Chapter 20 Verse 11

•So Mary had made her way back to the tomb and we know from verse 18 that this Mary is Mary Magdalene. And here she stands weeping…kilo in the Greek which literally means bewailing in pain…and I find that quite off…quite backwards.

•The tomb is empty. We rejoice when we celebrate Resurrection Sunday don’t we? We cheer the triumph of the Lord over the grave but here Mary stands…inconsolable. What do you mean inconsolable?

•Well we know that in just a minute she will encounter two angels…and they ask her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” And then she will encounter Jesus Himself…and what does He ask her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” So entirely backwards!

•You see the very thing which should have made her rejoice, here she stands weak in faith…weeping. Had the Lord’s body still been there, then this scene wouldn’t be so backwards because that would mean that His promise had failed, that His work on the cross was in vain, and she…Mary…and all others are hopeless and lost in their sins…but there was no body…

•So what’s going on here really? You see the weeping manifested her affection…how she loved the Lord, how she longed for Him…but the weeping also showed something else…her unbelief…

•How often we do the same thing. How often we mourn over the absence of things in our lives which in reality are within our grasp. My wife won’t respect me. She’s so hard and unkind to me. Even if she was the best wife on the block…wouldn’t fill you up man. If you love her as Christ loves the church, you’ll find that fullness of joy, because it ain’t in her power to give it to you in the first place…it’s in the Lord’s power…you see you already have it now, within your grasp! God has given you a wife, God has given you a ministry, God has given you His Son…and now you stand at the empty tomb weeping!!??

•But my job man, it’s so unappreciative of my talents! They treat me poorly and never invite me to lunch! Well what are you there for? To work unto man or to work as unto the Lord? Out serve everyone! Pray for everyone! Make sure your job is to let your light so shine before them that they see your good works and they glorify your Father in heaven! (Straight out of the mouth of the Savior! Matthew 5:16)

•You do that, you apply that Word from the Lord tomorrow at work and you’ll watch your job begin to mean so much more than lunch and popularity. So much more than monetary success and personal gratification…You see you already have it now, within your grasp! Yet you stand at the empty tomb weeping!!??

•Oh but Matt my life isn’t what I wanted it to be…if coach would have just put me in man, I could have gone pro! Life’s adventures aren’t comprised of different places, but different perspectives! The life you want is within your grasp! God is with you! He has not left you nor forsaken you! You’ve veered off of His path, out of His will…but today is the day of salvation! Get out from in front of that tomb weeping and get to praising! Rejoice always, again I say rejoice Paul wrote to the Philippians!

•No this isn’t easy but is anything easy that is worthwhile? Is anything effortless that has its end in preciousness? No…so you may need a few things…namely the Holy Spirit, faith, resolve and humility.

•I pray in my own life for more faith and more patience so that I might rejoice in what I do have rather than mourn over what I think I should have or feel that I want. That changes everything man! A heart that is thankful for its portion rather than spiteful and bitter for its lack. Mary here weeps for something and someone whom she has in no way lost…her weeping is backwards and I pray for patience and faith in my life and yours…that we would allow more time, we would wait upon the Lord in gratitude and rejoicing as God develops His purposes in our own understanding.

Chapter 20 Verses 12 - 13

•What a neat picture here…two angels sitting there in the tomb and between them the bloody linens of the Lord…this brings to mind the mercy seat situated upon the top of the Ark of the Covenant, right?

•In Exodus 25 God tells Moses precisely how to construct the Ark of the Covenant. Yet God calls it “the Ark of the Testimony.” Here we have 2 angels…which biblically is the number of perfect witness or testimony. And God told Moses…(this is Exodus 25 verses 18 and 19)…”You shall make two cherubim of gold; of hammered work you shall make them at the two ends of the mercy seat. Make one at one end and the other at the other end.”

