Does Easter matter? Why does it matter? Find out in this message.
This is an Easter message, developed by Pastor Brian Jones and delivered by Brian to Calvary Bible Church on Easter Sunday, April 4, 2021.
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Today’s readings are Exodus 13, Job 31, and Psalm 61.
This devotional is about Exodus 13:19: “Moses took the bones of Joseph with him because Joseph had made the Israelites swear an oath. He had said, “‘God will surely come to your aid, and then you must carry my bones up with you from this place.’”
Around 400 years passed between the death of Joseph and the birth of Moses. Joseph was certainly known among the Jewish people of Moses’s time; he was the father of two of the tribes of Israel, after all. But he was far from the forefront of anyone’s mind by the time the events of Exodus 13 happened.
All the best events of Joseph’s adult life happened in Egypt. In Egypt, he was wealthy and powerful. He was revered for saving the people from starvation even though his policies reduced them to slavery (Gen 47:21). Given all of this, it would be hard for anyone to criticize Joseph for not thinking of himself as an Egyptian. But 13:19 tells us that Joseph never gave up his Jewish heritage or hope. The fact that he commanded his descendants to dig up his bones and carry them to the Promised Land for burial shows you where his heart was. Joseph fully believed in the promises God had made to his family as this symbolic act demonstrated. Hebrews 11:22 referred to this verse and told us that Joseph’s instructions were an act of faith. Although God’s promises would be realized outside of his lifetime, Joseph believed firmly that they would happen.
In a sense, this happens to every believer in Christ when we die. Our hope is not just that we will live in heaven after death. Our hope is that all of God’s promises in Christ to us will be kept, including the resurrection he promised. We may not live to see the day that Christ returns but we will be raised again to reign with him if our hope and faith are truly in Jesus Christ.
Today’s readings are Exodus 2, Job 19, and Psalm 50.
This devotional is about Job 19.
It is sometimes argued that the Old Testament does not teach an after-life. Job 19:25-27 is a clear text that contradicts that argument. This chapter continued the documentation of Job’s arguments with his friends. Although they came to him expressing a desire to comfort him in his sufferings, they made assumptions about Job and his morality and condemned him as a sinner by applying their incorrect assumptions to their simplistic theology.
Job, in this chapter, complained painfully about the words of his friends. He found their words to be “torment” (v. 2a) and begged them for “pity” (v. 21). Although Job was perplexed that God would bring this kind of suffering in his life, his faith in God’s existence and in life after death did not waver. In verse 25a, he affirmed his faith in God’s existence: “I know that my redeemer lives.” He went on in the latter half of that verse to state his confidence that, someday, God would walk this earth.
But notice verse 26: “And after my skin has been destroyed….” What destroys a person’s skin? Death. After a person’s body dies, it is buried to decompose. God created us from the dust of the ground and the earth reclaims its dust after we die. So Job here is acknowledging that his physical body will decompose. But notice that he said, “AFTER my skin has been destroyed, yet…. I will see God” (v. 26b). Job believed that there was life after this life is over and that in that life after death he would experience God personally and directly.
Notice the phrase I omitted, however, from verse 26b: “…yet IN MY FLESH I will see God.” This phrase shows that Job understood not only that he would meet God after death but that there would be a bodily resurrection that he, Job, would experience personally.
This is our hope as well. In Christ’s resurrection, we have been raised spiritually to walk a new life. But the curse of physical death is still upon us until the final resurrection. While we may fear the process of death, the pain and sadness that it causes, there is no reason to fear death itself. Because of Christ, we may have confidence that we will see God personally, in the flesh, at the final resurrection. That meeting will be a loving reunion between our Father and his children or a moment of final judgment for those who have rejected God and his word and his Son in this life. Put your hope in God, therefore, if you haven’t already. He will bring you through the process of death and safely into his kingdom for eternity.
No doubt about it.