By Rev. Dr. Brent Russett – Asbury Free Methodist
April 20, 2025 – John 20
All through Lent, we have been journeying with Jesus to the cross. On Good Friday, we saw Jesus hung on a cross. I reminded you of the seven sayings of Jesus from the cross. The second last thing he said from the cross was, “It is Finished.”
The job that he came to do was finished. He became the lamb of God for the sins of the world.
1 Peter 2:24 (NIV)
24 “He himself bore our sins” in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; “by his wounds you have been healed.” (It is finished.)
2 Corinthians 5:21 (NIV)
21 God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (It is finished.)
Isaiah 53:5 (NIV)
5 But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
and by his wounds we are healed. (It is finished.)
He finished the work. There is nothing more to be done. You cannot add to what was done. He paid for your sin. He has done the work so that everything might be right between you and God the Father.
The work of the cross was finished, but the story was not over. Let us go to the Book of Luke
Luke 24:1–6 (NIV)
24 On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. 2 They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, 3 but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. 4 While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them. 5 In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? 6 He is not here; he has risen!
Over 2 billion people around the globe will celebrate the resurrection today because the resurrection of Jesus proves that he was more than a prophet. It proves that he was more than just a man. It proves that he was and is the son of God. If the resurrection of Jesus is true, then it not only proves who Jesus was and is, but it also impacts our personal stories 2000 years later.
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If you got a letter in the mail, on very official, expensive looking stationery from a lawyer’s office that that said you had inherited millions of dollars from a distant relative that you had never heard of, you would be skeptical. It seems like there are so many scams around. But this didn’t come through social media; it came by registered mail – so you would wonder if it could be true. If that happened to you, you would check it out. The offer is just too good not to look into. 1
The resurrection of Jesus Christ is just like that. You could be really, really skeptical about it, but the offer of the resurrection is too amazing not to look into. And make no mistake, the resurrection is an offer – an invitation.
You see, if the resurrection happened what Jesus promised is true. He promises you the life that is truly life. He promises to bring you into a relationship with the God of the universe in such a way that you can call him Father. He takes you where you are but calls you to become all that God created you to be. It is about allowing you to walk in peace with God and with yourself.
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Here is what I want you to know. The resurrection of Jesus can satisfy both your mind and your heart.
Here is what I mean by satisfying your mind. Let’s take a look at the resurrection from the perspective of Jesus’ disciple, John.
John 20:1–9 (NIV)
Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. 2 So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!” 3 So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. 4 Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first.
5 He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. 6 Then Simon Peter came along behind him and went straight into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, 7 as well as the cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus’ head. The cloth was still lying in its place, separate from the linen. 8 Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. 9 (They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.)
Mary Magdalene arrives at the tomb early Sunday morning. She finds the tomb empty. She runs and tells the disciples, so Peter and John take off to look at the tomb. John stops outside the tomb but Peter comes along and barrels right into the tomb.
He saw the strips of linen lying there, as well as the cloth that wrapped Jesus’ head. The Greek word for “saw” is not the normal word for “saw.” The Greek word is “thieorea,” from which we get the word “theorize.” It means to observe something intently, looking for an explanation. This is essentially rationality. You are looking at the evidence, and you are looking for an explanation.
So, Peter runs into the tomb, and he sees the linens – and I am sure he is thinking – OK – If this was normal grave robbers, then why did they leave the linen? It has value. Not only that, but it is also infused with about 30 kilograms of valuable spices. They have value. Not only that, but why would you take away the stuff that keeps the body from smelling? Grave robbers wouldn’t have done that.
On the other hand, if other disciples had taken away the body, why would they dishonour the body by taking it away naked? Peter is reasoning, and then John finally comes into the tomb. He looks at all of what is there, and it says they saw and believed.
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Now, there are a lot of people who think Christians just wake up one day and decide to believe. But it usually doesn’t happen like that. You will see that it took a whole lot of reasoning for the disciples to believe. That is how the Christian life tends to work. The reality is that unless your faith is thought through, it probably won’t last.
The Christian faith is obviously more than reasoning and thinking, but it’s not less than that. If you are not yet a follower of Christ, then I would encourage you to give some real thought to the resurrection.
Now, as we look at the disciples, you may be thinking that it was easier for them because they had more evidence in front of them to reason with than we do. But we have some evidence too.
I will only show you a few things from the text. There are so many things that indicate that the story of the resurrection is true. The first one that I would like you to consider is Mary Magdalene herself.
“Celsus was an early a second-century early Greek philosopher who hated Christianity. He wrote one of the first intellectual attacks on Christianity, showing why it was specious and why it didn’t work philosophically and why it wasn’t true. But one of the main avenues for Celsus’ attacks on Christianity was Mary Magdalene. He said, get ready for 21st century Canadians.
He said, speaking of Mary Magdalene, “How can anyone expect rational men to listen to the testimony of (and I quote) “a hysterical female”
Now, why was he able to say that is this? He lived in a time that we would call a misogynist time. A time in which women’s status was very, very low. Celsus’s question is, “How can we believe in the resurrection if it was only testified to by women?”
It’s also true that every single one of the Gospel accounts of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John all say that all of the first witnesses of the risen Jesus Christ were women.
