Those of you who have been with us,
with me, on former occasions of this nature,
will recall that I like to take a
series, it seems to build up like a
mighty stream, enhances as the river flows.
I was thinking this morning how that the
first series was on prayer, some of you
may remember.
Then there was a series on Israel coming
out of Egypt and entering the Promised Land,
taken as the great type of the Christian
life, the Christian entering the Promised Land of
a life of union and victory with Christ.
Then there was a series on victorious Christian
living.
Some of you may remember.
We said it was the normal thing, the
biblical standard.
I do not recall all the series, but
last year it was a series on Romans,
Romans 5, 6, 7, and 8.
Now this year the resurrection is upon my
heart.
I'm hoping to enter in with you into
the contemplation.
Oh, may the Holy Spirit draw aside the
veil and make it very real.
It is his mission to take of the
things of Christ and reveal them to hearts.
These seem very familiar to you all, but
I'm hoping that they may live before us
in a new way and that there may
be practical applications to the Christian life as
we go along.
These indescribably beautiful scenes from the
resurrection.
One thing that's upon my heart is this
fact that so many good evangelical Christians, in
actual practice, if not in theory, really have
a dead Christ.
A young man down in Mexico who does
Christian work among students in the university was
telling us of how he visited a museum
there in Mexico City, and he saw the
sacred art scenes from the life of the
Savior and of saints.
And as he looked about, he saw hundreds
of works of art, and finally, greatly dismayed,
he turned to the keeper and said, but
isn't there one work here on the resurrection?
No, he said, there is not.
Romanism has, as you all know, a dead
Christ.
But oh, may it be that in our
own Christian experience, we who believe in the
resurrection may come through these studies into a
fuller realization of the presence of the risen
Christ by his Spirit in our hearts and
in the life of the Church.
We're going to begin with the women at
the grave.
Yes, there are variations.
As you read from the closing chapters, St.
Matthew on the resurrection, Mark, Luke, John, there
are variations.
I think it's Luke who says, they, the
women, having spoken of the women who afar
beheld what took place when Joseph of
Arimathea and Nicodemus took the body from the
cross, wrapping the body in linen sheets, taking
the body to that freshly hewn
grave.
They.
And then there's one.
I may make some mistakes about this.
I've been studying it, but I'm not going
to take time to leaf my Bible too
much.
It may extend unduly the study.
It may be Mark who speaks of two
of the women, Mary, Magdalene, then Mary, is
it?
Perhaps we'd better turn here to Mark and
make sure of this.
Chapter 16.
Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James.
No, three.
And Salome, when the Sabbath was passed, they
had bought sweet spices that they might come
and anoint him.
It seems they weren't satisfied with what the
men had done.
You know, this duty, this lovely ceremony, this
duty was something for this wealthy senator.
These wealthy senators, something altogether outside their
can.
It may not have been done just properly.
And so the women come with spices to
anoint the body.
Now, John singles out one.
He only speaks of Mary Magdalene coming to
the grave.
There are those who feel that we have
in this fact, and others of a similar
nature in the scenes of the resurrection, these
variations a reason for doubt.
They speak of them as discrepancies.
We, on the other hand, realize that these,
I shall not call them discrepancies, variations, are
rather factors that enhance the validity of the
evidence for the reason that we are told.
I was speaking with some students up in
California, Southern California University the other day, and
they were telling me about that great legal
mind.
They said the greatest legal mind of America.
Sealeaf, I think was the name, who wrote
a book on evidences, the four laws of
evidence.
What is really evidence valid?
And the students told me that there were
some young man, Christian, who challenged their professor
very well.
These are the laws of evidence.
Have you ever applied them to sacred history
as we have it in the New Testament
to the Lord Jesus?
Why, no, he said, I haven't.
Will you do that?
And they said the result was he came
to these two conclusions.
He endured Jesus was the greatest fraud of
history, the greatest imposter, or he was God.
And then he said, but he couldn't have
been the greatest imposter because out of his
person and his teaching have come the greatest
things of our culture, of our life.
Ah, I have only one other alternative.
He must be God.
And then they forced him still beyond, and
the end was his conversion.
