Now there are a lot of things we could say about the literal, physical, and bodily resurrection of Jesus from the dead. For example, we could say that the meaning of the resurrection is that God is for us. We could say that it proves to us that all of God's wrath against all of our sins has been appeased. The resurrection tells us that God's righteousness that was offended by our sins has been adjudicated and made right. It confirms that God's determination to eternally damn those who have belittled and mocked His glory by their rebellion has been satisfied in, by, and through the sinless life and vicarious death of Jesus Christ. But we could also say that the resurrection is the unmistakable public affirmation by God the Father that He has fully accepted Jesus' suffering and death as the final payment to forever settle the debt of sin of all of those who will repent and put their trust in Jesus. And we could say that because God has proved that He has accepted all that Jesus said and did by raising Him from the dead, that God is now determined to close ranks with us. He now purposes to overcome all our sense of abandonment and alienation from Him. But we could also say that the resurrection allows for the final two parts of the promise of the New Covenant to be realized. Where Jeremiah prophesied, I will be their God and they will be My people. So the resurrection now makes God to be our God and allows us to be His people. And, for I will forgive their iniquity and their sin, I will remember no more. Hallelujah. For anyone who has been blessed by God to know that he is in fact nothing more than a wicked sinner and thus entitled to nothing more than eternal damnation, for God to sovereignly declare that He has chosen to forgive your sin by what He has done for you is truly the greatest news in all the world. And the resurrection proves that that great good news is true. The literal, physical, and bodily resurrection of Jesus is God's sovereign declaration to the nations and peoples of the world that no human can work his way to glory, but that God Himself intends to do the impossible to get us there. The resurrection is the promise of God that all who trust in Jesus will be the beneficiaries of God's power to lead us into paths of righteousness and all the way through the valley of the shadow of death so that we may lie down in green pastures and dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Therefore, believing in your heart that God raised Jesus from the dead is much more than accepting an historical fact. It means being confident that God is now for you. If you don't think God is for you now that you're saved, you do not believe in the resurrection. You believe your sin is greater than His grace. You are challenging the efficacy of His death, burial, and resurrection to assume that you're beyond forgiveness. And you don't have the right to do that. He has closed ranks with you. It means that He is ongoingly transforming your life and that He is determined to give you eternal joy. Hallelujah. Believing in the resurrection means trusting in all the promises of life and hope and righteousness and joy for which it stands. It means we have reason to be confident of God's power and love. It means that we can face the loss of all of this world's goods, including our natural and political freedom, and even our very lives without fear. It means that God will grant us both the desire and the power to forgive and love our enemies. That we will not hate any human being. And that we will have the testimony that our treasure is in heaven and not on the earth. But there are things that the resurrection does not give us. For example, the resurrection does not give us bodies that will never grow weary, weak, or sick. But it promises that when this body plays out, God will give us a new one. The resurrection does not mean that we will have more of this world's goods or that we will keep the goods that He has given us. But it promises that what we will have over there will be infinitely better than anything we could ever hope to have down here. The resurrection does not mean that all men will think well of us, or that we will not have human enemies, or that we will escape suffering. But it promises that when we suffer, we will share in Christ's glory. The resurrection promises us that whether we live or die, whether we prosper or suffer want, that whether we are delivered or endure persecution, that Jesus is enough. The resurrection assures us that God is determined to work unendingly on our behalf until we are so radically transformed that we will know and believe and say that Jesus is better than anything that anyone else can take from us now and that Jesus is better than anything that anyone else can give to us later on. Now there are several things that Dr. Luke wants us to know in the passage that Brother Andy just read to us. So let's try to look over the shoulder of the good doctor as he's moved along by God the Holy Spirit to pin down these inerrant and infallible words so we can get everything he wants to say. And the first thing out of the box is huge. Look again at Luke 24, verses 1 and 2. But on the first day of the week at early dawn, they came to the tomb, bringing the spices which they had prepared, and they found the stone rolled away from the tomb. I told you earlier that the Jews begin each day at evening. And this came from the way that God dealt with Moses in the book of Genesis where he wrote, and there was evening and there was morning one day. So the typical way the Jews have of starting the day, when I was growing up, We started our week my family started our week according to T.V. guide. Yes we did. And so Sunday morning was the first day of the week. That's I didn't have a clue what the Bible said. I went by T.V. guide and that's the first entry in the book was Sunday morning. So that's first day of the week. So that's how we did. So morning was the you know we get started in the morning and we end in the evening that's Greek that's actually a Greek way of doing things that is a Western culture doing things the Jews begin their day at sundown and they end their day at sundown so a day is from sundown to sundown the evening comes first and then the morning