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April 8, 2007
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Easter
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Pastor Brian Shimer
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"Looking for Life!"
Luke 24: 1-12
- When the children were small I read to them many times the story by Glen Keene about Adam the Raccoon and King Aren. In one of the stories King Aren is going to take Adam on a journey into a dark forest. Adam is so excited to go with the king and gets all his things ready. When he comes out of the house, his arms are loaded down with a stack of "everything he will need" - there is the TV, radio, clothing, toys, tennis racket, stacked up on his beleaguered hands way up above his head.
The king says, "Adam, why do you need all that?"
And Adam claims he may possibly need it. The king says, "Adam when you are with me, I am all you need."
And through the story as Adam has to leave more and more of this things behind through various mishaps he finds that indeed if he is with the king he has all he needs.
Now I must have read that story 100 times, possibly 1000 times, but I am still getting the message.
I remember years ago when Karen and I had the opportunity to take our first ever vacation together after I had worked as a travel agent for nearly three years. We were going to fly to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico and stay for a long weekend. I had just begun the candidacy studies for ministry so was working with another pastor on the preparations. I was so conscientious that I thought I Had to bring my studies with me. Mind you I was going to this resort for a weekend with my bride and thought I had to take my studies with me???
Well, I thought I did, and so took with me my Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (I used to think it got its name because it is so exhausting to carry it around), a huge, heavy Bible dictionary, another big tome, for I am going to take time to do some of the research I have to do for my studies while we are in Mexico. Karen is so longsuffering with me!
I will never forget the bellhop at the hotel carrying our bags for us to the room. He was a short, stocky guy and was sweating profusely by the time we reached the room. He said, "Senor, what do you have in here, bricks?"
"No, just a couple books."
Books in Puerto Vallarta! Who ever would have dreamed.
I exhibited then what I still struggle with today the need to accumulate things. I am like Adam Raccoon who thinks the king will not be enough and need to have all my "Stuff" along with me.
And I do have a lot of stuff.
While I was in Brazil in March, Rita Warkentien looked at me and asked, "Brian, can you tell me why the self-storage area industry is so big in America? When I was there I just could not understand why people would have so many belongings that they would have to rent space to store it all."
Well, why is that?
I don't really know, but was impressed with the few belongings they all had in their homes. They had TVs and Computers but few decorations and no noticeable boxes of stuff. What they had was out in view.
In one wealthy home we visited the mom showed us all her precious things from 40 years of marriage - these were kept in a glass case with four shelves. Therein were little vases and figurines but that was it. Just one case full of special things. It astounded me, thinking of my garage full of boxes of precious things which would have to be in a storage area had I no garage.
And I pondered those accumulations while I was gone and have made one major trip to Goodwill since returning home.
We accumulate, we acquire more than we can store, we hold onto what we have as if in that thing there is life and hope, when the only life and hope cannot be found in things, in stuff.
- The early believers in Jesus knew this - that life was not found in things and they had found life in Jesus. But then he had died. This was a huge loss to them. How could they continue? So as a last act of love, the women, notice the men did not think of this, but the women, prepared spices in order to go early on the first day of the week to anoint his body.
What a wonderful act of great but foolish love! How would they get the 2000 pound stone out of the way to get into the tomb? How would they be able to unwrap the blood and herb soaked cloths from his body? But they desired to serve their Lord by anointing his dead body. It was a last goodbye, perhaps.
Imagine their shock when they found the stone rolled away already and upon entering the tomb, did not find his body there!
It would be like the shock you would feel having gone to view a dead friend's body at the funeral parlor and arrive to find the coffin empty and have the dazed attendant tell you: "Well, Mr Jones just got up about an hour ago, said he was feeling better and went home with his family."
It would be the kind of shock my friend Bob Corrao experienced when as a security guard once working the night shift at the local funeral home, heard a knocking sound from the inside of one of the coffins out in the hallway. As Bob tenuously approached the box, the knocking became more rapid and suddenly the lid of the coffin flew open and up sat the body - dead but the nerves apparently still causing movement.
These women were looking for the dead body of their Lord, but instead found him gone. The tomb was empty.
It was not empty because the disciples had stolen the body, as has been told for years among the Jews and the Mormons.
