Luke 24:2 Commentary and Bible Study

‘And they found the stone rolled away from the sepulchre’, rolled away of course by the power of God. It was not only the power of God, but the great kindness of God that this happened, because really there was absolutely no need for that stone to be rolled away in order for the resurrection to take place. The Lord Jesus Christ could have been resurrected and the stone could have remained in place and there would have been nothing to stop him leaving the tomb. The risen Lord was able to pass through locked doors in his glorified form, and nothing could restrict his passage. Then why was it removed? It wasn't so much for his benefit as for ours. First of all the removal of that stone was symbolical. It was the first thing that the disciples saw: that that great weight had just been shifted out of the way. But what went on behind it was a far greater miracle of God, a far more amazing thing. The moving of the stone was just a small thing by comparison, but it had to be moved because the disciples were going to be invited in to view the empty tomb. They were going to have the privilege of seeing the angels there in the privacy of the tomb, and exactly what had taken place. The resurrection is something for us to look into, to be encouraged by, to learn from. Yes, it does incidentally remind us that nothing stands in the way of God's redemptive purposes. Nothing can stand in the way of God gathering his people out of every land and nation in every day and age. No matter what the temple police and the Roman authorities do to seal the tomb, that stone is just going to be rolled contemptuously out of the way, because there is absolutely nothing can stand in the way of the purposes of God. We have proved that down the running centuries. No degree of persecution or burning of Bibles; no distraction of modern secular materialistic brainwashing, can prevent God overwhelming hearts and gathering out his people. The Gospel of John tells us that Mary Magdalene was perhaps a little quicker than the others in some ways, and when she saw the missing stone rolled aside, she seems to have left the main company and gone back to tell the disciples. Meanwhile those other women, who were still at the tomb, go in. Mary perhaps assumed too much too fast, but it was natural for her to do so. She saw the stone rolled aside and she assumed that the body had been stolen, so off she went to report a stolen body to the other disciples – the other women stayed; they went in. But we can understand why Mary behaved as she did, because all these things that God did were taking the disciples by surprise. Even though Christ had prepared them for Calvary and for the resurrection, they were taken off guard, because they were still in the flesh. We too, even though we may have come to Christ and may love the Lord; our spiritual understanding is slow. Here was the resurrection and the immediate assumption of Mary was that someone had taken the Lord's body. It didn't occur to her that the Lord might have been raised from the dead, that he might have come forth from the grave by his own mighty power, because that was too spiritual a thing to understand. It was too much, too fast. All the mighty acts of God are above our understanding.