Word of Salvation – Vol.11 No.16 – April 1965

 

Alive Now!

 

Sermon by Rev. P. van der Schaaf on Luke 24:1-11

Scripture Reading: Romans 6:1-14

Psalter Hymnal: 359; 384:1,2 (after the law); 384:3; 361; 363; 467

 

Translated by John Westendorp.

Translator’s note: early editions of ‘Word of Salvation’ still had some sermons in Dutch for the migrant communities that then made up the Reformed Churches of Australia.

 

Congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Our Lord Jesus Christ, after terrible suffering, died on the Friday before Easter.

These days there are people who deny that.  However, in his days there was no one who doubted that.  His friends didn’t…!  His enemies didn’t…!  The soldiers didn’t…!  The women didn’t…!  The men of the Sanhedrin didn’t and neither did Pilate or Herod.  All were convinced that Jesus had died… had entered the realm of the dead from which no human being returns.

That was clear to everyone.  Jesu was not going to come back.

The certainty is that dead is dead and no one comes back from there before Judgment Day.  Only then do all people come back to life again and then Jesus will also be alive again.

This is what was taught already in the Old Testament and that’s what most Jews believed and it was certainly the thinking of Jesus’ followers.  When Jesus said to Martha after the death of Lazarus, ”Your brother shall rise again!”, Martha answered, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” (John 11:23-24).

That would certainly have been a comfort for Martha and when the Lord Jesus had died his disciples possibly thought about that too – just as we at a funeral also think about that – and speak about it: “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.”

That’s true… but that’s not everything.

Jesus had more to say about the resurrection.

When he was with his disciples in Galilee he told them that HE must be crucified and RISE AGAIN ON THE THIRD DAY.  That bit about rising again on the third day had always remained a mystery for them.  It didn’t escape them that Jesus had said it – for in Mark’s gospel (9:10) we even read that they seized on that statement and discussed with one another what ‘rising from the dead’ might mean.  But they didn’t understand what Jesus meant and they were afraid to ask him (Mark 9:32).

The Lord Jesus didn’t enlighten them further – apparently this belonged to the things about which the Lord once said, “I have many more things to say to you but you cannot bear them now.”(John 16:12).

So on Easter morning there was a firm conviction among Jesus’ followers that their Master was dead and that his body was resting in the rock-hewn tomb.  It was with that conviction that they went to the tomb – borne out by the prepared spices they had brought along.

But the women arrive too late with their spices.  God – so to speak – got the jump on them – for the so-manyeth time in the history of the church.  While they’re still debating who will roll the stone away for them (Mark 16:13) God has already had it removed.  While they are still thinking that Jesus is still dead, God has already raised him.  While they look for him in the grave, the grave is already empty.

While they are still in great confusion about this, suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stand near them.  They say that he is alive and that they ought to try to remember what he had told them before his death about that rising again on the third day.  And, yes, then they do remember that too. They didn’t understand it back then but they do remember it.

And then for those women that saying of Jesus about rising again on the third day begins to become just a tiny bit clearer.  Of course one can’t understand how the dead can become alive – but what they do understand is that he is ALIVE NOW.  Not that he will return to life one day when all the dead will be raised – but rather that he is alive already now while all the other dead are still in their graves.

This is what is unique about Easter morning and about the Easter gospel.  It is what is totally unique about Jesus Christ our Lord.

He entered the realm of the dead and was buried but he didn’t stay there like all other people did – until the last day.

In this way on that Easter morning Christ stands before us in all his glory and greatness.  Not all graves are empty that morning – only his.  The murderers who were crucified with him are still lying in their graves – but Jesus has risen from the dead.  The point is that there’s nothing special in that morning in itself – what is special is he – Jesus.

This is something the world has never before witnessed.

This is a testimony to the intervention of God… who alone can make alive.

These women believed in the Lord Jesus as the one who was sent by God.  When he was crucified they lost that.  Then he became for them a dead man among the dead.  And that is in truth what he was.

But God snatched him out of the realm of the dead and made him alive, so giving him a name that is above all names.

