“Why Do You Look for the Living Among the Dead?” | Luke 24:1–12

Show Notes

Episode 763: 
In this episode, Chris and Jeff dive into the significant biblical narrative of Jesus' resurrection. They read from Luke 24:1-12, where women visit the tomb and encounter angels who proclaim that Jesus has risen. Chris and Jeff reflect on the powerful question posed by the angels: "Why are you looking among the dead for someone who is alive?" This question serves as a central theme for the episode, prompting a discussion about where we seek fulfillment and meaning in our lives.

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You're listening to The Bible Guys, a podcast where a couple of friends talk about the Bible in fun, in practical ways. Good Morning, good morning. We talked the whole net through good morning, good morning to you and you you that's it. You knew it's coming. I knew it. I had a sense. I could feel it in the air. It was bubbling. And you didn't say it before. The thing is just happened. I just because you. Know it's Wednesday. Man, you're on Tuesdays. I know, but I just switched it up. We missed it yesterday. I thought I'm gonna go left. I'm gonna duke right. You don't know that. Hey, we're Chris and Jeff and we're the Bible Guys, and we today are going to launch into actually a saying that's during the Resurrection, because this week's all about Jesus' final words. This was certainly among them. But before we get to that, we actually have a segment called Hot Takes, Hot Showdown. I don't know is it? Is it a showdown? Is that appropriately titled? Because because Desiree rarely makes mistakes. Oh rarely, so implying that you think it may be wrong implying that she does. That's right, you are wrong. Okay. Well, anyway, Desiree has instructions here that says, do you agree with this statement or not? Defend your answer exclamation mark? Okay you ready, yes, go ahead. Candy corn is delicious. That's it. That's period. So do we'd agree with this statement or not? Ah? No? Okay, so a resounding no. Okay. So here's what the capital heck. No, here's the thing. I like candy corn. Pardon my language, note h G c K. Hey listen, I actually I actually I don't think I would call it delicious, but you like. But if there was a bowl of candy corn, I could definitely see myself picking up a handful and eating one by one. But you don't care for chocolate. Those are two different monster, are you? Those are two different things altogether? What are you like? Three years old? Are you serious? When I think candy corn and you don't like. I'm gonna give you a movie trivia? Okay, okay, oh candy corn. Let me help you to finish it. I don't know, but it sounds like an Arnes fors Andegger voice, well kind of. It was the voice for a bugs life it was the big large caterpillar. Yeah, he's walking by the fly inside the he goes, ooh, candy corn, let me help you to finish it. Yeah. I am not a candy corn fan, man, I like candy corn. I'm pretty sure they had one run of candy corn. Yeah. They just keep packaging it and sending it. Back up to people because nobody bought it. Yeah, it's terrible. Yeah, candy corn is definitely a staple though. Halloween it is. It's everywhere. Do you remember getting. Candy corn in your trick or treat bag? Yes? I would be so mad. We'd eat all of it, really, every single bit of it. Wow, well you know what I think you might. You are now my new best friend. Why because I never have to compete with you for chocolate, that's true, And you never have to compete with you with with kendy corn. So if we're ever in a situation where there's a bunch of candy thrown our way, you give me all your candy corn. I'll give you all the chib Okay, Okay, there we go. Perfect if that ever happens. Ever, I can't believe. I just thought this was going to be a no brainer. By the way that we thought that was when I was a kid, I. Liked it a lot more. I still like it. I just don't love it. But as a kid, I would have said it was delicious. Yes, okay, all right, number two? All right, number two. Referees influence NFL games with their calls to keep them close. Is that true? Not true? It depends on what is meant by this statement. In other words, in other words, here's what this statement. Here's what this statement implies to me. It implies that saying is that the referees job, like across the board, every referee, their shadow mission is to make sure that the games are always close by every call that they make, like in other words, like, that's the purpose of the calls. Right, Oh, Like is that what you think that done? You've done this. You have done this as a youth faster where you make rules to make it competitive. Yeah, so so like that's what it's saying, right. But but that is a different statement than the Kansas City Chiefs refs buyofs, which is very famous of course, right to the fact that there are referees today in the NFL who are getting paid under the table to help the Kansas City chiefs. You watch too many YouTube