Death Does Not Win

Transcript

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[0:00] Thanks be to God. Thank you, Jared, for reading. And welcome again. I'm glad that you're here. Our reading for this morning for the sermon is John chapter 20, verses 1 through 18. If you tuned in for Good Friday, we read all of chapter 18, all of chapter 19. That was about the arrest and the trial and the crucifixion and the burial of Jesus. That was 18 and 19. And 20 is about the resurrection of Jesus and the account of Mary Magdalene and Peter and John as they come and find the empty tomb. And more, actually. So that's what we're looking forward to today. And I said on Easter, on Good Friday, that when Jesus was on the cross and he said, which means it is finished in sort of a very finalized way, that while it was true that there was a little more to the story, a couple days later, and I didn't want to spoil it for you, so now I'm going to tell you what it is, is that, yes, the crucifixion happened and it was the fulfillment of the plan that God had, but there was more in the works. And that was a few days later when Jesus was raised from the dead. And the resurrection now brings even more context to this event, the week of the passion. So that's what I was hinting at on Friday, in case you didn't figure it out,

[1:18] and I'm pretty sure you did. But it's possible that some people watching don't know about the resurrection, the crucifixion or the resurrection, and so I want to be able to speak to everybody in this. So that's what today is all about. We call it Resurrection Sunday.

[1:36] And it's the day where we talk about the resurrection. It's the day we talk about Jesus' resurrection, but also that that becomes a promise to us of our own resurrection someday. Super important. Now I heard a story once, and this is a true story from somebody I know, who had visited a nearby... another church, not a covenant church, we won't say which denomination, on an Easter Sunday, hoping to just, you know, receive a wonderful Easter message. And for some reason, the preaching that day, the topic of the sermon that day, was on tithing.

[2:12] Tithing. Like, you know, it was about... It wasn't about the resurrection, but it was Easter Sunday. And he thought to himself, could you have picked any other topic that day? I mean, even if it wasn't the resurrection, some other topic besides tithing. And it's a head-scratcher. This is the most important day in all of Christendom. And I don't understand what the church was thinking, was that they would use that day to talk about tithing. But that's their business. We'll worry about our own business, I guess. So today is the day we talk about the resurrection. And not the only day, but it is an important day for us.

[2:47] And we remember the resurrection, and we testify to it. One of the things that is important, that we're important to know about John's Gospel, is that it really is a lot about information. It's about information. It's about all the senses, and what they take in. And then it's about testifying to what has been seen, and heard, and smelled, and tasted, and touched. It's very interesting. Not only testifying to it, but that that information and that sensory experience takes one to the next step in their faith. And that's about whatever it is that they're seeing, touching, smelling, etc. And testimony, when we say testimony or testify, it sounds a bit ominous, it sounds like a big deal, but it is very simple. It is simply, for them, it was simply telling one other person or more what I saw. And so I could testify right now today that I saw a cat driving on the way to church. It's a very simple testimony. It's just me sharing information. But that's a testimony about something that I saw. It's a testimony about something that happened. So John's Gospel is a lot about seeing and then testifying, and all of that brings other people to faith, and it brings a person who has experienced it to the next step in their faith.

[4:07] So I want you to look at today's reading through that prism, so to speak, and say, what are the words that I see or hear read that have to do with the senses? Sight? Sound? Touch? You know, all sorts of things like that. And so it's the narrative of Mary Magdalene and Peter and John. Now John's name isn't in here, but he's the one who wrote it, and he talks about himself sort of in the third person as the other disciple. Sometimes he calls himself the disciple whom Jesus loved. When you see either of those phrases, he's really talking about himself. It's his modesty that keeps him from naming himself, we think.

[4:50] And so Mary Magdalene, Peter, and John, at various stages find an empty tomb, and Mary is rewarded when she goes back with actually seeing Jesus herself. So listen for all the words that have to do with the senses. And with that, let's go to our reading. It's John chapter 21 through 18. It goes like this. Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance.

[5:24] So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don't know where they have put him. So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there, but did not go in.

[5:51] Then Simon Peter, who was behind the tomb, arrived and went into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, as well as the burial cloth that had been around Jesus' head. The cloth was folded up by itself, separate from the linen. Finally, the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. Remember that. They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.

