Luke 23.50-24.12

The empty tomb

(Luke 23.50-24.12)

Jason Procopio

Everyone who hears the message of the gospel is in a similar situation. Someone tells them an incredible story—the kind of story we usually find in a science-fiction or fantasy novel. The person telling the story offers no clear proof; they can’t show any scientific or irrefutable, empirical evidence to back up their claim. And yet somehow, the person telling this story, without necessarily pushing them to it, is clearly hoping you will respond to that story with belief. 

That’s not an easy position to be in (and I don’t think we admit this enough). How would you feel if someone told you the earth was created by aliens and that one day these aliens were going to return to take the “faithful” back to their home planet, and that’s why we’re building an embassy for them in Canada? We have to understand that from a scientific point of view, the gospel isn’t that much easier to swallow than this outlandish tale (I actually knew several people a while back who believed this). 

We believe the gospel because God did something in us, to convince us of its truth. But we need to remember that outside of God’s activity in our hearts, everyone reacts to the gospel in this way.

And that’s what we see in today’s text.

We’re going to start in Luke 23.50. Remember, Jesus has just spent the most agonizing night and day of his (or anyone’s) life. He suffered the wrath of God on the cross for many long hours, and finally, after putting himself back into his Father’s hands, he has died.

Burial (23.50-56)

50 Now there was a man named Joseph, from the Jewish town of Arimathea. He was a member of the council, a good and righteous man, 51 who had not consented to their decision and action; and he was looking for the kingdom of God.

So Luke tells us a couple of things about this Joseph, who won’t show up again, but who is nevertheless an important actor in this story. 

Joseph was a member of the Sanhedrin; he was a member of the Jewish council which arrested, tried and condemned Jesus. But Joseph, unlike the other members, was looking for the kingdom of God; Luke describes Joseph in the same way he described Zechariah back in chapter 1, and Simeon in chapter 2—he was a good and righteous man. 

And apparently he wasn’t there when the trial took place. Mark tells us that the vote to condemn Jesus was unanimous (Mark 14.64), but Luke tells us that Joseph had not consented to their decision and action. So we don’t know if he was out of town, or if the rest of the Sanhedrin knew he would disagree, so didn’t tell him about it. But in any case, he wasn’t present when this all went down.

So imagine his shock when he walked out into the street on the morning of Jesus’s crucifixion and found out what had taken place. 

The shock of this event must have sparked Joseph into action, which he had up to this point held back; he would be a “secret disciple” of Jesus, an admirer from a distance, no longer. He needed to do something, even if it was too late to prevent Jesus’s death.

V. 52: 

52 This man went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. 53 Then he took it down and wrapped it in a linen shroud and laid him in a tomb cut in stone, where no one had ever yet been laid. 54 It was the day of Preparation, and the Sabbath was beginning. 

Joseph was apparently a wealthy man, for he had a tomb ready and waiting (presumably for himself or for a member of his family), in Jerusalem. But even though Jesus had said that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God (Luke 18.25), this wealthy man had threaded the needle—he was looking for the kingdom of God.

So he asks Pilate to let him bury Jesus in his own tomb, and Pilate consents.

He takes Jesus’s body down from the cross, wraps it up according to the custom, and places it in the tomb. This tomb would have been cut out of the side of a hill—basically a small cave—and the entrance to the tomb was sealed up with a large stone which would be rolled up in front of the entrance. 

Now alongside this event, we read (v. 55):

55 The women who had come with him from Galilee followed and saw the tomb and how his body was laid. 56 Then they returned and prepared spices and ointments. 

This is the second time in a few verses that Luke mentions these women who had come with Jesus from Galilee. The last time was in v. 49, when Luke said they had been observing Christ’s crucifixion from a distance.

They come to the tomb, hoping to see what the state of things was, because they plan on preparing Christ’s body for burial. 

Once they see what’s going on, they go back home, prepare the spices and ointments traditionally used to prepare the body. But they can’t actually bring these things to Jesus’s body because by the time they’re finished, it’s the Sabbath—the Jewish day of rest, during which they are allowed to do no work.

