On Monday morning, February 26, of this year, Matt Lauer opened NBC’s Today show with a graphic like this one (Ossuary picture on Power Point) and these words: "Is this the tomb of Jesus? A shocking new claim that an ancient burial place may have housed the bones of Christ and a son. This morning a Today exclusive that could rock Christianity to its core." The interview that followed with James Cameron and Simcha Jacobovici didn’t present a shocking new claim.  Instead it rehashed a 1996 'Easter special' by the BBC.  The claim, as you’ve probably heard, is that the “family tomb” of Jesus has been located outside of Jerusalem, in what’s known as the “Talpiyot Tomb.  According to the story, ossuaries or “bone boxes” containing the bones of Jesus; His son, Judah; His parents, Mary and Joseph; Mary Magdalene, who the story claims was Jesus’ wife; Matthew, possibly the author of the Gospel of Matthew’ and several other unidentified people have been found in the Talpiyot Tomb.

The story is hardly news, since the tomb was discovered in 1980.  It also doesn’t qualify as news, because at least in theory news is supposed to be true.  Neither Mr. Cameron nor Mr. Jacobovici are archaeologists, and credible archaeologists aren’t buying the story.  Why would Jesus’ family tomb be located in Jerusalem, when His family was from Nazareth in Galilee?  How could Jesus’ family have afforded a tomb in the first place, given that only the wealthy could purchase such a luxury, and Jesus told us Himself that He didn’t even have a home?  And what of the allegation made in the story and in “The DaVinci Code” that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene?  Not a shred of evidence indicates that Jesus was ever married. 

The reason people have continued to search for Jesus’ bones, the reason they have continued to concoct stories about His marriage and other “normal,” human activities is they don’t believe that Jesus rose from the dead.  Obviously, if Jesus rose from the dead and ascended into heaven forty days later as the Bible contends, no one will ever find his bones in a tomb or anywhere else.  But the wonder of an empty tomb is a mystery the world of “science” can never solve OR admit as a reality.  Actually, if we’re honest we must admit that “pure science,” science that relies on observation and repeatability cannot prove or disprove whether Jesus, or Queen Elizabeth the Ist, or George Washington ever lived.  That’s because DNA tests weren’t available in those days.  CSI and its spinoffs show us how easy it is to solve crimes when DNA or ballistics, or toxicology are used.  But even in our day, the typical police department doesn’t have such advanced technology available or the resources to use them.  Certainly no one has DNA from Jesus, or Mary Magdalene from which to determine whether the bones found belong to them anyway.

Mr. Cameron and Mr. Jacobovici report that DNA tests from the bones of “Jesus” and “Mary Magdalene,” who is actually named Mariamene, found in the Talpiyot Tomb conclusively reveal that they were not blood relatives.  They, therefore, conclude that Jesus and Mary were husband and wife.  Conveniently, DNA testing has not been done on any of the other people’s bones, because if the bones labeled Joseph were found to not have familial DNA with Mary Magdalene, then he could have been her husband.  The book and Discovery Channel feature made about these “discoveries,” no doubt make great entertainment, but this morning the question I would raise is simple:  Does Jesus’ resurrection from the dead offer at least as reasonable an explanation for what happened to Him after His death as any of the dozens of “solutions” people have devised down through the past two millennia? 

We come back once again to the wonder of an empty tomb.  More people are in churches today than any other Sunday of the year.  Why?  Because human beings believe deep inside that life has meaning and purpose; that life continues beyond this life.  What gives us that sense of destiny – or at least a longing for a sense of destiny?  The Bible teaches that God Himself has placed that within us.  Some contend there is no God.  Some contend that any religion will do so long as one is sincere.  But the faith of Jesus Christ contends that He alone is the way, the truth and the life, and that no one can come to God except through Him.  This morning my goal is simple:  To examine Luke’s account of Jesus’ resurrection and the wonder of an empty tomb, and to use it to call us to a renewed sense of meaning and purpose for living each day.

Let’s stand right now and read Luke’s account of what happened on that first Easter morning so long ago:  ¹But very early on Sunday morning the women came to the tomb, taking the spices they had prepared. ²They found that the stone covering the entrance had been rolled aside. ³So they went in, but they couldn’t find the body of the Lord Jesus. ⁴They were puzzled, trying to think what could have happened to it. Suddenly, two men appeared to them, clothed in dazzling robes. ⁵The women were terrified and bowed low before them. Then the men asked, “Why are you looking in a tomb for someone who is alive? ⁶He isn’t here! He has risen from the dead! Don’t you remember what he told you back in Galilee, ⁷that the Son of Man must be betrayed into the hands of sinful men and be crucified, and that he would rise again the third day?”

