I'm not sure that there's any
more special passage of scripture for me than this wonderful section
in John's Gospel that we have before us. We are looking at
Mark's Gospel and we are reading those, looking at those first
eight verses in chapter 16. And I might read those and then
we read on down into John's account. And it's just the most beautiful
account. At the end of the day, we have a God who has revealed
Himself in the Lord Jesus and particularly revealed Himself
in the salvation of His people by what He's done. on the cross. And so the events of the cross,
as Paul went to the Corinthians and said, I sought to know two
things amongst you only, which is Jesus Christ and him crucified. Because if Jesus Christ and him
crucified as declared in the gospel impacts the lives of people,
then out from that radiates all of Christian life. All of world
history is centred upon that one event. All the history of
our lives is centred upon that one event. All the history of
your life, when you have no power whatsoever to control everything,
is centred upon that one event. One day soon we will be in a
place where we have no power and no control over anything
at all. Little do we realise that that's
how we are for all of our lives. But there'll come a time when
we'll die and God will be seen to be God and He will be in control
and our resurrection is promised. So therefore these events around
the cross have consumed us, I hope delightfully, for the last few
months and may do so for a while because they are just so fundamentally
central. They are central to all that
is to be a Christian. to all that is to worship God. What a privilege to know God
and to worship Him. Let's read Mark 16 verses 1-8
and then we'll just keep reading down from John chapter 20. Now
when the Sabbath was passed, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother
of James and Salome brought spices that they might come and anoint
him. Very early in the morning, on the first day of the week,
they came to the tomb when the sun had risen. And they said
among themselves, who will roll away the stone from the door
of the tomb for us? But when they looked up, they
saw that the stone had been rolled away, for it was very large. And entering the tomb, they saw
a young man clothed in a long white robe sitting at the right
side, and they were alarmed. But he said to them, Do not be
alarmed. You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who
was crucified. He is 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 into Galilee. There you will see Him, as He
said to you. So they went out quickly and
fled from the tomb, for they trembled and were amazed, and
they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid. Let's go
to John 20. Now the first day of the week,
Mary Magdalene went to the tomb early, while it was still dark,
and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb. Then
she ran and came to Simon Peter and to the other disciple whom
Jesus loved, and said to them, They have taken away the Lord
out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.
Peter therefore went out, and the other disciple, and they
were going to the tomb. So they both ran together, and
the other disciple outran Peter and came to the tomb first. And
he, stooping down and looking in, saw the linen cloths lying
there, yet he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came, following
him, and went into the tomb, and he saw the linen cloths lying
there, and the handkerchiefs that had been around his head,
not lying with the linen cloths, but folded together in a place
by itself. Then the other disciple, who
came to the tomb first, went in also, and he saw and believed. For as yet they did not know
the scripture, that he must rise again from the dead. Then the
disciples went away to their own homes. But Mary stood outside
by the tomb weeping. And as she wept, she stooped
down and looked into the tomb, and she saw two angels in white
sitting, one at the head and the other at the feet, where
the body of Jesus had lain. Then they said to her, Woman,
why are you weeping? She said to them, Because they
have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have
laid him. Now when she said this, she turned
around and saw Jesus standing there, and did not know it was
Jesus. Jesus said to her, Woman, why
are you weeping? Whom are you seeking? She, supposing
him to be the gardener, said to him, Sir, if you have carried
him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him
away. Jesus said to her, Mary. She turned and said to him, Rabboni,
which is to say, Teacher. Jesus said to her, Do not cling
to me, for I have not yet ascended to my Father. But go to my brethren
and say to them, I am ascending to my Father and your Father
and to my God and your God. Remarkable. Remarkable passage
of Scripture. What a remarkable series of events
we have to have laid before us by God the Holy Spirit. What
a remarkable day that Sabbath day must have been as they spent
that 24 hours just waiting and wondering. The disciples despairing
over what had become of their saviour and what, in a sense,
had become of them. They who probably thought they
were men of some position and reputation in his kingdom now
seem to be cowards, hiding, in a sense, away from people and
really, possibly, hiding from who they are themselves. And these women, as we saw yesterday,
these women had waited at the cross all of that time. They had waited faithfully with
the Lord Jesus, watched the crucifixion to the end, and waited until
