Love Never Budged (Part C)

If we are to remain useful to the Lord, it's not by being gloomy guys, walking around depressed and sorry about everything in our lives. These people were grieved, their hearts were broken, but love carried them through. And if you are downtrodden and you've been defeated in life and things have gone wrong, but you still love the Lord, let that part of you be visible.

Let the love for Jesus Christ shine from you. This is Cross-Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the Book of Mark.

Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross-Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. Today, Pastor Rick will conclude his study called Love Never Budged in Mark chapter 15. Crucifixion was intended to be long and painful. Of course, there were to be no survivors. It was not, well, we'll just torch you with this and then if you last enough days, we'll bring you down. No, it was a long and painful death.

That's what it was designed to do. You can look up in history, of course, the internet makes this easy. Years ago, you had to buy Encyclopedia Britannica or something to get these answers. Now, it's right there at your fingertips, as Daniel promised. In the end times, knowledge will increase and that was an understatement in many ways it seems, but you can look up how the Persians just worked on ways to torture people when they didn't like them. Some pretty mean, so this compared to some of the Persian methods, this was relatively, what's the word I want, whatever it is, it's not so bad.

There you go. Anyway, of course, the hands and feet would be nailed to the tree, to the wood and this would allow for the individual with his arms stretched out, his rib cage, of course, stretched out like that. It was difficult to breathe. Well, he could push up on his legs still and catch a breath every now and then and the reason why I'm pointing this out is because Pilate is inquiring about him. The Jews had asked for the bodies to be taken off and to do this, they're going to break the legs.

Well, when they break the legs, you can't hoist yourself up anymore to take those breaths and that hastens death. John's Gospel chapter 19, then the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first and of the other who was crucified with him, but when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs, but one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear and immediately blood and water came out and he who has seen has testified and his testimony is true and he knows that he is telling the truth so that you may believe. Now, I left that last part in there that seems to be separate from the account of how they handled the body of Christ, the Romans, after he died to verify that he was dead.

Well, there we read that they went to break the legs of the other outlaws which would speed up their deaths so they could take them off the cross, but John in telling this, he says, and he who has seen has testified and his testimony is true and he knows that he is telling the truth so that you may believe. He said, I was there, I'm telling you the truth and I'm telling you this because I want you to believe. I'm not making this stuff up. There's no benefit to making this stuff up. I'm not going to stand before God making up things about God.

I'm telling you the truth. And so when Pilate says is he dead already, the centurion verifies, goes to verify what they don't take Joseph's word, they go to see. And they could not break his legs because it was against the scripture. He, being the Passover lamb, the lamb of God, not a bone was to be broken. Exodus 12 verse 46 when God said you take the Passover lamb and you sacrifice it and you put the blood on the threshold of the house, but you don't break any of the bones.

And he is fulfilling that type. It is important to understand you cannot receive moral lessons from the Bible and at the same time charge its writers with dishonesty. How can you say you know we need to listen to these men when they talk about not stealing and not killing and not lying, but they're making up the gospel story.

That's a contradiction that defies reason and we should point that out any chance we get to the naysayers. These were godly men and what they wrote was godly and righteous and it would be foolish to weigh your eternity on such a petty complaint as yeah, but they were making it up when you have no proof. Verse 45, so when he found out from the centurion, he granted the body to Joseph. So he called for the investigation.

He received the verification. At this point, the world is beginning to, Pilate representing the world, is beginning to think that they're done with Christ. You can have the dead body of Christ, they would scoff. And there stands Joseph our hero, heart bursting with love. Love lost, but love found at the same time. He lost in his head. He lost Christ to death, but he has this newfound love for him now. Otherwise again, he would not be there doing what he's doing. I think maybe you're serving in the kid's ministry.

Maybe you're serving somewhere in the usher's ministry and you just don't, again, I'm coming back to this because it plagues us and you just don't have the feeling anymore, but you're serving anyway. How important it is because we're seeing this take place here in this man. It is a typhoon of heartache that he is enduring because of love. Why didn't he say, you know, I thought he was the Messiah. He got himself killed. He's not the Messiah. He said he was. He lied to me.

