need to get moving – with joy in our hearts – as the women did! As Lutherans it’s not just "Here We Stand", but here we go! – with the Good News of the empty tomb!
The angel promised that when you go – trusting in the risen Christ as your Savior from sin and live in the reality of the open tomb...you shall see Him – the Living One! That’s one of the 9,000 promises of God in the Bible. And God always keeps His promises to you – now in this life, and also in the life to come!
And so fear no more, my friends, "He is not here. He is risen just as He said." Amen.
Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing,
that you may abound in hope
through the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen
