The Empty Tomb | John 20:1-10
Sermon Transcript
Morning. Well, we have Thanksgiving this week, and we just had a Christmas theme video, and I'm preaching an Easter sermon. So I'm just trying to get you all confused as to what time of year it is, as we continue to go through the life of Jesus for this entire year, and now we are at the resurrection and ascension passages, which, of course, is the end of the year, which is Christmas. So anyway, trying to get you all discombobulated, my mother in law, years ago, told me a story about her grandmother, which is my wife's or her grandfather and wife's great grandfather, that back in the day that he refused to believe that our country sent a man to the moon, just refused to believe it. Now I remember years ago when she told me this. I thought it was kind of funny, but now there are more and more people who doubt that for different reasons, but they spent many years trying to convince him and to present him the facts that no We did send people to the moon, and here's how it happened, but he just refused to believe it, and they presented him the facts, and he remained unconvinced until he's dying day. Now, maybe you've had a similar experience with a family member or a loved one. You know, this weekend or this week, you're going to have Thanksgiving, and so you'll be talking to people, possibly that you haven't talked to in a while, people who might have different views than you on religion or politics or things like this, or maybe even sports teams. Growing up, I had a I had a uncle that was, I loved him. He married into the family. He who isn't blood, but an uncle who was just the only word I know is obnoxious Clemson fan. And I just thought they all were that way, you know. And just, you know, as a kid, I just had to hear it all the time from this, you know. So you don't ever so you're around family, but you don't know what you're going to get, you know, you don't know what kind of different discussions you'll have. And maybe you've tried really hard to convince someone of the truth of something, they just won't accept the reality of it. Now, when people refuse to accept the reality of something, lot of times, we'll throw this word out, which is really pretty harsh actually, will say, Well, you're just delusional. Now, delusional is actually a medical term for a real mental illness, and it means that to hold false beliefs of judgments about external reality despite clear evidence to the contrary. So delusional, many times, my wife will tell me I'm delusional when I talk about how I feel like my Gamecocks have a chance to make the playoff in college football. And she says, Honey, that's not going to happen. You know? I said, Well, other people say that might, you know, so she's constantly bringing me down, down to earth, right? But there are many things that people remain unconvinced about, and the resurrection of Jesus Christ is one of those things. Now, many of us in here today believe it, which is why we're here. But some of you might have been thinking about it, or might be unsure about it, and people remain unconvinced, even though Jesus's tomb was empty, even though they've never found his body because he walked around for over a month and saw people and spoke, and then he ascended to heaven. People still spiritually speaking, are in a spiritual delusion, so to speak, over the resurrection of Christ the empty tomb is an honest assessment that Jesus was victorious over death. So we're looking today at John chapter 20, starting in verse one. And last week we show we saw, we covered how Jesus had died and how he was buried. It says, on the first day of the week, that's Sunday, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon, Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, they've taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him. So Peter went out with the other disciple, and they were going toward the tomb. Both of them were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first, and stooping to look in, he. All the linen cloths lying there, but he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came following him and went into the tomb, and he saw the linen cloths lying there, and the face cloth which had been on Jesus' head, not lying with the linen cloths, but folded up in a place by itself. Then the other disciple who had reached the tomb first also went in and he saw and believed for as yet, they did not understand the Scripture that he must rise from the dead. The disciples went back to their homes, Father in heaven, as we continue to worship you today, we come across this passage, this story, this account of how, after Lord, you were put in the burial tone Sunday morning, you were gone. We look forward to hearing more in the weeks ahead about your resurrection appearances, but until then, Lord, we looked at today's passage when it's all about you, even though you're not in the passage, even though you were missing. Lord, help us see today and increase our faith about the reality of the tomb being empty, and what that means for our lives and lives for those in the whole world, Lord, I pray that your spirit speaks today through your preaching. I pray that your spirit fills this room today and we receive your word and we ask these things in Jesus name. Amen, I want to give us today three, what I'm calling causations about the empty tomb. Three causations. Number one, empty