they saw that body, that precious body, laid in that tomb. So what a day. What a day it
was. Luke's Gospel tells us that the
ladies, these women, the two Marys and Salome went home and
they bought spices after he was laid in the tomb and had them
ready. So there were these precious
spices that they had prepared to anoint his body, waiting there,
waiting and waiting all of this time. It's good for us to remember
that the Church is the Bride of Christ. Therefore the things
that happened to these women are symbols and emblems of what
it is for God to work in the lives of His people to make them
the Bride of Christ. So they are not insignificant
events. They are hugely important. Is
that someone? I'll give Troy. Okay, just to bring you up to
speed, Troy, we've been looking at what happened to the Lord
Jesus when he died. we had been thinking about what
it was like for those people who had loved him and worshipped
him and served him for those three years to have spent that
day, that day when Jesus was locked And we're looking at the
story in Mark's Gospel that's there before you of what happened
on that morning when those women came back. And God's children
are all collectively the Bride of Christ. And so the things
that the women did, it says that they ministered to the Lord Jesus. It says here that they came to
anoint the Lord Jesus. The things that happened to these
women, the things that God did in the lives of these women,
are signs of what God does in the lives of His bride, the Church
on this earth. There is nothing more important,
there is nothing more important in all of your life than that
you worship God. there is nothing else that matters
in this world apart from the worship of God. All of eternity
for God's children is filled with worship. And so, for these
women, and for us personally, who have worshipped God, the
absence of God, the seeming absence of Him cold and dark and locked
in a tomb. Does that actually describe how
you feel? Is that, like it is to me, an accurate
description of how you feel toward God himself? A whole bunch of
the time, It just happens to be a reality. As we walk in this
world, sin, the world, the devil, our own flesh will do absolutely
everything possible. All of those things together
work always, 100% of the time, against us worshipping God. And yet, in God's people, there
is placed in them a desire to worship God in spirit and in
truth. A real desire. God's people are people of faith. But here we have in these verses,
we have a description of the object of our faith. He is the
glorious God. But without faith, it is impossible
to please Him, according to Hebrews 11.6. For he who comes to God
must believe that He is, and that He is the rewarder of those
who diligently seek Him. For God's children who have been
given new hearts, there has been a meeting between us and God,
between us and the Lord Jesus. And in that meeting, We have
seen something of how glorious He is. We've seen who we are
and how great a need there is. And once people have met Him,
there is, like there is in these women, there is a hunger and
a thirst. There is a desire, which is life
itself, that we might be back in that place where we met Him
before. See, Christianity is at its heart
an experience. It's an experience of God Himself. And without that experience,
There is no salvation. There is no hope for the future. This is eternal life, said the
Lord Jesus, just a few nights before these events. This is
eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus
Christ, whom you have sent. And as God takes this Word, which
describes our Saviour, and makes it alive, He causes His children
to meet with Him afresh as we read His Word. And it doesn't
happen all the time. Most of the time, it is like
it was for these women. A time of darkness and a time
of despair. But when the light shines, the
light is so bright and the light is so glorious that we never
forget. We never forget what it is to
meet with Him. Mary Magdalene never forgot what
it was. to be possessed by seven demons,
to be held captive by those demons, to be held captive to do their
will, to live a life that we're not sure of, and we best not
add things to scripture about Mary Magdalene and do damage
to the character of one of God's dear children. But she was a
woman like all the people of this world. She was a woman who
was held captive. You and I, if we are believers
now, were people who were held captive. And now the Lord Jesus
has set her free and Mary will never be the same again. They
who were so particular about law-keeping, will always be seen
to be hypocrites, and wonderfully if they're seen to be hypocrites
themselves. But in Matthew's Gospel, it says
something really remarkable. As we saw a couple of weeks ago,
when the Lord Jesus died, that huge curtain That curtain 60
feet high and 30 feet wide that separated God from man and man
from God was torn in two down the middle from the top to the
bottom. A huge curtain was torn in apart. It was saying that
the old ways of meeting with God through nation Israel and
through the sacrificial system and through law keeping was finished. It was always ultimately about
a relationship of faith rather than activities of men. But Matthew's
gospel says at the end of the Sabbath, And then it says something
quite remarkable, as it began to dawn toward the Sabbath. Why did God the Holy Spirit write
it like that? Because the real Sabbath for
God's people is not a day where people rest. It's a person in
whom we rest. Remember our friend Clay Curtis
was being criticised by someone for mowing his lawns on the Sabbath.
