This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “Easter” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, March 26, 1989.
About this sermon
The bodily resurrection of Christ is fundamental to the faith. The ‘two men’ at the tomb in 24:4 echo Moses and Elijah at the transfiguration in 9:30-32, as the law and the prophets bear witness to the empty tomb. ‘He is not here, but is risen.’
Sermon transcript
This morning, our scripture is taken from Luke’s gospel, and we will be looking at Luke 23, verse 55, and reading from that verse through chapter 24, verse 12. This is Luke 23, verse 55, through 24, verse 12. hear the word of God. And the women also which came with him from Galilee followed after and beheld the sepulcher and how his body was laid.
And they returned and prepared spices and ointments and rested the Sabbath day according to the commandment. Now upon the first day of the week very early in the morning. They came unto the sepulcher, bringing the spices which they had prepared, and certain others with them.
And they found the stone rolled away from the sepulcher, and they entered in, and found it not the body of the Lord Jesus. And it came to pass, as they were much perplexed thereabout, behold, Two men stood by them in shining garments, and as they were afraid and bowed down their faces to the earth, they said unto them, Why seek ye the living among the dead? He is not here, but is risen.
Remember how he spake unto you when he was yet in Galilee, saying, The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified, and the third day rise again.” And they remembered his words, and returned from the sepulcher and told all these things unto the eleven and to the rest, all the rest. And it was Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary the mother of James, and the other women that were with them, which told these things unto the apostles. And their words seemed to them as idle tales, and they believed them not. Then arose Peter, and he ran unto the sepulcher, and stooping down, he beheld the linen clothes laid by themselves, and departed, wondering in himself at that which had come to pass.”
Oh Lord we are laid low yet you have raised us up We are taught, we are instructed by you and all of God through your word and that always with your spirit. So it is for your people everywhere. And with your people we have this common bond. The word, your spirit, and that great salvation which you have brought for us. We ask you, our God, as we come now to your word that we might be filled and that you might satisfy us with the very deep things of our faith. We pray this in Christ’s name. Amen. It does us good at times to return to the basics.
And if the word wasn’t so misused today to the fundamentals of our faith, return to the basics to those quite elementary principles of our faith in order to be refreshed by the clear and uncluttered message of the word. What would you judge are the essential features of the gospel? If someone were to ask you, what are the essential features of the gospel, what would you say?
Well, naturally, and I hope quite naturally for you, you would speak about Christ’s death. We are here getting down to the basics. here to the fundamentals, rehearsing them one more time. Hopefully, you would speak of Christ’s death. You would talk of his crucifixion.
You would tell me, if I were that person you were speaking to, that the crucifixion of Jesus Christ is essential, indispensable to the gospel. Can the gospel be the gospel if the crucifixion of Christ is ignored, left out, grossly distorted or denied? No, you would say. No. Why? Why? Why is that the case?
Because, so you tell me, the cross of Jesus Christ is that appointed means by which God has brought about the forgiveness of our sins. Basic stuff. It should thrill us. It should be readily upon our lips and definitely. We’ll see you on our hearts. This cross, then the appointed means by which God has brought about the forgiveness of my So if I’m to speak about that gospel, I cannot do so without speaking about that cross. I, you, we together then, having deserved God’s wrath and his judgment because of our sins, have been spared. And Jesus Christ, the Son of God, has taken our judgment. He has stood in our place.
To hear it again, to speak of it again, that our delight, regardless of how basic it is, He is, then, as the Apostle has said, he was delivered up for our transgressions, Romans 4.25.
And thus it is that this cross of Christ is an indispensable feature to the gospel that we embrace. Without it, the gospel is no longer the gospel. And those then denying this cross, ignoring it or perverting it and its message, though they claim to be followers of Jesus Christ, are nothing of the sort. It was for these basics, then, for something as basic as the cross, that men did take a stand in this century, in our time. You know what was affirmed in 1923, the Auburn Affirmation? It is not essential for a gospel of the ministry, for the minister of the gospel, to hold to the substitutionary death of Christ on the cross that is merely a theory and quite dispensable in affirming the truth. That is why I do not hesitate to say to Those that deny this cross, those that ignore it, those that pervert it and its message, though they claim to be followers of Jesus Christ, are nothing of the sort. There is a sorting out that is taking place in our time. between those who see that cross as indispensable and those who do not.
But let us press a bit further. Is there any other essential feature to this gospel which we believe Well, think of that passage which I quoted for you this morning, Romans four twenty five. It not only says he was delivered up for our transgressions, it goes on to say he was raised for our justification. Romans four twenty five puts it together. I judge as well as it can be put together. He was delivered up for our transgressions, and he was raised for our justification.
