In North India, a Christian missionary was preaching in a bazaar and, after he had closed, a Muslim came up and said, "You must admit we have one thing you have not, and it is better than anything you have." The missionary smiled and said, "I shall be pleased to hear what it is." The Muslim said, "We have an important place of history. When we go to our Mecca, we find at least a coffin. But when you Christians go to Jerusalem, which is your Mecca, you find nothing but an empty grave." The missionary replied, "That is just the difference. Mohammed is dead. Mohammed is in his coffin. So are all the other founders of false religions. But Christ, whose kingdom includes all nations and tribes, is not in a tomb! He is risen!"

Places of history are important. They tell us something. No matter how grand, incredible, amazing, or breath-taking they might be, places of history always tell us something about what happened there! This summer, I had the awesome opportunity to visit the Holy Land. We saw many important places of history. Places where God carried out his plan of salvation with his people. Places where Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and David lived. Places where Jesus did things for us. But let me tell you, when we were in Jerusalem, we don’t even know if we saw Jesus’ empty grave! We saw two supposed sites that may have been it. But to be honest, no one knows for sure! It just wasn’t marked out right away. Because of what happened at Jesus’ tomb, it was never the place, or the tomb, that was very important. But the message that this place of history delivered to the world with what happened here certainly is the most important in all of history!

I want to tell you about another moment of history. The famous Battle of Waterloo. In this battle, the French, under the command of Napoleon, were fighting the British, Dutch, and Germans, under the command of a general named Wellington. The people of England depended on a system of semaphore signals to find out how the battle was going. One of these "signal stations" was on the tower of the Winchester Cathedral.

Late in the day, the tower flashed the signal: "W-E-L-L-I-N-G-T-O-N---D-E-F-E-A-T-E-D-" Just at that moment, one of those sudden English fog clouds made it impossible to read the message. The news of defeat quickly spread throughout the city. The whole countryside was sad and gloomy when they heard the news that their country had lost the war. Wellington wasn’t the only one who was defeated. They would also be defeated! They would be subjects of another country now. This was the gloomy outlook they had to look forward to. Someone else would be in control of their lives!

However, suddenly the fog lifted! Now the remainder of the message could be read. The message had four words, not two! The complete message was: "W-E-L-L-I-N-G-T-O-N---D-E-F-E-A-T-E-D---T-H-E---E-N-E-M-Y!" An entirely different message! It only took a few minutes for the good news to spread! Defeat was turned into victory! Sorrow was turned into joy!

So it was when Jesus was laid in his tomb on the first Good Friday afternoon. There was another battle going on here. The battle of good versus evil. This tomb was the "signal tower" for Jesus’ disciples. And as the stone was sealed over this tomb with Jesus’ dead body inside, the message read, "Christ Defeated." Evil had triumphed. On that sad and gloomy day, hope had died in the hearts of Jesus’ most loyal friends. The fog of disappointment had clouded their hearts and minds. They had only read part of the divine message! "CHRIST DEFEATED" was the only message they heard. They would now be subject to lives of sin, and eventually, subject to death, just like their beloved Master.

But on the third day, just like the fog disappeared from the signal tower in England, the fog of disappointment and misunderstanding lifted in Jerusalem! The complete message was being hidden by that stone-covered tomb. The Angel rolled back the Stone that was covering up the rest of the message! Now, the disciples received the complete message, which also had four words, not two! "CHRIST DEFEATED THE ENEMY!" Satan may have struck Jesus’ heel, but Jesus crushed his head! Defeat was turned into victory! Sorrow was turned into joy! Death was turned into life! And this good news has been spreading ever since, bringing joy into peoples’ hearts!

I think you will agree with me it was pretty important that the people of England got the full message that Wellington defeated the enemy. Otherwise their future would look rather bleak. They would have been prisoners of war. Subject to another country. Maybe even killed. But, that cannot even compare to how important it is that we have received the full message: "Christ Defeated Our Enemy!" If you only had the first part: "Christ Defeated," you would be faced with the fact that your sinful lives, which you live in daily, would eventually bring about your eternal death. We would be prisoners to sin. Beaten by sin! Limited to sinning! And we would be prisoners to death! For all eternity! And each one of us in here deserves that!

This is a battle that everyone of us faces. We are born into a world which gives us some bad news right from the start: "You are a slave to sin! It doesn’t matter how hard you try! You cannot please God! Not even if you go to church on Easter! Not even if you go to church every Sunday! Not even if you make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land! You cannot earn your way into God’s favor and eternal rest. You are subject to a life of sinning. No matter how hard you try to be good, to have the right thoughts, words, or actions, you are going to keep failing!" It is no fun to be a constant failure! But that is what we are without Jesus’ resurrection. Without Jesus, we can only hear a message of defeat!

But something awesome happened in a tomb outside Jerusalem! When you and everyone who ever lived were looking at a very gloomy future because death could not be defeated, this "signal tower" blazed out the whole message in its entirety on that first Easter morning! And because we have that whole message, "Christ Defeated the Enemy!" we are freed from that gloomy future! We are free from our slavery to sin! We are free to put our sinful lives behind us! We are free to serve our Lord Jesus in thanks for this! And best of all, we are freed from death, just like Jesus was! I think this is a VERY important message for all of us! Don’t you? We now have the same comfort that Martha did when Jesus told her, "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die."

So, you won’t see as many postcards made of Jesus’ tomb as, say, Napoleon’s tomb, or Mohammed’s tomb at Mecca, or those of other kings and emperors. But that is because those tombs have a body in them. This one doesn’t! Amen.

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