I say as we end this week of Easter readings that I do not know how much of what I have presented this week is what the Lord preached that day on His walk from Jerusalem to Emmaus. But it was a long trip. It would have taken several hours. And I suppose, therefore, that Jesus preached not only what
In the eighth chapter of Acts, we have another suggestive text. Here Philip has been sent to the Ethiopian eunuch. When Philip finds him, he is reading from a manuscript he acquired in Jerusalem. It turns out that it is Isaiah, and the portion from which he is reading is Isaiah 53: “He was led like
In the fourth chapter of Acts we have another of Peter’s sermons. Here he has been called before the Sanhedrin (the highest council of the ancient Jews), and he is defending himself and his teaching. We have a relatively short record of this sermon in verses 8-12, but in the midst of it we have anot
Today we look at some of the texts Jesus must have used in His sermon, which we discussed yesterday. An obvious place to begin is with Peter's speech at Pentecost found in Acts 2. Peter used three texts in that message. The first was about Pentecost itself. It was from Joel—the prophecy that in the
One of the great accounts of the appearances of the Lord Jesus Christ to His disciples following the resurrection is His appearance to the two Emmaus disciples recorded in Luke 24. It is an interesting story for a number of reasons, and one is that Jesus preached a sermon on that occasion. It is ref
Mary said to the one whom she supposed was the gardener, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.”Do you understand what she was offering? She was a woman, and she was offering to carry away the body of a man. Now that’s hard for a man to do, let alone
Now when the women arrived at the tomb with their spices, it suited their purpose to have the stone removed, but it wasn't what they were expecting. They were confused and asked each other what they should do. And they decided that Peter and John should be told. Either they appointed Mary to the tas
We don't know a whole lot about Mary Magdalene. We're told in Luke 8 that Jesus had done a mighty work of grace in her life by casting out seven demons. We know that she was one of the women who ministered to Jesus and the disciples. But that's about all we know until we come to the activities durin
Not only did faith die in Jesus’ disciples, but I want you to notice that hope died also. Their faith was wrapped up in Him but their hope was no less wrapped up in Him. It’s true it was a rather limited hope. It was fashioned according to their own expectations of the future. They were first- centu
When Jesus died, the faith of His disciples died. There was much about Jesus that they didn't understand, but what they did understand, they believed and they followed Him because of this. For the three years they were with Him, He was their life. Where He went, they went. What He said, they heard.
The second lesson from this story is this. The experiences of Peter and John at the tomb also indicate that the body of the Lord was glorified. It was sown a natural body and was raised a spiritual body. And in this body Jesus lives, seated at the right hand of God where He waits in glory, intercedi
At this point Peter arrived and went into the sepulchre. Undoubtedly Peter saw what John had seen, but in addition he was struck by something else. The cloth that had been around the head was not with the other clothes, it was lying in a place by itself (v. 7). And what was more striking, it had ret
At the end of yesterday’s study, we noted how Eastern burials appear to have changed very little over the centuries, providing us with better understanding of the details of Jesus’ own burial.Luke tells us that when Jesus was approaching the village of Nain earlier in His ministry, He met a funeral
Mary meanwhile found the two chief disciples Peter and John, presumably in John's house where the beloved disciple had taken Mary, Jesus' mother. The two disciples immediately started for the tomb, running and leaving Mary far behind. John was the younger man. Consequently, he arrived at the tomb fi
One of the great historical evidences of the resurrection of Jesus Christ is the fact of the empty tomb. But the remarkable and quite startling fact is that when Peter and John arrived at the tomb on the first Easter morning it was not quite empty. That’s right, the tomb on Easter morning was not qu
Or I think of Paul. He had been on the side of Christ’s enemies. He was one who had a vested interest in unbelief. He didn’t want to lose his traditions. He didn’t want to have to change his life. He didn’t want to have to turn his back on all that he had achieved in Judaism. Thus, in his supposed z
But now I want you to look at something else. I want you to turn from thinking about those enemies of Christ, who are exemplified by the soldiers and the priests on that first Easter Sunday, and instead I want you to focus on Christ’s friends, those who learned of the resurrection and who met with J
Here's a case, which like so many others, shows us a man who proposes a theory to explain away the reality of the resurrection. And instead of being rebuffed or forgotten, as Schofield and his book should have been, he is rewarded. It's a case of rewards instead of punishments.Let me give another ex
The soldiers had not left their post, and the tomb was empty. They must have been terrified, wondering what was going to happen to them. After the religious leaders met together, they did not seek to have the soldiers punished. Instead, the guards were told to lie about what had happened.The soldie
Each year at Easter time, when I turn to these stories of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, I find myself wondering what I'm going to find new to preach on. When you've been doing this as many years as I have now, you begin to have the feeling that you have preached just about everything you can, gi
I wonder if you have been confronted by the power of that resurrection. The chief priests and Pharisees tried to secure their ecclesiastical world against Jesus. Saul tried to secure his religious traditions and life. Satan had been trying to secure his evil kingdom. Perhaps you too have been trying
There was another character who got into the act. In fact, he had been leading the battle against the Lord Jesus Christ for centuries. His name is Satan. We see him first in the Garden of Eden, where he tempts Eve to eat the forbidden fruit and thus participates in the ruin of the race. We see him i
So in opposing Jesus the first thing Saul was trying to secure was his Judaism. But there was also a second item that he was desperately trying to secure, namely, himself. Later his situation during this period was described as trying to “kick against the goads” (Acts 26:14), like an animal fighting
Well if the Jewish leaders did not fear the disciples, what did they fear then? I am sure they would not have voiced this openly, but in my judgment what they actually feared was the resurrection. After all, they were not imperceptive, and they had been observing Jesus for the better part of three y
