Mary Magdalene

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright. When Mary supposed Jesus to be the gardener, at first it seems like she couldn't be more wrong.

But when you consider the whole story, you realize she couldn't have been more right. Because Adam was a gardener who failed at his vocation, so God sent us a new gardener who would not fail. That's Pastor Alan Wright. Welcome to another message of good news that will help you see your life in a whole new light. I'm Daniel Britt, excited for you to hear the teaching today in the series titled, God Used Who?

And you may just be surprised, as presented at Reynolda Church in North Carolina. If you're not able to stay with us throughout the entire program, I wanna make sure you know how to get our special resource right now. It can be yours for your donation this month to Alan Wright Ministries. As you listen to today's message, go deeper as we send you today's special offer. Contact us at pastoralan.org, or call 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. More on that later in the program. But now, let's get started with today's teaching.

Here is Alan Wright. Are you ready for some good news? The good news of the resurrection of Jesus is that Jesus's resurrection proves his cross to have been authentic, meaning that everything that Jesus taught and all that had been prophesied about him as the Savior is proven to be true because Jesus is raised from the dead. And if he had not been raised from the dead, then we would still be left in our sins because the cross and the saving work of Jesus would not have been valid.

It was validated by the resurrection. So what's happened is that Jesus has become to us a second Adam. The first Adam fell into sin, but the second Adam came and lived in righteousness. So anybody who trusts in Christ is no longer in sin in Adam, but they're in the second Adam, you're in Christ. And it's wonderful, wonderful news.

I hope to explain all that today. We're in John chapter 20. This is the account of the first witness of the resurrection of Jesus. And it's quite fascinating that it's Mary Magdalene. A woman is the first witness. And in the ancient world, women were not allowed to be witnesses in the courtroom. And this is therefore something that's radical and beautiful because God highlights the fact that a woman is the first witness. If you were just making this stuff up, you wouldn't position a woman in this position because everyone knew in that time they weren't considered to be witnesses. It's beautiful.

It's radical. Mary Magdalene is what she's called. And we pick up reading John chapter 20 verse 11. But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb, and as she wept, she stooped to look into the tomb. And she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had lain, one at the head and one at the feet. They said to her, woman, why are you weeping? She said to them, they've taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they've laid him. Having said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing, but she 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've carried him away, tell me where you've laid him, and I'll take him away. Jesus said to her, Mary. She turned and said to him in Aramaic, Rabboni, which means teacher. Jesus said to her, do not cling to me, for I've not yet ascended to the father, but go to my brothers and say to them, I'm ascending to my father and your father, to my God and your God. Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, I've seen the Lord, and that he had said these things to her.

It seems like at first this is a case of mistaken identity. Some of the people who are most easily confused about biblical matters at times are little children who may not hear something exactly the right way and get it confused, and I chuckled out loud when I heard about a little girl who was so excited about her family's Easter activities, and she came to her mother and said, mom, when are we going to kill the eggs? And her mother said, what are you talking about, kill the eggs? She said, you know, when are we going to kill the eggs? I'm looking forward to it, and mother said, mother said, honey, what do you mean?

She said, you know, when we put the color on the eggs, and her mother said, oh, you mean when are we going to dye the eggs? Yeah, I read that some child thought that Noah's wife was called Joan of Arc. Another child thought Lot's wife was a pillar of salt by day and a ball of fire by night. Some child thought Moses went to the top of Mount Sinai to get the Ten Commandments. Another child thought the seventh commandment is thou shalt not admit adultery. One child thought Joshua led the Hebrews in the battle against cherry coke. Some children thought the wives of the apostles were called the epistles, and my favorite, one child said a Christian should have only one wife, and this is called monotony.

One child I heard of must have been scolded for playing too many video games because he was praying the Lord's Prayer, and he said, lead us not into PlayStation, but deliver us from evil. Sometimes children are confused just about the nature of God. We had a little boy in our church that first served in Durham, and he came to his mother one day and said, why is God so tired? She said, what do you mean? He said, you know that that song we sing all the time.

He is exhausted. He is exhausted on high, and my personal favorite case of mistaken identity really happened in that first church we served. I was walking down the hall, and a teacher was taking her class of three and four-year-olds out to the playground. I walked by, and I said, hi children, and one three-year-old girl just raised up with a big smile and waved at me and said, hi God. Mistaken identity, and this is a story that is about Mary mistaking Jesus for the gardener. What I want to show you today is the beauty of God's Word that is so multi-textured, multi-layered, such that at one level she couldn't be more wrong, but at another level she couldn't be more right.

I want to show you how Jesus is the new gardener, and why that's so important to know it, and why it is such good, good news. Mary Magdalene. She was from this town, Magdala, which was known as a prosperous town in Galilee, just a few miles away from Capernaum. They were known for their textiles.

They made clothes there, clothes there, and it was known as a prosperous place. So Mary might have come from a prosperous family. It's conjectured by scholars that she was one of the women that traveled with Jesus and helped support the ministry. The main thing you need to know about Mary of Magdala, or Mary Magdalene as she's called, the main thing you need to know about her is she really loved Jesus a lot. The reason that she loved him so much is he had healed her of so much. Luke chapter 8 says that she had been delivered of seven demons.

