Never Before (Part C)

What a lesson for us. As we come to the Scripture, just because we want to believe something is not enough. We have a foundation. There's something very real behind the reasons that we have faith. And so we are taught this.

Peter, you know, Peter says, give them a reason for the hope that is in you. We have a mindless rush to believe something that we want to believe. However, just because we want to believe it doesn't mean it's not true. It could be very true.

We embrace it. And maybe you've been going through some struggle in your life and you've not been looking up. You've been fighting these things by looking straight ahead.

The horizontal view, not the vertical. And then this verse can strike you and say, but they looked up. And then you begin to look up. I'm looking up to the Lord. As you roll forward in your faith and develop and mature, don't forget what Paul told the Galatians. Having begun in the Spirit, are you now being made perfect in the flesh? Having looked up to God and depending upon Him, are you now developing in your walk without Him by looking at each other or something else?

Absolutely not. Having begun in the Spirit, we continue forward in our faith, dependent upon the Holy Spirit and this relationship we have with Christ. And it is so easy to become, you know, sort of get Christian savvy.

Well, you know, I know how to do this. I'm a Christian. And you lose that sense of looking up and dependency. And where does that put you? Well, one place it puts, at least me, is I can say sometimes about a trouble in front of me, I don't care. God's got this. And whatever He's going to do, He's going to do out of love. And I believe that. And I'm not going to let me or anybody else take that away. I'm going to trust the Lord. Because having begun in the Spirit, I will be perfected in the Spirit. To me, as I read this, it struck me, but when they looked up, they saw that the stone had been rolled away. Problem solved. Still, no thought of the resurrection, though.

Again, is it not a lesson in that for us? They're coming to anoint a dead body, and the tomb is open as they are solving one problem, and they're still not thinking that maybe He is alive. The angel who rolled the stone away, he did so not to let Jesus out, but to let witnesses in. He could have just left it shut, and Jesus could have appeared. Well, you know, wow, He's alive. He didn't really have to have an open tomb, but He did.

I prefer this way because He preferred this way. And so, not to let Jesus out, but to let witnesses in. That's why the stone is rolled back, and the wise guy angel is sitting on top of it, right there in front of the Roman guards.

It's comical. Now, the earth shook when the angel rolled the stone away. Matthew 28, verse 2, there was a great earthquake, for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone from the door and sat on it. Well, did the ladies feel the earthquake? No, it had happened. It was likely local to that spot. Well, you say, well, how could anybody have known?

Well, maybe others did know, and they put the pieces together, or the Roman soldiers. They told a story. You think that was the end of it? You just don't shut up.

If you've ever experienced something phenomenal, you talk about it for the rest of your life from time to time. It just doesn't go away. I still remember seeing a car get broadsided at a stoplight and do a complete 360 in the air and land on its tires, and it's just below the elevated train. I mean inches away from hitting it, and everybody was fine. In 15 minutes, it was all gone. Everybody just swapped insurance cards, got back in their cars, and rolled away. But you had to see it.

It's like, this is crazy. I don't think the Roman soldiers just had this experience and then forgot about it over a cheeseburger or something later on in life. I think that they spoke about these things, and I think sensitive ears of Christians picked them up. And Luke, of course, when he does his gospel, it opens up that he really investigated what he had to write before he wrote it down for us. Verse 5 now, and entering the tomb, they saw a young man clothed in a long white robe, sitting on the right side, and they were alarmed. The angelic messenger from another dimension, the spiritual realm, of course, too occupied with this.

How could you be? It would be taking away from the centerpiece of Jesus Christ to be too caught up with what the angel's doing. But Luke, he mentions that there were two, but Mark concentrates or concerns himself only with the one who spoke. And they were alarmed at the presence of the angel, this whole thing. The Greek word there for alarmed, ekthambio, which you won't hear every day, greatly amazed, sort of amazed like never before, and that is the Greek word used there for alarm. Verse 6, and that comes back into the story, and that's why I point it out. But he said to them, do not be alarmed.

Do not be blown away. To him, this is casual. This is Christ. He's not here.

