Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Resurrection Text from Luke 24

Found in Luke chapter 24. To the best of my remembrance, I don’t think I’ve preached on this particular resurrection text before, and that’s why I’ve chosen it. We’ve talked from John and Matthew in the last two years, and I wanted to use the resurrection text found in Luke 24. We’re mostly familiar with Luke 24 because of the road to Emmaus, which we talk about a lot in this church.

As I read this, I want you to listen carefully. I’m going to read a little more context than the verses on your outline—verses 1-10. I’m going to go back a little ways in chapter 23 with Joseph of Arimathea. And as I read this, I would like you to listen to see if you hear echoes of Christmas. We’re dealing with the end of Luke’s gospel, and there are connections—which I’ll talk about in a minute—to the beginning of Luke’s gospel.

There’s an arc: a beginning, a middle, and an end of the story. So I want you to listen to that. Please stand. I’m going to start reading in verse 50 of chapter 23, and I’m going to actually read through verse 12. That’ll give us a couple of men here as bookends to this story of women.

Luke 23, starting in verse 50. Now, listen children, particularly you children—listen for any hints of the Christmas story here.

“Now there was a man named Joseph from the Jewish town of Arimathea. He was a member of the council, a good and righteous man who had not consented to their decision and action, and he was looking for the kingdom of God. This man went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Then he took it down and wrapped it in a linen shroud and laid him in a tomb cut in stone where no one had ever yet been laid. It was the day of preparation, and the Sabbath was beginning.

The women who had come with him from Galilee followed and saw the tomb and how his body was laid. And then they returned and prepared spices and ointments. On the Sabbath they rested according to the commandment. But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they went to the tomb, taking the spices they had prepared, and they found the stone rolled away from the tomb. But when they went in, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus.

While they were perplexed about this, behold, two men stood by them in dazzling apparel. 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? He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you while he was still in Galilee that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified and on the third day rise.’

And they remembered his words. And returning from the tomb, they told all these things to the eleven and to all the rest. Now it was Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary the mother of James and the other women with them who told these things to the apostles. But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them. But Peter rose and ran to the tomb. Stooping and looking in, he saw the linen clothes by themselves, and he went home marveling at what had happened.”

Let’s pray.

Lord God, we want to join Peter, meditating and marveling on what had happened. We thank you for this text, Lord God. We pray that you would illuminate our understanding by your Holy Spirit. We thank you for the spirit—the power from on high—that was to bring back Christ’s words to his disciples. We thank you for that spirit that indwells us individually and congregationally as well. And we pray that the spirit would bring things of Jesus to us now.

Help us, Lord God, to meditate on what happened in this account 2,000 years ago and its significance for our lives. Cause us, Lord God, to go back to our homes today marveling, praising you with thanksgiving. In Jesus’ name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated.

You know, the two great feasts of the Christian calendar—the two great days—are the movable feast and the fixed feast. Easter is movable. It moves around. Christmas is fixed—December 25th. But those are the two great poles of the Christian calendar and of what the church has used for 2,000 years in terms of ordering its church year.

And as I was searching for music to put on at my house this morning—I like to put on music relevant to the sermon—you know, I thought to myself, Easter gets kind of short shrift. Now, I use the word Easter. I don’t think Easter comes from Ishtar. Okay, I think that’s a man who came up with that—came up with an awful lot of odd stuff. According to the Venerable Bede, the early historian of the English people, April was called Eostre month. Eostre was some kind of goddess or god of fertility, but the name Eostre originally apparently has connotation to meaning “dawn.” And so April is the time when the sun is getting brighter in the sky. It’s past the vernal equinox. And it was just like saying July 4th is Independence Day—Eostre month was named—but nobody really much knew about Eostre anymore. So Easter really has its roots to Eostre, and Bede makes clear that it’s no big deal. We’re not calling up some pagan deity if we use the word Easter. It’s good to call it Resurrection Sunday, Christian Passover—all that stuff’s great. But you know, don’t feel bad if Easter slips out of your mouth on occasion.

In our culture, you know, Easter—there’s a recognition of it. The stock market closed on Good Friday. There’s more of a recognition on the East Coast. But you know, Christmas time is a wonderful, joyous time of the year, isn’t it? I mean, we have all kinds of cool Christian songs and carols, and the whole world sort of bursts into song. We’ve got the Messiah being sung by all kinds of people—hypocritically, no doubt. But maybe the Lord God uses it in their lives. We don’t really have that with Easter. About all we have with Easter is the Easter Parade song that I always remember—you know, Bing Crosby in your Easter bonnet with all the frills upon it. The Easter parade processional. Peter Cottontail, right? We’ve got that one too. But we don’t really have a lot of great cultural hymns about Easter.

I suppose one reason for that is that non-Christians—people that don’t really believe in Jesus—you know, the little baby born, that’s pretty non-threatening. It’s kind of cute and sentimental, and gosh, that’s neat, you know, and we can kind of get behind it. But the risen Savior—with, of course, the immediate reminder of his crucifixion on the cross and then his risen power and authority—well, you know, this is a little more intimidating. I think Easter is a little more intimidating—or should be—to all people as we meditate upon it.