And he said, the fellow said to him, aren't you resting on
the Sabbath? And Clay turned to him and said,
no, I'm resting in the Sabbath. The Sabbath is a man, not a day
any longer. Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother
of James and Salome, brought spices that they might come and
anoint him. Very early in the morning, on
the first day of the week, they came to the tomb when the sun
had risen, and they said among themselves, who will roll away
the stone from the door of the tomb for us? It's interesting,
isn't it? They came to the tomb when the
sun had risen. It can be spelled S-U-N, and
it should be. But they came to the tomb when
the S-O-N, the sun, was risen. And they came again to anoint
a body. The resurrection of the Lord
Jesus is a glorious truth for God's people. But we've got to
remember that even these women, even this Mary, who seemed of
all people to understand what the Lord Jesus was going to do,
she didn't understand or know when resurrection was going to
happen. She, like Mary and Martha, believed
in the resurrection. They believed, like God's people
in the Old Testament, that there was a time after these bodies
are put in the grave and they have rotted away, all the bodies
of all the people that have ever lived on this earth will one
day rise again. 05.36 No matter what happens
to any human body, the end of those bodies has not come yet. They will rise. But they came
to complete a service. Joseph and Nicodemus had come
on that day and they had anointed that wrapped the body in dry
spices. These ladies had brought spices
that they could finish that burial process, that they could do honour
to the body of this man. These women were faithful witnesses
to the end. They witnessed his dying. They
witnessed his burial. And here they are, Faithful witnesses,
God's chosen witnesses at the beginning of a new age. According to Jewish law, you
couldn't accept the testimony of women in court. In God's court,
the court of God's truth, their testimony is critical and vital,
because they are just witnesses to the truth. So they came not
expecting resurrection. But they also came like people
who do come to the Lord Jesus, they do come expecting problems. There was a huge problem. Who is going to roll away this
stone? How do you actually get access
to Jesus when there is a stone, a huge stone in front of you? No doubt the Holy Spirit is directing
us back to those extraordinary passages in the Old Testament
like Ezekiel 36. See, how do you get access to
God? How does God get access to you? There is, according to
God, a stone in your heart. We are born into this world with
hearts of stone. For those who think that they
have always been Christians, God says that you never were. You must be born again. A new heart. See, I will sprinkle clean water
on you and you shall be clean. It's a reference to what the
Lord Jesus did at the cross. It's a reference to what happens
as we do honour the Lord with baptism. And you shall be clean. I will cleanse you from all your
filthiness and from all your idols. All of us are born with
filthiness and idols in our hearts. And then God's promise is, I
will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you.
