God gets the last laugh

This is year Easter and April’s Fool Day are on the same day!

 Can we put the two ideas into a sermon title?

 "You think He is in this tomb. April fool's. He is not here."

God gets the last laugh. Some people it is a bit sacrilegious to think of God laughing.

Yet we find these words in the Psalms:

 ^“The One enthroned in heaven laughs” (Psalm 2:4).

Why is God laughing today? Why did God laugh on that first Resurrection day?

Here is the issue.

Death is our destination.

Life is terminal.

No one gets out alive.

So how do we react to the realty that we will not live forever.

Many people take a very common approach: Eat, Drink and Be Merry for tomorrow we die!

The Bible actually recognizes this view of life.

“If the dead are not raised,

“Let us eat and drink,
    for tomorrow we die” (Isaiah 22:13). (I Corinthians 15:32).

If you don’t believe in any kind of eternal existence, you have every right to hold this worldview.

Of course, the modern version of this is:

“Eat and drink for tomorrow we diet!”

Seriously, what is the meaning of life?

Listen to this ancient wisdom:

What do people gain from all their labors
    at which they toil under the sun?
⁴ Generations come and generations go,
    but the earth remains forever.
⁵ The sun rises and the sun sets,
    and hurries back to where it rises.
⁶ The wind blows to the south
    and turns to the north;
round and round it goes,
    ever returning on its course.
⁷ All streams flow into the sea,
    yet the sea is never full.
To the place the streams come from,
    there they return again.
⁸ All things are wearisome,
    more than one can say.
The eye never has enough of seeing,
    nor the ear its fill of hearing.
⁹ What has been will be again,
    what has been done will be done again;
    there is nothing new under the sun.
¹⁰ Is there anything of which one can say,
    “Look! This is something new”?
It was here already, long ago;
    it was here before our time.
¹¹ No one remembers the former generations,
    and even those yet to come
will not be remembered
    by those who follow them” (Ecclesiastes 1)

You live, die and you are forgotten!

Is that it?

This is why God is laughing today.

This is not end of our lives.

Listen to these words:

“In the resurrection scheme of things, this has to happen: everything perishable taken off the shelves and replaced by the imperishable, this mortal replaced by the immortal. Then the saying will come true:

Death swallowed by triumphant Life!
Who got the last word, oh, Death?
Oh, Death, who’s afraid of you now?” (I Corinthians 15)

Another translation of the Greek text says this:

“Death has been swallowed up in victory”(Isaiah 25:8).

⁵⁵ “Where, O death, is your victory?
    Where, O death, is your sting?” (Hosea 13:14).

Victory!!!!

 Jesus beat death!!

Death is not the final word!

Many years ago the famous American Evangelist, Dwight L. Moody spoke about  his death. Here is what he said,

“Someday you will read in the papers that D. L. Moody, of East Northfield, is dead. Don’t you believe a word of it! At that moment I shall be more alive than I am now. I shall have gone up higher, that is all; out of this old clay tenement into a house that is immortal—a body that death cannot touch; that sin cannot taint; a body fashioned like unto His glorious body.”

If those words sound familiar, Evangelist Billy Graham who died a few weeks ago claimed these words as an expression of his Christian hope.

What is our hope today?

Do we eat, drink and die?

Or

Do we eat, drink, live by faith and live forever?

Today is a good day to join God and have a good laugh.