If He Is Risen…Why Are You Dead?

Matthew 28:6  “He is not here; for He is risen, as He said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay.”

Every year about this time, we hear a beautiful Easter message. We listen to the touching Easter songs that are sung, sadly, only at this time of year. If we are fortunate enough to be in a church large enough, we will get to also enjoy the Easter plays both by adults and children. And, oh yes; the Easter cantatas put on by the choirs that are greatly anticipated.

I fear two things. There are two pits churches can easily fall into. People have heard the gospel preached so regularly that it no longer moves them to experience the power and the beauty of the Easter message. I also fear there are far too many churches where this gospel message is only heard twice a year. At Easter and at Christmas. The rest of the year, a watered down version of the gospel is offered to make the goats feel good so they might stick around for another year until the gospel is preached again!

HE IS RISEN!

This is the gospel. Righteousness is victorious. Death is defeated. Beware my friends of these two pits far too many Churches fall into every year. So many who would profess Christ still live just like the world. You cannot tell them apart. No victory is seen in their lives. No fruit is grown on their trees. No crowns are laid up in Heaven for them.

There is only hearing a beautiful love song sung once or twice a year celebrating His birth and His death without any doing. Be aware this year to be doers of the Word and not hearers only. Don’t let the gospel become so weak that it leads us not into the fight daily on the side of Christ against sin. Just because the battle has already been won, doesn’t mean the fight is over for the souls of men.

He is risen just as He said. Be aware this year that none of us fall into one of these pits.

If He Is Risen…Why Are You Dead

From death’s sting we are free,
To live our lives victoriously.
No longer lying within our own tombs.
No longer dying defeated by our wounds.

How sad if to this world we would die,
And hope for nothing better besides.
Our God is alive.
He is not dead!
Stop living as though for you He never bled.
Would you ask one who is dead,
Which way to go?
And then follow him wherever He led?

If you have died to self and it is true,
Then live like you are alive!
Climb out of your tomb!
He died your life save.
Three days after, He left behind an empty grave.
The stone was not rolled away,
So to His Father He could return one day.
It was rolled away so we could see.
No longer in the Earth was He bound to be.

When others look at the life you live,
What do they see?
Do they see someone who in Christ is alive?
Or do they see, one who’s mourning the dead.
Like Christ isn’t coming back for us and be wed!
Do you follow a Savior who has risen,
Or a lesser god born of your own delusions?

Our hope is not in Christ!
Our hope is in a risen Christ!
He left this world unimpressed.
Seeking instead a perfect life that all men would be blessed.
Carnal pleasures will leave a bitter taste.
The world will leave you thirsty.
It will leave your life in waste.

Christ descended to us with His Father’s love to bestow.
He then ascended back into heaven, so you and I could go.
You have been given a choice between death and life!
You are wanted dead or alive.
The Deceiver wants us as one of the living dead!
Our Savior is alive and living in men!
You are also wanted!
By the One who came having both humanity and divinity?
Will you live as one temporal or eternal?
Will you die as one earthly or heavenly?

Don’t bother looking in the grave.
He arose and is coming back just as He came.
Climb out of your tombs.
Live like you’ve been reborn from His womb.
Your labor will not be in vain.
Your life and death will never be the same.

Since you beheld the Son of Man,
As He ascended back to heaven just as He planned.
Be alive in Christ!
You can be healed of your sin because of His wounds.
Or, you can continue living as one dead.
Choosing instead to lay quietly and comfortably in your tombs.
If He is risen just as He said,
And He has saved you from certain doom.
Why are you living like He, and you, are dead?

Ron C. Kyker

Isaiah 53:1-3  “Who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? He grew up before Him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to Him, nothing in His appearances that we should desire Him. He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering familiar with pain. Like one from whom people would hide their faces He was despised, and we held Him in low esteem.”

Be aware my friends! How will you hold Him in high esteem as we enter this Easter Season?