And that started by God who said that in the beginning in Genesis. So, the Jew began the day at sundown in the 24-hour period that they called yom, and that we call day, went from sundown to sundown. So the Sabbath was from sundown Friday until sundown Saturday. Have you ever been to Miami or St. Louis or Dallas or New York City? where there's a large population of Orthodox Jews sundown right before sundown they walk to synagogue and there's thousands of them in the street walking to synagogue because they're keeping the Sabbath that begins at sundown on Friday as a little boy I'm in St. Louis and I'm looking at all that and they got their little black hats on and their curly Q coming out of the hats those are the derivatives of the Pharisees and they follow the teachings of the fair say equal Jews. And I'm sitting there with the nobody had air conditioner back in the fifties so we had the windows rolled down. Remember when they actually rolled windows down in automobiles and they had that little window that did this. Because when you drove it put air in on you and that was awesome. Yeah, y'all don't know what I'm talking about. And so I'm leaning out the window, this little boy, and saying, Mama, what are all those people walking down the street looking goofy for? Those are Jews. What's a Jew? They're going to synagogue. What synagogue? She didn't know. So the Sabbath was from sundown Friday until sundown Saturday. So Jesus died about 3 p.m. on Friday. Just about 2 or 3 hours before sundown. So they were in quite a hurry to get him down from the cross which took some time. Now 3 or 4 messages ago I told you what some of the time was because the weight of the human on the single nail in the feet And the agony that was in that person as he pushed down on that spike in order to lift himself up so he could exhale bent that nail at the bottom usually. And so they either cut the feet off of the man who had been crucified or they had to try to get that spike out after it was bent over. And so it took some time to get him off the cross. and they didn't have time to prepare his body properly. We read where Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea attempted to do this, but they were in such a hurry, they had to just kind of seal him in before the Sabbath began. So the large rock was rolled across the entrance of Joseph's tomb, sealing Jesus inside just before the sun set on that particular Friday. And Jesus was dead from that part of Friday before the Sabbath began and then all during the Sabbath. And now we see that He rose from the dead at some point after the Sabbath had ended at sundown on Saturday, which would have been called the first day of the week, which was Sunday. Now at that time, the Jews didn't name the days of the week like we do. Every once in a while you run into a Seventh-day Adventist who will tell you that you're a pagan because you're worshiping on a day that's named after the sun god sunday and sunday was named after the sun god that's absolutely correct but so was saturday and monday and tuesday and wednesday and all named after gods so if we're going to worship on any day of the week we're going to worship on a day that's named after a pagan god And so they do too, but they just don't classify themselves as doing that. But back then, they didn't name the days of the week. flowed out from the Sabbath because the Sabbath was the center of Jewish life. So the first day after the Sabbath was called the first day of the week. And after the resurrection, the Christian church no longer celebrated the Old Testament Sabbath, but began to meet together on the first day of the week, the day after the Sabbath, and also in Christian literature it was called the eighth day of the week, as well as the first day of the week, to celebrate the resurrection. and as they gathered together they took the Lord's Supper and there was preaching and teaching as we see recorded in the book of Acts chapter 20 with the Apostle Paul. By the time that the Apostle John was banished to the Isle of Patmos near the end of the first century, worshipping on the first day of the week had become so prominent that it was called the Lord's Day. And in the book of Revelation chapter 1 verse 10, John said that he was in the Spirit on the Lord's Day, which the early church took as an apostolic command, that all believers should be in the Spirit on the Lord's Day. And that is why we gather together on Sunday and not Saturday. We want to be in the presence of God and in the Bible and in the company of other believers on the Lord's Day to remember and to celebrate the resurrection. So Christians are those who adhere to the infinitely superior revelation of the new covenant that was built on superior promises, administered through a superior priesthood, who offered a superior sacrifice. Now, and I could get into this as deep as you want me to, as to why we do not worship on the Sabbath and why it's wrong to do so, in the sense of excluding the Lord's Day. But let me just say this, it's okay to worship God all seven days of the week. It's not wrong to worship God at any day. but we are commanded to gather together on the Lord's Day and there's evidence to suggest that that is what it's been since the beginning so next time somebody tells you that the emperor Constantine commanded the church to change Sabbath worship to Sunday worship and that the church was terrified of the big bad emperor remind them that the Christian church wasn't afraid of anybody and that martyrdom was common in the in the first three centuries and they didn't obey anybody that wasn't biblical So that's just not true. They did it before the end of the completion of the New Testament. Now all the Gospel writers agree that Jesus rose from the dead after the Sabbath was completed on the first day of the week. But we have to understand that the first day of the week began immediately after the Sabbath was concluded at sundown on Saturday. So to be consistent, the first day of the week began at sundown on Saturday and went until sundown on Sunday. So technically, Jesus could have risen at any point after the Sabbath ended, even Saturday night or early Sunday morning, and it still would have been called the first day of the