Greetings. This is Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church with a moment of truth, where we challenge you to think through an important issue of life and faith. And today, as Easter Resurrection Sunday is upon us, we challenge you to think through the resurrection of the author and finisher of our faith, that is the Lord Jesus Christ. And we ask you to do this with this proposition. The empty tomb is the garden of covenant blessing.

Yes, the empty tomb is the garden of covenant blessing. If indeed, as we saw last week, the cross is the altar of covenant curse, then the empty tomb is the garden of covenant blessing. But before we begin to unpack this, I want to invite you to our Seder dinner on Good Friday, April 14th at 6 p.m., a Seder dinner. Seder means order. And the Seder dinner is the order of the Passover meal.

That last meal that Jesus ate was a Passover meal before his crucifixion. And it displays so eloquently the life and death and burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It does so beautifully and eloquently, foreshadowing Christ and his sacrifice, even as the Passover lamb was sacrificed every year in the Jewish temple and on the altar. And we see indeed that Christ was the sacrifice. He endured the covenant curse on the altar for us.

And we want to portray this in the Seder meal, bringing out Christ in that meal. And it will be a full meal too, not just a token meal. We've got some 25, 30 pounds of lamb that we're going to roast with all the side dishes and trimmings. So you will go away, not only with a full belly, but also with a full heart, understanding more and more the death, burial, and resurrection of your Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. Once again, we will be sponsoring the Seder dinner.

Don't worry about, we'll be taking up a voluntary collection, but don't worry about buying tickets or bringing food yourself. We just want to invite our listeners to come and join us for this Seder dinner, 6 p.m., Good Friday. That's April 14 this year. Well, last week we looked at the crucifixion where we saw Christ plunged into the sufferings of hell on behalf of his people. What misery, what agony that was.

Here at the cross, God himself punished his own son with utter affliction. The affliction do every one of us as covenant breakers because of the original sin of our first father, Adam. Strengthened and sealed, that fate was in the sin that proceeds then from our own nature. So make no mistake about this, dear listener, unless you claim Jesus' suffering as a substitute for you, you will suffer in every excruciating detail in hell. Make no mistake about this, child of Adam, unless you claim Jesus' righteousness as a substitute for the filthy rags of your own righteousness.

You will stand in those rags on judgment day, while those who have believed will stand in the perfect glistening righteousness of Jesus Christ himself. These are just a few of the details we examined last week. Now, we encountered them as we studied our first proposition, the cross is the altar of covenant curse. So then, the question for Easter must be, if the cross is the altar of covenant curse, what is the empty tomb? My proposition for you today to consider is the empty tomb is the garden of covenant blessing.

The empty tomb is the garden of covenant blessing. Let's take these terms one at a time, shall we? First of all, the empty tomb. Oh, dear listener, the occupied tomb is a victory for the serpent, isn't it? The occupied tomb is the ancient enemy of God and man, that is the devil.

The tomb, the grave is the antechamber, the waiting room, if you will, for hell. Oh, as Isaiah puts it, the grave is all astir to meet you when you come. He's talking about the kings of the earth. It rouses the shades to greet you, all who were leaders of the earth, from Isaiah 14. And there is a day when, as John puts it in Revelation, death and Hades will be thrown into the lake of fire.

This is the second death. Far from being natural, too, dear Christian, far from being natural. Death is the most unnatural state of things in all of God's created universe. Life is the operating principle of creation. Genesis 2, 7 puts it this way.

Then the Lord God formed the man of the dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and the man became a living creature. Death is the tragic arresting of life, which should, life should go on forever. We've gotten accustomed to tragedy. Just because it happens every day with mundane regularity does not make death right and good and natural. There are only two possibilities why the tomb is empty as well.

Consider this with me as we consider the term the empty tomb. Oh, the tomb is empty for one of two reasons. Either another living creature has taken the body which once occupied it, or else new life in the dead man has made the tomb obsolete. Which was it in Christ's case, dear listener, huh? His enemies paid the guards at the tomb to say, tell the people his disciples came by night and stole them away while we were sleeping.

Now we can either take the testimony of corrupt and wicked men like this, men Jesus called vipers and hypocrites, or we can take the testimony of the angel who sat astride the empty tomb, who said, why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here. He has risen. The angel's response is reasonable given who Jesus was, right? He has risen indeed.

Peter told the rulers of Israel, you killed the author of life whom God raised from the dead. Oh, here's the paradox, listener. The very author of life died. He who breathed life into Adam? Stop breathing himself.

Yet could this stand in the end? We say no. As Peter puts it, God raised him up because it was not possible for him to be held by death. What a beautiful expression. Christ died a true death, but it was not possible for him to be held by death.

