Welcome everyone to our Resurrection Sunday service, 2022. Let me invite you now to take your Bibles and turn with me to the NT book of Luke, chapter 24. We’re going to look this morning at the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ recorded in the book of Luke. We’re going to look specifically at Luke 24:1-12 and four things in this text: 1) The Power of the Resurrection, 2) The Perplexity of the Resurrection, 3) The Promise of the Resurrection, and lastly 4) The Pessimism of the Resurrection.   

I heard a pastor say once about Luke 24 that this passage “is too wonderful for words. But that’s all I’ve got.” That resonates with me this Easter morning as I try to faithfully teach this magnificent passage of Scripture. This is not just a magnificent passage, this is magnificent, history-altering event. The greatest history-altering event in the chronicles of human history. I’m not exaggerating. 

So let’s talk about the resurrection, folks. 

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And let’s start here with this. Let’s start with…

1) The Power of the Resurrection (24:1-3)

The Gospel-writer, Luke, says this in verse one:

1 But on the first day of the week, at early dawn,

What day is this, do you know? This is Sunday! The first day of the week. Question: Why do we worship on Sunday instead of on Saturday, the Sabbath, like OT Israelites? Answer: Because Jesus was raised from the dead on Sunday morning. And by the way, Jesus was raised early on Sunday morning, because these women came to the tomb at early dawn. Like good Jewish women, they rested on Saturday. Luke records that at the end of chapter 23: “On the Sabbath they rested according to the commandment.” But on Sunday morning, they are up bright and early to come anoint Jesus’s dead body. Or so they thought!

And by the way, just before this, at the end of Luke 23, Jesus’s dead body was removed from the cross by Joseph of Arimathea. And Joseph placed Jesus’s body in a tomb in a garden not far from Golgotha where Jesus was crucified. And they buried Jesus there with roughly 75 pounds of spices, and then they rolled a huge boulder in front of this tomb. No one had ever been buried in this tomb before Jesus. And that boulder was strategic. They put that boulder there to keep grave-robbers from coming in. And they put a boulder in front of the tomb to keep the smell of Jesus’s rotting, putrefying flesh from coming out. Or so they thought. 

So just to be clear, Jesus died at Golgotha. And for three days, by Jewish reckoning, he was in the tomb. Jesus said, “The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised” (Luke 9:22). 

So back to verse 1 here,

1 But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they went to the tomb, taking the spices they had prepared.

By the way, who are the “they” of verse 1? Do you know? Well there’s a clue in Greek, because the verb “taking” (Greek: φέρω) here is a feminine plural verb. The “they” here are women, and only women. Luke makes that clear later in verse 11, “it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James and the other women with them.”

If you remember, when Jesus was arrested at Gethsemane, his male disciples abandoned him like a bunch of lily-livered scaredy-cats. Right after that, Peter denied him three times, and then ran away crying like a little school girl. The Apostle John was the only one that was with Jesus when he was crucified. 

But the women in Jesus’s life stayed with him. They stayed with him at the crucifixion. They helped Joseph of Arimathea wrap his dead body in linen garments and anoint him with fragrances and spices. And on Sunday morning, they rose early to take even more spices to his body. They just can’t shake this guy Jesus. Still after his death, they come to his tomb. If you didn’t know the rest of this story, you would almost feel sorry for these ladies. They can’t move on. Or so they thought.

Now did these women think that Jesus was resurrected from the dead? Did they assume that? Absolutely not. Otherwise they wouldn’t be bringing fragrances to anoint a dead body to block the smell of rotting flesh. Jesus is dead, right? Jesus’s corpse needs spices! The smell of his body needs masking! Or so they thought.

But now, look at verse 2,

2 And they found the stone rolled away from the tomb,

They came to find a dead body. Instead they found a stone rolled away! In his commentary on Luke, D.L. Bock writes, “In first-century Israel a round stone disc was often placed in a channel carved in the rock so it could be rolled easily to cover the usually rectangular tomb entrance.” So now we have this large, stone disc rolled away from the entrance of the tomb. How’d that happen? Even more alarming is verse 3. 

3 but when they went in they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus.

Where’s the body? Where’s the Lord Jesus? Well, let me say it this way. “He gone!” Well where’d he go? Who took his body? Who moved the stone? And why doesn’t the place smell like rotting flesh mixed with myrrh and spices? There’s no sign of a dead body. There’s no evidence of a dead body. There’s no smell of a dead body. This isn’t a tomb. This is just a cave carved out of rock. 

