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Copyright 1999
by Pastor David Legge
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I want you to turn with me in your Bibles to Mark's gospel - Mark's gospel and chapter 16, which you probably already know is the account of the Resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, if you're familiar with the New Testament and with your Bible you'll know that often the gospel writers, when they're writing about one specific situation, often in each gospel there is a different slant put on the story. For instance, you could have an account of a work or a miracle of the Lord Jesus Christ in Matthew's gospel, and then in Mark's gospel you could have the same account but with a different emphasis. The writer, Mark, was trying to get across a different point.
Now, in this account, in Mark chapter 16, of the Resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ there is, I believe, one specific point that the writer wants to get across to those reading his words. So let's look at chapter 16 of Mark, and we will be referring and thinking of the other accounts of the Resurrection, but we're going to specifically look at Mark chapter 16.
Verse 1: "And when the sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome, had bought sweet spices, that they might come and anoint him. And very early in the morning the first day of the week, they came unto the sepulchre at the rising of the sun. And they said among themselves, Who shall roll us away the stone from the door of the sepulchre? And when they looked, they saw that the stone was rolled away: for it was very great. And entering into the sepulchre, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, clothed in a long white garment; and they were affrighted. And he saith unto them, Be not affrighted: Ye seek Jesus of Nazareth, which was crucified: he is risen; he is not here: behold the place where they laid him. But go your way, tell his disciples and Peter that he goeth before you into Galilee: there shall ye see him, as he said unto you. And they went out quickly, and fled from the sepulchre; for they trembled and were amazed: neither said they any thing to any man; for they were afraid. Now when Jesus was risen early the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had cast seven devils. And she went and told them that had been with him, as they mourned and wept. And they, when they had heard that he was alive, and had been seen of her, believed not. After that he appeared in another form unto two of them, as they walked, and went into the country. And they went and told it unto the residue", the remainder, "neither believed they them. Afterward he appeared unto the eleven as they sat at meat, and upbraided them with their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they believed not them which had seen him after he was risen. And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned. And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover. So then after the Lord had spoken unto them, he was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God. And they went forth, and preached every where, the Lord working with them, and confirming the word with signs following. Amen".
Ann Landers was an agony aunt in a tabloid newspaper, and she confessed that every single month that she would write in this agony aunt slot, that she would receive 10,000 letters every month. When she was asked on one occasion: 'What was the subject that predominated all of your letters? What was the problem, and the burden, and the anxiety that most people wrote to you about?', she had no hesitation in answering the question. She said, without one second of thinking about it: 'There is one subject that predominates all: it is the subject of fear'. She said: 'Almost every letter that I receive, the root problem, the root diagnosis at the bottom of it all, is the problem of fear'.
Many doctors think that, indeed, 90% of patients, when they first come into their surgery, the first symptom of their problem or their illness was not a sore throat. It wasn't a pain in the chest, it wasn't a growth; but the first symptom that triggered all the other symptoms was the symptom of fear. If we're honest with ourselves, and if we look at the media, the television, the newspapers, even the billboards around us, we see that our society, perhaps more than any society ever in the history of time, is one that is eaten up with fear. It is one that is burdened and dominated with anxiety and the burden of even life itself, and living itself. Our world around us, and our environment around us, has been dominated, has been obsessed with fears and scares.
You only have to turn the TV on in the past week to see how many more scares there have been. The past decade, perhaps, we have been obsessed and bombarded through the television screen by scares - environmental scares. We've been told the ozone layer is going to cave in and the sun is going to burn us all up. The sea is going to come in from Newcastle and wipe us all out. We've been told about health scares. There was chickens: we had salmonella from our eggs, BSE from our cattle. Now, there's Asian flu from chickens again, and all these health scares. There are military scares. We've got more this week. Saddam Hussein has arisen his head again, making threats. More scares. In the Cold War we had the scare that someone was going to press a button in Russia and we were all going to go up in smoke. Scares!
We in our society today have developed a society, an environment of hypochondriacs of every conceivable kind: people who walk about their daily business in the world around us and they are so paranoid, depressed and conscious and worried about everything that could possibly go wrong - that probably has no probability of going wrong at all! Some people are even going about their daily life with the burden and anxiety of living life itself before them. Many of us have become like Louis XV of France. Louis XV was a man who was so paranoid, so obsessed with the subject of death that he forbade any mention of that subject in his presence. In fact, not only did he forbid the mention of the word, but he took away from his environment every reminder of the subject of death. Every grave, every memorial, every war cenotaph in the palace was taken away because it reminded him of that dreaded subject.