I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you
a heart of flesh. It must come from God. I will
put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes,
and you will keep my judgments and do them." Tell me, people,
what motivated Joseph and Nicodemus to do what they did that afternoon? Did the law say you must go to
Pilate and claim the body of Jesus? Did the law say that you
must wrap him and honour his body and put it in a new turn? Did man say that? So the question
again is what motivated these women? What was the motivation
for these two Marys and this Salome? Was it law? Was it man? See, what motivates true worship
of God? The thing that motivates true
worship of God is seeing God in the Lord Jesus as having done
what He's done to these people, to see Him as glorious. to see Him as God, to see Him
as our sin-bearer, to see Him as our Redeemer. We never see
it while we live in this flesh as clearly as we'd like to, but
Mary had seen Him. You see, what compels and what
motivates Christian service is love. 1 Corinthians 5, 18. It's the love of God. It's Christ's love. Not our love for Him. Christ's
love. We love Him because He first
loved us. But Christ's love compels us. That word compel is a beautiful
word. It means to surround. It means to control. We want to be independent. We
want to do our own thing. Heaven help you if you want to
do your own thing. If God leaves you to do what
you want to do and what satisfies you outside of worship of the
Lord Jesus, you will find on that great day that you will
wish that you never had the freedoms that you thought you had. It
is to surround. The love of Christ surrounds
His people. The love of Christ controls his
people. The love of Christ constrains
his people. You see, these people who worshipped
the Lord Jesus and the Holy Spirit has marked them out especially
and significantly at the beginning of this new age, their activities
around the cross and around the burial and around the death and
resurrection of the Lord Jesus are vital things to contemplate. What motivates your Christian
service? What motivates us in the things
that we do if it's not the love of Christ constraining us and
motivating us? human fleshly activity. You have to remember that down
the road, just within a stone's throw of these events that God
has written here for us, was a multitude of people. A million
people at a temple thinking that they were worshipping God. The
only people worshipping God in Jerusalem that day were a few
scraps of humanity outside of that whole religious world. They were the ones who were honouring
the body of the Lord Jesus. They were the ones who were worshipping
Him. And for those who seek the Lord,
Those who seek the Lord, who genuinely seek the Lord, will
find that seemingly in their way of worshipping God are mountains. There are stones. And yet God
just removes them. Every mountain before the great
Lord Jesus has become a plain. He will remove the mountains
if worshipping God is what you desire. If you, as the angel
said to this woman, you seek Jesus, if you seek Jesus, not
things that He might give you, but seek Him as a man who is
God, as a man who is your Saviour and your Redeemer. Then the mountains,
according to this verse, the stones will be removed. Also before these women was another
problem that they didn't even know about. because of the Sabbath
rest, everyone was shut up in their homes. But on that Sabbath
day of rest, the chief priests were as busy as little beavers,
and they'd gone down, and at the tomb was a band of Roman
soldiers, and on the tomb was a steel guard fixed. They had made that term as secure
as you can possibly make it and sealed it and then put a guard
to seal it again. Who removed the guard? Who removed that obstacle that
these women didn't even get to know about until after the events?
See, God removed it. An angel from heaven came down
and removed that obstacle. Nothing is going to prevent the
Lord Jesus and His Bride being together. Absolutely nothing. The stone had been rolled away,
verse 4, for it was very large. The obstacles of us going to
God and God coming to us are removed by God Himself. And then we have these first
words after the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. Again, they
are words from heaven. But he said to them, Do not be
alarmed. You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who
was crucified. He is risen. He is not here. See the place
where they laid him. The angels of God are our friends,
the angels of God, millions upon millions of them. I don't know
how many angels of God there are, but they are ministering
spirits to us right now. According to 1 Corinthians, there
are angels in this room witnessing the things that we do here. It is remarkable, isn't it? The
love of Christ surrounds us. His angels watch over us. They are our friends and our
servants. And he says to them, do not be
alarmed. Do not be troubled. A bit like
the words of the Lord Jesus used in John 14. Do not let your hearts
be troubled. You seek Jesus of Nazareth. See, for these people, it's a
declaration from heaven about what is going on in their hearts. The question that lies on my
heart and I hope lies on your heart, is do you seek Jesus of
Nazareth? Do you seek Him? He was crucified
and He is risen. He is not here. See the place where they laid
Him. You see, he was crucified, and
he was really dead, and he was really buried, and now he is
really, really risen. As 1 Corinthians says, he was
sown in corruption. He was placed in a term, and
it's wise for us to remember that the corruption that eats
away at our bodies is not something from outside, it's inside of
us. The corruption that will happen
to our bodies doesn't need anything external. But he was sown in
corruption, but he was raised in incorruption. He was sown
in dishonour, condemned as a criminal, dishonoured by those who should
have honoured him, dishonoured by the law, dishonoured by religion,
dishonoured by his friends, but he was raised in glory. He was sown in weakness. What could be weaker? What could
seem a less worthy object of praise and worship than a dead
and mangled body? He was sown in weakness. He was
raised in power. He was sown a natural body. just
like ours and he was raised a spiritual body. He is, as the scriptures say,
now a life-giving spirit. The second man, this new man,
is the Lord from heaven. He has risen. See the place where
they laid him. At the end of the day, Christianity
is based on the revelation of a person, and the revelation
of that person is a reality in history. To deny the deity, to
deny that the Lord Jesus is God and there is no other God, is
to deny facts of history. It is like saying that Bombardieri
doesn't exist. You can't see Bombardieri from
here. That doesn't mean that Bombardieri doesn't exist. The
reality is that the facts of who the Lord Jesus is are established
in history, in real time, with real witnesses. It cannot be
denied by rational men. There was evidence. There was
an amazing amount of evidence, as we will see, Lord willing,
next week. There was the evidence of this
book which promised so many things about the Lord Jesus and His
death and His resurrection. He will be raised. He has been
raised. has promised. Hosea 6.2 says,
after two days He will revive us, on the third day He will
restore us, that we may be in His presence.
