Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia! Our text is the Epistle reading, as well as these words from 1 Corinthians 15:26…The last enemy to be destroyed is death.

Dear friends in Christ, know your enemy. If you want to win any sort of victory, you have to know who's trying to beat you, and what their weapons are. You need to ask, "What are the opposing team's strengths and weaknesses? What defensive maneuvers can we use to safeguard against their attacks, and what offensive tactics will allow us to conquer them?"

Do you know who your enemies are? Perhaps cancer, heart disease, chronic pain, an abusive family member, bullies, the devil, are examples that come to mind. Those types of enemies do need to be dealt with in different ways, but none of those is your biggest problem. Today we are going to focus on knowing your final, ultimate enemy, death, and how he has been defeated. God's Word teaches that on Judgment Day, "the last enemy to be destroyed is death." That's Good News for Christians, but it also contains a sharp warning: death cannot be your friend, but it is the last enemy of us all. Of course, most people instinctively don't want to befriend death, but to flee or fight it. So we must know that between now and the end of the world, death will be our most constant and aggressive enemy, and we need to know this enemy intimately if we want victory over it.

Death is a tenacious enemy. By taking our loved ones from us, he makes life more sad and bitter, and he won't give up until he claims us, too. Death is so strong that he cannot be defeated in this lifetime by any human efforts. The so-called wars against cancer or other diseases are really just small battles in an unwinnable war, since even if we found a cure for one killer, it would only postpone the inevitable; death still comes for all. A surgeon was giving a lecture to a group of seminary students about modern advances in medicine. He concluded by saying, "Remember, even with all the progress we've made, the mortality rate is always going to be 100%." We really shouldn't call doctors and firefighters "lifesavers," but instead call them "death-delayers."

So from a worldly perspective, the fight against death is hopeless, and this fact is intensely painful for those who love this earthly life, whose hopes are built on this temporal existence. This unavoidable end has led many to conclude that life is completely futile, so they embrace the fatalistic mantra, "Let us eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you shall die." As Peggy Lee sang about the existential angst that many face over the disappointing nature of this short life: "Is that all there is? If that's all there is my friends, then let's keep dancing; Let's break out the booze and have a ball; If that's all there is."

But that's not all there is. The end of life isn't pointless and irrelevant, like the outcome of a JV scrimmage, but the stakes are infinitely higher. The death of the body is a losing battle, but that's nothing in comparison with facing the defeat of everlasting death in hell under God's judgment. God's Word teaches that "it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment" (Hebrews 9:27), that is, judgment by God.

Of course, the fool responds in his heart, "That's a lie; there is no God," but you know better. Perhaps you've tried to run away from God at times, but you can't seem to get Him off your back; your conscience just won't leave you alone. This morning, if your heart was in the Creed, then you confessed that you believe in "one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth and of all things visible and invisible." The LORD God created this world out of nothing, formed Adam from the dust, breathed into him the breath of life, and gave Eve to Adam so that man and wife could be fruitful and multiply, and rule over a perfect creation according to God's Word. God also created the invisible realm of the heavens, including the multitude of angels that we can't see.

But what went wrong? Satan and many of his fellow angels rebelled against God, and then the devil slithered into God's perfect world to convince Adam and Eve not to be content with the life God had given them, but that they should want more, to be like God. Really what they wanted was to place themselves above God. And so with their sin, with their rebellion, they placed all of us in captivity to sin and its wages, death.

But sin against God is not just a harmless mistake to which you can say, "My bad!" and God says, "No big deal." No, sin's consequences are greater than just the death of the body. Our state's justice system punishes criminals who break the law, sometimes even taking their lives in capital punishment, but the penalties of breaking God's Law are far more severe. All of us sinners deserve everlasting damnation in hell, eternal defeat, pain, misery, and stench in the fire prepared for the devil and all demons. One of the most humbling things the Bible calls all of us sinners is God's "enemies" (Romans 5:10). We like to think of ourselves as pretty good people-and maybe we are in the outward sense of obeying state laws, being nice to our neighbor, and taking care of our families-but as we face up to God's demands in His Ten Commandments, which we have rebelled against time and again, we must confess that indeed we are God's enemies, and we can't befriend Him again by buttering Him up with our good deeds.

But during this Holy Week leading up to Easter, the liturgy, hymns, Scripture readings, and sermons have proclaimed the wonderful truth that God loves even His enemies, and does not desire their eternal death. The Holy Trinity has had mercy on us. God the Father sent His only-begotten Son to be conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mary and born into the world as the God-Man Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh. And then in His Baptism in the Jordan, He was identified as the ideal Son of God who would fulfill all righteousness, that is, He would be the Child that Adam and Eve and we never could be, for Jesus would never sin but would live a perfectly righteous life in our place. And one day John the Baptist pointed to Jesus and said, "Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world." Not only did Jesus live a righteous life, but He became the spotless, sinless, priceless Lamb who took the guilt of all of God's enemies into His own flesh, and then went up on Good Friday to suffer and die for the sins of all people.

