Our text on this Easter morning is found in the Gospel according to Mark chapter 16, and this morning we will be looking at verses 1 through 8. Here now the word of God, blessing, Mark 16 verses 1 through 8. When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Salome brought spices so that they might annoy Jesus body. Very early on the first day of the week, just after sunrise, they were on their way to the tomb, and they asked each other, who will roll the stone away from the entrance of the tomb, but when they looked up, they saw that the stone which was very large had been rolled away. As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side and they were alarmed. Don't be alarmed, you are looking for Jesus the Nazarene who has crucified. He has risen. He is not here. See the place where they laid him. But go tell his disciples and Peter. He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you. Trimbling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone because they were afraid. This is the word of the Lord. Now before we look at this passage, let's pray. And ask the Lord Jesus who came out of that tomb and who is here this morning in this room with us. Let's ask him to speak to us. Our Father, the Apostle Paul, said that his preaching was not a demonstration of his brilliance or his eloquence or his genius, or his oratory ability. He said that his preaching was a demonstration of the power of the Holy Spirit. Father, no man is able to stand behind his desk and speak so that hearts will be changed so that Father, we will be changed and grow from the inside out. But Christ is able to teach that way. And we pray in the next few minutes that He would open our hearts, open our ears, that He would speak in this place and that we would hear him. And when we leave here in a few minutes, may we be able to say, Jesus Christ spoke this morning because John Sartel can't teach that way. Our Father this morning made this preaching be a demonstration of the power of the Holy Spirit. That's our prayer in His name and for His glory. Have you discovered the empty two this week, Evelyn Keaton died. Evelyn was a charter member of independent, a wonderful, wonderful lady. Her husband Luther Keaton died in November of last year, November of 2000. Her death was unexpected. She was in church last Sunday. She was in women of church on Tuesday was so healthy, but she died on Wednesday. In fact, she was to celebrate Easter today in the home of her nephew, Russell Williamson, Russell Elizabeth or members here. Elizabeth had told their five-year-old daughter, Sarah, that Aunt Evelyn would eat with them on Easter and Sarah replied, well, won't Uncle Luther be here too? Now, Elizabeth thought that she had made a plane. Uncle Luther died in November. But she sat down again with Sarah. And she said, Sarah, don't you remember Uncle Luther died? He went to be with the Lord. But Sarah was undaunted. And she said, but Mother, on Easter, they rise again. People Sarah may not have understood all the implications of the resurrection and gotten it just right. But one thing you know, she believed that the team was empty. She believed in the resurrection. She believed. And Uncle Luther was going to come back and eat lunch on Easter with them. I love that. She believed in the resurrection. She had discovered the empty team. I want to ask you a question. Is the resurrection that real to you? Is the resurrection that real to you and to me? Have you really discovered it? I'm not asking. Do you believe in the resurrection? Have you really discovered it? Let's answer that question as we look at this passage. First, I want you to see in this passage and it will help you to have it open in front of you. Mark 16, as you look at this passage, I want you to see that in some ways it's easier to anoint a dead body than it is to deal with a resurrection. Look at verse 1, when the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the Mother of James and Salon bought spices so that they might go to anoint Jesus body very early on the first day of the week. Just after sunrise, they were on their way to the team. And they asked each other, he's going to roll away the stone from the entrance of the team. Jesus had been hurriedly buried on the eve of the Sabbath on Friday afternoon. Late Friday afternoon, Joseph of Arimathea, a secret follower of Christ had come out of the closet and gone to pile it and claimed the body. The disciples must not have been too comfortable with Joseph because we don't read that any of them were present. The women who had watched the crucifixion must not have known Joseph or either they didn't feel comfortable with him because they watched silently from a distance. All the gospels record that the women were there at the team when Joseph put the body into two, but they were across the way, they weren't with him. John records that Nicodemus, another secret disciple, a member of the Sanhedrin like Joseph of Arimathea, that Nicodemus was with Joseph, just the two of them. Nicodemus had brought spices to anoint the body of Christ, to put in the foes of the cloth in which the body of Jesus was wrapped. But it had been done hurriedly, the law forbade burial on the Sabbath. It had to be done quickly, even before sundown, the women had not been able to do their part. When the body was wrapped with burial cloth, the spices were put between the foes, and this was usually done very slowly by loving hands, but they had to watch from a distance, frustrated.