So Luke tells us (v. 57): 

On the Sabbath they rested according to the commandment. 

Now the question is, why does Luke tell us all this stuff? Why include all of these details about the state of Jesus’s body, the place he’s being buried, the women who come and see him and then go out to make the necessary preparations?

Two reasons. First of all, he’s setting the scene. Every detail he gives in these last verses of chapter 23 will be important in what follows.

And secondly, he wants it to be crystal clear that Jesus was really dead. He wasn’t “mostly dead”, like Paul in Acts 14 (or like Westley in The Princess Bride). 

Jesus was completely dead. There was no more life left in his body.

And how do we know? Because there would have been ample opportunity to see that he was still alive, if that was the case. The guards would have seen it while they took Jesus down from the cross. Joseph would have seen it as he wrapped him in the linens. The women would have seen it when they came to see the body.

Hours after being taken down from the cross, Jesus was still very much dead.

And it is with that knowledge that Joseph and these women—and everyone on the hill that day, and all of Jesus’s disciples—spent their Sabbath day. What a somber Sabbath that must have been. Normally the Sabbath is a day of rest; a day of rejoicing; a day of remembering the grace of God toward his people.

But on this Sabbath, they all had to sit with the knowledge that the Savior, seemingly, wasn’t able to save himself.

If only they knew what they would find the next morning.

The Empty Tomb (24.1-9)

24.1 But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they went to the tomb, taking the spices they had prepared. 2 And they found the stone rolled away from the tomb, 3 but when they went in they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. 

So here are the women again, back to prepare Jesus’s body properly, and they find the tomb empty. Their first thought was probably grave robbers; or perhaps some overzealous disciples who had come to steal away the body and start a revolution. 

Their bewilderment wouldn’t have lasted long, though, because (v. 4):

4 While they were perplexed about this, behold, two men stood by them in dazzling apparel. 

Now just to be clear, when Luke says the two men are wearing “dazzling apparel,” he’s not saying they’re dressed like Elton John. This is the same language Luke used to describe the way Jesus’s own clothing shone during his transfiguration. These two men weren’t human men; they were angels (as Matthew tells us more explicitly, Matthew 28.2-4).

And it’s not just the similar language that tells us they’re angels; we know it from the women’s reaction. They are (v. 5) frightened and bowed their faces to the ground. This is the way people in the Bible always react to seeing an angel (cf. Luke 1.12, 29). 

V. 5: 

5 And as they were frightened and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, “Why do you seek the living among the dead? 6 He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, 7 that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified and on the third day rise.” 8 And they remembered his words, 9 and returning from the tomb they told all these things to the eleven and to all the rest. 

The angels’ subtle rebuke—Why do you seek the living among the dead?—was the best news these women could have hoped for. 

I love it when, in the gospels, we see Jesus (or in this case the angels) seeming to be surprised that people didn’t believe what he said the first time. Didn’t he tell you this would happen? He would be delivered up and crucified, and on the third day he would rise. That’s what he said, and that’s what has happened! What are you doing here?

Now obviously we understand their lack of understanding; they did what all of us probably would have done. Jesus often spoke in symbols, so what he had said would have been easy to forget; or it would have been easy to imagine he was speaking metaphorically when in fact he was just telling the simple truth.

But now they got it. What Jesus had said would happen, happened.

So they run off and they report what they have seen to the “eleven” (the other disciples left after Judas’s betrayal) and everyone else who had followed him.

Witness and Skepticism (v. 10-12)

10 Now it was Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary the mother of James and the other women with them who told these things to the apostles, 11 but these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them. 

The reaction of the disciples (now called “apostles”—Luke’s making a bridge between this story and the story of the book of Acts) shows us two things—one is secondary, and one is primary.

The first thing we see is the typical reaction of men to the testimony of women, at this point in history. 

