Can you image that? Can you imagine how scary that is, to have someone do something like that? How it just defies all thinking? You're talking to someone, and you've touched their hand, they've shared food with you; and then suddenly, in front of your very eyes, they're gone - just like that!
The mind can't comprehend it. You read it, and you've seen it in the scriptures before, but often we don't take time to think about what that must have been like - to be talking with a man; walking with a man; sitting and eating with a man - and suddenly you recognise it's the Lord; and then right there - His dish still there in place, cup of coffee still there in place - He just vanishes in front of your eyes.
In other words, He was no longer constrained by the physical world. He was able to enter into the realm of eternity, and back into the physical world, at ease. That's what it means to have a resurrection body - incorruptible, totally.
Further down, in Luke 24:36 – “Now the disciples were in the upper room and they shut the door. As they said these things, and were talking, Jesus Himself stood in the midst and said ‘Peace’; but they were terrified, frightened, and thought they were seeing a ghost”.
Imagine if you've got the doors locked, and there are just 12 of you in the room, and suddenly - boof! Someone turns up there! They were freaked out. They were scared. They were terrified. This is beyond human reasoning.
In Luke 24:39, they said to Him – “Look, behold My hands and Feet, it's Me”. It's Myself, it's Me. Hey, come and touch Me, handle Me. A spirit doesn't have flesh and bones, like you see I have, and He showed them His hands and His feet.
So you notice it looked just like a human body, but it had unusual power and qualities - no wonder they were terrified. Do you think you'd be any different? Because it's supernatural, the supernatural tends to frighten people. It's indescribable.
So He rose from the dead, and I want you to understand that He wasn't the only one who rose. Have a look back in Matthew 27:51 - This is straight after Jesus died on the cross. “The veil of the temple was torn from top to bottom; the earth quaked, the rocks were split, the graves were opened”.
Notice this: when Jesus died on the cross, the graves broke open. Now for a Jew to have the grave break open, it's very serious. They had to go and guard the grave. They couldn't do anything about it - it was the Sabbath. They had to sit there, and wait, and guard these places; so they would have been waiting outside those graves.
Now this is what happened - it says: “many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised, and coming out of the graves after His resurrection. They went into the holy city and appeared to many”. So Jesus was the first to rise from the dead; and notice it says: many - not all. Many were raised from the dead after Jesus' resurrection; and not only that, they went into the holy city, and they appeared to many.
So who were some of those people? Well, probably Joseph; was because Joseph knew this was going to happen, and that's why he commanded His bones to be taken from Egypt and buried there near Jerusalem. Probably Abraham knew, because that's why he bought a cave; and his descendants were all buried in the cave with him.
They wanted to be near what they knew would happen one day - Jesus Christ the Messiah would come, He'd come into the earth, die on the cross and rise gloriously from the dead! And at that time, they also would rise with Him - they had a great hope that stretched for centuries.