week. Because you need to notice that Luke did not tell us that Jesus rose early in the morning on Sunday, but that on the first day of the week at early dawn, they came to the tomb, bringing the spices which they had prepared, and they found the stone rolled away from the tomb. So by the time it was early dawn on Sunday, the tomb was already empty. So from this we could conclude that Jesus rose anywhere from immediately after sundown on Saturday up to and including just moments before these women came at early dawn. Because by the time they got there at early dawn, Jesus was already alive. Now there are a few things to note about what Dr. Luke says here. First of all, nobody believes. The hypocritical Jewish religious leaders certainly never dreamed that this itinerant preacher from Galilee would rise from the dead, or they would never have wanted him dead in the first place. As far as they were concerned, Jesus dying on the cross was the end of the man. And their only concern now was to erase his memory from the general population. And the crowd that mocked Jesus, made up of both Jews and Gentiles, never thought that Jesus would live again either. Certainly the Roman soldiers and authorities who actually carried out the crucifixion didn't anticipate Jesus living again. Now no Roman worth his salt believed that dead people would rise again, but the Jewish leaders asked that Pilate send a guard to the grave to prevent Jesus' followers from conducting a staged resurrection. And in Levi's record, we read this in Matthew 27, verses 62-66. Now on the next day, which was the Sabbath, the day after Jesus, the day after the preparation, the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered together with Pilate and said, Sir, we remember that when he was still alive, that deceiver said after three days, I am to rise again. Now this is amazing that the Pharisees remembered him saying that, but the disciples didn't. Therefore give orders for the grave to be made secure until the third day." Now, this is probably a different sermon. What does that tell you about unbelievers? That as it pertains to a lot of stuff about God and the Bible, they really believe. It's just they don't like what they hear. It's not they don't acknowledge it. Listen, the Bible says the devils believe. So fallen angels have the capacity to believe. So they're not saved. So this idea, there used to be an atheist from Ocean Springs wrote a letter to the editor almost every week in the local paper. He would just rail out against Christians just talking about this Jesus, this Jesus, this Jesus, this Jesus. So I wrote a letter to the paper, and I said, I want to commend, and I named his name, I forgot what his name is now. I said, he talks about Jesus more than most Christians. And I said, every week there's something about Jesus from this man in the paper. And this man uplifts Jesus because I don't believe in the tooth fairy. And the tooth fairy don't, I hope I'm not messing anybody up. Oh well. You get free stuff when you come to church here. So, there ain't no such thing as a tooth fairy. If you believe in a tooth fairy, you're not bothering me, because I know it's a myth. I don't go out of my way condemning the tooth fairy. This guy goes out of his way to condemn Jesus. Why? Because he knows there's something to it. He never wrote another letter to the paper. So, commend every atheist you know that they believe so strongly that it's bothering them. They're just bothered by this myth that doesn't exist. That's a fantasy. It's really upsetting them. Quit talking about this man that doesn't exist. It's really amazing. So anyway, they believe more than the apostles did. Therefore, give orders for the grave to be made secure until the third day. Otherwise, His disciples may come and steal Him away and say to the people that He has risen from the dead, and the last deception will be worse than the first. Pilate said to them, you have a guard, go, make it as secure as you know how. And they went and made the grave secure, and along with the guard they set a seal on the stone. They're going to have these tough guys going to guard the stone so God won't be able to move. Hallelujah. This is awesome. But we have to know that the disciples didn't believe that Jesus was really going to come out of that tomb alive either. and neither did the eleven remaining apostles. But we also need to know that the women that Luke refers to here in verse one they didn't believe either. These women didn't come early on Sunday morning to greet their risen savior. They came to do their duty and give Jesus a proper Jewish burial because they were prohibited from doing so on Friday evening due to the fact that the Sabbath was so near and they didn't have time on Friday evening and they weren't allowed during the Sabbath. So we could call what they're doing here a very decent act or an act of propriety or even an act of kindness. But we couldn't call it an act of faith because it wasn't. They didn't believe that Jesus had promised that what Jesus had promised about rising from the dead and they no more expected to see Jesus alive that morning than anybody else. These women came to give Jesus a proper Jewish send-off into Abraham's bosom, not to be witnesses of one of the greatest miracles in the history of the world. But what happened to the Roman guards, the tough guys? Well, once again, Levi tells us. Now after the Sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to look at the grave. And behold, a severe earthquake had occurred. For an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled away the stone and sat upon it. And his appearance was like lightning, and his clothing as white as snow. And the guards resisted the angel and overpowered him. I just want to know if y'all are reading. Some of y'all say amen, amen. No, no, I'm making stuff up sometimes. The guard shook for fear of him and became like dead men. Now those of you of the Pentecostal persuasion, this is one of the instances in the Bible where they fell out. They weren't believers. There's only five instances in the whole Bible where people passed out and fell on the floor and three of them was with unbelievers. The other was with Daniel and John. And they both saw