They spent Friday night in the Sabbath preparing special spices which were used to anoint the body in burial. They would not go the tomb on the Sabbath, so they returned to the tomb on Sunday morning, the first day of the week to anoint the body. Early that morning, in the early morning light, the first day of the week, these women were in a hurry to get to the tomb. They, however, were not going to a resurrection. There was no expectation on their part, there was no anticipation, they were going to finish a burial. They would unwrap the body, mix their spices with the one Nicodemus, Nicodemus had already used, they would rewind the body and go back home. And life would go on as usual. Tragedy had come into their lives, but these folks knew a lot about tragedy. All of their lives they had been under the oppression of the occupying Roman army. They had known tragedy and they would know what a game. They would return home and life would go on as usual. Nothing would change. In the last two weeks I've read these passages in preparing for the day. This is how I prepared for this message. I stopped and I looked at that and hit me. As I watched these women go to the tomb, the resurrection really turned their lives upside down from the moment they saw that empty tomb. Their lives were never the same again. One second of their lives was ever the same. And you know something? It hit me. In some ways it would have been easier for them if his body had been the tomb. In some ways it would have been easier for them to annoy the body and go back home and live life as usual. Thanks. In some ways it's easier to annoy the dead body and the deal with the resurrection. His mind was brilliant. He was a friend, his name was Bobby. I would give him books about Christ. And because of his mind I would give him books like Miraculous Janity and he would devour it. He had read Francis Shafer's book Escape From Reason. He gave me books to read that represented his existentialist position and we would talk about absolute truth. Did it really exist? And we would talk about the life of Christ. He knew he had to live but was he God and did he rise from the dead? One day we were talking and the concrete cracked. And Bobby said you know John? Jesus may be the Son of God. But then he added this but I don't want to believe it. I like my life like it is. I would have to change too much if he is the Son of God. And then I realized what had probably been happening all the time that we had been reading and all the time we had been debating. He wanted, he wanted Christ to be in that tomb. He did not want to find that tomb empty. He was anointing a dead body. It would cost him too much if that tomb were empty. But since it was a lot easier, it was a lot easier for him to anoint a dead body than to deal with the resurrection. Last time I saw him we were at a gathering and party. And I always wanted to know what he was reading. He hadn't seen him for years and said Bobby, what are you reading? And he looked at me and his eyes were dead. And he said John, I quit reading. I don't want to think anymore. What was he saying? It's a lot easier to anoint a dead body than it is to deal with a resurrection. And I think those aren't easy words. If you think that the resurrection does not turn your life upside down, if you think that life is easier with Christ in this world, in this following world, then you don't understand. Eric Feldman writes about when he was in Hong Kong visiting with a friend. And this friend took him to visit an old Chinese gentleman then living in Hong Kong. He had just been released. He hadn't been there long. He had just been released from a prison in China. He said they went down an alley and they went up to a second floor flat. They knocked at his door and this old Chinese gentleman opened the door. He was smiling all over. He was smiling with his whole body but his body was bent way over. They went into a sparsely furnished room and then the old man's wife came in a Chinese lady about his age and served them tea. And as she served tea, Feldman noticed how they looked at each other and how they sort of touched each other and he said he didn't understand they were even kind of giggling and they noticed that he noticed. And old Chinese gentleman said to Feldman, that's all right. We're newly wedged and then he told him this amazing story. The old gentleman in 1949 had been a student in seminary preparing for the ministry. He was attending Nanking seminary. The woman that was now his wife, he was engaged to her at that time in 1949 and they were preparing to marry at the seminary. But the day of the rehearsal, the communist soldiers came and they shut