So sermon title this morning is Do You Believe?
Do you believe? We're coming to the close of our
sermon series and the Gospel of Mark.
And if you followed us, you will notice that we have not covered
every story in the Gospel of Mark.
And part of it has to do with because we didn't have time in
the time span we allotted ourselves for the Gospel of Mark
to cover all the stories. Not that one story is not as
much valuable or worth as much as another.
We just didn't have time to cover in depth the Gospel.
We could easily make it into almost a year if we wanted to.
But this morning we want to look at one more story and the story
of the resurrection, the story where Jesus rose from the dead.
And as I said, we we skipped a lot of stories.
We skipped the story of, of the the arrest, the crucifixion.
Part of it had to do with a guest speaker coming and so on.
They're all good stories, but the story of the resurrection is
a very powerful story, and we want to pay good attention to
that one. The most powerful story of all
the Gospels is the story of the resurrection.
That's the most powerful story. Every Gospel has that story.
But is the story the least believed one?
Nobody doubted that Jesus was the Messiah.
Nobody doubted the miracles. They saw him, do they?
They believe that they believed him when they saw him heal
people. They believed him when the sick
were made well, when he fed the crowds with a few loaves and
fish. They believed all that.
But when it came to the story of the suffering and dying, the the
the most unbelieving were his disciples.
And they were the ones who were told, of course.
No, no, no, that's not going to happen to you.
It's not going to happen to you. He's not going to die.
And Peter, in fact, took him aside.
Master, it's not going to happen to you.
Jesus rebuked him and said get behind me, Satan.
But that's the story that really did happen.
It didn't sink in until it happened.
It didn't register until it happened.
It did happen, and then there's a prize.
He said it would happen and they found it hard to believe that it
would happen. And he can't die.
He's the Messiah. But then he did die and then
they believed it. And then it was, of course, the
opposite extreme. It's all over.
It's history. It's nothing.
The Messiah story is not true after all, and he's never going
to rise. That was the thinking we do well
to ask ourselves sometimes, how do we feel when we try to
convince someone of something and they don't believe us?
We we communicate something, but we can tell they don't believe
us. They tell us they don't believe
us and then they're proven wrong.
And then we feel like saying I told you so.
We don't find Jesus telling his disciples ever.
I told you so that he does sometimes say, remember, he does
that. It's easy to believe when it's
easy to believe. But when it's something so
improbable or so impossible, then it's a different story.
But one thing we have to admit in our lives is behavior always
reveals belief, and belief drives behavior.
This is reality. Let me repeat that behavior
always reveals belief, and belief drives behavior.
Stories told of Martin Luther the Reformer in the 1500s.
One morning, for a while he has he had been very depressed, very
discouraged, despondent, and just gloomy.
So his wife comes downstairs one morning out of the bedroom
dressed in total funeral garb, dressed in black, and Luther's
sitting at his desk there and looks up and sees his wife who
died. He asked her.
She said God died. Why would you say that?
She says, you look like it. He had been so discouraged and
despondent and gloomy and depressed.
This was her way of communicating to him how he was
living and whether the story is actually true.
I haven't fact checked it, but the story nevertheless
illustrates a very valid point. What we believe is always
revealed in what we do in response to the circumstances we
face. This is a reality.
You see, when Jesus walked to Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, the
disciples believed. They believed, not just
believed, they knew. He's the Messiah.
In a matter of time, he's going to take over.
He's going to be in the temple. He's going to reign.
He's going to rule. He's going to be the king of the
Jews. And he got that title on the
cross, of course, but not in the way they had hoped and nobody
expected. But the disciples believed he
would be crowned king. He would soon reign, and they
would reign with him. And everything sounded like it.
And then what's called a passion week.
And then he's in the temple, He's teaching, he's he's
rebuking the Pharisees. He's getting into all kinds of
trouble. And on Thursday night, the Last
Supper, things don't look good. The disciples still don't get
it. And then he goes out to the
Garden of Gethsemane, and there he has this burdensome
experience of taking on the world sin, and he's sweating
drops of blood. And then he gets arrested and
bound and led to the high priest and the disciples all scattered.
