The Living Savior Exceeds Expectations – April 5, 2021

When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go to anoint Jesus’ body. Very early on the first day of the week, just after sunrise, they were on their way to the tomb.
Mark 16:1,2

The Living Savior Exceeds Expectations

What do you expect to see when you go to a funeral? You expect to see friends paying their respects and loved ones trying to hold it together. You expect to see the deceased person’s body or an urn full of ashes.

That’s what you expect because that’s what you’ve experienced. That’s what the women who visited Jesus’ tomb on Easter morning were expecting, too. They’d been to funerals before. They thought they knew how this funeral was going to go. Only when they arrived, there was no body. That was definitely unexpected!

The women saw Jesus die on Friday. They saw his lifeless body carried down from a cross and put in the tomb. They saw that he was dead. But with Jesus, what you see with your eyes doesn’t tell the whole story.

So it is at the funerals of those who die believing in Jesus. You may see friends coming to pay their respects and see grieving loved ones trying to hold it together. You may see a body. But your eyes don’t tell you the whole story. And they certainly don’t tell you the best part of the story.

The grave could not hold Jesus. And it will not hold the ones who have faith in Jesus either. He promises, “Because I live, you also will live.” (John 14:19) The grave is where we were supposed to get what our sins deserve. But instead, the grave is where the believer gets what Jesus deserves—heaven, forever. Instead of closing our eyes in death and opening them again to see even greater death, we close our eyes in death and open them to see Jesus. Leave it to our Greatest Friend to take the devil’s greatest weapon and use it as the believer’s greatest blessing.

Prayer:
I praise you, living Savior, for your victory over death and the devil. Even more, I thank you that you share your victory with me. May your victory be my comfort in difficult days and my certain hope for the life to come. Amen.