They went into the tomb.  They knew they would have to.  Could you?  They were trying to prepare themselves.  They see the stone rolled away and don’t know what to think.  Something is wrong.  Did they rush in?  Did they creep in?  Did they hang back, huddled, for a few minutes, regathering whatever resolve and courage they had managed to cobble together on the dark walk there that morning?  What would they see?  They weren’t sure they wanted to find out.  But they came knowing they would have to go into the tomb.  So, they go in.

The body was gone.  The death wrappings were there, but not the body.  There should have been a body: very dead, very cold, wrapped head to foot, the odor of death strong, by then.

As they were wondering, weeping, worrying, two men were there.  Just there.  Luke doesn’t say they walked in or stepped out from a shadowy corner of the tomb.  The women were perplexed—that’s putting it mildly—then the men are there.

These messengers do not let the women remain in perplexity: there is a message for them, in the midst of their perplexity.  All this . . . all this about Jesus, and God, and the Bible . . . what perplexes you?  Faith may not be the most important dimension in your life, even today, but we have questions.  We wonder.  The more we wonder, the more there is to wonder about.  YouTube is great for this.

It seems there are responses to almost any question we might have.  I’ve been watching a lot of brief videos from John Piper, Ravi Zacharias, and Frank Turek.  I encourage you to look for yourselves into what they have to say.  Then encourage others to look.

Those two men who were not there and then are have a message for the perplexed, fearful women.  It’s a mysterious message, a wonderful message, a good message, the more we look into it.  What we see is that the God who is making Himself known to us through the Bible is a God who sends a message.  He sends us a message in our perplexity, too.  Something wonderful.  In the midst of our confusion, pulled this way and that by all the messages of this world, by our own sense of right and wrong, our own feelings of good and bad, God sends a message of wonder and power.

“He is not here, but has risen.”  Well, that first part was obvious!  The women knew Jesus wasn’t there!  They saw that much!  That’s the source of their worry, fear, and sorrow.  Jesus is supposed to be there, dead, wrapped up, smelly, in this dark, cold tomb.  They were supposed to be fulfilling their promise to finish what they had started the day of his death.  Now we can’t.  We don’t know where he is.  We feel so lost.  We don’t understand.

In the same breath, the men explain why Jesus is not there: he “has risen.”  But that makes no sense to the women, any more than it makes sense to those who do not believe today.  Jesus?  Risen?  Nonsense.  Not possible.  Just a story.  Things that weak people need to cope.  Only, the women did not believe.  Did that make them strong?  Even Jesus’ own disciples did not believe.  Did that make them smart?  All this unbelief is not a very promising start for a faith that has transformed the world and is still transforming this world, for the better.  Arguably, demonstrably, for the better.  I believe that education is good.  How about you?  How about hospitals?  Orphanages?  Feeding the poor?  Drilling wells for clean water?  Inoculations for preventable disease?  The Church at  work; believers at work.

The problem these angels identify (angel means messenger) is that the women, the followers themselves, did not remember what Jesus had told them, several times.  Jesus would be handed over to those who wanted to see him dead and gone, out of our lives.  They would kill Jesus, in a very public, brutal, and humiliating way.  They were sending a message: end of story.  World wins.  Human authority wins.  Human standards win.  And, on the third day, this very dead Jesus will rise.  At the cross, God was sending a message, too.

It all happened even though no one remembered.  It happened just as Jesus said it would because it is a promise Jesus made.  It is the promise God makes to His people, and God follows through on His promises.  If you leave here today remembering nothing else, understanding nothing else, remember and understand this: God follows through on His promises.

When we start remembering what God promises, other things start making a little more sense.  We remember God’s promises when we turn to where they’re recorded, turn to the Bible, and start reading it, regularly, in conversation with others also reading, reading it and praying, praying that God would allow all these words to start making sense, to start meaning something in our lives.  If you do nothing else when you leave here today, start reading this book, regularly.

We remember more than we realize.  We just have to remember that we remember.  We need help to do that.  Those angels help those women.  I’d like to help you to remember, today, that Jesus makes these promises, that these promises are fulfilled in holy power.  God is making these same, holy, powerful promises to you.  If you’ll receive and welcome these promises, if you want God in your life, He will give you the ability to receive Him and to receive what He has to say to you.  He will give you the ability to want Him in your life.

Those women, who had come in dread and grief, leave in joy, wonder, and praise.  They go and tell others.  Luke tells us their names, probably because the earliest Christians knew these women: they could hear the same story from the mouths of the ones who were there, who saw, heard, who went in unbelief and came away in amazed, renewed faith.  These women were known to the disciples, trusted.  If the apostles were going to believe anyone, it would have been Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Mary the mother of James.  “[B]ut these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.”

They did not believe.  That’s as honest as it gets.  The Bible is the most honest book I know.  The apostles themselves did not believe!  Because they didn’t remember?  My hunch is that they did not believe because the events of Friday, and their own very personal, abject failure, were still controlling their thinking, their feeling, and their believing.   Betrayal, failure, death, disappointment, confusion—they were bogged down in all that.  The world offers us many things that seem very good, yet we never quite escape the sense that underneath all the pretty things is betrayal, death, disappointment, and confusion.  Singers, composers, painters, philosophers, poets, filmmakers have felt that undercurrent for as long as we have had ways of expressing it.  Life ends.  Is it all just wasted breath?  Is everything just headed to death?  What’s it all about?

But the message that God sent those angels to say, and that those women, remembering, then share with the unbelieving apostles, is not a message of betrayal, death, disappointment, and confusion.  It is a message of rising!  Release, freedom, life, victory, power, promise.  It is a message of God, about God, our God—if we will receive Him.  He gives the ability to want Him in our lives.  When we focus our lives upon God, God opens our eyes, minds, and hearts to truths we hadn’t imagined, hadn’t known how to believe, hadn’t hoped to believe.

Peter, hearing the women, doesn’t sit there, laughing in angry derision.  He “rose and ran to the tomb.”  Peter rose, too, that morning.  He went to see, to look into it for himself: “stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; and he went home marveling at what had happened.”  Peter is moved to action by what he hears.  He doesn’t believe, yet.  That needs to be said.  But he acts on what he hears.  He goes and looks into it for himself.  Jesus isn’t there.  Peter sees the wrappings of death, but not Jesus.  Peter isn’t sure what it means.  He marvels.  He wonders.  I think he starts to hope, again, a bit.

Like Peter, we know this empty tomb means something.  We know we’re supposed to grasp it, celebrate it.  It’s a lot to take in.  It’s a miracle!  If you believe, if you remember, then, yes, it is.  Of course it is.  You and I know that there are many who don’t believe.  God will have them believe.  How will they believe, if they are not told, told by someone they know, someone they trust?

Soon, it will be time for us to rise, too.  We will rise like those women, so early that grim, glorious morning.  We will rise like Peter, to look into all this.  In Jesus’ resurrection, what we remember, celebrate, and wonder about especially, particularly today, is the glorious, powerful affirmation that those who put their faith in Jesus, who entrust their lives to him, shall, like Jesus, rise on that glorious day known to the Father only.  In Jesus, we rise, too.  Thanks be to God!

Rise in faith.  Go in hope.  Tell in love.  Rejoice in wonder.

To the God of all grace, who calls you to share God’s eternal glory in union with Christ, be the power forever!