Northside Church - Sydney
3 Easter Questions: Week 3 – Where is He?
You're listening to another great message from Northside Community Church. Well friends, you'll agree with me, people approach Easter in different ways, so the vast majority of Australians is just another holiday, another opportunity to get away with a family, have a Barbie, have a few drinks, you know, just another holiday. But if we look at the characters involved in that original Easter drama, I think we can see ourselves in some of these characters, because for us as Christians, and those who are sympathetic to the Christian cause, it's not just another weekend, it's the most important weekend of all. When we turn to the gospels, we look at some of these key players, a variety of responses, I think we can identify with some of these. For example, Peter and John came running to Easter. They came running to Easter, that's what the Bible says. They were first alerted to the strange goings-on at the cemetery by a rather distraught Mary Magdalene. She'd been the first to visit Jesus, she'd seen the stone roll back from the entrance to the tomb which led her to believe that the body had been stolen, and so according to John's gospel, she went running back to Jerusalem, she tells Peter and John and they go running to the cemetery, and they really emphasise the running because John, who's writing the gospel, actually points out that Peter beats him, it's like kind of it's a race. Now the fact that they were running so enthusiastically says to me that they were full of expectation and full of anticipation, I think that's a reasonable conclusion isn't it? Now friends that was enough for them to spring into action, just this knowledge that Jesus just may be alive. They'd heard a few strange things that Jesus had said about rising from death, they'd heard him say because I live, you will live also, hadn't made a lot of sense, but they knew enough to run enthusiastically. What could the removal of the stone mean? Well we know what happened. Peter bounds into the tomb. He sees the grave clothes folded, he sees the tomb empty, the stone's been rolled away. It's enough to convince him. The Bible says they saw and believed, and then they went home. Now they still had many questions of course, verse 9 of chapter 20, they still didn't understand the Scripture, which said that he must rise from death, they were somewhat bewildered, but they'd seen enough to convince him Jesus was alive, now it was just a matter of waiting to see what was going to transpire next. Now I know that's how many of you have approached Easter, you've come running to Easter, full of enthusiasm, full of joy because your spiritual life's in pretty good nick. The evidence of the risen Christ is there and a number of fronts, things are going pretty well and even when they're not going well you sense his strength, you sense his power in your life, you've come running to Easter, we've not got all the answers, we still have our moments of doubt, but he is showing up and we're involving ourselves in this time of celebration with great enthusiasm. But friends I know there are others of you, because I know this church well pastrally, there are others of you who cannot really identify with the faith and the fervor that this day is expressing. Yours is a very different approach to Easter, you're more easily inclined to identify with the experience of Mary Magdalene at that first Easter, you can see it's not without significance, it's not without significance, the John's Gospel records Mary Magdalene came to that first Easter while it was dark, the first verse of John chapter 20. Early on Sunday morning, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been taken away from the entrance. It's an unusual time to be going to a cemetery early in the morning, that's a very unusual time, but it's not just a chronological time, it's significant here. She arrives when it's still dark, more than that, more than that. She was in a dark place emotionally, spiritually, I'm in a really, a really dark place. We need to remind ourselves of Mary Magdalene's story, she had an amazing conversion, an amazing deliverance emotionally and spiritually when she first encountered Jesus Christ. We read about this woman in Luke's Gospel, Luke chapter 8 verse 2, this is the first reference to Mary Magdalene, listen to this, the 12 disciples went with Jesus and so did some women who'd been healed of evil spirits and diseases, Mary, who was called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had been driven out. Joanna, whose husband, chooser, was an officer at Herod's court and Susanna in a few more details. So here's Mary Magdalene and she's a woman from whom seven demons have been cast out. Now friends, I've got to tell you, I'm not all that experienced with demon possession. I've had a little bit of distant exposure to that phenomenon but anybody who's caught up in that tragic reality would have had a life that would have just been so dismal and so sad. And so she's encountered Jesus Christ and a whole life's been totally changed, totally transformed. So can you imagine how troubled and turbulent and how so many memories would have been coming back, none of us can even begin to imagine what it would have been like for her to stand near the cross, seeing her Lord and Savior dying, a slow, agonizing death. I don't think any of us can even begin to imagine what that might have been like. Can I remind you of the reference in Matthew chapter 27 verses 55 and 56, there were many women. This is the crucifixion. There were many women there looking on from a distance and they'd followed Jesus from Galilean. They'd helped him. Among them were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joseph and the wife of Zebedee. We talk today about post-traumatic syndrome. We offer counseling to policemen and firemen and ambulance