Stephen preached on the ’empty Easter promises’ this morning. He said that as a child, he had preferred Easter eggs with sweets or chocolates inside, eggs that rattled with the promise of an extra surprise! Nowadays, all the ‘extras’ seem to be on the outside!
Acts 13:29 talks about the empty cross: “when they had carried out all that was written about Him, they took Him from the tree and laid Him in a tomb.” The cross, following the death of Jesus, was empty, but in actual fact this represented the full salvation purchased for us by Christ.
Mark 16:4-7 tells the story of the empty tomb. This gives us the promise of eternal life, for it shows that death does not have the final word: ‘death in vain forbid Him rise’. In Christ, we can have fullness of life.
Luke 24:12 talks of the empty burial clothes in the empty tomb. Our Lord is alive! Because of this, we can have a full and living relationship with our Lord.
These apparently empty Easter promises actually give us everything we need:
(1) a full salvation
(2) everlasting life
(3) a living relationship with our Lord.