[6:19] Then the disciples went back to their homes, but Mary stood up. She stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus' body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot. They asked her, Woman, why are you crying?

[6:40] They have taken my Lord away, she said, and I don't know where they have put him. At this she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus. Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?

[6:57] Thinking he was the gardener, she said, Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him. Jesus said to her, Mary. She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, Rabboni, which means teacher.

[7:15] Jesus said, Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet returned to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, I am returning to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God. Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news, I have seen the Lord. And she told them that he had said these things to her. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank you for your word. Thank you for the eyewitness account of the resurrection. We pray that you would add your blessing to it in Jesus' name. Amen.

[7:52] Well, let's really quick recap what's happening here. This narrative is pretty straightforward, so we don't need to unpack too much. We have several people involved. Mary, John, Peter, two angels in white, and Jesus. So we're actually up to about six people now. We have people seeing things, looking into things, talking to each other, wondering about things, and people beginning to believe in things. So there's a lot kind of going on, a lot of verbs happening in here. John is interested in the faithful witness who will testify about Jesus. That's really, if you want to look for the larger, grander theme of John's gospel is, where is this faithful witness who will testify about all these things, and that testimony will lead to the next step of faith. So John is interested in finding a faithful witness who will talk about what they have seen, about his life, but really a lot more about his crucifixion and resurrection. And of all the gospels, John spends the most amount of time in the week of the Passion, more than half of John's gospel is about the Passion and the trial and the burial and the crucifixion and burial of Jesus and the resurrection. More than half. The other gospels, not so much. So John is really focused on this.

[9:11] And if you listen to the reading of chapter 18 and chapter 19, on Friday, you found, and I timed it, it was over 11 minutes, more like 11 and a half minutes, of just to read those two chapters about all the things that happened to Jesus from the end of the Last Supper until the moment he was buried. There was a lot of detail in there. And the reason, that's why it took so long. John had detail after detail after detail. He had names, he had places, he had times. He even kept track of a rooster crowing. You know, there was just a lot of detail. Important detail. And he cares about detail. So we have detail and we have people who experienced all these things and now we have their testimony. And you may be at home thinking, why is he going on about this? This is important.

[10:00] We have, and I'm going to get into why it's important in just a second. We have this testimony which John records and the other gospel writers, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and also Paul in our first reading from, or yeah, it was the second reading, second reading from 1 Corinthians 15. Paul says, I have passed on this news to you about Jesus and his death and resurrection.

[10:23] But the question is now, why is this so important? Why is testimony so important? And you may know this, but this is for those who don't know quite yet. Why? It's because the resurrection is so important. And for John to see a thing and to testify about it, and to record it so that other people could hear about it and hear the testimony and believe themselves, that to him was really why he existed, at least why his gospel existed. So the resurrection as a historical event, and there are many people in the world who will not believe that the resurrection is a historical event. They'll say it's sort of a fantastical story.

[11:09] This is the dividing line between Christians and maybe people who claim to be Christians, or people who aren't Christians, is you believe in the resurrection. That really is the thing. If you've ever read, and I've mentioned this before, kind of a delightful novel by John Irving called A Prayer for Owen Meany. And they talk about, you know, what does it mean to believe in something and who's a Christian or not. And Owen Meany, who's this sort of this little, this sort of a tiny person, but he's like a sage, he's a very interesting character. He says, it's all about the resurrection. Owen Meany says, if you don't believe in the resurrection, you're not a believer. You have to believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. If you don't believe in that, you're something else. Maybe you're on your way, you may be close, but you're not really there yet. You have to believe in the resurrection, the actual physical resurrection of Jesus, not some symbolic sort of pie in the sky. Wouldn't it be a nice idea, you know, that somebody dreamed up and it became a great literary device? No. We believe he raised from the dead, he walked about, he touched people. And so you get these stories from John of people touching people.

[12:25] That's next week's text. Jesus meets the disciples in the upper room. They want to touch him. They want to put their fingers inside the wounds in his hands and in his side. And he allows it. He allows it. He offers it, actually. And so this is a real person. This is a real thing and a real event. On Friday I talked about how the plan that God had to save the world from its sin was fully achieved in Jesus and his death on the cross.

