Inland Empire: Riverside
Gospel Unresolved? - Audio
(upbeat music) All right, it's great to have you guys here. The week before Thanksgiving. We're getting excited for some nice, good Thanksgiving food. I am anyway, and hopefully we'll get to have a special time with family and friends and it's great to be together. It's good to be reminded to be grateful. We have a lot to be grateful for. And today we're gonna be finishing out the book of Mark in chapter 16, so you could even be turning over there if you would like, and if you're visiting with us, we've been going through this probably for about six months. I lost track, but so some of you might be really excited that we're finishing. Mark, maybe we'll move on to something else. No, I'm just kidding, but so we're gonna be closing it out, the title is Gospel Unresolved, which we're gonna talk about in a minute. But I wanted to mention, this past Wednesday, we had a really cool time here. We had a Thanksgiving midweek with Thanksgiving, gratitude, and soup, all three of those. And it was really special to be together, and thank you to those of you who brought soups. We had 10 different soup options. So I took like a little bowl of every one of them. You know, you didn't wanna miss out. You don't wanna miss out. And we had some special times. We even had doggy bags. You could take the soup home. And so got to take a few home, you know, and that was pretty cool. And then some time of sharing, which was really special, about 15 minutes of people just kind of sharing what God has done in their lives this year, and just what you're grateful for. And that was really amazing. Jason even shared something that that was even a command in the Old Testament to offer a gift of Thanksgiving. It was the only, one of the only gifts that was just voluntary, right? So you could just do it whenever you wanted, and the way to experience that gift was to share the meal with everyone around you, with all your friends. So it was kind of like Thanksgiving in the Bible that you can think about all the great things that we have this year as we get together. And so this, next month we're gonna have a couple of those mid-weeks together. And the first one on December 4th, I just wanna tell you what they are, 'cause a lot of times people don't know what they are, and it might not be in your normal schedule to come on Wednesdays. But on the first one on December 4th, we're gonna share time together. We're gonna pray, and we're gonna talk about our dreams for next year. And not just personal dreams, but just like, what does God put on our heart as a church? Because we believe that everyone in here that knows Jesus has the Holy Spirit, right? So it's not just the leader of the church that comes up with ideas, because the Holy Spirit's not just in me, it's in all of us. And so we wanted to get a time just to get together and dream so far, even in the last couple of months, one of our sisters, Sandra, came up with the idea of prayer and the spirit. That at our services, we can have people that can pray with people just like right here, as you come. You can go to the back and have prayers for yourself, for healing, for your family, for anything that's troubling you and your life. And it's amazing just how God is working there. And I was sharing, I had that done once. It says nothing to do with the sermon, but I went to another church, and I went to a service, and I went to the back. I said, "If you want prayer, go to the back." I was like, "Hey, let's try it out." I'm always the one that's talking. So let me just be a part of it. So I went back, and there was about a 25-year-old girl that prayed over me, nothing against 25-year-olds. But it was just kind of an interesting thing, and it was a really special moment. And she prayed for us as a church. We were going through a transition at the time, and I said our church was going through a transition, and she prayed for me, and she put her hand on my shoulder here. And I was like, "Wow, this is amazing. We got to do this." So it was cool, when Sandra came up with the idea, it brought back that memory, like, "Man, that's such a special thing that we don't want people to leave here unresolved." Or like, "Hey, they need prayers, and they don't get them, right?" And so we have that chance. So that was pretty awesome. And then another idea, I'm just throwing them out, so you can think about it, is the good neighbor ministry to have people who live in the neighborhood of the church here to be a part of a ministry where we can meet needs in this general area. And one of the things that happened as we were doing our masters here a couple years ago, is we went around and we did survey in the neighborhood. Number one, do you know, have you ever heard of the Desert Cities Church of Christ? We interviewed like 20, 30 people in this area. I guess how many people have heard of the Desert Cities Church of Christ? None. I was like, "Wow, we've been here for 10 years, and nobody even knows who we are." A couple of people knew about St. John's, and I'm like, "That's because we haven't really made it a focus to be good neighbors, right?" You hit what you don't focus on, right? I forgot whatever that saying was you. You don't hit what you don't focus on. You don't make a basket, you don't choose. I don't know, something, one of those things, right? So now we want to focus on that, and just how can we be good neighbors? And the other question that we asked everybody is, what is the biggest need in this area? And every, probably 90% of the people said, there's a big homelessness issue. In this area right here around the church, and it was a surprise. And so I'm sure as we progress with the good neighbor ministry, that they might take us in different directions to really meet needs, and not just that we want to be known in the area, but we want to love people around us. And so anyway, so you may have ideas about men's