Luke 24:1-12
But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they went to the tomb, taking the spices they had prepared. And they found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. While they were perplexed about this, behold, two men stood by them in dazzling apparel. And as they were frightened and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, “Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified and on the third day rise.” And they remembered his words, and returning from the tomb they told all these things to the eleven and to all the rest. Now it was Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary the mother of James and the other women with them who told these things to the apostles, but these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them. But Peter rose and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; and he went home marveling at what had happened.
Easter Sermon: See You Sunday
Alleluia, Christ is risen!
Today, we are joyfully celebrating the story of the resurrection. This story begins with a number of women going to the tomb. They go to the tomb taking the traditional spices, the aloes and lotions and all of the things that you would put on a body being prepared for burial.
There would have been a lot of confusion after Jesus had been taken down from the cross. You can imagine, everything happened pretty quickly. They arrest him on Thursday. He's executed on Friday, in the grave by Friday night before the Sabbath comes. Nobody really has time to get together and have a meeting. There were no Roberts Rules of Order for the burial committee, so Joseph of Arimathea goes and takes the body down. Nicodemus is there to help prepare it.
But the women, maybe they forgot, and they bring spices to the tomb early in the morning that day. When they get there, the stone is rolled away, and the angels are there, and they say:
"Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified and on the third day rise."
And they remembered his words.
That's what I'd like to focus on today, that little phrase, "and they remembered his words." Why is that phrase so important?
Luke shows Jesus as the perfect Prophet coming to Jerusalem to suffer and die for his people. There's a test in the Old Testament, found in Deuteronomy. When Moses says there will be a prophet who comes after me, he asks the question: how will we know whether a prophet is from God or speaking on their own? The test is very simple. If the Prophet says something will happen, and it doesn't, they're a false prophet. Easy enough, right? If the Prophet says something will happen and it does, they could be a true prophet.
Now, there are lots of prophecies that you can make that everybody knows will come true. Otherwise, anyone would be the greatest prophet of all, right? "The sun will come out tomorrow." We can make predictions like that. It's pretty easy for the weatherman to be a prophet in California: "Sunny tomorrow." But that's not the kind of prediction that Jesus made.
Jesus made a prediction three times, and the angels remind the women of that. They say, "Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified and on the third day rise?"
Jesus predicts this three times in the Gospel of Luke:
Twice in Luke 9, he says, "The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed and on the third day be raised."
Later, he says, "But while they were all marveling at everything he was doing, Jesus said to His disciples, 'Let these words sink into your ears. The Son of Man is about to be delivered into the hands of men.'"
Or in Luke 18: "See, we are going up to Jerusalem and everything that is written about the Son of Man by the prophets will be accomplished, for he will be delivered over to the Gentiles and will be mocked and shamefully treated and spit upon. And after flogging him, they will kill him, and on the third day he will rise."
That's a pretty good prediction, isn't it? Because that's exactly what happened to Jesus. He was betrayed to the Gentiles, mocked, beaten, spit upon, flogged and nailed to a cross, and they took him down and placed him in a tomb. And then Jesus did what he said he would do. He came back, he rose from the dead, and the angels were there to share this wonderful news with the women. Notice they reminded them of what Jesus said. They reminded them that they can trust Jesus' promises. When he says something will happen, it will happen.
And the funny thing is, nobody believed him. Now, you can't really blame the disciples and all the other people there. Jesus often said a whole bunch of confusing things. They might have thought this was another one of his parables. Or they could have thought maybe Jesus was just kind of going insane. Because who is going to make that their plan? Go to the cross, die and then rise from the dead? "What Jesus? You're nuts."
And even after everything happened that he had predicted—that he was beaten and flogged and mocked and spit on and nailed to a cross and died—they still didn't say, "Wait a second, you remember all that stuff he said while we were walking to Jerusalem? It all happened. Maybe we should expect him to come back." No, the disciples were hiding, all alone for fear of the Jews. They thought they would be next on the crucifixion list.
Even the women, the women who followed Jesus everywhere and were at the foot of the cross, who didn't abandon him—they didn't expect him to be alive either, because they were bringing spices to anoint his body. You don't bring those spices if you expect no body to be there.
