Good morning, Dearest Friends,
Have you ever studied the ancient Egyptians, who erected the pyramids? They believed that when you died, you would need to take a whole lot of things with you to the land to which you were going. So, when they buried people, they buried them with things they thought they would need in the next life. It sounds strange, but the ancient pyramids were filled with chariots, horses, servants, utensils, and weapons, because the Pharaoh would need all these things in the next life.
If we believed that today, what would you be buried with? Imagine our funeral services, when during the visitation, people would come up to the casket and place in it the things we would need in the afterlife: a laptop computer, a cell phone, coffee mugs, a portable TV, air pods — all the things we would need in the next life.
Before Jesus, there wasn’t much to go on, to maintain belief in a life beyond the grave. However, Jesus didn’t talk about life after death in the same terms the ancient people did. With Jesus, it always came back to one central word — and the word was resurrection. He always pointed to the fact that there was going to be a resurrection.
But Jesus said something even more startling. In speaking to Martha about her brother Lazarus who had died, Jesus said something no one had ever said before, and no one will ever say again. He looked at her and said, “I am the resurrection.” It’s not an event out there somewhere. It’s not a date on a timeline. It’s not a theory, it’s not a theology, it’s not a belief system, and it’s not a philosophy. “I am the resurrection and the life,” Jesus said (John 11:25-26).
The message of the early disciples was not, “Be ye kind, one to another,” or “blessed is the peacemakers.” It was this: Jesus Christ is the resurrection and the life. The resurrection is the event, the one thing that locks and seals, once and for all, who Jesus Christ was. And he not only talked about it, he not only offered it, he demonstrated it when he himself walked out of the empty tomb.
We are sent forth in the power of Christ’s resurrection,
Bruce Jones,
Pastor Imagine Church
