Mourning turned to Joy

WELCOME:

Wednesday night: Dakota will begin the Existence of God. Please come and be a part of that. I am sure it will edify us and strengthen our faith.

We will have a meal at 5:30.

Thank you for all those that came to pray Wednesday. I cant tell you how encouraging it is to see God’s people come together for prayer.

SCRIPTURE READING:

Psalm 24:1–10 (NASB95)

The earth is the Lord’s, and all it contains, The world, and those who dwell in it. For He has founded it upon the seas And established it upon the rivers. Who may ascend into the hill of the Lord? And who may stand in His holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart, Who has not lifted up his soul to falsehood And has not sworn deceitfully. He shall receive a blessing from the Lord And righteousness from the God of his salvation. This is the generation of those who seek Him, Who seek Your face—even Jacob. Selah.

Lift up your heads, O gates, And be lifted up, O ancient doors, That the King of glory may come in! Who is the King of glory? The Lord strong and mighty, The Lord mighty in battle. Lift up your heads, O gates, And lift them up, O ancient doors, That the King of glory may come in! Who is this King of glory? The Lord of hosts, He is the King of glory. Selah.

LET US STAND AND WORSHIP!

“The Goodness of God”

Words and Music by Hillsong’

PRAYER OF PRAISE FOR WHO GOD IS

Lord, thank you for your constancy. For never turning Your back on us, for never getting frustrated with us, for forgiving our sins, for allowing us to be part of Your plan. We ask that You would look down upon this gathering of people and fill our hearts with great joy today as we focus on You. Amen!

“What a beautiful Name”

Words and Music by Hillsong

“What a beautiful Name”

Words and Music by Hillsong

PRAYER OF ILLUMINATION TO OPEN OUR HEARTS

Lord, give us ears to hear Your voice and eyes to see Your glory. Would you this morning illuminate Your Word and make it known to us? Help us no to make application to others peoples’ lives, but to apply every Word to our own lives. Amen

SERMON

INTRODUCTION:

This morning we will pick back up in the gospel of John and back at the tomb with Mary. And Mary is still at the tomb, and she is dealing with serious grief because the body Jesus is gone. And that is how the story begins, but it ends with this great announcement of joy to the disciples of what she has seen and heard.

And isn’t that a picture of the Christian life. No doubt there are many times in our lives that bring deep grief, but in Christ seasons of joy are sure to follow.

Psalm 30:5 “Weeping may last for the night, But a shout of joy comes in the morning.”

That’s what happens to Mary in these verses today. She is overcome by grief, so much that she is blinded to all that is going on around her, but this grief is quickly turned to joy.

What I am going today is break this into three sections: A tomb that is not empty, A garden that is no longer a grave, and A Savior who will never leave her presence.

Lets begin by reading these verses together:

A tomb that is no longer empty

John 20:11–13 NASB95

But Mary was standing outside the tomb weeping; and so, as she wept, she stooped and looked into the tomb; and she saw two angels in white sitting, one at the head and one at the feet, where the body of Jesus had been lying. And 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.”

Explanation:

This section begins with the conjunction, “but”, contrasting Peter and John who had gone back to their homes (v 10) and Mary who was still at the tomb searching for Jesus.

What I want to show you is what this conjunction makes clear for us: which is the deep devotion that Mary had toward Jesus. All others were gone, Jesus’ body was gone, BUT Mary was standing outside the tomb…

Application: What makes someone so deeply devoted like Mary?

Let’s first clear up who Mary Madeline was.

Because of church tradition, Mary has been said to have been a harlot whom had an encounter with Jesus and became a faithful disciple.

Mary has been called the sinful woman in Luke 7, because she anointed Jesus’s feet with her hair, the same as Mary of Bethany and confusion over all the Mary’s have left people to believe they were all Mary Magdalene.

But Mary Madeline was not a prostitute, nor was she the sinful woman who anointed Jesus’ feet, but a woman who experienced the great grace of Jesus and was saved out of a terrible situation of demonic possession.

What makes a person love Jesus like Mary Madeleine loved Jesus? Because of what Jesus saved her from made her love Him so much.

Jesus said that the one who has been forgiven much, loves much.

Some people are so much more devoted to Jesus, love Him more deeply, love Him more sacrificially, because of what Jesus has delivered them from.

That’s why often the most sinful people before Christ become the most devoted people in Christ.

We ought not to look at people who may be awfully sinful as without hope, but as people who (if they come to Jesus) would become the most devoted in all the church.

When Mary looks inside the tomb, she sees that the tomb is not empty. The body of Jesus is not there, but there are two angels inside sitting where the body of Jesus has been laying. And they are not just sitting together, but one is sitting at the place where His head was and the other where his feet was. And John makes sure to describe their placement in detail because there is a deeper theological meaning in that image for us to see which goes back to the OT.

