The Gateway to God

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Easter 4

John 10:1-10

Pastor Horton

The next time you are in Berlin, Germany, take a trip to the Pergamon Museum and marvel at the Ishtar Gate.  What is the Ishtar Gate?  It was one of eight gates that surrounded the ancient city of Babylon.  Even though it’s only the lower half of the gate, it stands about 50 feet high, and is made out of this glazed blue brick with gold trim, designed to make the gate and the giant walled entrance appear like shimmering jewels.  Lions, bulls, and dragons ordain its walls.  And the Ishtar gate protected a powerful city with its palace, temples, fortress, and famous Hanging Gardens (one of the 7 wonders of the world).  Can you picture this imposing gate in your head?  It would have been built during Israel’s 70 years in Babylon, and God’s people would have lived and worked in captivity under its shadow.  

Gates were critical points of access.  In Bible times they served as focal areas of trade and commerce.  Even kings would rule and administer justice at city gates.  And yet this morning we are introduced to a living gate, in the form of a shepherd.  Just as gates protected life, this shepherd protected his sheep.  And it was far from glorious work.  Here’s how a shepherd was described by a visitor to the Holy Land some 100 years ago.  “In such a landscape as Judea, where a day’s pasture is thinly scattered over an unfenced tract of country, covered with [misleading] paths, frequented by wild beasts, and rolling off into the desert, the shepherd and his character are indispensable. On some high moor, across which at night the hyenas howl, when you meet him, sleepless, far-sighted, weather-beaten, armed, leaning on his staff, and looking out over his scattered sheep, every one of them on his heart, you understand why… Christ took him as the type of self-sacrifice.”

So much for the warm and fuzzy Good Shepherd painting so many of us gazed upon in the Sunday School rooms of our youth.  This dedicated and determined shepherd is, in some ways, a more accurate description of Jesus and his work.  It is certainly true as we find Jesus in action in John chapter 9, right before our reading begins. 

John chapter 9 tells us about Jesus healing a man who was born blind – an incredible miracle.  And, this miracle was super frustrating to Jesus’ enemies, the Pharisees.  They had wanted to slander our Lord as some fraudulent madman….“but then how”, they wondered, “could he do miracles like that?”  So the Pharisees, this pack of wolves, hounded, not Jesus, but the newly-healed blind man.  They kicked him out of the Jewish synagogue for being made well.  And like a Good Shepherd, Jesus searched for and found this man.  Jesus announces that he is the promised Messiah.  And the former blind man bows and worships his Lord.  And then, at this tender moment, the Pharisees start chirping again in criticism of Jesus.  Jesus begins our reading with a double “Amen Amen,” calling attention to the sure and eternal truth he is about to say. 

Our verses: “I tell you the truth, the man who does not enter the sheep pen by the gate, but climbs in by some other way, is a thief and a robber.  The man who enters by the gate is the shepherd of his sheep.. and the sheep listen to his voice.  He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out…and his sheep follow him because they know his voice.  But they will never follow a stranger; in fact, they will run away from him because they do not recognize a stranger’s voice.”  We are told that Jesus had some confused stares and that he clarified, hearkening back to God’s name for himself given to Moses at the burning bush.  The great “I am” is speaking.  Again and again in the gospel of John, Jesus calls attention to his connection with his heavenly Father and his role in our salvation (“I am the Light of the World, I am the Way, the Truth and the Life, I am the Resurrection and the Life, I am the Good Shepherd”).  And now?  ‘I tell you the truth, I am the gate for the sheep.”  

How could Jesus call himself both Shepherd and Gate?  Go back to the picture of the giant Ishatar gate preserving life behind its door.  That is more accurate when it comes to the world of sheep.  Shepherds with their flocks in Bible times would be a literal gate.  In the evening they would funnel their flock inside a cave, or through a crack in a wallface and then they themselves would lay out as the physical gate.  They would often turn themselves into a living wall as the only point of entry or exit.  And little sheep prone to wondering and wandering would bump into their shepherd at the door before getting themselves lost.  Any wolf or lion prowling around would have to cross the protecting shepherd before doing damage to the flock.  

