Come and See, Then Go and Tell

This Easter message shows how the empty tomb proves Jesus’ victory over sin and death, inviting us to come and see what God has done and then go and tell others the hope that changes everything.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qEwJW3vTyU

Church members and friends can support St. John's By-the-Sea by visiting our website https://www.stjohnsbythesea.com/donate, where a donation can be made by PayPal if you prefer that to mailing your donations to the church.

Come and See, Then Go and Tell!

Good Morning, and Happy Resurrection Day! One wonderful thing about Easter is that it meets us exactly where we are. Not where we pretend to be, not where we wish we were, but where we actually are. Some of us come in joyful. Some come tired from getting up so early. Some come grieving, missing loved ones we lost in the past year. Some come uncertain about all this.

And into all of that, Easter speaks. This morning, I want to take a walk through our Gospel lesson from Matthew 28. Verse 1 tells us,

After the Sabbath, toward the dawn of the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb

Lets notice something important here. They are not going there expecting a miracle. They are NOT going there full of confidence and hope. They are going there because THEY KNOW Jesus is dead. They saw Him die. They saw the tomb Joseph and Nicodemus put him in. As far as they knew, the story of Jesus, this great healing prophet, was finished. That is important for us to hear, because sometimes we tend to think of these first witnesses as somehow different from us, like they were more ready to believe. Absolutely NOT. They were bringing spices to anoint Jesus’ body, to keep it from smelling for a little while longer.

And then everything changes. Verse 2 continues,

And behold, there was a great earthquake, for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. 

The stone is not just rolled away, it is rolled away and the angel sits on it, while the guards flee in terror.

From his perch, the angel declares that death does not get the final word, and the grave does not stay closed. And the angel says to the women,

Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here, for he has risen, as he said!

He is not here. Those four words change everything.

If Jesus were still in that tomb, everything He said would be untrustworthy. His authority, His claim to forgive sins, all of it would fall apart. At best, He would be a tragic teacher. At worst, a false hope. But He is not there. He has risen.

And that means what He said is trustworthy.

It means when He says, Your sins are forgiven, we can trust Him. It means when He says, Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest; He is not offering empty comfort. He was telling the truth.

The resurrection is not presented in Scripture as a vague spiritual idea. It is presented as a real, historical event, predicted by prophets in the Old Testament, and witnessed by real people in real history.

We have a tomb guarded and sealed by Roman soldiers, with a massive stone in front of it. Now it’s empty, and the guards are witnesses.

You have four women as the first to witness the Resurrection. At that time, that’s not how you would invent a story if you were trying to make it convincing. Women weren’t allowed to testify, and weren’t considered reliable witnesses by the culture, but they sure were considered reliable by God. As I mentioned Friday, you probably wouldn’t name them all Mary either if you were inventing it.

You have the disciples, who go from hiding in terror to boldly proclaiming the resurrection, even at the cost of their lives.

And you have Paul’s words, when he wrote 1 Corinthians around 20 years later, saying, “He appeared to more than five hundred people at one time, most of whom are still alive.” In other words, you can go ask them if you have questions. That’s not blind faith. That’s a faith grounded in something that happened.

But even with all that evidence, the resurrection is not just something to analyze. It is something to receive and believe. Because Easter is not just about what happened to Jesus. It is about what that means for you. The angel says in verses 6 and 7, Come, see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples that he has risen from the dead. Come and See, and then Go and Tell.

First, Come and See. Look at what God has done. Look at the empty tomb. Look at the victory over sin and death.

On Good Friday, Jesus took your sin, your guilt, your failure, everything that separates you from God. All of that is gone and finished. Paid in full.

But death still held us anyway. Now instead of being sinful people doomed to die, we were forgiven people doomed to die. That’s what Easter means.

On Easter, God declares that the penalty for sin is gone as well. Since sin is paid in full, death can’t hold on us. Paul says it this way in Romans 4 He was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification. Raised for our justification means that in the resurrection, God is declaring you right with Him, not because of what you have done, but because what Jesus did is fully accepted by the Father. Death is Dead and it has no more hold on us.

That’s not a grace that says, I’ll forgive you this time. It is grace that says, you are mine. Fully forgiven. Fully loved. Fully restored.

Next, the Angel says after you see, Then Go and Tell.

The women leave the tomb, Matthew tells us, “With fear and great joy.”

That’s an honest picture of what Easter does to a person. There is awe, there is wonder, there is a holy fear. And there is real joy, not because life suddenly becomes easy, but because death is no longer the end. Great Commission.

As they go, they meet Jesus. “Greetings,” He says. It almost sounds too easy. After everything that happened, after the cross, after the resurrection, He meets them with “Greetings,” as if, now that He’s alive, He’s just an everyday part of their lives.

Jesus is not distant. He is not unreachable. He is alive. Easter means that Jesus is not just a figure in the past. He’s alive now. He meets you in your life, in your struggles, in your doubts, in your questions, as simply as saying “Greetings.”

If you came here today carrying guilt, Easter speaks to that. Your sin is not stronger than His forgiveness. If you walked in here carrying grief, Easter speaks to that. Death does not get the final word. Death is Dead!

And when all that is feels overwhelming, Good News! Christianity doesn’t stand or fall on whether you feel hopeful. It stands or falls on whether that tomb is empty. Which means your hope is not based on your emotions. It is based on something solid, something outside of you, something God has done. That is why Easter can hold up, even in the hardest moments.

Because there will be days when joy feels distant. There will be days when life feels more like Good Friday than Easter Sunday.

But even then, the truth does not change. So Come and See. He is not here. He has risen. And Go and Tell, because He lives, you will live also. Amen.