What Celsus did to try to discredit the resurrection was absolutely right — for his time. He attacked what we would expect him to attack. It was the Achilles heel of the Christian movement at the time. Everybody said. “What, wait a minute, you expect us to believe that Jesus rose from the dead – if women were the first witnesses?
But it’s not the Achilles heel of the rational basis of Christianity today. Do you know why? “Because historians will say that if you were inventing stories about the resurrection, you never would have put women in there as the first witnesses. It just does not fit with the times they lived in. So, the only historically plausible explanation for why women are in the Gospel accounts as the first witnesses is — they were the first witnesses – that is actually what happened. The only plausible historical explanation for the women being first witnesses is that they were there. There is no other reason to write these accounts that way.
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Here is another reason to believe that the resurrection actually happened. There were other witnesses to the resurrection as well. Paul says in 1st Corinthians 15 – in a public document written less than 20 years after Jesus died – said that there were hundreds and hundreds of people who saw the risen Lord. Once, there were more than 500 people who saw him at the same time.
Paul said this is public knowledge. Most of them are still alive and live in this town. You can go and talk to them. A lot of them are in our churches. There were hundreds of people who were eyewitnesses to the resurrection. There is more than enough evidence that the resurrection happened to satisfy a thinking person. Jesus rose from the dead.
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There are so many reasons to believe the resurrection actually happened – but the last reason I will give you today is this. Except for John, all the disciples were executed because of their belief in the resurrection. If you formulate a story – then if you are threatened with death because of that story – you would say – “you got me, it didn’t happen.” But when you have 10 men separately dying because of their belief in the resurrection – you know that they believed that Jesus rose from the dead.
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However, resurrection not only has a way of satisfying the mind, but it also satisfies the heart.
1 Peter 1:3 (NIV)
3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,
This morning, we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus. But in a very real way, for those of us who have become Christians, we celebrate our resurrection. We have been given a new life. We have been raised with Christ.
Ephesians 2:4–5 (NIV)
4 But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5 made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.
The Bible says that we were dead. Spiritually dead. We were disconnected from God and the spiritual life. The Bible says that the wages of sin is death. How did we die spiritually? We sinned. Sin poisons our hearts; it kills our spirit; it separates us from the author of life. The wages of sin is death.
On Friday, we remembered how Jesus conquered sin and death through the power of the cross. He took our sin upon himself. The poison that was killing us was taken by him. So, the thing that was killing us was dealt with.
But that is only half the story. The other half of the story is that God loved us deeply. He is rich in mercy. He saw our spiritual state. It grieved him that we were separated from him. It grieved him that we were dead in our transgressions and sin. So, he said that now that sin has been dealt with, I can do something else.
Ephesians 2:5 -Says he made us alive with Christ. That is why we celebrate not only the resurrection of Jesus from the dead on Easter Sunday but also our own resurrection.
For those who have put their faith in Christ, for those who have trusted him to deal with their sin, for those who have received Christ into their life -they have been “made alive with Christ.”
Let me map out what that means. You were disconnected from God by death because of sin. But now you have been connected to God and made alive by Christ.
The Bible says 2 Corinthians 5:17 (NIV)
17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!
When you receive Jesus and your life, God puts his Holy Spirit in you. Your spirit is made alive because of his Spirit. At the core of who you are, you are alive; you are a new creation; God’s spirit is in you; You have entered into a relationship with a loving God who wants you to know who he is. His heart towards you is good.
So, at the core of who you are you are this new creation. You are in God, and God is in you. But surrounding this new creation is what we would call our souls. Our spirit and our soul are housed in our body. At the core of who you are, if you have put your faith in Jesus, you have been made alive with Christ.
But our souls – our minds, our wills, and our emotions– often have patterns that thwart us from experiencing the life that God wants for us. We think in ways that are destructive. We choose things that are destructive. It leads us to emotions that are unhelpful. God understands this, but he does not want to leave us like this.
So by the guidance of his spirit and the power of his word and our choosing to follow what he says, the life that is in our spirit seeps into our minds, our wills and our emotions, and we get to experience real life.
The fruit of this happening is Galatians 5:22–23 (NIV)
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control.
When God makes you alive by his spirit and his spirit starts to seep into every part of your life, there comes a peace that passes all understanding. There comes a joy that is unexplainable and full of glory. There comes a love that is both deep and wide. All of this happened because of the resurrection. All of this happens because you have been resurrected and made alive with Christ.
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That is why I tell you that the resurrection satisfies both the mind and the heart. If You investigate the resurrection, you will find that it makes sense to believe in it. It satisfies the rational part of us. But the resurrection was more than just an event in history. It speaks into our hearts right now. For if you have received God’s gift by faith, you have been made alive with Christ. He was resurrected physically. You were made alive spiritually. You are invited into this journey of joy and grace.
If you have never received Jesus into your life, I would encourage you to do that today. You can do that by simply praying.
Lord Jesus, come into my life and forgive me of my sin. Put your Holy Spirit in me and make me alive. Lord, let your work in my spirit break through to all of me. Change my whole life. Help me to walk in peace and joy and love by your power. Thank you for loving me.
A prayer like that, prayed in faith, brings the power of the resurrection to bear on our lives.
Let’s pray.
- Tim Keller thinking helped with the first couple of reasons for the resurrection given here.