videos, so you think that's more likely that there are teams getting paid off. Now, let me let me make this statement defendive. Let me take me defenditively. I'm not saying it's likely, but I am definitely saying it's way more likely than this statement. Yeah, so I read this statement, I don't think. I don't read the statement all referees influence NFL games with their calls to keep them close as their shadow mission. I think all and as their shadow mission. You added, I think it could be some referees sometimes influenced. It doesn't say some. It says referees, which means all referees. It doesn't it so it doesn't quantify the number of referees one way or the other. It can be read either way. I guess. So, But then why not say some because referees sort of implies all referees. I don't know. I don't know, But what I'm saying is it could just be on occasion. I think you're subconscious wants a good game, and I think I think it can be one of those moments where you just go, ah, right, I'm not gonna call that. Yeah, And I think that that's what happens. A lot of times they could call they could call holding on every single play. Oh yeah, there there are a lot of holdings that get away with every they play they let something. So then all of a sudden, there's four holding calls in a row, and they move you back twenty hours and can't get the next first down, and then you have to pump. The ball if you're playing against the Chiefs. And so that's what I'm saying is they they do pick and choose what calls they make. Yeah, And so then the question here is do you think they do that in order to keep the game close? Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. Well, we have to take we have to take a hot take. We have to say yes or no. We agree with that, don't. Okay, I don't think that that's what they do. You don't think they do. But I do think that that some referees do get paid under the table and have been crooked. Wow, I do for sure. Wow. Yeah, yeah, only only on. Behalf of the Well, well, I'll tell you what the the How. Did a team like the Chiefs in a small towel market wind up getting to the point where they win so many Super Bowls. Right, Well, honestly, the Chiefs just through Taylor swifts in Travis Kelcey relationship. But they just get engaged. By the way. You know that, Okay, did you know that? I'm super thrilled. Did you know that. This doesn't mean no, I didn't know that. Okay, good. I was wanting to make sure that you didn't know that because I was I was afraid that maybe you were unwilling to admit that you knew that. Okay, they just got engaged. Oh well, congratulations Jason and Taylor. If you're listening. Taylor, if you're listening, I have one word for you. Prenup. Anyway, we never advised prenups Bible. I'm just kidding. I just saw that in the YouTube video. Somebody said he was a lawyer. But no, here's what I'm saying. I'm saying that we need to wrap this up. But I'm saying definitively that the the the movement that was going around in the last couple of years was specifically for the Chiefs. And so what happened is the Chiefs would play and then people would build their evidence. They would throw it all on you know, Instagram reels or whatever, and then you'd sit there and watch this and analyze it. And I'm telling you that if somebody wasn't being paid under the table, it was the big coincidence in the history of ever. Yeah. Well, I think you'd have to combine that with how many horrible calls have been made against the Lions over left, and apparently somebody's paying those same refs to go against us. Yeah, no doubt. Right, So I don't know, no doubt it's coincidence. But anyways, so for the four listeners that made it through the Candy Corn and NFL conversation, by the way. The difference is the Chiefs made the NFL millions and millions and millions and millions more than the Lions did. Sure, that's why. Sure, that's why. Yeah, but they just hate us for some reason. So for all of our for all four listeners that made it all the way through the Candy Corn conversation, yes, and then through the NFL Football conversation, we're going to pivot into Luke chapter twenty four. Yes, right, Oh, which I have is that the transition. I have no transition. Jesus rises from the dead. Here wait if if you made it through that, then that means that you you you've survived a lot, you can overcome a lot. And you know who else overcame something. Jesus, Jesus when from the grave. Yeah, okay, good job, good job. I was fighting for it. Good job, Chris, I found something. One is more important than the other. But hey, okay, Luke. Chapter twenty four, verse one says, but very early on Sunday morning, the women went to the tomb, taking the spices they had prepared, and they found that the stone had been rolled away from the entrance. So they went in, but they didn't find the body the Lord Jesus. As they stood there, puzzled, two men suddenly appeared to them, clothed in dazzling robes. The women were terrified