Looking for Jesus in all the Wrong Places
Jul 26, 2013 2246
The women were frightened and bowed their faces toward the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? 6 He isn’t here, but has been raised.” (Luke 24:5)
There are some women here who go looking for Jesus because they cannot even bear to think of living in a world without Him. They had seen Him killed the day before. Jesus had told them that He would rise again, but they didn’t remember; they didn’t believe.
They didn’t really know what they were looking for; after all, they had seen Him die. But they went to the tomb to fill the emptiness in their hearts. In our society, we also go looking for Jesus. But like these women, we look for Him in all the wrong places.
We look for Jesus in science, which for many is the great “god” of our age. But the problem with science is that you can’t do a laboratory experiment to prove that Jesus Christ rose from the dead. Science might give you some clues, but you can’t find Jesus in science; He isn’t there.
We go looking for Jesus in modern culture. Modern western culture is based on a faith commitment to atheism in general, and materialism and naturalism in particular. In other words, there is no god, and you are just a bunch of atoms that got lucky; there is no greater purpose in life than to replicate. And the idea that goes along with this is that ultimately there is no objective reality other than what is material, because what random DNA believes does not matter at all. So according to this, what you believe about Jesus doesn’t matter; in fact, what you believe about anything at all doesn’t matter. You can’t find Jesus in modern culture; He is simply not there.
Some people look for Jesus in religion. The women who went to the tomb had said some prayers and had performed some religious rituals over the body of Jesus the day before when it had been taken down from the cross. But their religion ultimately didn’t satisfy their need for Jesus. That’s why they were sorrowing when they came to the tomb so early that Sunday morning.
There are too many sorrowing religious people in the world; these are people who believe that religion consists simply in religious beliefs and religious duties. Sadly, you won’t find Jesus in much of what passes for religion in the world today. He just isn’t there.
And so we look for Jesus in all the wrong places, and never find Him. Why? Because He isn’t there! He is risen! Jesus is alive today in the presence of the Father, ministering blessings and grace to His children.
You see, what this means for you and for me is that one day the King of Death will come looking for those people who belong to him, and he will come to your tomb, and he will see that it is open. He will see that the stone has been rolled away. And he will look inside and he will see that you are missing. Then Satan will shake his fist, and he will rage and storm about in fury, crying out, “Where have you laid him! He is mine! He is mine!”
And Jesus will say to him, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He [she] isn’t here, but has been raised.”
Because of what Jesus has done, you may spend a while in what Jesus calls a sleep, but who will spend an eternity with Him – an eternity that can begin today!
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