1 Corinthians 15:12-19
Do you ever get the feeling that something is missing in your life? Well, you’re not alone. Many people says they are looking for fulfillment, something to fill the emptiness of their life.
People look to ….
(1) Pleasure...Pleasure is like cotton candy, its sugary and seductive, a swirl of pink calories, but once it is consumed it is gone!
(2) Travel….Dime Box, Texas; Scratch-Ankle, Alabama; Remote, Oregon; Namesless, Tennessee; Whynot, Mississippi; Igo, California (just down the road from Ono). Yet, at the end of each our travels, do you know what most people say, “I’m so glad to be…” Where? “Home.”
(3) Work. God did create us to work, but life is more than work. Many spend their lives climbing the ladder of success, and after many years they reach the top rung, only to discover the ladder is leaning up against the wrong building!
(4) Wealth...9/11, the housing-market mess and the recent down-turn in the Stock Market killed a lot of American dreams. Financial accounts that were once full are now virtually empty. No wonder Proverbs tells us our riches “makes themselves wings and fly away as eagles toward heaven,” 23:5.
(5) Religion… One guy decided to join a Trappist Monastery, where monks are not allowed to speak. The monastery made an exception and allowed them to speak two words a year. At the end of the first year, “Hard bed.” Second year, “Bad food.” Third year, “I quit.” The Abbot said, “It doesn’t surprise me, all you have done since you’ve been here is complain.”
When all is said and done, what’s the point of all we’ve said and done?
The return on all of life’s pursuits is “emptiness...zero...zilch..nadda.”
(6) Some even turn to Christianity. You may have walked in our doors today...in our own personal search for something. Maybe your taking a last look at Christianity to see if there is anything to it.
The world’s appraisal of Christianity is that it is an empty religion. The world says we have faith in a God we can’t prove and hope for a destiny of which we haven’t seen. The world says that if you become a Christian your life will be empty of fun, empty of excitement and empty of thrills.
As I have look back over my Bible in preparation for Easter Sunday 2010, what I have to say my surprise you. I have again discovered that the true message of Christianity IS profoundly “empty.” Before you walk out, listen closely to what I mean.
The point of the Scripture we read at the opening (1 Cor 15) is that if certain things are not absolutely true and factual, then it is all empty. The word “vain” in verses 14 and 17 means “empty.” Preaching is empty and faith in Jesus Christ is empty if He is not risen.
But I want to suggest that the Christian message is “empty” is a different way. From a human perspective, it all started one day 2,000 plus years ago when...
1. Heaven was Emptied.
...when the Son of God stepped out of heaven and came to earth to be born Jesus of Nazareth, John 1:1-18. What a great mystery! “Without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh,” 1 Timothy 3:16.
In John 17:5 Jesus talked to His Heavenly Father of “the glory which I had with Thee before the world was.”
2 Corinthians 8:9 says, “For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, thou He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that ye through his poverty might be rich.”
This, of course, required that he be born as a human into humble circumstances, Luke 2:1-20. Zoom in on the stable where Jesus was born. What did it look like? It looked like a thousand other stables of that day...crowded with animals; dark; damp; rodent-infested. It was an all-around rotten place for the birth of any baby, let alone the God of heaven come in human flesh. This was “Emmanuel,” God with us.
A thinking person might ask, “If God created the world, why couldn’t He provide a nice, clean suite at the Bethlehem Best Western or a private room in the local hospital or at least a comfortable place in someone’s home?”
The answer is, God could have, and His choice was to have Jesus born in a stable. God was not going to have His Son, our Savior, born into the make-believe world of the rich and famous. No, Jesus was born into our world. He is one of us! He lived in the real world, having a more humble beginning that any of us. His was not a “log cabin to White House story. Just the opposite. His was a “White House (heaven) to log cabin (the stable).”
And Jesus did not remain a cute, cuddly little baby, as our Christmas cards depict.
2. The Manger is Empty.
The Bible says Jesus “increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man,” Luke 2:452. The baby Jesus grew up and led a quiet, obscure life in those early years as a blue collar worker, “a carpenter.” He was raised by a poor, working-class couple, and worked in a construction job for maybe as many as 25 years. He lived in a small neighborhood in an unpopular town. When finding out Jesus’ hometown someone said in ridicule, “Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?”
Listen to Isaiah 53:1. “For He shall grow up before Him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: He hath no form nor comeliness: and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire Him.” Can you even imagine it? The One who is “altogether lonely” had no outstanding “beauty” to which people would be drawn.
3. The Carpenter’s Shop was Emptied.
One day Jesus vacated the carpenter’s shop in Nazareth, walked 60 miles to the Jordan River, to be baptized of John the Baptist. He knew baptism was important. May I ask you, have you been baptized?
4. Jesus’ Earthly Ministry was Empty
John 1:10 and 11 say, “He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, and the world knew Him not. He came unto His own, and His own received Him not.” The single voice that announced Jesus was John the Baptist.
What Christ emptied himself of was not his deity, not his divine attributes, but his prerogatives - the glory and privileges of heaven. For the first time, God the Son was subject to such things as hunger, thirst, pain, weariness, and temptation, John 19:28; Hebrews 4:15. In short, He came to earth as a God-man.
