The Gospel Of Mark - The Significance Of The Cross To The Believer Today

Alright, so we're going to dig right on in here to Mark, chapter 16.

Mark 16 · chapter mention

Today is the end of our Mark series.

It has taken us a little while to get through it, but we are here at the end of the Mark series.

Next week we start a new series.

It's an Ecclesiastes and it is.

Everything is meaningless.

So that'll be next sermon series.

You guys ready for that one right?

Everything is meaningless.

But today we're going to finish showing up here in Mark.

If you want to go turning your word to Mark, chapter 16, verses one through eight, we'll just begin reading.

Mark 16 · chapter mention

When the Sabbath was passed, mary Magdalene, mary, the mother of James, and the solemn brought spices so they might go and anoint him.

I'm waiting for you.

There you go.

Very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb and they were saying to one another who will roll away the stone for us?

from the entrance of the tomb And looking up, they saw that the stone had been rolled back.

It was very large And entering the tomb they saw a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a white robe, and they were alarmed.

And 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, but go tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee.

There you will see him, just as he told you.

And they went out and fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment had seized them and they said nothing to no one, for they were afraid.

So let's pray, father, god, we thank you so much for your grace and mercy over our lives, and we thank you, lord Jesus, for the words that you give us in your Bible, lord Jesus, words that were given by you, lord Jesus, accounts of your life.

And we thank you, jesus, that over the last 2000 years, that your words still stand true, lord Jesus, that these words did not change, lord, and we thank you that your truths are true forever And God.

We just pray, lord Jesus, that your Holy Spirit would have his way this morning.

We praise you, god, in Jesus name, amen, amen, all right, so this account of the resurrection of.

If you don't know that, this is one of the synoptic gospels.

Synoptic gospel is a grouping of three different gospels that tell the same story.

All right, and this is Mark that we've been reading about over the last little while, and this is Mark's account of what's been going on in Christ's life And he's walked us through so many things.

And today this is Mark's account of him being at, or of these ladies being at the cross, i mean at the crucifixion.

What am I not talking this morning at the tomb?

that morning I'm going to preach my whole sermon in one sentence.

Here we go Right.

But we also found that this account is in Matthew, chapter 28, verse one through 10.

Matthew 28 · chapter mention

We find it in Luke 24, one through 10, and we find it in John, one through 18.

And there are some differences in each one of them, but it's something that we would kind of expect.

You know, i've heard skeptics and I've read skeptics talk about how they're so different.

But the truth is, if today each one of us were in an area where an accident happened, not all of us could stand in the exact same spot.

We would all be kind of surrounded by it And each one of us would see something a little bit different.

Each one of us think about things differently, so we would be paying attention to something a little more predominantly than something else, so like if it's a car accident.

You know me being a car guy.

I'm going to look at this car crash and see that, well, that car must have been going really fast when he hit that And I can't believe that the cross member broke underneath and even ripped the frame off Right, while somebody else who knows nothing about cars, when they tell of the story they're going to talk about how they saw the person inside get hit by the airbag and how they kind of the skin kind of squished against it and everything.

And it would be a totally different view, but it would be of the same account And that's why we have the gospels And together all of the gospels give us the account of what happened that morning.

And so Mark, of course, has his view, and this is what we read today, his view of it, and there are a few things that he talks about that I wanted to mention.

First thing, that he mentions three women's names, and we've read that, and Luke mentioned three women's name as well, but they're not exactly the same names And when we add them all together, we see that five women were there that morning, going to the, to the graveside, and what I like here is that Mark also points out that that morning he remembered the lady telling him about a story and how they were talking about how are we going to open the grave, right.

And so this is really important because we got to ask why and what prompted more I mean, these ladies to go to the grave that morning.

They knew that they couldn't move the stone.

You know, they knew that.

You know, maybe the security guards wouldn't even allow them to move the stone away, right.

So why did they continue going unless they were prompted?

They were urged, and so I love how Mark shows here that the women that morning were urged to go because they were already having this conversation about how are they going to even open this thing.

And so it's really cool how the Holy Spirit is moving in that on that morning And we think about these women.

They were really faithful too.