angels. I'd have passed out too. The angel said to the women, do not be afraid. Well, that fixed that. The man looks like lightning. And he says, don't be afraid. Why did angels tell people that? I know it's because they were afraid. Why were they afraid? I know it looks like lightning. I'm looking for another reason. That's right. They thought God was going to kill them because they all knew that they were lost and sinners and they needed a savior. And so they were terrified that God had sent an angel to judge them. For I know that you are looking for Jesus who has been crucified. He is not here, for He has risen. Just as He said, come see the place where He was lying. Go quickly and tell His disciples that He has risen from the dead. And behold, He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see Him. Behold, I have told you. And they left it to Him quickly with fear and great joy, and ran to report it to His disciples. You ever had fear and great joy at the same time? That's amazing, isn't it? Peter got let out of prison. He knocked at the door where everybody was praying. And the Bible says they did not open the door for fear. And they said, it's not him, it's his angel. Well, if it's his angel, open the door! Fear makes you do crazy things, don't it? It's amazing. And it's fear and joy mixed together. There's all kinds of words for this, but it's really amazing. And they left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy and ran to report it to His disciples. As it behold, Jesus met them, the women, and greeted them, and they came up and took hold of His feet and worshipped Him. They saw Him first. Then Jesus said to them, Do not be afraid. Go and take my word to my brethren to leave for Galilee, and there they will see me. Now while they were on their way, some of the guard came into the city and reported to the chief priests all that had happened. And when they had assembled with the elders and consulted together, they gave a large sum of money to the soldiers. You say, why is this in the Bible? I'm going to tell you why it's in the Bible. And said, You are to say, here's what you are to say. They bribed them to say this. His disciples came by night and stole him away while we were asleep. And if this should come to the governor's ears, we will win him over and keep you out of trouble. Why would they have to keep them out of trouble? Because they're saying that they fell asleep while they were ordered to be on watch, which meant they would suffer the death penalty. Now you say, why is it? And look, they took the money and did as they were instructed. And look, and this story was widely spread among the Jews as is to this day. And there's a Jew on 7th Avenue in New York City that has a shoe place where he fixes shoes. Orthodox Jew, hat, curly Q, the whole shooting match. And I spent some time with that guy when I was in New York City. And he believes that story. That's exactly what he believes. Because that's what he was taught. He didn't read the Bible, New Testament. He was taught that as a child. That we just made it up. And here it tells you how that story started. It was a bribe. And having said that, Dr. Luke makes it a point to mention these women by name. Look again at verse 10 of chapter 24 of Luke. Now there were Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary, the mother of James. And then it says, also the other women with them were telling these things to the apostles. Now as you read the other gospel record, it appears that we may have a contradiction. Luke names several women but when you read what the Apostle Levi wrote he says now after the Sabbath as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to look at the grave so he mentions two women right and then Peter's disciple John Mark says this when the Sabbath was over Mary Magdalene and mother the mother of James and Solomon brought spices so they might come and anoint him that he mentions three women but they're one who's got a different name And then yet the Apostle John says on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene came early to the tomb while it was still dark and saw the stone already taken away from the tomb. So there's Mary Magdalene by herself. So is this a contradiction? Do the Gospel writers disagree on who and how many women were there? No. This is not an example of why we cannot trust the Bible. This is one of many examples of why we can. First of all, each of the four Gospel writers confirms that Mary Magdalene was there. And John doesn't say that Mary was alone, only that she was there. So John was correct and Mary Magdalene was there, but she wasn't alone. Likewise, Luke gives us an indication that several women, even beyond the ones that he named, were there. So what we should take away from this is that while none of the men were there, several women were. And we can say that this was simply the normal duty of women to prepare the body for burial, and that's true. Yet the Gospel writers make it a point to name many of these ladies, which was highly unusual back in the first century. And as we have seen, Dr. Luke was especially mindful of women all through the Gospel record. And that is significant. Also, Jesus did things that were unheard of. for a man in his position as a preacher and teacher of the Bible, of the Scriptures, he actually spent time and talked to women one-on-one, which was never done by the priests. Now look again at verse 2 and 3. And they found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. Now this tells us that Joseph's tomb was a rather large one where people could physically enter into it. And when these women entered into Joseph's tomb, Jesus was not there. So at some point, before these women got there, Jesus had already risen. Now look what Luke wrote in Luke 24, 4-8. While they were perplexed about this, behold, two men suddenly stood near them in dazzling clothing, and as the women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, why do you seek the Living One among the dead? He is not here, but He is risen. Remember how He spoke to you while He was still in Galilee, saying that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified in the third day rise again. And they remembered His words." Talking