Jesus emphasizes his eternal purpose in verse 9, “I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved,”  What a difference from the characters in verse 1: “The man who does not enter the sheep pen by the gate, but climbs in by some other way, is a thief and a robber.”  Jesus is being very clear, not only before the enemies of souls then in the Pharisees, but calling out all false teachers of all time.  Jesus is announcing that he alone is the only way to God.  There is no salvation apart from faith in him.  Any teaching apart from this leads only to spiritual and eternal damage.  

And frankly our world disagrees with him.  “Well!”  The world objects, and you can almost hear the outpouring of disdain!  “But Jesus, aren’t there all these other worlds religions?  Who do you think you are!”  You can almost hear the current cascading objections from the world out there.  The devil also certainly lures us away from Jesus with his sweet sounding siren songs – temptations to follow our own desires instead of God’s will.  And our Old Adam, our sinful flesh, is intrigued by the false teaching of “my wants first”.  All others who lure do so at the expense of truth.  They come to do what they want, not what God wants.  You and I might even find them appealing in the way they dress or talk or sell, but they come to steal, to slaughter, to destroy.  Their teachings might even really appeal to my reasoning, but the devil’s lies hide in their words.

Jesus is unfazed and resolute.  He does not waver.  He does not flinch.  With tremendous care for the truth, and with boundless love to protect and save life, his answer remains the same “I am the Gateway of God.  If you want to live – you live eternally through me.  There is no other way.  I am here for you.”  

And what message from our Savior!  Jesus’s words stand out.  We long to hear him speak.  We wandering sheep are often like a lost child in a big crowd, and how good it is to hear that parent’s voice call us by name, “I’m right here.  Let’s go this way together.”  We long for the relief that comes from Jesus’ words.  And knowing what he says, we hear and recognize in false shepherds that which is not true.  

And how much more when it comes to our families as well?  God is compassionate in keeping his sheep and his little lambs close to their Savior.  It is a wild and wicked world out there.  Many messages fill the ears of our children and grandchildren with a devilish design to take them away from Christ.  How can we best help them in their walk of faith?  What messages are they hearing?  What is their world being filled with?  There is no way to keep all evil away from them…and so our job (the most important job we can do for the next generation of Jesus’ church) is to teach our family to hear, and to recognize Jesus’s voice.  We want them to know him by faith, and to long for his Word and to be in his Word, because there they will have what is true.  We want them to cherish Jesus as their own shepherd who loves them so much he even laid down his life for them.

Because we now get to have a special relationship with Jesus forever (so keep the warm picture of the Good Shepherd hanging up)!  By nature we should have been left outside in the cold.  Your sin and mine placed us there for eternity.  Instead, in great mercy, Jesus has gone to the cross to pay for each sin, including our wayward wants and the many times we turned to other sinful fleeting fancies.  He took his life back up as promised and has secured for you, God’s elect, a place inside the gates of heaven.  You get to be part of his flock forever.  He is the gateway to God.  And heaven is open to you through him.

He says that was his very purpose, “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.”  That is also a reality for you and me today.  In full and free ways our Good Shepherd comes to us and forgives hurting souls inflicted with guilt.  We are equipped in full and free ways with the saving message of the gospel – and are given a full and free life to live without fear, made “Dead to sins and alive to righteousness” in Jesus.  We are given a full and freeing faith through the Sacraments.  And we have a Shepherd who cares for us individually – fully and freely meeting our needs now and eternally.  Now with one foot in paradise we live as sheep of the Good Shepherd.  In Christ we have freedom, and we have purpose, and we have direction – looking forward to the eternal pastures of heavenly life.  Just as God promised and delivered his people from the Babylonian Ishtar Gate, God promised and will deliver us through Jesus, the Gateway of God.  Heaven is open through Christ.  New and eternal life is ours today.  Let’s go tell a future sheep of Jesus’ pasture about the great things our God has done in Jesus.  Amen.