And Peter kind of follows in the distance and they're through the
mockery of a trial Jesus condemned.
And then he's taken off to to pilot early morning hours
because the Jews couldn't kill anybody.
That was against the rules. They could get the Romans to do
their killing for them, but they couldn't kill anybody on their
own. So they had to get pilots
permission or pilots guys to do it for them.
They were in for the shock of their lives.
This was so beyond what they had ever expected.
This was just not supposed to happen, but then they believed
after it did and as far as they were concerned, Jesus is dead.
He's gone, it's over. No Messiah, no Kingdom of Israel
that whole three years. Come and follow me, I'll make
you fishers of men was all nothing, all gone like mist.
Well, that was not the ending. Today we'll look at the ending.
Let's read Mark chapter 16 beginning verse one.
Now when the Sabbath was passed, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother
of James and Salome brought spices that they may come and
anoint him. Very early in the morning on the
first day of the week, they came to the tomb when the sun had
risen, and they said among themselves, who will roll away
the stone from the door of the tomb for us?
Let's stop there. The story of these women is
remarkable. What they believed was 100%
evidence. What they what they were doing
was 100% evidence of what they believed.
Their beliefs were driving their behavior.
Do you think they slept much that night or the previous few
nights? I don't think so.
Their minds were feverishly rehearsing and regurgitating
what happened. How did this happen?
OK, what now? What now?
Well, the least we can do to our friend Jesus is anoint him.
But there was no time Friday night to put him in the tomb and
clothes that rolled this big stone in front of it.
There's nothing we could do. And so we'll have to wait till
Sunday morning because the Sabbath was a day of rest and no
working allowed. So their deep grief, pain and
agony, they had witnessed this. They waited out that long
Sabbath and then Sunday morning comes in early at sun up there,
there, and they are going to anoint the dead body.
That's what they can do. No work on the Sabbath.
But Sunday was a work day, the first day of the week, and they
lost no time making their way to the tomb.
And they had already gotten their spices and their
ointments. Whatever they had, they lived
out what they believed. They lived out what they
believed. They had come to anoint the dead
and verse 3 and it says they said among themselves, who will
roll away the stone from the door of the tomb, from the tomb
tomb for us. The woman believed Jesus was
dead and they lived like it. It may be easy for us here this
morning to point to the women and comment about how they
failed to grasp the teachings of Jesus about his death and
resurrection. But our story is not that
different from the story of these women, except in their
case, Jesus had not yet returned to heaven and sent the Holy
Spirit. Other than that, we're pretty
much in the same boat very often.
Notice their words, which they ask, Who will roll away the
stone? This was in their hearts a fixed
reality around which they had constructed the day's event,
their schedules, and their plans.
You see, words we say have a way of letting out what's inside our
hearts. That's just how it works, and we
may not mean anything ill by what we say sometimes.
I'll share a little story here between my wife and I Didn't ask
for permission, but I'm sure she would grant me.
So I bought a computer way back in the day and I wanted a
computer. I, I needed it, but I really
wanted to need it too. And so I bought a computer and
she and I did not quite see eye to eye on this computer thing
anyway, So I went to Steinbach Bible College, took it along
and, and was working on my computer.
And one night I said, I have to do some, some, some work on my
home assignment yet on my homework assignment yet.
And anyway, so we're had company and things got busy and, and she
didn't get it done. And later on the evening she
said, Oh yeah, you wanted to play on your computer yet.
I said, is that what it is? It's my homework assignment.
It was funny. She didn't mean it that way.
But to her, a computer was a recreational tool, a toy almost.
To me, it was a tool. And so the way we view things
just slips out. I've done the same thing.
I remember a guy wanted to go on a mission trip, and I said, oh,
yeah, we plan to go on vacation. Didn't you?