I'd like you to take a moment and imagine what it might have been like for the women and the disciples if they had listened, if they had believed what Jesus had said. Sure, it would have been pretty terrible watching someone they love get flogged and whipped and beaten and all of the stuff that Jesus predicted. They could be at the foot of the cross, and they would have been crying, but then they might have looked up and said, "See you Sunday." Right?
They could have believed, listened to what Jesus said and said he's going to come back, because he told them exactly what he would do. And this is the same guy who healed the sick and raised the dead and walked on water and did all sorts of cool stuff. Why couldn't they believe? They just didn't trust. It could have been so much better for them, but they didn't believe his words.
It actually reminds me of something that happens when you've got a real young kid, and you pick them up and throw them in the air. We've got some young children at 2911 and they're at the right age now that I get to do that, which is really fun for me. When the ceilings are low, they get a little nervous, but when the ceilings are high, they're really up there.
Now I'm getting to the stage in life where if something like that happens to me—I go up on a roller coaster—I'm really, really nervous, even though I know there is no way it's going to be a problem. The little kids, it never even crosses their mind that I wouldn't catch them. I mean, I could throw them up in the air and just be like... but they know I won't. All they do is laugh and smile and giggle. There's so much joy because they trust. It never crosses their mind not to make that trust.
That's what they could have had—the disciples, the women who followed Jesus, everyone who believed in him could have had that kind of peace. They could have just said, "See you Sunday, Jesus."
That's what Jesus can offer us too, the kind of peace that simply says, "We believe your promises." We believe that Jesus is the first fruits of the dead, that his resurrection is not a one-off kind of thing, but he leads the way through death to eternal life, that just as He is risen from the dead, all who believe in Him will follow that same path. That's the promise of the resurrection, that's the joy that we can have.
And it's really cool to be able to think: I don't have to worry, because I know Christ is with me. He has given me these promises. I know that at the end of whatever is ahead of me, even if it leads me to a cross, there is resurrection on the other side. And the same Jesus, who said, "I will be betrayed into the hands of men, crucified, and after three days rise," promises you that he will raise you from the dead.
But our hearts are just like the disciples. We always hear those words, and we forget about them, like me riding the roller coaster, too nervous to have fun just thinking, "Oh no, we're really high up." We start to think that we have to solve our problems. We have to take care of ourselves, or we trust other things, and we ignore the promises of God, and that robs us of the peace we could have simply trusting that our savior is with us.
But Jesus knows that. What did he do for the women who didn't believe his words? He sent angels to them, and they said, "He's not here. He's risen. Remember what he said?" And then he appears to them again, and he appears to the disciples in a room and eats fish to prove that he's alive. He appears to two disciples walking along the road to Emmaus, and explains everything about him in the Scriptures. He spends 40 days with his disciples, teaching them everything they need to know to be the messengers of the gospel after he ascends into heaven, because he knows that we are sinful, that we don't have the trust we need. So He reassures them and appears to them so they cannot deny that he is risen.
We too get some assurances. Those first are the ones that we read about when we gather here to study God's word. It's the testimony of the apostles. They saw Jesus alive. They spoke to him, they touched him, they ate with him. They know he was alive. And that testimony comes down to us as well.
And he appears here every single week, when we all gather together. The body of Christ is here to be with you, to repeat those promises, to tell you: come and have the peace that Christ offers you. He's here. The greatest way he does that is when he shows up with his body and his blood given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.
The resurrection of Jesus gives us this amazing promise that we too will rise from the dead.
Now, before we close, I want to let you know we're going to be talking about this resurrection promise all through the Easter season. Starting next week, we're going to do a sermon series on First Corinthians chapter 15, which is all about the resurrection and everything that it means for us. It's one of the longest chapters in the letters, and there's so much in there. Come back and hear more. Hear more about the power of the resurrection for you and all the amazing things it does. As Paul lays out this perfect and amazing promise that Christ wants to give to you, because Jesus is risen.
Alleluia, Christ is risen! Amen.
Find us on Youtube, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.