Sermon Tone Analysis

\\ */Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark,/*/ Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance.

2 So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, *“They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!”* 3 So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb.

4 Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first.

5 He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in.

6 Then Simon Peter, who was behind him, arrived and went into the tomb.

He saw the strips of linen lying there, 7 as well as the burial cloth that had been around Jesus’ head.

The cloth was folded up by itself, separate from the linen.

8 Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside.

He saw and believed.

9 (*They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.*)

Jn. 20:1-9//*[1]*/

 

As a church we are nearly two years in the process of studying the book of John and we are nearly through.

I believed that God would bless this journey and I have assurance that He has, as He always does.

Why John?

Because he was the Beloved disciple - the “disciple that Jesus loved”.

I think that John saw Christ as no one else did.

And through that heart perspective, that most intimate friendship with Christ he gives a rich account of the Savior.

For new Christians, John should be the first book that they read, followed by 1 John.

John captures the heart of God, the heart of the gospel.

In the final chapters, the narrative becomes a study of significant characters.

Sort of like the movie that ends with captions that tell us what happened to the main characters.

So recently we have looked at many of them – some good, some bad.

Today we look through they eyes of Mary Magdalene.

/(2.)

Mary Magdalene, i.e., Mary of Magdala, a town on the western shore of the Lake of Tiberias.

She is for the first time noticed in Luke 8:3 as one of the women who “ministered to Christ of their substance.”

Their motive was that of gratitude for deliverances he had wrought for them.

Out of Mary were cast seven demons.

Gratitude to her great Deliverer prompted her to become his follower.

These women accompanied him also on his last journey to Jerusalem (Matt.

27:55; Mark 15:41; Luke 23:55).

They stood near the cross.

There Mary remained till all was over, and the body was taken down and laid in Joseph’s tomb.

Again, in the earliest dawn of the first day of the week she, with Salome and Mary the mother of James (Matt.

28:1; Mark 16:2), came to the sepulchre, bringing with them sweet spices, that they might anoint the body of Jesus.

They found the sepulchre empty, but saw the “vision of angels” (Matt.

28:5).

She hastens to tell Peter and John, who were probably living together at this time (John 20:1, 2), and again immediately returns to the sepulchre.

There she lingers thoughtfully, weeping at the door of the tomb.

The risen Lord appears to her, but at first she knows him not.

His utterance of her name “Mary” recalls her to consciousness, and she utters the joyful, reverent cry, “Rabboni.”

She would fain cling to him, but he forbids her, saying, “Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father.”

This is the last record regarding Mary of Magdala, who now returned to Jerusalem.

The idea that this Mary was “the woman who was a sinner,” or that she was unchaste, is altogether groundless.

*[2]*/

 

First mentioned by Luke in chapter 8, verse 3, she was a long term follower of Christ delivered from 7 demons.

She is not to be confused with the woman who anointed Jesus at the home of Simon the Pharisee.

Among others, Mary accompanied Christ on his last journey to Jerusalem.

She stayed at the site of the crucifixion until it was totally finished until the last gun was fired.

It has always amazed me that she was there when the disciples, other than John,  were hiding for fear.

It would only be a courageous kind of love that is willing to risk that association that would keep a person there on that God forsaken hillside.

That is what Calvary was you know.

The place where God executed judgement for my sin on his only Son.

It is that place that heard the anguished, echoed cries of Christ lifted to a blackened heaven, “My God, My God – why have you forsaken me?”  Mary heard those words.

She saw the bloodied beaten body, lifeless, pierced, hanging there.

It is likely that she followed Joseph and Nicodemus as they laid the body in the rock tomb.

And then she withdrew for the Sabbath day, sundown Friday evening through sundown on Saturday.

The scripture tells us that */early, while it was still dark/*, she arrived at the tomb.

I wonder how she spent those hours.

Certainly in mourning.

They would have been long hours, dark, perhaps sleepless nights.

*1.

**Sleepless Nights*

 

Did you ever spend a sleepless night?

Most of us have known it at one time or the other and for a variety of reasons.

Perhaps, like Mary, grief has tossed you back and forth in the dark of the night.

Maybe it’s been a death, maybe a divorce.

Perhaps some other fractured or bruised relationship.

I know that I have laid awake, working over things that have slipped unresolved into the darkness.

When pride has kept me from resolving some issue with my wife – I pay for that – always.

The scripture says,

 

/22 //You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; 23 to be made new in the attitude of your minds; 24 and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.

25 Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to his neighbor, for we are all members of one body.

26 “In your anger do not sin”//a//: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, 27 and do not give the devil a foothold.

//Ephesians 4:22-27 (NIV)*[3]*/

 

Maybe the sleeplessness comes because a child is out in the night and you don’t know where they are.

Or maybe, better than that, they are crying in the crib and there’s nothing that you can do except to sit there and hold them.

I wonder if God has done the same for me at times when I have been inconsolable – times when I was unaware that I was being “held” in large eternal arms.

I suspect that this has happened many times.

Perhaps, regret holds you wide awake in it’s relentless grip or a sense of guilt or conviction for some unconfessed wrong that you are successfully concealing from everyone except God who sees all and knows all.

And there in the black night He sees you and you know it and there is no darkness too great to hide your sin from God.

 

! 2.  Circumstantial Notions

 

And so Mary finds herself in the darkness walking toward an empty tomb, mourning needlessly for a risen Savior.

And in that grieved state she finds it empty and draws some erroneous conclusions.

*/“They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!”/*

You may be at a troubled point in your life in these days as well.

There are times when this drives us deeper to discover the resource of our faith.

It causes us to pick up the scriptures and to search them for hope or direction or inspiration.

It causes us to cry out in desperation to God in prayer.

It would be wonderful if we could be just as concerned when there is no crisis.

It would be wonderful if we were daily desperate for God – the chorus says; “I’m desperate for you, I’m lost without you . .

.”

And one of our all too common struggles is that we tend to misinterpret the activity of God or simply to miss it altogether.

We think He is gone, left without a forwarding address and mistakenly we fear that we are alone.

Here are some things to keep in mind when the night separates you from God.

 

§         There are times when the process of God’s transforming grace is painful.

Sometimes it hurts.

One of the most painful processes is the diminishing of self – He increases – we decrease.

There has to be less of us in order for there to be more of Him.

 

§         Sometimes we have to lay good things to rest.

What could have been more difficult than to allow for the death of Christ.

He told them that it would be better for them that He go away.

§         God in never inactive in the lives of His children and in the lives of lost people.

When they thought He was dead in a borrowed tomb, he was storming the gates of hell.

*3.

**Surprising Need*