The much-needed help of the Holy Spirit

Posted on May 3, 2015 by Rev. Paul Rydecki

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Sermon for Cantate

Isaiah 12:1-6  +  James 1:16-21  +  John 16:5-15

Jesus’s eleven apostles were sorrowful when they heard Jesus talk about His imminent departure as they walked with Him to the Garden of Gethsemane. They didn’t know where He was going, or why He was going. And they couldn’t imagine how it could be a good thing that He was going away at all.

You can understand that, can’t you? I mean, just imagine what it would be like if Jesus had never gone away, if He had remained on earth and were still dwelling in Israel or somewhere else in the world. Just imagine what it would be like… Hardly anyone would know Him. There would be no world-wide Christian Church, just the church that met where Jesus was. If Jesus had never gone away, then He would still be in one place on earth, and you would have to go to that place to find Him and to receive help from Him. If Jesus had never gone away, then prayers to Jesus would have to be in person, as they were during His earthly ministry, and Baptism and Holy Communion wouldn’t even exist as means of grace. There would be no preachers anywhere else but where Jesus was, and even if there were, their preaching would fall on deaf ears all the time, because it would have no divine power to create faith or to save. If Jesus had never gone away, then no one else on earth could forgive sins. No one else on earth could reconcile sinners with God. If Jesus had never gone away, it might be wonderful for the relatively few people who could live close to Him and interact with Him. But for the billions and billions of others, Jesus would always be far, far away.

That’s why He had to go away. As He explains to His apostles in our Gospel, It is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I depart, I will send Him to you.

Jesus’ “going away” on Maundy Thursday night also included His going away to suffer and die on the cross. The need for Jesus’ death, the need for His resurrection from the dead—that’s clear, isn’t it? He had to go away to the cross and shed His blood as the atoning sacrifice for the world’s sins. He had to rise from the dead in order to apply His blood to sinners through faith and to impart His righteousness to all who would believe in Him for our justification. But how does that happen?

It happens as the Helper, the Holy Spirit, brings Jesus and His righteousness to the world in a different way, a bigger and better way. And understanding that way, that manner in which the Holy Spirit works, is crucial. He works through the Word, through the preaching of the Gospel, which is, as Paul says, “the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes.” Why is it the power of God? Because it is the tool of the Holy Spirit.

The Spirit sets the Son of God before our eyes in the Gospel, right now, in the present tense, so that the preaching and teaching that you hear actually has the power to bring you to faith in Christ Jesus and to work forgiveness of sins, life and salvation. Without the Holy Spirit, there is no Absolution, no Baptism, no Holy Communion, no power of God in the preaching of the Gospel, no divine help in the building of the Church. But with the Holy Spirit, there is.

Through the preaching of the Gospel, the Helper will convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment: of sin, because, Jesus says, they do not believe in Me. Jesus is making a distinction here between the unbelieving world and His saints, His believers, His Church. So the Holy Spirit will convict or rebuke the world concerning sin. Why? Because they don’t believe in Jesus. We preach the Law of God, His commandments, His moral requirements, to the world. We proclaim what is right and wrong, and we proclaim that all have sinned against God’s Law. Where there is faith in Christ, there the blood of the Lamb of God has been applied and sins have been washed away so that they aren’t counted against believers. But where there is no faith, people are still held accountable for their sin—all of it. So through the Christian preaching that goes on throughout the world, the Holy Spirit rebukes the world for its sin—for not believing in the only One who takes away sin. And He threatens eternal condemnation.

We preach the Law also to Christians, but differently. Not so that believers in Christ should imagine they are now condemned again and outside of God’s grace, but so that Christians, too, may know that they stand only by faith, and that apart from faith in Christ they couldn’t stand for one minute before the holy God and His holy Law. The Law makes no one righteous before God, but only reveals our sin, which will result in condemnation for everyone who does not believe in Christ. So in the preaching of the Law to Christians, the urgency is revealed of continuing to cling to Christ our Redeemer all the way to the end of our lives. For those who are in Him, there is now no condemnation.