No. A mission trip.
And So what we think blurts out, and we live that way.
Words have a way of just coming out.
Well, these women were actually living out what they believed.
And you know what? They had gone.
They had gone and got spices, bought spices.
They didn't know. They didn't have to worry about
any of that. The thing they're worried about
actually did not exist. They were worried about a closed
grave. How would, how are we going to
open it? How are we going to get in?
How often do we find ourselves preoccupied in our hearts and
minds with things that are very real to us and they don't even
exist? Oh, it's important to us, but
not to God. We're prepared, all geared up,
it's the real thing, only to find out it's not real.
And So what do we do? We bring our packages of
solutions to the problems that we're going to address only to
find out they don't really don't exist.
So these women that cure their ointment containers and
solutions to this anointing ceremony, not knowing they're
going to face an empty grave, Well, let's read.
But when they looked up, they saw the stone had been rolled
away, for it was very large. And entering the tomb, they saw
a young man clothed in a long white robe sitting on the right
side. And they were alarmed.
But he said to them, do not be alarmed.
You see, you seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified.
He is risen, He is not here. See the place where they laid
him. This was the shock of all
shocks. In their state of mind, they
could not have anticipated, expected or believed it.
And yet not just was the stone rolled away, giving them access
to the tomb that was empty. Unbelievable, unbelievable.
And the young man they see sitting inside with his long
white robe says, don't be alarmed, you seek Jesus of
Nazareth. He knew who was crucified.
He's risen. He's not here.
Let's just stop for a moment. Imagine you were one of these
women. We don't know what may or all
have gone through their hearts, but I think if I had been one of
those women, my nice little expensive box of ointment, it
wasn't cheap stuff. I would have been shocked to
maybe embarrassed. OK, what I'm going to do with
this now he's risen. It's useless, of no value.
I would have been scared and maybe embarrassed.
They had good intentions. They had good intentions.
You see, sincerity of intentions does not translate into right
actions. A person can be totally sincere,
totally wrong. It's a bit like reading a map
and saying, you know, I know it says that, but I feel I should
go that way. I'm going to go that way.
You can trust the map, the word of God, you can trust it.
If the map says it's this way, it's this way.
In this story, Jesus was not there.
What they believed was, after all, not true.
Instead, what should they have believed?
What they should have believed was so far from what they did
believe. It didn't even connect.
We can say it was maybe eternities apart.
These women had good desire anoint the dead body of their
friend Jesus. But they were wrong about what
they believed. Very wrong and their wrong
beliefs were the rule, the guide, the path that had
directed their useless efforts in trying to go and anoint the
dead body. There's a very powerful verse in
the Gospel of Luke, Luke 24. It talks about the women coming
to the tomb and there it talks about angels meeting them.
It says this as they were afraid and bowed their faces.
They, the Angel said to them, why do you seek the living among
the dead? That's a powerful, powerful
verse. Why do you seek the living among
the dead? The thing that was on their
hearts and minds was the reality.
Jesus dead. We got to anoint him.
That's how they had lived the last few days and he was dead.
But he had risen and they're focused on the dead, but he was
no longer dead. Maybe we should sometimes stop
and ask ourselves when we get into a predicament, when life
gets hard and difficult and we get tired and frustrated and all
those things, we should stop and ask ourselves what's going on,
what's happening? What is it that we're looking
for? The answers to our problems are
not to be found among the things that die and are dead.
Let's look at it this way. Kingdom of God, people should
not be focused on Kingdom of the world priorities.
Kingdom of God, people should not be focused on Kingdom of the
world priorities. And often times what we're
seeking, what God is trying to offer us is so different that we
would be embarrassed if we only knew.
Well, the Angel did not leave the women where they were in
Mark chapter 16. He instructed them.
He gave them an assignment instead of anointing a dead body
that doesn't exist. No, you have a job to do.
