Easter 2026 | Luke 24:1-12 | Certain.

Preacher: Scott Hollingshead

Text: Luke 24:1-12

Luke 1:14: Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also, having followed things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught.

Big Idea: Four attestations to the resurrection - that you might believe in the risen Jesus certainly and savingly.

Attestation #1: The empty tomb (vv. 1-3)
Attestation #2: The divine testimony (vv. 4-7)
Attestation #3: The witnessing women (vv. 8-10)
Attestation #4: The unbelieving disciples (vv. 11-12)

Transcript

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Amen, church. Let's pray. Father, what a gift it is to celebrate Resurrection Sunday. Your word in Revelation 21, verse 5 says, Behold, you are making all things new. We have every confidence in the world that you are because you started that work raising your son from the dead. It is in Jesus Christ that we can have life. It is in Jesus Christ that we, those who are in him by faith, have life. And he is offered today through the proclamation of your good news to those who do not yet know Jesus. And Father, we pray that your spirit would be at work to bring conviction of sin and to bring the light of the glory of God, your glory, God, found in the person of Jesus Christ for those who do not know him, that they would come to know him and to rest in him and to be born again and to enjoy the new life as part of the inbreaking of the future in the very present. We trust you for this work. In Jesus' name. And all God's people said. Amen. Church, you can be seated. Happy Easter church. On behalf of our church, my name is Scott. I'm the lead pastor. I just want to say welcome. We are so glad that you are here. And if you are a first-time visitor, you are our guests. We are so happy to have you. And if you want, we've got a gift for you on the way out. If you hit our first-time visitor desk that's on the left side of the lobby, we would love to just say hi to you, welcome you, encourage you, give you some information about our church. That would be fantastic. And those who call Doxa Home, as always, um, we respond, guys, to uh the Lord's gracious provision in our lives through our own giving. And so you can still do that online on the app. There's boxes on the sides of the worship center as normal that we might continue to see the gospel go forth in power, not only in our backyard, but around the world. And uh another kind of cool thing about today that's sort of set apart is there is a very cool photo booth out there. Did you guys see that? Okay. We would invite you to take those pictures. But here's what I know it gets a little testy out there, alright? Get a little contentious. So let's just be reminded of the fact that Jesus got out of the grave today. Okay? Don't be putting anybody in a grave in the line. Wait your turn. Hopefully, nobody will cut unless it's the pastor and everything will be a okay. I'm kidding. Don't let pastors cut. Don't let them do it. If you have a copy of God's word, why don't you grab it and go to Luke chapter 24? That's where you're gonna need to be. Luke chapter 24, as we it just worked out perfectly, didn't it, Church? As we would come to the resurrection text on Resurrection Sunday. And I don't think there's a better word to give to what Luke is going to tell us than the title of the message for Easter Sunday. And that is certain. Certain. Luke wants you to be certain about the greatest event in the history of the world. Do you believe that? Luke wants you to be certain about why Jesus Christ came, and that is that he might die for sinners and rise for their salvation, that Jesus Christ might conquer death for us. That Jesus by his death might deal the final death blow to death itself. We are to think about the cross as the payment for sin. Then the way to understand the resurrection is that the resurrection is proof that the check cleared, right? It is the amen, if you will, of the Father to the finished work of his Son Jesus Christ. And it is not an exaggeration to say that if there is no resurrection, then we are hopelessly futile in our faith. That Christianity is dead, nobody should be here. This is all a wreck. If Christianity were the game Jenga, and you pull the resurrection piece out, what happens? The entire thing crumbles to the ground. This is how important the resurrection is. Now, all four gospel writers deal with the resurrection. Not to mention Jewish historians and Roman historians, each with their own differentiation in detail, which by the way goes all the more to validate the claim that Jesus Christ rose from the dead. They weren't drawing it all from the same source. Today we get to see the perspective of one who compiled all of the details together. Our friend Luke, for many of you who have been with us, he's our beloved historian, he's our beloved physician, he's our beloved journalist, right? Now, as I get into Luke 24, can I just remind you what happened years ago when we started Luke? What Luke was setting out to do? Let me read you. I'm gonna put them on the screen. Here's Luke 1, 1 to 4. So we think about taking in the reality of the resurrection. Here's what he started his account saying. Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us. Just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus. Listen, that you may have what? Certainty concerning the things you have been taught. And so it's no surprise then that when we get to the actual account of the resurrection, the way Luke outlines it for us is he provides us four levels of proof about the resurrection. He wants you to have certainty, so he gives you four attestations about the resurrection of Jesus. And so we're going to play off of this as our big idea and enter right into our text this morning. Four proofs. Four attestations of the resurrection that you might believe in the risen Jesus certainly and savingly. Cool part about these attestations is they cover the spectrum. You get physical evidence of the resurrection. You get spiritual evidence of the resurrection. You get eyewitness evidence of the resurrection. You get experiential witness of the resurrection. He is spanning across the whole spectrum of evidences. That you might believe. This is the thing. You might believe, not just certainly, but you might believe in Jesus Christ savingly. Four attestations to the resurrection. Number one, the empty tomb. The empty tomb. We pick it up in verse one. It says this, but on the first day of the week at early dawn, they went to the tomb taking the spices they had prepared. Why? Because they thought what? That he was dead. You don't take spices to someone who's alive. You're not having to alleviate the stench of anyone if they're not dead. So when all those like scholars and critics talk about, oh, there was this big plan to make Jesus look like he raised from the dead, they're not even expecting him to be alive. They're going there to put spices on the body. A rotten corpse to honor the person and to alleviate the stench. I just, that's just free. That's not even part of the evidence. But I think it's a piece of the evidence, though, isn't it? It's not part of my outline, but it's certainly part of the evidence. And it says, and they found the stone rolled away from the tomb. But when they went in, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. Evidence number one, the empty tomb. On Friday, Jesus' body was in that tomb. On Sunday, he's not there. That's the evidence. Now let me just be super clear about this. All four gospel accounts omit one thing, the actual resurrection. Okay, we understand why though, right? Because no one was in that tomb to see it happen. Now that it happened is overwhelmingly clear. Let's kick it back a notch and let's just like take it from what is clear even to modern man today, even to the skeptic and the naturalist and the humanist and the atheist. Almost all people across the board believe Jesus Christ lived. Period. It's not even debated anymore with good scholarship. Almost all people across the board believe that Jesus was crucified on a cross. That's attested to by a number of early independent sources, which again heightens the probability that these things are indeed true. And there is overwhelming evidence that Jesus was buried in a rich man's tomb. And not just any rich man's tomb, but the rich man's tomb, the man Joseph of Eramathea. Now, why do we believe that? Well, first of all, it's really important if that is indeed a fact, because you don't put anyone in a tomb unless they're really dead, number one. But number two, there's something that scholars call the principle of falsifiability. All right? So if I wanted to, let me just put it like this, um, convince you guys that, hey, I hit a hole in one. Well, it's kind of hard to prove, right? If you just say that, there's not a ton of information that you can falsify. It's kind of my word against yours. But if I say to you, hey, I hit a hole in one in a foursome with Tiger Woods. And I did that at Augusta National. Well, now I've added a bunch of components that make what I'm saying highly falsifiable, right? If you wanted to check what I was saying, you could go back. I bet they have cameras on every hole. You wanted to talk to Tiger Woods, I bet you could get an account. He's not been in a great state as of late, but I bet you could still get an account. See, the whole point is if you were trying to falsify something, you wouldn't say he was buried in the tomb of a man named Joseph of Arimathea, who everyone knew at the time, who, by the way, was a respected member of the Sanhedrin, well known by a lot of people, it would be so easy to falsify. You're like, wait a minute, I I got a buddy on the Sanhedrin. That's not how that went down. Joseph of Arimathea didn't take him off the cross, he didn't put him in his tomb. That's not how any of that went down. But here's the thing it did go down that way. Nobody contradicted that. Because it was in fact exactly what happened. And it's overwhelmingly mentioned. It's mentioned in all four Gospels. Now, this is the first attestation, the empty tomb. Now, it probably helps just to say, for the sake of what the alternatives are, that among the best alternatives to explain the empty tomb is that people will try to go off of this idea of grave theft, grave robbery. Someone went in there and stole the body. There's so many issues to that, though. The problem is, there was kind of anticipation that was going to take place, right? And so you actually have the chief priests and the Pharisees, they gather on Saturday of all days, on the Sabbath, to make sure that Pontius Pilate will put his best soldiers in front of the tomb, that they would actually seal it with a Roman cord that would be attached by clay on one side of the rock to the other. And by the way, when I say rock or stone, we're talking about a 2,000 to 4,000 pound stone. You'd have to get past the guards, remove the cord, move the stone. Even to get to a grave theft. But here's the problem if that's one of the best alternative explanations, the grave theft only explains the empty tomb. It does not explain the additional arguments you would need to understand the supernatural elements or the seeing of Jesus