[12:58] And one way to look at this is that on the cross there was a victory over sin and a victory over the devil, which we'll get to in a moment. And I just want to reread what we sang, our first song, and I really thank Blake and Jenny for choosing this. Go back into your bulletin to this song called Forever. And this is how it reads. The war on death, a battle in the grave, the war on death was waged, the power of hell forever broken. The ground began to shake, the stone was rolled away, his perfect reckless love could not be overcome. Now death, where is your sting? O resurrected king, our resurrected king has rendered you defeated.

[13:41] What happened? What happened on the cross, what happened on the cross was a victory over sin and the condemnation that sin brings. God dealt with the question and the problem of sin finally on the cross in the work of Jesus that was completed. And actually it was also a victory over the devil. And we don't like to talk about the devil, but we need to talk about the devil because the devil is involved here. The devil rules the world. The devil rules over hell. The devil was present at the temptation of Adam and Eve. And the devil had won this great victory early on in time when he was able to tempt Adam and Eve away from following God. And the earth was plunged into this obscene darkness and depravity of sin that we all understand. You can just look at the last century of human history and all the genocides and the wars.

[14:43] I don't have time to talk about all that. But if you wanted to start making a list of it, you'd never have enough time. Human depravity and brokenness is everywhere all the time. And it was a great victory for Satan to bring that into the world.

[15:03] And on the cross, sin was defeated. At least for those who follow Jesus and who love him. Its consequences were taken away. So on the cross, Jesus, in his obedience to the Father's plan, poured out his love for us and he rescued us from sin's power and sin's condemnation.

[15:26] And so Good Friday is a victory over sin and the devil. Now, what about Resurrection Sunday? Is the resurrection even necessary? Think about this for a second. If on Good Friday, sin and the devil were soundly defeated, why did Jesus need to be raised? Why was that necessary? God had actually dealt with the problem of sin on the cross. Why then is the resurrection necessary? Wasn't it enough to win over sin and the devil? I'm going to tell you a phrase that we often said at seminary and it just kind of sunk in. And I want it to be your phrase too if you want it. They taught us over and over again that Jesus had won a victory over sin, death, and the devil. Sin, death, and the devil. Notice that there's an extra thing that got put in there? It's death. The devil may have thought, Well, I lost on the sin front, but at least that sin took down God's Son. And I won't have to bother with him anymore. So maybe even on Good Friday, the devil said, Well, I have been defeated, but I took something more. And I'm with me. At least I took down the Son of God. I won't have to worry about him anymore. But can you imagine the devil's surprise? And I don't know if he was in on it or not. I don't know. I assume he wasn't. Can you imagine the devil's surprise when Jesus was raised again?

[16:49] He was like, No fair! And God said, Who said I have to play fair? I'm the king of this universe. I can do what I want. I'm going to raise my son from the dead. He was obedient to me. There are some old paintings from the Middle Ages. I'm going to ask Yanni to put that one up there right now. There are some old paintings from the Middle Ages that depict Satan as a large fish. You can see it on there. And he's being brought up out of the lake by a hook. But the hook is also a cross. Now if you see that hook, you see that it's a cross. But also there's a little hook at the bottom. And Satan has been sort of snared by it. And those, I'm going to point over here. There we go. This long line of faces and circles are all the patriarchs throughout time. This is just one medieval sort of concept of this. You can send it away now, Yanni. It's very interesting. Is that the devil was tricked? The devil was kind of like, Oh, I thought I had this. No, no. The resurrection really fooled the devil. So he can't even console himself that death was the final word for Jesus. So his defeat becomes even more defeated, so to speak, right?

[18:00] The real reason this is important, and I'm going to say this, it's impossible to talk about this too much because we really do need to be living in the world now as it is, especially now as it is. There's a lot that we have to address in this world as believers. There's a lot of injustice in this world. There's a lot of inequality in this world. There's a lot of brokenness in this world that we have also caused some ourselves. And so we need to be absolutely present in this world and not spend so much time talking about the future and the by and by when this is all done and we get to go to heaven, except today. Today we can talk about it all we want because this is Resurrection Sunday. This is the day when we talk about why the resurrection is important. And the simple answer is the resurrection is so important because it's a promise to us of our own resurrection. And it's a verification to all the people who had watched Jesus that he really was who he said he was and really could do all the things that he did. It was a verification and even more of a testimony about the truth of the gospel.

