He is not here for He is Risen | Michael Ramsden | Easter | Garden Tomb, Jerusalem 2016

please take your seats so I'd like to introduce Michael Ramsden to you before he comes up to speak Michael is the international directory of the Ravi Zacharias International Ministries and has been part of that organization since it was founded in Europe in 1997 he's the joint director of the Oxford Centre for Christian apologetics he was born in the Middle East and brought up in England later on he's spoken all over the place finally arriving at the Garden team having practiced at the White House and NATO HQ and brought it rustles and before the European Parliament Michael were delighted to welcome you to the garden tune this morning may the Lord bless you and through you bless us well normally especially to burial Gardens are not normally associated either with hope or with joy but most frequently with the tears and with the sorrow at best they're places where we have a joyful remembrance of someone whom we loved but have now lost and we have physical connection we want to come to be in close proximity to the the last physical remembrance that we have of them so although we're mourning the relational loss of the presence that physical presence would be near where their body is bring some sense of comfort to us and this of course is why Mary is weeping so bitterly and literally in the text it says she is weeping out loud because she has come to that one place the last thing she can cling on to in remembrance of someone whom she has loved and admired to be close to the physical presence of his body even though he has now gone even though he has now died and he isn't here the body has disappeared and this is what causes this bitterness her soul actually has now come to dress the tomb many tombs at this time had become places of veneration where great men or people regarded as saints had died and people would come and visit those burial spaces to offer up prayers or to remember just to be physically close to the bones of the one whom they either knew or maybe now have just simply heard off but after the events of today no one would come to the tomb of Jesus Christ to be physically close to him after what is described here no one would look for the tomb of Christ in order to be physically close to him it isn't necessary because he has risen from the dead and he is alive now this is why Mary brings spices to the tomb now if he'd been buried in the ground and covered with soil you could go to that place and there would be no for one of a better word smell but the seal between a rock and the rot and the tomb is imperfect Jesus is packed with 75 pounds over 30 kilos of herbs and spices and wrapped in linen and placed in a cloth and she Mary comes in the early in the morning on the first day she can with more spices to dress the body so that those who come and visit may be at least greeted with a pleasant aroma as pleasing as the life which indeed had been lived but the - but the body is empty the tomb is empty she cannot understand what is going on she runs away and she finds two disciples Peter and John and they come running to this place and they're looking into the tomb we know that John is fitter than Peter maybe he had one of those fitbit's or something whatever it is he's faster he gets here first Peter comes up behind he runs straight into the tomb he sees but he doesn't observe but John observes and the thing that he notices is the orderliness of the tomb the head cloth is neatly folded away from the rest of the wrappings the linen strips are there almost as if the body has somehow just come out of it and it's crumpled down and as he looks at this the one thing that John knows is the body has not been stolen the body has not been moved if the body had simply been moved you wouldn't remove the the cloth in which he had been wrapped up in you wouldn't remove all those linen strips you certainly wouldn't take the time to neatly fold the cloth which has gone round his head and put it to one side you would have grubbed grab the body and ran or he would have carried it out in the cloth and put it somewhere else and John as he looks into the tomb just before the reading we had it says he believes but then it qualifies it he believes not understanding what the scripture has said John comes to the conclusion that Jesus Christ is risen from the dead not because of Scripture not because of some theological conviction he believes because of the evidence he sees the scene and there's only one conclusion the evidence allows him to draw the body has gone Jesus has risen and so he leaves it's so important in this day and age to remember that there is so much evidence for the Christian faith that is why we're so interested in the archeology archaeological reality of the sites wherein it is not very far from this place that Christ was crucified it was not very far from that place that Jesus was buried we are in the place where these events took place now some people feel that somehow this is unscientific and not credible in such a day and age but that belief is mistaken it is because we understand science it is because we understand laws of nature that we can reliably conclude that a miracle has taken place if I were to take my Bible and throw it up into the air to try to allow someone on the front row over there to catch it my Bible would fly in a beautiful parabolic curve described in a mathematical equation I learnt at the age of 12 and if I know the velocity and if I know the angle of departure from my hand I can protect the flight paths of my Bible with 100% accuracy every single time as it travels in a curve and I can predict where it will land with 100% accuracy but let's suppose I were to throw my Bible in the air and as it flew through the air it stopped midair and just stayed there