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. Today, as Easter is upon us, we challenge you to think through the crucifixion and resurrection of the author and finisher of our faith, the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, we are eager to return to several other major themes with great import bearing on our future as a nation. But if we are ever to call America back to her roots, we must keep rehearsing the great truths of the very faith which makes us strong.

Just as a family rehearses its founding and its lineage for each new generation, there's nothing more foundational to Christianity than the crucifixion and the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. Ah, more than the 4th of July, more than Thanksgiving, more than Halloween, more than your birthday or even Christmas, Easter looms as the holiday of celebration, for there has been no day like it since the day of creation. Am I exaggerating? Hmm. Let us examine part two of this brief series, and today we look at the resurrection.

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! Here, God himself punished his own son with utter affliction, the affliction due every one of us as covenant breakers because of the original sin of Adam, confirmed and sealed in the sin which proceeds from our own nature then thereafter. So make no mistake, child of Adam, unless you claim Jesus' suffering hell as a substitute for you, you will suffer it in every excruciating detail.

Make no mistake, 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 Christ himself. There's no substitute for those. Well, these are just a few of the details that we examined last week. We encountered them as we studied our proposition, the cross is the altar of covenant curse.

The cross is the altar of covenant curse. If that is the case, what is the empty tomb? What is the empty tomb then, dear listener? And I submit to you that our proposition for today is the empty tomb is the garden of covenant blessing. Ah, the empty tomb is the garden of covenant blessing.

Let's take those one phrase at a time, shall we? First of all, the empty tomb. The empty tomb. Nothing is more auspicious for us on Easter morning than the empty tomb of our Lord Jesus Christ. The occupied tomb is a victory for the serpent, the ancient enemy of God and man, the devil.

The tomb, the grave is the antechamber, the waiting room to hell. The grave is all astir to meet you. When you come, Isaiah says, it rouses the shades to greet you, all who were leaders of the earth. Oh, there is a day when death and Hades will be thrown into the lake of fire, Revelation tells us. And Revelation says, this is the second death.

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 tells us, then the Lord God formed the man of 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 go on forever.

And we have gotten accustomed to tragedy, I'm afraid. Just because death happens every day with mundane regularity does not make it right and good and natural. No. There are only two possibilities why a tomb is empty. Another living creature has taken the body which once occupied it, or new life in the dead man has made the tomb obsolete.

Which was it in Christ's case? Well, 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. And we can either take the testimony of corrupt and wicked men, 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, but has risen. Ah, this is only reasonable given who Jesus was.

Peter told the rulers of Israel, he said, you killed the author of life, whom God raised from the dead. He says that in Acts chapter 3. Oh, here is a paradox. The very author of life died. He who breathed life into Adam stopped breathing himself.

Ah, yet could this stand, dear listener? Oh, no. God raised him up because it was not possible for him to be held by death. Peter also says in Acts chapter 2. Christ died a true death, but as Peter says, it was not possible for him to be held by death.

Ah, no more than a little fish can stop a beach ball from bursting to the surface, right? No more than a crow can hinder the launch of a shuttle flight. No. Why? Why is this true?

Oh, it goes to the very heart of the nature of God as to justice and mercy, wrath and grace, salvation and damnation. First of all, number one, Christ was not worthy of death. He was like us in every respect, yet without sin, Hebrews tells us. Justice demands the acquittal of the innocent and the punishment of the guilty. The resurrection declared that Jesus Christ was innocent.

He was just. He was perfect. As Peter says again then in Acts chapter 3, 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 in the resurrection. And number two, we must observe, the empty tomb was a declaration of God's satisfaction in Christ's work. Yes, the empty tomb was a declaration of God's satisfaction in Christ's work. Christ labored.

He did work no one else could do to bring you to God, to bridge the infinite chasm which opened up at the fall. This has been made evident to all. Even the prophet David foresaw, as Acts told us, even the prophet David foresaw and spoke about the resurrection of the Christ, that he was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh seek corruption, Peter says in Acts chapter 2. 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, as Acts 17 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. Oh, that's our Lord Jesus Christ. And thirdly, we must say, because Christ's tomb was empty, yours will be too. As Paul says in Romans, 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, unquote, from Romans chapter 8. On Easter morning, death lost its most valuable victim.

Had he been able to keep Jesus, that is death, 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 it, 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?

