Matthew 28:1-10 Hope (Easter Day Talk)

Introduction

It was described as a great miracle, when hope had all but gone, the wonderful, the amazing happened. I am of course describing the discovery last week of nine year old Shannon Matthews, who went missing from her home in Dewsbery in West Yorkshire in February and was discovered safe and well three weeks later.

The safe discovery of Shannon has been one of the few positive items reported in the news for quite some time. Over the last few weeks the headlines have been dominated by news of the financial crisis affecting American and British institutions, riots in Tibet over Chinese rule, new evidence about the damaging effects of global warming, and the ongoing problems in Iraq five years after the toppling of Saddam’s regime. You can be forgiven when watching or reading the news not to feel rather despondent about the state that the world is in, and wonder whether there is any hope for the future.

But as Christians we believe that there is real hope, hope for ourselves and hope for our world, and it is this message that I want to talk about today. But before I do, when we talk about hope what do we actually mean? What is hope?

Definition of Hope

Wiklipedia defines hope as “a belief in a positive outcome related to events and circumstances in one's life.” So for example we may say that we hope the weather might be good tomorrow, or we hope that our football team will do well in their next match. According to this definition hope is wishing for something, or expecting something to happen, but without any certainty of it being fulfilled. It is to desire something, without any real assurance of getting what you desire.
But the Christian understanding of hope is quite different to the definition I’ve just given. In Scripture, “Hope” means a strong and confident expectation. In other words the Christian understanding of hope is an indication of certainty. Christian hope is the confident expectation, the sure certainty that what God has promised through Scripture has occurred or will occur.
Hope in the Bible is never a static or passive thing. It is dynamic, active, directive and life sustaining. Christian hope is something that makes a difference, it has the power to change and transform.

We see this in the story of the resurrection of Christ from the dead. It was on early on a Sunday morning that Mary Magdalene and Mary the wife of Clopas, two of Jesus’ followers, went to the tomb of Jesus. They went to the tomb according to Luke’s Gospel, to anoint Jesus’ body with oils and spices, which they had not had an opportunity to do when he was first placed in the tomb. These two Mary’s went to the tomb where Jesus lay, with hearts heavy with grief and despair. They had followed Jesus for a long time, and like Jesus’ other followers, must have felt as though their lives had been shattered and their world turned up side down, when Jesus had been betrayed, arrested and crucified. On Good Friday when Jesus hung on the cross, it must have felt as though all their hopes and expectations had been completely Destroyed. Emptiness and despair must have filled their hearts and minds, as they watched Jesus die.

But what they discovered when they reached the tomb was to change them and change the world for ever. What they discovered when they got to the tomb was that the large stone that had sealed the grave had been rolled away, and where the body of Jesus had been laid, now stood an angel, telling the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here; he has risen, just as he said.”

We could ask ourselves the question, why did the angel role away the stone? Jesus was already gone, he didn’t need help getting out. The stone was rolled away, not so that Jesus could get out, but so that the two Mary’s could get in and see the empty tomb, and to give them a profound new sense of hope and joy.

Jesus’ resurrection gives us also a profound sense of hope. Jesus’ resurrection from the dead vindicates and validates all that he said and did. Jesus declared “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies.” (John 11:25). Jesus’ own resurrection from the dead gives us hope that these words are indeed true. Hope, not just in the sense of wishful thinking, but a hope which is based on certainty.

Just as the stone was rolled away from the tomb of Jesus, so Jesus comes to roll away the stones of fear, dread, uncertainty, purposelessness that can mark our lives. (John 10:10) Jesus comes to breathe new life, new joy and new hope into our lives. His resurrection gives us real hope for the present and for the future. In Jesus we can discover reason to live, we discover God’s true purpose for our lives, we can discover a freedom, a joy and a peace that no one else can give us.

Jesus’ resurrection from the dead proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that Jesus Christ really is who he says he is. It shows us that we can trust his words. What’s more his resurrection tells us that God the Father accepted the sacrifice of His Son for you and for me. Paul said, "If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins." But Christ has risen! "He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification." He did that in order to put us right with God, whom we can now call, Father. And as a result of being forgiven for the sake of Christ, He says, "Because I live, you also will live." He hands to us the sure gift and promise of eternal life! "God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life." Jesus Christ broke through death! He broke down death! There is now no death for those who are in Christ Jesus! Because of the empty tomb, you and I, by faith in Him, have life today and life forever, this is the Hope in Christ!The resurrection of Jesus from the dead, makes a huge difference to our lives if we allow it to. It turns night into day, despair into hope, and death into life. Jesus wants us to let him live at the centre of our lives so that we can experience purpose and meaning, hope and healing, peace, and joy that comes from God. He wants to be the risen Lord of your life!

