Psalm 22:1-2, 7-8, 14-18, 22-24, 27-31
Psalm 22:1 My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning? 2 O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer, and by night, but I find no rest….7 All who see me mock me; they make mouths at me; they wag their heads; 8 “He trusts in the Lord; let him deliver him; let him rescue him, for he delights in him!”…. 14 I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint; my heart is like wax; it is melted within my breast; 15 my strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to my jaws; you lay me in the dust of death. 16 For dogs encompass me; a company of evildoers encircles me; they have pierced my hands and feet 17 I can count all my bones—they stare and gloat over me; 18 they divide my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots….
22 I will tell of your name to my brothers; in the midst of the congregation I will praise you: 23 You who fear the Lord, praise him! All you offspring of Jacob, glorify him, and stand in awe of him, all you offspring of Israel! 24 For he has not despised or abhorred the affliction of the afflicted, and he has not hidden his face from him, but has heard, when he cried to him.… 27 All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations shall worship before you. 28 For kingship belongs to the Lord, and he rules over the nations. 29 All the prosperous of the earth eat and worship; before him shall bow all who go down to the dust, even the one who could not keep himself alive. 30 Posterity shall serve him; it shall be told of the Lord to the coming generation; 31 they shall come and proclaim his righteousness to a people yet unborn, that he has done it.
Luke 24:1-12
24:1 But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they went to the tomb, taking the spices they had prepared. 2 And they found the stone rolled away from the tomb, 3 but when they went in they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. 4 While they were perplexed about this, behold, two men stood by them in dazzling apparel. 5 And as they were frightened and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, “Why do you seek the living among the dead? 6 He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, 7 that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified and on the third day rise.” 8 And they remembered his words, 9 and returning from the tomb they told all these things to the eleven and to all the rest. 10 Now it was Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary the mother of James and the other women with them who told these things to the apostles, 11 but these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them. 12 But Peter rose and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; and he went home marveling at what had happened.
From Thursday night through Friday afternoon, Jesus, the perfect Son of God, had been arrested, abandoned by his disciples, illegally and inaccurately charged with treason, cruelly beaten, otherwise mocked and tortured, and crucified to the point of an agonizing death. Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, two Pharisaic members of the Sanhedrin who apparently had not consented to the Sanhedrin’s charges against Jesus, sought his body, prepared it for burial, and entombed it in Joseph’s own tomb just before the Jewish Sabbath began at sundown Friday. Sunday dawn brought the first post-Sabbath light in which the women who had followed Jesus from Galilee could go to the tomb.
When the women arrived at the tomb, they found the stone rolled away and the body of Jesus missing. Had the body been stolen? Two angels in the form of young men in glowing clothingtold them that Jesus was risen as he had foretold. The angels commissioned the women to go and tell the eleven. Mark tells us that the women fled in fear and were afraid to say anything. Luke tells us that the women remembered what Jesus had foretold and then went and told the men disciples. But the men considered the words of the women an idle tale and did not believe them. With the possible exception of Peter and John, who went to see the empty tomb and at least believed that it was empty, only the undeniable appearances of Jesus Christ in his resurrected body made real believers of them. For women and men alike, it was hard to believe good news. It still is. Why is it hard to believe good news? Let’s look at three common reasons:
Reason 1. It is difficult to believe good news when our minds are overwhelmed by bitter memories and present fears. The first messages about the resurrection came to the disciples when their minds were seared by the hard reality of the crucifixion. How absolutely horrible it had been and how much they feared what would happen next to them! They were in hiding behind locked doors. It is hard to believe good news when we are hiding behind locked doors.
It is hard to believe good news when we have just raced in terror to the scene of an automobile wreck only to hear an emergency medical worker say, “I’m sorry. Your child has died.” It is hard to believe good news when the doctor steps into the room and says, “I’m sorry. The form of cancer you have is incurable.” It is hard to believe good news when a year before your retirement plan matures, you get a pink slip. It is hard to believe good news when your spouse says, “I have found someone else.”
Almost everyone in this room—with no matter how much or how little faith-- has experienced some kind of pain similar to those examples. Sometimes that kind of news feels like the absence of God, which is to say it feels like hell on earth.
On the cross, Jesus on our behalf experienced the feeling of hell on earth, and from the cross he called out the opening words of Psalm 22, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Psalm 22 is a psalm of David written roughly a thousand years before Jesus. The Holy Spirit caused David to include in his personal lament a number of poetic details that were literally fulfilled in Jesus’ crucifixion: the mocking and insulting of him, his thirst, the piercing of his hands and feet, and the casting of lots for his clothing. Jesus’ experience of forsakenness was real, but even as he cried out his pain, he also knew how psalm ended, with the worldwide celebration of his great deliverance which was indeed fulfilled by the resurrection we celebrate today.
Psalm 22 exists to assure us that the feeling of God-forsakenness need not be the final word. Our bitter memories and present fears need not be in charge. There is a Sovereign God. He reigns even over our experiences of hell on earth. He can overturn them even after the worst has occurred. We all have bitter memories and present fears. But we need not let them govern our daily lives.
