New Testament

The only resurrection that counts for anything is a resurrection of the body. The disciples knew Jesus’ resurrection was real when they touched His body, and it was only because of their deeply grounded conviction that He was raised that they were willing to launch out from their obscure corner of the earth to the whole of the Roman world with the Gospel.

On reaching the tomb they were astonished to find that the stone had been moved from the entrance. We can imagine them standing at a distance, afraid to go close, wondering what had happened. Who had moved the stone? Had the body of Jesus been stolen? Grave robbing was a common crime in the ancient world. Perhaps the robbers were still around. Or had Pilate ordered the body’s removal? What should they do? At last they decided the disciples should be told. So Mary Magdalene was sent back to the city to find them. Not one of them imagined that Jesus had been raised from the dead.

At this point, however, neither Peter nor John had seen the resurrected Lord. He was seen by the women first, those who had been last at the cross and were now first at the tomb. Jesus met them on their way home after they had gone to the tomb, seen the angels, and heard about Jesus’ resurrection. The angel’s message contains four imperatives which are as important for us as they were on that first Easter day for those women (vv. 6-7).

We concluded yesterday by looking at what we should see when we look into Christ’s empty grave. I had pointed out the first three of the five Spurgeon mentions. We’ll continue that in today’s lesson with the fourth point, the most important one. We must look into the tomb to see that Jesus is not in it. He is risen, as He said. He has conquered death.

How perverse are the sinful hearts of men. When Jesus was dying on the cross the leaders had taunted him, saying, “Let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him” (Matt. 27:42). But now Jesus had done something even greater than that. He had been raised from death. Did they believe in Him? Of course not. They could not believe because they would not believe.

Each year at Easter time, when I turn to these stories of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, I find myself wondering what I’m going to find new to preach on. When you’ve been doing this as many years as I have now, you begin to have the feeling that you have preached just about everything you can, given the rather limited corpus of material. And yet, each year as I turn to these stories, I find that there’s something there I never saw before.

The soldiers had left their post, and the tomb was empty. They must have been terrified, wondering what was going to happen to them. After the religious leaders met together, they did not seek to have the soldiers punished. Instead, the guards were told to lie about what had happened. They were to go out and say nothing about angels or a stone being rolled away, but simply to say that while they were asleep, His disciples came and stole the body.

Here’s a case, which like so many others, shows us a man who proposes a theory to explain away the reality of the resurrection. And instead of being rebuffed or forgotten, as Schofield and his book should have been, he is rewarded. It’s a case of rewards instead of punishments.

But now I want you to look at something else. I want you to turn from thinking about those enemies of Christ, who are exemplified by the soldiers and the priests on that first Easter Sunday, and instead I want you to focus on Christ’s friends, those who learned of the resurrection and who met with Jesus Christ following His resurrection.

One day there will be a great reversal. As is often the case in this life because of sin and the commitment that men and women have to unbelief, that unbelief is rewarded and the truth is punished. That’s happened before, and it will happen again. But, nevertheless, God is on His throne. The day is coming when all of that will be overturned. Unbelief will be judged, sin will be punished, and those who stand with the Lord Jesus Christ will hear Him say, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of your Lord.”