"ON EASTER SUNDAY, THE RISEN LORD WORKED FAITH IN HIS RESURRECTION WITHIN THE DISBELIEVING WOMEN."

Singing: (Psalms and Hymns are from the "Book of Praise" Anglo Genevan Psalter)
Hymn 26:1,2
Psalm 103:1
Psalm 85:3,4
Hymn 37:2,3
Hymn 29:1,2

Beloved Congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ!

We are children of our times. We’ve been raised on a diet of observing what happens around us, and then drawing conclusions on the basis of our observations. We observe that things always fall down, not up, and so we conclude that that’s how it always happens; we call it the law of gravity. We observe that the dead stay dead, and so we conclude that that’s what always happens; we resign ourselves to it being one of those bitter, unchanging facts of life.

Our times are changing. Postmodernism has taught us to question the correctness of the link we’ve seen between observations and conclusions; we’re told today that one can’t be quite so dogmatic about science, that more may be going on than meets the eye. And maybe, congregation, that’s good, for the conclusions of science remain conclusions reached by human minds – and human minds are sinful.

Still, how can one come to believe that a dead person has risen from the grave? More, how can one become certain that the curse of sin has been taken away? How can one, in the midst of the brokenness of this life, come to believe that Paradise has in essence been restored? Science, congregation, will not convince anybody, and peer pressure will not produce the evidence either, and neither will the voice of the masses. It matters not of which culture or times we’re children; only the risen Lord, through the mighty working of His Word, can produce the conviction that death is overcome, that sin is atoned for, that Paradise is restored. In Luke 24 the Lord sets before us the powerful working of the Holy Spirit – and encourages us with the good news that no Australian heart, no matter how stubborn, is too hard for the gospel to penetrate.

I summarize the sermon with this theme:

1. The women are spiritually dead
2. God makes them spiritually alive

Our text tells us of angels preaching the gospel to the women. Yet it’s not the angels who are central in the passage we read; central are the "women". Or, better said, central is God working in these women. Directly after Luke had recorded the death of Jesus in 23:46, He moved the spotlight away from the cross with the dead Jesus on it, away too from the crowd of onlookers, and directed the spotlight to the side, where a number of Jesus’ "acquaintances" had been standing watching the proceedings from a distance. These acquaintances, and then in particular certain women from Galilee, remain in the spot light until the end of 24:12. In the whole passage we read together, we’re told what these acquaintances –and again, particularly the women from Galilee– did and saw. These are the people to whom the angels spoke on the morning of Jesus’ resurrection.

For our part, we wonder why the Holy Spirit moved Luke to tell us about these women. We would have preferred to read here a report on exactly how Jesus came alive again, and preferably one we could verify in the labs of science…. We feel: in our educated and enlightened time that would help to take away widespread doubts about the reality of the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead….

But the Lord hasn’t told us how Jesus was raised, no more than He told us the details of He made life at creation. Instead, the Holy Spirit tells us about a number of women, specifically, how these women came to believe that in fact Jesus was raised from the dead. This is of more value to us than the details of Jesus’ resurrection, for we also need to believe what they believed.

These women were certain beyond doubt that Jesus was dead. You see, they’d been standing "at a distance" from the cross on Calvary, "watching these things" (23:49), watching Jesus’ suffer, feeling the darkness, hearing Jesus’ words of anguish, watching too as He died. They witnessed the reaction of the centurion to Jesus’ death, saw too that the crowds dispersed in distress. They saw it with their own eyes, and so it was fixed in their minds: their beloved Jesus had actually died.

They continued to stand there, watching. They saw "a man named Joseph" take the body of Jesus off the cross. They saw that he wrapped the body in linen, they saw that he "laid it in a tomb". That’s what Luke writes in 23:55:

"And the women who had come with Him from Galilee followed after [Joseph], and they observed the tomb and how His body was laid."

They were there when Joseph of Arimathea laid the body to rest, they saw how Jesus’ lifeless legs were laid just so and his stiffened arms placed just so. They were witnesses, they saw it all, and so the conclusion was so fixed in their minds: Jesus was dead. So convinced were they of the reality of His death that they, after Jesus’ body had been laid to rest and the stone placed in front of the tomb, "returned and prepared spices and fragrant oils" (vs 56). Embalming was what you do for the dead, and Jesus was really dead…. You see: these women were no different than any other person alive today; all are convinced that the yoke of death is unshakable – once dead, always dead.

