Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals

Eric Alexander: Well, we arrive this evening at John’s account of the resurrection in the 20th chapter and the remainder of John’s Gospel, which we will be considering in these coming one or two Sunday evenings. It is, of course, taken up with the account that John gives us of the resurrection of Jesus in chapters 20 and 21. Just as you discover that John provides us with a unique account of the life and ministry of Jesus and with a unique account of the death of Jesus with a particular purpose in everything that he records for us, so, as you would almost expect, John has a unique account of the resurrection with particular concentration upon certain things.

In fact, he covers the story of the resurrection in three groups of two stories, and you will see that very clearly in these two chapters. Two of them are at the tomb, and they are in the first half of chapter 20: the account of the disciples coming to the tomb and Jesus appearing to Mary. Two of these are in the upper room, and they are the second pair of stories. They come in the second half of chapter 20. Two are at the lakeside, what John calls the Sea of Tiberias, and they are in chapter 21: first the miraculous catch of fish and then Jesus' encounter with Simon Peter.

It is of great significance that in each of these three pairs of stories, in the second case, Jesus is ministering to some troubled and needy individual. Have you noticed this? In the first case, it is Mary, and he dries her tears of sorrow. In the second case, it is Thomas, and he dispels his doubts and brings him to faith. In the third case, it’s Peter, brokenhearted because of his failure, and Jesus restores him to himself and to service and to usefulness.

Now, very clearly, John is telling us in his account of the resurrection that though the Lord Jesus has ascended from the grave and is now the conquering victor over death, he is still the one who, by his mighty hand, touches the lives of the broken, the needy, the doubting, and the failures. Where there are tears, he dries them, and it is his risen ministry still to do so. Where there are doubts, he dispels them. Where there is failure, he restores and renews. John is, therefore, with a particular emphasis, pointing us to this ministry of the Lord Jesus.

But first of all, we need to look at this record at the beginning of chapter 20 of the resurrection itself. As it happens, John gives us in his account of the resurrection the basic evidence for it and the basic message of it, and that’s expanded as he goes on through the rest of these two chapters. Like the other Gospels, John begins his account of the resurrection, as you would notice, with a description of the empty tomb. Now, of course, for a comprehensive account of what happened at the resurrection of Jesus, you need a harmonization of all four Gospels. That’s why there are four Gospels in order that we might have a complete record of what was happening in the life and death and resurrection of Jesus.

I commend to you in this connection a fairly recent book by John Wenham entitled *The Easter Enigma*, which is published by Paternoster Press and which goes into this in some detail and is a fascinating book. "One of the most gripping books written for a long time," said one reviewer, which made me a little bit suspicious, but it turned out to be almost true. But John has a special interest, you notice, in focusing upon three people. The three people that he focuses upon are Mary of Magdala, whom we call Mary Magdalene, the person out of whom Jesus cast seven devils, you will remember, and who washed his feet with her hair.

She is the first, and she is the only woman that John focuses upon, although there were, as we know from the other Gospels, other women who came to the tomb early in the morning. The second person he concentrates upon is Simon Peter, who was obviously close to John. The third is himself. There is, you may remember, a reason given for Mary’s visit to the tomb early in the first day of the week, and that is to anoint Jesus' body with spices. Both Mark and Luke tell us of this.

Now, we know from the last passage in John’s Gospel at the end of chapter 19 that we were studying that both Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus had already done this. In verse 40 of chapter 19, for example, we read that taking Jesus' body, the two of them wrapped it with the spices which they had brought, 34 kilograms John tells us of them, and they wrapped the body in strips of linen in accordance with Jewish burial custom. Some have asked why it is then that Mary and the other women came in order to anoint the body of Jesus. It may simply be because the process was incomplete, or indeed that they may not have known about the previous anointing by Joseph and Nicodemus.

The main thing that John wants to point our attention to is that Mary found the stone taken away from the entrance to the tomb. That stone was probably not what you often see in drawings or pictures, a stone that was rolled up to the entrance to the tomb. Scholars tell us it was much more like a cork fitting into a bottle, so that it would be a rough stone that had been pushed into the opening in the tomb. It was gone, and Mary runs back to tell Simon Peter and John. In verse 2, "They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don't know where they have put him."

Then John tells us how they both began to run towards the tomb, and with perhaps a little lapse of modesty, he tells us that he outran Peter. Some have said Peter, of course, would have been older, but I need to remind you that youth and speed do not always go together. It may simply be that one of them was more eager than the other to be there. But at the beginning of this time, in verse 1, John tells us it was still dark. Mark tells us that when they got to the tomb in Mark 16:2, the sun had already risen. So it was then that Peter and later John went into the sepulcher and found two things.

This is John’s great concentration: one, that the sepulcher was empty, the body of Jesus had gone; and two, that the grave clothes were undisturbed. Now, to John, these are obviously two vital factors in understanding at least part of the historical evidence for the resurrection. You will notice that what he is speaking about, and he is at pains to clarify that to us too, he is speaking about a physical and literal resurrection of the body of Jesus.

