Word of Salvation – Vol. 30 No. 09 – March 1985

 

Don’t Panic; He Lives!

(Easter Sermon)

 

Sermon by Rev. J. W. Deenick on Mark 16:3-6

Scripture lessons: Matthew 28, Revelation 1: 9-20

Suggested Hymns: 356; 360; 364; 305:6,7; Bow.402; 404.

 

Beloved brothers and sisters in Christ,

Possibly this is the most wonderful thing we can say about our Lord Jesus Christ, that He is the Author of Life.  We say about the Lord that He is the Lamb of God slain for the sins of the world; we say about Him that He is the Prince of Peace and the Great Physician.  But Peter once said about Him that He is the Author of Life.  He said it at Jerusalem, after the resurrection, when he stood in front of the Jewish council.

This is one of the themes with which the New Testament is much preoccupied, that Jesus Christ is the Giver and Source of Life.  For you and me today this is an important message because all around us we are confronted with people who are much preoccupied with the problem of death; how to cope with dying; how to die peacefully and more or less comfortably, with dignity and without pain.  The question of euthanasia is on the mind of many people; and euthanasia is the art of dying gently and in good style.

Well, there is no reason why we should blame people for being concerned about death and about the way they need to face it.  There is nothing more certain in life than that we have to die; and seeing that we are so frightfully interested about living comfortably it is only natural that we also want to die with ease and dignity.

Yet, this interest in the manner in which we want to die does not have a Christian but a pagan (Greek) background.  Euthanasia is a Greek word used by ancient Greek authors but not in the Greek N.T.  The Bible is preoccupied with other things: not with death but with life.  Even about the O.T. that is true.  The author of Psalm 118 says: “I will not die but live”; and Jesus says: “He who believes in Me will never die”.  Even where the O.T. does speak about death it always keeps open the door of hope.  In Psalm 16, for example!  “You will not abandon me to the grave, nor will you let your faithful one see corruption.  You have made known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand”.  We all know what Psalm 23 says about it: “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil… and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever”.  And the author of Psalm 73 is no less secure: “My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion for ever”.

Indeed, the Bible is preoccupied, not with death, but with life; even more clearly so in the N.T.  In the Gospels the Lord Jesus says: “My sheep hear my voice and they follow me and I give them eternal life”.  And we remember especially the word that Jesus spoke to Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life; He who believes in me will live even though he dies”.  Nor can we forget what we read a few minutes ago in Revelation where the Lord Jesus says of Himself: “I am the first and the last and the living One; I was dead and see I am alive for evermore; and I have the keys of death and of the realm of death”.  That means the Lord Jesus Christ keeps death under control; He has the keys.  Death has no power of its own; it is under the authority of the Lord Jesus.  He has the power to turn death into life.

This we will remember today.  In a world in which so many people have lost the way and have no hope beyond death, are more concerned about dying with ease and dignity than about meeting their Creator and Judge in death, we hear the Saviour say: “I am the way, the truth and the life”; if you want to live and die as one who has been reconciled to God, if you want to live and die without fear, I am the way.  Come to the Father and to eternal life through Me.

On this Easter Sunday morning/evening we hear the Gospel concerning the Lord Jesus Christ who is the Life and the Resurrection:

I.  When the women panic they are reassured;

II.  When they see the empty tomb their hope revives;

III.  When they hear the Gospel of the resurrection the Church is on the way.

I.  The women panicked when they saw the stone rolled away and a young man sitting on the right side at the tomb.  It is no wonder they were totally perplexed.  Ever since the Friday evening, when they had found this grave for their Lord, they had been frightfully upset.  The last few days, since the Friday morning, had been heart-break, bitterness and agony to them.  Their Master and Teacher who had claimed to be the Messiah, the Resurrection and the Life, had been captured by His enemies, tortured, crucified and killed.  They had been so excited and hopeful while they followed and believed Him.  Now they were confronted with the dreadful reality that once again death had been wickedly triumphant over life; evil had been triumphant over holiness and love.

Yet, they came out to see the grave; they felt duty bound to care for the Lord’s body but they came without hope.  They felt totally lost and helpless in the sight of death, that seemingly all-powerful tyrant and despot, which kept the human race in bondage.  We must admire them for the fact that they still came while knowing that a very large stone covered the entrance to the tomb.  Obviously, they had more courage and initiative than the men.  The disciples seem to have been so despondent that they did not even have the heart to come with the women and offer their help.  Of course, they all knew that the tomb had been sealed, but clearly the women still hoped that somehow they might be permitted to perform their service of love to the dead body of Jesus.

