Exordium
“He is risen from the dead!” We know these words so well, they can lose their impact. So think of it in the negative. What if we didn’t hear this? What then? What would be true if He didn’t rise from the dead? What do we lack?
The first thing is that if death could hold Him and He didn’t rise, then His claims to be the Son of God would be false. His teachings, and God’s Word itself, would not be true or trustworthy. You couldn’t know what is truth.
But! – because “He is risen,” everything Jesus Christ said of Himself is true, He is the Son of God as He said, the only Savior. The works He was sent to do and the things He taught are absolutely true. This is about truth. All that God promised in the Old Testament is true, for “He is risen!” He has redeemed you from the power of that great liar and deceiver, the devil.
The second thing is that if Jesus remained in the grave, His death would be for nothing, all sins would be unforgiven. How terrible, if your sins might be brought out again on Judgment Day, to condemn you.
But! – since “He is risen,” it proves that God accepted Jesus’ death as full payment for your sins. They’re buried in Jesus’ grave. They won’t be brought up again. The words, “He is risen,” prove that there is forgiveness for you. He has redeemed you from all sin.
The third thing is that without the words “He is risen,” you could only be afraid of death. You could only be sure of this life, not the next one.
But! – the words “He is risen” declare that Jesus went into the valley of the shadow of death, laid down in the grave, came out alive on the other side, and now is risen so He can lead you there. Because He lives, you will live also. He has redeemed you from the power of death!
In the joy that He is risen from the dead, and all that this gives, as is our custom, let us rise and sing a festival verse for this greatest of days:
Hymn: “He Is Arisen, Glorious Word!”
JESUS’ RESURRECTION GIVES US THE SURE AND CERTAIN HOPE
Sermon Text: St. Mark 16:1-8 (v. 6a). But he said to them, “Do not be alarmed. You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He is risen!”
Lord, this is Your Word and these are Your words. Sanctify us by the truth; Your Word is truth. Amen.
In the name of Jesus, whose resurrection has caused us to be born again to a living hope (1 Peter 1:3), dear fellow redeemed: Grace and peace to you from God our Father, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Amen!
The disciples were without hope.
Disciples, at this point, doesn’t mean just the apostles, the 12 disciples minus Judas. This group includes men and women, all Jesus’ followers, His disciples in a broad sense. The Eleven, to start. But also Mary Magdalene, Salome the mother of James and John, Mary the wife of Clopas, Joanna the wife of Herod’s steward, Susanna, even Jesus’ mother Mary. She was His mother but she believed in Him, so she was His disciple. Also the two who went on the road to Emmaus, and Matthias who would replace Judas, and Jairus, Mark, and the secret disciples Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus.
But right now they all were without hope. The Bible describes what it means to be without hope. It defines pagans and unbelievers as those “having no hope and without God” (Eph 2:12). It says that our grief when death comes should not be “like others who have no hope” (1Thes 4:13), who are unbelieving and therefore without comfort, without hope.
Can Jesus’ disciples be no different than that? At this point, yes. They were without hope. They had lost hope. You look at them and you can see it. The eleven locked themselves in. Actually only ten since Thomas took off alone. And these women, they were going to anoint Jesus’ dead body. When they saw the angel, it says “they were alarmed,” meaning it was a frightening shock to them. They had no hope of seeing anything other than death there. This “alarm” is tied up with their sadness, but it’s a deep sadness, a despair, a depression, which is hopelessness. It’s a fear that everything about Jesus, all the promises, the hoped-for victory over sin and Satan – and death – isn’t true.
The Emmaus disciples express this disappointment in their words, “We had hoped that it was He.” So their hope is history. The women have this too, they now have no hope. The angel seeks to solve this: “Be not alarmed.”
Do you struggle to have hope? If a person feels despair or has depressive episodes or serious depression, they describe it as feeling hopeless. A feeling of hopelessness can overtake you suddenly. Something happened. Or you persevere in your struggles and try to be optimistic, but you run into so many walls and finally run out of resolve and it feels hopeless. Or the world around you, how things are going, how the conditions in the world or in the job market or in universities or in politics, any of it, can make you feel hopeless.
In all these ways that you can feel hopeless, it’s because Satan is attacking your hope. It’s what he does especially to Christians, who are the ones who have hope. We have to understand how hope is differentiated from faith.
Faith is the gift of God, it’s how your life in Christ begins, being given faith in baptism. It grows through learning, by hearing God’s word of truth and knowing Christ as your Savior. This is being a disciple. The teaching of the Word is the primary thing. But then the devil attacks your faith to try to wipe out your faith, to get you to give up. He uses all the things you can see or feel. He uses sorrow and sadness, danger and threat. He uses strife with others, adverse experiences, loneliness, whatever. If it’s something or someone important to you, he attacks that. But his target is your faith, that you will feel far from God, under judgment, that you will doubt God’s goodness to you.
This is where your faith has to become hope. Hope clings to the promises of God when it’s difficult. Hope is faith battling. Hope is like a captain of a storm-tossed ship, which is you. Hope battles against your feelings, these feelings of sadness, fear, feeling timid or faint-hearted, feeling burned, pessimistic, cynical. Hope is faith being courageous despite what you see or feel. Hope is faith being joyful despite what you see or feel.
