He is Not Here!

Introduction (5m)

Location, Location, Location

Guilty holiday pleasures - Escape to the Country, Homes Under the Hammer. Most important aspect of property buying: location.

M’s retelling of J’s Resurrection dwells on Location

Where is Jesus? His answer - startling and full of promise:

Patrick’s photo

Matthew 28:6 NLT

He isn’t here! He is risen from the dead, just as he said would happen. Come, see where his body was lying.

The world offers promises full of emptiness. But Easter offers emptiness full of promise. (A pastor)

World - fill life with stuff and busyness. End up feeling empty.

J offers us nothing but emptiness - empty cross, tomb, grave-clothes, strength made perfect in weakness, foolish things that confound the wise, meek inheriting the earth, poor in spirit getting the Kingdom of heaven, dying in order to live > abundant life to the full.

Explanation (5m)

Is it frustrating not to know how J’s resurrection happened?

No one sees it. We have very little detail. No factual evidence. How did it happen? Why didn’t J use it as a sign to draw people like other miracles? All we see are its effects: empty tomb, disciples met resurrected J.

Why? Because we would get caught up in trying to work out how to resurrect ourselves! Scientists, etc.

No amount of research at the empty tomb will reveal Jesus. The women who came to the tomb didn’t see Jesus there. Jesus didn’t come walking out of the tomb leaving his grave clothes behind. New Testament scholar Luke Johnson reminds us that the resurrection of Jesus is not resuscitated from clinical death. In John’s gospel, Jesus raised his friend Lazarus from death. Lazarus did come walking out of the tomb and Jesus asked his friends to unbind him. Lazarus was resuscitated; he came back to life as he had known it before. He wasn’t more alive than he had been before, and he would some day die. But the earliest witnesses bear testimony to Jesus who was transformed — who was alive in a new way beyond the limits of time and space. ...

The angel wants us to see that the very stone of death has been rolled away, turned over, transformed into a pulpit for proclaiming the resurrection gospel. Jesus is not memory but presence, presence which continues to transform the forces of death all around us.Sometimes when we dare to start walking toward Galilee we begin to see. (Barbara Lundblad, Transforming the Stone)

Lack of detail, of how, pushes us to place our hope in resurrected Christ himself rather than in the resurrection itself.

He is not here

Begins with the women. They meet angel who tells them J is not in the tomb - it’s empty:

Matthew 28:6 NLT

He isn’t here! He is risen from the dead, just as he said would happen. Come, see where his body was lying.

Human being crucified on the cross is not here. Just as he said he would - place your hope here. Jesus is resurrected just as he said he would be. Look for yourselves - see the place where he lay. John: linen cloths wrapped around his body left as if he had simply passed right through them. Handkerchief still rolled up in shape of head. No grave robbery - J had risen just as he said he would.

J is no dead and is not to be looked for among the dead. He is alive. He is with his people.

What does it mean?

It is an important truth. Not just about good overcoming evil, somehow. After all, enough evidence in the world to prove that’s not always the case.

Empty tomb means this: despite all evidence to the contrary, despite sad story of humanity, despite pain and harm that often seem to outweigh healing and wholeness, in the case of his one and only Son, JC, God has acted to overcome the pain and harm that the world did to him.

Serves as a promise that one day, when Kingdom of God is fully realised, the same will be true for us.

“He isn’t here” brings deep hope for the world and for all of us.

Application (5m)

If J isn’t in the tomb then he is with us

Matthew 1:23 NLT

“Look! The virgin will conceive a child! She will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel, which means ‘God is with us.’ ”

If tomb is empty, then J/G is always with us:

Matthew 28:20 NLT

Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

Always - all the days - with each of us every moment. HS is Spirit of J that will never leave us. Promise of J - Emmanuel - God with us has forever been fulfilled.

We cannot meet J in the way women did on first ES morning. But it is vital we do meet him in Spirit, and get to know him as we worship and learn from him. Otherwise, our Christian faith is dead.

That personal and intimate relationship with the living Lord is central to what being a Christian means in practice. (Tom Wright, Matthew for Everyone)

What should our response be to J’s resurrected presence with us?

Worship, naturally. Resurrection = J is who he says he is: Immanuel, the one true God who is revealed in and as J himself and who is now with us always.

But more than singing songs, reading God’s Word, studying it, praying:

Matthew 28:19–20 NLT

Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

Make disciples. People who hear, understand and obey J’s word. Enrol people we know in J school and teach them, mentor them, help them mature in Christ. Not here simply to save souls but to grow saints, helping them to make an often dramatic and permanent change of personal allegiance. When serving suffering humanity, must remember resurrected J commands us to save souls and grow saints from suffering humanity too.

It’s great to be here and to sing our resurrection songs, but it’s not enough: J commands us to “go”

Must be movement to our mission. Not just from sitting to standing. Not just from worshipping to eating. It is movement out of our front door to take the Good News of J’s resurrection to the lost people of B and beyond.

Going is why TSA exists. We must go and we must go and make disciples. It is not an optional extra!

And it may be hard

Sometimes there's no map for the places Christ is calling us to go, and such places can be dangerous as well. It reminds us of the medieval practice of cartographers in which they placed images of serpents and dragons on the edges of the map or globe with the phrase "Hic sunt dracones," similar to the ancient practice of writing "Hic sunt leones." Translated, the expressions means "Here there be dragons," and "Here are lions." The meaning was clear: This is unknown and dangerous territory. (Dr. Bob Rambo, Christ UMC, Jackson, Mississippi)

He is not here and Go and make disciples help us to put everything else into perspective

Empty tomb and Christ’s commission puts career into perspective. Living in resurrection power and making disciples requires more of our time, money and success than our career. Filling our relationship with resurrection, sharing life with a fellow disciple and supporting each other to fulfil God’s calling to us as individiuals/a couple becomes most important priority in our marriages. Empty tomb and Great Commission means when we suffer illness, death of loved one, we can learn to put sorrow into perspective when we remember we can face tomorrow in the truth and hope that Jesus lives and our lives still have purpose as a disciplemaker.

Will you celebrate the empty tomb, the resurrected Jesus, Emmanuel, the one true God who promises to always be with us by his Spirit, and then go and tell others about him?

Death is dead, love has won, Christ has conquered (Stuart Townend & Keith Getty)

What a message of hope to take to the world!

Next Steps

Songsters - See, what a morning

1 See what a morning, gloriously bright with the dawning of hope in Jerusalem; folded the graveclothes, tomb filled with light as the angels announce Christ is risen! See God's salvation plan, wrought in love, borne in pain, paid in sacrifice, fulfilled in Christ the man, for he lives; Christ is risen from the dead. 2 See Mary weeping, 'Where is he laid!' as in sorrow she turns from the empty tomb; hears a voice speaking, calling her name; it's the Master, the Lord raised to life again! The voice that spans the years, speaking life, stirring hope, bringing peace to us, will sound till he appears, for he lives; Christ is risen from the dead. 3 One with the Father, Ancient of Days, through the Spirit who clothes faith with certainty, honour and blessing, glory and praise to the King crowned with power and authority! And we are raised with him, death is dead, love has won, Christ has conquered; and we shall reign with him, for he lives; Christ is risen from the dead. Stuart Townend (born 1963) and Keith Getty (born 1974) © 2003 Thankyou Music/Adm by Kingswaysongs, a division of David C Cook, www.kingswayworship.co.uk Used by permission Used By Permission. CCL Licence No. 30158 Copied from HymnQuest: Copyright Licence Users' Edition HymnQuest ID: 40334 CCLI#: