The Resurrection of our Lord, Easter Sunday
Prince of Peace Lutheran Church
April 24, 2011
Sermon by Pastor Adam Horneber
“Jesus Kept His Promise.” – Matthew 28:1-10
1 After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb.2 There was a violent earthquake, for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and, going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it.3 His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow.4 The guards were so afraid of him that they shook and became like dead men.5 The angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified.6 He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay.7 Then go quickly and tell his disciples: ‘He has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him.’ Now I have told you.”8 So the women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy, and ran to tell his disciples.9 Suddenly Jesus met them. “Greetings,” he said. They came to him, clasped his feet and worshiped him.10 Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.”
Today I can wish you a happy Easter. We can greet each other that way for one reason. Not just because it says Easter on the calendar. Not just because the green houses are selling Easter flowers and Wegman’s is selling chocolate bunnies. Not because warmer weather may finally be coming, or because we have some deep abiding faith in the warmth of man’s heart to make this world a better place. The reason today is a joyous celebration, the one reason, is that Jesus rose from the dead – and he did it just as he said! He promised.
But maybe you’ve heard the saying, “Promises are meant to be broken.” I don’t know where that statement originated.On the surface it sounds a bit cynical. Yet, we can understand why it is repeated. Too often it seems to be true. Promises are broken and a spouse is left hurting. Promises are broken and a child is left alone. Promises are broken and people can’t rely on business partners anymore. Promises are broken and leaders can’t be trusted and countries go to war. People make promises they never intend to keep. Or they intend to keep them but lack the ability. You have likely been the victim of a broken promise; and at one time or another, I suspect, you have broken yours.
We’re gathered here on Easter not because of our promises, but because our Savior Jesus promised. He promised forgiveness and salvation and life, gifts worth more than all the gold on earth, to all who believe in him. He knew he would die earning those gifts for us. He said so:“The Son of Man will be betrayed to the chief priests and teachers of the law. They will condemn him to death and will hand him over to the Gentiles”(Mk 10:33). He will be“mocked and flogged and crucified” (Mt 20:19). Two days ago on Good Friday we marked his death. He hung in agony on the cross, the weight of the world’s sins crushing him. He cried out “It is finished” (Jn 19:30) and breathed his last. A soldier drove a spear into his side to be sure. His friends wrapped up his body and carefully laid it out in the tomb. But he had promised this wasn’t the end. Boldly Jesus had told the Jews, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days”(John 2:19). Jesus told his disciples, “On the third day (the Son of Man) will be raised to life!” (Mt 20:19) And then there was the sign of Jonah. When the Pharisees and teachers of the law demanded a sign from Jesus, he told them, “A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a miraculous sign! But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah.For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” (Mt 12:39-40).Jonah was swallowed up by the large fish. But he was confident the Lord would rescue him. We read his prayer in today’s first lesson: “You brought my life up from the pit, O Lord my God”(Jonah 2:6). Jonah was a living, breathing picture of what Jesus promised would happen to him, his resurrection from death.
When Jesus made a promise about the third day, he wasn’t making a promiseabout some trivial matter – “What will the weather be like tomorrow?”He wasn’t even promising a perfect, healthy life here on earth. His promise involved his very identity as God, and where we, his children, will spend eternity. No one has ever made such an important promise to you.
And today we can know for certain that JESUS KEPT HIS PROMISE. Easter means no broken promises from God.
[The Evidence]
Let’s first examine the evidence that Jesus rose. After all, our faith isn’t based on
some myth or fairy tale. When we say we are Christians, we’re not confessing to
follow a dead man, but one who conquered death.
What about those soldiers that Pilate had ordered to guard Jesus’ tomb? We don’t know if those particular Roman men ever heard the promise of the resurrection. But on the morning of the first day of the week, they witnessed something that shook them to the core. “There was a violent earthquake, for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and, going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it…The guards were so afraid of him that they shook and became like dead men” (Mt 28:2,4). They were to be guarding the body of Jesus, but it wasn’t there anymore. Later they reported what they saw to the chief priests. And they had to be bribed with a substantial amount of money to lie, to make up the story that the body had been stolen.
But the evidence gets better. The women who followed Jesus, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome went to the tomb lugging spices to finish anointing Jesus’ body. But they didn’t find the dead body of Jesus. Instead the women who entered the tomb saw the angel God sent. Imagine their fear and amazement! The angel not only told them that Jesus was risen, but pointed them to the spot where he had been laid.There were the strips of linen that had been wound around Jesus body. But Jesus was not there. They had witnessed his bloody crucifixion, had seen Joseph and Nicodemus take the body and place it in the tomb. But it was no longer there. As they ran from the cemetery they met Jesus himself. Falling before him they clasped his feet, the same feet that had been pierced on the cross. This Jesus was not a ghost, not simply some spiritual image of his former self. This was flesh and blood Jesus, standing before them, breathing, looking at them, speaking to them.
And the evidence only grows from there. Later that day, two disciples met him on the way to the village of Emmaus. They ran back to Jerusalem to report to the others and there Jesus appeared to them all. And the apostles were not following some cleverly invented scheme when they continued to testify about the resurrection. They believed it so strongly they were willing to die for it, and most of them did. The apostle Paul reported how Jesus appeared to over 500 followers at the same time. And later the risen Lord appeared to him.
