Easter • He Must Rise From The Dead

Amen.

Happy Easter.

It's so good to have you guys here with us this morning.

For those of you who may be your first time here at Sacred Mission, about a year and a half ago, we set out on a two-year journey through the Gospel of John.

And so we've just been working verse by verse through that book of the Bible.

That's one of our kind of core convictions that we should be preaching God's word expositionally, right?

Verse by verse, so that we do what Paul said, that we would teach the whole council of God to equip the saints for the work of ministry.

And so you're joining us this morning as we are in John 19.

And we had just finished up Jesus coming into the city of Jerusalem for the Passover.

And what we talked about was that the first uh 11 chapters of the Gospel of John focus on the three years of public ministry that Jesus had in his life.

And the last 10 chapters focus on his last week.

That's it.

There's a couple of uh bits about uh his post-resurrection appearances and so forth, but but predominantly we have ten chapters dedicated to the last week of Jesus.

Now, one of the things John does is he tries to help his readers understand that Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah, the one of whom God had promised would come to save and redeem his people.

And now, how does John go about that, right?

Does he go about that through persuasive arguments?

Does he go about that by trying his best to convince you that what he personally believes is true and that you should embrace this belief also?

No.

John does something critically important to our faith.

He goes to the Old Testament and he shows his readers how Jesus is the fulfillment of all the promises and prophecies of God that he had made to his people about the one who would come.

So what does John ultimately do?

He points to a greater authority, he points to a more reliable source than his own personal testimony.

He points to the fact that Jesus has fulfilled the scripture.

And in this, we can know he is the Messiah, the Son of God.

And so this morning in the text, we begin in the final scene of the crucifixion of Jesus in John 19, 31.

If you have your Bibles, open them up.

We're going to be working through the text together.

But here's what has already happened: Jesus has already undergone a hasty and illegitimate trial in the middle of the night after the betrayal of one of his own disciples, Judas.

He was taken before Pilate and exchanged for a zealot murderer named Barabbas.

Flogged with the cat of nine tails, a crown of thorns placed upon his head, beaten, mocked, and put to a public shame.

He was then paraded outside of the city gates of Jerusalem to the top of a craggy hill where he was nailed to crude timber and crucified.

Put to an open shame.

Just before we come to the text this morning, Jesus uttered his last words, it is finished.

And he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

Then the gospel account of John reads this, verse 31.

Since it was the day of preparation, and so that the bodies would not remain on the cross on the Sabbath, for that Sabbath was a high day, the Jews asked Pilate that their legs might be broken and that they might be taken away.

So the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first and of the other who had been crucified with him.

Remember, he was crucified between two thieves, Jesus in the middle.

But when they came to him, Jesus, and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs, but one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once there came out blood and water.

Now, this day of preparation that John is talking about is for the Sabbath that would be observed the following day.

So if Jesus was crucified on a Friday, Saturday is going to be the Sabbath for the people of Israel, and they're preparing to observe that Sabbath day.

The timing is very important because Rome's normal practice was to allow for the bodies of those whom they had crucified to remain on the cross, right?

Here's what they wanted to do: they wanted to make a public statement to everyone within the city if you come against the authority of the empire, this is your end.

This is what you're gonna face.

And so they would allow the bodies of the crucified uh victims to remain on the cross, and they would allow the the birds of prey and wild beasts to come and eat the bodies off of the cross.

And this was all a sign and symbol to all, right?

Do not come against Rome.

But the Jews asked for something, they asked for these bodies to be taken down because the Sabbath was coming.

Now, why did they ask for them to break their legs?

Well, they did that so they would die quicker.

How do you die from crucifixion?

Ultimately, you die from asphyxiation.

You're unable to breathe as you're hanging there on this cross, and your only ability to sustain your life is to pull yourself up, and usually your feet would have some type of prop of which it could push up on and gasp for some type of air just to drop back down in your weakness and continue to be unable to breathe.

So they said, Hey, in mercy, can you just break their legs so that they die faster?

So that we can pull them off, because the Sabbath is coming.

You see, since this was the day of preparation for the Sabbath that would be observed the following day, according to the law of God for his people, Jesus and these other thieves, these two thieves of which he was crucified between, could not remain on the tree.

Deuteronomy 21, 23 says this his body shall not remain all night on the tree, but you shall bury him the same day, for a hanged man is cursed by God.

You shall not defile your land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance.

So the Jews had requested that the soldiers proceed with breaking the legs of those crucified, so that after their death was pronounced they could be taken down.

They broke the legs of the two thieves who were crucified next to Jesus.

But when they came to Jesus, they had discovered that he was already dead.

And so there was no need to break his legs.

Instead, one of the soldiers who was there took his spear and plunged it into the side of Jesus, piercing his heart, and blood and water poured down the Savior's body.

The Apostle John then says that he has included these details, right?

So John is here trying to tell us a story for this end goal that we would believe Jesus really is the Messiah.

