Lost and Found:
Getting Back to Life
Luke 24:1-12
Introduction
1. Welcome to Resurrection Sunday! We recognize the resurrection of Jesus annually, but also weekly, and also daily - right? There is no part of our experience with Jesus that isn’t connected to the resurrection. It is so crucial that if there is no resurrection of Jesus, nothing else matters.
As Dr. Luke leads us to the end of his gospel, here is the account of the resurrection
Luke 24:1-12
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, 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.
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.
11 But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense.
12 Peter, however, got up and ran to the tomb. Bending over, he saw the strips of linen lying by themselves, and he went away, wondering to himself what had happened.
3. Peter Marshall “The stone was rolled away from the door, not to permit Christ to come out, but to enable the disciples to go in.” What a world-shaking discovery the empty tomb was!
4. We’ve been working under the theme ‘Lost and Found’ … and the resurrection promises new life when we’ve been found by Jesus.
5. THE RESURRECTION IS ALL ABOUT GETTING BACK TO LIFE WHEN WE’RE DONE BEING LOST.
1. JESUS WAS GETTING BACK TO LIFE
The Death, Burial, and Resurrection were a part of his natural vocabulary - it was a plan, it was his mission, and it was never in danger of being abandoned.
John 2:19-21 “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.” They replied, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?” But the temple he had spoken of was his body.”
Matthew 16:21 From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer
many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.
John 11:25-26 “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?”
The resurrection had a place in the sayings and teachings of Jesus. It was an unusual message and one the disciples didn’t always seem to understand.
Resurrection became the cornerstone of Apostolic preaching.
Acts 2:24, 32 But God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him. … God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of it.
The message of the Resurrection was also about…
2. LOST HUMANITY GETTING BACK TO LIFE
-The Resurrection promises New Life!
Romans 6:3-5 Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his.
The power of baptism is not in water but in connection to the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus! His new life gives us new life! In Baptism, God not just teaching us that our sinful way of life has died and been buried… but in baptism God is also telling us that the grave cannot hold us. When Jesus comes again there is no tomb that will stop us from meeting Him in the air.
-The Resurrection promises New Hope!
The resurrection of Jesus means a death to hopelessness and a birth of hope.
1 Peter 1:3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead…
No matter what we face in this life we have the hope of the resurrection to strengthen us. There has been a lot of hopeless and helpless feelings this past year - but not one moment has our hope in Christ diminished. The resurrection promises new life, new hope …
-The Resurrection promises New Victory
1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope. For we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. According to the Lord’s word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore encourage one another with these words.
Philip Yancey ends The Jesus I Never Knew: I know a woman whose grandmother lies buried under 150-year-old live oak trees in the cemetery of an Episcopal church in rural Louisiana. In accordance with the grandmother’s instructions, only one word is carved on the tombstone: “Waiting.”
New life, new hope, new victory! Only in living Jesus!
Conclusion
Only the resurrection could turn cowardly Peter into preacher of renown, transform Saul into the great missionary Paul; turn ordinary women and men into saints and martyrs; preachers and prophets, activists and organizers.Generation after generation, the empty tomb shouts: He is not here. He is risen!
Dr. Simon Greenleaf was a skeptic from Harvard law school. He’d written 3 volumes on the law. In his classes he mocked any Christian that was there. He was challenged by Christian students to apply his own law books to the ? resurrection of Jesus. He took up the challenge and found the evidence was so convincing, he became a believer! He later wrote, "The resurrection of Jesus is one of the best established facts of history." He sought to find a dead
Jesus. Instead they found a living one.
Revelation 1:18 “I am the Living One; I was dead, and now look, I am alive for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades.”
THE RESURRECTION IS ALL ABOUT GETTING BACK TO LIFE WHEN WE’RE DONE BEING LOST.
You can have new life, new hope, and new victory today!
Video of this message can be found on the YouTube channel for Forsythe Church of Christ.
Thanks for reading. I pray it is a blessing to you.