He will convict the world of righteousness, because I go to My Father and you see Me no more. The world either thinks it’s already righteous, or it imagines that it can become righteous. Ask just about any non-Christian you know, “Do you think you’re a good person? Do you think God would consider you a good person?” In our country, in our time, the vast majority would answer, “Yes!”, or at least, “I hope so!” or “I’m trying!” That’s because the world refuses to acknowledge that only Christ is righteous before God. Only Christ is a good Person in God’s eyes. So the Holy Spirit convicts the world and rebukes it for its self-righteousness and declares that all righteousness is wrapped up in Christ, who has gone away to the Father.

So how can anyone on earth be righteous if the only Righteous One has gone to the Father? Again, it’s the righteousness of faith. See what the Holy Spirit does! Jesus says that the Holy Spirit will glorify Me, for He will take of what is Mine and declare it to you. The Holy Spirit takes of what is Christ’s, takes His righteousness, His record of obedience as God and Man, and declares it to you. He brought back the righteousness of the ascended Christ to the world on Pentecost. He applied the righteousness of Christ to those who were baptized—both then and now. He hands it out and covers the penitent with it. That is now mankind’s only connection to the righteousness that counts before God, our only link to Christ and all that is His—the much-needed work of the Holy Spirit.

And He will convict the world of judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged. The unbelieving world’s judgment is severely flawed. People honestly think they can make up their own morality, their own rules, their own moral justice and get away with it. They deny the God of Scripture. They reject His commandments and create their own. They reject His pure doctrine and create their own false doctrine. They rejected Christ when He was here on earth and they reject Him still. So, no matter what “god” people claim to worship, if they refuse to repent of their sin, if they reject Jesus as the Christ, the Son of the living God, then they have Satan for a ruler.

Is there any doubt that Satan is the ruler of this world? Have you heard of Ashley Madison? It’s a dating website—for married people looking to hook up with someone else. And what is this world’s judgment of such an abomination? The website boasts 34 million members spanning 40 countries, the second-largest dating website in the world. You know the stats on abortion well enough, and what is this world’s judgment? That it is a good and noble thing. If you’ve heard of the riots in Baltimore, then you’ve probably also heard people defending the violence that has been committed there. You’ve heard how frequently people now talk about a woman having a wife or a man having a husband, as if it were perfectly normal and acceptable, and you’ve heard phony “Christian” preachers going along with all of it. The world is indeed ruled by Satan.

But there is the Holy Spirit, through the preaching of the true Christian Church, rebuking the world for its faulty judgment. People think they can get away with it, but the fact is, the ruler of this world is judged. The Lord Christ has come and crushed him already by His death and resurrection, and He will come again and cast him out into outer darkness forever. That should send shivers down the spine of unbelievers. Satan doesn’t win in the end. He’s already lost. Their god, their master, their leader and their ruler is condemned. And so will they be, along with him, unless…unless they repent during this day of grace, unless they heed the Holy Spirit’s rebuke and turn from their sin to the grace that is being offered in the Gospel.

That’s the point. The Holy Spirit convicts and rebukes the world now through the Gospel, so that they may repent and not be rebuked and convicted on the Last Day. This is the time of the Helper, the time of the Spirit, from now until Christ comes again. Now the Word of God is still sent out into the world. Now the Spirit rebukes with words, not with hell-fire. Now the Spirit calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies the whole Christian Church on earth and keeps it with Jesus Christ in the true faith. Now the Spirit comes with His much-needed help.

You haven’t seen Jesus. No one on earth has for nearly 2,000 years. He died and rose again and ascended into heaven long before you and I were ever born. All we know is a world where Jesus isn’t. But that’s not exactly true, is it? The Helper, the Holy Spirit, has brought our Redeemer very close to us, even grafting us into the body of Christ as branches are grafted into a tree. The Spirit alone could do this and has done it and will continue to do it until the end of this age. Sing a new song to the Lord for the much-needed help of the Holy Spirit! Amen.

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Joy will come after a little while

Posted on April 26, 2015 by Rev. Paul Rydecki

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Sermon for Jubilate

Lamentations 3:18-26  +  1 Peter 2:11-20  +  John 16:16-23

This morning you heard the words of Jeremiah, the weeping prophet, in his lament: And I said, “My strength and my hope Have perished from the LORD.” Remember my affliction and roaming, The wormwood and the gall. In our Gospel, too, Christ addresses the reality of grief and sorrow in the life of His disciples—grief and sorrow that would necessarily come, to them and to us, but only for “a little while.” Then the sorrow would give way to unending joy, as when a child is born after labor pains.

