Luke 24:1-9
Would you turn in your Bibles to Luke chapter 24. We are returning to the final chapter of Luke’s Gospel, Luke 24, getting the details of this amazing, amazing account of the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. There may be occasions or seasons in the Christian life when a believer loses sight of what’s important, when a believer loses focus on that which is essential and maybe veers off course, becomes ineffective due to, in that state of wandering and veering off course, becomes ineffective due to temptation to sin or distraction or worldliness. And in that condition, having fallen, he can become discouraged and even for a season be faithless.
We know, though, from Scripture that God will always bring his believing children back from, faith, faithlessness through the precious gift of repentance. God will strengthen their faith and restore their hope, return them into his, his useful service. The formal presentation of what I’ve just described, the doctrine, all its relating and supporting truths, the doctrine is called the Doctrine of Perseverance, the perseverance of the saints. And this is really what we are seeing in this 24th chapter of Luke. Christ is coming. He has risen from the dead. He never left, but he has risen from the dead and he comes now in this final time on earth to restore the faith of his people. And he’s going to do it by preserving them in God’s Word, by God’s Word.
Listen to this brief section from the confession that we affirm and we, every couple times a month, we confess from it. The London Baptist Confession of Faith from way back in 1689. Those guys knew how to put a word together, a sentence together. This is what they said, “though many storms,” this is from chapter 17, on the perseverance of the saints. “Though many storms and floods arise and beat against the saints, yet they shall never be able to take them off that foundation and rock which by faith they are fastened upon. Notwithstanding through unbelief and the temptations of Satan, the sensible sight of the light and love of God may be for a time clouded and obscured from them, and yet he is still the same. And they shall be sure to be kept by the power of God unto salvation, where they shall enjoy their purchased possession, they being engraven on the palm of His hands and their names have been written in the book of life from all eternity.” That’s the scroll that is now in the hands of our risen Savior, that was just sung about in that song.
Paul told Timothy, in 2 Timothy 2:19, “The firm foundation of God stands having this seal, ‘The Lord knows those who are his.’” There are times, as I said, and seasons, in which a believer may not look very much like he belongs to the Lord, and that’s a tragic time for sure. But the Lord still knows those who are his. He knows. He is omniscient. He sees all things. He knows the decision made from eternity past. But how are they known to others?
How are God’s people known to others? True believers repent of sin. They walk in faith. And that’s why Paul continues and says, “let everyone who names the name of the Lord abstain from Adikia.” Adikia is the word unrighteousness, sometimes translated iniquity or sin. And that Adikia, unrighteousness, wickedness, iniquity is always rooted in unbelief and unbelieving thinking. The Lord knows those who are his, and everyone else around will know who belongs to the Lord by the life that they live.
So as we come to the morning of the resurrection, we need to realize that this is exactly what the disciples of Jesus need so desperately at this juncture in their lives: the restoration of their faith. It’s critical that they return to what they know by faith to be true and to be right, and hopeful, and solid, because they are broken, scattered, troubled. Starts with the apostles themselves, the band of Jesus’ disciples. They are struggling, aren’t they? Led by Peter, denied even knowing Jesus; the rest of them have slinked into the shadows of the city or hunker down into their homes. On a fallen human level, we may sympathize with their mourning and their state of sorrow and even their despair, but we’d be wrong to sympathize wholly with them. That’s the sinner sympathizing with the sinner.
We need to abandon our sin and see them from a different view and that’s what this passage helps us to see. As the Angels rebuke the women, as the Lord rebukes the disciples on the road to Emmaus. We don’t have any real good reason to depart from faith, to depart from believing, circumstances, trials, afflictions, pain, sadnesses, sorrows. The Lord went through all those, never lost sight of believing, never took his eyes off the God who called him. You say, well, that’s just human nature. No, our Lord was human. He had a human nature, and he never failed.
Problem is not our humanness; the problem is our fallenness. And so we need to learn from the Lord and learn from Luke 24, and the Holy Spirit, how to return, how to be restored in faith and believing. These guys are really struggling in their faith, but we cannot let our own sympathies, and they are fallen weak sympathies, we can’t allow that to ignore, to allow us to ignore the cause of their troubles, which is a failure to remember Jesus words and to believe. It’s what our author, Luke the Evangelist would have us see in Luke 24 from start to finish of this great chapter. He writes as he stated very clearly, with purpose, in Luke 1:4, so that we might know the exact truth about the things we’ve been taught. So we would, would know our doctrine with certainty. So we’d hold fast to it with deep conviction and that is what this whole chapter is about.
As the Good Shepherd who is now risen, as he gathers his scattered sheep from all over Jerusalem, and he brings that flock, that scattered flock together, he shepherds them all back into the safety and the security of his own sheepfold, so they can feed on the soul nourishing truth that he has given them and he will give them. This is the Good Shepherd doing Good Shepherd work. This is what we see right here from the very beginning, right at the outset, as these believing women, who as we noted last week, they faltered in their faith, they’ve been troubled, they don’t see things clearly, and here they return to the tomb on Easter morning to attend to his dead body.
