Proof that gives hope

24 On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, they came to the tomb, bringing the spices they had prepared. 2 They found the stone rolled away from the tomb. 3 They went in but did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. 4 While they were perplexed about this, suddenly two men stood by them in dazzling clothes. 5 So the women were terrified and bowed down to the ground.

‘Why are you looking for the living among the dead? ’ asked the men. 6 ‘He is not here, but he has risen! Remember how he spoke to you when he was still in Galilee, 7 saying, “It is necessary that the Son of Man be betrayed into the hands of sinful men, be crucified, and rise on the third day”? ’ 8 And they remembered his words.

9 Returning from the tomb, they reported all these things to the Eleven and to all the rest. 10 Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them were telling the apostles these things. 11 But these words seemed like nonsense to them, and they did not believe the women. 12 Peter, however, got up and ran to the tomb. When he stooped to look in, he saw only the linen cloths. So he went away, amazed at what had happened.

Luke 24:1-12

We’ll let the kids make a little noise as they go out to Sunday school. Maybe just to say: guys, kids, come find me after the service. I have Easter eggs for you. So it’s not quite an Easter egg hunt—I’ll make myself available—but it’ll be good to celebrate together with you.

Recognizing that there are a number of people that are visiting here today, let me just say that our regular practice is to work verse by verse through God’s word, chapter by chapter, book by book. We presently are in the book of Romans—Romans chapter 8, actually verse 5. Don’t turn there, because we’re stepping away from Romans this morning to go through Luke chapter 24, verse 1 to 12, recognizing that this is Easter. It is Resurrection Sunday. It is a wonderful opportunity to remember the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ our Lord and our Savior. We’re going to be looking at a passage which deals with that this morning.

And so Luke chapter 24—as the rustle of pages seems to have come to an end and the swiping of phones and tablets—I’m going to read to you from verse 1 through to verse 12.

I’m going to ask, to honor the reading of God’s word, that as many as are able would stand as we read Holy Scripture. Would you please stand?

Friends, I read to you from Luke chapter 24, beginning at the first verse. Hear the word of God.

*On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, they came to the tomb bringing the spices they had prepared. But they found the stone rolled away from the tomb. They went in but did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. While they were perplexed about this, suddenly two men stood by them in dazzling clothes. So the women were terrified and bowed down to the ground. “Why are you looking for the living one among the dead?” asked the men. “He is not here, but He has risen. Remember how He spoke to you when He was still in Galilee, saying, ‘It is necessary for the Son of Man to be betrayed into the hands of sinful men, be crucified, and rise on the third day.’” And they remembered His words. Now returning from the tomb, they reported all these things to the eleven and to all the rest. Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them were telling the apostles about these things. But the words seemed like nonsense to them, and they did not believe. Peter, however, got up and ran to the tomb. And when he stooped to look in, he saw only the linen clothes. So he went away marveling at what had happened.*

Just so far in the reading of God’s word. Please be seated.

Brief word of prayer as we now come to the teaching of God’s word. Let’s bow our heads and pray one more time.

*Father, believing that this word is without error, believing that this word is sufficient for all matters of life and for godliness, and believing that this word shows us Your Son Jesus Christ, I ask that by Your Holy Spirit this morning You would stir the affections of our heart. You would renew the understanding of our mind. You would transform our lives from one degree of glory to the next, that we would be conformed toward the image of Jesus, our Lord and our Savior. I ask these things in His most precious, wonderful, and beautiful name, in the power of the Holy Spirit of God, and to the good pleasure of our Father who is in heaven. Amen.*

Well, friends, what on earth do you do with an empty tomb? What if everything that Jesus said about His betrayal, about the cross, about the third day—what if everything that Jesus said actually happened? What if the body is actually gone? What if the only voices that are left are those of angels? Would you remember the words? Would you believe His word?