what would I conclude that the law of gravity is being broken no I would conclude that something I cannot see or someone I cannot see is applying an equal and opposite force to hold it there how do I know that someone has intervened I know because I understand science I understand the laws of mathematics it is because I have my understanding of science my understanding of mathematics I can tell someone has intervened how do we know that God intervened and raised Christ from the dead it is because we understand science we understand biology we know the dead can come back to life the question is who has intervened to bring about this event and this is what we celebrate here in this place that God was in Christ that when he went to the cross he paid for our sin that we may be forgiven and that the Father has raised him from the dead and John believes as I said very clearly in the Gospel of John not because the scripture not because of theology but because of the historical evidence before his eyes it is the only explanation and John leaves Mary however is still weeping bitterly out loud angels appear if anything should have convinced her at this point you would think it would be a couple of angels but she is so grief-stricken all she wants is to cling on to that last physical remembrance of Jesus Christ her Lord and He is gone so when they asked her the question why are you crying what is the source of your grief instead of instead of pausing and thinking why are you asking me this she simply pours out her heart they have taken my lord away I don't know where they have put the body and as she responds to the question she turns around this question is so important for Mary she has asked it twice and as she turns around there is Jesus but if any of you have whipped wept and wailed out loud you will snow how hard it is to see through tears and she Jesus is now standing behind her but she's not looking for Jesus you see she's looking for the right person but in the wrong place her problem is not that she is asking for too much and wanting to see the body she's asking for too little so she's not expecting to see Jesus standing she wants to see him wrapped the body and so now she simply assumes in a very logical way that maybe he is the gardener who else would be in the garden this early and she's not interested in blame she's not interested in retribution she's not interested in any of that all she wants is the body of Christ back and she says have you taken him if you have tell me where you've put him I will go and get him she doesn't say if you've taken him bring him back she's not interested in blame all she wants is the body back that last physical thing to bring some source of comfort because she is disappointed all of the disciples are disappointed you see that disappointment on the road to Emmaus when Jesus joins them and says what has happened and they say we thought he would redeem us we thought Jesus would rescue us and Jesus is now simply not simply failed it seems to redeem them this rescue hasn't taken place but now even his body is gone for Mary the loss is total and with one word Jesus transforms the whole situation it is my pleasure and privilege to travel across the world and as I do I learned so much more and I received so much more than I ever give and as I travel due to the wander of technology I have the privilege of phoning home when I ring home I don't have to explain Who I am I don't have to say hi this is Michael your dad do you remember me sometimes I'm away a long time maybe I need to do that I don't need to do that I ring home one of my kids will pick up the phone and all I need to do is say Amelia and he'll instantly go dad she knows my voice Jesus Christ uh ters one word he calls her by name Mary and when she hears the voice now she instantly recognizes who is standing in front of her Jesus calls her by name Jesus Christ calls you by name he calls every single one of us by name he calls us to follow him and when you recognize his voice and who he is that God Himself is speaking to you through the person of Christ tears of mourning are transformed into tears of joy Mary doesn't stop crying when she hears her name but the emotion associated with those tears is now totally transformed Jesus Christ is alive and now he has to explain no doubt to her he will have explained to the disciples on the road to Emmaus and they will finally get it and they will finally see it in the scripture that God loves every single one of us you see Mary was mourning a loss of a relationship as were the disciples they were suffering from disappointment but the truth is is that God is mourning a loss of relationship with us with humankind he loves us he loves this world he loves you he is desperate to be in relationship with you but through sin and through what we have done we are dead to him and also and went in spiritually dead even to ourselves we are not alive when Christ went to the cross he paid a price where he took the curse of sin that has fallen on us and brings death and means that we are relationally lost to God he took that on into himself he paid the price and God in Christ took that into himself in order to redeem us in order to repurchase us that word in the Greek of the New Testament a polluter OSIS Lutron is the work to redeem it means to buy back a polluter osis was the process by which in the ancient world including the world that was marked in Jerusalem that Jesus Christ lived in if someone important was taken captive by the enemy someone would come they would negotiate their release they would pay a price and they would bring them back the whole process not just the price itself that whole process of identification negotiation purchase and bringing them back was called a pool atrocious they were redeemed redemption had taken place they had been