An Empty Tomb? Series

Everything that needed to be said had been said and everything that needed to be done had been done. In the span of a week their world had crashed down around them and now all there was to do was pick up the pieces and try to put a semblance of their lives back together.

A week ago they had followed Jesus into Jerusalem basking in the overflow of the adoration that the people had showered on him. This was it, the culmination of three years of following Jesus, of listening to his teaching and watching the miracles he performed. The people of Jerusalem finally seemed to get it, this was God’s chosen one the Messiah the one who would deliver them from their oppressors.

But that was Sunday, and somehow the tide had turned between Sunday and the wee hours of Friday morning when they came in the dark to arrest him in the garden. The events that happened after that were like a nightmare that swept down on them like a whirlwind from hell. Jesus was taken to the High Priest where he was charged with blasphemy, blasphemy? Blasphemy Jesus would be the last person in the world that would blaspheme the Father. And when he wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of giving in they had him beat and then turned him over to Pilate where it went from bad to worse.

The Governor knew that it was all a farce to appease the Jewish leaders who felt threatened by Jesus and his teaching, but what could he do? The High Priest and his cohorts could make Pilate’s life miserable. He tried for a compromise, actually a couple of compromises. First he sent Jesus to Herod in hopes that Herod would release him, but Herod sent him back. Then he appealed to the crowd offering to free one prisoner, hoping beyond hope it would the one they had welcome just the Sunday before, but instead the chose the terrorist Barabbas. And finally Pilate had Jesus flogged trying to appease the crowds blood lust, but still they demanded the crucifixion of the Galilean carpenter. And so Pilate relented, washing his hands of the sordid mess he turned Christ over to his soldiers to be executed and turned his back on the entire affair.

And so Christ who had a lived a perfect life was hung on a cross and died like a common criminal. And the one who claimed to have created the world was laid in a borrowed tomb. And it was finished just as he had cried out with his dying breath on the cross, and everything that needed to be said had been said and everything that needed to be done had been done.

On Saturday they had tried to understand all that had happened, they had told stories of their time with Jesus, remembered the good times and tried to shut out the horror of Fridays events and now on Sunday Morning they were collecting their thoughts and collecting their lives and were ready to walk away. Walk away from Jerusalem, walk away from their dreams from the past three years and their nightmares from the past three days. It was done, it was over it was finished.

And just when they had made up their minds the women came bursting through the door. There was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James and a couple of others and they start babbling about Jesus’ tomb being empty. Like that was going to happen it was just wishful thinking.

If we had of kept reading In the scripture that Kim read earlier, the ladies returned to where the disciples were staying to tell them what happened and the disciples reaction is found in: Luke 24:11 But the story sounded like nonsense to the men, so they didn’t believe it. It’s interesting to note that this is Luke’s account of the resurrection and you may recall that the scholars tell us that Luke was a doctor and that the term that Dr. Luke uses that the NLT translates nonsense was actually a medical term meaning hysteria, almost akin to babbling. Now I know that you are probably thinking “Those jerks, why wouldn’t they believe the ladies?” And I know that you would be the first person to believe that someone you had seen crucified was actually alive and well.

So why did the apostles feel like women were hysterical and couldn’t be believed? Probably for the same reasons that people today feel that the resurrection is simply a myth. So this morning we are going to look at some of the objections there are to the resurrection as well as explanations that are sometimes offered up to explain away the resurrection and answers to those objections and explanations.