Mark 16, 1-13, this is God’s Holy Word. When the Sabbath was passed, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Salome, brought spices so that they might go and anoint Him. And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb, and they were saying to one another, Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance of the tomb?
And looking up, they saw that the stone had been rolled back. It was very large. And entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a white robe. They were alarmed. And he said to them, Do not be alarmed. You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen. He is not here. See the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee. There you will see him just as he told you.
And they went out and fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment had seized them. And they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid. Now when he rose early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, from whom he had cast out seven demons. She went and told those who had been with him as they mourned and wept. But when they heard that he was alive and had been seen by her, they would not believe it. After these things, he appeared in another form to two of them as they were walking into the country. And they went back and told the rest. but they did not believe them.
Thus far, God’s holy, inspired, and infallible word. Grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God shall stand forever. Thanks be to God. Heavenly Father, again, we confess, Lord, that if it’s just by employing our own understanding and our abilities, we will fail. Even, Lord, if we’re lacking in some ability. We need you, we need you to understand and apply the scriptures and enable us to keep them in our hearts and minds and to use them when we have opportunity. So be with us this morning, continue to bless our worship, we ask in Jesus’ name, amen.
Now we’re at the last chapter of Mark’s gospel. We have today, and then I think next week we’ll be finished and go on to some other studies. But Mark closes his gospel with these topics. First of all, the empty tomb, and then the Great Commission to go into all the world and so forth. We will consider the Great Commission next time.
Jesus’ body remained in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea for parts of three days. And so you have, for example, in the Gospel of Matthew, he will be raised on the third day. During this time, we are told he visited believers in Sheol, that is the place of the dead, and accompanied the repentant thief to paradise. Today you will be with me in paradise, he said. All this happens as Jesus’ body is lying in the tomb there. Then as he rose from the dead, well, he undressed and got dressed. He removed the grave clothes from his body, acquired new clothing, and left Joseph’s tomb to reveal himself to a startled world.
And this is a story full of surprises. That’s going to be our emphasis today. A story full of surprises, and we’ll build our lesson on four of these surprises. Except that we borrow a few things from other writers. We’ll stick with Mark’s sort of compact account of the resurrection. But here are the surprises.
The first surprise, the stone was rolled back. The women said, who’s going to roll back the stone? Surprise, the stone’s been rolled back. The second surprise, the empty tomb. We have all these spices to anoint the body, but there is no body, it’s gone.
Third surprise, the not so lonely angel. Because other gospels tell us there were two of them. But Mark just mentions one. But he’s not so lonely as we’ll see, and that’s important. And finally, the best surprise of all, the unbelievable Christ. Last thing we read this morning was, they didn’t believe, they didn’t believe. Okay, we’ll come to this eventually here.
First, the first surprise, The stone rolled back. And I think here you have evidence of God’s available strength. You need strength? God has all the strength that you need. Let’s think about the purposes of this stone. What was this stone supposed to do?
Well, first of all, it kept the odor confined. When Lazarus died, they warned Jesus, said he’s been dead now for several days, and he smelleth, that’s the King James, he smelleth, he stinketh. So that was one of the purposes of rolling the stone over the door. Then it was to prevent grave robbers. This was a popular occupation in those days. You figured that dead people often had valuables in there with them. I don’t know what they thought they would do with them, but some people put their valuables in the tomb, but the stone would keep out the robbers. And then this was a guarantee, as it were, that the person inside was dead. I suppose that if there had been any life there, it would have faded pretty quickly.
But we know for sure Jesus was dead. As we said before, the people who examined his body were experts in death. And the Roman soldiers, of course, knew that if they had failed in their work of killing Jesus, that they would be held accountable. And Pilate, when he heard that Joseph would like to have the body of Jesus, he was skeptical. He said, are you sure he’s dead? And they did a sort of re-examination. He said, absolutely, he’s dead.
But rolling the stone over the entrance there just said to the world, the individual who’s inside here is dead. We wouldn’t have rolled a stone there if he weren’t dead. And if he happened to retain a little life, he would never get out. So that’s the reason why they had the stone there. But it’s important for us to know that, first of all, he was dead. He died for our sins.
And secondly, it’s important because the supposed impossibility of getting at him there is removed because God is stronger than any lock or rock or anything that men can put over the tomb. Well, anyway, no ordinary mortal could remove the stone by his own strength.
In other words, even the women, when they said, who’s going to roll the stone away for us? They were going to have to have some help. This was going to be a group project to get that stone rolled away. Maybe they thought they could convince the guards, or maybe some of their friends might be around, but it was going to take an effort to get the stone rolled away.