I'm done. It's not what he does. Thomas comes close to that, but he doesn't either. Thomas doesn't know what to do. He doesn't say, I just, I don't, he just completely will, he and Joe just fell apart. And I'm not going to believe because I'm not going through that again. I believed Christ was the Messiah, said Thomas. And it turns out he wasn't.

Now I don't know what to do. And I'm not going to believe he's risen because I, again, I'm not going through that. And of course, the Lord fixed that, did he not?

It was a defective faith, but who has perfect faith amongst us? Well, still, remaining before them is again the gruesome task to remove the body from the cross. A gruesome task, but a beautiful deed. And we don't need to go into how difficult that must have been.

It wasn't just a matter of untying some ropes. Only hands of love now touch the body of Christ. Shouldn't that be the way it is with the church?

If the church is the body of Christ, shouldn't it be cared for by loving hands? I think we all believe that. Because if I have not love, what do I have? What am I left with? If this love is to cast out fear, this perfect love, then it must be something I want.

If this love covers a multitude of sins which I have, that's what I want. Speaking about this multitude of sins, a lesson for all you parents raising your children. Teach them that it is easier to take a plank out of somebody's eye than it is to take a moat out of your own eye. A plank's just there, you just grab it. But a moat is a little more tricky.

And a plank may leave some moats. Anyway, teach your children that obedience involves more judgment of myself, examination of myself, than putting somebody else under a microscope and examining them. That's Pharisaism.

We don't want that. We don't want our children or our adults going around sticking people under a microscope evaluating their service to the Lord. Now that does not mean that blatant sin is to be ignored or trivialized.

That's different. I mean, if you come to a church, the pastor doesn't come up to you and say, hey, how are you doing? What sins are you wrestling with? I mean, we're not looking for trouble. But if you come to church and, you know, you still got the bag of money that says, you know, First National Bank on it, of course then, you know, that's rather blatant, is it not?

If you tell us, listen, pastor, this is what I'm doing and what you're telling us is a sin, we're not going to say, oh, don't worry about it. Then we've got to deal with it. But we're not looking as a difference. There's a big difference between the plank in someone's eye and the moat as I am saying it to you. And I think this is a lesson we all need to remember. I have enough things about me that I'm trying to fix and to waste time trying to point it out to others what they're doing wrong.

Not that it works very much anyway. You point it out, you usually make an enemy. Anyway, just a side note, but everything in scripture has everything to do with other parts of scripture. So verse 46, then he bought fine linen, took him down, wrapped him in the linen, and he laid him in a tomb which had been hewn out of rock and rolled a stone against the door of the tomb. It's so hard to preach on this subject. Again, to preach to Christians who know the story as well as I do and to keep you into it. When I first started, pastor, and I tried to teach the arcane sections of scriptures, you know, the minor prophets, you know, to tell people about Zephaniah and Haggai because it was fresh ground and, oh, I didn't know that, and you'd keep their attention. But the whole story, the gospel story, the Christians, you know, they're very familiar with. And just think, April's coming, and I'll be up here again trying to teach you something from, but God has been good to me, and I've got some surprises for you.

I'll just start making up stuff. So I said, well, I didn't know that was in the Bible. You go home and find it. I can't find it. Pastor, where is it?

Please, I'm too busy. Anyway, anyhow, back to verse 46 where he brings the fine linen. They take him down and they wrap him in linen. Here are these two rich men, Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus. They are two rich men who made it through the eye of the needle. Again, if these two rich men can make it, what's everybody else's excuse who is rich?

You don't have one. John chapter 19, verse 39. And Nicodemus, who at first came to Jesus by night, because he was afraid also, also probably the crowds were thinner, but anyhow, also came bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about 100 pounds. So Nicodemus finds out, or at some point these two communicate, and Nicodemus shows up. You know, the Jews did not embalm the bodies. They wrapped them in perfumed burial cloths, and that's what these men are doing now.

