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Let us pray. Holy Father, we thank you that as we gather together tonight we rejoice in the resurrection of our Savior Jesus Christ, that we have hope, that we have a future, that we have eternal life bound up in His life, which can never end. We thank you and rejoice in your Son Jesus Christ. Give us ears to hear and listen to your word. In Jesus' name. Amen. You may be seated. Well, it's not necessarily very common for us, but I would like to give you a job tonight. We tend to be gospel preachers around here, and so we're all about uh indicative and not imperative, but tonight I have an imperative for you. I need you to help me write an ending for the world. How would you begin to write an ending to everything that's happened in this world? To take all the threads of existence, to take all the thread of time, all the ins and outs of history, all the wrongs, all the hardships, all the wars, all the thefts, all the murders. How to take all of those things and draw all those threads together, tie them all together for a satisfying ending for the world. Can we do that? We could simplify it a little bit if you'd like. Maybe you can do that for your own life. Just your life. Take all the threads of just your life and try to tie them all together. I don't know how you feel about that. I think it would be very difficult to come up with an ending for the world that would satisfy all the things that would need to be satisfied in order for us to make sense of everything that's happened in our lives. It would basically be an impossible task for you to do for your own life because you don't know all the details even of your own life. But imagine how many more magnitudes of difficulty harder it is to come up with an answer to all of the things going on in this world. If one life has dozens of threads and wrongs to write as well as wrongs to repent of, what would eight billion lives be like to write? Or the billions of people who lived in the past or who will live in the future? Let's think for a moment about what's at stake when we try to write the ending to the world. To write the world's ending, we would have to decide how we would want it to end. Would we want the ending to be full of justice and all the wrongs of the world righted? Or is there an ending where the bad and the evil go unpunished? Do you think that every person, every individual person's ending would need to have the same treatment? Or would you just have a few main characters who you would like to tie all those knots for? How would you show that the just are rewarded and the unjust are punished? Would there be a heaven and a hell in your telling of this story? How would you judge the just and the unjust then? Would you judge people based on how they treated their family, how they treated their neighbors, how they worked in society, how hard they worked at their job, did they obey all the laws? How good would they need to be? If you got to the end of that story and you found out that the vast majority of people, if not all the people in the world, were on the unjust side, would you be surprised? How would you handle that? Justice is, after all, justice. So at that point, you would either have to lower the bar of what good is, or you'd have to ignore your own criteria to find a final solution where most, if not all, people, were on the unjust side. Writing the world's ending is no small matter, and to do the task well, we would have to take time and really think about what good is and how to know it when we find it. That's even if we know that we're trying to write a good ending to the world. In Isaiah 55, we read about a good ending. An ending where anyone can come into the presence of God and buy and eat and rejoice without money and without price. They can do so without stinting on rich food. Now, if God can imagine an ending of the world that has the doors of God's holy city flung wide open and anyone can enter in, then he must have done something to be able to make that happen. The point is, if you will, the cross and the resurrection bridged the gap between God and man so that we can be with God forever. When our Lord Jesus Christ came back from the dead on the first day of the week, he rewrote the ending of the world so that we can be with God forever. After finishing the Passover meal with his disciples, Jesus led them out to the Mount of Olives into the Garden of Gethsemane. And in that garden, like the Garden of Eden, the new Adam faced a desperate struggle with temptation. In some ways, it's interesting that it's the exact opposite of the temptation of the first Adam. The first Adam was commanded not to take fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Jesus is being asked to take a cup of God's justice and drink it down to the dregs. Our Lord did not want to taste of God's justice. He knew that that cup was going to be bitter. His prayer was, not my will, but yours be done. And when Jesus had prayed those words three times, he was begging when Jesus prayed those words three times, he was begging the Father to find another way to deal with our lawbreaking. To put it another way, Jesus was asking the Father whether there was another way to right the ending of the world. The bitter and cold truth is that law breaking brings nothing but death. It was true for our first parents. It has held true since their time, it is true for us today, and there's no amount of therapy or rehabilitation that can do away with past deeds or prevent future sin. And there's no way to go back in time to wipe away the thousands of years of lawbreaking. The only satisfying way to write an ending for the world would be to bring all the guilty to justice. And the justice that we're talking about demands blood. The law says justice is eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth. So when Jesus goes to the cross, St. Paul says that he was made sin for us. His death is a propitiatory sacrifice for sin. That basically means that his death serves as a satisfaction for our sin, for our blood guilt. The law of eye for an eye is upheld on the cross. He is the perfect, spotless lamb being offered up to God, his body for our bodies. And after his bloody sweat and tears, Jesus stands to face his betrayer and death with a determination that's shocking. One minute he is praying for the cup to pass, and the next minute he is going with his captors without a word of protest. The life of Jesus is not being taken away by force. He is laying it down. He faces the lies of false witnesses. He endures the spitting and blows from hands that know their own hypocrisy. And Jesus goes to that cross with all its humiliation and grief. He died there, in our place, to write a better ending to our story than what the justice of God demanded of us. The justice of God demands that we die for our sins. God's law stands completely against us. No matter what