Sermon Tone Analysis

*God’s Grand Opening*

(Luke 24:1-49)

 

Two ladies who were friends met on the street one day in their small town.

They chatted for a moment and then began to move on toward the respective destinations.

"Have a good day," one said to the other as she turned to leave.

The latter replied, "Thank you.

But I have other plans."

That always reminds me of the two disciples on the road from Jerusalem to Emmaus on that glorious day of all days when Jesus Christ rose from the grave.

These disciples had actually /heard/ about the resurrection, but found the story so incredible that they gave it no stock whatsoever.

With every reason to have joy unspeakable – /they had other plans/.

I’m not a big fan of Woody Allen’s personal life, but there are moments of genius in his perception of the human condition.

In one of his most inspired moments, he reflected the primary aspiration of every human heart when he said, “I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying!”

Isn’t that it?

Isn’t that what looms at the top of every personal Top 10 list?

Number 2 isn’t even visible from there.

We want to live.

We want life!

And on that Sunday, March 25, 29 AD, (or whatever day close to that it actually happened) one of the two most momentous days in the history of the world, /life became possible in a way that virtually no one had ever envisioned before/.

It turns out, life /is/ Jesus Christ.

Miss that and you miss the whole ballgame.

This was the day of God’s Grand Opening.

This was the day in history when God most clearly, most visibly and most emphatically shouted to all of His creation, “Here is life.

Have a great forever!”

But the event was so stupendous, so outside the realm of normal reality, so other-worldly, that even most of those closest to Christ during His three years on earth /could not believe it.

/So God in His grace helped them along, opening Himself to His creation in special ways calculated to get their attention and promote their flagging faith – the same thing He wants to do for us, so we don’t miss that great eternal future He has planned.

In Luke 24, my personal favorite chapter in the Bible, we truly enter holy ground that I can never adequately communicate, so join me in praying that God will open Himself to us as He did to those that first Easter morning.

[Pray] What four things did God open that led to faith in Him?

 

*I.

**He Opened the Tomb*

* *

First of all, we see that God opened the tomb.

Look with me beginning at verse 1: “But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they (from the various gospel accounts we know this included Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, Salome and Joanna, as a minimum – all women as best we know) went to the tomb, taking the spices they had prepared.

2) And they found the stone rolled away from the tomb, 3) but when they went in they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus.

4) While they were perplexed about this, behold, two men stood by them in dazzling apparel.

5) And as they were frightened and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, “Why do you seek the living among the dead?

6) He is not here, but has risen.

Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, 7) that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified and on the third day rise.”

8) And they remembered his words, 9) and returning from the tomb they told all these things to the eleven and to all the rest.

10) Now it was Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary the mother of James (Mark tells us Salome was there too) and the other women with them who told these things to the apostles, 11) but these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.

I love to read those words, but because we know what we know, it is hard to put ourselves back into the minds of those who /first/ experienced this.

You’d have thought their joy would have been immediate and ecstatic, but it was not.

I think that hope flickered a bit in the hearts of the women; and like someone blowing on warm embers it begins to heat up.

But that very disparate, beaten group of men – all of whom but John had fled when the going got tough, those specially trained by Jesus for three years – /could not believe.

/The words of the women seemed to them an idle tale.

Now, my question is, /what/ words seemed an idle tale?

That the stone was rolled away and the body gone?

I don’t think they doubted /that/, but the part about the angel and a resurrection – rubbish.

Can’t be.

Doesn’t happen.

Violates every known law of nature and besides, if He was going to do that, He’d never have let them kill Him in the first place.

They did exactly what you and I would have done in the same circumstances – they began to look for natural explanations.

I’m sure their first thoughts were a simple question – who moved the body?

The Romans or the Sanhedrin?

And why?

But what they surely did /not/ do immediately on that day of all days, that very first Easter, was have an Easter service!

Cuz they didn’t believe yet.

Now, old activist Peter couldn’t sit still for long and so he took off running to see for himself.