And as I said, if you look at this text we just looked at, there’s some interesting echoes of Christmas here. Did you notice some of them? For instance, the big obvious one: at the beginning of Luke’s gospel, you’ve got angels announcing Jesus and his incarnation. And at the end of Luke’s gospel, you’ve got angels here. These two men dressed in lightning. It’s kind of what the word means—flashing appearance. I saw a Peter Gabriel concert on TV, and he had some weird suit on that had light kind of things. And I thought to myself, you know, as great as our technology is, we can’t really portray a guy flashing like lightning like these guys were. This was overwhelming.

So you’ve got these two angels with appearance flashing like lightning from heaven. You see power and strength. They announce the resurrection: “He is risen. He’s not among the dead.” So you’ve got angels at the beginning and end of Luke’s gospel, and you’ve got a Mary and a Joseph. Did you notice that? Sort of interesting. You know, Mary and Joseph—of course, Jesus’s parents (adopted father at the beginning). And we’ve got different Marys—you know, we don’t have Mary, the mother of Jesus, by name specifically. We’ve got two Marys in there with a Joanna in between, and I’ll get to that later. It’s another nice little benefit of preaching this text. I get to think about my daughter Joanna quite a bit because here’s a text where her name is found.

But you’ve got a couple of men, and you’ve got a Joseph if you look at the whole story of the women with men on either side of them. You’ve got Joseph of Arimathea too. So as the book comes to its conclusion, we’ve got a new Joseph and new Mary, and I think that he gives us these names to textually do this kind of arc—moving ahead. You know, Joseph: we know from Matthew’s gospel that by the time you read Luke, by the time Luke was written, Matthew and Mark had been published. People knew him. And Matthew tells us that Joseph didn’t believe the report of his wife. And what do we have at the end of the story? We’ve got, you know, another guy who won’t believe the story of a woman—another Mary. And this is Peter. The apostles don’t believe it. Men don’t get real good commendations in this tale, right? They’re dense and denser. I think that’s one sermon title I saw for this part of scripture.

The women are dense enough, not realizing Jesus is a Revener. And denser: they don’t even listen to what the women had to say. I guess I don’t know. But I read that at this time in Judaism, women were not allowed—were not competent witnesses. And it’s, I don’t know, you know, there’s lots of reasons why God has women at the tomb in all four gospels, who are the witnesses and witnesses to the men as well. And maybe that’s part of it. Part of it, of course, is women represent the church and all that, but part of it may be kind of an in-your-face to pagan or even cultures like ours that tend to want to elevate men to the extent not of their calling or function, but rather in terms of their ability—supposedly more than women. And this is ridiculous, of course.

The problem that these disciples have at the end of the little story we read is the same problem most husbands have: they don’t listen to the women. And the scriptures over and over again affirm to us the importance of women in our lives.

So there’s a little bit of that going on, but it kind of ties back to Joseph’s not listening to a woman, and then the apostles don’t listen to the woman.

You’ve got some tombs, right? We know that Jesus was placed in a side of a hill, kind of like a tomb. And the tomb is a real big deal in all the resurrection accounts, including this one. It’s mentioned over and over again. So you kind of have, you know, the incarnation and then the resurrection happening—the birth rather happening in the context of the tomb—and of course you’ve got references to Mary’s womb. So these associations set up between womb and tomb, and so this kind of connects these stories as well.

And of course it’s interesting because we like the incarnation and think of that as neat and everything, but if you think about it, Jesus is born—comes out of that womb—to suffer and die, right? That womb is a womb that’s going to lead to his mission and purpose and calling to suffer and die for us. He comes out of the tomb no longer to suffer and die.

I mean, I think we can make a pretty good case that Easter is the high holy holiday of the Christian church. And if one’s going to get, you know, more songs and more attention and more joy, it’s got to be Easter. I mean, it’s so—and there’s a reversal that’s going on here, right? The womb is the place of life, and yet Jesus is going to come out to suffer and die. And you know, for those of us who understand circumcision, that suffering begins on the eighth day. Well, it begins on his delivery. But eighth-day bloodletting of our Savior begins and goes on for thirty years until his suffering on the cross.

But here at the end, it’s a reversal. What’s a tomb, not a womb, becomes the womb. It becomes the source of resurrection life. This is where Jesus is first raised up—in the context of that tomb-womb.

So the story moves ahead through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. If the birth is kind of reminiscent of creation, this new life from this new tomb—by the way, like Mary’s womb, it was a tomb that had not had anybody put in it before. It was a virgin tomb, right? Another connection you may have noticed when we read about it. Probably some of you noticed things I didn’t notice. There’s lots of connections.

But you know, now this tomb gives way to a new birth, new creation. Now, the reason why I read the account that I did is it talks about the end of the Sabbath. They rest on the last Sabbath, really, of the world. And then the story moves toward the empty tomb with the first day of the new week. There’s this transition from old creation to new creation. And that’s seen in this tomb now, which is the place where Jesus is raised up and the world becomes alive. The new creation happens in the context of the tomb or womb, whatever you might want to think of it as.