“Doubt Your Doubts” (John 20:19-31)

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“Doubt Your Doubts” (John 20:19-31)

Series: What Difference Does It Make?

by Pastor Nate Walther

Second Sunday of Easter, 04/12/2026

            I don’t know if you pay attention to religious trends.  I do, it kind of comes with the territory as a pastor, and one I’ve heard lately is to essentially treat doubt as a good thing.  The idea is simply this: it’s not good to accept faith blindly, but to really think about what you believe.  As such, doubt has become a way to hedge against arrogance that assumes, “I have all the answers”, and embrace positive virtues like humility and repentance.  In that sense that doubt has also become a virtue for many people.

So how about it?  Is that a mindset we should adopt that will MAKE A DIFFERENCE in our lives?  Before we hear God’s Word on this topic today, take a minute to think about the doubts you’re facing currently.  Maybe you’re unsure where a relationship is at right now.  Perhaps it has something to do with your health.  How about job security, do you have it?  What’s your housing situation going to be like next year?  Forget next year, do you know how you’re going to pay that bill next month?  Will interest rates reverse so you can finally refinance or actually purchase a home?  Will the stock market recover from its recent slump so you can meet your financial goals?  What’s going to happen with the war in Iran – is it truly winding down, or will it worsen leading to pain at the fuel pump or perhaps even worse pain than we can imagine right now?   Is that problem with your vehicle going to turn into a big deal?  What about that sound your water heater is making?

Yeah… doubt is something we struggle with everywhere else in our life.  We feel so much better if we can get these issues resolved!  We naturally long for answers and certainty, it’s just how we’re wired as human beings. (It’s why we appreciate the sciences, it’s even why the athlete who has everything still wants the security of that next contract!)  And today in his Word, God confirms the same is true for our faith.  He wants better for us, so he simply tells us to DOUBT OUR DOUBTS.  What better place to see it than in the biblical account of “Doubting Thomas”?

 First of all, let’s be clear: when Jesus told Thomas to “Do not continue to doubt, but believe”, that’s Jesus calling doubt a bad thing.  In fact, when Jesus says “stop doubting”, he literally says in his first language, “do not be unbelieving”, which also literally makes doubt the opposite of faith.  Doubt is not some virtue for our faith.  Doubt gets in the way of saving faith.  That said, notice how Jesus approaches Thomas.  There’s a gentleness here.  There’s also a distinct invitation preceding it. “Put your finger here and look at my hands. Take your hand and put it into my side…” In that context Jesus lovingly says, “Don’t be unbelieving, but believe – i.e. Now that you’ve seen the evidence, Thomas, there is no room for doubt!” 

And how does Thomas respond to Jesus?  Well, he promotes doubt as a positive thing and says, “There’s no way!  It can’t be true you’re alive after you died, Jesus!  You must be an imposter!…”  No, that’s not some hidden meaning in the original language.  Instead, it’s simply the short, striking reply of faith that we see in our text: “MY LORD AND MY GOD!…” Have you ever noticed that nicknames often come from single incidents, and they don’t always describe a person well?  That’s “Doubting Thomas”.  Despite his doubts Thomas answered them with faith.  He does so here.  He also does so to a degree back in John 11. When Jesus there spoke about his impending death, we are told, “Thomas said to the rest of the disciples, ‘Let us also go to Jerusalem that we may die with him,’” Now I’m sure Thomas did not completely understand all that was about to happen to Jesus. (None of the disciples did!)  But it was a better response than Peter who chastised Jesus at the time for talk of dying.  Still, because of the event we’re hearing today, Thomas gets the nickname.

