The Empty Tomb

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Transcript:

Well, I recently heard a story about how in some communities, they will apparently install their fire hydrants with these special bolts that will snap off at a certain amount of pressure. I don’t know if they do this everywhere, but they do it in some places, where they’ll snap off once a certain amount of pressure is applied to it, because sometimes people will hit the fire hydrants with their cars. And the city usually would rather go to the expense of having the water gushing up and having to have somebody come out and replace the bolts and put the fire hydrant back on than have to go to the expense of replacing a fire hydrant that’s been smashed up.

They want it to snap off at the bolts if it’s hit by a car. That way the fire hydrant itself is more or less undamaged. So what I discovered from that is it actually takes surprisingly little pressure.

I mean, I don’t think you could just go up and. . .

I’m not asking anybody to go out and test this and see how much pressure it takes to snap off a fire hydrant. I don’t think you could do it just by going up and kicking it or running and jumping on it. But evidently you can hit one with your car at a fairly low rate of speed and still have it snap off because they don’t want the fire hydrant damage.

So it takes surprisingly little pressure to snap off a fire hydrant, and then you’ve just got water gushing everywhere. Now, what does that have to do with anything? Because that’s how I am when I start to talk about the resurrection.

It takes very little, by way of encouragement, to just get me to explode, and next thing you know, y’all are listening to a four-hour message. I have to be very careful. The resurrection is one of my favorite topics.

A couple of years ago, I started doing a presentation for you all on evidence for the resurrection, and it ended up taking, I believe, four weeks. And I intended it to be one Sunday. I had notes for one Sunday, and it took me four weeks to get through those notes, and I still felt, man, there were things that I didn’t get to tell them that I wanted to.

So when I came to talk this morning about the resurrection, I had to limit, I had to very carefully limit my scope of what I’m going to talk about. Otherwise, we’ll be here for weeks on end. So, said all that to say, if you’re listening to this this morning and you’re thinking, yeah, but what about?

You’ve still got questions. What about this objection? What about this event?

How did this work? It’s not that there are not answers to those things. It’s that I’m having to very carefully try to avoid talking about every rabbit trail that I want to deal with with the resurrection.

This morning, we’re going to talk about the tomb being empty. Now, there are people out there who will say, I will give you this amount of information. There are people out there who will say, well, the resurrection never happened because Jesus wasn’t real. Okay, those are not historians who tell you that.

Mainstream historians, I’m not talking about Christian mainstream historians, but most mainstream historians, even non-Christians, agree that there was a historical figure named Jesus who lived in Nazareth around the time the Bible says he did. And there are historical records outside. I already feel it coming.

I already want to just deluge you with things, but with information. I’m trying to be careful here. There are historical records that record Jesus living at that time.

Some people will say, well, Jesus didn’t actually die. He couldn’t have resurrected because he didn’t actually die. When you read the description of the crucifixion in the Gospels, and when you compare it with what medical science would tell us to expect, there’s no way that it takes more faith to believe that Jesus survived the cross and sort of got better in the tomb and pretended to rise again from the dead, it takes more faith to believe that than to believe that he died and rose again.

There’s no medical, there’s no scientific way Jesus could have survived the crucifixion, laid in the tomb for three days, and then convinced anybody that he was the Son of God. He would have been in even worse shape after three days. You know, there are people who say, well, the tomb wasn’t empty.

That the whole resurrection thing is a myth because the tomb wasn’t empty. Well, the people who saw it empty sure believed it was. You know, at the time of the resurrection, there were 11 disciples remaining.

Well, if you consider a disciple to be a follower of Jesus Christ, there were more. But of the apostles, there were 11 remaining. Judas had already killed himself.

So there were 11, and all 11 of them suffered intense persecution because they said, no, we saw him alive. We saw him dead, he was buried, we saw the tomb empty, and then we saw him alive again. They suffered intense persecution, and ten of those eleven died as martyrs in gruesome fashion rather than recant that they had seen Jesus alive.