officers who see terrible things. Well, like Mary had no access to any of those sort of options. She and the others just had to dig deep and cope with it in the best way they could. It would have been a shockingly traumatic experience. What were the options open? Well going home, going to bed, pulling the covers up for a week or two would have been one option in the midst of her depression, going to a distant land, visiting a friend or relative, getting right away from the scene just to give some peace, some sort of comfort that might have been another option, anything that deadened the pain and eased the emotional upheaval. What a tragic turbulent time for Mary Magdalene. Let's face it. You put yourself in her situation. Let's face it. You'd be tempted to give up, wouldn't you? I mean, you'd be tempted to give up, to forget all about changing the world, bringing in the kingdom, letting your light shine. All the other things that Jesus had said, you'd be saying, "Well, look where all that's goddess." We saw him die. It's all over. But here's the thing. What actually happens is truly amazing. It defies imagination. Mary returns to the tomb. I don't know if you ever thought about this, friends, but I mean, she goes back under cover of darkness. She returns to the tomb despite her extreme grief and a probable fear. She goes to the place where she knows Jesus is. She knows he's dead or believes him to be dead. As useless as it may have seemed, she needed to be where Jesus was to give us some comfort in the darkness, in her darkness. Now in doing so, Mary shows us what faithfulness in the darkness can be like. She sets a new benchmark of what faithfulness in the darkness can look like. She knows what's possible. She shows us what's possible even when we're at a low ebb spiritually, when our prayers seem to bounce off the ceiling, when reading the Bible is just a matter of looking at words on a page like reading the phone book, when coming to church and going to connect group is so hard because you're doing it so tough and you feel like such a hypocrite. Under these circumstances, in the true spirit of Mary Magdalene, we can still go to the place we know Jesus is. We can still pray. We can still keep reading the Bible. We can still keep hanging out with our Christian friends in the belief that one day it's going to be different. I know some of you, many of you have proved this because you've kept going even in those tough times. And then you've discovered that God has been at work in the darkness after all. You've discovered that. I mean Mary went to the cemetery expecting to find Jesus in the tomb. She finds the stones being rolled away. Wow. She goes expecting to be alone and afraid. She finds there are two angels there. Thank God for the angels. He sends to us when we least expect them. If you had that sort of moment in your life, I know many of you have. At the time when the other disciples of cut and run, Mary presses on by faith in the darkness and something beautiful happens. You see, friends, Mary's willingness to hang in. That's what she did. Her willingness to hang in results in several faith-building outcomes. These are outcomes that are designed to restore Mary's faith and confidence in her Lord. They begin to happen for her here in the cemetery. Now, I want to say this morning, if you're at a point where your spiritual life needs a little bit of restoration work, if so far in this year or even before this year, life's been pretty tough for you and you've been traveling a little bit in spiritual darkness, and that's all of us at some point or other. And I want you to listen up really carefully because we're going to learn much in these closing moments from the experience of Mary and what happened to her. You see, first of all, she receives a gentle spiritual wake-up call. That's the first thing that happens. She receives a gentle spiritual wake-up call. Wake-up calls come in many different forms. Spiritual wake-up calls. Might be something you read in the Bible, just a little verse that sort of pops out at you in a fresh way. Maybe you're here on the radio or on the television, something a Christian friend says, something it said in a sermon or something you see on the stage in what we've experienced this morning. A little spiritual wake-up calls. I believe in Mary's case. I believe the spiritual wake-up call came in the form of a question, and it's the question asked by the guy whom she thought was the gardener, turned out to be Jesus. The question was this, "Woman, why are you crying?" Now, friends, you think about it. That would have been a startling question. I mean, she's in a cemetery for goodness' sake. That's where people do cry, and it's okay to cry. That's the place that the cemetery more than any other place in our world is the place where we associate death and grief and loss. Why are you crying? It's an outrageous question. It's actually an offensive question. You ask somebody in a cemetery. It's an outrageous question, but wait a minute, wait a minute. It's being asked by somebody who knows more than what Mary does. It's being asked by one who knows that no amount of pain, no amount of defeat, can fully crush the person who can summon even a little bit of faith. It's being asked by someone who healed the sick, who calmed the storm, who forgave the guilty, who comforted the lonely, who set free the captives. It's being asked by a very special person, "Why are you crying?" It's another way of saying, "Never give up hope. Never ever give up hope, even in the darkest moments of life." This is Resurrection Power at its best, and we're seeing it right here in this encounter between Mary and the risen Christ. It was the spiritual wake-up call. This troubled, almost defeated girl needed. But more was to come. Jesus calls her by name. It's one of the shortest verses in the Bible. Here it is. John