But then, as they approached the tomb they saw that the stone had already been rolled away and they started to get very alarmed.  What had happened?  Had the body of Jesus been taken away?  And then, when they entered the tomb with much trepidation and fear they saw this strange young man in a white robe sitting there.  Who was he?  They were really terrified.  But not for very long!  The Lord God in heaven had seen them coming and the angels in heaven were delighted about their courage; and so provision was made for their re-assurance.  With a comforting and reassuring but also very joyful serenity the angel said to them: “Don’t be alarmed!”  The cheerfulness of his voice must have encouraged them no end.

Now, as the women did, so do we, brothers and sisters, need a very great deal of encouragement in the face of the tyranny of death.  At one time or another, in one way or another, I am sure, you too have experienced, and will experience, how impossible it is to be reconciled with the reality of death, unless we face death in the light of the stone that has been rolled away.

You know, there is so much that we can do; but there is always one thing we cannot do.  There is so much that we can do medically, scientifically.  We can explore the universe and doctors can explore every little corner of our body.  They scan us from top to bottom and inside out.  They have ways and means to immunise us and to repair or replace the sick and broken parts.  But we are, all of us, well aware that, while they can often make us live a little longer, they cannot help us to escape from death.  Here or there, today or tomorrow, we will die.  We can try to be rational about it.  We can say: let us face it: death is only natural.  The leaves on our trees die and flowers in our garden.  Our animals, our cattle and our pets die.  Why should not we die too?  Only nature itself survives.  The trees will bud again and the birds lay their eggs again and have their young; and so human generations will come and go.  From death new life will grow.  Nature renews itself, world without end.

Let us be rational about it.

Yes, but the problem is that we are human.  We are not just flowers and birds.  We are human.  We have been created in the image of the Eternal One.  That is why we, and we alone, in the creation, are conscious of what is happening to us; and being conscious of it we rebel against it.  That too is natural.  It is in our human nature that we do not want to be defeated by death.  We rebel against death not only when young people die or people who still have many years of life and work to look forward to; even when older people die and the very old.  We experience it differently then.  We are not taken by surprise then.  But we still feel that there is something evil and wrong about the decay and death of their body and mind.  A human being, the person we have respected and loved, should not be debased and die in such a degrading way.

As the women did on the morning of Easter, so do we today need a lot of encouragement in the sight of death; and as they did, so do we receive it from the stone that was rolled away not by human hands.

That is what we must discover in the first place.  There is no escape from death coming from here below.  The stone will have to be rolled away by the LORD God almighty.  But come, join the women and be amazed.  God has rent the heavens once more and He has moved the stone that kept you and me imprisoned in death.

We do not know how precisely the stone was removed.  It did not need to be moved for the Lord Jesus to come out of the tomb.  It was moved to let the women go in.  But it was moved from heaven and for us to know that, kindles in our hearts new hope.

II.  The women experienced that too.  They looked around in the sepulchre but did not find the body of Jesus there.  That would have upset them deeply had it not been for that young man sitting there on the right hand side in his white robe.

It is interesting that we are given this little detail of where precisely he was sitting.  Later, when they told the others about it, they remembered it well; and in the early church it was always remembered until it was written down.  It was on the right hand side that they saw the young man sitting.  No, it wasn’t imagination.  It wasn’t a vision.  It was historic reality.  They remembered every detail of it.  As a historic fact it is described and as such it wants to be believed.

For the women to see this young man sitting there, so conspicuously dressed in his white garment, was disturbing in a way and yet it introduced a new element of hope.  He might know something more about where Jesus’ body was.

Now we cannot overlook, of course, that these women were in a unique position.  You and I could never be in a similar situation; no one could, not anymore.  These women had been set aside by the Lord God Himself for the special service of being eye-witnesses to the resurrection.  That is to say: not of the resurrection itself but of the risen Lord as He appeared to them later.  For this special service they were equipped here already by the angel.  You and I do not need that kind of equipment because we are not called to the same kind of service.