ministry, women's ministry, families, parenting, marriages, singles, including other churches, whatever, but bring them all to this midweek on December the 4th, and we'll pray and see what we can do, and where the spirit leads us. And then on December 18th, we're gonna have a carols and cookies midweek across the street at Washington Street Apartments, where we're gonna bring cookies to share, and seeing carols and have a holiday festive time with our neighbors across the street. So those are some of our midweeks that are coming up. I would encourage you to make some plans for that on a Wednesday at seven o'clock. The next one starts on December 4th. Okay, so before we get into being on the gospel unresolved, there was a miracle that happened recently that I wanted to share with you. It's kind of a funny one, but my wife loves her, she loves me and her son so much that she was willing to do anything that we were into. And so she ended up at a campfire duck hunting, duck hunting with the boys, right? So you can't really see it there, but she is wearing full camouflage gear, right? She went out, she looked like the, she had so much gear on, she was, it was like 40 degrees, right? And the next day, it was like 40 degrees, she got up at four in the morning with us, hoofed out to the play, sat froze herself to death practically, and sat within two feet of a dead duck most of the time. (audience laughs) I'm sorry if that, you know, anyway. But, so we had to move it, it was next to her, but we just, we put it behind her, right? So she didn't have to, you know, feel sorry for the duck the whole time. But, and not only did she do it, but she didn't say that she would never do it again, right? So we're thinking maybe every year or two, it could be an event where she goes out there with us. And it is a special place for us because that's kind of where my son came to faith and just seeing God out in nature and everything. So it is a really special place for our family, I make fun of it here, but it was a really special time. So, way to go Danielle, way to go. (audience applauds) And you can let me know if there's any other takers in here that wanna come, experience that. And last week we, midweek we did have Ezra Kim show up. There he is, I thought he might be here today. And last week we, he was born a few months ago, we had a few babies that were born, he was one of them. And then last week, they didn't send me a picture or tell me they were coming, but Amory and Jessica showed up with Eden. And so there they are. And she's not here today, but she wasn't here last week. So, I'm sorry, we didn't get to, hopefully you got this here. Anyways, let's have a prayer and let's start here. Father, we're just, just thank you for all the blessings around us, thank you for babies, thank you for family. Thank you for our time and your word in the Book of Mark here this year. Pray that it can really stir us. To be closer to you, to follow Jesus more closely, to see all that you're doing around us. I pray in the next few minutes that you open up our hearts that we can be touched by your word, be touched by your spirit, God, we love you. We pray in Jesus' name, amen. All right, so let's start reading Mark 16. I'm gonna read one through eight. When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the Mother of James and Phelomi, bought spices so they might go to anoint Jesus' body. Very early on the first day of the week, just after sunrise, they were on their way to the tomb and asked each other who will roll away the stone at the entrance to the tomb. But when they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had been rolled away. As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side, and they were alarmed. "Don't be alarmed," he said. "You are looking for Jesus, the Nazarene, who was crucified. He is risen. He is not here, amen." See the place where they laid him. But go tell his disciples and Peter, he is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him just as he told you. Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone because they were afraid. And so you might be wondering, why is this called the gospel unresolved? Well, verse eight pretty much sums it up, that they heard about Jesus raising from the dead, saw the empty tomb, and no, they didn't go out and tell everyone at first. It says that they went away, trembling and bewildered and didn't tell a soul because they were afraid. And that's where the gospel ends. We're gonna talk about the rest here in a minute, but it's amazing. It's like going to a movie, anybody seen Maverick? Okay, it's like going to Maverick and he gets shot down in a dogfight and he crashes. And then the movie ends, right? There's no glory, there's no tromps and through the snow, there's no one liners, goose doesn't show up, there's nothing, and it's just kind of left unresolved. And so if that's how the movie ended, guess how many people would have liked that movie? (audience laughs) None, right? It'd have been like, don't go see it, the ending's terrible. But it kind of stirs you up, it kind of makes you upset, aggravated, and feeling like, man, that's not enough. And that is exactly why people feel that Mark ended the gospel that way because it was to help people feel and see that not everything gets resolved. You can imagine the people that first read this book in about 50 A.D., their lives were very unresolved. Their temple was destroyed, their savior was killed and raised, Amen, for that. But their lives were in turmoil, they were being crucified, they were being taken to court, their families were turning on them, their families were turning on Christians because of their faith in Jesus. And so it wasn't a real happy time. And in that sense, it wasn't like, oh man, everything's good, let's just hang out. And no, it was a rough time. It was a time of turmoil. And it made me just think about our world today. There's a lot of