As Paul declares triumphantly in 1 Corinthians 15. Well, the empty tomb, we have just looked at the empty tomb. The empty tomb is the garden of covenant blessing. The empty tomb is the garden of covenant blessing. Let's look at the garden in our declaration here.

The garden. Let me ask you, into what did Christ step as he walked out of the tomb on that Easter morning? He stepped into a garden. We see in John chapter 19, 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.

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. As Genesis chapter 2 tells us, 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 the Lord God made 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.

Yes, from Acts chapter 2. We were meant to be hard-working, productive gardeners. Now, personally, I have a black thumb when it comes to gardening, but I have a neighbor who is a God-given Adam, if you will, when it comes to growing things, making his yard a veritable Eden, lush and green and full of colorful, thriving plants and trees, smelling sweet and delightful. In fact, he's won local awards for his yard. How does God describe Israel in Balaam's vision when he's talking about the beauty of the nation that he had created?

Where are they? Where in this place they are his people among whom he dwells, which he has created in one day as a new creation. Oh, Numbers chapter 24 tells us, 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 waters. That's how God views his people. When he is prepared to dwell with them, he views them as a garden.

When God creates new life, he creates it in a garden. When he dwells with man, he dwells with him in a garden. Oh, the holy of holies in the temple, the very inner sanctuary of the temple is where God dwelt with man, where God dwelt with Israel. And how was that inner sanctuary decorated? What was it meant to evoke?

Oh, the entire inner sanctuary, the scriptures tell us, was overlaid with gold. Then it was hammered and carved to look like, to look like what, dear listener? Oh, around the entrance and the walls he carved engraved figures of cherubim and palm trees and open flowers. And the furniture was made of olive wood and cedar, fragrant and lovely trees. The pillars and walls were festooned with pomegranates and gourds and lilies and flowers appear gold.

The lampstands were designed to resemble almond branches. Even the incense, when burned, evoked the pure and fragrant scent of the very Garden of Eden. Oh, the entire sanctuary was overlaid with gold. Then it was hammered and carved to look like what? Oh, a garden, dear listener.

The garden played a crucial role in our Savior's life. He often repaired to the Mount of Olives, a garden of fruit and olives. 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 woman found him as they came early that Sunday morning to embalm his body in spices and linen. In fact, for whom did they mistake him?

Oh, John tells us, Jesus asked her, that is Mary, why are you weeping? Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, right? Indeed, he was the good gardener, was he not? The gardener of creation. 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 finally 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 the new creation, a garden in which God dwells at peace with his creature, man. If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation, Paul says. The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come.

What was lost in the old garden, innocence and righteousness and purity, 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 covenant again, shall we?

We reviewed covenant briefly last week. Let's look again at covenant. It's the only word from last week which has carried over into this week's proposition. It's only right and good that this be so. 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? In what kind of an economy does he dispense justice and mercy, grace and wrath, salvation and damnation? Does he do it in dispensations? No, not a hint of this in the Bible. Through the Sharia of Islam?

No. How about the endless cyclical ages of Buddhism? No, none of these. God has established a series of covenants through which he manifests his faithfulness to those he loves. A bond in blood sovereignly administered.

That was our brief definition of covenant. 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 very systematic way. Good examples of this are in creation, the Ten Commandments. They bear all the marks of a covenant.

You have laws or stipulations in covenants. That is, you shall not eat from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. You shall not kill. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness.

These are all marks of a covenant. There are blessings and curses and covenants. For instance, in the day you eat of it, you shall surely die, right? Or honor your father and mother, that your days may be long in the land. Indeed, there are promises and there are curses and blessings too.

In fact, so similar is the economy in which God relates to both Adam and Israel that God complains about Israel. He said, like Adam, they transgressed the covenant. They dealt faithlessly with me. What Jesus does in the crucifixion and resurrection is inaugurate what he calls the new covenant. He says, as the institution of the Lord's Supper, this cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.

Oh, the shedding of blood is another feature of covenant. The life of the creature is in the blood, Leviticus tells us, and 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 that was first shattered in the garden. In the day you eat of it, God promised that is the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall surely die.

And that's precisely what did happen. In Adam, our first father, we all die. Sin came into the world through one man, that is Adam, Paul tells us, and death through sin. Every covenant as well has a mediator, a federal head, that is someone who stands between the people and the king of the ancient covenant. And Adam was our first mediator or our federal head.