Nor was their conviction that Jesus was really dead just a fleeting thought. Rather, that conviction stayed with them, though they had time to think. They couldn’t embalm right away, for –vs 54– "the Sabbath drew near." That’s to say: evening was approaching, for their new day began not a midnight but at sundown, and that meant too that they couldn’t embalm in the morning – for it was the Sabbath. But the morning thereafter –it’s now the third day- the women (and certain others with them) went at the crack of dawn to the tomb to pay their last respects. Though they had had time to think about the prophecies of Old Testament Scripture and about the words Jesus had spoken while He was with them, to think too about the power and the promises of God, they did not change their minds; Jesus was dead, and that was that.

We for our part, my brothers and sisters, have sympathy for the women’s conviction. We know too, from bitter experience, that dead is dead. A loved one dies, and we harbor no hope anymore of talking or walking with the person again, for dead is dead.

Yet, congregation, we are to know that the women’s conviction on this morning was a conviction rooted in unbelief! I say that because God had said something about a resurrection, and any hesitation to embrace a word from God is at bottom an act of unbelief. What had God said? Already in Paradise the Lord had laid a connection between sin and death. Said God:

"in the day that you eat of [that tree] you shall surely die" (Gen 2:17).

Eating of the tree, disobeying God’s command, sin. That’s what brought death into the world, for "the soul that sins shall die" (Ezek 18:4). And what had the Old Testament Scriptures said about sin, about getting rid of sin? Is 53:

"He was wounded for our transgressions,
He was bruised for our iniquities;
The chastisement for our peace was upon Him,
And by His stripes we are healed" (vs 5).

And again:

"By His knowledge My righteous Servant shall justify many,
For He shall bear their iniquities" (vs 11).

That was the message of the Old Testament sacrifices put into concrete words; all that shedding of blood in the temple over the years had foreshadowed that Another would pay for sin. The animal, the Other, had to die so that the sinner might live. As Isaiah said it elsewhere:

"He will swallow up death forever,
And the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces" (Is 25:8).

And what had happened on Good Friday? That Other One had come, had given His life as a ransom for many. In fact, in the course of His three-year ministry Jesus had repeatedly said that He’d not only suffer and die, but He’d also rise again. Luke 9:

"The Son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised the third day" (vs 22).

Luke 11 too. The crowds demanded a sign to show that Jesus had come from God. Said Jesus in vs 29:

"This is an evil generation. It seeks a sign, and no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah the prophet."

Jesus’ point was that as Jonah was three days in the belly of the whale and then came out, so Jesus would be three days in the belly of the earth and then come out (cf Mt 12:38ff). Once more, Luke 18:31ff:

"[Jesus] took the twelve aside and said to them, ‘Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and all things that are written by the prophets concerning the Son of Man will be accomplished. For He will be delivered to the Gentiles and will be mocked and insulted and spit upon. They will scourge Him and kill Him. And the third day He will rise again."

Jesus left no doubt about the things that were going to happen: there would be betrayal, arrest, mocking, crucifixion, death and, yes, and resurrection. That is: He would break the hold of death, break death’s hold because He would defeat sin, pay for sin.

And say not, brothers and sisters, that these prophecies were hidden from the women of Luke 24. Not only did these women follow Jesus as He carried out His work; the angels of our chapter state in so many words that the women knew of a resurrection on the third day. Luke 24:6:

"Remember how He spoke to you when He was still in Galilee, saying, ‘The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again."

And then vs 8: "they remembered His words." Yes, the women were very aware of the words Jesus had spoken in the past months. They knew.

And to top it off: they themselves had been witnesses that things had panned out just as Jesus had prophesied. He had spoken of His being betrayed, arrested, mocked, crucified, killed, and it had all come to pass, come to pass in the presence of the women; they witnessed it all. And God long ago, way back in Dt 18, had told Israel how they could discern whether a prophet was true or not; it all depended on whether his prophecy came to pass (vs 17ff). Jesus’ prophecy concerning His suffering and death had occurred just as He prophesied; here, then, was a true prophet, one whose words could be relied upon as coming from God. This very same prophet –He spoke from God- said He would rise on the third day, and so it was for the women to accept His words –bizarre as rising from the dead might sound- simply because He spoke from God. That they went to the tomb, then, to embalm on the third day after His death, that they went to embalm after they had received ample time to think, is simply evidence that they had not worked with God’s revelation, had not taken God’s Word at face value and embraced its consequences. And that is unbelief. A thoroughly modern problem.

We come to our second point:

For see, my brothers and sisters, what the Lord God does in the face of the women’s failure to work with His revelation. From heaven on high God sends two messengers to earth. The two messengers appear as the women puzzle about the empty tomb they’ve found. Though the messengers by their shining garments testify that they come from heaven, the women do not catch on to the reality of the resurrection; instead, they fear and fall on their faces before these messengers from God. What happens now? This: the two men in shining garments proclaim the gospel. Notice how they do it; they proclaim the gospel by means of admonition. "Why," they ask, "why do you seek the living among the dead?"