about Jesus' words. Now this is the first of a series of very strange events that came immediately after the resurrection where the truth of the Old Testament Scriptures and the promises of Jesus that He made during His ministry were either hidden or obscured or just flat out forgotten by people who at one time knew them. And when either the angel or Jesus Himself went over these things again, their eyes were suddenly opened and they remembered. All that these two men, who were obviously angels, were telling these women was what Jesus had already spoken. They told these perplexed women, Why do you seek the Living One among the dead? He is not here. He is risen. Remember how He spoke to you while He was still in Galilee, saying that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified in the third day rise again. This goes back to the biblical truth concerning angels. Angels do not have the authority to create doctrine, or to initiate truth, or to originate anything that is eternal. Angels are sent by God to speak only what God gives them to say. They are not autonomous beings. They are not self-willed creatures. They are ministering spirits. The writer of Hebrews says that angels are all ministering spirits sent out to render service for the sake of those who will inherit salvation. And Jude wrote this about the rebellious angels. Angels who did not keep their own domain, but abandoned their proper abode He has kept in eternal bonds under darkness for the judgment of the great day. Now, this is a controversial passage in Jude. But notice what he said their sin was. They did not keep their own domain, but abandoned their proper abode. In other words, they got out of what they were supposed to be in. They didn't stay in their place. They operated outside of where they were supposed to operate. And they were damned and judged for that. Back in Luke 10, verse 16, Jesus said, I was watching Satan fall from heaven like lightning. And in the book of Revelation 12, verses 3, 4, and then 7-12, in more apocalyptic language, the Apostle John talked about how Satan and a third of all the angels were cast out of heaven into the earth when they rebelled. I'm not going to spend a lot of time with this, but this is too important to just read over. Then another sign appeared in heaven, and behold, a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and on his heads were seven diadems. And his tail swept away a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the earth." There's the reference to the third part of the angels being cast into the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth so that when she gave birth he might devour her child. It's all kind of things I could say about that. Let me just keep going. There was war in heaven. Michael and his angels waging war with the dragon. And the dragon and his angels waged war. And they were not strong enough. And look, there was no longer a place found for them in heaven. They never go back into heaven. Satan does not go to heaven now. The demons do not go back into heaven now. and the great red dragon was thrown down the serpent of old who was called the devil and Satan at least we know who he is who deceives the whole world he was thrown down to the earth and his angels were thrown down with him there we go then I heard a loud voice in heaven saying I think what just happened all of our trouble is now going to start the devil has been cast out of heaven now he's on the earth where he can't jump on God, he can't do battle with God, he's going to do battle with us. Okay? So this is the moment when all the problems start for us. Look what the angel said. I heard a loud voice in heaven saying, Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of His Christ have come For the accuser of our brethren has been thrown down, he who accuses them before our God day and night. So it is at the moment of our greatest peril that heaven rejoices. Huh? And look, and they overcame him. because of the blood of the Lamb and because of the word of their testimony, and they did not love their lives even when faced with death. For this reason, rejoice, O heavens, and you who dwell in them, woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has come down to you having great wrath." Why? Knowing that he has only a short time. That's why he's mad. And so he wages proxy war with you. So these angels were cast down to the earth because they rebelled against God. But when you read all the verses in the Bible that contain information about angels, you come away with several interesting facts. For example, angels do not speak for themselves. They do not act on their own accord. They speak only what they have been given to say, and they can only do what they have been sent to do. Therefore, when they say something, it is a message directly from God. In other words, it is the Word of the Lord. And when they do something, it is only what God wills. So in that sense, we are to mimic the angels. We do not have the authority to create doctrine or to initiate truth or to originate anything that is eternal. And when we speak, we are to only speak God's Word, and when we act, we are to only do God's will. Now as soon as these angels quoted what Jesus had told these women earlier, Luke wrote, they remembered His words. So as these women heard the words of Jesus repeated to them, God opened their minds and they remembered. And that is why we need to keep the words of Jesus fresh in our minds. We need to read them often and consistently. We should study them and meditate on them and ponder them and talk about them and ask questions about them and memorize them and quote them. The Lord God did not only command you to love Him with all your heart. He commanded you to love Him with all your mind. One of the reasons we should do this is so that we can correctly understand what is going on in the world around us. So that you can discern what is happening. You see, if you're not careful, you're going to allow the news media to dictate two very important things to you. They're going to tell you what is important, and they're going to tell you what to think about it. With the advent of the 24-hour news cycle, the producers and writers of new programs highlight