Joseph's Empty Tomb: Three Crucial Questions, Part 1

Driving home: It's a pastoral effort to show people that ideas have consequences.

Martin explains that New Testament letters are not abstract theological treatises but grew out of specific needs in churches, like 1 Corinthians addressing the denial of bodily resurrection, to show that ideas have consequences.

Now I remind you that the letters of the New Testament are not theological treatises drawn up by apostles who went off into some kind of a monastic life to think out the Christian faith and then to write various letters that are mini-treatises on systematic theology. They are letters, and letters that for the most part grew out of particular needs in the various churches or among individuals to whom the letters are addressed. And this was certainly true at Corinth. Paul has addressed a litany of problems in that church, now concerning, now concerning, now concerning.

0:34 - 1:13 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Martin stresses the necessity of defining 'resurrection' biblically due to the devaluation of biblical terms by skepticism, materialism, and religious liberalism. He argues that…

He illustrates how biblical terms like 'resurrection' have been devalued, so asking someone if they believe in it no longer guarantees a shared understanding of the words' meaning.

Nazareth rose from the dead? What does the Bible mean when it asserts that Jesus of Nazareth rose from the dead? It is absolutely essential that we consider this question because we live in a day when biblical terms and the currency of biblical words have been greatly devalued and debased. There was a time in our own country, which has never been a Christian nation in the truest sense of the word, that if you were to ask any stranger, do you believe in the resurrection

8:23 - 9:04 Read in full sermon

The point: Ask what the Scriptures mean when they tell us Jesus of Nazareth rose from the dead, and be sure to answer it from the Scriptures.

Martin points out the contradiction of academics with Ph.D.s using words to argue that words cannot transfer meaning, highlighting their spiritual blindness despite intellectual brilliance.

Registers on the brain of the one to whom you're speaking, they have put an entirely different meaning upon that word. The combined influences of skepticism and agnostic or atheistic materialism and anti-supernaturalism producing in religious worlds, in the religious world, what is called religious liberalism, neo-orthodoxy. And in recent years, certain theories of language, which attack the very notion that concepts can be passed from one mind to another by means of verbal constructions.

9:41 - 10:20 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: The first strand of the biblical meaning of resurrection is that Jesus died a real physical death on the cross at Golgotha. Martin uses Mark 15 and John 19 to detail his…

He uses the analogy of modern medical technology (brain waves, pulse) to confirm Jesus' death, emphasizing that every tool would have registered him as unequivocally dead.

He was dead. Dead. Dead. Were we to bring to that body on the cross all of the tools of modern technology by which the medical profession establishes that someone is dead, every single one would have registered without, without any question, he is dead.

14:49 - 15:09 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: The first strand of the biblical meaning of resurrection is that Jesus died a real physical death on the cross at Golgotha. Martin uses Mark 15 and John 19 to detail his…

He describes the gruesome practice of breaking legs during crucifixion to hasten death by asphyxiation, noting archaeological evidence, to underscore the reality of Jesus' suffering and death.

By the breaking of the legs, they would make it impossible for the person impaled upon the cross to push himself up to get breath. And that's what they would do. And the descriptions are gruesome. By breaking the legs, they would hang there, unable.

16:23 - 16:38 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: The first strand of the biblical meaning of resurrection is that Jesus died a real physical death on the cross at Golgotha. Martin uses Mark 15 and John 19 to detail his…

Martin suggests the soldier piercing Jesus' side was akin to soldiers on a battlefield poking apparently dead bodies to confirm no life remained, reinforcing the certainty of Jesus' death.

How be it? soldiers with a spear pierced his side, and straightway there came out blood and water. Why did he pierce the side? Well, most likely, you've seen pictures, perhaps seen in a movie, soldiers going through a battlefield where people are lying there apparently dead, and they'll hit them with the butt of the rifle to see if they get any response of life, might jab them with a bayonet. It could well be that that's what this soldier did,

17:32 - 17:59 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: The second strand is that Jesus' dead body was prepared for burial and placed in a newly hewn, unused tomb. Martin explains that while Jesus' spirit went to paradise (Luke 23)…

He asks the listener to imagine the gory details of removing Jesus' body from the cross, emphasizing the physical reality and the love of those who performed this task.

take away the body of Jesus. Now, relive this. He's impaled upon the cross. He has at least a spike in each hand or wrist. A spike through his feet. May have been bound as well, we do not know. But now they come and they're going to remove that corpse from that cross. Now, I don't want to go into the gory details. Use your imagination.

22:06 - 22:36 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: The second strand is that Jesus' dead body was prepared for burial and placed in a newly hewn, unused tomb. Martin explains that while Jesus' spirit went to paradise (Luke 23)…

He describes the new, unused tomb as a 'virgin tomb,' emphasizing that no one else had been laid there, which providentially prevented confusion about whose body was raised.

People had walked by when there was this excavation, this digging into and chipping away of the rock, in order to have a vault, an above ground burial place. And everyone who had ever passed by that way in the last months knew. That this was a new tomb. Nobody came there to bow silently and reflect upon the life of the one who was entombed in that tomb.

24:51 - 25:16 Read in full sermon

Driving home: The same Bible that says Jesus rose from the dead tells us that again and again, when he appeared to people who above all others would wish he had been raised from the dead, they didn't believe it.

He describes the grave clothes lying flat in the tomb, implying Jesus passed through them, and the stone being rolled away for witnesses, not for Jesus, to illustrate the new properties of his resurrection body.

You know the incidents? He appears in a locked room out of nowhere. Some of the details here show that he passed through. The windings that Joseph and Nicodemus had placed around him.

29:02 - 29:17 Read in full sermon

Driving home: The same Bible that says Jesus rose from the dead tells us that again and again, when he appeared to people who above all others would wish he had been raised from the dead, they didn't believe it.