Oh, no more than a toddler can stop a beach ball from bursting to the surface of the water by holding it down. Huh? Death could not hold Christ. Why? This goes to the very heart of the nature of God.

And as to justice and mercy, wrath and grace, salvation and damnation, that is God's economy of covenant. Let me posit three things with you. Death could not hold him because he was not worthy of death. Christ was not worthy of death. Hebrews puts it this way.

He was like us in every respect, yet without sin. Justice demands the acquittal of the innocent and the punishment of the guilty. The resurrection declared Jesus Christ was innocent, just, and perfect. Peter puts it this way. You denied the holy and righteous one, but God raised him from the dead.

Jesus was innocent. Jesus was righteous and holy. Jesus was in his very person, the author of life. Therefore, he was acquitted, acquitted indeed by being raised from the dead. Secondly, the empty tomb was a declaration of God's satisfaction in Christ's work.

Oh, dear listener, Christ labored. He worked all of his life and he did work that no one else could do for you. That is, he brought you to God. He labored to bridge the infinite chasm, which opened up that at the fall. And this has been made evident to all.

Even the prophet David, as Peter puts it, foresaw and spoke about the resurrection of the Christ, that he was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh seek corruption. No, Christ was raised uncorrupted and incorruptible, brought back, triumphant from the grave. So satisfied is God the Father with the work of his son that he has fixed a day, Paul says, he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed. And of this, he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead. Well, thirdly, Christ's tomb is empty and because it is, yours will be too.

Yes, dear Christian, because Christ's tomb is empty, yours will be too. Paul puts it this way. If the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his spirit who dwells in you. On Easter morning, death lost its most valuable victim. Had death been able to keep Jesus, he would have been able to keep us all.

But as it stands, the empty tomb is eloquent testimony to Christ's victory and death's defeat. Because of Christ's resurrection, we can shout with the apostle Paul, death is swallowed up in victory. Oh, death, where is your victory? Oh, death, where is your sting? Oh, Christian, the empty tomb is the garden of covenant blessing.

Let's consider this second term, that is the garden. Oh, into what did Christ step as he walked out of the tomb on that first Easter morning? John tells us it was a garden. In John 19, we read, now near the place where he was crucified, there was a garden. And in the garden, a new tomb in which no one had yet been laid.

When the living God dwells with men, he dwells with them in a garden. This is consistent throughout scripture. When he creates new life, he creates new life in a garden. The garden is a vivid metaphor for new life and the dwelling place of God with man from Genesis to Revelation. This is true.

Genesis tells us, for example, the Lord God planted a garden in Eden in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground, to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, unquote. Dear listener, we were meant to be hardworking, productive gardeners. Personally, I have to confess to you, I have a black thumb when it comes to gardening.

But I do have a neighbor who is a God-given Adam in this respect when it comes to growing things, making his yard a veritable Eden. His yard is lush and green and full of colorful, thriving plants and trees, smelling sweet and delightful. He's won local awards for his yard. Well, how does God describe Israel? In Balaam's oracle, for example, where Israel are his people, among whom he dwells, which he has created in one day as a new nation.

Numbers puts it this way. How lovely are your tents, O Jacob, your encampments, O Israel, like palm groves that stretch afar, like gardens beside a river, like aloes that the Lord has planted, like cedar trees beside the water. Oh, paradise, right? When God creates new life, he creates it in a garden. When he dwells with man, he dwells with man in a garden.

Even the Holy of Holies in the temple, the very inner sanctum is where God dwelt with man, where God dwelt with Israel. How was it decorated? What was it meant to evoke? Oh, the entire inner sanctum was overlaid with gold and was hammered and carved to look like, to look like what, dear listener, huh? Well, around the entrance and the walls, he carved engraved figures of cherubim and palm trees and open flowers.

The furniture was made out of olive wood and cedar, fragrant and lovely trees. The pillars and walls were festooned with pomegranates and gourds and lilies and flowers of pure gold. The lampstands, too, were designed to resemble almond branches. Even the incense, when burned, evoked the pure and fragrant scent of the very Garden of Eden. The entire inner sanctuary was overlaid with gold and hammered and carved to look like what, huh?

Oh, of course, a garden. The garden played a crucial role in our Savior's life, too. He often repaired to the Mount of Olives, a garden of fruit and olive trees. The night he was betrayed, he was praying in the Garden of Gethsemane. When he was raised from the dead, he strolled the garden, which is where the women found him as they came early that Sunday morning to embalm his body in spices and linen.

And I even ask you, for whom did they first mistake him, right? For whom did they first mistake him? Jesus asked her, that is, Mary, John says, why are you weeping? Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, right? John's gospel is filled with such irony, since Christ is indeed the gardener of that greater garden, the restored paradise of the new Jerusalem.