instability, right? There's things that are not resolved. There's wars, there's trouble. And even in our own lives, we have unresolved relationships, right? And when, it's one of those things we don't really like to think about, right? It's like, if you have an unresolved relationship, you just put it back here. So you don't see it, you don't think about it. Just try to keep it out of my view 'cause I don't wanna deal with that. But God has a way of bringing it to the forefront that we have to acknowledge what's there. We have worries that get unresolved. Yeah, we're worried about things. Is this gonna happen? Is this gonna work out? Is everything gonna financially? We heard about that earlier. I wish that everything outside of our control could be inside of our control, right? Wouldn't that be great? We can control everything and then we wouldn't have to worry because it would all be up to us unless we messed it up. And anyway, that's another story altogether. Even ending the year can be troubling because you start thinking like, wow, did we do enough? Did my business do enough? Did we progress? Are we going in the right direction? Even there, it's good to be reminded that Jesus is who resolves our issues, right? That he brings resolution, he brings healing, he brings solutions to all of those problems that we brought in here with us. Even the ones that we don't wanna look at, even the ones that we don't talk about, he's got a solution and at the time that they were reading this too, Jesus already rose from the dead. The gospel is already being spread all over the world. People were doing miracles. I mean, there was all kinds of stuff, but sometimes God wants to aggravate us to inspire us and to help us turn to him. And I think that's part of what this book may have done. In the beginning here, when it talks about, I'm just gonna go through little by little here. So the women were introduced in the chapter before as his disciples, some of them followed him from Galilee, all the way to Jerusalem and they met his needs and were taken care of him. And so here they are after the crucifixion, they're going to the tomb to take care of them, to do what they could, right? They sacrificed their money. They bought all these spices. They wanna go take care of his needs still. And you probably have heard this before, but they were talking about this large stone. How are we gonna get this moved? And who's gonna help us? And we're not gonna be able to be our disciple. We're not gonna be able to do our job to love Jesus unless this is gone. And they're so thinking about that that they forgot everything else that he said. They forgot the promises of resurrection. They forgot the third day thing. They didn't even think about that. Their imagination was so limited by their pain and by this death of Jesus and by their lack of spiritual insight. Even the best, this was the best of the best, right? They were the only ones that were there. Everyone else had fled and were at a distance and they're so worried about the stone and they finally get to the tomb and the stone's already gone. Isn't that us, right? We worry so much about everything and God just takes it away in a second. We're like, why did I spend all that? Why did I waste all that time? I'm worried about something that I can't even control anyways and God just takes care of it and takes the stone away on his own there. And yet maybe today we're coming in and we're not thinking about heavenly things. We're not thinking about God's things. We're thinking about our things and we're thinking about things we can see and touch and feel and God's like, no, you got to get past that. Yeah, you got to deal with that stuff but you got to get, you got to increase your imagination. To even think about, what does God want from me? What is he trying to do in my life? What is he doing in my days? You know, when I go out, what does God want from me and how is he leading us and how can he meet needs through us? You know, when our imagination is just, when we're stressed, we're not very good followers of Christ. Those are the people that pass by the Samaritans, right? They're stressed, they don't have enough time to take care of things. Even this holiday season, if we can go through it stressed and we could miss gratitude, we can miss Jesus, we can miss the whole point. Ever done that before in holidays, you get to the January and you're like, I messed it up, right? I forgot Jesus in the holidays. This is our time to get ourselves straight so that we see him during this time, amen? And then they come in and they see this young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side and they're freaking out. Probably contrasting this young man here with the young man who was running away in the garden of disgrace. He's sitting on the right hand of the tomb. Doesn't really say, but it's probably helping us to remember that Jesus is sitting at the right hand of the Father, right? That he's overcome death, that he won. He's the son of man who everyone's gonna bow down to like he confessed a few chapters earlier. Every language will worship him, every people's. It's good to know that he is in charge. We're not in charge, but he is. That he's overcome even death. That that's where we're headed. That's our goal, that's our purpose, that is our direction. He was crucified and they actually, he's reminding them, he says, yeah, he was crucified, but he was raised. Jesus was actually known in the first century as the crucified one, even though he rose, that's how they referred to him, right? They tried to stop him, but they couldn't, right? He took our sins on himself. He showed his love, he was the crucified one who was raised. See, he's not here. You know, it's amazing that you could look in and not see it, right? They looked in, he's like, he's not here, look right here, go right in. They went in and they looked and he wasn't there, but they didn't understand. It