LOOKING FOR THE LIVING AMONG THE DEAD....Dr Phil Ryken

An excerpt from this week's sermon on Luke 24:1-12, a propos of James Cameron and the "The Lost Tomb of Christ."How could the women know that this was true? As far as they were concerned, Jesus was still missing. How could they believe in the resurrection of his body unless they could see Jesus with their own eyes? And perhaps more importantly for us, how can we believe this? Somewhere Harvard Professor Ernest Wright has said, “In biblical faith everything depends upon whether the central events actually occurred or not.” If that is true, then how can we know for sure that Jesus really did rise from the dead?
This question was raised in a fresh way this week by the announcement that the caskets of Jesus and other members of his family had been discovered in a burial cave from a Jerusalem suburb.


According to James Cameron, who produced a documentary film on the subject, DNA evidence would prove that this was, in fact, the family of Jesus of Nazareth. Finally, someone was coming up with the remains of Jesus (which of course the Jewish Sanhedrin would have done anything to produce two thousand years ago, thereby disproving the resurrection and discrediting the apostles!)
What is the best way to respond to such a direct attack on the veracity of the gospel? Some Christians answer by giving evidence for the resurrection. There is a place for this approach in the practice of apologetics, both as a way of confirming the faith and casting doubt on unbelief, if not actually convincing people of the truth of the gospel. The very fact of the empty tomb is evidence that demands a verdict. The body of Jesus was dead, having been crucified. Then it disappeared from the very tomb where it was buried. The body that disappeared was the very body that was crucified. This historical fact—the absence of his body from the empty tomb—joins the crucifixion to the resurrection and helps to confirm that Jesus rose from the dead.
However, this is not how the angels tried to convince the women at the empty tomb. They did not try to reason on the basis of the physical evidence. Nor did they make a case for Christ by refuting alternative explanations for what happened to the missing body. Instead, the angels simply told these women—and us—to remember what Jesus said: “Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified and on the third day rise” (Luke 24:6-7). We are to believe in the resurrection on the basis of what Jesus said. The empty tomb is not self-explanatory. There is a word that explains the deed, and this word is the Gospel message that Jesus not only died, but also rose again with a glorious and everlasting body that would never die again.
What the angels told the women to remember were the prophecies Jesus made of his death, burial, and resurrection. Back in chapter 9, after Peter confessed that he was the Christ of God, Jesus said, “The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised” (Luke 9:22; cf. 9:44). We find the same thing in chapter 18: “For he will be delivered over to the Gentiles and . . . after flogging him, they will kill him, and on the third day he will rise” (Luke 18:32-33; cf. 17:25). Everything happened just the way that Jesus said. The words of his prophecies all came true. He was crucified, dead, and buried.
Now it was the third day—the day Jesus promised to rise from the grave. Indeed, this was the day when he must rise from the grave, for the earlier promises of the gospel expressed a divine compulsion. Therefore, when the women saw the empty tomb, they should have known that he was alive from the dead. The reason they are perplexed is because they have not yet believed what Jesus said.