But Satan attacks our hope. He especially does this, by getting us to hope in things God hasn’t promised. It might be your wishes, something you’ve cooked up or built up in your mind. “My life is supposed to look different,” you might say. Sometimes people blame God over “disappointed hopes,” but it’s their own hopes, built up by their own wishes. “Hope in God” which defines a Christian is based instead on God’s promises.
The disciples had “disappointed hopes” because their hope was based on a continuance of nice experiences with Jesus. They were false hopes of their own making. But I’m grateful that the Bible shows them being this way, it’s honest about their fears and trembling and being without hope. Because it’s how we are. The devil attacks our hope. He makes you a storm-tossed ship. He makes you think you’ve lost your optimism, courage, and joy. He focuses you on your wishes so he can make you the one with disappointed hopes, to make you just like all those who “have no hope.”
But this brings us to the point where we can see how:
Jesus’ Resurrection Makes Us the Ones Who HAVE Hope!
Hear the words of the angel: “Do not be alarmed. You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He is risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid Him. But go, tell His disciples – and Peter – that He is going before you into Galilee; there you will see Him, as He said to you.”
True hope is built on faith, and faith comes from the Word, so that’s what we just heard: the Word. The angel acknowledges the women’s feelings, which hope is battling against but losing. Then the angel tells them the fact. He includes the fact that is beating them down, that Jesus died. But then the angel says the ultimate, most important fact in your life and all history: “He is risen! He is not here.” He shows them the fact of the empty tomb. He lays before them the promise that they will see Jesus again, “as He said.”
The emphasis here is that Christ’s promises are true. “As He said.” The angel builds their faith again on Jesus’ words, shows them how His words have come true. This is establishing their hope on God’s certain and sure promises. So that they will have the sure and certain hope. So they’ll stop being those who have no hope and return to being the ones who have hope.
Jesus’ resurrection does that.
· His resurrection proves that He is who He said He is, the Son of God, and all His word is true.
· That He is risen also proves that His death did procure the forgiveness of sins for everyone, so it makes the devil’s accusations against you about your sins false; feelings of guilt and shame are just the devil lying to you. Jesus is risen, so Satan’s accusations fall flat with God. They aren’t true.
· Jesus’ resurrection also proves that He defeated death for you, so anything that afflicts you regarding physical danger, any worries, the fear of death or how you will handle it or any of the trials and troubles, Jesus conquered it for you. Your life is in His hands. No matter what happens, you can’t lose life. Your life is eternal. You are in His hands, soul and body.
His resurrection gives you these promises. They’re brought to you in His Word. Not only in the Bible; but in the absolution, the preaching of the Gospel, holy communion, in the blessing, all of it is the risen Christ Himself bringing you forgiveness and life in His Word, to rest your hope on this. 1 Peter says His resurrection causes you to be born again to “a living hope.”
A living hope. A hope that does things, that battles against the feelings of gloom and sadness, and battles with certainty and courage and joy.
This is who you are as a Christian. Christians are the Hopers. The ones who have hope the world doesn’t have. It comes from Jesus’ resurrection, we’re told in that verse from 1 Peter. It has caused us to be born again to a living hope. You, as a baptized child of God, were not just born for this but reborn for this. For hope, a living hope, a hope that battles and endures.
So what do you do if you run into a problem with hope? If your hope isn’t battling but retreating? If you find so many reasons to feel without hope, or you’re hit with so much and get overwhelmed and lack hope, what to do?
First is to realize that this comes from the devil. He only attacks the hope of Christians so this attack tells you that you are a Christian, you are God’s child, you do have enough faith for the devil to be attacking you this way. This is why you make the sign of the cross daily to remember your baptism, that you are God’s child. The devil’s attack drives you back to your baptism, to remember God washed away your sin and it’s true because Jesus is risen!
Next, if you find you lack hope, is to realize that your forgiven self, your believing self, because of the devil’s attack isn’t as strong as your sinful self, your doubting self that listens to fears. What you need is not to think you’re a lost cause and everything’s hopeless. What you need is just for your forgiven self to be made stronger. This is where the Lord’s Supper helps. It’s there to strengthen you in faith, hope, and love. If you feel weak in hope, then you are who this supper is for. Jesus invites you. He is able to do this because He is risen, and living, and it’s the crucified and risen Savior who bestows on you His body and blood to strengthen you in the true faith unto life everlasting.
Finally, we remember that hope is in the things that we do not see, in the life that’s waiting for us, in the promises of eternal life. There is always reason to live, always joy, always a certain hope, because in Christ you always have life. Because Jesus’ resurrection makes you the one who has life, eternal life, His resurrection makes you the one who has hope.
Thus you can say:
No gloom shall ever shake, no foe shall ever take the hope which God’s own Son in love, for me, hath won. The world against me rageth – its fury I disdain; though bitter war it wageth – its work is all in vain. My heart from care is free, no trouble troubles me. Let tempest rage at will, my Savior shields me still; He grants abiding peace and bids all tumult cease. Amen! (“Awake My Heart With Gladness,” Paul Gerhardt, v. 3, 5, 7)