(3000?) That is incorrect….

An average of 6400 people die every day in the United States. Some die from heart attacks, some from strokes, many die in accidents on our highways, in falls, in natural disasters, some who’s bodies just grow tired and stop.

On September 11^{th 2001...twice as many people died in hospitals, on the highways, or in their homes, as died in the Twin Towers, the Pentagon or the Field in Pa. We don’t tend to remember them, unless one of them was someone close to us. Except for the occasional Laci Peterson or Ronald Reagan we try not to think about the 6800 others leaving us each day …unless, of course, one of those people is someone we love.. then we become very focused on death…for a while…..then in a surprisingly short time we wrestle our minds back to matters of the living.}

We are living in a time when death is being pushed in our faces like never before. In the war against terror, we find ourselves digging in against an enemy who seems to have zero respect for human life. (In a couple of weeks, I’m going to explain to you exactly how a human being can have no regard for the life of another. In past wars far more people were killed than in this one but we didn’t have pictures of beheaded people available on the internet just minutes after a beheading like we did on Friday. We knew, in the Forties that Hitler wasn’t a nice guy and felt like he needed to be defeated, but in wasn’t until much later that we began to see pictures of the horror of 6 million Jews being machined gunned into mass graves and herded into gas chambers that it began to sink in just how horrifying the evil had been. ( I’m also going to give you quotes in a few weeks that shows that Hitler intended to turn his attention to Christians once he finished with the Jews)

We just cannot fathom the mindset that seems to take joy in snuffing out the life of another person. To us life is so sacred….and rightly so!! But because we place such a premium on life we tend to want to shut from our minds the possibilities and probabilities of death.

The terrible events of September 11th 2001 did not increase the ultimate death toll by a single person! Those who narrowly escaped death in the Twin Towers that day will die another day, in another place, in a different way!

That’s the pattern, the only pattern, that any of us have to look forward to. In the observatory on top of the Sears Tower in Chicago a few weeks ago, we read, of one of Chicago’s past politicians who declared that he would come back from the dead to pick up where he left off. Oddly…He didn’t return! One second after his death, he discovered that he suddenly had a far better grasp of reality than he had had all his living days.

Some think of this life as a place of heightened consciousness and death as the time we leave consciousness behind…..not according to the Bible! This life is where we exist with a diminished consciousness….one second after you die all the cobwebs will be swept from your mind and, wherever you are, you will understand the meaning of life like never before.

I’ve been think of the beheading of Paul Johnson this week. I picture the cowards who cut off his head celebrating the ultimate sweet smell of victory….. they go out to dump his body,.. I’m sure reviewing how wonderful their day has been… the Saudi police see them dumping the body and five second later they are cut down and killed by the policemen’s bullets. One second after they die, the actual realities of life and death flood their minds. There are no virgins waiting to usher them into a sensual paradise…only God, the real God, the Creator God, who’s laws they defied, waiting to usher them into eternal judgment.

What I find so odd in all of that is that; in Muslim theology, their eternal future is not at all certain. When a Muslim dies they are taught that they have to walk over a thin bridge toward paradise. Those whose bad deed outweigh the good will fall off into eternal punishment…those who good deeds (particularly the five pillars of faith) outweigh the bad will make it across. Yet because martyrdom is considered to weigh heavily on the side of good deeds they will walk directly into the face of death.

Sometimes, we as Christians, have a less optimistic view of death than the pagans we are trying to bring into the light of God’s truth.

Just before Bill Bright died I was at a conference and he was carried up on to the platform. Several leaders gathered around him to pray. Some were praying loudly that God would heal him and restore his health. Finally he said, “please don’t pray that anymore, I’m ready to go. Why would someone who is on the verge of going to heaven choose to stay here.

Sometimes we pray harder to keep the saints out of heaven than we do to keep the sinners out of hell!

I want to make sure, this morning, that we, as Christians all leave with a Biblical viewpoint about death:

For those who believe and embrace that Jesus came to this earth, as God in the flesh, took on himself the sins of all mankind, took the punishment for our sins on himself, died in our place, faced head-on the forces of sin and death, defeated satan and hell and rose from the dead victorious over the grave…..

For those who believe and embrace those truths; … the way you view death should be changed forever!