The world may ridicule the name of Jesus, but it has no evidence by which it can deny him orwhat he did. No archeologists will ever discover his bones in a box. People have beendeluded into following other so called “saviors” from the past. But they are all dead. Buddha is dead. Muhammed is dead. Confucius is dead. In fact every other great worldly leader, be it religious or otherwise is powerless in the face of death – and you can often see the shrines and memorials in their honor. None of them can make the claim that Jesus can. None of them can produce the evidence of a tomb that it empty because they walked out of it.
But with Jesus we have the evidence. And though we weren’t there with the women or the soldiers that first Easter morning, we have the best evidence of all right here in the inspired word of God – the word that will never pass away even though this earth will. The devil and all who have bought into his lies would love to change the evidence, or to destroy it, but that is not possible. Jesus keeps his promises.
[The Effects]
But we’re not here this Easter morning only to recite the facts of the case. We’re here to understand the effects. We’re here so that God can impress upon our hearts just what his promise kept means for us. There is always the danger, so long as we walk and breathe on this earth, that the great truths of what Jesus accomplished are treated like cold, dry facts recited in a classroom. There is the danger that the Easter event becomes a lesson that lays on the top of our hearts but no longer makes them beat fast with joy, no longer moves us to shout his name to our world, no longer inspires new living.
We could spend a month of Sundays considering the effects of Jesus’ resurrection upon people in the Scriptures. Today let’s just look at the women who went out to his tomb. They came like women going to a funeral – to pay their last respects to a departed friend. What of their hopes and faith in him? They expected to see a dead body. In their thinking, this was now life without Jesus, life after Jesus, post-Jesus. But all of that changed when they heard the heavenly messenger say to them, “I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified... He has risen… You will see him” (Mt 28:5-7). And with their heads spinning at the news they ran, somewhat alarmed at what they had seen, yet, as Matthew says, “Filled with joy” (Mt 28:8) – literally, “great joy”, or “mega- joy.” Then, before their feet had carried them far, they met the risen Savior. He told them “Donot be afraid”(Mt. 28:10). That is, don’t be afraid any more of sin’s condemnation for I’ve covered that for you. Don’t’ be afraid of any enemies, even death, for I am alive and nothing will ever be the same. Then he made them messengers who would tell the others the greatest news ever told, “My brothers,you have a Savior, he lives.” He promised and it came true. The women worshipped him and they went!
So what does it all matter to you and me? Another way to phrase that question is to ask, “What if Jesus had not kept his promise? Or what if he tried but couldn’t quite accomplish it? Or what if the women had put their hands on a dead man that morning instead of a living one?”
The apostle Paul actually asked and answered that question when he wrote his first letter to the church at Corinth, and he was brutally blunt about it. We might as well be too.
- If Jesus didn’t rise from the dead, then he is just another corpse, his bones in a tomb, or maybe by now placed in a nice gold covered box – but only bones.
- If Jesus didn’t rise from the dead then he lied, or lacked the power to be what he claimed. In either case the Gospel is a giant myth. That’s what the “sophisticated” people call the Bible isn’t it? And then our witness to the world is only a candy-coated lie.
- If Jesus didn’t rise from the dead you can clear your Sunday morning schedule each week, open it up for shopping or stamp collecting or sleeping in, or anything a little more mundane than worshiping one who defeated death. What’s the point of celebrating a resurrection that didn’t happen?
- Frankly, if Jesus didn’t rise from the dead, you might as well get a new religion, and the sooner the better. But whatever it is, you better be good at it. It had better impress God because you are still in your sins. Now it’s up to you to balance the scales. It’s up to you to fix everything you broke.
- If Christ isn’t alive, if Jesus is dead, then you better get busy squeezing all you can out of this life, because when the cancer cell or the car accident, or cardiac condition catches up with you, it will carry your body to the tomb and it won’t be healed. It will only face hell.
You see, when it comes to Easter, to Jesus’ tomb, to his promise, one of two things must be true, either death wins….. or Jesus wins.
Praise be to God it’s not a gamble; it’s not even a close call – because Christ has indeed been raised from the dead. St. Paul wrote in another place: “For no matter how many promises God has made, they are “Yes” in Christ. And so through him the “Amen” is spoken by us to the glory of God” (2 Cor 1:20).
- That “Amen” means, “Yes, it is true, on the cross Christ carried all our sins, and buried them under his blood.” And because he rose we can be certain we are forgiven; nothing stands between us and God.
- That “Amen” means, “Yes it is true, Jesus lives and therefore he is my Shepherd and he is with me. He understands my fears and tears, and he can silence them and wipe them away.”
- That “Amen” means that the world may laugh at what we confess, but we can face it unashamed.
- That “Amen” means you carry the Gospel key that unlocks the door to heaven. Instead of angels, the Lord now calls you to go and tell the only truth that saves.
- That “Amen” means “Yes, because Jesus lives, we too shall conquer death.” Jesus promised that he will return and take us to be with him. And that means a real resurrection of the body to life in heaven.
Someone once said, “Vote for the man who promises the least. He’ll be the least disappointing.” There may be some truth to that when it comes to dealing with fellow sinful humans. But what a comfort to know we don’t have to settle for that when it comes to the Son of God, our Savior, Jesus. The women who went to Jesus’ tomb early on the first Easter saw the evidence of his victory over death and learned to know the effects of that victory that they could enjoy forever. Let your faith rest in the one who promised the most by far: to defeat death, to raise us up to life with God. Easter assures us Jesus keeps his promises. He is risen, just as he said. Amen!