Listen to this verse 7. But go tell his disciples and
Peter that's important. And Peter, that he, meaning
Jesus, is going before you into Galilee.
There you will see Him as He said to you.
So they went out quickly and fled from the tomb for the
trembled and were amazed. And they said nothing to anyone,
for they were afraid everything, their House of Cards had
collapsed. All this structure, this
organizing, this, this planning has nothing now and and was in
fact it was good that it was nothing.
The Angel told the women, Go and tell the good news, this
unbelievable glorious news, but only a moment ago didn't exist,
didn't exist. They never never even thought it
possible. But now not just have you seen
it, now go and talk about it. Go tell his disciples.
And Peter has mentioned, and I think very specifically, I think
it brought somewhere else in the sermon series that it's believed
that Mark received his gospel from the apostle Peter.
We don't have a definitive proof for that, absolute proof, but
that's highly possible and it may well be true.
But Peter had messed up big time.
And so when the Angel say go tell his disciples and Peter,
Peter need an extra measure of the grace because he had denied
Jesus and he needed a word of hope from the Lord.
He denied and swore and cursed that he knew Jesus and he had
gone back to fishing in Galilee, back to his old business, and
yet he was accepted and forgiven.
We know from the Gospel of John what Peter did.
Jesus rose from the dead and he met the disciples, but but
Peter, he needed a special encouragement.
We do we do know from John, I think it's 21 where Jesus
specifically invites Peter just by himself yet and restores him.
But here on resurrection day, Angel says, you women, you go,
go, go and tell, tell his disciples to go to Galilee.
From reading these gospels, it seems to me God's angels were
quite busy on resurrection day had a lot to do with these
people that needed to be brought back up, that needed to be
strengthened and encouraged and and lifted up again.
Well, the women leave the tomb, Mark writes.
They fled. When somebody flees, they run as
fast as they can. When you see somebody running as
fast as they can, as a sight to see, they fled from the tomb
trembling, scared and amazed. It must have been one of those
eye rubbing, self pinching feelings.
You know, like did this really just happened?
Did this really happen? It says they fled from the tomb,
but then what did they do? They did nothing.
According to Mark's gospel, they did nothing.
I think it was too much of A shock, was too unexpected, and
especially considering what they had been planning to anoint a
dead body. But we must ask ourselves this
question. Does this story change us?
Do we live as if Jesus is alive, or do we live as if he's dead?
How do we live? Do we believe?
Does my lifestyle, does your lifestyle look more like Jesus
as time goes on? Or does it look more like there
is no Jesus who rose from the dead?
Many people have heard the good news.
They're still afraid. Many people claim to believe in
Jesus, Don't live lives that indicate in any way that they
believe in Jesus. A writer that I've used, a
commentary writer that I've used for the series, his name is
Timothy Geddert and his commentary on Luke wrote a
summary on the women who came to the tomb and I'll read it, read
it. There's a piece here.
They prepared in vain for an anointing they that could not
happen. They worried for nothing about a
stone that was gone before they arrived.
They responded to the messenger with alarm and he promptly told
them not to be alarmed. He gave them a message to tell
and they did not tell it. They did not leave in respectful
silence. They fled in terror, disobeying
the messenger by keeping the resurrection message to
themselves. God has to have so much grace
and patience with us. Some people live like that in
the past, busy seeking to anoint what has no value or the dead.
Some people come and see the present, but then they don't do
anything with it. Fear keeps them bound and quiet
and shut up. Don't proclaim anything.
Then there are those who accept the faith and they receive and
share the good news. We come now in Mark chapter 16
to a passage of Scripture that is has been deemed
controversial. And there's a lot of controversy
on this passage. In fact, gospel writers mean
historians and scholars and theologians.
They say the earliest writings of the Gospel of Mark don't have
anything past the Gospel of Mark chapter 16 past verse 8.
Verse 9 and onward, it's actually not there.
