04-08-12 Hope and Redemption

Mar 16:1 When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome, bought spices, so that they might come and anoint Him.

Mar 16:2 Very early on the first day of the week, they came to the tomb when the sun had risen.

Mar 16:3 They were saying to one another, "Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance of the tomb?"

Mar 16:4 Looking up, they saw that the stone had been rolled away, although it was extremely large.

Mar 16:5 Entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting at the right, wearing a white robe; and they were amazed.

Mar 16:6 And he said to them, "Do not be amazed; you are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who has been crucified. He has risen; He is not here; behold, here is the place where they laid Him.

Mar 16:7 "But go, tell His disciples and Peter, 'He is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see Him, just as He told you.'"

Mar 16:8 They went out and fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment had gripped them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.

Mar 16:9 Now after He had risen early on the first day of the week, He first appeared to Mary Magdalene, from whom He had cast out seven demons.

Mar 16:10 She went and reported to those who had been with Him, while they were mourning and weeping.

Mar 16:11 When they heard that He was alive and had been seen by her, they refused to believe it.

Mar 16:12 After that, He appeared in a different form to two of them while they were walking along on their way to the country.

Mar 16:13 They went away and reported it to the others, but they did not believe them either.

Mar 16:14 Afterward He appeared to the eleven themselves as they were reclining at the table; and He reproached them for their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they had not believed those who had seen Him after He had risen.

Mar 16:15 And He said to them, "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation.

I want to spend the few minutes that I have with you this morning

talking about hope and redemption.

The passage I just read for us

is from the last chapter of Mark’s account of the life of Christ.

It is the passage that immediately follows

the hideous account

of the brutal crucifixion

of the only truly good man who ever lived on this earth.

What I read

is a passage exploding with redemption

and hope

and wonder.

It is a relatively short passage,

but it tells us everything we most need to know

about the one event in all of history

that we most desperately need to understand,

the one event in history

that contains within it

the foundation for hope

and for redemption

for everyone of us here this morning,

and, indeed, for every person who has ever entered this world.

But to understand why I say that

we need to do two things with the passage I’ve just read.

First, we need to see it,

to understand it within its historical setting.

We need to understand the lives of those mentioned in this passage

and the events that led up to that first Easter morning.

And then, second,

we need to take what happened in their lives

and understand how it affects our lives,

or more correctly, how it could affect our lives

if we hear correctly what’s really being said in these 15 verses.

You see, there are some of you here this morning

who are in desperate need of your own personal Easter -

your own discovery of true redemption,

your own personal discovery

that the tomb is really empty,

that one man truly did rise from the dead,

and what that resurrection means for you.

But we’ll come back to that in a few minutes.

First of all we need to begin with the event itself.

And to do so

we need to understand what was going on inside these three women

as they approached the tomb that morning.

And the only way we can do that

is to back up a bit,

to back up a few months,

or perhaps a few years in their lives,

back to when this Jesus first entered their world.

The birth of hope - true hope within a person

is a rare and remarkable thing.

I think, at its core

true hope takes place within us

when, for the first time in our lives,

we dare to consider the possibility

that there just might be something that will enable us

to break free from the unspoken and unbending rules of life on this planet.

We all know those rules.

We know many of them before we’ve even learned to speak,

before we could even begin to formulate them into words.

We understand that there are forces in place

that have already written for us

the script for our lives.

We know that there are certain unalterable rules

that keep us locked within very narrow channels in our existence.

We know that much of who we are as individuals,

and how we view ourselves,

and where we are wounded or broken

is determined for us by those who govern our lives

during the earliest years of our existence.

And we know, too, the rules of life within this society.

We know that hope of success

and tremendous social advantage

is allotted to individuals on the basis of just a few ingredients,

ingredients over which we have very little personal control...

physical appearance and natural abilities,

personality,

creative abilities,

wealth,

social prominence...

The few who corner the market in these areas

have a far greater advantage over the rest of us.

But for most of us

we learn before we’re even out of childhood

that there is a place appointed for us

in the society in which we live,

a place we cannot change and cannot escape.

And the only two options that seem to be available to us

are either to accept our appointed place

or to try to fight against it

and live out our days in frustration and disappointment.

This was certainly true

in the 1^st century world we have recorded for us in the Gospels.