that take place. And for that, here's our second attestation. The physical attestation is the empty tomb, but now he gives a spiritual attestation. We get the divine testimony. See, loved ones, if you're gonna go the grave robbery route, grave robbery only gets you so far. It doesn't explain the angels, it doesn't explain many people seeing Jesus bodily. I mean, when you look at the account of the angels, you got women seeing the angels, you get the Roman guards seeing the angels. See, what happens is if you're gonna have an alternative explanation to the resurrection, you need grave theft, and you need to add another argument, which would be the argument of hallucination. This is the best we got outside of the resurrection, all right? Hallucination. Can you believe that? That's what that's the best we got. Now here's the problem with hallucination. Hallucinations are personal, private experiences in one's own mind. The likeliness of all kinds of people having the exact same hallucination is virtually impossible. It's not even how it works. But you got big scholars who will put themselves forward as Bible guys and they're gonna say, no, this was just a grief-induced hallucination, a whole bunch of people having a grief-induced hallucination. Here's the thing, they would have had to have many grief-induced hallucinations, not just one, not just of one kind, multiple. Now, I recognize and I get it. This is especially this point, the supernatural stuff is the most challenging. If you're coming in and you're not a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, this is the most challenging to wrap your mind around. What are you talking about? You're gonna read about angels in a second. And of course, the argument's gonna be well, humans have the ability to make things up, and that's absolutely true. We have the ability to make things up. There are all kinds of things out there that turn into legends, aren't there? We got things like the Lochness Monster, right? We got things in multiple countries about white lady sightings as she's looking for her lost child in parks, and there's, you know, monuments to this kind of thing. And so you go, well, isn't the resurrection just like that? Yeah, but there's so many differences to the resurrection. Now, when you got hoaxes and wishful thinking and this kind of stuff, yeah, there's alleged sightings, but it's not like the resurrection when altogether hundreds of people witness the Lord Jesus all at one time. Many of these hoaxes, many of these legends get developed over centuries. The reality is the proof or the proclamation of the resurrection was in within months. People were talking about it. Within days, people were witnessing the Lord Jesus. And the reality is, the other thing that happens that I think is overwhelmingly clear about the resurrection is that people aren't usually willing to die for the truth of the white lady in the park story. Right? You're probably not willing to die that you saw the Lochness monster when you went to Scotland. But the disciples were willing to die for the belief in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Chuck Colson was a special counsel to Richard Nixon, the president, and he one time said it like this: he said, Quote, I know the resurrection is a fact. And he says, You know what? Watergate proved it to me. He goes, How? Because twelve men testified that they had seen Jesus raised from the dead, then they proclaimed that truth for 40 years, never once denying it. Everyone was beaten and stoned and put in prison. They wouldn't have endured that if it weren't true. Watergate embroiled 12 of the most powerful men in the world, and they couldn't keep a lie for three weeks. You're telling me twelve apostles could keep a lie for 40 years? Absolutely impossible. Now I say all that as we enter into the divine testimony. We find it in verse 4. While they were perplexed about this, that is, that the body wasn't in the tomb of the Lord Jesus. Behold, two men. That number is important, loved ones. That is the number of legitimacy to a testimony, right? The biblical qualification for legitimacy is two or more witnesses. Two stood by in dazzling apparel. And as they were frightened and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, Why do you seek the living one among the dead? And that's really what it is. The living one. He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you while he was still in Galilee that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified and on the third day rise. And so, what are we getting here? You got these angels that show up, they're testifying, but they're not adding anything new that the Bible hasn't already said to us, right? This isn't new revelation. This is repetitive revelation of what? What the Lord Jesus Christ already said multiple times, word for word. This is a testimony from the legitimacy of God's word. Now, I granted, if you're not a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ and you're like, oh, so so wait a minute. The second testimony, you're basically saying, uh, believe in the resurrection for the Bible tells me so. Uh-huh. And you know what? God would like to take this time to apologize to absolutely nobody. In fact, one of the things that we find out about the resurrection later on, as people are struggling through understanding, is Jesus says it's not an evidence issue. Later in Luke, he says it's a heart issue. You're not even going to be swayed by the evidence, you're going to be swayed by the Holy Spirit, and you're going to be swayed by the power of the Word of God, which is a testimony, an