It was not empty because Jesus had not really died on the cross, but fainted, as was surmised in the late 1800s. That scholar said the centurion mistook this for death, and in the cool of the tomb Jesus had awakened, rolled back that stone and walked triumphantly out of the tomb!
It was not empty because His body had been eaten by dogs as one modern so- called scholar claims.
It was empty because by the power of God Jesus had been raised from the dead!
- So the angels' question surprised the women. The angels asked them, "Why are you looking for the living among the dead?"
They had not been looking for the living, remember, but a dead body. What are we looking for when we seek life in the wrong places?
We amass the things, we get entertained, we buy something new, we eat something more all of which are ways to seek "life" in the wrong places.
The angels tell the women a word that we would do well to remember as well, and that is the word, "Remember." The angels invite them to remember what Jesus had told them while still alive: that he would die and rise again.
And they remembered his words, we read.
Do you find yourself seeking the Living among the dead? Do you find yourself seeking aspects of life in the wrong places?
Jesus is alive. If you have entrusted yourself to Him, than your life is hidden with Him. You need not go out there, gain more wealth, have a bigger home, drive more cars, attend more car races to find life. Rather, you need to remember the words He has spoken to you. You need to seek Him rather than amass things.
- As there was no body in the tomb and the angels told the women to remember what Jesus had told them, so our search for life begins with the fact that Jesus really rose from the dead. It begins with the fact that the tomb was empty.
No the most recent hoax being promoted by director James Cameron through his movie and website that a new archeological dig has uncovered the bones and the family of Jesus of Nazareth, is just that, a hoax. The dig referred to as new was actually uncovered in 1980 and was then shown to have no relation to Jesus whatsoever.
Cameron is one of many seeking to disprove the resurrection. But he has failed.
To say these are the bones of Jesus would be like saying that a grave found in the Banks Cemetery with the names Abraham and Mary Lincoln on them could possibly be the remains of the deceased president and his wife. Such an idea is preposterous.
No, Jesus really rose from the dead - the tomb really was empty. If you need to:
Ask Thomas Arnold, Professor of History at Oxford and author of the 3-volume History of Rome, who wrote: "I know of no one fact in the history of mankind which is proved by better and fuller evidence of every sort, … than the great sign … that Jesus died and rose again from the dead."
Ask author Josh McDowell who spent over 700 hours studying the subject of the resurrection and became thoroughly convinced of it also saying that it is the "most important fact of history."
Ask the lawyer Frank Morison who in the 1930s tried to rationally approach all the evidence of the resurrection to discount it and instead when viewing the facts from the vantage point of his legal training changed his mind and wrote instead the best seller: "Who Moved the Stone which decisively deals with evidence for the resurrection." (Above quotes from More Than a Carpenter, by Josh McDowell, ibid. pp 89, 96, 98 ubp).
Ask the apostles themselves - what changed them from cowering men to mighty witnesses who were willing to suffer and die for the Name were it not the reality of the resurrection and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon them!
And if all that was not enough, ask the logical question, if it all was a concocted tale, why would they have written it as they did? Why include Peter's denial of Jesus, Judas' betrayal, the disciples' fear and disbelief? Why have women be the first ones to the tomb? In that era, a woman was not a reliable witness. An orthodox Jewish man would pray daily, "Thank you God that I was not born a woman."
Evidences for the fact of the resurrection abound, in the lives of those around you who have been transformed by Him, even in the glories of spring when death is turned to life all around us.
If the tomb was empty, then Jesus is alive, and the Words He spoke are as fresh then as they are as we read them and listen for Him to speak into our hearts now.
Perhaps when we begin to seek for life in the wrong places it is time to simply remember what Jesus has said. What has He said? Where do I find life? We find it in Him - in Him who said, "come to Me all you who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest…" He said, "I am the Way and the Truth and the Life and no one comes to the Father but through Me."
Rather than running to the cupboard or the fridge, rather than heading for the store or the races, rather than buying the lotto ticket or the new car, turn to Him.
For God is saying, "Children, exchange those patterns of fleeing to something dead when you are looking for me. Stop running to the tomb. Instead learn to run to Me." How did Paul say it to the Colossian Christians? "Set your minds on things above not on earthly things. For you died and your life is now hidden with Christ in God." (Colossians 3:1-3).
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