didn't change them. So many of us, we've seen miracles, but it doesn't change us. Or it changes us then, but it doesn't change us now, right? It's like worked for a little while. Ever had that happen? Then you go right back to how you were before. Then you're talking about stones and who's gonna roll the way stones again? See the place where they laid them, they didn't see. We've been going through this whole book. The idea was to help us see, right? To help us pay attention, to help us not miss Jesus right in front of us. And here he says, go tell us disciples and Peter that you will see him in Galilee. That even though everyone abandoned and the best of the disciples were at a distance and still didn't see, Jesus was still faithful. It reminds me of that passage in 1 John, where it says, he is faithful even when we're not. Amen for that, right? His promises will be fulfilled even when we fall short. I shouldn't say even when we fall short, it's when we fall short, his promises will be fulfilled. And that's encouragement for all of us. 'Cause there's times when we just don't see. We don't see it till afterwards and we look back and we're like, oh my gosh. God got me through it. I didn't believe it at the time, but he got me through, amen? And then we get to the most troubling verse of all that just ends with people leaving the last word of the book being afraid. Like I said, terrible ending, unbeliefing. What does God want us to see? I'm sure there's a lot of things, but like I mentioned, that he's faithful even when they weren't. That God is faithful to us even, we might've had the worst year of our lives. God still loves you and he still believes in you. And you're still here, you still have a chance and you have another year to look forward to. Not everybody does. You know, they were expecting Jesus to be something different. So when he died, they died too. Their hopes and dreams died 'cause they weren't expecting, they wanted him to rise up and take over and they couldn't accept that he wasn't gonna do that, that he wasn't whatever they thought. Sometimes we think Jesus, I'm not even touching anything, but I'm beeping and I'm, we think Jesus is gonna do a certain thing for us. Let me try this, we put this up here. We think Jesus is gonna do a certain thing for us and when he doesn't, we're upset. Wait a second, you're supposed to do this. Everything's supposed to go this way or that way and he's like, well, where does it say that? I'm supposed to get rich. I'm supposed to have a comfortable life. I'm supposed to, well, I didn't have any of those things. Why would we expect that? Because we're not, that's what those around us might expect, but Jesus was trying to pave the way for them to take up their cross. He was trying to pave the way for them to be humble and trust God. He was trying to pave the way for his kingdom that came through death and resurrection. Sometimes we want Jesus to come and make us popular to make us respected as Christians and everyone will be like, just like the old days when it's like, oh, you're a Christian, you're a good person, that's amazing. No, that might not happen. Yeah, some people see it. Wouldn't that be amazing if they would just follow you around and come up to your family and go, man, I didn't watching you and I am so inspired by how Jesus has just been a part of your family and just by your faith and anybody ever have that happen? No, that doesn't happen. You know, what we want it to happen, we want to be approved, we want to make all the laws in the whole world follow the Bible. Yeah, good luck with that. Jesus didn't change one law. Actually, the lie he changed was instead of go one mile, go two miles, that's the one he changed. He made it worse to make it better. You know, and now I'm going to go through and read the rest of the chapter here, the alternate endings, if you're thinking in movie terms, it would be after the credits starting in what would have been verse nine, everybody agrees that it ended at verse eight anyway, in case you're wondering, you ever want, this is going to solve some mysteries right here, right, 'cause I thought about this one. Why are you, okay, if it's in there, it should be in there and why if it's in there, you say it's not supposed to be in there, right, it was only in some manuscripts and not in others and you're like, well, what's the conspiracy, right, what do we miss, what's the mystery, okay, we're going to clear that up today, it's going to be very exciting for you, I'm sure. It says when Jesus rose early on the first day of the week, he appeared first at Mary Magdalene out of whom he had driven seven demons. She went and told those who had been with him and who were mourning and weeping. When they had heard that Jesus was alive and that she had seen and they did not believe it. Afterward, Jesus appeared on a different, in a different form to two of them while they were walking in the country. Many of you know that as the road to Emmaus. These returned and reported to the rest, but they did not believe them either. Later, Jesus appeared to the 11 as they were eating. He rebuked them for their lack of faith and their stubborn refusal to believe those who had seen him after he had risen. He said to them, "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation. Whoever believes in his baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. And these signs will accompany those who believe. In my name, they will drive out demons, they will speak in new tongues, they will pick up snakes with their hands, and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all. They will place their hands on sick people and they will get well. After the Lord had spoken to them, he was taken up into heaven and he sat at the right hand of God. Then the disciples went out and preached everywhere and the Lord worked with them and confirmed his word with by signs that accompanied it. So, that's a