On Resurrection Sunday morning, the women came grieving. The tomb was open. The body was missing. And the message was clear: *He is not here, for He has risen.* Amen and hallelujah. But the apostles called it nonsense. They weren’t ready to believe yet.

And yet Jesus doesn’t shame the skeptic in this tale. He doesn’t crush the doubter. No, He answers their disbelief with evidence. He confronts their confusion with clarity. He doesn’t scold our doubts; He overturns them with truth. In this passage, Luke gives us a story where faith is manifest in place of fear, where doubt is swallowed up by wonder. And the question this morning for you is: where do you stand in light of this?

Here’s the big idea from Luke chapter 24 from the first verse all the way to the twelfth verse: **The fulfillment of Jesus’s prophecy of His death and His resurrection transforms our fear to faith and confronts the skeptic with wonder.**

That’s the argument that I’m making to you this morning. And this is how I’m going to do it—I’m going to take us through the story:

1. The devout women (verse 1)
2. Divine confrontation (verses 2–5a)
3. The decisive word (verses 5b–7)
4. Dawning faith (verse 8)
5. A divided response (verses 9–12)

The Devout Women

The first point this morning is **the devout women**. Verse 1—you can read with me in your own Bible, you can probably follow behind me as well. We read in verse 1: *“On the first day of the week”*—on Sunday—*“very early in the morning.”* For those of you who were at the sunrise service, we experienced that it was chilly, it was cold, it was misty, and there wasn’t enough coffee. But on the first day of the week, very early in the morning, probably without coffee, *“they came to the tomb bringing the spices they had prepared.”*

Now this passage of Scripture cannot be understood in isolation from all the rest of Scripture. We read in chapter 23 of Luke’s gospel, from verse 44 to verse 49, the death of Jesus Christ. What’s interesting about the death of Christ in Luke’s account is the presence of a few characters. The women are there observing as Jesus Christ is crucified and as Jesus Christ expires, as He dies. Of course, that’s not where the story ends in Luke chapter 23. It goes on at the end of Luke chapter 23, from verse 50 to verse 56, recording Jesus being placed into a tomb. And again, it is interesting that not only were those witnesses there to observe the death of Jesus, but those same women were there to observe the burial of Jesus Christ, our Lord and our Savior.

Now, those same women head to the tomb. Their preparation of the body of Jesus Christ hadn’t been complete; it had been interrupted by the Sabbath. And so they needed to go and prepare spices in order to embalm the body. They’re heading to the tomb to complete a process they have already started, with the expectation that they will meet the body of Jesus Christ. Their spices are used to slow the decomposition as well as mask the smell of a decaying body. The fact that they went home and prepared the spices, the fact that they are bringing the spices, confirms that they believe that Jesus is dead. They believe that Jesus—whom they had witnessed being crucified and whom they had witnessed being buried—is in fact expired, that He has passed away.

It’s not unimaginable to consider their emotions as they head to the tomb. The coldness of the morning is met by the darkness, is met by the sadness in their hearts, and the disappointment that the one whom they believed was the Christ is no longer here to usher in a kingdom which they were expecting.

The grief of those women—are they not just tagged on at the end of the tale? No, they’ve been with Jesus His whole ministry. In fact, the women have been ministering to Jesus as Jesus ministered to the people. And so, as they go to the tomb, I can well imagine with the sanctified eye that they are grieving, that they are mourning, that they are consoling one another. It’s a kind of devotion that is faithful to the end. The women come to the tomb to honor their dead Lord.

Divine Confrontation

The first point was the devotion of the women. The second point is **the divine confrontation**.

Verse 2: *“They found the stone rolled away from the tomb.”* That in and of itself would have been a shock to them. But then *“they went in and did not find the body of the Lord Jesus.”* You can imagine the tension building in their hearts. In fact, in verse 4 we read that they *“were perplexed about this.”* And in the midst of this confusion, in the midst of this perplexity, *“suddenly two men stood by them in dazzling clothes. So the women were terrified and bowed down to the ground.”*

Can you hear the mix of emotion? It’s spilling off the page. Perplexity, terror, them bowing down to the ground.

