This Changes Everything

Already been a great morning for us here at Sauldam Baptist Church. Man, I got to celebrate a friend of ours making his faith in Christ public. He talks about it with his co-workers. He invites his neighbors. He makes a point to discuss faith with his kids. So it’s not that he hasn’t told anybody, but he finally took that step. I’m just so stinking grateful I get to have that role with him.

We also had a sunrise service this morning. I’ve never even been a part of one, let alone preached one. So it was a special treat for me. We had a packed house over in the old church just saying good morning to Easter Sunday as the sun rose on us and you got a picture there. And that was a really sweet time.

So if you’re new with us today, I just want to say we’ve got a lot of really cool things going on. God is really stirring up a lot of fun stuff here at Sauldam Baptist Church. And I just want to invite you to be a part of it with us sometime.

But, you know, that video is talking about empty things. And it’s kind of odd that I would begin an Easter Sunday message harping on emptiness, right? Like none of y’all woke up this morning thinking, okay, what’s the pastor going to talk about? He’s going to start on this kind of low level of emptiness. But, man, we all deal with emptiness.

I think about how empty things create big responses. So I’m the fourth of five kids growing up. It got to the certain point where my mom, she stopped looking at the expiration date on the milk. She just bought two milks every time she went to the store because she knows, man, we’re going to drink these things. And I will confess, there were some times when I would finish off a carton and I’d stick that bad boy right back in the fridge. And you imagine the ire and the frustration of opening the fridge to get your cereal and it’s empty. Oh, man, what in the world? You know, some empty things create big responses and it’s not so funny.

You know, some of us have gone to the doctor, get checked up on a baby, and you get an ultrasound, no movement, empty. Other empty things can be full of meaning. You go to your bank account and withdraw some cash to pay a bill and you see it’s been drained. Man, what happened here? Or maybe you’ve had somebody no longer lives with you. You pass by that bedroom, it sits empty.

I start here because I’ve got a question for you. What if, what if your life could be full? Full, it could have fullness. It could have abundance, total joy. What if? You see, in John 10:10, Jesus said these words, “I have come so that you may have life and have it in abundance.” But do you believe that’s true for you? Could it be true for you? Could it be true for you today that your life, though dealing with its emptiness, could actually be full?

Here’s the thing. The Bible is no stranger to emptiness, nor the emotions that empty things. What does it bring? And Easter Sunday is a testimony to that. It is. Easter is a story of emptiness. But it’s a story of emptiness that actually fills us.

This story begins on Good Friday. A couple days ago, we gathered on Friday night and we celebrated, if celebrates the right verb, we celebrated how Christ was betrayed by a friend, tried by envious men, and crucified by the Romans. And after Good Friday, the sun goes down, He’s laid in a tomb. And we have Silent Saturday. And then we’ve all gathered here this morning, because we know how the story ends. Resurrection Sunday.

We all experience emptiness. The Bible has emptiness. Sometimes the emptiness is light. Sometimes it’s heavy, but it’s inevitable. You will experience emptiness. But hey, here’s the promise of Easter. It is that the empty tomb fills us with life and purpose.

If there’s one thing I want you to remember today, if there’s one thing I want you to talk about while you’re eating the ham and while you’re watching NC State go to the Final Four later, because I know that’s what you’re doing at 5 o’clock. You’re watching NC State. If there’s one thing you’re doing, if there’s one thing I want you to remember, it’s the empty tomb fills us with life and purpose.

I’ll pray, read our passage, and you’ll see what I mean. Pray with me. Jesus, thank you. Christ, thank you so much for Today. I’m so grateful. Here in 2024, I know how the story ends. And of the drama of the crucifixion and of the resurrection, it’s got some resolution in my life. But God, I pray that for just a few minutes, we would all put on glasses of people that are witnessing this for the first time. And we would let the emptiness inform us. Ultimately, Jesus, I pray that the empty tomb would fill us and would send us out of here, both with joy and a purpose. Lord, get a hold of my words. Father, what’s not true, would You just make people forget it? But God, what is from You, what is true, I pray You would sink it down into hearts, so that whether, no matter what folks do tomorrow or next Sunday, they would leave here changed just a little bit. Lord, thank You. We love You. God, I just want to see more people come to love You. And it’s in Your name I pray. Amen.

