The Resurrection of the Son of God

Mark 16:1-8

-We’ve become so used to bad news (almost to the point that when you hear the word “news” you don’t even need to say it’s bad). But what about those times when there’s good news? How do you respond then? 

-Think of the response after WW2, people flooding the streets. Or how people respond after a baby’s born. Or that dreaded day when someone who recently turned 16 gets their driver’s license (sometimes I wonder if it’s even safe for me to be out there)

-Today we’re going to look at how we should respond to good news, and not just good news, but the best news ever because it changes everything about our lives.

READ/PRAY

1. Anointing the Body (1-4)

-We ended last week hearing what happened to Jesus’ body. Joseph of Arimathea was given permission to take down the body and put it in a tomb, so he did as quickly as they could before Sabbath began. 

-Whole week was centered around the practice of the Sabbath, no one did anything that day, it was illegal! That’s why Joseph was so adamant about getting Jesus’ body down before Saturday.

-Anyone remember the names of the women I told you to keep in mind for this week? No peeking! 2 Marys. Today’s text begins with 2 Marys

-Anointing the body was a typical practice in the 1^st cent. You’ve probably seen what Egyptians did with bodies before, that’s where mummies came from. Jews didn’t embalm the dead like that, they allowed nature to take its’ course. The spices were used to cover the smell, and once the flesh was taken care of the bones would be placed in a box (similar to what we do with cremation today). This was a way to continue honoring those who have died.

-The women had waited as long as they needed, Sabbath is done, so they’re now able to anoint Jesus’ body. I don’t always have the best memory, but do you think they’d have forgotten where one of their best friends was buried?

-One of the evidences given against the resurrection was the disciples forgot where Jesus was buried. Do you really think in 36 hours they would have forgotten where the tomb was? 

-Not only would that have been completely narrow minded, but it would have been incredibly easy to discredit the news the disciples were sharing. On top of all that, remember what Mark told us about Joseph just a few verses ago. “A respected member of the council.” If you’ve ever driven by a graveyard and seen those giant tomb stones that stand out above the rest, that would have been like Joseph’s tomb. Prime tomb in the prime location that everyone would know about. Hard to miss!

-Very early, but still bright enough to see, on the first day of the week.

-They didn’t have access to electricity like we do, no flashlights or light switches to go out whenever they wanted. They were thinking of most things, but not everything. They didn’t think through how they would get access to Jesus’ body.

-Makes sense! If you’d hung your whole hopes on 1 person who was just killed do you think you’d be all there mentally? Even if it wasn’t your whole hopes, it’s still a big loss that throws everything else in your life off. Emotions are all over the place. Why would we expect people to act any differently?

-I don’t know if you’ve experienced this, but when people get stretched emotionally, there’s a tendency to revert back to your old self. Like this past week if you spent any time with family, you probably felt yourself reverting back to who you were in high school (whether that’s good or bad is up to you!) Similarly here, these Marys had been stretched to the breaking point, so instead of trusting in Jesus, even what He had explicitly told them, they reverted back to unbelief, almost as if they didn’t spend years with him learning from Him! 

-After all this questioning, they finally get to the tomb, and the stone in front of it had been rolled back. Then look at how Mark describes it “very large.” That would have made more sense a couple sentences ago! But anyway, they’re able to access Jesus’ body, but after they enter the tomb:

• Alarm at the Lack of a Body (5-8)

-Remember, this is a big cave cut out of a rock, so maybe someone else had come to anoint the body as well. Joseph could have come, maybe another one of the disciples wanted to pay their respects. But instead they find: a young man dressed in a white robe. If you go to a graveyard, what do you expect to find? Hopefully no one who’s alive! 

-Throughout the Bible we see the way people react to seeing someone who’s sent from God: scared out of their minds! 

-Contrary to popular belief: angels aren’t cute little cherubs, none that we know of are named Clarence, a bell doesn’t ring when they get their wings, and trust me, you don’t want to be touched by any angels. 