“A little while, and you will not see Me,” Jesus says, “and again a little while, and you will see Me, because I go to the Father.”

The immediate fulfillment of this saying of Jesus took place over the next few days, and over the next month and a half. He spoke these words to His eleven apostles on their way to the Garden of Gethsemane on Maundy Thursday. In a little while, Jesus would be arrested and removed from their sight. Within a day, He would be crucified, dead and buried in the tomb, where they surely would not see Him. But then, again, in a little while, just two days later, they would see Him, because His suffering for sin would be finished, and so would His time in the grave. And even during that time in the grave, when they would not see Him? He wouldn’t be idle. He would descend into hell and pin the devil down and release the devil’s hold on believers. And then, after His resurrection, He had to go the Father. He had to return to the Father’s side from whence He came, because His mission on earth as a humble servant had come to an end. All of those things were hidden under Jesus’ general, cryptic statement, “A little while, and you will not see Me,” Jesus says, “and again a little while, and you will see Me, because I go to the Father.”

Why so general? Why so cryptic? Because the events of the future had to unfold naturally. It is not for men to know all the details of God’s plans, because we are not God. He has given us a very general outline of the future, with a few bullet points here and there and with a spectacular description of the grand conclusion at the end of this world’s history. But the details in between He has mostly left out, leaving His disciples to cling to Jesus’ Word and promises, no matter how cryptic, leaving us to cling to the bullet points that He has revealed, and to the glorious ending, without worrying about the details along the way.

Now, one of the bullet points, one of the future realities we can count on, according to Jesus, as disciples of Jesus, is sorrow. Most assuredly, I say to you that you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice; and you will be sorrowful. The disciples would know that sorrow when Jesus was removed from their sight, when He was buried in the tomb. Remember the sorrow of the women on Easter morning before they got to the tomb? Remember how sorrowful the two disciples were on the road to Emmaus, before Jesus showed Himself to them in the Scriptures and in the breaking of the bread? And all the while, the world was rejoicing that Jesus was finally dead.

But there’s another bullet point that comes after this one. You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will be turned into joy. Jesus’ disciples learned on Easter Sunday the meaning of these words. All their sorrow over losing the One they had trusted in as their Savior was replaced by joy when they realized, they hadn’t lost Him at all. He had conquered sin and death for them and now lives forever.

I will see you again and your heart will rejoice, and your joy no one will take from you. No one would take their joy from them, because no one—not your enemies, not your persecutors, not the devil himself—could change the fact that Jesus rose from the dead and now lives to intercede before God for those who believe in Him. No one can kill Jesus again. No one can prevent Him from fulfilling His promises. No one can wrest the Lord Christ from His throne, no matter how hard they try—and they do try!

Jesus’ words in the Gospel extend beyond the crucifixion and resurrection. A little while, and you will not see Me, and again a little while, and you will see Me, because I go to the Father. They really describe the whole New Testament era, from Christ’s ascension to His coming again. Jesus’ disciples didn’t see Him ever again on earth after He ascended into heaven. And they did have sorrow in this life as the world began to persecute Christians like the world had first persecuted Christ. But the grief and sorrow would last only a little while, and then they would see Jesus again.

They would see Him like Stephen did as he was being stoned to death, alive and sitting on His throne at the right hand of God. Or they would see Him when they finally closed their eyes in death and their souls were whisked away by the angels to His side. Or they would see Him on the Last Day when He comes in glory to judge the wicked and to turn the page on this world’s crying and sorrow and pain. At times, it seemed like it would never end, but in reality, it lasted only “a little while,” as God views things. And then the joy of eternal life in Paradise would begin. And through it all, the apostles and early Christians were sustained on both ends. They were sustained because of the hope of future joy, but also because of the fact of Christ’s resurrection from the dead.

What Jesus said to His disciples remains true for Christians in our time. A little while, and you will not see Me, and again a little while, and you will see Me, because I go to the Father… You now have sorrow; but I will see you again and your heart will rejoice, and your joy no one will take from you.