what they deem to be important. And I don't know if you've ever spent any time at all in front of that thing, but if you listen to one program after the next, they're saying the same thing using the same words. That's because they've all got the same producers. And after you've heard it for three hours, it's not a A news flash. It's history. So if you're not careful, you will be agitated about an issue that may not even be relevant. And it has nothing to do with knowing and loving and obeying Jesus Christ because you're being artificially manipulated by some producer in New York City. Now some of what you see and hear may be very important. But some of it may not be important at all. even though it is being repeated a thousand times. But what Jesus says is always important. It is always relevant. It is always true. And it's always correct. And knowing what Jesus said, and then knowing what Jesus meant by what He said, is what will honor God and edify yourself and others. So what Jesus said and what He meant by what He said is absolutely indispensable to discerning what to think about what is going on so that we may walk this world in white. Knowing God's Word in context is vital if we are to know God's will and to actually do God's will. Other than that, we're just guessing. And knowing God's will is the only thing that matters when it comes to knowing what to think about what is going on so that we may live as though we truly believe. And whoever you listen to as conservative or liberal is completely irrelevant when it comes to these two issues. Let me remind you, dear friends, that being politically conservative or liberal is not the same thing as being biblical. Yet being biblical is the only way we can please God. So take heed on what you are allowing to feed your soul. And make sure that you remember what Jesus said. So whatever good these women were doing, I know some pastors in Gulfport, and they always talk about Dr. Laura. Dr. Laura, man, she tells the truth. Man, she's after it. She tells them to straighten up and fly right. That's the gospel. That's not the gospel. The gospel is Jesus lived a perfect life, and you're a sinner, and you need His righteousness to be forgiven. That's the gospel. So the Gospel is not that God's going to do something great in you so you can rise up and be a warrior like David and slay the giant. That's intoxicating. That makes you feel important. That's not the Gospel. The Gospel is you're with the other Jews behind the embankment scared to death, and Jesus is going to kill the giant. David was a type of Jesus. Daniel was a type of Jesus. Joshua was a type of Jesus. Moses was a type of Jesus. Not you. You're not going to shut the lion's mouth. Jesus is. And that doesn't make you excited, but that's the gospel. Amen. So Joel Osteen is wrong. Whatever good these women were doing, they had forgotten what Jesus said. And forgetting what Jesus said is the worst thing that could happen to anyone. Both Luke and the Apostle John tells us that people who knew the Lord and who were saved didn't even recognize Jesus after He rose from the dead. And this illustrates one of my own greatest fears. That I will be so busy studying the Bible that I forget Jesus. That I will be so wrapped up in church that I forget what Jesus said. This is why I say things like this. I love Reformed Theology. I think Reformed Theology is the correct exposition of Scripture. But I love the Bible more than I love Reformed Theology. Because the Bible is better than Reformed Theology. Now by saying that, I'm not trying to suggest that Reformed theology is at odds with Scripture. It isn't. But saying it like that helps me keep my own priorities straight. Likewise, I love the 66 books of the Bible. I spend the majority of every single day of every single week looking at the book. But as much as I love God's Word, I love Jesus more. Because Jesus is better than the Bible. Again, there's absolutely no conflict between the Bible and Jesus. I say it like that to help my own heart and mind set my priorities properly. And I want to go to heaven. I want to see those streets of gold and walk through those pearly gates and be reunited with loved ones who have gone there before me. But more than any of that, I want to see Jesus. More than my daughter. More than my father. I want to bow before Jesus and worship Him and adore Him and be close to Him forever because Jesus is better than heaven. So I'm not trying to fit in with some theological camp. I'm not trying to please John MacArthur or R.C. Sproul or Augustine. I am in awe of these men. But I am trying to please Jesus. I am trying to love Jesus and honor Him and bring Him glory with my life and my words and my actions and the very intent of my heart so I do what I do out of deep and abiding love and awe and admiration and respect for Jesus. And I preach and teach in a way that I hope you will too. We need to remember that the Pharisees were the single most religious people on earth. They read and studied and memorized and they discussed religious things all day long. And they are the only group of people that Jesus never said anything good about. Jesus condemned these men to their face. They were wrong about everything. So what is it about me that would prevent me from becoming just like those men? What moral uprightness do I possess that I can avoid making the same mistakes that they made? Unless God would guard my heart and keep my soul, I could end up worse than they. And that is why I fear. And that is why I pray. And that is why I beg God to help me and keep me and change me and convict me and do in me whatever He sees that I need lest I become a reproach to God and become a reprobate. Let me tell you what will happen in this church 50 years from now if we don't keep doing what we're doing now. This church will ordain homosexuals. This church will absolutely do everything that these other churches will do. The covenant of peace church will be a reproach to God and a den of creeping things and snakes of the earth if we do not stay where we are and keep moving on toward being biblical. There is nothing to stop us. We are not better than anybody else. We don't have something that other people have not had infinitely more of in years