The great leader, dictator, Joseph Stalin, was the same. This was a man who ruled one of the superpowers of the earth, yet this was a man who had eight different bedrooms in which to sleep in. He was so afraid of someone coming one night and assassinating him, or someone poisoning his supper or something like that, that he had eight bedrooms and he would fluctuate from one bedroom to another in case someone came to take his life.
Everything that could possibly go wrong, we think will go wrong. It's alright - isn't it? - to look out at the world and say: 'Well that's the way they think', but do you know something? I believe that so often, not only the behaviour of the world can affect the church, but even in our own day and age the attitudes at times, the psyche, the mind-thoughts of the world are actually filtering in to the church of Jesus Christ. We, as Christians, whether consciously or not, have taken the word of God and have set it aside, and have started adopting the mind, thoughts and attitudes of the world around us. The Lord Jesus Christ said that there would come a time when men's hearts would fail them for fear. You know, I think this morning that, often as Christians, perhaps not literally, but in our everyday daily life our hearts are failing us for fear. It's as if people are just taking us like a wet rag and wringing us out with worry and anxiety. There are things in our life that daily, every single day, eat away at our very character.
I want you to look at this chapter of Scripture that we read together this morning: chapter 16 of Mark. I want you to think of the scene for just a moment. We have, portrayed for us in this gospel, the Easter weekend. We have Good Friday - the death of the Lord - we have Saturday and then we have Sunday. We have here for us a record of what we call nowadays, Easter weekend. I want you to try to think of what the disciples felt like on Good Friday. Try and think about it! The Lord Jesus Christ, in the Garden of Gethsemane: soldiers come to Him. He has been praying, and they come to Him with swords and with staves and with armour; and they come to take Him away. One of His disciples, Judas, comes and kisses and betrays the Lord Jesus Christ. They take the Lord Jesus Christ, and then a prophecy is fulfilled. The great prophet said that when the Shepherd would be smitten the sheep would scatter. And the Shepherd, the Lord Jesus Christ - the Shepherd of the sheep was taken to be crucified - and what happened? It says that the disciples fled. They dispersed! They disappeared! You couldn't find them anywhere. A handful of them came to the cross to watch Christ die, and the rest deserted Him.
We all know Peter, don't we? He, if you like, is the epitome of the betrayal of the Lord Jesus Christ. We think of him around that fire. We think of the witnesses that came to him and said: 'Was not he with the Lord Jesus Christ?'. We think of the little girl who came and said: 'His speech betrayeth him. He has the speech of a Galilean' - and then he went to the extreme of betraying and denying the Lord Jesus Christ with oaths and with curses. But the rest weren't much better - they ran away. I don't know where they went, but they ran away. They were nowhere to be seen.
But I want you to try to think, just for a moment this morning, on what their feelings and what their thoughts were on Saturday morning. They arose on Saturday morning - if they could even sleep because of their guilt - and they awoke to the realisation that the Lord Jesus Christ was dead. Wherever they were, they were awoken - and can you imagine the thoughts that were coursing through their minds? Perhaps they remembered the Lord's life. Perhaps they remembered the miracles that He did; the miraculous words that fell from His lips; the great teaching that they had received at His feet, for three solid years at the feet of God Incarnate. Perhaps they were reminded of al the great things that He had promised them that He would do in the future, but now all they could think of was these words and the fact that Jesus Christ: He was dead.
Do you know what the supreme irony is? That no matter what acts the Lord Jesus Christ did that they remembered, or no matter what words He spoke that they remembered, they had forgotten some of the most critical words that the Lord Jesus Christ had stressed; especially in Mark's gospel that we have before us this morning. The irony is this: that these disciples had been told, time without number, that after three days, after the death of Christ, in three days He would rise again. But they had forgotten! Those who had heard it in their own ears, who had seen Him demonstrate it with Lazarus with their own eyes, those who had believed on Him in their hearts - the irony is they are the ones who had forgot. And the supreme irony is this: that the ones that had remembered were His enemies.