chapter 20, verse 16, "Jesus said to her Mary," there's five words, "Friends, I'm so glad Christianity is a personal faith." It's a very, very personal faith. To Jesus Christ, you and I are not just sort of faceless entities in a vast sea of people. He knows you. He knows me intimately, personally. That's the kind of relationship we have. He knows us by name. And we only have to look at His ministry in the Gospels to get irrefutable proof that that's how Jesus operated and still operates today. When the crowd was surging like the stage door to Justin Bieber concert, he turned and said, "Who touched me?" And the Bible says, "What? Who touched? Look at the crowd, Lord. They're just pressing out on you. It's crazy to go in nuts." He said, "No, no, no. Somebody's touched me here." I felt something, some power. It's a woman who needed a special ministry from Jesus, one to one. He got it. He stopped to talk to blind Bartimaeus. Great story. Bartimaeus is sort of like the embarrassing character of Jericho. Having to get Bartimaeus out of the way when Jesus visits our town, he always kind of puts on the scene, shouts a little crazy. We try to help him, but they sort of keep him out of the way, and sure enough, right on cue, "Jesus, son of David." He starts waving his arms around, and the officials are sort of like, "Don't worry about him, Lord." He says, "Hey, I want to talk to him. I don't have a word to that man. I think I can help him." He went to the home of Zacchaeus, stood right at the base of a tree, "You, down here. I'm going to have lunch with you." Blew the crowd away. He said, "Let the children come to me." He didn't say, "Bring them to the disciples," and they'll take them out of Christ. He said, "Let the disciples come to me. I want to meet these little children," because they're precious. He called his disciples into ministry one by one, personally, individually. He didn't put an ad in the employment section of the Nazareth news. It was like, individually, one-on-one, Matthew, come, Peter, come. Well, friends, in ministry of Jesus to you and to me through the Holy Spirit, it's intensely personal. Mary, that's the word. It's expressed beautifully in the words of Paul in Romans 8, 26. If you're a guest here this morning, this is a verse you'll hear a lot from this platform while I'm the minister here because it comes from my favorite chapter, and it's my favorite verse in the chapter. And I get to read it a lot. And it fits beautifully today. Here it is. Romans 8, verse 26, this is the intimacy we enjoy. In the same way, the Spirit also comes to help us weak as we are. For we do not know how we ought to pray. You can relate to that. The Spirit Himself pleads with God for us in size that words cannot express. Now, friends, that says to me, our Lord's knowledge of us is so intimate that He starts interceding, petitioning the Father even before we've had a chance to process our thoughts, let alone formulate any words for a prayer. The human equivalent is when you know someone so well, like your closest friend, your husband, your wife, you know them so well that you know what they're thinking and feeling even before they express it. You know, some of you've got that, darling, I've got a sense that you're really troubled at this time. Don't you know that? They love it. It doesn't work every time you need many years of marriage to be able to put that sort of, but you know, that's at the human level, but at the level of our relationship with Jesus, that's how it is. What an incredible point of reassurance for the Christian. He knows us by name, but there's one other component of the reward that was waiting Mary. He's given a specific assignment. Jesus knows all about the undisputed link between spiritual health and action. And there is a link. It's undisputed between spiritual health and action, service. Almost every one of His encounters with people in the ministry of Jesus, they nearly always involve action, nearly always. To the ten lepers, He said, go and show yourselves to the priests. Get out there. Take some action. Don't hurt you at the well. Go call your husband. There was a specific reason for that. To the man of the Bethesda Pool, take up your mat and walk to the woman caught in adultery. Go and sin no more. In every case, a specific call to action. And in Mary's case, verse 17 of John chapter 20, Jesus told her, "Go to my brothers and tell them that I am returning to Him who is my father and their father, my God and their God. Tell them I'm alive. Tell them I've broken the chains of death." That was Mary's assignment. And friends, that's our assignment today to just get the word out there so the way we live and when opportunity is given the way we speak, the Jesus is alive. You think about the ways that God could have announced the resurrection of Jesus. I mean, from a marketing point of view, there were so many other options. Jesus coming down in a big sort of cloud of light on market day in Jerusalem, thousands of people. Fantastic. Just coming down and just like lighting up the heavens and people going, "Wow. Sign me up right here and now." That's fantastic. I can believe in that. The God and his wisdom chose to reveal himself to a young woman in darkness, to show her the difference that can take place when we move from darkness to resurrection light. He chose that mode over the big grand entrance. And it takes my mind to 1 Peter, 1 Peter chapter 2 verse 9, but you, this is all of us, you are a chosen race, the king's priests, the holy nation, God's own people, chosen to proclaim, just like Mary was, the wonderful acts of God who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Some of you can say amen to that this morning, we all can. Call from darkness to light just like Mary Magdalene. That's the power of resurrection. Share it. Declare it. There's nothing like it. It's very impressed, shall we?