He Is Alive

Luke Following Jesus Brings Focus He Is Alive

Text: Luke 23:50-24:12

Intro: Three days can make a massive difference. On Friday, Jesus died; on Sunday, Jesus lives. On Friday, death and satan laughed, and on Sunday, death and satan received a fatal blow as Jesus rose from the dead and lives forevermore. All eleven of the disciples will have such faith in the resurrection of Jesus that they will give up their lives spreading the message of the resurrection. How did they come to believe the impossible happened?

1. Set the Scene:
   1. Facts that we should not forget:
      1. Jesus was dead on Friday, I mean, cold stone dead, his heart stopped beating, his lungs stopped breathing, and his brainwaves stopped functioning. Roman soldiers were very good at executing criminals. 100/100
      2. Nobody thought there would be no body in the tomb on that Sunday morning because zombies aren’t real.
   2. The disciples are in hiding, afraid that since the Romans just killed Jesus, they are next.
2. Man and death
   1. People react to death through grieving and caring for the dead body, which changes according to the culture you are in.
   2. We can’t overcome the cause of death: sin. Rom. 5:12
   3. We can’t stop the power of death. We will all die.
      1. For those who die, we desire their service to be good, for them to look good in a casket, and for the headstone to be nice with a suitable epitaph.
      2. Even so, with every medical advance and new technology, death is still 10/10.

• In 1909, seven-year-old Walt Disney was playing by himself in the backyard of his family's farmhouse. He decided to sneak up on a big brown owl, but when he grabbed it, the owl panicked. Disney threw it to the ground and stomped it to death. According to his biographers, that owl haunted him for years and produced a morbid fear of death.

Disney’s first big hit as a young animator came when he was 26 years old, with a cartoon featuring Mickey Mouse. But he immediately followed up that success with a short feature titled “The Skeleton Dance,” which opens with a terrified owl perched in a tree, followed by skeletons rising from their graves.

One scholar said, “If Disney was a mouthpiece for an American way of life, the force of his voice depended on a curious obsession with death.” Virtually every one of his famous films focused on the subject, from Snow White to Pinocchio.

His personal life was also focused on decline and demise. Disney’s daughter Diane said that Disney hired a fortuneteller when he was in his early 30s to predict when he would die. The fortuneteller predicted the age of 35. Disney distracted himself with workaholism and success. If he stayed busy, maybe he could distract both himself and the Reaper. He survived 35, but never forgot the prediction. Shortly before his 55th birthday, he knew that maybe he had misheard, and the fortuneteller had said 55, not 35.

1. In our culture, a mortician will work to slow down decay so that in an open casket, you can see the body and see it without thinking about a decaying, dead body.
2. Joseph of Arimathea
   1. Member of the Sanhedrin who did not vote to crucify Jesus but believed in Jesus.
   2. Requests the body of Jesus from Pilate and receives the necessary permission. Family members normally received the bodies of those killed by capital punishment, but Joseph asks and receives permission. He does this alongside Nicodemus. Mk. 15:43, Jn. 19:39-40
   3. They used 75 lbs of spices for Jesus’ burial, which was common for a king.
   4. Jesus is buried in a new tomb, wrapped in fresh linen cloths, with spices that conceal the decay of death.
   5. Joseph and Nicodemus had to hurry because “it was the day of preparation” - Friday, and they faced the start of the Sabbath at sundown.
   6. Jesus died around 3 pm, so the clock is ticking and they have much to do to care for the body of Jesus before the Sabbath begins.
3. Joseph and Nicodemus did all they could to honor the dead body of Jesus on short notice. It is a way for humans to mask the ugliness of death.
4. The women watched Joseph and Nicodemus remove Jesus’ body from the cross, prepare his body, wrap his body, and lay it in the tomb with 75 lbs of spices. They leave, making plans to fix what the men have not done to their specifications.
5. Time has run out; the Sabbath has begun, and everyone needs to go home. This Sabbath was their worst Sabbath ever, as the followers of Jesus mourned.
6. God has completed His work. Jesus died for our sins on the cross and will soon defeat sin’s twin and the consequences of sin: death.
7. Nothing has changed between the time of Jesus and now: we honor the dead, we mask death, but death still means death.

• Thomas Jefferson was the first Secretary of State, a primary author of the Declaration of Independence, and the third President; his picture appears on the nickel and the $2 bill. He created his own version of the Bible, as Jefferson appreciated Jesus' teachings on morality but did not believe in the supernatural. He took a razor to all of the sections of scripture referring to the supernatural, as he left out all references to angels, Jesus' miracles, or the divinity of Jesus, as he saw these things as fantasy. Listen to how the Jefferson Bible concludes the Gospel of Luke: In the place where He was crucified, there was a garden, and in the garden, a new tomb where no man had been laid. There, they laid Jesus, and rolled a great stone to the door of the tomb, and departed. To Thomas Jefferson, Jesus was a good man, but in the end, He was a dead man no different than Buddha, Gandhi, or Muhammad.

