Christ is Risen
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2018 · 1 April 2018
John 20 is about the resurrection of our Lord Jesus. Everything from now on is about the risen Christ. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is not just a feature of Christianity, it is the main event, it is the point of redemption. The purpose of God in creating and redeeming His people is to raise them to eternal glory so that they can worship Him forever. And the resurrection to eternal glory is not only in glorified spirits, but also in glorified bodies.
Our resurrection is secured by the power of God, the power of Christ demonstrated in His resurrection. Because He lives, we will live. Because God was satisfied with the sacrifice Christ offered for the sins of His people, God raised Him from the dead, validating His work on the cross. God said, “I am satisfied,” and Christ ascended to eternal glory, sat down at the right hand of God to bring them all into eternal glory in resurrected bodies.
The resurrection is the greatest event in redemptive history, or in human history. It is the most significant expression of the power of God on behalf of believers. It is the gospel promise. We are saved to be raised from the dead, and into heaven we go forever in that resurrected form. The purpose of salvation is a resurrected people. Because Christ conquered death, because He conquered sin, we will be raised to dwell with Him forever.
All four gospel writers record the actual history of the resurrection. The composite testimony of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John is the full, revealed, inspired picture of the resurrection. There are several interesting things to note about it. No one saw the resurrection. All we need to see is that the Person who was dead is now alive and there were many witnesses. And we are witnesses too, because Christ lives in us.
No Bible writer tries to explain the resurrection, because there is no rational explanation. It is a supernatural miracle like all the other miracles that our Lord did. You had the entire creation account of the universe in one chapter. In Genesis 1, you go from absolutely nothing to the entire universe coming into existence in six days. The fact is stated and the results are obvious, but there is no explanation for it given in Scripture.
It is a creative miracle. You can’t study creation from a rational, observable, scientific perspective; you can only accept the miraculous declaration that the Creator gave us. We don’t know anything about how God did creation; but we know it’s there, and He told us He did it in six days. And He is God who can do anything, we don’t question that.
We don’t know how any of the miracles of Jesus occurred. There’s no way to diagnose them or to understand them humanly. And we have no explanation for the resurrection. It happened the way all miracles happened. It happened because God willed it to happen, and by His supernatural power it happened. How it happened doesn’t matter; that it happened matters and there were eyewitnesses.
Oh, there are many evidences given in Scripture. There is the empty tomb, which is a pretty good indication. There is angelic testimony, directly from heaven; and there were eyewitnesses. All of that is described in the John 20 for us. As we come to his account and as we go through this, we will blend in a little from Matthew, Mark, and Luke at strategic points to help you get a better overall picture.
John wants us to see the glory of Christ, even in His death. And he showed us the glory of Christ, because he showed us that Jesus literally was in charge of His own dying. And then He was in charge of His own burial. And He is in charge of His own resurrection. This is all to demonstrate to us “that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God,” so that we might believe that, and by believing “have eternal life in His name.”
The Old Testament promised the Messiah would rise. Psalm 16: “because you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead, nor will you let your faithful one see decay. 11 You make known to me the path of life.” Isaiah 53: “He will be cut off,” but He will be made alive. “He will see His offspring,” and He will be eternally glorified and exalted. Jesus promised He would rise. Matthew 26:61, “Destroy this body, in three days I’ll raise it again.”
God says in Romans 10:9-10, “If you confess Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.” It is the very essence of the gospel. And to signify that on an ongoing basis, Sunday, the first day of the week, became the day that the church meets to worship, the day of resurrection. The church has been doing that since they met with Jesus that evening on the first day of the week.
It is that first day, Sunday that we see in John 20:1-10, “Now on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene went to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb. 2 Then she ran and came to Simon Peter, and to the other disciple, whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken away the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid Him.”
3 Peter therefore went out, and the other disciple, and were going to the tomb. 4 So they both ran together, and the other disciple outran Peter and came to the tomb first. 5 And he, stooping down and looking in, saw the linen cloths lying there; yet he did not go in. 6 Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb; and he saw the linen cloths lying there.
7 and the handkerchief that had been around His head, not lying with the linen cloths, but folded together in a place by itself. 8 Then the other disciple, who came to the tomb first, went in also; and he saw and believed. 9 For as yet they did not know the Scripture that He must rise again from the dead. 10 Then the disciples went away again to their own homes.”
Jesus said He would rise on the third day. He had been buried on Friday. He was in the grave a few hours on Friday before sundown. He was there all 24 hours of Saturday. And He would have been there about 12 hours of Sunday, because the Jewish days went from sunset to sunset rather than sunrise to sunrise. Jesus was in the grave on Friday, all day Saturday and about 12 hours on Sunday, which is counted by the Jews as three days.
Mark says it was “very early,” and the sun had risen. Luke says it is “early dawn.” Matthew says “it began to dawn.” John says “while it was still dark.” The integrity of Scripture is maintained in the honesty of these statements. Clearly all of them placed the arrival at the same time. The sun may have just arisen over the eastern desert. But the eastern desert was behind the Mount of Olives, so the city was still in darkness.
It was John who said “it was still dark” when Mary Magdalene came to the tomb. What that tells us is that she was the first one there. Now she didn’t start out alone. According to Matthew 27 another Mary, Mary the mother of James and Joses, was with her. But she got there first, she was in a hurry to get there before the other Mary. Now there were even other women who were coming along as well.
The same women who were at the foot of the cross were there on Friday when Joseph and Nicodemus were burying the body of Jesus. So they don’t go anywhere or travel anywhere on the Sabbath. It says in Luke 23:55, “The women who had come with the Lord out of Galilee saw the tomb and where the body was laid.” The Sabbath is over. They are awake on the morning of the first day.