Let’s pick up the reading in chapter 24, Luke verse 1. We’ll read through verse 9. “Now in 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. But when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. And it happened that while they were perplexed about this, behold, two men suddenly stood near them in dazzling clothing. And when 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. And the third day, rise again.’ And they remembered his words. And when they returned from the tomb, they reported all these things to the eleven and to all the rest.” That’s what we’ll cover for this week. Next time we’ll finish that section going up to verse 12.
Let me give you three points for our outline this morning. First we see, first point, what the women found. Second, what the Angels said, and third, what the women did. What the women found, what the Angels said, and what the women did. First, number one, what the women found. Luke set the scene there in verse 1. As we think about him setting the scene, the elements that he put there, very simple and yet very intentional elements or facts that helps us to discern what state of mind these women are in on this morning. They’re coming to the tomb on the first day of the week.
They’re coming first thing in the morning immediately after the lifting of the Sabbath restrictions. Is this because they are devout women and that’s why they come first thing? Is it because they got up early and God blesses those who get up early? Could they have come in mid-morning after coffee and Bible time? They’ve come early because they haven’t been sleeping anyway. It really stretches credulity to think anything else. I’m quite certain that these women had had very little sleep since the night before the Passover.
When Peter and the others had been with Jesus, then followed him into the Garden of Gethsemane, they witnessed his betrayal by Judas, his arrest by the Roman guard. They were led by their own chief priests. When this, apostles scattered and ran, I have no doubt they ran into the comfort of their fellow disciples, gathered together with one another in little groups, talking about what had happened. They were praying anxious prayers, talking about what to do.
As we know, Peter and John left that company to enter into the belly of beasts, bravely, it would seem, entering into the courtyard of the high priest to be there when Jesus was run through all those sham trials and that became, as we know, the platform for Peter’s spectacular fall, leading to further discouragement of Jesus’ little group of followers. When Jesus was then handed over by the Roman soldiers, to the Sanhedrin, and then to Pilate’s praetorium, they all ushered him up to Skull Hill, nailed him to the cross. And for these believers, their faith seemed at this point utterly crushed, as their hope died that day with Jesus on the cross.
So when you read Luke 24:1, I know we know what’s coming and we tend to project on these women on the morning of the resurrection, this great anticipation of resurrection glory. But do not imagine that at all. These women are not in a strength, a tranquil state of mind. They’re not coming calm, serene, hair in place, make up on, top of their game, they’re exhausted. They’ve had very little sleep since the early hours of Friday. They are emotionally shattered. They’ve just witnessed their Lord die and the brutality of the men around him, the leaders of their nation, probably friends and neighbors who were passersby and hearing them call out abuse and scorn upon the Lord that they love.
This is a tough, tough weekend for them. R. Kent Hughes captured the mood perfectly when he described the women, “as having dark sackcloth covering their souls.” It’s a good description, he said further, “They’re depressed, exhausted, mourning, with no hope whatsoever between the afternoon hours of Friday and this early trip to the tomb, aside from preparing the spices and the perfumes to finish the burial process and the preparation of Jesus body. Perhaps they found some comfort in Passover observance, but their hopes have been crushed. The joy was gone from them, dead, buried in that same tomb.”
Luke 23:56 says they had returned home to prepare the spices and perfumes. They had rested on the Sabbath according to the commandment. And now Luke 24:1, “On the first day of the week, at early dawn, they came to the tomb, bringing the spices which they prepared.” Mark says that the women came very early. Matthew says they came as it began to dawn. John, he says that Mary Magdalene came while it was still dark. Those accounts are not contradictory at all. They’re complimentary.
But the group of women, we have to understand, had come from different homes, probably all met up at a certain place in a certain time, and the time they came together was what we referred to as nautical dawn, earliest mark of Daybreak, when the sun has not yet peaked over the horizon. Enough light, though, makes the horizon visible. That’s called nautical dawn. Still quite dark, as you may know. But the light of the morning is rising, the sun is coming up, it’s driving all the shadows away. And so the day has started and it’s time to move.
On the way to the tomb, according to Mark’s Gospel, something else is starting to dawn on the minds of these women. They are saying to one another, who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance of the tomb? This is a big problem. And you can kind of tell their state of mind because they really didn’t think about this on Friday. They thought about it while they’re on the way to the tomb. That’s a big obstacle, about a two-ton obstacle. So they, these women who had been there Friday to watch this happen, see Joseph’s men roll this two-ton stone in front of the tomb prevented them access and they’re going to need some help, aren’t they?
