Father, we praise you. We praise you for the gift of
your Son. We praise You for the gift of
Your Word. We praise you for the gift of
your people. Our hearts are stirred this
morning. We pray now as we open up your
Word and see incredible things. By your Spirit, You would make
them credible to us. Or that we would be able to
believe and receive and live in light of Christ's resurrection.
In his name we pray. Amen.
Our reading this morning comes from John's Gospel, chapter 20,
starting in verse one through verse 18.
Now, on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene came to the
tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw that the stone had
been taken away from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon
Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and
said to them, they've taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do
not know where they have laid him.
So Peter went out with the other disciple and they were going
toward the tomb. Both of them were running
together. But the other disciple outran
Peter and reached the tomb 1st and stooping to look in, he saw
the linen clothes lying there, but he did not go in.
Then Simon Peter came following him and went into the tomb.
He saw the linen cloth lying there and the face cloth which
had been on Jesus head not lying with the linen clothes, but
folded up in a place by itself. Then the other disciple who had
reached the tomb first also went in, and he saw and believed, for
as yet they did not understand the Scripture that he must rise
from the dead. Then the disciples went back to
their homes. But Mary stood weeping outside
the tomb, and as she wept, she stooped to look into the tomb,
and she saw 2 angels in white sitting where the body of Jesus
had lain, one at the head and one at the feet.
They said to her, Woman, why are you weeping?
She said to them, They've taken away my Lord, and I do not know
where they have laid him. Having said this, she turned
around and saw Jesus standing, but she did not know that it was
Jesus. Jesus said to her, Woman, why
are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?
Supposing him to be the gardener?
She said to him, Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me
where you have laid him and I will take him away.
Jesus said to her, Mary. She turned and said to him in
Aramaic Rabboni, which means teacher.
Jesus said to her, do not cling to me, for I've not yet ascended
to the Father, but go to my brothers and say to them, I'm
ascending to my Father, and your father to my God and your God.
Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, I
have seen the Lord, and that he had said these things to her.
This is the word of the Lord, Thanks be to God.
Please be seated. One of my favorite questions to
ask of any text is why is this in the Bible?
Why did the Holy Spirit lead someone, in this case John, to
write these words? And it's a great question.
It doesn't always give us an obvious answer, but this morning
the answer is obvious. This text teaches us about the
resurrection of Jesus Christ because if Christ is risen,
nothing else matters. And if Christ is not risen,
nothing else matters. These were reportedly the dying
words of a historian and theologian named Yaroslav
Pelican. His who he is doesn't really
matter, but what he says matters tremendously.
If Christ is risen, nothing else matters, and if Christ is not
risen, nothing else matters. What does he mean if Jesus rose
from the grave that morning? If Peter and John went and found
the tomb empty, if Mary really did see the Lord, nothing else
matters because this is the most important moment in history.
Jesus is Lord, and every knee should bow.
But if Jesus did not rise from the dead that morning, nothing
else matters. Because for all of his good
teaching and deeds, Jesus ended up being a fraud.
Because at the center of his mission he said he would die.
He would rise again and return to the Father.
So if he didn't do that, why should we listen to anything he
says? Instead, we should just live it
up. Because tomorrow we die.
It doesn't matter. So I want us to realize what's
at stake in the resurrection and lean in this morning like this
is a life or death matter, Because it is.
If you think about after the cross, Jesus followers were not
in a good place. They were overwhelmed with
doubt. Some of them had just failed
miserably and they were full of grief.
But they brought all of that with them to the empty tomb and
the risen Christ met them there. So wherever you are this
morning, I invite you to bring your doubts and your failures
and your grief to the empty tomb.
And I pray that the risen Christ will meet you there today.
The first thing I want us to see is that the risen Christ has a
message for the doubting. And really here the character to
consider is the empty tomb. I don't know your doubts.
I don't know what you struggle with in the Bible.
I don't know what you see in the world or what you've seen in the
church. I don't know what happened to
you or someone you love. But I know we have our doubts.
My encouragement is that you're not alone.
Mary Magdalene and Peter were full of doubt on that Sunday
morning. They'd been crushed just a
couple days ago by the crucifixion of their Lord and
their close friend, so they were doubting everything.
But the empty tomb confronted them in their doubts.
It forced them to consider the evidence.
And this morning I want you to consider the evidence.
I don't know if we do this enough.
I think Christian or non Christian many of us have not
never really seriously considered the evidence.
