Told You So!

On last Sunday when we left off, Jesus has ridden in on the donkey and everyone was praising God and saying Hosanna, Hosanna in the highest and calling Jesus their King and it was so exciting but a lot has happened since then. During the week Jesus got into Jerusalem and he preached and he preached in a way that really upset the religious leaders talking about things about how the kingdom, the entry to the kingdom was going to be taken away from them and given to other people. By Thursday night when the Passover feast was fed we reenacted that here and then we went out and prayed like the disciples went out and prayed and Jesus said pray that you do not fall into temptation and while they were praying and sleeping the soldiers came and they arrested Jesus and then he was tried and they brought false accusations against him and then on Friday night we talked about how he was crucified, that he was crucified for our transgressions, not for anything he did wrong but it was for us.

And so here we are on Sunday morning and now we can celebrate again without context I think it's kind of like the cartoon that I saw this morning where two soldiers are laying on the hill sleeping beside the tomb and all of a sudden someone sat, you see him sitting up and they go what do you mean he says to the other, what do you mean you didn't say good morning? Then who would have said that and it shows the open tomb, does anybody know who told him good morning? Our scripture this morning proclaiming the resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ comes from Luke 24 verses 1-12 I invite you to stand if you are able. But on the first day of the week at early dawn they went to the tomb taking the spices they had prepared and they found the stone rolled away from the tomb but when they went in they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus while they were perplexed about this behold two men stood by them in dazzling apparel and as they were frightened and bowed their faces to the ground the men said why do you seek the living among the dead he is not here but he is risen remember how he told you while he was here still in Galilee that the son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified on the third day and on the third day rise and they remembered his words and returning from the tomb they told all these things to the eleven and to the rest now it was Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary the mother of James and the other women with whom with them who told these things to the apostles but these words seem like an idle tale and they did not believe them but Peter rose and ran to the tomb stooping in and looking in he saw the linen cloths by themselves and he went home marveling at what had happened the word of God inspired by God for the people of God thanks be to God amen you may be seated the scripture tells us that the women were there early dawn on the first day of the week the first day of the week is Sunday so that is why for us the Sabbath moved from Saturday to Sunday that we have the Sabbath that the resurrection of Jesus is so important even though we often as Christian place more importance on what holiday Christmas which is pretty cool he had to be born before all this stuff could happen the resurrection is a key it's a transition it's where everything changes it's where the world is set upside down it is where Jesus shows that he has the power over life and of death I want to tell you a little story unlike any human in all of history now it says the women came to the tomb the women if you just back up a little bit in Luke 23 the women were there at the crucifixion so it says after Joseph of Arimathea took Jesus and put him in his own tomb his family tomb that they followed along so they could know where it was now it was too close to the Sabbath so they couldn't anoint him so they went and watched where he was and they returned and they prepared the spices the burial spices the anointments that were supposed to be respectful to a body to respect a lifeless body and so they went and they put him in his own tomb they were all ready they put in a lot of work I mean Jesus didn't even apologize that all their work went for not but they put in a lot of work they brought these spices and they were ready to do it the best I can compare it to is today I'm not thinking of I immediately think of embalming fluid but this is better to think of like if you go to a grave the morning after someone is buried and put fresh flowers in there just to show that you care and that you love them and they came to show that they love Jesus and they were ready to honor him even in his death and the weird thing is the first thing is they found the stone rolled away now if you go to Matthew in verse twenty seven verse sixty it says that the women followed and when they went and saw that Joseph who owned the grave rolled a stone in front of the tomb now these were these were like caves and they would put them in there it wasn't like burying them the same way we would but they would be buried in a in a cave and they saw that the stone was rolled so immediately you can think of a couple things who might have taken the body of Jesus the soldiers the soldiers might have because they came afterward and guarded the tomb to make sure nobody could get in there and so in the book of John we see that Mary asked Jesus Mary Magdalene asked Jesus who where have you taken him thinking the gardener was a soldier and it was a critical moment in it all when they walked up there and saw the empty tomb they're already their heartbeats are already starting to pick up they're already gotten getting nervous and they're already getting worried and then it says they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus they went in and it was an empty an empty tomb now that would be a little freaky to find an empty tomb when you saw someone buried there when I was last year I told you a story about how life could be different growing up next to a funeral home with my family in the funeral business my dad and now my brother and when I think of this part I think of when we I believe my brother was only 15 and I was like 13 and we got in the hearse and my dad sent us to Topeka to pick up a body and it's probably not legal these days but I think it's a pretty day but then it was okay and we went to a funeral home there in Topeka and my dad explained ahead of time now this woman was in Menagerie Hospital in an asylum basically so you're probably going to find so her head is almost shaved and she's going to be in a gown that they have to wear in the hospital and so when we went there we went to the front door and the lady said hey she's in the back pull the