Turn with me for a moment to Matthew 27 - Matthew 27 and verse 62. Chapter 27 and verse 62; it says: 'Now the next day, that followed the day of the preparation, the chief priests and Pharisees came together unto Pilate, saying, Sir, we remember that that deceiver said, while he was yet alive, After three days I will rise again'. Now, this is the enemy of the Lord Jesus Christ. These are the people who wanted Him dead, who wanted Him six foot under, who wanted Christianity wiped off the face of the earth - and they were the ones who remembered the words that He said: that after three days, 'I will rise again'. If we had time this morning we could go right through all the gospels. We could go to Mark chapter 16, as we read this morning, and if you look at verses 1 to 3 you read that the two Mary's that came to the tomb, they brought with them sweet spices to anoint the body of Jesus. But if you look at verse 1 and verse 2 you see that they came on the third day of the week. That was the day that the Lord said He would rise again! They were coming with the mindset, the assumption, that Jesus was still dead and cold and they were coming to anoint His body. They had forgotten totally that He said: 'On the third day I will rise again'.
If you would go to John 20 you would see Mary Magdalene did not remember either: John 20 and verse 13. You could see that Peter and John, the two disciples who were in the inner circle of the disciples of the Lord Jesus - they themselves had forgotten. The apostles, all the apostles themselves, in Luke chapter 24 we see that they all forgot. When the women came up to the room and told them: 'We have seen the Lord', they doubted. The two on the road to Emmaus, they talked with this man who they thought was a gardener. They said to Him: 'We thought this man, we thought this one was the deliverer, the Messiah of Israel. Now it is three days and he's still in the grave'. Thomas - doubting Thomas, the man who epitomises doubt for us in our own minds - what did he say? When these women came up and witnessed to the Resurrection of the Lord, he said: 'Except I see the prints in His hands and the scar in His side, and except I thrust my finger into the hands and into His side I will not believe.' They, of all people, had forgotten that Christ had risen from the dead.
If you were to go home this afternoon and look at this passage again - chapter 16 - and count how many times 'fear', or 'affrighted', is mentioned, it would astound you. What Mark is trying to get across, this morning, is the fear of the disciples - how they were so afraid because of the fact that the Lord Jesus Christ was dead, what it meant for them. This day, Saturday, when they woke up, when they realised Christ was dead; they realised suddenly that their dream was over. They realised that the deliverer who had promised to deliver them - He was now dead and gone. Suddenly, at that moment, despair, depression that they had never experienced before in their life, it came across them like a cloud. It seemed that there wasn't a glimmer of hope. It was a dark tunnel that they were thrust in, that there was no light at the end of; and that Saturday - that Saturday brought great depression that to them, at that point, they could not lift.
The Saturday after Good Friday, the next day, was a day of desolation. It was a day of shattered dreams. It was a day of gloom. It was a day of inertia. For Mary the mother of Jesus, a sword had pierced her heart as she saw her beloved son die. Would she not have thought of the angel visiting her and promising her that the seed that was in her - that one, that little embryo - would be the deliverer who would bruise the head of Satan and bring victory over sin? But now that dream was over. For Peter, perhaps, his heart welled up in guilt as he thought of the fact that his Lord was dead, and he betrayed Him and perhaps if he hadn't betrayed Him, what might have happened? He might have lived.
I wonder have you ever heard of the rhyme: 'Monday's child is fair of face, Tuesday's child is full of grace, Wednesday's child is full of woe'? Well, these were Saturday's children. Saturday's children were full of despair, full of tragedy. Their dream was shattered and their dream was over. Can I ask you this morning; have you ever experienced anything like that? Perhaps you haven't experienced anything as earth shattering as Messiah dying, but perhaps you have experienced a loved one dying. Perhaps you've experienced a shattered dream: what you thought was going to be the future and suddenly, in a split second, it was all over and you just didn't know what was going to happen. Or perhaps you just have a fear that something is going to happen, and you're taken up with anxious thoughts and worries.
Have you ever felt depression like this? You know, there are people living today in our society who live in despair and darkness - the darkness of Saturday. They walk about their daily business. They are Saturday's children. Saturday's cities in our world are teeming places of misery and gloom. People in their daily lives, living for themselves, are walking, as it were, a ritual dance to death with an illusion that they think at the end of it there will be hope; only to die and find hell. We live in a godless world; a world that is full of despair; a world where fear grips people from day to day; hopelessness and meaninglessness crush people on every side. Can I ask you believer, this morning, are you one of Saturday's children? Are you like this?
