Truth For Life

Guest (Male): You're listening to Truth For Life Weekend, and we have a special Easter message for you today as we celebrate Christ's resurrection. How do we know it was real, and why does it matter? We'll find out as Alistair Begg examines the historic evidence and universal impact of Jesus' resurrection. We're studying chapter 20 in John's Gospel, focusing on verses 11 through 18.

Alistair Begg: We either know this by experience or by observation: that the death of a loved one is a devastating thing. That one's psyche is immediately filled with a huge combination of emotions—fear, disappointment, a sense of loss, pain, anger, and a prevailing emptiness. That the person who even hours before was in our company is no longer present. And the inevitability of tears is quite obvious.

Now, I begin in that way because I think we take this for granted, and therefore when we come to the record here, it's not surprising that John records the reaction of Mary. In fact, immediately it becomes clear that Easter morning has begun with darkness. The darkness begins to dissipate—the kind of darkness that was around at 5:00 this morning, if you were up. And when you looked out, you realized those are trees, those are not people.

But if you were somewhat sleepy, you might have considered that that was a possibility. You just don't see things. You might see someone that you should recognize and then you don't recognize them. And into that fragile darkness, Mary comes and she's weeping. That makes perfect sense; that's what you do. In fact, he says that she was weeping outside the tomb, then she was stooping to look inside the tomb, and it is in that context that she makes this discovery.

Now, what is fascinating is this: that while her reaction to things is perfectly understandable because, after all, the verdict had been rendered against Jesus—they had rejected him, they had humiliated him, they had executed him—and so in a very realistic way, it would have made perfect sense for Mary simply to say, "You know, that was good while it lasted, but it's just a lost cause." She sees the two angels. He was crucified between two thieves, and now he's entombed between two angels.

Keep in mind that Mary is there not looking for Jesus; she's looking for a corpse. And her reaction makes perfect sense—loss, sadness, pain, emptiness, disappointment, and tears. That's her reaction. Now, look at the question that is posed to her by the angels: "And she saw two angels in white sitting where the body of Jesus had lain, one at the head and one at the feet. And they said to her, 'Woman, why are you weeping?'"

Now, if I'd been there, I would have said, "I should have thought that was perfectly obvious why I'm weeping." But she says, "Well, the fact is that she's made the assumption that the reason the tomb is empty is because someone has come and taken Jesus away." And so she says, "They've taken away my Lord, and I don't know where they've put him." There’s this wonderful irony.

So the question to her seems highly inappropriate. Why would you say to somebody at a funeral service, "Why are you weeping?" It goes with the territory in the face of that kind of loss. But from the perspective of heaven, it's the tears that she sheds that are inappropriate. The angels are addressing it from the perspective of heaven. She is facing it from the only perspective she can, namely from life itself and from her experience with Jesus, who had meant so much to her.

So what appears to her to be perfectly straightforward is actually inappropriate. Bruce Milne says if there is one place in space and one moment in time when tears are least appropriate, it's at the empty tomb of Jesus on Easter morning. Right? Why would you be crying then? Her reaction is understandable, the question is straightforward, and then it gives rise to confusion—confusion because as you look at the text, you realize that the person standing there was Jesus.

She's about to make the discovery that this seeming stranger who has now crossed her path is none other than Jesus himself, but she doesn't recognize him. Why not? I guess because she wasn't supposed to. There's a lot of occasions in the New Testament when people do not recognize Jesus. Some of us when we read that, we say, "Well, that's quite remarkable. I would have recognized him immediately." Really?

Let's be honest. If you have only recently come to Christ, you never recognized him once. You read those books, you heard those sermons, you knew about him, you understood history, biography—but he was unrecognizable to you. Christ actually is unrecognizable to us apart from the work of God's Holy Spirit. She may be just blinded by her tears, but she doesn't see it's Jesus. And then the question comes again: Jesus said to her, "Woman, why are you weeping?"

She might have said, "You're the second person that has said that to me in the last couple of minutes here." "Why are you weeping?" And then he adds to it, "Who are you looking for?" You see, it's clear that along with the other disciples, she had not grasped the fact that when Jesus had explained what was going to happen to him when he entered Jerusalem, neither did they fully comprehend the first part in his death, but they certainly did not grasp the last part in terms of the fact that he would be raised on the third day to life.

And so in that encounter, she must have said to herself, "Who else would be around here at this time in the morning?" and makes the assumption that it's perhaps the gardener. And then this amazing statement: "Sir, if you have carried him away..." She's speaking to Jesus. Keep this in mind. She's not speaking to a gardener. "If you have carried him away..." Now, let me just say, in the profoundest sense, Jesus is certainly responsible for his disappearance. No one has carried him away. He has walked away.