and bowed with their faces to the ground. And then the men asked, why are you looking among the dead for someone who is alive. He isn't here. He's risen from the dead. Remember what he told you back in Galilee, that the son of Man must be betrayed into the hands of sinful men and be crucified, and then he would rise again on the third day. Then they remembered that he had said this, and so they rushed back from the tomb to tell his eleven disciples and everyone else what had happened. It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary, the mother of James, and several other women who told the apostles what had happened, but the story sounded like nonsense to the men, so they didn't believe it. However, Peter jumped up and ran to the tomb to look. Stooping, he peered in and saw the empty linen wrappings, and then he went home again, wondering what had happened. Hmm, there it is. Yeah, so though, why did you why do you look for the living among the dead? Is not a statement from Jesus? Oh, but I think he'd be a big fan of it and have it on his podcast. Anyways. Oh yeah, well this is this is actually yeah, this would be as far as I know, this is the only time that we're talking about a statement that isn't made by Jesus. Yah, it's about him. It's about him. Yeah, yeah. Anyway. Now, to be fair, Jesus did in other passages and other gospels, Jesus did say to Mary, who was crying by the tomb, who is it that you're searching for, right. I believe? So, no, he did, he did, Yes, he did, he did. And so we did a whole Eastern Remember all seventeen services. I preached seven of them, but I was a big attention. Yeah, I'm sure you were paying attention. So in fact, they were fabulous. Anyway, So Jesus did sort of ask a similar question, right, why do you look for the living among the dead? I believe that Jesus's question actually implies that who who is it that you're searching for? Because remember Mary was crying and she thought he was the gardener, and he says, who are you searching for? And in such a sage, and so it really is. And what we did was we took on Easter Sunday, we took that phrase and what we said was, are you looking Have you walked in through the doors of this church expecting a dead Jesus, a Jesus that is not alive, that's not powerful, a Jesus that is not resurrected, that that can't say to you from your sins or your soul, like, are you are you looking for that kind of Jesus? Or are you looking for the Jesus who is who's conquered sin and death and is all powerful, can give us a home in heaven and give us life abundantly now. And so that was the question today. That was the answer to that question, John twenty, Which Jesus are you looking for? Right? That's great? And the Angel just said it plainly. Why are you looking for someone who's living among the dead dead? You came expecting a dead Jesus, but he's not dead anymore. I think about that sometimes. Isn't it interesting how we live so much of our life looking for peace. We look for happiness and joy and blessing. We look for opportunity, we look for meaning and purpose and relationships. I can just go on and on all the things. We spend all of our life searching for love. And we're searching for all of those things among the dead. But Jesus is the Prince of peace. God is love. He's the only source of our purpose. So explain what you mean by that looking for that among the dead. So the Bible says that we are dead in our sins right until we're made alive in Christ. So when we do what the whole rest of the world does, and we look for satisfaction where the rest of the world looks for satisfaction. We live the same lifestyle the whole rest of the world lives. There. We're literally living among the walking dead, that's what we're doing. And we're looking for hope and satisfaction among them, when really the God Man is the only solution that really brings real love and real joy and real peace to our life. We look for all those things among the dead all the time. We do it too. Yep. I think it's fair for God to ask us the same question. Yeah, righty, look for the living among the dead. Yeah, we're looking for life in the places of death all the time. I think it was twenty fifteen. I did a series right after Easter and it was called The Walking Dead. Yeah, and so it was after the you know, the zombie thing or whatever. Yeah, when the show was popular. Yep. And uh, And it was sort of the same idea, right. It was the idea that, like, we are dead in our sins, you know, we're the walking dead. Until we it was just kind of neat. So yeah, that's really that's really great. So now let's go back to the beginning. On the very first sentence. It comes to you here it is, it says thank you. It says but very early on Sunday morning. H last week on the Bible guys, we talked about how the Jewish calendar starts at six am. That's correct, and it goes to, uh, you know, so six am till six pm or the first twelve hours, and that's when the sun is generally up, and then