I think Matthew Henry was the first person to call Jesus’s tomb a “borrowed tomb.” Jesus borrowed Joseph’s tomb, like I used to borrow my sister’s car when we were in high school. “Thank you, Joseph, for the tomb. But I don’t need it anymore. You can have it back!” Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a borrowed donkey, ate Passover in a borrowed room, and then when he died was laid in a borrowed tomb. 

To that you might say, “Why do you say ‘borrowed tomb,’ Pastor Tony? Why just borrowed? What happened?” Well Jesus rose from the dead – that’s what happened! Jesus defeated death! It’s the power of the resurrection demonstrated right here for us! 

Tell me if you’ve heard this before, church? 

There in the ground His body lay

Light of the world by darkness slain

Then bursting forth in glorious Day

Up from the grave He rose again

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That’s the Power of the Resurrection, folks. Let’s transition now to the perplexity. 

2) The Perplexity of the Resurrection (24:4-5)

Look with me at verse 4, 

4 While they were perplexed about this, 

And don’t kid yourself, by the way. You’d be perplexed by this too. Remember they had just watched Jesus die on a cross. They had seen the lance thrust into his side and burst his heart. They had seen water and blood flow from his side. They had helped take him off that cross and wrap his lifeless body with linen. If you were them, you’d be perplexed too. And they need some help to make sense of this. 

4 [And] While they were perplexed about this, behold, two men stood by them in dazzling apparel. 

In other words, “angels,” right? In fact, they are explicitly called “angels” by the two men on the road to Emmaus in 24:23. 

5 And as they were frightened and bowed their faces to the ground, 

Yeah they would be frightened! You know these women are right to be afraid here. Because a lot of times when angels showed up in the OT, people would get terrified. And that’s because a lot of times angels killed folks. So they are right to be afraid here.  

5 And as they were frightened and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, “Why do you seek the living among the dead?  

“Tombs are for dead people, ladies! Why would Jesus be among the dead? Jesus is alive!” You know there are some in our world, who call themselves Christians, but they have a real problem with the resurrection of Jesus. They believe in his death on a cross. That’s completely plausible to them—Jesus executed by Romans? Sure. But risen from the dead? Come on, that’s not plausible. 

And so the resurrection for them becomes a kind of spiritualized reality, not a bodily resurrection. They say, “No, Jesus Christ wasn’t literally raised from the dead. Instead, he is risen… in our hearts!” How y’all feel about that Verse By Verse? 

And this passage becomes for those people a kind of spiritualized moralism or an ethical code to live by. And for my part, I wish that these angels here in Luke 24 could spend about five minutes with people like that, scare the jeepers out of them and say to them, “Why do you seek the living among the dead?” “Why are you so dense? Jesus is alive. He’s been raised from the dead!”

Look at verse 6.     

6 He is not here, but has risen. 

You know there are other people in our day who say things like this, “I like Jesus; I do. I just don’t like the moral demands of Christianity. I like some things in the Bible, but there are other things that are distasteful for me.” “Maybe I’ll do these things from the Bible, but not these other things.” But here’s the thing, if Jesus didn’t actually rise from the dead, then who cares? Who cares what the Bible says? Who cares about its moral teachings? Who cares if you read the Bible or adopt some of its teachings or not? John MacArthur said once, “There is no Christianity without the resurrection. There is no salvation without belief in the resurrection.”   

There may even be people who go to church on Easter Sunday, or watch a message like this as a kind of social obligation. And I’ll just tell you, if you don’t believe that Jesus rose from the dead, don’t even bother with that. It’s insignificant. I would even go further than that, and say if Jesus didn’t rise from the dead, then you better go do something else and enjoy yourself, because there’s going to be a whole lot of nothingness after you are dead. Good luck dealing with death and the next great pandemic in our world.

But if you do believe that Jesus rose from the dead. If you do think his resurrection is plausible and believable and historically reliable…and by the way there are good biblical and extra-biblical reasons to believe that… If you do believe that, then you don’t get to say “Well, I like this in the Bible, but I don’t like that.” You don’t get to say that! You don’t get to say, “I like this about Jesus’s teaching, but not that.” If he is risen from the dead, then he is King of the world, and he deserves your absolute obedience and following in all areas of life.   

