John 20:11–18

0:00 You know, there are certain sentences that you hear sometimes in life that change everything in an instant. It makes your life something completely different when you hear these sentences. Can you think of any of them? Think back over your life and see if you can think of some of these sentences. Usually they're pretty short, these sentences that change your life. Think back to something you've heard that changed your life forever. Here's one. Will you marry me? Changes everything, right?

0:33 I mean, those of you ladies who are married, when you see your beau get down on one knee, you kind of know what's coming, and then he reaches in his pocket and pulls out the little black box, opens it up, and says those four words, and everything changes. You know what it is that changes your life, guys? It's when she says, yes. Or maybe even more, if she says, no. So here's another one, guys, that I know many of you have experienced that changes your life.

1:06 Three little words. Honey, I'm pregnant. Changes everything. Sometimes it's joyous stuff like that that changes your life, isn't it? Sometimes it's little phrases and sentences that change your life and they're not joyous at all. It's cancer. That'll change your life. So many little sentences, so many little words that encapsulate the moments of our lives that change everything. This morning, I want to take you to a story in John chapter 20, where it wasn't four words or three words or two words that changed a person's life.

1:46 It was one single word. And when this woman heard it, it transformed everything. Turn over with me, if you will, grab a Bible and turn over to John chapter 20. If you're using one of these red pew Bibles that you can find either in the pew racks in front of you or under your chair, if you're up in the balcony, it looks like this, though. You'll be able to find John chapter 20 on page 906. I know that there may be a lot of people, actually, who are not familiar exactly with how the Bible works. So let me just give you some kind of, you know, a sort of user's guide to what we're going to be doing today.

2:20 If you just look on page 906 of the Bible, for instance, if you look up there in the top corner, you'll see that we're in the book of John. So it's one of the 66 books of the Bible that make up the whole thing, right? There's 66 books in it, and we're in this one called John. You'll see down there at the bottom of the page a big number 20. That's what we call chapter numbers. Basically, those were put in about 1,000 years after the Bible was written just to help us kind of find our way around in the Bible. And then if you'll look inside chapter 20 there, you'll see what we call verse numbers.

2:52 So verse sounds like music, doesn't have anything to do with that. It's literally just a way for me to be able to stand up here and say something like, look at chapter 20, verse 12, and you'll be able to find it very quickly. And it just saves us Christians a whole lot of time trying to figure out where exactly we are in the Bible. So we're going to be in chapter 20 all morning this morning. So if I just say something like, look at verse 12, look at verse 13, you'll know that it's in chapter 20, and then you can go find the particular verse that we're talking about. We're actually continuing this study here that we've been in for, well, one week so far.

3:24 This is the second week of it. But we're looking at the last two chapters of the Gospel of John. This book was written sometime in the first century A.D., so something like 1,950 years ago or so, by a man named the Apostle John, who was one of Jesus' closest associates. In all likelihood, when John wrote this book, this account of the life of Jesus, he, in all likelihood, this was the last of the four Gospels to be written, as well as we can tell. And so probably what that meant was that John knew about the other three Gospels.

3:57 And that helps explain why his Gospel is so different. Does that make sense? He knew about the other three Gospels. He had probably read the other three Gospels. And so he decided to write an account of Jesus' life that would say some things that the other Gospels hadn't. And so you get this feel in the Gospel of John that it's just different. It's telling other stories. It's making different points. It's pointing out mostly different teachings that Jesus said during his earthly life. So, fairly or not, I think there's a good debate about it.

4:29 John's gospel also has gotten the reputation of being the most theological of the gospels. I'm not sure that's quite true. I've preached through the book of Matthew 2, and it's pretty theological. But John has gotten the reputation of being kind of the most reflective. He doesn't just tell the stories and give you the events. He also reflects on it or he lets his characters or even Jesus reflect on the events. The book also tells a number of stories that the other three don't. Also, different from the other three Gospels, John's book has a definite and stated goal about it.

5:02 He wrote this book for a reason. And the reason he wrote the book, very simply, is that he wants people to read the book and become Christians. He says it just straight up right there at the end of chapter 20. These things are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing, you may have life in his name. I mean, don't you wish every book that you read, for example, in college would tell you exactly what it's trying to do to you, right? Because that's what books are doing. They're trying to do something to you.

5:32 They're trying to convince you of something, or they're trying to dismantle something that you already believe. They're trying to shape you in some way. And so many books do it in such a kind of serpent-like fashion, right? It's very hissy, it's very secret, it's very in between the lines. Not John. John is just like, the reason I wrote this book is because I want you to read it and I want you to become a Christian. I want you to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and by believing in him, I want you to have life in his name. So that's John's purpose, and straight up, it's my purpose too in preaching through and talking about this book.

6:06 Look, I don't know why you came today. I don't know what brought you here. Maybe you just, you know, saw a sign on the street and popped in. Maybe you found us on a website. Maybe you were brought here by a friend or a family member. I don't know why you're here. But no matter what brought you here, I'm just going to be straight with you. My fervent and deep hope today is that by the end of your time here with us as brothers and sisters in Christ, by the time you walk out those back doors over there and head off to wherever it is you're going for the rest of the week, my hope is that you will make a decision to put your faith in Jesus Christ and become a Christian.

