JOHN 20:1-35 Today, we re looking at the one event in history that gives Christians hope the one event in the history of mankind that sets Christianity apart from all religions. We hear Christianity referred to as a religion, but those of us who are Christians know that Christianity is much more than a religion it is a relationship with the one and only living Savior and that s what we ll see today. I m afraid many times folks miss the point of Easter. Ron Dunn preached a sermon some time back entitled Missing the Point. Well, we re going to see some ways today in which we might miss the whole point of Easter if we re not careful. Maybe if we know the points we might miss, we ll be far less likely to miss them! When John begins to write the text we have before us today, the Lord Jesus has already been crucified. I heard the pastor say one time that folks have a tough time reconciling the sovereignty of God and the free will of man. We just can t understand how they could ever meet. But they did meet they met at the Cross of Calvary What the pastor was saying is that the precious Lord Jesus was nailed to the Cross by the free will of evil men who wanted Him dead and gone and forgotten. But, we must never forget that Jesus shed His precious blood to save sinners like you and me by the predetermined sovereign will of God. So, was Jesus crucified by the free will of man or the sovereignty of God? The answer to this question is YES!! Now, do we understand this? No, but there are a whole bunch of things I believe that I don t understand!! So, Jesus has been crucified. A spear has been run through His side. He has been taken from the Cross by precious friends and He has been laid in a borrowed tomb. After three days, on the first day of the week, John tells us that Mary Magdalene came to the tomb. She came early in the morning, while it was still dark and when she got there, she saw that the stone had already been taken away from the tomb. Mary Magdalene ran to tell Peter and John what had happened and they hurried to the tomb and looked in and let s see what they saw Verses 6-10 Verse 8 tells us that John believed. What did he believe? Remember that the Apostle John wrote this gospel account when he was a very old man and can t you just imagine that his mind traveled back to the time when he looked inside and saw the empty tomb and finally believed and understood what Jesus had been teaching and preaching so often in His 3½ year ministry? I believe John finally understood it was really true that Jesus would rise from the dead! But, Mary Magdalene didn t! Mary Magdalene missed the point! And let s see how Verses 11-18 When Mary Magdalene looked into the tomb, she missed the point! I believe it s interesting to know that the first person to see the resurrected Christ didn t even recognize Him. Page 1 of 9
The first thing I want us to think about this morning is the fact that Mary Magdalene missed the whole point of that first Easter morning by 1) Failing to Recognize the Lord Jesus Christ If you can, I want you to put yourself in Mary Magdalene s sandals this morning, because Mary Magdalene is typical of a lot of us. Sometimes when we re looking right at Jesus we fail to see Him! And my prayer is that as we go through this passage of Scripture we will have a new recognition and a new revelation of Jesus ourselves. How is it that Mary Magdalene missed the whole point of that empty tomb? Well, instead of seeing the empty tomb and rejoicing and singing her hallelujahs, Mary wept! And her grief was very great! The Greek word here for wept means a loud and long lament! The fact that Mary was weeping is one reason folks give for her failure to recognize Jesus. See, her eyes were filled with tears she was so overcome with grief, so overcome with sadness that her eyes were filled with tears and she couldn t see Jesus through her tears. That s one suggestion. And I think it s a valid suggestion. Sometimes it s hard for us to see Jesus when our eyes are filled with tears, isn t it? Sometimes it s hard for us to see Jesus when our hearts are breaking. Sometimes when circumstances have turned against us and our life seems to be going down the tube, it s hard for us to see Jesus in all of that! And, Mary s weeping was so unnecessary, wasn t it? I mean, Jesus was standing right there! But, Mary couldn t see Him I think there are times when our weeping, even though it may be great and heavy and long, may be unnecessary! If we could see the truth through our tears we might understand that much of our grief is really unnecessary! But it s hard for us when we ve suddenly gone through some tragedy it s hard for us when life has not turned out the way we expected it s difficult for us when life seems to be a tangled mass of threads it s just very difficult for us to see Jesus, because we become so absorbed with the tears of our life that the tears form a kind of veil through which we cannot see Jesus! Well, there s another reason suggested why we cannot see Jesus when He s standing right there in front of us and that s because oftentimes we re looking in the wrong direction we re turned the wrong way. This passage tells us Mary had to turn around to see Jesus. She couldn t see Him because she was turned in the wrong direction. And there is a sense in which many of us live our lives turned in the wrong direction, isn t it? We re looking in some other direction to try to find peace and looking in some other direction to try to find strength and comfort and assurance and even joy and happiness. We look to our friends and family. We look to the experts of our day to somehow make sense out of our lives and when we do that, we re looking in the wrong direction! Have you ever done that? I must confess I spent much of my adult life looking in the wrong direction. Jesus was there! But, I was so intent on looking in the wrong direction that I just didn t see Him! Page 2 of 9
