Why Do You Seek the Living Among the Dead?

We are going to start the message with the reading of the scripture.

Luke chapter 23, verse 50 through chapter 24, verse 12.

Luke 23:50

The burial of Jesus. Now there was a man named Joseph, a member of the council,

a good and upright man, who had not consented to their decision and action.

He came from the Judean town of Arimathea.

Thank you. And he himself was waiting for the kingdom of God.

Going to Pilate, he asked for Jesus' body. Then he took it down,

wrapped it in linen cloth, and placed it in a tomb cut in the rock,

one in which no one had yet been laid.

It was preparation day, and the Sabbath was about to begin.

The women who had come with Jesus from Galilee followed Joseph and saw the tomb

and how his body was laid in it.

Then they went home and prepared spices and perfumes, but they rested on the

Sabbath in obedience to the commandment.

Jesus has risen. On the first day of the week, very early in the morning,

the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb.

They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they entered,

they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus.

While they were there, wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that

gleamed like lightning stood beside them.

In their fright, the women bowed down with their faces to the ground,

but the men said to them, why do you look for living among the dead?

He is not here. He is risen.

Remember how he told you while he was still with you in Galilee?

The Son of Man must be delivered over to the hands of sinners.

Be crucified, and on the third day he raised again. Be raised again.

Then they remembered his words.

When they came back from the tomb, they told all these things to the eleven and to all the others.

It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the others with

them who told this to the apostles.

But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense.

Peter, however, got up, ran to the tomb.

Bending over, he saw the stripes of linen lying by themselves,

and he went away, wondering to himself what had happened.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for the reading of your word, especially the story

of your resurrection, your son's resurrection, and even what the ladies found

at the tomb and testified back to the disciples. Father, we thank you for this.

May this be the resource that we have for all of life. In Jesus' name, amen.

So what do people visit cemeteries to find? Tombstones.

Dead people. So why would the angels ask, why do you seek the living among the dead?

They didn't know that he was living. They thought he was still dead.

They were preparing for him. In the 19th century, there was a very prominent

British philosopher named Bertrand Russell who had an interesting view of life and death.

He said this, the life of man is a long march through the night,

surrounded by invisible foes, tortured by weariness and pain,

towards a goal that few can hope to reach and where none can tarry long.

One by one, as they march, our comrades vanish from our sight,

seized by the silent orders of omnipotent death, brief and powerless as man's

life, and in all of his race the slow, sure doom falls, pitiless and dark, blind to good and evil.

Boy, doesn't that sound really exciting.

Sounds like a guy who does not believe in the ever after.

Sounds like a guy who has no hope for a future.

Sounds like a guy who is lost without a god.

Talk about depressing. What could possibly have prompted Bertrand Russell to write such a thing?

Well, for one thing, like I said, Bertrand Russell was an atheist.

He didn't believe in Jesus. He rejected God, and he denied the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

For the atheist, there is no back door out of the grave.

You die, you're buried, you decompose. There's nothing left.

Once you die, you're gone.

An atheist doesn't go looking for the living among the dead,

because for the atheist, death is the final act.

Now, in the text we read this morning, the angels at the tomb asked the question,

why do you seek the living among the dead?

Why would the angels ask that question?

Well, they asked that question because these women hadn't come looking for a

living Jesus. is they'd come to the cemetery to prepare his body for the long time of burial.

They couldn't do it beforehand because it was a special Sabbath and they could

not do any work at this time, so they had to wait until after the Sabbath was

over to come and prepare his body for the final burial.

Generally, that's what you do when you go to a cemetery.

You go to pay respects to dead people or to seek names of loved ones who have passed on.

Well, that's usually what we do when we go to cemeteries, but not always.

One night while I was in college, I took my girlfriend at the time out to a

cemetery outside of town on a little one-lane road for our devotions.

I was devoted to her and she

was devoted to me I thought that it would be a great place to take her to be

alone away from the prying questions and spying eyes of the classmates back

at the college I also thought by taking her out to the cemetery outside of town

along a dark deserted road,

one lane road that she wouldn't be likely to hop out of the car and try to walk back,

I had a captive audience.

I only took her to the cemetery once, however,

because after we had been there for only a few minutes, some zombie-looking

dude stuck his face on my windshield and told us to get lost and get out of

there. He didn't have to ask me twice.

Later, when Nancy and I were living in Peoria, I taught both of our daughters

how to drive in the large cemetery that was about six blocks away from our house.