6:40 I would love for you to come find me at the door back there and say, Hey, Greg, I think that I'm a Christian now. What do I need to do? That would be a wonderful thing if you haven't done that already. It'll be the biggest and best decision of your life. Well, in this sermon series, we're looking at chapters 20 and 21. We're only going to look at a few verses today. But we've basically, in these two chapters, come to the very final episodes of Jesus' time on earth before he ascends to his Father in heaven. If you remember in chapters 18 and 19, he was tried by the Jews and the Romans and ultimately crucified.

7:13 And so what we get now in chapters 20 and 21 is a series of episodes in which Jesus is first resurrected from the dead. And then in which he appears in various ways to his disciples and teaches them certain things. I mean, sometimes it's just sort of general teaching. Like all of you as Christians are going to need this as I ascend to my Father in heaven. Other times it's very personal. Other times there's sort of, you know, unresolved tension between some of Jesus' followers and Jesus. And so he, in some of these episodes, goes right at it and fixes that tension and prepares them for the mission that they're about to head off on.

7:52 Last week in verses 1 through 10 of chapter 20, we saw Mary Magdalene and Peter and John. That's one of Jesus' closest followers, Mary Magdalene, Mary of Magdala. It was a village, so it's not really her last name. It would just be like me being called like, you know, Greg Louisvillian, right? That's just what, that's how you referred to someone, especially if you had a whole bunch of Marys around. You would say Mary of Magdala or Mary Magdalene. So you had her, you had the Apostle Peter, you had John himself, the writer of this book. And we saw them in verses 1 to 10 as they first encountered the empty tomb.

8:25 But I don't know if you've noticed yet in those first 10 verses, we actually haven't yet seen Jesus himself in the story. All we've got is the empty tomb. We've got the empty grave clothes that look like Jesus just sort of, you know, rose out of them. And then they collapsed down to where they were in a neat pile, just like they had been on his body. We saw all of that. But we haven't yet seen Jesus himself. Well, that's about to change. And the very first person who's going to see him alive again from the grave is a woman named Mary Magdalene, who was a longtime follower of Jesus and who loved him deeply, as we'll see today.

9:01 So let's pick it up in chapter 20, verse 11. Here's what John writes. Verse 10, the disciples went back to their homes. Verse 11, but Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. And as she wept, she stooped to look into the tomb. And she saw two angels in white sitting where the body of Jesus had lain, one at the head and one at the feet. They said to her, woman, why are you weeping? She said to them, they had taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.

9:32 Having said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing. But she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking? Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away. Jesus said to her, Mary. She turned and said to him in Aramaic, It's just a wonderfully poignant and tender story, isn't it?

10:25 Of Mary Magdalene being the first person to see Jesus and the way that experience, especially hearing him say her name and all of its joyful surprise, its astonishing happiness, to see the way that that one little word spoken to her by Jesus transformed her entirely. She went from being this grief-stricken mourner to a person that was filled with this sparkling, radiant joy of knowing that Jesus is alive. Here's the thing. Let's back up a little, and I want to show you a pattern that we're going to see for the next few weeks.

10:58 If you look over the next few sections of this book, so what I just read, 11 through 18, and then the next two. So Jesus appears to the disciples, and then Jesus and Thomas. If you look at those couple of sections of the book, what we're about to see is a series of three times where this very same thing happens. The same thing that happens to Mary happens to other people in these two sections. So Jesus appears to these various people, first Mary in our text today, then the disciples in the next one, and then the one that we know as Doubting Thomas, which we'll talk about in a couple weeks is not really the best name for him, but he's Doubting Thomas to us.

11:35 And what you'll see as we make our way through those sections is that there's going to be a pattern that emerges in those stories, a kind of three-step progression in the narrative that happens the same way every time. And when you see that kind of progression, when you see that sort of repetition in the way John tells stories, that means he's trying to teach you something. He wants you to notice that pattern, and he wants you to figure something out from seeing it. So let me just tell you what those steps are, so you can kind of be aware of them as you're even reading ahead a little bit.

12:06 The first step you're going to see in all three of these stories, including our text today, is that you've got someone sunk in some kind of very human emotion of some kind. It's very different in each case. But it's an emotion every single time that, at least in these particular instances, is born of unbelief. That's not to say that those emotions are always born of unbelief when they show up. But in these stories, the emotions that are there, that these people are sunken, every one of them is born of unbelief in their lives. So for Mary today, it's going to just be the emotion that she is sunken is inconsolable grief.

12:45 And we're going to talk in a little bit about why her grief is carried along by unbelief. In the second story, when Jesus appears to the disciples, the emotion that they're sunk in is fear. And then for Thomas, of course, it's this just rock-ribbed refusal to believe that Jesus is alive. So first step in every one of these stories is that they're all sunk in some sort of unbelieving emotion. In the second step, what happens basically is that each one of these people is confronted in their unbelief by Jesus.

13:17 And he doesn't confront them all in the same way. He looks at what emotion they're sunk in, and he engages them right at the aching point of their unbelief. That's the second step. And in the third step, the final one, is that when they're confronted by Jesus, these people are utterly and completely transformed by that encounter. So I don't want to sort of, you know, pull the pin on every grenade that's in the text. But let me just tell you how this works out. Mary's grief, this inconsolable, unbelief-driven grief that she's got, becomes something else.

13:53 The disciples' fear in the second story is changed into something else. And Thomas' ironclad doubt becomes something else entirely. So I don't want to tell you what those are. We'll talk about the first one today in a little while. But you see the point that John is driving home to you here in these three stories? It's that when you encounter and know the resurrected Jesus, it is a life-changing thing. And there is no obstacle that Jesus cannot overcome in order to bring you to that life-changing event.

