Title: What Will You Find When You Look For Jesus?04/20/03
West Side
Text: Matthew 28:1-10
A.M. Service ~ Easter Sunday
Purpose: To find the meaning of the empty tomb
*******************************************************Introduction
Did you see the story on CNN this past Sunday of the rescued POWs? When Kenneth Krueger pulled his big rig in front of former POW Shoshana Johnson’s home and began whooping and blowing on the horn, I understood the joy and relief that she was alive and would be home soon. As Mr. Krueger gave Shoshana’s mom a huge bear hug, he summed up the situation perfectly when he shouted "Thank You Jesus!"
I’m sure the disciples were just as overcome with emotion and hope when they began to realize that Jesus had risen just as he said he would.(1)
Today I want to talk to you about the question: “What will you find when YOU look for Jesus?”
READ Text: Matthew 28:1-10
What then is the message we discover about the empty tomb?
I. Jesus gives us comfort for fear
A.
1. v. 1 “Early on Sunday morning, as the new day was dawning…”
B. Encouragement for our questions
1. v. 5 “Don’t be afraid…”
a. Why were they fearful? They were looking for Jesus who had been crucified.
b. Question: How might you be looking for Jesus?
c. As they walked to the tomb, their questions:
i) Who would roll away the stone
ii) What might they find
iii) What would they tell the soldiers
iv) Why did these things have to happen
The angel said, “Do not be afraid…” When the angel sat upon the stone, (a physical barrier) it was as if it symbolized God’s conquest over all barriers to his will. The stone didn’t need to be moved to let Jesus out- rather it was so others could look in and witness the empty tomb.
It also said the soldiers fainted away. While the stone might symbolize a physical barrier, the soldiers represented a political or societal barrier.
Whatever the case may have been, it was extremely hard to celebrate Easter when you’re living Good Friday.
Are you going through a Good Friday experience, where you find it hard to celebrate Easter. May I say to you, that with Jesus, a new day has begun. For the darkness of Friday, gave birth to the dawning of a new day on Sunday. (v. 1)
Question: In my darkness, would God’s presence break through?
By David Coffin, guest columnist
It was Good Friday. My house looked more like a set for "Rescue 911" than a place of solemn preparation for the pinnacle of the church year.
Barbara, my wife of 15 years, had just gotten home at 3 a.m. after a long shift as a registered nurse at a physical rehabilitation hospital. Her heart started to pound more than a hundred beats a minute. Her pulse raced so fast we couldn’t measure it. We tried massage and relaxation exercises, but nothing helped. She said her heart felt as if it were going to explode. Desperate, I called 911.
In the darkness, the emergency medical services unit arrived in our parsonage living room and worked on my normally healthy, 43- year-old wife.
I followed the ambulance to the hospital, my thoughts as heavy as my foot was on the gas pedal. In the early morning hours when many churches would sing "Go to Dark Gethsemane" and reflect on Christ’s agony on the cross, I was deep in my own darkness.
Barbara had always been the trim half of our marriage. (I can’t stay away from bratwurst, and I have the waistline to prove it.) She had been working long hours to help pay off both my seminary and her nursing school debts. Was it too much for her? I wept as I thought the unthinkable.
At the emergency room, it took two hours to stabilize Barbara’s heart. My wife lay in a hospital gown, hooked up to IV tubes, breathing with the aid of an oxygen mask. It looked wrong; it didn’t fit this youthful, active woman.
When her atrial fibrillation was finally controlled, Barbara was admitted to the intensive care cardiac unit. She had another episode on Saturday, which the doctor again brought under control. It wasn’t a heart attack, he said, but because her father died of heart disease in his fifties, he wanted to be cautious.
Around noon on Saturday, Barb finally slept. I too was exhausted. I felt ten years older. After calling family members, I realized she needed her rest more than she needed my presence.
Intensive-Care Easter
I returned to our empty parsonage, facing an Easter I couldn’t cancel and didn’t have much heart for. I prayed, wept, and pleaded for God to give me the strength to be both a good husband and a good pastor. Lent had been a hard season in our rural area, with frequent blizzards and ice storms. The people expected--and deserved--a real Easter. As at many churches, Easter was our best-attended service of the year. They needed a worship leader who could invite them into the presence of the Risen Lord.
The question pulled at me. How can I celebrate Easter when I’m living Good Friday?
I called a couple of local pastor friends. They empathized, and in response to my question "How does one do Easter with a wife in intensive care?" they said, "You tell me how you did it, so I will know if it ever happens to me."
