John 20:1–10

0:00 My mother down here was just letting me have it for calling little James Trantham a sweet little bundle of iniquity in the prayer. That's what I called all three of my kids as they were infants. I would just, you know, hold them and rock them and look into their little blue eyes and say, oh, you sweet little bundle of iniquity, which is a, it's a funny phrase, but there's some theology behind it, right? Original sin, the fact that in Adam we're all, we're all, in fact, bundles of iniquity. That's what we are. It's just that some of us ain't so sweet anymore. or so little. But that's the point, right? That's why we're here. We're here because we are all, in fact, from the littlest and youngest of us to the oldest and most wizened, we are all bundles of iniquity. We're all people who are in need of a Savior, and praise God we have one in the Lord Jesus Christ. We're beginning a new series today in which we are looking at, first, the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and then his appearances to his disciples in various ways.

1:00 all of which happen at the end of the book of the Gospel of John. So let me invite you to take a Bible and turn over to John chapter 20. That's where we're going to be starting this series that's going to run through most of the fall, really right up until the Advent season, right before Christmas. So we've got 10 or 11 weeks in the book of John. In fact, we're looking not just at the whole book of John, but at the last two chapters of John. I finally got a chance to look, and in fact, this is the eighth autumn or fall that we've been in the book of John, just kind of taking a chunk of it every year.

1:30 And so on this, the eighth year, Lord willing, we're going to be finishing up the entire book of John through chapter 21. If you're using one of these Red Pew Bibles, you'll be able to find John chapter 20 on page 906. That's where we're going to be starting and just making our way over the next 10 or 11 weeks through just a couple of pages here if you look at it really quickly. This book is named after because it was written by a man named John who was one of Jesus' closest followers. And it tells us all the way through its 21 chapters of various events in the life of Jesus.

2:06 But if you've been with us for very long through this series in John, if you were here for two or three years, or some of you have been here for the full eight years of this series, you know that when John writes these stories about the life of Jesus, when he recounts these events about the life of Jesus, he's not just interested in recounting to you history for the sake of recounting history. this isn't a biography in the sense you know the word biography it's not just laying out the facts of someone's life and then putting some interpretation on it to see what lessons we can learn from it that's not what's going on John has a very clear and very straightforward agenda in what he's doing because he tells us at the end of the book and in chapter 21 in fact he tells us that as you read his book he wants us to have a certain response to what he's saying He wants us, you, me, all of us, to come to a certain conclusion.

2:59 And that conclusion is that Jesus is in fact the Messiah, the Savior of the world. And then he wants us, he says it straight up, I want you to put your trust in him for salvation and for the forgiveness of your sins. I want you to know Jesus. I want you to know that he's your only hope. I want you to know who you are as a sinner before God. And I want you to put your faith in Jesus Christ. So every episode of the book, from chapter 1 to chapter 21, Every story that's told is really driving toward that goal. It's to show you who Jesus is and to convince you that he is the one in all the history of the world that you should put your trust in for salvation.

3:37 Now, I'm not going to recount the whole book. That would just take too long for me to start in chapter 1 and bring you up to speed all the way to chapter 20. The whole book is really, though, about Jesus revealing who he is. And I want to show you or just mention some of the highlights of that. Maybe even to just kind of jog your memory to realize again what the book is doing. So, for example, in chapter 2, Jesus reveals himself to be the true temple, the place where God and man meet. God and man meet in his own person, right?

4:07 Fully God, fully man. But also God and man meet in him for salvation. In chapter 7, he's the light of the world and the living water. In chapter 8, he takes the ancient name of God, the great I Am, and appropriates it to himself. Remember that? Before Abraham was, I am. And the Pharisees, when they hear that, want to stone him. Because it's just an insane claim to take the name of God that the Jews have been, the God that the Jews have been worshiping since they met him. And to take his great name, the great I am, and apply it to himself.

4:39 Then in chapter 11, Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead, declares that he himself is the resurrection and the life. Just an absolutely absurd claim to something that only God can do, who is the source of all life. So throughout the book, pretty much every chapter, Jesus is making all these crazy claims for himself. And in the meantime, people are being confronted with having to respond to those claims. So most of the time in the book, you'll have Jesus making some kind of claim for himself. And then you'll see a range of responses, right?

5:10 As that bomb hits and Jesus says, I'm the great I am, or I'm the fountain of life, or whatever it is. And people will respond to him, either by rejecting him or by accepting him. So the story that's being told again and again and then over the whole is that Jesus is making these claims and putting the question to his listeners again and again and again. And the question that he's putting to them is, do you believe this or not? And that's what he says to Martha when he says, I am the resurrection and the life.

5:43 He ends that conversation with her by saying, do you believe this? Because that's really the central thrust of the whole book, and it's what the book challenges you and me with as well. Do you really believe that Jesus is who he says he is, or do you not believe that? So as we study this book, as we study even these last two chapters, I want that to be the question that kind of presses on your heart, whether you're a Christian or not. And if you're not a Christian, it's the most important question that you're ever going to be faced with. Do I believe that Jesus is the Christ or not?

6:14 Do I believe that Jesus is the King, the resurrected Lord, or do I not believe that? It's the most important question that you could ever ask yourself. But that's an important question, too, even for you as a Christian. Because what happens over the course of the Christian life is that over time we can lose the effect of that confession in the ins and outs of our own lives, right? You start out the Christian life with all kinds of verb, all kinds of energy. Jesus is Lord, yes, and that's going to reshape my life. But as circumstances change and as you have kids or you get married or, you know, get a job, all those things, the force of that confession that Jesus is Lord can lose its effect.

6:51 And the way you reignite it, the way you get that fire raging in your heart, again, is to ask yourself, do I really believe this? Because if I do, it's no wonder the world thinks I'm crazy. It's no wonder I see life differently than the world around me. And that ought to make changes happen in my life. So Christian or not, that's the question. Do you believe that Jesus really is who he says he is, or do you not? Because either way you answer it, yes I do, or no I really do not, it changes everything.