What they had not known, because it had come up in the intervening time, you know, that is during the Sabbath. While these women were obediently observing the commandment of the Law, their chief priests and their Pharisees were not obeying the commandment. The Jewish leaders went to Pilate and according to Matthew 27:62, “The next day,” after the, “after the day of Preparation, the chief priests and Pharisees gathered together with Pilate, and they said, ‘Sir, we remember that while He was still alive that deceiver said, “after three days I’m going to rise again.” Therefore, order for the grave to be made secure until the third day, lest His disciples come and steal Him away and say to the people, “He’s risen from the dead,” and the last deception would 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, made the grave secure, and along with the guard they set a seal on the stone.”
So the women had not anticipated that problem. They didn’t know about it. As we continue reading, Matthew resolves it for 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, there was a great earthquake, for an Angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled away the stone and sat upon it. His appearance was like lightning, his clothing was as white as snow and the guards quaked,” for fear, “from fear of him, and became like dead men.” And they go hustling back to the chief priests.
So unbeknownst to these weary and discouraged women, what they forgot to factor in when they had set out on their little quest, on the first day of the week, we go back to Luke 24:1, at early dawn as they drew near to the tomb, bringing the spices which they prepared, the women had no idea what to do about that great obstacle, the two-ton stone covering the tomb. They didn’t know God had already solved the problem for them, a problem they didn’t even know existed. If you could just make a little asterisk in your notes and say, God is working when I don’t even see it. He’s solving problems I don’t even know exist. So the problems that I do know exist, he’s got those too. Okay, back to our regular scheduled sermon.
They didn’t know what to do about the stone covering the tomb. It’s yet another in a long list of discouragements that they’d already endured. This stone that may prevent their and disappoint their best efforts to honor Jesus body and anoint it as they wanted to, little did they know God had already obliterated that obstacle, sent his Angel to roll away the stone. But, also, little did they know, God had done something even prior to that which would prevent them from achieving their goal of anointing the body. Verses 2 and 3, “When they came, they found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they entered they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus.” What they find is the stone rolled away. Problem solved.
What they don’t find is what they came for in the first place, the body of the Lord Jesus, but God had solved that problem too. As Philip Riken put it, “What the women found is that they could not find Jesus.” It’s a problem for them until they get some perspective which is coming. There are some who think mistakenly the Angel had descended from heaven to roll away the stone so that the resurrected Jesus could leave the tomb, not true. Jesus in his resurrected state, he had options. He could walk in the normal way, as he’ll do with the two disciples walking from Jerusalem to Emmaus, verse 13 and following. He can also vanish instantly from one place, in verse 31, show up in another place, verse 36, passing through the walls. He can appear and disappear and reappear at will, it seems. Traverse great spans of distance, metal barriers like walls and locked doors, distances like kilometers and miles, not a problem. Large stones over tombs and imperial seals that bar passage, none of these things are obstacles to him.
The resurrected Jesus in his glorified spiritual body. Interesting putting those two words together, spiritual body. It’s sounds like an oxymoron. That’s exactly what Paul calls it in 1 Corinthians 15:44, an immaterial material, a spiritual physical. That’s what he’s composed of. Evidently glorified humanity, if we look at the Lord Jesus Christ, has some angelic properties. Pretty cool when you think about where we’re heading. So removing the stone was not to let Jesus out, but to let the women in. Let them come, let them see, let them enter and find out. So that’s what the women found when they came. They found an empty tomb, and they found a disappeared body. We keep reading to find as, as they did, what we need to hear.
Number two, point number two, what the Angel said. What the Angel said in verses 4 and 5, “And it happened while they were perplexed about this, behold, two men suddenly stood near them in dazzling clothing. And when 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?” You can imagine the scene. These women all enter into the crypt, they’re all huddled close together in the dim light and they’re perplexed here about not finding the body of the Lord Jesus. They know they have the right tomb. They watch the body go in. They watch the stone be rolled. They have no identity problems with where the tomb is located. They came to the right place and they’re perplexed.
Interesting word. Aporeo is built from the word poros. Poros refers to a way or a means. It’s got an alpha primitive on the front of it’s making it, no way, no means; so literally to be all together without a way. That’s how they are in their minds. I, I’m all together at a loss, totally bewildered here. They thought a rock would be their biggest problem. This is a way bigger problem than a two-ton boulder, no body, all these spices; look, got all dolled up and everything.
So as they’re scratching their heads, dim light of the tomb is immediately dispelled in the brilliant light cast by the sudden appearance of two very well-dressed men. We know they’re Angels. Luke uses the word men, specific to men, andres. They’re not mere men as indicated by their apparel, as indicated by the women’s reaction and if there’s any lingering doubt, verse 23 refers to them as Angels, angelos.
