Seeking the Living One

My text for today is from the 24th chapter of Luke’s gospel. The context of this passage is the Lord’s crucifixion and subsequent resurrection on the third day. We begin now at verse one of chapter 24:

(Luke 24:1-6) “But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they came to the tomb bringing the spices which they had prepared. 2 And they found the stone rolled away from the tomb, 3 but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. 4 While they were perplexed about this, behold, two men suddenly stood near them in dazzling clothing; 5 and as the women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, “Why do you seek the living One among the dead? 6 He is not here, but He has risen.”

Let’s go back now to verse five: “Why do you seek the living One among the dead?”

Of course, the angels were asking them why they sought Jesus among the tombs. After all, the Lord promised several times during the course of His three-year ministry that He would rise from the dead. You can find such references, for example, in Matthew 12:39-40; Matthew 16:21; John 10:17-18. We can’t take time now to examine any of them, but I’ve included those references in your handout so you can study them on your own.

But although their question was in direct context with the Lord’s promised resurrection, their question also has great applicability to the modern reader because so many of us in the pews and outside the Church seek for the Living One – the Risen One – in all the wrong places.

I want to talk this afternoon about some of those wrong places – places we can search for all eternity and end up finding we’ve wasted our time. We can spend our lives running hard to the end of life’s highway looking for the Living One, and never find Him because we were on the wrong highway.

I don’t want that to happen to anyone listening to my voice. And to that hoped-for end, I want us to consider again what the angels said to the women – and would also say to us: Why do you look for the Living One among the dead”?  And in our case, why do we look for the Living One among dead religious faiths, dead works, dead religious practices, and spiritually dead people.

First, let’s look at the erroneous practice of looking for the Living One among dead – meaning useless and fraudulent – religious belief systems.

We here in this sanctuary really need to get this down deep into our souls. Remember, please, that when the apostle Peter proclaimed Jesus to the esteemed and revered religious Jewish leaders of his day, he also warned them: “There is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved.” (Acts 4:12)

Those who are knowledgeable of Scripture know that Peter was simply reiterating what Jesus said as recorded in John’s gospel: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me. (John 14:6)

It’s important AND IT IS NECESSARY for us in the 21st-century to remember that when Jesus walked this earth there were already a number of religions, all of which pre-dated the birth of Christ. Among those religions were Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism, and Mosaic Judaism (not to mention the pantheon of Greek and Roman gods and goddesses).

But nevertheless, it was to everyone alive in the first century – not just the Jews and the Romans, but everyone across the globe – as it is also to everyone in the 21st century, that Almighty God declared to them and declares to us that there is eternal salvation in no one else but through Jesus, who is Almighty Jehovah God incarnate.

No one else. And that includes the newer religious beliefs of Islam, Mormonism, Jehovah’s Witnesses, the so-called ‘Cosmic Christ, the New Age demonic deceptions and every other deception often wrapped in Bible terminology and ‘Christianese. Seeking the Living One among those dead – meaning, useless and lifeless – seeking the Living One among such deadness will ensure we NEVER find the true Living One upon whom our salvation depends.

That Jesus is the only and exclusive gate to heaven is really not a difficult concept to understand. Even a child can easily get this message about Jesus and the only one true faith. So why is it so many in the first century, and those in the 21st century, including some pastors and teachers in a growing number of churches of every label – clergy and teachers who even graduated from esteemed seminaries – why is it that they try to wiggle out of the very clear truth that no one comes to eternal life except through obedient faith in Jesus the Christ? Why do they reject the clear truth of God that no one can enter heaven unless they come through the very small gate – the gate that is named ‘Jesus’?

Neither our Lord nor ANY of the New Testament writers were wishy-washy about that immutable truth. And neither should any today who name the name of Jesus as their Lord and Master be unclear about that unchangeable truth.

So, PLEASE. Do not waste your life and your precious time seeking the Living One among lifeless religions that will lead to your eternal death.

Look now with me at how people seek the Living One through dead works.

Yes, I know what the Holy Spirit tells us through St James – faith without words is dead faith. You can read that for yourself in the second chapter of that epistle. But as always, if we hope to rightly interpret Scripture, we must let Scripture define Scripture and read all texts in context with the surrounding verses, the surrounding chapters, and the rest of the books in both Old and New Testaments.

So, regarding the misinterpretation of what James tells us – misinterpretation because his ‘works’ comments are so often taken out of context with the rest of the Bible, let’s also look (for example) to Ephesians 2:8-10 “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.”

I hope you caught that. God CREATED us so that we would DO good works as evidence of our salvation. It’s also helpful to our understanding of James to hear what John the Baptizer said to those coming for baptism: (Matthew 3:7-8) “You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Therefore, bear fruit in keeping with repentance.”

JB Phillips translates that text this way: “But when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism he said: “Who warned you, you serpent’s brood, to escape from the wrath to come? Go and do something to show that your hearts are really changed.”

Let me repeat that last verse: “Go and do something to show that your hearts are really changed.”

THAT is why faith without accompanying changes in one’s life and lifestyle is not true saving faith at all. It’s a sham. It’s dead faith. Lifeless and useless. And therefore, to seek the Living One among those who are trying to work their way to heaven is yet another fruitless activity.