I mean, we were talking this morning in the elders prayer.

You know they had the disciples.

They were.

They would know that if they got caught here in this section or in this area, maybe they would get in trouble, because they know that these guys are the followers, but the women would have possibly been the same way, but these women still went that morning and because they were so faithful to Jesus, and we know that at least one of these women were there all the way to the end of Christ's life when he said it is finished, he was there at the cross.

And so God Mark was honoring women by calling them out by name, and of course, it could have been a disciple that was urged to go that morning, but it wasn't.

It was these five women, and God shows to reveal himself to them first, and that was so cool.

And then we see, in Mark, he also calls this person not an angel.

He's the only one in the account that called it, called him a man and a young man in a white robe.

Now, again, this could be the way that people see things right.

This happened a couple other times in the Bible where he called the writer would call an angel a man, and so it's not out of the ordinary.

But if we read all of Mark as we've been reading it, we see that Mark's focus was all on Jesus being the Messiah, the Son of God, and he didn't make focus on much other than that, and so it could just be that he was making sure not to put this person that's inside on a level that Jesus is on no-transcript.

We see, though, that overall, he puts the ladies there even though they didn't know that the stone would even be able to be moved.

Mark remembers a conversation by these women, probably because these three women are the one that told him the story, because we got to remember, when we're reading this with Mark and Luke and Matthew, they're just stories to them, right?

They didn't actually see these things happening.

They're remembering the story of the ladies that saw it happen that morning.

And then what I find that's really wild, here at the very end, if you look at your book we even saw it on the screen It says that verses nine through 20 don't exist in some manuscripts.

If you're wondering what a manuscript is, it's the original writings that have been translated to English, and so the majority of those manuscripts did not have verses nine through 20, which is really wild, that the gospel of Mark just abruptly ends that Jesus has risen from the grave and these ladies are in astonishment and are silent, and that's it.

That's where he stops, and so that's been really something I've dug into a lot this week, and I've been wrestling with that, just really wrestling with the fact that it stopped right there, and why did that happen?

Could it be that Mark died and didn't get to finish his writing?

Could it be that Mark wanted to put the focus of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Messiah, there at the crucifixion alive, and just leave it there?

He's alive.

This is the Son of God, right?

It could be that pieces were missing that were found later, and that's why it said that some manuscripts say nine through 20s, added later.

It could be that the rest of it did get written, and that is what we read as you read verses nine through 20 in your Bible.

But it's really wild to look at that and see what Mark was trying to do and what he was trying to say.

But we do know that Mark focused on Jesus being the Messiah, on Jesus being the physical embodiment of God and at the cross, even the enemy.

One of the Roman soldiers said that this is the Son of God, and this is amazing.

And so, as I'm reading through this and I'm like God, what is it that you're wanting me to to talk about this morning, my mind continually went to the significance of the resurrection, as everything ends right there with Mark talking about how Jesus was alive.

And so today I want to focus the majority of my time on the significance of the resurrection of Jesus to our faith today, and the faith of a Christian.

So I want to break this down into three different points.

I'm going to first talk about why did Jesus have to raise from the dead at all.

Then I'm going to talk about what happened in eternity when he did, and I'm going to talk about what this means for us today.

So let's begin.

Why did Jesus have to raise from the dead?

You know, jesus did amazing things while he was alive.

We know that he did incredible miracles, that he taught us how to live in amazing ways, and he taught people how to love one another.

And he taught us amazing things about the Father.

And then, of course, he taught us, ultimately, what it meant to sacrifice himself for us Right.

He taught us how to live as servant leaders.

He taught us so much.

And if Jesus was just stepping out to pay our earthly penalty of sin, then he did that by dying on the cross.

Because if you were to go and kill somebody at that time and your sentence was the cross and he took that for you, then your, your penalty is paid.

So then the question is is why did he have to raise from the dead?

Well, the first reason, of course, is because he said he would.

Multiple times Jesus said I will die and rise from the grave.

So first he said he would, and if he didn't he would have been a liar Right.

But God had never lied.

Jesus had never lied And he had been.

He had came through on every word that he had ever said.

But he's not the only one that told us this would happen.