Not only that, but there were enough people who saw Jesus alive that the entire Christian church in Jerusalem was convinced that Jesus Christ was alive, and were able to convince others by their preaching and by their eyewitness testimony that Jesus Christ was alive. And some people will say, well, the resurrection was a legend. No, we can go back and within two years or less, two years or less of the crucifixion, document the fact that people were already teaching and dying for the fact that they believed Jesus Christ had risen again from the dead.

Within two years. There’s not time for the resurrection to have become a legend. Because within two years, how old were you two years ago?

Do you still remember things from two years ago? Whoa, you mean your memories didn’t get completely wiped and you’re susceptible to believing anything? I could tell you that we just all started existing two years ago?

I couldn’t tell you that? No, you remember things that happened two years ago. I’d suspect many of you remember things that happened ten years ago or fifty years ago.

The point is there were people who were living and who were eyewitnesses and saw these things, and we can demonstrate that within two years of the crucifixion, certainly less, but we can document it to within two years of the crucifixion. It was the message, it was the creed of the earliest Christians, that Jesus had died and been buried and had risen again. Folks, Jesus really existed.

Jesus really died and was buried. The earliest Christians believed it, and they put their money where their mouth was, so to speak. put their lives where their mouths were more accurately.

Folks, we have every reason to believe the tomb is empty. That’s the simplest I can make it for you this morning without going into all the details, all the medical evidence, all the historical records which would keep us here all day. If you’re interested in those things, if you want to know more about those things, I have taught on them here.

I’m by no means an expert. I just love the story of the resurrection. But I can point out some resources to you.

If you’d like to dig deeper into this, I’d recommend Lee Strobel’s The Case for Christ, an even shorter version of The Case for Christ. I’ve handed out some copies here over the years. Lee Strobel’s The Case for Easter. The Case for Easter is about, I think, a three-chapter, trimmed-down version of The Case for Christ. I have the messages I’ve presented here previously about the evidence for the resurrection.

Those are available on my website, and I can get you that information. Gary Habermas, one of the foremost experts on the resurrection, he’s, I believe, the dean of the theology department at Liberty University, spoke at OBU a couple months ago, right before Carly Joe was born. I got to go hear him.

Phenomenal presentation, but his website is GaryHabermas. com. G-A-R-Y-H-E-A-B-E-R-M-A-S.

com, if you want to write that down. He has all kinds of information about the evidence for the resurrection. There are all sorts of good sources out there that can give you the evidence that I’ve sort of glossed over this morning.

We know, folks, historically, we look at the resurrection and it is one of the best attested facts of ancient history. And we see it recounted accurately in the gospel accounts. We know it’s accurate because it wasn’t flattering to the people who wrote it.

Peter and the other disciples, they do not come off looking well in the resurrection story. They do not look good. They were the ones who doubted.

They were the ones who ran and hid. And it was the women who discovered the empty tomb. Now, that’s not a problem for me.

I’m not knocking women. I want to be very clear in the Me Too era. I’m not knocking women.

But in their day, if you wanted to invent a credible witness, you weren’t going to say, oh, the women saw it. because in many cases women weren’t even considered reliable witnesses to testify in court. Not saying I agree with that, I’m just saying that’s the world as it once was.

So if you were going to invent witnesses, you would have the men. The only reason to say the women found his empty tomb is because that’s what actually happened. If you were going to invent the story, you wouldn’t make Joseph of Arimathea, who was apparently the one dissenting member of the Sanhedrin, He was the one not there for the vote, evidently, when they voted to condemn Jesus, who was evidently a follower of Jesus.

You wouldn’t have a member of the Jewish Sanhedrin be the hero of the story, that when the disciples ran and hid, Joseph of Arimathea is the one who went to Pilate and said, can I give him a proper burial? There are just too many inconvenient things for it to be made up. All the evidence.

Folks, I know it’s popular in this day and age to say, well, the Bible, you can’t take that literally. The more I look at the Bible, the more I’m convinced it’s literally true. When I say literally true, I mean it’s true in the way God intended it to be meant and in a way that the original readers would have understood it.

