Don't You Understand,

Sermon Title: Don’t You Understand, "HE IS RISEN"!

Scripture: Luke 24 1-8

Wesleyan Community Church

Terry, Mississippi

Sunday Morning – March 31, 2002

Scripture Introduction:

We can all probably remember the words of being told to do something, then we can probably remember a period of time passing without any activity on our part in the direction of those guiding words, and then a reminder of what we were told. The gentleness of this reminder was usually based upon the demeanor of the person making the request. I am sure we all have memories of several accounts along this line, and if you think your response was always immediate, I remind you that we are in a church this morning.

This morning’s Scripture is recorded in Luke’s account of the resurrection morning and the discovery of the empty tomb by those that were going to prepare Jesus body. We need to remember that Jesus’ body was hastily placed into the tomb in order that the Sabbath be observed, there were preparations that were not completed. As we look at this Scripture this morning, allow your minds to absorb the wonders of what has taken place here.

Scripture Reading: Luke 24:1-8

1Now upon the first day of the week, very early in the morning, they came unto the sepulchre, bringing the spices which they had prepared, and certain others with them. 2And they found the stone rolled away from the sepulchre. 3And they entered in, and found not the body of the Lord Jesus. 4And it came to pass, as they were much perplexed thereabout, behold, two men stood by them in shining garments: 5And as they were afraid, and bowed down their faces to the earth, they said unto them, Why seek ye the living among the dead? 6He is not here, but is risen: remember how he spake unto you when he was yet in Galilee, 7Saying, The Son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again. 8And they remembered his words,

Sermon Introduction:

Why not look at the resurrection account on this, the morning that we celebrate the empty tomb and the fact that all has happened just as Christ foretold. This was foretold by the prophets, this was foretold by Jesus to his disciples prior to His entrance into Jerusalem, this was foretold by Jesus at the Garden when the soldiers came to arrest him, and what is the response. Clueless people who had no idea what was going on.

Our lives are filled with such warnings. I am going to pick on the habit of smoking, and I have to think of all the warnings that come along with it. We are told by the medical community about the dangers of that habit. We have probably seen the pictures in our health classes of the end results of the continuation of this habit, we see the blackened and useless lungs, we see the lips that are eaten with cancer. We have heard the first hand accounts by those that are caught up in the addiction to the drug nicotine and their pleading to those that are not yet ensnared by this powerful hold to avoid what they now find themselves held captive by. Now you will also notice that all that I have just relayed should be a powerful enough incentive not to smoke, and yet there are those that still succumb. I haven’t even mentioned the spiritual reasons behind the call to not get involved.

My point is not the problem of smoking, it is the problem of not listening to what we were told. We hear the warning but the thought never gets acted upon in our minds. We hear about things but fail to process them in our minds, minds that are more powerful and flexible then any computer known to man, and I venture that no computer will ever come close to matching the complexity and possibility of the human mind, a human mind that was ever so carefully created by the awesome abilities of our God.

It truly is a shame that to often, we must learn from mistakes, or even if what we are looking at is not a mistake, that we couldn’t have just accepted the wisdom that is often times lovingly laid out before us and accepted and gone forward with that, avoiding perhaps not so much as a mistake, but going forward and not loosing valuable time, time that we perhaps took learning on our own and not trusting in the experience of those that have walked that way before. We will all learn about the salvation that Jesus died on that cross to obtain, we will either know it and be a partaker of it or we will know it as a result from being exempt from it for all of eternity. The latter need not become a fact in our lives or the lives of others. We have God’s written Word at our disposal and we also have the empowering of His Holy Spirit if we so choose to allow Him free reign over our lives. The chorus explains it well -