The first thing they think about is getting back to the tomb. They probably think, “We’ll go back and pour some more anointing on the body of Jesus.” So Mary Magdalene comes early to the tomb while “it’s still dark,” but it’s light enough that she “saw the stone already taken away from the tomb.” Now we see an empty tomb. The stone wasn’t rolled away to let Jesus out. It was rolled away to let the witnesses in.
A resurrected Jesus doesn’t need the stone to be removed. He didn’t need the door to be opened that night when He showed up with the apostles and came right in. Mary fears the worst, verse 2, so “she ran.” She is assuming that Jesus is still dead, but taken. And that’s exactly what she says. She runs “to Simon Peter and the other disciple,” who is John, and said to them, “They have taken away the Lord out of the tomb.”
Her shock here is clear evidence that they hadn’t planned to steal the body of Jesus. She doesn’t expect a resurrection. She is not part of a plot to fake a resurrection. They would never do that and then go out and preach and die as martyrs for something that they faked. Peter and John run also. “Peter and the other disciple went out,” verse 3, “and were coming to the tomb. The two were running together.”
In the meantime, the other women arrive. And at that time the angels appear to them. Mary Magdalene missed the angel. Now none of these people know what had happened. They don’t know that the Sanhedrin got Roman guards to guard the tomb, and then put a Roman seal on the stone so that no one would come to fake a resurrection. It was a crime to break the Roman seal.
Mark 16:3-6, “Mary the mother of James, and Salome are saying to one another, ‘Who’s going to roll the stone away from the entrance of the tomb?’” They saw the stone had been rolled away, which was very large. Entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting at the right, wearing a white robe. The angel said, “Don’t be alarmed; you’re looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who has been crucified. He has risen, He is not here. See the place where they laid Him.” So here you have a second testimony of heavenly angels.
They also don’t know that on Sunday night, God sent a localized earthquake. But before He sent the earthquake, He put all those soldiers under some kind of divine anesthesia, so they all went to sleep. And then came an earthquake, and with the earthquake the stone was rolled away. Matthew 28: 1-4 describes it. The soldiers didn’t know what happened. And the soldiers fled the tomb.
We know they’re gone, because Mary Magdalene never refers to them when she gets there. The other women never refer to them when they get there. Peter and John never refer to them when they get there. They’re shaken by the earthquake out of their divinely induced comas. They know they have failed in their duty, and so they go right back to the Sanhedrin. And they are collective testimony that the body is not there.
Meanwhile back at the tomb, Mary Magdalene assumed that maybe somebody has stolen the body of Jesus. She has no thought of resurrection. She runs to Peter and John; they don’t have any thought of resurrection either. The two are “running together.” John wants us to know that he was faster than Peter. Since he is the author of this gospel he says, “The other disciple ran ahead faster than Peter, and came to the tomb first.”
He was also more hesitant than Peter, and he’s “stooping down, looked in, yet didn’t go in. And so Simon Peter also came, following him, entered the tomb.” Peter was not shy. Both had “entered the tomb and saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the face-cloth which had been on His head, not lying with the linen wrappings, but rolled up in a place by itself. So the other disciple also entered, and he saw and believed.”
Here is the evidence of an empty tomb: the absent guards; the stone removed; the body gone; the grave clothes neatly lying in place. Now remember that they did not embalm, they wrapped bodies like a mummy. And in the case of Jesus, they had about a hundred-pound weight of spices. And then they would wrap around and around the head the spices as well. So the body was wrapped, and the head was wrapped separately.
Now if somebody stole the body, they wouldn’t unwrap it. It would be a lot easier to carry a body all wrapped up and at least smelling reasonable than it would be to unwrap a corpse and touch the flesh itself. But if that happened, you wouldn’t see the linen wrappings lying in one place where the body had been and the wrappings around the head lying in another place where the head had been. Jesus had just gone through them.
They apostles almost all, with the exception of John, died as martyrs. And they died because they preached Jesus crucified and risen; and if they faked His resurrection, that would have been absolutely the most idiotic thing they could have ever done. How could they sustain it their whole life, die as martyrs for a fraud? The Jewish leaders were more afraid that Jesus would rise than the disciples.
Go to Matthew 28. The soldiers are back at the Jewish Supreme Court trying to explain what happened. In verse 11, “Some of the guard came into the city of Jerusalem and reported “to the chief priests all that had happened.” What do you think they said? “We don’t know what happened. We all fell asleep and then there was an earthquake, and the stone rolled away, and the body is gone. That is all we know.”
Verse 12-13, “When the chief priests had met with the elders and devised a plan, they gave the soldiers a large sum of money, 13 telling them, “You are to say, ‘His disciples came during the night and stole him away while we were asleep.” How do you know that if you were asleep? Verse 14-15, “If this report gets to the governor, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble.” 15 So the soldiers took the money and did as they were instructed.”
And this story has been widely circulated among the Jews to this very day.” The notion of critics throughout history that the disciples were so committed to the resurrection of Jesus that they fabricated it, is completely contrary to the testimony of Scripture. They don’t fully believe it until they see Him and touch Him. The first line of testimony for the resurrection of Christ is the empty tomb, the second is the angelic declaration, and the third is the testimony of the eyewitnesses.
The resurrection is the event by which God validates the sacrifice of Christ. All those animal sacrifices for all those centuries could never take away sin; but the one sacrifice of Christ removes sin on the part of the people of God who believe forever. And God indicated that by the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, by ripping the veil in the temple, ending the ceremonial system and the sacrificial system at that point. Christ was the complete and satisfactory offering. Let us pray.