He refutes the idea that the resurrection was a psychological concoction of Jesus' followers, arguing that God had to overcome their deep-seated unbelief.

It was not another body, the same body that had been hanging on a cross, bleeding, bruised and brutalized, washed and prepared for burial, laid in Joseph's tomb. In that body, Jesus of Nazareth rose again from the dead. And you see the whole notion that the idea of the resurrection is the concoction of the followers of Jesus, who after he was crucified, and who knows what happened to him after that, the more they thought about Jesus, and how wonderful he was, and he lived on in their memories, while they came up with the doctrine that he rose from the dead in order to give some concrete expres...

30:11 - 30:56 Read in full sermon

Driving home: And while they still believed for joy. That's one of the most fascinating phrases in all of the Bible. They're so happy they can't yet believe it.

Jesus' invitation to 'handle me and see' is contrasted with the inability to grasp an apparition, which would 'squeeze out through your fingers like water,' proving his physical reality.

Ah yes, but people report having seen apparitions. Ah yes, but do they touch and feel apparitions? Can you put your apparition around you? Can you put your apparition around a wrist and feel flesh and bone as your hand closes around it?

32:39 - 32:56 Read in full sermon

Driving home: And while they still believed for joy. That's one of the most fascinating phrases in all of the Bible. They're so happy they can't yet believe it.

Martin vividly imagines Jesus' expression as he ate broiled fish before his disbelieving-for-joy disciples, highlighting this act as a humorous yet powerful sensory proof of his physical resurrection.

Can you imagine the look on our Lord's face? He says, You got anything here to eat? They're still disbelieving for joy. So in this state, it's him but it's not him.

34:50 - 35:01 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: The third strand is that the very same body of Jesus, reunited with his spirit, was actually raised from death and left the tomb. Martin uses Mark 16, Luke 24, and John 20 to show…

He references John 2:25 (Jesus knew what was in man) to explain how Jesus knew Thomas's specific doubts, demonstrating Jesus' divine knowledge and his willingness to accommodate Thomas's need for proof.

How did he know about Thomas? Well, John told us way early in his Gospel, chapter 2, Jesus needed not that any should testify of man, for he himself knew what was in man. Just like he knows every one of you sitting here, inside out. He knows us totally.

38:31 - 38:48 Read in full sermon

The point: Do not take the Bible's word for resurrection and put your own meaning upon those words; do not have faith in a myth, but in the real, tangible, historical flesh of the incarnate God.

He contrasts faith in a 'noble myth' or 'religious ideas' with faith in the 'real stuff of touchable, tangible, seeable flesh,' emphasizing that his soul desires something more substantial than mere ideas.

It is all this, nothing less than this, and nothing other than this. And we're not at liberty to take the Bible's word for resurrection and for Jesus being raised from the dead and put our own meaning upon those words. I marveled at many men who call themselves biblical scholars, say, yes, I believe in the resurrection, but this is what I believe the resurrection was. Whether or not the body that actually lay on the slab in Joseph's tomb came out of it is irrelevant.

41:26 - 42:04 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: The second observation is that the bodily resurrection is the crowning affirmation in apostolic preaching. Martin samples sermons from the Book of Acts (Peter on Pentecost, Peter…

He explains that the sermons in Acts are not court transcripts but synopses, meaning the actual preaching was much longer and more detailed, yet the summaries still highlight the resurrection's centrality.

through in about two minutes, reading it out loud. Is that all Peter said? No. Even the text says, with many other words he testified and exhorted. So what we have are not

49:10 - 49:20 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: The second observation is that the bodily resurrection is the crowning affirmation in apostolic preaching. Martin samples sermons from the Book of Acts (Peter on Pentecost, Peter…

Peter's testimony that the apostles 'ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead' is highlighted as a precious, tangible proof of Jesus' physical resurrection, including details like seeing him masticate and swallow.

drank with him after he rose from the dead. Isn't that a precious little, we ate and we, he could have said we prayed with him, I'm sure they had some time to pray, or we received further instruction from him, because that's true, Luke records that, he opened their mind to understand the scriptures, but Peter says, you doubt? We ate and drank with him. We saw his teeth masticate the fish. We saw

56:21 - 56:49 Read in full sermon

The point: Be concerned about the historical fact of Jesus' bodily resurrection, because it is a matter of life and death.

Martin refutes the idea that Paul's conversion was a psychological breakdown, asserting it was a real encounter with the risen Christ, who revealed himself in glory, transforming Paul's life.

heart of it. For I delivered unto you first of all that which I received I didn't concoct it it's not the result of my fevered brain I did not have a psychological and emotional breakdown on the road to Emmaus because I was loaded down with the guilt of killing Christians and in the midst of that breakdown I had an apparition. No he was fully sane and in possession of all of his powers on his way to get more Christians and apprehenders when the voice comes out of heaven in a shining light brings him to his face and Christ reveals himself to him and that Christ has given him his gospel I delive...

68:19 - 69:03 Read in full sermon

The point: Confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead to be saved.

He quotes the hymn 'He Lives' and corrects his youthful understanding, stating that he knows Jesus lives not primarily because he lives in his heart, but because credible witnesses saw, touched, and ate with him.

and he said touch me feel me see and as I was preparing for the ministries today the song I used to sing as a young Christian out in the street corner at the top of my lungs he lives he lives Christ Jesus lives today he walks with me and talks with me along life's narrow way he lives he lives salvation to impart you ask me how I know he lives I used to have the gall to say he lives within my heart no I do not know he lives primarily because he lives within my heart I know he lives because credible witnesses saw him and they ate with him and they touched him

70:31 - 71:15 Read in full sermon