And he stood for the entire race of men when he sinned. Paul tells us that many died through one man's trespass. That's Adam. Because of one man's trespass, death reigned, Paul tells us. And that man was Adam.

And ever since then, each and every one of our individual lives have given shameful testimony to the fact that we have inherited both Adam's bad record, that is imputed sin, and Adam's bad heart. A bad record and a bad heart. That is, we have a sinful nature. The empty tomb is a declaration that a new covenant has been struck with a new covenant mediator, none other than Christ himself. It is God's stamp of approval of the new mediator's work.

Where once sin characterized us under Adam, now righteousness characterizes us under Christ. For as by the one man's disobedience, Paul says, the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience, that is Christ, the many were made righteous. Ah, where once death reigned supreme as the ultimate destiny of all Adam's children. Ah, that would be the occupied tomb. Now those who have faith in Christ have life, that is, there's an empty tomb.

If because of one man's trespass, 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 life through the one man, Jesus Christ. Ah, the apostle Paul. Have you personally received the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness, dear listener? Well, then the promise is 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 resurrection are two components of one covenant act. And by faith, our faith will be counted to us, as Paul says again, our faith will be counted to us who believe in him who raised Christ from the dead, Jesus, our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification. Paul says in Romans chapter 4, oh, dear listener, the empty tomb is eloquent testimony that you have re-entered and been restored to full covenant status. Well, the empty tomb is the garden of covenant blessing. Let's look at blessing, shall we?

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? We saw last week that a curse is a condition of sin and misery above which no man can rise.

That's a curse. A condition of sin and misery above which no man can rise. And God cursed Adam and Eve and consequently all of us in the fall, did he not, in the garden. But what is a blessing? A blessing.

Under our context here, a blessing is a condition of peace and prosperity below which no man can fall. A condition of peace and prosperity below which no man can fall. 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 deep or tragic that Christian's circumstances, the Christian knows blessing.

Oh, how can we say this? We have been redeemed. For example, we have been redeemed. One of the blessings. The empty tomb means you have been bought back from the slavery of sin and death.

You are now free as no worldling can know freedom. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, as Paul tells us, in order that the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles so that we might receive the promised Holy Spirit through faith. Oh, you have been redeemed. One of the blessings below which you cannot sink. And we have also then been adopted.

We are children of God now. Adoption. The empty tomb means you have been changed from a rejected orphan to an adopted son. Paul says, 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.

You are a child of God now. What a blessing. You have also received the blessing of sanctification. You have been made holy. Yes, sanctified.

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, 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. But you were washed. You were sanctified. You were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the spirit of our God. You have been blessed, dear listener, in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

It's only the beginning, too. All of this is only the down payment on that condition of peace and prosperity below which you can never fall. That is blessing. So much more is promised, too. As an adopted son, you are a child of the king from whom you will inherit all of the covenant blessings in eternity that only the child can inherit.

Paul says, 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. Oh, what is your inheritance, dear listener? Oh, what a blessing. It is indeed the consummation of all things, really, when heaven and earth are made one and heaven and earth are made new.

Revelation tells us in chapter 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. This is yours, dear listener. It's only a sample of the blessing of the empty tomb. All the Bible is full of them, recounted from Genesis to Revelation, blessing upon blessing.

These things will be yours. Oh, Christian, O child of faith. Embrace Jesus now, and take him by faith. No one will ever be able to take these blessings away from you. You will be sealed in righteousness and peace and prosperity.

Oh, the condition of peace and prosperity below which no one can fall. That's blessing. The condition of peace and prosperity below which no one can fall. Dear listener, the empty tomb is the garden of covenant blessing. May you experience that this Easter.

May your Easter be one of joy and celebration. It is no accident nor coincidence that Easter is the premier Christian holiday, and there is an infinity of joy and peace and prosperity to celebrate in the empty tomb of your Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. May this lesson today contribute to your salvation and growth in the Christian faith. This has been Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church. New Geneva meets for holy worship on Sundays at 10 a.m., and we will meet Easter morning.

Join us on Easter morning at 10 a.m. at 101 4th Street on the corner of 4th and Boulevard. That is where we meet in our sanctuary at 10 a.m. on Easter morning on the corner of 4th and Boulevard at 101 4th Street. And you can call us for more information at area code 208-523-0196. Area code 208-523-0196.