And he's going to continually point to not himself, but how Jesus has fulfilled the Old Testament promises and prophecies of God.

And that way we can have sure confidence of who Jesus is, and we can put our trust and our hope and our faith in him.

And so John's putting these details that some of the other gospel writers don't even include because he wants us to be sure of who Jesus truly is.

He has a purpose.

We read about this in verses 35 through 37.

He who saw it, speaking of himself, has borne witness.

His testimony is true, and he knows that he is telling the truth, that you also may believe, right?

That's his end goal, that you might believe.

For these things took place that the scripture might be fulfilled.

Not one of his bones will be broken.

And again, other scripture says they will look on him whom they have pierced.

John says that he's willing to put his entire reputation on the line to affirm the validity of what he is saying happened on that day, because he desperately wants us, his readers, to believe.

That's the end goal of all of this, that we might have saving faith.

And not just believe what he's saying to be true, but to believe that Jesus is truly the Messiah and redeemer of his people from their sin.

You see, John really isn't asking us to believe his words, but to believe that Jesus had fulfilled the very words of Scripture.

That's why he points his readers to two distinct ways Jesus fulfilled the scriptures, even in the way that he was crucified and died.

He's going down to this very explicit detail so that we can be thoroughly convinced that Jesus truly was the Son of God.

He truly was the promised one who would come.

The first scriptural reference fulfilling comes from Exodus 12.46, and we also see it in Numbers 9:12.

Numbers 9:12

And it's in relation to the Exodus story of Israel and the Passover lamb who was slain to save their firstborn sons.

It says this in Exodus 12.46 it shall be eaten in one house, speaking of the lamb.

You shall not take any of the flesh outside the house, and you shall not break any of its bones.

Now, John, at the time of writing this gospel, had come to know that Jesus was the true and better Passover lamb, that the Passover lambs who were slain in the exodus of Israel out of Egypt were just a type and a shadow, pointing to one who would come, who would be the true Passover lamb, whose blood would cover the house of his people, and that we would be saved from the destroyer.

We would be saved from the destruction of our sin.

And this lamb, not one of his bones would be broken.

You see, the lambs prepared that day in Egypt were just signs pointing God's people to the one who would come and save them from their own corruption.

And like those lambs, Jesus, the Lamb of God, would have none of his bones broken, even in death.

Then John references Zechariah 12, 10.

Says this, and I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and pleas for mercy, so that when they look on me, on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him as one mourns for an only child and weep bitterly over him as one weeps over a firstborn.

John is showing us that in the guard piercing Jesus' side, he was unknowingly working in God's sovereign plan of redemption to declare Jesus as the true redeemer of God's people.

Think about this for a moment.

That guard, that day, drawing his spear and plunging it into the side of Jesus, was but a part in the unfolding of the revelation of Jesus Christ to be the Son of God who comes to conquer sin and death once and for all, who saves his people from their sin.

This is imperative to the essence of our faith.

Our relationship to and our understanding of Jesus.

That he is the fulfillment of all scripture, that he is the realization of prophecy, that he is the promise foretold even in the Garden of Eden.

You see, Jesus isn't someone whom we are able to formulate our own narrative and ideation of his person, nor is he simply the figurative construct of those most influenced by his teaching.

Jesus is the word made flesh.

He's the incarnation of every promise and prophecy of God for his people.

In verses 38 through 42 of chapter 19, we read about the burial of Jesus, that a disciple named Joseph of Arimathea went to Pilate before the Jews were able to, and to ask for Jesus' body, to administer his burial.

You see, Joseph was fearful of what the Jews might do with Jesus' body if they were able to have control over it.

Because he had previously publicly made claims to his own resurrection.

It struck fear in the hearts of the religious leaders of the day.

And so Joseph of Arimathea, this friend of Jesus, goes to Pontius Pilate and asks for his body.

A member of the Pharisees and the Sanhedrin, who had come to believe that Jesus was the Messiah named Nicodemus, came to assist in the burial, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes to avert the odor of decomposition.

They place Jesus' body in a borrowed tomb in a nearby garden to rest, and then we come to Sunday morning.

The followers of Jesus have observed their Sabbath the day prior.

And in the morning of that Sunday, Mary Magdalene comes to the tomb.

And she's ready to minister to this body.

She's ready to continue the burial process to try and preserve this body of the one whom she so deeply loved just a little bit longer.

But as she approaches the tomb in the garden that day, she sees that the stone which sealed its entrance had been rolled away.

Before Mary even gets close enough to peer into the tomb, before she's even within distance to try and observe what's actually taken place, her heart is gripped with this fear and anxiousness, and she takes off running to tell the other disciples what she had seen.

She gets to Peter and John and says, They have they, they, who?

The Jews.

They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.

So John and Peter, they both take off running toward the tomb, and John arrives first, and he gazes in and he sees the linen cloths that wrapped Jesus' body lying there in the grave.

As Peter arrives just moments later, he actually goes into the tomb and he witnesses those same grave clothes lying on the floor and the facecloth of Jesus folded neatly and placed separate from the other wrappings.

