Turning Point

Guest (Male): Welcome to Turning Point. In the hours after Jesus' execution, his closest friends and followers hid, grieving and frightened. But all of that was about to change. Today Dr. David Jeremiah shares a powerful Easter message detailing Christ's victory over death. With Easter just around the corner, it's important to focus on the reason we celebrate. So listen as David introduces the resurrection of Jesus.

Dr. David Jeremiah: Thank you so much for joining us as we work our way toward Easter. Today we're going to look at the description of the resurrection of Jesus Christ given to us by Luke. Luke the physician, in detail and discussing things that are not found in the other gospels. Luke's rendition of what happened when Jesus came out of the grave is powerful. We'll spend two days talking about it as we work towards Good Friday and Easter.

In the meantime, I would like to tell you that our resource for this month is the book, The World of the End: How Jesus' Prophecy Shapes Our Priorities. It's a hardcover book of 241 pages. It takes you places in the prophetic scene that you might not otherwise visit, and it will help you be strong in your understanding of what's to come in the future. It is yours for the asking when you send a gift of any size to Turning Point during the month of April. Please do that, and when you do, ask for your copy of the book, The World of the End. Now here's part one of the resurrection of Jesus.

Guest (Male): Peter and John and the other disciples were experiencing the longest Saturday in history. They had lost everything they lived for. Their hopes weren't wounded; their hopes were annihilated. Their dreams were not shattered; they were just utterly stripped away. Now they didn't say it, but they surely thought it. He's dead. Jesus is dead.

It's neither the dark Fridays or the bright Sundays that require the greatest amount of grace. We've all learned even in our own lives that the greatest grace is needed during eternally long Saturdays when we're waiting for what happened to be resolved, when we're waiting for the promise to be kept, when we're waiting for the diagnosis to be confirmed. It's those long Saturdays that are so hard.

There's a very famous sermon on Easter by a friend of mine, and the title of the sermon is, It's Friday, But Sunday's Comin'. That's surely how it was for the friends of Jesus as the hours of Saturday overtook them with emptiness. But something was about to happen that would change these men and women forever. No longer would they be cowards hiding in the backdrop of the crucifixion, but something would happen that would change them into flaming evangelists who filled the whole world with the gospel. According to the record even of secular historians, these particular people turned their world upside down.

It is the experience of the resurrection of the Savior that explains all of this. Of course, this particular truth about his life is found in all of the gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. I've chosen today to tell the story from the 24th chapter of the book of Luke and the first 12 verses. Here we are told of the experience of the empty tomb and are met with some visiting women in verse one. "Now on the first day of the week, very early in the morning, they, and certain other women with them, came to the tomb bringing the spices which they had prepared."

Dr. David Jeremiah: We see these women on their way to the tomb engaged in this ministry of love, but we forget it was also a ministry of sorrow and hopelessness. These women who came to the tomb on that first Easter would have been some of the last ones at the cross with their Savior. Luke tells us that all of his acquaintances and the women who followed him from Galilee stood at a distance watching the crucifixion.

It is moving to see them now on this day, early in the morning, coming to the grave of their loved one, bringing their spices. They brought the spices as a show of their love for their dead Master. They thought of him as dead, and yet they still loved him with a great love. The things they had hoped for seemed destroyed, but their love for the Lord was not destroyed. I mean, Jesus had been beaten and put to death, but the love of these women did not die with Jesus.

They had been told by Christ before his death about his resurrection, but either they did not believe him or it just went over the top of their heads. They were coming to embalm the Lord's body because they thought this was the end of him. Their faith had failed them, but their love was still strong. They brought their spices that day, which would have been sorted into the foldings of the cloth around his body sort of as an external embalming process. They came with love to visit his grave.

Guest (Male): But as they drew near to the grave, something happened. Verse two says, "They found the stone rolled away from the tomb." That's not just an incidental detail. Let me fill in the blanks. This was something that was quite amazing to them. In fact, one of the other gospel writers tells us that this was the subject of their conversation on their way to the tomb that day. They had said among themselves, "Who will roll away the stone from the door of the tomb for us?"

Dr. David Jeremiah: Matthew records in his writings that a large stone was rolled against the front of the tomb. Mark says the stone was extremely large, and some of the manuscripts describe the stone as a stone which 20 men could not roll away. Believe it or not, I was at the very place where all this happened. I was in the garden where the tomb is, and I guess I should file this report. It's still empty.

