New Covenant Presbyterian Church
Sermon Luke 24:1–12 “Wondering About This”
April 21, 2019
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I have always loved reading mystery novels. My favorite mystery author is Agatha Christie. I have read most of her books. I also really love Sherlock Holmes. In most mysteries, someone has been murdered and a great detective is brought it to determine “who done it”. Today we are looking at a biblical mystery. There is a missing dead body, and we have to figure out what happened. We will get to this, but first, let’s pray.
“Grant unto us, O Lord, to be occupied in the mysteries of thy Heavenly wisdom, with true progress in piety, to thy glory and our own edification. Amen.” (John Calvin)
Our story begins three days ago when this happened.
Luke 23:55 The women who had come with Jesus from Galilee followed Joseph and saw the tomb and how his body was laid in it. 56 Then they went home and prepared spices and perfumes. But they rested on the Sabbath in obedience to the commandment.
Jesus died on a cross. His body was removed and placed in a tomb. A large stone was rolled in front of the tomb to seal it. As the sun was setting the women went to where they were staying and prepared for a Sabbath rest. From sunset Friday to sunset Saturday they did no work. They enjoyed the company of each other, shared stories about Jesus and prayed. And they experienced the grief we have all felt at the death of a loved one.
The sabbath ended with sunset on Saturday. It was too dark to go to the tomb to anoint Jesus’ body with spices and perfumes. So they went to sleep. But very early the next morning, the third day, they went back to Jesus’ tomb and this happened.
Luke 24:1 On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. 2 They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, 3 but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. 4 While they were wondering about this …
We have some clues in our mystery. The large stone has been rolled away. Who did it? Why did they do it? And Jesus’ body is not inside. Why not? Where is it? Who took it? All of these questions had to be spinning around in the minds of the women as they pondered what they were seeing. It was at this moment that God dispatched two angels with an important message for the women.
3… suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them. 5 In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? 6 He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee: 7 ‘The Son of Man must be delivered over to the hands of sinners, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.’ ” 8 Then they remembered his words.
So the angels came from God with a most important message. First, they asked the women a question. “Why do you look for the living among the dead?” The women are in a cemetery, the place of the dead. They are looking for Jesus. So the implication of the question is that Jesus must be alive. The women are to look for a living Jesus.
Then the angels told them what happened, “He is not here; he has risen!” So Jesus was raised from the dead and somehow left the tomb. Now, if we were in a cemetery looking at an empty grave where a loved one’s body should be the last explanation that we would believe is our loved one had come back to life. In all our experience, dead people never come back to life. So the women would not be able to accept this explanation. Saying that Jesus had been resurrected from the dead would be crazy.
The angels knew that they had to persuade the women that Jesus truly was raised from the dead. So they made the following argument.
6 … Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee: 7 ‘The Son of Man must be delivered over to the hands of sinners, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.’
The crux of the angel’s argument was that Jesus had predicted his own resurrection. In fact, Jesus had made this prediction three times in Luke’s gospel. So, did this argument cause the women to believe that Jesus was brought back to life? Well, no. All it did was to remind the women what Jesus had said, “8 Then they remembered his words.” But the Bible does not say that they believed those words.
The angels, having done what they were instructed to do when back to heaven. And the women went back to where they were staying in Jerusalem. There they met the men and told them about their extraordinary experience at the tomb.
9 When they came back from the tomb, they told all these things to the Eleven and to all the others. 10 It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the others with them who told this to the apostles.
The eleven apostles of Jesus heard the women’s story. They heard about the stone being rolled away. They heard about the angels and the proclamation that Jesus had been raised from the dead. And the women reminded the men of Jesus’ own prediction of his resurrection. So, did the apostles believe the women?
11 But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense.
Testimony about an empty tomb, a missing body, an angelic proclamation, and Jesus’ own words did not bring the apostles to belief that Jesus was raised from the dead. Peter went to the tomb himself to find out what is going on.
12 Peter, however, got up and ran to the tomb. Bending over, he saw the strips of linen lying by themselves,
Peter had seen an additional clue. The strips of linen that had covered Jesus’s body in the tomb had been discarded. Now, did all of this convince Peter that Jesus had been resurrected? Well, no.
12 … and he went away, wondering to himself what had happened.”
Let pause here for a moment and wonder about this. Both the men and women had seen a stone rolled away, an empty tomb and a missing body. Peter had looked into the tomb and saw the burial cloths. The women saw and heard angels proclaim Jesus resurrection and remembered Jesus’ own words about his resurrection. The women shared all this with the men. But no one believes it.
Every Easter the church proclaims the angelic message that Jesus has been raised from the dead. Every Easter the church reads scripture predicting Jesus’ resurrection. But the combination of the angelic message and scripture is not sufficient to bring us to the point where we believe that Jesus was raised from the dead. We need more to believe this.
The men and women who followed Jesus needed more than an angelic message and a memory of Jesus’ words. Eventually, they came to belief. So what happened that caused these people to believe in the resurrection?
36 While they were still talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.”
The men and women who had been accompanying Jesus experienced for themselves the resurrected Jesus. But before they could believe in his resurrection, they had a question that had to be answered. Was Jesus a ghost?
37 They were startled and frightened, thinking they saw a ghost. 38 He said to them, “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts rise in your minds? 39 Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself! Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have.” 40 When he had said this, he showed them his hands and feet.
That should do it, seeing and touching the resurrected Jesus. Surely that would bring all of them to belief in the resurrection. Right? Well, no.
“41 And while they still did not believe it”
What does Jesus have to do to get them to believe in his resurrection? Jesus decided to have breakfast with them.
41 because of joy and amazement, he asked them, “Do you have anything here to eat?” 42 They gave him a piece of broiled fish, 43 and he took it and ate it in their presence.
Surely this should do it, seeing, touching, listening to and eating with the resurrected Jesus. This should bring them to faith, but it didn’t. They still did not believe that Jesus was resurrected from the dead. But Jesus knew what to do. He knew exactly how to bring people to faith, and believe in his resurrection.
44 He said to them, “This is what I told you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms.” 45 Then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures.
In order to believe that Jesus was raised from the dead, we must read scripture illuminated by Jesus himself. That is why every Sunday we pray for insight before we read scripture. That is why we pray for inspiration before Bible studies. We want Jesus to open our minds so that through the Bible we come to belief in his resurrection. So if you want to believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ you must read the Bible under the inspiration of Christ’s Holy Spirit.
There is a great benefit to believing in the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. We read about this benefit in John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” The benefit of believing in the resurrection of Jesus is the promise of our own resurrection to eternal life.
If you do not yet believe that Jesus was resurrected from the dead I urge you to get involved with a good, Bible-believing, church like this one. Pray for the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Study the Bible as much as you can. You will come to belief. You will receive the promise of eternal life.
If you do believe that Jesus was raised from the dead, congratulations, you are assured of your own resurrection and eternal life. Now which life is more important, the 80 to 100 years you have in mortal life or the eternity you have in the resurrected life? I think eternal life is far more important. If so then we should live our lives not focused on our material mortal lives. We should focus all our efforts in building up our eternal lives. So love God will all your heart, soul and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.
We have solved the mystery. The reason the tomb was empty was that our Lord Jesus Christ was raised from the dead. The promise of eternal life is available for all who believe. Let’s pray.
We give you thanks, great God, for the hope we have in Jesus, who died but is risen and rules over all. We praise you for his presence with us. Because he lives, we look for eternal life, knowing that nothing past, present, or yet to come can separate us from your great love made known in Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen. (Worship Sourcebook p. 630.)
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