The laws of evidence.
Now, according to these laws, if those who
come bearing witness to a fact are in
perfect agreement in all the details, you can
be sure there's something wrong.
They've gotten together and agreed on every detail
in order to deceive the public.
Now, if they are agreed as to the
central fact to which they bear witness, their
being on the fringe, variations, then you have
something that is truly valid.
That's what we have here.
I was reading only yesterday that the leaders
of the great battle of Waterloo, Wellington, Lord
Wellington, Ney, that German general, Blücher, they couldn't
agree.
One said the battle began at, oh, I've
forgotten, ten.
Another said eleven-thirty.
Another said, Napoleon said, no, one o'clock.
Ah, but the battle of Waterloo was fought.
No, these variations do not disturb us in
the least.
We have here added strength, added glory
in the evidence.
They have all agreed as to the central
fact, namely that Jesus Christ the Lord arose
on the first day of the week from
the grave.
I say we're going to think first about
these women who, and here again there is
a slight variation.
We read, it was yet dark, and then
we read that it was toward dawn.
It was dawning.
Some years ago, I was at a sunrise
prayer gathering out in the village in Mexico,
and as we left the homes for the
chapel, it was dark.
And then a few moments later, I looked
out.
Why, the sun was rising.
The beams were on the horizon.
Well, both were true.
You will recall how on the way, these
women, anxious, were discussing the great
rock, the great stone that was at the
mouth of the tomb.
Morrison tells us, you know, there's a great
book out on the resurrection by an American
lawyer, Morrison, who was a doubter.
And one day, he said to himself, you're
a pretty picture.
You say you don't believe the story of
the resurrection.
You've never made a study of it.
So he decided as a lawyer, cold-blooded
fashion, to enter upon a thoroughgoing study of
the evidences of the resurrection.
And the result was like Thomas of old.
The moment came when Morrison said, My Lord
and my God.
And then he wrote that lovely book, Who
Rolled Away the Stone.
Well, this stone was worrying the women.
And when they arrived, the stone had been
rolled away.
Morrison tells us that those Jewish graves, we
know they were just caves, and that the
mouth is sort of a trough, and a
great stone could be rolled along the trough
to the mouth of the grave.
That these graves hewn out of the side
of hills, the rock, that in these graves
there was a sort of unanswered chamber.
And then at one side there being a
wall, not too high one could look over
it, and a doorway on the other side
of the wall, a slab where the body
would be laid.
Well, when the women arrived, as Matthew tells
us, a great angel, there was an earthquake,
and his countenance is lightning, that the angel
had rolled away the stone and was sitting
upon it.
A dear friend of mine remarked the other
day, Well, the stone wasn't rolled away so
that Jesus might go out.
The stone was rolled away that the women
might go in.
For the Savior's body glorified, I say for
the glorified body of the Savior, this stone
would have been no obstacle.
We know how he came and how he
went.
The apostles being behind locked doors, how he
came and how he went.
No, it was that the women might go
in.
And here again there's a slight variation that
doesn't disturb us in the least.
One of the evangelists speaks of an angel
of a young man, shining garments.
Well, the angels appeared in human form.
It seemed to be a young man.
John says two angels, one at the head
and the other at the feet where the
body of the Savior had lain.
And then as the women appear, the
angel speaks, Why seek ye the living among
the dead?
The two men, as it is here in
Luke 24, in shining garments.
He is not here, but is risen.
Remember how he spake unto you, when he
was yet in Galilee.
This is very significant.
Turning back to the Savior's word, Westcott points
out in a book of his on the
resurrection, that the appearances of Jesus our Lord
all took place not immediately, but after a
period of preparation, little remarks, incidents, that prepared
the ground.
Do you not recall his word?
Now the disciples should have recalled.
The enemy did.
Do you remember how they went to Pilate?
This imposter said.
The enemy remembered that in three days he
would arise.
Now we know what's going to happen.
His disciples will come at night and steal
the body and then give it out that
he has arisen, that he has risen.
Soldiers.
Yes, the enemy remembered.
The disciples forgot.
Do you not recall?
Now we are told in the Gospel according
to St. John, who singles out Mary Magdalene,
that she immediately hastened to the city.