It really is a waste of these resources because he's going to be out in three days. Nicodemus also objected to the unrighteous treatment of the Lord. John's Gospel, chapter 7. Nicodemus, he who had came to Jesus by night, being one of them, said to them, Does our law judge a man before it hears him and knows what he is doing? So there we see Nicodemus upholding the scripture in the presence of those who claim to be custodians of God's Word, but had no interest in carrying it out. Have you ever met a Christian like that, that knows the Bible?

They could know it like the back of their hand, whatever that means. And still, they have no intention of following it. They give you convenient Christianity. When it's convenient for them to point out your problems, and it's convenient for them to make themselves look good, oh yeah, they'll use the Bible. But when someone points out some egregious or some blatant sin, it doesn't all of a sudden count.

And they are out there, unfortunately. And he laid him in a tomb which had been hewn out of the rock. Here's another emblem of his incorruption. While there was the virgin birth, of course. Just, you know, how he came into creation, how he manifested himself. Then there was his entry into Jerusalem. Luke says a cult on which no one ever sat. And now here we have a tomb.

John's Gospel chapter 19 gives us a little bit more information. Now in the place where he was crucified, there was a garden. And in the garden, a new tomb in which no one had yet been laid.

And so there is, again, these emblems of his incorruptibility. It says here in verse 46, and rolled a stone against the door of the tomb. This is far from over. The rolling of that stone is not saying the end, and the credits start coming up on the screen. The rolling of this stone across the tomb is God still saying, for those who believe, this ain't over.

That rolling stone rolls both ways. And may we never forget it. When we face whatever it is we're facing in life, God still controls the roll of the stone. It is still, so you go to Israel today, you look at what looks like to be Golgotha, the place of the skull where Christ was crucified. It fits the requirements from scripture to the north of the city, outside of the city, the place of the skull, next to a garden. What is next to Golgotha today? Well, there's this garden that the archaeologists have unearthed. It also has a wine press in it, which would account for some of the wealth of Joseph of Arimathea. But there's also, hewn out of the hill there, a tomb. And you can go in this tomb today.

It all lines up. But the stone is not there, is gone. Nobody knows what happened. There is one in Jordan up on a mountain that fits the dimensions. No one knows why it's up there. There's no tomb up there that anybody has found. Just one of those things that make you go, hmm.

I mean, did the Lord send an angel? He said, use that for a Frisbee. You just can't read into it like that. But you can enjoy it. You can be amused by it. You can say, well, maybe. I mean, those angels are pretty strong people. Well, they're not people like us. But they're persons, right?

I wonder what a conversation's going to be like with an angel. What's your favorite color? Blue. No, no, no, no. Anyway, only those who love Jesus cared for his body.

True then, true now. The body of Christ. Only those who love Jesus care for the body.

And when does that supposed to start? So, the Gospels, the New Testament parallels the Christian walk in its outline. For example, in the Gospels we meet Jesus Christ. We fall in love with him there. And then we want to serve him. The Book of Acts comes right after the Gospels, serving the Lord. But then we discover that there's resistance from within and from without. From my own heart and from outside of me, too.

There are people who get in the way. And then I need correction. Well, that's what the Epistles are for. All of the Epistles are correcting Christian behavior. None of them are hallmark cards.

Hi, enjoy the season. They all deal with, you know, you got a problem as a Christian and this is how it has to be handled. And then, of course, by the time we're done with this, we just want to go to heaven. And there's the Book of Revelation. So, and this is not easy to teach from the Epistles because you have Christians coming from other churches with other doctrines and the Epistles are going to deal with those things. And many times Christians coming from other churches and other doctrines have not dealt with it. And so when you start saying, no, you don't have the right to speak in tongues any old place you want to.

There are laws governing this. You have no right to use tongues to shut up the teaching of God's Word because you just have this impulse during service. So it's difficult to teach this because you don't want to, you're not trying to crush anybody, but you're trying to stay with the truth. And the truth does hurt sometimes.

So the stone is rolled away and it's out of the way to this day. The Sanhedrin, they charged Christ with blasphemy, making it a crime for him to be who he was. The Romans charged him with treason, making it a crime for him to say who he was. That's how the godless think.

