It's Friday But Sunday's Coming!

April 20, 2014 Easter

“It’s Friday, But Sunday’s Coming”

Mark 15:33-16:8                                    NOTES NOT EDITED

SIS—Easter is God’s eternal answer to our pain and doubt.

ILLUS:  People are constantly searching for answers to an endless list of questions.  In a book written by Douglas Adams called, “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a comic science fiction series created by Douglas Adams that has become popular among fans of the genre(s) and members of the scientific community. Phrases from it are widely recognized and often used in reference to, but outside the context of, the source material. Many writers on popular science, such as Fred Alan Wolf, Paul Davies and Michio Kaku, have used quotations in their books to illustrate facts about cosmology or philosophy. In this book series we get the answer to life’s ultimate question.  It is “42.”  If that doesn’t make a lot of sense, then you pretty much get the point of the book.  However, “42” is a special number.  42 is 101010 in binary code, that light refracts off water by 42 degrees to create a rainbow, that light requires 10⁻⁴² seconds to cross the diameter of a proton.  Douglas Adams rejected all these reasons for “42” being offered as the ultimate answer.  He said, “I sat at my desk, stared into the garden and thought '42 will do'. I typed it out. End of story” (Wikepedia). 

Deep Thought, the computer that takes 7¹/₂ million years to come up with the ultimate answer, “42,” points out that the answer seems meaningless because the beings who instructed the computer never actually knew what the Question was.  This seems like an easy enough issue to overlook.  So, creatures from another galaxy design another computer to take 10 million years to come up with the “ultimate question.”  The intergalactic computer builders choose earth as the place for the computer and then take the form of mice to monitor it’s progress.  After 10 million years,earth is the targe to intergalactic war, the computer has not come up with an “ultimate question,” so the mice just choose one out of thin air.  The choose the question, “How Many Roads Must a Man Walk Down,” from the song, “Blowin’ In the Wind,” by Bob Dylan.

So, Bob Dylan provides the ultimate question and Deep Thought, the computer, comes up with the ultimate answer of “42.”  Problem solved.

Well, I’m thinking, that this probably does not give you a comforting answer to the ultimate question of life.  Our questions are deeper and more visceral, like:  “how can I get over my pain and through my doubt to achieve a real hope in life.”  That’s a much more important and universal question it seems to me.  We all deal with pain—sometimes unbearable pain.  We all deal with doubt—sometimes faith crushing, hope shattering doubt.  What’s the answer to our pain and doubt?  God has given us the anwer—it is Easter!  God’s answer to our pain and doubt in life is, Easter. 

The story of the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus takes place over a three day period:  Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.  Friday is a day marked by unspeakable, unbearable pain.  Saturday is a day of doubt and confusion on the part of the disciples.  Sunday is a day of great hope because of the Lord’s resurrection.  The application of the Easter story for us today is that we will all face these three days in life—over and over again.  Each time we are faced with pain that so often leads to doubt and despair, we can anchor our hope in the celebration of the Lord’s resurrection. 

The Easter Story ebbs from Friday, a day of blackness, pain, and sorrow to Easter, a day of immeasurable, indescribable hope and joy.  In our lives we will experience many Fridays, but we must always remember, “Sunday Is Coming!”

VIDEO:  “It’s Friday But Sundays Coming”

Let’s read about these three days of the Easter Story: MK 15:33-16:8.

1.  Friday:  A Day of Pain and Sorrow (vv. 33-39)

³⁷ But Jesus let out a loud cry and breathed His last. ³⁸ Then the curtain  of the sanctuary  was split in two from top to bottom. ³⁹ When the centurion, who was standing opposite Him, saw the way He  breathed His last, he said, “This man really was God’s Son!”

We have all experienced some degree of pain in our lives. Perhaps we experienced the emotional pain of losing someone to death who was very close to you.  Perhaps you have experienced the crushing emotional pain of a broken relationship, or a divorce.  Perhaps you deal with the emotional pain of depression that seems to be smothering the life out of you and you don’t even know why!  Pain is a reality of life.  We all experience, some to a greater degree than others perhaps, but no one lives pain free. 