Yet, although we could never be eye-witnesses, we too are to bear witness to Christ’s resurrection; and therefore we too need to hear about it, and to believe, that Jesus lives.  We hear about it through the testimony of these women.  Our faith rests on their testimony and that of the others – God speaks to us through them and so we too receive the encouragement and the assurance they received when they listened to the young man who was an angel and who told them that Jesus had risen.

III.  He said: “You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified?  He has risen.  He is not here.  See the place where they laid Him.”

In verse 8 it says that the women still had great trouble to grasp it all and to control their bewilderment and emotions.  That is understandable.  It says even that at first they were afraid to speak about it.  They fled away from the tomb and kept silent.  But from the other gospels we know that it was not for long.  Matthew adds that afterwards, when they went to tell the disciples, the Lord Himself appeared to them in person and that they clasped his feet and worshipped Him.

You see, the word of the angel at the tomb set them moving.  We could even say: it set the Church moving.  No longer were they sitting there in despondency.  There was news.  There was hope.  Christ had risen.  The tomb was empty.  They had seen it with their own eyes.

Sure, it was only the very first beginning of the Church moving out with the Gospel.  Christ was still to appear to them and to others for forty days, and the Holy Spirit was yet to be poured out upon them.  Still, here from the empty tomb and from the angel message it began, until the whole world would know it: Christ has risen.

There are two reasons mainly, congregation, why people fear death.  First because it is common to us all that we fear the unknown.  Why are we frightened of the dark?  Especially children are.  Why are they?  Because the dark seems to hide unexpected dangers.  One never knows what is hidden inside the darkness.  Older people are less troubled by it because from experience we know what to expect even if we cannot see it.  But that precisely is the problem with death.  We have no experience of death.  Therefore no matter how rational we try to be about it; no matter how much we say that naturally to die is the end of everything, we cannot be sure.  And, as soon as we hear about people who have been clinically dead and experience the strangest things in that state, we are jolted out of our false security and the fears return.

But there is another reason why death frightens us.  The problem is that we have a conscience and that we cannot get rid of the self- accusation with which our conscience bothers us.  Someone wrote that from all his experiences in the Japanese concentration camps during the war this experience stood out most clearly; that people, who had been thinking for years that they did not fear death because they had nothing to be afraid of, suddenly discovered that in the sight of death old sins and long forgotten guilt started to come back to them and started to upset them when really confronted with dying.

In that light it isn’t such a bad thing really when people know how to fear death.  It shows that they have a conscience and it may drive them out to Jesus.

Did you notice that the angel said to the women: are you looking for Jesus whom they crucified?  You cannot separate the resurrection from the cross.  It was the crucified one who rose again.  It was the Jesus who died for our sins and paid the price of His holy life on the cross, who also rose again.  You cannot separate the one from the other.  You cannot separate the forgiveness of sins from the resurrection of the body.  It is a beautiful thing that in the articles of the Apostles’ Creed these two are placed so close together: “…the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.”

I do not know how much rebellion and fear there is left in your heart in the face of death.  One thing is certain we too are often tempted to rebel against what seems to be the arbitrariness with which death selects its victims.  Young Reformed people die in accidents.  Every Easter weekend we fear the carnage on the roads, and we feel helpless.  And when we are honest with ourselves we wonder how WE will stand before God in the hour of death with our record of hidden sins and long forgotten guilt.  Indeed, how will we stand before Him who needs no archives or computers to remember the dismal story of our lives.  How do we put our fears to rest?

There is one way only.  Only by listening and believing what the angel told the women and what the women told the Church and what the Church through the Gospel tells us; the message that comes from God: the Christ who was crucified for my sins is also the Christ who has risen; who has conquered death for me.  Fear not, he said, just believe.  Fear not, it is your Father’s will to give you the Kingdom.

Fear not, the angel said.  Don’t be alarmed.  He has risen.

We may put our fears to rest when we see Jesus coming as the living Lord to help us in our helplessness, to set us free from our guilt, and give us life in the midst of death.  Paul speaks about it that way in Romans 5.  What God gives us in Christ is life in the midst of death.  While we were yet sinners – and in the midst of death – Christ died for us and rose again.  And so, reconciled to God by his death we are saved by his life.

And now I have nothing to fear.

            I fear no foe with Him at hand to bless;
            Ills have no weight and tears no bitterness.
            Where is death’s sting?  Where grave thy victory?
            I triumph still… through Him who died for me and rose again.

Amen.