It's here in the account that John actually adds his own commentary that I think is critical for us to walk through this morning.

He says in verses 8 through 9, then the other disciple who had reached the tomb first, he's talking about himself there, also went in, and he saw and believed.

Think about this for a moment.

What's he saying?

He saw the grave clothes, he saw the face cloth, and what was his response?

He believed.

Verse 9, for as yet they, Mary and Peter, did not understand what?

The scripture.

They didn't understand the scriptures that he must rise from the dead, that no one else had his body, that no one came in in corruption and deceit in the darkness of night and stole the Savior and took him to another place.

They didn't get what the Old Testament promises and prophecies of God about his anointed Savior who would come said.

John got it though.

John believed in that moment.

You see, in these short two sentences, John establishes an essential codependency between belief, scripture, and the person and work of Jesus.

In a sense, John even works to distinguish himself from Peter and Mary in this part of the story.

A distinction between belief and unbelief that hinges on what?

One thing.

Was Jesus the fulfiller of Scripture?

Or did you look into an empty tomb and you didn't see the Jesus you had constructed in your own mind?

One led to belief, one led to fear.

You see, John saw and believed.

He believed in the person and work of Jesus as the Messiah, believed that Jesus truly was the Lamb of God who had come to take away the sins of the world.

Peter and Mary, they remained in unbelief in a state of panic, fear, and despair because they did not understand the scripture that he must rise from the dead.

What if they did understand?

What if they had come to the tomb that morning, understanding the promises and prophecies of God of the Old Testament of who the Messiah would be?

How they were always pointing to the person and work of Jesus.

How they were a guide and an instructor to bring us to the feet of our Savior.

Their hearts would have had a different response at the sight of that empty tomb that morning.

You see, in ways, the empty tomb was antithetical to the person and work of Jesus that Peter and Mary had self-idealized.

There was no way in their mind, according to who they thought Jesus was supposed to be, that that tomb should have ever been empty.

It was devastating.

They began to scramble for answers, to try and discover pieces of the puzzle that would cause this all to make sense.

But all they had to do was go back to the scriptures.

If they had only submitted themselves to the promises and prophecies that God had already given to them, to who Jesus was supposed to be, how he would fulfill the work of God to save his people, that empty tomb would not have been devastating, causing their hearts to fall, crashing to the floor that morning.

It would have been a joyful sight, causing their hearts to rise in adoration and worship.

He did it.

He did it.

What God had promised the Messiah King would do, Jesus did.

You see, they would have seen and believed.

What John is showing us is that the essence of true faith is seeing and savoring the person and work of Jesus as the ultimate fulfillment of God's promises and prophecy in Scripture.

It is knowing Jesus in light of the revelation of Scripture that enables the heart to rejoice at the sight of an empty grave.

And it is this that causes the graves which we lie in to become empty as we step out of them in resurrection life through our Savior.

To know Jesus and His person and work, to truly have saving faith in him is to know and see Him in light of Scripture.

Scripture fulfilled, Scripture ultimately satisfied in His finished work.

Too many of us this morning, as we even come into Easter, we are like Peter and Mary, going through life, gazing at the disappointments of our own determined expectations of who Jesus is and how he should function with inside of the world in which he created.

Our own hearts are filled with worry and anxiousness and fear because the Jesus that we claim to know fails to meet our standard of who we say he is or should be.

We are like Peter and Mary that when we look into the empty tomb, our hearts are gripped with fear and anxiousness rather than joy at knowing that he fulfilled all that he claimed he would.

You see, we must cease from our strivings to know him removed from who the scriptures reveal him to be.

This is why the Old Testament is so critically important.

This is why our understanding of the whole of the Bible is essential to our faith.

We cannot know Jesus removed from the scriptures of which he fulfilled in himself.

If we seek to do that, we then fabricate a Jesus of our own image, an idle and false God, of which continually will fail to meet the standards and expectations we set forth for him.

To know him through the illumination of God's promises and prophecies to his people.

Church, this Easter morning, if we are ever going to have joyful hearts at the side of an empty tomb, if we are ever going to have true resurrection life in ourselves, it will only be through knowing and believing the person and work of Jesus in the fulfillment of all scripture.

To gaze into an empty tomb and not see it as devastating disappointment, but to see it as death no more.

To see all of sin, death in the grave forever being empty, and eternal life risen before you is to see Jesus, the one who fulfilled all of Scripture.

Let me leave you with this this Easter morning, with the Apostle Paul's admonishments to the church in Corinth.

Now, I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preach to you, which you received and which you stand and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preach to you, unless you believed in vain.

For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins.

What?

In accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day.

What?

Fulfilling all of the promises and prophecies of God about him in accordance with the scriptures.

Church, we are saved.

We are being saved and we will be saved.

Because there's to this day an empty tomb where once the person of Jesus laid, but no longer does, because he is the ultimate fulfiller of holy scripture.