down the seminary and they took all these Christians, they took all the seminary students and put them in a hard labor prison. Trying to re-educate them from their insanity with Christ, his, the woman to whom he was engaged, was allowed to come visit him one time a year. Just a few minutes, not long, one time a year. And each year after she came for a few minutes and left, he would be called immediately to the warden's office. And the warden would say, each time he would say, you know, you can go home with your bride if you will renounce Christianity. If you will just renounce the silly thing about Christ, you can go home and year after year, this man replied with just one simple word. Now, had he been able to stand the strain for so long being denied his family, being denied his marriage, how had he been able to stand it? I'll tell you why, because he had seen the empty tune, because he knew the resurrection was true. If the resurrection happened, that meant Jesus was the son of God and it would be folly to turn from him. That meant that the claims of Jesus were true, but facts, it would have been easier for him to have anointed the dead body. It was hard, it was 30 years hard to deal with the resurrection. Let me tell you, folks, make no mistake about it. And if you're here this morning considering the claims of Christ, let me tell you, in some ways it's easier to anoint a dead body. Then it is to deal with the resurrection because if you come and that team is empty and you see it, your life will not be the same. It will cost you. Secondly, I want you to see in this passage that the resurrection slams into our lives as a shocking and incredible surprise that is hard to believe. Look at verse 4. But when they looked up, they saw the stain which was very large and it had been rolled away as they entered the team. They saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side and they were alarmed. Don't be alarmed, he said. You're looking for Jesus and Nazarene who was crucified. He's risen, he's not here. See the place where they laid him. Now look at verse 8. Trimbling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the team. They said nothing to anyone because they were afraid. I love this. They were literally blown away. This was not some Sunday morning confession that says, I believe in the resurrection. Put yourself there. You arrive at the team, expect to find a bulge, roll back. You're looking to team. There's nothing there. A man who seems to be dressed in very bright clothes tells you Jesus is a ridgance. You say, yeah, sure. When cows fly, let me tell you, you don't think the women taught that. We're going to see they thought exactly that. This is exactly what you think. You ever buried someone? You buried someone at Memorial Park? You go back to visit the grave? What if you went back to visit the grave? You buried someone on Friday and you went back Sunday afternoon and you walked up and there was just a hole in the ground. You know, caska was open and you look. The man standing, you say, what happened? They just got up this morning, walked away. What would you say here, dear? You'd say, sure, when cows fly, that's exactly what these women thought. These women did not run from there to seek to, they didn't run from there to tell the disciples. He did it. He came back from the dead. Look at the words. Look at the words in verse 8, trembling, bewildered, flared. Now, those words, trembling in bewildered, don't mean believe. That means confused, perplexed, non-understanding, frustrated. They know more believed he had risen, then we believe the moon is made of cheese. Let's look at it. Let's look at them as they flared. Matthew records that these women, just after the left attend, they ran into Jesus Himself. They fell on their faces. They clutched His feet. What did He say to them? Don't be afraid. Don't be confused. It's really me. I have risen. He said, now you go tell my disciples that. You see, before, they weren't even, they were going to say nothing to know. He said, you go tell the disciples. Now, Mary Magdalene, this is a good way to spend east afternoon. Read these accounts. Mary Magdalene must have gotten separated from those women as they left the tune and that would have not been unusual. And she was not with that group that saw Jesus, because when she showed up to where the disciples were, she said to the disciples, this is in John. This is in the Gospel of John. He said, they've taken the Lord out of the tune. And we don't know where they put Him. She didn't say it. She said, they've taken His bodies. Body has been stolen. Then after Peter and John went to the tune, Mary Magdalene followed them to the tune and the man standing there, she said to him, they've taken my Lord away. And I don't know where they put Him. And it was then Jesus appeared to have read it in the 20th chapter of John. What's the point? These women were not prepared for what they encountered. The resurrection was outside their frame of reference just at this outside of hours. Jesus had told them many times he had said, I'm going to