EASTER TWELVE UNACCOUNTED FOR HOURS
TEXT: Matthew 28:1, Mark 16:2, Luke 24:1, John 20:1
INTRODUCTION: The Gospel reports agree that the tomb in which Jesus was buried was empty before daylight on Sunday morning.
Since He arose at 6:00 P. M. on Saturday/Sunday there are twelve mysterious hours during which time Jesus Christ went on a preaching mission.
When Jesus was on the cross, one of the malefactors being crucified turned to Him and said, 42… Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom. 43And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with me in paradise. Luke 23:42-43
This is where Jesus went at death along with the first trophy of His passion. Let’s look at this paradise, this place of the departed spirits and learn a few basic facts to understand what actually took place during the span of these unaccounted for twelve hours.
In Luke 16:19-31 Jesus told the story (not parable) of the rich man and the beggar Lazarus. In telling us this story He pulled the curtain of eternity aside and allowed us to look at the prison house of departed spirits, both saved and lost.
We are told that it is located in the “lower parts of the earth” Eph. 4:9. The place is identified in the O. T. by the word “sheol.” In the N. T. it is identified by the word “hades.” Both words refer to the same place – the heart of the earth – the prison of departed spirits.
It is evident that there are several compartments in hades. One is where the saved went at death before the resurrection of Jesus. They were “comforted” (Luke 16:25), but were nonetheless prisoners, because Satan held the power of death.
Jesus went to this place at His death. He was as much a prisoner there as any of the others who were confined there.
Next, there was the compartment of the lost. They are “tormented” (Luke 16:24). In this compartment the lost experience the equivalent of physical suffering, memory, despair – these all make the compartment of the lost a place of agony and hopelessness.
From this place the lost will one day come and be judged at the Great White Throne judgement. There they will be forced to stand in God’s holy presence and will be sentenced to eternity in the Lake of Fire (Revelation 20:11-15).
This is a lot like a criminal who is confined in the local county jail until his trial when he is sentenced to the penitentiary to pay for his crime.
All of the people who had died were in either one or the other of these compartments before Jesus Christ arose and led “captivity (the saved) captive” Eph. 4:8.
There are at least two other compartments in hades. One is called Tartarus. It is the place where the fallen angels identified with the sins of Genesis 6:4 are confined (2 Peter 2:4).
The other is called the bottomless pit and is probably the “great gulf” (Luke 16:26) separating paradise from the compartment of the lost.
The demons asked Jesus not to send them to this place in Luke 8:31, 31And they besought him that he would not command them to go out into the deep. Deep = infernal, abyss, bottomless pit.
This may be another prison for the demons.
There is another prison – the Lake of Fire – called hell and translated from the word gehenna. It is used only eleven times, all in the N. T.
Ten of these eleven times where the word is used were spoken by the Lord Jesus Himself. The only other time it is used by James in his epistle 3:6 6And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity: so is the tongue among our members, that it defileth the whole body, and setteth on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire of hell.
This then is a small description of the place of departed spirits to which Jesus descended at death. He was Himself a prisoner and consequently, while there was not preaching.
For three days and three nights, while His body lay in the guarded tomb of Joseph of Arimathaea, He experienced the pains of death, suffering the hell we deserved, taking the place of the penitent sinners.
Acts 2:23-24 23Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain: 24Whom God hath raised up, having loosed the pains of death: because it was not possible that he should be holden of it.
God “loosed the pains of death,” that is, released Him from the prison. Remember that as man, He died for man’s sins. As a man, He was imprisoned for man’s penalty. As man, He was brought from the prison by the Father through the power of the Holy Spirit.
Romans 1:4 4And declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead:
That Jesus was actually human in every respect can be seen from the fact that He had a human body (Mat. 27:58 58He went to Pilate, and begged the body of Jesus. Then Pilate commanded the body to be delivered.
He had a human soul, John 12:27 27Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour: but for this cause came I unto this hour.