Matthew and Mark, if you read the other accounts, you’ll see that Matthew and Mark mentioned only one of the Angels, presumably the spokesman speaking, the one that was prominent to them, even though there were two of them as recorded by both Luke and John. Luke describes the brilliance of their clothing using a word for starlight, lightning, that kind of a brilliant light. Imagine standing in a dark, dimly lit place and all of a sudden the brightness of lightning shows up in the middle of you. You’d be absolutely terrified. It’s the same word, by the way, that refers to Jesus’ clothing at the transfiguration. So quite the shock.
Of course the women are terrified. It’s an intensified form of a verb, phobeo. Emphobeo and it’s the noun form here conveys extreme fear. So before this, standing in the presence of this terrifying, otherworldly beings and they instinctively, they know what they’re seeing and they just can’t help but bow their faces to the ground. Their faces go down to, it’s very explicit in the language there to the earth, to the land. They kiss the ground. They’re not saying, they’re not reasoning, I ought to bow. They’re struck. The fear buckles their knees.
The glory and the majesty of these beings, it, it just sends them to the ground. And you might think the Angels, considering what these ladies have been through in the past 72 hours, maybe they could have taken it a little easy. Maybe they could have showed up in a gentler, subtler way. Maybe not as to frighten the women. Maybe come in strolling through that area as two kindly old men out on a morning walk or something. It may have been easier for these women on their feelings, it’s not really what the moment called for.
The Angels, Hebrews 1:14, calls them ministering spirits. Ministering spirits, serving spirits, they’re sent out to render service for the sake of all those who will inherit salvation. That’s what Angels are designed by God to do. They serve humanity. They serve those created in the image of God, very powerful, glorious, majestic creatures. And yet they’re also in their service to God, doing his will as fast as they can, intelligent, using all their powers of intellect and being to their advantage to accomplish his will in serving his people, serving God’s people.
They are astute observers of humanity. They’ve been watching us for thousands of years and these two Angels know exactly how to minister to these women effectively; It’s like this. So their sudden arrival, the shocking appearance were necessary, not for their own sake, not to say that’s our calling card, we’re Angels, splendorous, glorious, powerful. It’s not about them. They come like that for the sake of these women.
They could have come more subdued, but they didn’t. Came like this for the the spiritual good of these women, for the recovery and the restoration of their faith. These women had to be snapped out of their melancholy frame of mind. The dim perspective of troubled hearts, spiritual sight that is dulled by grief and discouragement, it creates a false perspective, a misleading view of what’s good and bad, right and wrong, true and false. Grief does not produce good thinking. They are here in that state of mind and they are discouraged, but they are unnecessarily discouraged. If they only knew what was what, what was real, what was true, immediate perspective change. We’re going to see that.
So these ladies had to have their attention arrested by a force far greater than their overwhelmed emotions. So their sudden arrival, their dazzling appearance, which these are necessary, that does the trick too. And now that the Angels have their attention, the women are ready to listen. They’re ready to listen attentively and carefully to every word. And what is it that the Angels say?
If the Angels had come down to convince the women about the miraculous resurrection of Jesus, we might imagine they had a number of options at their disposal. Lots of things that they could do. Very resourceful, these Angels. They could perform great acts of power. They could tell them stories about Christ’s preincarnate glory, astound them with amazing tales of where they’ve been, what they’ve done with the Son of God in realms of endless light. They might have even just shown the women a video replay of the resurrection, cast the the vision on the tomb walls. None of that.
All that matters at this critical moment are the words Jesus had spoken. Peter had experienced great and glorious things on the mount with the Lord at the Transfiguration. He says so 2 Peter 1, but what does he count as more important than any experience, any vision of glory, any real experience of glory being in the presence of the Shekinah glory of God and the transfigured resurrection, pre-resurrection, but resurrection glory of Christ? What does he count as more important? Prophetic word was more sure.
The written word is more sure, more certain, that’s what matters here, the words Jesus has spoken. So the Angels start here with a mild rebuke. They follow with a command to repent. And then they remind the women of what Jesus said. First, the mild rebuke in verse 5, the Angels ask the women a question. Why do you seek the living one among the dead? But that’s a rhetorical question. The Angels aren’t waiting around for their answer. They require no reply but they do intend by this rhetorical question, why do you seek the living one among the dead? They want to awaken their conscience. They want to startle them with, yeah, what am I doing here? And my, the Lord is the living one. What does that mean? What are the implications of that?
They awaken the conscience and they follow that with the announcement, “He is not here, but he has risen.” They declare to them the resurrection, they announce it. The Angels had to be a bit incredulous. I mean, I can’t get into an, I can’t get into any human beings’ head. I certainly can’t get into an angelic head. They have to be incredulous. From heaven they heard and observed all that Jesus taught in Scripture, all the promises he gave, teasing out the implications of doctoral prophetic truth. He talked about, as Peter put it, “things into which Angels had long to look,” and these Angels had long to look and see into these things.
