The Resurrection: How Will You Respond?
Matthew 27:27—28:10
He is risen! He is risen indeed!
So Christ is risen!
But I want to ask you a question this morning. Do you think of Christ's resurrection as just an interesting and unique fact of history—that God intended it just as a point of knowledge, for us to wonder about or speculate about?
Or do you think he had a more specific purpose in raising Jesus from the dead? Do you ever wonder what His specific purpose was for us, and in particular for you? Do you ever wonder what specific response God wants from you as a result of your knowing that Jesus came back from the dead?
And do you ever wonder whether you have responded to the resurrection of Christ in the way that God intended?
If you're not sure, or even if you are, I want to invite you to pray with me this morning that God will make it evident from this message this morning precisely how He wants you to respond to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. So pray with me, silently, as I pray out loud: Father, I invite you right now to speak to me, and to reveal to me by your Holy Spirit and Your Holy Word, precisely how you want me to respond to you and Jesus as a result of your having raised Jesus from the dead. Lord, what do you want from me, how do you want me to respond, to this incredibly unique event in history—Jesus the Christ's resurrection from the dead? In Jesus' name, Amen.
Now as we seek an answer, we're going to check out how the very first people to witness the resurrection of Jesus responded, and learned to respond—the female followers, or disciples of Jesus Christ. Did you know, that it wasn't the male followers of Jesus, the 12 disciples who first saw the resurrected Jesus Christ, but rather a select group of women who were exceptionally devoted to Jesus? Or did you know that they were the first to tell the disciples about Jesus' resurrection before they ever witnessed the resurrected Christ for themselves?
Yes, specifically three women, and perhaps others, show us precisely how God wants us to respond to the greatest event in all of history: the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ.
How did they respond? Before I tell you the story, I’m going to give you the answer in a nutshell. They turned from unbelief and apathy to a repentant & obedient faith in Jesus. Want to respond to Jesus Resurrection as God wants you to—want to get it. Then this will be your response: Turn from unbelief, or a dead faith and apathy, to a repentant & obedient faith.
Jesus had just given up His Spirit—He had just died at about 3 in the afternoon on Good Friday, 33 A.D. Matthew 27:55-56 has told us that many women were there at the cross looking on from a distance as Jesus died—these were women who had followed Jesus from Galilee, the northern province of Israel, to Judea, where He was crucified in the southern province of Israel, and had ministered to Jesus over the course of His ministry. In other words, these women were very devoted followers of Jesus. They had devoted their lives for these past several years to ministering to Jesus, and I suspect, His male disciples as well. And now their devotion and love for Jesus was being demonstrated as they remained with Him even to and now beyond His death on that cruel Roman cross.
Verse 56 focuses on the identity of three of these women. The first was Mary Magdalene. Mary's name tells us a little about her. She was from Magdala, a village on the southwest shore of the Sea of Galilee, which today is still in existence, only as a bustling city. Luke 8:2 tells us that she had been greatly blessed by Jesus' ministry—that she had been delivered from seven demons. And she had expressed her gratitude to Jesus by becoming a devoted follower, even a leader among the women who ministered to Jesus.
The second woman is also a Mary. She's identified as the mother of James and Joses. As you might know, there were two disciples by the name of James. There was James the brother of John, the first of the apostles to die by martyrdom in Acts 12. However, the James mentioned here is the other James, also known as James the less.
And then there is a woman who is identified by Matthew only as being the mother of the Sons of Zebedee, that is the other James and John. We know from other Gospels that her name was Salome. These three women were steadfastly devoted to Jesus while He was dying at the cross, and now after His death, they were still so devoted, they remained there with His body. In other words, they so loved and were so devoted to Jesus that they stuck with Jesus both in life, and death, and beyond death, and it becomes evident shortly that their motive was to see that Jesus received an honorable and respectful burial.
Now it's important at this point to ask some questions. First, where were the male disciples of Jesus, the remaining 11 after Judas' departure? The last we hear of most of them is in Matthew 26:56, when they abandoned Jesus as He was being arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane. Oddly, there is no record of any of them, except John, being present at Jesus' crucifixion, or thereafter. According to John 19, John had been there, with Jesus' mother, as they had drawn close to a dying Jesus on the cross, only to have Jesus commit to his care the Virgin Mary. And at that point, on that day, John had taken her to his own home to care for her as he would his own mother.
Regarding the remaining 10 disciples, there is no record that any of them were at the crucifixion. They were likely cowering, in hiding, somewhere in Jerusalem, fearing that their fate would be the same as Jesus' if they were found out.
And so these women were unique and even courageous in their devotion to Jesus. They were willing to openly identify with Jesus at a very dangerous and crazy time in order to insure Jesus' body were properly cared for.
But still another question needs to be answered. Why did Matthew narrow his focus to these three, and not others who were there who were his followers.