But she says to him, "If you've carried him away, if you're responsible for the fact of his disappearance, perhaps you'd be willing to tell me, and then I can go and get him." Mary, remember, he's dead, Mary. You're looking for a corpse. You're going to carry a dead body? Where are you planning on taking him? Remember Jesus had said, "No one takes my life from me. I have the power to lay it down, and I have the power to take it up." Supposing him to be the gardener.

What kind of king would be mistaken for a gardener? Kings wear crowns, kings have robes, kings are dramatic, kings have an entourage. How would she ever imagine that he was just the gardener? Because he's the servant king. In one sense, he is the gardener. Now, the fact is that Jesus has asked the question of Mary not in order that he might learn, but in order that he might teach. And so he speaks to her tears because he cares about them.

And at this moment, unknown to Mary, he is the answer to them. Let me just say that to you again. That Jesus knows Mary, he understands her tears, he understands her sadness. And in this moment, although she is unaware of the fact, he is the answer to the tears and to the sadness. He knew that she was sad because the truth hadn't dawned on her. Her reaction was understandable, the question was intriguing, the confusion was straightforward.

He doesn't rebuke her. In fact, it's quite amazing to me that the appearances of Jesus are so gentle, they are so sensitive, they're so wonderful. I mean, you get it later on in Luke chapter 24 with the two fellows on the Emmaus Road, and you have this strange ironic conversation there where he says, "You know, you seem to be a little sad today, fellows." And they say, "Hey, sad, given everything that was going on in Jerusalem."

And he doesn't go, "Hey, don't worry about it." He goes, "What's been going on in Jerusalem?" And they say, "Are you the only person that doesn't know what's been going on in Jerusalem?" That's confusion. That's confusion. So if you're here this morning and you have come because a friend invited you or because it's Easter and you probably should because of something in your background—you went to school and you were supposed to go to church on Easter—but your head is full of confusion, you're in good company.

Because even those who were right there at the epicenter of the unfolding drama are themselves not able to put the pieces of the puzzle together. But notice—no theological treatise, no rebuke for Mary. He doesn't say to her, "You, of all people, should have known about this." No. Just one word. One word. A word which dried her tears and changed her life forever. And that word: "Mary." "Mary."

The Gospel writers tell us that Mary's life had been checkered for sure. In fact, "checkered" is an understatement. Mary of Magdala is known as the one from whom seven demons had gone out. And therefore, she knew that the power of Jesus had transformed her life, and therefore she knew that if Jesus was dead and buried and gone, she had no hope for her life going forward. But she gets it. Because she heard the voice of Jesus say, "Mary."

When you hear the voice of Jesus, by the Spirit, through the Word, that'll be a very different day indeed. And so she responds, "Rabboni!" In fact, Matthew tells us that in this encounter, along with other women, she fell before Jesus' feet. We just sang about it: "We fall at your feet." Matthew says that they fell at his feet, and they clasped his feet, and they worshiped him. And it seems almost inevitable that she would lay hold of him, cling to him.

And look at what Jesus says to her: "Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, 'I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.'" And announce it to the disciples. Jesus had explained to his disciples that when he left, he wouldn't leave them as orphans, but he would come to them by the Holy Spirit.

Now, Mary is to go to the disciples; the disciples are going to receive the same message when they get themselves all tied up thinking that this is a great nationalistic endeavor. And they are all informed of the fact that when the reality of the truth of the risen Jesus dawns in a life, it is a privilege not only to embrace it, but it is a privilege and responsibility to share it. And that is why Jesus, before he ascends to the Father, is going to send the disciples out to Judea, to Samaria, and to the ends of the earth and so on.

And although they don't get it at the moment, they finally hit the streets of Jerusalem with a kind of waft of the supernatural, and the lips of Peter betray his conviction: "God raised Jesus from the dead, and we are all witnesses of this fact." In other words, this story that we're considering now—and about to stop considering—this story is universal. Universal. There are places in the world where certain religious entities have managed to gain a foothold; you identify the place with them.

But the unique thing about the Gospel of Jesus Christ is that it has pervaded all of the continents of the world, indeed all of the nations of the world. This is universal; this is not to be kept to ourselves. And the reason it's universal is because it's historical. That what we're dealing with here is time and space. We're dealing with a reality; we're not dealing with a concoction. We're dealing with something that took place.

It took place at Passover AD 33. The location was the tomb of a man called Joseph of Arimathea. No one had been in the tomb. He, discovering there was need for a tomb, said, "Well, you could use the place that I have." A real man, a real need, a real tomb, a real time. Consider it if you're wondering about these things. Without the reliable testimony of the emptiness of the tomb of Jesus, the early Christian community would never have gotten off the ground.