But anybody would have doubted like Thomas.  It’s no virtue, just an acknowledgement of our sinful shortcomings.  It’s why Jesus doesn’t just obliterate Thomas for his doubts.  But he does direct him to DOUBT HIS DOUBTS when confronted by God’s truth, which is exactly what Thomas did in the end…  As he did so, Jesus seems to prove that faith isn’t as blind as it may appear to be.  After all, he satisfied Thomas’s doubts by actually appearing to him!  But what about our doubts?  We haven’t seen Jesus appear to us, so are we just supposed to trust him blindly?

Or could it be that God satisfies our doubts more than we realize?  Just consider the great event we are celebrating this time of the year.  Do you realize there is absolutely no event in ancient history as well documented as the events of the first Easter?  That’s not just a point of dogma, it’s a cold hard fact!  As we think about the confession of faith we will again use today from 1 Corinthians 15, there are literally hundreds of witnesses who saw the risen Christ, many of whom comprised of the Bible writers who wrote about it: Matthew, John, Peter, and James saw Jesus alive with their own eyes – likely Mark & Jude as well.  Meanwhile, Luke carefully investigated many others who had seen Jesus alive.  Years later Jesus also appeared to Paul alive to complete the rest of the New Testament.  And we have copies of all their writings dating back to within a couple hundred years of Christ.  In some cases like John, we have examples of his writing just a couple of generations after he lived!  By that metric, if you’re going to doubt anything the Bible says about the resurrection, you’d really have to doubt everything we know from all of ancient history.  Seriously, throw out Julius Caesar or Alexander the Great – any copies we have of eyewitness accounts from their lives are from many more centuries (if not a millenium) later.  But who’s really willing to doubt all of human history? 

At the same time, how do we know Jesus’ earliest followers didn’t just steal his body and say he had risen, like the Jewish leaders claimed they did?  Because that introduces an entirely new level of doubt!  Why in the world would they do that?  Why perpetuate a lie which they had refused to believe possible after Jesus death, as the disciples & Thomas’s initial skepticism demonstrate?  Then, why would they risk their lives for a belief so contrary to human experience and expectation?  If they had not actually seen Jesus rise, why would they be willing to be killed for it – as most of them were? For example, we think Thomas was martyred in India!  There’s no reason for any of it unless these events actually happened.  From the pure perspective of history, which considers primary source material and an author’s purpose in evaluating the writing – without any bias against religion and allowing for the fact that if you actually believe there is a God, it’s not hard to believe he could do a miracle – the resurrection is the gold standard of historic credibility!  Jesus will satisfy our intellectual doubts, if only we let him.

More than that, Jesus satisfies our spiritual doubts.  Think of what Jesus told Thomas & the Disciples, “Peace be with you.” We primarily think of this word as peace among people, such as peace from war, but when the Hebrews heard the word peace, they primarily thought of peace with God.  And that’s what Jesus offers us, the kind of peace that we need to be true.  It explains everything about how we live and think.  Why else would anybody want to do any good for others if they get nothing out of it, or feel guilt when they have committed a sin?  Why else would mankind care about legacy and producing things that last after they’re gone?  If you just die and that’s it, none of this would matter!  But deep down in our souls we know we’re accountable to God and that more comes after death…  Yet the best any other religion offers is a blind faith, a wishful thinking that you’ve done enough good for what comes next. Which is precisely where Jesus takes the blindness out of that faith.  He clearly shows himself as a perfect substitute for us and a perfect sacrifice for our sin.  Far from hiding salvation, he simply offers himself on the cross – as proof that something real was done about our sin – then he offers us his empty grave – as proof that something real was done about death.  As we think about our sin, and the guilt we carry, and the evil in this world, and those we couldn’t bear losing (or those we have had to bear losing), where else are we ever going to find an answer like the resurrection of Jesus Christ?

Dear friends in Christ, DOUBT YOUR DOUBTS.  They’re not as solid as you think they are.  That’s true for every concern of body & soul. Whatever you face, look to see how Jesus has helped you in the past. Look at the cross and tomb. Look at your life personally, see how God has worked out things over the last year, or over the last decade for your good.  Then trust God will do the same in the future.  Trust those same words Jesus said about us in our sermon text, “Blessed are those who have not see yet believe.”  Whenever you have doubts about health or wealth, doubts that are relational or vocational in nature, doubts about your own value & self-worth, even doubts about mortality and eternity – trust that Christ will bless you, go to him in prayer, and take the hand he offers when life has you knocked to the ground – hands pierced by nails for you! 