undeniable, overwhelming testimony to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. There are so many prophecies and predictions. If you were to just be a faithful scholar of the book, you would be overwhelmed if you were an honest one. Hundreds upon hundreds of things fulfilled to the T, and then even when Jesus shows up in human flesh, he's calling his own shot and then he swishes it. Not to mention the fact. This one's just too. It's for gullible people. Listen, the reason why this testimony is supernatural is because Easter morning was a supernatural morning. Easter morning was a glimpse into something we don't know of before that. It's a first fruits of the future. It's as if on that morning we got a first installment of heaven. Easter morning, when Jesus rose from the dead, that was the beginning of the new creation. We were seeing something we'd never seen before. We're seeing something that's true of what's to come breaking into the very present. We were seeing in history the emergence of the life of the world to come in the first fruits of the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. And so, yes, our evidence is the Bible, when taken seriously, will overwhelmingly astound you with the proof, the prophecies, and the account of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. For the resurrection is not just proof of the gospel, it is part of the gospel. The death on that day gave way to life. And you, by faith in him, can have the same reality true of you. Physical testimony, spiritual testimony, third attestation, the witnessing women. The witnessing women. Now, this could be a little bit of a sensitive one, but I think it's a helpful one, alright? Only because of the day. This was written in. The witnessing women. Look at verse 8. And they remembered his words, right? What words? Well, words he just said. How he told you while he was still in Galilee that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified and on the third day rise. They remembered. Ah, it hit him. And returning from the tomb, they told all these things to the eleven. Now it was Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary, the mother of James, and the other women with them who told these things to the apostles. Alright, so here it is. Luke's giving us another fact to testify to the truth of the risen Jesus. All four Gospels testify to this very thing, and it's this multiple women were first eyewitnesses. Now, why is that so significant? Because if you wanted to make up the story and make it seem like Jesus had rose from the dead, you don't make women your first eyewitnesses. Period. No offense, women. Okay? Different day. In that day, in that context, sorry, ladies, your testimony, not admissible in a court of law. Not seriously entertained. You don't add that to a story you want everyone really badly to believe, unless what? It's what happened. It's what happened. It's one of the profound, simple realities. And here's the thing: we've been learning about, if you've been with us, the women had come from Galilee. You know how Luke keeps talking about them as the women from Galilee? Well, think about these women from Galilee. They've actually been there and seen, they saw his miracles. They saw his death when all the other apostles had run away. They were at the burial site on Friday. And in fact, one of the things that the parallel gospel accounts tells us is that on the way back to tell this news to the dudes, they actually see Jesus. They're one of the first to see the risen, resurrected Jesus. These are the first witnesses. I can't even imagine being in the home, being one of the guys when they come in, they're like, You won't believe this, I can't believe it! He was not there, and I saw something, but then I saw him and he looked like the gardener. I called him the gardener, it was bizarre, I just don't know what to do. And it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. One at a time, Joanna, go, right? It's like this is overwhelming. And one of the things, again, I love about the Bible is that the Bible's not going, yeah, and then there's some people that went and told the news. It was like, no, here it is by name. In fact, the Bible is really well known for this, unapologetically gives over 16 eyewitnesses by name of the resurrection of Jesus Christ while they were alive. So you say, like a journalist like Luke could actually investigate all this stuff. Is that really true? They're all there. Not just that, you got the names, right? Here's some of the 16: Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary, the mother of James. List goes on. But then on top of that, you know, in 1 Corinthians 15, where we get the first importance elements of the gospel that Jesus Christ died for your sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and on the third day he rose in accordance with the scriptures. Do you understand that that was circulating in Jerusalem by the mid-30s? There's really good evidence for that. Okay, so we're talking about everyone being alive and this message, which by the way, the disciples go back and preach in Jerusalem, in the place of the crime. You don't do that. Because that's where he really died. You don't go back to the place he really died and make the testimony that Jesus Christ is alive again unless it was overwhelmingly clear that he was. I mean, all you had to do was produce the body, right? Do you know how fast it would have ended if they had just produced the body? But it never happened. It actually would be easier to do now with AI and stuff, right? Just throw it out on social media. Look at what