tombs should cause us to consider it. Should cause us to consider why it's empty and what that means. Verse one says on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early while it was still dark. She must have been on my five year old's time clock, I don't know, getting up early while it's still dark. And when she got there, she saw that the tomb, the stone, had been taken away from the tomb. So the Sabbath started on Friday at sundown, and last until Saturday. This is the earliest time that the burial preparations could begin, and so she gets up and goes as soon as she can. Mary Magdalene, a woman who had a very difficult past. She'd been tormented by demons, but she became a follower of Christ. She stood there and personally watched the crucifixion of Jesus. Jesus had saved her. He was her Lord, her savior, a life changing impact in her life. So when she arrives at the tomb, finds the stone, a five foot stone rolled away. You can imagine, perhaps the sadness, the fear, the anguish she felt, not understanding what had happened. Now, Matthew's account tells us that the stone was rolled back by an angel, and this angel spoke to Mary and the other Mary who was with her, and so that Jesus was was not here that he had risen as he had predicted. So verse two tells us so she ran, went to Simon, Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, they've taken the Lord out of the tomb. We do not know where they've laid him. So she went and got Peter John, John how he refers to himself as the one whom Jesus loved, as who he that's who wrote this, this gospel, and it says they, they've, they've taken, well, who's they? Well, Mark's account talks about how there were two angels that once spoke with Mark, described them as young men, so they had a an appearance of a young man. And so Mary, at this point, is having to consider what she's been told, what she's witnessed, what has happened. You know, as a parent, I'm constantly considering things in my in my children's lives. Why did they do this? Why are they doing that? Why do they want to do this? Why do they want to do that? And Mary was having to consider what she saw and what she walked into. She wasn't sure, but she knew that Jesus was there, and now he wasn't. And at some point, every person who hears about the story of Jesus has to consider, why was the tomb empty? Look at first. Corinthians, 15. Paul says, if there is no resurrection. Generation of the dead, that not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain, and your faith is in vain. He says, If Christ has not been raised, then what are we doing? Why are we here today? Why Am I preaching? What Am I preaching about? Why are you worshiping? There's no reason for you to be here if Jesus has not been raised from the dead. First Corinthians 15 says this, For the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised, and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile, and you are still in your sins. First, Corinthians, 1532, says, If the dead are not raised, let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die if we're still in our sins, if there is no savior, if there is no truth of the gospel, then let's just live our best life. Let's just live our one life, and let's do whatever we want to do. But if the tomb is empty and Christ was raised. It changes things. It changes the decisions we make. It changes how we live our lives. The empty tomb should at least cause us to consider what that means. Secondly, the empty tomb should cause us to investigate. It should cause us to investigate. This is another thing I do as a parent. I do a lot of investigation. Maybe you two, lot of investigation. Verse three says so Peter went out with the other disciple, and they were going toward the tomb. Both of them were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first, and stooping to look in, he saw the linen cloths lying there, and he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came following him and went into the tomb. He saw the linen cloths lying there, and the face cloth, which had been on Jesus's head, not lying with linen cloths, but folded up in a place by itself. Now it tells us here that John outran Peter to the tomb, and we'll talk more about that later. But why would John include that, other than to say I was faster than Peter, right? Just get a little dig at Peter, maybe just let people know that he was younger and and more athletic, and he and he ran there, and what he would have seen was that Jesus's body would have been laid on a bench opposite the opening of the tomb. Modern modern archeology corroborates this, that this is how tombs were designed at the time after the body was deceased, it would have been wrapped up, kind of like a mummy type thing, linen grave cloths, and placed on one of the shelves inside the tomb a year later, after the body had fully decomposed, the bones would then been placed in what's called an assary, a second burial place inside the tomb, it would have had a stone of about four and a half feet in diameter that could be rolled away, but only those with money, wealthy people like Joseph Arimathea, who we saw last week, you gave him his tomb. Only wealthy people could afford that type of enclosure. John despite, as he said, beating Peter in the race to the tomb, he hesitated going in. I wonder why, possibly he's not supposed to be around as a Jew dead bodies. Maybe that's why he