I taught them to steer and properly accelerate and decelerate.

I taught them how to stop at a proper distance from an intersection and how

to properly signal their intentions.

I taught them to make turns to back up and to park. I taught them this and told

them that by teaching them to drive in a cemetery, they didn't have to worry about killing anybody.

I'm such a great dad.

By the way, I have been driving around in the outside of this town,

going around through the countryside.

And did you know that there's a cemetery outside of town?

Not the one you're thinking of, but one farther out. It's just a little cemetery,

and there's a law in Wisconsin that you cannot be buried there if you live within

15 miles of there, because the law says you don't bury living people.

So you see, this is what you come for.

So you see, there can be other reasons that people go to cemeteries.

Most of the time, people go to cemeteries to seek and honor the dead.

Luke 24, verses 1 through 3 says, On the first day of the week,

Luke 24:1–3

very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb.

They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they entered,

they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus.

These women had gone to Jesus' grave because they assumed he was still dead,

because it was on the Sabbath that he had died.

And so when people, when Jesus had died on the cross, there hadn't been sufficient

time to prepare his body.

So they brought spices and they thought they'd prepare him for that time.

You see, these women thought Jesus was dead and they were really simply trying

to make sure that the corpse would receive the proper respect it was due.

They were looking for the dead. and without realizing there'd been a resurrection,

the dead is all that they expected to see.

So the world around us is looking and seeking for the dead among the dead because

we live in a dying world, right?

What Bertrand Russell and numerous atheists believe is that they can rule out

the deity of Jesus, that he couldn't have possibly have lived through this,

because we live in a dying world.

Without Jesus, all that this world can offer us is six feet underground.

There's no fountain of youth.

Science might prolong your life, but it can't do anything to ultimately defeat death.

Plastic surgeons can make you look like you've cheated death, but you won't.

Although even some of those who have plastic surgery many times look like death warmed over.

I remember Phyllis Diller saying on one show one time that she couldn't possibly

have any more plastic surgery on her face or she really would have eyes in the back of her head.

But everyone we know is going to die sometime.

And as one person observed, there's nothing certain in this world but death and taxes.

And without Jesus, death is oblivion. It's emptiness.

It's the end of all existence. There's no hope for the future because without

Jesus' resurrection, there is no life after death.

For centuries, there have been philosophers and skeptics that have preached

that kind of hopelessness that we only have this one life to live and then the grave.

How many of us have been to funerals of those who have not known Jesus and not

known where their destiny was

going to be in heaven and find out how demoralizing that service can be?

But when one like faith loves Jesus,

the funeral is a celebration of going into a new home to be with God.

There were even some in the early church who believed that if the dead are not

raised, then let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.

Without the resurrection of Jesus, that's about all you get in this world.

But we seek for the living because Christ is risen.

We seek for the living because we know for a fact that Christ is no longer in that tomb.

Then Paul wrote, but Christ has indeed been raised from the dead,

the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.

A family was watching a movie on TV one night called The Greatest Story Ever Told.

All through the movie, one of the children was completely enthralled by what she saw.

Toward the end, as Jesus struggled under the weight of the cross,

tears were rolling down her cheeks.

She was absolutely silent and still until Jesus had been taken down from the

cross and laid in the tomb.

Then she jumped to her feet and she spun around, turning to her parents with

a bright, smiling face, and she said, now comes the good part.

Now comes the good part. The resurrection of Jesus is the good part of the story.

It is the good part of the story because it's in the resurrection of Jesus that

we have our faith. It's in the resurrection of Jesus that we have our hope.

It's in the resurrection of Jesus that we have the promise of forgiveness and a new life.

In Romans 6, verse 4, we read,

Romans 6:4

We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that just

as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father,

we too may have a new life.

God incorporated the resurrection into the very act that he has designed for

us to be redeemed from our lostness.

God is on a mission to redeem a lost world to himself, and he chooses to use

us, his chosen people, to accomplish his mission.

God has redeemed us. Hallelujah. Praise the Lord.

When Christ comes again.

When Christ comes again, there is no tomb that will stop us from meeting him in the air.

We shall all be changed, and we shall all rise from the dead to meet him in the air.

All who have come to Christ and died in their sins will come to Jesus again.

All who have been born again will join Jesus in heaven with God.

It's in the resurrection of Jesus Christ that we are who we are.

We live in a world filled with bitterness and doubt, but the empty tomb speaks of belief.