That's what resurrection is about, see the place where they laid
him. And then these women are given
this wonderful instruction, go tell his disciples, go and find
those 11 men who are hiding somewhere in Jerusalem or Bethany for fear
of their own lives. Go and tell these men who had
forsaken him, Go and tell these men who had promised so much
that night and had turned around to be so weak and pathetic. Go and tell them. Make sure they
know straight away. And Peter. Make sure, ladies,
that when you go, you go and see Peter and make sure that
Peter's name is mentioned specifically. Peter, who denied Him three times
before a little servant girl, now gets a word from heaven. Go and tell them. Go and tell
His people. You see, what do we tell them?
What were these ladies instructed to tell them? That He's going
before you into Galilee. The Lord Jesus goes before His
people wherever they go. He's going to Galilee and He
will take His people to Galilee. He's going to heaven and He's
taking His people to heaven. The Lord Jesus will not be separated
from His people. There you will see Him. You will see Him. What a remarkable
promise! You will see Him as He said to
you. The Lord Jesus, as God's prophet,
speaks words of promise, and every one that has ever been
spoken is absolutely perfectly fulfilled, perfectly true. There you will see Him as He
said to you. So what He's saying, the message
these ladies bring is a message of pardon, isn't it? a message
that despite all that you have seemed to be, to your friends,
with all the brave and mighty words that you've spoken, despite
what you know yourself to be and you have seen yourself to
be in these last 40 hours of darkness while you've been thinking
about what you've been doing, tell them that it's all forgiven. Tell them that I, the Lord Jesus,
is the one who is seeking and is making relationship again. Everything is forgiven. All your sins are taken away
in the Lord Jesus. All of the sins of all of His
people. There is no barrier now. There is no barrier. There is
no stone. There is no curtain that is left
between the Lord Jesus and His people. All of their sins are
taken away. His bride is holy and spotless. His bride looks into herself
and sees nothing, nothing that's worthy of anything from God.
The bride looks to her husband who provides everything for his
bride. And the glory which you gave
me, I have given them. that they may be one, they may
be one in relationship, just as the Lord Jesus and His Father
are one in relationship. I in them and you in me, that
they may be made perfect in one, that the world may know that
you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. There are no barriers. The stone
is taken away. Father, I desire that they also
whom you gave me may be with me where I am. That they may
behold my glory. They may see, they may behold,
they may touch and feel my glory which you have given me. For
you love me before the foundation of the world. It's a great message from Heaven.
Until Heaven comes and rolls away a heart of stone, rolls
away not to let the Lord Jesus out, but roll away that we may
have access to Him. May God grant us that. May we
be people like Mary who seek Jesus of Nazareth. She sought
after Him, not things that He might give her, not things that
He might do for her, but she sought Him. May God help me. May God help
you to be a person who seeks the Lord Jesus. And may he fulfill
that amazing promise from Hebrews 11 that I read earlier. He who comes to God must believe
that he is, that he exists, and he is who he says he is, and
that he is the rewarder of those who diligently seek him. What
a reward Mary Magdalene received that morning. woman, why are you weeping? Who are you seeking? Jesus said to her, Mary. Jesus is alive. Alive to come
and deal with our souls. Alive to come and powerful enough
to take away hearts of stone. As we join in the Lord's Supper
together, It's a meal of remembrance. It reminds us of blood that is
shed. That shed blood that sprinkled
everything including the book. That blood, that precious blood
that took away our sins and that body that was broken. that body
that was broken like our bodies must be broken, that there may
be in the twinkling of an eye a new body and a glorious body.