What I find amazing And if you know the entire scripture and how it goes, jesus and God told Isaiah years and years ago, 700 years before Jesus come in the embodiment of a little baby, god had told Isaiah what was going to happen And we see that in Isaiah 52 and 53, that the suffering servant would come in and he would die and he would rise again.

And so here we are.

If he didn't, then he couldn't be the son of God, the Messiah.

So it says here that in Matthew, chapter seven and 22, as they were gathering in Galilee, jesus said to them the Son of man is about to be delivered into the hands of man, and they will kill him And he will be raised on the third day and the disciples were greatly distressed, and it seems that they'd kind of forgotten these things because you don't see much about it.

You know, i was talking again this morning about how, if this is going on and Jesus had told me that he was going to die and then three days later come back to life, where would I be on the third day?

You know, on day number three, am I going to be, you know, somewhere on the other side of the world?

No, i'm probably going to.

If I'm scared, i'm going to be in the bushes somewhere near the grave, right, trying to see, because I want to keep my eyes.

It's like, did they forget about this or something?

It's really wild because, if you think about it, the only one that seemed to be concerned with Jesus' resurrection was the enemy, because we see in Matthew, chapter 27 and verse 63, the enemy was the one who said hey, remember, he said he was going to raise from the dead.

Matthew 27 · chapter mention

That's the reason why we have the stone in front of the tomb, that's the reason why we have the guard at the tomb.

It's because the enemy remembered what Jesus is going to say, and so I just find that really wild to think about that.

You know, the enemy realized the significance of the resurrection of Jesus and what that meant for the world, because they knew that if he did raise from the grave what that meant And so if he didn't raise from the grave, the entire Christian faith would be worthless.

That's not my words, i'm actually taking that from Paul in 1 Corinthians 15, verse 7.

1 Corinthians 15:7

And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile or worthless and you are still in your sins.

One of the things you think about is, if Jesus didn't raise from the grave, he would just been like any other cult leader over the last 6000 years Yeah, maybe be like Buddha or something like that, maybe Muhammad or somebody that leads people astray, and you would know about them.

But there's not a huge following of them, right?

But everything that happened it makes us remember all of the world come around it.

So if he didn't raise from the grave, little would be known from him.

But because he was raised from the grave, all of history now has been timed by his life and resurrection.

That is one part that really gets me.

When I talk to people who don't believe that Christ ever existed, that one is like almost like a flat earth or You know, because all of life's timeline is Is around his life.

So if he didn't exist, why are we still counting days by his life?

Everything in history before the last 2,000 years says before Christ And everything after was after his life.

So how in the world would we be?

what would we be counting if he didn't raise from the grave?

Because if he didn't die on the cross or if he didn't raise from the grave, then we would have realized that he's just a lunatic, because he he would have been a liar if he didn't raise from the grave right, and he did call himself God Right a number of times.

He said that he was one with God, that he was on the same level of God, so That would have meant that the world itself wouldn't have counted itself around his life.

Because who was this man from Nazareth then, if he didn't raise from the grave?

So, number two what happened in eternity when he did raise from the grave?

the resurrection of Jesus from the dead Proved that he was Christ, the Son of God.

The resurrection showed that there was nothing Anyone could do to stop him.

No enemy could keep him, every human enemies.

These schemes that they tried was undone at the resurrection.

Everything that the spiritual enemy For all of time was trying to do was undone at the resurrection.

And There's an amazing truth that's found on this day when, on a resurrection morning, when he rose from the grave, everything that Jesus said would happen, everything had been prophesied for all of time.

It was sealed, it was done, it was completed.

You know, we've read in John, chapter 19, verse 30.

John 19:30

He said, when Jesus received the sour rind, he said it is finished.

And he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

What was finished.

It is To tell us, to tell.

Last day I'm trying to put it together is the word that he used to ETE.

There you go.

And it's an accounting term that means paid in full.

See, when Jesus said these words, it was at that moment that Everything, all of human history, had ever done in the past and in the future, was now paid for Nothing that Jesus had done wrong, it was all us.

Everything.

The debt was paid and it was finished.

And that morning that he rose up from the grave, it was completed.

