The Power of the Resurrection

Today I want to talk about one of the most profound statements anyone has ever made.

In the Gospel of John, chapter 11:

Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die.” (John 11:25)

This is the most significant statement in all of human history. Because Easter is thee pivotal point in human history.

And I want to dive right into the story of his resurrection from the Gospel of Mark.

It’s often not as well known as the incarnation — the Christmas story.

So let’s look at this story from the Gospel of Mark, thought to be the earliest of the four Gospels.

It’s Mark 16 if you want to follow along in your Bible or in the Blue Oaks app.

When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go to anoint Jesus’ body.

Very early on the first day of the week, just after sunrise, they were on their way to the tomb and they asked each other, “Who will roll the stone away from the entrance of the tomb?”

But when they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had been rolled away. As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side, and they were alarmed.

“Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid Him. But go, tell His disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you into Galilee.’ There you will see Him, just as He told you.”

Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid. (Mark 16:1-8)

Now that’s the end of the Gospel of Mark.

It seems like a strange way to end a book, doesn’t it?

He doesn’t end it with great courage or great hope. “Trembling and bewildered, the women fled from the tomb.”

They say nothing. They’re afraid.

And actually part of what we’re going to see today is — one of the reasons we can believe this story is because of the way it ends here.

If someone was making up this story, they wouldn’t have ended it this way.

And in fact, people who came after Mark actually tried tagging on alternate endings to it.

In some Bibles you can see some of those.

One of the unique aspects of Christianity compared to any other faith or movement is that it actually traces its origin to one particular event in one moment on one day in history.

This is not true for Buddhism or Judaism or Islam or Atheism.

But one day there was no such thing as a Church, and then suddenly overnight there was!

There was this group of people who believed, and suffered the most extraordinary things, as a matter of historical record, for the sake of this man Jesus.

And it’s quite odd. There are four biographies of Jesus in the New Testament: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And in every case, most of what is written in the Gospels is devoted to the last week in Jesus’ life.

Now that is almost unprecedented in any biography. But here it’s four out of four.

Why would the Gospels be written that way?

Well it’s because these early followers insisted with remarkable unity that the one event that created this movement was that this man Jesus was resurrected from the dead.

But — and this is part of what we see in Mark — it took them some time to understand the full significance of what happened.

In our day many people think that the resurrection is good news, but if they’re honest, and maybe this is you, you’re not sure if it’s true news.

And often the thinking kind of goes like this: In ancient days people didn’t have science. They were kind of gullible.

So when Jesus died some people felt a vague sense of His presence still inspiring them. And over the decades, this kind of morphed into stories of him being raised from the dead.

But this logic is only plausible if we don’t actually understand how people in that day thought.

We need to look at the historic and cultural context of what was going on.

When the resurrection happened, when the tomb was empty, these women knew it was “true news,” but it actually took a while for them to understand that it was “good news.”

So what I’d like to do today is try to help us see what happened through their eyes.

Everyone here knows we’re here because of Easter, but many — maybe most people — don’t really understand there is a back story to this idea of the resurrection that’s critical to understanding Easter.

And it’s actually a real powerful reason for understanding that the resurrection of Jesus really did happen.

So before we get to the Jesus part, we’re going to spend a few moments talking about what people in the first century thought when they heard this word resurrection, because there’s a background to it.

I want you to try to capture their experience. And this is the best analogy I could come up with.

You’ll have to put up with it.

Some time ago, Kathy and I watched the movie The Sixth Sense with our kids.

You may have seen that movie. And the tag line is from this little kid who tells Bruce Willis, “I see dead people.”

They don’t know they’re dead. It’s a suspenseful movie.

Ever sit next to someone in a movie so scared they cover their eyes and keep asking you what’s going on?

And when they get real scared, they reach over and bend your finger, one single finger, backwards, like the more pain they inflict on you the better they feel.

And the tension got so bad, finally Kathy said to me, “Matt, if you don’t let go of my finger, I’m changing seats.”

There’s no fear like death.

And the twist in the movie comes in at the end of the story. Remember it?

Spoiler alert if you haven’t seen this 25-year-old movie.

Bruce Willis realizes at the end of the movie that he’s one of the dead people.

He didn’t know. He never saw that one coming. He’s one of the dead people.

Now keep that in mind. We’ll come back to it.

The human race has always wondered, has always been troubled by what happens when we die.

In the ancient world, some people believed that when we die, we just go out like a candle.

There was an ancient tombstone epitaph so popular there were versions of it both in Latin and in Greek. It went like this: “I was not. I was. I am not. I don’t care.”

