Page 742. We begin reading God's Word at verse 1. After the Sabbath at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb. And there was a violent earthquake for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning and his clothes were white as snow. The guards were so afraid of him that they shook and became like dead men. And the angel said to the women, do not be afraid for I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here, he is risen just as he said, come and see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples. And then to verse 11. And while the women were on their way, some of the guards went into the city and reported to the chief priest everything that had happened. And when the chief priest had met with the elders and devised a plan, they gave the soldiers a large sum of money telling them, you are to say his disciples came during the night and stole him away while we were asleep. If this report gets to the governor, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble. So the soldiers took the money and did as they were instructed, and this story has been widely circulated among the Jews to this very day. And then we turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 15, and in the Pew Bible, that's on page 856. There I begin reading at verse 3. The Apostle Paul says, What I received I passed on to you as of first importance, that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures, and that he appeared to Peter and then to the twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living. though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. And last of all, he appeared to me also as to one abnormally born. And then dropping to verse 17. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile. You are still in your sins. then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men. But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. And we stop reading God's word at that point. In the 20th century, we are not interested so much in opinions as we are in facts. And I suppose for you who have our home from college, you are aware of that, that your teachers continue to challenge you to give them the facts and to check your own opinions out to make sure that you aren't going to be a 20th century Archie Bunker. And if you're going to go by facts and not just by prejudice and by feeling and ignorance. Then sometimes we think when we get to the Christian faith that we have to change gears. And all of a sudden we put our mind in neutral and then we live by faith, just live by faith. And maybe there's somebody in the audience that's already thinking, no, no, that's not quite true, Pastor, because you can put Christianity to the test. It works. It really works. And maybe you have said that to someone. You should try Christianity once. It really works. But I'm suggesting to you this morning that that's not the way that we begin. That is not what we base our faith upon, whether or not Christianity works. and that we ought to try it and give it a chance. In the first place, I'm not sure that you can do that with the Christian faith. It's pretty hard to pray to God while in the back of your mind you're wondering, I wonder if he really exists. It's pretty hard to ask for forgiveness of sins if somehow in the back of your mind you wonder whether or not you are a sinner and whether God does forgive. Furthermore, if you are going to base the truth of the Christian faith on what works, you may be in trouble, too. We used to live in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and there was a very powerful program put on by Christian Science. And every week they produced another testimony of someone who, through the Christian Science program, had been healed miraculously. And they would say to you, it works. It really works. You ought to try it once. And I'm sure that if you went to some of your neighbors, you might find them say, you know, I used to be all uptight and couldn't get ahead, and now I am into yoga. You ought to try it once. It really works. It does. Now, I don't want to discourage you this morning from telling your friends and neighbors that that the Christian faith, that the Lord Jesus Christ has meant a great deal to you and that he has indeed given you peace and power and assurance that you have never known before, but our faith is not based on that. Our faith rests upon fact, upon the facts of God, the facts of what God has done in history The Christian faith is not the musings of some theologian or some philosopher that account for reality in a very good way, and it does. There's nothing that accounts for man and creation and sin and all the rest as well as Christianity does. But the basis of our faith is the resurrection, is this day. As a matter of fact, I must confess to you that many times, many times, the devil challenges my faith. And there are times when I wonder, is it really all true or is it simply that, you know, that I have been brought up in a Christian faith or my particular experiences and live in the United States? And God always brings me back to this day, to the resurrection, because our faith is grounded right here. Not a philosophy, it is what God has done. That's the touchstone of the Christian faith. And that's why this morning, I think in the bulletin, you'll find the theme of the sermon is the place where Christ lay. I wanted to take that those words of the angel to the women and say, come and see the place where the Lord lay. Now, we have, for those of you who are worshiping regularly with us, have been looking at the places of Christ's suffering during the last four weeks. This morning, we conclude that little series of sermons by looking at the place where the Lord lay. And the first thing that I want you to notice about the place where the Lord lay is that that is crucial. The emptiness of that grave, the resurrection is crucial for our faith. No one, you know, denies the life of Jesus. I mean, what idiot, what fool would say that Christ did not