It was completed because it proved that he had nothing.

Death had no hold on him.

But what debt are we talking about and for just a moment, i know there might be some in the room that don't understand what this debt is they were talking about.

So, over 6,000 years ago, we were in the garden.

God made Adam and Eve and, just in case you didn't know, god, the father, the son and the Holy Spirit were there present, because the world was made in him and through him, and that's Jesus, right?

and so they're all there and they make Earth and they put man and woman in the garden and God would walk with them every day, which stroll with them through the garden.

Because he loved us, because he wanted to be in Relationship with us, right?

but he also wanted us to have free will.

Well, how do we have free will if he makes everything perfect and tells us how to do it Right?

There's no choices.

So he gave us one choice, one single choice Don't eat of that tree right there.

Whatever comes out of that tree, don't eat it, everything's gonna be fine.

The one choice.

Of course, we know what happened.

You've heard the stories Adam and Eve ate from it, and I used to get so mad at Adam and Eve for eating from that tree.

We wouldn't be here today, everyone for you.

But yet I think about my own life and how many times I have broken God's rules, and I have to humble myself All the way under and go yep, i would have done that too, maybe faster than they would have.

So it's all of us.

All of us have this in our life the propensity to sin.

And so now sin was Introduced into our life, we could no longer walk with God because of his perfectness, so now we're separated from him.

But if you notice story, god Still loved us so much that he didn't just banish us and burn us to the ground.

What you could have done.

Ah, you know what I hate?

this piece of artwork right here.

I'm gonna start over over here.

He could have done that, right, but he hung out like he wanted to still take care of us.

So he put clothes on us and he did set us outside of the Garden of Eden and Then to show us throughout time The weight of sin in our life, he taught us how to sacrifice and what it took to sacrifice for our sin, and that's when we started seeing animals being Sacrificed and blood was shed, and it continued to show us for thousands of years that cost.

The penalty of sin was death and It took blood to cover that sin.

And so then here we are with this debt of sin, and This is what Jesus came for.

And it was a plan all along.

This wasn't a plan to All right.

Well, first one didn't work plan to know this from the beginning.

As Scott talked about last week, jesus knew what he was coming to earth for.

Jesus chose to follow through with the sacrificed And in his very last words he said it is finished.

All of time We were separated completely from the father, completely separated, with no way to commune with him.

But that was finished because the debt had been paid.

And The next, on the three days later, on that morning, when he rose from the grave, he cut the ties of death and hell because nothing had control of him.

So Jesus rising from the dead sealed in all eternity the truth of all the words that he said while he was here.

What does that mean for us today?

Well, it's utmost importance that we understand and believe that Jesus raised from the dead.

You can't be saved without truly believing that in your heart.

Romans 10 9 says because if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

We must believe this, we must know it, and There's a few things that I thought about Regarding Jesus and the free gift of salvation that I wanted to share with you this morning.

One that was Jesus was born of a virgin, meaning that it is a miracle that Jesus even came at all into a woman.

That Had never happened before in past or in future.

There's never, ever, been another person with immaculate conception.

He was it.

Jesus lived a sinless life, although we had every opportunity to sin, but never once did.

He was the perfect human, and this had never happened in the past and it's never happened since He's it.

Jesus sacrificed himself to pay the debt of sin that no one could pay, so that we could be God's children once more.

That had never happened before this time, and it's never happened again.

We don't hear any other stories ever again.

We don't have a new timeline.

You know that we have.

You know BC and AD, and then we go a thousand years and then we have BT and you know some.

Whatever you know before Tom and after Tom, we don't have that.

It's all about Jesus.

Everything, everything in the Word of God is about Jesus All the way back to Genesis, chapter 1, verse 1.

Genesis 1:1

But then Jesus rose from the grave, not just in spirit but in full body, and he ascended to heaven.

It is on the throne, completing and confirming every prophecy that had ever been made of him.

There was over 300.

That's impossible.

It never happened before and it hasn't happened again.

Jesus Christ, he's it, he's all His resurrection sealed in once and for all, all of everything that he said.