7:28 Well, not surprising, as the story goes on, Jesus is making all these claims to being God, to being the light of the world, all of it. He's making all those claims. All of that comes to the attention, of course, of the Jewish leaders and rulers. And they realize in the course of the story that he's starting to become a serious threat to them. Why is he a threat? Well, if the people start following Jesus, then they themselves are probably going to lose their power, maybe even their position. It might cause trouble with the Romans. And the Romans might invade if they sense some kind of thing going on that bothers them in Judea.

8:01 So, after Jesus raises Lazarus, the Pharisees, the Jewish rulers and leaders, start to plot out a way to get Jesus arrested and condemned, and they hope ultimately executed. And they get help from a man named Judas, one of his 12 disciples. So, from chapter 13 on through chapter, say, 17, tension between Jesus and the Pharisees has reached a breaking point. And by that time, through those five or six chapters, you can feel the story moving inexorably to the cross.

8:32 So from chapter 13 through 17, you've got the story really of one night. You've got six chapters of the book right there where Jesus is spending one single night, the Passover, with his disciples. First in the upper room where they celebrate the Lord's Supper together. They take the Lord's Supper and then really walking through the dark streets of the city. And Jesus is preparing them for what's about to happen. He tells them who they are. He says, you're the vine that's connected to, or you're the branches, sorry, that's connected to me, the vine. You're the people of the new kingdom. You're to be a people that's marked by love for one another and love for God.

9:06 He promises to send them the Holy Spirit. He tells them that he's going away from them, and they need to be prepared for that. But that he's going away in order to prepare a place for them, and that he's going to come back for them. He tells them all these things, and they don't get it. I mean, they don't begin, the disciples don't begin to understand what he's saying. But he's telling them anyway. Well, then starting in chapter 18 and running through 19, this is what we looked at last year, those two chapters. You've got the story of really just several hours on the Friday morning of Passover week.

9:40 So during the wee hours of the morning, Jesus is taken first to the house of the high priest. Then he's taken to the palace of Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor. A trial is run on kind of two different fronts, the Roman trial and the Jewish trial. Finally, Jesus is condemned and flogged and mocked and dragged outside the city where he's nailed to a cross and crucified. By the end of chapter 19, Jesus is well and truly dead. And the soldiers stab his body with a spear and then they turn his corpse over to some secret followers of his. Those secret followers, Nicodemus and another man named Joseph of Arimathea, wrap his body in cloths.

10:15 And they bury him in a tomb that had been cut for Joseph himself. And that's it at the end of chapter 19. And if the book ended there, that's a bleak situation. But if you remember back a little bit further into 19 and all the details that kind of suffuse it. If you remember, John's main point through all of the events that take place through the crucifixion of Jesus. The thing that John seems at pains to get across to you and me, his readers, is that none of this, the trial, the flogging, the crucifixion, the crown of thorns, the spear in his side, none of it just happens to Jesus.

11:01 Nobody takes Jesus' life. He lays it down. And from the moment he's arrested and he says, you know, it is I, I am. Soldiers fall down on the ground and they realize we're only going to be able to arrest this man if he allows us to arrest him. Through his trial and crucifixion, even after his death, even after he's hanging on the cross, dead. Everything that happens is completely under his control. And completely in fulfillment of prophecies that had been made centuries earlier. A lot of which we saw just in these past few weeks in the book of Isaiah.

11:33 It's all part of the plan that God's been unfolding since the beginning. So by the time you get to chapter 20, the beginning of 20, Jesus is well and truly dead. His body has been pierced with a spear, wrapped up in cloths, and it's been placed in a tomb. And then comes Sunday morning, in the wee hours, and that's where we pick up the story. Look with me at John chapter 20, verse 1. Now, in the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb.

12:15 So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, they have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him. So Peter went out with the other disciple, and they were going toward the tomb. Both of them were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. And stooping to look in, he saw the linen cloths lying there, but he didn't go in. Then Simon Peter came following him and went into the tomb. He saw the linen cloths lying there and the face cloth, which had been on Jesus' head.

12:46 Not lying with the linen cloths, but folded up in a place by itself. And then the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went in. And he saw and believed. For as yet they did not understand the scripture that he must rise from the dead. And then the disciples went back to their homes. Now that's a short story, but it is an extraordinary little short story. I mean, on the one hand, you're talking about the most important event that's ever happened in the history of the world.

13:21 And yet one of the things that people have always noted about this resurrection story is its brevity. John wastes absolutely no words telling us what happened. And yet, just like so many other parts of this book, for all of its brevity, on the other hand, the story is also incredibly detailed. It's just got extremely specific stuff that's said, even about, for example, like bodily movements, right? I mean, you've got the repeated references to running. You've got the reference to stooping, all of that. All these bodily movements that are described in great detail that you just wouldn't get from somebody who was telling the story from afar.

14:01 And if you're telling the story from afar, you don't put details in like he ran and then he stooped and he looked. You just don't say that. You only do that if you were there. And in fact, that's exactly the case here. John isn't telling the story from a distance. He's an eyewitness to it. He was, in fact, there. In fact, in this story, he's the one that's called the disciple that Jesus loved or the other disciple. There's three characters in the story, right? Mary Magdalene and Peter and the other disciple. The other disciple is John himself who wrote the book. And there are other things to notice here too, just sort of at a broad level.

14:33 Do you notice how much movement there is in this little paragraph? Like everyone is going somewhere and usually they're going there fast. I mean, just look at it. Look at verse 1, and look at all the movement words. You've got Mary Magdalene came to the tomb. Verse 2, so she ran and went. Two different movement words there. Said to them they've taken him out of the tomb. Verse 3, so Peter went out, and they were going toward the tomb.