-This is the time of year where we talk about angels a LOT! We don’t often pay much attention to them the rest of the year, though. Think of the way all the people during the Christmas story respond: Zechariah responds in disbelief, Mary worries something is wrong but still chooses to obey, shepherds are (in the words of Linus from Charlie Brown) “sore afraid” To see something as completely holy, unstained by sin as an angel is terrifying! And these Marys know it!  

-Thankfully, the angel tells them: Don’t worry, it’s ok! Let me tell you the gospel message: Jesus was crucified, but He rose! He’s not here! So you should go tell other people what happened.

-Think of how Mark started this book: “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” And here at the end we have the angel summarizing the whole thing: you’re looking for Jesus, let’s think about what happened to Him.

-But then they are also given a job to do: telling other disciples, specifically Peter. Why do you think Peter was called out specifically by name? What sets Peter apart from everyone else? 

-Think back a few weeks ago now when Herb Bloomquist was here and preached on the trial of Jesus. Do you remember what Peter did that last night? He denied Jesus three times, and after the third time, Luke tells us Jesus looked straight at Peter, and Peter remembered what Jesus had told him just a few hours earlier. 

-This story is meant to give the rest of us hope. All of His disciples abandoned Jesus, but 2 in were worse than the others: Judas and Peter. Have you ever thought of how terrible the people Jesus chose were in following Him? Literally no one was left on the last night! They were too afraid, too worried about the worldly ways of living that they fled. This tells us that there’s hope for reconciliation and restoration even after betrayal. This tells us that anyone can be brought into God’s family.

-Why don’t they tell anyone else? The angel gave them 1 job, and Mark leaves us hanging with them refusing to obey that 1 command.

-Won’t be believed, waiting to see if they were misled, distrust of this stranger, maybe they themselves refused to believe what they saw! Before we get to the line and the note in your Bible, I think this the correct place to stop our study of Mark. Throughout this book, Mark has been trying to get us (the readers) to respond to the question: who is Jesus? This ending leaves the story unresolved, because we should ask ourselves: how should we respond to this story? What is the proper response to a man rising from the dead? We’ll get there in just a minute, but before we do I want us to think through the question:

-Why do we believe this happened?

1-No body was ever produced. This would have to be the worst hoax in history if Jesus didn’t actually rise from the dead. It wouldn’t have been hard to just pull out the body and belittle this upstart little group who claimed to worship someone who people had seen crucified during the busiest time of the year (New Years/Christmas on the interstate) But they couldn’t, and still can’t! 

2-Radical change in the disciples. They fled in fear on the last night, but just a couple months later, the same council that condemned Jesus to death holds no power over them. Why the change? Something must have confirmed what they’d been taught! Maybe seeing the resurrected Jesus?

3-Changing in day of worship. Did you notice the in vs. 2 is said “on the first day of the week.” That would be Sunday! But since Israel had been taken out of slavery they’d worshipped on Saturday. Why do you think suddenly this group of people started meeting for worship on Sunday instead of Saturday? Something significant must have happened that would make them throw out over a millennia of tradition, like maybe someone rising from the dead on that day!

4-Lastly, how would someone account for the transformation in Paul and James (Jesus’ brother). We’ve seen Jesus’ family appear a couple times in Mark, and every time they have they’ve tried to discredit Jesus. Yet in the book of Acts, the leader of the church in Jerusalem is James, Jesus half-brother. That’s the biggest reason for me! I have siblings! I don’t believe everything they tell me. James saw something in his brother that made him change his mind.

• Excurses: Textual Variants (9-20)

-What do we do with the note in our Bibles? Is everything we just read a lie meant to trick us?

-As we continue uncovering new texts we find older and older evidence that solidify what we have in our Bibles. The Dead Sea Scrolls revolutionized biblical studies, and confirmed that the Bibles we have are correct.