You don’t see Jesus. When you do see Him, the time of sorrow will be over. But now you don’t see Him. Now is the time of wrestling with the sinful flesh and with despair and with temptation. Now is the time of watching our children grow up in a world that is becoming more and more depraved by the day, and more and more hostile to Christ and to Christians. Now is the time of small Christian gatherings, of struggling churches, of loneliness and isolation, because so few people are willing to put up with sound doctrine. Now is the time of suffering and death. Now is the time of the cross. Now, for a little while.

But Jesus told us about all this ahead of time, didn’t He? It’s one of those bullet points of history, the grief and sorrow of Christians in this world. We mustn’t forget about those other bullet points of history: the suffering and death of Christ for your sins and the resurrection of the Lord Christ in the past, and the coming again of the Lord Christ in the future, the end of sorrow and grief after a little while. We mustn’t forget that no matter how successful Satan appears to be in this world, he is already defeated. Jesus already descended into hell to bind him, so that all who are baptized in Christ and believing in Him are free from the devil’s power, because our Redeemer lives.

We also mustn’t forget about that other bullet point right in the middle, how the living Christ promises to be with His Church always, to the very end of the age—this age of grief and sorrow, how He has given His Word and Sacraments to us and has promised to use them to forgive us and to build us up in faith and love until He comes.

As the weeping prophet Jeremiah concluded in his Lamentations, The LORD is good to those who wait for Him, To the soul who seeks Him. It is good that one should hope and wait quietly For the salvation of the LORD. Now is the time of the woman’s labor pains. But soon the child will be born. Soon the Christ will be revealed, and all His saints with Him. And the sorrow will be forgotten. And joy will come, in a little while. Amen.

 

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Sermon for Misericordias Domini 2015

Posted on April 19, 2015 by Rev. Paul Rydecki

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Today’s sermon at Emmanuel was preached by the Rt. Rev. James Heiser of the Evangelical Lutheran Diocese of North America. Only the audio is available today.

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Peace in the name of Christ

Posted on April 12, 2015 by Rev. Paul Rydecki

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Sermon for Quasimodogeniti

Job 19:25-27  +  1 John 5:4-10  +  John 20:19-31

Peace be with you! Anyone can say those words. They’re used, not only by Christians, but by Jews and Muslims as well. It’s a nice greeting, or a nice parting wish, nothing more—unless it has the weight of God’s voice behind it, unless God is the one bestowing peace. If God enters the room and says, “Peace be with you!”, then what do you ever have to fear again? You simply have to rejoice, because it means He hasn’t come to punish you or to condemn you, but that He wishes to grant you the gift of peace, and He wants you to relax and rest securely in the knowledge of that peace.

But when could such a thing ever happen—that God would walk into the room and proclaim “peace”? Well, as you heard in the Gospel, it happened on the day of Jesus’ resurrection—the first Easter Sunday. The women had come and reported the resurrection to the apostles, but the apostles had been slow to believe the report of their Christian sisters. They had even been slow to believe the sight of the empty tomb and the stone rolled away, in spite of the fact that the angel reminded the women about the words Jesus Himself had spoken before He died, that He would rise on the third day. The apostles didn’t believe it. They were afraid of the Jews and their murderous behavior on Good Friday. So they locked themselves in that upper room instead of going to Galilee where Jesus and the angels had told the women He would meet with His disciples.

But Jesus appeared in their midst. Now that He’s risen from the dead, He no longer chooses to abide by the laws of nature. His body is no longer confined to the limits of space and time. He is able to be wherever He chooses to be, whenever He chooses to be. On that Easter Sunday night He chose to be with His disciples, and the first words He chose to speak to them were, “Peace be with you!”

Then He showed them His hands. And there’s the mark of peace and the reason for peace: Jesus was crucified, hung on a tree made to be a curse for all those who were under the curse of sin. And He showed them His side. The mark in His side was from the spear of the soldier that caused blood and water to flow freely from Jesus’ dead body. It was no illusion; Christ had truly died. And yet, there He stood in the midst of His disciples alive again—alive to proclaim to them that His blood, shed on the cross, had truly made satisfaction for their sins, to proclaim to them that He had truly been raised from the dead, and truly lives to be our Advocate with the Father. And now, as the Apostle Paul wrote to the Romans, “Having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

See what peace there is in the fact of Christ’s resurrection! This is God, the Son of God, who told His disciples, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me. He and He alone has the authority to declare peace, because He and He alone is the Lamb who was slain. He alone has earned the forgiveness of sins for all people. He and He alone has the authority to forgive sins or to retain sins, and He has promised to forgive the sins of all those who believe in Him.