Yes, we will still doubt at times,  It is a sign of sin in this world and of our own sin, yet it’s no unforgiveable sin.  But the key thought, how should us doubting Christians address such doubts?  Take page out of Thomas’s book.  Put your fingers in the side of his flesh.  You & I find that in Word & Sacrament, in the message of which he is the flesh incarnate, and in his own body & blood given for us in Lords Supper.  Then DOUBT YOUR DOUBTS.  Doubt is not the goal!  It’s not with anything else in our lives, so don’t allow Satan to get you to accept it as some virtue here, that it’s somehow OK not to have the answers with faith.  No, Jesus and his certain answers to us are the goal.  He lives to MAKE A DIFFERENCE for our doubts…  And don’t let anyone tell you it’s arrogant to know what God knows and listen to what God says.   At the same time, do be humble & repentant as you see how Jesus works patiently on you despite your doubts, just like he did with “Doubting Thomas.”  Amen.

The One Place God Isn’t

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“The One Place God Isn’t” (Matthew 28:1-10)

Series: What Difference Does It Make?

by Pastor Nate Walther

The Festival of Easter (4/5/2026)

            Have you ever been in a situation where you wondered, “Where is God?”  If so, you’re not alone.  Even us pastors feel like that at times.  We’ll look difficult situation or a difficult home, and we think, “There is no God in this place.”  And you can understand that if it’s a situation where someone has rejected God and done what is wrong. But what if you haven’t?  What if you do everything right in your career, but others end up ahead?  What if you do your due diligence on your car purchase and keep up with the preventative maintenance, and you still have a catastrophic engine failure?  What if you go to church and try to follow what the Bible says, yet you still come down with that cancer diagnosis. What if it’s your mom or your dad who always went to church and they were so good to others, and they died way too young?  It’s those times where we may be tempted to think, “WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES MAKE?” if, in fact, our faith does not seem to be making any difference where it matters the most.

            Well, there is ONE PLACE GOD DOESN’T EXIST, but it’s not in these places where our fears dwell.  The one place God doesn’t exist is in the grave.   Because the only thing worse than not being able to see God is working in a situation would be if he were truly dead himself, unable to help us with these situations.  But the great meaning of Easter is that Jesus lives, and that means our faith in him can always make a difference.

            As we look back on our sermon text, a few thoughts really stand out in connection with this theme. First of all, did you notice that fear is a repetitive thought throughout?  From the soldiers to the women it is mentioned again & again, and the women’s fear even persists after they get good news from the angel.  Granted, godly fear can be a good thing – you may recall that this Bible word even has the connotation of respect – but when the angel & then Jesus himself both tell the women “do not fear”, it tells us this is not healthy fear but bad fear.  And of course they were afraid.  They thought the one they had identified as their God was dead!  They just saw him buried in the tomb at the end of the previous chapter of Matthew. Now, it would have seemed their faith would make no difference for them. And the fact is that Jesus was indeed dead for a time, the angel’s word don’t hide that truth.  He had clearly been killed before their eyes by crucifixion (vs 4), and (vs. 6) when the angel describes Jesus lying in the tomb, the tense in the first language conveys the sense that he was lying there for some time.