So birth and rebirth—there are it’s interesting because in the beginning of Luke’s gospel, time is talked about, you know. The Luke story is the one we know best—the Christmas story—from you, talk about Augustus. So time is measured in the context of the old world and the old emperor of the world. But now time is used again. There’s a time reference, but the time reference now has specifically to do with this transition from Sabbath to new life and resurrection.

So lots of little connections—echoes, we may say—of the Christmas story here in this context. And of course I read with emphasis for you young kids particularly: What did Joseph of Arimathea do with Jesus’s body? Put it in linen wrappings. What does the Christmas story tell us in Luke 2? Jesus is put in swaddling clothes. So at his birth, death, and rebirth—the recreation of the world, his resurrection—we have these swaddling clothes that kind of match up these stories as well.

So you see, the resurrection accounts, when seen in the context of Luke—for instance, the arc of a book—has a lot more freight going on to it. It’s the completion of the Christmas account, and that’s the way Luke’s gospel moves. It’s got interesting twists and turns to it, doesn’t it?

You know, whether we’re reading in Luke or Matthew or John, weird stuff happens that third day after he died. And that’s, you know, repeated emphasis in the text: third day. And “third day” is a phrase that’s used three times in Luke chapter 24. It’s the day of resurrection—three days up. But you know, strange things happen. You know, they go to the tomb, he’s not there. Peter sees the clothes. You know, and for the other accounts, we know that Mary sees a gardener, thinks it’s a gardener during—actually it’s Jesus. Strange things happen that morning.

And I don’t know, you know, probably most of you don’t do Easter egg hunts and all that sort of stuff, but it’s the same kind of thing. You get up early in the morning—which is what Easter means: dawn, the crack of light—and you go out expecting to find things, and what you find is different. It’s not where you think it might be. Or maybe your parents have hid something special or different for you. Well, that’s kind of like this is. They get up at the crack of dawn thinking one thing, but the story takes a completely different direction for them.

So you know, all that by way of—we’ll look now briefly at the individual account. We’ll go through kind of the outline I provided you. The outline doesn’t take into account the Joseph and Peter bookends, but I threw those in because of the connections. But let’s work our way through now the—the way I’ve structured the particular text, the narrative of the women at the tomb. I’ve structured it in seven parts.

For you younger kids, you know, there’s this nice coloring sheet. You know, and it kind of tells the story, right? Two men—not one, not three. In Luke’s account, it’s two. And they’re in bright, flashy clothing, aren’t they? Now, earlier in Luke’s gospel, this same word has been used as lightning. That’s why I say it’s like lightning clothing to them. See, we can’t really reproduce it. It’s spectacular what these guys look like.

But there’s two. It’s interesting too because Luke, earlier in his gospel, has two men who get kind of transformed on the Mount of Transfiguration. Two men up there, right? Moses and Elijah. And then in the ascension account, there’ll be two men there as well witnessing to that. Luke—he seems to have this coupling up thing going on. And maybe that’s because Luke is this gospel to the Gentiles. This is a gospel of testimony, a witness to Christ. So these twos are all over the place in Luke’s gospel. But we sort of want to remember these main events in Jesus’s life, from Luke’s pen, have these two shining guys with him.

And you’ve got a couple of women. Now, actually, there are three named women at the end of our text, but I—this I didn’t draw this. I would have put three or maybe four or five. But three. So three named, but here we have two. And they’ve got these spices, ointments that they were going to put on the body to spice him up.

Jesus has been spiced, of course, for his death, right? He’d been embalmed. He’d been prepared for his burial a week ahead by being anointed. He was going to come out of that tomb even without these women doing their job. It had already happened. He’s going to come out smelling like a bridegroom. That’s the picture from the Song of Solomon. So the perfume shows their service, their love, their commitment to Jesus, and it shows him being the bridegroom. And he’ll raise up—when he raised up, certainly in his resurrection appearances, he smelled really good, I think, is what we can infer from that—another connection back to Christmas, right? Because at his birth, you know, they bring frankincense. So they bring spices to him at birth, and we have these women with spices at the end. So you young people can kind of look at that picture and meditate on that and maybe color it or whatever.

And now we’re going to go on and talk specifically about the sections of this text. We’re going to talk about the sections of this text in some detail—a little more detail than we’ve done up to now.

And so the way I’ve arranged it, you know, is it starts with these women going to the tomb. It ends at these women coming back from the tomb. You know, when they go to the tomb, what happens? They get perplexed when they get to the tomb, right? And in their perplexity, then the angelic messengers appear to them in dazzling array. And then they bow down, seeing these two angels. They get frightened. They fall down.

And this probably isn’t—they maybe this is after the angels started speaking or maybe this is just all wrong. They really ought to just be prostrate as the angels are talking to them. They’re in a position of submission. They’re reverential to this message that’s being given to them. So and then after that happens, then these wonderful shining garments of the men are matched with some incredible words that we’re going to look at in a couple of minutes.

And the women then—they’re not perplexed anymore. They move from being perplexed to remembering what Jesus said and interpreting the events of the day based on the word of the Savior. And this happens as a result of their submission to these wonderful providences—these shining angels in front of them—and their submission to the words that those heavenly messengers bring. And that’s what moves them from being perplexed when they get there to now remembering and no longer being perplexed.