It’s in this ON-THE-THIRD-DAY-RESURRECTED-JESUS that God demonstrates that he is centuries and centuries ahead of the thoughts and hopes of us human beings.  Jesus Christ lives – not on the last day but on the third day.

The women have arrived with their spices… but too late.

God has in Christ passed the stage of the spices.  I don’t know where the women left their spices that morning – and it doesn’t really matter.  As long as we clearly understand that the time for spices for Jesus’ grave has passed.  If we come with them anyway it is just a meaningless gesture – and it’s as if God takes them out of our hands and just walks all over them.

There is a comment somewhere in the Bible that there are people who crucify the Son of God all over again (Heb.6:6).  That’s a frightening accusation.  But are there not many people who bury the Son of God all over again?  Who act as if he doesn’t live?  Who do not live out of the belief that that Christ was raised on the third day?  I am convinced that this belief plays far too small a role in our daily life and produces too little fruit in us.

We project the victory over death much too often into a far distant future.

We live much too often by what we see happening around us and we’re influenced too much by our circumstances.  We ought to live much more out of what happened centuries ago in the garden of Joseph of Arimathea.

The Lord Jesus speaks repeatedly about the victory over death in – what in grammar – is called the perfect tense.  “He who hears my word and believes him who sent me HAS eternal life… he HAS passed out of death into life.”  “He who believes in me shall live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.” (John 5:24 & 11:25,26).

We must not fail to do justice to these words and therefore we must live out of them.  He has conquered death.  He mastered it… gagged it…!  The last enemy lies bound at the feet of our Lord.  The Lord put it so beautifully to John on the Island of Patmos, “I have the keys of death and hades.”  He has power over them already now.

He is indeed the Living One!.

Death no longer gnaws at the life he possesses.  Nor is his life threatened anymore by death.  He submitted himself to death and robbed it of its power on the cross.

That cross, that seemed so pointless to the women, appears after all to have been the wisdom of God.

That cross, which made Jesus so powerless, appears to have carried immense power.

That cross, that seemed to be the end of everything, appears to have made a totally new beginning.

And now the fruit of that atoning death of Christ is not just harvested at the end of the ages but you can live from it already today.  You not only can… but you must…!  Just think of Romans 6.  “Even so consider yourselves… alive to God in Christ Jesus… present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead.”

It’s not just a matter of some distant future, it is also the present.

It’s not just a question of your body, it is first of all a question of living now with the whole of you being in the presence of God.

That’s how Jesus Christ – the head of the body – lives: before God.

That is the life that Jesus created through his death.  A life prepared for his service.  That is the life unto eternity!

“Oh, yes, but we must all soon still die” is perhaps what you’re thinking:

Sure… in a certain way you can still call that ‘dying’.  But you can with equal justification – not to mention more justification – not call it ‘dying’.  It all depends on what meaning you attach to that word.  As long as you remember that from God’s point of view it is no longer ‘dying’.

Christ has conquered death and it must be your conviction that you are alive to God in Jesus Christ.  “He who believes in me,” he once said, “shall never see death.”  And Christ surely knew very well what death and dying is.  If that which we must still experience, he no longer calls death, then it surely is no longer death.

“He who believes in me…!” he says.

Believing in him means belonging to him and he is the living one.  He went through that awesome chasm of death and he now stands on the other side.  He who believes in him now stands, in him, also on the other side.  That’s the message of Easter.

That is the message of ALIVE NOW!

God is perhaps always far ahead of all our human thoughts and words and formulations but that is just the reason why it is good to celebrate Easter again.

On that first Easter morning God changed the belief in the resurrection on the last day to the resurrection on the third day.

At that moment he brought the thoughts of people a little closer to the thoughts of God.  He – in a way of speaking – took the spices out of the hands of the women, so as to give those hands the opportunity to grasp the feet of their living Lord in worship (Mat.28:9).

Let this be the fruit of our Easter celebrations.

Understand clearly that your Lord has conquered death and that you now walk in the land of the living.  Walk in that joyful light of life NOW!

Let it be your conviction that you are people that are ALIVE NOW, in Christ Jesus and who will therefore also be raised on the last day.

Amen