The Resurrection (Part 4 of 4)

In the Bible, we read that the women who made their way to Jesus' tomb had come to come prepared with spices.

They'd come to anoint Jesus' body. But they didn't find what they were expecting, and they could not keep from talking about what they'd found. Today on Truth for Life, Alistair Begg explains a very important announcement that requires a response.

We're in Luke 24. But if it's a good biography, I don't want to just know they wondered. I want to know, what did you wonder about? And of course, we don't have it here, but they must have wondered all kinds of things. Well, it's certainly amazing from where we sit, with the advantage of all the time we've had and all the things we've read, but for them it wasn't amazing at all. The last thing that crossed their minds would have been a resurrection.

The last thing in their mind would have been that Jesus would rise so soon from the dead, and would appear so dramatically to his followers. Now, again, let me remind you, this is careful investigation. This is an orderly account.

Follow the orderly account. While they were wondering about this, and while they were perplexed, here is a reason for even more perplexity. Suddenly, unexpectedly—the Greek is essentially out of the blue—two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them. John tells us, John chapter 20 and verse 12, he says, and two angels were present. It's actually helpful to me to have this described here by Luke with his kind of clinical analytical mind, and he says there were two individuals whose clothing gleamed like lightning.

That's the best he can do for it. An angelic, supernatural encounter, and their clothing was bright enough, striking enough, to outclass the whiteness of the tomb in which Jesus had been laid. But this supernatural intervention ought to be no surprise.

I'm not disturbed by it at all. Angels, we have heard on high, sweetly singing o'er the plain. They were here at the arrival of Jesus. They announced his birth. The angels arrived.

And I wonder if some who were present on that occasion in Bethlehem were dispatched now to the scene in Jerusalem, and the word came. Okay, I want a few of you that were down there in the fields with the shepherds to go down here, two in particular, in order that you might speak to these women. And they don't just stand there looking cute. They speak. The women have been frightened.

They bow down with their faces to the ground, and the men don't get into that at all. They just ask them a very straightforward question. Why do you look for the living among the dead?

Now, there is in this a kind of gentle rebuke, isn't there? Why are you here looking for the living among the dead? If you're looking for a living person, why did you come to the cemetery? Well, the fact is, they weren't looking for a living person, were they? They were looking for a dead person. That's why they had all the stuff in their hands. Jesus was dead.

It was over. They were going to anoint his body, close it down, fold it up. Here they are, looking for life in all the wrong places.

William Berkeley, whose commentaries are used falteringly, can't resist the opportunity at this point to suggest that men and women do the same as these particular women had done. And that is that they go looking for Jesus in all the wrong places. They go looking for him among the dead. I really have to stop myself with great frequency in most of the bookstores of the country. Because I go all the time to the New Age section, to the philosophy section, to the Eastern mysticism section, to the, of course, religious section, whatever else it is, and invariably I find people there pulling all these books off the shelves. And I find the temptation to shake people or to stand on a chair and to say, Why do you look for the living among the dead?

Because to the extent that they have any longing and search after spiritual reality, it is that which is placed there by the seeking, searching power of God. And yet, men and women are content to look for a Jesus who's just a noble hero, a Jesus who's a research project so that their children can get an A on it as they deal with a historical figure at school, a Jesus who's a wonderful example. But the one thing they don't anticipate is what these women didn't anticipate—namely, a risen, living, empowering Jesus who walks and talks and changes their lives. This is the Jesus of the New Testament. We're not here to revere the memory of somebody who was around.

We're here to celebrate the presence of someone who is alive. I don't have a relationship with the Bible. I have a relationship with Jesus. I meet Jesus in the Bible. I hear his Word in the Bible. He guides me through his truth. But I talk to him, and I listen for his voice, and I meet him in the company of his children, and I celebrate his presence in communion, and I rejoice in the fact that he is a risen Christ, that he is not a theory, that I'm not in love with a philosophy, that I have not been embraced by a religious notion, but I have been encountered by a living Christ. And this is Christianity.

And this was the one thing these women didn't expect. You see, loved ones, you need to understand how dead and finished and buried was the notion concerning Jesus in the minds of all these people. And that's where we'll come to later on. We had hoped he was the one who would redeem Israel. But that's all in the past.

It's interesting that, as they were frightened by this supernatural intervention—so men and women are frightened by the idea of a supernatural intervention, aren't they? This might appeal to whom I speak. Although, my fellow, I must remember his name. Actually, it's better I don't remember his name, because then I can't be guilty of maligning him by name. It's just I have this figure.

He's a very clear figure. But he was on again this week, and someone called in and said that they were needing to get in touch with their uncle, and he said, Does your uncle like cars? And the person said, No. And he said, I'm seeing something about flowers. Does that mean anything? The person said, No.

He tried about seven things. The person said, No, no, no, no, no. I was rejoicing at it. I was jumping up and down.