15:06 Verse 4, both of them were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb. They're moving, and they're moving quick. In fact, the first time you have a verse that doesn't have a movement word is verse 5. Stooping to look in, he saw the linen cloths lying there, but he did not go in. So it's almost like as he stoops down to look into the tomb, there's this moment of bated breath. Like you're holding your breath. It's the first time in the story nobody's moved. And what's going to happen?

15:39 And then it all picks up again. Simon Peter, and then look at this in verse 6. As the breath is like blown out, as that bated breath in verse 5 is blown out, you get these three movement words all in a row. Then Simon Peter came, following him, went into the tomb, right? It's just like, whoosh, let's go, go, go, go, go. There's an urgency here that you can see even in the words of the story. You know the themes as well. So look in, for example, verses 5 through 8. You see all those uses of the word saw there in 5 through 8?

16:12 Stooping to look in, he saw. Then Simon Peter came following and went into the tomb, and he saw. And also the face cloth. And then verse 8, and the other disciple also went in, and he saw and believed. All this emphasis on seeing. And what's really interesting is that all three of those uses of saw are different Greek words underneath. All three of them are different. Different Greek words for seeing or looking. And they're all significant. Okay, another thing.

16:43 Notice how John plays with exactly how these people interact with the tomb. There's a progression to it. Because as you go through the story, the people involved are getting closer and closer with every step to the tomb. So, for example, at the beginning, Mary goes to the tomb, but she doesn't look in it. Right? She just sees the stone that's rolled away, and she goes away. She doesn't look in the tomb. John gets there and he looks, something Mary didn't do, but he doesn't go in.

17:15 Peter doesn't just look inside. He actually goes in the tomb, but he doesn't believe. John then goes in and believes. You see the progression there? That's deliberate. John is doing that for a reason. These characters go from not looking to looking to going in to believing. There's a progression that's happening there, and we're going to talk about all this later, but here's the point John's trying to get across to you in this story, the main idea.

17:46 Jesus' tomb was definitely empty. That's what he wants you to see. Jesus' tomb was definitely empty, and that's enough for you to recognize and trust him as the resurrected Lord. Jesus' tomb was definitely, for sure, empty, and that's quite enough for you to recognize and trust him as the resurrected Lord. All right, so in terms of structure, narrative is always a little bit difficult to structure because it's a story, right? Just one event moves, you know, to the next.

18:16 But there are various ways you can find the structure. You can look at, you know, the various characters and sometimes that works. In this case, I think you have to look at the various movements that happen in the story. Remember I mentioned there's a lot of movement, right? Mary goes and runs and then she goes here. She goes back to town, all of that. I told you there's a lot of movement and I think that's the best way to break it down and understand it. So here are the three major movements that are in this story. First is Mary's kind of back and forth in verses 1 and 2. She goes to the tomb, then she goes back to town to tell the disciples what's happened.

18:48 Then in verses 3 through 7, you've got Peter and John's rush to the tomb, right? They have this kind of foot race, and they go to the tomb in great haste. And then in 8 through 10, you kind of have the last movement of John going into the tomb and believing. So with those three kind of divisions, the sermon's got three points. Look at each one of those, seeing the responses of each of those people. It's very simple. Here are the points of the sermon. Number one, Mary ran. Nothing super insightful there, right? She ran. Number one, Mary ran.

19:19 Number two, Peter examined. I'll explain where that comes from later. Peter examined. And number three, John believed. John believed. So those three points, Mary ran, Peter examined, John believed. Friends, my prayer is that as we study this passage together, whether you're a Christian or not, by the end of this sermon, by the end of our service and time together, you will marvel once again, or maybe for the first time, at what God has done for you in Christ. Look, if you're not a Christian this morning, no matter how you got here, maybe a friend brought you, maybe you just popped in, I don't know.

19:53 But if you're not a Christian, then I want to be as straight up with you as John is straight up with you in the writing of this book. My hope is that by the end of our service today, you will in fact decide to become a Christian. I mean, that's why John wrote the book, right? That's what he wants from you in writing this whole book. He wants you to size Jesus up and he wants you to decide, yeah, I mean, given what John says here, given what these eyewitnesses say, I believe that Jesus is who he says he is. I believe he can do what he says he can do.

20:23 I believe he can save a sinner like me from the wrath of God for all eternity. And I hope, friends, if you're not a Christian, that you will be. I hope that by looking at the empty tomb, that will lead you to do exactly that. So let's jump into this. Point number one, Mary ran. That's what she did. Now, she did that on the surface, but there's a deeper sense in which she ran too. And that's what we want to talk about. This first movement of Mary going and coming happens in verses 1 and 2. And if you just kind of look at it at the highest level, you can see the movement.

20:54 This woman, Mary Magdalene, which means Mary from the village of Magdala, is going to Jesus' tomb. That's what she does. And then she quickly turns around and runs back to town in order to tell Jesus' disciples what she's seen. So that's the first thing that happens. Now there's a couple of interesting things to note here right off the bat in verses 1 and 2. First thing I want you to notice is that John there dates this as happening on the first day of the week.

21:25 See that verse 1? 21. Now, on the first day of the week, these things happen. These things happen. Does that strike you as interesting? Well, it should. Why? Well, it's interesting because throughout this story several different times, The way Jesus has predicted and dated his resurrection is as happening not on the first day of the week, but on the third day after his crucifixion. So you get three or four times in the book where Jesus says, I'm going to be crucified, I'm going to be handed over to the Gentiles, they're going to kill me, but on the third day, on the third day, on the third day, I'm going to rise again.

22:04 That's how Jesus himself dated it. Why does John date it as the first day of the week, rather than saying on the third day after his death, early in the morning, And Mary went to the tomb. Why doesn't he do that? Well, it's even more interesting when you realize that all four of the gospel writers, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, do exactly the same thing. They date this as happening on the first day of the week. Why? Well, the reason they do that is because Christians have always recognized that if Jesus really got up from the dead, then everything is different now.