Fact: according to 1 Corinthians 11, Angels observe the worship services of Christ’s true churches. They want to see the structure of authority and submission in the church. They want to see that well observed, rightly observed order, that the truth might have a hearing among God’s people, that God’s people would rejoice. They want to see husbands and wives lined up in their authority structures as they should, parents and children. They want to see all of that functioning in the local church. They rejoice to do that. Angels, I’d imagine, are here now watching this service, watching other faithful churches. They long to look into these things. They long to understand.
They themselves being not embodied spirits, but simple spirits. They don’t have the experiences we have. They don’t know the Lord as we do. They know him in a different way and here they are seeing all that Jesus was promised happening and they’re, they’re excited. They see the end of sin. They see atonement provided. They see the redemption of God’s elect accomplished, provided. They see this as the very fountain of all salvation and here are these women, mourning, discouraged, they can’t see straight.
The holy Angels hung on every word that Jesus spoke. They were eager and excited in their anticipation to see the full realization, to see the Son of God glorified in Christ. And they find it the greatest of sins, mysteries. And the more I think about it, I do too. The greatest of sins mysteries, how it influences the mind and dulls the heart. So the very people of God, us, we forget. How do we do that? Why do we do that? Why do we fail to remember even in dark times and troubled times? Why do we God’s people fail to take heart, fail to show courage, fail to lead the ungodly around us, fail to point to the truth?
The Angels, I would imagine, expect the attitude of Jesus disciples to be akin to what we read earlier in our service for scripture reading in Isaiah 8:17. “I will wait for the Lord.” That’s my posture even when I don’t understand things around me. I will wait for the Lord. I will wait for the Lord and I will hope for him. I hope is all resting in him. I’m not unsettled in my heart. Things are perfect, glorious, our future’s bright, it’s eternal. I will hope in him. And as they wondered about Israel, should people inquire the dead, on behalf of the living.
So now they wonder again, why do you seek the living one among the dead? You’re not them. You’re not the unbelieving of Israel. You are the disciples of the Lord Jesus. He’s not here, obviously. He’s risen. He is risen indeed. Don’t be so dull. Don’t be so slow of, hard to believe. Jesus had said in John 14:6, “I am the way and the truth, and the life in him was life. John 1:4 and the life was the light of men. He appeared as Paul said, “to abolish death”, 2 Timothy 1:10 and to bring life and immortality to light through the gospel.
“Jesus said, I am the light of the world, and he who follows me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.” That’s why Paul taught when he recapitulated the doctrine of the bodily resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15:45, “This Jesus who is the last Adam is, he’s become a life giving spirit.” Now I understand all that is truth written after the fact, truth that required the coming of the Spirit to enlighten and illuminate the mind and let the apostles teach and the prophets prophecy and the teachers teach.
The churches and all that had to be, be developed in their thinking and take firm root and deep root, but it’s starting right here, starts right here. So while the women are perplexed about the appearance of the Angels, the Angels are perplexed about dullness of the women. The Angels say, you got no business in this tomb searching for the living one among the dead. He’s not here, he’s alive. In other words, let the dead bury their own dead. You go follow Christ, go follow the Lord Jesus.
So now that they have their attention with this rebuke, it’s gentle in tone, but it’s a clear rebuke. It puts the women in a receptive frame of mind for repentance. So second, the the Angels command their repentance. Don’t use the word repent, but that’s what’s commanded here. He says, “remember how he spoke to you while he was still in Galilee.” The word, remember, there, they use that verb remember, mimnesko, and they put it in the aorist imperative, which is a very strong way of commanding. It’s a combination of a verbal tense and mood that stresses the urgency of this command. So it’s like, do this and do it now. It’s really, really urgent. Make it your top priority to remember how he spoke to you. Remember that.
It’s actually a bit of irony here in mentioning where the women heard Jesus, where they heard him, hearing him while he was still in Galilee, They cite that location back in Galilee while they’re standing here at this place, a tomb to honor the memory of the dead. Here’s why this is kind of interesting. Just briefly, I didn’t mention it earlier, but the word for tomb is mnema with an MN, mnemoneuo. It’s mnema comes from the verb mnaomai, and means to be mindful of. To be mindful of, it refers to a memorial, a monument to remember, in this case remember the dead. So it translates into a kind of a concrete way as a grave, a tomb, a sepulcher. But it’s memory, that’s what the word means.
They are there at the place of memory, and they’ve forgotten. So the Angels snap them out of their wrong thinking as the women have come to this place of remembrance, to this tomb, intending to memorialize their dead Savior. They called them to repent of that thinking and remember instead the living one and the living words he spoke while in another place when they were of a frame of mind to remember the life-giving words that they heard from him, where they feasted on the bread that he gave when he broke it for the 5000, for the 4000. And he told them “I’m the bread of life.”
