Who Will Roll Away The Stone

Who Will Roll Away The Stone?

Main Text: Mark 16:1-7

INTRO:

• In man’s path of happiness there lies a huge rock, which completely blocks up the road…

• Who among men can remove the barrier?

• Generation to generation…men have buried their dead…the sepulcher (grave), becoming their prison of no escape.

• The women in our story are going to clean up Jesus’ body. They are going to anoint his body with spices and oils. The rudimentary forms of embalming.

• But there was this great barrier in their way. Not only had a stone been rolled in front of the tomb’s opening, but the bible tells us in Matthew 27 that the Chief Priests and Pilate ordered that the stone be sealed to the tomb itself. Nothing could get in, and nothing could get out.

• I see in this passage that there must have been a little faith on the part of the two Mary’s. Knowing that the stone was there, knowing it had been sealed up… they must have believed, or at least hoped in the back of their minds that something had happened. That something had finally gone right. Because they were already on their way when they asked the question, “Who will roll the stone away from the entrance?”

Man has been asking that same question for millennia. Who will move the stone? Who will break down the barrier between God and us?

Instinctively man knows there is a God. He understands that happenchance over billions of years is too far fetched to believe. He knows that there is some kind of super-power out there, somewhere. There has to be… but how do we get to Him? How is it that man could talk to, walk with and please God? Man knows there is a hole in his soul. Man knows that there has to be a divine being to fill that hole. But how, how can it happen when there is this great boulder of a rock in the way?

But as I said Wednesday night, God has a plan. God speaks and plans fall into place. God speaks and systems are automatically created to serve His will. God had a plan all along. His plan was to remove the barrier. To remove the wall, the stone, the rock the bars.

In looking at this, let’s first turn our eyes to the OT. In the OT we can begin to see what it is that God is doing. We can see what he is setting up.

God often works in patterns. He always establishes something in the past that is fulfilled in the future.

*Joshua 5:1-9*

1). The Reproach of Egypt is Rolled Away.

Egypt is always representative of sin.

Egypt is symbolic of a place of sin. A way of living in the fleshly nature or human nature. We in Christendom call it “the Old Man.” Being that the old man is what we were before Jesus came into our hearts and we became new creations in Christ.

We see here in this passage that the people called the place where they had been circumcised, Gilgal.

What is in the name Gilgal?

Gilgal in the Hebrew has a very specific meaning. It is called Gilgal because the meaning of the word is exactly what God did for them that day.

Gilgal = Rolled away or Completely Rolled off.

God spoke to Joshua to have the people circumcised. Circumcision was the outward way in which God’s people were recognized as His people. It was an outward expression that they were covered; they were cleansed before God because they were a part of his people. When the priest made the sacrifice, the sacrifice was for all of the people who were circumcised or part of the family of circumcision.

They had been living in Egypt. All the sin, all the degradation of Egypt, all the impurity of living in an impure land with impure people had left them in state of not being clean, or holy before God. None of the men who were born in the dessert those 40 years had been circumcised.

So God says, if you are going to be my people and if you are going to fight in my name and if I am going to be the God who delivers you and gives you the land that I have promised, you are going to have to be holy before me. Circumcision was that barrier. It was the thing that once it was removed, allowed them to be a part of the family of God.

We know today that the circumcision is not of the physical nature but of the heart. Each who has accepted Jesus as their savior is one who has been circumcised in his heart.

Romans 2:29 says, “No, a man is a Jew if he is one inwardly; and circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit…”