Life without Limits; Mark 16:1-8; Romans 6:5-11 NLT; 7th of 7 in “All for You” series; Easter Sunday; 04-16-06; The Promise; Darryl Bell
What limits you? What ties you down? What holds you back? What keeps you from becoming all you intended to become and from doing all you long to accomplish? Remember the Capital One credit card ads where the agent always says, “No,” No, No” Does it feel like you keep getting “NO” as your answer too? (Set up a sign that says “NO.”) Will I ever overcome this problem? No. Will my job situation ever improve? No. Will I get on track financially soon? No. Will I ever find real satisfaction with life? No. Does it seem like your dreams keep getting beaten down and new problems keep popping up?
If so, you’re not alone. In fact, this may help you identify with the women in our Bible story today. They were painfully aware of the limitations of life. The cross had just said NO to the most awesome and abundant life they had ever known. If this could happen to him, what hope was there for them? They were heading to the tomb to pay their final respects by anointing his body for burial.
As an aside here, the fact that women were the first witnesses of the resurrection is really a cool thing. The testimony of women was not acceptable in courts of law at that time. Only men were considered credible witnesses. So this actually gives greater credibility to the resurrection story. If someone had made up the story, if it was fabricated, they certainly would not have made women the first witnesses. They would have made it Peter or John or some other respected man. But women are the first witnesses in the gospels, because they’re not made up. That’s what really happened.
Jesus’ body was placed in the tomb just moments before the Sabbath began, so there wasn’t time to complete the burial procedures before the Sabbath. And Sabbath laws forbade work on the Sabbath. So as soon as the Sabbath was over on Saturday at sundown, the women went to the local shop and bought burial spices. By then it was dark, so they waited through another long night until first light on Sunday morning, when they went to the tomb. They certainly didn’t expect the resurrection. They were overcome with grief.
As they made their way to the tomb, it dawned on them. “What about the stone? Who will roll the stone away for us?” It was way too big for them to move themselves. Who could move it? In a way that stone is a reminder of life’s insurmountable problems and barriers for us. They block our way. They’re too big for us to move. And we don’t know what we can do about them.
As they arrive at the tomb, the women look up, and the stone is already rolled back. God takes care of those barriers even when we can’t. The women don’t know whether this is good news or bad news, but the way things have been going, they probably expect the worst. Their hearts are pounding as they cautiously approach the tomb. Has someone stolen the body? God forbid, have they desecrated it? Is someone still inside? They don’t know what to expect as they step in. Their eyes adjust to the low light, and they are startled to see a young man sitting there. Their hearts jump right into their throats. The text says they are “startled” or “alarmed.” Terrified might be a good word.
The visitor, of course, is an angel. In the Bible angels look very much like people—no wings, no halos, no special glow. And usually when angels appear, people are terrified, so here as in most cases, the angel’s first words are, “Don’t be alarmed. Settle down. Don’t be afraid.” Then he gives them a message that changes them and the world forever. It’s a message that truly breaks the bounds of life’s limitations. I want to look at it in two parts, and each part has an implication—a “therefore” or “so what”—connected with it.
The first part of the message is, You’re looking for Jesus, the Nazarene, who was crucified. He isn’t here. He has been raised from the dead. Their minds probably can’t get around this, because it isn’t at all what they expected. He confirms that they are in the right place. Look, this is where they laid his body. The implication is, “Look, this is the place. But the body is gone. It’s not here. He is risen!”
This is arguably the most important and one of the best-attested facts of history. When I was struggling with the claims of Christianity for myself, it was the resurrection that convinced me. If the resurrection didn’t happen, a lot of other things have to be explained. For instance, 1) how do you explain the empty tomb? Some argued early on that the disciples came and stole the body while the Roman guards slept. But if a Roman guard was caught sleeping on duty, he was executed. They had pretty good motivation to stay awake. And even if the whole group had slept, wouldn’t the noise of the disciples moving the stone have awakened even one of them? And the disciples themselves were grief-stricken and distraught. They didn’t have it in them to pull off such a theft. And almost all of the disciples were martyred for preaching that Jesus is alive. Is it conceivable that under the pain of torture and death not one of them would ever break and tell the truth if they had stolen the body?
You say maybe somebody else stole the body? Who? The Jews? The Romans? They both wanted to show that Jesus had not risen, so why wouldn’t they produce the body if they had it? It would have been easy to kill the whole Christian movement in those early years by simply coming up with the body. But they couldn’t do it. The tomb was empty.
If Jesus didn’t rise, we also have to account 2) for his many appearances afterwards. He appeared in many different settings at different times of the day to different individuals and groups. That’s not the way hallucinations work. And Paul reports in 1 Corinthians that Jesus appeared to more than 500 people at once, many of whom were still alive. If it were not true, wouldn’t someone from that 500 have spoken up?