In this gospel, then, we hear not just about Christ’s death, but likewise of his resurrection. And as essential as is that crucifixion, equally essential is the resurrection. Could we remind ourselves of just how essential that a resurrection is? Listen to the Apostle one more time from another passage, 1 Corinthians 15.
If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain and your faith is vain also. He goes on to say that if Christ has not been raised, then you are still dead in your sin. Can the resurrection be ignored, denied, grossly distorted, and the gospel remain the gospel? You tell me, no. I ask you, why?
Because, you go on, the resurrection of Jesus Christ means true life, life of the Spirit, and the achievement of the original goal for mankind, namely, the realization of that unbreakable fellowship with God forever. We then, who were the sentenced to death, for the wages of sin is death, have now been described as victors. Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Isn’t that the point to which 1 Corinthians 15 presses? We are the victors, then, by way of Christ’s resurrection from the dead. Death is denied. Its bands are broken. life, eternal life, is given, and that graciously.
And as much as the message of Christ’s death should thrill us, even as we recount it and think of it, basic as it is, so Our recounting of our thinking of the resurrection. That, too, should thrill us. Isn’t it interesting what the Apostle Paul says in Romans 10, verse 9? He says, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart, you see, the affection are brought into view, believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, you shall be saved. The affection bound to that event. I love the resurrection. I love the resurrection of Jesus Christ. I set my affections upon that. I am bound in my heart to it.
Those then denying this resurrection, ignoring it or perverting it, turning it into something else, suggesting that it is only metaphorical language, that we have to get beyond and above the mere happenstance of history, ignoring the event itself. Those who suggest such things, though they claim to be followers of Jesus Christ, are nothing of the sort. 1923, once more this century, the Auburn affirmation, 1300 ministers of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America signed that document that said that the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ is unessential. It is merely a theory. It is not essential to be held by those who would minister in this church.
Now I would judge that for the majority of you here today, you were not raised in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. You’ve come by various routes. But you understand why you are here. You are here for the basics, for the fundamentals. The cross is indispensable. The resurrection is indispensable. And there are those as there were those who have said and do say that they are expendable. But let’s press a little further. We’re not done yet. Is there for this gospel which you have embraced.
Of which an essential feature is the resurrection. Still further and and essential ingredient of that resurrection without which the resurrection would no longer be. Are we holding to something here in affirming the resurrection? That if we remove it. The resurrection is no longer. Now, if there is any gospel.
Judged as addressing this particular issue. The gospel of Luke. in the account of the resurrection, and what follows clearly does. Note, if you will, particularly in that twenty-fourth chapter of Luke, those stories that do follow the one that we’ve read this morning. Verses thirty, I’m sorry, verses thirteen through thirty-five. gives us that wonderfully told story of the two on the road to Emmaus. And note what is underscored as you move through that passage. Everything conspires to convince the reader, as well as to convince those two on the road to Emmaus, that the one that they were dealing with there on the road to Emmaus was in fact really present in his body. really present in his body. The risen Christ walks with these two, though they don’t recognize him. He talks with them. He sits down to supper with them. He actually takes bread and he breaks it.
Everything is conspiring to convince you that you are dealing here with a real body. move on to the next story versus thirty six through forty three. The story tells us of Jesus meeting with his disciples and again we find the same message you’re dealing here. with an account that conspires to convince you that you are dealing with a real body. Jesus invites the disciples to touch him, to observe his hands and his feet. He says, A spirit does not have flesh and bones, as you see that I have.
Verse thirty nine. And in order to establish his claim, he asks for some food and then he eats it in their presence. verses forty one through forty three. Now you can move back, you can move back to verses one through twelve, and the story, the account of the resurrection, and we find here precisely the same message. Is it not clear to us? That’s why I began with the fifty-fifth verse of the twenty-third and its references to the body of Christ.
Yes, Jesus body, the crucified body, that one laid in the tomb, came out of the tomb. Is that your doctrine of the resurrection? What went in came out. Now, there are many people who don’t have that doctrine of the resurrection. Jesus’ body, his crucified body, the one laid in the tomb, came out of the tomb.
So Luke goes on to tell us quite deliberately that when the women come to the tomb and they find it open, they coming in hopes of caring for the body, verse three, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. They did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. Our gospel, our doctrine of the resurrection demands the empty tomb, regardless of what others may say.