And He did all of this out of love for you, to save you from sin and everlasting death in hell. As St. Paul explains in Romans 5, you might be willing to die for a good person, but you wouldn't be willing to die for your mortal enemy. Yet God shows that His love exceeds all human ideas and possibilities, because He sent Christ to die for not just one enemy, but for all the billions of enemies who have ever lived or who will ever live. Jesus died not just the little death of the body, but He suffered the big Death of condemnation for sin that our guilt deserves. St. Paul wrote, "God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life" (Romans 5:8-10).

"Saved by His life," that is, by Christ's life. That is the clincher, that is what we are rejoicing in this Easter Sunday. Jesus did not stay dead in the tomb, but is risen, ascended, and glorified at the Father's right hand, never to die again. Death no longer has dominion over Him, for He has triumphed over sin, death, hell, and the devil by His righteous life, in His sufferings and death, in His glorious resurrection. And Christ's life is the only one that can give us victory over death. None of our fighting, fleeing, planning, and struggling against death can accomplish a bit, but Jesus lives, and the victory is won! Christ has "abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel" (2 Timothy 1:10).

And you have a full share in that victory by your Baptism into Christ and by faith in Him. God's Word teaches that Baptism unites you with Christ's death and resurrection, so that your death becomes His, and His life becomes yours. In Holy Baptism, Christ takes away all your unrighteousness, guilt, shame, and death and exchanges it for His righteousness, forgiveness, glory, and indestructible life. You have been reconciled to God by Christ's death for your sins, and now that you are united with Him by Baptism and faith, you will be saved by His life. Jesus is the only true Lifesaver in the whole universe.

But even though all of that is gloriously true, that still doesn't make death your friend. No, death remains your enemy, the last enemy to be destroyed. You see, even though Christ has defeated death and made him powerless to condemn anyone who believes in Christ, still God has given death a sort of stay of execution until judgment day. And that is where our Epistle reading comes in, teaching us how to deal with our last enemy in the meantime, as we await the Day when Christ will judge the living and the dead.

St. Paul writes, When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, [that is, in the final resurrection unto life on the Last Day], then shall come to pass the saying that is written: "Death is swallowed up in victory." "O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?" The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

On the last day, death will be wiped out for good, but in the meantime, "the sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law." If you and I had perfect faith in Christ's resurrection, we would have absolutely no fear of death, because His promise to save us is completely reliable. But since we remain sinners-forgiven sinners, but sinners nonetheless-then death still stings because of sin and the Law, God's commandments and threats against sinners. Even though we have been brought to repentance and faith in Christ by the Holy Spirit and begin to have holy desires, and begin to resist sin, we can't become perfectly pure, and so our sins and the Law condemn us again, and make us think we're not saved but are going to hell. It's really a vicious cycle.

So who will save us from this body of death? Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ! There is only one place we can flee, only one source of help and salvation: Jesus Christ, and He comes to rescue you through His Word and Sacraments here in the Church, in which He is week in and week out distributing to you the forgiveness, life, and salvation you need to win the victory.

Also, know that your enemy is always close by. God's Word tells us to pray, "Teach us to number our days, that we may get a heart of wisdom" (Psalm 90:12). Enemies can sneak up on you when you're least expecting them, especially death. We can all get deluded into thinking that death is far in the future. As one perceptive woman told me, there's not room in our day planner for dying; perhaps there's even less room in our schedules for thinking about death. Besides, life expectancy is about 80 years now, right? Surely we can just put off repentance until later. No way, that's a false sense of security, since none of us knows the day or hour of Christ's return or of our death.

When I used to ask my grandfather how he was doing, he'd reply: "I've got one foot in the grave, and the other foot on a banana peel." He knew death was coming, and he felt the sting of death, but he also knew who His sure defense against eternal death was: Jesus Christ. And in Christ, we're not only saved from eternal death, but we're also saved for an eternal life of resurrected joy in heaven with Him. This is great cause for rejoicing this morning, but there is too much joy in Easter to fit into one little Easter Day service and sermon, which is why there are seven full Sundays of the Easter season in the coming weeks to celebrate all the gifts our Lord gives us in Christ's resurrection. In fact, every Sunday is a little Easter, when we return again to the presence of the Crucified and Risen Christ as He comes to us in His Word and Holy Supper.

So make it a point to come back here and receive Christ's gifts of forgiveness, life, and salvation, since your last enemy, death isn't going away anytime soon, and while death isn't your friend, Jesus is, and He is the only One who can give you the victory over that Last Enemy. And to that, all we can say is: Alleluia! Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ! Amen.

And the peace of God which passes all understanding will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus unto life everlasting. Amen.