I said, This is so good! A classic interest in seances and the dark side of things. But go to those same people and tell them of one who has gone through death and has come out on the other side, and the announcement of which has been made by the supernatural intervention of an angelic throng, and they'll say to you, You don't expect me to believe that kind of thing, do you? Now, I would be unnerved by this were it not for the fact that the Bible tells me that the God of this age has blinded the eyes of men and women so that they cannot actually see the truth when it is right in front of their faces, and that they will embrace a lie before they will follow the truth. Now, there's something here that I'm sure you've already picked up on. I want to point it out to you as a reminder to those who are at the top of the class, and that is that the perplexity of these women gives way at least to a measure of clarity, not as a result of seeing an empty tomb and not as a result of meeting two angels. You'll notice that? You see, the story here is not, And we went over there, and we saw the tomb was empty, and we met a couple of angels, and we're back to tell you, no body, couple of angels.

No. Empty tomb plus angelic visitation minus explanation or minus interpretation equals danger. That is why, you will notice, the angels speak. The angels speak a word. The angels speak, if you like, the word. The angels do what? They bring the Bible to the women.

The Bible that has yet to become inscripturated, but nevertheless the Word of Christ himself. That is why they said to him, verse 6, He's not here, he's risen. Remember? Remember how he told you while he was still with you in Galilee? And then they quote from chapter 9, and again from chapter 18, The Son of Man—these are the words of Jesus—the Son of Man, he told his followers, must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, be crucified, and on the third day be raised again. And then it says, And then they remembered his words. And it was when they remembered the words of Christ, when they interpreted the events in light of the Word, then at that point confusion began to give way to clarity. We live in an age that is fascinated by stories of the equivalent of empty tombs and angelic visitations.

May I remind you of what I've told you before? That the confidence of heaven is in the Scriptures. And if you want to hear from God, if you want to know about God, if you want to meet God, then ultimately and finally and savingly you meet him in the person of his Son, and you are encountering his Son in the pages of the Bible. And that's why so many of you know so little about God—because you've never really considered the Bible. And that's why some of you are coming to faith in God—because the Bible is starting to shine into your minds.

And you're realizing that the weight of faith is not by some religious mysticism, the weight of faith is not by the disengaging of your mental faculties, but that the weight of faith is by hearing the Word of God. And they heard the Word of God. You find the same thing, remember, back in the story of the rich man in Lazarus. And the rich man dies, and he goes to hell, and finding himself there, he's so concerned that he would first of all get relief and requires water, which he has denied, and then asks Abraham if somebody would go and tell his brothers about the danger of ending up in this place.

And you may remember how the dialogue proceeds, and it finally ends up with the rich man giving orders from hell. No, no, he says—it's interestingly, in hell, people will still be giving orders, and still be denying, and still be raging. No, no, he says, if somebody would go to my brothers, if somebody could rise from the dead and go to my brothers and tell them, then my brothers would all believe. And Abraham says, if they will not listen to Moses and the prophets—in other words, if they won't pay attention to the Bible—they will not believe, even if someone were to rise from the dead. Now, you have this very same principle here—an empty tomb, an angelic visitation, which is then interpreted in the light of the Word of Christ himself. And there is, of course, a wonderful little sermon that I'll give to you that you can preach somewhere when you're doing a talk. The women remembered, and then the women returned, and then the women relayed the news. But we won't do that sermon.

Now let me draw this to a close. The announcement of the resurrection, you will notice verse 9 and following, is not an end in itself. The announcement of the resurrection is a springboard for action. Mark actually tells us that the angel said to the women, We want you to go and tell his disciples and tell Peter. Because it is this story, it is this news, it is the putting together of this investigative report which is finally going to convince these folks that they have a reason to live, that there is a significance in their discipleship, that there is a relevance in their proclaiming of the kingdom. And so verse 9, when they came back from the tomb, they told all these things to the eleven and to all the others.

And verse 10 tells us who was involved in the reporting, and verse 11 tells us how the men, the big, noble, tough guys, received this. They did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense, like gobbledygook, like feverish ramblings, like an old wives' tale. The word, when it is used in medical terminology, it describes the wild talk of someone who is delirious. The wild talk of delirium. And you can imagine these women appearing in on them. They're already having their discussions about how everything has come to a sorry end. And then they come with a story.

They can just hear words. Someone's making tea in the kitchen, and they can hear, Tum! Empty! Stone! Gone! Angels!

Remember! All these words, all jumbling in on top of them. And somebody says, Oh, I wish you would all be quiet. Any sensible man can see that it's all over.

It's done. Now, my dear agnostic friends, those of you who are hanging your lives on your ability to rebut the historicity of the resurrection, ponder this. Do we have here, in the apostles, a group of men poised on the brink of belief, needing only the shadow of an excuse to launch themselves forth into the Jerusalem streets proclaiming the resurrection? Is that what we have here?

No. We have a group of eleven complete skeptics, totally unwilling to accept the woman's report, prepared to dismiss it as delirious twaddle. Now, let me wrap this. There you see them. They didn't believe the women because their words seemed to them like nonsense. What a sorry bunch. A dejected and paralyzed company. Like a football team—that is, a soccer team—that has gone in at halftime and is sitting in the locker room, dejected, dispirited.