14:30 When you become a Christian, when you understand that Jesus has risen from the dead, When every obstacle is overcome and the Spirit brings you to life and you see it, yet Jesus is who he says he is, he's live. When you get to that point, it's an utterly life-transforming thing. Christianity is not just something you add to your life. It's not just an enriching activity that you do for your family's sake. It's not just something that you do so that your kids will grow up in a moral environment. No, when you encounter the resurrected Jesus, it changes everything. It's to have your life transformed. It's to have your whole entire existence turned upside down and to be made something utterly new.

15:05 That's why the Apostle Paul was exactly right when he said, Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, behold, new creation. Well, today, it's Mary. And the main idea is this. To know the resurrected Jesus is to be transformed. To know the resurrected Jesus is to be transformed. We're going to look at this text in three sort of progressions, three points to the sermon.

15:36 And basically what these are, are steps in Mary's experience of seeing the resurrected Jesus. So here they are. First we're going to look at verses 11 through 14. That is a storm of grief. A storm of grief, verses 11 through 14. Number two, a flash of life, 15 and 16. And then finally, number three, the dawn of mission, looking at those last two verses, 17 and 18.

16:08 So a storm of grief, looking at 11 through 14, a flash of life, looking at 15 to 16, and then the dawn of mission, 17 and 18. All right, so point number one, the storm of grief, looking first of all at verses 11 through 14. The last time we saw Mary in the story, last time the camera sort of focused on her was in verse 2 when she had run from Jesus' tomb back into the city to tell Peter and John, basically at least her assumption was that the stone had been rolled away from the tomb and she just assumed that Jesus' body had been stolen by grave robbers.

16:38 Well, she told Peter and John that, and apparently in their haste, Peter and John left her behind in the city because they got into a foot race, if you remember from two weeks ago, running to the tomb. And we really don't see Mary again until right here at the beginning of verse 11, where she's once again alone at the tomb. Maybe she ran along with Peter and John, got to the tomb, they left and went back home, and she stuck around. Maybe they were already gone when she arrived on a little bit slower pace. Who knows, it doesn't say. It just says that once Peter and John had gone back to their homes, Mary stood weeping outside the tomb.

17:14 She's still locked in the same grief that she'd felt since she watched Jesus being tried and crucified. And it has consumed her like a hurricane. You know, we don't know much about Mary Magdalene. We know from her name that she was from a village of Magdala, which was nearby. But what we do know, the little bits and pieces and snippets of her that we get in the Gospels tell us that she was an intensely devoted follower of Jesus.

17:45 And in fact, maybe more than anybody else in the story, she loved him deeply. And she had reasons to. And Luke tells us that at one point Jesus had cast seven demons out of her. Traditionally, she's said to have been a prostitute whom Jesus saved from that sin. But we really don't know that for sure. There are little hints here and there that that may have been the case, but it's not a certainty that she was a prostitute. What we do know is that Jesus saved her from something terrible. He saved her from the terror of seven demons that were possessing her. He saved her from the terror of her sin, and she loved him for that.

18:22 Those who have been forgiven much are the ones who love much. And Mary knew that, and she became one of Jesus' closest followers. There are other places in the story that tell us that she seems to have been a woman of some means. Apparently she had some money. She had some resources. And she used those resources to support Jesus and his disciples over and over. When they would come into the city, often they would stay at her house. She would support them and feed them. But even beyond that, her support of Jesus was not just monetary. Her support of Jesus and her devotion to Jesus comes out most clearly in the fact that again and again and again in the story, she is just there.

19:00 She's with Jesus every step of the way. She's there with him through his teaching. She's there with him through the last hours before the crucifixion. You know, all of the Gospels mention explicitly that she was one of those who was present at the crucifixion. And if she was at the crucifixion outside the walls of the city, probably she was there for everything else too. She was there when the crowds gathered together on the patio of Pontius Pilate's palace and cried out, crucify him. She was there when the soldiers publicly flogged him and made him carry his own cross through the city streets.

19:33 She may have been one of the women that offered Jesus water in the street. She was there when the nails were being driven through his wrists and his ankles. She was there when the crowd was jeering him and mocking him and making fun of him as he hung there on the cross. She was there when the whole world went dark. She was there when the darkness lifted and Jesus cried, it is finished. She was there when the earthquake happened. She was there when the reports began to come in of the curtain in the temple being torn from top to bottom. She was there for it all, and she saw it all. And still, she didn't leave.

20:06 That's what's extraordinary. Even when Jesus was dead, she was there. She was one of those who caught his body when the Roman soldiers wrenched out the nails and lowered Jesus' corpse from the cross. She did the preliminary preparations for his burial that afternoon. it was all hurried that day because of the Sabbath coming, but she had done it. And then she'd come back early on this Sunday morning to finish the job. There was nobody, literally nobody, who was closer to the crucified Jesus than Mary Magdalene. When everybody else scattered, when everybody else went to their homes for fear of the Jews or whatever it was, when everyone else abandoned him. She and a few other women with her stayed with him. And she did it because she loved him. He'd saved her from her sin. He'd saved her from seven demons, and she loved him because of him. That's what the Bible tells us about Mary Magdalene. So it's not really surprising that

21:09 we find her here in verse 11, on the morning of this first Lord's Day, standing before the tomb, weeping. Now you can imagine why she's weeping. Mary stood weeping outside the tomb, and as she wept, she stooped to look into the tomb. John mentions it at least two times in that one verse. She's caught up in weeping, and it's not hard to understand why. I mean, not only had just, you know, three days prior her friend been cruelly killed by the Romans, but now, as far as she knew, he'd been dishonored in the most horrible and degrading way because some grave robbers had come and stolen his body, desecrated it as a kind of final indignity to him and his followers.