And just think about this for a second. Let’s do a little thought experiment together. How did that group of lily-livered, scaredy-cat disciples go from abandoning Jesus before his crucifixion to strong, bold, powerful witnesses for Jesus just a few days later? How did that happen? I mean they were in a sorry state after Jesus’s arrest. They were dejected. They were frightened. They were hiding. They were demoralized. How did that change? 

Was it because they concocted this idea: “Okay, listen up, guys! Let’s just pretend that Jesus was raised from the dead. Yeah… yeah! Let’s just make something up. And then we can risk our lives telling other people about this fabricated story of ours!” Would they do that? Would these guys really be willing to give their lives for that? I don’t think so! It takes more faith to believe that, then faith to believe that Jesus actually rose from the dead. 

You know how they changed from scaredy-cats to bold followers of Jesus Christ, willing to preach him even unto death? I’ll tell you what it was. They saw Jesus alive! And they believed that he was raised from the dead. And through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, his disciples wrote these Scriptures so that you might see and believe in the resurrection too. 

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We’ve seen the Power of the Resurrection and the Perplexity of the Resurrection. Now Luke tells us about…

3) The Promise of the Resurrection (24:6-9)

Look with me at verse 6. The angels said, 

6 He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, 7 that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified and on the third day rise.” 

Three times, at least, Jesus told them this. Three times! You ever get tired of telling your kids stuff, parents? If so, you are not alone. Jesus dealt with that too. And bless their hearts, Jesus’s disciples, both male and female, didn’t get it. They didn’t remember. Not until after he was raised from the dead. You know, human beings are a forgetful species. We are! We need to be reminded about God’s Word often. That’s why we come to church for regular reminders about God’s Word. We need it. 

Look at verse 8. 

8 And they remembered his words, 

Now they remember. Finally they remember! Praise the Lord. There is hope for your children someday, parents, that they will actually remember what you told them. It’ll probably kick in when their about 30 years old. 

Just as a refresher here, Jesus told his disciples in Luke 9:22, “The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.” 

Jesus says later in Luke 18:31-33, “‘See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written about the Son of Man by the prophets will be accomplished. For he will be delivered over to the Gentiles and will be mocked and shamefully treated and spit upon. And after flogging him, they will kill him, and on the third day he will rise.’” 

And yet Luke 18:34 says, “But they understood none of these things. This saying was hidden from them, and they did not grasp what was said.” 

Did they just forget? Was this because of a lack of understanding or because of their hard hearts? I don’t know. I’m inclined to defer to God’s sovereignty and timing with these things. They didn’t know, because God didn’t allow them to know until the appointed time of his resurrection. 

And watch what they do once they remember. Here their response of faith takes hold of their hearts. 

8 And they remembered his words, 9 and returning from the tomb they told all these things to the eleven and to all the rest. 

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And what happens next with Jesus’s disciples? How are they going to respond? What do you think, church? Wouldn’t it be great if it read, “And Jesus’s eleven apostles believed it instantly as soon as they heard it. They were filled with joy and rejoiced when they heard that Jesus was raised from the dead. And they started singing, ‘Happy Days are here again!’” Wouldn’t that be great? I wish that’s what it said. I wish that’s how they responded. But it’s not. What does it say? Look at verse 10.

10 Now it was Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary the mother of James and the other women with them who told these things to the apostles, 11 but these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them. 

We’ve seen the Power of the Resurrection. We’ve seen the Perplexity of the Resurrection. We’ve seen the Promise of the Resurrection. The fourth thing that we see in this text is this: 

4) The Pessimism of the Resurrection (24:10-12)

These women rushed back to Jerusalem to tell these disciples what happened. And you know what they encountered? Pessimism. Incredulity. “It’s an idle tale” they said. It’s unfortunate, but this pessimism still continues today. In some places, the resurrection of Jesus Christ is still considered an “idle tale” told and believed primarily by women. 

It’s interesting if you’ve ever done any research on the actual historicity of the resurrection. In the First Century world, the last thing that you would ever do if you were making up a story that you wanted people to believe is make women your first witnesses. The testimonies of women were downplayed in the ancient world. Most cultures at this time were misogynistic. In Book One of his Politics, Aristotle says that “the male is by nature superior, and the female [by nature] inferior. The one rules, and the other is ruled.” In fact Celsus, the second-century critic of Christianity, called Mary Magdalene “a hysterical female” deluded by sorcery. And he asked why should anyone listen to the testimony of this hysterical female? How do y’all feel about that, ladies of Verse By Verse Fellowship? 