They go to the tomb on a mission. Their devotion and commitment to Jesus is what makes all this happen. Their love for Jesus is what brings these spectacular things into their life. What a lesson in that for us! You want those neat things to happen to you? You want to move from perplexity to understanding the events in your life based on the word of God? It begins with service and love for Jesus. You see, they love Jesus, and it’s in that love they go to him, and they leave understanding—having the words assured to them again of his resurrection. They leave knowing that Jesus has been raised up, and they immediately attend to a mission, don’t they? They immediately—they don’t just go back to their homes. They go back and tell the eleven and tell Peter what happened.

Now, you know, like all fallen men, the men, you women are at that thing again. You know, it’s the way men are. Sorry, women. That’s just the way it is in our fallen state. We shouldn’t be like that. We’ll try hard not to be like that, but that’s what happens. But see, it’s their love now for the body of Jesus Christ, the church, that’s driving them to speak. Even though they probably know these guys are going to think we’re nuts, it’s their love for Jesus’s body—dead body they think—that moves them toward this. And it’s their love for the body of Jesus Christ, the church represented by the eleven here, that drives them to go back on a mission, even though their mission is going to be rejected.

So it’s a nice, you know, easily understood Easter morning story filled with significance for us.

Let’s just talk a little bit more about the detail, okay?

First of all, the women: unnamed women go to the tomb. So they’re not named here, okay? They’re going to move at the end of the story. Their names are going to be given, but for now they’re unnamed. We could see undifferentiated. Their names and their identities are given at the end when their mission is complete.

Now these are women who are on a mission already. They love Jesus. They have this great commitment for him. And we’ve got to understand that they’re doing this—as we said before—in this transition point. These women are devout. They love Jesus. They love the law. They kept the Sabbath. That’s what the last verse of the previous chapter said, right? They kept the Sabbath. And now they’re keeping, as it were, the first—the new, the Christian Sabbath.

This transition is marked as well. The text is definitely showing us in this transition from the last Sabbath, really, to the beginning of the new week at the crack of dawn—Easter, right? At the crack of dawn, the new world has come. There’s a new creation these women are going to walk into. And you’ve got to cut them a little slack about their being perplexed. Walking into a new creation is different. Things look a little different. Things don’t happen quite like you expect them to happen.

So these women are moving. They’re transitioning, or God is moving them rather. You know, Friday night we had the Good Friday service, and we had the strophe, right? You—if you were hearing the strophe, that’s that big earthquake noise. And we were going to cut it out this year because we’ve never been able to make it effective. And finally we thought, well, we’ve got a sound guy. He’s good at what he does. He’ll find the sound. And he did. And I heard it. I wasn’t here Friday night. I was ill. But I heard it on Thursday when I was here, and it sounded very good.

Well, the reason why we decided to include it was because, as I look back on traditional Tenebrae services—Tenebrae means darkening. Seven words of Christ, candles get darker. As I look back on those, they always had the strophe. It was a big part of it. Tolling of the bells—that was kind of optional—but the strophe, the earthquake, was a big deal. Why? Because the earthquake happened on Good Friday. Mel Gibson’s movie The Passion did such a great job of this. It wasn’t some little localized earthquake. The dead come up. They’re raised up in the context of that earthquake. They’re awakened from the dead. It’s a little preliminary picture of the resurrection of Christ in the world.

And an earthquake is God’s way of throwing away old notes. You know, I’ve used this illustration before. You know, I’ve got paper, paper, paper. It’s all printed out on these big fonts. So I’ve got lots of paper at home Saturday night, and I got to throw out some. And I’m getting old. I’m getting confused. Well, is this the pile I’m going to throw away? Is this the stuff? You know what? So what I do is—the stuff I’m going to throw away—typically I just rip it in two. Now I know it’s going to the garbage heap. Well, that’s what an earthquake is. It’s kind of like God ripping the world in two. He’s doing away with it, and he’s moving toward the new creation. That’s kind of the picture of the earthquake noise. And that’s why it’s so important on Good Friday—that the death of the Lord Jesus Christ accomplishes what’s now happening: this new world that these women walk in the context of.

So these unnamed women—they go to the tomb, the place of death that we know is actually the place now of life. They go ministering to the Lord Jesus Christ. And you know, as I said, if you walk away from here with what—how do I apply this? You get to understand: from perplexity, as you move forward serving Jesus. It’s your love and commitment to Jesus that provides a degree of understanding the events in your life. And if you’re perplexed and have problems, if you have manifestations of difficulties in you, I know I do—lots of them—problems all the time—how are we to understand them? Well, you don’t get there if you’re not moving toward Jesus. That’s the little illustration we could use of these women. They’re ministering to him, okay?

Now, this isn’t where they started ministering. Way back early in Luke’s gospel, these women start ministering to Jesus. And it says that they ministered to him out of their own substance. In other words, they had their money that they gave to Jesus for his purposes. You know, for years now, they’ve been ministering to him. See, so these women—not only were they servants of Jesus, representing the church. We all should serve Christ with everything we’ve got, right? The part for the whole. We give tithes to Christ. We give some offerings. He really has it all. Though all—we’re all of our money is given for devotion to Jesus, our love to him. We do that stuff. And not only were they ministers to Christ in love and had piety for him, they were finishers.

