Well, here we are! Today is Resurrection Sunday! Historically, this is the day that the church celebrates the resurrection of Jesus. For thousands of years, the church all over the world has set aside this day to intentionally highlight and celebrate the victory of the empty tomb of Jesus.

I absolutely love this day, and I look forward to celebrating it every year, but I am concerned this morning, with something that I will refer to as “the danger of familiarity”. The danger of familiarity is simply becoming so familiar with something that used to take your breath away that has now become like old news to you. It is like remembering how your spouse used to take your breath away when you saw them and then realizing that that awestruck sense is more like a fading memory now.

This is my concern this morning because I do not want us to approach our passage today void of any sense of awe because we have become so familiar with the story of the resurrection that it no longer affects our day-to-day lives. I am concerned that we could be in danger of studying this passage with nothing more than excitement for an annual holiday. Like children who grow bored with a shiny new toy within a week, we live with the ever-real threat of approaching the Resurrection of Jesus without any reverence, any fear or any astonishment.

The reality is this, you might be excited to celebrate this day today. But does that excitement fade in the coming days, weeks, and months ahead? What will change in your life in the aftermath of this sermon? Could it be that one of the main reasons we sometimes live our lives in a fog of mundane boredom, or in the chains of a paralyzing fear of what tomorrow may bring, or stuck in the stifling chokehold of besetting sins, is because we have lost our astonishment and awe of the work of Jesus in leaving the tomb empty some two-thousand-odd years ago?

Could it be that the very doctrine that was meant to give assurance to all of our insecurities, and hope amidst our deepest sadness, and strength when facing our most shameful weaknesses, has become nothing more than a fading forty-five-minute talk once per year, rather than the life giving, invigorating, and fortifying daily doctrine we should cling to the most? If you walk out of here today in the aftermath of our study and nothing changes in your life, then you are caught in the trap of familiarity.

I know this is a heavy way to introduce the sermon for today’s text. But I want you to remember the horror of what happened on Good Friday a few thousand years ago. I want you to feel the heaviness of the setting for the opening words of our passage today. The Resurrection was preceded a couple of days ago by the horrific crucifixion and death of Jesus. He was betrayed, denied, falsely accused, abandoned by his friends, mocked, condemned to death, beaten, spit upon, crucified for six hours, exposed shamefully in front of an audience, experienced full separation from God and then died in our place.

It should have been us, but it was him in our place. Saturday was dark, evil and horrific. But Sunday is here! The tomb is empty! Satan, Sin, and Death hold absolutely no power over us. The work of Jesus at that cross was fully ratified by the empty tomb. The King of kings and the Lord of Lords – at whose name every knee will bow, and every tongue will confess his kingship – he is alive and well; Jesus is the living King!

But here’s the thing, the apostle Paul makes it clear in 1 Corinthians 15 that if the resurrection is an old wives’ tale, then we are above all people on this earth the most deserving of pity; we should be pitied more than anyone else if we say we believe something that is not true. I would add to that, that are in danger of being the most pitiful people on the face of the planet if we say we believe something so central to our faith as the resurrection of Jesus but are not affected by it more than once per year. This is why it is important for me to warn you in this introduction to not walk out of here affected by the empty tomb. What you do in the aftermath of this sermon will be on you.

One commentator points out that humanity’s rejection or unbelief or boredom with the resurrection of Jesus is the reason that “Our great American cities are, for the most part, teeming with pools of human misery where people live out their days in a kind of ritual dance toward death with [false] hope or illusion” and he goes on to say that “In the midst of an increasingly godless world, despair grips people’s hearts everywhere. Hopelessness and meaninglessness [constantly] come crushing in on us from every side” mostly because we have never left the gloom of Good Friday and we have never turned the page to the next chapter on Resurrection Sunday.2

This is exactly where I am afraid most professing Christians spend the bulk of their lives; living in the dark shadows of the doom and gloom of Good Friday where Satan, Sin, and Death hover, condemning, tempting, and taunting anyone who would dare to turn the page to Sunday morning. This is what happens when we become so familiar with the empty tomb that it does not affect us on a daily basis as it should.

Here again, my commentary helped to set the stage for experiencing this passage with fresh eyes – free from the danger of familiarity – by taking us back to the effects of Good Friday on those who experienced it firsthand when the author says, “The effect of Christ’s death would have left Jesus’ followers in the greatest despair and depression of their earthly existence” they would have woken up on Sunday morning “without a glimmer of hope [because] without the resurrection, that depression [of Good Friday] would have never lifted. That Saturday before the resurrection was a day of desolation, shattered dreams, gloom and inertia. [Just] think how it was for Mary. A sword had pierced her soul. Think of Peter’s paralyzing guilt, beloved John’s heartache, and Mary Magdalene’s despair.”3

Listen, I do not know what you walked in here with this morning. I do not know what haunts your heart and mind when you lie down to sleep at night. Weather it is the crumbling weight of your sins, or the shame of your failed attempts to be who God calls you to be, or the depression of carrying far too many unresolved wounds, or the coldness of a heart that has become far too familiar with the things of God, or the paralyzing fear of skepticism, either way, let me assure you that you and I are not too far off from where our original characters are at as they make their way to the burial tomb of Jesus on that first Sunday following Good Friday.

