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March 31, 2002
Easter Sunday
Psalm 16:8-11
Pastor Joel Zank

The Savior's Resurrection Makes Us Secure!

(Psalm 16:8-11) I have set the LORD always before me. Because he is at my right hand, I will not be shaken. Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices; my body also will rest secure, because you will not abandon me to the grave, nor will you let your Holy One see decay. You have made known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand.

In Christ Jesus, our Living Redeemer, dear fellow redeemed,

What makes you feel secure about your future? Is it your investment portfolio or your 401(k)? This past year has reminded us that investments can disappear in a moment. They offer no lasting security. Well then, what about your healthy diet and all those hours you spend exercising? Do they make you feel secure? Perhaps- until we remember people like Jim Fixx, the famous runner who died of a heart attack at age 45, or Olympic record holder Florence Griffith Joyner, who died of a seizure at age 38. Physical fitness can't guarantee us security either. How about your loving family, whom you trust will take care of you in your golden years. Does that thought put your heart at ease? What if you outlive your family? Maybe exciting advances in medical science give you hope. But wait a minute, scientists are still struggling to find that elusive cure for death, aren't they?

Now that I've spent a little time ripping the flimsy rug of worldly security out from beneath your feet, I'll let God's Word replace it with a 10-foot thick, solid granite foundation, which will support you without fail not just up to the moment of death, but forever afterwards. For this is what Easter is all about-security. Having said so, we'll take as our theme today: The Savior's Resurrection Makes Us Secure: secure that God is with us; secure that God will raise us; and secure that God will bless us.

The author of our psalm was a man who obviously felt secure. He says: "I have set the LORD always before me. Because he is at my right hand, I will not be shaken" (v.8). Here's a man who made God and his Word the top priorities in his life. He was a man who found security in the truth that God was with him. That truth should be enough to make anyone secure, right? Does it make you secure? Jesus has promised, "I am with you always, to the very end of the age" (Matthew 28:20). Since this is true, then why do we fall apart, come unglued, and quiver like Jell-O at the first sign of trouble? Why do things like medical tests, unemployment, and the threat of crime fill us with fear? It's not because God has lied to us. He hasn't abandoned us. No, our worry and anxiety are self-inflicted wounds. Unlike the psalmist, we fail to set the Lord always before us. We often act as if we have no God at all, much less one who is with us at all times. The fault is all our own-and is just one of our many sins that tends to make us fearful of God's presence rather than feel comforted by it. The fact that God is with us to see all our selfish actions, hear all our bitter complaints and even read our dirty, sinful minds, means that he has all the firsthand evidence he needs to throw the book of his law at us and lock us away in hell forever. It's this frightening truth that leads us to confess with Moses his words in Psalm 90: "We are consumed by your anger and terrified by your indignation. You have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your presence" (Psalms 90:7-8). So much for security!

If only we could be more like the man in Psalm 16! He was so confident in his ability to please and trust in God. How could that be? Who is this man? He is none other than our own Savior, Jesus. Oh the words of the psalm were put on paper by Israel's King David, but the Lord's Apostle Peter tells us in Acts 2:25 "David said about [Jesus]: 'I saw the Lord always before me. Because he is at my right hand, I will not be shaken.'" Through the miracle of prophecy, David shares with us the Savior's most private thoughts, thoughts that reveal his drive and determination to carry out his Father's will and save the human race from its sin. These were the very thoughts that lead Jesus to pray in the Garden, "Father...not my will, but yours be done"(Luke 22:42). Jesus loved his Father so much that he willingly became the focal point of all of God's hatred toward all sinners. God hates it when we sin. God hates us when we sin. But Jesus took the hate out of God by taking the sin out of us and suffering its punishment, our punishment in hell.

Do you understand what all this means for you? Now you are the man in Psalm 16! Jesus' payment for sin counts as yours and so does the obedience that sent him to the cross. The Bible says that Jesus has taken your sin from you and has given his holiness to you. But how can we be sure this is so? Because Jesus is alive today. In his letter to the Romans, Paul tells us that Jesus was raised to life because of our justification (Romans 4:25). If sin were still clinging to us, Jesus would still be in the grave, paying off sin's wages. But he's not. He's risen! Our sin is gone and so is our fear. We don't have to fear God's presence in our life anymore. The Savior's resurrection makes us secure in the truth that God is with us to help us, not to harm us. The God who is with us is the one who so loves us that he gave everything to save us from our sins. In the same love he promises to be at our right hand today, tomorrow, and every day thereafter, seeing us through our health problems and financial woes and every other trouble so that nothing can shake us loose from his loving arms. The Savior's resurrection means that "God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble" (Psalm 46:1).

