Seen, Said, and Spread

This is a series of devotions and meditations on scripture that reject fear and champion faith. The passage discusses the story of Jesus' resurrection and emphasizes the significance of the empty tomb. The angel rolled away the stone and sat on it, while the guards were terrified. The women asked questions and believed in Jesus. Jesus didn't need help to rise from the grave. The stone was rolled away to let people see the evidence of his resurrection. The empty tomb was the first evidence that Jesus was gone and it needed to be seen, said, and spread. The New Testament was written by eyewitnesses within the lifetimes of those who were there. The ultimate message is that Jesus died for sin and was raised to life, and it's up to each person to believe and confess this truth. Welcome to Fear No Fear. Grace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. May the Holy Spirit embrace you today. This is a series of devotions and meditations on scripture. We reject fear in any and all forms. Fear is a spiritual force, the currency of darkness and ignorance. It's what we inherited when Adam gave up his faith and Satan uses it to keep people down. His only weapon is words. If he can get you believing or looking at words of fear, he's got you. Instead, we champion faith as an allegiance to God, as a belief and trust and loyalty to the Lord God Almighty. We accept the evidence of His word as unvarnished truth, as is, just as it's written. We get close to His perfect love through the word, and perfect love casts out fear. 1 John 4.18 All scripture is taken from the World English Bible, which is in the public domain. Visit eBible.org Matthew 28.2-6 Behold, there was a great earthquake, for an angel of the Lord descended from the sky, and came and rolled away the stone from the door, and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and His clothes white as snow. For fear of Him, the guards shook and became like dead men. The angel answered the women, Don't be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus, who has been crucified. He is not here, for He has risen, just like He said. Come, see the place where the Lord was lying. There are two things I really like about this passage, one I've always liked, and one I noticed recently, which happens a lot with scripture, because it is living Word, and there will always be new things to notice. First, an angel descended from the sky, rolled the stone away, and sat. Just sat. The angel wasn't being threatening, wasn't drawing himself up to his full stature or anything, or glaring out of his eyes. He sat. Calm, waiting with total patience. The guards were totally, utterly terrified of this sitting person, and lay like the dead. Ironic, eh? They were meant to guard the dead, and here they were doing corpse impressions. Now what's the second thing? The women asked questions. We know that because the angel answered the women. They may have just got out some exclamations, perhaps a cry to the Lord to save them. Remember, visitations by angels under the law were not always a good thing. Maybe not even fully formed sentences, but they got words out. They weren't lying on the ground, though they may have been kneeling, a frequent and understandable reaction to an angelic visitation. The guards were not followers of God, and not believers of Jesus. The women were. When the angel showed up, who by his very nature reflected the light of the Most High God, their flesh failed them. The women were believers. The women loved and worshipped God. The women were able to withstand. Loving and following God gives us the faith to withstand when his messengers arrive. Now in the New Covenant, our spirits are the pure spirit of Jesus, so we are capable of standing during visitations. Although sometimes they can still lay us low because of the sheer reflected power of God on display. Our bodies are, in fact, still flesh, even though our spirits are in Jesus the Christ. Now, the angel rolled the stone away and sat on it. Nothing else happened. The presence of the angel is what affected the others. Nothing else. Now let's pop over to the Gospel of John, chapter 11, and starting in verse 41. So they took away the stone from the place where the dead man was lying. Jesus lifted up his eyes and said, Father, I thank you that you listened to me. I know that you always listen to me, but because of the multitude standing around, I said this, that they may believe that you sent me. When he had said this, he cried in a loud voice, Lazarus, come out. And he who was dead came out, bound hand and foot with wrappings, and his face was wrapped around with a cloth. And Jesus said to them, free him and let him go. That's verses 41 to 45. Now Jesus was wrapped just like Lazarus. Mark 15, 46. The women were going to finish the process, adding the herbs and aromatic spices to the body of Jesus. Mark 16, 1. The body had already been wrapped. Lazarus could barely move. He couldn't free himself from the wrappings, just managed to get to the door of the tomb and was understandably in need of assistance. Jesus had supernatural angelic assistance available to him, and it wasn't used. This means one thing. Jesus wasn't in the tomb when the angel opened it. He wasn't wrapped, and he needed no help. Remember what the angel said and did? He opened the tomb and sat on the stone. When the women spoke, he answered and said, he is not here, for he has risen, just like he said. So Jesus was already out. He got out because when God said, come forth, Jesus rose right out of the grave into life, resurrected into the full power and majesty of the risen Lord, only begotten Son of the Father, the great I am, and he needed no help. Jesus defeated Satan and all his works, corrected the arrogance of Adam, claimed the shunned authority the Father had granted humanity, and stood bearing the name that the Lord Almighty had placed above every name there is or ever will be. This victorious Savior needed no help with wrappings or with stones. I mean, in a few more verses, Jesus is walking through walls, appearing and disappearing, translating instantly from one locale to another, eating snacks and