⁸Then they remembered that he had said this. ⁹So they rushed back to tell his eleven disciples—and everyone else—what had happened. ¹⁰The women who went to the tomb were Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and several others. They told the apostles what had happened, ¹¹but the story sounded like nonsense, so they didn’t believe it. ¹²However, Peter ran to the tomb to look. Stooping, he peered in and saw the empty linen wrappings; then he went home again, wondering what had happened.                Luke 24:1-12 NLT (Let’s pray……………….Amen.) Please be seated.

            How many of you have ever heard or read that account of Jesus’ resurrection before?  How many of you came here this morning who had never heard that Jesus rose from the dead?  Here in America most of us have at least been exposed to the resurrection account.  Most of us know that on Easter Day the tomb was empty.  It’s hard for most of us to even imagine not knowing that.  I’ll never forget the first time I met someone who had never even heard of Jesus.  It was in Cambodia three years ago.  We were showing the Jesus film, a film developed by Campus Crusade for Christ that shows Jesus life, ministry, death and resurrection.  Each night that we showed it, one of our group would stand before the people in the village where we were showing the film and ask, “Have you heard of Jesus?”  In each of the villages at least some of the people shook their heads, or said, “No.  Who is he?”  What would you say in answer to that question?  What would you say to a person who has never even heard the name of Jesus, when he asked you, “Who is he?”  We say that Jesus is Lord.  We say Jesus is our Savior.  We say that Jesus is the Son of God.  We say that Jesus is the Messiah.  But of all the things we could say about Jesus, what do you think those who had never heard of Him said, when we told them that Jesus rose from the dead?  It’s not a reasonable statement on the surface, is it?  If I told you this morning that my Mother died seventeen years ago, but that she rose from the dead three days later, what would you say?  Wouldn’t you say, “That guy needs help.”  Wouldn’t you say, “Excuse me.  I need to…… do just about anything but continue this conversation.

     You see when it comes to Jesus’ life, death, resurrection and ascension into heaven, SOMETIMES THERE IS NO “REASONABLE” EXPLANATION FOR WHAT HAPPENS!  I don’t mean that it didn’t happen.  I mean that if we use our typical western, scientific categories, we either won’t believe or won’t be able to explain what happened.  Let’s look again at the first two verses of this morning’s Scripture:  ¹But very early on Sunday morning the women came to the tomb, taking the spices they had prepared. ²They found that the stone covering the entrance had been rolled aside. Luke 24:1-2 NLT Jesus had been placed in a rich man’s tomb.  The man’s name was Joseph of Arimithea.  The tomb was a cave carved into a hillside. The entrance of the tomb was sealed with a large stone.  Typically, such stones were a foot or a foot and a half thick, eight to ten feet tall, and weighed as much as four tons.  The women had been to the tomb on Friday afternoon.  They had started the process of embalming Jesus.  But since Friday evening was the beginning of the most sacred holy day in the Jewish calendar—Passover—they could not finish the task.  Thus, they waited until Sunday morning.  As they walked back to the tomb, one of the biggest questions in their minds was: How are we going to move that stone.  The soldiers who had put it there were unlikely to help them move it.  No one else was likely to come around, because Jesus’ disciples were in hiding fearing for their lives.  So, imagine the women’s surprise when they walked up to the tomb and found that the stone had been rolled away.  What would you have thought?  Really, what would you have thought?  Would you have walked into the tomb?  Would you have run in the opposite direction?  We know what happened, or at least if we’re already believers in Jesus we KNOW what happened.  But those women had no clue and there didn’t seem to be any reasonable explanation.  Their doubts or questions wouldn’t have come from a rigid adherence to the scientific method.  It hadn’t been invented!  Their doubts and questions came from the reality of a four ton stone being moved away from the tombs entrance.

     They decided to do something I’m not sure all of us here this morning would have done---they went inside.  They were about to discover a simple, but profound truth: 