The answer, I believe will be found in the very critical events to follow: all three of these women would be the first to be eyewitnesses of Christ's resurrection, and two of the three would be among the very few, at most four people, who also witnessed the details of Christ's burial.
You see, what is happening here is that Matthew is setting the scene for us—the scene for the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And He is marshalling for us the eyewitnesses, the first the necessary multiple eyewitnesses necessary according to Old Testament Law to assure us of the facts of any historic event—and these women would uniquely become eyewitnesses of the most important facts that underlie our Christian faith. As I Corinthians 15:5-8 describe them for us, they are the death, the burial and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. All three of these women witnessed the death of Christ first-hand, as did thousands. Two of the three were among only four people we know of who witnessed His burial, which is a proof in itself that He was dead, dead as a door nail, and that He was raised from the dead. And all three were among the first three eyewitnesses of His resurrection.
Now there's still a third question that we need to ask. Why did God grant the great privilege of being the first three eyewitnesses of the Resurrection to these three women? Why not to the inner circle of the three apostles—James, John, and Peter? Why not to any of the other disciples, male or female? What was so special about them?
The answer is this: These three women, at this moment, demonstrated themselves to be the most devoted to Jesus. They demonstrated that they loved Jesus even beyond death, at the risk of their own lives, to honor Him even in His burial.
And there is an important spiritual principle to be found in this—one that still applies to believers today. Respond with tangible love and devotion to Jesus, and Jesus will show up for you. Respond with real, tangible, active love and devotion to Jesus, and Jesus will show up for you. God, in Jesus, will supernaturally manifest Himself to you, when you show this kind of loyal, faithful love to Him.
Jesus enunciated this principle Himself just the night before these events, in the upper room during the last supper. He told His disciples: "Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me. The one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love them and show myself to them” (John 14:21). In other words, Jesus clearly says two things here: If you want to have an experience, even a supernatural experience of God in your life, if you want answered prayer, then the condition for that is loving Him. And it's not just a sentimental kind of love. It is a love that is proven by action: What demonstrates that you love Jesus? It is this, very specifically—you have His commandments and you keep them. That is you have His Word, the Word of God, the Bible, and you value His Word, and you do your level best to keep His word, to obey His commandments. Now I don't believe He's talking about perfection here, but an intention that is to a large degree realized. The foundation for how you live is God's instruction found in His Word. You live according to Scripture, rather than the whims of this world, or your own desires. You demonstrate your love and devotion to Jesus by keeping Jesus' commandments.
So, the next question for you to ask yourself is this: Do you live according to Jesus' commands? Is the Bible, especially the New Testament important to you? Do you spend time in God's Word because you intend to live by it? Do you live by Scripture?
Perhaps if you have lacked in the experience of a personal relationship with God, and answered prayer, and you've wondered why, here is the answer. You haven't loved Jesus as He said you need to love Him in order to experience Him. You haven't valued the Word of God and made it your goal to live by Jesus' commandments found in it.
You see, the very reason these three women were the first to have Jesus show up, as the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ to them, is that they were the ones who were there for Him even after His death. Now it's true, they didn't show up at the grave that day because of their faith that He was going to be raised from the dead as He had predicted. But they did show up, and they showed up because they loved Him, and they showed up before any of the other followers of Jesus did, precisely because they were so zealously devoted to Him. So they were honored, they were rewarded, for their devotion and love to Jesus, just as John 14:21's promise indicated they would be.
In verse 57, the scene now shifts to the burial of Jesus' body. The Romans were often content to let the victims of crucifixion rot on their crosses as a continuing warning to those who would be tempted to repeat their crimes. But the Jews were not so inclined; in fact, the Law did not permit this, especially on a holy day. So, out of the shadows comes a secret follower of Jesus, a rich man, Joseph of Arimathea, a member of the Sanhedrin who had condemned Jesus to death, but one who had not consented to this plan. He now openly identifies for the first time with Jesus, and comes to Pilate asking for His body. Pilate consents. Verse 59 tells us that Joseph took the body and wrapped it in a clean linen cloth. The Gospel of John tells us that another secret believer and member of the Sanhedrin, Nicodemus, also came to him at the tomb with burial spices and helped. In verse 60 we're told that Jesus was then laid in Joseph's own new tomb which he had hewn out of the rock, and that he rolled a large stone against the entrance of the tomb and went away.
