It’s Not Over Yet
Acts 2:22-24, 36-38
Dr. Roger W. Thomas, Preaching Minister
First Christian Church, Vandalia, MO
Introduction: We had it won. I was sure of it. It was the eighth inning of the sixth game of the National League Playoffs. The Cubs had a 3-0 lead. The team was five outs from their first World Series appearance in fifty-eight years. Every die-hard Cub fan could taste the sweet nectar of victory. The curse was finally over. We had it won. But it wasn’t over yet. That’s when the fan grabbed the foul ball just as leftfielder Moises Alou was about to catch it. The Marlins went on to score and then take the lead. My Cubbies totally collapsed. They lost that game and the next. The Marlins, not the Cubs, went to the 2003 World Series and won! I had thought it was over!
I wasn’t the first to make that mistake. In 1948 Thomas Dewey had the presidential election all wrapped up. Everyone said so. The top political experts, according to a Newsweek poll, said Dewey had a hundred more electoral votes than he needed to win. Newspapers all across the country predicted a landslide for the Republican candidate. Life Magazine captioned a picture of Dewey, “The New President.” The Chicago Tribune already had the headline printed “Dewey Defeats Truman.”
On election night, Dewey stayed up late working on his acceptance speech. Truman spent the night in Excelsior Springs, MO. Reports say he ate a ham sandwich, drank a glass of milk, and then went to bed, convinced he had lost. They were both wrong. Everybody thought it was over! That wasn’t the first time somebody made that mistake.
It was a cool spring night in the city. Caiaphas went to bed early. It had been a long day. It had been a long week. The Jewish High Priest had been up before day break that Friday to hear the case of the Galilean. It had all taken place under the cover darkness to keep his followers from getting wind of what was afoot and incite a riot. The trial went just as planned. Witnesses provided ample evidence against the trouble maker. The council voted and the verdict was announced. The Roman authorities gave their approval. By nine in the morning Jesus was on the way to the cross. At three in the afternoon, it was finished.
Sleep would come easy to Caiaphas that night. He was tired. But he was also relieved. Jesus has been causing him trouble for months. His teachings had upset the rabbis. Rumor of miracles had put the masses in a stir. He remembered the hysteria when the Galilean had paraded into town to shouts of the crowd just a week before. Then there was the disturbance in the temple that same day. The normally meek and mild teacher had gone on a rampage through the temple courts turning over tables and chasing out the merchants. It had been one troubling report after another all week long. The Roman governor had warned him to get the problem under control or he would find a high priest who could. Caiaphas didn’t have to be warned twice.
Late in the week the security police made the arrangements. An inside source provided the needed information. Jesus was now history! Before going to his chambers, Caiaphas finished one last piece of business. He signed the request for a cohort of Romans soldiers to guard the tomb through the night. The last thing they needed was some orneriness by the Galilean’s followers. Caiaphas and all the other Jewish authorities went to bed on Friday night content that the Jesus-problem was solved. They thought it was over. But God raised him from the dead (Acts 2:24).
Jesus’ friends also thought it was over. Unlike Caiaphas, few of them slept that Friday night. Never mind that they had been up all night. They were too heart broken and scared to sleep. Heart broken that their friend, hero and teacher had been killed. Scared that they would be next. Most had scattered on Friday morning. A few had stayed with him to the bitter end. They had stood near the cross and watched him take his last breath. “It was finished,” he said. And then he died. It was over.
His followers couldn’t just let the Romans dispose of Jesus’ body like that of a common criminal. Joseph requested that Jesus’ body be placed in his new tomb. Some women made a quick temporary preparation of the body for burial. Doing it right would have to wait until after the Sabbath. That could wait. It was over. On Saturday, the Sabbath, some of the followers huddled together in prayer. The braver ones ventured to the temple. Others quietly began their preparations to go back home to Galilee. They had no reason to stay in the city. Jesus was gone. They thought it was over. But God raised him from the dead (Acts 2:24).
But they were not the last ones to think that! For two thousand years folk have been making that same miscalculation. Some, like Caiaphas, make themselves adversaries of Jesus. Others become skeptics. Most have been a lot like people we know, maybe like some of us here, neither serious followers nor outright adversaries. It’s not that we don’t like Jesus. We just have other more pressing matters to take care of. Amazingly some of us actually approach Easter like it was just another day. “What’s the big deal?” we tell ourselves. Jesus lived. He taught nice lessons about loving your neighbor and forgiving your enemy. Then he died. It’s over. No need to get all fanatical about it! But God raised him from the dead (Acts 2:24).
People can do many things with Jesus. We can despise him as a fool. We can oppose him as a killjoy. We can admire his life and teachings. But anyone who thinks he can dismiss him as unimportant makes a terrible mistake. Every time we date a check or turn the page of a calendar, we give silent acknowledgment that something happened two thousand years ago that we dare not ignore. It all hinges on what happened on Easter Sunday. We may think it is over. But God raised him from the dead (Acts 2:24).