Guest (Male): The tomb according to the scripture was one that had been hewn out of rock. Never had it before been used as a place for a corpse. But this particular tomb had been hewn out of rock, and when you go there and you see it, that's exactly what it looks like. It looks like it was carved out of the rock in which it exists. And the door that went into the tomb was about four and a half feet high and five feet wide. I know that to be true because I'm six foot two and when I was there I went in the tomb and I had to bend down to get in the door.

So the question would be, what kind of a stone would be necessary to close the mouth of a tomb like that? Oh by the way, this isn't what we usually thought. I grew up in a church where my daddy used to preach on resurrection and I always got the impression that the tomb was like this big hole and they found this big boulder that was bigger than the hole and they pushed this boulder into the hole. That was how they did this, but that wasn't it at all.

They had special stones that had been either carved or found that were cylindrical. They were big stones like a big wheel, and they would cut a groove in front of the grave and they would roll that stone in front of the tomb. Scholars have discussed what it would take for a stone to be big enough to cover the tomb where Jesus was buried, and they have said it would have weighed somewhere between one and a half and two tons.

On that first Sunday morning when the women came to the tomb, one of the first things that shocked them and made them realize something was going on was this stone was not where it was supposed to be. It was not in front of the tomb. It was not even rolled back up the slot. It was in a place by itself where it could not possibly have gotten if humans were involved in the process.

Mark and Luke describe the position of the stone as very clear. It was in a place not in front of the tomb. It had been moved out of the groove. It was some distance away from where it should have been. John uses the word that means to pick something up and carry it away to describe what happened to the stone. Now we've read the rest of the story, so we know what happened. It was an angel in cooperation with an earthquake that got that stone out of the place where it was supposed to be. But think about this if you're the women. You're on the way, you've had this conversation, what are we going to do with the stone when we get there? Then you get there. The stone's not in front of the tomb, it's not in the groove, it's over here in the field by itself. How did that happen?

Dr. David Jeremiah: In order for us to understand what was going on, we have to get into the minds of these women as this story begins to unfold before them. Now they approach the sepulcher where Jesus was to be buried and the scripture says in verse three of Luke 24 that they went in and they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. Immediately they noticed that no one was in the tomb and I want to say to you that the gospel rests entirely on the fact that the tomb was empty.

This has been our claim and no one has ever been able to deny it. Let's face it, the Jews of Jesus' day could not deny it even though there was nothing they wanted more than to discredit the witnesses of the resurrection. And the Romans could not deny it in spite of the fact this was the most embarrassing event in the 10-year reign of Pontius Pilate.

In order for you to grasp the magnitude of this very thing, the empty grave, let us remember that the disciples began to preach the resurrection of Jesus Christ not in some distant country. They began to preach that Christ was risen from the dead in the city of Jerusalem. Now having been there, I need to tell you the garden tomb isn't out in the country. It's not in the suburbs. It's almost downtown.

And the disciples began to preach that Jesus had come back from the grave, that he'd risen from the dead, and anyone who wanted to disprove that had only to do one thing. Go to the tomb where he supposedly was buried and produce his body. If they had done that, Christianity would have been dead on arrival and there would be nothing like what we enjoy here today in the celebration of a living Christ.

What was the central truth of the apostles' preaching? What was the stimulus of the miraculous afterglow of the resurrection of Christ? Read the book of Acts and there you will find all the sermons that were preached during the after part of the resurrection and they're all about the resurrection. They're not really about the crucifixion. They're all about the fact that Jesus overcame death and he was alive.

When the disciples became aware of this and it finally got into their spirit, they knew they were doing something miraculous. They knew they were living in a moment that had never been known before. They had a leader who had died and had been dead for three days and had come out of the grave victorious over death. And not only that, that's what he told them he was going to do before it happened. So everywhere they went they preached on this and God blessed the message of the resurrection and the church was born. We're here today because of those early days of the preaching of the apostles. How many of you know that the world offers promises full of emptiness, but Easter offers emptiness full of promise? Empty cross, empty tomb, empty grave clothes; all full of promise.

Guest (Male): Well that's what happened when the women arrived that day, but there's an explanation of all of this about to happen. In verse four we meet some angels. "And it happened as they were greatly perplexed about this, two men stood by them in shining garments."

Dr. David Jeremiah: Now we shouldn't be surprised that the angels showed up at the resurrection because they showed up a lot during the Lord's ministry on this earth. I wrote a book on angels some years ago and I remember how surprised I was to discover how involved the angels were with Jesus while he was on this earth. Let's face it, they got it all started when they heralded his coming outside of Bethlehem announcing that Jesus was to be born.