Well, if you have your Bibles, you can open them up or turn them on to Mark chapter 16. This whole spring, we have just sat in the book of Mark as we’ve been walking through Jesus and His ministry. We’ve been looking at how Christ, who is the King, has been establishing a kingdom here on earth. That’s all we’ve been doing. And today, it makes sense that we would end Mark at the resurrection on Resurrection Sunday. I’m not too clever. I just lined it up that way, and I’m kind of proud of that idea, all right? So, the scripture will be on the screens. It’s better in your laps, but let’s read Mark 16, verses 1 through 8.

When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they could go and anoint Jesus. Very early in the morning, on the first day of the week, they went to the tomb at sunrise. They were saying to one another, “Who will roll away the stone from the entrance to the tomb for us?” Looking up, they noticed that the stone, which was very large, had been rolled away already. When they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side. They were alarmed. “Don’t be alarmed,” he told them. “You’re looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen. He’s not here. See the place where they put Him. But go. Tell His disciples and Peter, He is going ahead of you to Galilee. You will see Him there just as He told you.” So they went out and ran from the tomb because trembling and astonishment overwhelmed them. And they said nothing to anyone since they were afraid.

That’s God’s word for us this morning. When I read the Bible, I usually am looking for scenes. I’m looking for moments. And in this story, in the resurrection, there are four scenes. Our opening scene for this moment is about devotion and doubt. Verses 1 and 2, it’s devotion and doubt. You see these women full of devotion. They go and they purchase spices to anoint the body of the buried Jesus. Now to understand this, we have to take ourselves back a little bit because the burial practices back then are not exactly what they are now. See, they were not trying to preserve the bodies like we would preserve a body whenever one of our loved ones passes away. Instead, they would buy spices to rub all over the body to mask the smell of the natural process. And also, those bodies weren’t buried in wooden coffins that were then placed six feet down. No, they were placed into little tombs that were cut into the hillsides. Usually it’s rock. These bodies would just kind of be slid in. So, these women have gone and they’re buying these spices out of their own pocket. This would have cost some money. This is a very particular need they had. So, they go to buy these spices to anoint the body of Jesus because Jesus, they just saw Him be crucified, be degraded, be mocked, be mistreated. They said, “We just got to give some honor to this body. If nothing else, we need to just treat this body the right way.” So, they buy these spices out of their own money and they show their devotion by going at the earliest possible time. Verse 1 says that when the Sabbath was over. See, the Jewish people had some very particular rules about what they could and could not do on the day of worship that they call the Sabbath. They were not able to Walk certain distances. They weren’t even actually able to go buy things. They weren’t able to sell, sell things. They weren’t supposed to do any work of any kind. So they actually wouldn’t cook any more food on the Sabbath. They would just heat up food they had already cooked, which for some of us that sounds like how maybe we actually grew up. We kind of carry that over into our culture, at least we used to.

So these women go at the earliest possible time when the sun was just starting to rise, when they could just barely say the Sabbath was over, when they could just barely get by. They said, “All right, we got to go now.” So they go to the market to buy these spices at the very first possible moment. They’re devoted in the spices. They’re devoted in the time. They’re also devoted in the fact that they have chosen to personally associate with Jesus.

Put yourself in their shoes. Jesus had just been put to death by the Roman authorities and the Jewish leaders for being this messianic rebellious leader. This incendiary preacher who’s going around healing people, who’s breaking all those Sabbath rules. This man that’s saying that the temple is going to be torn down. This guy that’s saying, “Rome doesn’t matter. Israel doesn’t matter. I’m making a kingdom here.” And they said, “You know what? It doesn’t matter. Whatever it costs us, whatever happens to us, we’re going to associate with this man named Jesus. We’re devoted to Him.”

