Visitors to Jesus' tomb two days after He was crucified found that His body was not there.
Only a few days earlier, people had witnessed His welcomed entrance to Jerusalem, followed by His arrest and trial.
Many watched soldiers lay upon His bruised and beaten body a heavy wooden cross to carry outside the city, to Golgotha,
"the Place of the Skull."
Many witnessed the spikes piercing His hands and feet onto
that cross, and saw Him lifted up on it. Many saw two other crosses one on either side of His. Many
heard the soldiers' taunting exclamations as they leaned over to gamble for His
robe on the ground...at the foot of His cross.
Witnesses saw Jesus hanging, suffering, and bleeding on the
cross outside the city of Jerusalem. Jesus was dying as witnesses watched and listened to the words of the One unafraid
of death, the One who came to die.
Many watched the sky become as midnight that afternoon at the moment Jesus died. They felt the earth crack and quake. Some inside the city, in the temple, heard the
curtain hiding the most holy place tear violently down the middle. From top to
bottom, ceiling to floor, it ripped, even as the sin-made division between earth and eternity was torn by the suffering Savior of the world.
No witness could doubt the immeasurable horror of sin on
that day. Jesus came to defeat sin and to uproot it entirely. He came to defeat its deceptively appealing displays as well as its macabre and secretive ways. Jesus died to gain the victory once and for all over the
enemy of man's soul and all his devilish works.
Jesus said "And no man hath
ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man
which is in heaven.
"And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the
wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up:
"That whosoever believeth in him should not
perish, but have eternal life.
"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only
begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have
everlasting life.
"For God sent not his Son into the world to
condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved."---John 3:13-17
Some witnesses saw Jesus' lifeless body removed from the
cross, wrapped, and laid in a rich man's tomb. On the third day, what drew a redeemed soul, Mary, to the site of His grave?
It does not seem that resurrection hope led her there, for she
was wanting to see His body, perhaps to add some spices where He lay. The disciple John recorded (John 20:15) her question: "Where have they
laid Him?"
She had no idea that Jesus was alive until He spoke her
name and she recognized the voice of the Lord.
Jesus depended only on God the Father, not on human hope or
faith, for His resurrection. The Father had promised to raise His body on the
third day. The Father raised His body up from death, just as He had said.
A cross stands over the world.
Jesus said, "And I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men
unto Me."
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