1. Jesus and Death
   1. In the first paragraph of Luke 24, a clear contrast is drawn between how men view death and how God handles it.
   2. The followers of Jesus thought of how death impacted Jesus, not how Jesus would impact death.
   3. The Effort of the Women
      1. While the followers of Jesus rested on Saturday, God was at work. God is always at work when we rest in Him. Our efforts do not always mean God does more, but they mean we get to join in what He is doing, rather than missing out on it.
      2. They gather their own spices - probably at a significant cost to themselves.
      3. At early dawn - at the deepest dark. Hunters will know the darkest is just before the light breaks.
      4. They would have been asking themselves, possibly, how they would get into the body of Jesus because of the stone. Mk. 16:3 The stone was placed there not to keep Jesus from getting out, but from robbers of his body from getting in.
      5. 24:2-3 They found the stone rolled away and the body of Jesus was missing.
      6. Picture the scene: these women are now in a tomb that is missing a body in the deepest dark of the night.
         1. They were perplexed - not happy
         2. Now two men stood by them and they were afraid - I bet they were.
   4. The Message to the Women
      1. The two men were angels dressed in dazzling apparel—clothes as bright as lightning.
      2. The angels ask the women why they were looking for the living among the dead. Jesus is not here but has risen - dead people stay dead. What the women were doing was not illogical.
      3. These women, who loved and followed Jesus sincerely, desired to honor Him in His death but had forgotten His words in His life. Matt. 16:21, 17:22-23, 20:17-19
      4. If you ignore Jesus’ words concerning His resurrection, then you believe He will handle death like everyone else, which is precisely what these women felt.
      5. On one hand, can you blame the followers of Jesus for not listening to the idea that Jesus will be resurrected from the dead - it seems like nonsense.

• Jesus had an unknown twin who showed up at his death - twin or substitution hypothesis.

1. One of the most powerful verses in this passage is, “they remembered His words.” 24:8 We experience less anxiety and troubles in life if we daily remember His words. Live your life remembering what the Bible says about your identity in Christ.
   1. New creation 2 Cor. 5:17
   2. Adopted into Christ’s family Eph. 1:5
   3. Heirs in Christ Rom. 8:17
   4. Child of God John 1:12
   5. Forgiven 1 Jn, 1:9
   6. Justified Rom. 5:1
   7. No condemnation for those in Christ Jesus. Rom. 8:1
   8. Crucified with Christ and Christ is living in me Gal. 2:20
   9. God’s masterpiece Eph. 2:10
   10. Delighted in you Zeph. 3:17
   11. Victorious 1 Cor. 15:57
2. I will not be critical of anyone for believing that dead people are supposed to stay dead.

• After a long day at the office, Chris came home one day to find his dog with the neighbor's pet rabbit in his mouth. The rabbit was obviously dead. Chris panicked!

"If my neighbors find out my dog killed their bunny, they'll hate me forever," he thought.

So he took the dirty, chewed-up rabbit into the house, bathed it, and blow-dried its fur. Chris knew his neighbors kept their back door open during the summer, so he snuck inside and put the bunny back in the cage, hoping his neighbors would think it had died of natural causes.

A couple of days later, Chris and his neighbor saw each other outside. "Did you hear that Fluffy died?" the neighbor asked.

"Oh. Uhmm... Sorry to hear that. What happened?" Chris mumbled.

The neighbor replied, "We just found him dead in his cage one day. But the strange thing is that the day after we buried him, we went out to dinner, and someone must have dug him up, bathed him, and put him back into the cage! There are some really sick people out there!"

1. Jesus was not purely a man but was both man and God. His divinity was clothed in His humanity.
2. The only one who lived a perfect, sinless life and did not deserve to die, freely gave up His life as our substitute so that we could escape the payment of our own sins.
3. Jesus’ dead body was in the tomb on Sunday morning, surrounded by 75 lbs of spices reserved for the death of a king. Those spices were the smell of death in that culture.

• Have you ever noticed that certain smells trigger specific memories?

1. John writes His story of Jesus from a different perspective than any of the other gospel narratives. John wants us from the beginning to know that Jesus is eternal and in Jesus is life. Jn. 1:1-4, 14
2. Because there is life in Jesus and He has risen from the dead, His followers are not slaves to death and its power. Jesus’ resurrection power resides in us.
3. The Message of the Women
   1. Luke list the names of the women as the eyewitnesses:
      1. He lists his sources and many people knew these women and could have conversation with them about what they saw.
      2. Luke doesn’t deny the sources because they were women. Jesus chose to reveal his resurrection first and primarily to women.
   2. They told everyone about what had just happened, and no one believed them. Their message seemed like nonsense. Two disciples decided to investigate.
   3. Peter ran to the tomb. We know from the gospel of John that he ran there as well. Peter ran to the tomb because when you need Jesus, you run to Him. Peter needed Jesus and knew it.
   4. John tells the story of both he and Peter going to the tomb and the evidence they see of the resurrection. Jn. 20:3-10 Grave clothes lying flat and a face cloth lying by itself, carefully placed to the side. Thieves don’t fold cloths.
   5. Peter walked away, amazed at the finding. Lk. 24:12 John walked away believing. Jn. 20:8
   6. Peter would believe. In Jerusalem, where Jesus died and Peter denied Him, he gave a bold witness to all who would listen. Acts 2:22-24 He experienced a changed life.
4. So What?
   1. From a human perspective, death always wins.
   2. From a spiritual perspective, death deserves to win every time because we all sin. Jesus paid for our spiritual death, eternal separation from God due to sin, on the cross. If we receive Jesus as our substitute, we will not experience an eternal spiritual death.
   3. The resurrection of Jesus brought change:
      1. Worship is now on Sunday.
      2. Baptism is seen through the eyes of the resurrection, buried with him in death, raised to walk in newness of life.
      3. Communion - As believers we remember the price Jesus paid for our sins and that He is coming again, which implies resurrection.
   4. When examining the resurrection of Jesus, you must come to a conclusion. If you come to no conclusion, that is a conclusion.

Conclusion:

What are we to make of Jesus Christ? This is a question that, in a sense, has a frantically comic side. For the real question is not what are we to make of Christ, but what is He to make of us. The picture of a fly sitting, deciding what to make of an elephant, has comic elements to it.

Source: C.S. Lewis in God in the Dock.