John’s account does not leave us the option of interpreting the resurrection as a spiritual continuance of Jesus in the lives of his disciples. What he is speaking about is a literal, physical, bodily resurrection whereby Jesus, who was dead, has come to life again. John is telling us why he and later Peter and the rest of the disciples came to believe that this was true. The two things he emphasizes, you notice in verse 2, "They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don't know where they have put him." So Peter and the other disciple, verse 3, started for the tomb. Both were running. The other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. Then Simon Peter, who was behind him, arrived and went into the tomb.

Clearly, the vital first thing is the tomb was empty. The second thing that is vital for John’s record of the resurrection is that the grave clothes were undisturbed. Verse 7, "as well as the burial cloth that had been around Jesus’ head. The cloth was folded up by itself, separate from the linen." He is describing a situation where not only were the burial cloths which were wound around Jesus still there, which was astonishing in itself if his body had been removed. You think of the amount of a hundred pounds weight of spices and the wrapping of this bandage-like linen around him. But they were not only there; they were there in an undisturbed condition together with the head covering, as though the body had somehow been lifted, as it were, through them. That’s the thing that John is wanting to say to us.

Now, there are several possible things that this could mean and several explanations of it. It’s important for us, in understanding that this is an historical, physical resurrection that John is speaking to us about, to understand what they are. First of all, there is the possibility that has been raised as an explanation for the empty tomb that the women went to the wrong sepulcher. Now, you can realize how that idea arose. It was dark, it was early in the morning, they probably had been sleepless and dazed with sorrow, they went out and came to the wrong sepulcher.

But even, of course, if Mary had done that during the darkness, it is inconceivable that when she returned with Peter and John in daylight, that she would return to the wrong sepulcher and that others of the disciples would accompany them and accept that this was the sepulcher in which Jesus was buried. For this precise reason, Matthew tells us in Matthew 27:61 that when Jesus was being buried, they had watched the burial, sitting opposite the sepulcher. Presumably, Joseph, whose sepulcher it was, had come at some point to that and could have pointed out the mistake to them.

There are fatal flaws, but the most fatal of all, of course, is the flaw that lies behind almost every explanation of the empty tomb apart from the resurrection. That is that the resurrection of Jesus became ultimately the greatest possible embarrassment to the authorities. The question is, if the disciples had simply gone to the wrong tomb and the body of Jesus lay in another tomb, why would not the authorities have gone immediately and found the body of Jesus and said, "Here is what all the who-ha is about. We’ve discovered the body," and its presence would immediately have blown apart the resurrection gospel.

So that idea falls as being an impossible one for people to believe. Here’s the second one: it is the idea that Jesus did not really die, that he only swooned or fainted, then revived, left the sepulcher by some means pushing away the stone himself, and made himself known to the disciples. One scholar has written recently about that these words: "So Joseph and Nicodemus took down his body, wound it in the grave clothes, and laid it in Joseph’s new sepulcher. Are we then seriously to believe that Jesus was all the time only in a swoon? That after the rigors and pains of trial, mockery, flogging, and crucifixion, he could survive 36 hours in a stone sepulcher with neither warm food nor the tending of his wounds? That he could then rally sufficiently to perform the superhuman feat of shifting the boulder which secured the mouth of the tomb and that without disturbing the Roman guard? That weak, sickly, and hungry, he could appear to the disciples and give them the impression that he had vanquished death? That he could claim to have died and risen, could send them into all the world and promise to be with them unto the end? That he could live somewhere for 40 days and then disappear when no one apparently gave him food and shelter and no one finally saw him die?"

Such credulity is more incredible than Thomas’s unbelief. That particular theory revives from time to time. There was a book that was published in Manchester not very long ago and reviewed in the London *Times* as an extraordinary dismissal of the resurrection of Jesus, but it still faces us with this fact of the empty tomb. The third possibility is that someone stole the body of Jesus, either thieves or his enemies or his disciples. Both of these possibilities clearly, just with a moment’s thought, fall down. If thieves or his enemies stole it, is it not an extraordinary thing that it was not possible for them, when Jesus' disciples were proclaiming the resurrection and again that was the great problem for the authorities, that they would have produced the body of Jesus?

If his disciples stole it, is it not an extraordinary thing that here this band of men and women who became morally transformed by believing in the resurrection of Jesus began this gospel ministry with a massive piece of hypocrisy and were ready to die for it? Hypocrites and martyrs are not made of the same stuff. That same theory falls to the ground, and we are left with the fact of this empty tomb and with the only possible conclusion that Jesus actually rose from the dead.

The other piece of evidence of the grave clothes that John points our attention to underlines this. You will have read already at the end of chapter 19 something at least of the Jewish process of preparing a body for burial, and John describes it for us. Then, when he begins to describe what happened at the resurrection, he tells us that these clothes were lying in a particular position. Strips of linen were lying there as well as the burial cloth that had been around Jesus' head. The cloth was folded up, the NIV puts it. It really means twirled round. What he is trying to describe to us is the position that these clothes, filled with spices, would be in if the body somehow had been dematerialized out of them. This is precisely what John is describing to us happened at the resurrection of Jesus. It was not a resuscitation of someone who had been dead and was raised from the dead and went out still bound with these grave clothes. It was a resurrection into a new sphere of existence, and Jesus passed through the grave clothes as we read in the later part of chapter 20 that he passed through the doors.