The more I come away convinced that it’s truth, that it’s God’s truth. And we see the story, we see one account of the story of the resurrection in Matthew chapter 28. Starting in verse 1, it says, Now after the Sabbath, as the first day of the week began to dawn, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to see the tomb.

And behold, there was a great earthquake, for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone from the door and sat on it. His countenance was like lightning, and his clothing as white as snow. And the guards shook for fear of him and became like dead men.

Now when you look at all the gospel accounts together, what this appears to be saying is the women came out there as the day after the Sabbath began to dawn, that Sunday morning. Some accounts talk about it being night, some talk about it being morning. That’s not a contradiction.

There is that time of the morning where I don’t really know what to call it. It’s still dark, but it’s just sort of becoming light. I hate that time of the morning.

Nobody should be awake to see that time of the morning, but nevertheless, it’s there. So they come out at this time, and it says there’s an earthquake. I don’t think this is saying they were there for the earthquake.

They were coming out there, and there has been this earthquake where the angel of the Lord descends from heaven, rolls the stone back, and just sits there. Imagine the angel of the Lord just sitting there on the stone looking at the soldiers like, what are you going to do? Your move.

Now, Jesus has risen again. The very ground shakes because the Creator has come back to life. I’m not talking about God the Father.

I’m talking about God the Son, who was co-participant in creation. God the Son has come back to life here on earth in this physical body. And his countenance was like lightning, talking about the angel who sat there.

His face was like lightning, and his clothing as white as snow. And the guards shook for fear of him and came as dead men. They fell down.

They passed out in fright. They fell to the ground. Big, burly, Roman soldiers, tough guys.

This wasn’t me who, I don’t know, I don’t know, Charlie’s coming down the hallway and then there she is when I come around the corner and I about have a coronary. I’m talking about, these were some tough guys and they had seen some things and yet they see the angel of the Lord and the stone roll back and they fall over like dead men. And when the women get there, in verse 5, it says, but the angel answered and said to the women, do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified.

It’s interesting the reaction of the angel to the two different groups of people. To the soldiers who was there to make sure that Jesus stayed in that tomb, the angel was a horrifying figure. He was a threatening figure, an imposing figure that scared them so bad they passed out.

But to the women, he’s this gentle figure, this understanding figure. To those who believed in Jesus Christ, he brought good news. He said, don’t be afraid.

It’s interesting how every time the angels announce Jesus’ presence, they tell us, don’t be afraid. Why? Because when Jesus shows up, it’s good news.

He says, do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. Verse 6, he is not here. He’s not here.

What do you mean he’s not here? Where else would he be? Probably what they were thinking.

He’s not here. He is risen. He’s risen.

He’s back. He’s back from the dead. He is risen as he said.

Sometimes we miss this. Jesus told them this was going to happen. They didn’t understand this at the time, but Jesus told them on multiple occasions that this was going to happen.

One of the most prominent is when he told the religious leaders, destroy this temple, and in three days I’ll raise it up again. And they thought he was talking about the actual physical temple that they were all standing in. And they said it took us 40 some odd years to build this, And you think you’re so powerful that you’re going to rebuild it in three days?

I don’t think so. Little did they know. He wasn’t just talking about being powerful enough to rebuild the temple in three days.

He was talking about the temple of his body. And he’s not just powerful enough to rebuild the temple. He’s powerful enough to rise from the dead in three days.

He told them it was coming. They didn’t understand. His disciples apparently didn’t understand, or they would have not run and hid necessarily.

But the angel said, He’s not here, for He is risen as He said. I love that. Come and see.

Come and see, he says, the place where the Lord lay. Because I think the women did not seem to have lost their faith in Jesus the way the men did. The disciples still had an affection for Jesus, but as far as they were concerned, It seems to have been over.

The women probably didn’t understand any more than the disciples did that he meant he was going to rise from the dead. But for them, they couldn’t let go of Jesus. There was still this attachment to Jesus, this love for Jesus.

And yet sometimes as much as we love Jesus, as much as we want to believe that his promises are true, sometimes we need to see some evidence. You know how I know we need to see evidence? Because God gave it to us.