(Hebrews 2:14-15) Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death-- that is, the devil-- and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. (NIV)

That last phrase is the key…“held in slavery by their fear of death” For all of us death is that great unknown. Who wants to welcome something that takes away what we do understand and replaces it with something we do not understand at all? Yet the writer of the Hebrews says there is more to this whole thing than just a fear of the unknown. He says that the fear that accompanies the thought of death for us all comes from where?________

The one who holds the power of death!.. Or did at least until Jesus released him of it… the devil!

One of the missions of Jesus…. was to free us from the fear of death!

Death is the terrifying enemy of all humanity who for those who believe and embrace the resurrection of Jesus from the dead has been sucked dry of it’s ability to terrify us!

(1 Corinthians 15:55-57) "Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?" The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Once the bee has stung it loses its ability to terrorize. It can’t actually sting a second time.

Understand with me…the stinger is not death itself…that still comes to everyone. The stinger is the “fear of death”!

After Jesus death, resurrection, and ascension death, for the believer, did not go away. In fact, it came even quicker. Persecution of Christians began almost immediately and many, many of the early church did not live to old age. Every one of the disciples, except John, came to a violent end. Paul told people they should think carefully about marrying because there might be few anniversaries to celebrate. He warned people not to skip church just because they thought going might get them killed. He himself gave his life as a martyr.

Now here’s the thing: History suggests that one of the things that drew unbelievers to new life was the way first century believers faced death. To those who had no future hope, death was something to be terrified of. Early church Christians who were led into arenas with wild animals seemed to have such a peace in the face of what they should have afraid of, that it drew the pagans around them to set out to discover what they had.

And that wasn’t all: Over the next 300 years of the Roman Empire until Constantine finally declared Christianity the official religion there was a growing influence of Christians across the empire.. Do you know why? I’m sure there were many reasons but one of the reasons actually stated by historians is this:

There were a series of plagues that gripped the Roman empire wiping out as many as one third of the people in a given area at a time. And it wasn’t just one plague but one after another after another. You may have seen pictures in history books of plagues where wagons would go through town each morning picking up the dead of the night before and quickly burying them in mass graves. That was how it was in the 2nd- 4th century. It wasn’t just Roman pagans dying… Christians died too…but it was there response to death that made everyone sit up and take notice.

They carry their dead as if in triumph!

How in the world could the death of someone they loved leave them with a sense of triumph… of mission accomplished?

Because they knew the stinger was already gone!

Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage said in 251AD that only non-Christians had anything to fear from the plague.

When the pagans watched the Christians literally embracing death, they turned to Christ in vast numbers.

(Hebrews 2:14-15) Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death-- that is, the devil-- and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. (NIV)

Let me take you back for a moment to the scene of the resurrection:

(John 20:6-18) Then Simon Peter, who was behind him, arrived and went into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, as well as the burial cloth that had been around Jesus' head. The cloth was folded up by itself, separate from the linen. Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. (They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.) Then the disciples went back to their homes,….

Enter Mary Magdalene, the woman of questionable morals, whom Jesus had forgiven:

Her reaction here to the resurrection, I think runs kind of parallel to the change in mindset between a pagans view of death and resurrection and the believers view of death and resurrection. Look with me:

She is hopeless, she is sad, she feels betrayed, she doesn’t know where to turn…

Why? How could she look right at the one she was grieving for and miss the fact that it was him? Why didn’t she recognize Jesus?

Because she was looking for Jesus in the wrong place! Her despair came from expecting him to be in the tomb. She was looking for a corpse, not the living Lord! Her hopes were based on nothing higher than that her life and future were entirely dependent on her own actions, that her immediate responsibility was to care for the dead corpse of one who might have been so much more. The unbelieving world around you is living with no more than that.

Mary was not only looking for Jesus in the wrong place she was looking entirely in the wrong direction. She was peering into the tomb with Jesus at her back.

Stop looking in; start looking out.

Stop looking for a corpse, look for a risen Lord.

Stop looking for Jesus in a place where he does not belong!

Mary!- means “exalted one.” Not Mary Magdalene.. reminding her of her past.

Look how He wraps her future and the disciples future into His future…

What Mary experienced that day now has huge theological ramifications.