21:47 So Mary was distraught. And it's understandable. But here's what I think John is trying to teach us in this. Here's what I want you to learn from this. For all that we can understand about Mary's grief, and for all that we can sympathize even with Mary's grief and her tears and her pain, The fact remains that John wants us to see in this little story that she was lost in it. She was lost in her grief.

22:20 It was a hurricane in her heart. And it caused her, all of that grief, to miss the glory of what was right in front of her. Now let's look at some of the details of the story. First look in verses 11 and 12. She stoops there in the midst of her tears to look into the tomb. I mean, look at what she sees in verse 12. She saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had lain, one at the head and one at the feet. Now think about that. John just names these guys as angels.

22:52 Other ones of the Gospels will describe them as being not just in a normal kind of white, but in a dazzling white, like a white that would put your eyes out with all of its brightness. She had the angels sitting there in all of their dazzling brightness, One where Jesus' head had been, one where his feet had been. You've got the grave clothes lying there just like John had seen, right? As if Jesus had been wrapped up in them. And then when he came out, they just went, right? They just sort of deflated because there's no body in them. They're laying there in a very nice order just as they had been wrapped around Jesus' body. She saw that.

23:24 That was the very thing that convinced John, if you remember last week, to believe that Jesus really was alive. You've got everything laid out for her right there. And so it makes the angel's question in verse 13 make sense. Look at it. They said to her, woman, why are you weeping? Now, we don't know exactly what tone the angel said that in. Maybe it was a compassionate tone. Maybe it was more of a rebuking tone. We don't exactly know. But what we do know, what you can see in the Gospels, is that there are times when these angels, especially around the resurrection, provide a kind of comic relief sometimes in the Gospels.

24:01 Like, they're the ones who show up, and they're a little bit incredulous at the way these humans are reacting to Jesus being risen from the dead. It's almost like they can't believe that these humans don't understand it. So you've got this one angel, for instance, here saying, why are you still weeping? And I wonder if his tone is something like, why are you weeping? Jesus is risen from the dead. There's nothing to be sad about anymore. You've got another one in another gospel that asks the women, why are you looking for the living among the dead? You know, as if they're dumb for having done so.

24:33 He's not here. He's risen just like he said he would. Why can't you humans get it through your thick skull that Jesus was going to rise from the dead? In Matthew, you can look at it, the angel that has the assignment from God of rolling back the stone. I mean, not to let Jesus out, but to let the humans in. He rolls back the stone. And then in this amazing detail, Matthew tells us that he rolled back the stone and then sat on it. That's interesting to me. First of all, because you don't think of angels as having a whole lot of personality usually, right?

25:06 You think of angels as being these stiff things that walk at right angles, right? And they herald and they pronounce. You do not think of the angel that's given the assignment to roll back the stone on Jesus' tomb as finishing the work and then sitting down to pick the lunch out of his teeth. You just don't think of him like that. He's like a teenager angel, I think. He does the job, and then he sits down. Well, this one asks a great question. And, you know, I wonder if there was just some kind of angelic incredulity in him.

25:41 Mormon, why are you weeping? Why are you weeping? He told you he was going to rise from the dead. Why are you weeping? Why isn't all this getting through to you and creating in you faith and hope like it did for John a few verses earlier? Why aren't you seeing it, Mary? I think that's his question. Well, her response to him shows just how furious this storm of grief in her heart really was. Look what she says in verse 13. She said to them, they have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.

26:15 I mean, it's a tenuous unbelief that she's got there, isn't it? Not tenuous, actually the opposite of tenuous. in the face of all this everything that she's seen she is sticking to her story she is sticking to the assumption that what's happened here regardless of the grave clothes regardless of the angel regardless of the stone regardless of the empty tomb what has happened here she thinks is really nothing more than that Jesus's dead body has been stolen in the face of all of it that's what she's sticking to. And then it gets worse. Look at 14. Having said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing, but she didn't know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking and supposing him to be the gardener? She said to him, sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you've laid him, and I will take him away. I mean, it's just incredible. It's just incredible. Here's Jesus standing right in front of her face to face, and she

27:16 doesn't recognize him, and even tells him, the risen Lord Jesus, that his own body has been stolen by grave robbers. It's incredible. Now, you know, to be fair to her, it's not all that unusual in the Gospels, in these stories about Jesus's appearances after the resurrection. It's not unusual for people not to recognize him at first. It happens several times. On the road to Emmaus, they don't recognize him. Out on the Sea of Galilee, they don't recognize him. It happens all the time. But John, here at least, seems to be piling up road signs that Mary, in her grief, just bombs right past without paying any attention whatsoever. The open tomb, the grave clothes, the angels, Jesus himself, none of it phases her in her insistence that what has happened here is that the body has been stolen, and that's that. She's adamant about it. She's sure of it. She is as certain as she can be, and yet she's wrong.