Somewhere along the line, we’ve been convinced that faith and evidence are mutually exclusive. That, well, if I have evidence, it means I don’t have faith. So I just need to trust, and it doesn’t matter about needing to see evidence.

Because then you end up putting your faith in just any old thing. And it’s not the strength of our faith that determines its validity. It’s its object.

If we don’t have some reason to believe that the thing we’re putting our faith in is worth putting our faith in, then it’s worthless faith. I can go pick anything that people worship and decide to put my faith in that without evidence. Just because I believe strongly doesn’t mean anything.

Now, God gives us reasons to believe. There’s still room for faith because we still have to look at who he is, and there’s our evidence, who he is and the things he’s done. There’s our evidence, but faith comes in and saying, so now I believe that he’s going to do the things he’s promised he’ll do.

See, we have faith based in God and his track record that he’s going to bring to pass the things he says he’ll do. That he’s going to continue to be the God that he’s always been. So there’s this place here where the angel says, you need to see.

You need to come look at the evidence. He said, he’s not here. He’s risen.

As he said, come see the place where the Lord lay. Come and see for yourself. Come and look.

Come and look and see that he is everything that he said he was. Come and look and see that he’s done everything he promised he would do. You didn’t understand the promises at the time, but come see.

He’s fulfilled them anyway. Verse 7, and go quickly and tell his disciples that he has risen from the dead. And indeed, he is going before you into Galilee.

There you will see him. Behold, I have told you. So he invites them.

He says, come and see. But he says, go quickly. You don’t have to stand here for the rest of your life and ponder the evidence.

Once you have the evidence and once you know that Jesus is who he says he is, then go quickly, he says, and do something about it. Go tell his disciples that he’s risen from the dead. Go tell them.

Go tell them what you’ve seen. Go testify. Are there things about the resurrection they didn’t know yet or didn’t understand?

Absolutely. Were they called to go and be experts before they told somebody about Jesus? No.

He says, go tell them what you’ve seen. Go tell them what you’ve seen. Go be a witness.

All you have to do is open your mouth and tell the truth about what you’ve seen. Go tell them that he is risen from the dead, and indeed he’s going before you to Galilee. He’s on his way to Galilee now, and you’ll see him there.

Behold, I’ve told you. So go tell the disciples what you’ve seen and what you’ve heard. Go spread the news and tell them that he’ll meet you in Galilee.

And so they went out quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy. It’s interesting how you can have that mix of emotions and that mix of fear and great joy. Sort of the thing I best liken it to is becoming a parent.

And the first time I was expecting, I didn’t know anything about babies. It was a horrifying experience. I mean, I was glad, but I was also scared to death.

There you go, fear and great joy. And you know what? Each time, Each time I’ve been expecting again, there’s been a combination of those two emotions, the fear and the great joy.

Now, by the time we were expecting Carly Jo, okay, we’ve already had three others. I know how to take care of a baby. So it wasn’t a fear from that standpoint, but it was a fear of, you know, you see Benjamin and Madeline and Charlie running around and climbing walls and all this stuff, and I’d look at Charlie and say, what were we thinking, number four?

How are we going to make this work? Talk about some fear. When she’s eight months pregnant and the other three are running wild, there’s a mixture of fear and great joy.

Some of you have felt that same mixture of fear and great joy. Now take that and crank it up to ten, and that’s what the women felt as they were leaving the tomb, that mixture of fear and great joy. The joy of can you believe it, and the fear of what in the world just happened here.

So they went out quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy and ran to bring his disciples’ word. They could not wait to go and tell about what they had seen at the tomb. And as they went to tell his disciples, verse 9, Behold, Jesus met them saying, Rejoice!

Hey guys, be glad! He meets them on the road and he tells them to rejoice. So they came and held him by the feet and worshipped him.

They didn’t have to stop and think about it. They knew that this was Jesus. They knew he had risen from the dead and they were so excited that all they could do was grab him by the feet and worship at his feet.

They were so excited to have him back. I’d suspect that just about everybody in the room has lost a loved one at some point. And I’m talking about those loved ones that you’d say, I would give anything to just have another day with them.

