He is Risen

He is Risen

Luke 24:1-12

On September 11, 2001, 13 Islamic terrorists hijacked 4 American planes. They shouted Allah Akbar as they crashed the planes. One into the Pentagon, one into a field in Pennsylvania and two into the world trade centers in New York. They killed over three thousand Americans that day. They believed what they were doing would make them martyrs of their faith. To trust something without any evidence of truth, is the very definition of blind faith.

As Christians we don’t believe in Jesus, based on blind faith. We believe in Jesus based on an empty tomb. We believe in Jesus, based on the fact, He told us He would be handed over to sinful men to be crucified and on the third day He would rise again. And that is exactly what He did, proving that He is God by not only predicting His death but predicting His victory.

As Christians we believe in Jesus based on the testimony of witnesses that met the risen Savior. They became empowered by the Holy Spirit, and they would go on to change the world not because of what they believed to be true, but because of what they saw with their own two eyes.

The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the very heart of our Christian faith, without it there is no Christianity. Without it, Jesus becomes just another dead demigod, who claimed to be something that He wasn’t. Like all the other leaders of world religions and philosophies who are dead and buried, but He is not. The tomb is empty, and He is alive. As Christians, we can believe that Jesus is God because He is risen. (Luke 24:1-12)

1 But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they came to the tomb bringing the spices which they had prepared.

2 And 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 perplexed about this, behold, two men suddenly stood near them in dazzling clothing;

5 and as the women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, “Why do you seek the living One among the dead?

6 “He is not here, but He has risen. Remember how He spoke to you while He was still in Galilee,

7 saying that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again.”

8 And they remembered His words,

9 and returned from the tomb and reported all these things to the eleven and to all the rest.

10 Now they were Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary the motherof James; also the other women with them were telling these things to the apostles.

11 But these words appeared to them as nonsense, and they would not believe them.

12 But Peter got up and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he *saw the linen wrappings only; and he went away to his home, marveling at what had happened. (Pray)

In our passage this morning, the women who were closest to Jesus, had been preparing spices to anoint His body for burial. They didn’t have time to do it before Easter Sunday, because of the Sabbath. The Sabbath forbid them from working until early Sunday morning. So, they were on their way to the tomb. Just like any of us going to the cemetery to visit a loved one, their hearts were heavy, and they were still in disbelief over what had just happened.

What’s interesting is that none of the men were with them. These women were faithful followers of Christ. They remained faithful throughout the whole ordeal. They were there at the foot of the cross and never denied Him, like all the other disciples had done. Now they are on there way to the tomb.

As they were walking along, Mark tells us they were concerned about how they would roll the stone away. They knew the Roman guards would not do it for them, they are not going to help some grieving Jewish women. But when they arrived at the tomb, they found no guards, no stone, and no Jesus.

Contrary to popular belief the stone was not rolled away from the tomb so Jesus could come out, He didn’t need that. It was rolled away so the women could go in. A resurrected Jesus didn’t need the stone rolled away. He could walk right through the stone. But the world needed to see the empty tomb.

The first thing I want you to see is we can believe Jesus is God because the empty tomb. It’s important to understand that it wasn’t the death of Jesus on the cross that proved He was the Messiah. But it was the resurrection. It was necessary Jesus die for our sin. The wages of sin are death, but it was the resurrection proved He was God, and the empty tomb is the proof of the resurrection.

In the ancient city of Hebron in Israel, we have the tombs of the patriarchs. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And their bodies are there. They have been there for over 3800 years. In Bethlehem we have the tomb of Rachel, Jacob’s wife whom he loved. She died while giving birth to Benjamin, and we have her body and tomb.

In Jerusalem we have the sepulcher of David, the great king of Israel. He is dead and buried and has been there for more than 800 years before Jesus ever walked the earth. And in modern Jerusalem we have the church of the Holy Sepulcher, at the site of the tomb of Jesus, the tomb given to Him by Joseph of Arimathea. The church is built around an empty tomb because there is no body.

I heard a story of a conversation between a Christian missionary and a Muslim. The Muslim wanted to impress the missionary with how superior Islam is to Christianity. He said, “when we go to Mecca, we at least find a coffin, but when you go to Jerusalem, your Mecca, you find nothing but an empty grave.” And the missionary said, “That’s true, Mohammed is dead, and in his coffin, like all other religious leaders and philosophers. But Jesus is risen, and all power in heaven and earth is given to Him forever because He is alive.

One of the greatest pieces of evidence of the resurrection of Jesus, is the silence of the Jews concerning the empty tomb. When the disciples began to proclaim a risen Savior, that Jesus was alive, and they began to talk about how they walked with Him and talked with them before He ascended into heaven. If the Jews would have had a body, they would have paraded down the streets with it. They would have called the whole thing a hoax and taken people to the tomb and said look! There He is, but they couldn’t do it because the tomb is empty.

