A Risen Redeemer Series

Back in 1851 two missionaries, one English and the other American, were walking past the temple

of Siva in Tanjore, India. They noticed the people carrying out one of the brass idols. It was a hot

sunny day and the idol had become heated. One of the worshippers happened to touch it, and feeling

that it was very warm, concluded that it was sick with a fever. The Rajah, or king being present

immediately sent for a physician. He came and told them not to be alarmed for the god was well.

The king called him a fool and sent him away. He ordered that another physician be called. When

he arrived and examined the idol, he told them the god was very ill with a high fever and would soon

die if remedies were not immediately applied. He directed them to put the idol in a shady place, and

wash him with cool liquid. When it was cooled off the physician pronounced him cured, and the

Rajah gave him three thousands rupees for saving the life of the god.

It is not everyday that a man can save a god, and he was no doubt delighted with his

accomplishment. We can laugh, of course, at the ignorance of men who could seriously believe in a

god capable of getting sick, dying, and needing to be rescued by men from the jaws of death. Any

god who can get sick and die is no god at all. This ought to be as obvious to us as any truth is.

Those who make statements that God has died only reveal that the God of whom they speak is no

more than a man made idol, and not the God of Biblical revelation. It is true that God, out of the

great love with which He loved us, became incarnate in human flesh, and submitted to the death of

the cross. He did literally go through the experience of dying, but the vital fact, the great fact of

Easter, is that He went through it. He did not remain in death, but rose to live forever. Jesus said to

John in Rev. 1:18, "I am he that liveth, and was dead; and behold, I am alive forevermore, Amen

and have the keys of hell and death." Christ has the keys of hell and death because He experienced

both, and triumphed over both. A poet has written,

Yes, He is risen who is the First and Last,

Who was and is, who liveth and was dead.

Beyond the reach of death He now has passed.

Of the glorious church the glorious head.

This is more than the message of Easter, for this is the foundation of the whole of Christianity.

Anyone is free to disbelieve, and even deny it, but none are free to honestly bare the name of

Christian who do so. There is no Christianity if the resurrection is not true. If men have lost faith in

the idols of their self-made religion, let them cry out that their god is dead, but let us not confuse

their petty idols with the Living God of Revelation. Those who have a God who is dead need to be

even more enlightened, and recognized that their god was never alive.

We want to consider the great story of the resurrection from the point of view of two groups of

people. Both groups are believers, but Mark's account first deals with the experience of the women,

and then of the men. We want to consider the male responses in another message. For now we will

consider the experience of the women on this day of resurrection. The first thing we see is-

I. DEVOTION DISPLAYED. v. 1,2.

These few loyal women have endured the agony of watching their Lord die a violent death, and

they watched Him being placed in a tomb hastily before the Sabbath began. How much real resting

they did on that Sabbath we do not know, but our text shows that as soon as it was over these

devoted disciples made a purchase. Late in the evening they bought spices for the purpose of going

to the tomb in the morning, and anointing the body of this one they so loved.

They harbor no hope of the resurrection, for they would not spend money for spices to anoint His

body if they had any hope that it would be alive soon. They acted in the belief that this was the end,

and that His body would forever lay in the tomb, or at least until the resurrection at the last day,

which all faithful Jews looked for. They are so grateful, however, for all that He was, and all that

He did for them, that they must express their devotion, and the only way they could do so was to