No ordinary mortal could remove the stone, but that also tells us that, whereas death is concerned, You can’t do that by any mortal strength either. There’s no mortal man able to raise the dead by his own power, by his own strength. The stone was, of course, fixed with a seal. the Jewish leaders were afraid somebody might try to steal his body.
So they had a seal placed there, and if the seal were broken, then you would know that somebody had been fooling around with the stone. The seal was placed there, and then the stone was set in place. It was not like you could just sort of roll this thing this way and roll this thing that way. When it was in place, it was kind of fixed. And that would have been another job for any group of people who wanted to take away the stone. They would have had to get the stone out of its setting. I don’t know what kind of setting they might have put there, but the whole idea was to keep it in place so you couldn’t roll it away, certainly not easily. Well, the stone also was guarded. Now the tomb, of course, the whole thing was guarded, but the stone was guarded. They had set a watch there so that nobody could come and try to do anything.
Again, an indication that Jesus really had died. And that was the purpose of His coming into the world, that He might bear the sins of many, that He might die in the place of sinners. The Apostle Paul says that He died, He was buried, and then rose again the third day. We’ll get to that part. But the guards were to make sure that nobody fooled around with this, that you couldn’t take His body away and then say, oh, He’s risen. The guards were there to make sure that nobody did anything that the authorities did not want done.
Well again, the lesson is that God is stronger than any effort to keep Christ buried. and He is stronger than anything that could hinder His work in any way, and that applies to you and me. Now, we can rejoice that God was able to roll back the stone for Jesus to exit the tomb, but we can be thankful that whatever we face, whatever great stone is in our way, however it’s guarded or set or sealed, God can move it.
God can get it out of our way. So that’s really the first lesson to learn here. The first surprise, the stone was rolled away. God enabled that to happen. He even says the angel participated in removing the stone. But for us, whatever we face, God’s able to move the stone so that we can do his work. Then we come to the second of these surprises, the empty tomb. In Paul’s writings, he says, O grave, where is thy victory? Where’s your victory? The empty tomb, you see, is a victory of the Lord. And nobody expected that there would be victory here.
In fact, they felt like, well, maybe Jesus’ life and ministry and so forth, even His willingness to die, all of this would sort of inspire people to serve God in a deeper way and to believe that God had visited man, but that’s about as far as he went. Otherwise, there was a defeat here because they had expected Jesus to be the King. And you know that when Pilate got Jesus into his hands, he mocked and said, are you the King of the Jews? And then when he crucified him, he had that written over his cross. They had to put the charge over the cross, Jesus of Nazareth, the King of Jews. And so, in a sense, you see, the surprise here is that he really is able to be victorious, to overcome. He himself said, I lay my life down because I want to. Nobody can make me do it. And I’ll take it back again. Because I’m that great. I’m that much in charge. O grave, where is your victory? Well, Jesus is the victory, you see.
And, well, The empty tomb, as we said, was not empty because there were two angels who came and after Jesus had departed the tomb, they stuck around to provide some information. They were evidence themselves and witnesses that Jesus was not there. He’s not here, they said. The empty tomb had to mean one of two things, three things actually. First of all, that Jesus never really expired, that somehow he survived, and people just thought he was dead. But as I’ve said, that would never happen. The Roman soldiers knew when somebody was dead and when they weren’t dead. So Jesus was dead, and that’s not an explanation, that somehow he had survived.
But even if he had survived, remember that stone, how was he gonna get out of there? It was still covered. And then, of course, when the women got there, it was uncovered. But the fact is, he couldn’t get out on his own as a human being if he had somehow survived. So that’s one thing to keep in mind. And then people would say, well, the body was stolen. Well, still people had to somehow get in and do it. And that was basically an impossibility. The body wasn’t stolen. So what’s the explanation? The third explanation, the only one that really works, is that Jesus rose from the dead.
And that having risen, He had the power of God. to open that tomb, to chase off the guards as the earthquake came and sort of made them faint and run. The Lord had brought to this empty tomb emptiness. It was all the Lord’s doing. And from this point, then we put aside all these other alternatives that we mentioned and just say, He rose from the dead. We have to acknowledge that. What about the empty tomb? Somebody wrote a book some years ago about the empty tomb, and that itself is the proof. He wasn’t stolen.
The guard was so thorough, and the things that were put there were so thorough that nobody could have unless God had acted in this way, so that the emptiness meant that Jesus was alive. that he was somewhere, now they hadn’t figured that out quite yet, but he was somewhere alive and it really behooved them to find out. And the only one that seemed to do it in a really effective way was Mary Magdalene. because she stuck around and she saw somebody standing in the garden there and she said, oh, they’ve taken away my Lord and we don’t know where he is now and can you help us? And then he said, of course, Mary, and she recognized him and they had that reunion there. And Mark is kind enough to tell us here that Mary Magdalene was the first one that really caught on. that realized that this was not some sort of mistake or resuscitation or something like this, it was a real resurrection, that Jesus was alive. Not many others believed, but I think at that point she certainly believed.