We can start with the stone. Well, that would have been large and it would have completely covered a small hole through which you could access the tomb. The reason why you would have a stone in front of a tomb is to prevent wild animals from coming in and feeding on the body, so there’s a practical reason for it. We also read in other gospel accounts that this was also to protect the body, not just from grave diggers, but the Pharisees didn’t want the body stolen, and so a large stone had been rolled in front of the tomb and a seal had been placed upon it. This would have presented a major obstacle for these women as they came to spice the body.

The reality is it must have been going through their head as they headed there that dark, cold, early morning: *How will we move the stone? Are there enough of us?* There’s Mary and the other Mary and Joanna, and we know from Scripture that there are a number of other women that are with them. But would there be enough to move this stone?

But as they come closer, as they come nearer to their destination, they realize, possibly even to their horror, that the stone has been rolled away from the opening. You can imagine their hearts quickening as they quicken the pace and go and stoop down through the hole in order to observe what’s going on in this fresh tomb where Jesus had been laid. And to their horror, they discover in that moment that the body is not there.

Wonder what’s going through their mind. Surely not grave robbers. There was a guard set outside the hole. Surely the disciples didn’t come and steal the body. The women know that they’re cowering back at home. Where is the body of the Lord Jesus Christ? Shock and confusion. The stone has been moved. The body has been removed. The dread of who has moved it.

And then all of a sudden—in fact, if you’ve got the KJV, *behold*—out of nowhere, two men in dazzling clothes appear. Now, that idea of *dazzling clothes* doesn’t come across great in the English. It’s actually a verb: the clothes are doing something. Clothes don’t often do things—the clothes I wear certainly don’t do things. But these clothes that these two men are wearing—well, the clothes are doing things before the men even do anything. What are the clothes doing according to the text? The verb says that the clothes are *dazzling*. That’s not a description of the clothes; that’s a physical representation of what the clothes are doing before the women. It is as if the clothes are themselves beaming out.

We’ve seen dazzling clothes in Luke’s gospel and in other gospel accounts before, at the transfiguration. Jesus was dazzling—same kind of idea. We see in the Old Testament as angels appear to men, a radiance coming out of them. And that’s what these clothes are doing. It signifies that these aren’t just two guys—maybe James and John, or I don’t know, Nathaniel and Thomas. No, these aren’t two men that the women recognize. These are two men in dazzling array. These are two angels. They are having a divine encounter.

The terror of the women in response to these two men in dazzling array confirms that these are angels. In Luke’s gospel, there are a couple of accounts of people coming into contact with angels. You might remember at the beginning of the gospel, there is the father of John the Baptist, and he is confronted by an angel in Luke 1:12–13. And again, when he comes into contact with these angels, he’s struck with fear and terror. And what do the angels say when they meet humans? *“Do not be afraid; I come with glad tidings,”* or *“I come with good news.”* We saw the same in Luke’s gospel in chapter 2. The angels appear to the shepherds, and when they appeared to the shepherds, same scenario: they were struck with terror, they were struck with fear, and the angels say to them, *“Don’t be afraid; we come with good news.”*

Well, these angels are no different. As they appear to these women, these women are struck with fear down to their heart. They fall down to the ground and they bow before the angels. They are scared in this moment. They are terrified in this moment. They are overwhelmed with fear in this moment.

Luke is building his story up. He’s adding tension after tension so that you, the reader, wonder: what news are these angels going to bring? Shock, as God shakes their expectations with an empty tomb and an angelic message.

The Decisive Word

That brings us to the third point that we see in this text. The first point was the devotion of the women going to the tomb. The second point was this divine confrontation that they experience. The third point is **the decisive word** that they hear.

