He Is Risen!

You had worked your whole life for a dream. You had a goal. You had something that was right there in your grasp.

You had something that seemed attainable. This guy was six foot six, 321 pounds. He was in his sophomore year at Tennessee, just before his sophomore year, and in spring workouts, he could hardly catch his breath.

And he said he remembered walking like 400 feet and being out of breath, so he thought he’d go get it checked out. And imagine you sat down before your world-famous doctor, and this is what he said. It can occur, not only can be, they’re usually associated with chest pain, shortness of breath, low frequency.

If you think about how your lungs work, your blood vessels that come into your lungs are very large segments to where they’re able to contract. If you have a large, one-cropped, or large-oxygen vessel in the lung, three sections in the lung, that helps you with oxygenation. And that shortness of breath when you’re physically active, if it’s in a large vessel, even closer to the boxy areas, it can fail, so then you’re not getting any oxygen in your lung.

For many people, this would be the death sentence of their dream. It would kill it. There were so many obstacles in the way.

There were so many things that stood in his way. If I could, it was like a stone that was blocking the path. Now, as we are coming here to this Easter morning, the women who were with Jesus, Mary, and the others, they witnessed the crucifixion and death and Jesus being taken off the cross.

They witnessed Joseph of Arimathea, who offered his own family tomb and wrapped him up, and they carried him to the tomb. And the women saw him being put in the tomb, and they went home to prepare the spices for his burial, for his death that everybody knew was the end. When they went back to that tomb on that Sunday morning, Mark says they questioned each other, who will roll the stone away? There was a stone, they believed, that separated them from their Lord and their Savior.

Will you stand as you are able for the gospel of the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the book of Luke, chapter 24, verses one through 12. But on the first day of the week, at the early dawn, they went to the tomb, taking the spices they had prepared, and they found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. While they were perplexed about this, behold, two men stood by them in dazzling apparel, and as they were frightened and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen.

Remember how he told you while he was still in Galilee that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and crucified and on the third day rise, and they remembered his words. And returning from the tomb, they told all these things to the 11 and to all the rest. Now it was Mary Magdalene and Jonah and Mary the mother of James and the other women with them who told these things to the apostles.

But these words seemed like an idle tale, and they did not believe them. But Peter rose and ran to the tomb, stooping and looking in. He saw the living cross by themselves, and he went home marveling at what had happened.

The word of God, inspired by God, for the people of God, thanks be to God. Amen, you may be seated. Mary, Jonah, Mary the mother of James and the others had high hopes and they were shattered when they looked at the cross.

And when they went to put the burial spices on Jesus, which was a respectable and honorable thing to do for someone who had died, they didn’t know how they were gonna even get to Jesus because of the stone. But when they got to the tomb, the stone was rolled away. God rolled that stone away and called Jesus from death to life just as Jesus is called Lazarus from death to life, except for Jesus was a resurrection that would never end, and that stone was gone.

And they saw amazing things. They saw angels in the midst of this. Now, when we were talking about this football player, we were talking about a man named Trey who faced obstacles and he had to know that his dream was not dead.

So he had to find out what he could do about it, how he could treat it. And this is what he would have heard. He was gonna say they’re treatable, right? They are treatable.

Trey found treatment with blood thinners and other things and improved and had very limited with practice and then he kept working harder and harder. He also faced the death of his mother in 2015. And he kept improving and he was literally the best guard in the country.

Now, that’s a matter of opinion because there might’ve been some others that were pretty good. And he faced something else that was unbelievable is when it came to the NFL draft, people had things in mind like, who’s old enough to remember who Derrick Thomas is? That guy is the best pass rusher the Chiefs have ever had in their lives. And he was in a car accident, was paralyzed from the waist down and then ended up with blood clots in his legs that went to his lungs, pulmonary embolism killed him.

So when it came for draft day, the scouts and the general managers didn’t trust that someone who had survived pulmonary embolism wouldn’t get more blood clots. I mean, trauma to the legs can cause blood clots and then they go back up. So imagine if you’re Trey and you’re sitting around with your family and friends wanting to be drafted, your dream that you thought was dead came back to life and then it was first round gone by, second round, third round, fourth round, fifth round.

There was a stone blocking your dreams. When it came to the draft, it looked like Trey was dead on arrival. The women saw something amazing.

