Luke 24 1 12 Sermon

When The Stone Was Already Gone

Most of us have rehearsed what we would do in a crisis. We have thought through the hard conversation, planned the difficult visit, prepared ourselves for the worst. And then we arrive, and the situation is nothing like we imagined. The thing we braced for is not there. Something else entirely is waiting for us instead.

That is exactly where Luke 24 begins. A group of women had prepared for grief. They had spices ready. They had a plan. They were walking toward a sealed tomb in the early morning dark, and they were not walking toward resurrection. They were walking toward the finality of death. What they found changed everything, not just for them, but for every person who has ever carried a question about whether Jesus is who he claimed to be.

Luke 24:1 through 12 is one of the most carefully told accounts in all of Scripture. Let us stay inside this passage and let it do its work.

The Text: What Luke Actually Says

Luke tells us the women came to the tomb on the first day of the week, very early in the morning, bringing the spices they had prepared. He has already told us in chapter 23 who these women are. They had followed Jesus from Galilee. They had stood at the cross. They had watched where the body was laid. They were not confused about the location. They were not visiting the wrong tomb. These were eyewitnesses who knew exactly where Jesus had been buried, and they came to anoint him.

When they arrived, the stone had already been rolled away. Luke does not dramatize this moment. He simply states it as fact. The stone was gone. They went in, and the body of the Lord Jesus was not there.

Luke says they were perplexed about this. That word matters. They were not immediately joyful. They were not expecting resurrection. They were confused, standing in an empty space where a body should have been, trying to make sense of what they were seeing.

Then two men in dazzling clothes appeared beside them. The women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground. These are not subtle figures. Luke is describing a moment of divine interruption. And the first thing these messengers say is a question: "Why are you looking for the living among the dead?"

That question is not a rebuke. It is a reorientation. It is the hinge on which this entire passage turns.

Then comes the declaration: "He is not here, but he has risen."

And then something remarkable follows. The messengers do not simply announce the resurrection as new information. They point the women back to something they already heard. "Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that it was necessary for the Son of Man to be betrayed into the hands of sinful men, be crucified, and rise on the third day."

Luke tells us they remembered his words.

They left the tomb and reported everything to the eleven and to all the rest. Luke names some of them: Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James. He says it was these women and others with them who told the apostles.

And the apostles did not believe them. Luke uses a strong word. Their words seemed like nonsense to the men, and they did not believe them.

But Peter got up and ran to the tomb. He bent down, looked in, and saw only the linen cloths. And Luke closes this section with a quiet, searching line: Peter went away, amazed at what had happened.

Not yet believing. Not yet proclaiming. Just amazed.

The Central Claim: Resurrection Is Not What We Prepare For, It Is What God Has Already Done

Here is what this passage is asking us to see. The resurrection of Jesus Christ was not produced by anyone's faith. It was not the result of the disciples' expectation or the women's hope. These women came prepared for a dead body. The apostles dismissed the report as nonsense. Peter ran to the tomb and walked away still processing what he saw.

The resurrection happened before any of them believed it. The stone was already rolled away when they arrived. The tomb was already empty. Jesus had already risen.

This matters enormously. The resurrection of Christ does not depend on our readiness to receive it. It is not a spiritual experience that becomes real when enough people believe it. It is a historical event that God accomplished in the darkness before dawn, witnessed first by messengers from heaven, confirmed by an empty tomb, and then announced to people who were not expecting it.

That is the gospel. God raised Jesus from the dead. Not because the disciples were faithful enough. Not because the women had enough faith. Because it was necessary. Because the Son of Man had said it would happen. Because death does not have the final word when the one who died is the Son of God.

The Remembered Words

There is a detail in this passage that deserves to sit with us for a moment. The angels do not give the women new theology. They give them a memory. "Remember how he told you."

