What Are You Doing with Jesus' Empty Tomb?

Plenty of people have real challenges with the resurrection of Jesus. That's not a modern problem. The objections surfaced immediately in the first century, and they haven't changed much since.

Some say the body was stolen. The disciples fabricated the whole story. Others suggest the disciples hallucinated, though explaining how multiple people share an identical hallucination at the same time is a difficult case to make. Still others argue the resurrection is a legend that developed gradually over decades. But when you look at the lives of the people who proclaimed it, they went to their deaths holding to this declaration: Jesus of Nazareth has risen from the dead. People don't typically die for what they know to be a legend.

Then there is the objection that comes from a naturalist framework, and it goes something like this: dead people don't rise. The resurrection violates science. That one deserves a careful look.

What Science Can and Cannot Say
Science is a powerful and reliable tool for understanding the world. But it's important to be precise about what science actually does. Science observes repeated patterns and behaviors in nature. It documents cause-and-effect relationships. Science says: this is what normally happens. What science cannot do is prove something is impossible.

Why not? Because science studies repeated, observable events. It cannot test a one-time, unique event. Consider a simple example: if you drop a ball one thousand times and it falls every time, science can reliably conclude that objects fall under normal conditions. But science cannot say it is absolutely impossible for anything to ever defy gravity under any circumstance. That claim would go beyond what the data can support.

So when someone says, "Science proves dead people don't rise," the more accurate statement is: science says dead people do not naturally come back to life. That is a description of normal patterns, not a declaration of impossibility.

The resurrection claim is not that dead people randomly revive all the time. The claim is that God acted in history in a singular, unrepeatable way. That shifts the real question entirely. The question is not, "Is resurrection normal?" The question is, "Is there a God who can act beyond normal patterns?"

That is not a science question. It is a question about God.

The Real Objection: John 20 and Doubting Thomas

The deeper objection to the resurrection is found in John chapter 20, verse 27. Jesus is speaking to Thomas, who has resisted belief in the risen Christ. Thomas has become famous for this moment. We call him Doubting Thomas.

When Jesus speaks to Thomas, He says: "Do not disbelieve, but believe."

The word translated "disbelieve" is worth slowing down on. In the Greek, it is the negation of the verb meaning to believe. It carries the sense of refusing to believe, being unwilling to trust, remaining unconvinced despite evidence. This is not passive uncertainty or honest confusion. This is a settled posture. It is volitional. It is a decision of the will.

That distinction matters because it explains why disbelief often persists even in the presence of evidence.

If the resurrection is true, then Jesus has conquered sin and death, and He is Lord. If the resurrection is true, then my life is not my own. If the resurrection is true, then I am called to repent before a holy God. The resurrection is not simply unbelievable. For some, it is genuinely inconvenient. Disbelief can be less about the evidence and more about what accepting the evidence would require.

Five Reactions to the Empty Tomb
John chapter 20 walks through five different responses people had to the empty tomb. The first is this: you can dismiss it.

Watch what Mary Magdalene does. In verses one and two, John tells us she came to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw that the stone had been taken away. She ran to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them: "They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him."

Mary Magdalene had a deep devotion to Jesus. After He cast seven demons out of her, she spent the rest of her life serving Him, honoring Him, and following Him closely. She was at the cross during His crucifixion, and John shows her as the first to arrive at the tomb that morning. Her devotion was real, rooted in what He had done in her life.

And yet, here is what she does with an empty tomb: she immediately reaches for an explanation that fits her existing framework. The proverbial "they." She doesn't know who "they" are, but someone must have moved the body. The tomb is empty, therefore someone took Him. It's a logical conclusion, except it is not the right one.

What is striking is not that she has an explanation. It's how quickly she reaches for it.

When Evidence Isn't Enough
As the story continues, John picks up Mary again in verse 11. Peter and John have already come and gone. Mary is standing outside the tomb, weeping. She stoops down, looks inside, and sees two angels in white, one seated at the head and one at the foot of where Jesus' body had been.

The angels ask her: "Woman, why are you weeping?"

She answers: "They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him."

She is standing in front of two angels and she still says "they." She doesn't stop to ask why there are two angels there. That is not a normal sight. Something about this scene should give her pause. But her framework has already decided what happened, and she processes everything she sees through that lens.

Then she turns around and sees Jesus standing there. She doesn't recognize Him.

Many have suggested that His glorified resurrection body looked different, and that may be part of it. On the road to Emmaus, two disciples walked and talked with Jesus without recognizing Him until He opened their eyes. But there is another layer at work in Mary's case. This is not a failure of eyesight. It is a failure of expectation. Mary has no category for resurrection. She is interpreting everything she sees through the assumption that death still has the final word.

This is where the language of disbelief becomes precise again. Disbelief does not simply mean uncertainty or confusion. It carries the idea of a refusal to trust, a settled posture that resists belief. Mary is not hostile. But she is still reading reality through a framework that cannot yet accept what God has done.

The Framework Problem
That dynamic did not stay in the first century. Many people today do not reject the resurrection because they have carefully examined all the evidence and found it lacking. They reject it because they have already decided what is possible and what is not. If dead people do not rise, then the empty tomb must have another explanation. The conclusion is set before the evidence is examined.

What John 20 shows is that it is entirely possible to be very close to the truth, to see the evidence with your own eyes, and still dismiss what God is doing because it does not fit within your existing framework or expectations.

The question is not simply a scientific one. It is a question of the will.

What are you doing today with an empty tomb?



This blog is based on the message shared by Senior Pastor Dr. Roger Patterson at our CityRise West U Baptist campus on Sunday, April 5, 2026. Check out the full message below!