He has beaten the grave. It’s no joke!
I like the story about a man who used to walk to work, taking a short-cut through the cemetery. On his way home one dark evening, he stumbled and fell into freshly dug grave.
About an hour later another man, who was quite drunk, was taking the same short-cut through the cemetery. He could hear someone crying out for help. He edged toward a dark hole in the ground with a fresh pile of dirt beside it.
A voice came from the bottom of the grave: “Help! It’s cold down here!”
The second man looked down and replied in a drunken slur, “I’m not surprised. You’ve kicked all your dirt off!”
Today many people in our world celebrate a story that is not a joke. It’s very real.
It’s about a man in a grave, not because he accidentally fell in, but because three days earlier he had willingly died for the wrong that is in every human being.
It’s not simply about a man who is assumed to have ‘kicked his dirt off’, but about a God who truly raised a dead man to life, rolled away a big stone, and opened a sealed tomb.
It’s about perfectly sober people witnessing – and angels announcing – the greatest miracle our world has ever known. Jesus truly has beaten the grave! He’s kicked his ‘death’ off!
This story is also about you. It’s a story about the amazing love of God the Father for you, his child. God loved you so much that he allowed his only Son – part of himself – to go into that grave, to suffer and die in your place; to take the penalty you deserved for the wrong that you had done.
God raised him from death to give you hope: the good news of wrongs forgiven – forever paid for; the good news that Christ is alive and is with you as you struggle with the circumstances of your daily life; the good news that there is hope and life beyond this life – for you as well.
Jesus did this for you.
He’s “kicked his death off” for you.
And it’s no joke!
Trust Him!
Pastor Lester Priebbenow
District Bishop, Victoria, and Tasmania