And He had a human spirit, Luke 23:46 46And when Jesus had cried with a loud voice, he said, Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit: and having said thus, he gave up the ghost.
His human spirit was energized by the Holy Spirit throughout His ministry. While Jesus was on the cross both the Father and the Holy Spirit withdrew from Him while the sins of humanity were placed on Him.
His new resurrection life is in the realm of the Spirit, not the realm of the flesh.
Jesus received a resurrection body at 6:00 P. M. on Saturday/Sunday – exactly seventy-two hours after His burial. With it He also received the keys of hades.
Revelation 1:8 18 I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death.
Jesus then unlocked the door of the paradise compartment and led captivity captive. Ehp. 4:8 8Wherefore he saith, When he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men.
These captives, remember, consisted of all the righteous dead from Abel to the time Jesus was raised.
It seems fairly reasonable that Jesus didn’t choose a saint here and one there to raise from the graves which were opened by the earthquake.
Rather it seems that the graves were opened at the time of His death for the specific purpose of raising them at His own resurrection.
With its location to Jerusalem and the long history of Israel which was involved, this cemetery contained a wide variety of O. T. saints buried there.
Eph. 4:8-10 8Wherefore he saith, When he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men. 9(Now that he ascended, what is it but that he also descended first into the lower parts of the earth? 10He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens, that he might fill all things.)
But before Jesus ascended to the Father to place His own precious blood upon the altar in Heaven (Heb. 9:12), there was one more thing He had to do.
He must reenter hades again and preach to the fallen angels and the damned. 1 Peter 3:19-20 19By which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison; 20Which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water.
He didn’t preach the gospel of salvation, rather it was a declaration of judgement – the sealing of their doom. Having already liberated the saved there were none but the lost remaining in hades to whom to preach.
The great struggle between Christ and Satan ended in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. His resurrection was the seal of complete victory.
Death had been conquered; its power was transferred from the hand of Satan to the hand of Jesus Christ.
Like David when he entered Goliath’s arena and having defeated him, decapitated him with his own weapon, so Jesus through death destroyed him that had the power of death, that is, the devil (Heb. 2:14.
In the defeat of the devil came also the defeat of the devil’s followers. Jesus Christ was triumphant. He openly declared His victory. Col. 2:15 15And having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it.
This making a shew of them openly, was the demonstration of His victory before His proclamation of victory was made to His enemies.
It required two things. First, He must Himself be freed from death in its every aspect. He was reunited in eternal fellowship with both the Father and the Holy Spirit.
This is shown by His being loosed from the pains” of death by the Father (Acts 2:24), 4And declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead: Rom. 1:14.
Second, there must be a demonstration of His victory over death by exercising this authority on behalf of others. When the saints arose after His resurrection, they entered into the city of Jerusalem and Satan was powerless to stop them.
Before His own resurrection there was no victory to be proclaimed. In the justice of God’s moral and legal economy, there could be no realization of victory’s gain until, in time and in full, this victory had been completely won.
Who were these spirits Peter talks about in 1 Peter 3:19-20 19By which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison; 20Which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water.
There is definitely a distinction between the fallen spirits. Some are described in Eph. 6:12 12For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places
These fallen angels are not chained in prison as the ones in 1 Pet. They are free to roam the earth and heavens to do battle against the saints.
But the other fallen angles are chained in prison. We see this in 2 Peter 2:4-5 4For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment; 5And spared not the old world, but saved Noah the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly;
Also Jude 6 6And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day.
Who are these chained spirits and why are they chained? We see that they are connected to the time of the flood. So lets look at what Genesis 6:1-4 has to tell us.
The question is who are the sons of God? There are two schools of thought. The first is that they were the godless line of Cain who commingled with the godly line of Seth and caused God to judge the earth.
The result was that the moral distinctions between the two were gone. The Sethites became as badly contaminated as the Cainites. It resulted in wickedness and because of the severe judgement was inevitable.
God brought about the flood as an act of judgement on the unrighteous and as a way of preserving the righteous.