            Wouldn’t we have drawn the same conclusion?  As we face trouble in this fallen world – as we encounter pain and confusion and loss – fear often gets the best of us and threatens to undermine all God would give to us.  You ever notice how fear subtly shapes our lives for the worst?  You go through something bad, so you fear it happening again.  You don’t trust someone because you don’t want to get hurt again, or you assume the worst of situations that hold any resemblance to a bad chapter from your past, or you anticipate that a medical test will only end poorly long before you know the results or how it will actually play out in the future. It’s PTSD, or rather PSTD, Post-Sin-Traumatic-Disorder.  The more we’re affected by the consequences of sin in our world – worse yet, the more we’re affected by the consequences of our own sinful actions and see the damage it causes – the more it wears on us… 

            And that may be where we think we’re missing something in our faith, or (even wors) that God isn’t actually there.  But do you realize what’s going on?  There’s a very simple explanation for this that has nothing to do with any deficiency in our faith; or rather, any deficiency the object of our faith.  It’s our sinful nature’s last-ditch effort to get us away from the right answer. It’s our wounded nemesis Satan trying to drag us down with him before God crushes him.  You see, faith was never meant to solve all our problems in a terminally-ill world.  That may be the world’s delirious idea of faith as it lies on its deathbed, but it’s not God’s idea of faith.  In fact, faith will always mean a struggle in a world dying with sin.  The Bible says that faith is certainty of what we cannot see, which assumes that life won’t always be problem-free!   That’s precisely what we hear from God today: faith may not eliminate every cause of fear in our lives. But what it will do is help lead us through these fears to something better. 

            Case in point, consider the women once more from our sermon text.  They were clearly living in fear before the events of the first Easter Sunday.  I even wonder if they had some PTSD as they walked to the tomb and felt that earthquake, harkening back to a few days earlier to that wretched earthquake when Jesus died and their hopes died with him.  And we’re even told they continued to have some fear after they heard the good news from the angels!… but also that there was joy mixed in.  Why?  It wasn’t because Jesus hadn’t died.  It wasn’tbecause they were able to erase every concern.  It was because there was one place their Savior could not be found. As the angel said: “He is not here.  He is risen!”  The tomb was empty.  Though the angel reminded them that Jesus spent time in that tomb just like we will, the angel also told them that Jesus hadn’t stayed there. 

            So also, dear friends in Christ, “He is not here. He is risen!” Our Savior exists everywhere except in death.   That means Jesus lives to drive away our fears.  So whatever it is that you face – whatever irrational fears have a grip on your heart, whatever health concerns you have for you or those you love, whatever hopelessness you see in a grave whether it’s a dying relative or you just think about the terror that awaits you someday – Jesus lives to deal with it and Jesus lives to bring us back from it!  As we saw with the women, those fears may not be removed right away, but there is joy to be found if we face these fears with a Savior who offers certain victory in the future.  And it’s not just for the future.  As you look to him in faith, Christ may calm those fears sooner than you realize.  Consider the rest of his disciples.  The angel said Jesus would see his disciples in Galilee some time later. (It had to be a few days later at least, since it would take them some time to travel from Jerusalem.)  Then, Jesus repeated that he would see his disciples in Galilee.  But, whether it was because of their fears or their lack of faith, Jesus actually appeared to them that same evening in Jerusalem. (That’s actually our Gospel next week in church.  Make sure to come back for that, don’t let Easter just be a “one and done”, this message is too good!)

            That’s just it, our faith provides such good news that it’s an immediate call to action.  Back to the women: think of how they responded.  There was no waiting around.  No lingering at the greatest memorial in human history.  After all, what good was this empty tomb if others didn’t know their Savior lived also?  Similarly, the good news of Jesus’ resurrection is yours to share.  You heard that right.  Don’t think for a moment you have nothing to offer if you’re not a pastor or a teacher.  Think about this: if at this most pivotal moment in all of human history, God chose women to be the first witnesses of the resurrection with all the challenges they faced back in that culture – women whose testimony wouldn’t have been admissible in a court of law back then, women who weren’t even looking for this task themselves – then this is a job for all of us even if you think nobody will believe you or if you’re not looking for this task. Like them, the only thing we need to be qualified is simply to have heard the message that changes everything…  and you just heard it.  And besides, why wouldn’t we want to have such meaningful purpose in our lives? Souls saved forever.  That’s what’s at stake. Forever is a very long time. Nothing else we do could matter as much as that! Don’t let fear stop you from experiencing such joy.  Get it in your mind that this is for you to share, to live out, to bring to the world around you. (We’ll hear more about that also in the weeks to come.) 

