Easter The Supreme Question of Easter –
John 11:25-26
March 13,2013
Sacramento Bee Article pp.1 &20: $5 Million Study looks at the
chances of eternal life.
During Easter
season, major news magazines have run
cover stories on religious themes.
Time magazine did one entitled “Does Heaven Exist?”
U.S. News and
World Report. Titled “Life After Death,” the article reported on the scientific
debate about near-death experiences. Listen to the first paragraph:
Ex. After being struck by lightning, a man meets a “Being
of Light” who grants forgiveness for a lifetimes of violence. In full cardiac arrest on the operating table, a
gradeschool teacher travels down a long tunnel to “a place filled up with love,
and a beautiful white light.” And Elvis Presley takes her by the hand. (U.S.
News and World Report, March 31, 1997, p. 59)
The article goes on to say that perhaps as many as 15
million Americans have had near-death experiences. Many of them were changed
forever by the things they experienced. They had touched eternity, or so they
believed, and life on this earth could never be the same again.
We all wonder about life after death, don’t we? It’s natural to
think about it because sooner or later we’re going to die. That much is
certain.
“Have you smelled the first shovel of dirt from your
grave yet?”
I. Death: The Last
Enemy
Death is truly the last enemy of the people of God.
That’s not my word. It’s what the
Bible says in 1 Corinthians 15:26. We can beat many other enemies- temptations,
trials; but death always wins in the end. We cannot put it off, delay it, or deny it. “It is appointed unto man once to die,” says the Bible,
and no one will escape that appointment.
II. Jesus and
Death
By the time Jesus
got to Lazarus, had been in the tomb for four days.
17 When Jesus arrived at Bethany, he was
told that Lazarus had already been in his grave for four days. 18 Bethany was
only a few miles down the road from Jerusalem,
19 and many of the people had come to
console Martha and Mary in their loss.
20 When Martha got word that Jesus was
coming, she went to meet him. But Mary stayed in the house. 21 Martha said to
Jesus, “Lord, if only you had been here, my brother would not have died.
22 But even now I know that God will give
you whatever you ask.”
23 Jesus told her, “Your brother will rise
again.”
24 “Yes,” Martha said, “he will rise when
everyone else rises, at the last day.”
When Martha saw him, she said, “Lord, if you had been
here, my brother would not have died” (11:21). There is a strange combination
of sorrow and enormous faith in those words.
Lazarus has been dead so long that any thought of an
immediate resurrection is out of the question.
But that doesn’t seem to be on Martha’s mind. She thought that Jesus could heal Lazarus and she also
believed he would be raised on the last day. It apparently never occurred to her that Jesus could
raise Lazarus right then and there.
It is against this backdrop that Jesus said to Martha
those famous words that have been quoted at a million gravesides ever since:
“I am the resurrection and the life. He who
believes in me will live, even though he dies;
and whoever lives and believes in me will
never die. Do you believe this?” (11:25-26 NIV)
These words have been a light and a hope to the people of
God for 2000 years. We quote them because they express our deepest faith in
Jesus Christ. I’ve always thought these verses were a bit mysterious
because Jesus seems to contradict himself. In one place he
says a man will live even if he dies.
Then he immediately says that if a man believes in him he
will never die. How is it that you
can die and not die at the same time?
Let us consider each phrase carefully in order to understand
what Jesus is saying to us on Easter Sunday.
1. He is the
master of death in all its forms.
“I am the resurrection and the life.”
He doesn’t say, “I bring resurrection and life” but
rather “I am the resurrection and the life.” In the presence of
Jesus death is no longer death.
How can that be? Our Lord often
used the word “sleep” to describe death. Death for the believer is like lying down to a good long
nap. The body may sleep a long time—for many years in fact—but
in the end it will wake up. When Jesus raised Lazarus, it was just a specimen, a
sample of what he will do for his people when he returns to the earth.
The answer to
death is not a resurrection. It’s Jesus
himself. “I am the resurrection and the life.”
No one can ever hope to escape death unless he is
related to Jesus through personal faith.
That’s why this article in U.S. News and World Report is
so telling. Men and women desperately want to peer beyond the veil. They want to know what lies on the other side of death. The answer is quite simple. If you know Jesus, what lies
on the other side is resurrection and life. If you don’t know him, you have no hope at all.
You might call the Psychic Hotline or talk to the woman
who thinks she met Elvis. When the time of death comes, you’d better know Jesus or
you’re going to be all alone. In march 1997) most of us were shocked and saddened by
the mass suicide of 39 men and women who were part of the “Heaven’s Gate”
cult in California. Evidently they mixed a few Bible verses with some bizarre
science fiction and threw in some New Age mysticism to create a heady brew that
led them to believe that a UFO was approaching the earth. They thought that by taking their own lives they would be
transported to new existence aboard the UFO. Why would people do something like
this?