We're surrounded by people filled with depression and desperation,

but the empty tomb promises deliverance.

To people filled with fear, the empty tomb teaches us faith.

The empty tomb takes those bound by their sin and offers them a savior.

And it turns people worried about punishment into people focused on praise.

No other religion offers this kind of hope.

You can stop in by the grave of Muhammad and he's still there.

You can visit the grave of Confucius and he's still dead and still confused.

You can visit the grave of Buddha, and he's still there with his brother Bubba. They're really not.

But no matter what world religion you might think of, their founders are all

lying in a tomb, gathering dust or turning into dust.

But if you stop by the tomb where Jesus was buried, the body is not there because

he is risen just as he said.

Speaking of the Messiah, David prophesied, you will not abandon me to the grave,

nor will you let your holy one see decay.

In Isaiah chapter 53, God declared that the Messiah would suffer and die.

Isaiah 53 · chapter mention

He would literally be sacrificed as a guilt offering like a lamb was sacrificed for us.

It is the Lord's will to crush him and cause him to suffer.

And though the Lord makes him a guilt offering. He will see his offspring and

prolong his days, and the will of the Lord will prosper in his hands.

So the prophecy declared that the Messiah would not stay in the grave. Hallelujah.

We know that, and we can be assured of that.

He's risen, just as Jesus himself said. The angels said, he's not here, he is risen.

Remember how he told you, they

said, "'the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of awful men.'.

On the third day he would be raised again. Jesus told about his death and burial

and resurrection several times during his ministry.

He answered those who challenged him for a sign and said, destroy this temple

and in three days I will raise it again.

When Jesus asked his disciples who they thought he was, Peter gave the good

answer when he said, thou art the Christ, the son of the living God, not the dead one.

And then Matthew tells us that from that time on, Jesus began to explain to

his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands

of the elders, chief priests,

and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed, but on the third day he

would raise again from the dead.

So it's well known that Jesus had made this prediction.

Even his enemies knew that he had declared that the grave would not hold him.

And so now what's interesting is this, that in the story we've just read in

Luke, those ladies didn't seem to understand that. Jesus had told them all that.

These women have come to the cemetery to seek the dead among the dead,

and when you go to a cemetery, that's generally what you're there for.

But when they got there, there was no corpse. There was just no dead body to prepare.

There was just empty clothing laying on the slab that was in the tomb.

A famous preacher named Peter Marshall once said,

the stone was rolled away from the door not to permit Jesus to come out,

but to enable the disciples to go in and see that the tomb was empty.

Isn't that what is up to us?

The tomb is empty. The door was rolled away so that we can come in and see that

Christ is risen and the tomb is empty.

I think it was last year that I gave you all an Easter egg, a plastic egg,

to take home with you and leave it open on you just to remind yourself that

the tomb is empty and Christ comes and lives for us.

We can remind ourselves every day, and life is great.

A Sunday school teacher had just finished telling her third graders about how

Jesus was crucified and placed in a tomb with a great stone sealing the opening,

then wanting to share the excitement of the resurrection,

she asked, what do you think were Jesus's first words when he came bursting out of that tomb alive?

A hand shot up in the air in the back of the classroom.

An excited little girl jumped to her feet and shouted, I know,

I know. Good, said the teacher.

Tell us, what were Jesus's first words?

And with a throwing your arms in the air, jumping as high as she could, she said, ta-da!

Ta-da. The resurrection is what Christianity is all about.

That's what faith in Christ is all about.

If you take the resurrection out of our faith, all you have is a list of do's

and don'ts. A man named Arthur Ramsey put it bluntly, no resurrection, no Christianity.

The resurrection is the core of all the promises of God, and they all hinge

on the triumph Jesus had over the grave.

Down through the ages, various atheists have tried to disprove the gospel of Jesus of the Bible.

They've looked at history and the Bible record to try to prove he didn't rise from the dead. Dr.

Benjamin Gilbert Fort West and Fort Littlejohn were from Cambridge.

They were so fed up with Christianity, they wanted to destroy it.

So they took a leave of absence to study and write a book to refute both the

resurrection and the conversion of Saul of Tarsus.

After they had studied all of that, and as a result of their time in research and study,

they were both converted and became ardent believers and wrote,

reject not until you have examined the evidence, for Christ's resurrection is real.

Dr. Simon Greenleaf was a skeptic from Harvard Law School.

He'd written three volumes on the law in his classes.