Then later manuscripts have it. So the arguments are what
happened. 1 conclusion that some historians and theologians say
may have happened is that Mark did not get to finish his gospel
and so it just ended there and somebody put a little extra in
there. Or maybe Mark did finish it and
the ending part went missing for some reason.
Maybe a page got torn off or something.
And it's also suggested that maybe Mark just ended it right
there and left it like that unfinished.
Whatever way people may look at this part of Scripture, we take
it as Scripture. It's, it's God's word and it
does not add or distract or subtract anything from the
gospels. There's one small point there in
this part about drinking poison, handling poisonous snakes.
We'll look at that in a bit. But Mark's gospel continues.
So let's look at the disciples and see how they managed.
Let's read that Mark, chapter 16, verse 9.
Now when he rose early on the first day of the week, it's kind
of like a retelling of the story from a different, different
lens. He appeared first to marry
Magdalene, out of whom he had cast 7 demons.
She went and told those who'd been with him as they mourned
and wept, and when they heard that he was alive and had seen
was had been seen by her, they did not believe.
So she told she wouldn't spread it, but they did not believe.
After that, he appeared to another in another form, to two
of them as they walked and went into the country, and they went
and told it to the rest, but they did not believe them
either. Later he appeared to the 11 as
they sat at the table, and he rebuked their unbelief and
hardness of heart because they did not believe those who had
seen him after he had risen. What is noteworthy is the
disciples struggled with this belief.
And we do know that that's true from even the other Gospels.
This was, yeah, this just doesn't happen.
People don't just walk out of graves and Mark makes makes it
the gospel. Mark emphasized that quite
strongly. So the disciples, they believed
he was dead. When the disciples had seen that
he was killed, they believed. They didn't doubt, they believed
they he had told him I'm going to die.
They did not believe that. But now that he was dead, they
believed he was dead and he was going to stay dead.
And they were. The way they behaved, it looked
like it. We have no trouble imagining the
disciples on Palm Sunday, as I mentioned before, walking and
praising and worshipping and shouting.
Just the confidence, the optimism, the excitement, the
anticipation. On Thursday night, the
Gethsemane experience, and then on Friday morning the house
comes crashing down around them. Then he dies and then he's
buried and it's over. Well, how?
How do you think the disciples look now after Friday?
On Sunday, I mean in the Sabbath and on Sunday, panic stricken,
terrified, scared to death. To them it was over when he rose
from the dead. They didn't think so.
They didn't believe for fear of the Jews.
They were in hiding behind locked doors.
To them it was not a question of if we're going to get attacked
and maybe killed. It was questioned when's it
going to go down? Whenever.
When are they going to find us? When will we get caught?
They were in hiding. Any thoughts of Jesus being
alive was about as far from their minds as they could
possibly be. And then when Jesus did meet
with his followers, 2 of them on the road, they didn't recognize
him. Later in the room in Jerusalem,
he appeared and some doubted. I think we would fit well with
this group of 11. We may think and say, well, if
we had seen what they saw and if we had heard what they heard, we
would believe. Really, Do we believe today this
book is true? Don't we see Jesus at work
today? That little video that we just
watched? I love that little story.
Too often, unbelief is the benchmark from which we make
decisions. So if we're going to grow in our
walk with Jesus, we're going to have to trust Him.
It's a decision we make. It involves risk.
It's going to be uncomfortable. It's not always going to be safe
either. Our lack of ability or lack of
understanding is not the benchmark from which Jesus tells
us what to do. Notice what he told his
disciples. He told them, go and spread the
gospel. Let's read Mark chapter 1615.
He said to them, Go into all the world and preach the gospel to
every creature. He who believes is baptized will
be saved, but he who does not believe will be condemned.
And these signs will follow those who believe in my name.
They will cast out demons, they will speak with new tongues,
they'll take up serpents, and if they're drink anything deadly,
it will by no means hurt them. They will lay hands on the sick
and they will recover. So then after the Lord had
spoken to them, he was received up into heaven, sat down at the
right hand of God, and they went out and preached everywhere, the
Lord working with them and confirming the word to the
accompanying signs. Amen.