Luke and the other gospel writers all recount this story, each giving details the others leave out—their four accounts don’t contradict each other, but complete each other. 

But one thing they all have in common is the fact that women were the first witnesses to Jesus’s resurrection. It was a courageous fact to include in their accounts, because at the time, the testimony of a woman was not always given credence (especially in a court of law). 

But it’s just this kind of detail that reminds us of the truthfulness of the accounts. If Matthew, Mark, Luke and John had wanted to convince their contemporaries of the truth of their gospels, they would not have included that the first witnesses to the resurrection were women.

The fact that God ordained that the first witnesses be women, in that context, at that time, speaks volumes to how women would be necessary and included in the life of the church.

The second thing we see is that the apostles don’t believe them, because they think the women are telling “an idle tale.”

Now I don’t think they disbelieve them because they were women; the apostles knew these women, had been with them since leaving Galilee. They would have known their trustworthiness. 

More than likely, they didn’t believe simply because the story was so incredible.

But surely if anyone would believe a story like this, it would be these people. They had seen Jesus perform the most extraordinary miracles, had seen him raise people from the dead. How difficult could it have been to believe that Jesus himself could be raised?

As it turns out, quite difficult. 

We know this from experience, because we are the same as the apostles. We all know the expression, “out of sight, out of mind.” How quickly we fall back into “reason” when the object of our worship isn’t right before our eyes! 

We have been overwhelmed by the grace and mercy of God…and then a short time later, we find ourselves beaten down by the thought that we couldn’t possibly be good enough for God to love us.

Or, for a current example, on innumerable occasions we have seen God’s provision and care in our own lives, we’ve seen him work difficult situations out for our good…and yet we’re afraid when the coronavirus hits, wondering if he’ll work this out for our good as well.

We are incredibly quick to forget what we know to be true.

But there is one person present who is perhaps a little more ready to consider the women’s testimony, and that person is Peter.

V. 12:

12 But Peter rose and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; and he went home marveling at what had happened.

Probably without realizing it, Peter has been waiting for this.

Remember, he is the apostle who would have been most beaten down by Jesus’s death. He not only left Christ like all the others; he denied him. He was just outside the house where Jesus was being interrogated, and in his fear, he lied and said he didn’t know him. And as he denied him a third time, Luke told us in 22.61, Jesus turned and looked at Peter. 

That look had surely haunted Peter ever since.

So the news that Jesus may be risen would have been too good to be dismissed out of hand.

Have you ever lost someone whom you loved, and then seen them later? My mother-in-law died of cancer nearly eight years ago. A lot of people have horror stories about their in-laws. I don’t; we had our disagreements, but I loved my mother-in-law, and I miss her.

She died when Jack was a baby, so I haven’t seen her for many years, outside of photos. But every once in a while, as I’m walking down the street, I look up and see Sylvie walking toward me. And for about a half a second, before my brain can catch up and remind me that that’s impossible, I’m convinced that it’s her, and I feel really, really happy to see her again.

Moments like these are times when our hearts want something that our brains know can’t be true.

I believe this was a moment like that for Peter. 

The moment these women came in, I guarantee you his heart took a leap. Perhaps his brain reasserted itself after a moment (as it did for these other disciples who didn’t believe the women), but then he would have remembered the things Jesus had said, and the extraordinary miracles Jesus had performed, and the thought creeped in: COULD it be true? 

This was Jesus. Of course it could.

So he had to see for himself.

He ran to the tomb, and found it empty, found the linen cloths Jesus had been wrapped in lying there by themselves.

And Luke tells us he went away, “marveling” at what had happened. (Literally, “wondering.” He’s not entirely convinced yet, but he’s perplexed as to what this turn of events could mean.)

Believing the Resurrection

Now why would we stop here? We’ll see Jesus himself in just a couple verses, and after so much time watching him suffer, we want to see him again. Why not go there right away?

Because Luke highlights something here that we don’t see quite so clearly in the other gospels. He highlights the initial skepticism of the apostles when they hear the report of the empty tomb.

