Luke 24:1 NIV
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.
What Could Happen In A Few Hours?
When our son was four
years old, I decided as the good father that I was, that it was time to take
the training wheels off his bike. This
is of course a rite of passage for most of the world’s population, as important
as promoting into middle school and going out on the first date. Now I am certain that if Mary Jo was home at
the time, I might not have gotten past getting the first training wheel off our
son’s bike but she wasn’t and so like all good fathers who love their children
I took charge of helping our son spread his wings and fly, We went out to the
back of a nearby middle school where there was an acre of asphalt and
basketball courts. I got our boy up on
his little bike, steadied him as he established his balance with his feet on
the pedals and hands on the handlebars, said a brief prayer and then pushed him
off into the adult world. I cheered him
on as he wobbled away from me, furiously trying to maintain his equilibrium,
veering left, then to the right, but steadily moving forward. There were perhaps sixteen large metal poles holding
the basketball rims and backboards in place spread out over at least an acre of
land. Not one of them was shrouded in
mist; none of them were hidden behind sheets, painted with special colors that
camouflaged them. Each was like the
Eiffel tower standing boldly by itself, far from its matching partner, a giant
mountain of metal and immovability and yet as my little boy pushed off with the
enthusiasm of Christopher Columbus looking for the passageway to the Orient, he
somehow not only did not avoid the basketball pole, like a bee drawn to a
flower, he pedaled straight at one.
Silently he crashed into the basketball pole and there he lay crumpled
on the ground. Like a good dad, I ran to
him, checked for any major structural damage to his body and comforted my son
in the same way any true father would.
“Son”, I said. “You did
great! Do you want to try again?” He got up, dusted himself off, climbed on his
bike and with a push from me, off he went again.
Now here is where I was
dumfounded and could not grasp what I saw.
Why did my son, with perfectly good eyesight not notice the giant metal
poles out in the middle of the wide open spaces? How did he miss the danger before him and why
didn’t he do anything to avoid running into one of them? Yet I must admit this to you. I also have run into my fair share of
basketball poles and did nothing to avoid them.
I have failed and because of pride or an unwillingness to look at the
facts have ruined parts of my life. I
have made bad decisions, thought I knew what I was doing and was wrong. I have hurt others by what I have said, made
others suffer for my mistakes and plenty of times blamed someone else for my
failures. Are you immune to failure or
have you had your fair share of losses? Have
you sinned? Do you know when you are
wrong or are you like me, you tend to cover up your mistakes or ignore
them? How bad is bad when it comes to
you, how seriously should you take your sins, your moral mistakes, your
rebellious acts against God? What should
you make of your failures, your shortcomings, the difficulties you cause others
and yourself? Let us look at Easter and
how what Jesus did two thousand years ago impacts your life.
When it comes to what we
have done wrong, our own sin, we have a giant blind spot. We make too little of it and do not realize just
how destructive our sins are, the potency of their evil. The Bible has this to
say about your mistakes and moral failures.
Don't you know that when you
offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one
whom you obey — whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to
obedience, which leads to righteousness? (Romans 6:16-17 NIV) We see our
violations of God’s law as silly little misdemeanors that were not intended to
harm anyone. Everything from a little
lie we tell to a short adventure into porn, we laugh away as no big deal. And yet God clearly does not see what we call
shortcomings as insignificant at all.
What it took for Him to eradicate sin from His people is a clear
indication of just how really horrific our sinning is and the devastating
effect it has on the universe.
Look closely at what
Jesus had to suffer to get rid of your sin.
Can you see the flesh being ripped from Him as the whip tears at His
back, across His chest, along His legs?
Do you hear the beating His face took as he was pummeled by the
guards? Have you noticed the blood
dripping down His face from the crown of one inch thorns shredding His scalp
and forehead? Then Pilate took Jesus
and had him flogged. The soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it
on his head. They clothed him in a purple robe and went up to him again and
again, saying, "Hail, king of the Jews!" And they struck him in the
face. ohn 19:1-3 NIV) What about the force of the nails driven into His
feet and wrists, the writhing pain He suffered as He hung on the Cross hour
after hour, the ridicule He suffered as strangers laughed at His naked body
hung up for all to see? What did it cost
God to take those insignificant, trivial, unnoticeable sins out of you and make
you free of them? Do those sins really
seem like nothing? Are they as
unimportant as you have pretended for Christ Himself to be tortured like that,
beaten like that, and ripped apart like that?