We don't know the exact nature of how this spiritual oppression had afflicted her, but you can imagine she was in a constant angst, perhaps living with a chronic discouragement or even some physical impairment. We don't know until she met Jesus and he had delivered her. Unfortunately, early church fathers associated Mary Magdalene, because she's mentioned in Luke chapter 8, they associated her with the woman in Luke 7 who is called a sinful woman who anoints Jesus' feet. And because of this, some of the early church fathers said, well, Mary Magdalene must be that woman. And so they labeled Mary Magdalene as the quote, sinful woman. And she gained this reputation as being a prostitute, a sinner, an adulteress. And none of that is true according to the gospels. There's no indication of that about Mary Magdalene. Mary Magdalene was a follower of Jesus and she loved him because he had healed her of so, so very much. And he simply looked her in the eye and he called out her name.

It would have been in Aramaic. And he said, Miriam. And when he spoke that word, she looked in his eyes and she saw the love of the savior. And she knew in an instant that he was alive. And in that moment, all the hopes and dreams and longings of her life were met. And every bit of the confusion she'd ever had in life was answered at that moment simply by Jesus calling her name. This is, by the way, beloved, how faith comes. When God calls you.

See, this is the way faith happens. You begin to ask the question of yourself. What am I weeping about? What's my problem?

What do I long for? And where am I looking for an answer? And something happens when you begin to seek, when you begin to look, when you begin to wonder about these things. God's using that.

Maybe you're here this morning and that's where you are. It's like, I know I need some answers for my life. God's in the midst of that.

That's Alan Wright, and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. God's love. You've heard about it with your ears.

You've believed it in your mind. Now experience it in your heart with Alan Wright's beloved book, Lover of My Soul. The Bible is a love story from beginning to end. You are the spiritual bride of Christ, the perfect bridegroom. The Bible tells about a God who has gone to unimaginable lengths to woo you, to win you, and to walk with you hand-in-hand. For any man who has fallen in love with a woman, you've tasted the sweetness of what God's love for you is like. For any woman who has searched for true love, what you long for can only be found fully in God. Gary Chapman, renowned author of the five love languages, says, the incredible reality that God pursues us in love comes to life in Lover of My Soul. Ancient biblical accounts explode in the heart. Accept Christ's proposal, enjoy His embrace, revel in His love.

After all, it's a match made in heaven. It's Lover of My Soul by Alan Wright. And today is the last day this special offer is available to you. Call us at 877-544-4860 or come to our website, PastorAlan.org.

Today's teaching now continues. Here once again is Alan Wright. The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and keep it. Adam was a gardener. The first human being was a gardener. And he had a job. He was to work it and keep it.

The Hebrew language more literally means to till it and to guard it. And I'm not much of a gardener. Our first house was a little cluster house in Atlanta and the previous owner had built the most beautiful vegetation in the backyard, had a gorgeous strawberry patch, had big barrels with goldfish swimming in it, had beautiful flowers and vegetation. It is sure a good thing we only lived there three years. The strawberry's been eaten by the birds. The goldfish were dying one by one. The grass was withering.

The pompous grass looked peaked and it was a good thing we got out of there while we could. But a real gardener works the ground and guards it. And the first thing Adam should have done to guard his garden is don't let a snake into it.

But he did. And this serpent that represents Satan in chapter 3 begins to lure the woman by saying maybe God didn't say what you think he said because God had said if you eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil you'll surely die. But the serpent said, verse 4, you'll not surely die. God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be open and you'll be like God. Do you see what the serpent was saying? He was saying if you will do this thing, eat this tree, then you will be more like God.

Do you see the irony, the sad tragic irony? She was already like God. They've been made in the image of God. But the serpent planted this thought. There's something you need to do in order to make yourself more like God. That by the way is the primal lie. And it is at the root of almost all temptation. It is what leads us away from God. Because God made us for relationship as human beings. But the tree of knowledge of good and evil is the do to be tree.

Do this and then you'll be somebody. And they fell for it. And when sin entered the world, immediately Adam and Eve felt like they were naked and they were ashamed. As soon as sin came in, shame came in. Shame is that horrible feeling that I don't measure up.

I gotta do something about this and I don't want anybody to see this. It is a lonely feeling. It is an anxious feeling. It is a horrible feeling.

We'll do almost anything to cover it up. And we don't use fig leaves but we use our perfectionism and we use our drugs and we use anything we can find to get away from feeling that horrible shame in our souls. And they felt that. And a fascinating thing happens. At verse 22 of Genesis 3, the Lord God said, Behold the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat and live forever.

And if your Bible's like mine there's a dash there. As far as I know it's the only unfinished sentence that God speaks in the Bible. He doesn't finish the sentence.

He says, Now lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat and live forever. And God can't bear to say it. You ever had a sense like I'm not even gonna say it. I can't even bear to say it.