I prayed some more, cried some more, and paced the room. I was tired but couldn’t sleep. I had put together my sermons in rough outline form, but they weren’t as polished as my Myers- Briggs "J" personality expected (a "J" type craves order and a sense of completion). I read and reread the biblical texts.
Finally a seminary classmate called me from out of state at 11:30 that night. He asked me what I planned to preach on Easter Sunday. I responded by pouring out my heart to him. My friend gave me a couple of thoughts to hang onto.
"First, Christ is Savior and rose from the grave," he said. "Dave, you are not Christ. You will find the energy to do Easter. Second, Barb knows you love her. She wants you to be the best pastor you can be on Easter morning."
Resurrection
Though I barely got three hours of sleep the night before Easter, somehow Christ strengthened me the next day. I led the early service, went to our church’s breakfast, and was able to proclaim to the large (for us) crowd of 123 at the second service the eternal message: "He is risen!"
The choir sang, we served Communion, and the crucifix on the altar was replaced with the statue of the risen Christ. Throughout my chanting of the liturgy and prayers, I stared at the statue of the risen Christ and drew strength from it. I was told that I preached one of the finest Easter sermons of my ministry at the church.
When the Communion server gave me the bread and wine and said, "Take and eat; this is the body and blood of Christ, broken and shed for you," it struck me: Christ is present with us in all his majesty--just as he is with Barbara in the ICCU.
There’s a lot I’ve learned to live with. Our priorities changed dramatically, thanks to the Easter weekend when we truly lived--not just observed—the journey to new life.(2)
David Coffin is a Lutheran pastor in Ohio.
May I say to you today, if you are experiencing a difficulty in celebrating Easter because you live in Good Friday, Jesus gives comfort for fear.
II. Grace to Believe
A. v. 6 “He isn’t here! He has been raised from the dead, just as he said would happen. Come, see where his body was lying.”
B. What I notice about that verse is the emphasis. Notice that there is an exclamation point at the end of that first phrase. “He isn’t here!”
C. Just as the cross was a moment in time. When the stakes were driven into the hands and feet of our Lord and Savior, in which to make a dramatic statement.
D. May I say to you. There isn’t anymore important punctuation point in the Bible. For it defines the moment. It separates all those would be philosophers and leaders, with the King of kings, and Lord of lords.
God’s promise confronts us each time we stand at the tomb. He is risen, just as he said.
JN 2:20 The Jews replied, "It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?" 21 But the temple he had spoken of was his body. 22 After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the Scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken.
The message of the tomb is that Jesus gives us grace to believe. For he is the accepted sacrifice.
Romans 4:25 “25 He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.
RO 5:1 Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2 through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.
When Jesus was handed over to the authorities to die, he was willingly laying down his life for you and I. He did this so that by completing the process of dying for our sins, we might be justified.
What does justified mean?
1. In a judicial sense it means “acquittal”
2. Our guilt has been removed and our broken relationship with God has been restored by God’s act of free grace and forgiveness
3. It’s not what we do, but what God does for us:
Eph. 2:8-9 “It is by grace you have been saved, through faith. This is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God- not by works, so that no one can boast.”
You see, it’s not dependent upon our working or our worthiness.
“Consider the ways in which we try to justify ourselves, to make our lives meaningful and acceptable, if not by ‘good works’ at least by hare work or by acts that we think will win the approval of others. The desire for success and the quest for acceptance almost leads us into idolatry. We become terrified by the prospect of failing to win the love and recognition that we grave.”(3)
There is an invitation here: Verse 6: “Come and see…”
Jesus Christ invites you to come and see what a new life in Christ is like. For there is nothing that you can do to justify, or work your way into heaven. It is only by the free gift of forgiveness of sins, by grace through faith that we receive it.
What will you find when you look for Jesus?
1. Comfort for fear 2. Grace to believe
III. Strength to Share
V. 7 “And now, go quickly and tell his disciples he has been raised from the dead, and he is going ahead of you to Galilee.”
There is here as sense of urgency. For he was going ahead of them.
The fear of the unknown and the past is replaced with the hope and certainty of the future. For our future includes Jesus Christ.
Time is short. No man knows when Jesus is returning, so each must be ready.
Acts 17:31 “For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead."
This good news of Jesus is not to held for ourselves, but is to be shared with all men.