We talked about this a couple years ago in John’s gospel when Jesus throws back the head and gives the victory cry: “It is finished.” Now, I know we normally think “it’s finished.” But you know, the same word can be used and—to parallel it with the other gospel accounts of the death on the cross—seems like he’s got to be shouting that out: “It is finished.” What’s finished? The work of bringing about a new world through dying for the sins of his people, okay? And so it’s finished. Jesus is a finisher. He didn’t go halfway. He went all the way.

These women are Christian disciples. They’re finishers. They’re not going to stop ministering to Jesus even at his death. They’re going to go and finish their work of ministering to him by anointing his body with spices. Children, Jesus wants you to be a finisher. He wants you to be like Mary and Joanna and the other Mary. When mom and dad give you a task, don’t do it halfway. Jesus is a finisher. Jesus’s people rather are finishers. They finish the task.

So that’s the women. They’re finishing their task of ministering to Jesus as they move toward the tomb.

Then the next part of the outline—which I’ve immediately misplaced, thought, here we go. Okay, the next part of the outline: the women are perplexed by the empty tomb. And as I said, it’s kind of like the story “dense and denser.” But the gospel accounts seem to say that these things are sort of hidden from God’s people. We don’t want to be too hard on them, but it does seem odd to us that they don’t realize he was going to be raised up. Jesus had told him over and over again, and the angels are going to remind him of that.

But there’s a perplexity to them. And you know, here again, this can kind of help us in our life. Our lives are filled, to some degree, with perplexity. There are all kinds of things that trouble us. And the major one, of course, is death. As we get older—got a ninety-two-year-old lady here today. I’m fifty-five. I’m getting older. The body starts to die more and more. Jesus is telling us, “Don’t plan on making it in this body. You’re going to need a new body, which Jesus will give you as you believe on him,” okay?

So there are perplexities. Why is my body getting old? There are things we want. We want better bodies. Even if you’re young, you get sick. And there’s just stuff that happens in our lives that’s perplexing. So automatically we can kind of connect with these women. They come to the tomb, and as they come to this tomb, they’re sort of perplexed.

By the way, in verse 2, we read that they found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in, they didn’t see the body of the Lord Jesus. And then as they were perplexed, something happens. Well, it might mean nothing to you, but this little phrase—”Lord Jesus”—this is the only place it happens in Luke’s gospel. Twenty-four chapters. Only place he uses “Lord Jesus.” He uses “Lord,” he uses “the Lord Jesus.” You know how many times Luke used that expression in Acts, in the book of Acts? Seventeen times. It’s not that he didn’t like the expression, but somehow the text wants us to connect the saving aspect and the lordship of Jesus Christ together after he’s done all that stuff that he came to earth to do. After he’s suffered and died for our sins. Then is the first time that Luke refers to him as “Lord Jesus”—Savior and Lord.

Jesus dies for us as our Savior. And based on that death, he commands us as our Lord. Men and moms, functional superiors. You know, the model of Jesus is service to the people that he commands. He is Lord. Dads are lords of their home. Moms are lords over the kids. You know, but he’s Lord Jesus. And this is used, as I said, in reference directly after he dies on the cross for our sins. He serves those that he’s going to command.

So these women, like us, are perplexed about the particular acts of providence that they encounter. Now, it’s an empty tomb. They don’t understand what’s going on. But we share their perplexity about the simple acts of providence that we walk in the context of. You know, I’m perplexed. I’m flying. I’m doing the Lord’s work. I’m in Atlanta. I get to the concourse. There’s no electricity for hours and hours and hours. I’m diabetic. I plan to have my food there because I’m going to get low blood sugar otherwise. Well, there’s no food service because everything is electronic, and they’re not selling any food. There’s no bathrooms. If you have any medical conditions or require a little few more trips to the bathroom, you’re out of luck too, because the bathrooms don’t have any water pressure. Big concourse. Atlanta airport. This is where—that’s why I didn’t make the first meeting I was supposed to make in Bristol, Virginia a couple weeks ago.

Hot. The air conditioning is off. They occasionally open the doors, you know, let a little air in. It’s hot, crowded. They move you from gate to gate for three or four hours. Then they finally say your flight’s cancelled. Go over to a different concourse. You know, it was interesting because people were so patient for three or four hours—and they thought the plane was going to be leaving in half an hour—and then when it was cancelled, all broke loose. Now all the four-letter words start flying. And myself and Patch, one of the elders from Trinity, who had we connected up by this time—when we go to the C concourse, we’re thinking of Easter because we’ve been in this dead concourse with no food, virtually no light, you know, masked in together with sweaty people—and we go to the C concourse. We take this escalator up, and we smell food, we see light—resurrection, man. This is great.

But you know, until that time, for three or four hours, I’m perplexed. I’m doing your work, God. I’m a diabetic. Don’t you understand these things? I mean, I don’t actually—I wouldn’t have the incredible stupidity or whatever—to admit these things. But that’s what that’s what tempts us. We—and if we’re not going to be bitter or complaining, we at least become perplexed about the providences that God brings into our lives.