None of you will say it. Because how he would have finished that sentence would have been like this. If in his state of condemnation man now comes back and takes of eternity he'll live eternally in a state of condemnation and all humanity will. I cannot let him in his state of sin also make it permanent. And so God didn't even finish the sentence.

It's too unthinkable to him. And so instead he put Adam and Eve out. He put cherubim there flaming sword so they could not get back in and get to the tree of life. The fall into sin is a story of how humanity got put away from the tree of life in the middle of the Garden of Eden. And God's mercy is there because he had a plan.

He couldn't finish the sentence because God had a plan already in mind. The dilemma that the Bible calls sin, it's not just that we do bad things and so on. Because you look around you say well they're good people, they're bad people. You might be sitting here today and going well I'm a good person.

I'm not as bad as other people. And that's the whole point of life is to be a good person and so forth. What the Bible calls sin is something much deeper than that. It is to say that we've all been born in sin. And the reason for this is that if you trace everyone back we're all the children of Adam and Eve.

They are the beginning point. Everyone is in some way or another has been the great great great great great great great great great great great grandchild of Adam and Eve. They were in sin. They sinned. So everyone who has been born has been born into a condition of sin. And the way the Bible describes it, it's a condition that by necessity has caused a massive separation between humanity and God. Never changing God's love for his creation.

No. God loves his creation so much. Nothing could change his love. But God's holy and he's just.

And he said if you eat of that tree you're gonna die. And if there is disobedience there's gonna be punishment. So if you bring sinful people into the presence of this holy God there's only one result from that. The righteousness of God demands it.

So this is a problem. The predicament of sin. That's the way the Bible speaks of it. Not just doing good things or bad things but the condition of separation from God.

That's the problem. And the problem was that if we're all born in Adam how will we ever be delivered so that we're not in the same condition. And what God saw and it makes sense is that we needed a whole new breed. We needed a whole new race of humanity. We needed something to happen. But God looked and there was no one righteous on the earth.

All had fallen short. Even the best person in this room. In other words when Mary supposed Jesus to be the gardener at first it seems like she couldn't be more wrong.

But when you consider the whole story you realize she couldn't have been more right. Because Adam was a gardener who failed at his vocation so God sent us a new gardener who would not fail. There is therefore now no condemnation for this is what has happened for anyone who's accepted Jesus.

The Bible says he who knew no sin became sin so that we who were so sinful would be reckoned as his righteousness. That's at the heart in the center of the gospel is that Jesus came to do what Adam couldn't do and to pay a price that we could never have paid. And when you accept him you're in him forever and forever. It's a strange way to end an Easter message but it's true Jesus is your gardener and that's the gospel. Alan Wright and a message preached on Easter Sunday but very much applicable to our lives today. It's from the greater series it's coming to a conclusion God used who and today's teaching is on Mary Magdalene.

Alan is back in a moment with additional insight on this for your life and today's final word. God's love you've heard about it with your ears you've believed it in your mind now experience it in your heart with Alan Wright's beloved book Lover of My Soul. The Bible is a love story from beginning to end.

You are the spiritual bride of Christ the perfect bridegroom. The Bible tells about a God who has gone to unimaginable lengths to woo you to win you and to walk with you hand in hand. For any man who has fallen in love with a woman you've tasted the sweetness of what God's love for you is like. For any woman who has searched for true love which you long for can only be found fully in God. Gary Chapman renowned author of the five love languages says the incredible reality that God pursues us and love comes to life and lover of my soul. Ancient biblical accounts explode in the heart. Accept Christ's proposal enjoy his embrace revel in his love after all it's a match made in heaven. It's Lover of My Soul by Alan Wright.

And today is the last day this special offer is available to you. Call us at 877-544-4860 or come to our website PastorAlan.org. So Alan we know this was an Easter Sunday message we also know this is the conclusion of God Used Who which is subtitled how God used unheralded women in astonishing ways yet I feel like Mary Magdalene is one of the more prominent women in the Bible.

So when you were preparing this message how are you filtering all this together? Well I think that I was just so drawn to the figure of Mary Magdalene though she is more familiar than Pua and Shiphrah and the daughters of Zelophahad. I don't know that we've always stopped and just pondered and considered her life. And when she thought Jesus was the gardener.

Right. That's the focal point of today's message. I wonder if we always thought well she made a big mistake Jesus wasn't the gardener.

But I wonder if in a deeper sense she was absolutely right. This whole story began with a garden. The garden of Eden. And it finds its climax in a garden.

Yeah. The garden of Easter. And in the Eden garden that first garden the woman was born without sin but she became a sinner. But in the Easter garden this woman who was born in sin Mary Magdalene she becomes a forgiven Saint. She sees something. She sees the resurrection. And I think there's an invitation for us here as well. And so for all our listeners as we conclude this series and have seen how God has used these unheralded women and how God puts the gospel on display in their lives. How much more so in everyday life can you see the gospel on display through the ways God's using you. And so be on the watch.

He can use anybody at any time. Today's good news message is a listener supported production of Alan Wright Ministries.