We all experience physical pain that so often can lead to emotional pain, and even utter despair if the pain is chronic.  I thought I’d experienced the worst pain of my life when I experienced my heart attack.  I suffered for twelve hours with pain that increased hourly.  Then, a couple months after my heart attack, I destroyed all the tendons and ligaments in my ankle playing softball.  The pain from that, made my heart attack look like a picnic.  Then, came the most physically painful experience of my life—an infection set in to my sinuses from a failed dental implant I’d had for 38 years.  The pain from that tooth almost finished me.

But, even those three instances of physical pain do not compare with the chronic, bone crushing, spirit exhausting pain of others I have known.  Many of you have been praying for Diane King as I have. In just a matter of weeks she went from vacationing in Florida to being told she only had a couple months to live.  She has pancreatic cancer and the pain is indescribable.

Yet, even such chronic pain as pancreatic cancer brings, that is not the greatest pain ever felt by a man.  Jesus suffered like no man has ever suffered or ever will suffer.  If you were to add up all the pain of every person ever born, every person alive today, and every person that will be born in the future, you would understand the pain the Lord Jesus felt on the cross—because, that’s exactly what Jesus was doing:  taking all the pain from all the sin that ever was or ever will be and accepting God’s judgment for that sin.  The sin of everyone, but one—Jesus alone could have lived without pain because He alone lived a sinless life.  But, God loved us so much, that He Himself, Jesus the Son of God, became fully human and died in our place, received the pain of our suffering so we could have eternal life.

If you were going to ask, “what is the ultimate question,” it would have something to do with “pain and suffering.”  Philosophers call it the “problem of pain,” because pain creates a great problem for understanding the existence of God, or making sense of our own existence as mankind.  Every major religion addresses pain as a primary issue.  Hindus solve the problem by denying that physical the physical world is even real—denial is their answer.  Jews solve the problem by appealing to traditions and rituals—religion is their answer. Islam seeks to solve the problem by assuming that Allah is All-powerful and man must accept whatever comes as a matter of fate against which nothing can be done—submission is their answer. None of these solutions solve the problem.  Only Christianity gives us the ultimate answer to the problem of pain—Good Friday.  God paid the price for all the sin and the pain it brings by sending Jesus Christ to die on the cross for the sin of mankind.

The humiliation Jesus suffered before His crucifixion should have been our humiliation.  When the crowd spit in His face, it should have been our face.  The crown of thorns that pierced His brow should have been our crown.  When the Roman cat-a-nine-tails whip fell upon his back literally shredding His flesh, it should have been our back.  When the nine inch nails were driven into His hands and feet, it should have been our hands and feet.  The spear in His side, should have been our spear.  And, the greatest agony of all:  the feeling of abandonment and being forsaken by His Heavenly Father—that should be our abandonment and our forsakenness. When the darkness fell on over the universe on that awful moment Jesus died—that was our darkness.  BUT, Jesus took all of our pain upon himself so that even the pain we experience in this life has meaning, and ultimately, pain will be left behind altogether when we stand with the Lord in glory one day!

How do we understand our pain?  First, pain is INSTRUCTIVE.  Pain reminds us that something is wrong.  Pain reminds us that God gives us free-will and we use that free-will to choose sin over righteousness and sin brings pain.  Second, our pain is PRODUCTIVE.  Know this, God will never waste the pain in your life but will use it for His glory and our blessing.  We often quote Paul:

^{Romans 8:28} We know that all things work together  for the good  of those who love God: those who are called according to His purpose.

Paul also said in 1Peter 4:13:

Rejoice as you share in the sufferings of the Messiah,  so that you may also rejoice with great joy at the revelation  of His glory.

When we embrace our suffering in this world, God actually uses it to perfect our souls.  Theologians call this, “the soul building theodicy” or justification of God’s goodness.  Finally, to deal with our pain we need to understand it is SELECTIVE.  By selective I mean that pain is associated with sin.  As long as sin exists, pain exists.  However, when at last we climb those golden stairs to glory and we enter into the Presence of God, there will be no more sin, and so, there will be no more pain for us.  Pain selects those who exist in the presence of sin, and in Heaven, there is no more sin.  John says,

¹¹ Then I saw a great white throne and One seated on it. Earth and heaven fled from His presence, and no place was found for them.  ¹² I also saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne, and books were opened.  Another book was opened, which is the book of life,  and the dead were judged according to their works  by what was written in the books. ¹³ Then the sea gave up its dead, and Death and Hades  gave up their dead; all  were judged according to their works. ¹⁴ Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire.  This is the second death, the lake of fire.  ¹⁵ And anyone not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire.

