Redeemer Lutheran Church
1084 W. Bullard Ave.
Fresno, CA   93711
Phone: (559) 439-8500
Fax: (559) 439-8585
office@redeemerfresno.com

The Reverend Clarence Eisberg
Phone: (209) 725-9082
Cell:  (209) 631-3108
pastor@redeemerfresno.com

Worship ~ 8:30 a.m. & 10:00 a.m.
Family Ministries ~ 10:00 a.m.
Holy Communion ~ 2nd & 4th Sundays
Connecting People to Jesus
and to One Another!
www.lcms.org









The Reverend
Clarence Eisberg

April 4, 2010

“An Empty Grave ? Look Inside !"
Easter Sunday
Text: John 20:1-2

“An Empty Grave?  Look Inside!”

He is Risen!  He is risen, indeed!

In the cold gray of the early morning three women were winding their way through the
narrow and dark streets of Jerusalem.  Their feel plodded slowly over the stone
pavement. On Friday they had seen their hope in Jesus of Nazareth crushed.  They
witnessed his death by Roman crucifixion.  

The three crosses still stood on the hill outside the city walls.  Their black outline, stark, in
the pre dawn light.  A triple crucifixion was not an unusual thing.   After the slave leader
Spartacus was defeated, 6,000 of his followers were crucified.  In 4 B.C. the Jewish nation
had seen the Roman magistrate, Quintillus Varus, crucify 2,000 of their own countrymen
for their involvement in a revolt against the empire.  

The Roman centurion, his squad of soldiers, had placed the three crosses in hollowed out
holes of stone.  Everyone who was there remembered the earthquake, and the darkness
which accompanied the crucifixion.  It was obvious that many powerful people had wanted
the Man in the middle out of the way.  The Man in the middle of the two thieves was
exceptional.  Even the charges against him were nailed to the cross above his head.  “He
was the King of the Jews” the sign said.

Normal rules of law had been set aside. In one early morning trial he had been accused of
blasphemy; at another he was condemned for wanting to over throw the government. By
sunset on Friday all three men were dead.  The end of the two common criminals had
been hastened when the execution squad broke their legs.  No help had to be given to
the Man in the middle. The Man in the middle died around 3 o’clock in the afternoon.  Still,
the squad took no chances.  One of them plunged his spear into the Man’s heart.  The
act caused no great damage to the heart which had already stopped beating.  The Man
was dead.  

We don’t know what happened to the bodies of the two thieves.  We do know what
happened to the corpse of the Man in the Middle.  His body was claimed by a friend and
placed in a borrowed grave near the site of the crucifixion.  A great stone was rolled in
front of the entrance.  The body was shut away.  The Man’s enemies had the tomb sealed
and guarded by soldiers.  They wanted no rumors of a resurrection.   

Before dawn on the third morning, after Sabbath restrictions were lifted, the women
approached the garden. Dew was heavy on the grass.  In their hands they carried spices.
It was their last measure of devotion. They wanted to anoint the body of Jesus.

Unknown to the women, the garden where the tomb of Jesus was situated was in great
commotion.  The ground shook. The guards were startled in the darkness of the morning
by a vision of angels descending to the tomb and rolling away the stone.  They fled in
terror.  

When the women arrived at the tomb, all was quiet.  The air was crisp, with the freshness
of spring.  The guards were gone  The seal on the stone was broken.  The stone had
been rolled away.  They entered the tomb and their fears were confirmed.  The body of
Jesus was gone!  All that was left was the linen shroud, lying on the bed of stone.  The
grave was empty.

For Mary Magdalene it could only mean one thing….Someone had stolen the body of
Jesus.  Without waiting for further evidence she ran back to the disciples to tell them of
the tragic news.  

When Peter and John heard the news they ran to the tomb.  Upon arriving, Peter quickly
entered the tomb and saw the evidence.  Yes, the tomb was empty, the body gone.  All
that remained were the grave clothes, the linen shroud and burial cloth that had been
around Jesus’ head was neatly folded in a place by itself.  

Mary stood outside the empty tomb, where Jesus’ body had been placed.  “As she wept,
she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white seated where Jesus’ body
had been…..they asked, “Why are you crying?”  He is not here!  He has risen!

Philip Yancy wrote: “Christianity has two great symbols to offer the world, a cross and an
empty tomb.  An empty tomb without a cross would miss the central message of the
gospel…”

Other religions have values for behavior.  They have their leaders and religious
teachers.  There is one big difference.  The graves of their religious founders are still
occupied.  Christianity has an empty grave because Jesus lives.   He is risen!

