Have you ever wondered why the angels said those words?
I’m referencing the scripture that follows the resurrection of Christ. It’s Easter weekend and there are so many posts right now. These words caught my eye.
On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them. In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, ‘Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; he is risen! Remember how he told you…
Luke 24: 1-8
In Mark it says “He is not here….just as he told you.” In Matthew it says “He is not here; he has risen, just as he said.”
I’m a mom and a wife….and when I use the phrase “just like I said” it usually is not a positive thing.
This was the thought that came to me…for the salvation of mankind…did Jesus have to be resurrected? The answer I come up with is no. At the cross, when Jesus breathlessly cried out “It is finished!” He meant it. The price had been paid, the perfect and spotless Lamb had once-and-forever been offered as a sacrifice for the sins of mankind, the veil between the Holy and Most Holy place was torn, and Satan’s accusations that man could never be good enough to enter heaven had been rebutted with Christ taking on our sins so we could take on His perfection.
So why the Resurrection? Because IT said so. “For the Bible tells me so”. Through history, spoken by prophets, and quoted by Jesus himself. Numerous prophesies are written by King David, the ‘man after God’s own heart”…. Psalm 16:10 “because you will not abandon me to the grave, nor will you let your Holy One see decay”. The prophet Isaiah also spoke of it hundreds of years before Jesus life and death and resurrection. “He was assigned a grave with the wicked…though he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth….. and though the LORD makes his life a guilt offering…. After the suffering of his soul, he will see the light of life and be satisfied…. my righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities. Therefore I will give him a portion among the great…because he poured out his life unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors. For he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.” (excerpts from Isaiah 53).
The wisdom given to the Prophets is God-given, which means when Jesus quoted the Prophets, he was quoting himself! We know that Jesus was the Son of God, but he was also the Son of Man. We know he spent a significant amount of time in his life communing with his Heavenly Father–but we know he experienced humanity, too. He was hungry in the wilderness, he was tired after being surrounded with people desperate for hope, he was angry when the religious leaders focused more on rules and money-changing than the Living Sacrifice. We know He begged God to take the responsibility from him in the Garden, the weight of all of mankind’s sins breaking his heart and separating Him from his Father. We know he felt the Father’s distance, on the cross he cried out “My God, My God why have you forsaken me?” Even though spiritually He knew prophesy predicted his resurrection, He very possibly have questioned, as the Son of Man, if the prophesy was real. When His Father’s spirit was being removed, He desperately wondered if He would ever see His Father again. If He really would see his beloved earthly friends again. If He would ever again hear the adoring songs of angels echoing in Heaven.
So when the angels said “as He said” they were not scolding, they were reminding. They were celebrating. They were rejoicing. I am reminded of the scene in C. S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, when Aslan the lion has taken Edmund’s place…and then (spoiler alert) comes back to life…he explains to the children “‘It means,’ said Aslan, ‘that though the witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know. Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of time.” (Chapter 15). The “as He said” the angels spoke was like saying ‘ta-da!’ Jesus waking up from the dead, after hearing his Father’s voice calling him “Arise”….Ta-da! It’s an exclamation point! “We won the battle…and YES, love conquers death!”
And it’s showing the desperate believers of future ages, us, that if God said it, it will be so.
He said to them, ‘This is what I told you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms.’
Luke 24:44 (after the resurrection)
The disciple Matthew wrote the words that Jesus spoke regarding His future glory and Second Coming. “As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately. ‘Tell us,’ they said, ‘when will this happen, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age.” (Matthew 24:3) The rest of Chapter 24 is Jesus prophesying the future.
“At that time the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and all the nations of the earth will mourn. They will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky, with power and great glory.”
Matthew 24:30
Just like the angels who said ‘he is risen, like he said’, to the disciples following Jesus ascension two angels said “Men of Galilee….why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.” (Acts 1:11)
So we, too, the followers of a Risen Christ, have been promised that He is coming to take us home. However our world has gotten so God-less, we feel the palpable separation from God, we have been given the promise of death sooner than we thought from a terminal diagnosis, we may be horribly alone, the world has become so dark and the promised ‘signs of the end of the age’ have passed and Jesus didn’t come….
“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, trust also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go to prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going.”
John 14:1-4
Even though it feels like all is lost…He IS risen. He IS coming again. Like He Said.
