There are many thoughts as to what actually happened on that first Easter so many years ago, or what it actually means to us today. That is what we will address today. So, if you would, please open your Bibles to LUKE 24. We will begin there, but first . . .
What do you think a good sermon does? One experienced preacher said a good sermon will make you sorry you sinned, but overjoyed that you are saved anyway. He said it will make your heart cry out with empathy for others and make it laugh out loud with thanksgiving that they are there for you to talk to.
My hope is that no matter what it does, it will always bring you closer to Christ after hearing it than you were before you heard it. And that is my plea today; that God will draw you closer to His Son than you ever were before.
Most biographies devote less than 10% of its pages to a person’s death, but in the Gospels, we see that Jesus’ death is the central theme. Well, not so much His death, but that He arose after His death.
Why the difference between the two types of biographies? That is very simple. The only biography that affects your eternal life is the one that is about Jesus.
Today, all over this world, Christian preachers will be talking about the same message: “Jesus Christ arose from the tomb!”
And, all over the world, Christians will be asking the same question and will be receiving the same good news: “Why are you looking for the living among the dead? He arose, just as He said He would.”
Many years ago, there was a well-known judge. One evening, while standing in his bathtub, he reached up to turn the light switch on and he got electrocuted. His wife heard him fall, and she ran up to find him lying across the edge of the tub.
She called 9-1-1 and they took him to the morgue. The local radio and television stations received the news and began immediately broadcasting it across their airwaves. Soon, the entire area was grieving about his death.
But in the middle of the night, this judge awoke! He had been merely knocked unconscious. When he awoke, he was dazed and confused, and did not know where he was. It was dark with only the faint glow of a distant light to give an eerie outline effect to the room.
He fumbled around for a phone and when he found it, he called his wife to come and get him. She panicked and screamed for him to stop calling because he was dead! That scared him even more, so he called a friend. The friend also yelled and said he was dead.
The judge now was frantically trying to find a way out of wherever he was. And in so doing, he began knocking things over and creating a loud commotion.
It turns out he was not alone. There was a young college student who was living there while learning how to be a mortician. The noise woke him up, and knowing they were coming from the morgue, he got scared and ran out of the building!
He was last seen running in a dead panic out of town, still dressed in his pajamas and screaming something about ghosts.
To wake up in a dark place that was unfamiliar to you and not know how you got there would indeed frighten most of us. But there was another man who woke up in such a place, but He knew where He was and He knew what happened to cause Him to be there.
And just like the judge, others claimed He could not be there because He was dead. And there are many who, years and years later, still deny that this man is alive. This man’s name is Jesus, and He is our Godly Christ. And it is this man who our entire Christian belief revolves around.
Now, you might say that is unnatural. I would agree, but I would counter with it is SUPER-NATURAL, and that is how Jesus works in our lives; on a super natural basis!
Last week was Palm Sunday, and we talked about the empty tomb. Let’s go back there again for a few minutes so we might be able to experience what the two women experienced as they approached the tomb early that morning to prepare Jesus’ body for burial.
In LUKE 24:1-3, we read -
“1 Very early on Sunday morning the women went to the tomb, taking the spices they had made to prepare Jesus’ body for burial. 2 They found that the stone had been rolled away from the entrance. 3 So they went in, but they didn’t find the body of the Lord Jesus.”
It was early in the morning, just before dawn, and the women were carrying the oils and cloths to prepare His body. They had just witnessed their Christ being hanged on a cross and killed in a most horrendous of ways, and then put into a tomb for the dead. So, on the way to the tomb, I doubt if there was much talking between them. They were grieving too much to talk.
And while they were walking the last moments of darkness, they felt the ground shudder. They would have known it was an earthquake, so they probably stopped and just stood there until the shaking was over. And then, they rounded the last bend in the road, and as they did, they saw the guards. They were all lying on the ground as if they were dead.
And the rock that sealed the tomb had been rolled away by the earthquake and the tomb was wide open. They went in the tomb only to find it empty. There was no body to prepare. As they stood there, trying to absorb this scene, and not quite knowing how to do it, they suddenly saw two men, dressed in dazzling white garments.
