Resurrection
Notes
Transcript
Intro
Intro
Death is inescapable
Most of us start learning this as children. - pets, relatives, etc.
Once the dog dies, they never come back.
But then as we age it becomes more and more confronting - we notice our parents are staring to look a bit whethered, they’re not as active as they used to be. We start to ponder, how many years do they have left? How will I survive when they are gone? There’s nothing I can do to stop it.
Then we reach a stage where we find we’re going to funerals rather regularly, more often than you would like. In fact, there’s fewer and fewer people older than me, and it seems like every other week I’m saying goodbye to another friend or relative.
But there’s nothing you can do to stop the march or death. It comes for us all.
Accident, illness or old age - it is coming. Death marches on to consume us all.
And this is the plight of humanity. We’re all in the same boat. Why? Because it is the fruit of what we call “sin” - rebellion against God. Sin gives birth to death and that has been the way of things since our first parent Adam & eve ate the fruit in the Garden.
But God - the best statements start that way - but God was not content to leave humanity in the grip of death, to be forever consumed by it’s inescapable procession. God made humanity for life, and to live it with Him! And so he planned to overcome death.
That is what we celebrate today!
And to help you Love and appreciate the wonder of this, i want to take you back into the Old Testament, to show you how God had been foreshadowing this for a long time.
Israel escapes Death
Israel escapes Death
On Friday we touched on the idea that Jesus was the passover Lamb. He died in the place of God’s people, all those who receive the blood escape judgement.
But what Good is escape from Judgement today if tomorrow I’m faced with death?
That’s what it was like for Israel. They had the first Passover and God struck all the firstborn of egypt, any house without the blood.
Then Pharaoh finally relented and released Israel from their slavery. They immediately, in the night began their exodus. They left as fast as possible.
But moving a million or so people is not an easy opperation. It takes time. But nevertheless they bagan to flee to the east - making their way toward Canaan.
Yet before long, they came against a big obstacle - the Red Sea. They didn’t have a ferry for a million people. They didn’t have a bridge. They had livestock and children. There was osetsibly no way to cross.
Then, Pharaoh changed his mind - he did not want to let Israel go - he did not want to be defeated. He gathered his army and he chased down Isarael.
They were cornered, the army bearing down on them. Defenseless Israel pressed up against the Red Sea.
What good was the escape from wrath if the next stop was death in the sea?
Yet God was there, with them, and he was going to deliver them from Death.
Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and the Lord drove the sea back by a strong east wind all night and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided. And the people of Israel went into the midst of the sea on dry ground, the waters being a wall to them on their right hand and on their left.
God opened a path for them - a road. SO that they could go through the sea on dry ground.
This was their escape from iminent death - not to go around it, but to go through it.
In the imagery of the Bible, the sea is connected with chaos and death. It is uncontrolable, it is the grave of many a sailor.
Yet God opened a path that goes straight through the middle of it.
It is as through he opened a path right through the middle of death itself - where they could safely traverse. Like a regular road - the groud was dry.
God rescued them. We didn’t intend for them to escape slavery only to perish in the sea. He lead them and saved them from destruction.
God loves his people, he comes to them to recuse them and deliver them from their enemies, from their sin, from death.
But the rescue, the deleverance waxs only for those who were with the Lord. Only for those who were loyal to God and joined themselves to his cause. It was only for those who were willing to take the blood of the lamb.
Pharaoah and his army, the enemy of God and his people, thought that they could overcome the power of God, or at least use it to their advantage. They thought that they could pass through the waters too.
They tried to chase Israel through the sea - but God had other plans.
The waters returned and covered the chariots and the horsemen; of all the host of Pharaoh that had followed them into the sea, not one of them remained. But the people of Israel walked on dry ground through the sea, the waters being a wall to them on their right hand and on their left.
The same water - for some they pass through to life, the rest are destroyed.
There was no way through for those who were opposed to God. There was no way through for those whowanted to use God’s provision for their own sinful purposes.
As the water enclosed about them, it was as though they were given over to death. They entered their watery grave, never to rise.
Israel on the other hand passed through, they walked through it and lanbded on the other side - free and clear.
It’s as if they had passed through the grave and come out again.
Now they were a free people. Free from slavery. Free from their opressors. Free to follow God to the promised land.
Jesus Defeats Death
Jesus Defeats Death
Now all that Israel went through was real, and a true story of God’s deliverance.. Yet even as amazing as all those events were, they were foreshadowwing something greater - The full and final defeat of death.
ALl those who left Egypt and passed through the waters eventually died themselves, and most never made it to the promised land. They still faced the problem of all mankind - the inescapable march of death.
But God - see that! - But God was intent on overcoming death once and for all.
And like with ancient Israel he was going to do it in the the wake of the sacrifice.
God came into the world to save all those who would pin their loylaty to him. All those who would trust him. God came to save his people.
So Jesus came into the world - he lived a perfect life...
... And he died as a sacrifice. He died as the passover lamb who turns away the wrath of God. Yet he didn’t stay dead. When the went looking for his body in the grave, and angel said:
He is not here, for he has risen, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay.
Jesus died and was entombed, but the grave couldn’t hold him!
ANd this was no accident, it was God’s intentional plan to defeat death!
this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it.
It was not possible for death to hold Jesus down!
He didn’t just die to assuage God’s Judgement only to still be faced with the inescapable consuming march of death. He died so that death would be defanged. SO that we could pass through death. Death loses it’s sting.
Death where is your sting? Grave where is your victory?
Christ is victorious now. He’s the first man to knock death on it’s head. To take it out of consideration. Fo him, death was not the inievitavle inescapable end - it was an enemy to defeat, and now death is his servant.
Jesus says:
“Fear not, I am the first and the last, and the living one. I died, and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades.
You Can Defeat Death
You Can Defeat Death
Jesus invites you to join him in escaping death.
God call you to pass through death - like Israel of old, the Church is freed by the blood of the Lamb and we are passing through death.
Come and walk through the waters of death - pass through on solid dry ground. Death is all around you, a wall to the right and left - but death is tamed by God.
Now, we still face death, like the ISraelites face the red sea, but we will come through it and enter the promised land. All those who die in Jesus will be raised to new life.
But how do we get there? We get there by dying. Dying to ourselves. We must give up our rebelion and our sin, dying to ourselves. We must go through our own death so that we can find life.
In fact we have a ritual that symbolises our death and new life in jesus, it’s called baptsim. We pass through the waters and come out a new person:
We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.
So What?
So What?
Death is coming, but you can chose if death get the last word.
Die to yourself, die in Jesus, then you get eternal life.
Tackle death on your own terms and you will be crushed.