That's the end of Mark. Mark chapter 16.
We have a promise from Jesus that a servants will be
protected. And the other gospels say the
same thing. This is not whoever, an
exemption from danger, from risk.
God is not always spare us his Saints.
And this passage about drinking poison or handing poison to
snakes? This is not something that's
intended to be interpreted literally, although some have
taken it that way. The Gospel writer communicates a
different message. Whatever there is in the world
will only go as far as God allows it to happen, whatever
that may be. There are many stories where
God's Saints have been protected through extreme danger, and
sometimes His Saints die. It doesn't refer to actual
physical drinking of poison, but difficult circumstances,
handling poisonous snakes, but dangerous situations.
God has called us to use our minds and to use common sense,
yes, but I suggest that when we face injustice and hardship and
oppression and persecution, let's not be surprised.
Whatever God allows us into our lives, He allows us to happen.
He's aware He can still protect us, spirit, soul and heart.
And if our time has come to to leave, then it's time to leave.
But He wants to bring Himself glory through us, His Saints.
We know the story. The disciples did go out and
spread the gospel. But now what about us?
Our lives show what we believe. So do we believe?
We have a passage in James chapter 2 verse 19 and to 20.
If you believe there's one God, you do well.
Even the demons believe in tremble.
But do you not know a foolish man that faith without works is
dead? So saying we believe is a start,
but that's not where it's at. Believing in God really means
serving God. We're saved by grace, but grace
isn't cheap. It cost God everything to save
us from our sins, and it will cost us everything to walk in
relationship with Him. If we're going to believe, we're
going to believe in God's terms, not ours.
We will believe not just with our mind, not just with our
brain, but with our heart, with our hands and our feet.
On Pentecost, the Holy Spirit filled the apostles and they
were never the same again. The message of the resurrection
took hold and thousands and thousands were converted and
continues on to this day. The message continues on in our
times. Did you?
Bonhoeffer wrote a book called Discipleship, and in his book he
talks about cheap grace where people want to kind of water it
down or dilute it and so on. Let me just read a bit of it.
He said cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without
requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline,
communion without confession, absolution without personal
confession. Cheap grace is grace without
discipleship, grace without the cross.
Grace is grace without Jesus Christ living in Incarnate, he
says. Costly grace is the gospel which
must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked
for, the door at which man must knock.
Such grace is costly because it called us to follow, and it is
grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ.
It is costly because it costs a man his life.
It is grace because it gives a man the only true life.
It is costly because it condemns sin, and it's grace because it
justifies the Sinner. And above all, it is costly
because it cost God the life of His Son.
We were bought at a price that cost God so much.
Our question we must answer for ourselves today is do we believe
what we believe is evident by what we do.
We've looked at the Gospel of Mark and so now the question is
what now? Timothy Getter and his
commentary mentions it began in Galilee and that's where he told
him to go back to came full circle.
We never leave that place. It begins at the cross and
that's where we walk. Takes a lifetime.
We do not finish it in this life.
We finish it when we breathe our last, that's when we finish it.
My heart's desire is that we will be faithful.
God will say to us on Judgement Day when He comes to take us
home and say, well done, good and faithful servants, so let's
go and live out this gospel that we say we believe.
Let's pray. Lord, thank you.
Thank you for your word to us. Out of the Gospel of Mark.
At the very end of your earthly presence, your people struggled.
And it was not until after you left and sent your spirit that a
greater part of the picture came into view.
Today we have a story of your life that continues on.
You're not dead. You rose from the grave.
That's our greatest comfort. You give eternal life to all who
repent, put their faith and trust in You.
I pray, Lord, this morning that Your word will continually grow
in US, shape US, form US evermore into your image.
Thank you Lord for your presence in our lives.
Help us, Lord to be the image bearers that reflect you in this
world. Thank you, Jesus.
Amen.