And it means more than that! The Savior's resurrection makes us secure in the knowledge that God's help will come to us even in the grave! Once again speaking on our Savior's behalf, David says in our psalm, "Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices; my body also will rest secure, because you will not abandon me to the grave, nor will you let your Holy One see decay" (vv.9-10).

Just before he closed his eyes in death, Jesus' committed his spirit into his Father's hands. He was delighted to know his soul would be in heaven. Thanks to King David, we discover that Jesus also rejoiced to know that his body would rest in the earth. Why would this fill Jesus with joy? Because Jesus knew that the Father would not leave his body in the grave to rot. After just three days the Father would raise that body to life and reunite it with its soul. Now given our own selfish natures, we might suppose there was something self-centered about the Savior's joy, thinking, "Sure, he could rejoice, he had God's promise that his body wasn't going to even decay in the grave." But my friends such thinking misses the point entirely. There was nothing selfish about the Savior's joy. He was rejoicing on our behalf because he knew what his resurrection would mean for us-what it does mean for us!

We sinners all have a fear of death. That fear is not unlike a child's fear of a dark basement. "Daddy" a little one might say, "I have to go down stairs. Would you come with me?" Then as she thinks about it some more she says, "Daddy, would go first and turn the light on?" Friends, Jesus went first into the grave ahead of us. He's no longer there. He's passed right through, punching a hole in death that now fills the graves of his people with resurrection light.

Now the cemetery is no longer a scary place for us. Jesus has left the light on there by promising each of us, "Because I live, you also will live" (John 14:19). Jesus' beautiful confession in the psalm supplies us with the faith we need to make his words our own. By faith our hearts are glad. Our tongues rejoice. Our God will not abandon us to the grave. Even if our bodies are in the earth for hundreds of years, even if they have decayed to the point that they are nothing more than piles of dust, even if our ashes have been scattered to the winds or the seas, these things present no challenge to the one who made us and, more than that, who raised himself from death to life. In whatever shape or form he finds them, "By the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, [Jesus] will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body" (Philippians 3:21).

Rest secure, dear friends, God will raise us from the dead. But then what? What lies beyond that promise? The psalmist tells us in our closing verse. He assures us that God will bless us: "You have made known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand" (v.11).

The path of life isn't some road we travel by our own power to get to heaven, as though Jesus came to show us all the turns we must take but then left us to make the journey alone. The path of life is all Jesus' saving work, which has been set before us this morning. The path of life is the Savior's perfect obedience credited to us. The path of life is his innocent death for our sins. It's his resurrection and the life it guarantees us. Jesus does not merely show us the way. He tells us he is "the way and the truth and the life" (John 14:6). This is the promise of our living Redeemer that guarantees eternal security. How does the hymn writer put it? "He lives our mansion to prepare.; He lives to bring us safely there" (C.W. 152, v.7)." This is why we can be sure that God will bless us.

But how will he bless us? What will heaven be like? That I can't tell you because God doesn't tell us. Apparently heaven's wonders go far beyond human words and expressions. But what I can tell you is that in heaven there will be no limit to our joy. How different that will be. While we may sometimes find earthly life tolerable, wouldn't you agree that here joy tends to be in short supply and that pleasure is rare diversion? But in the psalm Jesus talks about being filled with joy and pleasure. The blessings he enjoys and has won for us won't be just an occasional experience of our heavenly existence. They will fill every moment of our lives there-lives that will never end. That's the other difference. In heaven not only will there be no limit to our joy, there will be no end to it either.

Here on earth there is always a bittersweet end to the times we enjoy. We must leave the gathering of friends, finish the game, put down the book, turn off the music. In heaven the blessings God has prepared are so secure that they will go on and on and on. That's security!

You know, for about as long as I can remember, Linus, the Peanuts cartoon character has been a poster boy for insecurity. Remember how he had to take that blanket of his with him wherever he went? A child's blanket, a simple piece of cloth may seem like a silly object to which to turn for security, but what have you found in this world that offers anything more? Pension plans? Your job? Your health? Medical science? The security these things offer is short-lived. No, today were back to a blanket, a piece of cloth, to be specific, the burial cloth that Jesus folded up and laid to the side after wiping from his eyes the sleep of death. That cloth and the empty tomb in which it was found are the only security we'll ever need. For these things remind us that the Savior's resurrection makes us secure, secure that God is with us, secure that God will raise us and secure that God will bless now and forever. Amen.