So rebuked to get their attention, a call to repentance to put them in the right mindset. And then thirdly, the reminder itself, “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. And the third day rise again.” I suppose there could have been a number of things they cited in Jesus’ teaching so many ways to remind these dear men, but what they remind them of is essentially the gospel, the prediction of the suffering of the Son of Man; join together to the prediction of his glory and by meditating on his suffering and on his glory, that’s gospel truth. It’s the gospel.
The prediction itself was recorded twice in Jesus’ Galilean ministry, Luke 9:22, like, Luke 9:44, Luke 9:22 says “The Son of Man must suffer many things.” There’s that word must again, which is in our text as well. “He must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and scribes, and be killed and be raised up on the third day.” It’s kind of interesting that what the Angels summarize in Luke 24:7, “He must be delivered into the hands of,” not the chief priests, the elders, chief priests, and scribes, “but delivered in the hands of.” He takes all those terms and combines them into one term. What does he call them? “Sinners.” He must be, “he must suffer many things, be rejected by the elders, chief priests and scribes, and be killed and be raised up on the third day.” 22 verses later Luke 9:44. Put these words into your ears, for the Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men.
Just a summary pointing back to that earlier instruction. Lord Jesus continued to say the same things as he left Galilee, entered into Perea, and then into Judea and Jerusalem. We can read those things in Luke 17:25 and Luke 18:31 to 32, repetitions of the same kinds of predictions of his suffering and his glory. But I want to draw your attention in verse 7 to that little word, must, and the word must that follows each subsequent point. The Son of Man must be delivered, must be crucified, and must rise again.
The controlling verb is that verb must. Small verb, weighty verb of divine necessity, dei. It’s D.E.I, but not in the D.E.I that we think about today. It’s dei. It’s a Greek word. Okay verb. It expresses, really, this divine necessity verb, expresses the necessity and the immutability of the divine will. The Son of Man, must be delivered. Think, oh, that’s a matter of divine necessity, that’s immutable. That’s God’s unchanging will. He must be delivered and he must be crucified and he must rise again. And so whatever’s follows that must, must happen.
It’s guaranteed by the unchangeable will of God, his eternal decree, the determination of the Triune God, the Inter-Trinitarian council, to redeem a people for the glory of Christ. Some call that the Pactum Salutis, Council of Peace, some even call it the Covenant of Redemption, but it is a free decision of God to redeem a people for Christ, in Christ, through Christ, and by this very means that he be delivered, crucified, and resurrected, and once determined, that will of God will not, does not ever change.
That’s why Jesus spoke of it as, a necessity, a must. He is giving his people, if they’ll listen to the word, and this one being a little tiny word, three letters, and man, it punches above its weight. If they’ll listen to this word, they will have an assurance of certainty. If they believe, they’ll have a a guarantee of the ironclad word of God’s immutable will, secured by his eternal power and decree. That’s why Jesus said in Luke 9:22 same thing, “The Son of man must suffer many things, be rejected by the elders, chief priests and scribes, and be killed and be raised up on the third day.”
He states the gospel as a necessity of God’s will. And then 22 verses later, Luke 9:44, he builds from that. He actually replaces the verb, dei, it’s necessary, with the verb mello, which means soon, imminent, certain fulfillment. The Son of Man is going to be delivered or about to be delivered into the hands of men. So he’s working from his own theology, it’s a divine necessity, so it’s gonna happen and it’s gonna happen soon.
This gospel, in ironclad certainty, guaranteed by the eternal unchanging will of God, has become now a reality. And that’s what these Angels are telling the women to remember. They don’t offer any proof of the resurrection. They don’t show a video. They don’t, they don’t call the women to examine the evidence; the word of Jesus is sufficient and reflecting on its fulfilment for them, it’s life giving.
Man, do we need to hear this now? It’s a bit rhetorical to say now more than ever, but let me do it anyway. Now more than ever, the Church of Jesus Christ needs to pay attention to the words of Jesus Christ and the little ones too. The big doctrines, the sayings, but also each of the individual words and preachers need to preach those words. They need to be bold and confident because they’ve done the study and they know what’s there.
It’s not sufficient for preachers to get up and just glibly pass over all the details. So you know what, I’m, I’m really just here to give the gist, make sure everybody’s, kind of like encouraged, just kind of like a life coach, cheerleader, just want to give pep talks. I don’t want to discourage anybody. I mean, people are having a hard time as it is.
You know, for people having a hard time, as it is, these women, what do the Angels say? Get detailed about the words, believe them; every single one. Son of Man was indeed delivered into the hands of sinful men, was indeed crucified, and these women had witnessed that. So if that happened according to his word, well, they got to remember the rest of what he said because he didn’t stop with his death. Got to remember the rest of what he said about being risen from the dead. They got to believe it. They’re bound to believe it. That’s their proof. That’s their certainty. Why? Because Hebrews 11:1, “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for. It’s the conviction of things not seen.”