Note what the two messengers from heaven say to the women. Why do you seek the living one among the dead? He is not here. He is risen. The body was gone, and that by the working of God the Father through the spirit of his power. But not everyone, and as I’ve already suggested to you, not everyone, not even all of those who claim to follow Jesus, accept this doctrine of the resurrection. can accept the empty tomb, can accept the fact that the body came out. And there are many, you see, who think that they can have Jesus without the resurrection, without this specific kind of resurrection, if the resurrection is necessary at all. a widow. I understand her grief. It’s not a matter of the cold-hearted doctrinaire Christian surveying the grief of someone without any pain of heart. But there was a woman, a widow, who once told me about her husband, her late husband, an elder in the Presbyterian Church and a medical doctor.
She said to me that he could not, he could not, to the day of his death, believe in the resurrection of the body. Her husband, she explained, was a man of science. And you couldn’t expect him to believe in such things. Now you know what this woman was doing, she was comforting herself with such excuses for her husband, because you see, if the resurrection is essential to the gospel, her husband did not believe that essential, and thus he did not believe the gospel. And if he did not believe the gospel, he was lost. So this poor widow had to construct a Christianity in which the resurrection was unnecessary and dispensable. And as much as our heart may go out to her, she was wrong. The excuse this widow made for her husband, I might point out, none of the women present on the first resurrection morn would have subsequently made for any man that they ever knew.
Now it may be judged as you survey that one chapter story resurrection. It may be that as you survey that story. You become impressed as I have with just how much is being said about the resurrection and the essential character of that resurrection the indispensability of it to the faith. for just as the empty tomb is central, so also is this apologetic with regard to the women. It’s not merely an apologetic with regard to the empty tomb, it’s an apologetic with regard to the women themselves.
For what are people liable to think? These women are just given over to hysterics. It’s a matter of private, subjective opinion. That’s all. And that’s precisely what the disciples to whom they reported. But last you think that survey the passage once more.
There is that empty room to be sure, but you see, these women are not standing there alone. They are confronted by two others, two messengers. We might expect that these messengers would be called Two angels, they are not called angels, they are called two men. We are struck by that. Why? Why should they be called two men, rather than two angels? They appear in dazzling apparel. Are they not angels? They are not so identified. Well, the answer to the puzzle is found earlier in the Gospel of Luke.
If, for instance, you were to turn to the ninth chapter, the thirtieth and the thirty-second verses, you would find there verses that appear in the context of the story of the transfiguration. Two men are mentioned there as well, and they are identified for us as Moses and Elijah, giving comfort to Jesus as he sets now his face to his appointed task, his appointed end. Jerusalem and the crucifixion.
They then representative, Moses and Elijah, of the entirety of the Old Testament revelation, the law and the prophets. The two men in Luke 24 correspond to the two men in Luke 9. It’s not just a group of women who are excited about a robbed tomb, it is the law and the are now bearing testimony to the fact that this was the goal. The law and the prophets then stand in these two men, bearing witness to the resurrection and the empty the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the point to which they were pressing all along. This is where the law and the prophets were going. But note what the two men do. Interestingly, they don’t call attention to themselves.
Rather, they point the women to the words of Jesus. Once more, You have law and prophets, words of Jesus. They remind these women of the things that Jesus had said while he was yet in Galilee, so that now their witness has added to it the witness of Jesus himself. And when the women then go and tell their stories, To those who think it nonsense, they do so not as a group of women who are emotionally upset and distressed, utterly confused, but as those who come bearing witness not just to what they have seen, but to all that the law and the prophets have said, and more than that, all that Jesus has said.
And in this. The women become the paradigm, the pattern. For all proper gospel preaching. Not so as to confer ordination on them. They nearly become a picture of the church. In that church’s movement and in her proclamation of this gospel and its indispensable elements. What are those indispensable elements? The cross, the resurrection, the empty tomb. Testified to by the law and the prophets. and seen by the words of Jesus himself. I tell you, it is irrefutable. It is utterly and completely irrefutable. the testimony then, our own, of the gospel which we embrace.
Truly, we who believe it, not because we’re better than others, but because of the grace of God, we who believe it are the redeemed. And we live with the certainty that as Christ has been raised in his body, so we too will be raised in our bodies on the last day, so that we might be with him in glory forever. Now Lord, we would not forget the basics of our faith, and our heart would be warmed by those basics as they are rehearsed for us and by us, and our spirits would thrill in the knowledge of their truth. Our God, we pray that we might understand the foundations that have been laid for us and those indispensable elements to the proclamation of your word to the ends of the earth. May we truly be those who have embraced Christ’s cross, his resurrection. That we might be, Lord, those whose bodies are raised in glory at the day of his appearance.
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