hearse around the back and we will get her loaded up well that meant you too load her up and so we opened the door we went in we looked she matched you know we saw all this the stuff that said yeah this woman was definitely in Menagerie so we had to did I mention the 325 pound part of this we had to pick her up and move her from the table she was on to our rolling cart to get her into the hearse and I was like I stood there and looked for a minute and I go I didn't agree with that part so my brother is down by the head and I'm by the feet and I look and of course she's in the robe so the calves and the feet are exposed and I'm going I'm not touching that and I look around with my perceptive thought going in my panic I realized there was a box of Kleenexes so I pulled the Kleenex so I wouldn't have to touch the body and then when I went to hold I could still feel the cold through the Kleenex it was a very traumatic time in my life and I'm just warning you in advance if you hear my brother tell the story he does a lot better because he said here I was I had my arms under there and I was taking her with all the weight and Eric had the Kleenex and he picked her ankles up and moved along and I'm always like yeah your story is so much more fun than mine but I had a hold of the legs and he had a hold of the body he did have most of the weight we got her into the cart it was such a struggle I should have been more impressed with the strength of my brother at this point in time in his life and we put her into the hearse we drove back home little did we know that behind us was the highway patrol trying to catch up with us because we took the wrong body a little after we left the lady at the funeral home discovered her heir not ours and we pulled into the driveway of the funeral home and my dad came out to meet us and he's trying not to laugh at us in hindsight I'm just glad he wasn't mad and he walks over to her and he grabs something on the toe called a tag a toe tag at 13 I didn't know what this was and he read it and he goes yep wrong person so the highway patrol was coming to take her back could you imagine her walking in and realizing somebody was gone that wasn't supposed to be gone the women walked in the tomb and there was no Jesus I mean the anticipation building up on this that their final act of honor for Jesus was to put the burial spices on him they worked so hard that night went out right at the break of dawn which they could because remember we talked about on Friday that 6 a.m. is when the new day started in the Israelite in the Hebrew calendar so they went in there and they were ready to do one thing then the stone was rolled away then they saw no body and then all of a sudden they saw it says while they were perplexed about this behold two men stood by them in bling bling apparel and they were bright but it wasn't like bling like we might see bling it was coming from within them a light from within them that brightened up everything in that dark cave so do you think those were somebody famous a rock star in the dazzling apparel who was it angels and they stood before angels now it was different for them than it was for you remember when Mary the mother of Jesus and then an angel appeared to her in a vision and she was afraid and the first thing the angel said was do not be afraid and several other times the angels came and they said do not be afraid but to them instead of calming their fears or normally they would say hey don't worship me I worship God like you they just got him up and they reasoned with him and once the angels started reasoning with the women they said he is not here and but has risen remember how he told you while he was still in Galilee in other words what they said to them was he told you so remember you're not remembering were you listening did I say that in my dad voice are you listening and the angels talked to him and they reasoned him with this he said while you were still in Galilee he said the son of man must be handed over must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified and on the third day he would rise now Jesus said this in a couple of different ways we see that Jesus said this in Matthew twelve forty where he tells the parable when they are trying to get out of him who he is and what he is doing Jesus oh they're trying to ask him who John the Baptist is and he goes why don't you tell me who he is and they didn't want to say because if they said he was a prophet then the people would see their endorsement but if they said he wasn't a prophet he might upset the people so they didn't know what to say so they finally just said I can't tell you and Jesus said then neither will I but I will tell you this the son of man will be in the belly of the whale for three days like Jonah and on the third day he will be spit out well he didn't say spit out but that's what happened to Jonah and it's an allegory an analogy to say the son of man will be in the belly of the earth for three days and for Jesus it was a little more literal because during those three days he went to Sheol and talked to those who had already died to see if they would believe in him and then when the third day came the son of man would rise now he also said this a little more directly when in John 2 when he went remember when he came into town and the temple was all full of people selling stuff not just selling stuff but gouging everybody because they had to come in to town for this and they didn't have a their doves or their sheep or their goat to make the sacrifice they were supposed to make and Jesus took a whip and whipped and opened up all the doors and let the animals run free tipped over tables and they came and they questioned him and he was in the temple yards and he said you can destroy this temple but in three days I will rise up I will rebuild it now that was held against him that when if you remember at the trials before the crucifixion they started going he said he would tear the temple down and make us rebuild it that was one of their accusations against him they did they misunderstand him in again in Matthew after Joseph put Jesus in the tomb they said sir the Pharisees gathered before Pilate and said sir we remember that that imposter said that he when he was alive after three days I will rise did you hear that the Pharisees said we remember that he said after three days I will rise meaning they knew they understood they understood what Jesus was saying that he would die and in three days he would rise again so they said please go guard that tomb so they sent the soldiers out to guard the tomb they might have even understood it a little better than the disciples but they tried to prevent it and they tried to twist it and then in verse