So first I want to take the other side and assume that this
didn't happen. So what are the arguments we can
make that Christ did not rise again?
And how strong are these arguments?
First, someone could have stolen or moved Jesus body.
This is actually Mary Magdalene's assumption in verse
2 and 13. She thinks someone has taken
Jesus body. She says they've taken the Lord
out of the tomb and we do not know where they've laid him.
If it was grave robbers, which happened back then, you have to
figure out how the grave robbers get past these professional
soldiers and move this massive stone.
If it was the Romans or the Jews, I guess they could have
decided we're going to change locations.
But then they know where that is and they could tell everyone.
And if it was the disciples, that just doesn't make any sense
because the disciples, since Friday, they're running and
hiding. They're not in any place to take
on soldiers and move a huge boulder.
So second, the women could have gone to the wrong tune.
If the women went to the wrong tomb and then went and told the
disciples and the story starts to spread, Jesus has risen.
It would be so easy for the Jews and Romans just to take everyone
to the right tomb and put a big sign.
No, he's still very much here. Third, maybe Jesus didn't
actually die. This has been called the swoon
theory, that Jesus was on the cross, but he didn't actually
die on the cross, maybe just kind of passed out.
But it's a hard pill to swallow because the Romans were really
good at killing people. Crucifixion was kind of their
thing, and the Gospels actually tell us that Jesus died before
the soldiers could come and break his bones to speed it up.
It's also hard to believe that this would have been a horribly
injured Jesus. Very weak that that character
could inspire his followers to think that he had conquered
death. Take that message to the world.
4th. The disciples could have just
made the story up. It's a fabrication.
This is actually the easiest of the arguments to believe the
resurrection didn't happen. It's just a myth.
But if you just think the disciples made it up, you have
to deal with several questions. So if they made it up, why did
they give women such a prominent role in the story?
I have nothing against women, but back then the culture did,
and the culture didn't really see woman's testimony as valid
in court. And so if this is a fiction,
it's a strange choice that in all the gospels, the women are
the first witnesses of this earth shaking event.
It's also interesting if they made it up, that they
immediately went to go preach this lie right where it happened
in Acts. You see them preaching where in
Jerusalem where it would be so easy to tell everyone, hey, this
didn't happen. The tomb's actually over here.
That's hard to swallow. And if they made it up, you have
to figure out how to explain the book of Acts, the whole New
Testament and all of church history.
Good luck. If they made it up they knew it
was a lie. Would you endure what these
disciples went through knowing it was a lie?
Chuck Coulson served under President Richard Nixon and he
was involved in the Watergate scandal of the early 70s and
went to prison and later came to Christ and had a powerful
ministry in Jesus name. Listen to what Chuck Coulson
says about this. I know the resurrection is a
fact and Watergate proved it to me.
How? Because 12 men testified they'd
seen Jesus raised from the dead. Then they proclaim that truth
for 40 years, never once denying it.
Everyone was beaten, tortured, stoned, put in prison.
They would not have endured that if it weren't true.
Watergate embroiled 12 of the most powerful men in the world,
and they couldn't keep a lie for three weeks.
You're telling me 12 apostles could keep a lie for 40 years?
Absolutely impossible. And it's worth noting what the
apostles faced was a lot worse than a little jail time.
When you consider the arguments that Jesus didn't rise from the
dead, are any of them compelling to you?
That's what you have to ask. Could I buy any of that?
I think they all fall flat. And so we have to ask, what's
the evidence that Christ did rise from the dead?
And it's amazing to me to think that God didn't have to provide
us with evidence. If you look one verse later,
John 2019, the disciples are hiding out.
They've locked the doors. They're scared.
Jesus appears in the room, like he just appeared or walked
through the door. Maybe he was more real than the
door now. And if he can do that, did he
need the stone to be rolled away?
I think the stone wasn't rolled away for Jesus.
He didn't have to have an exit. He could have just done whatever
he wanted. It was rolled away for us.
God wanted us to see as he was accomplishing this miracle of
miracles. He left us with evidence.
So Christianity is not a blind leap of faith into the dark like
so many people think, Christian and non Christian.
Oh you just have to leap into the dark.
No, it's trusting in a God who has revealed himself in history
with brilliant light. So consider the evidence.
Professional soldiers were somehow neutralized that
morning. They were there to guard the
tomb. They knew if they failed, death
was the likely result for them. So in Matthew 28 four we learned
that an Angel took care of the guards and Matthew says for fear
of him, the guards trembled and became like dead men and the
stone was rolled away. We see this in verse one.
