By Rev Charles Seet

Preached at / Published Life BPC 10.45am Svc, 2011-01-23

Text: John 20:1-18

Some of you here may remember Charlie Chaplin, a British comedian who made a big name for himself many decades ago in the days of silent movies. He died in December 1977 at the age of 88 and was buried in a cemetery in Switzerland. However, just two months later, his body was missing from the grave. Various rumours began to circulate about the missing body. One Hollywood report suggested that it had been dug up because Charlie Chaplin was a Jew buried in a gentile cemetery.

The truth about the missing body was revealed only 11 weeks later. It had been stolen by a two mechanics who demanded a ransom of 400,000 pounds for its return. The Chaplin family refused to pay the ransom and had kept silent about the matter as the Swiss police conducted investigations to find the grave-robbers and the missing body. The culprits were finally caught and convicted after 11 weeks. The body of Charlie Chaplin was recovered near Lake Geneva and re-buried under 1.8 metres of concrete to prevent it from being stolen again.

This morning we will consider another instance of a body that was missing from its grave. But this time, it was not because the body had been stolen by grave-robbers, but because it was the body of Jesus Christ, who had resurrected from the dead. 

It was about 6:00 am on a Sunday morning in April of the year AD 30. Jesus had died on the cross 39 hours before this, and His dead body had been laid to rest in a garden tomb, all wrapped up in linen and coated with spices. A group of women who had witnessed all this were now making their way to that tomb on that Sunday morning, to complete the embalming of His body with more spices. Along the way they wondered how they would get inside the tomb, knowing that its entrance was covered with a very large stone. But when they reached the tomb, these women received the shock of their lives: The tomb's entrance was already open and the body was missing! 

One of these women was Mary Magdalene, whose life had been gloriously saved and transformed by the Lord Jesus. Since the day that Jesus freed her from the misery of demon possession, she had been His devoted follower, serving Him and His disciples wherever they went. How grieved she must have been to have seen her Master arrested, tried and ruthlessly crucified to death. How earnestly she must have wished to see Him alive again. But now at the empty tomb she found that she could not even see Him dead, as His body was gone. This was far too much for this poor woman. Something must be done!

So she ran back to Jerusalem to look for the other disciples of Jesus. When she found Peter and John she broke the unsettling news to them. And as they came to the empty tomb to see it with their own eyes, Mary Magdalene followed behind them, probably expecting these two disciples to start some kind of investigation to find His missing body and return it back to its proper place. But that did not happen - Peter and John were just as clueless and powerless as she was, to do anything but return home. So in her state of perplexity, grief and disappointment Mary Magdalene remained there at the tomb, crying her heart out and hoping against hope that she could somehow solve the strange mystery of the missing body of Jesus.

Little did she know that her hopes would soon be realized, as the Lord was standing just behind her. In fact she was still emotionally distraught when she saw Him and asked Him for help, mistaking Him for the gardener. It was only when He called her name, 'Mary' that she knew that He was none other than Jesus. If only Mary Magdalene had known much earlier on that Jesus had truly risen from the dead, she could have spared herself from all the unnecessary anguish, running and weeping she had just gone through. If only she had remembered what Jesus taught His disciples several times before - that He would rise from the dead - she would not have been so shocked that morning to find the tomb empty.

What made the disciples respond so strangely despite knowing that Jesus would rise from the dead?

Let us look at some instances where Jesus told His disciples that He would rise from the dead. Matthew 16:21 'From that time forth began Jesus to shew unto his disciples, how that he must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day.' 

This was the first time that Jesus told them specifically about His resurrection, and it was about 9 months before the event. Jesus repeated it to them a few days later: Matthew 17:22-23 'And while they abode in Galilee, Jesus said unto them, The Son of man shall be betrayed into the hands of men: And they shall kill him, and the third day he shall be raised again. And they were exceeding sorry.' 