28:08 But why was she so sure? I mean, think about that for a second. Why was she so sure? I mean, what had locked her so firmly into that certainty that it was grave robbers who did this? I mean, think deeply about it. What had locked her in? What is she having to presuppose here for her to be so certain that that's what had happened? What presupposition, what certain presupposition had to be lodged in her mind that would have created this belief that his body has been stolen and this continuing deep swirling storm of grief that was swallowing her soul?

28:49 What presupposition would do all of that in her? Well, I'll tell you what the presupposition was. She had to be certain, she had to be beyond a shadow of any reasonable doubt that Jesus was still dead. That's what she had to believe. That's the presupposition, that's the belief that was causing the grief. That's the presupposition that was causing this ironclad certainty that what's happened here is grave robbers. It's what blew her past the empty tomb, the grave closed, the angels, Jesus himself, and still insists.

29:22 The body's been stolen. She didn't have any room, no room at all in her mind or heart for the possibility that he might be alive just like he said he would be. She was sure that Jesus was still dead. And you see the point that John's driving at there? At this point in Mary's life, she had right down at the bottom of her heart what you might call an invincible unbelief. She had an invincible unbelief. Nothing could get through to her.

29:53 Peter and John couldn't get through to her. The empty tomb couldn't get through to her. The grave clothes didn't get through to her. Not the angels, not even looking Jesus in the face could get through to her. For all her grief over having lost her friend who she deeply loved, who saved her from disaster, for all of that, there was no way. She just would not, could not believe that he was alive after all. She couldn't do it. She was weighed down and closed off by invincible unbelief. Friend, is that true of you?

30:27 Or let me change the question a little bit. Even if you're a Christian, was that at some point true of you? Well, the Bible says that, yeah, it was. Even if you're a Christian right now, at some point in your life, you were weighed down and closed off by invincible unbelief, an unbelief that nothing could get through. That's what the Bible talks about when it says that we are, as human beings, dead in our trespasses and sins. Not just incapacitated, not just sick, not just drowning, but drowning dead, drowned dead at the bottom of the ocean.

31:05 Dead in your trespasses and sins. And then Paul writes in another place, the mindset on the things of this world does not please God. Indeed, it cannot please God. You ever think about that when it comes to you that when you became a Christian, it wasn't just a matter of you turning over a new leaf. It wasn't just about you making a decision. It wasn't just about you overcoming the questions that you had about Jesus and bringing yourself through study and reflection and contemplation to a moment of belief.

31:36 No, you were dead in invincible unbelief. And what it took for the Lord to overcome that was a miracle. When you get that through your head, you start to understand what that means. And it does a couple of things in our hearts. For one thing, it just reminds us what a miracle of God's grace it is if you are a believer at all in Jesus. And friend, you didn't do that. Your heart was stoned, just like Mary's. It wasn't your decision that brought you to Christ.

32:07 It may have felt like that. I understand. In the human experience, it's always that all of a sudden, boom, you know, we see the glory and the beauty and the wonder of Jesus and his salvation. and we move to accept him. That's what it feels like to us. But what John is telling you is that by the time your eyes opened and you saw the beauty of Jesus, he had already called your name and brought you to life. He's the one who broke through the invincible unbelief. He's the one that shattered the rock in the bottom of your soul and made your spirit come to life so that you could see the beauty of Jesus.

32:41 Another thing that that understanding does, To understand that every human being is weighed down and closed off by invincible unbelief also gives us hope that God can save anybody he wants to at any time he wants to. Friend, I know some of you in this church have been praying for family members and friends for decades to come to the Lord Jesus Christ. I know you have because you've prayed about these people on Sunday evenings and you've told me about it and you've written to other elders to ask them to pray.

33:11 Some of you have been writing the church kind of regularly on 3 ABC unofficial to say, please pray for so-and-so, so-and-so. And you've been doing that for years. My friend, if that's you, don't give up. Don't give up. Even if it's somebody that seems to be at the end of their life, don't give up. Because when the Lord decides to save somebody, when he decides to shatter that granite block of invincible unbelief, he does it in a moment. You don't know.

33:44 And I don't know when God might break the granite in that person's heart. But keep on praying that he will. And don't grow weary in that work. But I want you to think about something else before we move on. One more thing. Mary had this rock of unbelief in her heart, right? She was certain that she knew something about Jesus. And what she knew was that he was dead. Not mostly dead. Not, you know, not halfway dead. dead dead fully dead he was dead and she knew it and the fact that she knew it was her problem there's an old joker once who said it's not the things that you don't know that mess you up it's the things that you do know that just ain't so that's true and that's exactly what was going on with mary she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that jesus was dead what messed her up though is that that just wasn't so so here's a question for you to think about what's something in your life in your mind your heart that you are quite certain of about god

34:47 that might just not be so now that's an incredibly hard question to answer because you don't naturally question the things that you are quite certain of right the reason you don't question them is because you're certain of them and the reason that you're certain of them is because you don't think they deserve any questioning so it's a hard question to answer but there are times in life when God will shine just a little bit of light into those corners or he'll shake things up just a little bit. He'll shine some light on assumptions that you are making that just aren't the case. So what is that for you? And you can think about that over lunch, think about it this week, but I don't know, just some examples. Maybe it's a certainty that God isn't going to save that person. Maybe you're absolutely certain that God isn't going to save that person. Maybe you've become absolutely certain after years that God is not going to give you victory over that sin.