rise from the dead, but they were just like us. We think, well, we don't believe in the resurrection because we're modern. People thought they were modern too. The resurrection was just as miraculous as unreal to them as it is to us. They'd seen Jesus rising dead. Jesus said to them, he was going to rise from the dead. He had said, I'm the resurrection of life. And it actually said, do you believe this? They said, yes. Jesus had probably said, do you believe that I'm going to rise from the dead? And they had probably said, yes, just like here on Sunday morning, we idly, easily say, I believe in the resurrection. But it was not reality in their lives. And they really didn't believe it. And it was beyond their imagination. Just like for many of us, we really, really haven't discovered it. Jill was four years old. We were returning from Bristol, Virginia, Tennessee. She was in the back seat leaning over between, you know, you know, don't you all say anything about her? Don't you come up to me after the service and say, well, why wouldn't she in a child's chair? They didn't have children's chairs then. Man, have you seen your parents can tell you about it? You know, when we got ready to go somewhere, we didn't struggle with that contraction trying to get the seat belt behind it. We just threw the kids in and left. Now, I'm not hitting that for those seats have saved a lot of lives. But how much trouble are they? I hate those things. I really did. You try. I told Jen, I said, look, once it's in the car, don't ever take it out by five of them. Put them in every car. We're not going to fill with it. But Jill was, Jill was leaning over the seat and between us. And it was the week of Easter in the middle of the week. And, and we were talking about Easter Sunday. And I said, Jill, what happened on Easter? She said, Jesus died. Now, it's great how Jesus died. And she told me that he died on a cross and we talked about that for a minute. We talked about the nails and what a crucifixion was. And even though she had never seen a crucifixion, she understood. And she understood about death. You know, sometimes we try to shield our children from something they understand better than we think. I was reading something that Ross Sam's Jr. had written this week about something that had happened in his neighborhood. The neighbor's cat was run over by the car. And the mother wanted to quickly dispose of the remains of the cat before little Billy got home. Little Billy was four years old. And she didn't want him to see the dead body of the cat. And she didn't want him to know the cat was dead. Well, she got that done. Billy came home and about two days later, he came in and he said, Mom, where's the cat? And mom sat down with him and she said, Billy, I've got something sad to tell you. The cat died. But it's all right. He's up in heaven with God. Billy looked right and his mom confused and he said, Mom, what in the world would God want with a dead cat? You know, he understood more about death than his mother thought. Jill understood that day. Jill understood about dying. That was not hard for her. That was not hard for her at all. As you said, do you believe that Jesus died on the cross? Yes. But I said, all right, then Jill, what happened? She looked at me like he died. And I said, no, Jill, that's not the end of the story. I said, they put Jesus in the grave on Friday evening. And on Sunday morning, he got up and he walked out of the grave. Jill's answer was the same as these women. She looked at me and she said, Daddy, what teasing me? I loved it. I had a four-year-old that preacher's daughter that didn't believe in a resurrection. But I still loved it. Why? Because it was not something easy to believe. It was incredible. It was huge. People don't get up out of the tomb and walk away. No matter what you can pass on Sunday morning, they just don't do it. But for her, that four-year-old, she would accept the death, but not the resurrection. The resurrection was incredible and thanks. That's what it is here. These women left the tomb for plaques and troubled and confused. Because resurrection is incredible. You know, many have tried to make it not so incredible. They've tried to make it acceptable in our modern world. The world has said, you know, well, he really didn't rise. And in churches across the land, that will be echoed even from the pulpits. Well, you know, he really didn't physically rise from the dead. In the church, many churches repeat what the world says that Easter's about the earth coming back to life. It's about leaves coming back to trees about bulbs sprouting again. It's about flowers blooming. It's about sap rising. There's an 830 service. There's a man up at the back. He said up when I said sap rising. He told me at the service he said, I thought you said sap was rising. But in churches all across our land, you know, say flowers are blooming. The disciples just imagined the resurrection. It's really about spring. About the earth coming back to life. But about flowers blooming and about the sap rising. I attended the church when I was