22:43 There is something entirely new and entirely amazing that has happened. And life as we've always known it can't just go on like it always has. If Jesus got up from the grave, then we have been catapulted into a brand new age of resurrection. And in a very real sense, this really is day one of that new age. That's why we do it. That's why they did it in their writings. It's also why we Christians have traditionally for 2,000 years now, right up until the last 25 or 30 or 40 years, always met together on the morning of the first day of the week.

23:21 On Sunday, or as Christians often call it, the Lord's Day. We do that because the reason we gather together here is to remember that it was in fact on the first day of the week that Jesus rose from the dead. I mean, just by the way, that's why we here at Third Avenue meet when we meet on the morning of the first day of the week, Sunday. And it's why, by the way, we don't offer you as members of the church or attenders of the church, we don't offer you a whole lot of other options for coming to church when it's convenient for you. I mean, you know the drill, eight different options for services scattered from Thursday night until Sunday evening.

23:58 We don't do that for you because there's a reason Christians gather on the morning of the Lord's Day. It's because the resurrection is the most fundamental reality. It's the immovable boulder in history around which we as Christians organize the whole rest of our lives. So friends, we're not that interested in making things convenient for you to come worship the Lord of the universe. We're not interested in giving you options so you can fit church into the nooks and crannies of your busy life.

24:31 And quite to the contrary, what we want is for you as a Christian and a follower of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords to have to accommodate your busy life to the Mount Everest of Jesus' resurrection. And we want you to make it an immovable commitment to come here on Sunday mornings, soccer games and football games and whatever else notwithstanding. We want you to come here on this day, at this time, to worship the risen King Because that's part of recognizing your place and his place in the universe.

25:07 Okay, another thing that I want you to see here. And this is really just kind of to set some of your minds at ease. John says here in verses 1 and 2 that it was Mary Magdalene who went to the tomb that morning. You see that? On the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early while it was still dark, etc., etc., etc. She ran back, all of that. It's Mary Magdalene. That's the only person that he mentions as going to the tomb in the dark of night. But other gospels say that there were other women with her.

25:41 So what's up with that? Well, people have tried to take that literary hay right there and spin it into a whole lot of skeptical gold over the centuries, just arguing that, well, that's just inconsistent. It's even contradictory. The Bible can't even keep up with its own story. There are contradictions everywhere. And so they say, look, this one says it was Mary Magdalene, but this one says it was Mary, the mother of Jesus, and Mary Magdalene. That's a hopeless contradiction. And they try to impugn the trustworthiness of the Bible with that kind of argument.

26:12 But if you think about it, no, it's really not hopelessly contradictory at all, is it? Remember, one gospel to say and mention that Mary Magdalene went to the tomb doesn't necessarily mean that he's saying it was only Mary Magdalene alone. There could have been others. I mean, when we, you know, talk to our kids, for example, about youth group, I might ask my 17-year-old son, hey, who was at youth group? And I'll get, you know, he'll name like one person, he'll name like his best friend, and that's kind of it.

26:43 It's just like, oh, you know, Bill or whatever, not going to pick out a name. Ask my daughter, and if she's feeling talkative about who was at youth group, she'll start popping off, you know, maybe dozens of kids that were at youth group. Neither one of them is lying to me, and their stories aren't contradictory. It's just that when my son wants to name somebody, he has a purpose for doing that. And when my daughter wants to name multiple people, she has another purpose for doing that. It's all true. I think the thing to remember when you come to things like this is that people often demand that the gospel writers tell their stories with a kind of modern precision that would be appropriate in a criminal deposition.

27:24 But they're not being deposed. The gospel writers are not sitting across the table from a lawyer being deposed. They're just telling the story. And everything they say is true, but they don't always all say everything that could be said. Sometimes they're making a point about this, and sometimes they're making a point about this. In this case, I think John focuses in on Mary Magdalene because she's going to be the first one to actually see the resurrected Jesus, and that's really important to him. because John is all about eyewitnesses. On the other hand, I mean, some of you may have looked into this before.

27:57 It may be, and I think probably, in fact, it is the case that at this point in the story, while it's still dark in the wee hours of Sunday morning, I think Mary probably is, in fact, alone at this point in the story. In fact, I think she's probably come to the tomb alone here in the darkness before the dawn, and then she comes back again later with the other women. We'll explore some of that in future sermons as we make our way through chapter 20. Anyway, look there, John says in verse 1 that Mary came to the tomb while it was still dark.

28:30 Now, if you've been here for much of this series through John, your ears will probably perk up at that because John has used the images of dark and nighttime and light and morning several different times throughout his book to indicate the spiritual capacity and spiritual state of the characters in his story. So, for example, Nicodemus came to Jesus, you remember, at night because his soul was still benighted.

29:01 Judas went out to betray Jesus, and John ends the story of Judas by saying, and it was night. And Judas' fate is sealed. When Peter betrays Jesus, it's dark and cold, but then immediately after Peter's sin, what happens? The rooster crows, which signals what? The first light of the morning breaking over the horizon. So there's hope for Peter in a way that there wasn't for Judas. Well, here, I think he's doing exactly the same thing. When he says that she came while it was still dark, he's not just giving you a sort of astronomical time marker.

29:36 That's not what's going on. He's telling us something, I think, about the state of Mary's soul at this point in the events. It was still dark for her. She didn't get it yet. She didn't understand, which is why she sees the stone rolled away from the tomb and she runs. You see that? She sees the stone rolled away from the tomb and she runs. Verse 2. Now, what do you notice in verses 1 and 2?

30:09 Just look at those really carefully. First day of the week, Mary came to the tomb early while it was still dark. She saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb, so she ran. Went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, said to them, They have taken the Lord out of the tomb. We do not know where they have laid him. Look at that very carefully. What do you notice there about what Mary does not do? Look at it. Especially between verses, the end of verse 1, beginning of verse 2, what does she not do? She doesn't go look in the tomb.