These women had no difficulty at the gate
because the law was that at the Passover,
time of the Passover feast, the gate should
be open day and night.
Hastened to the city, we read, to tell
Peter.
She comes to Peter and to the other
disciple whom Jesus loved and says unto them,
They have taken away the Lord out of
the sepulcher, and we know not where they
have laid him.
Now that was a natural thought.
Ah, the enemy.
The enemy is not yet satisfied.
The body must be desecrated.
They have taken away the Lord out of
the sepulcher, and we know not where they
have laid him.
And now we have Peter and John on
that resurrection morn, running away.
Peter all out of breath.
He was older.
You know, these little details in the story
of the resurrection are so very significant because
it all dovetails perfectly.
John arrives first, of course, as we read
here, this lad, and he may still have
been a lad if, as some historians tell
us, he lived until the second century or
even if only until the close of the
first.
He must have been quite a lad.
And he arrives first.
And then another detail in keeping it all
jibes so beautifully, he looks in.
We have just said that these caves were
of such a nature that it was possible
to step into the antechamber.
He looks in, but he does not go
in.
That reverence that characterized John, Peter blustering!
Of course, he plunges right in.
And really he was not worthy.
He hadn't straightened out his accounts with the
Lord yet.
Simon Peter, following him, John went into the
sepulcher and seeth the linen clothes lie and
the napkin that was about his head not
lying with the linen clothes but wrapped together
in a place by itself.
You wonder why these details are brought out.
Ah, but they have great significance.
I lived with Jewish people in Germany after
World War I in the days of the
occupation.
And that lie, the high priest and the
keepers, you will recall the soldiers came to
tell them what had taken place.
That angel whose countenance was as lightning that
earthquake and the stone rolled away.
We read that they gave them money to
propagate a lie and that lie is still
upon the lips of Jewish people.
They told me over there in Germany, yes,
his body was stolen by the disciples who
carried it out that he had risen.
Now this detail here gives the lie to
all that.
If there had been that hasty assault at
midnight, can't you conceive of those discouraged, disheartened,
defeated disciples facing Roman soldiers and fighting it
out.
Ah, friends, how ridiculous.
Even had it been so, the presence of
the body merely, ah, would never have accounted,
would never have brought about that immeasurable transformation.
In the spirit of the disciples so overwhelmed
with discouragement and suddenly on fire the glow
of the glad tidings of the Savior's resurrection,
the linen clothes wrapped together in a place,
the napkin by itself, there was deliberation, there
was call.
Now we don't know whether the Savior himself
or these angels, but in perfect deliberation this
that we have just read came to pass.
Then went in also that other disciple which
came first to the sepulcher and he saw,
now note this, and believed.
Believed what?
What he saw?
No, that the body had been taken.
He believed.
John comes at once.
Ah, he remembers.
He believed.
For as yet they knew not the Scripture.
Oh, the prophecy in the Old Testament there
in Psalm 16 where the prophet said that
the Holy One should not know corruption.
Then the disciples went away again unto their
own home, but Mary.
Now we're coming to the heart of the
study of the morning.
You do not wonder that John leaving to
one side these other figures focuses the light
of history upon Mary.
Mary Magdalene, as Mark puts it in his
story of the resurrection out of whom the
Savior had cast seven, does it say devils
or demons?
Seven devils.
Seven demons.
There seems to be in that remark something
of the thought that oh, this one's so
unworthy out of whom he had cast seven
devils.
She is the first.
Behold the risen Christ.
Here again, friends, we come upon further evidence.
The very nature of the story here is
so contrary, so contrary to human reason.
Now, if as enemies of the Christian faith
even in our day I want to say
that, oh yes, but it's the disciples themselves
drawing upon their imaginations and then there are
those who speak of hallucinations, you know.
I recall a professor, teacher of mine up
at the university in philosophy had been a
missionary.
Can you conceive of it in China?
Teaching philosophy and talking about hallucinations of the
book of Acts.
May the Lord keep us.
No.
These folk were not hysterical, just the opposite
pole.
They were overcome with dismay, with discouragement.