The sin referred to in Gen. 6 is not fornication or adulterous living but mixed marriages of believers with unbelievers. As such, this sin cannot apply to angles because even though they are referred to in the masculine gender, sex, as such, is not attributed to them.
In answering a question about marriage in heaven, Jesus said about believers Matthew 22:30 30For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven. So they think this says a sex life is not ascribed to angels.
The second school of thought is that the “sons of God” are fallen angles.
First we see the distinction between “men” and the “sons of God.” The word “men” stands for the whole human race. The “sons of God” are carefully distinguished from the human race.
The expression “sons of God” or “sons of Elohim” is seen only four other times in the O. T. Three times in the book of Job.
Job 1:6 6Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan came also among them.
2:1 1Again there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan came also among them to present himself before the LORD.
38:7 7When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?
And then once in Daniel 3:25 25He answered and said, Lo, I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire, and they have no hurt; and the form of the fourth is like the Son of God.
We know that these are not humans because as we’ve already established man went to Paradise in the heart of the earth when they died before the cross not heaven.
Gen. 6:1-2, refers to a second and deeper apostasy in the ranks of angels. A great number of angels had already fallen when they followed Lucifer in his rebellion against God.
Rev. 12:3-4 3And there appeared another wonder in heaven; and behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads. 4And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth: Now some of these angels fell even lower.
We see these angels in 2 Peter 2:4-6. Look again. Notice the context of Peter verse 5. It is speaking of Noah and the flood, the angels are spoken of right before this in verse 4.
Look at Jude. We see that the angles left their first estate in verse 6 and then were able to cohabit with women. Verse 7. Again in context we see that God is talking about “strange flesh” unnatural sexual relations.
We need to remember that we are talking about the spirit world when we are talking about angels. They have powers and abilities that we don’t know about and haven’t been told in the Scriptures.
Just because there is no marriage in heaven and angels aren’t given in marriage doesn’t mean that they are not capable of cohabiting with women.
Who is to say that fallen angels cannot use their great wisdom and power to materialize in bodily form and cohabit with human kind?
We have evidence in Scripture that angels can materialize and appear as men in bodies that can assimilate food and drink. Gen. 18:1-8 and Gen. 19:1-3 1And there came two angels to Sodom at even; and Lot sat in the gate of Sodom: and Lot seeing them rose up to meet them; and he bowed himself with his face toward the ground; 2And he said, Behold now, my lords, turn in, I pray you, into your servant’s house, and tarry all night, and wash your feet, and ye shall rise up early, and go on your ways. And they said, Nay; but we will abide in the street all night. 3And he pressed upon them greatly; and they turned in unto him, and entered into his house; and he made them a feast, and did bake unleavened bread, and they did eat.
In modern occultism demons are made to materialize. Evidence exists that demons can and do have sexual relations with human being.
What was the purpose for them to cohabit with women? Why did the flood come because of this? Remember God’s promise to Adam and Eve in Gen. 3:15 15And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.
The promise of Satan’s demise was the child that would be born of a woman, the child that would bruise his head. Satan attempted to contaminate the human race with these giants, these monsters, so that Jesus could not be born.
Also why would the commingling of the Sethites with the Cainites produce giants? It wouldn’t. What we see here then are demons, superhumans, evil contaminated mankind.
We see other examples of Satan trying to keep Jesus Christ from being born in the Scriptures. After the promise was made that Jesus would come through the seed of Abraham, the first Jew, Satan’s attacks were concentrated against the Jews.
The entire book of Esther is about how Haman tried to have the entire race exterminated. Then after Jesus was born Herod tried to murder Jesus by having all children two years and under killed.
This is an attempt in Gen. 6 of Satan trying to contaminate the human face so that Jesus could not be born. I do not believe it was because of the commingling of the Sethites and Cainites.
God told man to be fruitful and multiply. There is no command against commingling between lines. What about the other children’s lines? There were more than just the two.
Would God cause a worldwide flood just because believers were marrying unbelievers? Isn’t it possible for Noah and his three sons to continue to preach the Gospel and win souls and for Noah’s children to teach and win their children to the Lord?
