Transcript
In your Bibles, will you turn with me to the Gospel of Luke chapter 23 and verse 44. Luke 23:44. Luke 23, beginning to read at verse 44. 23:44.
And it was about the sixth hour, and there was darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour. Then the sun was darkened, and the veil of the temple was torn in two. And when Jesus had cried out with a loud voice, He said, ‘Father, into Your hands I commend My spirit.’ And having said this, He breathed His last.
Jose and Eriginda Estrada live in Houston. Just this past February the 11th, about 5:00 p.m., Jose left the house to go to a nearby jogging track. He told his family that he would be back soon. He drove away in his 1988 maroon Chevrolet truck.
About 50 minutes later, Eriginda’s concentration on the National Basketball Association’s All-Star game was shattered by a wife’s worst nightmare. There was a grim-faced constable standing on her doorstep.
“I have a 27-year-old son,” said Eriginda later. “My first thought was that he had had an accident.” But then the constable said, “What is your husband’s name, and does he have a red truck?” And when she said yes, the constable said, “I’m sorry, ma’am. He’s had a heart attack.”
Just as quickly as she could, she drove like crazy to Memorial Hospital Southeast, where she was ushered into a small consultation room and informed that she was too late. That Jose Estrada had died. The constable, whose name was Hernandez, accompanied her to a small room where she viewed the body. She then signed the death certificate and was escorted to a waiting room.
She asked the constable if he would mind making the first calls to family and friends, which he agreed to do. After a little bit, people were beginning to gather in the waiting room to comfort her, Linda Estrada. And then, about 30 minutes later, a relative walked into the waiting room that nobody, plus nobody, was expecting. And it was Jose Estrada himself.
Mrs. Estrada said later, “At first it didn’t register. And then I started screaming, ‘You’re alive! You’re alive! They told me that you were dead!’” And Jose said, “I’m okay. It’s you I was worried about.” And he had been informed that his wife was at the hospital with a heart attack.
You say, “How in the world could such a crazy mix-up ever take place?” Well, here is how. While Jose was out jogging, another jogger had a coronary. After the medics and the constable arrived, they could not find any identification on his body. The only thing they found was a set of General Motors keys. So the constable took the keys and tried to open various General Motors vehicles in the area. And despite odds of 26,000 to 1, the keys opened Jose Estrada’s Chevrolet truck.
A license check led him, of course, to the front doorstep of Mrs. Estrada. And that is how she got the news.
Well, you say, “What about the identification of the body?” Well, Mrs. Estrada said, “You have to be in that state of mind.” She said they had tape over his eyes. They had tape over his mouth. “I couldn’t even tell whether he had a mustache or not. But he had the same shoes, the same radio, the same shorts as my husband had. He even had the same type of belt. So I said, ‘Let me see the hands and the feet.’ And he had the same feet. The funny thing is,” said Mrs. Estrada, “I turned to the constable and I said, ‘Does he look Mexican?’ And Constable Hernandez said, ‘Yes.’” So that is how she identified the body.
Well, Jose Estrada got back from his jogging and he found an empty house. And the phone rang, and it was his wife’s boss calling. She had received a call from the hospital. And when he answered the phone, she said, “Joe, you’re alive!” And then she said, “Oh, don’t tell me it was Eriginda.” And so now Jose rushes to the hospital thinking that his wife has had a heart attack. He comes up to none other than Constable Hernandez, and he says, “I’m looking for Eriginda Estrada.” And he was directed to this consultation room where he heard weeping and lamenting. And fearing the worst, he walked in. And that is when he and his wife discovered that the other one was all right.
Now, after the Estradas’ reunion, the constable went back to the jogging track. And there he found Mary Sammons looking for her husband, John. And for the second time in the day, he had to break the bad news. He escorted her to the hospital where she identified the body as the body of her husband.
Now when this was reported in the Dallas Morning News, about three weeks had passed. Do you suppose that this experience has affected the Estradas at all? You better believe it. And Mrs. Estrada said, “Let me tell you, we’ve changed some things since this happened.” And one of the things that has changed is they have stopped taking each other for granted.
And there has also been some practical changes. She says, “We always look at what the other one is wearing.” And she said, “He has put this funny little thing on the end of his keychain so that I can tell the keys.” And then she added, “He always carries an ID when he goes jogging.”
Well, I think you will probably agree with me this morning the chances of that happening to an individual, or two individuals, must be much greater than a million to one. And yet this experience in which Mrs. Estrada virtually received her husband back from the dead is not only an amazing story. It is a heartwarming story. It is an inspiring story. And it is a true story.