30:41 She doesn't go. She gets no further than the stone being rolled away, and she doesn't walk up to it. She doesn't stoop and put her head into it. She doesn't take a look at what's happened. She just sees that the stone is rolled away, maybe even from some distance, and she jumps immediately to a conclusion that turns out to be false. Do you see that? She jumps to a conclusion. Verse 2, she runs to Simon Peter and the one whom Jesus loved, that's John, and says, Here's my conclusion. They've taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.

31:12 now in her defense here she's got plenty of reasons actually to jump to that conclusion that somebody had taken the body of jesus out of the tomb i mean you got several other historical sources that show us that grave robbing at this point in the history of the roman empire was a very real problem graves were just robbed all the time and so to walk up to a fresh grave and see the stone has been rolled away would give you the sense immediately that oh this is another one of those instances where the grave has been robbed, and in fact, Emperor Claudius eventually made it a capital crime. So bad was the problem to rob graves. So it's not too wild a theory in Mary's mind to think that this rolled away stone that she's seeing means grave robbers, and in fact, it's not even an unreasonable response for her to run away. I mean, after all, they might still be there, and here she is, a woman, in the wee hours of the morning, while it's still dark, alone, all by herself. So not unreasonable, and yet still, she stopped short of really pushing in and looking,

32:18 and the result was that she jumped to a wrong conclusion. They've taken his body. Now, given John's really, I think, meaningful comment that it was dark, it was still dark, And even the way the story plays with other people's reactions to the tomb, it's hard to think that in talking about Mary, looking at the stone, and then running, it's hard to think that he's not making a spiritual point. Here in the darkness, instead of pressing in to see the truth, Mary takes a quick look at the situation and runs away.

32:53 Now that's not an uncommon response by people, is it, to the claims of Jesus. I bet all of you have had this experience where you sit down across from somebody for coffee or for lunch, or you sit down next to somebody on an airplane, or you're talking to somebody in your office or at your school, or out on the lawn of the university, and everybody's happy with the small talk. They'll sit there and talk to you and take your Chick-fil-A sandwiches and all the rest, but as soon as you try to take the moment to turn the conversation to talk about Jesus, it's just like the shields go up, man, just, you know, and they're gone. The eyes glaze over, their head starts to turn away, Their body language starts to make it really clear that they don't want to be with you anymore.

33:29 They've taken a quick look at the situation, and they're running. I've seen it a thousand times. Why is that? Why do people do that? Well, the reason they do it, friends, is because like we said before, if what Jesus says is true, if he really is the Son of God who got up from the dead, then everything changes and if you as a human being look at those claims and believe that truth that Jesus got up from the dead then everything doesn't just change cosmically everything changes for you your values have to change your desires have to change your goals and your purposes in life have to change the way you interact with other people has to change sometimes your friends have to change. Everything changes, and life becomes something entirely different. But it's a glorious difference, right? Because all of a sudden, life becomes not just an existence in

34:34 which you do the best you can for a few decades, and maybe if you're lucky, you manage to do some good for some other people along the way. But all of a sudden, life becomes a purposeful, eternally meaningful, true life with a capital L. Live before God for His glory until this age gives way to the next, and you're going to live with him forever in a new heavens and new earth. Listen, friend, if you're hearing me, if you're listening to this sermon, then God has you doing that for a reason. And the reason that he's got you doing that, the reason he's got you listening to me talk about this stuff is exactly the same reason he put all these other people in this book in the path of Jesus.

35:13 He's confronting you with a choice. Do you believe this? Do you believe that Jesus is who he says he is and can save sinners like you? Friend, if that's you, if you're hearing this sermon and that choice is in front of you, don't be like Mary Magdalene. Don't run. Listen and believe. So Mary ran. Point number two, Peter examines. So making our way a little further into the story, in verse two, Mary makes a report.

35:49 it's wrong right the body has not been stolen in fact but she doesn't know that yet she thinks that's what's happened and besides that it's enough to get Peter and John on their feet and they race off toward the tomb and it's quite literally a race verse three so Peter went out with the other disciple that's John and they were going toward the tomb both of them were running together but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first okay now whether you may not know this you may know it this may be a very very common thing to you people have drawn all kinds of conclusions about this foot race over the course of the centuries and they have tried to stuff it with all kinds of meaning so for example sermons have been preached and books have been written that say John ran faster because he loved Jesus more or he ran faster because he was a better disciple some people have even tried to allegorize it and have said that well Peter represents the Jews, and John represents the Gentiles, so the empty tomb is presented to Jews

36:49 first, kind of because Peter went in first, but John got there first, and the details just fall apart. Peter does not represent the Jews, and John does not represent the Gentiles. It doesn't make a lick of sense. In fact, I like what Don Carson says about this episode after. He spends several paragraphs describing everything that people have tried to do with this, and stuffing it full of meaning. And he finally gets to the end and he says this. The ancient explanation for the swiftness of the beloved disciple is probably the correct one. He was younger and faster than Peter and he got there first. I mean, that's it. It's eyewitness details. You can't stuff it full of allegory. You can't go looking for some kind of hidden meaning. It's just that John was younger and faster and he got there first. And John knows that because he's the one that did it. And so he writes it down for us i think it is important though to see the massive sense of urgency that marks this story i mean think about think about what happens in this thing mary magdalene runs peter runs john

37:52 runs faster in other words whatever has happened here is something that demands that it be figured out immediately there's this driving question in the story what has happened to cause the stone to be rolled away from the mouth of the tomb. And everyone is rushing to get an answer to that story. There's a sense of urgency that this thing has got to be figured out immediately. Friend, I hope and pray that the Lord himself will ignite that kind of sense of urgency in you. I hope you'll do that, especially if you're not a Christian. I hope you'll have this sense in your heart that I've got to get this figured out now because my eternity hangs in the balance. Hope that's true for you. But friend, you're not off the hook if you're a Christian about a sense of urgency in the Christian life.