hesitated. But Peter, who was anything, if not impulsive, just barreled right in there. And what did they see? Well, they saw a face cloth. Now this is clear evidence that Jesus's body was not stolen because robbers would not have gently unwrapped him, not have gently taken off the face cloth and lighted laid it off to the side and neatened it up. Jesus was neat. He neatened it up and put it off to the side. You know, they wouldn't have done that if you've ever been robbed before or anything like that. You know from experience, they don't clean your place back together. Once they take what they needed, they take what they need and leave it a wreck. This was cleaned. It was sitting there all nice and neat, laid beside by Jesus Himself. Many people like to discredit the story is not being believable, but the burden of proof is on proving that the story did not happen, because we have plenty of evidence that it did. And so I want to give you four internal evidences today from the story itself that supports the claim that Christ was resurrected. Number one. Uh, honesty. The Bible is honest about people that are in the Bible. In fact, sometimes it's too honest. There's things in the Bible. There's recordings of what people have done that are almost like R rated or even worse, you wouldn't even want to read them about without your young children very honest about what people have done. It paints its people being very human. Even David, a man that the Bible says was a man after God's own heart, was a scoundrel at times. So the Bible is honest. There's no reason to lie. They're not trying to make them, these people look better than they were just saying. These are people that believed, and this is what their life was like. Secondly, the Bible is filled and this account is filled with irrelevant details. If you're going to make up a story, unless you really knew what you were doing, you would not put irrelevant details in there. And unless you have ADHD or something and you get off track, you know what I mean, you wouldn't put that in a story. If you were lying. You would try to put something you could remember. This passage is filled with the relevant details which proves that it was true. Because Why in the world would John record that he beat Peter to the tomb? Who cares other than John? And John mentions it again later. He really wanted to make sure they understood that, and maybe he teases about it, I don't know. But who cares that John outran Peter? Nobody does, and only a true account would put that in there. Third the story has harmony to it all. Four Gospel accounts have different details. We already saw how Matthew said that there were two angels, and Mark said it looked like young men, not contradictory details, but supplementary details, complementary details, if I was standing on the corner over here and saw a wreck at the red light, you were on the other side, and the police interviewed us, I would probably give details, and you would give a similar account, but you would include things that you saw that I didn't see, and I would include things that I saw that you didn't see. It doesn't mean that we contradict it means that we're telling the whole story together, and so the Gospels harmonize these accounts, so you get a full picture of what occurred. And the gospel writers decided to put on some level what they wanted to put in there, like the fact that John was fast. And fourth, there's a lack of motivation for fabrication. There's, there's, what's, what motivation do they have to lie? There's no reasonable explanation why the disciples would make up such a story. You can be wrong. You can die for your faith and be wrong about your faith, but you still believe your faith. Why would they die for something they knew was false. Why would they do that if they knew it was false? Why would they die for it when the sword is at your throat and you're going to die if you know you're covering a lie? It's not reasonable. They had no motivation to do that. But also, not only do we have the internal evidence, we have external as well. External number one, we have an incredible preservation of what we call the New Testament, documents. The gospels, were written some 30 years after the resurrection. And some people would say, well, that's too that's too far. A lot can happen in 30 years that you're going to forget. Let me tell you what 30 years ago was, 1994 I was a freshman or sophomore in high school, and I have a lot of memories from those days. And you probably have a lot of memories too. And if you 30 years ago had followed the Son of God, Jesus Christ, for three years of your life, you wouldn't forget a lot of that stuff, those meaningful impacts would stay with you. Think if you've ever met a famous person, my father in law had a job where he met some famous people and played golf with them, and he can tell me every word they said in conversation 30 years later, because it had an impact on them. And so we have these preservation of the documents well, where they wrote down what happened. And then when you compare these New Testament documents with other historical documents, like the history of Julius Caesar or Homer's Iliad or Laodicea, they are 1000s more documents and accuracies of those than those ancient books. But no one doubts the historicity of those books, because those books don't claim that Jesus Christ is Lord and Savior, the most accurate preservation