Day 2224 – The Death of Death – Ressurection Day – Daily Wisdom

Welcome to Day 2224 of Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.
This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom
The Death of Death - Resurrection Day! – Daily Wisdom
Putnam Church Message – 04/09/2023
The Death of Death – Resurrection Day!
Last, we continued our Resurrection messages with “When the Stones Burst into Cheers” from Luke 19:35-42. We learned three essential points last week:

God is worthy of loud and joyful praise.
Our praise should focus on the person and work of Jesus.
God must and will be praised through Jesus Christ.


On this Easter morning, this resurrection day, our focus is on The Death of Death because the Resurrection is real and changes everything. Throughout the message, we will look at the last few verses in Matthew 27 and most of Matthew 28.

There are moments when, all of a sudden, something happens, and everything changes. There are so many examples of this that it’s almost hard to pick. So, I chose a personal story that impacted our lives. On Easter weekend of 2017, we received the news that Hazel had leukemia. When Elizabeth called me, I was planting seedling trees in the yard, and our son Barney was helping me. Paula was on her way to visit some friends in North Carolina and had just crossed the North Carolina border when I called her. She drove off the first exit, turned around, and headed home. All of our lives were turned upside down. For the next 2.5 years, it was recurring treatments, hospital stays, and continual tears and prayers. By God’s grace, Hazel came through all, and today is a healthy, feisty, nearly eight-year-old flaming redhead. While her semi-annual checkups have been very positive for the past three years, our heart skips a beat or two whenever she gets a fever or a cough. I suspect it will be that way for years, because everything changed on that day six years ago.

When all of a sudden, in a moment, everything changes, that’s a powerful reality. It was the same over 2,000 years ago, but with an impact that changed our lives and the world. The empty tomb of Jesus changes everything. The fact that that tomb is empty changes everything. Not only for us as individuals but for who we are, how we live, and why we live the way we live.

God’s work can’t be stopped.

Jesus, the Pharisees, and the chief priests had issues. They’re like the Democrats and the Republicans today. They don’t get along. Jesus offended the chief priests and Pharisees because he undermined their authority. He was subversive to their power. To use a modern phrase, they thought Jesus was a royal pain. Everything about his ministry bothered them. The fact that Jesus associated with tax collectors, the immoral harlots, and the uneducated, ordinary people who all flocked to Jesus bothered the religious people. Those people were blemishes to them. So they were tired of Jesus. They wanted this whole Jesus thing to be over. They remember when he was still alive; he said he would be resurrected from the grave. So they go to Pilate.

Interestingly, the Jewish priests were not allowed to use their palace guards. They had been under Roman rule for many decades at this point. Listen to Matthew 27:62-66 to understand their thinking, “The next day, on the Sabbath, the leading priests and Pharisees went to see Pilate. They told him, ‘Sir, we remember what that deceiver once said while he was still alive: ‘After three days I will rise...

Welcome to Day 2224 of Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.
This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom
The Death of Death - Resurrection Day! – Daily Wisdom
Putnam Church Message – 04/09/2023
The Death of Death – Resurrection Day!
Last, we continued our Resurrection messages with “When the Stones Burst into Cheers” from Luke 19:35-42. We learned three essential points last week:

God is worthy of loud and joyful praise.
Our praise should focus on the person and work of Jesus.
God must and will be praised through Jesus Christ.


On this Easter morning, this resurrection day, our focus is on The Death of Death because the Resurrection is real and changes everything. Throughout the message, we will look at the last few verses in Matthew 27 and most of Matthew 28.

There are moments when, all of a sudden, something happens, and everything changes. There are so many examples of this that it’s almost hard to pick. So, I chose a personal story that impacted our lives. On Easter weekend of 2017, we received the news that Hazel had leukemia. When Elizabeth called me, I was planting seedling trees in the yard, and our son Barney was helping me. Paula was on her way to visit some friends in North Carolina and had just crossed the North Carolina border when I called her. She drove off the first exit, turned around, and headed home. All of our lives were turned upside down. For the next 2.5 years, it was recurring treatments, hospital stays, and continual tears and prayers. By God’s grace, Hazel came through all, and today is a healthy, feisty, nearly eight-year-old flaming redhead. While her semi-annual checkups have been very positive for the past three years, our heart skips a beat or two whenever she gets a fever or a cough. I suspect it will be that way for years, because everything changed on that day six years ago.

