[Machine transcription]
Christ is risen. He is risen indeed. Hallelujah. And dear saints, that’s a good thing for us. Because if Christ were not risen from the dead, our faith would be in vain. If Christ were not risen from the dead, we would have no hope beyond the veil of death. If Christ were not risen from the dead, we of all people are the most to be pitied. But Christ is risen. He has risen indeed, and his resurrection is our hope and our peace and our comfort and our joy that will never end.
Christ’s resurrection stands in the middle of the history of the world and interrupts this funeral procession that began in the garden and continues to the last day. Now, we, I know, hate to think about this. We hate to think about death at all, and we try to put the idea aside that death is coming to us and also to those that we love. But when we take a step back and look at it, it’s really from the very, very beginning until the very end, that the history of humanity is this long procession of death. That their Seth and his children were burying Adam and Eve, and Shem and Ham and Japheth were burying their father, Noah, and Abraham was burying his wife, Sarah, and the children of Israel were burying their parents. All of them who left Egypt were buried on the way, and one generation after another passes away. The bodies are prepared for death, and they’re laid in the tomb. This is true also for us. You’ve laid your own ancestors in the grave, your great-grandparents, your grandparents, some of you, your parents, your spouse, even your children and your grandchildren and your friends. You’ve gone to the cemetery, you’ve lowered the body, you’ve covered it up, and you’ve left. And those bodies are still there.
This is humanity after the garden. One long, big funeral. And we’re in this procession. We’re in it either because we’re mourning the death of those that we love, or because one day we will be the one being mourned, wrapped in our own grave clothes, and put down to sleep in the grave. But into this massive funeral procession, which is the history of the world, our Lord Jesus himself steps in. And he, just like everybody else, died. His body was prepared for burial by his mother, Mary, by Nicodemus, by Joseph of Arimathea. They wrapped his body and they laid it in the tomb, and they covered the tomb with the stone and they sealed it. The soldiers were there watching. They even came back a couple of days later to finish the work of this funeral.
But unlike every other funeral, unlike every other grave, the Lord Jesus said, “is risen.” His grave is empty. His tomb is open. They were astonished at this when they arrived this morning, 1,992 years ago this morning. When the women arrived at the tomb with the spices that they had prepared for burial, they found that Christ was not there. Standing around astonished, the angels had to show up to tell them what was going on, to remind them what Jesus had told them. “Remember how he said to you it was necessary for him to be rejected and killed and buried, and on the third day he would rise again,” and then they remembered what he said.
Right. And in this resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, death is destroyed, and the grip that the grave has is broken. And not remember, not just for Jesus. He did not need resurrection. He was ready to live forever already. But just like everything that the Lord Jesus did, this also is, dear saints, for you. He was in the womb and on the world, in the world, and on the cross and in the tomb for you. And he’s up out of the tomb also for you to break death, to knock the teeth out of the grave, to destroy this tyrant that has been chasing us down since the very beginning. The tyranny of death is broken by the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ from the grave. And this is marvelous good news.
But it’s not enough yet. Because the Lord Jesus in his resurrection has done more than set us free from the fear of death. Remember how it was in the garden when Adam and Eve sinned and they were expelled from the garden? And in the garden still was that tree of life. And so that Adam and Eve wouldn’t break into the garden and eat from the tree of life or any of their descendants, the Lord put two cherubim there with flaming swords to guard the way to the tree of life. Now, why was it? Why did the Lord not want us to eat from that tree of life and live forever? The reason is because if Adam and Eve would have gone back into the garden and eaten from that tree, they would have lived forever in their sins. They would have lived forever in their guilt. They would have lived forever in their shame.
And this is when we start to realize that death has partners, that death is not alone as the enemy that we face, that death is always bound up with sin and always bound up with the devil. These three always go together. We know it from the very beginning when the devil comes into the garden and tempts Adam and Eve to sin, and the result of that sin is on the day that you eat of it, surely you will die. So that the wages of sin is death. And the devil is always the one tempting us to sin.