And because of his resurrection we now can have an intimate relationship again with him, just as the beginning, when he created heaven and the earth and he set it in motion and he was walking with us in the garden.

Now he's not just walking with us in the garden, in the world, he's walking in us.

So many times I think about how cool it would have been to just be in person with Jesus as one of the disciples.

But we have it much greater.

He's in us.

We feel him, not just physically but spiritually.

We feel him, we hear him, we're guided by him.

But it was after he rose from the grave that he gave us the Holy Spirit.

It was after he rose from the grave that the day of Pentecost happened.

He gave us the Holy Spirit, the same spirit that was with Jesus, that raised him from the grave.

He now put inside of us.

Just break and loose the fangs of death.

That acts two and 24, because it's not possible to hold Jesus Now because of what Jesus did for us by the resurrection, proving that death could not hold him.

Death doesn't hold us.

We should not be afraid of death.

If we know Jesus Christ today, there should be no fear of death, because it doesn't hold you.

It has no power over you.

The ultimate victory that was provided when Jesus rose from the grave was this is that God adopted us as sons and daughters.

The God of the universe that created us has adopted us as sons and daughters and we will spend eternity with him.

Yeah, there's some really cool stories in the Bible about how we're going to have a mention when we get to heaven.

Jesus told us he's gone to prepare a place for us.

None of that matters as much as Jesus Christ in front of us Put me in a shed in the corner of heaven.

As long as Jesus is right there with me, i'm not going to heaven.

So I could get a mansion.

I don't want that When we truly know Jesus and we understand his resurrection power and the Holy Spirit comes inside of us.

Nothing in the world compares, nothing, none of it compares.

The resurrection of Jesus reminds us that we should be in awe of God's holiness.

He is a holy God.

He is not just here paying our debt anymore.

He's not just fixing our problems.

He's the Son of God on the throne and he should be honored and worshiped that way.

See if he didn't race from the grave.

We talked about all of that, what that would look like, of who Jesus would be but he raced from the dead, proving that everything he said was true, proving that he's the Son of God, the Messiah.

And now, when they saw him and there's so many people that saw him ascend to heaven he's on the right hand of God, he is in the Godhead.

He's not just our buddy, he's not just our boy.

You know, i see the picture of Jesus that they've drawn, where he's just like.

You know, i'm just your friend, you know.

Or the old songs that we hear.

It's not just that.

Yes, he does love us.

He is called Abba, father, daddy, right, but Jesus said if you love me, you keep my commandments.

If you love me, keep my commandments And, just like any good dad, his rules in his home are up, kept, they're honored, because they have respect for their dad And my daddy in heaven, who loves me, and I know he's got my back, but he's still God, he's still Father, so we should honor and respect his holy name.

We should honor and respect the things that he says are right and what are wrong, and not try to skew those or make them fit what we want.

The resurrection should remind us that, since we are now in him, every enemy he overcame that day has been overcome for us today and forever Remember.

Jesus said he's coming back.

He said that we have a comforter.

He left that comforter with us, called the Holy Spirit.

He's gone to prepare a place for us.

He were not alone.

Jesus is God, he is on our side and we know this.

Why?

Because the resurrection, because he proved it all.

He proved, and today I want us to search our life for a few moments.

While I was putting all this together this week, i really felt like either someone in this service or someone online maybe someone hearing it later doesn't know Jesus.

That's why I kind of broke it down a little bit and explained what sin was Explained, our need for Jesus, and then we are talking about one of the most important things that we need to understand in salvation is that Jesus Christ raised from the dead, and I want everybody to know in this room that if you confess your sins, confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that Jesus raised him from the dead, you too can be saved.

I felt like this morning that at least one or two of you do not know Jesus.

And you hear me today and you're thinking, oh, but I've been going to church for a long time.

I said that prayer when I was a little kid.

That doesn't matter, i don't know if you know, but like saying a prayer is not in the Bible.

You know, that's not the way to get to heaven.

When we give our life to Jesus, our life changes, completely changes.

Now I'm not saying that you can't say a prayer and get saved.

You can, but you must mean it And you must believe that Jesus Christ raised from the dead.

And so today you can have that opportunity.

And listen, i'm not going to call you upfront.