I ve told you several times about a little piece of calligraphy I did a number of years ago. This little framed piece hangs on our wall at the cabin and it says, If you don t feel close to God, guess who moved How many times have you moved off in a direction that was totally opposite from where the Lord Jesus was? Well, there s a third reason that Mary missed seeing Jesus that first Easter morning. And that is because she was looking for a corpse instead of the living Lord. See, Mary didn t go to that tomb that morning looking for Jesus alive she went to that tomb looking for Jesus dead! If Jesus had been lying in that tomb, she would have been satisfied! Grieving? yes! But she would have found just what she was looking for! Her weeping here is not because Jesus is dead, her weeping here is because the body is missing! She has nothing tangible to hold onto. And so, she s looking for the body and she says to the gardener, who was really Jesus, If you ve taken Him somewhere, tell me where and I ll go get Him. Well, I want to tell you something this morning, I m glad she didn t find what she was looking for, aren t you? I mean, if she d found what she was looking for none of us would be here this morning. There would be no resurrection! There would be no Easter! Listen it s not always a bad thing when you don t find what you re looking for! Sometimes the best thing that could happen to us is that we fail to find what we re looking for! But, what if Mary had found a dead Jesus? Well, Paul says it this way in 1 Corinthians 15:12-20 Paul says in this passage of Scripture that if Christ is still in the grave then, six tragic things are true 1) preaching is profitless verse 14 Beloved, if there is no Easter, then what are we doing here? We re all wasting our time, aren t we? I ve wasted my time preparing and teaching this morning. The pastor has wasted his time preparing his sermon and preaching it this morning. You ve wasted your time by coming to Sunday School and Church and we all ought to go do something else 2) our faith is foolish verse 14 If Christ isn t raised we re trusting something that doesn t deserve our trust! Who wants to believe in Jesus if Jesus is dead? See, it s simply not enough to believe Jesus died for our sins if we don t believe He was raised from the dead! Romans 10:9 if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and Page 3 of 9
believe in your heart that God raised Him from the?? dead you shall be saved!!! This is the difference between Christianity and man made religions. The founders of religions lived and died and are still dead! But, Christianity is a relationship with a living Savior! Jesus lived! Jesus died! Jesus rose again! In fact Romans 1:4 says He is shown to be the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead. How do I know Jesus can save me? How do I know all His promises are yea and amen? Because God raised Him from the dead! We don t serve a dead savior! A dead savior is nobody s savior! Well, if Christ isn t raised from the dead, our preaching is profitless and our faith is foolish, and 3) the disciples were deceivers verse 15 Paul s not saying that if Christ is still in the grave they were mistaken! What Paul is saying is they were false witnesses! A false witness comes into court and deliberately, knowingly, willingly perjures himself he is a liar! And Paul is saying if Christ wasn t raised, they re all deliberate liars! Now, liberals will say, Well, how do we know that they didn t just make all this up? How do we know they aren t liars? We know because most of the disciples paid with their very lives to carry the Gospel to the world. They died cruel deaths! WHY? Because they knew Jesus had been raised from the dead! 4) sin is sovereign verse 17 You are yet in your sin What does this mean? It means that if Jesus is not raised then God didn t accept Christ s payment for our sins. In Romans 4, Paul says He was delivered up because of our transgressions He was raised because of our justification Without the resurrection, we re not justified! God demands righteousness! I have good news and bad news we cannot produce any! Righteousness cannot be earned or bought. We don t have it and we desperately need it! Well, the good news is that this righteousness is freely given because Jesus died, was buried and He rose again! No resurrection no Savior! No Savior no forgiveness! No forgiveness no justification! No justification no cleansing! No cleansing no salvation! No salvation the penalty of our sin is upon us, not upon Jesus! Thank God, we have a risen Savior who has paid the price for all our sins! Page 4 of 9