Well, if you are I want to tell you some good news. Turn with me to Romans chapter 1 for a moment - Romans chapter 1 and we'll read from verse 1. It's verse 4 I want to look at, but we'll read from verse 1 to get the context. Romans 1 verse 1: "Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God, (Which he had promised afore by his prophets in the holy scriptures,) concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh; and declared" - now, if you ring your Bible, ring that word! "And declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead".
'Declared'! Now, that little word 'declared', in the Greek, is a word - this word: 'horizthentos' (sp?). 'Horizthentos' - that is the word that we get our English word 'horizon' from. Horizthentos - horizon. You can nearly read this verse like this. Verse 3: 'Concerning His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord...who was horizoned to be the Son of God with power...by the resurrection from the dead'. Jesus Christ was horizoned as the Son of God with power because of his resurrection.
What's your horizon this morning? What is a horizon? Well, a horizon is a boundary, isn't it? It's a boundary in the environment, in the landscape, that you can't see any further. It says 'thus far and no further you can't see'. It's something that stops you. It's a boundary around you, and that's what a horizon is. Can I ask you what your horizon is? What is your boundary? What is the thing that seems to stop you from getting anywhere for God? What is the thing that seems to stop you, even in your own life, getting rid of fears and getting rid of worry and anxiousness? What is that boundary? This verse says - listen to this - that Christ has been horizoned. He has been made your horizon. When Christ came out of the grave He became your boundary, He became your restriction, He became your horizon!
In the school I went to we had a swimming pool. When I went to the school I couldn't swim, but when I left the school I could swim because they just threw you in and let you get on with it! But when I was in the swimming pool I used to wear goggles (not these ones now!), swimming goggles, and they always came off when I got to the deep end. They used to plummet right to the bottom of the deep end - and I used to think: 'Here we go again!'. What I used to do was (I'm sure you know what it's like to do this) I tipped up and when right down to the bottom of the pool, further and further down. The further down you get you feel the weight of the water above you, and then you feel the pressure of the water and your ears start to feel funny, and your nose starts to feel funny. The further down you get you feel that you can go no more, and you just grab the goggles and turn up, and you feel this awesome force pushing you - and it just pushes you right out of the water until you thrust through the surface into the air. That was just like the resurrection of the Lord Jesus - only a thousand times more. Because when the Lord Jesus Christ was risen from the dead there was a spiritual law that was set in motion. It's this: His humiliation set in motion His own law of exaltation. Now, I want you to get that: His humiliation set in motion His own law of exaltation. Philippians 2 is an example of that. It says Christ humbled Himself and became obedient unto death - His humiliation - even the death of the cross. But His humiliation at the cross necessitated His exaltation. "Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name".
You know, the Resurrection was exactly the same. Christ had been humbled unto death, even the death of the cross. It was if Christ was being pushed further down and down and down in His life. He could be pushed no further down than this death that He had suffered with the sins of the world upon His shoulder. As He is pushed down and down and down, there is this compulsion and this power of His exultation that, as it were, thrusts Him out of the grave! As Romans says, He becomes the horizon of everyone who trusts in Him. His humiliation set into motion His exultation. Matthew's gospel says at that moment when He thrust out of the grave, when the grave could hold Him no longer, that there was a great earthquake. It says that the guards that stood there, it says that their legs shook and they became as dead men. Think of it! The ones who were living became dead, and the one who was dead became alive! In that split second, because Christ had to be exalted for the stoop that He took, life came into those stick-like dead bones and into that cold flesh, and Christ had risen again.
But there's something that I want you to see in our passage. Chapter 16 - Mark chapter 16: because this is just beautiful. Mark chapter 16 and verse 7, and the angel said to these women after the Lord had risen again: "But go your way, tell His disciples and Peter". Now, why did he item out Peter there? Why did he emphasise Peter there? 'Go and tell His disciples and Peter'? Can you imagine, when these two women came into the upper room and told them and said: 'Listen, he wanted me specifically to tell you, Peter, that He had risen again'? Can you imagine what that would have felt like for Peter? One who was despairing, one who was degraded, one whose mind was perplexed with fear and was twisted with the turmoil of the fact that he had betrayed the Lord of Glory; and now the Lord of Glory had sent a message to tell him, 'Peter, I've risen again!'.
