Lux Lucet

The following sermon was preached by John Robbins at Reformation Chapel in Unicoi Tennessee. Last week I featured part one of this sermon.  Today, I present part two. To read part one, please click here. The transcription is my own.

– Steve Matthews

Well, Luke continues in verse five,

Then, as they were afraid and bowed their faces to the earth, they said to them, ‘Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but is risen! Remember how he spoke to you while he was still in Galilee.’

Well, these women are terrified. These men suddenly appear, and the women are terrified. Luke says they were afraid and bowed their faces to the earth. And the angels speak to them and say, “Why do you seek the living among the dead?”

This reminds you of the opening chapter of Acts, where Luke is telling about the apostles watching Jesus being assumed into heaven. And two men again appear, maybe the same two angels, and speak to the apostles, and they say, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand here staring up into heaven?” They ask them a question again. And here the angels ask the women, “Why do you seek the living among the dead. And then they tell them, “He is not here, but is risen. Remember how he spoke to you.” And this makes it clear about the important of words. See, we’re told in the first chapter of John that the Word preceded the visible creation, that everything that was created was preceded by the Word. The Word comes first, the Logos comes first. And many people get everything backwards, they think events, or history, or creation come first, rather than the Word.

But notice here no one witnesses the resurrection event. And what the women receive are words from the angels. They’re told specifically, “He is not here. He is risen. He is living. He’s not among the dead.” And then the angels remind them of Jesus’ own words that he spoke while he was still with him. Their faith rests on the testimony of Jesus and the testimony of the angels. The women did not see the resurrection event, but they received these words from Christ and from the angels.

And the words that they’re reminded of by the angels are given in verse seven, “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.” There’s the actual words that the angels remind the women of.

Look at Matthew seventeen, a parallel account, and let’s read verses twenty-two and twenty-three. “Now while they were staying in Galilee, Jesus said to them, ‘The Son of Man is about to be betrayed into the hands of men, and they will kill him, and the third day he will be raised up.’ ” Very literal language. “And they were exceedingly sorrowful,” is the conclusion of Matthew there. Very literal language, but he said very clearly, and the other Gospels give similar accounts of him predicting what’s going to happen. But the women do not remember, consequently do not understand. And they prepare the body, they show up to prepare the body to prevent it from decomposing.

Now by contrast, turn to Matthew twenty-seven. Who do remember his words? The women don’t. The disciples don’t. But the Pharisees do. And look at Matthew twenty-seven beginning at verse sixty-two. “On the next day, which followed the Day of Preparation,” that is, this is the Sabbath, the Jewish Sabbath, “the chief priests and Pharisees gathered together to Pilate,” they actually go to see him on their Sabbath, “saying, ‘Sir, we remember, while he was still alive, how that deceiver said, ‘After three days I will rise.’ ” They understood it. They remember it. “Because we remember what he was saying.” Now the disciples don’t remember and they don’t understand. The women don’t remember and they don’t understand. But the Pharisees and the chief priests do.

“We remember, while he was still alive, how that deceiver said, ‘After three days I will arise. Therefore command that the tomb be made secure until the third day, lest his disciples come by night and seal him away, and say to the people, ‘He has risen from the dead,’ So the last deception will be worse than the first.’

“Pilate said to them, ‘You have a guard; go your way, make it as secure as you know how.’ So they went and made the tomb secure, sealing the stone and setting the guard.”

Now in the providence of God, they remember the words of Christ, and the effect of it is to make an even greater witness of the resurrection, because it’s the Scribes and the Pharisees that seal the tomb and set the guard. It’s not even the Roman authorities. They’re given the authority by Pilate, but they actually do it. He gives them a detail, and says, “Here, go whatever you want to do, make it secure.” And they do. And this results in an even more embarrassing situation for them when Christ rises from the dead. The Scribes and the Pharisees don’t believe his words, but they remember them, and they understand what he meant. But they’re afraid that the disciples are going to come and steal the body and then perpetrate a fraud saying he’s risen from the dead. The women don’t remember, but when they’re reminded by the angels, then they remember. And then they understand what he meant.

Well Luke tells us in verse nine, “They returned,” that is, the women, “then they returned from the tomb and told all these things to the eleven and to all the rest.” They go back and they tell the eleven, of course Judas has killed himself by this time, Judas Iscariot, and to all the others. And Luke names the leading women here, Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Mary the mother of James, and the other women, and they told all these things to the apostles. Now it’s interesting here, because the message is given by the angels to the women. Christ is humbling the disciples, because they’re not there. It’s the women who receive the message and it’s the women who carry the message back to the apostles. This is the message they deliver. And it says they deliver the entire message, “Told all these things to the eleven and to all the rest.”