generally proving himself to still be as fully man as he ever was, but also now fully God in the restored and complete divine power and identity that he had cast off to become man at his birth. The last Adam could do things no man ever could because he had his new body, his resurrected body. He was out of that grave, out of those clothes, and out of that tomb as soon as his father finished speaking. So why roll the stone away at all? I believe, and I have heard others say it, that the stone was rolled away to let us in, not let him out. We needed a witness to the clothing lying there. These women were approaching their Thomas moment. They were not asked to believe just on words, but to see proof the body was supernaturally gone, that this was the proof that would allow them to choose. So here we go. Would they believe what they saw or not? And the women chose to believe. Thomas, when it was his turn, chose not to believe. But then he didn't see the tomb as far as we know. But what he did have to hold on to were the words of Jesus from Jesus himself, which is what we also have. We cannot see those wrappings. We have not seen the tomb. We have the words of Jesus from Jesus himself. We have the testimony of those women, just as Thomas did. Now, in the first century, women were considered unreliable witnesses. So were they allowed to see the tomb and see the wrappings so that when the men came along to prove what they said, they could see that the women were saying exactly what happened. So then when they also spoke, Mary Magdalene, for instance, seeing Jesus and interacting with him, they could take that on faith, knowing that none of these women had been false in any way, regardless of how they might culturally been prone to think of them. So, again, we have the testimony of those women, just as Thomas did. Now, once Thomas saw Jesus, he regained his faith. He was with them for the rest of their journey, right up to the baptism of the Holy Spirit and Acts. But he failed his first test. The empty tomb was the first evidence that Jesus was gone. It was evidence that needed to be believed without physical explanation. I mean, the grave's empty. The clothes are there. How would be the first thing people thought? And there were two angels inside on either side of that stone bench as in the same way they sit in effigy on either side of the Ark of the Covenant. So in standing there, they were forming a picture of the mercy seat, Luke 24, 4. So the women needed to see him gone. They saw that picture of the mercy seat. The disciples needed to see him gone. The soldiers needed to see the tomb empty so they could report it to their masters, the chief priests, who had remembered Jesus said he would rise again. This testimony needed to be seen, said, and spread. This was the first evidence. They'd have more evidence later, but this was the first. And the New Testament was written within the lifetimes of the people who were in it. The very last books of the Bible that were written were only written 60 years after Jesus was resurrected. So the same generation. The disciples were young men. They would only have been around 80 at this point, those who hadn't been killed anyway. There are several statements by its authors in the books about being eyewitnesses and going and talking to witnesses that were still at that time living. Luke 1.1, 1 John 1.1 and 3, and 2 Peter 1.16. They wrote the Gospels knowing that if the facts weren't correct, there were those still alive who would have pointed out the errors, some of them gleefully. Now think about those Pharisees. Matthew 27, 62 to 64. They remembered what Jesus said. Heathens, believers, and beloved disciples all saw that tomb empty. They heard the words of the angels that Jesus was not there. Remember, the soldiers were playing dead. They weren't dead. Once again, humanity was being let behind the curtain to see the truth. Jesus died for sin and was raised again to life. Confess that and believe it and you will be saved. Are you going to believe the words? Are you going to believe the picture of that empty tomb? That's the question. This is the ultimate good news, the absolute and objective truth. Just like with Thomas, what you do with it is up to you. Reject it and choose to be outside the light. That's your right. No one, not even God, is going to force you. But if you believe and confess it, you'll be with the God who is love, light, and freedom forever and ever and ever. So what are you going to do with that empty tomb? Are you going to read what they saw or what they said and believe it and spread it? Or are you going to disbelieve it and ignore it? The choice is yours. It's a biggie, but it's yours. Our daily affirmation of God's love is Isaiah 49, 15-16. Do you know how important you are to the Father in Heaven? He has your name written in the palm of His hand. Imagine that. Your name is written in the hands that started everything that ever was, the hands of ultimality, ultimate love, ultimate mercy, ultimate judgment, ultimate joy, ultimate light, ultimate everything. And right there on the palm of that hand, your name. That He might look on it and think of you forever, every day, forever. He loves you so much. Don't let yourself forget it. He loves you. As we close, remember that you have birth. You are precious and valuable. Declare this. Today, God loves that I, now you, fill in the blank. Was it a meal you made? A smile you gave? Did you get out of bed? Read? Put on socks? There's no wrong answers here. There is no end to God's love and no end to the things about you that He loves each and every day. Pick one. And remember, the Lord loves you just because you're you. 1 John 4, 9-10 tells us, By this, God's love was revealed in us, that God has sent His only-born Son into the world, that we might live through Him. And this is love. Not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as the atoning sacrifice for our sins. His perfect love turned away God's wrath because of sin. And it casts out our fear, too. See verses 18 and 19. We love because He first loved us. He just loves us. He can't get enough of us. And that is wonderful. See you next time.