IF YOU LOOK IN THE WRONG PLACE, YOU’LL NEVER FIND WHAT YOU SEEK!  The story’s told of a man who was down on his hands and knees obviously searching for something he had lost.  Another man approached and asked, “What are looking for?” The first man replied, “I’m looking for my wedding ring.”  “Oh,” said the second man, “At least you lost here, near the light.”  The first man replied, “No, I lost it over there in the woods, but it’s so dark over there, I decided to look here.”  We can imagine that the man is still looking for his ring.  Luke tells us what happened when the women entered the tomb: ³So they went in, but they couldn’t find the body of the Lord Jesus. ⁴They were puzzled, trying to think what could have happened to it. Suddenly, two men appeared to them, clothed in dazzling robes. ⁵The women were terrified and bowed low before them. Then the men asked, “Why are you looking in a tomb for someone who is alive? ⁶He isn’t here! He has risen from the dead! Don’t you remember what he told you back in Galilee, ⁷that the Son of Man must be betrayed into the hands of sinful men and be crucified, and that he would rise again the third day?” Luke 24:3-7 NLT  The angels asked a reasonable question:  “Why are you looking in a tomb for someone who is alive?”  But the question was only reasonable from the angel’s perspective at that moment.  They KNEW that Jesus was alive.  They knew that He had not only defeated sin, but death as well.  The women didn’t know it.  How could they?  Yes, Jesus had told them that He was going to die and rise again.  Yes, Jesus had done everything He said He would do up to that point.  Yes, Jesus had walked on water. He had performed amazing miracles.  But this was different.  The women had seen Jesus beaten nearly to the point of death.  They had watched Him hang on the cross of Calvary.  They had seen a Roman soldier take a spear and lunge it through Jesus’ lungs and heart.  He was dead.

     Do you realize there are some folks who don’t believe that Jesus was dead when they put Him in Joseph’s tomb?  These folks are the originators of the “swoon theory” of Jesus’ “apparent resurrection.”  In other words, Jesus only appeared to be dead, when they put Him in the tomb on that Friday, we call Good Friday.  No reasonable person can believe that Jesus, who had been up all night long, who had already been sweating blood before His arrest, and who had received a terrible, savage beating at the hands of the Romans, and then been crucified and speared was still alive when they put Him in the tomb. But the swoon theory says that Jesus was not only alive, but that the cool temperatures of the tomb revived Him, and He got up and somehow moved a four ton boulder away from the tomb’s entrance without arousing the awareness of the soldiers posted outside.  I don’t about you, but to me that takes a really active imagination to believe!

     The women believed the angels’ words, which actually makes sense.  If you believe that angels appeared to the women, it makes sense that they told the truth to the women, doesn’t it?  But as the women would soon discover:  SOMETIMES THE TRUTH IS SO WONDROUS, IT SEEMS LIKE NONSENSE!  Luke put it this way:  ⁸Then they remembered that he had said this. ⁹So they rushed back to tell his eleven disciples—and everyone else—what had happened. ¹⁰The women who went to the tomb were Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and several others. They told the apostles what had happened, ¹¹but the story sounded like nonsense, so they didn’t believe it.  Luke 24:8-11 NLT  The women remembered what Jesus had told them.  The evidence of the empty tomb and the angels’ proclamation was enough for them.  They rushed back to tell Jesus’ eleven disciples first—and then EVERYONE else—what had happened.  Luke tells us who the women were:  Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the Mother of James (who is also the mother of Jesus) and several others.  The interesting thing about the resurrection accounts in all four Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, is that each tells us that it was a woman or women who first heard the news and first saw Jesus after His resurrection.  This makes absolutely no sense unless it’s the truth.  Why?  Because in Jesus’ day women were not permitted to give testimony in a court of law.  That means if the disciples wanted to make up a story about Jesus’ resurrection that the first witnesses would have been men, probably themselves.  But they left it the way it was.  Why would they do that?  Reverse psychology?  Psychology hadn’t been invented?  Once again the reasonable explanation is that the Gospels tells us women were the first to here of the resurrection and the first to see Jesus, because they were!

    That being said, the disciples didn’t believe the women.  Once again, we live 2,000 years after the event.  We KNOW that Jesus rose from the dead, so we ask, “How could those disciples have been so hard-hearted?  How could they have dismissed the women’s report as ‘nonsense’?”  Put yourself in their place for a moment.  Jesus died on Friday.  Everyone knows Jesus died on Friday. Now it’s Sunday.  You’ve spent two grief and guilt ridden days wondering what you could have done differently—especially if you were Peter.  You have invested three years of your life into Jesus, believing that He was the Messiah. Now, He’s dead, and your dreams with Him.  Enter the women, shouting, “He’s alive!  He’s alive!  The Savior is alive!”  Would you have said, “Praise the Lord!”? or would you have said, “These women need help.”?