LUKE 24:4-5 explains this situation to us.
"4 … two men suddenly appeared to them, clothed in dazzling robes. 5 The women were terrified and bowed with their faces to the ground. Then the men asked, “Why are you looking for Him among the dead?"
To the women, it must have seemed as if the world had stopped making any sense, and to make matters even more confusing, two angels appeared before them. And they calmly asked the women why they were looking for the living where only the dead would be.
And they continued by telling the women to remember that Jesus had already told them of His forthcoming betrayal, death, and resurrection.
Continuing in LUKE 24:6-8, the angels say,
"6 He is not here! He has risen from the dead, just as He said He would! Remember what he told you back in Galilee, 7 that the Son of Man must be betrayed into the hands of sinful men and be crucified, and that he would rise again on the third day.” 8 Then they remembered that he had said this."
We are imperfect humans, and sometimes it is the natural world that overwhelms us with information since we can see it, touch it, etc. Sometimes, at first instinct, the super natural world will elude us. That is why the women did not quickly remember what Jesus had told them. They were being inundated with the sights and sounds from this world. It took someone reminding them, and then they focused back on the Lord.
Now, let’s get back and find out where the body of Jesus went. The guards might have been the first witnesses. They were Roman military soldiers. That means they had superb training and were in top physical condition. They were trained killers and had no fear. Yet they were found to be unconscious from fear and trembling.
We know that in any military, there is a very stiff punishment for falling asleep on duty. If any of them had fallen asleep, the others would have shown no mercy in waking them up! And, they would have been punished severely by their commanders. But there is absolutely no record of them ever being punished or charged with anything.
Could it be that their superiors actually knew the truth, but since they did not want to make it public, they could not punish their own men?
I believe the soldiers fainted because any time people who do not believe in Christ and who do evil things are confronted with Christ, they always become afraid and faint.
So where else could the body have gone to? If Jesus’ enemies took it, they would have produced it alter to prove He was still dead . . . but they never did.
And the disciples had taken it, they would have been arrested, but there is no record of them even being a suspect, much less being investigated for it.
From the day Jesus arose, to this very day now, people will deny He could have overcome death, and to prove it they will spend all kinds of energy and time making up the most outlandish of stories to explain how Jesus could not have lived again. Everything they come up with is either laughable on the face of it, or they leave many more questions than they supply answers to.
In truth, the empty tomb is impossible to ignore or deny. It is a historical fact that was substantiated by over 500 personal eyewitnesses; none of whom were ever shown to be mistaken.
Paul talks about these witnesses in 1 CORINTHIANS 15:6-8 –
“6 After that, he was seen by more than 500 of his followers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. 7 Then he was seen by James and later by all the apostles. 8 Last of all, as though I had been born at the wrong time, I also saw him.”
Paul does not just elude to mysterious witnesses; he goes so far as to identify them by saying many are still alive. He gives specifics … and these too are never disputed.
All the facts and proof are on the side of truth. The Resurrection did happen, but what have we done with it anyway? We have changed it, denied it, and done everything but own up to it. In fact, we have taken provable facts and exchanged them with open-faced lies and tried to be satisfied with doing so.
Here are just a few of the things we have said did happen, instead of just accepting the truth in the Bible. See if any of them sound the least bit plausible to you.
One story is called the VISION THEORY. That says that everyone wanted to see Jesus so badly that over 500 people had the exact same vision at the exact same time, even though none of them were identified.
In reality, you cannot even get two people to have the same vision at the same time unless they rehearse it, and you cannot get over 500 people to sit down and rehearse anything and get it right.
Another story is the TELEGRAPH THEORY. It is an actual theory, based on what thousands of people believed during the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. It says that Jesus somehow had managed to send a picture of Himself back and people thought they were seeing Him rather than a picture.
In reality, TV was not invented back then, so there is nothing at all to base this story on except for a wild imagination.