That’s a happy thing to put on someone’s tombstone, isn’t it?

But that’s what a lot of people thought.

Then there were other people who believed that there was a place — sometimes called Hades — an underworld where departed spirits go at death.

They have a shadowy existence there, but they don’t come back to this world. They don’t come back to life.

The road to Hades real clearly was a one-way road.

Now in Israel over time, a completely different belief emerged called the resurrection.

This word was around a long time before Jesus.

It existed for the Greeks. They didn’t believe it was going to happen, but they knew about the idea.

Resurrection was the idea not just that there was going to be some vague, shadowy afterlife some way or another.

You see, in Israel they said, “The problem is not just that we die. The problem is the world is a mess. There is pain and suffering, and we can’t fix this mess.”

And it wouldn’t do any good for there to be ongoing existence if the mess keeps going on.

So resurrection was the belief that there is this great God who created all things, and one day He’s going to fix the mess.

When that happens, He will bring the righteous back to life — full, vibrant, bodily, high definition life.

And at that time He will redeem and heal all of creation.

So they believed that the resurrection would bring not just an afterlife, but a God-perfected, God-redeemed, God-set-right life.

God will step in, forgive the sins of His people, establish justice, end suffering, heal creation, resurrect His people.

And when that happens, the resurrection will be dramatic, obvious, undeniable, and done on a mass scale.

It will happen to all of God’s children, and it will happen at the end of history.

They believe we’re living now in this age, but when the resurrection comes, we will be ushered into the age to come.

Pretty much everyone else in the ancient world believed that life was just kind of this endless cycle.

Israel introduced to the human race the idea that it is headed somewhere.

But now because of this, no one in Israel would ever think to claim that one individual had been resurrected in the middle of history.

If someone were to claim that, then the response would have been —

Has disease been eradicated?
Has justice broken out?
Has suffering ended?

Well then, stop talking nonsense.

It would be kind of like… we used to live in San Diego. Some of our San Diego friends are huge Padres baseball fans.

They believe one day the Padres will win the World Series, and then history will come to an end.

But no one would say, “This year just the Padres first baseman will win the World Series. The rest of the team will have to wait.”

That wouldn’t make any sense. The World Series is a team deal.

Resurrection was understood to be a team deal.

Now into this world comes Jesus.

He’s a rabbi like many other rabbis. Although no one else ever taught with His authority.

He attracts followers as great leaders attract followers.

He speaks of God like other spiritual teachers. Though no one else ever claimed the intimacy with God that Jesus did.

Those who followed Him knew there had never been anyone like Him.

And they believed He was the Messiah, that He would overthrow Rome and usher in God’s kingdom.

But there was a twist coming.

Jesus died.

When this happened, even though He had predicted it, none of His followers said, “Everything is going according to plan now.”

None of His followers thought His death was a good thing.

In fact we’re told that when it became clear He was going to die, all the disciples deserted Him and fled.

When He died, all four Gospels give us very unflattering portraits.

His disciples are disheartened, dismayed, disappointed, disillusioned, and dispirited.

And then suddenly they weren’t.

After His death, they knew they were finished. They knew they were defeated. The movement was over.

Then suddenly, as a matter of historical record, for some reason this same group of people became convinced that Jesus had resurrected.

And that conviction would change the world.

They were motivated to spread this news at enormous cost to themselves.

Now some people think we’re skeptical about the resurrection because we’re modern, and we’re smart, and we have science, but in ancient world people were gullible and ready to believe anything.

CS Lewis calls this chronological snobbery.

Ancient people were not stupid. They understood dead creatures tend to stay dead.

Ken Davis writes about a woman who looked out of her window and saw her German shepherd shaking the life out of a neighbor’s rabbit.

Her family did not get along well with these neighbors, so this was going to be a disaster.

She grabbed a broom, pummeled the dog until it dropped the now extremely dead rabbit out of its mouth.

She panicked.

She had no idea what to do. So she grabbed the rabbit, took it inside, gave it a bath, blew it dry with the hair dryer until it was back to its original fluffiness, combed it with an old comb until it looked alive again.

She snuck into the neighbor’s yard and propped the rabbit back up in its cage.

An hour later she heard screams coming from next door.

She asked her neighbor, “What’s going on?”

“Our rabbit! Our rabbit!” her neighbor cried. “He died two weeks ago. We buried him, and now he’s back!”

People in the ancient world knew dead rabbits tend to stay dead.