Revelation, composed by the same apostle John, describes the new Jerusalem as that city filled with rivers and trees and gems, even as was the Garden of Eden. Paradise restored is the place of new creation, a garden in which God dwells at peace with his creature, man. 2 Corinthians 5 says, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come.

What was lost in the Garden of Eden, that is innocence, righteousness, purity of creation, life itself, is now restored in the new garden. The empty tomb has heralded new life in the garden. God dwells anew and afresh with his creature, man, in the garden. The empty tomb is the garden of covenant blessing. Well, let's look at our third term, which is covenant.

The empty tomb is the garden of covenant blessing. This is the only word from last week which has carried over into this week's proposition. And this is only right and good. Covenant goes to the very heart of how God relates to his creature, whether in all he accomplished in the crucifixion or all he accomplished in the resurrection. How does God relate to man, dear listener?

In what kind of economy does he dispense? Justice and mercy, grace and wrath, salvation and damnation. What kind of economy? In dispensations? God forbid.

Through the Sharia law of Islam? Oh no. The endless cycles of Buddhism? No. God has established a series of covenants through which he manifests his faithfulness to those he loves.

Our brief definition of covenant, carried over once again from last week, is a covenant is a bond in blood, sovereignly administered. A covenant is a bond in blood, sovereignly administered. God unites himself to his people in an unbreakable bond, the terms of which are laid out in a systematic way too. Good examples of this are in creation, where God made a covenant with creation, and also in the Ten Commandments, where God made a covenant with Israel. Both of these covenants bear all the marks of a covenant.

That is, they have laws. You shall not eat from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for example. From the Ten Commandments, you shall not kill, steal, bear false witness. There are also blessings and curses in every covenant, where God says, in the day you eat of it, that is the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall surely die. Or from the Ten Commandments, blessings and curses, honor your father and mother, that your days may be long in the land.

In fact, so similar is the economy in which God relates to both Adam and Israel. God complains about Israel by the mouth of the prophet Hosea. He says, like Adam, they, that is Israel, transgressed the covenant. They dealt faithlessly with me, unquote. Now, what Jesus does in the crucifixion and resurrection is inaugurate what he calls the new covenant.

Vital language in the New Testament. Luke 22 puts it this way, this cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood. Christ inaugurates the new covenant at the cross. The shedding of blood is another feature of covenant too. Leviticus tells us the life of the creature is in the blood.

Blood stands for the life sacrificed. Our lives have each and every one gone forfeit to God ever since the fall in our first parents. Whether you realize it or not, you owe your very life, your eternal soul to God for your broken covenant status. First shattered in the garden. In the day you eat of it, that is the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall surely die.

And this is precisely what happened. In Adam, our first father, we all did die. Paul says it this way, sin came into the world through one man, that is Adam, and death through sin. Listener, every covenant has a mediator. You must understand this.

Every covenant has a mediator, a federal head, that is someone who stands for and between the people and the king of the ancient covenant. Adam was our first mediator, our first federal head, our first covenant mediator. He stood for the entire race of men when he sinned. Paul says many died through one man's trespass. Because of one man's trespass, death reigned.

And ever since Adam, each and every one of our individual lives have given shameful testimony to this fact that we have inherited both Adam's bad record, that is imputed sin, and Adam's bad heart, that is his sinful nature. The empty tomb is a declaration that a new covenant has been struck with a new covenant mediator, not Adam, but none other than Christ himself. It is God's stamp of approval of this new mediator's work. Where once sin characterized us under Adam, now righteousness characterizes us under Christ.

Paul puts it this way, for as by the one man's disobedience, the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience, the many were made righteous. Oh, where once death reigned supreme as the ultimate destiny of all of Adam's children, that's us, that's us, the occupied tomb. Now, those who have faith in Christ have life, that is the empty tomb. Paul says, if because of one man's trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in the life through the one man, Jesus. Oh, what a blessing, dear listener.

Have you received the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness? Then the promise is to you that you have life in the new man, Jesus Christ, and your tomb will be empty. The apostle Paul is very clear about this. The crucifixion and the resurrection are two components of one covenant act. Paul says this in Romans chapter four, faith will be counted to us who believe in him who raised from the dead, Jesus, our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.

Unquote. The empty tomb is eloquent testimony, dear listener, that you have re-entered and been restored to full covenant status. The empty tomb is the garden of covenant blessing. Well, let's take this last term then, blessing. Blessing.

The empty tomb, the resurrection, is the first and crowning blessing of salvation in Christ. We saw last week that the cross was the altar of covenant curse. Now with God's stamp of approval upon his son's sacrifice of his life for yours upon the cross, the way is open for the fulfillment of all the blessings promised in God's economy. What is a curse and what is a blessing? From last week, a curse.