The message of Jesus’ resurrection gives us a real hope.
- Because Jesus lives… We can have hope for today
- Because Jesus lives … We can have hope for tomorrow
- Because Jesus lives… We can have hope for eternity

So may “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.” (Romans 15:13)

Christ's Passover

Sermon given at an Shared 'Agape' Meal on Maundy Thursday 2008

Sharing a meal together this evening acts as a powerful reminder of the last supper that Jesus shared with his disciples on the night that he was betrayed.

The final meal that Jesus shared with his disciples before his arrest was a Passover Meal. Although this is not made explicitly clear in John’s Gospel, is apparent from reading the Synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke. The Apostle Matthew writes “On the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Where do you want us to make preparations for you to eat the Passover?” He replied, “Go into the city to a certain man and tell him, ‘The Teacher says: My appointed time is near. I am going to celebrate the Passover with my disciples at your house.’” (Matthew 26:17) Luke records “Jesus sent Peter and John saying, “Go and make preparations for us to eat the Passover.” (Luke 21:8)

The Passover meal commemorates the dramatic liberation of the Isarelite’s from slavery in Egypt, as recorded in the book of Exodus. The Israelite’s had been slaves in Egypt for 210 years, when God called Moses to lead the people of Israel out of slavery into the promised land. The LORD said, "I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey… So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt." Exodus 3:7-10

Pharaoh initially refused to let the Israelite’s go, so God sent plagues on the Egyptians to prove his power. In each of the plagues it was only the Egyptians who were affected. The tenth and final plague was the killing of all first born sons in Egypt.

So that the tenth and final plague which was being sent on the Egyptians would not touch the Israelite’s, each Jewish household was told to take an unblemished, male lamb, slaughter it, and brush the blood from the lamb on the door frames. God instructed Moses that “The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are; and when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt.” What saved the Jews was the blood of the lamb that had been slaughtered.

Every Passover, Jewish families celebrate a special meal to recall how God delivered his people. This Seder meal, as it is known, consists of prescribed foods, each of which symbolizes some aspect of the ordeal undergone by the Jews during their enslavement in Egypt. It is this meal that Jesus shared with his disciples at the last supper.

• The Passover Lamb which was slaughtered on the Feast of Unleavened Bread which was the day before the Passover. This was extremely significant to commemorate God’s salvation from death by the lamb’s blood smeared on their doorposts. The lamb was the Hebrews last meal they ate before leaving Egypt.
• Unleavened bread was eaten to remind them of the haste with which their ancestors left Egypt.
• They had salt water to remind them of the many tears shed during the years of slavery in Egypt and also to remind them of the Red Sea which their ancestors miraculously cross over.
• They ate bitter herbs to remind them of the bitterness of slavery and the hyssop used to sprinkle the blood of the lamb on the door posts.
• A sweet mixture of apples, dates, pomegranate, nuts with cinnamon sticks which reminded them of the clay and straw their ancestors used to make bricks while in slavery.
• four cups of wine during the course of the meal to remind them of the four promises of God’s deliverance, and to symbolise liberty and joy.

At the Passover, Jesus would have celebrated with His disciples the deliverance and the salvation of God, they would have praised God and sang hymns together, but this meal was also to take on a new and even greater meaning.

Paul records what happened in his 1st letter to the Corinthians. The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, "This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me." In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me." For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

On the night when the Jews remembered how God delivered them from slavery in Egypt, we remember how Jesus through his death on the cross rescued us from the slavery of sin and death.
On the night when the Jews recalled how they were saved by the blood of lambs daubed on the door frames, so we remember how through the blood of The Lamb of God, Jesus Christ, we too have been saved. In John 1:29 we read, Jesus is “the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” When Jesus died upon the cross for our sins, he became our Passover Lamb, the one whose death saves us all. The apostle Paul writes, “For indeed Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us.” (1 Corinthians 5:7) As followers of Jesus Christ, we have been washed clean by the blood of the lamb. It is the blood shed by Christ that saves us from sin and death.

At the Last Supper Jesus gave us two symbols to remind us of his great sacrifice, bread and wine. Bread to remind us of his body broken for us on the cross, and wine to remind us of the blood he shed for us. John 3:14-17 says, “. . . Even so must the Son of Man be lifted up [on the cross], that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.”

In the Last Supper of Jesus, Jesus brought the focus of the Passover to Himself, to recall his great sacrifice. Jesus became the great sacrifice, the spotless unblemished Lamb of God, to take away our sin, and by doing so enables us to have a new relationship with God. We remember this every time we share together the Lord’s Supper.

So as we break bread and wine together this evening, we remember our Passover Lamb, Jesus Christ, who was died on the cross for our sake. "Now may the God of peace who brought up our Lord Jesus from the dead, that Great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you complete in every good work to do His will, working in you what is well pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen" (Hebrews 13:20 & 21).