It was true in the lives of these three women

who went to the tomb that first Easter morning.

And before Jesus made His entrance into their world

there was no real basis for hope.

There was simply duty,

and responsibility,

and routine,

and the inalterable rules of life.

Only that isn’t the worst of real life, is it?

With each of these women,

just as with each of us,

there was also the pain,

the darkness,

the inescapable inner bondage that robbed even the good days of joy.

We are told that before Jesus entered their world

one of these women, Mary Magdalene,

was possessed by 7 demons.

We are not given any additional information about her demonic harassment

or how it affected her life,

but it’s not knowledge we need

in order to understand the darkness and helplessness

that characterized her life before she met the Master.

Her life could have been nothing more than fear,

and bondage,

and inner agony.

And for each of these women,

prior to Jesus’ entrance into their world,

the inalterable course of their life

was an inflexible and inescapable certainty of their existence.

But then this Man came on the scene,

a Man who changed all the rules.

He had the authority to drive out the demons,

and to free those who came to Him from pain,

and in the most amazing way He gave them hope, and purpose, and dignity, and love.

With His words

He taught them how to live,

and with His love

He gave them the courage and the reason to follow what He taught.

Simply put, He gave them hope.

Hope...real hope, the kind of hope that only God can give

is one of the two most powerful forces in human experience.

The greatest force is love,

but hope is a very close second.

Hope gives us the reason to go through the pain.

Hope gives us the ability to see beyond the present

and to make sometimes extremely hard choices now

for the sake of a life and a future we have not yet seen.

Hope creates a clear point of light in the darkness

and fills the human spirit

with the firm assurance

that there is something or more correctly Someone greater than just the rules of life,

someone who can fill our life with purpose

and our hearts with joy.

And for just a few months

these women bathed in that hope,

the hope that came from the presence of this Jesus in their world

and in their lives.

And it was good beyond words.

There were times during those months

when the only way they could bear the thought of the day coming to an end

was by reminding themselves

that when they woke up in the morning

He would still be in their world,

and He would still know their name,

and with everything He said and everything He did

He would remind them once again

that their life had a purpose,

and their future was bathed in hope.

You see, that is the way the human spirit responds

when we come in contact with the love of God.

And during those few months when He was with them

it was all so intensely, wonderfully GOOD

simply because He was...

well, simply because He was,

and that was all that mattered.

And then, just when everything seemed to be going so well,

when it appeared as though the whole nation finally, fully woke up

to the wonder of who this man was and the hope He offered,

suddenly, in a handful of days,

it all went terribly, tragically wrong.

People who held power

recognized the threat this Jesus posed to their future,

and the unthinkable became a reality.

The source of all hope was crucified,

nailed to Roman cross,

as a tiny handful of the faithful

stood at the foot of that cross,

and felt the earth shake under their feet,

and saw the sun driven from the sky,

and in their minds heard over and over again

the sound of the hammered blows

driving nails through the flesh of the only One

who had ever filled their lives with light, with hope, with love.

There really are no words

to describe the darkness and the pain

that filled the hearts of those three women that morning

as they made their way to the tomb.

It is enough for us to realize

that all they had left to do in life

was to try to find some measure of comfort

in covering His now decaying corpse in spices.

And it was all the worse for them

because they had known hope for those few months of their life.

To have seen the light,

and built their life on the hope it gave them

and then have it ripped from their lives in a single day

made it all so much worse

than if they’d never given themselves over to the hope in the first place.

But then, on that amazing, glorious, impossible morning

when they entered that tomb

and found His body was not there,

and heard the good news - He’s alive...alive forevermore,

their crucified hope

became a resurrected reality

that would never die again.

And I find the chronology of that morning to be fascinating.

It began, of course,

with the resurrection itself,

an event that only the angels witnessed.

But then, the very next thing on the agenda

was His appearance to Mary Magdalene.

Mark says,

Mar 16:9 Now after He had risen early on the first day of the week, He first appeared to Mary Magdalene, from whom He had cast out seven demons.

But we are given a more detailed account of that meeting by John.

In his Gospel he says,

Joh 20:11, 15-18 But Mary was standing outside the tomb weeping;...she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, and 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 Hebrew, "Rabboni!" (which means, Teacher). Jesus said to her, "Stop clinging to Me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to My brethren and say to them, 'I ascend to My Father and your Father, and My God and your God.'" Mary Magdalene came, announcing to the disciples, "I have seen the Lord...