saved and Christ comes into this world to pay the price the debt that we owe to God because we have betrayed him we have turned away from him we have denied him just as Peter denied him in the garden not very far from here just as he was betrayed and abandoned by his friends just as when people disavowed him and said I knew nothing of you Jesus came into this world to rescue a people whom he loved captive in sin and in bondage to death and he pays the price and through his resurrection he conquers over sin over death he offers us new life a new hope a new start a new beginning a new relationship Mary was grieving because she'd lost this relationship with God the simple truth was was that God was actually grieving over the lost relationship that he has with mankind and he was determined to rescue it and bring it back that's why he came that's why he was crucified he established it through his resurrection and he is here alive today do you know him do you have his presence in your heart to be a Christian is not simply to claim a name it is to have that presence to have that relationship at the center of your existence and at the center of your life and he can conquer through anything that you may face I remember listening once to a man who was telling me of a close friend his wife had killed in a car accident she was driving over the crest of a hill two young men who had been drinking late at night with no lights on their car came up the hill on the other side and they collided at the top at high speed neither of the men in the other car were wearing seatbelts this man's family were all killed and the two men in the car that hit them were thrown out through the windshield and they landed in a ditch and they survived but neither of the men would confess to whom had been driving and therefore neither of them could be prosecuted there was no way of identifying who the driver of the car was so this man had now not only lost his family and his children there was this sense of injustice there was no justice for what had happened and both of these people got off free one day he fell asleep in a chair and he was dreaming and he had like almost a waking nightmare he dreamt that the Sun was setting on him and he was running towards the horizon and no matter how fast he ran towards the horizon the Sun was setting at a faster rate than he could reach it and eventually the Sun set he was plunged into darkness at this point he sprang out of his chair wide awake his sister was in the room she said to him what happened and he explained this dream and after he'd explained it she said you know if you wanted to enter the Sun you needed to turn around and start running the other way and then you would have met the Sun as it rose over the other horizon as you sit here whatever difficulties trials disappointment grief that you have know this if you run towards the Risen son you will find yourself in the warmth and light that he alone brings her tears of weeping are turned into tears of joy everything is transformed and everything is changed there's one other question that Jesus asked her who are you looking for he says now that verb to look has more than just to see it also means desire if I were to ask you what are you looking for in life I'm not asking you what are you looking at right now you're looking at me but soon the scenery will change and it'll be more beautiful but if I were to say to you what are you looking for I'm asking you what is it that you desire what is it that you want what is it that you're hungry after Jesus asks every single one of us who were you looking for who do you desire who is it you want why have you come to this place today who did you want to see a preacher your family a place God is here with us he is asking you who are you looking for who do you desire if you are here this morning and you know as you sit here in this place it's almost as if the risen Christ has reached his hand into your heart and placed it on your life and you know that your sin has separated you relationally from God and for the first time you realize that Jesus Christ the risen Lord has come into this world to pay the price for your sin take on your brokenness the curse that has fallen on you because of things done wrong in your life onto himself and wishes to set you free that you may enjoy relationship with him I'd like to offer just a very simple prayer now if you are satisfied with you just drop it in my hand or if you don't have a card write your email address on the order of service tell me which country you're in we will write to you and we'll be in contact with you if you would like me to pray with you just raise your hand as you say if you know you just say yes to Christ and let me pray father we thank you that 2000 years ago Christ came the Son of God and died for our sins you did not fail you did come to redeem all of us and we thank you that in you we are set free Lord Jesus you are risen from the dead we thank you that you can break the chains of death and sin set us free this day change our hearts and lives and we will follow you whatever it may cost you cost us because it we fear nothing for we also look forward to the day when you will raise us from the dead and we will be with you forever and it's in Christ precious and Holy Name we pray

Channel: RZIM HQ

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Keywords: RZIM, Ravi, Ravi Zacharias, Ravi Zacharias International Ministries, apologetics, evangelism, Jesus, Jesus Christ, Christ, Christianity, Christian, Christian Apologetics, philosophy, God, truth, Bible, gospel, Lord, salvation, Michael Ramsden, OCCA, Oxford, Jerusalem, Sunrise Service, Garden Tomb, Empty Tomb, Easter, resurrection, from the dead

Id: SfYzzmgPf2g

Length: 21min 10sec (1270 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 29 2016