we could try and offer, it would all come to nothing. Think about it. How could giving money, acts of devotion, service to others, or any other thing avail to answer the demands of the law? If we tried to write the world's ending with real justice in mind, there would only be one ending. Recall the scriptures that we read tonight. Genesis 3, we are cursed to die. At the beginning of that Ezekiel passage, the valley is full of dry bones. In that Exodus passage, the water goes over the heads of God's enemies and they are washed away. But that's not the end of the story, is it? Then there's the gospel. The soldiers were vigilant on Friday afternoon and evening. They maintained their watch all day on Saturday. They were faithful on their duties on Sunday morning, but they were not prepared for the presence of God. In scenes reminiscent of Mount Sinai, when the presence of the Lord came down, the mountain shook, lightning shattered the sky, and the glory of the Lord stooped down on the earth. The angel of the Lord came down that morning to roll away the stone. The guards trembled and fell down as if dead. On that day in the past at Mount Sinai, the people were commanded not even to approach the mountain, because if they touched the foot of the mountain, they would surely die. Once the presence of God came down in power, though, the Israelites in Exodus did not have to be told not to touch that mountain because they were too afraid to go anywhere near it. Those Roman guards didn't stand a chance, but the Lord was merciful to them. They were allowed to get up and tell their story later on. However, there's another difference. They had no idea how they were going to move that heavy stone out of the way, but they were compelled to bring honor to the body of Jesus. As they approached the tomb, they saw the wreckage of the scene, but fear did not seize them. Or excuse me, fear did seize them. But they didn't flee away like the Israelites at Sinai. They saw the glory of the Lord, and though they were afraid, they were commanded, fear not. Can you imagine what that scene must have been like for them? What they would have thought? All the guards laid out on the ground, apparently dead, the heavy stone rolled away, and who knows if the ground had opened up with all that earth shaking. Instead, their first thought, after hearing the words of that angel, is to rush in to look for the body of Jesus, what were they expecting to see? I guarantee you they were not expecting to see the they were not expecting to see an empty tomb. Despite his clear repetition of the fact of the resurrection, none of his followers, none of Jesus' followers expected it. The women were devastated in that first moment by that empty tomb. It represented to them the final dashing of all their hopes. Then came the declaration of that angel. He is not here, for he is risen. You see, the demands of the law are simple. The sinner must perish. That's what the law says. But Jesus had committed no sin. The punishment for lawbreakers was not meant to be laid on a law keeper. Death could not figure out what to do with such a thing. Death's power was broken and undone, and when Jesus' body took that first new breath after three days in the cold of death, his body was transformed with radiant life, and a new ending for the world was written. This time the world's ending is summed up by the words, He is risen. The shocking scene of the tomb was transformed into great joy at the words of that angel. The myrrhbearers to spice the body of Jesus are commissioned to be gospel bearers. They bring the good news to the disciples. Jesus Himself meets them, and the law fulfiller now stands in front of them. And everything about the kingdom and the world that Jesus has promised does not seem like an impossibility to them anymore. Come, everyone who thirsts. He who has no money, come, buy and eat without money and without price. This passage from Isaiah is fascinating to me. How could there ever be a place where all the things we need could be gotten for nothing? The words, nothing in life is free, ring in my ears when I read this passage. I don't know about you. And at the beginning of the Lord of the Rings, this is the Lord of the Rings thing, sorry everybody, if you've not read Lord of the Rings, you're about to get a crash course here, sorry. At the beginning of Lord of the Rings, the inhabitants of the Shire complain of Bilbo's unnaturally long life with the words, it shall have to be paid for. The dreamlike call of Isaiah 55 is there will be a place and a time where anyone can eat and drink to their hearts and their stomachs content and not have to worry a bit about money or earning it. But it shall have to be paid for. It just won't be us who pays for it. In the Lord of the Rings, Frodo has to carry the ring, which gave the long life and vigor to Bilbo, to mount doom and destroy it. The Lord Jesus is the one who bears our burden, our sin, to that cursed tree, that Roman cross. He broke the shackles of death and kicked down the doors of Hades. He led the Old Testament saints into the presence of God Almighty and walked out of that grave to bring the same life and hope to us. The Lord Jesus' resurrection transforms the cross and the justice of God into the joy of the Christian. Now we lift high the cross and follow our Lord into the holy city, that new Jerusalem, and sit at that glorious marriage supper of the Lamb. And at that table we will eat and drink, we will rejoice and rest. We will live in that new city forever. Tonight, when we started trying to write the world's ending, it was all about judgment and righteousness. The problem of sin was just simply too big for us. We could not overcome it. It's all doom and gloom and fire and brimstone. But then there breaks a more glorious day. A light springs forth out of the grave, and the world's ending is rewritten. Death and judgment are not the final words. Because He is risen. Because He is risen, the hungry and the thirsty can eat and drink and be satisfied. The best bread and wine are freely given. There are seats saved at the marriage supper of the Lamb. It never could have happened with us. It was not the ending we imagined, but it is the ending made real to us and for us by the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Amen. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you that as we've heard your word declare to us from Matthew's gospel, He is not here, for He has risen. Lord, we pray that we would every day live with that hope securely fixed in our hearts. As we long for that better day and that better kingdom and that better life, Lord, let us enjoy it now by faith. As we hear your gospel proclaimed and declared to us as we come to take, Lord, partake of your body, of your son Jesus Christ, as we remember our baptism. Lord, give us a hope securely fixed in your Son, your risen Son, Jesus Christ. In his name we pray. Amen.