Let me first tell you about the OT Ark of the Covenant. It was built by Moses, by God’s instruction, and it symbolized the presence of God. Wherever the Ark was, you could rest assured that God was there. Now inside the Ark God told Moses to place the tablets of stone by which the 10 Commandments was written on.

The Ark was placed inside the tabernacle and then when the temple was built, it was placed inside the temple, in the inner most room called the holy of Holies that only the High Priest could enter once a year.

And once a year, on the day of atonement, the High Priest would enter the Holy of Holies and sprinkle blood from animal sacrifices on the mercy seat of the ark which was the place between the two cherubim. And this would make atonement for the sins of the people.

Now this is a recreation what Mary saw in the tomb that moring as she looked in.

Two angels sitting in white on a flat platform where the body laid, one at His head and one at His feet

Can you see the resemblance?

Now lets talk about the theology

The mercy seat of the Ark is the place on the middle of the two angelic beings. This is where the blood was applied from the sacrifices to atone for the sins of the people.

But the atonement was only temporary. For the High Priest would have to enter the Holy of Holies year after year, sacrifice after sacrifice, making atonement for sins.

All of that was pointing forward to this the ONE ATONEMENT made through the person of Jesus Christ whose blood was applied to the mercy seat.

This was a one time blood application that atoned for all sin for all time. Those before Jesus were saved by the blood of Jesus, and those after Jesus are saved by the blood of Jesus.

The Ark of the Covenant that contained the tablets of stone with the law written on them has been replaced by the Ark of the New Covenant that has grace written on it.

There is a difference between Grace and the law, between the first Covennat and the second greater covenant.

The Law is what we often find ourselves reverting back to: if I do this, then I’m going to be in trouble with God.

If I mess up, then I am going to look for the consequences of my sin. I’ve done wrong so I must be punished.

Just like the disciples who saw the blind man and said, who sinned, him or his parents?            

Grace is this: Yes, you have done wrong BUT Jesus bore your punishment so you do not have to.

God does not deal with His children the way that he deals with the world because our relationship with God is based upon the merits of Jesus, not our own merits.

Its the Law of Christ, or the Law of Grace

This picture of the old Ark and the new Ark is a picture of Law vs grace, the old covenant vs the new covenant, blessings and curses vs the sweet sweet grace of God.                                                                    

A garden that is no longer a graveyard

John 20:14–16 NASB95

When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, and did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?” Supposing Him to be the gardener, she 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 in Hebrew, “Rabboni!” (which means, Teacher).

Explanation:

(v 14) “she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but did not know that it was Jesus”

Why did Mary not recognize Jesus?

Maybe because it was still too dark for her to make out His face, maybe He was walking around the garden like the gardener messing with vegetation, or maybe And I think more so that her grief that has so blinded her that she could not see that it was Jesus standing right in front of her.

Just imagine walking up to the tomb of Jesus, knowing the body is missing, knowing that Peter and John had just walked inside the tomb and saying nothing, and then you walking in and seeing to angels (in whatever form they appeared but dressed in white sitting on the tomb of Jesus) and thinking nothing of it. Having a conversation and instead of recognizing something amazingly divine before her eyes, she is overwhelmed by her grief to even recognize that they were angels.

Mary was not there looking for angels that morning, nor was she looking for a living, walking, and breathing Jesus….she was looking for a dead body.

And her grief over the missing body had blinded her to what is standing right in front of her.

Twice in the section she is asked by the angels and by Jesus Himself, “why are you weeping?”. Why are you in such grief Mary? If you would just open your eyes and look, you would see that your pain and grief is really unnecessary.

The irony of it all was that her grief over the missing body of Jesus was not something to weep over, but something to rejoice in!

It was far better that His body be missing, than it would have been for Mary to find His lifeless body.

And how closely does this parallel to our lives.

If we think about our lives, and about the grief that we have experienced, how much of it was unnecessary?

How many times did we face things in our lives that brought us great sadness and turmoil, kept us up at night, only to learn later on that what we considered the most terrible thing in our lives, that we are actually grateful for today?

Now I don’t want to downplay grief and sorrow. It certainly is a part of the human life, and we all deal with it at times. When we have losses, we grieve. When hard things come into our life, we weep.

But in light of eternity, shouldn't we look at situations in this life through a different lens?

The reason we grieve is because we look at things purely from a worldly standpoint, from a view point of life as if there is no eternity at all, no resurrection from the dead, no heaven, no overarching plan of God, and we allow grief to come into our lives that really serves no purpose other than to bring us down.

Maybe that’s you this morning. Maybe there is grief in your heart, maybe not on the outside, but maybe on the inside and that grief has wrongfully taken your joy out of this life….I would encourage you to step back and get an eternal perspective about this life.