In fact, according to John’s gospel, John and Peter had a footrace to the tomb with John arriving first but stopping at the entrance and noting that while there was no body, the linen wrappings were still there – */very strange if the body had been taken/*.

Let’s pick up the account in John 20, verse 6: “Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb.

He (also) saw the linen cloths lying there, 7) and the face cloth, which had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen cloths but /folded/ up in a place by itself.

Now, don’t miss the “folded” face cloth, or napkin.

Is that important?

Absolutely!

Is it really significant?

Yes, if you understand a little bit of Hebrew tradition.

Every Jewish boy knew that once a table was set by a servant, then the servant would wait, just out of sight, until the master had finished eating, after which he would rise from the table, wipe his fingers and mouth with that napkin and toss it on to the table.

The servant would then know to clear the table.

For in those days, the wadded napkin meant, ’I’m done.’

*/But/* if the master got up from the table, and /folded/ his napkin, and laid it beside his plate, the servant knew that the folded napkin meant, ’I’m not finished yet.’

The folded napkin meant, ’I’m coming back!’

At least one of those men, John, saw that empty tomb, saw those linens and particularly saw that folded napkin – and */he got it.

/*John 20:8 says, “Then the other disciple (John), who had reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and /believed/; 9) for as yet they did not understand the Scripture, that he must rise from the dead.”

As best we know, John was the first to put it all together on that first Easter morning and he got it!

Hopes that had been dashed on Friday were suddenly alive again because Christ /is/ life.

John got it first.

Did Peter get it?

I don’t know.

Now or soon after, he did, but John was first.

Now, let’s stop our narrative here for a moment to consider what’s happened.

The tomb is open.

How and why?

Various explanations have been given over the years.

Some have suggested that Jesus never really died, but merely /swooned/, later recovered and presented himself as resurrected.

But remember that those who crucified Jesus were at pains to insure the security of his gravesite.

According to Matthew 27, the Jewish leaders came to Pilate and said, beginning in verse 63, “Listen, that imposter said he would rise in three days.

You’ve got to secure that tomb thoroughly.”

And he gave them leave to seal it completely and guard it securely.

There was nothing slipshod about the security around Jesus’ tomb, and the swoon theorists have yet to explain how Jesus somehow 1) convinced Roman experts that he was dead in the first place, 2) entered a carefully secured tomb, 3) revived himself without help, 4) rolled away a huge stone, 5) overcame the guard detail and 6) presented himself perfectly alive and unharmed, all in the space of a couple of days.

Preposterous.

Others suggest that the body /was /moved by the Jews or Romans – leaving open the question of why it was not /immediately/ produced 7 weeks later when Jesus’ disciples began to turn the city of Jerusalem upside down with their teaching of the resurrection causing apoplexy among rulers on both sides.

Others suggest that the disciples themselves stole the body, leaving open the question of how this completely dispirited,  dysfunctional little band of men managed to 1) overcome the guard to get the body in the first place; how they managed to 2) dispose of it so completely it could not be found, and far more importantly 3) why they would then suddenly begin to preach a spiritual kingdom rather than sponsor the physical revolution they had been expecting all along; and finally, 4) why they would themselves all die a martyr’s death for what they /knew/ to be a lie?

 

/None /of these explanations holds water.

Why?

Because Jesus was alive!

Jesus Christ /is/ life.

I believe that few facts in history are more verifiable than the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

More than one member of the unbelieving community has set out to prove once and for all that there was no resurrection.

None has ever succeeded but many have become believers in the process, including apologists like Attorney Frank Morison who wrote the classic /Who Moved the Stone?/ as well as others like Josh McDowell and Yale educated journalist, Lee Strobel.

I believe that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead because there is no other way to explain that empty tomb.

I believe that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead because something like 600 other OT prophesies were fulfilled in his life, so why not those that spoke of His resurrection?

I believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ because there is no other explanation for the Christian church.