38:36 The Christian life is supposed to be marked by a sense of urgency. One of the greatest dangers of being long on this road of discipleship is that it can become something roped to us. It can become familiar and therefore unremarkable. And what happens is that over time, we as Christians just lose our sense of urgency. We lose our fire to learn about and love Jesus. We lose our burning impulse to pray.

39:07 We lose our sense that there's more to this world than we can see with our eyes. And eventually what happens is that we just stop running toward the kingdom. We stop striving for the kingdom. And we just settle into a kind of sleepy drift toward it at best. But friends, that's not at all, not for a second, how the Christian life is supposed to be lived. not in the slightest. We talked about this last week. We are awaiting people, but we're not supposed to be an idle people. We're not just Christians who blow up our wraps and jump in the lazy river and see where it takes us. Not at all. The Christian life is supposed to be lived with energy and vigor and strength with bright eyes and a clear purpose. It's like Paul says in that little, you know, bit of scripture that I read right after the song. I press on to make it my own. I press on toward the upward call of what I have in Jesus Christ. Peter says something very similar in a funny kind of way he says gird up the loins of your mind you know what girding up the loins is if you're if you're in the we don't gird up our loins anymore we just don't because

40:09 we don't we don't have them right they had long robes right that they would wear and if you wanted to go fast you had to like pull up your robes and tie it on your waist so that you could so that your legs wouldn't get tripped up in the robe and so Peter says there gird up the loins of your mind And what he means by that is prepare your minds for action. Get ready to run. Get ready to have purpose. Get ready to move. Friends, the Christian faith is a running, striving faith.

40:44 Is that how you describe your discipleship to Jesus? Would you describe your discipleship to Jesus as full of energy, full of purpose, full of deliberate action? or are you more the Lazy River kind of Christian? Now, brothers and sisters, some of you today, I imagine in a congregation this big, some of you need to wake up this morning. Some of you need to drink a cup of spiritual coffee, whatever form that takes, and get going. What were you doing spiritually a year ago that you're not doing now?

41:25 Or maybe to put it another way, what sort of unhealthy frames of mind have gotten root in your heart that weren't there a year ago? Maybe it's time to make some deliberate changes. Maybe it's time to start running again. And Paul was under no illusion that this thing is a race. This thing is a fight. And our fight is not against flesh and blood, but against powers and principles and spiritualities in the heavenly places.

42:05 I saw someone just the other day that said, man, if demons were visible, Christians would pray a whole lot more. I want you to see another thing, too. At the end of verse 4 there, John arrives at the tomb, and then in verse 5, he stoops to look in. And stoops is another one of those words that just sparkles with eyewitness detail. If you're telling this story from a distance, unless you're writing fiction, you don't recount the word stoops.

42:35 You don't use that. You just say something more generic, like, he looks. That's how a historian would talk about this. He looked in the tomb, because that's really all we can say, right? But the fact that John uses this kind of sparkling, detailed word like stoops, again, tells us that he was there. And if you think about it, you know, of course he stooped to look into it. Tombs in those days didn't have high ceilings. Why would you need a high ceiling in a tomb? Once you're laid in it, nobody gets up and walks around anymore, at least until this day. Anyway, John stoops and he looks in. Further than Mary got, she didn't look, he does.

43:08 But still, you see that word saw there in verse 5? Stooping to look in, he saw the linen cloths lying there. But he did not go in. He saw the linen cloth. That word saw there in verse 5 is just the very most basic Greek word for seeing something. It's the Greek word blepo. Blepo, right? And it means just the bare act of seeing or looking. There's nothing significant in the seeing.

43:39 There's nothing significant in the looking. It's just a bare action word. There's no reflecting or thinking going on. There's no interpretation that's being given to anything. Gileppo is just light bouncing off an object and hitting the retinas. That's it. John saw in that way. But now look at 6 and 7. Then Simon Peter came following him and went into the tomb. He saw the linen cloths lying there and the face cloth, which had been on Jesus' head, not lying with linen cloths, but folded up in a place by itself.

44:11 So Peter gets there, right? He's huffing and puffing because he's slower and older than John is. But he finally gets there and he pushes John aside and he actually goes into the tomb further than anybody has gone so far. And he too saw the strips, but he also saw this face cloth that we're going to talk about in a few minutes. But that word saw there in verse 6 is a different word from the one in 5. The word in 5 is blepo, it just means a basic seeing, right? There's nothing more to it, just a basic seeing. The word saw that Peter did is something different.

44:44 theoreo, T-H-E-O-R-E-O, T-H-E-O-R-E-O, now what does that sound like? Sounds like theory, right? Theoreo, that's where we get the word theory, we're theorized, and it means that when he saw the strips in the cloth, he thought about it. Now, to be clear and careful, I'm not just working from, oh, that looks like theory, and theory means thinking, and so therefore Peter saw it. That's actually what the word means. You look it up in the historical sources, and, you know, it doesn't, it's not like dunamis, where, you know, the word for power in Greek, dynamis. It's not like, you know, it's like, well, power, it means explosive power because of dynamite. No, it doesn't. It just means power. Like, this one doesn't work backwards like that. It means to see something and to think about it carefully and therefore we get the word theory so he didn't just see these things and look

45:45 away he examined these things with his mind he tried to figure out what these things meant okay especially if you're not a christian let me ask you a question have you ever done that have you ever taken the time and the mental energy to look at the empty tomb of jesus and to look at the historical accounts of the witnesses who say that they had all kinds of interaction with after he was raised from the dead those eyewitnesses say that they talked with him they saw him they ate with him they had long conversations with him they put their fingers in the wounds on his wrists you ever looked at all of that and really examined it carefully to see if it's true You should.

46:31 I mean, really, if you're really serious about testing Christianity, if you're really serious about seeing if it holds up under pressure, that's really what you have to do. You have to examine the resurrection and determine if it's true. Come to an opinion about whether it happened or not. Because everything, literally everything about the Christian faith rises and falls on that one question, did Jesus really get up from the dead? Because if he didn't, then all right, fine, let's all just go home because I personally am not interested in organizing my whole life around the ethical system of just one more ancient dude who died and stayed dead.