And from that point on hope in all its glory

was reborn within Mary and within each of His disciples

as they met the risen Lord

and confirmed for themselves that He is alive indeed.

Only this time it was different

because it was not just the hope

of some sort of political power

or new leadership regime that would last for a few years and then fade away.

This time it was the beginning of the Kingdom of God on earth,

the Kingdom of Emanuel - God with us,

personally,

individually,

constantly,

eternally.

And just as He Himself had conquered death,

so, through Him they would conquer death as well.

John 14:18-19 “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. After a little while the world will no longer see Me, but you will see Me; because I live, you will live also.”

And for the first time in the history of the world

the people of God discovered what it truly meant to be redeemed,

and through that redemption,

to live in the presence of the God who loves them forever,

and through Him

to break free from the rules of this world

that had imprisoned them all.

Certainly most of them went back to the same villages,

and the same jobs,

and the same positions within society that they had known before.

But this time they went back

with a purpose,

and a hope,

and a message of redemption

that redefined their very existence.

And no longer were they trapped in a life of routine and drudgery

that they could not escape.

Now they were simply on assignment for a few years

in the place their King had selected for them,

encouraging their fellow pilgrims,

and staying ever alert

as they watched for others who might be open to the truth.

And whatever they did,

they did heartily, doing it for their King

who would never ever leave them again.

OK, that’s a little tiny bit

of what was going on in the lives

of just a few of those who were there on that first Easter morning.

And that’s all great...for them.

But that was nearly 2000 years ago,

in a place and a culture we know nothing about personally.

And though it makes a great story,

and a pleasant diversion from real life,

in itself it changes nothing.

It changes nothing, that is...unless it’s true.

It changes nothing unless,

through the examples of the lives of these people,

our God is sharing with us

what He wants to do in and for each one of us today,

in this life, in this world.

And that, my friends, is exactly what He’s doing.

There are some of you here this morning

who, in your own life,

are at the same place that Mary was at following the crucifixion.

You have no hope.

Those rules of life we were talking about earlier

have written for you

a script that you cannot change.

And it’s a script you hate,

one that has left you feeling empty, and helpless, and trapped, and filled with pain.

There are some things that are broken in your life.

You may not be fighting seven demons,

but the one you are fighting

has filled your life with darkness

and you’ve grown weary of the fight.

What you need,

what you long for

is not another program,

or another approach,

or another system or support group.

What you need is an empty tomb,

and a living God

who stands, waiting for you,

a living God who knows your name

and who will take you just as you are, right where you are,

a God who will lead you out of your darkness

and into His marvelous light.

Well, I’m here to tell you this morning

that such a God exists,

and all He asks from you

is your willingness to reach out to Him

and place your life into his hands.

What you need is your own personal Easter.

He doesn’t want your promises,

He doesn’t want your money,

He just wants you because...well, because He loves you with an everlasting love.

He loves you far more than you love yourself right now,

and He has no problem at all

with all that stuff inside you that you hate so much.

And He knows the way through that wilderness that surrounds you right now,

He knows how to heal,

and free,

and restore.

In his second letter

Peter gives a beautiful picture

of resurrection within the human spirit.

In 2 Peter 1:19 he says,

So we have the prophetic word made more sure, to which you do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star arises in your hearts.

...until the day dawns and the morning star arises in your hearts...

Do you know what that is?

That’s the birth of hope within us,

the hope that comes with the presence of the Morning Star, Jesus Christ.

If you hunger for hope,

if you long for redemption

I encourage you to let Him in.

If this is all new to you

and you don’t even know where to start,

let me assure you that it’s not complicated,

and it’s certainly not even remotely religious.

All you have to do

is to tell this living God

that you want Him to come on in and take over.

“God, if you really want my life, with all it’s mess, You can have it. I know I need You. I know I need the hope that only You can give me. If You really are alive, please come and live in me, live with me forever. Amen.”

You see, that’s what Easter is really all about.

It’s about a living Creator God, Jesus Christ,

who offers life out of death

to all those who reach out to Him.

Happy Easter! He’s alive...He’s alive indeed.