The stone could have weighed 2 tons, 4000 lbs.
The soldiers needed levers to just get it in place.
The Dallas Cowboys offensive line couldn't move it.
You think a few women and fishermen could move it?
Probably not. Matthew 28, two, says.
An Angel rolled back the stone and sat on it.
I think that was probably enough for the soldiers to say I'm
going to do something else. Now.
The grave clothes were left undisturbed.
We see this in verses 5 through 9.
Jewish people would wrap the dead body in these claws with
maybe 100 lbs of spices. So from Friday night to early
Sunday morning, Jesus was sort of like a mummy in that tomb.
But Sunday morning these graves clothes were mysteriously lying
there empty, maybe inflated a little bit like where his body
used to be. Like a caterpillar's chrysalis.
After the butterfly emerges, he's gone, and the resurrected
body of our Lord just passed through the clothes.
I guess he had to find some new clothes, which I've never
thought about. Where did he get clothes?
Sunday morning early and the face cloth was folded up and
left in place. The head would be wrapped
separately from the body. Jesus apparently folded up the
face cloth like a person who's done with an article of closing.
I don't need this anymore. Put it back where it belongs.
And then we have these eyewitness accounts of angels.
All the Gospels are united and testifying that there were these
shining men or angels on the scene.
And then we have these amazing eyewitness accounts of Jesus
appearing to people. But they're not what you would
expect from a myth. They're not sensationalized.
When you talk about the empty tomb or the appearances there,
If anything, understated Jesus appears to Mary here.
She's not blown away. She mistakes him for the
gardener, and he appears to these sad disciples on the road
to Emmaus, and they don't recognize them.
And in the passages after this one, you know, Jesus deals with
Thomas's doubt and Peter's denials, and then he has
breakfast with his friends on the beach.
They're beautiful stories, but they have the feeling of
authenticity and credibility, not like they were made-up.
Many people have tried to disprove the resurrection, and
they've all failed. There's a lawyer named Frank
Morrison. He tried to do it, and then he
ended up writing a book called Who Moved the Stone to Defend
the Resurrection. So brilliant people have weighed
the evidence and concluded that Jesus rose from the dead.
Listen to what a former Chief Justice of England said.
There exists such overwhelming evidence, positive and negative,
factual and circumstantial, that no intelligent jury in the world
could fail to bring in a verdict that the resurrection story is
true. So from that Sunday morning on,
Jesus followers knew what what was at stake.
They knew the world had changed. So when Peter preaches in Acts,
what's central the resurrection? And when Paul talks about the
gospel in First Corinthians 15 three, what's central the
resurrection, he basically says First Corinthians 15-3, this is
the gospel. This is the matter of first
importance. Jesus died for our sins.
He was buried and he rose from the grave, and this is all in
fulfillment of the Scriptures. And then what does he do?
He mentions all these people to whom Jesus appeared.
In First Corinthians 15-6, Paul says the risen Christ appeared
to 500 people. At the same time, he says most
of these people are still alive, though a few have fallen asleep.
So a few have died. So think about what he's saying.
Paul is saying we're not making this stuff up.
This didn't happen that long ago.
Some of these witnesses have died, but most of us are still
here. So if you have questions or
doubts, like see us after the service, come find us.
We witnessed this. Paul sees the other side too.
In the same chapter, Paul says if Christ has not been raised
from the dead, our preaching is in vain, our faith is in vain,
we've become false witnesses about God, we're still in our
sins, and we are above all people, most to be pitied.
So without the resurrection, you have to explain the apostles
transformation, the explosive growth of the church, the life
of Saul who becomes Paul, the last 2000 years of the church.
Without the resurrection. How do you explain why we're
here this morning and why many of us believe that this is true
and we can see the change in our lives?
Jesus invites us to bring our doubts to the empty tomb, to
consider the evidence, and to believe that he's risen indeed.
So whether you're a Christian or not, if you've never seriously
considered the evidence, my encouragement is follow Peter
and John and run to that empty tomb.
What could possibly be more important than figuring out if
Jesus rose from the dead? The evidence points the
historical fact of Jesus bodily resurrection.
If Christ is risen, that means something cosmic has happened
right here on earth. But what does it mean for us
personally? So we turn our attention to
Peter and Mary Magdalene and see the personal significance of the
resurrection. As we look at Peter, we see the
risen Christ has a message for the failing.
