Mark chapter 15 and verse 42. And now when the even was come,
This is the evening of the day in which the Lord was crucified.
Now when the even was come, because it was the preparation, that
is the day before the Sabbath, Joseph of Arimathea, an honourable
counsellor which also waited for the kingdom of God, came
and went in boldly unto Pilate and craved the body of Jesus. And Pilate marvelled if he were
already dead. And calling unto him the centurion,
he asked him whether he had been any while dead. And when he knew
it of the centurion, he gave the body to Joseph. And he bought fine linen, and
took him down, and wrapped him in the linen, and laid him in
a sepulchre which was hewn out of a rock, and rolled a stone
unto the door of the sepulchre. And Mary Magdalene, and Mary
the mother of Joses, beheld where he was laid. And when the Sabbath
was passed, Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and
Salome had bought sweet spices that they might come and anoint
him. And very early in the morning, the first day of the week, they
came unto the sepulchre at the rising of the sun. And they said
among themselves, Who shall roll us away the stone from the door
of the sepulchre? And when they looked, they saw
that the stone was rolled away, for it was very great. And entering
into the sepulchre, they saw a young man sitting on the right
side, clothed in a long white garment, and they were affrighted. And he said unto them, Be not
affrighted. Ye seek Jesus of Nazareth, which
was crucified. He is risen, he is not here.
Behold the place where they laid him. But go your way, tell his
disciples and Peter that he goeth before you into Galilee. There
shall ye see him as he said unto you.' And they went out quickly
and fled from the sepulchre, for they trembled and were amazed.
Neither said they anything to any man, for they were afraid.
Now when Jesus was risen early the first day of the week, he
appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had cast seven
devils. And she went and told them that
had been with him, as they mourned and wept. And they, when they
had heard that he was alive and had been seen of her, believed
not. After that, he appeared in another
form unto two of them as they walked and went into the country. And they went and told it unto
the residue. Neither believed they them. Afterward he appeared unto the
eleven as they sat at meat and upbraided them with their unbelief
and hardness of heart because they believed not them which
had seen him after he was risen. Amen. May the Lord bless to us
this reading from his word. Now According to my calendar,
this is Easter Sunday, the Sunday that follows Good Friday and
a time of year when traditionally people remember some of the key
events surrounding the death and resurrection of the Lord
Jesus Christ. Sadly, like all these occasions,
The facts and the meanings of the events have largely been
pushed into the shadows and replaced with festivals and festivities
and celebrations and holidays and activities that don't honour
the Lord in any way, even that become a parody or a mockery
of the wonderful works that they are supposed to represent. And a gospel preacher has a choice
at such times. Do I ignore the occasion as if
it doesn't exist because it is misrepresented by a world that
doesn't care about what really happened at the cross and in
the garden? Or do I rail against it and speak
against the hypocrisy that that denial represents? Or do I take
the opportunity to clearly and simply restate the facts, the
meaning, and the continuing significance of the death and resurrection
of the Saviour, at least to those who believe? and I'm going to
do the latter. I'm going to do the last of these
so as if I may dispel some of the darkness with which these
great events have been hidden so that we can see what they
really mean. So here's what we'll do. We'll
think about the fact of the death and the resurrection of the Lord. We'll think about its meaning,
and we'll think about its ongoing message for us today. Now I think that most of us listening
today know that the Lord Jesus Christ came into the world with
the express purpose of saving his people from their sins. This is something we speak about
a lot. The circumstances of the Lord's
birth showed that Jesus was special. His life and his works proved
that he was God, proved that he was God with power. for the
things that he did. Even his name signified that
he would deliver his people from their sins. He was called Jesus,
which means saviour. However, the salvation that Jesus
promised was not salvation like most people think about. Many
people in Jesus' time wanted to be saved from their enemies. Some wanted to be saved from
their sicknesses. Some wanted to be saved from
their poverty. And they all hoped for a better
world for themselves and their families. And I suppose in many
ways we could say that that's the same sort of salvation that
people seek today. But the salvation that the Lord
Jesus Christ came to deliver, came to secure, came to obtain,
was not a military salvation or a political change or an economic
transformation. It was a spiritual deliverance
of men and women and boys and girls from their sin and guilt
for their disobedience against God. The Lord Jesus didn't come to
give us some extra holidays from school or from work or to give
us the opportunity to have some celebrations. The Lord Jesus
Christ came to represent his people, to answer for them before
God, and to personally take responsibility for our wrongdoing and bear the
punishment for our sin according to God's justice. And that is why the Lord Jesus
Christ went to the cross and died. It was not an accident
that he died. It wasn't a big mistake that
he died. It wasn't even something that
was arranged by the Jewish leaders and carried out by the Romans,
as it were, in a vacuum. It was God's way of salvation
for his people, for sinners like you and like me. And the Lord
Jesus Christ came from heaven to go to the cross, came from
heaven and willingly laid down his life and suffered for the
sins of people like you, like me, like us together in order
to obtain peace between God who had been offended and man who
had sinned. And that's what the Lord Jesus
Christ did. He died on the cross, he interceded
on the cross, he shed his blood and redeemed his people from
their sins. But what happened after Jesus
died? If dying for our sins was the
job that Jesus came to do, did it matter what happened afterwards? Christ's blood had been shed. His sacrifice was completed. The salvation, the redemption
of his people had been accomplished. He cried out, it is finished. His work was finished. It was
job done. And as we read together, Jesus'
body was taken down from the cross and it was carefully washed
by his friends and respectfully prepared and Christ's body was
put for burial. Jesus was placed in a new tomb,
cut out from a rock in a garden. that was owned by a rich man
called Joseph, Joseph of Arimathea. And there he lay. And in some respects, we might
wonder that that wasn't all that happened. But the thing was that
before the Lord Jesus Christ died, he told his friends and
he told the authorities that he would die and that he would
rise again from the dead. And actually, Jesus' disciples
paid less attention to these words than the Jewish leaders
did because the Jewish leaders placed a guard around the tomb
of Jesus so that no one could steal the body and claim that
he had risen. But that wasn't going to prevent
the Lord Jesus from doing what he had promised. And when Jesus
came back to life after three days in the tomb, God the Father
sent two angels to roll away the large stone that had sealed
the entrance of his grave. It was also the job of these
angels to scare the soldiers and to inform the Lord's friends
about what had happened. Jesus rose from the dead early
on the first day of the week. He came out of his grave and
he showed that he who had once been dead was alive again. Death couldn't hold our Saviour. He who is the resurrection and
the life had power over death. He had power over the grave.