They weren’t there to watch Jesus physically get up and resurrect and revive and walk out or disappear out of the tomb. No, but faith would tell them it happened, just by focusing on his words. It is necessary; therefore it will happen. “The assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen,” that’s what faith is. Their faith is rewarded in the suffering of Christ’s atonement, which is now fulfilled.
Their faith is going to be further rewarded in the resurrection as they remember his words, believe, reflect on them, learn from them. The women found the tomb empty, nobody inside. Now they have to heed the Angels, they have to receive the rebuke, repent of failing to remember, believe everything that Jesus has said, and then remember all of his words, each and every one of them, and believe. What did they do? Third point, I’m happy to tell you, they did believe. They did. They did remember.
So here’s number three, what the women did, what the women did. Simple sentence, verse 8, “And they remembered his words.” I love reading that. They remembered. Good job. These faithful women received that angelic rebuke. They repented and remembered Jesus’ words. Their faith began right here at this moment to be restored, to be built up, to mature, to be strengthened and now what we read in verse 9, that’s going to help these women keep on remembering Jesus’ words and reflecting on them. “And they remembered his words, and when they returned to the tomb, they reported all these things to the eleven and to all the rest.”
You want to make sure you hold on to something of spiritual importance and truth. Give it away. You’ll hold on to it by giving it away. You will deeply embed it in your heart if you keep on teaching, and speaking, and reporting, and telling the truth. Sending the women back to report Jesus’ words to the eleven and all the rest, that’s actually an initiative of the Angels. We read in Matthew 28:7, “They said go quickly and tell his disciples.” Mark 16:7 adds, “tell his disciples and Peter and tell them add he has risen from the dead” and Luke tells us, “and they reported all these things.”
So yeah, the resurrection, including what the Angels commanded them to remember as well, the gospel words of Jesus predicting fulfilment, fulfillment of the gospel, fulfillment of all the elements of the gospel in what he did, dying on the cross to atone for sin, rising from the dead. There’s quite the contrast here, and especially so for the first century mind. And I shouldn’t just isolate the first century way of thinking.
We should talk about all the centuries before the first century, and many of the centuries all the way from the first century up to the time in which we live, because in our century we’re taught to deny obvious realities such as the differences between male and female. But when we failed to consider how these Angels came first to the women to announce the resurrection, we don’t see the contrast we should see here. We’ve got the strongest of all created beings coming down to the weakness of human adults, these precious women.
If we don’t see that contrast, we fail to see the point here. We’ll see more about it next time, but it’s very important to reflect on this now as we conclude and kind of consider how to apply this to our lives. Of all the followers, Jesus could have sent the Angels too. He didn’t send them to the great apostles of the church first to announce the resurrection and come to the most intellectually astute, that doesn’t apply just to the women, applies to the men too. Not many wives, not many mobile, not many mighty. They didn’t come to the most intellectually astute of the great orators or debaters of their time. They didn’t come to the wealthy, the influential.
In fact, the Angels didn’t come to any of the male disciples at all. And if you’re trying to provide a reliable witness in a first century mind, and that’s why I say in human history before that, all the way leading up to the first century and from the first century on until modern times, a reliable witness in court was a male voice, a male witness. Jesus did not send his Angels to the men. This isn’t a punishment. The majestic and mighty Angels came to the women, to the weaker sex, to those who were not considered in their time to be mighty and powerful, but vulnerable and dependent. Because the message is not dependent on the vessel carrying it. And that should encourage every heart here, male and female, young and old, child and adult and senior adult.
The message does not depend on us. It doesn’t depend on our power, our strength. It doesn’t depend on our influence. It doesn’t depend on our charisma, it doesn’t depend on our followers online, doesn’t depend on our money. If you think the gospel will be better received if it comes from a superstar or a celebrity, you got to rethink your theology. The Angels come to show to the women, to show that the message is not dependent on the vessel carrying it.
The message of the gospel has its own power, its own strength. It’s like a seed. Those small can be crushed between the fingers, but when planted intact, you don’t mess with the seed, you don’t take anything away from it. But when you plant it intact into prepared soil, it grows a mighty harvest. It has its own power to give life, regenerate, transform, encourage and preserve. The word Angel, Angelos means messenger, comes from the Greek verb Angelo. Angelo means to report or announce, which is exactly what these women do. They reported all these things to the eleven, to all the rest.
So because of the message that they now are reminded of, that they’ve always held but failed to see and kind of hid it under a bushel. Oh no. These women, because of the message, become Angels in a manner of speaking. They’re messengers of the gospel, restoring faith, preserving faith in the men. They go to the eleven and to all the rest. We know it’s going to take some time for further reflection, to know, understand, benefit from the truths of verse 7.
