My undergraduate degree is in sociology. While I was in college I took one particular course where we were required to go across campus; now this is the University of Utah, 30,000 students; and, working in twos, we were to perform a simple yet revealing experiment. One person was the "do-er" and the other was the "recorder", then the rolls reversed.
Our assignment was to go about the campus, as if we were headed toward another class, and intentionally make eye contact with some random individual. Once eye contact was made we were to, either smile only, or to not smile and simply say, "How are you?" We were to carry this out until both members of the pair had 10 examples of each type.
The results were amazing. Each of these contacts led to a particular result. We’ll come back to the results in a few minutes... let’s listen to God’s Word from ...
Scripture
3 For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve. 6 After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, 8 and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.
9 For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. 10 But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them-yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me. 11 Whether, then, it was I or they, this is what we preach, and this is what you believed.
It is Easter morning... Jesus Christ is risen! Death could not hold Him. We are saved!
The most important thing we need to know... in all the world, is that Christ died for our sins, He was buried and on the third day, today, He rose again. Our sins are forgiven. Sins keep us out of heaven. We cannot be in God’s presence with sin in our lives. Jesus, as the Pascal Lamb, the sacrificial lamb, shed His blood as the last and final sin offering.
This little bit of knowledge gives us hope for the future. This gives us a reason to go on. This is the best thing, the most important thing, we could ever know.
The big question for us to consider, though, is what effect has the empty tomb had on us, individually? What effect has the empty tomb had on YOU? If you are a believer I can suggest a few certain effects: Let’s turn to Galatians 5:22-26, "But the fruit of he Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law." Let’s stop there for a moment.
What does it mean ‘fruit of the Spirit?’ These, my friends, are the attributes of the Holy Spirit. Remember that when we accept Jesus into our hearts we get the Holy Spirit to live within us. Our bodies become the temple of the Holy Spirit. That being so, the Holy Spirit living within us, we also get the attributes of the Holy Spirit. We get these attitudes.
If we aren’t exemplifying these things; love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control; if we aren’t exemplifying these attitudes in our lives I suggest that there is a problem with our temple. If we look carefully at this list, these are pretty much attitudinal things.
I am reminded of the story going around the internet about a woman driving a car. She is the second car in the line and when the light changes to green she immediately jumps on the horn; blasting away and yelling at the car in front of her.
The guy in front gets flustered and kills the engine on his car causing a further delay. The woman sticks her head out the window and begins shouting obscenities and offers up a couple helpful hand gestures to encourage the man.
A policeman jumps out of his car, that was just behind the woman. He quickly pulls her out of the car, handcuffs her and hauls her off to the station. The woman is increasingly irritated that they have brought her to the station for no reason. The officer, recognizing his mistake, apologizes to her. "I’m sorry ma’am. I saw the ‘honk if you love Jesus’ bumper sticker, the Christian fish symbol on the trunk, the ‘What would Jesus do’ window sticker; noticed your anger, your gestures, your language and automatically assumed you stole the car.
Was this woman exemplifying the attitudes that represent the fruit of the Spirit? No, where was her joy, her peace, her patience, her self-control? It would seem that she was having trouble with her temple... apparently the Holy Spirit was away on business and she was left with her same old worldly attitudes. From all outward expressions we would have to come to the conclusion that the empty tomb had no effect on her, at all.
Let’s continue... at verse 24, "Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other."
This is pretty clear; if we belong to Christ we have crucified the worldly attitudes that live within us. They should be dead and gone.
Again, what effect has the empty tomb had on your life?
As our student groups went about the campus carrying out our assignment we tallied up some pretty interesting results. For those people to whom we said, "how are you," we heard back the normal, expected results; good, fine, ok. Some of the people would ask us, ‘how are you, today?’ to which we were told to answer with a cheerful voice while saying something horrible such as; my dad got hit by a truck, my dog threw up on me this morning, or I just found out I have cancer.
The first thing we noticed was that as soon as we spoke to people they would drop their eyes breaking the eye contact. When we gave them a cheerful yet horrible answer the results were overwhelmingly things like, ‘oh, that’s nice,’ ‘good,’ or ‘great, glad to hear it.’
It was clear that along with eye contact there wasn’t really any ‘ear contact.’ The responses were programed and rehearsed. ‘Good,’ ‘fine,’ ‘ok.’
But for the other group, those we smiled at, we had a very different result. When we smiled at someone they almost always smiled back, PLUS, they carried their smile for a moment after and actually smiled at others that were coming at them, who in turn smiled at others.
It seems that words of greeting fell mostly on deaf ears, but smiles always resulted in returned smiles, PLUS, these people kept their smile while they passed other people. The greeting died; the smiles lived on.
That is the effect we would hope the empty tomb would have on all of us. Paul said, ‘God’s grace came to me through the empty tomb and it had a great effect on me. It changed me from one who persecutes the Church to one who promotes it.’ We would hope it would change us, like a smile rising up from somewhere deep inside; a smile that would cause us to have an effect on other people; an effect that would even change them.
The empty tomb is the very heart of our faith. It is the truth that we preach. The empty tomb is the evidence of the Resurrection and without that ... let’s look at a couple more verses from 1 Corinthians 15, look at verse 13 and 14, "If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith."
Conclusion
Is your faith useless? Do you believe that Jesus was resurrected? If you believe that then you have to see that the empty tomb should change us. The empty tomb should bring us to our knees. It should cause us to be different.
Last night the great old epic movie, "Ten Commandments" with Charleton Heston playing Moses was on. Every time Moses has an encounter with God it changed him so much that the people could even see the change. According to the Bible, as the Israelites were in the wilderness and Moses went into the Tabernacle to be with God his face was so bright that the people couldn’t even look at Moses; they demanded that he cover his face to protect them.
God changes us. The empty tomb changes us. Easter morning changes us.
Jesus Christ is risen! He is risen, indeed! The question is... has it had an effect on you? Are you changed because of it? Is your temple actually the home of the Holy Spirit? Is your temple working? Is the very Spirit of God living in you? Can people see it when they look at you?
And....
Is it like a verbal greeting that gets lost as soon as you are out of sight? Or is it like a smile that not only changes you but changes those you come in contact with?
The stone is rolled away, tomb is empty, Jesus is alive. Halleluiah!
1 Corinthians 15:3-11| Contact: gmail.com@bbc.sharpsburg Search |
Copyright © 2012, Bethel Baptist Church of Sharpsburg Logon |
 |