35:41 Maybe especially if you're not a Christian, maybe you've become certain that God can't or won't save someone who's done everything that you have done. My friend, if you're thinking that one, I can tell you right straight up that that one is not true. It just ain't so. There's nobody on the face of this planet that is too deep and too dark for God's grace to save them. When Jesus died on the cross, it wasn't just part of the curse that he exhausted. It was all of it, all the way down to hell. Friends, Jesus can save you. Jesus will save you if you'll come to him in faith and repent of your sins and put your trust in him. He'll save you. Don't ever think for a moment that he won't.

36:31 Well, here's point number two, second part of Mary's experience, a flash of life, a flash of life. So in verse 14, Mary questions the angels and then somehow apparently becomes aware of someone else standing behind her. So she turns and John just says it flat out there in verse 15. She turned and saw Jesus standing there, but she doesn't recognize him. Then in 15, it's interesting, Jesus asks her two questions that I think as readers of the Bible, especially if we're familiar with this story, we tend to run over these two questions without thinking about them nearly as much as we should.

37:09 So look at verse 15. 14, she turns around, sees Jesus standing. She didn't know that it was Jesus. And then 15, Jesus said to her, woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking? Why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking? I think usually what we do with those two questions, if we think about them at all, if we read them in any kind of tone at all, is that we basically read those questions as if somehow, for some reason, Jesus doesn't know Mary.

37:41 And I'm not exactly sure psychologically what we're doing with that. It's almost like we're actually putting Jesus in the role that Mary thinks he's in, which is this random gardener who just comes up to her and asks, Woman, what's wrong? Why are you weeping? And what grave are you looking for? You know, can you not find the person that's buried? And we kind of put him in the gardener role that she puts him in, and we just allow those questions to have the force of this, you know, unknowing gardener who's asking questions of this woman that he doesn't know. So we read it like that. Woman, why are you weeping? Who are you seeking for? You know, I'm the gardener.

38:12 I'm the cemetery keeper. If you just tell me the person's name, I can probably help you find their grave. Like he doesn't know why she's weeping. Like he doesn't know who she's looking for. But see, that's the thing. He does know why she's weeping. He knows exactly why she's weeping. And he knows who she's looking for. And once you realize that, once you realize that Jesus knows everything, well, then you realize that Jesus isn't just asking these questions for like a rhetorical puncher to get a conversation started.

38:43 He's not playing the role of gardener or something. With those questions, he's actually confronting Mary right at the aching point of her invincible unbelief. Now let me show you how that is. He's confronting her at the aching point of her invincible unbelief. And I want you to see it. So the first thing he does, look at those questions really carefully. Verse 15. First thing he does is ask her the exact same question that the angels did. Woman, why are you weeping? Now, of course, if he had let her answer that question, she would have had a ready answer to that question, wouldn't she?

39:17 What would she have said, do you think? She would have said, I'm weeping because my friend is dead. And now, to top it all off, grave robbers have come and stolen his body. That's sad to me, and therefore I am weeping. She'd have had a ready answer to that, and Jesus knew it. But look what he says next. It's a direct challenge to that unspoken answer. He says to her, who are you looking for, Mary? And he doesn't just want her to say the name. He wants her to think about the name.

39:49 Who are you looking for? Mary, think about who it is that you are here in this graveyard looking for. You're looking for Jesus. You're looking for the one who cast out seven demons from you. Is that who you're looking for? You're looking for Jesus, the one who saved you from your sin and changed your life? You're looking, Mary, for Jesus, the one who walked on water and healed the sick and made the blind see and made the lame walk and who raised your friend Lazarus from the dead and who told you again and again and again that he was going to rise from the dead on the third day, that's the Jesus you're looking for, then Mary, if that's who you're looking for, why are you still weeping?

40:32 Friends, there are just depths of truth and wonder in those two questions, aren't there? And they are exactly the questions that you and I need to ask ourselves often. Dear woman, why are you still weeping? Don't you know who it is who sits on the throne of heaven? Don't you know who it is who loves you and who cares for you and who died for you? Well, if you do, why are you weeping? Dear man, why are you still so afraid?

41:05 Don't you know who it is who sits on the throne? Don't you know who it is who is sovereign and in control of everything? And dear man, why are you still afraid? Dear Christian, why are you still bowing and scraping before sin and letting it be your master? Don't you know who it is who has set you free from sin and made you his child and adopted you into his kingdom and set you on high with Christ? Dear Christian, why are you still serving sin?

41:38 Dear church member, why are you still harboring bitterness against your brother or sister in Christ? Don't you know that the one who forgave you of far more than you will ever forgive anyone else calls you now to forgive? Why? Why then, if you know him, why are you still harboring bitterness? But Mary doesn't hear him. She doesn't get it. She answers with the same assumption that is still lodged in the bottom of her heart.

42:14 He's dead. He's dead. He's dead. This I know beyond a shadow of a doubt. He's dead. So Mr. Stranger, if you've moved him, tell me where he is. And I'll put him back in the tomb where he belongs because he's dead. And then I think, essentially, Jesus has just had enough of it. And with one word, that rock of invincible unbelief in the bottom of Mary's heart is shattered. The granite is broken through and the light of heaven shines in her soul. And what he says is, Mary.