But having remembered them and now being commissioned to take the words of Jesus back, to remind the eleven apostles and the rest of the disciples, these women have some time to reflect on those words, to ponder those words and notice these women who started the morning discouraged, how do you think they’re doing now? Have they had any any more sleep? No. Physically, nothing’s changed. They’ve still got all their issues. They’re still running on empty in the tank, but now they have the life-giving message which gives them life, a spiritual life and an energy. They cannot wait to get back to the men. Everything’s changed, everything’s changed. And this takes us back, beloved, to where we started to see the outworking here, kind of in, in a narrative form of the doctrine of the perseverance of the Saints.
Though there are many storms and floods that arise and beat against the saints, such as seeing the Lord Jesus crucified on a cross, give up his spirit and die, be taken away from the cross and buried in a tomb. Third day comes, the time when decay and decomposition starts to take root and set in. Though many storms and floods arise and beat against the saints. Though the Assyrian army is marching to your city. Though the Huns are at the gate, though the culture around you is disintegrating, it’s becoming more violent and blasphemous. Many storms and floods arise and beat against the saints, but because of the preserving power of the truth of the gospel, nothing can knock us off that foundation and rock which by faith we are fastened upon.
We didn’t fasten ourselves to the rock by ourselves, through ourselves, because of ourselves. We’re fastened to that rock because God did that. He drilled us in; he anchored us there. So even temporary unbelief and blindness, whether that happens by the temptations of Satan, discouragements and disappointments, fearful anxieties, threats of a changing world, anything else you want to fill in that blank with?
“I’m persuaded that neither death nor life, nor Angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing is able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Are you so persuaded? Because if you’re not, if at times you falter and fail in believing, let the interaction of these Angels and these women in this text chart your way back to steadfastness, back to believing, back to taking heart, back to encouragement.
If you follow through, verse 7, and do your own reflection on that amazing, mighty, chock full of encouragement and hope truth, it’ll fill you with a lifetime of life. The Son of Man, who’s that? God’s chosen, specially anointed mediator, the only mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus, the God man, the one who has a divine nature, human nature, who stands in the gap between God and man, to represent man to God, God to man, that Son of man. He was delivered into the hands of sinful men.
He’s delivered into their hands because he had taken their sins upon himself. He took their afflictions and griefs and sorrows on himself and became, because he bore their sin in his body, he became a curse of God, not because of any sins he had done, “because he committed no sin nor was there any deceit found in his mouth, but he was crucified, pierced through for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities.” The chastening of our peace fell upon him, and by his wounds we were healed. And though he was delivered up because of our transgressions, he was raised because of our justification and he was raised on the third day, according to the Scriptures.
He rose from the dead. He left that tomb empty, having conquered the grave, death, the sin that took us there. By remembering these words, by reflecting on them, by believing them with no reservation, no qualification, and then repeating them to others, as we continue to teach, we continue to deepen our understanding, as we evangelize, as we disciple.
Life, transformation, change, that all happens and those are elements of our faith that strengthen our assurance. So although the sensible sight of the light and the love of God may for a time be clouded and obscured from you, yet God is still the same, and you will be kept by the power of God unto salvation, where you will enjoy your purchased possession. You are engraved upon the palm of your savior’s hands; your name having been written in the book of life from all eternity.
Those, beloved, are words of truth that you must always remember and believe. Whenever you lose sight of hope, when you’re attempted to discouragement so that you can be restored in faith. Those are the words of truth you have to remember, reflect on, rejoice in, so that in times of strength and fruitfulness and joy, you can give thanks to God because he is worthy. Let’s do that. Bow that with me in prayer.
Our Father, we thank you not only for the good and glorious gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, but we rejoice in how you have brought this to us, in the very human stories, in the, with these characters that we can all identify with, people that are our own flesh and blood, we get them. We are even tempted wrongly to sympathize with the result of their fallen condition and the sins that they commit and the weakness of faith that they show.
And yet we realize they’re like us and we’re like them. And there is no temptation that’s come upon us except that which is common to men, common to women. And yet, God, you will always make the way of escape, that we can bear up under the temptation and not enter into temptation and not fall into sin. And the very clear route of escape is to look down at our Bibles and meditate on the words of Jesus Christ, in total and in part, and to understand, believe.
We thank you that you have, by your amazing grace, granted us by your Spirit to be regenerated to this living hope. You’ve given us a new nature. You’ve given us eyes to see, ears to hear, a heart to believe and understand and receive, to be receptive to your rebuke and your correction. You, by the Spirit and by the Word, teach us how to repent. You’ve given us that gift. You never take it away. So it’s always there and available if we have fallen, and if we do stumble and fall, we’ve become weak and believing, we can always be recovered and restored.
Let us give ourselves fully to understanding your Word and learning and believing deeply, so that we can rise up and walk confidently in the truth and boldly proclaim it and report it to others. We love you. We thank you so much for what we’re learning. We thank you for the Lord Jesus Christ and the atonement that he won for us on the cross. The redemption accomplished, the Spirit applies. We thank you that we can bring glory and honor to you, father. In the name of Christ, we pray. Amen.