And just about a month before the event He mentioned it to the disciples again. Matthew 20:18-19 'Behold, we go up to Jerusalem; and the Son of man shall be betrayed unto the chief priests and unto the scribes, and they shall condemn him to death, And shall deliver him to the Gentiles to mock, and to scourge, and to crucify him: and the third day he shall rise again.' (see also John 2:19-22; 10:17,18)

This prediction concerning His resurrection was known even by His enemies! It was the very reason why they came to Pontius Pilate on the day after His burial to ask Pilate to secure the tomb against any intruders. You will see this in Matthew 27:63-64 'Saying, Sir, we remember that that deceiver said, while he was yet alive, After three days I will rise again. Command therefore that the sepulchre be made sure until the third day, lest his disciples come by night, and steal him away, and say unto the people, He is risen from the dead: so the last error shall be worse than the first.'

In view of such clear statements as these, it seems very strange that Mary Magdalene, Simon Peter and John were so shocked and surprised when they came to the tomb that morning. Why did they not rejoice to find it empty? Why did Mary weep so despairingly at the tomb when she could not find His body? And when she told Peter and John about the missing body, why did they rush to the tomb instead of assuring her that Jesus had surely risen from the dead as He had promised? Why did they all respond like this if they had been told at least 3 times by Jesus Himself that He would rise again on the third day? 

Some commentators have tried to suggest that they responded like this because they were too blinded by overwhelming emotions. They had been terribly traumatised when they saw Jesus such a helpless and pitiful state when the Roman soldiers mistreated Him so badly. They were too overwhelmed by intense feelings of fear and of their own insecurity. All these had cut such deep wounds into their minds that they completely forgot all that Jesus had said about His resurrection from the dead. 

1. We need to have faith in order to grasp every hope God has given to us (v.9).

However, while it is possible that some people can become quite irrational and may even behave strangely when they are in a very emotional state, I doubt that this is sufficient to explain the responses of Peter, John, Mary Magdalene and even of the rest of the disciples. There must have been a deeper reason for this response: It was all because their hearts did not grasp the hope that Jesus would rise from the dead. It just seemed too incredible to them that Jesus would come back to life. 

Like the two other disciples who would meet Him later that day on the road to Emmaus, they were 'slow of heart to believe.' (Luke 24:25) Peter, John and Mary Magdalene, were slow of heart to believe in the hope and necessity of His resurrection, even though Jesus had told them about it repeatedly, and even though it was foretold in Old Testament passages like Psalm 16, Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53. 

This point is mentioned in v.9 of our text: 'For as yet they knew not the Scripture, that He must rise again from the dead.' The words 'knew not' here in the original Greek do not mean the disciples were ignorant about the resurrection of Christ or about the OT passages that pointed to it. The words 'knew not' here indicate that they did not grasp this wonderful hope by faith. This was the thing that caused them to respond so strangely when it actually happened! 

And this can easily happen to any of us. We may have studied the Bible thoroughly and learned all its truths very well, but that alone does not mean that we will respond to every situation in life as we should. For instance, why is it that we still worry and fret so much when things don't seem to go well for us? Don't we already know that our Heavenly Father knows our problems and has a good purpose for everything that happens to us? And why is it that when trouble comes we still resort to our own human wisdom and sinful devices to deliver ourselves from it? Don't we already know that the Lord is always ready to help us if we only ask Him? And why is it that we are so fearful of dying when we already know that death will usher us into the glory of heaven and the very presence of God? 

When we do any these things, we are actually no better than those disciples who actually knew that Jesus would rise from the dead and yet they responded as if He should remain dead. We run in great panic when we should be resting calmly in His peace. We weep in hopeless despair when we should be rejoicing triumphantly in the Lord. What is it that causes us to respond as if Jesus is not alive and well? Isn't it our failure to grasp this glorious truth by faith?

Dearly beloved, let us live by faith in the Lord, so that we may grasp every hope that is ours. Some of us may have been in here in church last Sunday when the huge stack of concrete blocks across the road collapsed during our 8 am service. And perhaps you may have wondered how I could continue to pray and preach so calmly after hearing that loud crashing noise from outside. Well, I knew that something terrible must have happened outside, but since there was nothing to indicate that we should stop the service, I just continued on, trusting that the Lord will protect us in His House as we listen to His Word. After all, God is our refuge and our fortress - in Him will we trust (cf. Psalm 91:2). And true enough, He kept every worshipper who was here safe and sound last Sunday!

