Luke 24:1-6 The Resurrection Transforms Death Into Life

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 A young woman had been seeing a great deal of a young man. One day he called to say he had something special on his mind. He would pick her up in his car, a memorable antique jalopy, and they would drive to the country for a picnic. They drove to the country side.  The young man seemed preoccupied.  They drove along in silence.

Then they headed back towards home. Back in the city, the young man broke his silence. He spoke solemnly of the great and significant event that was about to occur.  The Park, he said, would be the appropriate place for it to happen.

They drove through the park on that beautiful spring day; the young woman's expectations soared. Finally the young man announced that the great moment was at hand. He slowed the car down, headed for a shady enclave. This was it, he said, the climax had arrived. He was sure that she would feel the same excitement as himself. The car, in short, had at that carefully timed juncture, reached the 100,000 mile mark. The figures on the speedometer were turning slowly over as the car came to a halt. "Everything is back to zero," said the young man, caught up in the rapture of the moment. "Yes," said the young woman to herself, "Everything is back to zero." That is how the disciples must have felt before the great resurrection morning: Their hopes were all devastated.  Everything was back to zero.  But something was going to change all that.

On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb,  but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them.  In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them,  “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; he has risen!          

Everything was changed. Everything was transformed: from Death To Life! They discovered Jesus transforms Death into Life!

1.  EMPTY TOMB

He Predicted His resurrection. Because he was the Son of God, he knew about his coming death in Jerusalem. But he also knew about his resurrection. In John 2:19-22 he said that he would be raised in three days—although the disciples did not understand it at the time. In John 10:17-18 he plainly said he had the power to lay down his own life and then to take it back up again. At the moment when Peter declared, “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God,” Jesus told his disciples for the first time that he must go to Jerusalem, that he would be put to death, and that he would be raised to life on the third day (Matthew 16:21).  Anyone can predict his own resurrection; only the Son of God can fulfill such a prediction.

 The Stone was rolled away! First, the stone itself was three to six feet in diameter and weighed two to five tons. It took several strong men to roll it into place. Second, the New Testament uses several prepositions that indicate that the stone was not just rolled away; someone picked it up and physically moved it. Third, the seal on the stone could only be broken by a Roman official. Anyone else caught breaking the seal would be put to death.
Who rolled the stone away? The disciples? The Roman guards would have stopped them. The Jews? Same thing. The Romans? Not likely. They had no motivation. And who would risk death to do such a thing? Who rolled the stone away? God did, because he’s the one who raised Jesus from the dead.

The graveclothes were still in place. When John wrote his version of the Sunday morning events, he includes the fascinating note that when he and Peter entered the tomb, they found the graveclothes lying in place with the linen head cloth folded next to it. Evidently the spices and resins had hardened into the shape of Jesus’ body, leaving the appearance of a cocoon after the butterfly has escaped. How do you explain that fact? Grave robbers would have taken the body without unwrapping it or they would have unwrapped it and thrown the winding sheets to the side. No one steals a body and then rewraps the graveclothes.  I believe that when Jesus rose from the dead he literally passed right through the graveclothes leaving behind the linen wrappings just as John and Peter found them.
 The tomb was empty. It’s interesting to note that all the contemporary witnesses agree on this fact. The disciples, the Jews, and the Romans all knew that the tomb was empty. It’s true that each group viewed that fact differently but no one disputed the basic assertion that on Easter Sunday morning Jesus was no longer in the tomb.
 No one ever found his body. Again we come back to the fundamental issue. The Jews never produced his body. In fact, they concocted the first Easter conspiracy precisely because they didn’t know what happened to it. The Romans went along with the conspiracy because they didn’t know what happened either. If anyone—anyone at all—had produced the dead body of Jesus, the entire Christian movement would have gone the way of so many other short-lived religions across the centuries.  No one has ever found the body of Jesus and no one ever will. The skeptics simply can’t answer the question, “What happened to his body?”

