the term with me, the Luke 24 verses 1-12 this evening, left where we saw three sets of people respond and be drawn to the Lord Jesus even in his death. We saw the Gentile Roman military officer, the Centurion, publicly confessed the innocence of Jesus, the son of God. We saw the rich, Jewish council leader Joseph boldly and courageously asked the body of the Lord that he might bury him with dignity. We saw the women of Galilee showing their affectionate loyalty to Jesus as they always had and are portrayed to have done.
Tonight we see three more sets of people. There's some overlap, three sets of people responding now to the empty tomb. Luke wants us to see how the women were persuaded and he wants us to see that the apostles were disbelieving and he wants us to see Peter investigating. There's an empty tomb, there's a resurrection.
Do you find it difficult to believe in the resurrection of the Lord Jesus? Do you want to consider this tonight? What it means and how we believe it and why we believe it. So let me invite you to Luke 24 verses 1-12 and to hear now the Word of God.
But on the first day of the week at early dawn they, that is the women, 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 about 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 simple 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 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 in idle tale and they did not believe them.
But Peter rose and read to the tomb, stooping and looking in. He saw the linen cloths by themselves and he went home marveling at what had happened. Amen. This is God's Word.
Let's look to him in prayer. In our Father in Heaven we bless you for the empty tomb. We thank you for this word of it and we pray that you would richly bless us, that you would speak to our hearts, that you would do far more abundantly beyond all that we could ask or imagine well beyond what I could say. Let your words speak and speak to our hearts for we ask it in Jesus.
Conversion stories have always been introverted at the age of 18. I have always been interested to hear how adults have been brought to faith in Jesus. How did they come to do so? What were the circumstances?
Some of you have had the benefit and the rich blessing of growing up as a child in the church and never knowing a day when you passed from death to life or when you first began to really believe that Jesus was the Savior who died and rose. That is a tremendous blessing. It really is. The sum lived in despair and feeling hopeless and sinful and guilty and without a Savior in this world.
And then God engraised showed us Jesus. I'm always interested to be here what the stories are. I'm fascinated by the conversion story of John Wesley, now the famous founder of Methodism in 1738 May. He had what's called his Alders Gate experience.
He reluctantly went to a meeting and he was a minister at the time, though not yet evangelical converted. Someone there at the meeting was reading from Martin Luther's preface to the Epistle to the Romans that Paul wrote. Luther's work on it. At about 8.45 p.m.
Wesley says this while Luther was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ. I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation and in assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins, even mine and saved me from the law of sin and death. C.S.
Lewis had an interesting conversion experience. The over the course of his life having lost his mom at a young age, he had left the Anglican Church of his youth and had become an atheist. He had abandoned the faith. He grew up to be a scholar and a professor at Oxford and later Cambridge.
Many of you know his name. On September 22, 1931, he was brought to faith in Jesus during a trip to the zoo, riding in the sidecar of his brother's motorcycle. He says, quote, when we set out, I did not believe that Jesus is the Son of God. And when we reached the zoo, I did.
He had come to faith in Christ to be his savior. And Lord, the Bible says that the wind blows where it pleases and so likewise the Holy Spirit works where he pleases. When people come to faith in Christ are converted. They believe in Jesus as their Lord and savior and that he died for them.
He was buried and he was raised from the dead. And it was all for his glory and their spiritual well-being. The resurrection though raises lots of questions. And if you're here tonight with questions, we're doubts.
We understand and we're glad that you're here and we hope that you feel that you can have the freedom to ask your questions. I'd love to interact with you about these things afterwards. We hope that tonight you'll along with us consider the perplexity of the women and the disbelief of the disciples and the skepticism of Peter. And so tonight I want to ask two big questions.
The first one we'll deal with rather quickly and the last one we'll deal with in three parts is an outline of the passage. The two questions are why is faith in the resurrection important? Why bother considering this? And secondly, what does this passage show us about faith, faith and arisen savior?
So in the first place, why does it matter? Well, the epistles of the New Testament were written to spell this out very clearly. The letters were given so that we would know in first or in the chapter 15 the apostle Paul says this, if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain and we are found to be misrepresenting God. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.