[19:10] I want you to hear this. When Jesus was raised from the dead almost 2,000 years ago, it became for you a promise that you too will be raised from the dead someday. That's the promise. And the people who you love, who love him, will be raised from the dead. And even the people who have gone on before us, a cloud of witnesses, who died but lived in hope of their own resurrection, you will see them again. And I have several people that I'm thinking about right now. A cousin who was tragically killed in a car accident about 14 years ago. I'll see her again. My mother and my father, they're gone. But they're not gone. I'll see them again. You may have your list of people that you will see again. And so what else has been defeated in this short span of days? Sin, yes. The devil, yes. But on the resurrection, death has been defeated. Death has been defeated. Not in the sense that we won't die, because we will, but death will not be the final word for us. Death will not be the final outcome for us. It doesn't have the power it would otherwise. And Paul loves this. It's in our call to worship. You remember that call to worship that we read together this morning where he says, death, where is your victory? Where, death, is your sting?

[20:47] Death has been swallowed up in victory. And I'm going to say it again, and I want you to hear it, and I want it to sink in. Death has been swallowed up in victory. On the cross and in the resurrection, Jesus has defeated sin, death, and the devil. And the resurrection is for us. I'm going to tell you something kind of personal right now, and I think some of you know this, not all of you have heard this, but on December 27th, I went in for a colonoscopy, my first one ever. And as I woke up from that procedure, the doctor, the nurse said, the doctor really wants to talk to you. And I was like, uh-oh. And then the doctor comes in, and you know when the doctor comes in and his face is very serious, he's not joking or anything, and he says, we have to talk. And I said, I'm listening. And he said, we found a mass, it's pretty big, we couldn't even get past it because we couldn't get past it, and it looks pretty big, and you need to go have a scan.

[21:49] And he said, I don't know if it's cancer, but I'd be surprised if it wasn't cancer. That's just how it was. And so as I took a scan, and they said, this is pretty big. And they said, you know what else? We found not just something in your colon, but we found a spot on your liver that we don't like, and we found a spot on your kidney that doesn't look good, and we need to investigate this more. And I was processing that information, and I was sitting at my desk in my office, which is just 50 feet in that direction, and I was reading. Sometimes information is really dangerous, right? I was reading that if this was something that was an illness that had spread to other organs, then that would qualify as what we call stage four cancer. That means it has spread. It's dangerous. And there was a slightly outdated table, but it was a table of life expectancies, of what you would expect whatever stage you were in. And it said for stage four, 13% of the people who were diagnosed with stage four colon cancer, only 13% of them would be alive five years later. That's what I read.

[23:02] And in that moment, when I finally figured it out, it dawned on me, my heart kind of just went down into my stomach. And I actually, I hit my desk, because I thought, I'm 51. I'm not ready for this. I've got three kids. My youngest is six. My oldest is 12.

[23:22] I've got a family. I've got a lot to live for. I've got a lot I need to do yet. And I talked to my wife, Krista, and we were like, we don't know. Maybe we can fight this. We need to find out more information. And it was a tough few days. I got on the phone. I knew I needed another scan that would kind of definitively tell me if this was actually true. Those were all just suspicions in the first scan. And I know this is a long story, but this is the part that I want you to hear, is that I was finally able to get a more detailed scan called a PET scan. And I went there, and they put me in this room inside this machine, making a lot of noise, in the basement of a building off El Camino Boulevard up in Palo Alto.

[24:08] And I was just so completely alone there. Like, they all left the room, and this machine was going. And I was stuck in the corner of this room in the corner of the basement of this building and not a person in sight. And I felt like as far away from everything. And I was starting to make sure I had my affairs in order. I checked my life insurance policy and found that my mother was still a beneficiary of it, and my fiancée, Krista, now my wife, but her name was wrong because we had never updated it. So I was like, I've got to start getting this stuff in order in case I don't have long to live.