•And so these two angels sitting there in the tomb…and between them? The mercy seat. So cool! Where God promised He would meet with man and speak with man…(Exodus 25:22). And here also between them…the blood scarred linens of Jesus speaking of the cross…and we’ll see in the next verse that God meets with Mary there…as she’ll turn and see Jesus there with her…such a great parallel to the Ark of the Covenant…

•No doubt the construction of the Ark of the Covenant in the Old Testament pointed to…had this scene as its very essence…what was in the Ark? The tablets of the 10 commandments…the law…the handwriting of requirements for all men, that no man could attain to…our condemnation was there in that Ark…but notice, the Ark was their coffin just as this tomb was the final resting place of our separation from God!

•One more thing to note here before we move on…Mary is faced with two angels…but she’s not impressed! I dig this! Here she is weeping for the Lord, longing for the One True God…and a couple angels show up…and she’s like big woop…why?

•Because it is Jesus whom she wants and loves…and it is Jesus that she knows! No angel will do! I love that because Paul would write to the Galatians, “even if an angel comes to you and preaches any other gospel that what we have preached, that of Jesus Christ, let him be refused…accursed…cast out!”

•Why is this so important to not…because there are major movements today that have heeded the word of angels over the Word of God! And look they’ve done so to their own demise!

•Who gave the golden tablets (fictional story that is) to Joseph Smith? According to Mormon history, the angel Moroni! Who gave the Koran to Muhammad? The angel Gabriel! Ellen G. White wrote about her “accompanying angel” who revealed to her the hidden truths of the Bible leading to the founding of the 7th Day Adventist movement. Even the Jehovah’s Witnesses falsely believe that Jesus is Michael…the arch angel!

•What’s completely common within all of those movements? They all deny the deity of Jesus Christ but notice…Mary here, denies the supremacy of the angels!

Chapter 20 Verse 14

•See that? She cares so little about these angels and so much about the Lord that she turns her back to them…and when she does…she sees Jesus!

•This is a lesson that we NEED to learn from Mary! The Psalmist wrote in Psalm 73, “Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is none upon earth that I desire besides You. My flesh and my heart fail; but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever!”

•If Jesus really occupied the throne of our hearts…the meager and temporary and fleeting things of this world would make no appeal to us. It is because we are so little absorbed with Him and therefore so poorly acquainted with His soul-satisfying perfection, that the things of time and sense, the things of this world…are so highly esteemed.

•We trade in our beauty for ashes, our days for loss, our children for pleasure and emotional satiation...and we wake up heavy with regret…

•God offers us just the opposite in Jesus. Hope for regret. Power for weakness…if we would (like Mary) would turn our backs on even angels for the sake of seeking the Lord!

•And as she turns to seek, she finds Him…what do you have to turn from to really seek Him I wonder...money? Sex? Fraud? Pride? Your own intellect, maybe? Maybe your own way…because according to Jesus there is only one way. What is it that God is telling you…”get right, choose righteousness?” Turn from it! And turn now because notice, when Mary turns…great revelation! Not only does she see Him…He speaks to her!

•But first, why do you suppose Mary did not know that it was Jesus? Well look before I say anything, the Bible doesn’t tell us…The Bible gives us clues that our heavenly eternal body is not completely different than the one we have now, but it is also not completely the same…2 Corinthians 5 tells us that we have a body that awaits us…a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens…

•And so we don’t know if Jesus looked all that different or all that the same…but we do know that Mary is weeping…weeping for a bit of a backwards reason and quite possibly her eyes were so swollen with tears that she couldn’t see…

•Rings true in my life…the Lord comes to us through brothers, sisters, circumstances, songs…man even the rocks declare His glory…but how often we too do not know that it is Jesus holding us…calling out to us…reassuring us…because of our backwards tears…crying for our trinkets and our own sinful affections…

Chapter 20 Verse 15

•“Woman, why weep? Whom are you seeking?” The first words of the risen Jesus and isn’t this just like Him? “Why weep” He says reminding me of Revelation 21 which promises “He will wipe away all of our tears.” And “Whom are you seeking” He says reminding me of Isaiah 61 which speaks of the Savior as a Healer of the brokenhearted…One who proclaims liberty to the captives and opens the prisons of those who are bound!