Well, the emptiness of the tomb also tells us that there is not just a victory, but a defeat. That is, death is defeated. Who can defeat death? Some of these athletes that grow old and can’t continue to sparkle on the football field or the basketball court or whatever, well, they say, Father, time always wins. Well, that’s just another way of saying death always wins, but not here. Death is defeated. And if it can be defeated here, then it can be defeated wherever God wants it to be defeated. And of course, Jesus did defeat death here.
The emptiness of the tomb is also a preview. Preview. Because the Bible says the day is coming when all the graves are going to be opened. You know, there won’t be anybody left really to inspect, but if we can just imagine that, they go around, this one’s empty, and this one’s empty, and that one’s empty, and they’re all empty! Because in the general resurrection, you have the just who are raised to be with the Lord, and the unjust who are raised to face judgment again. But this is a preview here of what’s coming. that the day will arrive when all who are in the tombs will come out because the resurrection is something that God has put into his plan and purpose and it will take place and for us who believe, oh what a victory, oh what a celebration, oh what a wonderful thing. to meet with the Lord fully clothed in our new bodies and ready to serve Him forever and ever.
Well, that’s the second surprise. The first one was the stone was rolled back and then the tomb was empty. And then we come to this matter of the angel who really had a partner in there. We know from Matthew, for example, that he had a partner. And so there were two of them. And I don’t know why it was two and not three, or two and not one, but there was another one.
But from our point of view, the angels have different functions. When you read the Bible about angels, this one has a job to do usually as a messenger, and another angel as a guardian. Again, I don’t know why the second angel was there exactly. I don’t even know if the second angel spoke at all.
But the point is that God employs these spiritual servants of His, and I think the reason, not explaining everything as I said, but the reason that we want to be concerned with today is God is employing the fullness of heaven, as it were, to raise up and exalt the Lord Jesus Christ.
The empty tomb, prompted a lot of speculation as I gave you some alternatives to his ideas. Somebody stole his body and maybe he resuscitated or something. But the angels are there to explain things. They’re there to end the speculation. In other words, there shouldn’t be any speculation really about the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ.
And there was plenty of that. There was plenty of that with Pilate and the Romans and the Jews and various ones. They were speculating this and that. And they said, oh, don’t let people come and think that that he rose from the dead. Let’s say somebody stole his body. They were coming up with all kinds of things. But why were the angels there? Well, again, one of the principal functions of angels is to explain things, to be messengers from the Lord. And they were there to say, very simply, you’re looking for Jesus of Nazareth?
He’s not here. He is risen. And of course, that’s what we celebrate at Easter. The Lord is risen. Risen indeed, as we say at the Easter time when we greet each other. So, the angels say He is risen. Then they say, don’t be afraid. Now, it would be kind of scary, wouldn’t it? If you went to the haunted house at Disneyland or someplace, you’re supposed to be afraid because there are ghosts and stuff there. But Jesus says, no, don’t be afraid. Or the angels, I should say, don’t be afraid. Well, then what are we supposed to do? And they say, go and tell His disciples. Go and tell them. That’s what you’re supposed to do. You’re witnesses to the resurrection.
Well, they weren’t quite believers yet in the resurrection. I think as time went on and they met together and people shared their recollections of what happened and so forth, then they would believe. But there was a lot of unbelief, as we have read about here.
And the fact is that these people had a job to do right then and there. They weren’t supposed to clean up the tomb, or they weren’t supposed to fold up the grave clothes. They were already folded up. Their job was to go and tell. Anybody that came to the empty tomb and met with these angels got instructions from them.
First instruction, don’t be afraid. And second instruction, go and tell. Tell the disciples. And I think by implication, tell everybody you know. that the angel of the Lord has spoken and told you that Jesus is not here. He has risen. And tell them that you looked in and you saw no person there, no body there, that clearly everything was neatly placed and the Lord was gone. Tell them. That’s the job. Don’t be afraid. Talk about it. Tell people about it.
Now, the main post-resurrection event was still to come because These disciples were all to head to Galilee. So among other things the angels told them was, now get ready, pack your suitcases, get ready, go back to Galilee. Jesus is going to be with you there. And that really becomes the main event. after the resurrection itself.