Now all this is important in establishing the fact of the Resurrection. Jesus was buried in an impenetrable tomb, surrounded by rock. The lone entrance had a huge stone rolled against it, larger than any one man could roll back. God was seeing to it that there was no easy way the body would be stolen, and that there were no secret exits so it could somehow be stolen away—that the only way would be through the stone, which would soon become will-nigh humanly impossible to remove because of the Roman guard that would be placed at the tomb. And more than that, there were four witnesses to the fact that this is where Jesus' very dead body was buried. Yes, Joseph and Nicodemus. And in verse 61, we can add to that number now two of these devoted followers of Jesus, as it states, "And Mary Magdalene was there and the other Mary, sitting opposite the grave." They are there, as will become evident, because they intend to anoint Jesus' body for burial after the Sabbath, and they want to know where the body is so that they can do so. Again their good and faithful intentions lend important corroborating evidence to the Resurrection: They furnish two of the four eyewitnesses who assure us not only that Jesus was dead, but that He was so dead, He was buried, and also tell us precisely where He was buried—a critical issue because it would become the very same tomb that was found to be empty, except for Jesus' burial clothes, on the third day.
The next day, a Sabbath Day, the very chief priests and elders who were such sticklers about observing the Sabbath with respect to Jesus reveal their own hypocrisy by working on the Sabbath—working incredibly hard on the Sabbath to make sure that Jesus' body remains in the grave. None of Jesus' disciples, including the women, seem to remember at this point that Jesus repeatedly predicted He would be raised from the dead on the third day, but the chief priests and the elders remember this prediction. And they are bound and determined to keep Jesus' body in that tomb, no matter what, because for them, everything they valued depended on it. If His body disappears, or if it is raised, everything they had worked so hard for—the whole matter of the loyalty and obedience of the Jewish people—will have been in vain. And so we find an odd thing happening here. Unbelievers nearly acting as though they believe Jesus might come back from the dead, and supposed believers acting like they don't believe He will back from the dead. So they show up in Pilate's residence asking for a Roman guard to make the tomb secure. Pilate agrees, gives them a guard, and in verse 65 tells them to "go, make it as secure as you know how." And these men who had everything to lose if the body went missing, went and made the grave as secure as they knew how. There was even a Roman seal placed on the tomb. In other words it was sealed with the seal of Caesar, and a string was placed in front of the entrance, indicating that the tomb was not to be opened or violated except on penalty of the greatest power and authority on earth at that time—the Roman Empire.
Unwittingly, these enemies of Jesus worked to prove that no power on earth could have removed Jesus' body from the tomb. Only a heavenly intervention, an actual Resurrection that occurred by the power of God Almighty, could account for the disappearance of Jesus' body the following day.
And on that Sunday morning, we still see all of Jesus' followers acting like unbelievers—because at this point they were. Though Jesus had clearly and repeatedly predicted He would be raised on the third day after His crucifixion, none of the 11 showed up at the tomb to view this incredible event. Why? They were fearful for their own lives, and they explicitly did not believe this would happen. In fact, Luke 24:9-11 tells us the male disciples of Jesus didn't believe even after these women told them Jesus had been raised from the dead.
Likewise, even these three faithful female followers of Jesus, along with other women, did not believe Jesus would be raised on that day. Because they did not believe, they experience the same pangs of grief, disillusionment, discouragement, doubt and depression that certainly the male followers of Jesus were experiencing. That is, because they did not believe Jesus' Word, God's Word, that He would be raised from the dead, they experienced these pangs. Had they believed, they would have sailed through awful these events in a much more encouraged and delighted fashion. That's what unbelief often does for us—it leaves us thinking the worst has come upon us because we have assumed God is not somehow working for good through all things, even the difficult things. Unbelief robs us of peace and joy.
And so the women, in accord with both their love, and their unbelief, show up at the tomb on Sunday morning. They come with burial spices, not with expectation of seeing the greatest event in all of history. Because of their devotion, their love for Jesus, God shows up, first in the form of an earthquake, then an angel coming and rolling away the stone and sitting victoriously upon the stone and telling them that Jesus is not here, He is risen. And then notice these four important little words on Matthew 28:6: "Just . . . as . . . He . . . said."
Now there was the crux of the whole matter on this important day. Jesus had given them God's Word—God's promise that He would be raised from the dead. But they had not believed. As a result of unbelief, they had suffered immeasurable grief, immeasurable sadness, and immeasurable loss. The women had showed up at the tomb, but with a dead faith—a faith not strong enough to believe in the predicted resurrection, and a faith that had been gutted by the crucifixion. Yes, they were acting out of love, but by bringing burial spices, they were acting out of this unbelief. If they had acted in accord with their faith, they would have been there, not to anoint Jesus body for burial, but to celebrate the greatest event in all of history, which assures all of us who repentantly believe of our own personal resurrection and eternal life.
This supplies us with our second principle this morning: Don't respond with a dead faith—but with a living faith that acts consistently with what it believes.
These women, and all Jesus' followers, up until this point had a dead faith. Oh, they believed Jesus was special, but not special enough to come back from the dead. Not special enough that as the Son of God He alone among all the men of history could arrange for and predict His own resurrection to the day. So they, and all the disciples acted in accord with that dead faith—they weren't at the tomb on the third day expecting to see a Risen Jesus.