live or even that He didn't die? I mean, who would argue the cross? Who would deny the cross? That's not the issue for people who challenge the Christian faith and who challenge the identity of Jesus. The issue is the resurrection. That's the issue. And that's why I want you to look at the place where the Lord lay. That's what the Apostle Paul said in that 17th verse in 1 Corinthians. The Apostle Paul understood the importance of the resurrection. He said, if Christ is not raised, your faith is futile. Don't waste your time here in church. If Christ is not raised, if you're just going through a little ceremony this morning because a little Christianity can't hurt anybody, or there's some good morals or ethics in the Bible, if that's what we are here for, forget it. Paul says, if Jesus Christ is not raised, you are of all men most to be pitied. Then I would suggest you do what the old TV ad for Millers used to say. You know, this is Miller time. You may as well, you only go once around in life. You may as well make the most of it. Don't waste your time being bored by a sermon or bringing offerings or listening to choirs. I mean, it may be good inspiration once in a while, but if Christ is not raised, we have nothing to sing about. That's what Paul says. We have nothing to sing about. Paul knew that, and the devil knew it. And that's why right at the very onset of the resurrection, the devil gets his spokesman, the Larry Speaks for the Sanhedrin, to issue the official explanation of the place where the Lord lay. Because they recognized, the devil recognized the importance, tremendous importance of the resurrection. And God recognizes, of course, that. God knows that. And that's why God surrounds the resurrection with all kinds of evidence and all kinds of proof. And we'll talk about that sometime. But God wants to assure us that our faith is not based upon the oratory of Paul or Peter or Chrysostom or some other great saint, but our faith is based on the mighty deeds of God. And particularly as they come to us on Easter, because on Easter, with that great deed of God, all the other things begin to make sense. And so I would call you this morning to come and to look at the place where the Lord lay. It's hard for us to get back into the mood of that first Easter. We have come this morning anticipating a joyful service. We have come anticipating the singing of the choir and all of that. But that wasn't the first Easter. That isn't how it went. The first Easter began with gloom. It was dismal. It was terrible. Their world had crashed in on them. They had so hoped that Jesus was the Messiah, and now he's dead. And the disciples are hiding in fear. And the women are the only ones that dare to be on the street, apparently. They go to the grave heartbroken, going to render their last their last act of love to a friend, to someone that they had so hoped in, but who had so let them down. And they walk and they wonder about the rock. And they get to the grave and they no longer wonder about the rock, who's going to push it away, but they see the open grave and they are bewildered. It's empty. It's empty. And their hearts must drop even lower. It's empty except for those linen cloths, for those strips that the Bible talks about, for the shroud, if you will. That's left. Not folded in a corner, not strewn about, not on a heap, but the angel says, I want to direct you to the place where the Lord lay. That's where the strips are. Later on, Mary looks into the tomb and she sees the angel, two angels sitting there, one at the foot and one at the head, where the Lord lay. They knew by the location of the linen where the Lord lay. It was that that the Apostle John saw, and that's why I read from John 20 this morning. It is that what the Apostle John saw, and all of a sudden it dawned on him. And he looked, he perceived, and he believed. What was there about those linen strips that gave evidence of the resurrection? What was there about those linen strips that said something about that empty grave? Well, they were not strewn all over the place, which would have been the case if an animal had come in there, a mountain lion or dogs. They would have strewn it all over. And they were not missing, which would have been the case if the disciples or someone else had quickly snatched the body. but they are where the Lord lay. It is the impression we get, it is as if Jesus had simply evaporated, simply left without disturbing the clothes. Now that was enough evidence for John, but for the women and for Peter too, It was so unreal, it was so unexpected, it was so unanticipated, it was so unheard of, that they became even more bewildered and more perplexed. But if the women were perplexed, and if they didn't understand the significance of what they saw, the chief priest did. And that's why they immediately got together and they issued this official statement that while the guards slept, the disciples took the body of Jesus. Now, that is the first official explanation of Easter. That's the first official explanation of Easter by Jesus' enemies. They don't talk about a legend. Of course, you can talk about a legend on the very day it happens. They talk about legends today. When they tried to explain away the resurrection, they didn't talk about legend, they didn't talk about myth. They talked about the disciples stealing the body. They should have thought that through, because it is a silly explanation. It is a poorly contrived lie. Try to imagine that, will you? Try to imagine. Try to imagine these disciples, scared to death, tiptoeing to the grave that morning and moving this stone, this rock, so quietly that the soldiers stay sleeping. The very thought is absurd, isn't it? Try to imagine, if you will, the disciples foisting this deception on the world. Disciples that, to their followers, would pound into their followers that they are to be truth-tellers. Imagine the disciples foisting this great deception on the entire world when they themselves live lives that even their