They were down in the deepest depths of
sorrow and discouragement.
They were not expecting this.
The truth of the matter is that the
Savior had to reprove them for the hardness
of their hearts, unwilling the disciples to believe.
Now, this fact, the fact that it was
Mary, Mary Magdalene, you know, if they had
been just telling a story, well, they would
have had the Savior appearing to his enemies,
overwhelming them with his glory.
He didn't appear to one of them.
Oh yes, later, Saul of Tarsus, but that's
a different story.
I mean in that time, that hour of
the resurrection.
No.
And even if he had, brethren, appeared to
the high priest, appeared to the king, appeared
to enemies, it would have had no effect.
What was the result of that greatest of
his miracles when at the mouth of Lazarus's
grave he cried, Lazarus, come forth, and he
who already stank stepped out?
What was the result?
They went around the corner and said, this
man must die.
Did they believe?
It only enhanced their unbelief and their hatred
of the Lord Jesus Christ.
It would have had no effect.
No.
Only to his own.
First to Mary.
She stood without a reciprocal weeping.
And you know, I can't pass over this
fact without remarking that it's to the everlasting
glory of womanhood.
Let all the men present bow their heads
in shame.
Women.
You know, when it comes to a great
moral crisis, women have more courage than men.
The men, where were they?
They were behind closed doors because of the
fear of the Jews.
And it was these same women who stood
by the cross.
I say, had these men been drawing on
their imaginations, oh, they'd have had the Savior
first appearing to the apostolic band gathered in
stately fashion, singing a messianic song, the 16th
Psalm.
They never would have.
Oh, this was infinitely removed from their minds.
A woman out of whom he'd cast seven
devils.
The first.
Why, you know, 20 centuries have gone by
and woman hasn't yet been lifted out of
the doldrums.
You know what I mean.
Why, it's taken centuries.
For the Savior, it's Christianity that's given woman
her place.
And that day, these men, first to a
woman, the first missionary a woman.
It always breaks my heart down in Argentina
that your pastor said to me, you know,
I was on the way to the church
when he said, the women can't pray out
loud here in my church.
Oh, can't they?
Hmm.
Thank you.
But Mary stood without at the sepulcher weeping,
and as she wept, she stooped down and
looked into the sepulcher.
Well, we've just remarked on how that could
easily have been done.
The exit chamber, this wall, the doorway, the
slab.
She looked into the sepulcher and see of
two angels in white sitting, the one at
the head and the other at the feet
where the body of Jesus had lain.
And they say unto her, Woman, why weepest
thou?
She says unto them, Because they have taken
away my Lord, and I know not where
they have laid him.
And when she had thus said, she turned
herself back and saw Jesus standing and knew
not that it was Jesus still the morning
mist, no doubt her tears, her sorrow.
It was only natural that she would not
be able to clearly distinguish who the figure
was.
Jesus saith unto her, Woman, why weepest thou?
Back there in the book of Isaiah, the
25th chapter, verses 6 and 7, or is
it 9?
We are told that the Savior, upon his
appearing in his advent, would wipe away 9
and 10.
No.
8 and 9 would wipe away tears from
off all faces.
Hmm?
Woman, why weepest thou?
There seems to be something vastly, that goes
vastly beyond the mere circumstance in this question.
Does it not, friends, why weepest thou?
You know, our, in large measure, friends, our
sorrows, our secret tears, our fears, our doubts,
our unbelief, our anxiety over circumstances, it's just
not in keeping with a Christian life, with
the fact that the risen Christ is ever
with his own.
Why weepest thou?
Haven't you yet rolled that burden over on
your risen Savior?
Do you still worry about, well, friends, why
go into detail?
I was reading this morning, my dear host
gave me a book last night, the story
of Mike Martin.
I knew him over in Japan.
The father of King's Gardens.
You know, up there in Seattle, that great
work, this layman.
And he tells he was a Christian.
He was going to Bible school.
He was obeying the Lord.
He'd given up his work to go to
Bible school, Bible Institute.
But he told the director, he said, well,
I still smoke cigarettes.
He said he smoked two packages a day.
Getting ready for the Lord's work.
Giving up his business.