Illustration: Rodney Buchanan: Sermon Central
In 1981 there was a devastating flood in central China. During the flood an ancient pagoda collapsed at Famen Temple. A few years later, archaeologists were digging through the rubble when they made a startling discovery. Sealed in a miniature stone casket, they found what they believed to be part of one of the Buddha’s fingers. It is now touring Taiwan, and was for a while on display at a mountain-top monastery.
The finger was housed in a miniature golden pagoda as tens of thousands people came to pay homage to it. They burned incense and placed flowers all around the relic. One visitor said, “I was born more than 2,000 years after the Buddha, but I feel moved and touched to have seen the finger.” Some said they felt as though the Buddha was actually sitting in front of them.
How tragic. How utterly empty. People sitting before a piece of dismembered, mummified flesh feeling as though it was something special. Could the finger of the Buddha help them? Could it reach out and touch them? Could it heal them? Could it raise them from the dead?
Christians would react quite differently if someone claimed to have a preserved finger of Jesus. They would not revere it at all. In fact, if someone could find a finger of Jesus it would literally destroy the Christian faith per se. The whole Christian faith rests on the fact that there is no such finger to be found. There is no finger, no hand, no body — for Jesus rose from the dead and his body is gone and his tomb is empty.
As we come here today we are celebrating the fact that Christians believe in an empty tomb. There are no relics because Jesus was bodily resurrected from the grave. We are not here to have a memorial service for a great religious teacher who lived 2000 years ago; we are here to celebrate the fact that Jesus Christ is alive and reigns as King of the universe. When the women arrived at Jesus’ tomb on Sunday morning, the angel said, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here; he has risen, just as he said” (Matthew 28:5-6).(4)
The message of the Tomb that we find when we look for Jesus is
Comfort for Fear
Grace to Believe
Strength to Share
IV. Purpose to Rejoice.
v. 8 “The women ran quickly form the tomb. They were very frightened but also filled with great joy, and they rushed to find the disciples to give them the angel’s message. And as they went, Jesus met them. “Greetings.” He said. And they ran to him, held his feet, and worshiped him. Then Jesus said to them,. “Don’t be afraid! Go tell my brothers to leave for Galilee, and they will see me there.”
We have much to rejoice about.
1. Road to Emmaus: Luke 24:32 32 They asked each other, "Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?" LK 24:33 They got up and returned at once to Jerusalem. There they found the Eleven and those with them, assembled together 34 and saying, "It is true! The Lord has risen and has appeared to Simon."
2. At the Ascension: Luke 24:51 51 While he was blessing them, he left them and was taken up into heaven. 52 Then they worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy. 53 And they stayed continually at the temple, praising God.
3. Jailer: Acts 16:34 34 The jailer brought them into his house and set a meal before them; he was filled with joy because he had come to believe in God--he and his whole family.
Conclusion: Out of the ashes of life, you can still find Jesus.
Recent paraphrased illustration from Kuwait. (As reported to me by a local Nazarene pastor from J.C. where this chaplain attends)(5) A chaplain from Junction City, Kansas relates the story of some colleagues who are serving as chaplains in Kuwait. Apparently, near Ash Wednesday this past March, there was a fire near some tents in one of the staging areas in Kuwait. The blaze quickly spread to a couple of other tents, which in the wind, quickly burned to the ground. Thankfully no one was hurt.
The commanding chaplain there, realizing that Ash Wednesday would soon be upon them, did not have any palm branches to burn, so asked one of the firefighters if she might have some of the ashes from the recent fire.
The firefighter took a small can and amongst the devastation of the fire and charred remains of several tents, bent down and randomly scooped up a can full of ashes.
The Chaplain thanked him and returned to her tent. She didn’t think much of it until she began to prepare for Ash Wednesday. She took the can, emptied it so as to sift the ashes and break apart the clumps. Upon rubbing the ashes together, she discovered that among the ashes, was a little silver cross. The kind you might carry in your pocket. And in that moment she relates, it was as if God said, “I am still here. Even though you are a long way from home, in what seems like the ashes of life. I am still here.”
Today: When you look for Jesus what do you find. You will find that he’s alive. And calling your name.
Footnotes
1 Sermon Central Newsletter Illustrations: 4/15/03
2 David Coffin: Leadership Magazine
3 "Words of Faith" Rob L. Staples. Beacon Hill Press, Kansas City, MO. 2001. Pg. 60
4 Rodney Buchanan: Sermon Central Easter Illustrations
5 Story related to me by fellow pastor