And if in this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. In other words, he's saying that if Christ hasn't been raised, you're full for thinking he has been. And if Christ hasn't been raised, you're lying about God or you're misrepresenting God. You're absolutely wrong.
And more than that, you're still in your sins. In other words, your faith in Christ is futile that hasn't brought about farden for you because there is no part in a Savior who's not risen. He's in the grave for his own sins if he's still in the grave. And more than that, you have no hope of paradise here.
You are to be pitied for wasting your life following a dead man. But if he has been raised in the apostle Paul is saying that everything Jesus said is true. And we can have pardon and paradise through him. Jesus went into the grave because God accounted him guilty for our sins.
And Jesus came out of the grave because he fully satisfied divine justice for us and God proclaimed him innocent of personal wrong doing. And so he came out and he is alive forever more. And the resurrection means that we have a living Savior that you have a Savior that you can talk to, that you can know that a Savior who can come and help you, a Savior who can intercede for you. He always lives to do so.
He can comfort you. He can walk with you through the valley of the shadow of death. And he can guarantee that just as he has been raised, you yourself will rise from the grave with a resurrected body of power immortal forever to live with him. You know all these things.
Why does it matter? It's incredible what he offers to you and to me. And without his own resurrection, we're all fools to believe in him for this. Go find salvation somewhere else.
Go work hard for it. Don't seek a different Savior. A different God because he can do nothing for you if he's not alive. This is Paul's point.
And so this is supremely important to the Christian faith. I mean, you can't just pass over it. But then we want to ask the question as Luke raises the issue of faith here. What does this passage show us about faith?
That's these three different sets of people encounter the empty tomb. And so that's where we'll spend the rest of the bulk of our time. And I want you to see the three-part outline versus one day he tells you about the women and the words which convince the women. And in verses 9 to 11 he tells you about the disciples and the disbelief of the disciples.
And then at verse 12 he tells you about Peter and the perplexity of Peter and the investigation he does to satisfy his curiosity and perplexity about these things. So in the first place is verses 1 to 8. I want you to consider the words which convince the women. Notice where he begins.
On the first day of the week at early dawn, this is the crack of dawn on Sunday, Alexander McLaren said sorrow and love are light sleepers. And early dawn found the brave women on their way. And they've come to the tomb taking spices that they've prepared to finish the work that Joseph had begun with all the spices he had wrapped in the women shroud about Jesus' body. But they wanted to be sure it was done well.
They had such affection and respect for the body of Jesus even in his death. They would not give up. And so they've arrived early in the crack of dawn and they discover their what? That though the tomb was filled with Christ on Friday, it is empty of Christ on Sunday morning.
And they're perplexed by it. The stone has been rolled away and there's nobody in the tomb. Jesus isn't there. The linen cloths are lying at the side.
And yet there are two men standing there in dazzling apparel. It says verse four. These are, we are to understand, angels, holy messengers of God. When they appear to humans, they usually are robed in radiant splendor.
Here they are in white and dazzling robes. The women are awestrops. So they bow down before them. And they're frightened.
They bow their faces to the ground. Verse five and the men say to them, in a kind of angelic, I think mild, rebuke. Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here.
He has risen. Now let me ask for you to pause and think about this. How do the angels seek to convince the women that Jesus has risen from the dead? Not by reasoning with them over the empty tomb.
Though I am going to finish my sermon ironically doing just that. Not by reasoning with them about the empty tomb, but simply asserting the empty tomb. And not by arguing over alternative explanations of what happened to the body, but by reminding them of what of what Jesus said. Verse six.
He is not here but has risen. Remember how he told you while you were in Galilee that the Son of Man must be delivered in the hands of simple men and be crucified when on the third day rise. He points the women to the prior word of Jesus that pre-explains the empty tomb. Jesus is not in this text.
No one sees him risen. It looks a count. He is not here. He is simply gone.
How did they come to believe in the resurrection through the word that had previously been given and the reminder by God's angels and agents of that prior given word? Jesus had given this word in Luke 9. He had told the disciples in Luke 9 22 that 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 in Luke 18, nine chapters later, taking the 12.
He said to them, see we are going to Jerusalem. And everything that is written about the Son of Man by the prophets will be accomplished. He will be delivered over to the Gentiles, 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. But they did not understand these things. The same was hidden from them. They didn't grasp what was said.