•And I love this because Mary says “just tell me where they’ve taken Him and I will carry Him back.” I’ll bear His weight…which shows her great love for Him…because love bears all things!

Chapter 20 Verse 16

•I just want to point something out here as we see the primary occurrence…the initial instance…the first time Jesus reveals Himself after the resurrection…and whom does He choose for this epic event…a woman.

•There are a couple reasons that I bring this up…first…for John to hope that His book would take root…if he indeed were not simply writing what is absolutely true…he would have without a doubt…chosen either himself…or at least a man for this high honor…but its Mary…it’s a woman chosen as the first witness of the resurrected Christ…you see my point is…no one, in that culture, would fabricate that!

•Why? Because in the culture the witness or the testimony of a female wasn’t even recognized legally! But John is simply writing what happened and I love this because the culture said one thing…Jesus said the truth! He was radical man, counter cultural! Firm in righteousness! And we should be too!

•And the second thing is I see an interesting parallel here…a pattern that reveals a powerful truth. Who was the first person that He just came right out and told that He was and is the Christ? You got it! The woman at the well!

•You see in God’s economy…male and female…completely equal! Galatians 3:28 says, in His family there is neither Jew nor Greek…slave nor free…male or female…for we are all one in Christ Jesus…He created man in His image and He created them male and female…but this culture and many cultures still seek to elevate one gender or one race or one social status above the other…not God! Man in God we are all equal and there is no partiality…no favoritism!

•What there is…is order. Opportunity for discipleship. Because truly without a plan there is no disciplan (discipline). 1 Corinthians 14 tells us that we serve a God of order…just as there is order in heaven…Jesus prayed to the Father, “nevertheless not My will by Thy will be done!” Yet was He and is He absolutely equal to the Father in all ways? Entirely.

•And here Jesus shows this wonderful equality and balance in His creation…as He once again chooses a woman for this tremendous revelation!

•And He says to her, “Mary.” And when He does…she recognizes Him! How? Why? There were many Mary’s. How is it that this one call of her name…opened her eyes? I submit to you that He spoke to her in a personal…familiar way…which is exactly how He speaks to you and to me. If we would but have ears to hear…my how our eyes would be opened!

•And her eyes were…look at the next verse…

Chapter 20 Verse 17

•This word “cling” in the Greek (haptomai) is given to us in the present imperative tense which means that she indeed was clinging to Him…

•And so interesting what He says to her…”let Me go”…remember back in John 14…He had made a promise. He said “when I return to the Father, I’ll send to you the “Helper” and He will abide with you and in you…He is the Spirit of truth, of love, of power and of a sound mind…” And I believe that this was His will for Mary…that she should know Him no longer according to the flesh…as Paul wrote to the church in Corinth in 2 Corinthians 5:16, but now we know Him according to the Spirit, in eternal communion…

•And He says, “I go to My Father and Your Father, and to My God and your God.” Why not just say “our?” Because He is proclaiming the death of separation! Lost in sin, the world is of its father the devil man…but because of His grace, because of what Jesus accomplished…because of the price He paid…now His Father is our Father…and His God is our God…why? Because we have a Mediator. One that was and is able!

Chapter 20 Verse 18

•No doubt she didn’t want to let go…but she did. Why? Because He commanded her to…I wonder what it is today, as we have heard so clearly of His commandments and they all center around one theme…love the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul, mind and strength…and love eachother as yourself…I wonder today what it is that has been commanded of you as the Lord speaks personally to your heart…into your life…that you, like Mary, may have no practical interest in doing…

•That is the ground level, primary marching orders of what it is to be a Christian…a follower of Jesus…a disciple of Christ…God’s word is clear…and when the chips all fall…when all of the smoke and the mirrors of your life are removed…so is your answer. I pray today, you’d choose to be fully His…and fully free!