42:46 It's such a beautiful word. Especially when you consider what he could have said to her. Of all the things that he could have said after he watches her blow past the empty tomb, past the grave clothes, past the angels, past him with her invincible unbelief, imagine what he could have said to her. He could have rebuked her. He could have called her a whitewashed sepulchre. He could have said, oh, you woman of little faith. Or he could have said, did you not hear me when I told you I was going to rise again? But none of that, just Mary.

43:20 Mary, of all the things that he could have said, it's the tenderest, most loving, gentle, most wonderful thing imaginable. Mary. He says her name. The sheep hear his voice. And he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. And when he has brought out all his own, he goes before him, and the sheep follow him for they know his voice. You know, I wonder if in the halls of heaven when the Lord does that miracle of salvation in a sinner's heart, I wonder if the same thing happens.

44:03 I wonder if the way he does it is just to say your name. I wonder if that's how it is for all of us. At the moment when our souls come to life and our eyes open and we see the beauty of Jesus, does he say our names just like that?

44:38 I don't know. But for Mary, the minute she heard that word, her soul came to life and she knew him. She knew him immediately, who he was. He addresses him with this word, Rabboni, which John helpfully translates there. He tells us it means teacher. Actually, it's not just teacher. That's rabbi. That's a more common word that you'll all know. Rabbi means teacher. Rabboni is a little more personal. It means my teacher. That ending of it, oni, means my, my teacher. Now, you know, that's not the highest theological thing that Mary could have said there.

45:10 right I mean she doesn't she doesn't you know call out my Lord and my God like Thomas does she doesn't say you're the Christ the son of the living God she doesn't say that she doesn't understand everything yet but what she does know now beyond a shadow of a doubt is that Jesus is alive and her grief and her tears and her fear have just been obliterated by the joy of that understanding. Well what about you? I wonder if you've had that moment yet when you realize that oh my goodness Jesus really is who he claims to be. He really is alive and he really does change people and save them from their sins and give them eternity. I wonder if you've had that moment yet because for every Christian there is such a moment. Sometimes it's more dramatic than other moments. There's some Christians who can't even pinpoint kind of exactly when it happened because it's more like a sunrise of understanding in their souls.

46:02 For other people, it's a blinding flash of light. But it happens for everybody. The light breaks through. The granite of unbelief shatters in a moment. For every Christian, I wonder if that's happened for you. Maybe this is the day when, in the halls of heaven, if this is how it works, God says your name and you come to life. What's that going to feel like? You know what it's going to feel like? I'll tell you what it's going to feel like. It's going to feel like your heart, your soul looking at Jesus and toppling over into faith in him.

46:35 You're just going to realize, all of a sudden, no matter what's happened for the whole rest of my life, all of a sudden, I'm starting to believe this. I'm starting to believe that Jesus is who he says. I'm starting to believe that he really did rise from the dead. I'm starting to believe that he can save people, even people like me. And your heart will topple over into belief in him. You'll trust him. Maybe that's happening to you and the trick at that moment, if you feel that kind of happening in your heart, the trick is not to take your heart and prop it back up into unbelief.

47:08 Trust him. Fall over into faith and trust in Jesus. Look at his beauty, look at his glory, look at his salvation and trust him. Maybe this has been the moment when your name just rang out in the courts of heaven. It's point number three, finally, the dawn of mission. This is kind of the third step in Mary's experience. Storm of grief first, then this flash of life when Jesus brings her to spiritual life. And then point number three, the dawn of mission.

47:42 So in 15, she tells the gardener, sir, if you've carried him away, tell me where you've laid him. I will take him away. She still doesn't believe in 15. Jesus says to her, Mary. She turns, says to him in Aramaic, Rabboni, which means teacher. And then we really don't know what happens. in 16. Something happens. John doesn't tell us. The detail isn't there. Maybe she fell on her feet, like many people often do, and grabbed onto his feet in order to worship him. Maybe she went for a hug. Maybe she did, in fact, get him in a hug. But something happens between 16 and 17 that gets this little rebuke from Jesus in 17. Jesus said to her, do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father, but go to my brothers and say to them, I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God, and your God. Now, this is, without a doubt, one of just a handful of the most difficult and argued about verses in the entire New Testament. And I'm here to tell you today

48:43 that after hours of research, I am not going to solve this puzzle for you. We just don't know what Jesus is talking about here. Maybe the first readers of the book of John did. Maybe it's been lost to us. I don't know. You can tell some things about it. It's difficult, but there are several things about this verse that just kind of cause us to scratch our heads. We just can't, we can't quite figure it out. So one of those, if you think about it, and if you're, maybe your mind is already going to these other places, one is just the question here. In verse 17, why does Jesus forbid Mary to touch him here? But just a few verses later, like literally just a few verses later, He's going to encourage doubting Thomas to touch him.

49:24 And there's several other times after his resurrection in other gospels and other places where people do, in fact, touch Jesus. It doesn't seem to be against the rules really for anyone except Mary. Here's another one. Look at the verse carefully. Why does Jesus tell Mary that the reason she can't cling to him is because he hasn't yet ascended to the Father? Well, what does that have to do with it? Like, you can't cling to me, you can't touch me because I haven't yet ascended to the Father, which implies that once I do ascend to the Father, you know, clinging to me will be fine, right?

50:00 What is the logical connection between those two phrases? A lot of answers have been given through history, so some have said very confidently that what's happening here is that Jesus, in these 40 days after his resurrection, he actually ascended to the Father and then back down to earth many times over the course of those 40 days. And it was just at the last one that they saw him rise up into the sky. They didn't see the other ones. But he did this over and over and over again. And so what happened here is that maybe Mary Magdalene has caught him so soon after the resurrection that he hasn't yet done that first ascension to the Father.