While the women tried to convince the disciples, Peter slipped out.  He went to the tomb himself, and what we find from that experience is:  SOMETIMES EVEN SEEING FOR OURSELVES DOESN’T ELIMINATE THE WONDER!  Luke recorded this way:  ¹²However, Peter ran to the tomb to look. Stooping, he peered in and saw the empty linen wrappings; then he went home again, wondering what had happened.  Luke 24:12 NLT  Now, did Peter believe the message?  He went home “wondering what had happened.” He saw the empty tomb. He saw the empty linen wrappings, but did He see that Jesus was alive?  Did he grasp the truth of the wonder of an empty tomb?  No.  He didn’t. Not at that moment.  It wasn’t until Peter saw Jesus for Himself that he believed.  It was that way with Thomas.  We don’t have that luxury.  We can’t see Jesus with our own two eyes, unless of course, He reveals Himself to us, as He did the Apostle Paul.  But typically, we who live in 2007, must believe Jesus is the Son of God without the benefit of seeing Him.

      I said at the outset that my goal for today was To examine Luke’s account of Jesus’ resurrection and the wonder of an empty tomb, and to use it to call us to a renewed sense of meaning and purpose for living each day.  The single, greatest reason for believing in the resurrection of Jesus Christ and to see the impact of the wonder of the empty tomb is the changed lives of Jesus’ followers.  When Jesus was arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane, the disciples scattered.  Judas had already betrayed Jesus.  Peter denied ever knowing Jesus three times that night.  The rest hid themselves from the authority for fear of reprisals for being associated with Jesus.  But then something incredible happened.  The “cowards” became courageous.  Fifty days after Jesus’ resurrection all the disciples plus more than a 100 others appeared on the streets of Jerusalem filled with the Holy Spirit and spreading the news that Jesus was the Messiah, the Son of God, and that He had risen from the dead just as He promised.  The result?  3,000 men and women believed the message and became followers of Jesus, too.  Who was the preacher that day?  Peter, the man who denied ever knowing Jesus.  The early church records one amazing story after another about the courage of the believers, about the miracles that took place in the name of Jesus, and about how the church grew daily in strength and numbers.  As the church grew, the leaders faced imprisonment and execution without wavering.  It seemed that the more the persecution increased the faster the church grew.

     Could a dead man inspire all that?  We have to acknowledge that down through the centuries sincere people have been willing to die for their beliefs—even false beliefs.  But in the case of the followers of Jesus those who died did so for the cause of peace and wholeness, not to advance an agenda of destruction.  What would happen in our day, right here in Butler County if we grabbed onto the wonder of the empty tomb and lived with the same kind of anointed boldness as the first century church?  What would it look like if we went to work or school tomorrow and trusted the Holy Spirit to guide our thoughts, our decisions, our words and actions?  Would the world be turned “upside down” once again as it was in the first century?

      In some ways the parallels between the first century and the 21^st century are amazing.  The early Christians faced ridicule for their beliefs.  Political and religious groups constantly sought to discredit the message. Standing up for Jesus could mean losing a job, or losing one’s life.  Today people ridicule us for believing that Jesus rose from the dead, for believing that His purpose for our lives is worth living regardless of the cost.  But let me ask a simple question, “What is there in life that offers greater meaning and purpose than Jesus?”  Does science?  Does atheism? Does Islam? Buddhism?  Why is Islam the fastest growing religion in America?  Could it be that Muslims have meaning and purpose and are called to discipline and diligence in living life?  Jesus offers that and so much more.  The key is:  are we willing to live it?  Are we willing to go out today and tomorrow and every day and let the wonder of the empty tomb and the power of the Holy Spirit motivate us to lives that make a difference, to transformation that is obvious to people around us?  The practical application of the empty tomb in the disciples’ lives in the first century was a faith to live for and a faith to die for!  It’s the same today.  Every conversation, every assignment at school, every task at work can be colored and flavored with the reality of Jesus’ resurrection in our lives.  When we believe that it moves us past hopelessness to hope; past desperation to a sense of divine appointment in everything we do.  If we’re experiencing “the good life,” if we have what we want, if our work or school’s going well, and our family is blessed, then we still have one more thing to gain—the ultimate joy that comes from living a life of gratitude to God for all that blessing.  This week’s challenge is simple:  let the wonder of the empty tomb motivate you to live at the next level.  What does that mean?  It means speaking the truth in love to everyone.  It means being honest in every transaction in our lives.  It means stepping back and letting Jesus guide us when we feel lost.  It means praying as a first option rather than a last resort.  It means inviting others to be part of the life we enjoy in Jesus, rather than hoping or assuming that someone else will do it.  It means that we exist to serve others rather than being serve.  It means going out and committing random acts of kindness every, single day!

     Jesus didn’t die on the cross to stay dead.  He died on the cross to defeat our sins and to rise again that we may know for sure that our lives are eternal as well!  Let’s stand and thank Him for giving us life, and for giving all who call on Him a new life that changes everything.  The wonder of an empty tomb makes all the difference……Let’s pray…………….Amen.