Now read along with me at the end of verse 5: *“Why are you looking for the living one among the dead?” asked the men. “He is not here, but He was raised. Remember how He spoke to you when He was still in Galilee, saying, ‘It is necessary for the Son of Man be betrayed into the hands of sinful men, to be crucified, and to rise on the third day.’”*

The beginning of what they say: *“Why are you looking for the living one among the dead?”* If your translation just says, *“Why are you looking for the living among the dead?”* it sounds good in our ear. But in actual fact, the language is a little bit more specific than that. The first phrase is in the singular; the second phrase is in the plural. The angels are literally saying, *“Why are you looking for the living one?”* Who is the living one? Jesus Christ. He is the living one. *“Why are you looking for Him among the dead? Why do you come to tombs to look for the One who is living?”*

They go on to say in verse 6: *“He is not here, but He was raised.”* Traditionally—I come from an Anglican background and my dad is an Anglican priest—you start off these kinds of services by saying *“He is risen”* and everybody says back *“He is risen indeed.”* And if you’re a particularly charismatic Anglican, you say *“Hallelujah”* at the end. That gets taken from this passage of Scripture. But the words in English, it’s not actually helpful if we read *He is risen*, because it then could indicate that anyone could have risen Him. But that’s not really what’s happening in the language. It’s really *He was raised*. It’s a passive verb. In other words, the raising was being done to Him, because God has raised His Son, because the Spirit of power has raised Jesus Christ, because Jesus said He would take His own life up again. *He is not here, but He was raised.*

And then the angels call to mind something which Jesus had said to His disciples many times. You would think they would have got it, but they didn’t. Many times in the past: *“Remember how He spoke to you when He was still in Galilee.”* That *remember* is an imperative. It’s a command. The angels are now telling the women, you must remember the following: the words of Jesus Christ. He said that it was necessary for the Son of Man to be betrayed into the hands of sinful men, to be crucified, and to rise on the third day.

Well, what Luke is doing here, what the angels are doing here, is they are reminding the women of something which Jesus said in the past. You can read about this in your own Bibles this afternoon in Luke chapter 9, verse 22; in verse 43–45 of the same chapter; and in chapter 18, verses 31–34. Turns out that Jesus often told people what was going to be happening in the future. He told them that He must suffer. He told them that He would rise on the third day. And He didn’t just do it once or twice or even three times. He did it over and over again over His three‑year ministry. But His disciples were a little bit slow. In fact, you read about that as you go back into those accounts. It often says straight after Jesus says these things, after Jesus tells them about His death and tells them about His resurrection, that they were confused and didn’t understand what He meant.

Well, the time for confusion has come to an end. Now, the angelic host want these women to know the truth. And they want them to know that they know that Jesus has not only died, but Jesus Christ has risen again.

It’s important to know that this message doesn’t just sit in the mouth of angels. It doesn’t just sit in the mouth of men, but this gospel message sat in the mouth of Jesus Christ Himself. There is wonder as the angels point to Christ’s prophecy of His death and of His resurrection.

Dawning Faith

Well, we’ve read of the devotion of the women, of the divine confrontation, of the decisive word. Well, here comes **the dawning of faith** in verse 8.

*“They remembered His words.”* The women remembered.

You see, these women observed a whole lot of things in the life of Jesus. Now, we’ve spoken about them observing this moment—His resurrection. But they had also observed His burial, and they had observed His death, and they had observed Jesus Christ saying that He would die and that He would rise again. And as these angels in their dazzling clothing reminded them of these things, they themselves remembered. They had a eureka moment.

I can imagine a joyful moment, a surprising moment, an unexpected moment, as the recognition began to dawn on their hearts that Jesus, their Lord and their Savior, whom they loved so dearly, was not dead in a grave, but He had risen from the grave.

Discovery, as the women discern the truth of Jesus’s words and their despair begins to turn into hope.