eight a very short verse it says and they remembered his words and they remembered his words after the angels reminded them then it clicked have you ever had something click like some word helps you remember something else or some scene something you had totally forgot and it clicked and they rose and they ran back to the disciples it says they told these things to the eleven and to all the rest wait a second how many disciples were there twelve so they excluded one Judas there was no Judas was no longer so Luke is very clear in saying there were eleven there and the others that it wasn't just those apostles it was the other disciples those who had been following Jesus who stayed there and they were staying in the upper room and you remember whose home the upper room was in in the book of Mark it is written by somebody named does anybody know that Mark that's a good one and Mark is better known throughout the Gospels as a guy named John Mark now John Mark was a guy that worked with Barnabas and when Barnabas and Paul split Mark went with Barnabas and tradition says that Mark went somehow Peter got a hold of Mark and told him more about the Gospel and he wrote it but the Gospels tell us that it was in his parents home was in the upper room and then the disciples were in there with John Mark with his family with all the followers and nobody was excited they were all depressed they were all hurting they were all fought you know you think of all that they had put in they had given up everything in their lives and Jesus was gone and then all of a sudden they come back the women came running in to tell them the story and now Luke finally tells us now it was Mary Magdalene and Jonah Joanna and Mary the mother of James and the other women with who them who told them these things to the apostles now when we look at these women and we see who they were Luke tells us earlier in the Gospel that they followed him around that some of them had had demons driven out of them by Jesus some of them came from really rich backgrounds and they helped fund the ministry for Jesus some of them were bolder than the apostles to stand there at the crucifixion and go to the tomb in the morning and in their excited state of telling this story it says but the disciples just thought it was an idle tale they didn't believe him now someone if you're on one side you think the soldiers of the Pharisees took him if you're on the other side you think the disciples would have taken him but the disciples didn't even believe it it just seemed impossible I mean there are certain things in life that are let's just say they don't seem to change one is taxes and the other is death I mean who there had ever seen someone who had died rise again nobody I mean death is one thing that was certain and it was certain in their minds that Jesus had died and they had to rethink everything about the mission so when it says it sounded like an idle tale at this point in time it really sounded like they were delirious they just thought they're delirious they're so heartbroken with Jesus death that they're hallucinating we can't believe anything they say it sounds crazy now one of the reasons Luke might have included this is to tell us if we tell others about the resurrection of Jesus Christ sometimes people are going to think we are crazy delirious delusional but Luke is trying to tell the people and the people he's writing to that it's okay you can be encouraged because they didn't believe it even the disciples didn't believe it so if others don't believe it don't get discouraged keep telling people that Jesus is alive keep telling people he is risen it was really cool that reminds me I got a I got a nice text this morning from our the building manager named Corey who was part you know this was Harris engineering before we moved in here and she just wrote me and said I hope you guys have a blessed Easter service you know I hope it's a powerful day and I and I and I said thanks hope you have a blessed day too and I said the code words he is risen and she responded with the right code words back he is risen indeed and I thought that was really cool because more than once she's told me how when it was Harris engineering she sat there in the entryway and she said over here where I was you know I was the the administrative assistant for the the place and and I would sit right there and where I sat and I prayed every day now I look above there and I see your scripture the scripture we have on the wall from Ephesians four four that says there is one body and one spirit just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call now I don't know if she was praying for a church to be here instead of their engineering firm but she prayed and she prayed for the power of God to come and for the presence of God to come and they still want us to pay rent but it's pretty cool but Peter even though hearing this he rose and ran to the tomb stooping in and looking he saw the linen cloths by themselves which means they weren't wrapped around the dead body and it says when he went home marveling at what had happened now the word marveling is a little different than the words of being surprised or being perplexed that we saw marveling means I don't totally get it but there's a hint of hope in there that marveling says Peter had a hint of hope and he was starting to see the difference and he was starting to see that something had changed it reminds me of the difference of I don't know if you go through the ups and downs of watching Royals baseball but they have this player that they call the unicorn called Bobby Witt Junior has anybody heard that name before now Bobby Witt Junior is like 24 years old and you know we've seen him play for 3 or 4 years and seen some of the amazing things he did this year at the world baseball classic the world got to see him a little bit more there was a couple of hits to the shortstop where he is so fast he was running to get the ball and he dove and he got it and he threw it from shortstop to first base while sitting down and got him out Kansas City people have seen that no big deal the next inning somebody hit it over there and he dove and jumped to his feet and threw him out and they're playing it over and over on sports channels and different things for different days and just so surprised that this kid who Kansas City has been bragging about could do something and then when the Royals were playing I don't know if it was yesterday or another day recently he did something amazing in the outfield and one of the announcers said the words I still marvel at what he can do but I'm not surprised because I've seen it. I pray that what this Easter brings you is a chance for you to marvel at what he can do.