Today, here, in just a few moments, we're going to simply pray and everyone's going to pray with you And today, right where you're sitting, you don't need to come up front, you don't have to do that.

Right where you're sitting, you can talk to Jesus, confess to him your sins, believe that he did come up from the grave.

He's on the right hand of God today and you will be saved.

It's a guarantee And just as we know Jesus Christ raised from the dead, we know it.

It is historically proven, even outside of the Bible.

I don't know if you guys knew that Science only proves the Bible more and more all the time, every time they find something.

A while back they found brimstone burned in to the tower of Babel, like they found the pebbles and everything proving that that happened They found when they dug on the bottom of the Red Sea they found horse and man bones side by side would cherry at pieces.

Everything in the Word of God happened y'all.

It is true.

There were more than 500 people that saw Jesus alive after the crucifixion.

It is medically proven that any man period took the beating that Jesus took and that all those who got crucified.

There's no way you can live through it.

You're almost dead before you get to the cross.

You're in critical condition before you even get there.

So there's no way that he stayed alive for three days in tomb Right.

It is all true.

And today, if you're feeling a tug in your heart that today's the day to give your life to Jesus, you've been hearing it for a little while, you've been feeling it.

You're drawn here this morning.

You're not here by accident.

It's because the Holy Spirit is revealing to you.

Do you know how amazing that is?

None of us can give our life to Jesus unless the Holy Spirit reveals it to us.

That means that the spirit of the living God is talking to you right now.

So today, if you're feeling that we're going to give you an opportunity to pray, so let's all pray right now.

Father, god, we do pray for each and every person here and each and every person watching this God.

We pray, lord Jesus, that you would prick their hearts, that you reveal to them their need of a savior.

God, you rose from the grave so that we could be one with you forever, so that everything that you and the Father in heaven had planned would come to pass.

Because of your sacrifice, because of your resurrection, because of your blood, and now, this morning, because of your promise, no one has to leave here without being saved.

God, we believe that this morning And right now, if you're one of those who feel the need right now, you feel the calling to give your life to Jesus, right now, i encourage you to just confess your sins to Jesus, just not all of them I mean, it'd take me the rest of my life to do that for myself But just confess your.

I am a sinner.

Right now, you can say this I am a sinner.

Lord Jesus, i know that what you did on the cross and your resurrection sealed in eternity my salvation.

Please come in and change my life.

I want you to be the Lord of my life.

In Jesus name.

Can all of us right now just pray for just another few moments?

And if you've just given your life to Jesus, right now, just begin to thank Him in your heart.

Just begin to thank Him.

Today is the first day of being reborn, of being born again, of your life being changed.

Thank you, jesus.

Have your way this morning And save people's souls.

We love you, jesus, your name.

We pray Amen This morning.

If you said that prayer, i'm not going to ask you to come up from I'm not going to do that to you What I am going to ask is that you confess with your mouth that Jesus Christ is Lord of your life, and all that means is turn to someone in your group, turn to someone in your family, or come to the prayer team here after the prayer team is going to be up here in just a few moments or come and see me after service at the coffee bar.

I'm going to come out there and just tell me today I gave my life to Jesus.

Because that's the next step.

We don't be ashamed of Jesus Christ as our Lord.

It's confessing that Jesus is Lord of our life, and we want to get you set up for baptism as well.

All right, well, god, we just thank you so much for this day, thank you for each and every person, and God, we continue to pray for all of the ministry that you're doing in and around this world, lord Jesus, and as we have some of our own in Ukraine and we have some of our own in other states and God, we've got some in you in Columbia And God, we just pray right now that you would move there and have people give their life to you, jesus, and move in their lives.

But, god, right now we have a team here as well, so many that come and want to see your amazing miracles and amazing grace, lord Jesus, and I just pray that you would touch each and every one of them as they're ministering your gospel through action and through serving and through just acts of love.

Lord, jesus, god, i pray for divine times where they can speak your word to somebody and that they would give their life to you.

Jesus, god, that at least half of them would be able to witness someone giving their life to you this week.

Jesus, we just thank you for that, father.

We love you in Jesus name, amen.