1When the Sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. 2And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. 3And they were saying to one another, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance of the tomb?” 4And looking up, they saw that the stone had been rolled back – it was very large. 5And entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a white robe, and they were alarmed. 6And he said to them, “Do not be alarmed. You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen; he is not here. See the place where they laid him. 7But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.” 8And they went out and fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment had seized them, and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.

#1: THE TRIP TO THE TOMB (VV. 1 – 3)

Mark tells us in verses 1 – 3 that “1When the Sabbath was past” (for the Jews, the original Sabbath was on Saturday) Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. 2And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. 3And they were saying to one another, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance of the tomb?”

If you want a good bird’s-eye view into the condition of the hearts and minds of these women, all you have to do is realize that they rushed out to Jesus’ tomb, totally forgetting to bring someone with them to move the stone away from the doorway of that wretched hole in a rock.

These girls were so devastated by Jesus’ death, and they were so eager to perform the loving ritual of covering Jesus’ dead body with preserving spices, that they overlooked their need for someone to move that stone out of their way. Have you ever been so distraught over some painful thing in your life, that you overlooked the fact that you need help with moving an obstacle out of the way so that you can move forward? Could it be that you are living in this place today?

Maybe you are so consumed with some area of struggle or stress or loss that you keep trotting off down the road trying to remedy your situation while spacing off your deep need to stop and ask for help from the only one who can give you the victory over Satan, Sin, and Death through his work at the cross and the empty tomb.

This is exactly where these girls were at on that Sunday morning. They are absolutely devastated from seeing their friend tortured for six hours on a cross until he died. Imagine their dismay when they rounded the corner and found the stone rolled away!

#2: THE EMPTY TOMB (VV. 4 – 7)

Mark tells us in verses 4 – 7 that they looked up and “4…saw that the stone had been rolled back – it was very large.” Imagine the thoughts running through their minds at this point… had someone broken into the tomb? Who could have moved that massive stone? Mark continues in verse five, “5And entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a white robe, and they were alarmed.” This word for “alarmed” is only used once in the entire New Testament and it literally means “to be terrified”.4 Imagine how terrifying it would be to find the body of your loved one missing from the grave and weird man you have never seen in white clothing sitting in that grave fully alive. I would be terrified too!

Once again, Mark moves on in verse six, by saying, “6And he [the angel] said to them, “Do not be alarmed [terrified]. You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen; he is not here. See the place where they laid him. 7But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.” I do not know if you have noticed yet, but Mark wastes no words in getting to the point. Everything that is happening here is full of fast paced action. There is no mundane dead religion taking place in that empty grave. The living God is moving the story forward at breakneck speed with all of the action sequences coming together in an empty tomb.

In fact, this is the unique thing about Mark’s writing style; he gets to the point, and he keeps it brief. In fact, if you do a study of Mark’s gospel you will find that it is, as some have termed it, “The Gospel of Action” because throughout the book Mark uses the word “immediately” forty-two times to highlight a sense of action and movement in the story as he describes the power and effects of Jesus’ ministry.5

Although we do not see the word “immediately” here in our passage for today, it is important for us to understand Mark’s literary genius as he brings his gospel to a close in the same action-packed way he has been doing since the start of the book.

The point here is this, the ladies standing in the empty tomb need to waste no time. They can see where Jesus’ body used to be. The angel tells them that Jesus has risen from the dead and that he will meet them in Galilee just as he had told them he would do. They should waste no time in leaving the empty tomb. And they should waste no time in proclaiming the resurrection to the disciples and to Peter too.

On that last part, the part about Peter, it seems as though the angel, under the direction of the Holy Spirit, singled Peter out. Could this be because Peter had denied Christ three times on the night of his death? Could it be that God was especially sensitive to Peter, knowing that he, above all the other disciples, was carrying not only the mind-numbing horror of the death of Jesus, but also the heavy weight of his guilt in denying Christ in his death?

If God could be so gracious to a man who wimped out like a coward in the darkest hours of Jesus’ life, how gracious could he be with you and me? How often do you go on about your day thinking that you are too far gone for God’s grace or like you need to clean up your act before approaching him? How long have you lived under the dark shadow of being so familiar with the resurrection of Jesus that it has become a passing thought with no power for transformation in your life? How long will you live under the weight of dead religion before you wake up in the aftermath of the empty tomb fully alive to the Spirit of God?