What's the big deal? He's God. But anyway, he says, do not be ekthambio. You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who is crucified. He is risen. He is not here.

See the place where they laid him? So he says to them, don't be utterly amazed at something that is utterly amazing. Astonished, utter wonder. But Matthew adds this. He said this is not a fear, a terror fear. It is a fear involved, but it is a fear with joy. Matthew chapter 28, verse 8.

So they went out quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy and ran to bring his disciples word. Now Matthew uses the word fear, and it is where we get our English word phobia from. And it is fear.

But it is a fear that has a joy attached to it. They know something's going on. They know this is spiritual. They don't know what. And they don't know where to go with this. It's so exciting.

Where on the scale of excitement would the needle read with these women at this point? And the angel says, you seek Jesus of Nazareth, who is crucified. Let's make no mistake, he's saying. Let's get the identity right. This is the Christ that you saw on the cross three days ago. He's up. He's risen.

He's not here. And this angel, well angels announced the birth of Christ. They announced the resurrection of Christ. In Acts chapter 1, they will say that this same Jesus that you see taken up will return in like manner.

They will announce his return prophetically. See the place where they laid him. And so he invites the women to come in to the tomb, which they do to look in. And there was the evidence of the grave clothes and the headpiece in a separate place, which impressed John the apostle very much, and he writes about that in his account of this story. After all, John looked in also. And no doubt about it, the Lord was risen right through those spice-soaked clothes.

He just came right through them. This was a spiritual deal. Mary, again, she's already telling the apostles this, she supposed robbers because she didn't look in the first time. She at first thought, even later, she thought robbers. Where have they taken him? They've taken the body of the Lord. She says to the supposed gardener, if you tell me where he is, I'll go get him.

And so, man, what a morning. Verse 7, but go tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you into Galilee. There you will see him as he said to you.

Verses 6 and 7 announce the crucifixion and the resurrection together, and we must, I think, be careful to do that. But the Lord does not forget to start rebuilding Peter, and he's going to finish that job. And Jesus knew that the best of men are molded by failure. I'm pretty moldy myself, but it is true. Failure, it can mold us if you let it, or you cannot let it. You can waste it, or you can get back. I mean, if you fail and you say, that's it, I quit, then that's it.

But if you get back in there, that's where work gets done. He is going before you into Galilee. There you will see him as he said to you. And so, he's telling the disciples that he wants them to go to Galilee, but they're going to be slow in doing that.

Surprise! And they're going to be almost reluctant to get back up to Galilee. I mean, it's a week later, and he's still appearing to them when Thomas was with them in the vicinity of the cross. That was ground zero. And so, he's trying to nudge them back up where there are more followers there, and there's less combatants in Galilee than there was in Jerusalem.

So, it's a practical thing. 1 Corinthians tells us in chapter 15 that he appeared to 500 at one time, and that would more than likely be the majority of people from Galilee. Verse 8, so they went out quickly and fled from the tomb, for they trembled and were amazed, and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid. Good that they didn't have cars. Could you imagine with that excitement?

It would be like demolition derby. Anyway, they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid. The Greek word there, phobia, from where we get phobia from, means fear. And that's what they were, but Matthew has told us yet, but this fear included joy. Mark just doesn't put that in. And there has been a lot of effort by Bible scholars to insist that verse 8 ends the Gospel of Mark. It's a frenzy defense, I think, which is a condemnation of their argument when you get all excited about something you're trying to insist upon without facts. I do not believe them. Thank God it's not all the scholars, but there are many that are otherwise good scholars, and they'll say the Gospel of Mark closes with chapter 8.

I want to talk about that just a little bit, but not too much. They do this because they think that older manuscripts from ancient Egypt, or Egypt in the days not long after the apostles, about 300 years after the birth of Christ, they think that because those manuscripts are the oldest manuscripts, that they're therefore the best manuscripts. But that is not the case. They think because they're older, they're therefore trustworthy. They think that because these older manuscripts don't carry Mark chapter 16 verses 9 through 20 in it, that therefore somebody added them later.