When we last saw Peter in John 18 a few weeks ago, he failed
miserably. He talked to big talk, but then
in his walk he fell on his face. He pulled a sword and tried to
stop Jesus from going to the cross and then he denied knowing
Jesus three times. We remember the rooster crowed
and Luke says Peter went out and he wept bitterly.
So just imagine his emotional state on Friday and Saturday and
then early Sunday morning. His Lord, his Messiah was gone.
His hopes were dashed and all he can think is in Jesus moment of
greatest need I failed. I acted like I didn't even know
him. That's what he has to live with.
Peter had failed Jesus, and we've failed Jesus.
We failed to love him with everything we have.
We failed to love others as he's love us.
We failed to honor him with our thoughts and our affections and
our bodies. And so we may have success in
this world, but can we admit that we failed Jesus, that we're
sinners? That's where Peter was that
Sunday morning. But in the midst of his failure,
look at what he does when Mary Magdalene comes and finds him,
when she raises the alarm that the stone's been rolled away and
Jesus isn't there, what does he do?
Peter doesn't wallow in self pity.
He doesn't drown himself in his doubts.
He gets up and he runs. And maybe he's just thinking,
I'm going to go protect my dead friend's body.
But in his failure, he at least runs towards Jesus.
In your failure, do you run towards Jesus?
And so it's another beautiful, believable story.
I think of Peter and John running through the streets of
Jerusalem early in the morning and oops, sorry, Mary, They seem
to have left her behind. And John seems to be younger.
It's so funny just getting his perspective.
He won't say his name, but I think it's John.
John points out that he's faster.
He gets there first. John looks into the tomb but
doesn't go in. But Peter, true to form, slow
but bull in the China shop, just barges right in.
And so Peter sees the evidence, the stones rolled away, the
grave closed, the face cloth, He's taken it all in.
And so John follows him into the tomb next.
And John sees and John believes, John becomes the first to
believe that Christ is risen. And then verse 10 says they went
back home, which is interesting. I wonder what they talked about
as they went home. And I think some time passed
between them leaving and Mary Magdalene coming back.
It's not clear exactly what Peter and John believed or
understood in this moment, but just imagine Peter running to
the tomb knowing all of his failures.
How's Jesus respond to him and his failures?
We see this in verse 17 when Jesus is talking to Mary.
Because Jesus gives Mary the task of going to the disciples
and telling them about his resurrection.
And how does Jesus refer to his followers?
He could have said go to those failures and say to them, go to
those failures. That's kind of who they were.
But he doesn't. He says, go to my brothers and
say to them, go to my brothers. Peter had denied Jesus and fled
the scene. And as far as we know, all the
other disciples did the same. But Jesus calls them my brothers
in John 15. He called them friends when he
was sitting with them. He said he would lay down his
life for his friends, and that's what he did.
And now he goes one step further, calls them brothers.
And what's his message for his brothers?
I'm ascending to my father and your father, my God and your
God. So do you see it?
The risen Christ not settling scores.
Instead, he's building a family of forgiven failures.
The disciples are his brothers. He wants his Father to be their
father, his God to be their God. So in our failures, the risen
Christ offers us grace upon grace, the grace of forgiveness
for our sins and failures, the grace of adoption into his
family. This morning the risen Christ
invites us to bring our failures to him, to believe in what he's
done for us, and to receive his forgiveness.
Will you come to Jesus this morning and receive His grace?
Finally, the risen Christ has a message for the grieving.
We don't know much about Mary Magdalene.
I would love to know more. In Luke 82, we learned that
seven demons had gone out from her.
People have tried to guess what her sins were, but we don't
know. I think all we know is that she
must have sinned much and suffered much, but she was
forgiven much, and so she loved much.
And all four Gospels locate her here at the tomb on the Sunday
morning in John 20. It's clear that she's in deep
grief. She's weeping, wailing, thinking
someone has now added insult to injury.
I just had to experience my teacher, my Lord, being brutally
killed. And now someone has stolen his
body just to make further sport of him.
And so we meet Mary in her darkest hour at her lowest
point. And many of us have been there.
Some of us may be there this morning.
I know the last month or so has been a time of deep grief for
many in our community. And like Mary, you may have no
expectation that things are going to get better.
But let's see what happens. In verse 11, John says she stood
weeping outside the tomb. The word in Greek forestood is a
strong word. There's a sense that she stood
right there. She anchored herself.