It took just a few hours for God to take our sins from us but the cost
of that transaction was unbearable pain for God Himself.
I think there is one more
aspect to Easter we would do well to consider.
Not only are your sins horrific and devastating for you and others, this
matter of what you should think of your troubles and failures must be
considered. So the women hurried away
from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy, and ran to tell his disciples. Suddenly Jesus met them. "Greetings,"
he said. They came to him, clasped his feet and worshiped him. (Matthew
28:8-9 NIV) Ponder for a moment what
sort of shock Mary Magdalene, Peter, John, Thomas and the others must have felt
when they saw Jesus alive after they had watched Him shattered by pain and
die. Is there any sort of comparison we
can make to it? He was dead; everyone at
the foot of the Cross, from the soldiers to the disciples to the women who
watched Him be crucified, knew He was dead.
The body was a wreckage of death.
Can you picture how wide their eyes were, how violently their heart beat
in their chests, how numb they were to all other sounds, all other movements,
all other smells when they looked upon Jesus alive and knew beyond doubt He
really was alive? What thoughts of
previous failure went through their heads, what disappointments and trials of
life did they consider as they gazed upon His wondrous resurrected body? Did any memory or plan stand in the way of
just seeing Him, staring at Him, being mesmerized by Him? Did they fuss about what they would have for
dinner, complain about the back pain they suffered, get irritated by the long
wait they endured as Jesus remained dead?
No sight could have been more spellbinding, no event more entrancing
than just this one matter, Jesus standing before them raised from death and
fully and magnificently alive before them.
Ponder this for a moment; that what we see with the disciples is just a
hint at the emotions you will encounter when you too take your place among the
saints who see Jesus standing before them the first time. You too will soon enough, like the disciples be
gripped by the most stupendous joy a person could ever possess and it is not
that far off.
Have you ever noticed the
connection the Scripture makes between the crucifixion and the resurrection of
Jesus? Over and over the Bible points
out that it was on the third day after He died that Jesus was raised from the
dead. When they came together in
Galilee, he said to them, "The Son of Man is going to be betrayed into the
hands of men. They will kill him, and on
the third day he will be raised to life." And the disciples were filled
with grief. (Matthew 17:22-23 NIV) . God
gave a number to it, a very specific number to connect the two parts of the
salvation equation. Crucifixion plus
resurrection after three days equals salvation.
It is not four days and it isn’t two days either. It is the third day that everything comes
together for God’s people. No
crucifixion and there isn’t the removal of Sin from us. Without resurrection there isn’t any life to
our holiness. They must be joined as one
and they cannot be separated for your eternal life to begin—crucifixion and resurrection. The two are joined into one outcome on a
particular day and no other day, the third day.
The third day…it is where all our hope rests; where your hope rests.
Keep this in mind when
you think about your life right now. Our
LORD does not initiate a crucifixion without a resurrection in mind. Yes, you have troubles, you do have
hardships. You may wonder why He lets
them happen. Why this sadness, this
frustration, this failure? I cannot say
why you have faced what you have and perhaps you cannot either. I do not know how it will all work out for
you, how this trial you face will go. It
is hard maybe for you to see how your dreams can still come to pass; how your
suffering can be removed, but you must see this, look squarely at this. You have not come to the end of the matter;
it is only the first day, maybe the second but it is not yet day three. For you it is Friday or maybe Saturday. The dread of things is still upon the wind,
the troubles you face are still in the air.
Death is before you, troubles and heartache and pain and discouragement
have still remained and it seems late in the game, too late for anything much
to change, for any good to come of this but it is the second day. You have not yet reached the third day. It is Saturday, perhaps even Saturday evening
but remember, God does not initiate a crucifixion without a resurrection. Sunday will come; it is nearly here in fact.
Yes, you wonder like Job with all his troubles why it is so tough, so
hard. Like Jesus’ mother, His disciples,
His friends, you don’t know why Friday has to be so bad and why there is so
much pain and defeat on Friday. That is because you have first day thoughts,
first day emotions, first day worries, first day fears; it is still the night
for a universe awaiting the dawn. Friday
has come and Saturday stands for now, but there is one more day left and then everything
will change for you. There is hope in Friday, hope in Saturday because...Sunday
is on its way. All death will come to
life. All troubles shall be cast aside
with the dawn of the third day. And you
will see that day!
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