7 Sermon Illustrations on Resurrection Hope

"A man goes to bed willingly and cheerfully, because he knows he shall rise again the next morning, and be renewed in his strength. Confidence in the resurrection would make us go to the grave as cheerfully as we go to our beds; it would make us die more comfortably, and sleep more quietly, in the bosom of the Lord than we rest in our own beds." This is a choice word; a flower which smells sweet, and blossoms in the dust. It needs not a line from us; it only requires the Holy Spirit to enable us to enjoy its fragrance.

In the Decian persecution, six Ephesian young men fled into a cave on Mt. Cœlian. Their pursuers discovered them, and stopped up the mouth of the cave. There they fell asleep. In the reign of Theodosius, a heresy arose which denied the resurrection. At this time an Ephesian discovered the cavern on Mt. Cœlian; and, when the light penetrated it, the seven young men arose, as if from the sleep of a single night. One of them was sent to the city for food, and wondered much at the changes everywhere visible. At the baker's he offered strange coin in payment for bread and was dragged before the bishop; where the truths of this legend came out. The principal inhabitants of the city went to the cave, and found the young men with the freshness of roses on their cheeks, and a holy light around them. Theodosius himself came, to whom they said, "Believe in us, O emperor! for we have been raised before the day of judgment in order that thou mightest believe in the resurrection of the dead." Then they gave up the ghost. This resurrection occurred after a sleep of one hundred and ninety-six years.

The Jewish synagogues are called Beth Chaylin, house of the living. The Greek original of cemetery, means a sleeping-place. The Germans call the burying-place God's acre. The rosemary, which has been sometimes distributed at funerals, is symbolic of the hope of resurrection. The Jews, as they carried a corpse to burial, had a custom of plucking a handful of grass, denoting, that, as the cropped grass would grow again, so the dead would come up in his season.

A vase closely sealed was found in a mummy-pit in Egypt, by the English traveller Wilkinson, who sent it to the British Museum. The librarian, having unfortunately broken it, discovered in it a few peas, old, wrinkled, and as hard as a stone. The peas were planted carefully under a glass, on the 4th of June, 1844; and, at the end of thirty days, these seeds were seen to spring up into new life. They had been buried, probably, about three thousand years ago, perhaps in the time of Moses, and had slept all that time, apparently dead, yet still living, in the dust of the tomb.

— Gaussen