I submit that
their belief in life after death was entirely proper. However, when people cut themselves off from the Word of
God, they have nothing left but vain speculations and idle dreams. What they did was extreme, but it illustrates the folly
of trying to find answers apart from God’s revelation.
2. He is the
answer to death for all of us.
“He who believes in me will live, even
though he dies.” Think about those words for a moment.
You can live even though you die. This is the fondest and
deepest wish inside the human heart.
To know that death is not the end.
How sad it must be to come to the end of life and to
believe that after death this is nothing at all.
Just a vanishing into the cosmos, a passing into the dark
night, marching off the stage into eternal nothingness.
But without Jesus Christ, what other hope do we have? You & I have been funerals for all kinds of people.
Most of them have been older, but occasionally a funeral for a younger person, and sometimes a child or an infant. The circumstances vary , but this much is certain. At the moment of death the truth about individuals comes
out.
You can fake your religion most days, but you can’t fake
it when you stare death cold in the face.
In that moment Jesus makes all the difference in the
world. In the saddest moments I have seen the light of God on
the faces of those who have lost their loved ones. Through their tears they
smile because they know Jesus and he has made all the difference.
3. He is the
victor over death for all time.
“And whoever lives and believes in me will
never die.”
This is the most amazing statement Jesus ever made
because he is clearly saying that death for the believer ceases to be death at
all. It is merely the
continuation of life in the presence of God.
That’s what Paul meant when he said that to die
“is gain.” It’s also what David
meant when he declared “And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” Jesus had this in
mind when he promised the dying thief, “Today you will be with me in
paradise.”
Can you imagine what it was like for Jesus to raise
Lazarus from the dead? First he told them to roll away the stone.
38 Jesus was still angry as he arrived at
the tomb, a cave with a stone rolled across its entrance.
Martha objected, pointing out that his body would stink
because it had been dead for four days.
39 “Roll the stone aside,” Jesus told them.
But Martha, the dead man’s sister, protested,
“Lord, he has been dead for four days. The
smell will be terrible.” 40 Jesus responded, “Didn’t I tell you that
you would see God’s glory if you believe?”
41 So they rolled the stone aside. Then
Jesus looked up to heaven and said, “Father, thank you for hearing me.
Then Jesus prayed to his Father.
42 You always hear me, but I said it out
loud for the sake of all these people standing here, so that they will believe
you sent me.” Then he cried out, “Lazarus, come forth!” Why did he call
his name? Because if he hadn’t said, “Lazarus,” all the dead in all the graves
of the world would have been suddenly emptied.
43 Then Jesus shouted, “Lazarus, come out!”
The Bible says that Lazarus came forth from the grave,
still bound in his graveclothes. Jesus ordered that the wrappings be removed
and he be set free.
44 And the dead man came out, his hands and
feet bound in graveclothes, his face wrapped in a headcloth. Jesus told them,
“Unwrap him and let him go!”
Here’s something you may not have considered. Lazarus was raised from the dead only to die again later.
Why did Jesus raise him? So that we would know that he could do it. After all, anyone could say “I am the resurrection and
the life,” but only the Son of God could do what Jesus did.
III. The Question
You Must Answer
It’s Easter Sunday morning, 2013. What does this day
mean? It means that
through Jesus Christ you may be released from the fear of death. But there’s a question you must answer. It’s the question
found at the end of verse 26. We generally overlook the question, but it’s the key to
what Jesus said.
Here’s the question. “Do you believe this?” That’s the
supreme question of Easter. In the end truth must always become personal.
Let me wrap up this message by asking you six
all-important questions:
- Do you believe with all your heart that Jesus Christ
is the Son of God who came from heaven to live on this earth 2000 years ago?
- Do you believe that when he died on the Cross, he died
in your place, bearing your punishment, and paying for your sins?
- Do you believe than on Easter Sunday morning, he
literally, physically, bodily rose from the dead never to die again?
- Do you believe that Jesus is now seated at the right
hand of God the Father?
- Do you believe that Jesus is truly the resurrection
and the life and that he is able to remove the terror of death for those who
trust him?
- Are you willing to stake your life on your answers to
the first five questions?
I began the message by quoting from the magazine article
that asks the question “Is there life after death?”. In some ways, you can’t
blame the people of the world for looking to Near-Death Experiences to answer
that question. If you don’t know
Jesus, you’ll grasp at any straw. But if you know him, you don’t need to worry about those
things.
We don’t need the word of people who nearly died when we
have the word of someone who died on Friday and then came back to life on
Sunday morning. His Word can be trusted and he said, “I am the
resurrection and the life.”
Do you know him? I pray you will open the door and let
him in. You will never regret that decision and when death finally comes, it
won’t be death at all, but an entrance into life everlasting.
Acknowledgment :Text Source- adaptations from Rev. Ray Pritchard