enemies find to be blameless. Now try to imagine that this first story would hold weight, that the disciples stole the body of Jesus, that these men who preserved and who gave to us through the directions of the Holy Spirit some of the greatest, in fact, the greatest ethical and moral teachings in the world, that they perpetuated, perpetrated the greatest, most heinous, most dastardly lie in all of history. And then imagine it from a psychological point of view, how empty this explanation is, that these same disciples at the time when Jesus was crucified are living in desperate fear. They have the doors bolted They are afraid for their lives, but when John sees the linen close, when the grave is empty, somehow or other, a dramatic change comes upon these men. A change so dramatic that they no longer hide, but they proclaim Jesus Christ within blocks of the tomb. And that every one of them, I believe, end up paying for that message with their life. Now imagine that these disciples have perpetuated a lie. It is too absurd even to imagine that they would continue to hold to that lie when they face the lions and the state and the flames. As a matter of fact, as you read the history and some of the historians that write around that time, you'll find that this explanation soon is changed for another one. And unfortunately, that one is as bad as the first because the second explanation that you'll find in secular literature is that the high priest decided that it would not be wise to have a shrine for the people to go to. So he took the body and he hid it away so that they wouldn't have a shrine. to go to. Now can you imagine, once again, you would think that the devil would even be shrewder than that because within seven weeks, when Jerusalem is not only hearing the rumors of the resurrection, but they are hearing the preaching of Peter. On May 15, Pentecost comes. That's next month on the 15th. Pentecost comes, and they are there in Jerusalem. They are proclaiming the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and 3,000 people in one day come to accept him. Don't you think that if the high priest had taken the body of Jesus, that he would have brought him back with great pomp and said, look, these men are heretics. There's the risen Savior, rotting and stinking where we put him six weeks ago. Why didn't they do that? Because the grave was empty. Come, said the angels, and see the place where the Lord lay. Now, because of the importance of that event, The resurrection of Jesus Christ. Throughout history, the devil continues to try to find other ways to explain it. I read of a more modern theologian who explained it this way, that when the women came to the garden, the tomb, they were confused. They didn't know where the grave was. Maybe you've had that same experience yourself. You've gone to a cemetery. And every grave kind of looks the same, and you forget where it is. And so they came, and they were confused, and they were looking in this section, and a young man sees them, and he recognizes their problem, and he says, no, he's not here. Behold the place where the Lord lay. He's over there. You know, the explanations get sillier as you go along. Or you think about the other one that Jesus just swooned that he had not really died on the cross and that he had just fainted and then they put him in the grave and somehow or other after 24, 36 hours he regained his strength and he managed to push the stone away and scare the guards. And one after the other, others say, well, the disciples had so hoped in Jesus, and they had so believed that Jesus was the one, that they couldn't accept his death. And so finally, after weeks and weeks, they finally came to the conclusion that he was raised because some of them had had the hallucination that they had seen the Lord. Maybe some of you have lost a spouse. And you know how that goes. Sometime, all of a sudden, you think you hear His voice. A child, you hear that voice that grabs your heart. For a minute, you think you've heard Him. That's the way it was with the disciples. They had that kind of, for a minute, thought they heard Him, and so they proclaimed the risen Lord." But you see, God anticipates that kind of lie. So the Lord Jesus Christ, the first night, the first day, He appears to Peter, and He appears to Mary, and He appears to the two disciples, to Emmaus walking along, and He appears to the ten in the upper room. All different circumstances, all different numbers of people. You can explain a hallucination that one might have, but that they all have it together. And then 500 said Paul at one time. So you see, the Lord surrounds the resurrection with proof. It stood empty, the tomb did, in the middle of Jerusalem. And that is where the preaching began, right there, where the people could go back and could check could go back and check just a few blocks away. It's not like, you know, I'm telling you that something happened in Palestine where you've got to get on the airplane and make reservations and get travel permits and all of that. No, they are proclaiming the risen Lord right in Jerusalem. Weeks after it happened. So you see the evidence of the crawl of the resurrection becomes insurmountable and we We become part of that evidence too. Our being here this morning, what historical event has brought the church into being? And even our worshiping on this day of the week, you know, our forefathers, we trace our heritage back to the Jewish people who were jealous of the Sabbath, who wouldn't change it because God had commanded it. What prompted those early Jewish Christians to change that day of worship? What prompted them to come together on the first day of the week? Something, something astounding, something revolutionary. The resurrection of Jesus Christ. The very same thing that changed the leaders of the church. What changed Peter from a wimp who was afraid of that little girl by the fire, to someone who would dare to speak in front of kings. What changed him? We read in the Bible