The question, brothers and sisters, has an implication. The implication is that the women could know, should know, that the Jesus they seek is alive, is not dead. And how could the women know? They could know that Jesus was to rise both from the Old Testament Scriptures as well as from His own words. They could know, they are responsible to know, but they chose not to know. A thoroughly modern problem.

So the angels say it to them plainly: "He is not here, but is risen! Remember how He spoke to you when He was still in Galilee, saying, ‘The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again’" (24:5ff).

No, congregation, the women were not shown Christ actually arising from the dead; they were instead shown that Jesus wasn’t there and then told that He was risen, yes, reminded of His own words, reminded of the Words of God. In a word: the Word of God came to the women on this Easter morning, a repeat of what God Himself had first revealed in Paradise, and later "had...proclaimed by the patriarchs and prophets, and foreshadowed by the sacrifices and other ceremonies of the law," and finally "had...fulfilled through His only Son" (LD 6). That word: that’s what has to convince the women that Jesus has arisen.

And what happens? Vs 8: "they remembered His words." And no, that does not mean that a memory lapse suddenly cleared up. The word ‘remember’ occurs time and again in the Bible to describe that one goes to work with certain information. That’s the point here. "They remembered His words," and the point is that the women went to work with what they had earlier heard from Jesus’ mouth. And going to work with Jesus’ words, remembering them, means that they apply them in the circumstances of the day. So, vs 9:

"Then they returned from the tomb and told all these things to the eleven and to all the rest."

No longer did they seek the Lord’s body in order to embalm it; with the spices still in their hands they returned to the city and directly sought out the rest of the acquaintances in order to relate to them what they had seen and heard.

How come, congregation? What this is? This: here is evidence that the word of God is "living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow" (Heb 4:12). The women see only death, and the bitter finality of death. But the Word of God is "like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces" (Jer 23:29), that breaks in pieces also the hard rocks of these women’s hearts. Through the mouths of these heavenly preachers the women heard again the same sounds they’d heard earlier from Jesus’ mouth, and see the result: the women began to take God’s revelation in the Old Testament and through Jesus Christ at face value. Faith "comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God" (Rom 10:17). Through the proclamation of the angels, these women heard again the Word of God, were reminded of what Jesus had said, and now this proclamation met with faith in the hearers. They heard it again, and now believed it, and so ceased their futile search for the deceased Jesus in the cemetery of Jerusalem; they sought out instead the distraught disciples in order to relate to them they gospel of Easter.

Has Jesus, congregation, truly risen from the dead? No one has seen His actual rising. And no science lab in the world has today succeeded in raising a person from the dead – let alone one dead since three days ago. What evidence, then, shall human flesh –be it on Easter Sunday itself or today- find to confirm the truth of Jesus’ resurrection? Make no mistake, my brothers and sisters, older and younger: the human heart is so dead in sin that no evidence coming from this earth will convince anyone of Jesus’ resurrection. Not even seeing Christ climb out of the grace will do that; the human heart will only conclude that Jesus must not have been truly dead to begin with. What it takes to believe that Jesus arose? This: the human heart itself must be raised to a new life! And only the Spirit of the resurrected Jesus can do that. How does the Spirit do that? He does that through the Word, through the preaching of the Word. Only the recreating work of the Holy Spirit in sinful hearts can make sinful hearts believe something as wonderful as the resurrection of the dead. Or, to say it more precisely, only the recreating work of the Holy Spirit can make sinners embrace as fact that the bitter consequences of our fall in Paradise –and death was the consequence of sin!- has been overcome! Ultimately, that is what is underlined for the world through the resurrection of Jesus Christ; the fall into sin is overcome, death is overcome.

Does the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, beloved, seem possible to you? My human mind, my observations and calculations, tell me that it’s not possible. Jesus had really died; of that the women were accurate witnesses. And yes, the Bible is so clear: as a result of the fall into sin every soul dies; "death is the wages of sin." Is it possible that Jesus arises? It can’t be, beloved, it can’t be unless the hold of sin is broken! And this is the blessed conviction that the Holy Spirit works in sinful hearts, that yes, the hold of sin has been broken! For on Good Friday Christ died, died in triumph. That’s why He could rise on Easter Sunday – according to the promise of Scripture.

What does it take for the gospel of Christ to make inroads into modern hearts? Do we have to change the gospel to make it more acceptable? Do we have to provide scientific proof of Jesus’ resurrection? One thing alone, beloved, is needful. That is the preaching of the gospel. Through that preaching the Holy Spirit will break the heart of every one God has chosen to life eternal. What Australia needs, what our young people need, what we all need is nothing else than the faithful preaching of the gospel. That’s all. And the Holy Spirit works the faith God desires in all those chosen to life.  Amen.