They would never have gotten off the ground. It would have fizzled out. It is the reality of the tomb being empty and the significance of it. Why was it empty? People say, "Well, I think it was removed by the disciples." To what end? Why would they remove him? Well, I think it was probably stolen by the religious authorities. Really? Well, they were very concerned to deny the reality of Jesus, so if it was stolen by them, why didn't they just produce the body?

Why didn't they just say, "You want to come up with some story about Jesus being alive? Look, we have the corpse." And the appearances of Jesus. The appearances of Jesus. On the third day, he rose again from the dead—we say that in the Creed. And the record is clear: he appeared to Mary, we're considering it; to Peter; to the twelve; Paul when he writes about it in 1 Corinthians 15, says and he appeared to 500 people at one time.

That kind of knocks on the head the hallucination idea. You might hallucinate one at a time, but probably not 500 at a time. And Paul adds, "Most of whom are still alive." So you could put up your hand and say, "I was there." What about the conversion of Paul, Saul of Tarsus? It's impossible to understand that Saul of Tarsus, the new Paul, has written so much of the New Testament.

He was a monotheistic Jew, he was an arch-critic of Jesus, he was expressly committed to the destruction of this strange sect that was beginning to make a nuisance of itself all throughout the area. But what he goes on to say is inexplicable unless what he said happened to him on the Damascus Road actually happened to him. One of my friends in Scotland says, "We cannot use Paul to explain the rise of Christianity. We need Christianity, the rise of Christianity, to explain Paul."

I think that's really good; I wish I'd written that. Now, I could go on, but I'm not going to. Consider, for example, the fact that you have a New Testament in your hands. There wouldn't have been a page of the New Testament written were it not for the reality of the risen Christ. There would be no reason and there would really be no story. It would be obvious that the whole thing had come to a crashing halt and he was buried and dead and finished, whatever the explanations might be made.

And consider the existence of the church, as I say, throughout the world today. Throughout the world today, men and women are considering what we are considering. Let me say this finally: in light of this passage and in light of the universal impact. The universal impact is only valid on the strength of the historical reality. And that historical reality may be considered, may actually be believed, and at the very same time, miss the personal dimension of what's involved.

In the passage that Justin read, we saw that the other disciple, that is John, who had reached the tomb first, also went in—he saw and believed. He saw and believed. Mary's testimony, when she's dispatched by Jesus to go, is to run into the context of these disciples and say to them, "I have seen the Lord." When Thomas, who's the doubter in the process, finally manages to get his hands on Jesus, quite literally, Jesus says to him, "Thomas, you believe because you have seen, but blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed."

I would say that is probably the vast majority of us. We haven't seen Jesus, but we have met Jesus. Somewhere along the line—whether in reading a book, whether in a conversation with a friend, whether a Easter service or any other kind of service for that matter—that which had been so for so long just at arm's length to us, impinged upon us. Now we may not know how that goes. We were having a conversation just the other day about you never know you're asleep until you waken up.

And then you say to somebody, "Was I asleep?" When your mother calls you for school, and at first it's just a noise, and then it's a voice, and then it's a voice that seems to be a stirring voice, and then it's my name being called. Some of you, I think, would testify to coming to faith in Jesus along those lines. Starts off as a noise, perhaps an annoying noise. And then, as you listen a little longer, you realize that in the same way that one word dealt with Mary's tears and transformed her life forever, so one word from Jesus may actually do the same for you and for me.

Might not be my name. It might be that he just says, "Come." "Why are you weeping?" "Who are you looking for?" Who are you looking for this morning? These questions are good. All these Easter questions are good. I wish we had some more Easters. Who are you looking for? What are you looking for? Looking for love? Looking for meaning? Looking for forgiveness? Looking for hope? Looking for peace? Looking for freedom? If only I could get out of this mess. It's all in Jesus. It's all in Jesus.

Guest (Male): You're listening to Truth For Life Weekend. That is Alistair Begg explaining why a risen Christ is essential to our Easter celebration. In addition to the Bible teaching you hear on this program, we carefully select high-quality books to help you better understand Scripture. And today, we are recommending a brand-new devotional. It's titled Your Only Comfort: Devotions for Hope in Suffering.

This is a collection of 30 daily readings, all drawn from the preaching of Charles Spurgeon. Each of the sermon excerpts focuses on resting in God's grace and providence through trials, doubts, and suffering. In this book, Spurgeon tackles weighty subjects like God's sovereignty over evil, how to experience fellowship with Christ during suffering, and the relationship between suffering and glory. To find out more about the devotional Your Only Comfort, visit our website, truthforlife.org.

Thanks for listening. If you tend to think of the Lord as a powerful being who rules from afar, join us next weekend to learn about an intimate God who knows you better than you know yourself. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth For Life, where the learning is for living.