[24:44] Down in that basement, in the corner, in the darkness, with this machine kind of enveloping me, I finally said to God, whatever comes next, I'm going to trust you. I'm going to give all of this to you. Whatever is inside me, I don't know what it is yet, whatever is inside of me, I give that to you. And I trust that even if I don't have more than a few years to live, that you'll take care of me, you'll take care of my children, you'll take care of my wife.

[25:14] And I said, I know I'm going to go to heaven. I know the resurrection is real. I know I'll see my mother and father again. I'll see my cousin. And I know that I'll see my wife and my children. We might all arrive at the same moment. We don't know.

[25:31] And so I said, for whatever comes, I want to be ready and I'm just going to give this to you because I can't control this. I can't control what's inside of me. And in that moment, God sent this incredible peace to me that I can't describe. But it was just like, yes, this may be bad, this may be good, this may be unknown, but I have you in my arms. I'm holding you tight. You're going to be okay one way or the other. And that's what the gift of the resurrection is on one level. It's to say, even if I have two years to live or two weeks to live, there's this embrace from God that says, you're in my arms. And you may leave this life, but I'm not going to let you go. I'm not going to let one of whom you have given me be taken away, as Jesus said about his disciples. And so I felt that great peace. And to end the story, because if you haven't heard this before, you're probably dying to know, because this was a few months ago.

[26:35] That morning, they resulted that scan like an hour later. And I was walking into my office, the very same place, and I got a note on my phone that said, you know, the scan is complete. It's been read by a radiologist. And here's the result. The thing on your liver is not a thing. It's not a problem. The thing on your kidney is cancer, but it's not related to this other cancer. So it's not stage four. So it may just be stage three or stage two. If you're lucky, it's stage two, my oncologist said. So then I had surgery eight and a half weeks ago. And they did a biopsy of the two masses they took out, one from my colon, one from my kidney. The liver is not a problem. It's something else. It's called a hemangioma. It's normal.

[27:19] And the biopsy, the biopsies came back, the pathology came back, all stage one. And my oncologist was like, you are very lucky. And I was like, ah, luck has nothing to do with it. We had an army of people praying about this. So I have a new lease on life. I don't have to go back to the doctor until August for a scan. Don't worry about me. I'm recovered from surgery, but God is good. And it was in that moment that it kind of reorients your life. And you go, you know what?

[27:49] Could you help me? Could you help Asher? Thanks. My son is here and he wants a little attention, so he's banging some things. We love you, Asher. He's the reason why I'm so happy to be alive. One of the reasons. So that's the resurrection. And that's why it's so important. It's because of the hope it gives us. And that's why testimony is so important to John. He's not reporting on who won the chariot races. He's not talking about sort of trivial things. This is a big deal. The most important thing that ever happened in the history of the universe, aside from the universe being created, is that Christ was raised from the dead. Eyewitnesses saw Jesus. They talked to him. They listened to him. They touched him. They shared a meal with him. They tasted the food. And all that was after the resurrection. All that was after the resurrection.

[28:39] So we testify. This is what the church does. This is the church's work. Is that we testify that if you don't know what will happen when you die, and I'm speaking to you if you're watching now, and you don't know what will happen when you die, and you just don't know, and you worry about it, and you worry about the state of your soul, because you look at your actions and you wonder if they're right, and sin and the devil are pressing hard against you and they're dressed up for battle, but the plan God had for my sin and the plan that God had for your sin was completed by Jesus. My sin is gone. It's washed away like the stain that it is. And yours can be too. John talks about seeing things turning into believing things. You see something and then you start to believe. You believe in what Jesus has done. And this is what I'm asking you. If you don't know Jesus yet, come to believe that Jesus went to the cross for you. And that God loves you. That he cares about you. No matter what you do. No matter what you have done. It is not so much that God cannot forgive you. Sin and the devil are defeated when you believe. And so is death. Whatever you may face a year or two from now or until the end of your life, God is going to hold you in his arms in safety

[30:06] and carry you when you can't walk anymore. We testify that death will not have the last word on this Resurrection Sunday. Because Jesus was raised from the dead. Hallelujah. He is risen. He is risen indeed. Let's pray. Father, thank you that your Son was raised from the dead to give us the hope of our own resurrection. In Jesus' name, Amen.