-Nothing in this section is revolutionary or only found here. We have 3 other Gospels telling the same story that tell the exact same story that is contained here. But it’s most likely not written by Mark, and most likely not what God wanted us to have in Mark’s Gospel.

-The translations we have today (note: it is a translation. Jesus didn’t speak English), these translations are trying to communicate God’s words to us in a way we can understand, which is a beautiful gift. Let me tell you, Greek isn’t easy to read! Unfortunately, it’s no longer Greek to me, but it took literal years of my life in order to be able to read and understand the Bible in the original languages (I don’t know how many hours I spent trying to memorize vocab). 

-We have more translations than we know what to do with, and all of them will give us notes to help us know and understand God’s message to us today. The problem becomes when we build entire theologies out of these passages that most likely weren’t in the original book Mark wrote. Look at vs. 18. That happened to Paul, but isn’t something that should be practiced today, but some churches hold regular snake handlings to “prove” they’re Christians. Don’t build any theologies or practices from these texts! I’ll talk a little more about this in Sermon Scraps tomorrow,

-What does this mean for us today? Why does the death of a Jewish man 2,000 years ago have implications for us now? 

-As the leader goes, so goes the nation. 1 man’s sin led to death, 1 man’s death leads to life (Rom. 5:12) Think of the way we talk after a Viking’s game. WE lost last week. OUR quarterback is now mobile (sorry Cooper’s daddy). Somewhere we all view ourselves as part of a group. The question is which spiritual group are we a part of: Adam or the second Adam, Jesus? Whose family are you a part of, and which family do you demonstrate that you’re a part of in the way you live?

-I remember reading an article years ago where a dad would tell his kids every day they left for school “remember whose you are!” At one point, another parent heard them and tried to correct him “don’t you mean remember WHO you are?” Doesn’t matter who we, it matters GREATLY whose we are! If we’re a part of Jesus’ family, we’ll lack nothing.

-The way I’ve often shared this is all of life is who you know. Who you know can get you jobs, connections, vacations, money, even eternity is literally dependent on who you know. So when you see Jesus face to face, will He know you? The way we show whose family we’re in is by living a life that is true, beautiful, and good.

-How do we model lives that are true, beautiful, and good?

-Podcast this week talking about this very concept. We need to grow in hospitality. Heb. 13:2, 1 Peter 4:9, Rom. 12:13 all command us to show hospitality to others. How do we do that? 

-We need to commit to being table people (appropriate for Thanksgiving weekend!)

-Think of God’s first command to Adam & Eve (if you’ve been in Micah’s class, the Adamic covenant). They were to fill the earth and subdue it, and eat of any tree except one. The Fall comes about by eating.

-Abraham, when God comes to him in Gen. 18, prepares food to eat with God.

-Throughout the OT the way God’s people celebrate and remember God’s work in their lives is by feasting (eating)

-I went to a conference right before the twins were born walking through Exodus, fascinating story of God’s covenant with Israel in 24:22 “They [elders, Moses, Aaron, Nadab, Abihu] beheld God, and ate and drank.” God invites His people to eat with Him.

-The Last Supper is a meal, eating with His disciples, serving as a reminder of Jesus’ death on their behalf. That practice continues down to us today: we regularly eat and drink to celebrate and remember God’s work in our lives.

-And then what does Jesus say during that last meal? Mark 14:25 “Truly, I say to you, I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.”

-We are commanded to be hospitable throughout the Bible, I would argue the way you demonstrate you’re hospitable is by inviting people to your table. By building a bigger table, you invite people in so that they can eat and drink of the Lord’s table at church (signifying that they’re now a part of the people of Jesus), which will find its final fulfillment after Jesus returns when we will have the biggest and greatest feast you could ever dream of!

-Are you hospitable? Are you regularly inviting people to your table because Jesus has invited you to His table? Jesus even tells us to invite those who can’t repay us to our tables! Do you long for the day when you will table with the Lord in the new heavens and the new earth?