The apostles, although they had heard Jesus say the same things the women did, and although the women told them what the angels had said, didn’t believe it. Not yet.

Why is that important? 

A lot of people, in the early days of the church, said that the resurrection of Christ was a story that the apostles had invented to give weight to their outlandish claims. And of course no one could prove they were lying; Jesus’s body was gone, so they couldn’t point anyone to it. 

So if the writers of the four gospels had wanted to convince people more quickly that they were telling the truth, they wouldn’t have had the first witnesses of the resurrection be a group of women (given the culture at the time), and they wouldn’t have depicted the apostles themselves as being just as skeptical as anyone.

As Alexander Maclaren said, “The evidential value of the disciples’ slowness to believe cannot be overrated.”

This happened. Jesus really died, and he was really raised.

The whole of the Christian faith is based on this reality. 

If Jesus is not raised, then our faith is a lie. If Jesus is not raised, then he was either just a crazy man claiming to be God, or an imperfect sacrifice for us.

But the resurrection proves that Christ wasn’t a crazy man, and that he was a perfect sacrifice for us. The resurrection proves that his sacrifice was accepted by God and sufficient to reconcile us to him.

Through our rebellion against God, we were all separated from God, and deserving of his wrath. But in his death, Christ took our sins on himself and was punished in our place, as if he had sinned our sin. And in his resurrection, Christ took his perfect life and perfect sacrifice and applied it to us, as if we had lived his life. 

If Christ is not raised, we have no sacrifice; we have no mediator between God and man; we have no perfect High Priest; we have no one interceding for us before the Father. 

Christ was raised from the dead—this happened.

But here’s the thing. Luke knows that Theophilus (the man for whom he wrote his gospel), as well as anyone else who might read it in the future, would have no more visible proof of the resurrection than the apostles did at this moment. Jesus wasn’t there with them at this time; they hadn’t seen him raised. All they had was the testimony of this group of women.

So by showing us their disbelief, he puts us right there with them—the evidence we have is the testimony of someone else who was there, and he expects us to be skeptical at first.

So if I could summarize the message of this text, it’d be this: Jesus is alive. It’s the glorious truth on which our faith is based, and God calls us all to believe this truth, to trust this truth, to put our faith in this truth.

But he also calls us to recognize that we need his help to do it.

The disciples had no evidence besides the incredible testimony of these women, and they didn’t believe it. And they wouldn’t believe it until (as we’ll see over the next couple weeks) their eyes are opened to see it.

So be kind to skepticism, but don’t let it win.

If you’re a Christian, and you’ve shared the gospel with someone, and that person still hasn’t responded with faith in Christ, be patient with them. The apostles themselves reacted this same way. Unless God himself does the work of regeneration, skepticism will always be the fallback reaction. So be patient. Keep at it. Trust God to do his work.

And if you’re a skeptic—whether you’re a Christian or not—if you find yourself having a hard time believing these things, cut yourself some slack. That’s a perfectly normal and reasonable reaction. The apostles themselves reacted this same way. You can’t force yourself to believe something you don’t believe, to feel something you don’t feel. That work of illumination isn’t yours; it’s God’s. He is the one who has to do the work in you to make this happen.

But at the same time, he calls us to not sit still and simply wait for it to happen. Peter, although he wasn’t yet completely convinced, didn’t just sit there saying the women were crazy. He leapt up, and he ran to the empty tomb to see for himself.

So be kind to your skepticism, but don’t sit in it. If your heart is telling you something your mind can’t accept, consider the possibility that your heart is probably a few steps ahead of your mind. 

So keep going. Run to the empty tomb and examine it for yourselves. Pray that the Holy Spirit would do the work in your heart to convince you that this really is true.

Trust the testimony of the eyewitnesses to Christ’s resurrection. There is no better news than the news that Jesus really is alive today, that he really is reigning, still to this day.

And it’s true.

Jesus is alive. He is risen, he is reigning, and he is King.

Trust him today.