Dearly beloved, will you live by faith in what God has promised and taught you in His Word? Will you grasp the hope that He has given you by faith, even in times of deep crisis, in times when there seems to be no hope at all? Our Lord wants you grasp that hope by faith, as much as He also wanted His disciples to grasp their hope of His resurrection by faith and He helped them to do it on that first Easter morning. There are two parts in our passage of Scripture where this can be seen.

2. Faith comes from considering the testimonies that Christ has left for us (vv.6-8).

Let us look first at vv.6-8 'Then cometh Simon Peter following him, and went into the sepulchre, and seeth the linen clothes lie, And the napkin, that was about his head, not lying with the linen clothes, but wrapped together in a place by itself. Then went in also that other disciple, which came first to the sepulchre, and he saw, and believed.'

Here we see that when Jesus resurrected from the dead, He deliberately left behind the linen clothes that He had been wrapped in, inside the tomb. This was found by His two closest disciples, Peter and John. And the testimony of these linen wrappings was two-fold: Firstly, they removed any possibility of believing that the body of Jesus had been stolen. No grave robber would bother to unwrap the dead body before taking it out of the tomb. It would have taken too much time to do this since the layers of linen cloth were all glued together with the embalming spices. Unwrapping the body would also have released the awful stench of rotting flesh and this would have left behind a trail which could easily be followed. Therefore, the presence of the graveclothes strongly indicates that the body was not stolen.

Secondly, the details of the linen wrappings as given in v.6 clearly indicate that a miracle had occurred. There were two distinct items - the linen clothes which had covered the body of Jesus, and the napkin which had covered His head. This napkin was wrapped together and located a short distance away from the linen clothes. This description shows that the items had retained the same shape and position in the tomb as when they had contained the body of Jesus. They were now just like an empty cocoon. 

But how could the body have been removed from them without changing their shape and position? This was the mystery that Peter and John were faced with. To Peter, it remained only a mystery (Luke 24:12). But to John, it was a miracle - a miracle of immense proportions! For it would be impossible even for a living person to get out of those linen wrappings all by himself. 

As a comparison, I would like you to turn to John 11:43-44 to see what had happened at another resurrection miracle: 'And when he thus had spoken, he cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth. And he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with graveclothes: and his face was bound about with a napkin. Jesus saith unto them, Loose him, and let him go.' You will notice that Lazarus could not possibly get out of those graveclothes by himself as he was bound hand and foot. That is why Jesus told the people there to 'loose him and let him go.' You will also notice that the face of Lazarus was covered by a napkin - this was same thing that Peter and John saw still wrapped by itself in the empty tomb.

And so the body of Jesus had miraculously come out of the graveclothes it was in without changing their shape and position. This was probably what made John believe that Jesus had resurrected from the dead in v.8. However, he seemed to have kept this belief to himself and did not share it with Peter or Mary Magdalene. Perhaps his faith at this time was still new and too weak to make him bold enough to proclaim it as he would do much later on. 

Today, these graveclothes that Peter and John saw no longer exist. But Jesus has left us with something far better to testify to us that He has truly risen from the dead - the written testimonies of His disciples! The Bible that you hold in your hands is better than the graveclothes of Jesus. It provides sufficient testimony to enable you to believe fully in the resurrection of Christ and in all the other precious truths of God. 

But you must be committed to study it and meditate on it in order to grow in faith. If you come to God's Word the way that Simon Peter came rushing into the tomb in v.6, you will probably gain nothing out of it. But if you approach the Word of God with a prepared heart, the way that John approached the tomb carefully, taking time to pause at the entrance, stoop down and look in first before he entered and saw the graveclothes, then you will believe as he did. And so, if you want to have a faith that firmly grasps every hope that God has given, please take time to meditate on the Word of God every day. This is so much better than making a trip to visit the empty tomb or looking for the graveclothes of Jesus if they exist today because you can have God's Word with you everywhere and read it at any time. 

There are some who think that their faith will increase tremendously if they can only get to see or touch the actual graveclothes of Jesus. And they believe that this actually exists today in a Roman Catholic cathedral in Turin in north Italy. The 'Shroud of Turin' is touted to be the actual graveclothes of Jesus. It has been viewed by millions of people. It has become famous because it is alleged to bear a visible image of Jesus on it. Some even believe that looking at the image on the Shroud is just like looking at a full-length, life-size photograph of Jesus, front and back. 