It’s not, and here’s the point, it’s not enough for the Lord Jesus simply to solve your dying problem. He could have, if he wanted, concocted some sort of pill that you could take and live forever, put some fountain of youth somewhere, and you could go swim in it and live forever. But that’s not enough, because you would be living forever in your guilt and living forever in your sin, living forever deserving the wrath of God.
In fact, that is a possibility. When Jesus talks about the resurrection in John chapter 5, he talks about it in these terms. He says there is a resurrection to life, and there is also a resurrection to death. There is the real possibility that, because all people will be raised on the last day, there is a real possibility that we will be raised and still in our sin and still under the wrath of God and still deserving of his punishment. This is what the Bible warns us about in hell and this condemnation. And the Lord Jesus does not want that. In other words, he doesn’t just want you to live forever. He wants you to live forever with him. He wants you to live forever in glory. He wants you to live forever sharing his radiance and his holiness and his life, not forever apart from him, but forever with him where he lives, there we will be also.
So it’s not enough for the Lord Jesus. I mean, we could imagine it. It’s not enough for the Lord Jesus to come down like Adam and Eve and their kids are standing around and the two angels are there guarding the way to the tree of life. And Jesus could just, I don’t know, punch them in the face and break the swords and say, “Okay, now you can go eat the fruit.” That’s not enough. He has to make a way for us to come into eternal life also washed and cleansed of our sins.
And this is the business of his death on the cross. And it works like this. All of us are dying because we are sinners. It is what we deserve. The wages of sin is death. Sin then, sorry, death then comes to us as a judgment, the righteous judgment, in fact, of God. But there was one who was righteous and holy and perfect, who never sinned. There was one person, in the whole history of humanity, there was one person that death could not claim. There was one person that death did not have the right to destroy. There’s one person who stood innocent and holy and free from death. That one, Jesus Christ, gave himself over to death. And in death’s claiming that which it did not own or possess, in death’s devouring of our Lord Jesus, death lost its authority over all of humanity.
There’s a line in one of the quotations from one of the church fathers. It’s in your bulletin. That’s your homework this week, by the way. I’m checking to make sure you’re not reading all those things right now that you’re looking at me. You have to read them this week. And you will find in there one of the church fathers talking about how the flesh of Jesus tasted like poison to the grave. Can you imagine? Yeah, that the grave so greedy, it was not content to devour every single person except for one. The grave had to have everyone. And so it went to devour Christ who it did not have any right to devour. And the taste of the flesh of Christ in the mouth of the grave is like poison.
Or Luther, my favorite. Luther loves to preach about how death is, it’s like a guy who tries to eat a bite of steak without chewing it, and it gets stuck in his throat, and he’s choking, and he spits it out and dies. This is the grave when Christ is buried. Jesus now becomes the death of death. And in his dying on the cross, he sets us free from the tyranny of death. Because he sets us free from our sins and our guilt and our shame. That, in fact, is why he was dying. So that you can stand on the other side of death without fear.
It turns out that dying is not the hard part. The hard part is what comes next. It says in Hebrews that it’s appointed for man once to die and then to be judged, and it’s the judgment part that’s the hard part, that we have to stand before the throne of God and face his righteous judgment. But now, you, dear saints, you baptized, you are clothed in the righteousness and the perfection of Christ, so that there is nothing true. There is nothing to fear in judgment. God’s wrath is spent already. It’s spent on Christ.
So that Jesus, by his resurrection, completely transforms death for us. Death is no longer… Now listen carefully. For you, Christians, death is no longer punishment for your sin. But the Lord Jesus brings death to you as a gift. Paul says it like this. Paul says for me, to live is Christ… to die is gain. Because when the Lord Jesus brings death to you, he’s carrying you from this veil of tears to be with himself in heaven. He’s bringing you into the glory of his life that will never end.
Now, we do have to lay our dead bodies in the grave and lay the dead bodies of those that we love in the grave. But we do so in the hope of this truth, that Jesus Christ is the first fruits of them that have fallen asleep. And because He is risen, we will rise also on the last day to live with him forever, to sing the praises of him who died so that we might share in his life. And dear saints, this is our hope, this is our confidence, and this is our peace. Christ is risen. He has risen indeed. Hallelujah. May this truth guard your hearts and minds through our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.