And here is one that I personally find hysterical. It is called the SWOON THEORY.
This theory says that Jesus was very weak after the beatings and enduring being hanged on the cross and then having a spear shoved into his lungs and heart. He also had lost a tremendous amount of blood. This caused him to faint, showing such a light heart beat that it could not be detected.
Then, thinking He was dead, they put him in a tomb and rolled a 7-ton rock in front of it to seal it closed. And Jesus lay in there for three days, bleeding, hurting, having no water and no food, yet on the third day, He awoke feeling good enough to push that heavy boulder out of the way all by himself.
The trouble with these lies, is that it takes more faith to believe them than it takes to believe the Bible. I do not possess that kind of faith, nor do I want to. I am happy just having the faith in the truth of God’s Word. And that truth tells us that Jesus Christ did arise from the tomb, and He did it by the super natural power of the Almighty God who is our Creator.
That truth has impacted everybody that has ever faced it with honesty. Look at the immediate changes in the early church for example
ACTS 5:27-28, shows critical evidence for us to consider:
“Having brought the apostles to the Sanhedrin, they were questioned by the high priest. “We gave you strict orders not to teach in Jesus’ name,” the priest said. “Yet you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and are determined to make us guilty of this man’s blood.”
The Sanhedrin were a group of men much like a city councilmen of today. And now, they were panicked at the thought of being blamed for the disappearance of Christ, so they ordered the Apostles to stop talking about Him altogether. In the past, they would have been intimidated by the council of Sanhedrin, but now, after receiving the power of the Holy Spirit after Jesus arose and ascended back to Heaven, they now preached with absolute authority and boldness. They had encountered a profound change.
They were now willing to die for the One who gave them hope and in whom they believed. But how does this prove Jesus arose from the dead? People are not willing to stand boldly for a lie knowing they will be killed for doing so. Not one of them recanted their bold belief in Christ, even when faced with the immediate prospect of dying in the most painful of ways.
When Jesus was arrested, the disciples deserted Him. When He was being tried in the Kangaroo court, Peter denied even knowing who He was. But after He arose, the disciples got stronger in belief and the church got stronger in action.
It is only through, and in, Jesus Christ do we find the strength to grow His kingdom and to keep our salvation. Since the cross, Christians have staked their eternal lives on what Jesus said as He uttered these words:
“Because I live, you also shall live.”
Today, our focus should not just be on what happened to Jesus, but on what happened to the disciples because of what happened to Jesus, and how that has affected our spiritual lives today.
1 CORINTHIANS 15:20-22 tells us,
"But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead – the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam, all die – so in Christ, all will be made alive."
Death is not the end for Christians, it is only the beginning. the beginning of a life spent in Heaven with our Creator and our Savior. As Jesus now lives forever, we also can live forever … with Him, because we have true hope.
Elijah thought everyone wanted to kill him, but God showed him they weren’t. This gave Elijah hope and because he had hope, he went forth and accomplished even more of God’s goal.
Do you think it gave King David hope when God gave him victory over his enemies in the most super natural of ways?
We desperately need hope in order to live. I am reminded of the story of four ladies in a nursing home. They were sitting at the table playing cards when a nurse brought in a new male resident.
One of the women asked where he came from, and he said he had been in prison for 30-years for killing his wife. So the lady smiled a big smile, looked at him and said, “So you are single then, right?”
We all need to have hope, but I would suggest we try and have a Godly hope, for that will give us a much better result.
When you take away our hope, you take away our very lives. And the hope we have is our hope in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the King of all kings and the Lord of all lords.
But knowing about what we are to do will not help us if we are unwilling to put it to use. It would be like knowing what brakes on a car are for, but not believing you have brakes, or because you don’t want to take the time to think about them, you end up not using them …. even to save your very life.
My prayer for us today, as we close, is that we all see the need to understand all we can about Jesus Christ and the role He plays in our personal lives.
Let’s close in prayer.
* after Easter Sunday, the video of this sermon can be seen at: http://www.cowetanazarene.org/easter.html