This is a great promise for believers—even death is cast into eternal hell.  But, this is also a dire warning to humanity.  Should a person die and enter eternity without having accepted the gift of life offered by Jesus, that person will experience eternal pain.  Pain will select those whose eternal hearts know only sin and such shall be their lot for all eternity.  Death will be cast into hell and everyone that goes there will experience dying and pain, forever.

So, Friday was a day of pain and sorrow.  How do we deal with pain in our lives?  We give it to Jesus.  We ask Him to bear us up in our time of pain.  We ask Him to allow our pain to draw us closer to Him. 

And, then there was Saturday.

2.  Saturday was a day of Doubt and Confusion (vv 42-47)

⁴⁵ When he found out from the centurion, he gave the corpse to Joseph. ⁴⁶ After he bought some fine linen, he took Him down and wrapped Him in the linen. Then he placed Him in a tomb  cut out of the rock, and rolled a stone  against the entrance to the tomb.

We all have days of doubt and confusion.  We often have times when we ask the question:  “where is God?”  We do not see God moving in our lives so we assume God must have misplaced us, or perhaps He really has abandoned us.  We get swallowed up by the Tomb of the Unknown.  Nothing creates more doubt than the “unknown.”  I think this is one reason that graveyards are so scary and unsettling for people, especially at night.  A graveyard is all about what’s “hidden” away in the ground.  What are we really “marking?”  Is it the memory of the life lived, or the death, or the expectation of something yet to come.  Jesus was buried, albeit in a tomb not underground.  His body was placed there on Friday and of course come Sunday morning He was no longer in the grave.  But, what about Saturday?  Was anything happening as the body of the Lord lay upon a stone bed in a garden tomb?  Was Saturday just a day of “waiting and wondering?”

We know what the disciples were doing on Saturday—at least most of them, except for Thomas.  John gives us a very revealing look at the disciples between the time of the crucifixion on Friday and the Resurrection on Sunday (John 20:19).

In the evening of that first day of the week, the disciples were gathered together with the doors locked because of their fear of the Jews. Then Jesus came, stood among them, and said to them, “Peace to you!”

There is something very significant about the Greek word translated, “locked.”  The word can mean simply to “close or shut.”  It can also mean, “lock as with a key.”  This word is related to the word for key.  That is not what is so telling about this word.  The construction of the word is in the “perfect tense.”  Usually one would expect the aorist tense, which is the simple past tense.  The perfect tense suggests an permanency or an intensity of an action.  It usually refers to an action that is irrevocable.  In other words, “the disciples retreated to their hideout and locked it up tight!”  They were afraid.  Jesus was dead and dead people—especially dead saviors—are of little help to the living.  All of their hopes had been placed on Jesus and now he was dead and “gone”—out of sight.  Game over.  Or was it?

Nothing creates more doubt or confusion in our lives than “death.”  The first question that comes to mind for many if not most people is:  “what now?”  Is there life after death?  A full length motion picture is running this Easter season that poses just that question:  “Is Heaven for Real?”  Or, is death just the end of it all?  Do we just lie in cold lifeless repose forever.  Doubt and confusion paralyzed the disciples and actually imprisoned them in a jail of fear.  Why?  Because they no longer saw the Lord at work—but, was the Lord in fact at work even as His body lay in the grave?  Ephesians helps us out in this regard.  The gospels are silent about Saturday, but not Paul.  He says,

^{Ephesians 4:8} For it says: When He ascended on high, He took prisoners into captivity; He gave gifts to people. ⁹ But what does “He ascended” mean except that He  descended to the lower parts of the earth?

The Apostle Peter tells us,

^3:19 In that state  He also went and made a proclamation to the spirits  in prison  ²⁰ who in the past were disobedient.

2Peter 2:4 tells us this “prison” was “Tartarus,” another name for hell.