But there's a great amount of evidence to disprove that. Irenaeus, an early church leader, who wrote before those old manuscripts were written, he quotes Mark's Gospel chapter 16 verse 19. So he came before those older manuscripts, and he's quoting this section that they said Mark didn't write as being written from Mark. You can read that if you want to do some research in Irenaeus against heresies, book 3, verse 10, section 5.

And he's not the only one. There are other church fathers that adjusted martyr, for example, who he came even before Irenaeus, and there are others. So I don't believe the Holy Spirit concluded the Gospel of good news, of Mark, with the disciples in fear, that they said nothing to anyone for they were afraid. End of story. I don't believe that. It doesn't make any sense.

I conclude that Mark's Gospel concludes with verse 20, which says, And they went out and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them and confirming the word through the accompanying signs. Amen. And so again, I strongly disagree. I don't care how much formal training they have. You know, scholars can indoctrinate other scholars. That happens in seminaries and universities.

Not just the liberals do this. And that's why you bring your Bibles to church so you can say, boy, he's right again. But to slow down indoctrination, you have your Bibles open, your students yourself, your scholars yourselves. And the only thing this doctrine, if not even a doctrine, this position that Mark 8 is the end and everything else was added by somebody else, the only thing that is brought to Christianity is doubt.

It has not improved anything. This is one reason why I don't care for the NIV. Well, there's a lot of reasons why I don't care for the NIV translation or the NASB. There's a lot of those that use this Alexandrian source from Alexandria, Egypt, these ancient manuscripts and some other ones. I don't like their source. I'd rather go with those who use the source material from Syria, where Irenaeus and Justin Martyr and others were.

There was far less of a gnostic influence in that part of the world in early Christianity. And I think that the protest comes from scholars. I hope I didn't lose you on this. This is important stuff because you read in your Bible and you get this little footnote, you know, older manuscripts stop here. What does that mean? Well, we found better stuff and it doesn't have the rest of what you're going to read. No, it does not.

You're lucky I don't know where you live. You just put doubt in the church for what? Now, no great doctrine is lost by either view, but still they're wrong.

Why is this? I strongly feel that the protest against these verses largely stems from the mention of the sign gifts in verses 17 and 18. Little scholars don't want the sign gifts. They don't want to believe that people can still speak in tongues, that there can be healings. They don't want to believe this stuff. And you can't almost fault them because of the abuses of these things.

I mean, you think those sprinkler heads, you think they're for fire suppression. They're to shut down anybody that stands up speaking tongues while I'm preaching before I can get to them. This is unbiblical to interrupt the teaching of the Word of God because you feel you've got something to say nobody else can understand.

Oh, look at me. That's abusive and it's rampant in Christianity and it's been for some time, but that's no reason to say, okay, then let's get rid of all the sign gifts, which is what I think many of these scholars do. I am not a cessationist. I believe in the gifts, but I do know for a fact that since the fall of Jerusalem, the gifts have greatly diminished and they're not centralized. A church that says we're a healing church, I think is very disappointing. I mean, if that was the case, you need to go down and empty out the hospitals. Don't withhold it.

Let it go, brother. I believe people can heal. I believe people speak in tongues and give interpretation, but I just don't believe that the Holy Spirit hands these things out like chiclets.

He's not a, you know, a Pez dispenser and you just push on it and out pops the treat. And many have treated it this way. And I also think this is one reason why many churches are afraid to do the Book of Acts, because then they have to deal with this. And I'm looking forward, I can't wait to do the Book of Acts. I'll also add, in places like Iran or I walk, it's got to be, how do you run before you walk? Anyway, they don't have the scripture like we have it.

Other parts of the world, China, North Korea. Do I think that the Holy Spirit would have to reach people that he would indeed give sign gifts? Absolutely. Because I don't see them doesn't mean they're not happening. But he doesn't do these things to wow us. He does these things to fight back the work of the devil. And again, will come that. Jesus said, you know, you shall receive power to be my witnesses, not my entertainers, not my performers. It is the word, it is truth that we have been entrusted with. And we see that the disciples did not believe in the resurrection because they didn't believe the scripture or know the scripture well enough. We'll come to that in a minute. So coming back to this, I think it takes more effort to try to explain away Mark verses 9 through 20 than it does to receive them. And there's no purpose in it. There's nothing inside these verses that would make us go, oh, I sure wish he didn't say that.