When all of a sudden, in a moment, everything changes, that’s a powerful reality. It was the same over 2,000 years ago, but with an impact that changed our lives and the world. The empty tomb of Jesus changes everything. The fact that that tomb is empty changes everything. Not only for us as individuals but for who we are, how we live, and why we live the way we live.

God’s work can’t be stopped.

Jesus, the Pharisees, and the chief priests had issues. They’re like the Democrats and the Republicans today. They don’t get along. Jesus offended the chief priests and Pharisees because he undermined their authority. He was subversive to their power. To use a modern phrase, they thought Jesus was a royal pain. Everything about his ministry bothered them. The fact that Jesus associated with tax collectors, the immoral harlots, and the uneducated, ordinary people who all flocked to Jesus bothered the religious people. Those people were blemishes to them. So they were tired of Jesus. They wanted this whole Jesus thing to be over. They remember when he was still alive; he said he would be resurrected from the grave. So they go to Pilate.

Interestingly, the Jewish priests were not allowed to use their palace guards. They had been under Roman rule for many decades at this point. Listen to Matthew 27:62-66 to understand their thinking, “The next day, on the Sabbath, the leading priests and Pharisees went to see Pilate. They told him, ‘Sir, we remember what that deceiver once said while he was still alive: ‘After three days I will rise from the dead.’ So we request that you seal the tomb until the third day. This will prevent his disciples from coming and stealing his body and then telling everyone he was raised from the dead! If that happens, we’ll be worse off than we were at first.’

Pilate replied, ‘Take guards and secure it the best you can.’  So they sealed the tomb and posted guards to protect it.”

What this is teaching us is that you can’t stop the work of God. The chief priests and the Pharisees wanted to stop Jesus from being resurrected from the grave, and they thought, We’re going to make a plan, and there’s no way that this nonsense of Jesus will continue.

We also must remember that we can’t stop the work of God because I think if we’re all honest, we all try in some ways, don’t we? Things are going on, circumstances in our lives, situations where God wants to bear fruit in our lives, and we’re, in a way, putting our proverbial foot down, Mm-mm. No way, Lord. You are not going to do that.

That’s why one of the most common themes in the Bible is the idea of surrender or trust. Many of us know what it’s like to resist what God is doing. Like the Pharisees and the chief priests, we say, “God, this is unacceptable in my plans.” For the Pharisees and the chief priests, Jesus was unacceptable to their plans. So they were trying every which way to stop what God was doing.

The Pharisees say to Pilate, “Listen. The first deception that Jesus told people was that he was the Messiah. We don’t believe he’s the Messiah. But you know what would be worse? If his disciples come and say, he’s resurrected from the grave. That would be a huge problem for us. So can you take care of this for us, Pilate?” Notice what Pilate says. “Take guards and secure it the best you can.” So they sealed the tomb and posted guards to protect it. (This consisted of at least four guards.) In these verses, we realize that at the tomb, there were three obstacles to Jesus being resurrected.

First, there was a stone rolled in front of the door. Unlike today, we bury people in the ground at the graveyard; this cave had a massive rock in front of the door. So there’s a physical barrier, a physical obstacle, this gigantic rock, blocking the resurrection of Jesus.

Second, they sealed it. The idea of sealing showed Pilate's political authority, saying, “No one can break the seal of Pilate without his authority.” So, the day's politics said Jesus was not coming out of that tomb.

Third, there’s the guard set. So not only is there a physical and political obstacle, but now there is a good, old-fashioned personal obstacle of the best Roman guards.

This arrangement is the setup for Resurrection Sunday. They’re trying to stop what God is doing, the work of God. In Matthew 28, we see that those obstacles don’t work. This arrangement sets the stage for that classic resurrection account. The simplest way to say it is “He is risen.” Although there are all these obstacles, there’s this big stone, the seal of Pilate, and the Roman guards; nothing will stop what God’s doing.

He is risen.

Matthew 28:1
After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary (Lazarus’s sister) went to look at the tomb.