Still, it was to His disciples in that upper room that the risen Christ proclaimed peace. He doesn’t appear in our midst like that, so that we can gaze into the wounds on His hands and His side and hear His voice as the disciples did. He doesn’t appear in our midst to deal with us sinners. So the phrase, “Peace be with you!”—is there any way you can hear those words and know that God Himself is speaking to you?

There is. Peace to you!, Jesus said to His apostles. As the Father has sent Me, I also send you.” And when He had said this, He breathed on them, and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”

This is a remarkable truth. The Lord Jesus, to whom all authority in heaven and on earth has been given, is the Judge. As He had said earlier to His disciples, the Father has given the Son authority to execute judgment also, because He is the Son of Man. And now that same Jesus has sent His apostles out into the world. Just as Jesus was sent by His Father, so in the same way He sends His apostles and authorizes them to do what he alone has the authority to do: to pronounce judgment here on earth, to forgive sins or to retain sins, to give the peace of God, or to withhold it.

We call this authority to forgive or retain sins the power of the Keys, because Jesus had once said to Peter, I give you the Keys of the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. Here in our Gospel we see Jesus giving this authority to all of His apostles whom He directly sent out, as He had been sent. But then in the rest of the New Testament we’re told that the Christ also sends ministers of the Word in another way, as He calls them through the Church to be pastors, bishops, elders, or deacons, so that the power of the Keys didn’t die out with the apostles, but continues to be exercised until the end of the world through those who are called into the Office of the Holy Ministry.

So, through the office of the holy ministry, Christ does enter into the room and announce, “Peace be with you!” This is why I absolve you “by virtue of my office as a called and ordained servant of the Word.” Because this office to which the Church has called me has the authority of Christ to forgive the penitent, or to deny forgiveness to the impenitent. When your pastor says to you, “Repent!”, it’s Jesus calling you to repent. When your pastor says to you, “I forgive you your sins,” it’s Jesus forgiving you your sins. When your pastor says to you, “I retain your sins,” it’s Jesus retaining them.

So when you hear a minister of the Word declare, “Peace be with you!”, you should hear more than a nice greeting or farewell. You should recognize it as the voice of Christ, the Good Shepherd, speaking to His sheep through His called and ordained ambassador. This is how He has chosen to deal with His people until He returns at the end of the age. When a pastor baptizes or administers the Sacrament, He is doing it on behalf of Christ Jesus who sent him to do it, so that the words chanted by the minister before Holy Communion truly bestow what they say: “The peace of the Lord be with you alway!”

You may ask, why has Jesus chosen to deal with us this way, through the means of grace, through the ministry of the Word? Why not walk into each unbeliever’s home to deal with him directly? Why not sit down at every Christian table, or go sit at every hospital bed, or come directly into every Christian church to preach a sermon or to proclaim peace? Why not stay on the earth and sit on a throne and reign visibly over the world?

I don’t know all of His reasons. But I do know this one: it is so that you, His dear people, may be blessed.

The Apostle Thomas wasn’t with the other ten apostles when Jesus appeared to them on Easter Sunday. And he refused to believe their story of Jesus’ resurrection, just as the ten had refused to believe the story of the women. Unless I see in His hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe.

Jesus gave Thomas what he demanded. And then Thomas was ashamed for having demanded it. Jesus said to Thomas, because you have seen Me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed. God determined before the foundations of the world that sinners should be justified and saved by faith. And He also determined how that faith would be created and sustained, not by sight, but by the work of His Holy Spirit in the preaching of His Word. He determined to do everything by means of His Word and Spirit: convicting the world of sin, convincing the world that Christ truly died for the sins of the world and is truly risen from the dead, convincing the world to trust in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins. In this way, the Spirit of God is glorified. In this way, believers are blessed.