And that’s what these women do. Well, God answers their perplexity. And it says in verse 4 that behold, two men stood by them in dazzling apparel. So we’ve got a double witness here of something going on. And their garments are like lightning. Now, there, you know, I don’t think the women’s perplexity has cleared up at this point. They’ve gone from perplexed to probably more perplexed. Now, what’s going on? We’ve got lightning-garbed guys speaking to us. So you know, it can get a little more tough in the perplexity area rather before we move toward understanding.

But the women’s response to this—and I don’t know, you know, I hope I’m not making too much of this. I’m using it as an illustration. But the text says that as they were frightened and bowed their faces to the ground, the men spoke to them. As they were frightened, bowed down their faces to the ground, then the men speak. Now, you know, if you see two men dressed in lightning, you’re probably going to fall down. But I’m using at least it as an illustration application. For us, in the midst of perplexing circumstances, the way we’re going to move to understanding what’s going on is a submission to the strange providences of God.

And I don’t know what causes them to go down, but I do know that this is a typical position of submission and reverence for God and his messengers. These women became submissive to the special providences of God. And it’s in that state of submission that things turned—that’s what brings the turning point to them. That’s what moves them from perplexity to remembering. That’s what moves them from going on a mission that they can’t fulfill to going on a lot better mission that they can fulfill.

You see, they’re moved that way because they submit to the special providences of God on that early Easter day. And they hear then God’s interpretation of their events. So the women fear and they bow down. At the center of this narrative, I think, is reverence. At the heart of this resurrection narrative: reverence and submission is what moves the women ahead. So reverence is what’s going to prepare them to hear the words of the angels. At least submission. It’s going to prepare them to hear the words. It’s going to produce understanding. They’re going to remember some things because of that, and they’ll be able to really finish—to really complete—their mission.

So now the men start to speak, and you know, as glorious as it is to think of men before us flashing like lightning, their words are more spectacular than that visual image. At least in my way of thinking, their words are even more spectacular. And we could spend a lot of time talking about them. We won’t. But they say some pretty amazing things.

What do they say? They said to them, “Why do you seek the living among the dead?” Why do you seek the living among the dead? That’s a spectacular word. That’s a word that should bring clarity to people that are perplexed and not understanding their trials and tribulations. Maybe some of you today go through your lives not really thinking about Jesus much or not living your life for Jesus, not believing in him as the resurrected Lord. Yeah, you like him as, you know, as the Christmas baby, but as the resurrected Lord of power and strength who is going to send people to heaven and hell—this is a little less nice to be around him. And maybe in your perplexity, you know, life is frustrating to you. And I tell you that one reason why people get perplexed and frustrated is because they’re seeking life where there is only death. Why do you seek the living among the dead?

The immediate reference, of course, is you’re in a graveyard. Jesus said he’d be raised up. He’s not going to be here anymore. He’s gone, right? This is the place of the dead. He’s living. But by way of application, this world is cycling down fast because they’re seeking life, joy, knowledge, strength, fulfillment in the places of the dead. You know, they’re seeking life by turning to philosophies. They’re seeking life by turning to a dead Jesus—treating Jesus like a Greek hero who still is in tombs somewhere, who wasn’t really raised up in power and authority and is the Lord of all things and the second person in the Trinity. No, they treat Jesus as a historical figure who died, was a real guy. And so they seek life among a dead Jesus by looking to his teachings and influences rather than seeking the living Christ who is the Lord of all creation.

Even Jesus can become part of your scheme to get life from the dead. We’re going to eat stuff here. We’re going to eat dead food—bread that died. You go, we’re going to have the Easter feast. These animals died long ago. You’re seeking life among the dead. That’s why we give God thanks and say, “Please make it living. Make it helpful to us because we know that apart from the grace of God, that dead stuff can’t nurture us.” But we don’t know that so well about the philosophies of the world, about our attempts to fix our problems.

So often we turn to the philosophies of the world as a way to get fulfillment, joy, knowledge, and God says you’re seeking the living among the dead. The world is in opposition to Jesus Christ by and large right now. And when we seek the counsel of the world on matters, you know, then what we’re doing is we’re going to the dead and seeking life. You fill in the blanks. What in your life is dead that you’re seeking life from? I’m sure there’s a bunch of stuff.

Discipline is, you know, discipline apart from obedience to the Lord Jesus Christ is a dead thing. There’s no character traits. They’re going to make you better people ultimately. There’s a character of all time: the Lord Jesus Christ, who will give you his character by power of the spirit. And I’m not saying you don’t try to work on those things, but character apart from Christ is one of those dead things and can’t give you life and won’t move you from perplexity to understanding.

So the angel gives a wonderful word here that could be the motto the rest of our lives: “Lord God, help me not today to seek life by going to the dead things of the world.” Could be the motto for living. So he tells them that, and then he says “He is not here, but he has risen.”

Well, this is it. This is the resurrection—Easter announcement. This is what we’re here rejoicing today—because of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, the producing of the new creation. The tomb has become in fact a womb, and the whole world has been brought to new life in Jesus Christ.