And that's the problem with a lot of us who claim to be believers in Jesus. We have a dead faith. When asked, we will say we also believe in Jesus, that is we intellectually agree with the facts about Jesus, but we really don't expect Him to do anything special. We really don't expect that He'll do anything that is really relevant or beneficial in our lives. So, we live, and act and behave like he won't. We don't pray much: we don't read or obey God's Word: we don't go to church consistently, or very often. We do pretty much what we please because we really don't believe that Jesus will do anything special for us, or be all that relevant to our lives.
Now James asks us a critical question about this kind of faith—mere intellectual or dead faith in God. In James 2:14: "Can that faith save him?" Can that kind of faith get someone to heaven
And the discussion that follows emphatically tells us no, that kind of faith can't save him—that kind of faith can't save you. If all you have is the kind of faith that James 2 says the demons have—that you "believe that God is one." Well, "the demons believe and shudder." That kind of faith—agreement with facts rather than trust in the facts as being good for you and your salvation—well that kind of dead or intellectual faith will not save you.
God wants us to respond to the resurrection not with a dead faith—a faith with no works to demonstrate it's really there. But a living and active faith—a faith demonstrated by our works.
Is that the kind of faith you have?
Well, God is merciful, especially to women who so loved Jesus. And He responds miraculously, supernaturally, to re-ignite a living faith, a saving faith.
Back to the scene of the tomb on that Sunday morning: As the women are on the way to the tomb, there's the earthquake, a dazzling white angel plunges from heaven to earth, rolls the stone back, sits on it, and greets the women with the news that Jesus has risen. But notice this, He invites them to see for themselves—check out the tomb, ladies. And then go tell the disciples and Peter.
Now that would have a bit of a faith-building effect wouldn't it!? And guess what happens. Dead faith becomes living and active faith. And living and active faith results in, guess what, now a repentant and obedient faith, obedient to the Word of God spoken by the messenger, the angel. The women immediately check out the tomb, find it just as the angel said, and immediately head off to tell the male disciples, just as instructed. But notice what happens to them when their living faith is restored—verse 8—"and they left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy and ran,"--they didn't just walk, they were energized by their faith that Jesus had now actually come back from the dead, they ran to report to His disciples.
Why did the women respond now to God's Word, spoken through this angel, to first check out the tomb for themselves and then go quickly to tell the male disciples. Because now they had a living faith, an active faith, a faith that was real, and because it was real and living compelled them to action. What you believe determines what you do. And now, because they finally really believe, they acted, and they acted with great zeal. That's what happens when you have a living faith, a real faith, rather than a dead faith—your faith compels you to action, to repentant obedience to God's Word.
And guess what happened then? As their faith translated into obedience, there was another surprise. On their way, they ran into, of all people, the resurrected Lord Jesus—the ultimate reward. And they took hold of His feet, and I'm sure in an incredibly joyful moment of reconciliation, they worshiped Him!
Our third principle this morning. Respond with an obedient faith & experience great joy!
Some of you here this morning are afraid if you get serious about Jesus, if you really believe with a living and loving faith, you'll be miserable. You won't get to do what you want to do. But there is nothing further from the truth. Jesus said that He came that you might have life and might have it abundantly in John 10:10. In John 15:11, He told His disciples, "I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete." But the truth of the matter is, that real joy, lasting happiness, comes not in spite of repentant, obedient active faith, but because of it.
This morning, I have a question for you. What kind of faith do you have? Is it a dead faith, demonstrated by a minimialist attitude toward Jesus, doing as little as possible and hoping to get by? Have you at some time prayed a prayer, a sinner's prayer, and hoped that would be good enough? Have you told yourself that you believe, therefore, your good, but your belief is a mere intellectual agreement with the facts, rather than a real trust in Jesus that is reflected in your works, how you live?
The Bible tells us that there is a way to know whether we're going to heaven, whether we really know Jesus, whether we're going to experience the resurrection of the righteous. It's found in I John 2:3. It might surprise you what it says. Here's what it says, "This is how we know that we know him, if we keep His commandments."
That's the test folks. It doesn't say, we can know that we know Him by whether we've prayed a sinner's prayer at some time or another. Or whether we say we believe. It essentially tells us that if we really believe with a living faith, that faith will also be an obedient faith. And we can only be assured of eternal life and a right relationship with God, only if we keep God's commandments.
How should you respond to Jesus resurrection? As these women learned to respond. By turning from an apathetic and dead faith to a repentant, living and obedient faith.
So this morning I'm going to pray for you. If you are unsure whether you're right with God, I'm going to pray for you, and with you, that this morning God will grant to you a repentance, a repentant and obedient faith that leads to the forgiveness of sins and eternal life.