A Divided Response

What do you do with hope? What do you do with good news? Every now and again, I’ll get good news. And the first thing that I’m going to do is get on my phone and phone my wife, because I love her and I love to share good news with her. And just after that, I’m going to get on the phone to my mom and my dad and share good news with them. And after that, I’m going to go—depending on how good the news is, of course—I’m going to go through friends and I’m going to work my way down. There is good news; I want to tell you about it.

Do you think these women are any different to us? No. Their devotion is on display. This divine confrontation has happened. This decisive word has been given. The dawning of faith has begun in their hearts. And now they want to go and share that abroad.

And so we come to the final point this morning: **the divided response**, from verse 9 through to verse 12.

You can read in your Bibles: *“Returning from the tomb”*—I wonder how long that took. I can imagine the walk to the tomb took a while, but the return from the tomb—oh, there must have been a different step, a different beat in their heart. As they went back, *“they reported all these things to the eleven and to all the rest. Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women who were with them were telling the apostles these things.”*

And of course the apostles, being the apostles, immediately believed them. No. Verse 11: *“But these words seemed like nonsense to them, and they did not believe the women.”*

Peter, however, being Peter, *“got up and ran to the tomb. And when he stooped to look in, he saw only the linen clothes. And so he went away marveling at what had happened.”*

Well, in verse 11 we read that they reported all these things to the eleven and to all the rest. And in verse 10 we read of Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary the mother of James and the other women that were with them. They were telling the apostles these things. The word *telling* in the Greek is in the imperfect tense. They told and they kept telling and they couldn’t stop telling these things. They were so excited. They were bubbling over. They couldn’t stop telling of this good news that they had heard from the angelic host, telling them of the tomb and telling them of the emptiness and telling them of the stone that had rolled away and telling them of the message. And they told and they told and they told the apostles.

Those apostles are really slow.

Not only had Jesus told them that He was going to die and rise again, not only did they now have witnesses telling them of that truth, but I imagine that those who had seen Jesus arrested, those who had scattered like sheep without a shepherd, those who had watched His trial from a distance and afar, those who had stood at the base of the cross—John in particular—that they heard these words, they heard them in disbelief. It says that they considered these words nonsense.

Now it is true in the ancient world that people had a very dim view of witnesses that were women. A court of law wouldn’t have accepted their report as a first witness account; they might be a second or a third witness account, but not a first witness account. But that’s not why the disciples don’t believe these women. These women are believable. They know these women. These women have been with them for years and years and years. I think what they’re struggling to understand in their heart of hearts is: how can He who was dead—and we saw Him—be alive?

But in the women, you can hear the urgency in their voices, the elation in their message, the disciples’ disbelief, and then at the end this story of Peter getting up and running to the tomb. Turns out he’s not alone. In one of the other accounts, we know that John is with him. In fact, it’s kind of funny. In Matthew’s account, it’s Peter and he gets to the tomb and he stoops and he goes in. In John’s account, John is writing the document. He says, “No, it was Peter and I, and guess what? I beat him to the tomb. And then when Peter arrived, he stooped in and he went in first.”

Peter looks at the evidence in front of him. He looks at the folded grave clothes, and in his heart of hearts, he starts to marvel. He starts to wonder.

Connect to the gospel

How does this passage connect to the gospel of Jesus Christ? You don’t have to do too much heavy lifting to get to the gospel, right? It’s all over the place. The death and the resurrection of Jesus is explicitly stated in Luke 24:7 when the angels say, *“It is necessary that the Son of Man be betrayed into the hands of sinful men, be crucified, and rise on the third day.”*

The gospel message, friends, is not complex. In fact, it’s so simple that even children can grasp it. The gospel message is that Jesus died. That Jesus died for your sin, because God is holy, and in and of yourself you could never stand before a holy God in your own self‑righteousness. You could not do enough in this life or in a million lives to come to be right with God, because your sin has separated you from Him.