of documents of anything written in the ancient world, by far. Secondly, archeology in. One archeologist has said that it may be stated categorically that no archeological discovery has ever controverted a biblical reference. Scores of archeological findings have been made which confirm in clear outline or in exact detail historical statements in the Bible, and by the same token, proper evaluation of biblical descriptions has often led to amazing discoveries. The better archeology gets, the better science gets, Christianity is not disproved, it's buttressed and gives more and more credence to the claims. If you could disprove it, Lord, you would have heard about it by now. It would be all over the news. If this, what they call myth, could be disproved three extra biblical witness outside the Bible, you have 39 other sources that are not part of the Bible that people and historians wrote of more than 100 facts regarding the life and the teachings of Jesus, and this is not even counting the early church fathers who wrote tremendously and then in fourth the hostile environment for 2000 years, 2000 years, no one has come close. Jesus's resurrection has been on trial for 2000 years, and no one has been close, come close to making a credible case in disproving the resurrection. All they can say it's a is it's a it's a cover up, it's a conspiracy, it's a myth. Well, show me the evidence is a conspiracy. There is none, because it's not if they could, you better believe they would. At some point, upon honest investigation, we need to make a decision as to what we think about the empty tomb. And finally, number three, the empty tomb should cause us to believe. That's the purpose of it. That's why this is something just happened. It's to cause us to believe, to to understand just who God is, and the power that Jesus had, how he was fully God, but yet fully man. Verse eight. Then the other disciple, who, by the way, reached the tomb first, there he is again, John, just getting it in there again, also went in and saw and believed. For as yet, they did not understand the Scripture that he must rise from the dead. Then the disciples went back to their homes. John went in after Peter got in there and looked, and he looked and he saw and he believed. Now the fact that two men saw it gave credence to the claim under Jewish law that what they saw was true. They saw and believed. Now this week, you're going to have Thanksgiving. You're going to come across family members, people in your life that may not believe, and you might have a chance to talk with them. And I understand that that Thanksgiving is not a time where you want to talk politics or religion or college football, right? I understand that. But this situation is life or death, eternity is at stake, and maybe if you get a chance to talk about it, maybe the Lord opens up something conversation. Ask them, Have you ever really considered? Have you ever really investigated? Well, yeah, I've read parts of Have you ever really read the entire Gospel of John? Have you read all? Have you really read it in most of the cases? No, they have not heard some facts. They've heard of teaching. They've heard someone say, Well, you can't believe it, but if they ever actually investigated, maybe you can lovingly challenge someone in your life this week to investigate this claim, then get back with me and see what you think. See, it's not a head issue. A lot of times, keeping people from faith in Christ. It's a hard issue, because we know that that decision changes our entire life, and it scares people. The empty tomb should cause us to believe. Challenge them this week to read about the reality of the empty tomb so that they too may see and believe Heavenly Father as we close our time together today, I thank you for the. The people that you called to write your Bible, Holy Scripture, we thank you that it was your hand inspiring them, yet you allowed them to to have little intricacies of their own personality in there and these irrelevant details just underscore to a lot of us that this is true. And for 2000 years, people have wished it wasn't true. And Lord and wars have been fought over these kind of things. People have died for these matters of faith because they're so important. So Father, as we close our time together today, as we go into Thanksgiving, where a lot of us are out of our comfort zones and we're, we're, we're trying to be nice in our best behavior, and maybe we don't like the food, or maybe we eat too much that we look for opportunities, opportunities while we're sitting around and eating or watching football or whatever it is we're doing, to share with people the reality of them. Determine if there's one in here today that's never seriously considered, never seriously investigated. This truth, that this week they would and Lord, you would give them the grace to do so that they too would believe that your Son, Jesus Christ, through His death, through his burial and through His resurrection, took on the sins of the whole world and forgave those who would place their faith in Him, so that those who do would have their sins forgiven. They'd be made right with God, but they'd also have eternal life with you forever. That is your plan for mankind, Lord, and we thank you for that. And this Thanksgiving weekend, we give thanks to you for that plan of salvation, Lord. We love you. We ask these things in Jesus, name Amen.