We benefit greatly from intelligent scholars, but many times they can go kooky and you just got to watch. It's like everything else. Verse 9, now when he rose early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had cast seven demons. Okay, she is the first one. So the Holy Spirit, the perfect Holy Spirit response to these verses aren't in there. I know I shouldn't do that.

I'm not sorry, but somehow I shouldn't do it. Anyway, his perfect response is that the kingdom power was fully at work. You say they stopped in fear. I say the Holy Spirit cast out demons. That's how he picks up verse 9. So if you read that, well, they were all afraid.

They didn't say anything to anybody. And then it's like the Holy Spirit comes and says, yeah, but remember, Mary, she had seven demons and I blew them out. And so this is how the gospel continues, and I love it. Verse 10, she went and told those who had been with him as they mourned and wept.

She wasted no time, as we said. Here it is three days later, their mourning and their weeping. Never before had these men felt this low. This was different from all the sorrows in the scripture.

This was different. All his followers thought he was dead and gone. And what about all of his work? What about all those years and times we spent with him, his care for us?

What about all of this? It comes crashing down on them. He was far more than a beloved rabbi to these people. He was their Lord, their God. He was their Christ.

He was just everything that they had hoped for, and now life had been smothered out of them, too. Tomorrow held no appeal for these men. They were weeping and crying.

There was just nothing more they could do with themselves. Verse 11, and when they heard that he was alive and he had been seen by her, they did not believe. Well, as in verse 13, when the men come and bring the news, at first they're not going to believe them either, so this is not just a gender thing. Well, you know, they're just women dreaming. They didn't believe the men either. This is how devastated they were. For these men, it was not possible for them to believe something just because they wanted to believe it.

What a lesson for us. As we come to the Scripture, just because we want to believe something is not enough. We have a foundation. There's something very real behind the reasons that we have faith, and so we are taught this.

Peter, you know, Peter says, give them a reason for the hope that is in you. It is not this just, you know, mindless rush to believe something that we want to believe. However, just because we want to believe it doesn't mean it's not true. It could be very true.

We embrace it. Well, everything was lost. Fate had beaten them.

That's how they felt. John's Gospel, chapter 20, verse 9, for as yet they did not know the Scripture, that he must rise again from the dead. This is a point that is emphasized in the Old Testament and the New, that it is truth through revelation that forms our foundation and not truth through speculation or emotions. And those who go to a church and say, yeah, but, you know, it was dull. Well, was the preaching right?

That's the standard. Who cares if you think you wanted to be entertained? Was the truth spoken? Because that's what hell hates. Hell hates when the truth is spoken and looks to do something about it.

And may we not assist hell in doing this very thing. The only ones who seem to have remembered that Jesus said that he would rise again in three days were the very men who had him crucified. Matthew's Gospel, chapter 27, verse 23, the chief priests and the Pharisees saying to Pilate, sir, we remember while he was still alive how that deceiver said, after three days, I will rise. How come the apostles didn't get it? How come they didn't apply this to their life? How come we can find unbelievers who are more pleasant to be around than believers sometimes?

That shouldn't be. So as with us, the believers then had a lot of Bible work to do. And when we get to the book of Acts, we see Peter is moving with Scripture. He's quoting Scripture and applying it, and he is up in the face of the devil. And I'll close with this verse, Luke 24, verse 45. This is after the resurrection of Christ.

He's still on earth, before the ascension, ministering to his men. And Luke writes, and he opened their understanding that they might comprehend the Scripture. Why does Satan come along and say, you've got to doubt that that was put in the Bible by the mark? Well, what else can I doubt Satan in the Scripture? I won't listen to him. I will know the Scripture because the Holy Spirit will guide me through it. When you subscribe, you'll be notified of each new edition of Cross-Reference Radio. You can search for Cross-Reference Radio on your favorite podcast app. That's all we have time for today, but we hope you'll join us next time as Pastor Rick continues to teach through the book of Mark, right here on Cross-Reference Radio.