So the second part of their message is the wondrous story of the risen Lord Jesus Christ.

The third part of their message is a commandment to remember. “Remember how he told you while he was still in Galilee.” They call the women to remember. People that are helpful to us in times of perplexity will urge us to remember the words of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, if you don’t know the words, you can’t remember them. So the implication here is that you’re supposed to know the word of Jesus. You’ve got to know the Bible to remember that Bible and how it applies to your particular perplexity, right? So behind this immediate application is a better knowledge of Jesus’s word—not just in the Gospels, but certainly there. Well, they’re called to remember because they did know the Bible.

What did he tell them when he was still in Galilee? “That the Son of Man must be—not the Son of Man will be, or maybe will, or decided to. The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified and on the third day rise.”

Now, what was Jesus saying? Well, I know this is going to happen. Those ungodly men are so powerful. No. Acts—Luke, same author, in Acts—tells us that Jesus was handed over by the predetermined foreknowledge of the sovereign God of all things. He must because this was the will of the Father, and Jesus came to do the will of the Father. Jesus must because God had ordained this.

Now he must be delivered over. Sinful men have their responsibility. And in Acts he tells them you bear responsibility. You killed this guy. Even though it’s the sovereignty of God at work in bringing this to pass, he uses your sin sinlessly. Still you have your responsibility. And Jesus is delivered over.

Well, this is really good. Because it means to us that every difficulty is now defined by this tremendous difficulty. The crucifixion of the Son of Glory is actually happening. Yes, sinfully by men. They’re at work. But ultimately, the sovereignty of God is saying, “This must happen.” You know, it sounds stupid, but I was at a dinner with my brother Mike and Greg Bots and some other guys years ago—long before, you know, when Greg was here at a Geneva conference—and I was cutting a dinner roll and I sliced my finger with the bread knife. It was really sharp. Big gash in my finger. My brother Mike immediately says, “You know what a good Calvinist says about that, don’t you?” And I say, “No, what?” “I’m glad that’s over. It had to happen.”

Well, that’s true. You see, whatever perplexity we’re in because of sin or our stupidity, our own actions, whatever it is, we can know that the sovereign God is working out his ordained decree, okay? So we can trust in that. Jesus must. But that of course is not the ultimate reason why Jesus must be delivered and be crucified and on the third day rise.

He must because if Jesus doesn’t die for our sins, we’re not cleansed of those sins. We’re all going to hell. God says that if you’re a sinner—if you’ve sinned—well, and actually you are, the Adamic imputation of Adam’s sin is enough, but then you each sin as well by not serving God wholeheartedly. Those sins will send you to hell—eternal punishment. The scriptures are quite clear about this. And if Jesus hadn’t died for our sins, there’d be no redemption. There’d be no new world. There’d be no from—tomb becoming a womb. No, be none of that.

Jesus had to die for our sins. Romans makes that very clear—that Jesus died for our sins. And Romans also makes clear that’s not enough. He was raised for our justification. He must need be delivered and crucified and die because your sins would not be remitted if that hadn’t happened. But if all he did was that and took away your zero, you need a positive righteousness to get into heaven.

So Jesus was raised for our justification—means lots of things. It means that God declares that he is the faithful one. He has suffered, you know, faithfully, sinlessly, all that stuff for us. It is that declaration by God of our right state with him—that all of our enemies are his enemies now, etc. It all is all that—but certainly it’s also the imputation of the positive righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ to us. Without the resurrection—Jesus just died for our sins—that doesn’t merit us entrance into heaven. He must be raised back up because in that resurrection, Romans tells us, he was raised up for our justification—for our justification. He grants us his righteousness.

So the angels say some neat stuff here—some core, elemental truth. And this stuff here that I just talked about, this is repeated several times in Luke’s gospel and then in Acts again as well. This is the core. This is the gospel message: that Jesus died for sinners and was raised for their justification. And again, it’s the third day. It’s the day of resurrection. It’s the day of new creation.

All right. So the angels have this wonderful message that they take to the women. And the women then—based on these words, okay?—the angels have not brought any new word, have they? They’ve not said, “Well, you need more divine revelation.” No. All they do is point back to what Jesus said, okay? Now, that’s important too, because in a couple more places in chapter 24—Road to Emmaus, then Jesus appearing to them in the final scene of Luke’s gospel—in both places, what does Jesus do? He teaches them how all the Bible, all the Old Testament, talked of him. He calls them to remember his words—not just when he was with them, but his words in the Old Testament as well.

So the angels are not bringing new message. You don’t need something new to move you from perplexity to understanding and better service. What you need is to have God’s word applied to your situation—to understand its relevance to your particular situation. And on the basis of that, then verse 8 rather—”and they remembered his words.”

It brings them to this remembrance. That’s our job with each other. This is really nouthetic counseling. Cypionone was here last week. George Cypionone, great guy. You know, biblical counseling just means using the Bible to cause people to remember what the Bible says about the state that they’re in—whether it’s their sins, how they got there, whatever it is. The scriptures have the answer. The scriptures point to Jesus, and Jesus is the answer to our problems. And the scriptures—remembered interpreting our situation based on the whole word of God. Really, that’s all, you know, nouthetic counseling or biblical counseling is.