A scholar named of N. T. Wright notes:

There were many messianic movements in the first century. In every case, the would-be Messiah got crucified by Rome as Jesus did.

And then he writes this:

In not one single case do we hear the slightest mention of the disappointed followers claiming their hero had been raised from the dead. They knew better.

Resurrection was not a private event. It was a team sport.

If you were following a Messiah — and again, there were many of them in the first century who claimed to be a Messiah — and your guy got crucified by Rome, as Jesus did, you had two choices:

Disband the movement — everyone go home and give it up.
Or look for a new Messiah.

And the Gospels are real clear.

As we would expect, Jesus’ followers believed they were finished. They were done. It was over.

And then two things happened, both of them are spoken of in Mark 16.

First, the tomb was empty.

He is not here. See the place where they laid him. (Mark 16:6)

Second, Jesus appeared to His followers.

He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you. (Mark 16:7)

It was the combination of these two factors together that was overwhelming. One without the other wouldn’t do it.

If it was just an empty tomb but Jesus didn’t appear to anyone, then skeptics could say, “It was just a case of grave robbery.”

But Jesus did appear. The apostle Paul wrote within two decades of Jesus’ life that the risen Christ had appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve, and then to more than 500, most of whom were still living.

Now you don’t say something like that within twenty years unless you know the people who saw him will back you up.

On the other hand, if people had reported that they had seen Jesus somehow, but the tomb still had Jesus’ body in it, then skeptics could claim it was visions or hallucinations or something like that.

If the Romans could have produced the body they would have.

The graves of heroes, especially crucified messiahs, were commonly venerated as shrines by their followers… except for this one because the tomb was empty.

See this is simply not a story that could have been made up by someone because it violated their understanding of what was going to happen in history.

Another reason why it was not a made-up story — Mark says the empty tomb was discovered by “Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome.”

Notice what all three of those people have in common. They’re all women.

Now we tend not to notice that.

In ancient Israel (this is really important) women were low enough in status, they were not regarded as credible witnesses.

In fact, they were not allowed to give testimony in court.

You could commit a terrible crime, and if it was only witnessed by women, you would get away with it.

But the first eyewitnesses to the empty tomb are women. And this is recorded not just in Mark, but in all four Gospels.

If they were made-up stories, there is simply no advantage to having women serve as the eyewitnesses. It would have seriously undermined the credibility of the claim.

The only plausible explanation for why all four Gospels say it was women who found the empty tomb is that it was women who found the empty tomb.

Jesus’ followers were driven to an understanding, to an explanation of what happened that was impossible for them to have predicted or even thought about ahead of time.

And it was not, “We have a sense of inspiration. We still somehow feel His presence. His vibe seems to be in our lives.”

No.

It was, “Jesus is alive somehow. We don’t understand it. And He is not just alive. He is more alive than He has ever been before.”

And then they came to understand that this doesn’t just affect Jesus.

See this is the twist that no one was looking for. — They came to understand that somehow in Jesus, the resurrection started a new age.

And so the reason for this transformed community was not just this sense of inspiration. It was they believed they were a resurrection community.

We were the dead people. Didn’t know. Dead in our sins. Cut off from God.

And somehow when Jesus was raised again, God promised He would fix the world. He would forgive sin. He would heal suffering. He would redeem humanity. And it has begun. God is being faithful to His promise.

After the resurrection they realized that when Jesus died on the Cross it was more than just His death. They didn’t know that when it was happening.

It took the resurrection for them to look back on that and say, “It wasn’t just His death. Somehow that was our death. Somehow our sin that we know needs to be forgiven, your sin and my sin, they were forgiven through what Jesus did. He was the ultimate sacrifice for our pardon. He paid the ultimate price. My guilt died on that Cross.”

They didn’t understand that until the resurrection. Sin and guilt were defeated.

And then on the third day came the greatest step in human history.

The stone was rolled away.

And Jesus stood on the threshold of that tomb. And you wonder what went through His mind.

And then He steps across that threshold — and God’s new day has begun.

It’s this moment between Him and His Father. And we don’t know what He thought, but that step changed the world.

But here’s where it gets personal.

There’s another step. It’s a step for you.

I was talking to someone recently, and he was telling me how he went a long time in his life pretty far from God.

And then he realized the limitations of his own self-sufficiency and pride… as human beings inevitably will at death if not before.

He spent about a year studying God and asking questions and looking at Jesus until eventually he realized his issue was no longer a lack of information.

Maybe you lack information, and you need to decide, “I’m going to learn more…” but he realized for him that wasn’t his deal.

His issue was a commitment deal.