But in their devotion, no matter how pure, there’s some doubt mixed in. Ultimately, they just, they doubted that He would rise. See, we have hindsight. We can look back at Mark chapter 8, Mark chapter 9, Mark chapter 10. Three times where Jesus told His disciples, He told these women, “I am going to be betrayed. I am going to be mistreated. I am going to die. I am going to be crucified. But I am going to rise.” Jesus had already told them this three times. And then also in Mark chapter 14, Jesus said, “Hey, remember, I’m going to die. After I die, I’ll see you in Galilee.” I’m not really sure what they knew what to do with that information at the time. But it’s clear they did not put their wholehearted trust in it. They, though devoted to Christ, doubted Him, which honestly, I find incredibly encouraging.

Anyone else in the room have a little doubt mixed in with your devotion to? I know I do. I’ll be honest with you. I wish I could stand up here and say that I am 100% faithful to Jesus in every decision and word and action of my life. I wish I could stand up here and say that I’ve never once wavered in my belief that there really is a God who really did die, who really did rise from the grave. But I’d be a liar if I said those things to you.

So if you’re here this morning and you’re here mostly for the clothes and the ham later, not so much for the preaching, I want to invite you, suspend some of that doubt for a moment. Let Jesus get into your emptiness and let’s see what He might have to say about that.

But I return to this. I’ve got a question. Why would it matter that it’s these three women that come to Jesus? Why would it matter that Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome were the ones that bought spices, came to the tomb, and took this on? You see, it’s interesting. These women saw Jesus do a lot of things. They saw Jesus feed 4,000 men and their families with some bread and food. They saw Him do it again with 5,000 people. They saw Jesus take people that can’t speak and make them sing His praise. They saw Jesus take paralytics and get them up to dance and enjoy of who Christ is. They saw Jesus exercise demons out of people oppressed by darkness. They saw Jesus even a couple times rise people from the grave. They heard the Sermon on the Mount for themselves. They heard the parables for themselves. They were part of that sort of inner group that Jesus was explaining Himself to. That’s who these women are.

But they are also the women that Mark tells us witnessed Jesus be crucified and buried. So God gives them this treat. These women that saw the whole thing, they get to see the resolution firsthand. And they’re the first that see it. And that’s incredibly important for us.

Here’s the deal. Here in 2024, women have a lot of due rights. Every woman In this room has the right to vote, has the right to own and sell property, has the right to do tons of things, has the right to testify in court, has the right to education, and so forth. That was not always the case. And especially at this time, in a pretty patriarchal society of the Jewish folks, certainly of the Romans, women were not looked on as viable witnesses to anything. So why would God choose the witnesses of His resurrection to be women? One is to give women new value. To say, “Hey, they are just as much people as those guys are.” It doesn’t matter what you say. They are fully people. They’ve got value in my eyes. But two, it’s to establish the authenticity of this book. If I wanted to spread a lie, if I wanted to spread a movement that I knew wasn’t true, I would choose the strongest possible voices that culture was giving to me. Which means, if there’s any sort of marginalization, any sort of oppression, that’s not the voice I’m choosing. That’s not the one I’m going to have be my primary witnesses. But Mark, writing at a time when women’s voices and their witness was not seen as totally valid, was saying, “This is so true, I’ll even take the silent voices and they’ll be the first ones to know about it.”

Friends, there are a lot of reasons to believe that what you are holding in your hand is true. And this is one of them. But I bring it back to the story. These three women that are devoted yet doubting go to the second scene where they become surprised and distressed. That’s verses three through five. They are surprised and distressed. They’re surprised to find the stone has already been rolled away. You see in verse three, they’re walking and they’re talking and they’re saying, “Huh, we’ve got the spices. We’re at the right time. We’re going to the right place. Who’s going to roll the stone away? Who’s going to take care of that big rock blocking the way?” These women were big on the inside, maybe not so much big on the outside. Maybe weren’t actually able to move that heavy stone. Mark’s already told us it was a very large stone. But they’re walking and you could just put yourself in their shoes. They’re walking. They’re talking about Jesus. They’re talking about the incredibly terrible scenes they’ve just seen over the last 48 hours. They’re talking about how much they miss Jesus. They’re talking about what do we do now. They’re talking about all the prophecies. Is it true? Is it false? What’s the deal? They get to the tomb. They’re walking and they look up and they see that stone’s already been rolled away.

