Life From The Tomb

Give me some symbols of life. What comes to mind when you think of the words alive, living, and life? Personally, I first thought of my baby. She is a new life in this world. Speak out some of your answers. (Give short time to talk about it). How about the green grass outside? It was brown and dead for 3 or 4 months and now look at it; vibrant and alive, so alive that you now have to mow your lawns again. Freshly laid eggs are a good reminder of new life. They could become a little chick one day. Look around all of nature, especially in the spring, and you will find life. Yet, did you think of perhaps a coffin or a seed buried in the ground? Your first idea probably wasn’t something we normally associate with death.

A short story follows this same logic. A teacher at a Christian school asked the kids to do an assignment shortly before resurrection Sunday. She told them to take some plastic “Easter” eggs and put something that represented life in them. Well, one young fellow who was literally retarded never seemed to get the assignments right. He always seemed to fail and the kids ridiculed him. Once the children had come back from their weekend break, the teacher asked them to bring up their eggs. She started opening them one by one and found grass, leaves, and even a butterfly. She finally found herself with the last egg, given to her by the little boy. She opened it and found nothing. She naturally assumed he didn’t understand the assignment and so went to help explain it to him again. When she asked him if he didn’t understand with the other children laughing in the background he said “The tomb was empty… wasn’t it?”

You wouldn’t normally associate the tomb, a casket, a funeral, or even the death of a seed with life. Christians or even pseudo-Christians walk around with crosses hanging on their necks. Why a cross? Why not an empty tomb hanging our necks? Christians walk around wearing a symbol of death about their necks. Jesus died. We even witnessed that last week. Satan had gotten his way with Judas, Caiaphas the high priest, and even with the life of Jesus. Satan enticed the mobs and the priests into such an evil action. Many who had hailed Jesus as a prophet and a king now mocked him and laughed at Him. They requested that he come down from the cross of His own power. Yet, he hung on the cross and died. Death isn’t a good thing so why did he do it? Death is a tool of Satan and yet he succumbed to it. Why? Check out Luke 24:46-47. “Thus it is written, that the Christ would suffer and rise again from the dead the third day, and that repentance for forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in His name…” He did it so we could be forgiven. He did it so that we could have a life we never dreamed of. He did it so that we could have hope. He rose for you and me!

He rose to eliminate my sins. – Lk. 24:47; Ps. 103:12

“… that repentance for forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in His name…”

“As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us.”

Jesus Christ came, died, and rose again because he loved us enough to want to save us from our sins. By sins, I mean moral failures. Places in which we have crossed the line on what is right and what is wrong. Transgression means to go outside of the laws. We transgress the law when we speed or when we fail to report income on our taxes. At one point you have made a decision to go beyond the law and because you have gone beyond the law, you will face punishment in the form of a fine or even jail time. In the same way, since we all have moral failures according to God’s law, we will face judgment and sentencing. We have transgressed God’s law along the way and now find ourselves separated from Him.

This is where the resurrection of Christ kicks in. Since we have been separated from God by our failure to obey His law, Jesus chose to bridge that gap by making a way to get rid of our sin. Sin requires death and so Christ died for us. Anyone can die however, so what would it matter if Christ died? He rose to prove himself perfect and blameless. He rose to prove He is God and cannot be confined by death. He rose and defeated death and sin. He conquered sin which gives us the ability to conquer sin through him. Now, when we repent, Jesus is faithful to forgive our sins and cast them as far as possible from us. When we repent, we turn away from our sins and begin walking towards holiness and purity. We reject the values and opinions of this world and accept that God’s law and rules are correct. We accept that Christ rose from the grave to forgive our sins. Jesus rose to eliminate our sins!