much better ending, right? It closes it all up and they went to the end of the world and they were like invincible with the spirit and all these things. It wasn't the original ending, but it is no less true, right? That they did go to the end of the world. Jesus did appear to Mary Magdalene. She did go tell everybody. They didn't believe he appeared to the other guys on the way to the road to Emmaus. He rebuked them for their lack of faith and he did say go out into all the world and everything else here, just because it wasn't in the original letter, doesn't mean it wasn't true. But what it was when they first read it, everything was in turmoil and it was written like that. One to 200 years later, things were not in turmoil. They had already went to the ends of the earth. They had already preached the gospel, all these things had happened and so that they were in a very different place and so they added this ending, which seemed to make sense, right? Because if you're reading it and everything's all right, wait, we already went to the ends of the earth. It just makes sense. They just filled in a little bit more details after the story was written. And so that's why it's not included 'cause it wasn't in the original ones 'cause it didn't make sense to them because they hadn't gone to the ends of the earth yet, but later on they did and so it made sense and everything was all resolved and that's why they included it. They didn't change the Bible. They just filled in the rest after the fact. So now we can be resolved. Whenever we read that and we are all worried about it, we can feel better and that's how God works. He is one to 200 years ahead of us at least. All those things that we're worried about, that we're wondering if they're gonna get resolved, they're gonna get resolved. He already knows how it's all gonna happen, right? We're left in this kind of limbo. Like I wonder if it's all gonna work out and he's like, yeah, it's all gonna work out, right? If it doesn't work out in this life, it's gonna all work out in the next life. And so he is, even then, he's ahead of us and it builds my faith. That hey, when this was written, people had no idea what was gonna happen and look what happened. They went to the ends of the earth. Everything worked out. And so I'll read the last alternate ending in verse nine here. I think it's at the bottom of your Bible somewhere. It says then they quickly reported all those instructions to those around Peter. After this, Jesus himself also sent out through them from the east to the west, the sacred and imperishable proclamation of eternal salvation. Same idea. They went to the end of the earth with this amazing proclamation. Everything was resolved. But today, as we take communion and today, as we take communion, Jesus is on the throne. He's gone before us. He's given us the spirit to help us to live our lives for him. My challenge for all of us is to think about the ending of these women running away and think about how we can end it in a better way. They didn't speak, how can we speak? They were terrified, how can we be courageous? They were scared for themselves. How can we deny ourselves? How can we take up our cross? And let's continue to live out this life of Christ today. As we take communion, we're in a world that's still unresolved. Full of war and hunger and homelessness, danger, issues in relationships with family, uncertainty with jobs, our future, darkness and light. We're in a world with hate and love, pride and humility, power and sacrifice. Some places the name of Jesus is rejected and you can still be killed. Some places it's honored. Years ending and years beginning, but we know that with Christ, everything will be resolved and has been resolved through his blood. As we pray for our communion, I'm gonna read a prayer, a Thanksgiving prayer. I forgot to show you all that. As we take our communion and imagine this meal that Jesus gave with the blood of his covenant which he said is poured out for many. He knows the problems that need to be solved. He starts by solving our problem of sin and guilt, shame, remorse. He gives us freedom. He gives us true love. He gives us the spirit that can pour through us to this world that needs it. He says I will not drink it again until I drink it anew in the kingdom of God. Even as he took communion with his disciples, he didn't see these earthly problems. He was already looking way past that big heavy stone. He was looking already to the kingdom of God. I'm gonna start by praying a prayer by Abigail Van Buren which is a Thanksgiving prayer and then we're gonna pray for our communion. Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for food and remember the hungry. We thank you for health and remember the sick. We thank you for friends and remember the friendless. We thank you for freedom and remember the enslaved. May these remembrances stir us to service that your gifts to us may be used for others. God, thank you that we come to you to give you our burdens, those things that are troubling our souls, those relationships and things about this world and the darkness that's around us that bothers us and keeps us up at night and causes us to suffer here. We bring those to you, God, knowing that you will resolve them in this life or the next God. I pray for all of us here that we can be grateful people, that we can live our life of service to you and to others around us, that somehow you can use us, our brokenness to give love to others. Father, thank you for Jesus, thank you for His body and His blood that even as He shared this meal with His disciples that He could see beyond the pain and troubles that were ahead. God, as we take our meal today, let this bread and this juice represent your body and blood, help us to see past our struggles and to see beyond whatever we came in with to be able to see you, God. We love you, we pray in Jesus' name, amen.
Inland Empire Church of Christ