They’re surprised at that obviously. They do something then that doesn’t make any sense to me. Verse five. They enter the tomb. I don’t know about you. If I go over to the cemetery and I find that some of the dirt’s been dug up and one of the coffins is open, I’m not going to go like looking and getting inside of it. But these women are braver than I am. They say, “We need to investigate what in the world’s happened.” So they enter the tomb, but they don’t expect what they see. They saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side. Naturally, they are alarmed. They’re surprised. We would expect them to be delighted because we are reading in hindsight. We would expect them to be like, “Oh, the resurrection! It’s already happened!” Remember, they’re not believing in it. They’re not delighted. They become distressed. Where’s the body? Or as Andy Stanley puts it, “Nobody expected no body.” Bit of a tongue twister there for you. Nobody expected no body in the tomb. They didn’t expect that. They expected to see their beloved friend Jesus lying there dead. But there’s an angel there instead.

Now, we know it’s an angel. If you look at the other gospel accounts, they are all incredibly clear. It’s an angel. So they’re talking with this angel, or at least the angel starts talking to them. And amidst the shock of the empty tomb, the angel has good news for the women. News about a resurrection and a commission. That’s our third scene. News about a resurrection and a commission. I’m going to I’m gonna read verses six and seven again for us. The angel says, don’t be alarmed. You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth who was crucified. He is risen. He’s not here. See the place where they put Him? But go, tell His disciples and Peter, He is going ahead of you to Galilee. You will see Him there just as He told you. Why these details about a birthplace and a burial place? Why would the angel cite where Jesus is from and where He’s going? Why wouldn’t the angel lead with some more theological language? Why wouldn’t He talk about, oh, you’re looking for the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity, Emmanuel, God with us. You’re looking for the Messiah, the anointed one. You are, oh, you must be looking for some theological treatise. No, He says, oh, Jesus of Nazareth. Yeah, Joseph’s boy, right, His stepson. Oh, you’re looking for the guy that used to be a carpenter but became a teacher and became a healer. You’re looking for the guy that you ate with, the guy that you talked with, the guy that you would hug. You’re looking for the guy that danced at that wedding in Cana. Yeah, that’s who you’re looking for, right? This angel doesn’t explain the theological nature of the resurrection. He just reports it. He just says, you are looking for the man that lived, walked, and died. That’s who you’re looking for.

This angel is connecting their emptiness with their expectations. And He’s saying, you’re looking for Jesus, your friend. He’s not here. Oh, it’s not that He’s been stolen. It’s not that somebody is covering up a conspiracy theory. It’s not that He didn’t actually die, but He actually just got up because He was really hurt. No, He died, but He has risen. And He is not here, friends. Oh, no. See the place where they put Him. You know you saw Him be put here. You know it.

Mark’s gospel has portrayed an incredibly active Jesus. If you’ve been with us for any of the sermons of this series, Jesus is constantly going to and fro throughout Israel across the book of Mark. Even in the resurrection, Jesus is active. Jesus couldn’t have waited around like five minutes for these women. He couldn’t have just waited to be able to tell them Himself. We don’t know all of His reasoning. We don’t know why the story is written this way. We just know Jesus was dead, has risen, and is not here. Mark’s gospel ends the way it begins, with a very active Jesus, leaving a tomb empty yet filled with meaning. And what’s that meaning? That He’s got life for you.

The resurrection is all about how Christ has life for you. Think about it. Why would Jesus have to be resurrected? We talk about Jesus as this perfect sacrifice all the time. We talk about the blood of Jesus covering us and washing away our sins to make us as white as snow. We talk about how Jesus died for you. We discuss death all the time in relationship to Jesus. See, we needed a perfect sacrifice. We needed something that could cover us to cleanse us from our sin. But why would He have to rise? Why couldn’t Jesus just stay in the tomb? Oh, the apostle Paul wrote about this in 1 Corinthians. He said, if Christ hasn’t been raised, then your faith is worthless. And you are still in your sins.

