By Chris WittsFriday 29 Mar 2024Morning Devotions with Chris WittsFaithReading Time: 1 minute
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Transcript:
When you think of Easter, what comes into your mind? Perhaps a long weekend and the opportunity to have a break or visit the family. Children are keen to get some Easter eggs and chocolates.
But we should take a few minutes to think of the Christian message. We celebrate Easter as a commemoration of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And there is that horrible word ‘death’. Of all the fears that plague the heart of man, none is greater than the fear of death. It is our greatest fear. Whether we’re prepared to admit it or not.
Why do we fool ourselves into believing that day will never come?
Whether consciously or not, every life is sooner or later touched by death, and thus every person must deal with these questions at one point or another. We are afraid to die. We are afraid of what happens when we die.
The Certainty of Death
Life is short and so uncertain. That’s why the Bible says, “What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes” (James 4:14b). Moses said to the Lord in Psalm 90:5-6, “You sweep men away in the sleep of death; they are like the new grass of the morning-though in the morning it springs up new, by evening it is dry and withered.”
It is sometimes said that nothing is certain in life except death and taxes. But that is not wholly true. A clever man with a good lawyer can find a way around most if not all of his taxes, but no one escapes death.
Does death win in the end? On this side of the grave it’s hard to tell.
As George Bernard Shaw wrote, “The statistics on death have not changed. One out of one person dies.” Worldwide, there are approximately 56,600,000 deaths each year. That works out to 4.7 million per month, 155,000 per day, 6,500 per hour, 107 per minute, and 1.8 per second.
Does death win in the end? On this side of the grave it’s hard to tell. Left to our observations, we don’t know much beyond the familiar words of Ecclesiastes: There is “a time to be born and a time to die” (Ecclesiastes 3:2). Visit any cemetery and you’ll quickly realise death takes people of all ages and backgrounds, the rich and poor, famous and infamous.
The Defeat of Death
I feel the story of Easter says that death is not the end of the story for those who know the Lord. The Bible tells us what lies ahead for those who know Jesus. Have a read of 2 Corinthians 5, and discover wonderful truths that give us hope as we face death with all its dark fears.
Paul says clearly that we have nothing to fear, that no matter how we die or when or where, and no matter what may be our physical condition at the moment of death, we have a promise from God that death itself cannot break.
How? Because on the event we call Good Friday, Jesus died on the cross to take my sin and your sin onto himself, so that the power of death would be cancelled. We have hope beyond the grave, as Jesus himself rose from the dead.
We have hope beyond the grave, as Jesus himself rose from the dead.
Paul expresses it like this, “Now we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands” ( 2 Corinthians 5:1).
As to what happens after we die, science has nothing useful to tell us. The great researchers have no certain knowledge about what happens a minute after we die. We will not get the answer from philosophy or from history. If you visit a vast cemetery, all you know for certain is it is full of dead people who once were alive. There is speculation, and then there is revelation. Paul says there are some things we can know with certainty.