He was in a kind of spiritual drift mode.

He believed in God, he believed God is real, he believed the story is most likely true. He just didn’t respond to it.

He had never actually surrendered his life to this God.

Because, you see, if Jesus is raised from the dead, it changes everything.

So he decided he wanted to confess his sin, and receive forgiveness and new life.

But he wanted to be really clear, so this is what he did.

He went home, and he said he stood for a long time in the doorway of his home, and there’s a threshold that separates the outside from the inside. He stood on that threshold for a moment.

And he said, “Now God, when I step through this door, I want You to know I’m leaving my old life behind. I’m leaving my old sin. I want to be forgiven.

“I’m leaving my old aloneness and my old fear. And I want to be Your child, and I want Jesus to be my Forgiver and my Friend and my Leader. I don’t want to be alone anymore. I want to be home with you.”

And then he walked through that door. And he said, “That was the biggest step I have ever taken. Because I entered into a relationship with God. And now when I have problems, or questions, or doubts, which I do, I remember that doorway. I remember that step. I remember He is with me.”

Have you ever taken that step?

If you haven’t, what a great day to do it!

If you’re willing to trust him, I have some good news for you… you have a resurrection coming.

Jesus said:

I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. (John 11:25-26)

There is nothing that can separate you.

Our family was on vacation when our kids were very young — maybe Lily was 6 and Amryn was 3 — we were at a hotel with a swimming pool. I was standing in the pool, and they were taking turns jumping to me.

And I had to warn them both, “Don’t run around the pool. Safety is really important. If you run, you could slip into the water, and if you do that, you could drown. That would be really, really bad. I don’t want you to drown.”

So I gave them apparently scarier warnings than I had intended.

At one point, Lily was jumping to me, and Amryn was messing around on the edge of the pool, and she slipped and fell into the water.

I immediately reached over to get her. She went all the way down and I reached down to pull her right back up.

But by the time I got her up, she was just sobbing with big tears in her eyes.

Looking up at me with those big brown eyes, shaking her head, “Daddy, I drowned! I drowned!”

I had to say to her, “No, Amryn, you didn’t drown at all. That is not drowning. You didn’t even come close to drowning. You weren’t even within a mile of drowning.

“So let’s not tell Mommy about this, okay? Mommy probably wouldn’t understand what I know, which is that your father was watching you the whole time.

“And in that moment when you slipped under the water — that was so scary for you, but daddy’s arms were right there with you, and they were plenty strong enough to pull you up out of that water.

“You were right in my arms. You were perfectly safe, more alive than ever.”

See this is not just good news; this is true news.

This is what Jesus means when He says, “whoever lives by believing in me will never die.”

That is not a metaphor. That is not a vague hope.

It’s like you’re going to slip under that surface, and then those big arms are going to grab you, and death itself no longer has power.

Now either that’s true or it’s not, but don’t just go through your life with this kind of vague drifting.

Death has no power to take you from the arms of the Father.

Guilt cannot separate you from God.

Whatever bad news you face, if you’ve stepped through that door, if you’ve trusted this man Jesus, you have a resurrection coming.

You who are elderly and your health is so frail, so fragile, almost gone, you don’t have to live in fear. You have a resurrection coming.

You who are devastated because your spouse has left you, and you feel so betrayed and so alone, you don’t have to live like you have no hope. You have a resurrection coming.

You who are frightened parents, you don’t have to live burdened by the weight of blame. You have a resurrection coming.

You who are anxious
You who are jobless
You who are out of money
You who are guilt-ridden addicts hiding in the shadows
You who are lonely and longing to be loved

If you take this step today — if you give the leadership of your life to Jesus Christ, you live in a new reality.

Those arms are plenty strong. They have not lost any of their power. And they will pick you up.

Wherever you are, you have a resurrection coming.

And if you have never taken that step, you can take it right now.

Let’s pray together. Would you bow your heads?

Heavenly Father, right now many people are speaking to you about their hearts and their hopes.

And we’re so grateful that you are a faithful God. You are the God who raised Jesus Christ from the dead. We remember and rejoice in that now.

Would You bring that same power into the lives of those who are listening in this moment?

Would you bring that resurrection power in the lives of those who need to trust that your arms are there to save them.

Now God, we give you our love and our praise, and we thank you for our hope, and we do this in the name of our risen Savior, Jesus Christ, Amen.

If you prayed that prayer and took that step today, will you let someone know so they can help you take the next step in your spiritual journey.

Now will you stand with me as the worship team leads us in one more song to close the service.