He Is Risen, As He Said

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Sunday, 24 April 2011 08:17

April 24, 2011

“HE IS RISEN, AS HE SAID”

Matthew 28:1-10

By Pastor Ole Lillestolen

Jesus is alive! No other faith in the world, that I am aware of, can look to a savior who died and rose again from the dead. It was interesting to hear the Christensens last weekend as they told about their missionary experiences in the far east. One person who became a Christian was told from birth that he was a reincarnation of Buddha, so he was important in his community. He felt very dissatisfied with Buddhism and turned to Christ. But, nobody is claiming, like this, that Jesus was reincarnated into another person. Jesus, Himself, rose from the dead!

If you look at this from the human perspective, it is hard to believe, especially since it happened some two thousand years ago. It’s easy to wonder if the story of Jesus resurrection is just a legend. In fact, Jesus’ disciples had a tough time believing in Jesus’ resurrection, and they were there at the time!
Jesus had prepared them for His death and resurrection. In Matthew 20:18,19 Jesus told them plainly: “Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem; and the Son of Man will be delivered to the chief priests and scribes, and they will condemn Him to death, and will deliver Him to the Gentiles to mock and scourge and crucify Him, and on the third day He will be raised up.” Nevertheless, when Jesus was crucified all of the disciples and all of the others who were following Him thought that was the end!

Interestingly, the only person in the gospel accounts who seems to have expected more from Jesus after His death on the cross was the thief hanging next to Jesus. He did not understand what was going on, but it looks like his response to Jesus is the only positive response in the gospels. Seeing the sign that Pilot put on Jesus’ cross, “Jesus, the King of the Jews,” he said, “Jesus, remember me when You come in Your kingdom!” (Luke 23:42) His halting faith in Jesus was rewarded with Jesus’ promise, “Today you will be with Me in Paradise!” I suspect Jesus’ promise gave him a sense of hope even though it was in the last hours of his life!

But, this disbelief by the rest of Jesus’ followers and disciples helps us to more confidently believe that Jesus truly did rise from the grave. It was Sunday morning and two women, both Mary’s, “came to look at the grave. And behold, a severe earthquake had occurred.” There was nothing surprising about an earthquake in that area. Most of the ruins of the ancient cities of that area are the result of earthquakes. Quakes would ravage cities to the point they were too far gone to rebuild, so people moved on. But, this earthquake wasn’t the result of a fault line. “An angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled away the stone and sat upon it.”

From that moment on, the gospels tell us that Jesus demonstrated His resurrection to a parade of witnesses. These two Mary’s saw Jesus, as we read in the end of our text, and the guards witnessed the ground shaking so that the stone was rolled away and they saw the angel whose, “appearance was like lightning, and his garment as white as snow.” They “shook for fear of him, and became like dead men.”

Remember also that the centurion in charge of Jesus’ crucifixion. Mark 15:37-39 tells us that just before Jesus died on the cross He “uttered a loud cry, and breathed His last. And the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. And when the centurion, who was standing right in front of Him, saw the way He breathed His last, he said, “Truly this man was the Son of God!”” The Jewish Sanhedrin may have bribed the soldiers to lie about Jesus’ resurrection, but it doesn’t look like they were very convincing, if they even wanted to be.

Some five hundred people saw Jesus alive after His resurrection. Within 250 years this event which took place in a little corner of the Roman empire transformed the entire empire and the entire Western world. Despite the strongest efforts of the Jewish leadership to squash the spread of the gospel, the news of Jesus’ death an resurrection spread and people from the bottom to the top of society believed and turned from their religions to accept Jesus Christ as their savior and Lord.
As remote as that time may seem to us today, there is no better record of any man’s life in ancient history than that of Jesus. The best archaeology puts the copies of the eyewitness accounts of Jesus’ death and resurrection to within decades of their being first written, and thousands of copies and scraps of copies all attest to the same message: Jesus died and rose again from the grave, just as He said He would do.