2. EYEWITNESS TESTIMONY                   

He appeared to Peter.  to the Twelve to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living to James to all the apostles, and last of all He appeared to  me also…   1 Corinthians 15:3-8

In our modern culture we don’t appreciate the significance of the fact that the women came first to the tomb. No first-century fiction writer would have put the women at the tomb first because women weren’t considered reliable witnesses. The only reason to say that the women saw him first is because that’s what actually happened. No one would have made up such a strange detail. Not only did the disciples not expect a resurrection, Luke 24 makes it clear that the men didn’t believe the first reports from the women. Discounting them as unreliable, they decided to check the tomb for themselves. Remember, the disciples went into hiding after Friday because they feared for their own safety. They last thing they expected on Sunday morning was a resurrection. In the beginning, it wasn’t just Thomas who doubted. None of them believed the early reports and all of them had to be convinced over and over again that Jesus had risen from the dead. SOMETHING HAPPENED IN THAT ROOM! 

BEFORE THE RESURRECTION    AFTER    

Anxiety            Courage                            Insecurity           Confidence                                        Confusion           Purpose

Discouragement         Joy                        Weakness          Power  Doubt     Faith              Guilt       Forgiveness

Sorrow   Hope                                              Fear       Peace  

19 In the evening of that first day of the week, the disciples were [gathered together]with the doors locked because of their fear of the Jews. Then Jesus came, stood among them, and said to them, “Peace to you!” 20 Having said this, He showed them His hands and His side. So the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. 21 Jesus said to them again, “Peace to you! As the Father has sent Me, I also send you.”  22 After saying this, He breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.  23 If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain [the sins of]any, they are retained.”   Jn21:3-5 “I’m going fishing,” Simon Peter said to them. “We’re coming with you,” they told him. They went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing.  4 When daybreak came, Jesus stood on the shore. However, the disciples did not know it was Jesus. 5 “Men,” Jesus called to them, “you don’t have any fish, do you?” “No,” they answered.

Taking the gospels together with 1 Corinthians, you get a list like this: First to the women, then to Peter and John, then the disciples on the road to Emmaus, then to the disciples in the Upper Room, then to the disciples and Thomas one week later, then to the disciples in Galilee. And somewhere along the way he appeared to 500 people at once. There were other appearances as well that we cannot date precisely. Taken together, the list is impressive enough that it cannot be cavalierly dismissed as wishful thinking. Writing some 30 years later, Paul commented that most of those who saw the risen Christ were still alive and ready to testify to what they had seen.

3.  EXISTENCE OF AN ENERGIZED/    EXPLODING CHURCH

'God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of the fact.'  Those who accepted his  message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to their number  that day..  Acts 2:14, 32, 41

Here is one of the most remarkable facts surrounding the resurrection. Whereas before that Sunday the disciples were unsure, timid, doubting, and in general a lackluster bunch, afterwards to a man they were utterly, radically and completely transformed. They were quite literally new men. Suddenly these timid souls became first-century Billy Grahams, totally dedicated to spreading the good news to anyone who would listen. Persecution didn’t stop them, opposition didn’t faze them, hatred didn’t intimidate them, hardship didn’t slow them down, the threat of martyrdom didn’t intimidate them.  To a man they became dynamos of Christian evangelism. In the words of the Bible, they went everywhere preaching the gospel. These were the men who turned the world upside down. What made the difference? I submit that the only possible answer is that these men met the risen Christ and he changed their lives forever.
 The early Christians all believed he had been raised. This is nothing more than a simple historical observation. All the early Christians—without exception—believed that Jesus Christ had risen from the dead. The Jewish Christians believed, but so did the Gentiles. Wherever the gospel went, it produced converts who joined in proclaiming the risen Christ.

 The resurrection was the centerpiece of their preaching. It’s interesting to read the accounts of the early Christian sermons from the book of Acts. They all centered on the truth of Jesus’ resurrection. We today tend to focus more on the death of Christ. But it was not so in the beginning. The first Christians understood that without the resurrection, the crucifixion had no meaning.
 They died testifying to the reality of the resurrection. Church history tells us that of the eleven original disciples (not counting Judas) plus Paul, all died violent deaths for their faith in Jesus. The one exception was John, who spent his final years imprisoned on the island of Patmos. Beyond that, thousands of Christians died in the various Roman persecutions.  Why would men and women die for a myth or a legend? Why would the apostles die for Christ if they knew he had not risen from the dead?