3) If Jesus didn’t rise, how do we explain the amazing change in the disciples? They went from cowering in hiding, afraid for their own necks, to boldly proclaiming the resurrection in the very city where Jesus was killed just a few weeks before. They were transformed and gave the rest of their lives to spreading the message that Jesus was alive. They couldn’t do that unless they believed it was true.
4) Finally, if Jesus didn’t rise, how do we account for the countless lives that have been changed throughout history and today? The personal experience of Christians is compelling. I can tell you, “I know Jesus is alive. I just talked with him this morning.”
This is the news these women encountered that first Easter morning when they stepped into that empty tomb. He is risen! And because he is risen, there is an implication for them, a response. Go and give this message to his disciples, including Peter: They are the first believers who are specifically told to tell others about Jesus. Joel Marcus points out, “Whereas before [the crucifixion and resurrection] Jesus commanded secrecy and open proclamation was disobedience, now Jesus commands open proclamation and secrecy is disobedience” (quoted in Garland, The NIV Application Commentary, p. 614)). Go and tell. That is what Jesus stressed time after time between his resurrection and his ascension to heaven. Go make disciples. You will be my witnesses. It is the mandate of the whole church because Christ is alive.
The specific mention of Peter is a tremendous blessing. Remember Peter had failed Jesus big time. He denied that he even knew him. But the resurrection revokes death and sin and failure. It shows God is greater. It’s the promise of a new start. It proves our past can’t limit us or hold us back. This hints at Peter’s restoration a short time later despite his huge failure. It reminds us that Jesus doesn’t give up on us, his disciples, no matter how badly we have failed. Because of the resurrection, there is hope of a new and positive future.
The first part of the angel’s message is He is risen! And the corollary is Go, tell. Spread the news. The second part of the promise is, he is going ahead of you to Galilee. You will see him there, just as he told you before he died! Remember on their way to Gethsemane after the Lord’s Supper, Jesus predicted that the disciples would all desert him and run away. And then he said, But after I am raised from the dead, I will go ahead of you to Galilee and meet you there. I will go ahead of you. I will be your leader again. This shows that Jesus’ promises are true. He promised he would rise from death, and he did. He promised he would meet them in Galilee, and he did. Mark records two separate times earlier in his ministry when Jesus told his disciples that he was going to fall into the hands of his enemies, suffer and be killed, and then rise to life on the third day (8:31; 10:33-34). They just didn’t get it. But now it all makes sense. The light bulbs go on.
Mark Hensley has written: “Christianity would have been the easiest religion to disprove in the first few years. Just produce the body of Christ. Yet no such body has turned up. Now, I don’t know anybody who has come back from the dead. Better than that, Jesus said he would come back from the dead, and then he did. Harry Houdini said he’d come back, but he didn’t. Overcoming death is a big deal. It can’t be ignored. If someone tells you they’re going to die, be dead for three days, then come back to life… and they proceed to do it… I suggest you listen to whatever they say next!”
Jesus goes ahead of you. His promises are true. That’s the second part of the angel’s message. And the implication or response implied by that is trust him. Trust him. He said he would come back from death and he did. If he can do that, he can keep all of his other promises as well. He will be with you. He will never abandon you. He will forgive your sins. He will restore you to God. He’ll restore purpose and meaning to your life. He’ll give you joy and peace. He’ll give you power to live a new life. He’s proven himself faithful. He keeps his promises. So trust him.
1) He is risen, so go tell others. 2) He goes ahead of you and keeps his promises, so trust him.
The women at the tomb are overwhelmed. They are dumbfounded. They are in awe and wonderment. They don’t know what to think. Mark says, They fled from the tomb, trembling and bewildered, saying nothing to anyone because they were too frightened to talk. Obviously their silence was temporary. You can’t keep news like this secret. The fact that their story is written here shows that they did share it. They did tell others, but initially they were dumb, because they were afraid. Fear kept them from telling others what they knew about Jesus.
And too often that is the case for us as well. We have the best message in the world. We know Jesus is alive. We have experienced him in our own lives. But when it comes to speaking up about him, we can’t find our tongue. We’re afraid. I’m speaking of myself here too. I’m afraid. And usually those fears are groundless. We’re afraid of what other people might think. We’re afraid someone might ridicule us or make fun of us. We’re afraid of looking stupid or possibly misrepresenting the message. I hope like the women eventually did, you and I will also find our tongue and not be afraid to speak up for the living Lord.