John’s Gospel tells us that they had brought anointing spices. They weren’t coming to see a resurrected Savior. They were coming to anoint the body of a dead One. Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus had hastily prepared the body before the Sabbath started Friday evening. So, these women were not coming to see a risen Savior but to complete the preparation of Jesus’s body. They show up, but in verse two, this sure just got real (Verse 2). There was a violent earthquake, for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and, going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it.

Have you ever been in an earthquake? I have only felt small tremors. Then, from my understanding, the house or building suddenly starts to shake, and you get frozen. But now, there is also an angel at the tomb. He rolls the door away, thus breaking the seal (Verse 3). His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow. He sits down on top of it of the massive stone (Verse 4). The guards were so afraid of him that they shook and became like dead men. They got frozen.

Notice what the angel says to the women (Verse 5-6). “The angel said to 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. Come and see the place where he lay.’” Jesus told people he would be resurrected from the grave, but they did not get it. People today still question how it is possible.

Let me give you a scenario that might help. Do you like to watch crime dramas? Every time you see a scene in the emergency room, there’s a moment when somebody flat lines, where all of a sudden, their heart stops beating. Then what do they do? The people in the emergency room move into action. They grab the AED, the automated external defibrillator. When somebody’s heart stops, they try to shock the heart to start again. Now, do you guys believe in an AED? Do you believe those things would work? I know Ellea and Delbert Shaffer believe that this morning. We all believe in an AED. It’s the same thing. God’s grace and wisdom allow humanity to figure out how to bring somebody back to life whose heart stopped beating. Don’t you think God knew how to do it first?

Think about all our objections to the things said in the Bible. People ask, “How can you believe in the virgin birth?” Easy. If you can believe the process of In-Vitro Fertilization, where you take an egg out of a woman and some male sperm and put them in a little test tube, then you can put that back in a woman who’s never known a man, she can have a baby. If God’s grace and wisdom allow humanity to figure out how to do that, don’t you think God, who created humanity, can figure it out first?

Resuscitation back to life is not unusual anymore. Now, don’t get me wrong, though. Jesus is unique. Because everybody who gets resuscitated back to life dies again, just like Lazarus, except for Jesus. The fact that Jesus was resurrected from the grave should not be an intellectual hurdle. Why? Because it happens all the time. God allows humans to figure out how to do it. God, the creator of life, knew first. That fact is He created life out of nothing.

I want you to ensure that we all realize that Christianity would have never gotten off the ground two thousand years ago if they had just produced the body. He's resurrected from the grave when all this stuff starts going on. All they had to do was say, “No, no. His body is right here. Look. Here he is.” This thing would have never gotten anywhere. But they weren’t able to produce the body. Why? Because he wasn’t there. The seal was broken, and the stone was removed. He has risen just like he said.

Come and see. Go and tell.

He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay. If that wasn’t exciting enough for the women who came to the tomb, the angel said, Then go quickly and tell his disciples: ‘He has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him.’ Now I have told you.

There is a dual reality of why we gather together each Sunday. First, we come and see for fellowship, praising God, and learning from His Word. Then we go and tell others of that Good News. Too often, we fall into the habit of saying, “Come to church” rather than saying, “We come together as the church so that we can have a profound experience with the reality of the resurrection, and then we go to share God’s story in this generation. That is kingdom building. It’s not good enough to come and see; we must go and tell.

We come and see so that we and I can have profound experiences with the reality of the resurrected Jesus. Once we have that experience, we must go and tell God’s story in the world. Gathering together as the church only feels fulfilling when we simultaneously join God’s story in this world.

I want to encourage you and challenge you. There’s nothing more fulfilling after you have a profound experience with the resurrected Jesus than to put on that faith and be a part of changing the world in Jesus’ name, to build God’s kingdom until Christ returns to restore the global Eden. That’s where all this stuff gets worked out into reality.

When you find yourself in the story of God, not only coming and seeing but going and telling, then all of a sudden you get, “Oh, this is why we come together as the church, because it’s a family reunion and then we scatter throughout the world blessing people in Jesus’ name.”

How did women at the tomb respond? They’re both terrified and overwhelmed with joy. They were fearful, and they were full of joy (Verse 8-10). “So the women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy, and ran to tell his disciples. Suddenly Jesus met them. ‘Greetings,’ he said. They came to him, clasped his feet and worshiped him. Then Jesus said to them, ‘Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.’”