And did you know that that is exactly what we can say about the wonderful event that we are here this morning to remember? The resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is an amazing story. It is heartwarming. It is inspiring. And perhaps best of all, it is absolutely true.
And just as the experience of the Estradas affected them, I am wondering this morning whether the experience of the resurrection of Jesus Christ has deeply affected you. And therefore I want to ask you a question. And the question is this: Will the living Lord find you in the waiting room?
Now obviously I am drawing on the story I just told you. Will the living Lord find you in the waiting room? And that leads me directly to the title of my message this morning, which is this: The cross of Christ is God’s waiting room. Did you get that? Can I repeat that? The cross of Jesus Christ is God’s waiting room.
Now I am here to tell you this morning, folks, that over my six decades of life I have sat in a lot of waiting rooms. And I want you also to know that my least favorite waiting room in which to sit is a dentist waiting room. The only thing worse than sitting in a dentist’s waiting room is sitting in a dentist chair. And the reason I hate the waiting room is that I know I am headed for the chair.
And you know, I would really love to have a dentist waiting room that operated this way. The dentist would come out, or maybe his nurse would come out, and he would say to me, “Zane, it is your turn. But today you are not going to have to sit in my dentist chair, and I am not going to stick any of my implements in your mouth. I am going to sit in the dentist chair myself, and I am going to work on my own teeth. And when I am finished, you will have a perfect set of teeth.”
Now somebody out there is probably thinking, “Zane, you have sat in one too many waiting rooms and have begun to lose your marbles.” Well, I admit I probably will not find a dentist waiting room like that. But is not that very much the way in which God’s waiting room is operated?
You see, in this waiting room there is no pain for the patient. There is no pain for the patient. Spiritual healing occurs because all of the pain has been borne by the Great Physician, by Jesus Christ Himself. And it is precisely that fact that we are reminded about in the passage of Scripture that we read just a few moments ago.
For in that passage of Scripture Jesus is hanging on a cross on the top of the hill called Calvary. And as He hangs there, suddenly darkness descends on the landscape. And there is darkness from the sixth hour to the ninth hour, from twelve noon to three p.m. And while the light of the sun is blotted out, something else occurs. That curtain in the temple, the veil of the temple, that curtain that stood before the holiest part of God’s temple was torn during those hours of darkness.
Now it is very important for us to understand that these two events that occurred while Jesus was on the cross are full of meaning. They are full of significance. You see, in many ways the Son of God is like the sun that shines down from heaven. For out of the Lord Jesus Christ shone the very glory of God the Father. And Jesus could say, “He who has seen Me has seen the Father.”
But when Jesus died on the cross, my friends, it was just as if a great dark mass, like a dark cloud, descended upon Him and blotted out the vision of God’s glory. And that great mass, that thick dark cloud, was the sins of all mankind. All the sins ever committed in this world and all the sins that will ever be committed in this world. All the sins that you have ever committed or will ever commit and all of the sins that I have committed or ever will commit. All of these sins, like a hideous, horrifying dark cloud, settled down on Jesus Christ.
And the Bible says that God has made Him to be sin for us, He who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. And the Bible also says He bore our sins in His own body on the tree.
But as that was happening, my friends, the veil of the temple was torn. And in the book of Hebrews we are told that the veil of the temple was a reminder that man’s way into the presence of God, into the holy presence of God, was blocked by his sin. But that veil, we are told in Hebrews, also represented the physical body of Jesus Christ. It represented His fleshly body.
And you see, when the Lord Jesus Christ had His body torn by suffering and death, it was like the tearing of that veil. And the way into God’s presence, the way for sinful people like ourselves to get into the presence of God, was opened up for all men.
The Bible says Christ also has once suffered for us, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God.
And do not you see, my friends, that is why we can get into God’s waiting room? It was Paul who said our citizenship is in heaven, from whence also we look for the Savior. We wait eagerly for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. And every Christian has, so to speak, entered God’s waiting room. They are citizens of heaven, and they are waiting for the Lord Jesus Christ to come back and to take them to be with Himself.
But let me remind you of something. Let me remind you something. You cannot get into that waiting room by trying to be good. You cannot get into that waiting room by being religious. You cannot get into that waiting room by saying your prayers or by giving your money to the church. The only way that you can get into that waiting room is by faith in the One who loved you and died for you and rose again.
That is why the Bible says, “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but should have everlasting life.” The Bible says, “Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us.”
And if you are hoping to get into the presence of God by living a good life, forget it. You cannot do it that way. You are not good enough. I am not good enough. That is why Jesus had to bear the dark cloud of your sin and mine. That is why He and He alone could open the way to God for us. And the only way we can take advantage of what He has done for us is by believing on Him for everlasting life.