I need to comment briefly about the ending of Mark’s gospel. It seems like a very abrupt ending to a wonderful story. You’d expect him to give some kind of conclusion, to wrap it all up. So there is speculation that whatever the ending was must somehow have gotten lost. And if you look in your Bible you will see two alternative endings, one shorter and one longer. Based on the language and the content it seems clear that in both of these cases some well-meaning monks who were copying scripture long ago tried to provide the conclusion that the gospel seemed to lack. So they produced these endings that scholarship has identified as from a much later time. They are basically a collection of scriptures from other locations pulled together to give a fitting conclusion to Mark. But they are almost certainly spurious.
The very best ancient manuscripts end with verse 8, and there is no indication that anything was lost. David Garland argues that Mark intended to end it this way. It is a subtle literary device that draws us as readers in to finish the story for ourselves. As we see the women running off in silence, we must ask ourselves will we too be silent? Will we “go and tell” like the angel instructed the women to do? Will we go to meet Jesus ourselves as he goes ahead of us? Will we experience the reality and the power of the resurrection in our lives?
The resurrection transforms a hopeless end into an endless hope. Because Jesus rose from death, we can trust him as our Savior. The resurrection shows that our faith does not depend on our own adequacy. It depends on the power of God. The disciples failed repeatedly, yet the gospel goes forward by God’s power, not by our successes. Failure is not the end. Don’t we need to hear that? Failure is not the end. God is at work, even through our failings.
Like the first disciples, our greatest need is not just to see or hear about the resurrection, but to have the resurrection happen to us. Lloyd Ogilvie says, “The most powerful historical proof of the resurrection is the ‘resurrected’ disciples. Dull, defeated people became fearless, adventuresome leaders. Cowards became courageous; the timid became triumphant; the inept did the impossible. ‘He is risen!’ became the joyous chant of a new life without limits” (Life without Limits, p. 283). Jesus said, Because I live, you will live also (John 14:19). The resurrection life is the same as eternal life. It is far more than just time with the ends knocked out. It is a new quality of life that includes God in our day-to-day experience and is powered by his Spirit. The message of Easter is that the resurrection can happen to us now.
We have missed Easter if we say, “He is risen!” and we can’t also say, “I am risen!” The same power of God that raised Jesus from death now lives in me. We can now say, I have the strength to face all conditions by the power that Christ gives me (Phil 4:13 TEV). So when I face a financial challenge, I know it will be okay because Christ’s power lives in me. When a loved one is sick, I can trust God with it because the power of God lives in me. When I’m facing a huge challenge at work, I can move forward because the power of God lives in me. When I don’t know what to do with a problem my kid is facing, I can put it in God’s hands because the power of God lives in me. When there appears to be no hope from a human point of view, I still live in hope because the power of God lives in me. Life doesn’t limit me like it did before. Christ is risen and I am risen too!
Paul says in Romans 6, Since we have been united with him in his death, we will also be raised as he was. That’s not just by and by when we die. We are raised to new life right now. He says, Our old sinful selves were crucified with Christ so that sin might lose its power in our lives. We are no longer slaves to sin. For when we died with Christ we were set free from the power of sin. Now the power of God lives in us, rather than the power of sin. And since we died with Christ, we know we will also share his new life. We are sure of this because Christ rose from the dead, and he will never die again. And Paul concludes, So you should consider yourselves dead to sin and able to live for the glory of God through Christ Jesus (vss 5-9, 11).
Because Jesus broke through death, we can live a new life without limits. Think back to those things that limit you. With Ogilvie we can say that “we are not able. But with the confidence of the resurrection we can know that he is able. Listen to the undaunted faith of those early Christians in whom the resurrection was more sure than their own pulse beat: ‘He is able to strengthen those who are tempted’ (Heb 2:18); ‘He is able to save those who draw near to God through him’ (Heb 7:2); ‘He is able to keep you from falling’ (Jude 24); ‘He is able to subdue all things unto himself’ (Phil 3:21); ‘He is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day’ (2 Tim 1:12); ‘He is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think’ (Eph 3:20).”
When our lives feel like “NO” is the operative word, we need to bring God in. (Show letter “G” for God.) We may not be able, but he is able. When the living God enters our situation “NO” becomes “GO.” (Put “G” on sign, changing it from “NO” to “GO.”) The limits are lifted. We’re given the power to go for it. I can do everything through him who gives me strength (Phil 4:13 NIV). The resurrected Christ gives you “go-power.”
Easter is not just a celebration of something that happened 2000 years ago. It is the celebration of God’s power over sin and death that gives us new life today. God’s resurrection power in us frees us from the old boundaries and limits and “NOs” that had kept us bound. The Bible says, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glorious power of the Father, now we also may live new lives (Rom 6:4 NLT).
GO with that new life today!