50:36 And by the time we get to Thomas a few verses later, he has in fact gone to the Father. And so now it's okay for people to touch him now. Because obviously, well, obviously what? And that's where the argument ends. They just say that. So he goes to the Father after Mary, and he comes back and lets Thomas touch him because, yeah. So explain that. Like, show me one verse in the Bible that might help explain what happened when Jesus got up to heaven.

51:06 And, like, does he get sprayed with some sort of, you know, ceramic wax so that he can't be, you know, made impure or something when he gets up there? Is that why he can touch him? Nobody knows. Nobody has an argument. There's just nowhere to go from there. And it doesn't really make sense anyway. Other people have given a fairly kind of, you know, low-level pedestrian understanding to this. And basically they've said that what it means is, look, Mary, you don't have to hold on to me. I'm not gone yet. And, you know, I'm going to be gone soon, but not yet. So you don't have to hold on to me like that. Like, I'm going to get away from you.

51:37 So, you know, you would read 17, like Jesus said to her, don't cling to me, Mary, I've not ascended yet to the Father. You know, but you can let go now and go tell my brothers that I'm going to ascend in the future. Maybe, that may be right. I'm making fun of it a little bit, but some really smart people think that. But to me, that just seems a little too shallow. I mean, John isn't giving this much space to these words from Jesus for no reason other than to just make a kind of joke that she doesn't need to hug him so hard.

52:09 There's got to be a deeper spiritual meaning there. There's got to be something else going on. I mean, again, there's just no way to be totally sure. But I think that what's going on here is that Jesus is telling Mary that she can't relate to him now, after the resurrection, in the same way that she related to him before the resurrection. He's saying, things have changed, Mary. You can't relate to me anymore just as a friend. There's more to it than that now. So I think the best way to read it is something like this.

52:41 Mary, don't cling to me. Don't hold on to me in the flesh in the same way that you did before my resurrection. As if I'm merely still your friend. For although I haven't yet ascended to the Father, I'm about to. And when that happens, our relationship is going to change. So I think that's the best logic. And so when you read it in 17, it would read something like this. Jesus said to her, do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, because they need to know this too, I am going to ascend to my Father and to your Father, to my God and to your God.

53:18 It's a message that that in the flesh relationship that Mary enjoyed with him, that in the flesh relationship that the disciples enjoyed with him, that friendship relationship that they enjoyed, that's changing now. There's going to be distance between him and them. He's ascending on high, and so the relationship is going to change. In other words, they're not going to relate to him in the same way. And what Jesus makes another point about in the same verse is that they're also not going to relate to the Father in the same way now or even to each other in the same way.

53:52 You see that? Don't cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father, but you go tell my brothers because they need to know this too. Tell them, I am ascending. and then look what he says here, to my father and your father, to my God and your God. Do you see what that's saying? It's saying that in the wake of Jesus's resurrection, when you become a Christian and you become united to Jesus, you are pulled into a relationship with the creator of the universe that reflects the very relationship that Jesus has with him. It's not the same thing. Jesus has a unique relationship with his father with his God. That's why he separates him. To my father and your father. To my God and your God. There's separation and yet it reflects it's the same thing.

54:41 We're adopted. We're made sons and daughters just like Jesus is a son. And then look at that little phrase there in 17 also. Go to my brothers. and say to them this. Do you know that up until this point in the Gospels, Jesus has never referred to the disciples as my brothers? They're friends, they're followers, they're sent ones, they're disciples, they're all kinds of things.

55:14 But he's never yet called them my brothers until right now. Do you see the point? Jesus' resurrection and ascension to the Father changes everything. it changes your relationship as a Christian to the Father. No longer is God a threat to you when you become a Christian. Now God is His Father and your Father. His God and your God. He's not a threat. No longer are the people around you who name the name of Christ your enemies.

55:48 They're your brothers and sisters because they're all brothers and sisters of Jesus the King. It changes everything. Look what else. Look what else happens here. When Mary sees him, he then sends her. Do you see that? Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, I'm ascending to my Father and your Father. To my God and your Father. He sends her. It's the beginning of the Christian mission. She goes off and she tells others about the resurrected Jesus. And what we're being taught there is that that mission and goal is not incidental to the Christian life.

56:23 It's what we do. Last thing, I just want to kind of wrap it up in a bow for you. But do you see how Mary's experience here, these three points? The storm of grief that she was in, the flash of life that Jesus gives to her, and then being sent on the mission after her relationships are all changed. Do you see how Mary's story in this is exactly your story if you're a Christian? It is exactly your story. First, lost in sin. Second, called to life in Jesus. And then third, sent to the world with the good news.

56:56 Friends, that's who we are. The people of a risen Savior. And now we go to tell others the same thing. Let's pray. Our Lord, we thank you and we praise you for your goodness. We thank you that you are the risen one. And we thank you that you change and transform lives by your divine resurrection power. God, we pray that if there's anybody here today who doesn't yet know you, we ask, oh God, that they would by the end of our service today. Lord, we pray that even the baptisms we're about to celebrate would be used by your Spirit to press on their souls the beauty of coming to faith in Christ and finding newness of life.

57:33 Lord, we ask all of these things in the name of Jesus. Amen.