And that’s what the angel told the women as he said to them, “Do not be afraid; for I know that you are looking for Jesus who has been crucified. He is not here, for He has risen, just as He said. Come, see the place where He was lying.”

After the news that Jesus rose from the dead, this “Just as He said,” phrase is one of the most important phrases in this text. This phrase tells us how we should respond to this wonderful news. In other words, Jesus’ death and resurrection isn’t just a random event of ancient history, it had and continues to have a purpose and we discover that in listening to what Jesus said about Himself and about His purpose amongst us. In fact, we should take a cue from this scene and get involved with what Jesus said rather than stand still and focus on a cross and on an empty tomb. The angel told the women to leave the tomb and do what Jesus told them to do next!

There is a value and a need to occasionally stop and look at the cross and at the empty tomb, but we miss the boat if we do not listen to what Jesus has to say to us as the risen savior who vacated that tomb. He’s not there! He wasn’t there at that moment either! He was already moving on, and He wants us to follow Him where He is going!

At that point in time, He was telling the women to tell the disciples that Jesus, “is going before you into Galilee, there you will see Him; behold, I have told you.” Before they actually were able to return to the disciples Jesus appeared to them on the way back. We read that, “they departed quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy and ran to report it to His disciples. And behold, Jesus met them and greeted them. And they came up and took hold of His feet and worshiped Him.” Their faith was rewarded by this special visit with Jesus and that is the way that it often is, we experience God’s touch and blessing when we respond to His leading in faith.

This is a crucial point to take to heart from this text this morning. When Jesus said on the cross, “It is finished,” He didn’t mean that He was stepping out of the picture because He had completed His purpose. As the thief on the cross recognized, Jesus was only completing one phase of His purpose so that He could move on to the next. In 2 Corinthians 5:19 the Apostle Paul tells us that, “God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them,” but Paul reminds us that the whole point of what Jesus did on the cross was to reconcile us to God, to Himself! Our sins no longer stand between us and God! No one can say that God is not interested in them! No one can say that God will not accept them! Jesus paid the price fully on the cross so that we can once again have a relationship with Him.

On the other hand, Satan wants us to think of salvation the way the Iraqi people think of America’s rescue of them. They just want America to step in and rescue them from Hussein and from those that would destroy their country, but then for America to step away and let them do their own thing, maybe even against the interests of America! They’d like us to rebuild their infrastructure and create a paradise for them, but they don’t want us participate in it with them because we, in their minds, are infidels! We are not on the same page!

What Jesus did is not at all the same! Do you remember about the Auca Indians of Equador? They were the most brutal, murderous people in the jungle and five missionary men felt called to reach out to them. To make a long story short, they reached out to them in friendly ways and were able to visit them, but something caused the Indians to turn on them and kill them. The Indians then expected to have an army of retaliation come for revenge, but the wives of the dead missionaries convinced the Ecuadoran government to not send the army in. The wives reached out to the tribe, surprising them with love instead of revenge. Eventually the women were invited to visit the tribe and they led many of them to the Lord, including those who killed their husbands.

The Indians knew they should not have killed those men and they were overwhelmed by the love, the mercy, and the willingness of those wives who wanted to come live with them! Jesus died so that we might be reconciled to Him and live in fellowship with Him. The wives had forgiven the Aucas, just as God has forgiven us. But, it was then up to the Aucas to decide whether they wanted to get into a relationship with those forgiving wives and it is up to us to decide whether we want to be in a living relationship with Jesus.

For the thief on the cross, Paradise was not about a fancy place to hang out for eternity. He said, “Jesus, remember me!” He had no idea what Paradise, or Jesus’ kingdom would be like. He just wanted to be with Jesus! I guess we can learn something from that thief after all!

The issue for us today is, however, how are we responding to what the risen, living Jesus is speaking to us today? The disciples heard but did not process what Jesus was saying, so they had to be reminded of what Jesus had said before they could move on. Let us listen to, meditate on and process what He is telling us in the Bible, and then act on it!