We are challenged to stay open to continuing resurrection experiences that come to followers of Jesus Christ. Resurrection experiences may not come quickly or easily or painlessly, but they will come. Psalm 22:27-28 says, “All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations shall worship before you. For kingship belongs to the Lord, and he rules over the nations.” In short, our God reigns over and, if we will let him, ultimately overrules our experiences of hell on earth, and, in the long run, that will make all the difference. It is the good news of the resurrection.
The lyrics raise the issue of our seeming insignificance: “I am a flower quickly fading, here today and gone tomorrow, a wave tossed in the ocean, vapor in the wind.”
The lyrics also raise the issue of our unworthiness, filled as we are with sin and fear: “Who am I, that the eyes that see my sin would look on me with love and watch me rise again? Who am I, that the voice that calmed the sea would call out through the rain and calm the storm in me?” Our seeming insignificance and our sin and fear, our doubt, make us feel unworthy of God’s love. Indeed, we are unworthy. There is no contesting the point. We have no claim to the mercy of a Holy and Sovereign God.
It is hard to believe the good news that we can be saved. And yet the lyrics say, “Not because of who I am, but because of what you’ve done, not because of what I’ve done, but because of who you are….Still you hear me when I’m calling; Lord, you catch me when I’m falling, and you’ve told me who I am: I am Yours.” The message, true to scripture, is that, despite our unworthiness, God has claimed us in Jesus Christ. All we must do is to give ourselves to the One through whom we have been claimed, and let Him be our Savior and Lord. He will make us what we cannot be on our own, children and heirs of God! While we are indeed unworthy, our God reigns over and will overrule our insignificance and our sin if we will let him. If we will believe, confess, repent, and seek renewal, we will be covered by his righteousness while we are growing into it. It is the good news of the resurrection.
Reason 3. It is difficult to believe good news that conflicts with our culturally-formed expectations. With regard to our believing the message of the resurrection in our culture, there are a number of culturally-shaped expectations that get in the way. I have time to mention two such expectations:
Expectation A. Our popular culture broadly expects that, when we die, some immaterial part of us, our soul perhaps, automatically goes to a better place which we imagine to be according to our own tastes. Nowhere in the Bible is it suggested that there is an automatic immortality in a better place to which we all go. If Jesus was raised from the dead--and there is good evidence that he was—then those who believe in him will be raised to share resurrection bodies like his in a new heaven and new earth, not our worldly idea of pleasure, but God’s perfect plan for all creation which is far better than we can imagine. Our God reigns over death and for his faithful overrules death. That is the good news of the resurrection.
Expectation B. Our academic culture broadly assumes that all real events have material explanations that accord with physical laws expressing the current consensus of leading scientists. Again, if Jesus was raised from the dead--and it is hard to contest the evidence that he was—then there is more to reality than our scientists have imagined. I am not debunking science. There is a proper place for the study of the natural order on its own terms. I am just proclaiming that there are bigger truths that science cannot address, that we can know only as the Sovereign God reveals them. Our God created the natural order that science investigates, and our God reigns over it. The death and decay that appear to govern the natural order are not the final word. The final word is the word of life in Jesus Christ. That is the good news of the resurrection.
Conclusion: If Jesus was raised from the dead, then our experience of hell on earth, our bitter memories and our present fears, are not the final word; a better word will yet be spoken and it will prevail. If Jesus was raised from the dead, then our unworthiness, our insignificance and sinfulness, are not the final word; a better word will yet be spoken, and it will prevail. If Jesus was raised from the dead, then ultimate reality is not about our immortal souls automatically going to a better place that fits our sinful imaginations; a better word will yet be spoken, and it will prevail. If Jesus was raised from the dead, then ultimate reality is not limited by physical laws that are discoverable by even our best scientists; a better word will yet be spoken, and it will prevail.
Jesus was raised as the first citizen of a new creation, a new heaven and new earth which reflects not our personal desires, but the best plans of our Sovereign Creator. There is nothing automatic about our entering that perfect realm. Those who enter that realm must do so under the covering of Jesus’ righteousness and must have placed themselves on the road to being made in fact righteous, or they will not enter that realm at all.
We have a crucified Savior and a Risen Lord who is the key to our eternal destiny. It is not my job and it is not your job to decide who enters the future realm. Jesus himself tells us that he will separate the sheep from the goats, that only those whom he recognizes as living in him will enter that perfect realm. We want to be in that number when the saints go marching in. Jesus is our only Savior, our only Lord, our only Judge. He alone decides our ultimate destiny. He alone decides which people have lived their lives in union with him.
If he died for our sins and was raised from the dead as our living Lord, then that is the solid truth on which we must build our hope, our faith, our love, and our lives. Our God reigns over hell, sin, and death. If we are in Christ, we have nothing to fear. That is the good news of the resurrection.
Let us claim the good news for ourselves. Let us proclaim the good news for the world. Let us exclaim the good news right here and right now! Our God reigns! We are his! Say it with me: Our God Reigns! We Are His!
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