If Christ has not been raised, Paul says, Our preaching is profitless, Our faith is foolish, The disciples were deceivers, Sin is sovereign, But also, 5) death has dominion verse 18 The Christian Arsenal Everyone in this room has lost a loved one a father, a mother, a husband, a child, a brother, a sister, a friend Well, Beloved, if Christ is not raised then, they won t be either and we won t be either! There s no hope all our loved ones are gone we ll never see them again! Death has won! Are we to believe that God intends for us to live and then die and that s all there is? No! God has prepared for us a beautiful eternity! I look forward to seeing my mother, and my daddy, and our baby and all of you someday in heaven! And it s because Christ was raised! Well, one more tragic truth if Christ is not raised 6) our future is futile verse 19 If the present is all there is, we might as well eat, drink and be merry because hey, tomorrow we re just going to die and that s the end! If Christ isn t raised, we are of all men most to be pitied, Paul said! And all that sounds pretty pitiful to me! Remember the old song by Peggy Lee Is That All There Is? Well, if the Lord Jesus Christ is still in the grave over in Israel then, this truly is all there is!! But, Christ has been raised! And we have a message that is meaningful! And our faith is secure! And the disciples were dependable! And our sins are forgiven! And we have eternal life in a place called Heaven to look forward to and enjoy! Well, let s get back to the Gospel of John. Not only can we miss the point by failing to recognize the risen Lord, but we can also miss the point by 2) Failing to See All That Jesus Has Accomplished There s an interesting statement that the Lord makes in this that has a lot to say to us He says in verse 17, Do not hold onto Me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. The Greek idea here is stop clinging to Me It was a command to stop something that was already in progress. Page 5 of 9
What s Jesus saying here? He s saying, Mary, the old relationship of sense and smell and touch and sound and taste those things no longer exist, but now there is a new relationship between us. I believe Jesus meant, Mary, the blood I shed at Calvary made Me your Redeemer. I broke the barrier down that stood between you and Jehovah! See, these tombs were actually caves that had been carved out of the stony hillside of Judea and they would leave a flat part of the rock on which to lay the body. Mary Magdalene was left alone and she got up enough courage to look inside the tomb and she saw two angels one at the head and one at the foot of this slab where the body of the Lord Jesus had lain. In the Old Testament, Moses was told by God to build a mercy seat and that mercy seat was to have two cherubim of pure gold one at either end and God told Moses and I will meet with thee there. What a picture of fulfillment we see here After Jesus died, the veil of the Temple was torn in two the Gospel of Matthew tells us it was torn from the top to the bottom. We know why we know that this was God s way of saying that before the death of His precious Son, there was a barrier between God and man. Man could not come into the presence of Almighty God any time he wanted to. In fact, the veil represented the very truth that man couldn t come into God s presence at all! Before the Cross, the veil said, Keep out! Don t come in! You re not welcome in God s presence! You re sinful! God is holy! Your sins must be atoned for by the slaughter of bulls and goats and lambs and turtledoves! But, after the Cross, the very hand of Almighty God tore that veil in two from top to bottom Do you know how thick that veil was? The Jewish historian, Josephus, said it was four inches thick! No man could have torn that veil from top to bottom. Only God could have done that! And He did that to say, My Son has broken the barrier down! The sacrifice has been made and has been accepted! You can come in now! In fact, please come in tell Me everything that s going on with you. I m so glad you came how long can you stay? Mary didn t know that Jesus had reconciled God and man. Mary, bless her heart, just knew His body was gone! The pastor said it so well this past Wednesday night. He said we must never get over the wonder and the joy and the peace and the excitement of knowing all that Jesus has done for us. Oh, if your Bible reading or your prayer life or your worship has become mundane and routine, I want to challenge you today to go home and make a list of all that our Lord Jesus accomplished at Calvary. And get excited about it!! Well, Mary missed the point of that first Easter because she failed to recognize Jesus and because she failed to see all that Jesus had accomplished for her, but one last thing was Mary s 3) Failing to See God in the Circumstances Page 6 of 9