starting at six pm when the sun goes down. They called that night, and so that their twenty four hours would have been six am to six am. So on Sunday morning when it says early on Sunday morning, one verse one Gospel says, well, it was still dark, so it was it was right at the crack of dawn. Now, remember last podcast, you and I said, there's gonna be a lot of things when we get to heaven, we'll say wow. Right. I believe that that rising of the sun is also symbolic. Right when Jesus says I'm the Light of the world, you know, there's there's a new dawn. It's a new day, as mercies are, you know, made new every morning. Just the idea that that they came right at first light to the tomb, I think was also symbolic as well. I said, right, but it was wrong. It's sunset to sunset is how they measure their day. Did I get it wrong? Six pm to six pm? Yes, it's sunset to sunset, which that close to the equator tends to be six to six Is that? Did I say it wrong? Yeah? Because I looked it up real quick, I was like, I think that's wrong. I'm sorry. Oh yeah, so a it's normally it's sunset to sunset, sun to sunset to sun Remember in the Book of Genesis, evening and morning were the first day yep, over and over and over and even in the morning with second day evening, and so they keep they manage their days by evening morning. So amazing thing about Sabbath is so. I was on the wrong six right, that's right. Okay, So it wasn't six am, it's six six p Yeah, that's right. So the the way that the Sabbath works, and it's so clever, especially for business people, is the evening of Friday begins Sabbath and it ends evening on Saturday. So you can work right up until Sabbath begins on Friday and you can pick up your work after Sabbath ends on Saturday, but you still have a twenty four hour window of rest and reconnection with God. Right. That that's how it worked. So it's a really interesting. Oh wait, oh you know what. You know what the reason why I got confused is because like, for instance, you know how they always say like on the ninth hour, remember he cried out on the cross, and then another translation will say three in the afternoon, right, well, nine hours from you know, you know three in afternoon. You go back at that six am, so you would say, oh, then it's the ninth hour of the day, right, And what they're saying is at least check GPT is actually looking up Jewish custom and Jewish calendars, right, and it actually says, yes, that is correct, But it's it's counting the day as those twelve hours, so it would say evening and day. So it's not saying like we say a. Full day time yes, yeah, yeah, we. Would say day is midnight to midnight, right, us, we would say that's one full day, So we're using the word day even when it's dark. When they're saying day, they're saying those twelve hours. So when they're saying it was the ninth hour. They're saying it was the ninth hour of lighttime O daytime. So based on Genesis, evening and morning were the first day, correct, So evening from sunset all the way until sunset. I'm not saying that it's not called a day. Yeah, what I'm saying is the ninth hour, third hour, sixth hour. They were counting from that six am spot. From six am. Yeah, and they were calling that day sunrise from sunrise daytime correct, not the day. Yeah. Yeah, okay, boy, that was confusing for our listeners. Well I messed up on it on the air, and. Go ahead, and that's okay. But either way, it was still dark. What you were getting at was at this very moment when the sun rise. That's all. That's all. I just got the times wrong. But but either way, it says very early on Sunday morning, and we know that the sun was just coming up because of what we read in all four of the gospels. So but yeah, so Jesus appears to them and and but that's not before the angels did. Hey, by the way, let's talk about this for a minute. So in one gospel, it says that they were dazzling white and the other one that says they were sitting on the tomb. So obviously all of those things are correct. And one gospel says there was one angel, there was one mentions yeah, only. Mentions one angel. Yeah. But either way all have to be true, right, So they're written from different perspectives. So all of those things, when you piece them together, we know that there were multiple angels, and we assume that the angels were the ones that rolled away the stone or did God roll away the stone? I don't know. It doesn't say it, does it, I don't think. So have you ever heard of sermons about. That angels rolled away? Well, I mean I've heard, I've heard different people talk about it. But either way, the stones rolled away, and Jesus is not yet ascended to his father and he comes out and interacts with Mary. So the angels, it's interesting sometimes people will point to the fact that one book says it was one angel, one book says it was two angels, another book says two angels clothed and in bright robes. Whatever. I think. One of the gospels doesn't even mention