gone by. Read John Wesley. Read his biography. Read the amount of time he spent in prayer with God. And then look what he wrote about the doctrines of grace. And how did he get there? How could he be so wrong about that? How could George Whitefield preach till thousands, till coal miners stood there and the black faces had tears dripping down their faces as they heard this man preach? How could that man own slaves? How could the greatest theologian in the history of the United States, Jonathan Edwards, own human beings and sell them like cattle? How does that happen? Because we're men and we have clay feet and we're just sinners. Take heed. Take heed. Do not say, look what I have come into. Because you'll fall. Jesus said, I beheld the archangel of heaven. I beheld Lucifer. I beheld the most musical angel in all of heaven fall like lightning. That's how fast you lose. Bam! It's gone. And you'll spend the rest of your life trying to find it. Take heed. Beg God for mercy. Beg God. Walk tenderly before the Lord. Do not presume upon His mercy. But praise Him. So whatever you do, Whatever politics you engage in, whatever acts you carry out, however much church stuff you engage in, don't forget who Jesus is and what Jesus said. And repeat what Jesus said to yourself and to others often, so none of us will forget. They forgot! Look at what Dr. Luke wrote in verses 9 and 10. and returned from the tomb and reported all these things to the eleven and to all the rest." Now there were Mary Magdalene and Joanna Mary, the mother of James, and the other women with them were telling these things to the apostles. Now, the 11 refers to the remaining 12 men that Jesus personally chose to be apostles, the men who were specifically authorized by Jesus Himself to take Jesus' message to the people and who were given the divine power to perform signs, wonders, miracles, and various gifts of the Holy Spirit to give divine credibility to the words they spoke. Of course, Judas was the 12th man, and by this time he has already committed suicide and is already in his own place in hell. So Luke tells us that the women whom the angels spoke to have come back from the tomb and they reported to the remaining eleven apostles that Jesus is alive. He's alive. We saw Him. We saw Him. He's alive. We worshipped. We touched His feet. And verse 11 tells us what spiritual condition the eleven were in at that time when Luke says, but these words appeared to them as nonsense. and they would not believe them. How do you get there? How do you get there? How do you get there? They were chosen by Jesus. Jesus stayed up all night long to pick these people. Now there's no doubt in my mind that the women were very excited and were talking real fast because that's exactly how I would have acted. But even assuming this, Luke doesn't say that it was because they were women or because they were excited that their words seemed to the eleven as nonsense. It was because the eleven didn't believe what the women were saying. The eleven were saying, what is wrong with these women? But they're listening to them because they're all saying the same thing. Their stories are identical. And they all say they had the same experience. And it's not like there was all kinds of time for these women to get together and make up the story. This just happened to them moments ago. And keep in mind that these women didn't believe it first either. So this was not some attempt at misleading the eleven to believe something that these women felt really passionate about. No, this was a fresh, traumatic experience and their stories were all consistent. Now remember that these eleven men had been with Jesus for at least three years. And they had seen breathtaking miracles and heard the world's only perfect teaching from the world's only perfect teacher. They had been personally chosen to be the representatives of Jesus and they had forsaken all to follow Him. And yet at this moment, three days after Jesus died, the men still do not believe. They did not believe that Jesus had risen from the dead. And the excited statements by these women that they had just spoken to two angels who had told them that Jesus was alive appeared to these chosen men as nonsense. Not a miracle, not some great thing, not something that might happen. Nonsense! Foolishness! But evidently something was happening in Peter. By the way, and I should have put this in there, the word nonsense here is a derivative of the same word that's in 1 Corinthians 2 verse 14. that says that the carnal man cannot accept the things of the Spirit of God for they are foolishness to him. It's that kind of nonsense. It's too stupid to believe. It's too ridiculous to consider. It's worth only disdain and rejection. But evidently something was happening to Peter. God was evidently at work in the man who had denied Jesus three times just three days earlier. And Luke gives us insight in verse 12 of the great difference between Peter and Judas. But Peter got up and ran to the tomb, stooping and looking in. He saw the linen wrappings only, and he went away to his home marveling at what had happened. Now exactly when did Peter go to the tomb? As you piece the four Gospel records together, you can see that Peter went before Mary Magdalene came back. And it was also before the full testimony of all these women. So Luke's comment here in verse 12 is out of sequence. To get all this clear, we need to read from John 20, verses 1-10. Now on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene came early to the tomb while it was still dark and saw the stone already taken away from the tomb. So she ran and came to Simon Peter and to the other disciple whom Jesus loved, that's John, and said to them, they have taken away the Lord out of the tomb and we do not know where they have laid him. So Peter and the other disciple went forth and they were going to the tomb. The two were running together and the other disciple ran ahead faster than Peter and came to the tomb first. John outran Peter. and stooping and looking in, he saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. And so Simon Peter also came following him and entered the tomb, and he saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the face