I’ve heard it said this way. If Jesus didn’t rise, church is just a weird hobby. I enjoy it because I’ve got a couple dozen folks sitting here looking at me while I talk, making me feel real good. This is fun for me. It’d be real lame for you if Christ didn’t rise. But He did. Christ did rise.

The thing is, all people die. Death is inevitable. It’s unavoidable. It’s not special. All people die. Death is like a stone rolled over the tomb of our lives. An unavoidable obstacle that we can’t move. What is special about Jesus is that He, though died, did not stay dead. But He rose to life. And He, and only He, can remove the stone over the tomb of your life and free you from sin and death. Only Christ can draw you out of the tomb of sin and death and invite you into eternal life. Only Christ can do that. And He has that for you.

The resurrection of Jesus Christ means the forgiveness of your sin and the assurance of eternal life with God starting now into forever. What Jacob testified to a few minutes ago by being lowered into the water and then being brought back up is the fact that he does not place any trust in himself for his salvation. But he says, I can’t do it. I’ve tried, but I can’t. My sin is too big. It is too dark. It is too heavy. But Christ has done it for me. That’s what Jacob attests to. That is what the apostle Paul attests to. And that is the message that is given to these women. You see, they are witnesses of the resurrection. And the angel gives them a commission. He tells them very simply, go and tell. Go. Tell the disciples what you have seen. Tell Peter what you’ve seen. Tell them that He’s going to meet you all in Galilee. Again, the angel doesn’t explain the resurrection. He just reports it. He just gives the news. And he commands the women to do the same thing.

The same is true for us, I believe. I believe that God is also commissioning us to go and to tell. We go and we tell. Jesus did not just rise from death and secure something for you or for you or for you. He did. But it’s not just for you. Christ, in His rising and His commissioning, invites you to give it away. He invites you to go and tell somebody about it. He invites you to participate in other people’s resurrection stories where they one day will be able to be in that water. And they’ll be able to say, you know what? I was going through life and things were peachy. I was fine. Yeah, I had a little financial trouble. Yeah, sure. A little bit of relational issues. Okay. Yeah, I didn’t know how to parent my kids. Whatever. I was fine. And then somebody from Sauldam Baptist Church told me about Jesus and had to mess it all up. They had to tell me about how Jesus rose from death so that I could have life. They had to tell me about how Christ can forgive me of my sin. And I had to start thinking about sin. They had to tell me, one day, you’re going to die. And I had to start thinking about that for myself. But then they said, hey, through Christ, you can live forever with God. And you can experience newness of life. And you know what? I guess I’m going to get baptized for it.

That will happen in our community as we go and we tell. If we believe that Christ rose. Did He rise? There we go. But perhaps the oddest, most confusing scene of this entire passage is how it ends. With fear and silence. The women went out, ran from the tomb, because trembling and astonishment overwhelmed them. And they said nothing to anyone. And so they were afraid. Man, we’d expect delight, joy, hope. But faced with the angel in an empty tomb, they’re just afraid. In fact, the word afraid is the same experience Jesus had in the Garden of Gethsemane as He was awaiting betrayal. You remember the scene? Jesus has invited a couple of the disciples to pray with Him because He knows I’m about to be handed over by Judas. And Jesus is on His knees and on His face and He’s praying, God, God, if this cup can pass from me, please do it. Nevertheless, not my will, but Your will. And He’s in such deep agony. He’s actually sweating drops of blood. That same word is used to describe these women. They were incredibly afraid. And tied to that, they were silent. Highly ironic. Commissioned to speak, they go mute and they tell no one.