And that’s our job. That’s how we—one another, one another—is we bring each other to remembrance of how the scriptures, what God’s word, what Jesus said about the situation we’re in. You see, so we’re moved from perplexity to understanding, not through some new word.

What is the Holy Spirit’s job? He takes Christ and ministers him to us. How does the Holy Spirit work? The spirit works by means of the word. The spirit of God is ministered to one another or by the word directly to us. And that word then interprets our situation. And the spirit brings light then to us in applying the word of Christ to us.

So they’re moved ahead. Returning now. So now the narrative comes to its conclusion. Now they’re returning from the tomb. What—before we move on, one last thing about this word.

God has always—from the beginning chapters of the Bible through the prophets onto the end—he always uses providence, actions around us, interpreted by his word, as what brings men to maturation. Look at the prophetic books. Things are going on, and the prophets are helping God’s people understand the things that are going on. They bring God’s word. So God is using providences that would cause us perplexity otherwise combined with the prophetic word of Christ to interpret those things—to bring us to resurrection joy and fulfilled service.

And that’s what they immediately do. They then leave the tomb and move back. And here the women rather are named. And I kind of like it. If you look at verse 9: “Returning from the tomb, they told all these things to the eleven. They told them to the eleven and to all the rest. Now it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Mary the mother of James and the other women with them who told these things to the apostles.”

You’ve got a kind of a cute little chiasmus there, right? They told these things, they told these things. The rest, the rest. We have three women named: Mary, Jo, Joanna, and Mary. And so Joanna is kind of at the center of this feminine form of John. And basically what it means is God is graciously gifts us—God is a gracious giver is one way to translate the name Joanna.

Now Joanna was a giver, wasn’t she? She was a giver of her substance. She and more than that, she probably gave her reputation. She was explicitly named earlier in Luke’s gospel as the wife of Herod’s steward. Now it couldn’t have been good for her reputation, health, and well-being to become a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ, coming out of the house of Herod. So she gave self-sacrificially just to follow Jesus. And then she gave of her means—of the money that she had—to minister to him. She’s a gracious giver to Christ. And God then names—or God tells us then this name that reminds us that really she’s a gracious giver because Christ has graciously given her life.

So Joanna is sort of the heart of the story. Mary, you know, is kind of a word that goes back to bitterness. There’s joy through bitterness kind of thing. And they’re on either bookends of these three named women, but right at the center is this wonderful name that reminds me of my daughter. But you primarily here in the text, you know, God is this gracious giver. He has given these women mission and purpose. They fulfill their mission. You know, they were named at the beginning of their ministry. Now they’re named at the very end. And they finished, by the grace of God, the task they’ve been called to do.

And now instead of ministering to the dead body of Jesus, they’re in the resurrection power of the Holy Spirit and of Christ, and now they’re ministering to the body of the church. May God grant us at this Easter season the joy of these marvelous things that are recorded for us here in the context of Luke’s gospel. May he help us to see in our particular difficulties his providences at play. May he grant us to be ministers to one another. Even as those angelic messengers came, may we be that to one another, encouraging each other to remember the scriptures—that what looks like the darkest hour is actually the brightest moment of all history.

You know, there’s this tale told: when June 18th, 1815, the battle of Waterloo, the French under the command of Napoleon were fighting the allies—the British, the Dutch, and the Germans—under the command of Wellington. People of England depended on a system of semaphores, you know, Morse codes so to speak, signals to find out how the battle went. So the signal starts coming through, right? And the Morse code says: “Wellington defeated.” And England goes south. They go sad. They go dark. Wellington lost. This is a bad deal. Napoleon won.

But what had happened was the fog had come up, and they didn’t see the rest of the story—and the rest of the message was: “Wellington defeated the enemy.”

So they were in the dark throws of despair until they realized fog—and the fog lifts—and they get the full message, and they’re moved from perplexity and despair and sadness to bright hope. What looked like the darkest hour was actually the brightest moment. The enemy? Not only had they not been defeated, but they had defeated the enemy. Jesus—the darkest moment for these women, looks like Jesus is defeated. But no, Jesus actually defeated the enemy.

May God grant us the grace in our times of perplexity and difficulty to remember: we’re only seeing half the message. Wellington defeated. But in the grace of God, as we apply his word, we’ll see the rest of the message of the providences that God brings into our life. Jesus has defeated the enemy.

Let’s pray.

Father, we thank you for this day of victory and resurrection. We thank you for this wonderful season. We thank you for Luke’s gospel, and we thank you, Lord God, that you have moved us from being perplexed about things to clarity by remembering your word. Help us to keep this word at the center of our being. May your spirit, Lord God, minister to us individually. And may we be messengers to each other, exhorting and encouraging each other to finish the task you’ve given us, knowing indeed that your bright hand of victory, blessing, and resurrection strength is upon us.

Cause us, Lord God, to be people that remember your word—to interpret the events. Help us, more than anything else, to flee from the sources of death and to seek life through the one who is the living one, the Lord Jesus Christ. In his name we ask it. Amen.