            Finally, all this rings true because there’s one place God isn’t: dead and in a tomb.  If he were, our faith would contain no call to action; in fact our faith wouldn’t make any difference in our lives, we’d simply be at the mercy of what happens to us.  But Jesus lives.  Throughout this Easter season, we’re going to see all the difference this can make in our lives.  For today, if you just remember one thingn remember that this single fact has changed your outlook on eternity.  You and I know where we are going. That makes all the difference.  We know we’re going to see our loved ones raised in the flesh someday, because Jesus was raised in the flesh first, and we’ll see them with our own eyes as we too are raised in the flesh. … So, if Jesus lives to make such a difference for death, somehow-someway he can make a difference for everything else along the way.  Amen.

The Defeat of Death!

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“I have set the Lord always before me.  Because he is at my right hand, I will not be shaken.  Therefore my heart is glad, and my whole being rejoices.  Even my flesh will dwell securely because you will not abandon my life to the grave.  You will not let your favored one see decay.  You have made known to me the path of life, fullness of joy in your presence, pleasures at your right hand forever.” – Psalm 16:9-11

The Defeat of Death!

On April 10, 1912, in the north Atlantic, the Titanic struck an iceberg that would tragically and famously sink.  During its demise, a young Violet Jessup was ordered to a lifeboat.  The hope was that she could set an example, help calm fears, and demonstrate how to put lifejackets on safely.  She was even handed a baby to save!  

The year before the Titanic, she had served on the sister ship, the RMS Olympic, which suffered damage after a collision, and made it back to port.  And shortly after the Titanic, in 1916, in the midst of world war, she served on the hospital ship RMS Britannic.  This vessel would also face disaster.  It struck a German mine and sank in under 55 minutes.  Violet survived, at one point having to jump from her lifeboat as it was shredded by the large Britannic propellers.  

All of these events made Violet Jessup an exceptionally fortunate person.  God allowed her to dodge death on more than one occasion.

Would Jesus be so fortunate?  God’s plan for him would be different.  His goal was not to dodge death, but to face death and defeat death for our sake.  Psalm 16 was written by the inspired author David, but speaks to the life of Christ.  For example, in verse 5 the speaker remarks, “Lord, you are the cup that has been given to me.  You have secured an allotment for me.”  We may recall Jesus’ similar sounding prayer in the garden of Gethsemane as he makes ready to fulfill his heavenly Father’s will and to drink the cup of suffering before him.  

And yet Psalm 16 is often used in a celebration of the eternal life graciously given to us through Jesus’ work!  Both Peter in his Day of Pentecost sermon and Paul in the book of Acts, quote this psalm.  They both make a comparison: “David died…his tomb is over there…but God’s Anointed truly defeated death”.  Here is Jesus, the promised one from God who now resides in glory.  Our risen Savior now drinks from the cup of eternal joy.     He takes his rightful place upon the throne of David, no longer abandoned by his Father upon the cross extended, but lives today in eternal blessedness and in full control over his kingdom.  

And where Jesus goes, we will follow.  He has promised to return to take us there to be with him.  Just as his payment for our sin counted at the cross, so now his victory in eternity counts as ours as well.  David himself longed for that “fullness of joy in your presence, pleasures at your right hand forever.”  

Violet Jessup escaped the clutches of death again and again.  But she could not dodge death forever.  Neither can we, for like her, the wage of our sin is death.  And yet take heart!  As we walk through life, as we age gracefully or with illness upon illness, as we even face death itself – we need not be shaken.  For Jesus who has conquered death gives us the path of life and walks with us every step of the way.  This April we again marvel at the reality of his empty tomb and rejoice in word and song that “he is risen for me!”  May his good promises this Easter season make your heart glad as you rejoice in Jesus, the defeater of death and giver of life forever!  –Pastor David Horton