He mocked any Christian that was there, but he was challenged by some Christian

students to apply his own book to the resurrection of Christ.

So he took up the challenge and found the evidence was so convincing that he

too became a follower of Christ.

He later wrote, resurrection of Jesus is one of the most and best established facts of all history.

These men sought to find a dead man, a dead Jesus. Instead, they found a living

Christ, and that can make all the difference in the world.

Paul wrote, Brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall

asleep or to grieve like the rest of men who have no hope.

We believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring

with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him.

According to the Lord's own word, we tell you that we who are still alive,

who are left until the coming of Christ, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep.

For the Lord himself will come down from heaven with a loud command,

with the voice of the archangel with the trumpet call of God,

and the dead in Christ will rise first.

After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together in

the air to be with him in the clouds, and so we will be with the Lord forever.

Jesus said, I'm the living one. I was dead, and behold, I'm alive forever and

ever, and I hold the keys to death and sadness.

But so do you seek the living or do you seek the dead? Do you seek the one who

holds the keys to the future?

Have you come to seek the living Christ?

On the day of Pentecost, the apostle Peter stood before the huge crowd gathered

in Jerusalem and declared these words, fellow Israelites, listen to this.

Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles,

wonders, and sign, which God did among you through him, as you yourselves know.

This man was handed over to you by God's deliberate plan and foreknowledge,

and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross.

But God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death,

because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him.

Therefore, let all Israel be assured of this. God has made this same Jesus whom

you crucified both Lord and Messiah.

I want to close this morning with a.

An audio message from Reverend Shadrach Lockridge, who was a pastor at Calvary

Baptist Church in San Diego, California, in the late 1990s.

Listen along to this, please, and let it strike your heart.

The Bible says my king is the king of the Jews.

He's the king of Israel. He's the king of righteousness. He's the king of the ages.

He's the king of heaven. He's the king of glory.

He's the king of kings and he's the lord of lords. That's my king.

I wonder do you know him. My king is a sovereign king.

No means of measure can define his limitless love. He's enduringly strong.

He's entirely sincere. He's eternally steadfast.

He's immortally graceful. He's empirically powerful. He's impartially merciful.

Do you know him? He's the greatest phenomenon that has ever crossed the horizon

of this world. He's God's son. He's a sinner's savior.

He's the centerpiece of civilization. He's unparalleled. He's unprecedented.

He is the loftiest idea in literature. He's the highest personality in philosophy.

He's the fundamental doctrine of true theology. He's the only one qualified

to be an all sufficient savior. I wonder if you know him today.

He supplies strength for the weak. He's available for the tempted and the tried.

He sympathizes and he saves. He strengthens and sustains.

He guards and he guides. He heals the sick.

He cleanses the lepers. He forgives sinners.

He discharges debtors. He delivers the captive.

He defends the feeble. He blesses the young. He serves the unfortunate.

He regards the age. He rewards the diligent and he beautifies the meager.

I wonder if you know him. He's the key to knowledge.

He's the wellspring of wisdom. He's the doorway of deliverance.

He's the pathway of peace.

He's the roadway of righteousness.

He's the highway of holiness. He's the gateway of glory.

Do you know him? Well, his life is matchless.

His goodness is limitless. His mercy is everlasting.

His love never changes. His word is enough. His grace is sufficient.

His reign is righteous. And his yoke is easy. And his burden is light.

I wish I could describe him to you.

Yes, he's indescribable.

He's incomprehensible. He's invincible.

He's irresistible. You can't get him

out of your mind you can't you can't

get him off of your hands you can't outlive him

and you can't live without him well the pharisees couldn't stand him but they

found out they couldn't stop him pilot couldn't find any fault in him herod

couldn't kill him death couldn't handle him and the grave couldn't hold him. Yeah!

That's my king. That's my king. Amen.

That's our king. Do you know him?

If you don't, or if you're not even sure if you do, today would be that day

to find Christ and be found by him.

What a day it would be on a day that we celebrate that Christ is risen for you

to be risen to new life as well.

Let me pray with us. Heavenly Father, as we conclude this Resurrection Service

Sunday, some of us may not know that we're followers or not.

Some of us may have not even just chosen to make a decision.

Some of us have just kind of gone through life just pretending everything's okay.

But Father, we pray, I pray, that this would be a day of great awakening.

Christ is risen. You are risen indeed.

And we want to shout hallelujah and praise be to Jesus with our lives before you.

In Jesus' name, amen.