Listen again to how our Gospel ends, with these words from the Apostle John: And truly Jesus did many other signs in the presence of His disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name. John witnessed all those things that Jesus said and did. John saw the risen Christ with his eyes. But he writes to those who have never seen or witnessed any of it. He could have given us more, he says, more evidence, more signs, more proof. He could have gone on and on and on. But God the Holy Spirit, who inspired John’s pen, decided, it’s enough. The appearance of the risen Christ to the apostles and first century disciples is enough. The holy ministry that the Lord Christ instituted is enough. What has been inspired by the Spirit and written by the prophets and apostles about God, about Christ, about the resurrection, about salvation—it’s enough. In the Word of God, we have all we need until the end of the age to believe and to keep believing that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, to hope in Him, to trust in Him, to receive eternal life in His name. Because the Word of God has the power of God’s Spirit within it, and the weight of God’s authority behind it. Peace be with you, declares the Lord. Amen.

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The secret of death’s defeat

Posted on April 5, 2015 by Rev. Paul Rydecki

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Sermon for the Feast of the Resurrection

Isaiah 52:13-15  +  1 Corinthians 5:6-8  +  Mark 16:1-8

Christians are dying around the world, some by natural causes, more and more by the hand of persecutors and wicked men. We’ve seen death here in our congregation since last Easter, and we may well see it again before next Easter. Death is taking its customary toll.

But Christians know a secret, which isn’t really a secret. We know what causes death, what drives death, and what empowers death to keep its hold on a person. We know it better than any doctor or any scientist in the world, because God has revealed it to us in His holy Word. The origin of death is the Garden of Eden and Adam and Eve’s fall into sin. God warned them, but they wouldn’t listen. They sinned against God, and they died. We all inherit their sin. We all mimic their sin. And we die, too. “The wages of sin is death.” “The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the Law.”

People die, we die because we have sinned against God’s holy Law, and the Law is very clear: “Cursed is everyone who does not continue in all things which are written in the book of the law, to do them.” “The soul who sins shall die.”

Except for once. One time—and only once—a sinless soul died. One time a perfect, righteous, obedient Law-abiding Man was hung on a tree and died—the sinless Son of God who came from God and entered our human race in order to be that Man who died for all men.

But Christians know another secret, which isn’t really a secret. We know that Christ the crucified One is risen from the dead. His empty tomb proclaimed it. The angels proclaimed it. The faithful women proclaimed it. And later, all the apostles proclaimed it, along with over 500 other witnesses who proclaimed it. But most importantly, Jesus Himself proclaimed it, both before the fact and after, and the Holy Spirit of God has been proclaiming it in the Scriptures for thousands of years. Death couldn’t hold the Sinless One.

And so Christians know yet another secret, and this is, perhaps, the most important. We know what defeats death, what stops death, and even what reverses it once and for all for us sinners. It’s the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us (for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree”). Christ received the death penalty that we deserved for our sins, so that we might receive the eternal life reward that He deserved for His obedience. A blessed exchange!

Now all who have sinned, now all who are subject to death are called by this Gospel to repent and believe in Jesus Christ and to be baptized in His name for the forgiveness of sins. And those who have been baptized are called to live in daily repentance, drowning the old Adam, the old sinful self and rising each day to live a new life, a holy life, to keep God’s commandments, no longer as slaves to the Law, but as sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. And we’re also invited to keep receiving the body and blood of Christ for our forgiveness and for our comfort in Sacrament of the Altar.

I am the resurrection and the life, says the Lord. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live. And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die. This is why we often refer to the death of a believer in Christ as a “falling asleep,” because for those who believe in Christ, death is already defeated; it’s as harmful and as permanent…as a good night’s sleep. Death will soon be reversed for those who die in Christ, even as it was reversed for Christ Himself. Such is the power of Christ’s resurrection. Such is the power and the certainty of His promise.

Christians are dying around the world, and will continue to die until Christ returns. Death is still our bitter enemy, and it still brings much sadness with it. But we know a secret. Death has been defeated by Christ, and even death is now part of the plan as the risen Christ rules over the world. As the Apostle Paul says, Christ must reign till He has put all enemies under His feet. The last enemy that will be destroyed is death. And then, when that happens, listen to one final secret this morning, which the Apostle Paul calls a “mystery”: I tell you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed—in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible has put on incorruption, and this mortal has put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory.” “O  Death, where is your sting? O Hades, where is your victory?” The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord.

A blessed and happy Easter to you all! Amen.

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