"I  say  unequivocally  that  the  evidence  for  the  Resurrection  of  Jesus Christ is so powerful that it compels acceptance   by proof  which leaves absolutely no room for doubt."  - Sir Lionel Luckhoo 

4.  EVIDENCE OF CHANGED LIVES

Transforms Death Into Life  PARDON FOR MY PAST

He has forgiven all our sins and cancelled every record of the debt we owed; Christ has done away with it by nailing it to the cross."  Colossians 2:14  Rom 8:1 There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus,

Immediate  There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus,

Complete   There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus,  

Unconditional  There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus,

A cartoon from the Wall Street Journal shows a man walking up a set of stairs toward the gate of heaven. Above the gate is a sign with two words: “No Deals.” This time the Journal got it absolutely right. God makes no deals when it comes to heaven. You either enter by way of the Cross or you don’t enter at all.

Transforms Death Into Life   Power FOR MY PRESENT

I pray that you will know how great His power is for those who have put their trust in Him. It is the same power that raised Christ from the dead.  Eph 1:19-20

In 1990 Nelson Mandela was released from prison after twenty-seven years. In 1994 he was the first democratically elected president of South Africa. When he was inaugurated, he asked his jailer to join him on the platform. Then he appointed Archbishop Desmond Tutu to head a government panel called the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Mandela did not want his country to follow a predictable pattern of revenge that he had seen in so many other countries. For the next 2 ½ years, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission listened to the atrocities from the South African history of apartheid. The rules were this: if a white policeman or army officer voluntarily faced his accusers, confessed his crime, and fully acknowledged his guilt, he could not be tried and punished for that crime. Mandela insisted the country needed healing more than it needed justice.   At one hearing, a policeman name van de Broek recounted an incident when he and other officers shot an 18-year-old boy and burned his body. Eight years later, van de Broek returned to the same house and seized the boy’s father. The wife was forced to watch as policemen bound her husband on a woodpile, poured gasoline over his body, and ignited it. The courtroom grew hushed as the elderly woman who had lost first her son and then her husband was given a chance to respond. “What do you want from Mr. Van de Broek?” the judge asked. She said she wanted van de Broek to go to the place where they burned her husband’s body and gather up the dust so she could give him a decent burial. His head down, the policeman nodded agreement.  Then she added, “Mr. Van de Broek took all my family away from me, and I still have a lot of love to give. Twice a month, I would like for him to come to the ghetto and spend a day with me so I can be a mother to him. And I would like Mr. Van de Broek to know that he is forgiven by God, and that I forgive him too. I would like to embrace him so he can know my forgiveness is real.” As the woman made her way to the witness stand, persons in the courtroom began singing Amazing Grace. But van de Broek did not hear the hymn. He had fainted, overwhelmed.

Transforms Death Into Life PROMISE FOR MY FUTURE

I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in Me will never die.  John 11 

I came across a paragraph from a letter written by a pastor who was dying of cancer. Until he was stricken at age 55, he had never faced his own mortality. During the three years before his death, he wrestled mightily with all the sermons he had preached about grace, salvation and eternal life. But now, at the age of 58, he was about to die, and he had to find out if all those sermons had been true. The following paragraph comes from a letter he wrote shortly before his death:  “All my life as a pastor I have been preaching the promises of the resurrection of Christ and the power of his atoning death. So far, I have been distributing faith’s checks; now I’m starting to cash them for myself—to find out if they are really negotiable. And I have come to a very personal conviction. It is that facing our own dying incomparably improves the quality of our own living. King David ended his twenty-third Psalm with the assurance that he would “dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” For me what that means is that I, along with all those who have gone before me, am just outside the door of the fullness of God’s grace in life everlasting. For me, Easter has already arrived!” A faith that doesn’t help you when you are dying won’t be much good when you are living. When Jesus walked out of the tomb, the people of God walked out with him!
Death could not keep its prey, Jesus my Savior. He tore the bars away, Jesus my Lord.
Up from the grave He arose, With a mighty triumph o’er His foes. He arose a Victor from the dark domain
And he lives forever with His saints to reign He arose, He arose, Hallelujah, Christ arose!
The empty tomb says, He is risen. The disciples say, He is risen. The church of Jesus Christ says, He is risen. All creation says, He is risen. Jesus has conquered our last enemy. He solved the problem of death forever because he entered the realm of death on our behalf and he came out on the other side holding the keys of death and hell in his hands!

Transforms Death Into Life BY A PERSONAL FAITH

You need to trust Him as your risen Lord and Saviour!

“Here I am, I stand at the door and knock. If any one hears my voice and opens the door,

I will come in and eat with him, and he with me."  Revelation 3:20

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