They're now losing 7-0, and none of them want to go back out for the second half. And the one who's wearing the armband—the self-appointed spokesman and captain, in this instance, Peter—he is as made as big a mess of it as anybody in the room. And indeed, his voice is virtually silent. There's no air in his balloon. There's no wind in his sails. He has crumbled at the questions of a servant girl.

And he, perhaps more than any other, is aware of his failure. So it's quite wonderful, isn't it, when it says in verse 12 that Peter, however, got up and ran to the tomb? There we go again! Good old Peter! Jesus comes walking on the water. Peter says, Can I try that? Jesus says, Sure. You want to walk on the water?

Go ahead. Who do people say that I am? You're the Christ, the Son of the living God. Top of the class, Peter! Now, Peter, we're going to go up to Jerusalem, and I'm going to die and be in a dreadful predicament. Peter says, Oh, no, you're not! Jesus said, Get behind me, Satan!

Lord, if everybody bails on you—I'm your man, I have your back—weren't you with him? No. Jesus? Pfft! No.

Mm-mm. You sound a lot like him. No, you need your ears cleaned out, miss. I do not sound like him. I stinking well don't sound like him.

Do you understand that? Well, we think we saw you with him. Now, don't get me mad.

I don't want to start using bad language with you, miss. But this is Peter. He got up to check it out. You bet your life he did.

Why? This was his only hope, wasn't it? If Jesus is alive, if he has a message for the scattered, demoralized group of which he is the self-appointed Captain, then maybe there's just hope for him. There is hope for him.

We'll come to that. That's the wonderful story of the resurrection. There's hope for those of us who've made a hash of it. There's hope for those of us who've opened our big mouths when we shouldn't and kept our mouths quiet when we should. There's hope for those of us who stepped over thinking we could walk on water and virtually drowned ourselves and everyone else along, who made these great protestations of faith. There's hope.

Oh, yes, there is. But let me end where I began, with the women. On the first day of the week, early in the morning, women, spices, prepared, ready, action, following their hearts into the realm of disappointment and decay. Eventually, their bewildered silence, giving way to the topsy-turvy recounting of the sight that they'd seen and the words that they'd heard. No one, I remind you, who wanted to fabricate a convincing account of the resurrection in first-century Palestine would have dreamed of doing it in this way.

The testimony of the women was inadmissible in a court of law. And God sets it up that the women will be the recipients of the news and the tellers of the story and the bearers of the message. Surely it's just a classic illustration of what Paul refers to. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things and the things that are not to nullify the things that are. And to ponder that, I need nothing other than a mirror.

Don't you? Look around. This is a company in crisis. This is a group of individuals able, on a Sunday morning, to conceal all the things that really rock our boat and wrestle us to the ground and pin us to the mat. And God says, You're my group. Because I chose the weak things and the things that aren't to show the things that are that are really not by the power of the risen Christ. A humbling reminder that God has chosen us to share the good news with others. This is Truth for Life.

Be sure to keep listening. Alistair will be back in just a minute to close with prayer. Does it surprise you that Jesus' disciples found the news of his resurrection hard to believe? That they needed proof? An empty tomb and an announcement from angels were not enough to convince them? So how can we know the resurrection is true? Well, there's a new book that we're recommending that will help you with that and today is my first opportunity to tell you about it. The book is titled Alive, How the Resurrection of Christ Changes Everything and this is the perfect supplement to our current series from Alistair because it investigates the historical and biblical evidence of Jesus' resurrection.

You'll benefit from discovering how the reality of Christ's victory over sin, death and hell establishes a solid ground for our faith. Request your copy of the book Alive when you give a gift of any amount. Visit us online at truthforlife.org slash donate or click the image you see in the app. And if you have not yet downloaded the Truth for Life mobile app to your phone or your tablet, it's easy to do. Just search Truth for Life in your app store and you can download it for free. Once you've downloaded it and you've opened it, you can play each day's program, you can access Alistair's teaching, you can read the daily devotional.

So search out the Truth for Life mobile app in your app store and download it today. Now here's Alistair with a closing prayer. Father, I pray that you will forgive us when we are tempted to rely on who we are or what we think we are, as if somehow or another that we presented that which you needed in order to accomplish your purposes. But you have put your treasure in old clay pots so that the transcendent power might be seen to belong to God and not to us. Forgive us for thinking wrongly about these things, and encourage us that you come to the beleaguered and to the unbelieving, to the skeptical and the confused. And shining in the light of your Word and filling the sails by the power of your Spirit, you get us up and ready for another day, another mile on the journey. May the grace and the mercy and the peace of the risen Lord Jesus Christ be the portion of each one who believes, today and forevermore. Amen.

I'm Bob Lapeen. Hope you can join us tomorrow. When all hope seemed lost for Jesus' disciples, something happened that made them view his death in a different way. What happened? We'll find out tomorrow. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.