However investigations have shown that the Shroud of Turin is not authentic at all. If it is, it should be completely caked with the myrrh and aloes that were used to embalm the body because Nicodemus had provided 34 kg of these (John 19:39). But there isn't even the slightest trace of these spices on it. Furthermore, numerous scientific tests have dated it to be no earlier than 1260 AD. The most telling evidence against the Shroud is found in our passage of Scripture. Jesus was not covered from head to toe by a single piece of cloth. We have seen that His body was wrapped completely in strips of linen and His face was wrapped separately with a napkin. 

If any of you still believe that the Shroud of Turin is authentic, please listen to this: It is far more important for you to see the image of Jesus in His Word rather than in an old piece of cloth. And what is of even greater importance is to be able to see the image of Jesus produced in your life (Galatians 4:19). And this will become true of you as you keep spending time with the Lord Jesus every day through meditating on His Word and fervent prayer. 2 Corinthians 3:18 tells us, 'But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.'

3. Faith comes by listening to His voice when He speaks to us (vv.11-16)

Now we come to the second part of our passage of Scripture where we see How Jesus helped another disciple of His to grasp the incredible hope of His resurrection by faith. This disciple it was Mary Magdalene. In her case, the moment of faith came not from what she saw, but from what she heard, as seen in vv.11-16. 

When she looked into the tomb, she saw two angels in white sitting there. You may wonder why Mary did not think that this was unusual. It isn't everyday that people gets to see an angel, let alone 2 angels at a time. But why did Mary not take the angels' appearance as a sure sign that the body of Jesus must have been removed supernaturally? And why didn't the sight of these angels stop her weeping? And that is not all. When she turned around she saw Jesus but did not recognize Him. She was looking so desperately for His body but she did not realize that He was standing right in front of her! And she was still weeping despairingly. The lesson we learn from this is that seeing angels or Jesus in person does not make any difference to one's faith.

Some people think that their faith will really be much strengthened and settled fully if only they can see an angelic vision or even a vision of Jesus appearing to them. They want to see in order to believe. But our Lord said to Thomas later on, 'because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.' (John 20:29) The apostle Peter mentioned the same thing in 1 Peter 1:8-9 'Whom having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory: Receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls.'

What we need is in order to believe, is not to see Jesus, but to hear Him. Mary Magdalene's tears ceased to flow the moment she heard Him calling her name, 'Mary!' This was all that she needed to hear to change from sorrowing to rejoicing. There must have been something about the way Jesus called her name that made Mary recognize Him. It is just like what Jesus Himself had said in John 10:27 'My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.'

If you truly belong to Jesus, you will hear His still small voice speaking to your heart, calling you, comforting you and at times, correcting you. Sometimes He may speak to you through His Word as you read it devotionally or as you hear it preached faithfully, or as you partake of the Lord's Supper. Sometimes He may speak through the words of a hymn that you hear or sing. 

And somehow you know that it is none other than the Lord, as your heart is strangely warmed and your spirit rejoices to hear His voice. Be still! Take time to listen to Him when He speaks. And don't let the noise and distractions of the world deprive you of the opportunity to listen to Him. 

And for those of you who are still unsaved, perhaps Jesus is calling you this morning to believe in Him. Perhaps He is calling your name right now, to awaken you from your unbelief. Why do you wish to remain in such a state, with absolutely no hope of life beyond the grave? Don't you know what you are missing? Why do you choose to remain in sin and in all the miseries it brings, when Jesus can deliver you from them right now and bring hope, peace and joy into your life? Please respond to His call by turning to Him in faith and repentance. Ask Him now to be your Saviour and Lord.

In our message this morning you have seen that having all the right knowledge alone is not good enough. You need to have faith in order to grasp every hope that God has given to us. You have also seen that faith comes from considering the testimonies that Christ has left for you. This means taking time to meditate on His written Word. And you have seen that faith also comes by listening to His voice when He speaks to you.

There is one more lesson: When your faith is strengthened, please don't keep it to yourself but share it with others. This is what Mary Magdalene did - according to v.18 she came and told the disciples what she had seen and heard, in order that they too might stop weeping but share her joy of believing the incredible hope!

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