There are two ways we can look at grief:

1) this bad thing happened to me and I am cursed. God does not love me. I am destined to suffer and be miserable all my life. And the result of that is often being blinded by that grief to things standing right in front of us.

2) God is sovereign, and He is in absolute control of this life. And what may be out of my control and a source of grief for me, is part of God’s plan who runs this world with absolute perfection.

There is a pastor in Georgia who has a daughter who just graduated High School and has been suffering from a chronic illness for years has been placed on hospice care this weekend.

He did make this public, and this is what he said in the midst of his grief, “she joins the entire family in facing the days ahead with faith in Christ m confidence in the resurrection, and the blessed assurance that our Soveriegn God does all things well”

What a great example of how to deal with grief from an eternal perspective.

Through this grief, Mary does not recognize Jesus even when having a conversation with Him.

So He asks her the same thing that the angels did: “woman why are you weeping?”. She does not recognize Him. Then He asks, “woman, who are you seeking?”. She still does not recognize Him. But then He says her name, and when she hears her name, she instantly recognizes His voice and knows the supposed gardener is really Jesus.

Now what is it about saying her name? Well Jesus told us in John ch 10 that “His sheep knows His voice and He calls them by name and lead them out.”

It was when Mary heard her name everything changed for her….what she could not see before, she could see oh so clearly now.

The same is true for us. Jesus is a distant person to us, no matter how much we learn about Him and hear about Him, he is just someone from another time and another dimension until He calls us by name.

To know Him is to know His voice and to know Him personally. Our relationship cannot be based upon knowledge or what we have learned in church, but to know Him as the Risen living Savior who has called us to follow Him.

A Savior whose presence will forever be with us

John 20:17–18 NASB95

Jesus said to her, “Stop clinging to Me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to My brethren and say to them, ‘I ascend to My Father and your Father, and My God and your God.’ ” Mary Magdalene came, announcing to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord,” and that He had said these things to her.

Explanation:

“Stop clinging to Me”

Now this can be confusing to us because it seems like Jesus is saying to Mary, do not touch Me as if His new risen state is one that cannot be touched by people. But that doesn’t make sense in light of the upcoming events, and particularly down in verse 27 where Jesus tells Thomas to physically touch Him so that He can believe that Jesus truly has risen.

So why does Jesus tell Mary to stop clinging to Him? Because what must happen in Mary’s life is that her reliance upon the physical body of Jesus is coming to an end, and now her relationship with Jesus will happen in a different way.

Why? becuase Jesus is going to ascend back to the Father where He was before the incarnation. His time on earth has come to an end, and they will not be able to see him anymore.

And the question that arises then is: “how does one find the presence of Jesus today, if the Phsyical body of Jesus is gone?

Notice what Jesus says to her, “stop clinging to Me for I have not yet ascended to the Father”. In other words Mary, you must understand that I am leaving, and your thinking must chnage….My physical presence will no longer be here, becuase I am going back to the Father, but that does not mean you will not find me.

When Jesus ascended to the Father, who does He send back down to earth? The Holy Spirit. And what does the Holy Spirit do? Does He take up resident in some body and pick up where Jesus left off? Yes, in our bodies.

So to the question of, “where do we find the presence of Jesus today?” Friend you will find him dwelling inside the bodies of His brethren which will later be called the church.

The church is where the manifest presence of Jesus Christ lives today.

Application:

We really have trouble grasping the reality of what the church truly is. We think about it as a gathering of people. We think about it as an organization with rules, and work, and servants. But how often do we think about the church as the place where Jesus can be found in His fullest sense?

1 Corinthians 3:16 “Do you not know that you are a temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?”

1 Peter 2:4–5 “And coming to Him as to a living stone which has been rejected by men, but is choice and precious in the sight of God, you also, as living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house for a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.”

This gathering together here may not seem like nothing more than people who come together under the name of Jesus, but there is so much more!

It’s in this place that you will expereicne the love of Jesus.

It’s in this place that you will experience the help of Jesus.

It’s in this place that you will expereicne the truth of Jesus.

Its int his place that you will expereicne the holiness of Jesus.

Not because of the people, but because Jesus lives inside of these people called the church

One more thing:

Jesus aid to Mary: “but go to My brethren and say to them, ‘I ascend to My Father and your Father, and My God and your God.”

Now we have been called servants, we have even been called friends of Jesus up to this point, but this is the first time that Jesus calls us His brethren.

That’a what the resurrection has done. This was the announcement to the disciples. It’s not just that she has seen Jesus, though that is an amazing thing, but that the disciples have now become children of God and brethren of the Lord Jesus.

That’s what it means to be a Christian. It’s not just a term used to describe people, it’s an adoption into the family of God.

How does that happen?

John 1:12 “But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name,

Receive Him into your life by receiving His authority, His lordship, His ways, His principles, into your life.

And if you will receive Him, He will receive you and make you a child of God.

~PRAYER~