Sermon Tone Analysis

One thing to remember today: The Good News is Kingdom news!

Straight from Jesus’ own mouth, the Good News is Kingdom news.

With that in mind, lets see what Luke is telling us in today’s text...

Luke 24:1–3 (ESV)

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.

This is the first and ONLY place in the Gospels where the title Lord Jesus (κύριος ̓Iσοῦς) is used.

(Last half of Mark 16 but that doesn’t count) We see it frequently in Acts, all of Paul’s writings, Hebrews, James, Peter, Jude and Revelation.

Why is that?

What is Luke conveying?

Keep that thought for a minute.

Luke 24:4–6 (ESV)

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.

Two men, dazzling apparel?

Does this ring any bells?

Yes, Luke is drawing you back to the transfiguration story in Luke 9:28-36.

Two men, dazzling apparel, Elijah (who would return to hearld the messiah) and Moses (looking for a great prophet like Moses)(The women didn’t know about the transfiguration, Luke tells us that Peter, John and James, “kept silent and told no one in those days anything of what they had seen.” ) So, Jesus is the Lord, the Messiah, the Great Prophet - OK, lets keep going..

Luke 24:6–9 (ESV)

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.

Again, Luke is taking us back to chapter 9, Luke 9:22 where Jesus said, “The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priest and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.”

Son of Man… In Daniel’s visions, one like a Son of Man is presented Ancient of Days (God the Father)

Daniel 7:14 (ESV)

And to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed.

Luke is leaving us, the reader, with no doubt about the importance of the resurrection - the resurrection is the inauguration of the Kingdom of God.

In Luke 9 (again) in verse 27 we see Jesus say, “But I tell you truly, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the Kingdom of God.” Up to this point the Kingdom of God has been “at hand,” but now the Kingdom of God is here!

The Prophet-Priest King has returned, as God promised, and He is Jesus.

So, Luke is telling us all that through the resurrection, the Kingdom of God is now here.

Ok, you may be saying, “I know, I’ve heard all this kingdom stuff before, why is this important?”

Fair enough - so, lets go look at the story of the Bible and see why the resurrection and the Kingdom are important...

I’m going to try something new today (like I do).

First, I ask the artsy folks in the room for mercy, I am not an artist - I’m a 5 year old in a 50 year old body with an idea, a stylus pen thing, a computer tablet, and Microsoft Paint.

Judge my work accordingly.

Second, this is either going to work well, or flop miserably, I have no idea at this time which it is going to be! Third, for the next 30 or 40 minutes, you are going to be hit with a fire hose of scripture...

Even if I fail at this, I hope that this will help you think through the importance of the Kingdom story of the Bible, and that by doing so, you will be a bit more comfortable talking with your neighbors, co-workers, family members, or complete strangers about the story of Jesus, because the Good News is Kingdom News.

With those caveats..

When the world thinks of God, they often have in mind an old grey-bearded tyrant in the sky who randomly metes out discipline his subjects.

Bruce Almighty - “smite me oh mighty smiter!”

He has two main functions - acting as a cosmic killjoy and sending people to hell.

Maybe, just maybe, if you are good enough, you’ll get to hang out with some angels strumming on harps and floating on clouds.

How this plays out is like this...

The problem is, none of this is scriptural, and Jesus certainly didn’t teach any of this.

So, lets think about the real story...

The Good News which is Kingdom news.

For a kingdom to exist, at a minimum, you must have 1.

A sovereign (and individual with supreme authority), 2. A realm - a territory over which rule or dominion is exercised by the sovereign, 3. a subject or subjects of the rule or dominion of the sovereign, and 4. a law or laws to express the will of the sovereign to the subjects.

SO, you need a sovereign, a realm, subjects and law.

Gen 1:1 “In the beginning, God...

God is good, He is eternal, self-existent, He is in need of nothing, BUT, God is love, and love is creative, caring and sharing… So,

God created the heavens and the earth.

Light, atmosphere, land, vegetation, stars, fish and animals and birds - and it was all good.

God was King - The Sovereign.

The heavens and earth were His realm.

Creation was his subject.

And, all was governed by the laws of nature decreed by God.

God could have stopped right there and enjoyed and ruled His good and perfect creation.

He would not have been lonely, or felt unfulfilled or incomplete; He could have enjoyed his good and perfect creation for all eternity without us.

BUT, our God is a sharing God...

So God created us, His unique, image bearing children to share the creation...

Genesis 1:26–27 (ESV)

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.

And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

So, on the first page of your Bible, we see two realms - the Heavenly Realm of God, and the Earthly Realm of God’s perfect image bearers - us.

These realms are two kingdoms, the Kingdom of Heaven and the Kingdom of Earth.

Both perfect and both eternal through the power of God.

These two realms were united, they were separate, but one.

God walking in His creation and with His special image bearing creatures on whom He had bestowed the right to rule over that creation under His authority.

God ruled the whole, we ruled a little corner called Earth.

All is well until we see another created being (the serpent of Genesis 3) enter a realm, the Earthly kingdom, where it did not belong.

The serpent enticed Adam and Eve to violate the one rule their King, God, had given - not to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil (I like to call it the tree of judgment).

Adam and Eve’s rebellion against their King (sin) resulted in the loss of their perfect kingdom.

They lost their sovereignty over their realm, but by their nature still “ruled” in some respects over animals, fish, birds and plants.

Their inmost nature was changed, it was corrupted, and they were inclined toward destruction and death rather than creation and life.

Their rebellion also opened the floodgates of imperfection into their realm.

Here is what James (Jesus’ half-brother) had to say:

Thus, sin lead to separation from God and DEATH - both spiritual and physical - of these fallen image bearers - us.

This separation from God, due to sin and imperfection, is the core of what we call hell.

We normally think of hell as some geographic, subterranean torture chamber where Bruce Almighty’s mighty smiter smites.

This is a Dante’s Inferno / Roman-Greco view of hell and does not have its root in scripture - this is not what the Bible teaches.

It’s bad, but it’s not Dante’s Inferno - actually it is far worse.

Maybe in a couple of months we will do a deeper dive on the issue of hell, but, for today, I want to draw your attention again to what James has to say:

James 3:6 (ESV)

And the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness.

The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life, and set on fire by hell.

While hell does have a concept of geography, it is also something that wells up within us - our rebellion, our hate, our lust, our bitterness, our anger.

Sin is hell and death.

God is Holy.

God’s holiness in the presence of sin or imperfection results in the destruction of that sin or imperfection.

In His love, God separated himself from us, from his creation, so as to not destroy us.

When Moses asked to see God’s glory, God said to him:

Our separation, and our loss of kingly authority, left a power vacuum - and as we know, power abhors a vacuum - and in our fallen realm, someone is always looking to seize power.

Scripture tells us that an imposter king - Satan - filled that vacuum.

Luke 11:18 (ESV)

And if Satan also is divided against himself, how will his kingdom stand?

1 John 5:19 (ESV)

We know that we are from God, and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one.

So, at this point in the story, we’ve lost our kingdom, we’re separated from the source of our life, and a squatter (think of a vagrant in an abandoned house), an evil imposter king has moved into our realm and is exercising unlawful authority because we are powerless to stop him.