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Isaiah 53; Matthew 27:55 - 28:15
God wants you. This is the reason for the resurrection. God made you to be with you then things changed in the garden. We are all Adam and we are all Eve. We are all guilty of sin which is what moved us away from the God of our creation.
Now what? After hundreds of years of wondering and finding meaningless gods on our own -- gods like money, power, prestige and beauty -- the only true God brings us back to himself. Jesus came to walk this earth to teach us how to come back to our true selves. He taught us through his life, his death due to no crime he committed and most of all through his defeat of death what our path is to be.
He showed us that this earth has no power over those of us who know and trust in our creator God. Back in Isaiah 53 we see the great prophet's prediction that Jesus would be crushed by pain and death and look it all in the face without flinching. This is because Jesus knew that going through this pain would bring us all who believe over to the other side of it.
Look at Matthew 27:55 to pick up from where we left off last week. Jesus is dead and many women who had been following him were standing by and grieving the death. Where were the disciples? They had left the scene because they were probably afraid that they might be next! This is a lesson for the men today: we must stand up the for the right even if we might suffer some penalty. The women didn't run. The women were not afraid of the authorities.
A wealthy man who loved Jesus took the body and wrapped it in clean linen and placed it in his own tomb. The Temple Police were to take care of sealing the grave and this was important because Pilate wanted this story to end. He had heard that Jesus had predicted that he would rise from the dead and Pilate did not want grave robbers to steal the body of Jesus so that his followers could claim a resurrection had occurred.
Matthew 28: 1 says, "Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to keep vigil at the tomb." So it was women would see and hear from the angel that Jesus had walked out of the tomb and they were to run to tell the disciples, "He is risen from the dead." The Bible says they wasted no time and on their way to find the disciples they saw Jesus and fell to their knees in praise. Jesus told them to continue on their assignment to inform the disciples.
What just happened? Remember in Luke 2 that an angel announced the birth of Jesus. How perfect that God sent a angel to announce the resurrection and what a magnificent assignment that was for any angel.
The stone that was rolled in place to seal the grave was as big as a VW Beetle. When the authorities heard that Jesus was no longer in the grave, they ran to the scene of what must have been a crime. There they found no body and the clean, white linens neatly folded. Would robbers bother to fold linens? Could a few guys quickly move the VW Beetle-sized stone?
No, because resurrection is an inside job. Jesus did it from the inside for himself and he'll do it from the inside for you. Let Jesus roll the stone in your heart away so you can live free with him forever.