You know, I think about my grandfather. There’s not a week that passes. He’s been gone for a little over three years now, and there’s not a week that passes that I don’t think, oh, I need to call Papa.

Oh, can’t afford the long distance on that one. You know, there’s stuff going on that I just want to tell him, that I just want to talk to him about. I just want to get under the truck with him one more time and change the oil together.

Now imagine that loved one that you’d give anything to see again, and suddenly they show up and they’re alive. How overjoyed would you be? Folks, they loved Jesus.

They loved him so much, they gave up their lives to follow him for three years, and suddenly he’s been cruelly taken away from them. He’s been unexpectedly taken away from them. Now, he’d been warning them it was going to happen, but they didn’t see it coming.

They didn’t understand. So from their standpoint, he’s been taken away unexpectedly, and they are plunged into this grief, and all they want is just to see Jesus again, and suddenly he shows up there along the road. Think how tightly you would hold that loved one.

Folks, that doesn’t begin to compare to how they held on to Jesus. And Jesus said to them, Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brethren to go to Galilee, and there they will see me.

Just like the angel had told them. Go tell them I’m alive. Go tell them I’m headed to Galilee, and tell them I’ll see them there.

Now verse 11, Now while they were going, behold, some of the guard came into the city and reported to the chief priest all the things that had happened. And when they had assembled with the elders and consulted together, they gave a large sum of money to the soldiers, saying, Tell them his disciples came at night and stole him away while we slept. And if this comes to the governor’s ears, we will appease him and make you secure.

See, the Roman soldiers, too, were under threat of death, evidently, at least of some severe punishment if they were found sleeping on duty. So for the Roman soldiers to go and say, we were asleep and the disciples stole him. We were overpowered by this church group while we were asleep.

That’s one of the worst things that they could say. The only reason the Romans have for saying this for any amount of money when they’re putting their necks on the line, the only reason the Romans have to say this is because the real explanation is worse for them. The real explanation that, hey, this guy rose from the dead and we went and executed the Son of God.

That’s worse for them because that message starts getting out and everybody starts flocking to Jesus. So somebody comes out with a cover story and it looks bad for them and it’s a lie. The only reason for them to give that cover story is because the real story is even worse.

And so the Jewish authorities tell them, hey, tell the people, tell your authorities that they came while you were asleep and they stole the body. Again, the disciples did not steal the body because if there were some grand conspiracy of the disciples, As they were under torture and persecution and pain of death, somebody would have talked. Right?

You know why a lot of crimes get solved, a lot of cold cases get solved? Because somebody had to open their mouth. Nobody ever recanted.

Folks, the disciples, any one of them could have made the torment stop if they just said, all right, all right, I confess, we did it. But nobody ever said that because they didn’t. So they said lie and say the disciples stole the body while you slept.

And if you get in trouble, we’ll try to make it right. And they gave them some money and they sent them on their way. It says in verse 15, so they took the money and did as they were instructed.

And this saying is commonly reported among the Jews until this day. Until the day of the writing of the book of Matthew, they were still trying to spread that rumor that the body had been stolen. As a matter of fact, I read that in some Jewish sources as I was researching from my latest book on how different religions view Jesus.

One of the Jewish answers to the resurrection is that it’s just a hoax. The body was stolen. And actually, it’s not just a Jewish answer.

There are a lot of people in our world who think the body was stolen. But that just makes no sense from the standpoint of how the disciples went forward after this. Folks, what we see here in this passage is that the women found the tomb empty.

How do we know Jesus is who he says he is? because all of the evidence points to it, especially the empty tomb. If that tomb had not been empty, they could have put the whole story of the resurrection to bed right then.

They could have strangled it in its cradle before it got any traction. Oh, you think Jesus is alive? Let’s go down to the tomb and show you.

They could have taken a group of authorities and a group of soldiers down there. They could have rolled the stone back and said, See, it’s still dead. Nobody ever did that.

As a matter of fact, we see after the women find the tomb empty, the authorities in Jerusalem don’t argue about the tomb being empty. They admit that the tomb was empty. They admit the tomb was empty.