After this sermon is over there will be a baptismal service up here, as you have just heard. Wonderful to have one on Easter Sunday morning, do not you agree? And you know, when I baptize a person, as most of you know, I always ask the following question. I say to that person, “Have you believed in the Lord Jesus Christ for the free gift of everlasting life? And do you know for sure that you will be with Him forever?”
And I want you to understand I will not baptize a person who does not have eternal life already. I will not baptize a person who is not sure that they are going to heaven. You see, baptism does not even get us a step toward heaven. Baptism is what we do to show that we already say that we have already received the free gift of eternal life, that we already know that we are going to be with Jesus Christ.
The question I want to ask everybody this morning is not, “Do you hope you will be in heaven? Do you think you might be in heaven?” Those are not the issues. Do you know for sure that you will be in heaven because you have trusted in Jesus Christ?
My father once worked for a bank. It was before I was born, so naturally I do not remember it. I do not remember my dad as a bank teller. And in those days he had a nice friend named Eddie Foster who was a professional baseball player and also a born-again Christian.
And my father told me this story. He says that he was struggling with whether he was saved or not, whether he had everlasting life or not. And one day his friend Eddie Foster came to the bank, and he went up, I guess, to my father’s window or his station, wherever that was. And he showed my father a verse out of the Gospel of John. It was John chapter 5 and verse 24.
And the verse went like this. It said,
He that hears My word and believes on Him that sent Me has everlasting life and shall not come into judgment but is passed out of death into life.
And I remember my father telling me, he said, “I realized that I had heard God’s word. I realized that I believed what God said about His Son as my Savior. And on the basis of that verse I understood that I already had everlasting life, that I would not come into judgment, that I had already moved from spiritual death to spiritual life.”
And from that time onward my father was sure of his salvation.
Have you heard the phrase, “His promise is so good you can take it to the bank”? Well, Eddie Foster took God’s promise to the bank, and my father deposited it. My father deposited it. He banked on it. And he was sure from that moment forward.
Let me tell you something. God promises you that the moment you trust Christ for eternal life that you have eternal life, that you will never come into judgment, that you have already passed from death into life. And as you sit here this morning you either believe that or you do not. If you do not, you are not saved. And you will never be saved until you do. And if you have believed it, you can know that you are saved already.
Do not you see? In the light of the resurrection of Jesus Christ the cross of Christ becomes our waiting room. It is the place where we take our stand. It is the thing in which we hope. And under the shadow of the cross we wait for the coming of Jesus Christ.
I think the songwriter has put it so beautifully. “Beneath the cross of Jesus I fain would take my stand, the shadow of a mighty rock within a weary land. A home within the wilderness, a rest along the way from the burning of the noontide heat and the burden of the day. I take, O cross, thy shadow as my abiding place. I want no other sunshine than the sunshine of His face. Content to let the world go by, to know no gain or loss, my sinful self my only shame, my glory all the cross.”
Yes, my friends, the cross of Jesus Christ is God’s waiting room.
Now I have to tell you one more thing about waiting rooms. I cannot ever remember being in a waiting room which was not littered with magazines. And of course the folks who put them there know what they are doing. They are trying to get your mind off of what lies ahead of you, the visit with the doctor or the visit with the dentist.
And I guess I have tried to read these magazines many, many times. And you know what? It does not work for me. And out of all of the time I have spent reading magazines in waiting rooms I cannot remember one single thing that I have learned. I am too jumpy to learn anything.
But God’s waiting room does not work like that. You see, the Christian is not jumpy about the future. The Christian understands that he is saved and saved forever, that he has peace with God, that he has assurance of eternal life. And therefore he can learn something. He can learn something in that waiting room.
And did you notice that immediately after describing the darkening of the sun and the tearing of the curtain of the temple, the writer of the Gospel of Luke allows us to listen in on the closing words of Jesus Christ? And after Jesus has cried with a loud voice, He expresses this prayer. He says, “Father, into Your hands I commend, I commit, I entrust My spirit.”
What a marvelous lesson is found in those words. Think about it for a minute. Despite all that had happened to Him in the last few hours, He had been arrested. He had been mocked and struck and spit upon. A crown of thorns had been put on His head. He had stood in three courtrooms. He had been unjustly condemned to the death of a criminal. He had been shouted down by the mobs, and they had driven the nails through His hands and through His feet.
The book of Psalms tells us that His suffering was so intense that His mouth and throat were dry with thirst. And the pain in His body was so severe that it felt like all of His bones were out of joint. And yet what do we find Him doing when He comes to the end of His life? We find Him trusting God His heavenly Father. We find Him committing to God His Father the spirit of life, with the understanding, my friends, that God had promised to give it back.