Those who dismiss Easter as unimportant are not the only ones to make a miscalculation about Jesus. We live in a world filled with more than its share of wicked men and women. Cruel dictators tyrannize people. The greedy trample the poor. Many live in selfish indifference convinced that how they live and what they do is nobody’s business but their own. We only go around once. Eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow you die is life’s motto for many. No future, no hope, and certainly no judgment! So what that Jesus said he is coming to judge the living and dead! Jesus is history. He’s gone. It’s over. But God raised him from the dead (Acts 2:24).
Let me insert a brief commercial. Beginning next week, I will begin a four Sunday sermon series I am calling “Ready and Waiting.” We will work our way through Matthew 24-25. Those two chapters contain Jesus’ teachings about preparing for his second coming and judgment to come. We all need those words, especially any of us tempted to think that we’re finished with Jesus, that everything that matters is over!
To think that way is to make a terrible mistake. One can make an opposite miscalculation at this point. While some attempt to dismiss Jesus and others think they are done with him, still others give up on him. Life isn’t always easy. A lot of us struggle with disappointment, heartache, and frustration. We can conclude at those moments that our situation is beyond the reach of Jesus. Like the sister of Lazarus, we say, “If Jesus had been here, it would be different.” But he isn’t. He’s gone. It’s over. But God raised him from the dead (Acts 2:24).
The old flower lady had it right. We would probably take her for a homeless person. Every day she camped out by the big downtown office building. She would spread a newspaper across a park bench and cover it with carnations she had picked from the trash behind a nearby flower shop. When passersby would take one of her flowers and leave her some money, she would respond with a big smile and a cheery, “God bless you.”
One day a young man walked right by without even noticing her. As he passed, he suddenly turned and picked up a flower. She responded with her usual greeting. As he put it in his lapel, he said, “You look happy this morning.”
“Why not?” the flower lady answered, “Everything is good!” Her tattered dress and disheveled appearance seemed to contradict her words. “Everything is good!” the young man asked with a question in his voice. “You don’t have any troubles?”
“Of course, I have troubles. You can’t reach my age and not have troubles,” she replied. “It’s like Jesus and Good Friday,” she paused for a moment. “Well?” prompted the man. “When Jesus was crucified on Good Friday, that was the worst day in the whole world. When I got troubles, I remember that. Then I think what happened only three days later—Easter and the Lord arising. When I get troubles, I think of Easter. It’s Friday, but Easter’s coming!” But God raised him from the dead (Acts 2:24).
It’s not over yet. If we think it is, we might dismiss Jesus. We might give up on him. We might also give up on ourselves. That too would be a huge mistake. A lot of folk, maybe some right here in this room, have made some mighty big mistakes in life. Or maybe some of us have committed a whole lot of “little sins” that just keep repeating themselves over and over. We conclude that we are hopeless. Jesus is great. Faith is wonderful. Heaven will be marvelous. But it’s not for us. It’s too late. We had our chance and we messed up. We are what we are and that’s all we will ever be. It’s over for us. But God raised him from the dead (Acts 2:24).
Here lies the Good News of Easter. No one is too bad or too far gone. No one is beyond fresh starts and new beginnings. It’s not over unless you want it to be. “Though your sins be as scarlet, they will be as white as snow,” the Bible says (Isa 1:18). “If anybody does sin, we have one who speaks to the Father in our defense—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world” (1 John 2: 1-2). “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom 5:8).
In our original text, the Apostle even offered this forgiveness to those who conspired in Jesus’ death. “Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ. … Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off—for all whom the Lord our God will call” (Acts 2:36-39). But God raised him from the dead (Acts 2:24).
Conclusion: Phillips Brooks, a great American preacher of another day said it well, “The great Easter truth is not that we are to live newly after death - that is not the great thing - but that we are to, and may, live nobly now because we are to live forever.”
In a German prison camp in World War II, unbeknownst to the guards, the American prisoners managed to cobble together a makeshift radio. The prisoners would hide the radio when the Germans came around. They would bring it out at the right time to catch the latest news about the war. This went on for several weeks. Then in early May 1945, the Allied broadcast reported that the German high command had surrendered. The war was over! However, because of a communications breakdown, the word didn’t get to the German camp. The guards knew nothing about what had happened. But the word spread quickly among the American prisoners. A celebration broke out from one end of the camp to the other.
For the next three days, the guards thought the prisoners had gone stark raving mad. They sang, waved at guards, laughed at the German shepherd dogs, and shared jokes over meals. The Germans couldn’t understand it. But they would. On the fourth day, the word finally reached the camp. The Americans awoke to find that all the Germans had fled, leaving the gates unlocked. The time of waiting had come to an end. (Philip Yancey, Christianity Today. March 2005, Vol. 49, No. 3, Page 120).
Not everyone understands Easter. Some are puzzled by our celebration. But we know. Someday everyone will. It’s not over yet!
But God raised him from the dead!
***Dr. Roger W. Thomas is the preaching minister at First Christian Church, 205 W. Park St., Vandalia, MO 63382 and an adjunct professor of Bible and Preaching at Central Christian College of the Bible, 911 E. Urbandale, Moberly, MO. He is a graduate of Lincoln Christian College (BA) and Lincoln Christian Seminary (MA, MDiv), and Northern Baptist Theological Seminary (DMin).