When Mary looked into the tomb and saw the angels, that should have told her something, shouldn t it? When she saw the angels, that should have been a clue to her that God was around. I mean, wouldn t you think that? It s amazing how we miss the obvious many times! Mary turned away from the angels not intrigued with the angels not even curious about the angels and then she turned to this Man whom she supposed to be the gardener, and she said, They ve taken away my Lord and I don t know where they ve laid Him. See, in Mary s mind the dilemma was between her and other people. She thought there was somebody else who had taken the Lord it was somebody else s hand that had caused this mysterious disappearance to take place. She never even considered that it was God! The only explanation had to be somebody had come and taken Jesus away! It never occurred to her that Jesus had taken Himself away! Sometimes the clouds grow dark in our lives because we fail to see the hand of God in the midst of our circumstances. We need to always look for the hidden hand of God! All Mary could see was what she thought men had done! All she could see was an empty tomb! All she could see was that Jesus was missing! If Mary had looked beyond and could have seen and recognized the hand of God and taken God into account there would have been no unnecessary tears shed. I wonder this morning as we look at our lives and we see all the things that are happening in our lives and I m talking about the unhappy things, the sad things, the difficulties the health problems, the financial problems, the job problems I just wonder this morning if we ve missed the whole point! Are we able to look beyond the immediate and see the hand of God? Do we not realize that the hand of God is always working? It s unseen, invisible and so we give it no thought. We take all the circumstances of our lives and we analyze them and we calculate them, but we leave God out of our calculations, don t we? Well, we ve seen today how Mary could miss the point of the empty tomb. We ve also seen that Mary finally became aware of who the gardener really was. We ve seen today that Mary had a new recognition of Jesus, a new relationship with Jesus, a new awareness of God in the midst of the circumstances and now I want us to quickly see that Jesus also gave Mary a new responsibility Jesus told Mary to run and tell the disciples what she had just seen. Mary had a new responsibility! And that was to go and to shout the good news that Jesus Christ is risen! And to say, I have seen the Lord! And she did! And if you and I get the point of the resurrection at all, it will be that we are to share with others that the Lord is risen and that we have seen the Master. I tell you the people who will be in church today all over this city and all over this country and who worship the risen Jesus and talk and sing about the resurrected Lord and who then leave the church and never mention Him to anybody they ve missed the whole point! Page 7 of 9
When you think about it, the resurrection had to be one of the saddest days of Jesus life. Why is that? Because not a single person was there to meet Him when He arose! I mean, He d told them He was going to rise! Think about it! Have you ever arrived at a train terminal or an airport and there was no one there to meet you? Maybe they got the time mixed up or maybe they got caught in traffic whatever the reason, didn t you feel just a little unwanted and unloved? How do you think Jesus felt when He arose and no one was there? All His disciples should have been there! All of His followers should have been there! All His family should have been there! But, nobody was there! Not a single person was there to meet Him when He came out of that tomb. WHY? Because nobody believed Him they missed the whole point! I wish we had time this morning to finish this chapter. If we did, we d see the story of a man named Thomas who is known today because he was a doubter. Let me just say this about Thomas this morning. If you re a doubter, don t let Satan do a number on you. We don t see a strong rebuke directed at Thomas for his doubting. But, let me just point out two things about doubt 1) Doubting and unbelief are not the same thing. The doubter questions the unbeliever doesn t. The doubter wants answers to his question the unbeliever won t believe any answers if they re given! 2) Thomas doubted when he was alone. Thomas wasn t with the other disciples when he was doing all his doubting. When we isolate ourselves from other believers, we are much more likely to doubt what God has already told us. Remember John the Baptist? Jesus called John the Baptist the greatest man born to woman. And when John the Baptist was alone prison he doubted that Jesus was who He claimed to be. One more thing and we ll be through People who hear about the resurrection for the first time may need time before they can comprehend this amazing story in other words, they may miss the point at first Like Mary and the disciples may pass through several stages of understanding 1) At first, they may think the story is a fabrication, just too good to be true and impossible to believe verse 2 2) Like Peter, they may check out the facts and still be puzzled aobut what happened verse 6 3) Only when they encounter Jesus personally are they able to accept the fact of the resurrection verse 16 4) Then, as they commit themselves to the risen Lord and devote their lives to serving Him, they begin to understand fully the reality of His presence with them verse 28 My prayer this morning is that we ll not miss the point of the resurrection. The point of the resurrection is that Page 8 of 9
We have a new recognition of Jesus We have a new relationship with Him We see God in all our circumstances And that we tell others that we serve a risen Savior and they can, too! May God help us to do that! May God help us to commit ourselves to Him anew and afresh today and devote our lives to serving Him every day we live! Page 9 of 9