Luke tells you in Luke 18. So they are brought to believe by the reminder of the promise and then the fulfillment of God's word. It is a human weakness to which I readily confess myself at fault, to not do what we say we will do. Not always out of malice here.
I am speaking generally. Not always out of malice. Sometimes people do lie and never intend to follow through what they said they would do. Sometimes, however, circumstances simply get in the way, circumstances over which we have no control and we do not foresee.
Sometimes simply out of weakness, we make a rash promise, but discover that we just have no ability to follow through. At least that is what the procrastinator tells me myself. Sometimes we do it out of forgetfulness. We make a quick promise that simply slips our mind all the more as we get older, perhaps.
We are the kind of people who can say with the apostle Paul, the good I want to do, I do not do, and the evil I do not want to do, that I do, a wretched man that I am. This is the husband who says I will take out the trash and promptly forgets and goes to sleep. We are the husband who says yes, I will stop at the store. I am away from work.
And hours later, he goes right home from work without stopping at the store. This is the father who says to his children, I will play a game with you when I get home from work and then he doesn't play the game. We can all relate to these things. The world is full of people who promise but do not deliver.
And Luke is telling you, Jesus is not like that at all. He foretold it and he fulfilled it. He promised it and he did it. And the angels say, bank on it.
Remember what he said he would do? This explains the emptiness of this too. And what are the implications of that? That this is a sufficient reason to trust in Jesus to save you.
This is a sufficient reason for you to believe in the death and resurrection of Christ. Your faith resting on the authority and the inerrancy and the infallibility and the reliability of God of Jesus speaking in and through his word. They have an empty tomb and an absent Jesus but they have a sure and certain word of promise and fulfillment. And you have that exact same word and they were told to remember those words and then they believed that he rose.
We tend to say things like, well, if I could have only been there and seen Jesus come out of the tomb, do you know that nobody saw Jesus come out of the tomb? Nobody we know of? The Bible doesn't record a single instance of anybody watching Jesus come out of the tomb. I presume that the angels saw it happen.
He's simply gone from the tomb and people see its emptiness and they come to believe because Jesus told them ahead of time what they were to believe about it. And that is sufficient for us to have faith. You don't need to have a miracle in order to believe in Jesus. You've already had one.
You don't need to observe his resurrection. He's already risen, but he told you exactly that it would be this way. And so the angels are saying, remember his words, depend on his words. His words are reliable.
His words are faithful. And then just in case we missed a diversity, it says the women remembered his words. It was his words, not seeing Jesus with their own eyes that confirm their faith in him. Sometimes in the year 386 Augustine famous Augustine was in Milan and while outdoors he heard the voice of a child singing a song in Latin, but in English something like take up and read, take up and read.
Some of you know this story. He thought it first song was some kind of child's game or child's song, but he could never remember having heard that song himself before and then seeing a copy of the scriptures. He felt like he was being urged to pick up and read and so he picked up and he read and he opened it and his eyes went to the first place. He opened it too.
It was Paul's letter to the Romans and Augustine who had up to this point led a very, let's say, his life, a very sexually active and dysfunctional and promiscuous life and lion and sheep and stealing and all kinds of things. By his own admission read these words in Romans 13, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual access and lust, not in quarreling and jealousy. Rather put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make to a provision for the desires of the flesh and he felt like his heart was flooded with light. It brought him to conversion and faith in Jesus to save him from his sins.
God's word woke him up. God's word brought him to faith. God by the Holy Spirit working in and through his word brings faith. This is the point of laboring to bring to you.
Are you the kind of person who wants to be taken by the hand and escorted into heaven and then you want to look around and ask all your questions of God and once you are satisfied with every single answer then you'll say, I'll trust you, God. Do you know if that's you that the devil has been in heaven and he has had a good look around but he doesn't trust God but believe and trust God and you'll know it's from God. You'll know what he says and you'll know his promises are true. In other words, unbelief, not insufficient information is your most basic problem.
They had sufficient information but they needed to remember it and believe it. How do I know I can trust Jesus with my eternity? Does he have to walk me into heaven now? Show me my mansion in my bed and then I'll believe.