a student and graduate school in Atlanta. And the minister was preaching on the resurrection. I went to hearing that Easter morning because I specifically knew he didn't want. He didn't believe in the resurrection. I knew that. And I wanted to hear what he was going to say on Easter. Well, you know, it would be hard. Think about it. What if you had the job to go preach a sermon on Easter morning and you were going to say, Hey, people, it's about flowers blooming. That'd be a hard sell, wouldn't it? Well, I went to hear. You know what? That's exactly what he said. He said they imagined the resurrection. He said really didn't happen. He said it's about flowers blooming. It's about leaves coming back to the trees. It's about life coming back to the earth. It's about sap rising. You know, when I left that church that day, I wasn't saying, Wow, that's incredible. Can you believe that? The flowers are blooming again. It's a miracle. Let me tell you, those women were not bewildered. They were not perplexed about flowers blooming and sap rising. That minister had taken the incredible out of the resurrection. He needed to discover the reality of the empty team. One day the sky is going to break wide open. And Jesus is going to break into our real spacetime history from the dimension where he is right now. And that minister is going to see him. And what he will see will not be spring returning or the sap rising. And that minister will discover the reality of the resurrection, but it will be too late. If you're one of those who believe the resurrection of Jesus is just a figurative thing about the earth being reborn and flowers blooming, you go home and you read these accounts. Is that what you think blue these women and these women and the disciples away? Is that what you think Matthew and Mark and Luke and John were writing? Is that what they died and gave their lives for flowers blooming? I think not. And if that's the kind of resurrection you have, it will not bring power to your life. It will not bring comfort or consolation or it won't bring joy. George MacDonald, great, great writer, 19th century writer. He was born in 1824. He died in 1905 from Scotland. You need to know this about George MacDonald. George MacDonald and his writings had much to do with the conversion of C.S. Lewis. We owe a great debt to George MacDonald. When George MacDonald had a young daughter and his wife had a young daughter and she died and George MacDonald was away and he wrote his wife a various powerful letter. And he told his wife, he said, it's horrible. It's dark on the inside. I know you're hurting. And he said, but you will not find consolation in lovely, but empty, cinematality. He said, you won't find consolation in pleasant fancies of half-held creeds. And then he began to write about the great shepherd who loved their daughter and about the great shepherd who had risen from the dead. And he began to write about the God of the resurrection who had gone on before and prepared the way for their daughter. He was saying to his wife, if you make the resurrection any less incredible than the huge thing that it is, it will be of little comfort to you. You know why so many of us are not moved, powerfully moved and driven and comforted by the resurrection because for us it's a half-held creed. We haven't yet discovered the resurrection, the empty tale. In some ways it's easier to annoy the dead body than it is to deal with the resurrection. The resurrection slams into our lives as a shocking and incredible surprise that is hard to believe and then thirdly and finally. When we discover the resurrection, everything we do and everything we say in all of our lives and every nook and cranny of our lives relates to that reality. You cannot unhook the resurrection from anything in your life, won't you discover it? You'll never forget it. Verse 7, but go tell his disciples and Peter. He's going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him just as he told you. After the women saw Jesus, after they were convinced, what did they do? Did they go back home just as they had planned to do on their way to the team? You think they said, do you think what I'm saying? Well, I'll be. Wasn't that something? I've got to go home cook dinner now. Benjamin's going to be home before I get there. I don't think they did that. They could not run fast enough to tell him, have you ever had something you couldn't keep contained? Have you ever had something that was so huge, so big, so incredible that there was no way? Do you mean you just got it say to somebody? That's where they were. After the disciples had seen him. By the way, I was thinking about this, Elizabeth, when you told me about Sarah, you know the disciples, he appeared to them in the upper room, that Monday evening. They were eating. None of them expected, really expected him to show up for dinner, but he did. After the disciples saw him, do you think, hey, one has something. That was neat, right? But we don't need to go to Galilee. We've got some things to do down here. We don't need to go to Galilee. They were