You see, when Jesus died, His body was put in the grave. His soul went into the heart of the earth, to the place we call paradise. But the spirit of life went into the confident, capable, trustworthy hands of God His heavenly Father. And His confidence in His Father was not misplaced. For on the third day God reunited our Lord’s body and soul. And then the spirit of life that had been committed to Him was breathed anew into the body of Jesus Christ. And He sat up on that slab of rock where they had laid His body.
According to the Gospel of John, He unwound the bandage that was around His head, folded it up neatly, and laid it to one side. Because the angel had rolled away the stone, He got up and He walked through the door. And from that moment and forward He could say, “I am He who lives and was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore.” He had trusted in God, and God had fulfilled His commitment.
Do you see what lesson there is in that for us? If we have trusted the Lord Jesus Christ, we know that we are saved. Then no matter what happens to us, no matter what our problems are, no matter what our difficulties are, no matter what our trials are, no matter what our frustrations, our disappointments may be, we can put them all into the hands of our heavenly Father. And He is able to see us through to the very end.
Jesus died the way He lived His life, in confident trust in His loving heavenly Father. And if you have found Jesus Christ as your Savior, then you can trust Him. And you can trust your heavenly Father for everything that takes place in your life.
And do not you see? The cross of Jesus Christ not only becomes God’s waiting room where we wait confidently for the coming of His Son. It becomes God’s schoolroom. It becomes God’s schoolroom where you and I learn to trust God through all our lives and right through the closing hours of death. For He who promised is faithful.
George Mueller of Bristol, England, was beyond all question one of the truly, truly great men of prayer that ever lived in this world. And there are many stories of his answers, the answers that he received to prayer. I want to tell you one that was told, in fact, by a captain of a vessel, by someone who was sailing a ship. And as much as possible I am going to try to tell it to you in the captain’s own words.
The captain said, “We had George Mueller of Bristol on board. I had been on the bridge for 24 hours, and I had never left it. And George Mueller came up to me, and he said to me, ‘Captain, I have come to you to tell you that I have to be in Quebec on Saturday afternoon.’”
The captain said, “I replied, ‘That is impossible.’” And Mr. Mueller said to me, “Captain,” he said, “in 57 years I have never missed an appointment. Let us go down into the chart room and pray.”
And the captain goes on to say, “I looked at him, and I said, ‘What kind of a lunatic asylum did this man come from? I never heard of any such thing like that.’” And he said, “Mr. Mueller, do you have any idea how thick the fog is?” And Mr. Mueller said, “No. My eye is not on the density of the fog. My eye is on the living God who controls all of the circumstances of my life.”
So the captain consented to go down to the chart room, and they closed the door behind them. And the captain’s story continues like this. He said, “He knelt down and he prayed the most simple of prayers. And then when I was about ready to pray, he put his hand on my shoulder and he told me not to pray. And Mr. Mueller said to me, ‘Captain, since you do not believe that He will answer and I believe He has, there is no need whatsoever for you to pray.’”
And I looked at him, and he said, “Captain,” he says, “I have known my Lord for 57 years, and I have never failed on a single day to get an audience with Him. Captain, get up, open the door, and you will find that the fog is gone.”
And the captain concluded his story by saying, “I got up, and the fog was indeed gone. And on the following Saturday afternoon Mr. George Mueller kept his promised appointment.”
Now, folks, there are a lot of times when we as Christians sail through the fog. We sail through what seems like dense darkness. We sail through deep problems and trouble. But our eye can never be on the fog. The eye must always be upon our living Lord who can lift the fog. He can banish the darkness. He can conquer the problems and bring us safely to port.
And do not you understand that if you have trusted Him for the most important thing you will ever trust Him for, which is everlasting life, if you have trusted Him for that, you can trust Him for everything else, regardless of what it may be?
When peace like a river attendeth my way, when sorrows like sea billows roll, whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say, “It is well, it is well with my soul.” Though Satan may buffet, though trials may come, let this blessed assurance control, that Christ has regarded my helpless estate and has shed His own blood for my soul. It is well with my soul. It is well. It is well with my soul.
Shall we pray?
Father, if there is any person in this auditorium this morning who cannot truthfully say, “It is well with my soul,” may they right here put their trust completely in the Lord Jesus Christ and find the assurance based on His word of eternal life. And for each and every one of us as Christians, Father, teach us more and more to depend upon You, to trust You for everything, and to depend upon You to lead us through the fog. We ask this in Christ’s name. Amen.