In his article on this matter, Justin Taylor writes that “In the first century, women were not even eligible to testify in a Jewish court of law.” And that’s why there testimony in Luke and the other Gospels matters! It matters for two reasons: “First, it is a theological reminder that the kingdom of the Messiah turns the system of the world on its head. Into this culture, Jesus radically affirmed the full dignity of women and the vital value of their witness. Second, it is a powerful apologetic reminder of the historical accuracy of the resurrection accounts. If these were ‘cleverly devised myths’ (2 Pet. 1:16), women would never have been presented as the first eyewitnesses of the risen Christ.”

These women were bringing a true witness to these men about the empty tomb, and these men dismissed them. Shame on these men for that! These are the same men, by the way, who abandoned Jesus in his hour of greatest need. But not all of the men dismissed them. Look at verse 12. 

12 But Peter rose and ran to the tomb; 

The pessimists are incredulous, but Peter’s got to find out for himself. And Luke says Peter “ran to the tomb.” Like Forest Gump, Peter was running to that tomb! By the way, in the Jewish world, grown men like Peter didn’t run. That’s what kids do. That’s what’s so remarkable about the Father in Jesus’s parable of the Prodigal Son. In that parable, the Father ran to his son (cf. Luke 15:11-32). That’s a shocking development in the story. In the Jewish world, men walk. They don’t run. It would be undignified for a grown man to run. But Peter doesn’t care about dignity right now. He’s got to find out what happened to Jesus’s body! 

[and] stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; 

And what did Peter find? There’s no dead body like maybe he was expecting. And what does he smell? There’s no smell of decomposing flesh like maybe he was expecting. There’s just the sweet smell of myrrh and fragrances. And what does he see? All he sees is linen cloths lying down by themselves. 

Why are linen cloths there, do you know? If grave robbers had stolen the body, why would they leave the clothes? If someone had dragged Jesus’s body out of there to impale him before the people as a warning against insurrectionists like they did with William Wallace in London, why would they take the clothes off? The answer to that question, I think, is that Jesus’s new resurrection body has the ability to materialize and de-materialize as needed. 

How many of you imagine Jesus like the Incredible Hulk just kind of ripping his clothes off of him after his resurrection? That’s not what happened! The linen cloths were just lying there. John tells us in his gospel that they were “rolled up” or “folded up” there inside the tomb (John 20:6-7). How’d that happen? I’ll tell you how it happened, Jesus passed through his clothes like your body and hands pass through water. And these linen garments are lying there in the tomb, like the abandoned chrysalis of a butterfly.

Some of you might ask, “Well if Jesus’s body could materialize and dematerialize, then why was the stone rolled away? Why didn’t Jesus just pass through the stone?” Well Warren Wiersbe says it best. The stone was rolled away “not to let Jesus out but to let the witnesses in.” That big boulder was the first great inanimate witness to the resurrection. The angels rolled the stone away to let Jesus’s disciples in, so that they could testify to the resurrection!  

Some of you might ask in light of this, “Okay, Tony, Well if Jesus’s body could materialize and dematerialize, was it a real, corporeal body?” Yes, it was. Mary Magdalene could touch it (John 20:17). Thomas could touch it. He could even touch the nails scars in his hands (John 10:27). Jesus said, “Bring me a fish,” and they brought him a fish and he ate it (Luke 24:42). And he did that in his new resurrection body, which is absolutely awesome to me!  

And to all this you might say, “Yeah, Pastor Tony this is just like Lazarus, when Lazarus was raised from the dead!” Actually, no this is totally different from Lazarus. Lazarus came out with his grave clothes on. Lazarus came out, and he needed help getting unwound from the cloths wrapped around him (cf. John 11:1-44). Lazarus came back from the dead, but he had to die again. Poor guy. He had to die twice. 

Jesus’s resurrection wasn’t like that at all. He defeated the grave and he abandon his grave clothes forever. His resurrection body is eternal. It’s a real body. It’s a corporeal body. But it’s a glorified, eternal body. And (I assume) it has the ability to materialize and dematerialize. Maybe our new bodies will be able to do that too?