How do I know I can trust Jesus with my well-being now? Must he make every circumstance heaven on earth pleasant for me? Then I'll trust him as if, as if every unpleasant circumstance in my life is not actually for my well-being as though rigorous exercise isn't good for the body. Okay, no, no, don't think that way.
But ask yourself this, how did Adam and Eve know that one tree gave life and the other brought death back in that garden? They had never experienced death. They had never seen it. They didn't understand it in any way experientially for sure.
But they were to believe God's word of promise about it. Then they would know and they were to believe in order to understand, not understand in order to believe. But instead they disbelieved and they rebelled and they looked at the forbidden fruit and they thought it was pretty and it might taste good and it might make them wise like God. God had already said, believe in you understand.
God had already said, trust me and you'll be wise like me because I've already made you wise. They said, I'm going to make myself wise and then I'll trust you. And the point is coming all the way back to this passage, you don't need to see the risen Lord Jesus to believe in him. That day is coming and it is sweet when we will behold him face to face.
But you just need to know that he promised he would suffer and die and be buried and rise on the third day and the tomb was empty. It is sufficient for the faith of the women. And so the angel says, don't you remember what he said? And you and I have got to live by the word and the promise of God.
God need do nothing more to prove himself to you before you can trust him. You can trust him and his word is enough. You really can't. The women did.
Now the second thing is this in verses 9 to 11, we see the disbelief of the disciples. At verse 9 returning from the tomb, the women told all these things to the 11 and to all the rest and it was Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary, the mother of James and the other women who told them things but their words seemed like an idle tale and they did not believe them. The contrast here could not be more stark. The women come to faith and the apostles don't.
Throughout these last hours of Jesus' life, the Bible pointedly honors these women for their loyalty and their affection, their love and their care and their faithfulness to Jesus. They had faith and yes, they came to the tomb initially to make his burial better. They had forgotten but they were brought to true faith. They were at the cross with him and his death.
They were at the tomb where Joseph buried him. They were first at the tomb on the day after the Sabbath. They were the first to discover the fact of his resurrection. They were first to proclaim the truth of the resurrection after the fact of it.
Augustine remarks here that the first preachers of the resurrection of Christ were these women when they went to the apostles to do what apostles do, proclaim the risen Christ. Here we want to reflect for a moment is evidence that the Bible is not biased against women. It is not interested in oppressing women. Whatever you may have been told, men may think all women are like Eve and slow to believe the truth or easily deceived but here it's the men who are slow and the women who are trustworthy and it honors them in pointing this out.
It honors them in highlighting their names. They are not anonymous like the centurion or the criminals of Calvary but it was verse 10 Mary Magdalene and it was Joanna and Mary the mother of James and some other women who may have been made servants of one or two of the women. One of the reasons their names are given is because they are still alive when Luke is writing his gospel account and they were well known in the church like Peter and James and Paul and you could visit with these women. You could have sat next to them in church.
You could have turned to them at the end of the service and said did you see the empty tomb and they would have told you what they saw? And the Bible honors them in another way here. It puts them forward against the grain of their own culture. In their day the rabbis some did teach that men ought to thank God that God had not made them women and the testimony of women we know was not regarded as worthy of the courtroom.
So it was the testimony of women was considered worthless and they were not permitted to serve as legal witnesses in the court of law but God said I will make them my witnesses here. I'll give them the high honor of knowing before all others that the grave is not one. Death has not been victorious and our last enemy has been defeated by Jesus. They're the first to know it.
And if you were making this story up you wouldn't write that these women had such a prominent place in the story because it would seem to undermine your hopes of others paying attention to it as many have pointed out. But Luke did write this because this is the way it happened because God is honoring them. So they come to the apostles and they tell them what they have seen and what they heard and the apostles think what they say it's an idle tale and Luke the physician knows exactly what they're saying. He uses a Greek medical term here meaning the babbling of a person suffering under a fever or with an insane mind.