Jesus had spoken about his death and resurrection more than once. Luke records it in chapter 9 and again in chapter 18. The disciples had heard it. The women had been with him. The words had been spoken clearly. But grief has a way of burying what we know under the weight of what we feel. The women came to the tomb with spices and sorrow, and the words of Jesus had not yet connected with the reality in front of them.

The angels do not argue with them. They do not rebuke them for forgetting. They simply say, remember. And when the women remembered, Luke says, they believed. They went and told.

This is a word for anyone who has ever sat in a season where the promises of God felt distant. Where you knew the right things, had heard the right words, but the weight of your circumstances had buried them under layers of confusion and pain. The answer is not always new information. Sometimes it is the recovery of what has already been spoken. The word of Christ is sufficient. It does not expire. It does not lose its power because we temporarily lose our grip on it.

The Faithful Witness Of Unlikely Messengers

Luke is deliberate about who carries the first resurrection announcement. It is the women. In the first-century world, the testimony of women was not considered legally reliable in a court of law. Luke knows this. His original readers knew this. And yet these are the first human witnesses to the empty tomb, and they are the first to carry the message.

This is not an accident. Luke has been attentive to women throughout his Gospel. And here, at the most important moment in human history, God entrusts the first proclamation to people the culture would have dismissed. Their words were treated as nonsense by the apostles. But their witness was true.

There is something here for every person who has ever felt like their voice does not count, like their testimony would not be taken seriously, like they are not the right kind of person to speak about Jesus. The first people to say "he is risen" were not believed by the inner circle. But they were faithful. And the truth they carried did not depend on whether anyone believed them in that moment.

The resurrection is not made true by our proclamation. But our proclamation is made necessary by the resurrection.

Peter: Amazed But Not Yet Finished

Peter's response is worth pausing over because it is so honest. He ran. That detail is significant. Something in him could not stay still when the women spoke. He had to go and see for himself. He bent down, looked in, saw the linen cloths lying there, and went away amazed at what had happened.

Peter is not yet at full faith in this moment. He is not yet preaching. He is processing. He is standing at the edge of something too large to take in all at once.

If you are in that place today, if you are somewhere between the empty tomb and full conviction, between amazement and settled faith, Luke is not embarrassed by that. He includes Peter's in-between moment because it is real, and because the story does not end there. The same Peter who walked away amazed will stand up in Acts chapter 2 and declare the resurrection to thousands. The amazement was not the end. It was the beginning.

What This Means For Us

Luke 24:1 through 12 does not ask us to manufacture certainty we do not have. It asks us to remember what has been spoken, to take the empty tomb seriously, and to be willing to carry the news even when others dismiss it.

The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the foundation of everything the church believes and everything the church does. It is not a symbol of new beginnings or a metaphor for personal renewal. It is the actual, bodily rising of the crucified Son of God from a sealed tomb in Jerusalem. And because he rose, death is not the end for anyone who trusts in him.

If you are here today and you have never placed your faith in the risen Christ, this is the invitation. Not to a religion. Not to a set of rules. To a person who died for your sin and rose so that you could be made right with God. The tomb is empty. The question the angels asked is still the right one. Why would you look for life anywhere else?

And if you are a believer who has grown weary, who has felt the weight of grief or confusion pressing down on what you know to be true, hear the word the angels spoke to those women. Remember. He told you. He is not in the tomb. He is risen. And the words he spoke to you are still true.

The stone was already gone when they arrived. God had already done it. That is still the case. The resurrection does not wait for our readiness. It waits for our response.

Go and tell.

Sources Consulted

The Holy Bible, Christian Standard Bible. Holman Bible Publishers, 2017.

Bock, Darrell L. Luke 9:51 to 24:53. Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament. Baker Academic, 1996.

Green, Joel B. The Gospel of Luke. New International Commentary on the New Testament. Eerdmans, 1997.

Marshall, I. Howard. The Gospel of Luke. New International Greek Testament Commentary. Eerdmans, 1978.

Garland, David E. Luke. Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament. Zondervan, 2011.