the angels, right, so they must be lies because they don't agree. Right. Well, if you don't mention any of the angels. The resurrection still happen, so that's right. They're not the cause of the resurrect So the angels are are secondary players in the story. So it doesn't matter if you don't mention them. It doesn't matter. If you mentioned that there's two angels, that's fine, that's great. Apparently there were two angels, right, But then if you say, well, there was one angel, only one spoke. So in the passage where it says and the angel spoke, say there was only one angel, right, it just says the angel spoke right, right, And there was an angel there dressed in white or whatever, and he spoke, And so of the two angels, only one of them speaks, and that's how that works, so it can reconcile all of them, right. Well, if anything, we've mentioned this before, but if anything, it makes it more believable because from four different accounts, the stories are going to be told four different ways. And if this was all a lie, they would have made a congruent. Oh right, right, They would have colluded so that the story was exactly the same from all four with you exactly. Yeah, yeah, Why would they leave any room otherwise? Yeah, so these are these are not opposing views, the different perspectives, different perspectives of the same things. And not to mention just because one doesn't feel like mentioning a fact doesn't mean that it didn't happen. It just means he's not mentioning the fact, right, right, right. So anyways, this is the big question. The ladies come and they're looking for the resurrected Jesus, and where are you looking for the living among the dead? I think back to the beginning of our conversation here, that's a temptation for all of us. We have to really be aware of where are we looking for real life? We're not going to find it where all the walking dead people are living, right that it's just not We're only going to find it in Christ and in God's ways, God's words, all those kinds of things. And so you know, the angels kind of hinting it. You're kind of wasting your time, ladies, right. The other one is I wanted to highlight the fact that these same four ladies keep showing up all the time, right, it's the other Mary is the mother of James and John. You've got Mary Magdalene, is there You've got all these ladies, man talking about incredibly loyal, godly women that are willing to won. They're risking their reputations in their lives, you know, to go down there. This was a sealed tomb being guarded by guards. How did they even think they were going to get in? Yeah? Right, right, Well they men just been going to pay homage. Or well they brought the spices to Annoin in his body. Oh yeah, that's right, right, So I don't know how. Maybe they were just hoping, or. Maybe maybe it was doable, because it does say several ladies. Yeah, so how courageous are they compared to the disciples the men are hiding? So you know, these ladies have come up multiple times, just in the stories we've told this week, let alone, all throughout Jesus ministry. I highlighted the fact that it was those four ladies that were funding Jesus ministry all the way back at the early part of his ministry. I just highlighted a couple days ago, right, these four ladies were well known associates of Jesus. Well for this, it's not like, oh, don't worry about it. They're just ladies. Right if the men were being hunted, so were the women. But the women and weren't afraid. And it just shows you sometimes how much more courageous and uh significant that contribution is. Well, women, I always say, ladies, women first to the cross, first of the tomb. Yeah right. And by the way, one more thing, and that is I love the fact that the angels say he isn't here, he's written from the dead, and then they say, remember what he told you, and then it says and then they've remembered what he had said. And oftentimes in our lives we will see the promises of God unfold and then will be surprised, and then it's only then that we remember that God promised the whole time. Anyway, right, have you ever have you ever seen that It's like God comes through and all of a sudden you're like, I can't believe God came through, and it's like, wait a minute. He promises to take care of us, you know, he gives us specific promises. And it was the angels that had to remind them this was a promise. Jesus said he was going to do this, which means it's a promise. And so every time that we doubt and every time we have, you know, a lack of hope and we're living in despair, we need to first tell ourselves, hey, let's go back to the promises of God. What does God promise for us or to us? And we need to remember that God's promises are going to come true even when it seems like it's darkest, right, because that's what happened to here man. That's powerful man. Yep. Okay, well, that's a great place to end. That's our time, so hopefully we will see you tomorrow on the babble. Guys,