In other words they think the women are literally just absolutely out of their minds and many people today think that the Bible is a fairy tale and Christians who believe that are out of their minds would get relate to these women. And I just want to say this don't be pigheaded like the disciples were and don't be prejudiced. If it is by God's grace a woman in your life a mother or a grandmother or a sister or a cousin or a friend who was the first to tell you the good news of the gospel rejoins in that fact like Timothy could rejoice that he learned the gospel through the scriptures on the me of his mom and grandmother. But also we should last point here under the disciples and their disbelief we ought to take great encouragement from this.
How encouraging it is to see that the disciples were skeptical and then at first they didn't believe and yet we know that Christ forgave them and Christ brought them to faith and he built his church on their witness and testimony as they got to see eventually the risen Christ and go out and proclaim it everywhere. Jesus didn't give up on them he didn't turn his back on them and persevered with them and graciously dealt with them. You may have spent your whole life to this very moment denying the resurrection of Jesus and Jesus is still willing to pardon you. Now if you don't believe certainly you were in good company with the apostles we're not picking on anybody here.
But let's remain in the company of the apostles who turn to believe and their turning is a good reason for us to do so too. If these apostles didn't believe it when it happened and then they came around to believing it and then giving their lives in preaching it there must be something to it and of course there is. So that's the second thing you see here the disbelief the initial disbelief of the disciples and the last thing you see is the perplexity of Peter. First while Peter rises runs to the tomb stoops looks and sees the wind and cloths went home marveling at what had happened.
The women discovered that it was true and the disciples thought it's just not true and Peter said well it might be true and I've got to be sure. And so he runs because I believe the women but he goes and he looks and he kind of hopes it's true it seems like he's perplexed and so he sees that Jesus isn't there and if you're not sure if you're intrigued by the resurrection like Peter was then like Peter dig in and find out ask yourself what happened to the body. You'd be in good company with Peter if you did that others have gone before you it's kept to go on disbelieving only to be convinced because the evidence is overwhelming. The Frank Morrison and English journalist over 80 years ago set out to disprove what he called the myth of Christianity was a journalist he asked all the when where what why how questions and was brought to faith in Christ writing a famous book who moved the stone that because led many people to faith in Christ.
If we are intrigued but not sure I would say be like Peter and run to the tomb and ask why is it empty and where did Jesus go? With Peter search the tomb there's no back door there's no trap door it's cut in a rock there's but one opening it's not the wrong tomb it's Joseph's tomb a rich man's tomb and he didn't miss place where his tomb was when he laid that body in the grave the women saw him buried there they're not the wrong place the women didn't take the body they couldn't have rolled the stone back if they wanted to the other gospels tell you they had a discussion about it was good enough do it for us it's too big we can't do it. Gray robbers didn't steal the body of Jesus why take time to unwrap the body of Jesus and leave behind the expensive linen shroud all neatly folded up it's the expensive item in there the Romans didn't take the body we know from the other gospel writers that they sealed the tomb and they sent a guard to watch over it fearing others might actually steal the body the Jews didn't take the body why would they and if they had how would they have slipped it past the guard and not got caught and if they had taken it and all these people came out converted to Christ believing that Jesus is the true messiah risen from the dead wouldn't they just bring out the body and say no he's dead and the apostles didn't take the body the guard at the tomb certainly would have stopped them besides why would they give all of them were nearly so their lives for a lie and why let themselves be persecuted and martyred if they knew it was a hoax you have no plausible alternative in other words to explain the empty tomb and it is because he has risen just as he said how else do you explain the disciples suddenly changing from fear to boldly proclaiming a resurrected savior and dying for their faith how else do you explain in a generation where there were lots of messiahs we know in that generation there were lots of men according to be nasa who had a following with them how do you explain that once that messiah so-called died the followers died out and the movements did not perpetuate but in this case it exploded around the world how else do you explain the sudden growth of the church made up of Jew and Gentile monotheistic Jews now worshiping of man as god and polytheistic Gentiles now worshiping only Jesus as god how do you explain any of that it was because the tomb was empty because Jesus is risen and alive forevermore and you can rise with him forever let's pray father heaven we bless you for our risen savior we thank you for the miraculous thing that you did and the glorious and wonderful thing and the hope that we have a pardon and paradise in Jesus grant us to believe in him to trust the truth about him proclaimed in your work witnessed by your people in Jesus they might pray amen let's stand and sing of the resurrection and our resurrection hope