47:09 There are a bunch of those and I don't want to organize my life around any of them. But friends, if the resurrection is true, if it really happened, if Jesus really got up from the dead, then everything is different. So have you asked those questions? Have you examined the matter thought about it like Peter did what happened on that Sunday morning what exactly happened something did and it changed the course of history right because here we are so what was it what happened I mean did a bunch of people just have a kind of mass hallucination that they were seeing Jesus no it doesn't even make any sense what is a mass hallucination unless you believe in something like ESP a hallucination is something that takes place in one singular brain and it doesn't happen among multiple brains. If I'm having a hallucination, I can't communicate that to you and make you have it. Again, unless you believe in ESP and then we got something else to talk about. It wasn't a mass hallucination. I mean, what about the theory that some people and even some entire religions have

48:10 basically that Jesus just swooned on the cross. He didn't die. He swooned or he went into a coma and they thought he was dead and they stabbed him. He still wasn't dead. They wrapped him up in the cloths and they put him in the tomb and he still wasn't dead. They put the stone over it. Still wasn't dead. 36 hours later on the third day he blinks to life, stabbed, crucified, hasn't eaten or had any water in 36 days. He pulls the cloths off somehow, rolls this multi-ton stone out of the way, staggers into the home of the disciples and convinces them all that he's the conqueror of death. It didn't happen. What about the disciples just deceiving us? What if they all got together and said, hey guys, let's come up with a, let's come up with a conspiracy. We'll tell the world that this guy got up from the dead. We'll steal his body, hide it away somewhere where not even the Romans can find it, and we'll convince the world that Jesus got up from the dead and we will be rich and famous. Well, no, I mean, the problem is none of them ever got rich and famous. They all

49:12 died swearing that Jesus got up from the dead. They didn't just die of old age. Every single one of them was killed, martyred in horrible ways. Peter was crucified upside down. One of them was dropped in boiling oil. Another one was pushed off the edge of the temple and died. They were all killed in all these horrible ways. And yet to their last breath, they said, no, no, no. We swear by God. This man got up from the dead and we saw him. Friends, you don't do that. You don't do that for a hoax or a conspiracy.

49:47 What happened? What happened on that Sunday morning? The only explanation, the only thing that explains everything is that Jesus really did get up from the dead. And if that's true, then you need to organize your life around the one who did it. You need to recognize him for who he is as the Savior who saves people just like you from your sins. And who sits now at the right hand of the Father, ruling everything. And you need to put your faith in him and live for his glory. Mary ran, Peter examined, third and last, John believed.

50:22 John believed. So in 5.6, John stoops down, looks inside the tomb, sees the linen cloths. Peter then goes further. He actually goes into the tomb where he sees not just the linen cloths, but once he gets in there, he also sees this face cloth or head cloth. The word face isn't really in the word. It's a complicated Greek word, and it doesn't have the word face in it. That's kind of an over-translation. It's more just a cloth, right? It's the sort of cloth that you might be able to twist and wrap around your head, excuse me, in a turban. That's what the cloth is.

50:57 But then look at verse 8. Because in verse 8, John pushes things forward again. Now, John doesn't just look, and he doesn't even just go in and examine. He goes into the tomb, and he sees, and he believes. Now, that word saw there is the third time the word saw is used in English.

51:33 So, you remember back, sorry, I got a tickle in my throat. First time that we used the word saw, it just meant bare seeing. Second time, it meant theorizing or considering. Third time here is the Greek word orao. And that means, that's like the most important seeing of all. It means to see with understanding. In other words, John finally gets it. Okay, but what makes him get it? I mean, you look at the progression. We go from verses 6 and 7 where he sees the linen cloths lying there and the face cloth.

52:07 Not lying with the linen cloths but folded up in a place by itself. To verse 8, he goes in and sees all of those same things and believes. What happens between the seeing and believing? What does he see that causes him to believe? If what he saw was the linen cloths laying there and the head covering or the face cloth or whatever you want to call it over here. What is it about that that makes him believe? And look at how much attention John gives to those pieces of cloth. I mean, he gives those little pieces of cloth, he gives them pretty much two whole verses.

52:42 The whole story is only ten verses long, and two of them are about the cloths. That's a fifth of the whole story. So what's so significant about that, and why does seeing those pieces of cloth lead John to say, Okay, now I believe. Well, it has to do with the details that John records here. So, first of all, you've got to understand a little bit about Jewish burial procedures, Jewish burial rituals. Different cultures throughout the world have had different burial rituals. For example, you know about mummies, right, in ancient Egypt.

53:13 In Egypt, the custom was to wrap the body up completely with wax and all kinds of stuff and basically embalm the body. In Roman and Greek cultures, the most common way of disposing of a corpse was to burn it. They cremated their dead. The Jews had their own burial rituals. And essentially the way they did it was that they would take long pieces of linen strips, start at the feet, and wrap the person's... Oh, thank you, brother. You're saving my life. So they would take strips of linen, wrap it around the feet of the dead body, and come all the way up the body.

53:48 They would usually cross the arms right about here, and they would wrap the linen around the body. And they would get up to just right about here, just underneath the shoulders, and they would pull the linen tight and then tuck it in. Then they would take another piece of cloth, more like a sheet, and they would wrap it around the head of the person who was dead. Now sometimes, you know, there are sources that say that they covered the face. There are a few places like that. There are other times when it looks more like, and it may even be true of Jesus because it said this is the cloth that was covering his head.

54:19 Now that might mean his whole head, but it could also be that they just wrapped it around the top of his head. There are sources that say that that's what they did. But whether it was here or here, the whole thing, the point is that once the person was wrapped up and laid down on the bier, there was a gap between the linen cloths wrapped around the body and the turban that was wrapped around the head. There was a gap. Okay, so why is that significant?