It was the angels who told Mary this was going to happen. It was an angel who told Joseph. It was angels that told the shepherds. When Jesus began his public ministry and he went out into the wilderness to be tempted by Satan, guess who was with him? Angels. When he was in the garden of Gethsemane in that hour of agony for humanity, guess who was there? Angels. And who rolled the stone away from the tomb? It was the angels. And who shared the message of the gospel for the first time? It was the angels. Two angels that Mary saw when she looked into the tomb, and these angels had a message for Mary. A very assuring message.

Guest (Male): As they were afraid and bowed their faces to the earth, the angels said to them, "Why are you seeking the living among the dead? He's not here; he's risen." In other words, Jesus is alive. The tomb couldn't keep him under.

All the famous tombs in the world are famous for one reason. They're famous because of the people who are buried there. Whether it's Westminster Abbey in London, or the tomb of St. Thomas in India, or the tomb of the unknown soldier in Washington, they're all famous for the bodies that they contain. The tomb of Jesus is famous for what it does not contain. It was empty on that first Easter and it is still, and the emptiness is a constant reminder of this angel message. He's not here; he's risen as he said. So the angelic messengers give an assuring message and that assuring message is the message we celebrate on this day.

Dr. David Jeremiah: When you go through a tough time you need something you can hold onto, something that's sure, something that's time-tested. Let me tell you, people haven't gathered for the past 2,000 years to say the stock market has risen; it has risen indeed. They have not gathered to say the dollar has risen; it has risen indeed. Or the employment rate has risen, or the gross domestic product has risen, or the value of my 401(k) has risen.

Here's the one hope that has held up human beings across every continent and every culture for two millennia of difficult times, of poverty, disease, pain, hardship, and death itself. Here it is. Christ is risen. He is risen indeed.

Guest (Male): Then there's this moment of awakened memory, and I put this in here because it's kind of critical to the way some people look at the resurrection. Verses six through eight, the angels speaking to the women said, "Do you remember how he spoke to you when he was still in Galilee saying that the Son of Man will be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified and the third day rise again?"

Dr. David Jeremiah: And the lights go on. Oh yeah, I remember that. I run into people all the time they say I don't know why you people make such a big deal out of the resurrection; Jesus didn't even believe in the resurrection. I love it when people say stupid things like that because obviously they haven't read the Bible. What do you mean Jesus didn't believe in the resurrection? He experienced the resurrection.

But he also spoke about it. During his three years of ministry he spoke freely of his death, his burial, and his resurrection. For instance, early in his ministry, immediately after he cleansed the temple, he got into this discussion and he said this to the Jews of Jerusalem. And I got to tell you what he said freaked them out. He said, "If you destroy this temple, in three days I will raise it up." Now he's standing at the temple that was built that took hundreds of years to build, one of the seven wonders of the world, and he's talking to the Jewish people and he said, "If you destroy this temple, I'll raise it up in three days." And they say, yeah right.

But you don't have to wonder what he was saying because in the verse it says, "But he was speaking of the temple of his body." In other words, if you destroy this temple, in three days I will raise it up. On another occasion during the second period of his Galilean ministry after he healed a demoniac, Jesus said, "For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth." What was he talking about? He was talking about the resurrection.

Immediately following Peter's great confession, we read that from that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem, suffer many things from elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed and be raised the third day. So if somebody says Jesus didn't believe in the resurrection, they just haven't read the record. He believed in it, he taught it to his disciples, he told them it was going to happen, he described all the details of it. And the fact that they didn't believe it even after it happened, many of them, is not the fault of Jesus. He told them.

The empty tomb and the resurrection, when it happened, hit the disciples with shock and awe. In fact, in the early moments of his resurrection, the people who were closest to him, they didn't believe it had happened. It happened exactly as he said it would and they were caught in unbelief as his repeated appearances to them ultimately broke down their doubt. It's an amazing thing that they had been with him all this time, they had heard all these teachings, but when it happened, of course, there's the evidence of the empty tomb and the declaration of the women.

Guest (Male): When they went into the tomb and saw that it was empty, the Bible says they returned from the tomb and told all these things to the 11 and all the rest. And 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.

Dr. David Jeremiah: I must stop here and make a note about the priority of women in this story. They were the first to see the empty grave. Women were the first to see the angels. Women were the first to see the resurrected Lord. Women were the first to hear his loving words, and they were the first to share the joyful news that he was alive.