He had power over his enemies. He defeated death and he came
back to life. And we learn from the Gospels
that after Jesus had risen, he spent another 40 days on earth. He was seen by hundreds of people,
more than 500 at one time. And the Bible records for us
12 different occasions when he was seen of his followers. But there may have been many
more than that. Then after 40 days, he ascended
bodily into heaven and returned to his father. And he promised
that he would come back again and gather all his people for
whom he died and all who trusted in him. The resurrection of the Lord
Jesus, resurrection literally means come back from the dead. The resurrection of the Lord
Jesus has lots of significance for believers. It proved, for
example, that Jesus was true to his word and could be depended
upon. He said he would come back from
the dead and he did. He is worthy of our faith and
our trust and our belief. He said he'd rise again and he
did. It brought joy to his disciples
to see him again. It energised their ministry and
motivated them to go out with the message of the gospel. It
confounded the world and it gives us all hope of eternal life. But what the Bible teaches us
is that first and foremost, the significance of the resurrection
of the Lord is important for one simple reason. It showed
that God was satisfied with the sacrifice of his son. It showed that God was satisfied
and accepted the death of the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross
and that that death had achieved its purpose and accomplished
its goal. If the Lord had not risen from
the dead, we'd have no certainty, we would have reason to question
if what he'd said, if what he did mattered, if he had actually
accomplished what he said he would do. But by the resurrection
of Christ, we have proof that all for whom Christ died are
saved. We have evidence that God's anger
against the sin of Christ's little flock is taken away, is removed. The word we use sometimes is
propitiated. It's been appeased and that peace
and reconciliation between God and the people for whom the Lord
Jesus Christ died has been restored. We look at the resurrection and
we look at the empty tomb as evidence of the complete success
of the Saviour. So what is Easter all about?
It is about the complete success of the Lord Jesus Christ. Let
me say a couple of things more. This is not just a historical
event. You ask somebody what's Easter
about, they'll maybe speak about... Jesus, they'll speak about the
church, they'll speak about something that happened a long, long time
ago. But the whole point about the fact that the Lord Jesus
Christ is risen from the dead is that he is alive. He's alive
today. The death and resurrection of
the Saviour means that our Lord is alive now. That he died once
and now he lives forevermore. And because he lives, We who
believe, we who have faith in Him, we shall live forever with
Him. Because He lives, we have a living
relationship with Him. We speak to Him. We listen to
Him. We walk with Him. We learn from
Him. We try to live to please Him. We love Him. and he loves us and we will live forever with
him. Yes, it is true that believers
die, but not really. What we do is we give up these
bodies, at least for a while, to the earth from which they
were created. But our spirits, that new creation,
that lively soul that the Lord has created within us, that goes
on. Our spirits go to be with the
Lord where he is in heaven. And someday at the end of time,
these bodies too, our very bodies that we give up and lay in the
grave for a while, they too will rise again. And Christians don't
fear death because we believe the Lord Jesus Christ defeated
death when he rose again. And sure, we get nervous, even
hesitant, concerning what the experience of death will be like. And yet we know the Lord is with
us and will never leave us. Paul tells us that our lives
are already joined to his life, to his spirit, so that we already
have eternal life in him. So Easter time isn't about bunnies
or eggs or chocolate. It's about the success of our
Saviour. And it gives us all hope. It gives all the Lord's people
hope that as He is now, so we soon shall be. The risen Lord Jesus is our hope
and our happiness. All the Saviour now possesses
in his risen state shall soon be ours. Jesus said in John chapter
14, Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more, but ye
see me. Because I live, ye shall live
also. May God give us faith to trust
in the death and in the life and in the ever-living Saviour. Amen.