Jesus was busy on Saturday while His earthly body lay in the tomb.  He was preaching.  Ephesians tells us He preached “mercy and deliverance” to those saints who died in faith, like Noah, Abraham and millions of others.  He emptied Hades of all the righteous.  He also preached a message of justice to those in “Hades, or Tartarus” (the penalty side of Hades). 

So, how do we then deal with our “Saturdays”—the days of doubt and confusion when our circumstances seem to indicate God is not working, and when our minds are filled with unanswered questions and confusion?  How do we deal with this doubt and confusion?  I don’t know who said it but it sums up Saturday pretty well:

“When we cannot trace God’s hand, we must trust His heart.”  When we cannot see God working we must realize that He is, in fact, working to cause “all things to work for our good.”  The gospels are silent about Saturday, but through Paul we learn that Jesus was busting wide open the very gates of Hades and releasing all of the captives.  Now, Hades, or paradise, was the temporary abode of all the saints who died before Jesus conquered death on the cross.  It was a “holding cell” so to speak—actually two cells.  On one side was a place of punishment for those who died having rejected God.  On the other side was a chamber for those who died with faith in God.  The paradise side is now empty as Ephesians tells us.  The side of the eternally condemned is being continually filled.  Every day over 150,000 souls enter into eternity—the vast majority having never accepted the Lord Jesus Christ.  Ultimately, when the final note on God’s symphony of history is struck, those in Hades will be cast into a permanent place of torment. As we read earlier, John tells us in Revelation that “death and hades were thrown into the eternal lake of fire.”

So, we must deal with our Fridays—days of pain and sorrow—by accepting the completed work of Our Lord on the cross, knowing that the price for our sin has already been paid and one day we will spend time in eternity where sin does not even have a presence.  Until then, God will use even our pain to perfect us and produce in us the image of His Beloved Son, Jesus Christ.  For our Saturdays—days of doubt and confusion, we know now that Jesus was working on our behalf even while His body lay in the grave.  He was demolishing the power of sin and reclaiming the power over death for all His followers.  Even though His work was not seen, it was effective.

This brings us to the final day in our “triad of Easter.” 

3.  Easter:  A Day of Hope! (16:1-8)

Easter encompassed the death and burial of Jesus and reached an eternal crescendo with Sunday.  Because He lives, we have hope because we know we will live also.  Mark describes this glorious event:

^16:6 “Don’t be alarmed,” he told them. “You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene,  who was crucified. He has been resurrected!  He is not here! See the place where they put Him. ⁷ But go, tell His disciples and Peter,  ‘He is going ahead of you to Galilee;  you will see Him there just as He told you.’ ”

There is the “Ultimate Answer to Life!”  It is not “42” as we learned before—as wonderful as the number “42” might be.  No, the answer to life—the answer to our pain, our sorrow, our doubt, our confusion—the answer is “Easter.”  The Empty Tomb gives us hope because it reminds us of what the women did NOT find there.  They did NOT find Jesus in a place of the dead, because He was, and is, very much alive.  And, just like He planned to meet the first century disciples in Galilee as our text tells us, Jesus has also promised to meet you and I again.  One of the most comforting texts in all the Bible is in John 14.  I use it at nearly every funeral.  It is so full of hope and comfort.  Jesus Himself told us:

 “Your heart must not be troubled.  Believe  in God;  believe also in Me. ² In My Father’s house are many dwelling places;  if not, I would have told you. I am going away  to prepare a place for you. ³ If I go away and prepare a place for you, I will come back  and receive you to Myself, so that where I am you may be also.

So, yes, we will experience pain.  Life is full of Fridays.  But, as we saw at the beginning of our service:  “It May Be Friday, But Sunday’s Coming.”  One day, everyone who has received Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior will see Him.  Yes, “Heaven Is Very Real!”  One day, we will see the Lord.  He will not be the humble carpenter of Galilee, but we will see him in all His glory as the King of Kings.  The answer to our pain and sorrow, doubt and confusion is NOT in a religion, however wonderful the tenets of any given religion might be.  The hope of Easter is not in an “idea,” but in a King—Jesus, My King!

VIDEO:  That’s My King!

INVITATION

<<END>>