And you know why it's important? We as a country probably have the highest regard for women of any of the countries we know about, but it wasn't that way in Jerusalem when Jesus came out of the grave. Women were given no credit for anything. They couldn't even serve as a witness at a trial. And so culturally such a story from women would be viewed with suspicion.

One of the main proofs that the resurrection story is credible is the realization that the first-century church would never have created a story like that whose main witnesses were women. They just wouldn't have done that. And when they told the disciples what they had seen, verse 11 says, "Their words seemed to them like idle tales and they didn't believe them." I mean, the apostles were not men poised on the brink of belief just needing somebody to push them over the edge. They were utterly skeptical even when the women they knew well told them of their experience; they refused to believe.

So if you're here today and you're a hard case, you're a skeptic, you're in good company; the disciples were just like that too. They got through it and I hope you will too. There's a person who's going to enter into the dialogue here. He's going to fix everything. He always fixes everything. Do you know about Peter?

Guest (Male): Peter listened to these women. He didn't know if they were telling the truth or not but Peter, listen to what it says, Peter rose and he ran to the tomb. I don't know if it's true or not but I'm going to find out for myself.

Dr. David Jeremiah: Did you notice that in the story of the resurrection there is more running than in any other place in the Bible? I'm not kidding you. Half of the running experiences of the Bible are in the resurrection story. The women ran from the tomb. Peter and John ran to the tomb. The disciples and Emmaus ran back to Jerusalem. And somebody has written, where's that energy in the church today? We shuffle along; they ran. And then they came and they found this discovery.

Guest (Male): Stooping down when Peter got to the tomb, he saw the linen cloths lying by themselves.

Dr. David Jeremiah: In a real sense, the grave of Jesus was not totally empty. In fact, some years ago I preached an Easter sermon on the title, The Not Quite Empty Tomb, because the tomb had some grave clothes that were still there. And when John leaned in and he looked into the tomb and he saw the grave clothes, it was so startling to him that the Bible tells us that he became a believer.

And let me tell you what he saw. Here were the grave clothes in the form of a body, slightly caved in and empty, like the empty chrysalis of a caterpillar's cocoon. You see in burial in Jesus' day you didn't put on a shroud or put on a coat or a burial gown. The way you got buried is you got wrapped like a mummy with clothing all wrapped all around your body. Well when they looked inside there was no body, but all of these wrappings and all of this cloth was still in the shape of a body and there was no body there. It was this discovery that caused John the apostle to believe in the resurrection.

Now I want to quote from John's gospel but first I want to explain something to you about John. John wrote his gospel, the fourth gospel, and he never talked about himself by name. He called himself the disciple that Jesus loved. Come on, John. I know you're trying to be humble but that's over the top, man; the disciple that Jesus loved? Well it gets worse.

Guest (Male): The Bible says in John 20, "So they both ran together and the other disciple outran Peter and came to the tomb first." John could not help himself. He had to put in the text that when they ran to the tomb, he was faster than Peter. The other disciple that Jesus loved got there first.

Dr. David Jeremiah: Well, that's the honesty of the Bible and some of those little humorous things are put in there to keep us alive and help us to understand we're talking about the real story, what really happened at Easter. During this month when you help us here at Turning Point, we want to add to your library a book called The World of the End. And you can have this book as yours for a gift of any size during the month of April.

We like to motivate you and encourage you to help us because this worldwide ministry requires a great deal of financial assistance and it all comes from people just like you. Without you we cannot do this. We don't have any major corporation that sponsors us. This is listener-supported radio and you're a listener. So thank you for what you're going to do. It's yours for the asking when you send a gift of any size to Turning Point and be sure to join us tomorrow as we finish our discussion of the resurrection of Jesus according to Luke. We'll see you then. Thanks for listening.

Guest (Male): For more information on Dr. Jeremiah's special Easter message, please visit our website where we also offer two free ways to help you stay connected: our monthly magazine Turning Points and our daily email devotional. Sign up today at davidjeremiah.org/radio. That's davidjeremiah.org/radio. Or call us at 800-947-1993. Ask for your copy of David's informative and inspiring book The World of the End with a special Be The Answer bookmark, yours for a gift of any amount. You can also purchase the Jeremiah Study Bible in the English Standard, New International, and New King James versions, complete with notes and articles from Dr. Jeremiah's decades of study. Get all the details when you visit our website, davidjeremiah.org/radio. This is David Michael Jeremiah. Join us tomorrow for more of this special Easter message here on Turning Point with Dr. David Jeremiah.