But again, the women’s fear and their silence gives me incredible hope. Because once again, I stand in front of you as a man that doesn’t take all the shots that God gives me either. I stand as someone that wishes I could have a few moments back where I knew, I knew I could share the gospel with this person and I just whiffed or avoided it. The resurrection does not magically deal away with our problems, but it invites us into faith in the Savior, which means tomorrow can look incredibly different than yesterday for you, if you trust. If you believe in the good news that Christ really does love you, He’s wild about you, and He willingly gave His life as a substitute for you, and He didn’t just die for you, but He rose from death for you, securing for you a place with God in His presence forever so that you could have newness of life now and for the rest of your days into eternity.

So why would Mark end his gospel this way? It’s to invite us into the story. If I don’t have your attention now, it’s to invite us into the story. One that Jesus is still writing. It’s one that Jesus is still writing. You see, there’s two invitations in this passage. We’ve already looked at them. They are come and see, go and tell. Come and see, go and tell. I said at the very beginning that the empty tomb fills us with life and with purpose. Jesus wants you to come and see. He wants you to see that a tomb was made empty so that you could be filled with life. We’re all living for something. We are all living for something. But here’s the message of the Bible. It’s that you were made to live for one thing. And His name is Jesus. Amen. His name is Jesus. The one who died for you is the only one who can help you truly live. So God is saying, come and see. Suspend your doubt. Come and see how I was nailed to a cross for you. How I can take your life and I can fill it with something lasting. Because the things we live for always fail us. Work, family, security in this life, people’s approval, power, whatever it is. You put anything in that blank. It will fail you. Either now or on the day you die. Everything fails save for Christ. And He has life for you.

My invitation to you this morning, if you are not so confident that you’ve actually placed your faith and trust in Jesus Christ, I would encourage you, stop listening to me and just pray to Jesus. And just tell Him the truth about yourself. God, I don’t know You. I want to know You. I confess that I am a sinner and I need to be forgiven. Will You forgive me, please? We heard it read multiple times. We saw it attested to earlier. If you call on the name of Christ for salvation, God will save you. He will fill you with life. But you have to give your emptiness to Him. And there’s many of us in the room that have experienced that.

So your invitation is to go and to tell. Don’t just celebrate Easter. My ask for you is that you would live to tell somebody about the message. Not mine this morning, but the message of the Bible that Christ died and rose to save us. That there really is a God that really does love you a whole lot. And He really has done everything necessary for you to live forever with Him in peace. Go and tell that message to somebody. That if you are a believer in Christ as your Lord and Savior, that is your purpose. That’s your purpose. It’s not to secure finances. It’s not to make a fun retirement. It’s not to get everything you can out of this life. That’s not your purpose. Some of that comes with it. Your purpose is to tell and to bring others into this kingdom.

I’ll be down front here in a few minutes. If you would like to pray or to talk about what it would look like specifically for you to come and see or to go and tell, I would love to pray and begin that conversation with you. Finish with this. A gentleman by the name of Jaroslav Pelikan says it this way. If Christ is not risen, nothing else matters. If Christ is risen, nothing else matters.

Pray with me. Jesus, thank You. Thank You for giving Your life for us, being crucified for us, buried for us, but also being resurrected for us, securing for us life, true life, God. Thank You. I beg You to help us to walk in that. God, I beg that You would please give us the grace. Father, give us the grace to come and see if there’s those of us in the room that don’t know You really. God, that they would be done with the charades. They’d be done with the show. They’d be done with just the habits of Christianity. They would be ready to accept the heart of it. God, I pray if that is somebody in this room right now, Holy Spirit, You would get a hold of them and You would wake them up and You would fill their emptiness with life and love. Please do that right now.

And God, for those in the room that do know You, I pray that You would help them to embrace this purpose to go and to tell. Lord, that You would put a name or a face of somebody in their circle of influence right now that they would know, I have got to tell this person about this news of Jesus. God, undoubtedly there’s folks in the room that have been doing that. And I beg that You would encourage them to remain faithful in it. God, for all of us, would You captivate us with the glory of the cross and the empty Tomb. God, I’ve sought to be faithful, and I trust that You will use this for Your purpose. Thank You, Jesus. Amen.