But secretly he was still weeping over this
thing.
He just couldn't lick it.
Until finally he took it to the Lord
and he said, I can't, Lord.
Lord, he said, in that moment it was
gone.
The Lord could.
You heard about that engraving on a dear
Christian woman's tombstone.
She did what she couldn't.
No one else will attend to this sacred
body.
The fear that it might have been taken
by enemies for desecration.
I will take him away.
Jesus saith unto her, Mary.
She turned herself and said unto him, Rabboni,
which is to say, Master.
Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not.
For I am not yet ascended to my
Father.
Now I do not think that we are
to interpret this as a forbidding way on
the part of the Savior in the days
of his humiliation when he walked among men.
Well, you will recall the woman who came
to wash his feet with her tears and
to dry them with her hair, kissing his
feet.
He did not repel her.
He complained to the Pharisees, Thou gavest me
no kiss.
John rested upon his bosom.
No, I think there's something deeper here.
It was that now in this new dispensation
which was dawning, now our touch must be
different.
And it is different.
It is different.
Ah, it's deeper, more vital, more real.
We've all thought, oh, if only I could
have lived in those days and looked upon
him.
But now we have something greater.
The inborn Holy Spirit who brings the risen
Christ before his own and who brings them
into a deep oneness of spirit with their
Lord.
Now that's greater.
That's greater.
Touch me not.
I am not yet ascended to my Father,
but go to my brethren and say unto
them, I ascend unto my Father and your
Father and to my God and your God.
We said that it was our hope that
certain practical aspects in relation with these scenes
from the resurrection might be brought home to
our hearts.
Here is the one this morning.
I ascend unto my Father and your Father.
The Savior just brings his own right into
the same position.
Oh, I recall a period in my Christian
life I was traveling down in Chile.
I had with me William Newell's Romans verse
by verse.
In those days I was having a good
deal of difficulty with the doctrine of pure
grace.
I don't have any more.
No, I don't have any more.
And over and over there is William Newell.
Went through Romans.
He brought out the fact, digging around into
the roots of these Greek words that the
Christian stands where Jesus stands.
If the Christian enjoys the same favor, then
can it be possible that I in Christ
enjoy the same favor, favor of the Father
which the Son?
Well, has he not given us authority to
become sons of God?
Are we not co-heirs with Christ of
God?
And doesn't that Paul tell us that together
with Christ we've been raised up?
And as it is in the Wymouth translation,
enthroned together with Christ.
That's how it appears in the Wymouth version,
enthroned together with Christ.
I go.
I ascend unto my Father and your Father.
Here we have the fulfillment of that longing
of Job.
You'll recall how in the ninth chapter, finally
he cries out, oh, if there was only,
well, a daysman as a mediator.
Umpires, it is in the margin of one
version.
In the Spanish it reads, el jubilar arbitro.
If there was only one who could put
his hand on God and on man, could
perfectly represent God and perfectly represent man.
Well, you know, he'd have to be God
and he'd have to be man, so there
just isn't any hope.
Ah, yes, but hope, Job, is a journey.
If there could only be, well, it is.
That's the gospel.
He brings into perfect oneness God
and man.
I ascend unto your God and my God,
to my Father and your Father.
Oh, gracious Father, how we thank thee.
It's just, in a sense, Father, too much.
Like Job of old, we say, if it
only could be.
If there were only one who could perfectly
represent God and perfectly represent man and bring
them together.
But, Father, it's true.
It's real in how wonderful it is that
the only begotten of the Father, full of
grace and truth, should leave glory and come
into this world of woe and bring about
that reconciliation.
Father, we're so thankful that these evidences of
the Savior's resurrection, they're so real.
Father, it makes us realize that only those
who do not want to believe and who
are determined not to believe fail to see
the truth.
And so, Father, bring us more fully, we
pray, in these days, as we will be
meditating on these scenes of the resurrection.
Oh, bring us more fully, Father, into a
real participation in the power of the Redeemer's
resurrection, that we may come to that rock
which is higher than I, as the psalmist
wrote, and just take our places with the
risen, ascended Lord to reign in life by
one, even Jesus.
For we ask it in His holy name.
Amen.