I don’t know if you noticed that in there, but there’s an admission from the government that the tomb was empty. Where’s that admission? Because they don’t try to deny it.

They try to cover it up. They do what governments often try to do. They covered it up.

You don’t cover something up if you know it’s not true. Oh, so many stories I could tell that illustrate that point. But they immediately said, ah, that tomb is empty.

We’ve got to do something about it. And they went for the cover up. So the tomb was empty.

The women found it. The government admitted it and tried to cover it up. So what’s the significance of the empty tomb?

Why does it matter so much? What matters because if Jesus rose from the dead, then everything he said about who he is was absolutely true. If Jesus rose from the dead, then he is God in human flesh, as he claimed.

If he rose from the dead, then he has the power over life and death, as he said. He has the power over sin and judgment, as he said, over forgiveness. He has the ability to forgive sins as God, as he said.

He was the Messiah. He was all the things that he claimed to be if the tomb was empty. and so we’re faced you and I, all of us are faced with this message of the empty tomb either it’s empty either it was empty, either he rose again or he didn’t and we’re presented with a choice, do we believe that he rose or do we believe against all the evidence it’s just some story see the empty tomb calls on each of us, it beckons to each of us the empty tomb calls on the seeker to come and see this morning if you’re not somebody who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.

We’re glad you’re here. Even if somebody dragged you here, we’re glad you’re here. All the evidence for the empty tomb calls you, just like the angel said to the women, come and see.

The angel never said, just take my word for it. The angel said in verse 6, he’s not here, for he is risen. As he said, come see the place where the Lord lay.

And if you’re on the fence this morning about Jesus, If you’re skeptical, if you think maybe he was a good moral teacher, but I don’t think I buy this son of God stuff, folks, the empty tomb beckons you to come and see. And if I’ve not given you enough evidence here this morning, then I encourage you to go check out some of the resources I mentioned earlier. And I’m sure I can find some more.

But those are a good place to start. The empty tomb says, come and see. We can’t ignore it.

We can’t ignore it. The stone’s been rolled away. The soldiers are lying there like dead men.

the angel sitting on top of the stone saying, come and see. We can say, no, I don’t want to look at the evidence, but that’s making a choice too. We are presented with the evidence.

The evidence of the empty tomb is right there for us to find, and we’re called to come and see, and we have a choice to make whether we’re going to do that or not. If you’re somebody who’s never trusted Christ as your Savior, I invite you to come and see. Don’t take my word for it.

Go look. Go see not only what the scriptures say, but what the historical record says, what the medical evidence says. Go look at all of it.

Come and see that the tomb is empty. Many of you are sitting there saying, well, I’m not a skeptic. What does this have to do with me?

There’s a message from the empty tomb for you as well. See, the women were not just told come and see. They were told go and tell.

Just as the seeker is called to come and see, the believer is called to go and tell. You know why they went and told and why they were so anxious? It’s because they had incredible news.

And folks, if you believe that Jesus is the Son of God. If you believe that He died on the cross for your sins and rose again the third day, as was foretold in Scripture, as was foretold by Him, if you believe that, and you’re not telling anybody, you are sitting on the best news in history. We get good news and we can’t wait to share it.

Sometimes we get mediocre news and we can’t wait to share it. That’s why I’m sure this afternoon there will be plenty of pictures on Facebook and Instagram of what everybody’s having for lunch. Maybe not y’all, but there are people out there who do this.

We get mediocre news and we can’t wait to share it. The most incredible news in history is that God the Son came to earth, lived a perfect sinless life so that he could die on the cross as the perfect sacrifice for our sins. He bled and died for our sins in full, to pay for our sins in full.

He was buried, and then three days later, he walked out of that tomb, leaving it empty, and leaving behind him a trail of eyewitnesses a mile long. Why in the world? What possible reason could we have for not telling everybody we meet that Jesus is alive and there’s evidence to prove it?

And if he’s alive, then he offers forgiveness and salvation to each of us because he died on that cross to pay for our sins in full and proved hi

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