Isaiah 53 verse 9, and they made his grave with the wicked, but with the rich at his death because he had no violence nor was any deceit in his mouth. You think one of the Sanhedrin members other than Joseph and Nicodemus, you think more of them would have said, hey wait, there are too many things about the life of Christ that are lining up with his life and no one else's life. And we try these tactics today when we talk about evolution and how goofy. Do you know if the evolutionists were not so much against Jesus Christ, they too would call evolution stupid, but they can't because that to them means they have to then say, well then maybe there is a creator.

It's the dumbest thing. I mean what my pastor used to say when a fly, a fly goes up to the ceiling and at the last second flips and lands on the ceiling on his feet. Well according to evolution, he would have kept banging his head into the ceiling until he figured out how to do this. In fact, all the flies would have died until they could have developed this system of survival, which is evolution. Now that's simplifying it and I'm just really not happy with the oohs and aahs.

I'm not getting enough of them. It should be, yeah, that's right. But anyway, let's get done with this.

So, and because of time in that sense, because I could go on and on and on. So the religious elite, delighted to be rid of the one that went around doing good. Mark chapter seven, he wrote this, Jesus speaking, it is written, this people honors me with their lips, but their hearts is far from me. Okay, I honor God, I love you Lord, but then I mess up, but my heart does not. Love doesn't budge. Maybe I sin and do the wrong thing, but my heart does not change.

I get in my truck and want to just, you know, other people to just stay off the road until I'm past them. You know you get in the flesh. That doesn't mean I don't love the Lord. Verse 47, and Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Josie's observed where he was laid. Again, it's unlikely that these women knew Joseph of Arimathea personally. They were unfamiliar with the location of the tomb, so they have to follow to find out where it is. In chapter 16 of Mark, we'll read, and they said amongst themselves, who will roll away the stone from the door of the tomb for us? But when they looked up, they saw that the stone had been rolled away, for it was very large. And so here's where it's going to go.

They're following, looking where he is laid, but when they come back days later, this was a concern they had, and of course it will be dealt with. My point is, in reading from Mark 16, that if we are to remain useful to the Lord, it's not by being gloomy guys, walking around depressed and sorry about everything in our lives. These people were grieved, their hearts were broken, but love carried them through. And if you are downtrodden and you've been defeated in life and things have gone wrong, but you still love the Lord, let that part of you be visible. Let the love for Jesus Christ shine from you, rather than the hardships, because one, you're planting rocks. They're not going to grow.

They're not going to produce life. But love, love does something. And Jesus knew they were going to be sorrowful. He says this in John 16, Most assuredly I say to you that you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice, and you will be sorrowful, but your joy will be turned, your sorrow, pardon me, will be turned into joy. I'd rather go complain to God than complain to you. I'd rather take the things that bum me out and tell it to God than to walk around with it on my face showing you.

I don't think there's any fruit that comes from being sad all the time. I'm not saying that we need to fake it. I'm saying we need to fight it.

And there's a huge difference between the two. Courage stumbled in the lives of these men and women at this point in the story. But throughout it, throughout the whole story with their courage and their faith struggling, love never moved. They never stopped loving him. Jesus knows who loves him.

And he appeared to those who loved him then and he does now. And may God teach us to love because we need it. You younger Christians, again, that are still in the home, you know how to be loved. You enjoy when you're loved. But what comes out of you? Is there any love coming out of you or is it just one way with you? Are you just like a drain that just sucks into love and that's the end of the story?

What do you generate? Does anything, you know, again, look at your maps. You look at the Sea of Galilee and you see that water flows into it and water flows out from it. And within that Sea of Galilee there is life. Along the banks of the Galilee there is life. You go to northern Israel, it's all green and it's lush and there's life. You go south to the Dead Sea, it's larger than the Sea of Galilee. But there's no life around it.

There's no life in it. It's a desert. I don't want to be the Dead Sea.

I want to be like the Sea of Galilee. Well, to do that I've got to know my Lord has risen. I've got to know He loves me and I've got to know I love Him back. And to do that I have to believe. I have to have faith. Without faith it is impossible to please God. These are things that God wants to help us with. He's not saying you need to do this in your own strength. He's saying I want to help you with this. I want you to love me because I surely love you. Thank you.