1 Peter 1:3,4 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade-- kept in heaven for you
What did you hope to find when you came here to church this morning? Maybe you hoped to see a beautifully decorated church. Maybe some of you hoped to see some familiar faces of family members and friends. Maybe you hoped to sing some of those beautiful Easter hymns. Maybe you hoped to find some peace, some answers, some inspiration or some direction for a life that at times seems to be spinning out of control. What did you hope to find when you came to church this morning? Many times our hopes are based on our past experiences. You’ve been to Easter services before and so you build your expectations for today on previous experiences, that this year will be similar to past years. Or maybe your hope is based on what someone said to you. Someone said that they were going to meet you here, that there was going to be beautiful music, singing, decorations and they even told you that the message of Easter is so much more than chocolate bunnies and brightly colored eggs, but that the message of Easter is about a man that gives living hope, lasting peace and true purpose. So here you are, with all those hopes. Well, I’ve got some good news. No matter what brought you here to today, today is a day of hope because a living Jesus gives living hope. Strangely enough this living hope takes us to a place of death, where hope normally appears to end.
We go to a cemetery. This cemetery is located just outside of the city of Jerusalem. It’s Sunday morning nearly 2000 years ago. The week leading up to this Sunday had been festive and frantic. This relatively small city was packed full of people who had travelled to Jerusalem for the annual Jewish festival called the Passover. But this year’s festival was underlined with controversy. There was a man who some people had claimed was the Messiah, the Deliverer of Israel, who had been performing miracles, healing people and even raising dead people back to life. He even had claimed to be the Son of God. His following was growing large and larger, and in the eyes of some Jewish religious leaders more and more threatening. This man Jesus had been arrested Thursday evening and crucified on Friday and that evening his body quickly placed in a tomb in that cemetery outside of Jerusalem.
It was day three of Jesus’ death and some women went to the cemetery. What did they hope to find? Their past experience had taught them that you do not go to the cemetery to see IF the person is still there. You go to the cemetery because you KNOW the person is still there. So they went hoping to find Jesus’ lifeless body. When they arrived, they saw the stone that blocked the entrance to Jesus’ tomb had been rolled away, allowing them to look in and see that Jesus’ body was not there. What did they expect had happened? Experience had told them that if the body was missing, someone must have stolen or moved it. That was the only natural conclusion that Mary, one of Jesus' followers, could come to as she asked a man who stood beside her, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him” (John 20:15). But the man who stood next to Mary was none other than the man she was looking for – it was Jesus. The women came to that cemetery hoping to find a dead body, but instead, they found a living Jesus who gave them hope. Jesus was not dead, Jesus was alive!
This man had done exactly as he had promised and repeatedly and specifically predicted. Jesus had said about himself, “He must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.” (Luke 9:22). There is nothing cryptic about those words, is there? It as a simple and straightforward as, “I am going to work on Tuesday.” What Jesus said may have been hard for people to BELIEVE, but it was not difficult to UNDERSTAND. What Jesus had said, Jesus had done! The one who once was dead, now was alive!
Think of the relief of Jesus’ disciples and the joy they must have felt! Not merely a joy that their friend and teacher was among the living. Even more than the reassurance that they were NOT crazy for believing the seemingly crazy things this man Jesus had said. It was the joy, peace and confidence that came from knowing that Jesus had done what he said he was going to do – not just rise from the dead, but bring salvation to the world. You see, this was and is personal. His death was for them, for the world, for you. Jesus died to bring you freedom from the guilt and punishment of sin, to pay the price required for us to be right with God and spend life eternal with him in heaven. Jesus died for you.
Now there might be some people that would stop me there and say, “Woe. Hold on for just one second. I don’t need anyone to dying for me.” And I understand that. No one likes to think that they were the cause of someone else’s suffering and especially the cause of someone else’s death. But the fact is that sin requires payment. The Bible tells us what that payment is, “The wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). Because of our failures to do what God asks of us – to be patient with our children, understanding with our spouse, kind to the people around us, speaking well of one another – because of our sin – the required payment is death, eternal separation from God. Now you have a choice, either you pay or someone else has to pay for you. Sure, there are plenty of people that try to ignore this fact. But that works just about as well as throwing the bills you receive into the trash can, and pretending they’re not there. You can ignore them but they don’t go away. That’s why Jesus came. Jesus came to pay the wages of our sin. As the very Son of God, he was capable of living the perfect life that we could never live. Jesus willingly went to the cross and there suffered the eternal separation that we deserve for our sins. Jesus has paid the price that is required for our sin. And here’s the neat part, the Bible says yes, “The wages of sin is death,” but it also goes onto say, “But the gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:23). God gives this payment to you as a gift. He says that all those who believe in him shall not perish, but have eternal life. This gift of life eternal, this freedom from the guilt and payment of sin belongs to all those who depend on him.
That is the “living hope” that Peter, one of Jesus’ disciples who saw Jesus after he rose from the dead later wrote about. Peter wrote, “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1 Peter 1:3). Dear friends, this is the living hope of Easter. Jesus has risen from the dead so that you may know that sin’s payment has been made, salvation is yours. This is the living hope that the a living Jesus gives to you! What does this living hope mean for you?
Have you ever been stood up? You know, someone says that they’ll meet you somewhere at a specific time and then they don’t show up? Now I’m not asking everyone to reveal their dating history. When you are stood up, hopes are quickly dashed and replaced with disappointment. Once that happens or if it happens repeatedly, you probably have a hard time trusting that person the next time they ask you to meet them somewhere. When you think about it, hope and trust go hand in hand? We only have hope when the basis for that hope is trustworthy, solid, certain and faithful.
Jesus did not stand up anyone on Easter. He said that he would rise on the third day and did exactly what he said. As impossible and hopeless as it may have seemed to those who saw his lifeless body taken off the cross and placed in the tomb, Jesus still did it. And dear friends, Jesus will never stand you up either. No matter how impossible and hopeless the situation may seem to us, he will absolutely do what he has promised – Easter assures it to you! A marriage that seems hopelessly irreparable, a relationship with an adult child that has been stressed, health that continues to deteriorate, a job that brings frustration, a world that seems to become more and more violent – look to what the Lord promises you in the Bible and know that God will do what he says. That is the living hope that allows you to even stand in a cemetery at the graveside of a fellow Christian, and stand with hope-filled grief, that while the separation is hard, it is only temporary. Jesus has transformed death, to be the doorway to life eternal for all those who believe in him.
There will be a lot of kids and a few adults that get one of these today – a chocolate bunny. I remember as a child getting one of these and looking forward to enjoying it for a long time when I bit into it and suddenly realized that it was hollow. How disappointing. It looked so good from the outside, but really wasn’t much there after you got through its thin chocolate shell. This world holds out a lot “chocolate bunnies” that promise to provide hope – relationships, careers, recreational activities, new car, bigger home, more money, optimism based on optimism. While the things of this world may bring some temporary satisfaction and joy, they are hollow, inevitably leaving a person looking for something more, for the next “chocolate bunny” if you will. Dear friends, the risen Christ has given you a solid and living hope, a hope that is not based upon the ever changing things of this world, but a hope that is based upon a powerful and faithful Savior-God, a Savior who gave his life for you, a Savior that not even death could prevent him from doing what he promised. That is the living hope that is yours because, Christ has risen! He has risen indeed! Amen.