that Christ appeared to him. We know the facts are that he was never the same again. Paul mentions James. James, a brother, a cousin of the Lord, hated him. We read that Jesus appeared to James. We know that he was never the same again. Those are the facts. The apostle Paul breathed out hatred against the church. What his logic couldn't do, prison did. We read that Jesus appeared to him. We know that he was never the same again. He became persecuted for the church, for the Christ. So we could go on and on to show you that the resurrection is the fact, is the basis, is the foundation of our faith. And we have spent so much time on that this morning because it is so important. It is so desperately important. It is so wonderfully important because, well, let's just look at a couple of things. It is so important because when you think about that, you think about sin again and again and again. The Bible tells us that the wages of sin is death. God came to Adam and said, the day thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die. That's the refrain. That's why Jesus has to die. Because God laid on him our sin. Jesus becomes a sinner because he becomes the sin bearer. And therefore he must die as a sinner. That's what God says. But now he comes to life. And that tells us something about that sin that Jesus bore. It tells us that it is gone. That somehow or other, He took it all. That He, in His infinite power, paid for every last one. Because there's nothing left of it. That's why He is raised from the dead. Because sin has been paid in full. That's the joy, that's the joy that open grave gives us. Not one of our sins is left if Jesus was the sin bearer and is raised. That's why Peter said, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave us a living hope in the resurrection of Christ. Or you think about how powerfully this open grave speaks about death. All of our life, we face death, the cycle of birth and death, birth and death. This past week, we have two members in our church whose mothers died, or a mother and a father died, I should say. We have two other members in the church who just got word that one, their mother, and one, their father, have maybe three months to live. That's the thing we struggle with again and again and again. And then on Easter, some headlines. Not that cancer, a cure for cancer has been found. Not that a mechanical heart has been perfected. Life has come forth from death. That someone who has been dead for three days is now alive. And then maybe, when I think about this, I was reminded about the excitement. I don't know how many years ago that was, and I think it was Dr. Christian Bernard, wasn't it, who did the first heart replacement? Remember the excitement? Remember the optimism, the hope that thousands, hundreds of thousands of people with bad hearts had, that somehow or other that would give them a new lease in life. It thrilled the world. Every television camera was there in South Africa. My friends, we're not talking about hearts. We're talking about life. We're talking about death being reversed, which has never happened. And that's not a future discovery we're talking about. That's not something that I have my body frozen for to hope that later on someday some great discovery will come. There are people that spend thousands for that, you know. My friends, on Easter, there is a headline that says, death has been reversed. Life has been brought forth out of the grave. Come with the women and see the place where the Lord lay. You see what tremendous comfort that gives me when I lay a loved one to rest. When I hear about a father, a mother, and a child slips out of my finger when the grim reaper is there. I see the headlines, Easter. Behold the place where the Lord lays. You see, that's why we have spent so much time this morning on the proof, on the facts of the resurrection. Because all of our life, we have heard that constant refrain of birth, life, and death. And the grave always had the last word. It always mocked us. It always thumbed its nose at us. because it was always victorious. And now comes Easter, and at last, the grave does not have the last word. At last, it is not the end. Look at the place where the Lord lay. That's what Easter's about. He is, Paul says, he is the first fruits. Now, children, when you live out east in Michigan or Minnesota, Iowa, you know, this time of the year, earlier in the spring, it's cold and dark. And you wonder whether winter is ever going to be done. And then you come home one day and you say to your mother, Mother, guess what I saw today? You know what that is? A rabbit. You know what your mother says to you? If you saw a robin, spring can't be far away. Because the robins are always first. And there may be snow on the ground, but spring is coming. And that's the way it is with Jesus. He is the first fruits. And we go home today and we say, guess what? That grave was open. Death was reversed. Jesus was raised. He's the first fruits. He's the Robin of the resurrection. Ah, says Peter, praise God who began us unto a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. We believe. And God, thank you for undergirding that faith with the open tomb, with the facts of the resurrection. Amen. Father, we thank you today that we may indeed praise you for life, praise you for hope, and praise you that that cycle, that endless cycle of life, and death has finally been broken, that there is a new hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. And Father, it is our prayer, especially for those in this time of the year who must face the death of a loved one or must put a loved one in the grave, that they may look at that grave as Joseph did of old, that it has been sanctified. and that the voice of death, the mockery of death has been clothed and shut up. The grave does not have the last word, but Christ has the last word. I am the resurrection. Lord, may we live our lives then in this week with that kind of hope or that kind of joy for Jesus' sake. Amen.