God’s intentional pursuit of Peter in the resurrection should give all of us great hope and reassurance that he is graciously pursuing each of us in the same way. There is no sin too great for the bloody cross and the empty tomb to overcome! You are not too far gone for God to save you. You haven’t been sleeping on Jesus for too long if you are hearing this message.

If he can leave a tomb empty, then he can certainly save you and transform your life. What could the full realization of this kind of grace do in your life? Notice what the experience of this act of grace did to the women in the aftermath of the resurrection.

#3: THE AFTERMATH (V. 8)

In verse 8, Mark tells us that, “8…they went out and fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment had seized them, and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid. Upon reading these final words of Mark’s gospel – yes there are other verses that were added to our Bibles that were not present in the earliest manuscripts… so most scholars believe Mark ends things in verse 8 this way as an action-packed cliff hanger of sorts – but in these final action-packed words, we see the aftermath of the experience of the resurrection. Think about what happens in the aftermath of this story.

The girls leave the tomb in a hurry, they are so astonished and afraid that they say nothing to anyone. Does this mean that they did not tell the disciples? No, certainly not. The other gospels confirm that the girls excitedly testified of the resurrection to the disciples and Peter.

So why does Mark say they said nothing to anyone? Scholars agree and I do too, the girls simply did not lollygag; they did not stop to talk to anyone as they hurried to tell the disciples and Peter. They took immediate and decisive action and they obediently testified to the resurrection of Jesus to the people God directed them to. In a blink of an eye these girls were transformed by the Resurrection in the aftermath of experiencing the empty tomb; they changed from confused, grief stricken, girls into powerful witnesses of the work of Jesus in their lives.

This should challenge us to waste no time in proclaiming the truth of the resurrection of Jesus to every person the Lord directs us to. But it should also challenge us to live with the astonishment and reverent fear or awe of God in the power of the cross and the empty tomb. There are a lot of things (good things even) that we can waste our lives doing that hold no eternal value apart from the cross and the empty tomb.

CONCLUSION…

In conclusion, I want you to think of the time you waste worrying about things you cannot control. Or the time you waste trying to overcome or endure the broken spaces of your life on your own. What would it be like to live your life in the astonishment of the cross and the empty tomb? To be weighed down by nothing more than the power of the cross and the victory of the resurrection? Think about what it would like for you be fully set free from whatever you walked in with today, simply because you experienced the full power of the resurrection of Jesus.

The Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 in The Message Version, says, “Death [has been] swallowed by [the] triumphant Life [of Jesus]! Who got the last word, oh, Death? Oh, Death, who’s afraid of you now? It was sin that made death so frightening and [the] law-code guilt that gave sin its leverage, its destructive power. But now in a single victorious stroke of Life, all three—sin, guilt, death—are gone, [because of] the gift of our [Resurrected] Master, Jesus Christ.”

As one commentator has alluded to, you and I can waste our lives in the despairing dark shadows of Satan, Sin, and Death – where much of the world currently lives – or we can live in the astounding, action-packed liberating freedom of the power of the cross and the empty tomb.6 You can walk out of here today in the aftermath of this sermon and live fully alive and free from the effects of Satan, Sin, and Death. All it takes is for you to be fully surrendered and repentant at the foot of that bloody cross, in the doorway of that empty tomb, in light of the hope of eternity.

Look, I agree with you, this life can be excruciating sometimes… sometimes more than I think I can handle. But here’s the thing… you and I have not been crucified for the sins of the world… but I know a Savior who was and I also know that he absolutely obliterated the power of Satan, Sin, and Death on a Sunday morning when he rolled the stone away and walked out of that grave.

That same power that is alive in Christ, now lives in every one of us who have trusted in Christ’s work at that bloody cross and his victory in that empty tomb and are now living with the hope that he promised in his imminent return in glory! This is where I want all of you to live every day of your lives! Friday was horrifying, Saturday was devastating, but thank God for Resurrection Sunday! On resurrection Sunday this became the anthem for the Christian life: Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! What will happen in your life in the aftermath of this day?

1 Unless otherwise specified, all Bible references are to the English Standard Version Bible, The New Classic Reference Edition (ESV) (Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers, 2001).

2 R., Kent, Hughes, Mark: Jesus, Servant & Savior, Preaching the Word Commentary, (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2015), 401.

3 Ibid., 400.

4 Ibid., 402.

5 Craig L. Blomberg, Jesus and the Gospels: An Introduction and Survey, 2nd Edition (Nashville: B&H Publishing Group, 2009), 129.

6 R., Kent, Hughes, Mark: Jesus, Servant & Savior, Preaching the Word Commentary, (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2015), 399 – 406.