Not only did they see the empty tomb but they had the angels that came to them and they said, started with these words, why are you looking for the living among the dead? Now, sometimes we look for life in things that are dead. Sometimes we think we can find life if we go to something that is dead and to help us get through something. How do we find our strength? Some people end up with addictions and pain and hurt and more and worse issues.

When we look for the living among the dead, we think we can find life in something on this earth that’s just gonna die again and we forget the importance of what it is to know Christ and that Christ rose from the dead for those women. They saw all this greatness and then they came to the disciples and Luke uses the words, they thought it was an idle tale. What could they do with this? They didn’t believe them.

They didn’t believe it could happen. Nobody seemed to believe that Trey Smith could be healthy. In an interview with sportsspectrum.com, he said that in his darkest days, he had to remember the faith he grew up on.

He had to remember a mother and a father who took him to church every week, a grandfather who was a pastor and the faith he had learned along those ways. He said there were a lot of hurdles to jump. Ultimately, he had to walk by faith and not by sight.

And when you walk by faith and not by sight, it’s celebrating that it’s empty. It’s celebrating that there is no one there because there is no one dead there. There is life.

For Super Bowl 58, Trey Smith, saw something he never thought he would see. This week, which probably only 10% of you know that this week is the NFL Draft. And with that NFL Draft, the hopes and the dreams of so many young men will be found and will be lost.

In 2021, that sixth round hit and almost to the end of the sixth round, you heard the name Trey Smith called by the Chiefs. Since then, he’s won two Super Bowls. He’s participated in another and he’s won four AFC championships.

And he’s now on the franchise tag for $24 million. Rated as the best guard in the country. Life comes when we trust in Jesus.

I’m not saying $24 million comes. But everything we see in life, when we see issues, when we see problems, when we see difficulties, when we see hurdles, and we see a stone that is blocking us to get to what we feel like God has called us to do, God will roll that stone away. That is not for us to worry about.

For us, it’s about being faithful. It’s about trusting in God. It’s about knowing God.

It’s about growing in our grace and in our faith. And being a part of all of that. Finally, Peter and John believed enough of what the women said to run to the tomb.

And Peter stooped and looked in. He saw the empty linen cloth lying there. And he marveled.

And his life, he thought it had changed the last few years. It was about ready to change dramatically because Jesus was alive. And he was risen.

Any analogy I would give on even someone who died and resuscitated, which I’ve done on Easter’s before, it falls short of the amazing glory of Jesus rising, God rolling the stone away, and Jesus walking out of that tomb alive until he ascended again and he lives forever with the Father and when we believe in him. The books we’ve read, the verses we’ve read, that Dana read in Romans, talked about in baptism, we have a death like his. It’s a picture of going down into the water, being like buried into the ground and dying to ourselves.

Dying to our sins, dying to our hurts, dying to our pains, dying to everything in our guilt. And then when we come out of the water, it’s like rising again. We’re baptized in a death like his and we rise to a life like his.

Paul also says in 1 Corinthians 15, the sting of death is sin and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Death is swallowed up in victory.

O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting? But thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. I was reminded that a few months ago when it was Super Bowl Sunday and we were talking about watching the Super Bowl that I said, does anybody remember what I said was when is our Super Bowl Sunday? Easter Sunday, today, today is our Super Bowl. It’s not something we’re expecting to wait and go home and see later and watch.

It’s something we are here to experience, to experience the power of the risen Lord in our hearts and lives, to experience God who rolls away the stone and helps us go from death to life and helps us achieve the victories that are for God’s glory in our lives. This is our Super Bowl Sunday. This is greater than any dream we could have.

This surpasses any hope we could ever have otherwise. There’s no greater victory than that victory of Jesus on Easter Sunday that means everything to us. It takes us from where we thought we were blocked by a stone to a place where we have victory, victory of life over death, victory of good over evil, victory of God winning.

And Jesus crushes Satan under his foot. Let’s pray. Oh my God, thank you so much that you give us victory, you give us a Super Bowl, that because you live so also can we live, that because you died so we can also die to our sin and our shame and our hurt and our pain.

Help us to remember, God, that we need to lay all those things at the cross. We need to let them die. That when we look at the cross, you have taken all those things and given us the ability to walk out of the tomb so that we can have life, so we can have victory in you.

Because you live, we can live also. So we praise you, we glorify you, we lift your name above every name because you are so amazing. In Jesus’ name, amen.