The presence of Jesus will change your fear to joy. Joy is not situational or circumstantial. Joy is a disposition of the heart that says, “God, you are God, and I trust you.”  Or as Oswald Chambers put it: “When you fear God, you fear nothing else, whereas if you do not fear God, you fear everything else.”

In twenty-first-century Western nations, we realize that men and women are equal but different. Women are equally intelligent to men and maybe more so. Women have the same skills, although unique. So there’s uniqueness, but men and women are equal. But in Jesus’ culture, in the Roman culture, women were not even allowed to testify in a court of law. I know that sounds unbelievable and archaic, and it is wild and ancient because we don’t value that. But in that day, women were not allowed to testify in a court of law.

Suppose you were telling the story that Jesus is the resurrected Messiah and want it to run forth with validity in first-century Palestine. In that case, you do not have women be the ones who testify of the resurrection. They weren’t even allowed to testify in a court of law, and they’re the ones who are the apostles to the apostles, all the guys whom God chose whom Jesus walked with for three years. They were nowhere to be found. The women were there, and Jesus said, “Listen. You go tell my boys that I am alive.”

If you wanted to write a story that would change the Roman Empire, you needed to take that out. It needed to be Peter. It needed to be John. It needed to be James and Andrew. But, no, it’s Mary Magdalene and the other Mary. I mean, think about how powerful that is. So, if you want to write a story that will have some validity in that culture, it’s not the women sharing it. But they were the ones who were there, who saw. They were the apostles sent to the apostles saying, “He is resurrected from the grave.”

Don’t believe the cover-up.

In verses 11-15, the officials tried to create a cover-up. Don’t believe the cover-up! You can imagine. Mary and the other Mary are going to the apostles to tell them, “He is risen.” The guards go to the chief priests and say, “You will never believe what happened.” They tell them the whole story. “There was an earthquake, and there was this crazy angel who was shining and white as snow, and he broke the seal, opened the door, and sat down on it. We freaked out. The body is gone.” The officials respond, “This is what we’re going to do. We’ll pay you hush money, and we want you to tell everyone that the disciples came while they were sleeping and took the body away.”

Now, I hope you realize this is a terrible cover-up. This story is like, “The dog ate my homework.” Because if this is true, not one but all the soldiers (at least 4) had to be asleep. Not only that, all these soldiers had to sleep through an earthquake, the stone being rolled away, and the disciples stealing the body. This scenario would be like ten sleeping pills, and you don’t do that. You don’t wake up from that. But all these soldiers had to be asleep. All of them had to sleep through all of this mess. So even though they were sleeping and missed the whole thing, they knew who did it? I don’t have enough faith to believe that. Not only did they miss the entire thing and sleep through it, but even though the stone got moved, they knew who did it, too. It’s just a cover-up, because they don’t want to deal with Jesus truly being alive. Besides that, if the Roman guards messed up that badly, they would be executed.

Since Jesus conquered death, then we also have to deal with him. God created each one of us to have to deal with Jesus. It’s the most crucial question in the world—What have you done with Jesus?

What’s interesting about that question is that if Jesus is who he said he is, the only proper response is absolute allegiance. Because straight up, if he conquered death, he’s the only One who’s ever done that. That’s powerful. Jesus is the only teacher in history, philosopher, and religious leader alive today. All others have died. I want to encourage you today. If you are here and have never decided to align your life with the Giver and Sustainer of life. If he conquered the grave, you want to join him in that. If he conquered shame and brokenness, you want to join him. So do I. It’s the only logical place to be—with Jesus.

I can say this because I know what happens now. God accepts you exactly the way that you are. But you know what’s incredible about who God is? He loves us too much to keep us the way we are. He’s changing all of us. We never arrive. We’re all in process. It’s just a matter of if we’re going to say, “God, I’m willing to let you do the work you want to do on me from inside, not the outside. I will let you move in and change this life from the inside.” God is not afraid of where you’ve been. He knows us from our core. If you turn to Jesus today, you'll find he has already been waiting for you to turn. Just come.

He was seen by many.

Near the end of the forty days after the resurrection (Verses 16-17), “Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted.” We’re going to close today with the reality that he was seen by many. Not only did Mary and Mary see him, but the disciples did. They go over to Galilee, and Jesus reveals himself to them. It says, “They worshiped him; but some doubted.”  After this, right before...