Do you know what the resurrection meant for Peter? It meant this: that the Lord Jesus Christ, our Lord Jesus Christ, can overcome the greatest enemies: death and hell, by His resurrection. If He can overcome death and hell, what is there in our life that we cannot overcome by the power of His resurrection? What is there? What horizon is too heavy for the Christ to push away as He comes out of the grave? These were Saturday's children. Think of that! These were Saturday's children a few moments before. They were depressed, they were despairing, but then they became Sunday's children! The children, who, it says in the Acts of the Apostles, turned the world upside down. What a change the resurrection made to them!
Someone has said: 'Sunday's children are the arguments the world understands and the world needs'. What is your day? Are you living in the darkness, the pessimism, the hopelessness of Saturday, or are you living in the bounding life and irrepressible hope of Sunday, the Lord's Day? For the disciples it seemed that everything had ended in tragedy. Nothing else could have changed their sad hearts but life coming and coursing through the body of the Lord Jesus Christ. Do you know something believer, this morning? The resurrection, for us, is everything. Do you believe that? The resurrection means everything, and so much of the time when we preach the gospel we say: 'Don't forget the cross!' - and we should never forget the cross, but we forget the Resurrection! Paul said that 'if Christ be not risen then is our preaching vain and our faith is also vain; and we, of all men, are most miserable'. It means everything. Do you know why? Because if the cross, the blood of Christ, took our sins away and took the power out of sin, the resurrection of Christ puts God's power into us! It thrusts the life of God into a dead sinner, and we are made alive.
Do you know what Paul's request was? He said, 'above all things' - he said he counted everything in this world: ambition, achievement, status, even health, he said he counted it all but dung! Why? That he might know Him - and what else? - and the power of His resurrection! Believer, this morning, do you know the power of His resurrection? I know you know it in your head, but do you know the resurrection power of Jesus Christ in your life from day to day? Do you know that power that changed Christ from dead to living? Do you know that supernatural power in your life? Do you know that you can?
Oh, the resurrection means so much and I could go on telling you what it means to the Saviour: what it makes Him, and what it means to the sinner, and what it means for Satan, and what it means for the Sabbath, and what it means for baptism. But let me ask you in closing: are you living in Saturday, in the shadow and the dearth of Saturday? Or will you live in the shadow of the risen Lord Jesus Christ in your life? Will you let Him be your horizon? Will you let the dynamite of the resurrection explode your faith? Will you let its floods and fires cremate your anxieties? Will you let its waters come unto your dry and thirsty land in your life? Will you let the resurrection of Christ make a difference in your life, until we face the ultimate horizon that is death?
I read once about a man who was facing that horizon, and I just want to finish with this: telling you what he said, because this was a man who knew the power of the resurrection. A man called Dr W.B. Hinson (sp?) was speaking from his pulpit only a year after commencing his ministry in this specific church. He was told that week by a doctor - he said: 'This week you will go to your death'. He writes this: 'I remember a year ago when a man in this city said, 'You have got to go to your death'. I walked out to where I live, 5 miles out of this city, and I looked across at that mountain I love, and I looked at the river in which I rejoice, and I looked at the stately trees that are always God's poetry to my soul. Then in the evening, I looked up into the great sky where God was lighting His lamps and I said, 'I may not see you many more times but, mountain, I shall be alive when you are gone. River, I shall be alive when you cease running towards the sea. Stars, I shall be alive when you have fallen from your great sockets in the great down-pulling of the material universe''.
Do you know what this man knew? He knew what Job knew. He could cry: 'I know that my Redeemer liveth!'. Do you know, and does knowing make a difference? I pray this morning to God that it will. Let's bow our head and commit ourselves to the Lord.
Our Father, we thank Thee for the Lord Jesus Christ: our risen and exalted Head, the only Head of the church, the only one whom we worship, and the only one who is risen from the dead. Lord, we thank You for what that means to us, for the life that He gives us, for the justification that He has achieved for us by His Resurrection, for the fact that as He is risen so we also will rise and meet Him one day in the air - and so we will forever be with the Lord. We - wonder of wonders - we shall be like Him for we shall see Him as He is. Lord, let us see Him now as we wait around His table. For we ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.
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Transcribed by:
Trevor Veale
Preach The Word.
June 2001
www.preachtheword.com
This sermon was delivered at Portadown Baptist Church in Portadown, Northern Ireland, by Pastor David Legge. It was transcribed from the tape, titled "Fear" - Transcribed by Trevor Veale, Preach The Word.
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