54:51 Well, look carefully at what John says he saw. Now, verse 6, Simon Peter came following him, went into the tomb. He saw the linen cloths lying. That's the stuff from like chest down, right? Those are the linen cloths. So he sees those lying there on the sort of, you know, stone bed that the body would have been lying on. He sees that. Now, the word lying there does not mean lying in a disorganized heap. It just doesn't. What it means is lying in order. It means lying in order.

55:24 There are other places in the historical sources where this word is used and, you know, a guy's like writing to his boss and he says that the papers are lying prepared or lying collated on your desk or whatever. Or, you know, there's somebody else that writes to someone and says, I'll send you your clothing, but until you call for them, they are lying here prepared for you in my home. And I'll send them when they, when you, when you, anyway, that's what it means. It means lying in order. Now, that's interesting. Because if grave robbers had taken the body, or even if a swooned Jesus had woken up and had to fight his way out of all of these strips, they wouldn't have been lying there in order.

56:05 It would have been a mess. And then look at verse 7. And the face cloth, they saw the face cloth too, which had been on Jesus' head, that's interesting, not lying with the linen cloths, but folded up in a place by itself. Now, folded up there, it might mean folded up. It does sometimes. But in other places, it means wrapped up, twisted up, kind of like you would twist up a turban on a person's head or even a graveshroud over their face.

56:36 Twist it up around them so that it holds. Could mean wrapped up. And notice that it's not with the linen strips, as if somebody piled them all up. No, no, no, it's wrapped up in a place by itself. In other words, there's a gap between it and the linen cloths. Okay, so what's the significance of that? Well, it's really hard to say. I mean, John doesn't give a lot of details.

57:07 All we know, really, is that what he saw, linen strips in order where the body was, Then the face cloth wrapped up like a turban at some gap from the strips led him to say, okay, I believe. Why? Well, again, we don't know exactly. But I think what John probably saw was strips and face cloth or head covering arranged not at all like they would have been if robbers had come in and stolen the body or even if Jesus had fought his way out of the grave, but arranged rather just like they would have been if Jesus' body had just gone through them.

57:53 Just like he would later go through doors and walls. See the strips with nothing under them, without a body in them, just kind of sank down, but perfectly in order, just like they had been wrapped around him. The face cloth or the head cloth just kind of stayed there, still wound up tightly like a turban, and at a little bit of a gap from the rest of the cloths, but with no head in it any longer because Jesus was alive. I don't know if that's the case. John doesn't say, but I think that's what it's describing. And that might be hard to get your head around because I think we tend to think of Jesus as, you know, when he comes back to life, when he's resurrected, I think we tend to think of him as, you know, wrapped up in the cloths and laying on the, you know, the beer in the tomb and, you know, zap, he's alive and his eyes come open and he's still tied together like this and then he starts to struggle, right?

58:41 and he finally is able to work his way out and maybe an angel comes and helps him with the stone and he walks out. That's not what the resurrection looked like. That's what the resuscitation of Lazarus looked like. I mean, you remember John 11? It literally says that he stumbles out of the tomb because his arms and legs are bound. I mean, Lazarus did not walk out of the tomb doing the rocky thing. No, he sort of... He sort of did that.

59:12 And Jesus had to say, unbind him and let him go. It wasn't like that for Jesus. He didn't come hopping out of his tomb. He didn't have to fight the grave clothes off. No, Jesus' resurrection wasn't like that because his resurrection body was not just resuscitated. Something completely different happened to it. It became something different. It became a glorified body that could walk through walls, that could appear and disappear at will. Yeah, it's still visible, right?

59:44 Or it's still physical, I mean. It's still got the wounds, but now it's glorified. I mean, friends, you realize that the angel didn't roll the stone away to let Jesus out. He rolled the stone away to let us in. So John saw the empty tomb. He saw the empty, undisturbed grave clothes. and he believed. Friend, what's it going to take for you to believe?

1:00:18 What are you going to have to see? I mean, you might say to me, well, show me what John saw, and I'll believe. Let me see the empty tomb. Let me see the linens and the face cloth set up just like you did, and I'll believe just like John believed. You realize, though, that even John recognized that his seeing the cloths and believing on the basis of that wasn't enough. I mean, look at the last verse, or second to last.

1:00:50 He saw and believed, that's verse 8, for as yet they did not understand the Scripture, that he must rise from the dead. I mean, to see and believe is one thing, And it's good. John doesn't treat it as anything other than good. He saw and he believed and that's good. But Jesus is going to say later to believe without seeing is even more blessed. So then on what basis do you believe? If you can't see the empty tomb, if you can't see the cloths, on what basis do you believe?

1:01:27 Verse 9, the scripture that he must rise from the dead. You're supposed to look at those prophecies from 700 years before Jesus was born in the book of Isaiah and others of the prophets. You're supposed to look at the scriptures as eyewitness testimony of the people who saw these things. And you're supposed to go on the basis of that testimony and those prophecies, I believe. Friends, especially if you've been here for the last few weeks looking at Isaiah, you've been confronted with the very things the Lord wants you to look at and believe on the basis of.

1:02:06 You've got it. You've got it all. You've got the eyewitness testimonies right here in John. You've got the prophecies from 700 years ago in Isaiah. You've got it all. Don't run. Examine it. And believe. Let's pray. Our Lord Jesus, we thank you that you are the resurrected and reigning Son of God, the King of kings and the Lord of lords. We thank you that the tomb was and is empty. And that no matter how hard archaeologists may look, no matter how hard historians may search, they're never going to find your bones.

1:02:43 Because you, Lord, are resurrected and sitting at the right hand of your Father. Oh Lord, we pray today, this morning, that no one would leave this place not believing in you. But we pray that your spirit would be active, even right now, bringing life to dead hearts and giving faith where there was none before. We pray all of this in Jesus' name, amen.