Curse is a condition of sin and misery above which no man can rise because God has ordained it so. Well, a blessing then, correspondingly, a blessing is a condition of peace and prosperity below which no man can fall because God has ordained it so. Blessing. When God pronounces a blessing, it is a condition of peace and prosperity below which no man can fall because he has ordained it so. And what Christian does not know, this state of affairs, every Christian has been blessed in the midst of a cursed world full of sin and misery, turmoil, disease, death, loss, sadness, loneliness, alienation.

No matter how tragic his circumstances, the Christian knows blessing. How can we maintain this? Oh, the Christian now knows the blessing of being redeemed, first of all. The Christian now knows the blessing of being redeemed. The empty tomb means you have been brought back from the slavery of sin and death.

You are now free as no worldling can know freedom. Paul says in Galatians, Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law in order that the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles so that we might receive the promised Holy Spirit through faith. Secondly, the Christian now knows the blessing of being adopted. The empty tomb means you have been changed from a rejected orphan to an adopted son. Paul says in Romans 8, you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received the spirit of adoption as sons.

By whom we cry, Abba, Father. The spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, Paul says. And then thirdly, just a third blessing among many, many, many, many blessings. Third blessing, the Christian now knows the blessing of being sanctified. The Christian now knows the blessing of being sanctified.

This fancy theological word simply means that God looks at us in Christ now as holy and righteous and that we can now begin to live holy and righteous lives. What a blessing. The empty tomb means you have been made holy and set apart as a person with a special destiny. The Christian knows this in a way no worldling can know. Paul says in first Corinthians, do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?

Do not be deceived, neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you, Paul says. But he goes on to say, but you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the spirit of our God. Washed and sanctified, dear listener. This is only the beginning.

All of this is only the down payment upon that condition of peace and prosperity below which you can never fall, dear listener. Blessing is that condition of peace and prosperity below which you can never fall because God has ordained it so. This is blessing. So much more is promised to him. As an adopted son, you are a child of the king from whom you will inherit all the covenant blessings in eternity that only the child can inherit.

Paul says in Romans 8, the spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God. And if children, then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, unquote. What a great promise. What is your inheritance? The consummation of all things in our savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, when he returns and heaven and earth are made one and made new.

John puts it this way in Revelation 21. Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. And the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem coming down from heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, behold, the dwelling place of God is with man.

He will dwell with them and they will be his people and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes and death shall be no more. Neither shall there be mourning or crying or pain anymore for the former things have passed away, unquote. This is only a sample of the blessings of the empty tomb, dear listener. The Bible is full of them recounted from Genesis to Revelation, and they're now yours.

These things will be yours. Oh, Christian, oh, child of faith, as you celebrate Resurrection Sunday, as you celebrate Easter, remember these things. No one will ever be able to take them away from you either. You were sealed in righteousness and peace and prosperity because blessing is indeed the condition of peace and prosperity below which no one can fall because God has ordained it so. Dear listener, the empty tomb at Easter time now, the empty tomb is the garden of covenant blessing.

Oh, may your Easter be one of joy and celebration. It's not with, it's no accident or coincidence that Easter is the premier Christian holiday. And dear listener, what I would like to do is invite you to our Seder dinner that we're having on April 14th, which is Good Friday. The Seder dinner is the grand display of the Passover meal. And we're going to have a full Passover meal, some 25 to 30 pounds of lamb with all the side dishes and trimmings that you can imagine.

And we will act out the Passover meal and we will show you Christ in the Passover meal. We'll have this once again, the Seder dinner on April 14th, Good Friday at 6 p.m. in our fellowship hall. Don't worry about bringing food. Don't worry about paying anything. Just call us ahead of time if you can and make a reservation so we know how much food to fix.

That's our Seder dinner, the grand and gracious display of the Passover meal where we see Christ emblemized in that meal. April 14th, Good Friday at 6 p.m. This has been Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church. We also invite you to join us at our Easter morning worship service, our Resurrection Sunday worship service. If you have no other place to go on that Easter morning or if you've been thinking about visiting us for a while but you haven't yet done so, come and worship with us on Easter morning.

We have a holy and reverent service that celebrates the resurrection of Jesus and his empty tomb and points to our empty grave on that joyful day of resurrection too. New Geneva meets for holy worship at 10 a.m. Sunday morning, Easter morning as well. We meet for holy worship at 10 a.m. on Sunday morning at 101 4th Street on the corner of 4th and Boulevard. For more information and reservations to our Seder dinner, call us at 523-0196. Call us at 523-0196.