Listen To Her - Luke 24:1-11

Do you remember the story of Manoah?  If not, let me remind you.  There was a man named Manoah.  He and his wife were getting on up in years and they did not have a child.  They had wanted one for a long time.  By the way, their story is not necessarily different from several others in the bible, older couple without children wanting children, and seemingly when all their hopes seem gone, God comes along and does the miraculous.  In their case, God sent an angel to Manoah’s wife and tells her she is going to have a son and what the manner of his life will be.  She goes home and tells her husband and he doesn’t believe her!!!  They pray that God will send the angel back again and that Manoah will get to hear the whole thing himself, because… well, his wife is a woman!  Sure enough, the angel comes back and when the wife realizes he’s there, she goes and gets her husband and he gets to hear the same schpeal she heard previously. 

I love how replete scripture is with exalting women.  Many people will say that the bible is patriarchal and masochistic.  Quite the opposite.  Scripture lifts up women.  It’s the men around them who do not.  As we get into today’s scripture, might I offer that we get the exact same thing here… God lifting up the fairer sex and showing that He created them as equals, and as people being seriously flawed, we make some pretty big blunders sometimes, but we still have a job to do.  Let’s get started. 

The women were doing what was natural to them.  They wanted to honor Jesus.  It was common in their culture to wrap a person in linen clothes and then cover them in these spices to minimize, if not totally get rid of, the smell from their decaying body.  In a sense, they were creating a casket and vault for the person… only it was conformed to the body of the person.  Again, this was their cultural norm.  The problem was that as they arrived at the tomb, something was amiss… the stone was rolled away from the door and they were not sure why until they got to the tomb and found the angels sitting there bringing them a message of hope and joy… a message that their Lord was no longer in the grave, and that He had risen from the dead.  This might be a hard pill to swallow, but there were a few things going on in Jesus’ favor for them.  1) He had performed many miracles while they were present and so they knew He could do some amazing things. 2)  He had said that He would rise again.  3)  Angels were the ones who were testifying to them that Jesus was alive and well.  They had little to no reason to not believe what they were hearing. 

Now, they had a responsibility to go and tell the disciples that Jesus was alive and well and that all of them would see Him again soon.  So, they go back to where the disciples are and they offer the same information to the disciples which they had heard from the angels.  Unfortunately, the disciples do not believe the women.  Why?  There are at least two reasons I can think of.  First, the men believed what was natural.  People don’t just get up and walk around and continue on in life after having been dead for roughly 40hrs, especially after hypervolemic shock and massive trauma to their torso caused by a puncture wound from a spear.  Once people are dead from those causes with no medical intervention, they are dead.  Now, let’s consider, what kinds of medical intervention could someone receive to save their life after that?  From the hypervolemic shock, the person would have to receive multiple units of blood transfused and the sources of the bleeding would have to be stopped, which, by the way, blood transfusion did not begin til the 17th century.  For the mass trauma to the torso, since Jesus’ paracardial sac and probably his heart being punctured, he would have needed probably a ventricular bypass machine and quite possibly a heart transplant.  Neither of these things began until the 20th century.  So, again, the men did not believe the women, because they believed what was natural.  Second, women were not considered believable at the time as eyewitnesses.  Their testimony was not given any legal weight as it does today.  Therefore, the disciples took off racing toward the empty tomb.  Yet, they would have saved a lot of effort and grown in their faith if they would have just listened to her… or them in this case. 

Today, Christians have a similar difficulty as the women did back then.  Not that people, especially here in the West consider Christians any less credible.  Instead, people have a hard time believing things that they do not know or understand.  To believe something beyond the natural is … well… not natural.  How many people have walked on water during a raging storm? One!  How many people have risen from the dead after a mass trauma with no complications?  One!  How many people have ascended to heaven bodily?  Three, yet only one of those died first.  Jesus is the answer to it all.   

The reality is that our testimony, if we hold to the truth of Jesus, is truly unbelievable.  It is no wonder that people cannot believe it, because they cannot believe the supernatural.  People have a tendency of not believing that which is not the prevailing thought.  For instance, when Copernicus and Galileo each stated that the earth revolved around the sun, the leaders at the time thought they were nuts.  Even Democritus who postulated the idea of atoms back in ancient Greece prior to Jesus’ ministry did not take hold until the 19th century.  Yet, Jesus’ resurrection is not without historicity.  The wealth of evidence regarding the empty tomb is what converted atheist Lee Stroble to becoming a faithful follower of Jesus.  The overwhelming evidence of the truth of scripture is what precipitated the conversion of atheist Josh McDowell.  Cold Case detective, J. Warner Wallace used his skills as an investigative detective to review the case of Jesus’ death and the empty tomb and surmised that indeed Jesus did rise from the grave.   

People will not be able to believe by sheer will power the testimony of Christians.  It requires a movement of heart.  The fact that Jesus rose again from the dead is supernatural does not make it real.  It makes it unbelievable to those who do not believe in a sovereign, divine, all-knowing being who commands creation as He wills.  Some people can believe in evil spirits, but they cannot believe in a sovereign, benevolent Creator who sent His own Son to die for us.  Some cannot accept the sacrificial atonement of Christ, because they believe it to be barbaric and archaic. 

Our job, with the best of our faculties is to convince for sure.  However, some will not believe our testimony.  We do not have to be astrophysicists, philosophers, microbiologists, quantum theorists, doctors, lawyers, or engineers.  Instead, we need to know the testimony.  Jesus died.  He died for our sin.  God raised Him from the dead.  It was attested by men and women alike.  Over 500 people saw it and could have testified the same.  Therefore, upon the witness of 2 or 3 a matter shall be established.  If we can believe that Jesus died for us… that He has indeed changed our lives.  We ought to live lives that are believable with a trustworthy witness in all that we do.  What people do with what we say is up to them.  Just be like the women, go and tell.