And look what happens at the end of verse 12. 

and [Peter] went home marveling at what had happened. 

Yeah, I bet he was marveling. Let me just say something right here for apologetics purposes. Nobody throughout all the centuries of Christianity has ever argued that the tomb wasn’t empty. Nobody! Even unbelievers who try to deny the resurrection, even they believe the tomb was empty. They just believe it was empty for some other reason. Grave-robbers? Swoon theory? Maybe the disciples came and whipped the guards, moved the stone, and stole the body away? That’s what the Jews and Romans concocted as a theory according to the Book of Matthew (28:11-15). They had to come up with something, because they’ve got an empty tomb and no body inside it. 

Some people might say, “Well they hallucinated that Jesus was alive. That’s what happened.” Really? All these disciples and all these women and all these people from the NT that saw him (more than 500 people according to 1 Cor 15:3-11), they were all hallucinating? That takes more “faith” than believing that Jesus actually rose from the dead. 

And you’ve got to consider this. If they want to prove to people that Jesus didn’t rise from the dead, then why don’t they just take those early Christian converts to the tomb and say, “Your religion is a farce... here’s the dead body right here”? My point here is that they couldn’t do that. They couldn’t do that, because there wasn’t a dead body to show people. The tomb was empty and so they had to account for that some other way. And I would just say that some of those theories take more faith to believe than the truth that Jesus was raised from the dead.

You know every person is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts. These are the facts. The stone was rolled away. The tomb was empty. Everyone knows that. How are you going to account for that? “Oh it’s the swoon theory. Jesus just kind of swooned on the cross and appeared to die. And then he was revived in the tomb and escaped afterwards.” Really? You want to stake your life on that? You want to stake your eternity on that versus Jesus doing what he said he was going to do… rise from the dead?

I know this passage ends anticlimactically. Peter just goes home in verse 12 marveling at what happened. There’s more to this story in Luke. There’s more to Jesus’s resurrection in Luke’s Gospel and then in the Book of Acts too. I’ll let you read and think about that on your own. The question here for you is this. What are you going to do about the empty tomb? What are you going to believe? Are you going to join the parade of pessimists that have too easily dismissed Jesus’s resurrection over the centuries? Are you going to spiritualize this resurrection? “Jesus wasn’t really resurrected from the grave. Jesus is only spiritually resurrected in our hearts!” I’m sorry. That doesn’t work! Luke didn’t record this so that we would embrace a “spiritual” resurrection. Luke recorded this in this gospel so that we might believe and be saved. Jesus was raised from the dead. I believe it. Do you believe it? 

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You might say, “Why is this so important to you, Tony?” Why is resurrection so important to Christians? Why is Easter so important to Christians? Why the resurrection, Pastor Tony?” Here’s why. Let me close with this, and then we can worship Jesus together some more. Here’s why it’s important. 

a)   If Jesus didn’t rise from the dead, then he’s a liar and cannot be trusted

Jesus said he would rise from the dead. And he either did or he didn’t. Don’t give me a truncated Jesus who didn’t say what he means and do what he said. Either he did it or he didn’t. I believe he did. I believe he was raised from the dead. What do you believe? 

Why’s the resurrection so important to us as Christians? 

b)   If Jesus didn’t rise from the dead, then we won’t rise from the dead

Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, “And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins… If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied” (15:17, 19). Paul says, “And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain” (15:14). If Jesus Christ’s resurrection didn’t happen, then we should all just give up! I mean it! We should all just eat ice-cream and live a hopeless life. We’re all going to die soon and it’ll be over, so let’s just quit. That’s not what we believe as Christians. And Christ explicitly died and rose from the dead, so that we would have life eternally. 

And finally here’s a third reason why the resurrection is so important to us as Christians. 

c)   If Jesus didn’t rise from the dead, then he’s not coming back for us

But praise God, Jesus was raised from the dead, and we can celebrate him at Easter time. We can celebrate the past, the present, and the future. His past resurrection. Our present salvation. And our future hope that he is coming back again for us and he’s going to usher us into eternity. 

Like the old hymn goes:

In garments glorious he will come,

To open wide the door;

And I shall enter my heavenly home.

To dwell forevermore. 

Amen! Let’s bow in a word of prayer and then we can sing together.