Then there are those who think they will find the Living One among false teachers, deceptive pastors and theologians who are actually dead in their trespasses and sins. Paul often talks of those kinds of spiritual corpses in passages such as Ephesians chapter two, Galatians chapter one and 2 Corinthians chapter 11. Again, you can look up these texts later on.

It doesn’t matter what their educational levels are. They might – and often have -- PhDs, or ThDs, after their names.  Nor does it matter what their clerical rank is – whether pastor, priest, deacon, bishop, or cardinal. If they preach a gospel message contrary to what the apostles all preached and as recorded in the New Testament scriptures, then we should hear what St Paul said of them:

(Galatians 1:8-9) “But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed! As we have said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, he is to be accursed!”

In other words, those who bring from their own spiritually corrupts and dead souls false messages about God – whom Scripture describes as the Triune Being – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – God says of them: “Let them be damned.”

So, why do so many seek the Living One among such liars and children of Satan? Liars like the popular Richard Rohr who teaches saccharinely sweet heresy wrapped neatly in Christian packaging. Liars like clergy who tell their spiritually immature congregations they can have a ‘reasonable hope’ that hell is empty because a loving God would never send a soul there for an eternity. Liars who tell their biblically immature congregations that if they just have enough faith, their lives will be filled with good things.

These spiritually dead men and women seduce MILLIONS of those in the pews because they have not done the hard work of reading and studying the entire Bible for themselves.

No wonder St Paul charged Timothy with this warning: (2 Timothy 4:2ff) “Preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths.”

In other words, Timothy, these immature Christians will seek after spiritually dead teachers to tell them what they want to hear, and not what they NEED to hear.

My brothers and sisters here in Ashwood – PLEASE do not be like them.

Be careful who you listen to on television, radio, or from pulpits – and that includes being careful of what I tell you as I stand here each week. Be like the Bereans who, as Luke tells us, studied the Scriptures every day to verify what the great apostle Paul was telling them. You’ll find that text in Acts 17.

Be like them as you search for the Living One.

So, those are some of the ways people fruitlessly search for the Living One – searching for Him among dead religious systems, through dead works, and among spiritually dead teachers.

How then are we to seek the Living One in such a way that we are SURE to find Him? Well, of course, don’t DO what I’ve just urged you to not do – listen to spiritually dead teachers, investigate dead religious ideas, and put good works ahead of obedient faith in Christ’s atonement for your sins. And yes, seek Him in the pages of your Bible from Genesis through Revelation. Receive the Books as the fully inerrant, infallible, and inspired love letters to you and me as they surely are.

But I want to add this additional approach. Whatever we do – WHATEVER we do – to seek the Living One, we must do on our knees.

I do not now mean on our knees ‘in prayer.’ I mean we approach Him on the knees of our heart. In other words, we approach Him DAILY that by the Holy Spirit’s work, He make AND KEEP US, humble. That we ask Him

to do that to us and for us because it is not at all our nature to want to be humble –even humble before Almighty God.

The heart, as Jeremiah reminds us, is deceitful above all else and is desperately sick. (Jeremiah 17). And God is ALWAYS opposed to the proud, to the arrogant, to the self-sufficient. But He is always gives His grace, He always moves in close to the humble.

One reason Ash Wednesday is such an important day in the Christian calendar – and it is most unfortunate that so many Christian churches do not practice the distribution of ashes on that first day of Lent – I think it’s such an important day because when we receive the ashes on our foreheads and hear the words: “You are dust, and to dust you will return. Repent, and believe the gospel” – we are reminded that we just ain’t such hot stuff as so many of us like to think of ourselves.

Humility. It’s so hard for so many of us to be truly humble about ourselves, who we think we are and what we think we have accomplished in our lives.

Oh, really? What WE have accomplished in life? Doesn’t Scripture remind us: “What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as if you had not received it?” (1 Cor 4:7) And didn’t the Lord Jesus tell us: (John3:27) “A man can receive nothing unless it has been given him from heaven.”

“Some trust in chariots” the psalmist wrote in Psalm 27, “and some in horses. But we will remember the name of the Lord our God.”  And it could also be said of humanity in general, “Some trust in their riches, some in their health. Some in their physical strength. Some in their accomplishments. Some in their ‘connections’ – all of which are nothing less than idols before which we lay our self-importance.

But it is ONLY when we recognize and acknowledge to God that HE is the true source of all that we claim for ourselves, only when we completely, humbly, reverently, and honestly lay at the feet of Jesus all that we are and have accomplished – only THEN will our pride and our idols be driven away like the chaff that it all is.

That’s why HUMILITY is the antidote to wasting our lives seeking the Living one among all the dead things that beckon us onto those dead-end highways. Humility – forcing ourselves to live as a slave – a S.L.A.V.E. of Jesus Christ.

I memorized this text a while ago, and I will close my message today with this final word from God's infallible word:

(Psalm 123:1-2) “To You I lift up my eyes, O You who are enthroned in the heavens! Behold, as the eyes of servants [Heb: slaves] look to the hand of their master, as the eyes of a maid [Heb: slavegirl] to the hand of her mistress, So our eyes look to the Lord our God . . ..”

And so, O Lord, we all look to the hand of the Lord our God.