That’s why there is no contradiction from the Jews in ancient literature. There is too much evidence, to many eyewitnesses. Oh, they tried to say the disciples stole the body, but that just proves they admit the tomb was empty. And how could the disciples, ordinary men, over- throw the Roman guards to rob the tomb. No, Luke tells us the disciples didn’t know He had risen until the women told them, and then they didn’t believe it.

If you think the resurrection of Christ was a hoax and someone was just trying to cover up the fact that His body was stolen, do yourself a favor and go read “loving God” by Charles Colson. He explains that twelve of the most powerful men in the United States couldn’t keep a lie straight about Watergate for three weeks. If the resurrection had been a lie no one could have kept that truth from coming out. The resurrection could not have been maintained for a single day, for a single hour, if the empty tomb had not been established as fact.

As Christians, we can believe Jesus is God because of the empty tomb. We can go and see it with our own two eyes. Our faith is not based on an, “I hope so,” but it is based on the truth and logic of the resurrection. Anyone who would try to disprove the resurrection has to explain the empty tomb. But not only can we believe Jesus is God because of the empty tomb, but we can believe Jesus is God because He did what He said He was going to do. Vs. 6-7

The women are perplexed because there is no body, Jesus is gone, and they don’t know what happened. When suddenly angels appear to them and say, “why do you seek the living among the dead, He is not here but He has risen, remember He told you what He was going to do.” Then they remembered. You see, Jesus not only predicted He would be crucified at Jerusalem, but He predicted He would rise again. And because who spoke the truth about the resurrection, we can believe everything else He told us was true as well.

We can believe the promises of God. We can believe that he is going to prepare a place for us that where He is there we may be also. We can believe that we are forgiven. We are free, and we can believe that God loves us and gave His Son for us. We can believe that He is going to come again for us.

John 3:16 is one of the most familiar verse in all of scripture, it says, “God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son that whosever believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life.” Because Jesus did what He said He was going to do, we can believe that what He says is true.

Have you ever met someone like that? Someone that would always do exactly what they said they would do? No matter how inconvenient it was, or how much pain they went through, you could always rely on them. I wish I was that person. As I searched for some way to illustrate this point, I always came up short, because there is no one like Jesus. There is no one who always does what He says He is going to do. He came and He died for our sin so that we could be forgiven, and He rose again, so that we could be saved and spend eternity with Him in heaven. He did for us exactly what He said He would do, no matter how difficult the cross and the tomb were.

As Christians we can believe Jesus is God because He did exactly what He said He would do, but we can also believe He is God because of the eyewitness testimony of those who seen the risen Christ.

When the women learn that Jesus has risen from the grave, they become the first ambassadors for Christ. They run and tell the Apostles, but the Apostles didn’t believe them, they had to find out for themselves. Luke spends the remainder of the chapter describing how Jesus revealed Himself to them, encouraged and opened their minds to the scripture. Finally, before Jesus ascends into heaven, He commissions them. He makes them ambassadors.

After Jesus rises from the grave you see this incredible change in the disciples. They go from hiding out in an upper room to becoming very bold and empowered by the Holy Spirit. They go from abandoning Him at the cross, to proclaiming the gospel to the world, they establish churches, write the New Testament, and stand up to authority. Because of the empty tomb and because Jesus was alive, they were willing to lay down their lives, not because of something they believed in, but because of something they knew to be true.

1 Corinthians 15:3-6, “For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. After that He appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom remain until now, but some have fallen asleep.”

Lee Stroebel said, “If we were holding a trial to determine the facts concerning the resurrection, and if we were to call to the witness stand every witness who personally encountered the resurrected Jesus and we cross-examined them for only 15 minutes, and if we went around the clock without a break…we would be listening to first-hand testimony for more than 128 hours…that’s over 5 days -worth of testimony…who could possibly walk away unconvinced? “The stories…they are too close. The written history is too strong to deny what they saw and what they experienced. One psychologist even said, “over 500 people having the same hallucination would be more of a miracle than resurrection itself!”

As Christians we can believe that Jesus is God because He is risen. We have the evidence of the empty tomb. It is still with us to this day and it is still empty, and it always will be because He is risen.

We have the evidence of Jesus own testimony. He did what He said He was going to do. He said that He would be handed over to sinful men to be crucified but that on the third day He would rise again and that’s what He did. And because He did what He said He would do we can believe everything else He said to be true.

Finally, we have the testimony of the many witnesses of the resurrected Christ. An overwhelming number of men and women that experienced Jesus after he rose, but more importantly was the change in their life. They went from hiding in fear to changing the world. The question is, do you know the risen Savior, and has He made a change in your life?