The gospel message is that God died for your sins. Jesus is the Son of Man. Jesus loved that title of Himself. It’s a title which is taken from the Old Testament, and it’s a title which brings together two ideas. The one is the idea of His humanity: that Jesus is God in the flesh. He is a man. He was born of the Virgin Mary. He came into this world and He lived as one of us. He dwelt among us. He lived a life. He got tired. He got hurt. He was grieved. He felt pain. Jesus was a man. And in that sense, the Son of Man is a wonderful title to apply to Himself.

But that’s not all that that title means in the Old Testament. The Son of Man in the book of Daniel comes before the Ancient of Days, and in that picture we see that the Son of Man is in actual fact God Himself. When Jesus applied the title to Himself, He applied the title to one whom this is true of at once: both God and man, fully God and fully man, with no dilution of either of those two natures within Him.

And so, as man, Jesus could die for our sins on the cross. As He died, He died as your substitute, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Your hope that the price of your sin might be paid. But on the cross, Jesus, the eternal Son of God, pays a price that only deity could pay. You see, He didn’t just pay the price for one of us. Because Jesus is God, He could pay the price for every single one of us. All the sins from eternity past and all the sins stretching into eternity future—taking into account that the world had a beginning and the world will have an end—Jesus Christ paid for. The Son of Man bled and died that you might live.

But friends, He didn’t stay in that tomb. No, He said that He would rise again. And so on the third day, up from the grave He arose with a mighty triumph o’er His foes. He arose in victory over sin and over death and over the dark and wicked one. He, the Son of God, crushed the head of that wicked, vile serpent from Genesis chapter 3.

Application for believers

And so, believers, as you read Luke 24 from verse 1 to 12 and you hear the story again of Jesus Christ dying for your sins and rising from the dead, how ought you to live in light of this? Well, my suggestion to you this morning is: be like those women. Be like those women who heard the good news of the gospel and in elation and in excitement took the word—the good news of the gospel—to the world. And trust that God will open the eyes of unbelief as you share the gospel message with your family and with your friends, even as He opened your own eyes to this gospel truth.

Application for unbelievers

But obviously, friends, it’s not just believers that are here today. I have no doubt that we have visitors amongst us, and we also have family members that weren’t dragged to church—I get that—but let’s say invited to church on Easter Sunday because it’s that time of the year that everyone goes to church. And so not only are you welcome to be here, but this message applies to you, too.

To those of you who have not yet placed your faith and trust in Jesus Christ as your Lord and your Savior, hear this message. The Son of Man died for sinners just like you. And He rose from the grave in victory, giving life to those who believe in His name. Friend, the call on your life this morning is to repent. That means to turn away—to turn away from your sin and to turn to the cross of Jesus Christ. Put your faith and your trust in Him, the Savior who has paid the price that you might live.

Conclusion

And so in full circle: what do you do with an empty tomb? If Jesus really said that He would suffer and die and rise, and then He did, then the empty tomb is not meant to be a mystery to you. It’s meant to be a message—one that calls you to remember the words of Jesus Christ and believe.

The women did. Their grief turned to joy. Their fear turned to faith.

Well, the apostles didn’t—at least not at first, not in this story. But to them it sounded like nonsense. But even then, Jesus didn’t reject them. Their story isn’t finished. He will still pursue them. He brought truth to their confusion. He will turn their doubt into worship. And He still does that 2,000 years later. He still meets skeptics with wonder. He still answers disbelief with resurrection proof. He still transforms fear with gospel hope.

Friends, the tomb is empty. The word that He spoke, it is true. And the question now is: what if? How will you respond?

The argument this morning was: **The fulfillment of Jesus’s prophecy of His death and resurrection transforms our fear to faith and confronts the skeptic with wonder.**

We worked through the passage in five points. We looked at the devotion of the women, the divine confrontation, the decisive word, the dawning of faith, and the divided response. I trust that the Lord God Himself impresses this word into your heart, stirs faith, and glorifies Himself in and through your life.