But Jesus’ ministry was empty, empty of any inclination toward worldly fame or fortune. After the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand they wanted to make Him a king, but He would not allow it. When crowds did begin to follow Him they soon left because of His truthful, straight-forward, confrontational and polarizing preaching about their sinfulness, their separation from God, and their unbelief, John 6: 60-66; 8:12-59. This resulted in his Twitter following tumbling and his Facebook friends unfriending him. The hits on his website also decreased dramatically, yet He persisted in pursuing this path, often perplexing his closest pals, Mark 8:31-33.
Jesus lived life without advantage. He knew poverty, discrimination, oppression, rejection.
It was not long before one night His circle of closest companions were emptied of His presence, when He was snatched away from them in order to meet His destiny in a dark dungeon beneath the very edifice erected for the purpose of worshiping Him. Forced to face the fury of pious impostors, "like a lamb to the slaughter, and like a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth," Isaiah 53:7. He "made himself of no reputation...[and] humbled himself...and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross," Phil 2:7-8.
Why did Jesus Christ have to “empty Himself” to become a human being? Why become flesh, in order to become our Savior, our High Priest and coming King over this earth? Couldn’t God have done it a different way?
Out of necessity, Christ had to become a being that could die - that could shed blood for the forgiveness of our sins...
5. Jesus Christ Empty out His Life’s blood
...to totally satisfy the wrath of God against sin. It was only the work of Christ on that bloody cross that has perfectly satisfied God with regard to sin. Why did God do it this way? “Because He is an infinite God of infinite holiness, all sins committed against Him are infinite in magnitude. Only a gift of infinite value could turn away the infinite wrath of God. And only God Himself (in the Person of His Son) could make such an infinite gift,” Ray Pritchard, In the Shadow of the Cross, p. 112.
In many church building there are figures of a still crucified Jesus—still on the cross. Jesus indeed suffered on the Cross, but after six Hour of suffering, He cried out “It is finished.” Not, “I am finished,” but “It is finished,” that is, the work of redemption was completed—paid in full. Jesus emptied the cup of God’s wrath against sin by His death. Then He died.
6. The Cross was Emptied.
His blood-covered corpse was gently removed from the cross by the kind gentleman, Joseph, who would tearfully trod to his own tomb and tenderly lay him to rest. What was the tomb all about? It was the historical proof that Jesus actually died.
7. Buried and three days later the Tomb and the Grave Clothes were Discovered to be Emptied…
...of the One who had been sealed within it, but not by human hands, for none lived who could move the stone and simply remove Him. Besides, the tomb had been heavily guarded. Just as God, with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, had parted the Red Sea, so did He blast open the grave of His Son who came out on His own power, fully alive once again. It is the emptiness of the tomb that has made all the difference.
We staked our life and eternity on an empty tomb. We know the tomb of Jesus was empty because the Jewish response was put out the false story that the disciples had stolen the body—a clear acknowledgement that the grave was empty.
The empty tomb changes everything. It changed the cross from tragedy into triumph. It changed His disciples from cowards into crusaders.
The empty cross and the empty tomb are the two hinges on Christianity. It is our gospel—our “good news.”
8. Jesus Calls His Followers to Empty themselves.
In fact, he began to teach them that to be his followers, they too would have to empty themselves. They would have to deny themselves worldly gain if such pursuits interfered the slightest with their devotion to him and his Father in heaven, even if it meant losing their lives.
· Mark 8:34-37 “Whosoever will come after me, let him deny Himself, and take up His cross, and follow me. For whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel’s, the same shall save it. For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for His soul?”
And so the analogy between his emptying and our emptying has come full circle, because it is in this very emptiness that we discover the essence of authentic faith, that is, the joy of fulfillment. For, like those early disciples,
we too are called to die that we may live and deny all that we may possess even more. “So likewise, whosever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be My disciple,” Luke 14:33.
This was the punch line of Christ's teaching about. Do not turn away from the "emptiness" of Christianity. Turn to its emptiness. It is the hub of its power. The true follower of Christ is full of faith...full of joy...full of peace...full of contentment ...full of love...full of friends...full of family...full of hope… full of help… full of heaven. It is a great life, a gracious life, and generous life.
Because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the empty tomb, if you will, we have….
· Hope for our forgiveness. Jesus is a living Savior. And because he lives we have a sure hope of eternal life.
· Help for our failures. Life is a big responsibility. And the longer I live, the bigger the responsibilities get. The pressure of family, job, finances, and friends can seem overwhelming. He will be your help.
· Heaven for our future. Jesus said, “Because I live, ye shall live also.” And He said, “Where I am, there ye may be also.”
After Jesus had competed salvation through His death and resurrection...
9. The Earth was Emptied of Jesus at His Ascension.
Jesus was taken up in a cloud, Acts 1:11. and is now “set down at the right hand of the throne of God," Hebrews 12:2, now seated at the Right Hand of God the Father. At this moment His ministry is as our Advocate and Intercessor.
And then a day will come when….
10. His Seat will be Empty at His Return.
Will you be ready when He comes again?
11. At the Rapture the Earth will be Emptied of All who have believed in Jesus.
The graves of those who have died “in Christ” will be emptied. All who are living when Christ comes in the clouds will be “caught up to meet the Lord in the air.”
Think what it will be like when all whom God has forgiven in Christ are taken out of this world! Will you be in that number that are called out? Or will you be in the number that is left behind?
12. Believers will be Emptied of all Worldly Cares to be in the presence of God forever.
“God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying,” Revelation 21:4.
· Romans 10:9-10 , “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness: and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.”