THROUGH CHRIST OUR LORD, HOPE SPRINGS ETERNAL
John 11:17-27 . . .
As far back as I remember, I loved watching a parade. On Palm Sunday we commemorated the triumphal entry of Jesus the Good Shepherd into the Holy City of Jerusalem. What a parade that must have been! Jesus riding on a donkey as He passed through a sea of people waving palm branches, and shouting, “Hosanna! Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord!”
By the end of the week, however, shouts of triumph had turned to angry accusations that escalated into demands that Jesus be crucified. What a stark contrast! And what a reminder of just how quickly things can go awry in our own mixed-up world!
As the story of Crucifixion week unfolds, stunning is the deterioration of human nature, as it plunges from the mountaintop of joy to the valley of sorrow. What a dastardly deed done to the One who came to bring peace, joy, love, forgiveness to the world!
The good news is that evil schemes perpetrated by wicked people did not then, and will not now, undo God’s plan of redemption.
Thus, the Message of Easter is:
God always triumphs over Evil! Guaranteed! A double indemnity guarantee promised by the Good Shepherd, sealed by the Great Shepherd - John 10:27-30 . . .
God is in the business of guaranteeing the outcome of His redemptive plan by turning negatives into positives . . . God took the greatest negative the world has ever known – the crucifixion – and turned it into the greatest positive the world has ever known – the resurrection!
Thus, the declaration of Jesus to Martha expresses the essence of our Christian faith: “I am the resurrection and the life”.
Yet, our faith, like that of Martha’s, has been put to the test time and time again in our own lives. We, like Martha, have found ourselves asking, “How could this have happened?” We, like Martha, railed at Jesus, saying, “If you had been there, he or she would not have died.”
Then one day, through tears of anguish as great as any ever experienced, we visualized the Crucifixion of Jesus. The stark reality of death transported us to Calvary where we knelt at the Cross . . . found ourselves beside Mary, helplessly gazing upward as Jesus died . . . wept as Mary wept.
In our grief we “saw” Jesus on the cross. As we beheld His agony, we suddenly realized: Even God’s Son endured physical death . . . why He had to die . . . what it really means to be a child of God. Then we were struck by the same amazing truth that once dawned upon the beloved Apostle Paul - “Death no longer has dominion over us”- Romans 6:8-11 . . .
“Alive in Christ!” “Alive” is the name of a multiple vitamin that I take once a day; but, thank God, “Alive in Christ” is the spiritual victory that occurred once, for all, and lasts forever! Now:
Unless we see the resurrection in light of the crucifixion, we may miss the pertinent point to be made about that “not so holy” week which began in triumph only to end in tragedy. A lesson we sometimes learn the hard way:
Into every life rain falls, and into every life situation there comes a time of weeping . . . for loved ones . . . over disappointments . . . due to war, poverty, injustice, not to mention various and sundry other ills. But hold on! In the midst of it all, hear the promise of Jesus: “Your weeping will turn to joy”!
The Resurrection changed everything! Death had been swallowed up in Victory and there was the dawning of a new age of triumph over tragedy - for all who believe!
And the Risen Lord said to grief-stricken believers: “Because I live, you shall live.” In this one powerful statement, Jesus reiterated to Martha, and to all who believe, the fulfillment of God’s promise of a new reality: “Death no longer has dominion”! Remember the context of this promise?
On His way to Jerusalem to be received triumphantly, to be rejected and crucified, then to be raised from the dead – Jesus had detoured to go to the home of his friend Lazarus who had become suddenly ill and died.
Martha expressed her aggravation with Jesus for not coming sooner; but Jesus responded with words of hope: “Your brother will live again.”
Martha replied that she knew Lazarus would rise at the resurrection that was to come. Whereupon Jesus spoke those immortal words that have come down to us through the centuries, “I am the Resurrection and the Life. He who believes in me will live, even if he has died (physically); everyone who lives, and believes in me, shall never die.”
Jesus was not thinking in terms of physical life when He said that everyone who believes in Him shall never die. We who believe in Jesus do, in fact, die - physically. Jesus was speaking of life after physical death. His Resurrection gave us the certainty that death is not the end of our NEW life in Christ.
There are those who think of this earth as the land of the living, and that we are headed to the land of the dying; but it would be more accurate to think of this habitat of ours as the land of the dying, as did King Edward on his death bed: “Weep not. I shall not die. As I leave this land of the dying, I trust that I shall see the blessings of the Lord in the land of the living.”
Our King of kings and Lord of lords made it clear to us that, because He lived and died for our sins but was raised from the dead, those who trust Him as Lord and Savior know this: When death takes our bodies, our souls do not pass out of the realm of the living; our souls pass in to the realm of the living.
I think I told you about Vance Havner whose wife died and someone said to him, “I’m sorry you lost your wife”. To which he retorted in his own inimitable way, “I haven’t lost my wife. I know exactly where she is.”
As children of God, we know exactly what we are about and where we are going: we are on a spiritual journey – “not toward the sunset but toward the sunrise”. By the amazing grace of God we are not on our way to death; we are on our way to life.
How can this be? The word of God tells us: We become children of God and therefore “spiritual beings not of this world” when we truly believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God, and we fully accept Him and all that He said as absolute truth.
How much of Jesus have you accepted? Are you a sheep or a goat? I pray God you’re a sheep. If you’re still a goat, I pray God you’ll become a sheep.
Remember: “My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish.” That spiritual being of His sheep . . . of yours and mine . . . shall never perish.
When we repented of our sins and confessed with our mouths “Jesus Christ is Lord”, we did it to the glory of God His Father who at that moment became our Father who art in heaven. He granted us the privilege of sonship
– which means that physical death is but a transition from the here and now to the hereafter - a transition from this life to the next.
The factual statement of a believer’s destiny was made by Saint Paul: “To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:8) . . . “and so shall we ever be with the Lord” (I Thessalonians 4:17).
Paul could make that ecstatic statement of faith because of his own encounter with the risen Christ; but Paul’s encounter with Christ could only occur due to the fact that God had already made the most dramatic statement ever made when God raised Jesus from the dead whereupon an angel of the Lord made the most climactic announcement ever heard:
“He is not here. He has risen!” In that one declarative announcement lies our hope . . . expectation . . . salvation . . . hope!
When someone asks you and me to give a reason for the hope within us, what shall we say? Say “He is risen!” Let us all say “He is risen indeed!” Amen.