off to Galilee. You couldn't have kept them out of Galilee. Going to Galilee, meet me up there. Do you know what his resurrection means? It means that he was really deity. It means he really did die for our sins. It means that all the rest of that stuff that he said that is so awesome, it means it's true. It means that he's coming back. It means that we really will give an account to him one day. It means our loved ones who have died in Christ have gone to be with him. It means that we will see him again. It means that we do our jobs differently. It means that we treat our husbands, that we treat our wives differently. It means that everything we do, or say, or we approach, we do, and say and approach it differently because everywhere we go, the resurrection, we can't unbutt from it. People say, why do you do what you do? Why are you faithful? Why are you doing this? Why are you doing your jump? Because I've been to an empty tube and he's not there. Let me tell you, Christ has risen. You know, sometimes when someone is dead, a husband or wife, a child is so hard. People say to me, John, the gospel, what you say, the gospel and the resurrection is no comfort to me. It's really no comfort to me. I hurt so badly. Maybe they hurt so badly just from the separation that they don't realize what they're saying, but I'm not sure that's it. I really think it's not a comfort because they hadn't been to an empty tube. Paul said it. Paul knew as much grief as anyone in this room. And Paul said, when you go to the cemetery, whether it's a little girl or a little boy or your son or daughter or your mother or father or your wife, whoever it is, don't you mourn like the world mourns. The world needs a cemetery and says, never more, there's no higher. We only have been raised. Paul says, don't you mourn like the rest of the world, it has no higher. Through the tears, through the pain, you smile. And you say, I know that my redeemer lives. And I know that person lives. I live and die in Christ. I shall live too. And I should see him. No, it says in that verse, in 2 Corinthians 1 chapter 3, he says, there's no comfort. There's no pain. There's no depth of pain. There's no depression. There's no darkness. I can't lighten. There's no depression. And I can't cure. There is no pain. No matter how deep that I cannot heal. He says, I am the God of all comfort. And you know what that means? It doesn't mean that he comes down and supernatural it writes on the wall and supernaturally sits you up in his lap. That's not what it means. It means he brings the reality of the resurrection, powerfully slamming into your life. This hit me so hard when I stood at my father's grave in Draper's Valley, Virginia. A little country cemetery beside a little country church, church that dates back to the Revolutionary War. And there was my father's casket. And I didn't look away from that casket. And there was the red clay of a genuine that damn empty hole. And I didn't look away from it. I looked right at it. And this is where confession of faith really gets really, really becomes real. And I sit out loud. I'm standing by myself. I sit out loud. Grave. Grave. Listen to me. You don't have him now. You don't. He's with Jesus. You couldn't keep Jesus and you can't keep him. And I said, you may say, you may say tonight that you have his body. And you do. I said, you do have his body. But just for now. And it's just a body. And one day Jesus is going to return, Grave. And he's going to twist that body from your cold grip. And he's going to change that body. He's going to join it to the soul that has gone to be with the Lord. And he's going to have a body that will never, ever die or never know another grave. Do you hear that? Standing over two graves on a hill, overlooking Yazoo, Mississippi, and seeing the vault of my brother in my nephew that had been killed. The mics aren't telling the thing you're starting to blazing across those two vaults. The same thing, a confession of faith. Mike and Nate, you're not in those caskets. You're with Jesus Christ and I will see you again. Death you don't have their souls. And you'll not keep their bodies for long. People, it reaches to every nook and cranny and it does not get so dark. That the resurrection cannot bring the right. And it doesn't get so painful that the resurrection can't bring the bomb of Gilead. And it doesn't get so sick that Jesus can't heal. People, the greatest fact of history, the greatest truth I know is that Jesus rose from the dead. That he's risen. You can have all the rest, but you can't have that. It is the greatest fact of all of history. Do you believe the tomb is empty? If you do, it slams into your life and you can't ever get rid of it. If you say you believe it and your life goes on as before, you just don't understand. Pray, pray to God that he'll show you a risen Christ. So I ask you, have you discovered the empty tomb? Little Sarah, she said, I'm going to eat Easter dinner when I'll go later. My little Sarah, don't you give up. Cause one day you will eat with him in the biggest banquet you've ever seen.