And then finally in verses eleven and twelve, “And their words seemed to them like idle tales, and they did not believe them.” That is, the words of the women. ” But Peter arose and ran to the tomb; and stooping down, he saw the linen cloths lying by themselves; and he departed, marveling to himself at what had happened.” The eleven and the rest do not believe what the women are saying, they seem like idle tales. Now the women are simply reporting what the angels have told them. But the apostles don’t believe them.

Peter believes some of what the women said, else he wouldn’t have moved. And we’re told from the other accounts that Peter and John both go to the tomb. Else he wouldn’t have moved, he would have stayed there where the group was at that point. But they believe something the women have said. We’re not told exactly what propositions they believed. And they didn’t believe everything, because Peter remains perplexed in verse twelve. He’s confused, he’s marveling to himself at what had happened.

Notice something else that’s interesting about this, God does not send angels to talk to Peter and John. They go to the tomb. He sends the angels to talk to the women, but he does not send angels to talk to Peter and John and explain to them. They, at this point, their information and their faith rests upon the word that they have received from the women. Now many people, some unbelievers, have argued that this whole thing was a conspiracy hatched beforehand by the disciples to perpetrate a fraud. That’s what the Jews, the Scribes and Pharisees intended to destroy by setting the guard. Well it would be odd, if there were such a conspiracy, that these events would be recorded like this. And it would be odd, if there were such a conspiracy for the disciples to come and snatch away the body, that they would take the time to fold up the cloths that are wrapping Jesus. But as John reports in chapter twenty verse seven, everything is folded neatly in the tomb. The cloths which surrounded his body, and the separate cloth that was on his head, are folded neatly.

Peter runs, because he believes something the women have said. But he doesn’t believe everything they have said. He sees the cloths lying by themselves, and then he leaves trying to figure out what has happened. Well, later on he becomes completed aware of what has happened. But here you have Luke’s great account, it’s only twelve verses, of the resurrection and the events surrounding it.

Are there any comments or questions or corrections?

Comment (Tom Juodaitis): You had brought up that the word precedes the event or the action and I think in the Biblical Theological movement or the Historical Redemptive, the same movement, different title, I think they try to put history first, and then the word or the event first, and then the description or theological significance of the event in Scripture, they say that the Scripture points it that way, it’s interesting that they go that route.

Response (John Robbins): And it’s common, it’s not just the Biblical Theological movement, but it’s common among the so-called Emerging Church movement now. But they say propositional truth is nice, but it’s secondary.

For instance, the president of the National Association of Evangelicals, Leith Anderson, has a book out called A Church for the Twenty First Century, in which he makes that very point. He says that in the past we’ve been told that if you want to experience God, you first have to understand propositional truth. But the new view is, if you first experience God, then you will get propositional truth. And he said, and he ties it in with the Biblical Theological movement, he says the event comes first, the experience comes first, and then everything flows from that. The culprit, he says, is Systematic Theology. And we cannot allow Systematic Theology to govern our thinking, because it makes the word first.

Well, the word is first. In the beginning was the Word. Not the deed, not the event, not the experience, but the Word. And it’s the Word that creates. It’s the Word that foretells all of human history in Scripture. And it’s the Word that constitutes all the events of history. The mind of God, the plan of God, is settled from eternity. And what we see in our lives, and in history, is the results of that. And the Biblical Theological movement, and the Emerging Church movement, and liberalism in general just get things precisely backwards.

Comment (Tom Juodaitis): But also didn’t Neo-orthodoxy take that position, as well?

Response (John Robbins): There’s something called an encounter, which is an event that takes precedence. It’s not understanding or believing propositions, but having a personal encounter with Christ. And you see that jargon used more and more too, about people having a personal experience or personal encounter or something like that with Christ rather than understanding and believing his words.

One of the things I didn’t bring out where we’re told that the disciples did not believe them, that is the words, that could also mean they didn’t believe the women. See, people want to make a big difference between persons and propositions. But to believe a person, you have to believe what he says. There’s no other way to believe a person other than to believe what he says. And if you don’t believe what he says, if you don’t believe his words, you don’t believe him. The two are the same. There aren’t two kinds of truth.

In the twentieth century a Jewish philosopher, Buber, came up with the idea that there were two kinds of truth, it truth and thou truth, as he called it. And one was propositional, the it truth, and one was personal, the thou truth, and what was important was the thou truth, the personal truth. But there’s nothing like that in Scripture. That is based on a sort of Jewish mysticism, that there’s somehow a second kind of truth. But all there is is propositional truth. And if you don’t believe the propositions, or if you don’t remember them, as the women didn’t remember them, you don’t understand, you don’t believe.

That’s why the Bible insists all the time throughout upon understanding. Read the Book of Proverbs and how it emphasizes understanding. The beginning of wisdom, and while you’re getting, get wisdom, get understanding. That’s the important thing. And without that, you’re perplexed, not matter how many experiences you have or how many encounters.