happened. It's amazing. And when you can't even tell anymore anyway, when you're on social media, you're like, is this true or not? You don't have any of that issue then. It's overwhelmingly clear. But then, just to put the final nail in the coffin, here's the fourth attestation. The final nail in the coffin is the unbelieving disciples. Yeah. You know how you're always told, oh, you Christians are so gullible, and the first people that heard about the resurrection, man, they're so gullible, and you get some sort of chronological snobbery, right? Like, oh, we're so smart and elevated, and they didn't know about evolution, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And oh man, this guy's so dumb and all that stuff. Have you even read the Bible? These guys didn't believe one word of the stuff that the women were saying. That's an excellent testimony to what happened. Listen, they're coming. All right, all right, all right. Verse 11. But these words seemed to them an idle tale. L-O-L. Meaning nonsense. There wasn't a disciple in that upper room that was believing any of this. They thought it was all made up. They're usually depicted as gullible. They're like, I don't buy this for a second. One scholar said it like this: the unbelief of the apostles is one of the strongest evidences indirectly that Jesus Christ rose from the dead. If the disciples were at first so backward to believe our Lord's resurrection, and were at last so thoroughly persuaded of its truth that they preached it everywhere, Christ must have risen indeed. The first preachers were men who were convinced in spite of themselves and in spite of determined, obstinate unwillingness to believe. If the apostles at last believed, the resurrection must be true. End quote. What does this prove? It proves that they weren't trying to make it up, they weren't even expecting it, and they didn't even believe it when they heard it. Wasn't their best moment spiritually, was it? You think about it on a faith side, you're like, wait, these are the guys who are supposed to believe this stuff and go like, oh yeah, this was exactly what Jesus said. They're like, I don't buy it at all. But what's this say? Peter rose, and we know the story about Peter, right? It's hilarious. One of the other gospels talks about Peter running to the tomb. He gets beat because he's slow by John, right? He runs to the tomb, he stoops, and he looks in, and he he sees, here's the thing. He sees the linen cloths by themselves, and he went home marveling at what happened. Okay, last little thing. If you're so grave theft, right? Let's go back to that idea. Grave theft, one of the best naturalistic options. If you're stealing a body, go with me here. Are you like nicely unfolding every part and folding it together and leaving it on the side before you get the body? I mean, is that what you're doing? You're stealing a body. No, at best, even if you're tearing through the linen cloths, it's gonna look like someone teepeed that tomb, right? I mean, you're gonna lay it all out everywhere, you're gonna grab this body and you're gonna hit the road. No, no, no. That's not what happened. Those linens were laid there, folded neatly. Because the Lord Jesus rose from the dead. It's different than Lazarus. See, Lazarus came out wearing that stuff. Jesus is like, I'm dead never to die again. All the grave clothes that can be in the tomb. Because I've raised to new life. Now, you might say, all right, fine. It looks like the resurrection may be indeed the best explanation. But let me be very, very clear. That belief is not going to save you. That is you just going, okay, it's the best explanation. I guess I believe in the resurrection. Facts about the resurrection that you believe will not save you. Only faith in Jesus Christ, the risen, reigning Savior, will save you. Only a faith that expresses itself in the way that Paul talks about confessing with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believing in your heart that God raised him from the dead. You don't do anything to earn salvation. You receive it by believing in the one who died for your sins and rose for salvation. Confessing him with your mouth and believing that he rose from the dead in your heart. And you go, well, how do I know? Okay, okay, okay, I've done how do I know that this has taken hold in me? Well, there's evidences. Let me read you 1 Peter 1.8 and see if this resonates with you as you're thinking about your own faith. Here's what it says. Though you have not seen him, you love him. Do you love Jesus? Though you do not now see him, because he's ascended to the right hand where he's ruling. Though you have not, you do not now see him, you believe in him. Listen, and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory. Do you love him? Do you believe in him with a joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory? Because that, friends, is the fruit of those who will obtain the outcome of their faith, which Peter says is the salvation of your souls and the souls of all who would turn from their sins and rest in by faith the risen, ruling Jesus Christ. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for its power. We love the fact that it's just so overwhelmingly clear, God. We thank you that Jesus is alive, that he's seated at your right hand, that he's ever living to make intercession for us. Lord, we love you. We celebrate that. Though we do not see him now, we love him. And though we do not see him now, we believe. And Lord, help us to rejoice even in our singing with a joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory. In Jesus' name. Amen.