cloth, ha, which had been on his head, not lying with the linen wrappings, but rolled up in a place by itself. So the other disciple who had first come to the tomb then also entered, and he saw and what? Believed. How precious did that grace appear the hour I first believed. Boom! John believed. For as yet they did not understand the Scripture. What? That he must rise again from the dead. What? So the disciples went again to their own homes. What? That's what you do when Jesus rises from the dead? You go home? Look at how John ends the passage. So the disciples went again to their own home. Now that means they separated. Peter and John just saw this. Now, it doesn't tell you. I guarantee you they talked. I guarantee they weren't being quiet. What do you think? I don't know. I believe. I don't know. What do you think? I believe. What do you think? OK. See you tomorrow. Bye. What? How do you do that? Why would you do that here? It's very similar to the way that Luke ends his account with Peter. Look what Luke says. And he went away to his home marveling at what had happened. So why did John and Luke say it like this? Why did everybody just go home? Here's why. Because neither the disciples nor Peter knew what to do next. Where are you going? Well, we'll go to the church. There wasn't no church. What would you have done? Well, I can tell you what I'd have done. I'd have been all over town. What's the next step? Now what? Okay, he's alive. Now what? What should they say? This had never happened before. There was nothing to guide them. And so what we're going to see next week is that Jesus Himself is going to appear to these men several different times, giving them instructions on what they're going to do next. But right now, everybody's in shock, so they just go home. Now in my remaining time I want to briefly give you five truths about the resurrection that I hope will give you a deeper understanding of this glorious reality number one Jesus had a bodily resurrection no everybody don't let anybody ever tell you it was metaphysical or it was a theory or anything like that he rose from the dead with a body When Jesus was raised from the dead, He didn't leave His body behind. In fact, after His resurrection, His scars remained. He ate fish. His body ascended into heaven and will bodily come again. The Son of God will always have a bodily existence. And the fact that Jesus still has a body testifies to the dignity that God has given the human body, both the ones we have now and the ones we will have after our resurrection. Matthew Lee Anderson, the founder of Mere Orthodoxy, writes this, quote, The resurrection of the body means that to be human with God is to be with Him not as disembodied souls, but as people with noses, faces, arms, and legs that are similar to those we currently have. Number two, Jesus had a justifying resurrection. Perhaps the clearest instance of Paul's connecting Jesus' resurrection with his own justification is obscured in most English translations. Paul writes in 1 Timothy 3, verse 16, by common confession, great is the mystery of godliness. He who was revealed in the flesh was vindicated in the spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, and taken up in glory. The word that was translated here as vindicated is typically translated declared righteous or even justified elsewhere in the New Testament. But if Jesus was perfect, how could he be justified since justification implies guilt? The answer lies in Jesus' death and resurrection. Richard Gaffin, the professor of systematic theology at Westminster Theological Seminary, explains, quote, "...as long as Jesus remained in a state of death, the righteous character of His work, the efficacy of His obedience unto death remained in question, in fact, was implicitly denied. Consequently, the eradication of death in His resurrection is nothing less than the removal of the verdict of condemnation and the effective affirmation of His righteousness." Unquote. Number three, Jesus had a Trinitarian resurrection. The pattern in the New Testament is to speak of God the Father as the One who does the raising, Jesus as the One who is being raised, and the Spirit as the means by which the Father raised Jesus. This pattern is seen in Romans 8, verse 11. But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you. Here we see not only that God the Father raises Jesus through the Holy Spirit, but our own resurrection will be parallel to the resurrection of Jesus, and that God the Father will raise us through the Spirit. Number four, Jesus had a firstfruits resurrection of ours to come. Paul describes Jesus' resurrection as the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. The term firstfruits is an agricultural metaphor that points to the initial quality of the harvest. Gaffin explains, Paul is saying here the resurrection of Christ and of believers cannot be separated. Why? Because to extend the metaphor as Paul surely intends, Christ's resurrection is the firstfruits of the resurrection harvest that includes the resurrection of believers. This thought is reinforced in verse 23. Each in his own order. Christ the firstfruits, then it is coming those who belong to Christ." Number five, in Jesus, believers are already spiritually resurrected. The resurrection is not only a future event for believers. Those who believe in Christ have already been raised to life with Him. Paul writes in Colossians 3 verse 1, Therefore you have Therefore, if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God." Gaffen explained, believers will never be more resurrected than they already are. God has done a work in each believer, a work of nothing less than resurrection proportions that will not be undone. The resurrection is an already but not yet reality for the true Christian because of our union with Christ. Jesus' resurrection means that those who have faith in Him have been raised from the dead because they are in Christ. And yet we still await the full experience of the resurrection to come. And all of this, plus much more, is why we need to speak often about the resurrection. We need to trust in the truth of it, hope in the promise that it makes, and defend it against all who would deny it or minimize it. Amen. Let's pray.