Only Christianity offers a God who became man, suffered death on a cross and then rose
from death.  Rev. John Stott in his book: “The Cross of Christ” writes: “We can not
proclaim the cross without the resurrection nor the resurrection without the cross.”

The apostle Paul proclaimed: “Christ died for our sins …. Was buried… was raised from
the dead…. And appeared too many.  

Everyone knew the grave no longer held the body of Jesus.  The women knew.  The
disciples knew.  The military guards knew.  The Jewish authorities knew.  As a matter of
historical record, the military guards reported everything that had happened to the chief
priest, the Jewish authorities knew the story.  They knew an angel had appeared at the
tomb.  They knew the grave was empty and that the body of Jesus had been resurrected.

They devised a plan.  They made up a story.  The paid the soldiers a large sum of
money.  They promised the soldiers protection if they would spread the false report that
during the night the disciples had come and stolen the body of Jesus.  This story has
been widely circulated to this very day. (Matthew)

Years have passed since that cold, gray morn in Jerusalem.  For many centuries
generations of men and women have pondered the abundant historical evidence that
Jesus rose from the grave.  They have re examined the “Shroud of Turin”.  They have
examined the eye witness accounts.  They have traced the evidence of common
fishermen willing to die rather than renounce their faith in Jesus.   

Go back and read the record yourself. That’s what attorney and journalist Lee Strobel did.
For a time, Strobel says he was too intellectual to accept the resurrection of Jesus as
established fact. In his book God’s Outrageous Claims he writes: “I used to consider the
Resurrection to be a laughable fairy tale. After all, Yale Law School had trained me to be
coldly rational, and my years of sniffing for news at the Chicago Tribune had only
toughened my naturally cynical personality. But intrigued by changes in my wife after she
became a Christian, I spent nearly two years systematically using my journalistic and legal
experience to study the evidence for the Resurrection and the credibility of Jesus’ claims
to being God. I emerged totally convinced and gave my life to Christ . . .” (4)

I would challenge you, if you have any doubts at all about the historical record of the
resurrection, to go back and read the story for yourself. The story does not read as
something that was made up. It’s too chaotic. Notice the initial reaction of the disciples to
the resurrection they did not believe it themselves. Mark tells us that when Mary
Magdalene and the other women told the eleven disciples that they had seen the risen
Lord, even “they did not believe it” (16:11). Luke is more blunt: “[The disciples] did not
believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense” (Luke 24:11).
Even after the risen Christ had made himself known to many witnesses, Thomas, one of
Christ’s most sincere disciples, would not believe that it could be so. He had to see for
himself (John 20:24-25). Even when Christ made his final appearance to his disciples on
the mountain where Christ gave them the great commission, Matthew adds these

incredible words, “Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus
had told them to go. When they saw him, they worshiped him; BUT SOME DOUBTED” (28:
16-17). They were in Christ’s presence “but [still] some doubted.”
This is not propaganda. It is not a story fabricated to deceive. No one tried to iron out all
of the wrinkles in order to convince us. This is the jumbled testimony of actual witnesses
to the most amazing event in history. These witnesses to Christ’s resurrection recorded
their testimony with all the doubts of their friends and the accusations of their enemies left
intact. This is the first reason I believe in the resurrection: those who experienced his
resurrection are such credible witnesses.

Jesus came into the world so that by his perfect life, his blood shed on the cross would
destroy the devil who holds people in the fear of death… his resurrection frees the hearts
that were held in slavery by their fear of death. (Hebrews 2:14)
The universal cause of death is sin.  We are not here today to remember the death of a
great teacher, a great prophet whose name was Jesus.  We are here today because he
kept his appointment with death, but was raised to life with a glorified body, with flesh and
bone.  His grave was empty on that first Easter, not because some disciples had stolen
the body, but because God’s Spirit raised him to life.

Earlier that morning, inside the tomb, before the women arrived, there was an explosion of
light.  The darkness was shattered and the tomb was filled with light.  The body of Jesus
was quickened by the Spirit of God.  Energized by the Spirit of God the Father, God the
son cast off the restrictions of death.  Instantaneously he possessed a resurrected body.
The stone was rolled aside…. Not to let Jesus out, but to let the disciples and us inside.

The resurrection of Jesus means that death is no longer our ultimate end.  Death has
been swallowed up by God’s victory.  “Our citizenship is in heaven and we eagerly await
our savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ.” When he returns with the trumpet call of
God and the voice of the archangel… then all who have died believing in Jesus will be
raised to life and we will be with the Lord forever.

The grave of Jesus is empty because he lives.  He rose from the grave.  He is seated at
the right hand of God.  He has opened the gates of heaven to all who believe.