She wasn't going anywhere. So in her grief, Mary gets as
close to Jesus as she can and stands there.
So she becomes the picture really of abiding in Christ,
even if she thinks he's dead. But now she looks into the tomb.
Earlier she just saw the stone rolled away.
Maybe it was too dark, maybe she was too scared, maybe she was in
too much of a hurry. But now she takes a look and
what does she notice? Not the grave clothes, if
they're still there, but 2 angels sitting where the body of
Jesus had been, one at the head, one at the feet.
And they ask her kindly, woman, why are you weeping?
And she shares her grief. Then she turns and realizes
someone else is standing with her.
And this man asked the same question, woman, why are you
weeping? And then he adds, whom are you
seeking? She thinks he's the gardener, so
maybe he knows what happened to Jesus.
But it is Jesus. And in verse 16, he says Mary,
as he'd said countless times before.
And her eyes are open and she turns, and her whole world is
turned upside down, Teacher, she cries out and her fears are
gone, and her hope is restored and her grief turns to joy in a
moment. Because of the risen Christ.
So Mary Magdalene, this sinful, demon possessed, formerly demon
possessed woman, was the first person to see and touch the
risen Christ. Isn't that amazing?
He could have gone to Pilot or Caiaphas or Nicodemus or Peter
or John, but he came for Mary, which is just like coming for
you or me. I think he did that for a
reason, but no one would feel too far gone.
She was standing there weeping, and Jesus was standing there
with her. So can you see it?
The risen Christ, he comes to the doubting, to the failing, to
the grieving, to us. And if we don't see ourselves in
these categories, we're just kidding ourselves.
This is who we are. So in our grief, are we running
from Jesus? Are we running to Jesus?
Are we trying to get as close to Jesus as we can, even if we
don't think he's there? Because when we bring our grief
to Jesus, we find that he's actually standing with us and he
speaks our name and he gives us joy in the midst of our grief.
So as we close, I feel the struggle of having too big of a
Christmas present to fit it in a box and try to tie a bow around
it. One tried to tie a bow on this
package of the resurrection, but it's too glorious.
It's too hard. But I'm going to try because
this moment changed history and has changed every moment since.
So let's wrestle with it, GK Chesterton wrote.
On the third day, the friends of Christ, coming at Daybreak to
the place, found the grave empty and stone rolled away.
In varying ways they realized the new wonder, but even they
hardly realized that the world had died in the night.
The world had died in the night. What they were looking at was
the first day of a new creation, and then the semblance of the
gardener. God walked again in the garden
in the cool, not of the evening, but the dawn.
So Chesterton captures the cosmic significance of this
moment. This was the dawn of a new day.
This was the hinge of history. Jesus was the first born of a
new humanity. The resurrection is cosmic.
Jesus has conquered sin and death and hell.
But at the same time, isn't it beautiful?
It's intensely personal. John wrote this gospel in this
passage so that we would believe that Jesus is the Christ, and
that by believing we would have life in his name.
So if we believe in the risen Christ today, the resurrection
means our sins are forgiven, we have eternal life, we will be
united with Christ in a resurrection like His, and we
can trade a life in this world that sometimes seems meaningless
for a life with great purpose and mission.
We can have life in His name. So the resurrection is cosmic.
Do you believe that this happened and it changed the
world and the resurrection is personal?
Has it changed your own life? Can you say by faith with Mary I
have seen the Lord? If Christ is risen, nothing else
matters, and if Christ is not risen, nothing else matters.
Let's pray. Father, we praise you for the
glorious reality of the resurrection.
We pray this morning that we would bring you our doubts, all
our questions, and we would come and consider the evidence, that
we would come and peer into the empty tomb and you would help
us. You would convince us.
You would convert US, maybe for the first time.
Christ is risen, everything is changed.
Father, we bring you our failures, also our sins.
We pray or that we would trust that Christ is risen.
You have received his offering paid in full.
Help us to trust and receive this forgiveness, this welcome
into your family. And finally, Lord, we pray for
all those who are grieving or that you would stand with us in
that, that we we would have a sense of Jesus coming, speaking
our name and giving us his joy even in the midst of deep grief.
Word. Thank you for this message that
pierces history and I pray that it would Pierce our hearts.
And as we go from here, we would go with great hope and run to
the world that needs such hope. In Jesus name we pray.
Amen.