My parents are not saved but that didn’t stop God from saving me.
I believe that the “sons of God” are the fallen angels chained in Tartarus that Jesus went to and proclaimed victory over! “You tried to stop Me but you couldn’t do it!”
This is what Jesus did during those twelve unaccounted for hours. It was a proclamation of the conquer over the conquered. It was the declaration of victory.
It was the decree of eternity that He proclaimed. It was finalized in His victory over death and His enemies are made aware of the consequence of their rebellion against His rule.
In closing let’s look at one more aspect of our sermon this morning which is when and in what body He made the proclamation.
The Scriptures we are about to look at definitely state that Jesus was resurrected before He descended into hades as conqueror. He was raised from death’s power after three days and three nights spent as a voluntary victim.
1 Peter 3:18-19 18For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit: 19By which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison;
Notice carefully the order of these events. First, Jesus suffered for sins, the Just (Jesus) for the unjust (man) that He might bring us to God – pay the sin debt – in so doing removing the barrier from the approach to Go.
Isaiah 59:2 2But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear.
Next, He was put to death in the flesh, that is, His physical body was separated from His human soul and human spirit.
His physical body was then embalmed and placed in Joseph’s tomb but His soul and spirit descended into hades as Satan’s victim.
Here He remained for seventy-two hours. But quickened by the Spirit – resurrected; made alive by the Holy Spirit.
Before His resurrection, His life had been a flesh and blood life. In His resurrection body, the life of His flesh is in the Spirit, not in the blood.
Luke 24:39 39Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have. It is a body with flesh and bones but without blood.
By which also – not only resurrected, but in a resurrection body – He went and preached unto the spirits in prison. He redescended into hades in His resurrection body with His proclamation to the damned.
No saved were there to hear His message. They had already been set free and those who came out of the opened graves were in Jerusalem’s streets and homes on an errand of their own which we will look at next week.
At the same time of His resurrection, Jesus received the keys of hades from the Father thereby becoming Lord of both life and death. Mat. 28:18 18And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.
He showed His Lordship by setting free those who had died with faith in God’s promises and leaving imprisoned the rejectors of God’s grace.
Paradise, the section of hades where the saved were kept, has been enlarged to give more room for all the damned that have and will go there. Isaiah 5:14 14Therefore hell hath enlarged herself, and opened her mouth without measure:
When a believer dies now he doesn’t go to hades. He goes to be with Christ. Phil. 1:23 23For I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart, and to be with Christ; which is far better:
1 Thess. 4:14 14For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him. How can we come back with Jesus unless we are already with Him? You can’t come back from someplace you’ve never been.
Then, too, this is also certified by Jesus’ words in Mat. 16:18 upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell (hades) shall not prevail against it.
Jesus seems to be saying, “Although the saints from Adam until now have been held in the prison of hades, that place will never imprison, even for a moment, one who believes in Me.”
Jesus left no doubt as to the first order of importance in the gospel message – salvation! Salvation is predicated upon belief in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Rom. 10:9 9That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.
In His earthly ministry, Jesus based the truth of everything He taught upon the fact that He would rise again. It was the sign of Jonah – death, burial, and resurrection – which alone would be given as a “sign from heaven” (Mat. 12:39-40).
Because He lives, we shall live also.
Salvation is the purpose of preaching. If Christ be not risen…preaching, faith, are vain…the dead are perished…we are liars and yet in our sins (1 Cor. 15).
Men are saved by believing the report God has given of His Son. 1 John 5:10-13 10He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself: he that believeth not God hath made him a liar; because he believeth not the record that God gave of his Son. 11And this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. 12He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life. 13These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God.
And salvation is attained (listen to this carefully) by specific belief in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. This is why such great importance is put upon it as a fact of history, and as a message of hope.
Have you come to a place in your own life when, conscious that you were a sinner deserving death, you received the Jesus as your own personal Savior? If not, I ask you to do so now.