It is to this that the angels point in both John’s Gospel and Matthew’s and also briefly in Mark’s. We read in John chapter 20, verse 8, that having seen that evidence, John himself, who had reached the tomb first, saw and believed. We are not told that Peter, at this point, believed, nor wherever she was at the time, did Mary. If she was standing outside or in the tomb, but we do read that John saw and believed.

Now, therefore, follows in verse 9 John’s own comment: that they still, that is the disciples, still did not understand from the Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead. You’ll notice the way in which that is put. What he is saying is that they did not at this point understand the necessity of the resurrection. I want to spend the rest of these few minutes we have saying something to you about that. Why is it that John says the Scripture tells us that Jesus not rose from the dead, but had to rise from the dead? What is it about the resurrection of Jesus then that is not just historically true, but fundamentally important for our salvation?

The answer is two things. Why did Jesus have to rise from the dead? Why is the resurrection so important? Why do I take some time this evening, for example, to demonstrate to you that there is an historical basis for believing the resurrection? There are two reasons, and the first is this: Jesus had to rise from the dead in order to confirm the sufficiency of his sacrifice. Let me explain to you what I mean by that. That Jesus died on the cross, there was no question whatsoever. That his death was real and that he had said to his disciples, "What I am going to be doing there on the cross is taking your place, bearing your sin, receiving the judgment that belongs to you, and offering to God the Father a sacrifice for the sins of the world."

Now, there could have been no question about what Jesus told them he was going to do when he died. He had explained it. He had even gone to the trouble of giving them a visible evidence of it in the Lord’s Supper, to which we come this evening. "Do this," he said, "in remembrance of me." The breaking of the bread, the pouring out of the wine, was the visible evidence of a life broken by the burden of sin and the blood of Jesus poured out in death as our sin bearer. But the question that arises, you see, is this, and it arose whenever Jesus died. It was the question that hung over the burial of Jesus by Joseph and Nicodemus. How do we know that the death of Jesus is a sufficient sacrifice for the sins of his people? How may we be sure that he has achieved salvation by his death on the cross? Historically, you see, the death of Jesus was just the execution of another criminal in Roman records. How do we know that Jesus has achieved our salvation by his death? The answer is through the resurrection of Jesus from the grave.

Because that resurrection is God the Father’s amen to the death of Jesus in our place. He is saying by Jesus' resurrection, "This is where sin is dealt with. This is where I am satisfied by the offering up of this sacrifice of my Son." For this reason, the New Testament says he was raised for our justification. That is, we are assured of forgiveness of sins because he rose from the dead to set the divine seal upon the sufficiency of his sacrifice.

But the second thing is not only to confirm the sufficiency of his sacrifice, but to complete the salvation of his people. In other words, what Jesus is rising from the grave to do is to bring that same risen power which brought him from death to operate in the lives of his people. That, I think, is the significance of these three incidents in John’s Gospel: the drying of Mary’s tears, the transformation of her whole future, bringing her out of darkness into light; the dispelling of Thomas’s doubt and bringing him to faith; the restoration of Simon Peter. It is Paul who says, "The same divine power which brought Jesus from the grave is in us."

That power is a power which produces not only the resurrection of Jesus, but the spiritual resurrection of his people into newness of life. Now, that’s what the resurrection is all about. This is why it is a gospel, you see. What Jesus is doing is not only being himself raised from the dead, but he is beginning this new ministry. He says to Mary, "Do not cling on to me just now as though you had what you had before. I am ascending to be with my Father and your Father, my God and your God, and what I am going to do," he says, "is to unleash the powers of the world to come in the lives of my own people."

My dear friends, there is a resurrection which is of the very essence of Christian salvation, which is illustrated here in John 20 and 21: the resurrection of Mary from her darkness and despair, the resurrection of Thomas from his unbelief, and the resurrection of Peter from his brokenness and failure. The Lord Jesus rose from the grave to confirm the sufficiency of his sacrifice and to complete the salvation of his people. May we know that resurrection for ourselves and increasingly discover that if anyone be in Christ, there is a new creation. Let us pray together.

Our blessed Lord, we bow to adore You because You have raised Your Son, the Lord Jesus, in triumph from the grave. We thank You that the same power by which He rose is available to raise us into newness of life in Christ Jesus our Lord. We ask that we may find the same reality of resurrection power at work in our lives for the glory of Your great name. Amen.

Mark Daniels: You are listening to *Hear the Word of God*, the online and broadcast teaching ministry of the Reverend Eric Alexander. To access more Bible teaching from Reverend Alexander, visit hearthewordofgod.org where your generous contribution will help us sustain and grow this ministry. That’s hearthewordofgod.org. You could choose instead to mail a check to this address: 600 Eden Road, Lancaster, Pennsylvania 17601. Or call 1-800-488-1888. This program is a presentation of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. I’m Mark Daniels. Thank you for listening. Please join us again next time for Eric Alexander and *Hear the Word of God*.