They’re to go there. They’re to meet with Jesus. He’s going to teach them more things. He’s going to bring things to their memories. He’s going to give them responsibilities. He’s going to deal with Simon Peter, for example, and restore him back to fellowship again. There’s a lot of things to be done. So this meeting in Galilee, which is quite a distance from Jerusalem from where the tomb was, but they’re to go there. And the main event after the resurrection itself is to take place there. And then the angels could kind of say, our work is done. We have ended the speculation. Not that they would have stopped it in their mind, of course, but we’re ending the speculation.
And now the disciples need to go and be prepared for what comes next. And that’s to go out into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. And that’s what we’ll come to next time, next week when we study together. So these messengers, I think we can say they were messengers of hope and purpose. The hope is, of course, that now everything to do with Jesus is not ended, but now will carry on, and the purpose is to take the Gospel to all the world.
That’s the message that the angels brought. Well, then we come to the best surprise of all. We’ve had the stone rolled back, we have the empty tomb, we have the angels and their work there, and finally, we have the unbelievable Christ Himself. And I think the best way to summarize that is to say their beloved Lord that they thought was now gone forever, He’s back again. He’s with them again. And I like to use the title Christ here, the unbelievable Christ, because so many had expected Jesus to take command, that Jesus to be the King.
And this Christ is not just risen to be risen, but He is risen to take the throne. And we know when the ascension comes, when He is taken up into heaven and so forth, He’s seated at the right hand of the Father. We know that He is fully in charge and in command.
This whole business of the King of the Jews, nobody was able much to figure that out until He rose from the dead, until He was able to be with the Father and command the angels in this way and that way and His people down here through the Holy Spirit and so forth. In fact, following His resurrection, then Jesus is moving on Himself. He’s going from A to B and so forth. But when He’s done teaching His disciples, He’s going to go to be with the Father. He’s going to go there and to rule and to reign.
Keep that in mind. That was unbelievable to some people. But Jesus says believe it. Believe it. The early post-resurrection found a bunch of disciples who were slow to believe. They just didn’t believe. But by the time you get to the ascension, they’re ready to say, we believe. We believe. And that’s good news for us too. We should be believing as well.
The ascension is the reigning of the King. We’ve looked for Jesus to be the King, and now He’s going to reign. Then, the king’s first bestowment. Once the king is seated at the right hand of the Father, he gives a great gift. A great gift. And that gift is the Holy Spirit Himself, as we’ve mentioned. Bestowment of the Holy Spirit.
He says, from now on you’ll receive power. After that, the Holy Spirit’s come upon you. And you’ll be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, to the ends of the earth. And you know, that hasn’t changed. That hasn’t changed a bit. That’s the same gift that He gave to them, He gives to us also.
So that filled with the Holy Spirit, we’re able to bring people from every tribe and tongue and people and nation to the Lord. The King’s first bestowment is to send the Holy Spirit to rule and to comfort. Well, finally, the Holy Spirit confirms the resurrection. He creates faith. Faith in what? Well, yes, faith in Jesus’ death for sinners on the cross, but also, He creates faith in the resurrection, that Jesus is alive. He confirms the resurrection. He empowers. You’ll receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. And He does more than that.
Because He comes to dwell within us, then He brings Jesus into our hearts. Sometimes we sing that little song, into my heart, into my heart, come into my heart, Lord Jesus, come in today, come in to stay, come into my heart, Lord Jesus. How is that possible? By the Holy Spirit, because He’s the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit of the King. He comes to dwell and live within us. When you say, I have Jesus in my heart, what do you mean? You mean you have the Spirit of the Lord Jesus living within you and empowering you and fellowship with you and comforting you.
So all of these things then are a big surprise to those who started out saying, this is unbelievable. And now, as I said before, as things move along, the disciples are convinced and go on to Galilee and then are with Jesus when He’s taken up in the Ascension and so forth.
The good answer is, Lord, we believe. We absolutely believe. Let that be our testimony today also, that these things that were a surprise of old, they’re not surprising anymore. because this is the way the Lord works. Let’s pray. Father in heaven, we thank you for these surprises. Thank you, Lord, that you worked in the hearts of the disciples, the women, all of them, Lord, to bring them this place of knowing for sure that Christ is risen, that He was successful in paying for our sins, and that He now lives, that we can live also, and one day our graves should the Lord not come any time sooner, but our graves will be empty someday, too, because there is a resurrection, there is a Holy Spirit, there is eternal life. We thank you for all that, then, in Jesus’ name. Amen. Well, let’s sing a closing hymn on the back of your bulletin there.
Now blessed be the Lord our God, the God of Israel. For he alone does wondrous works in glory that excel. And blessed be His glorious name to all eternity. The whole earth let His glory fill. Amen, so let it be. Well, the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make His face shine upon you and be gracious unto you. The Lord lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.