He is risen indeed

Reading comes from John chapter 20 verses 1 to 9. Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw the stone that had been removed from the entrance. So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, They have taken the Lord out of the tomb and we don't know where they have put him. So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb.

Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there, but did not go in. Then Simon Peter, who was behind him, arrived and went into the tomb.

He saw the strips of linen lying there, as well as the burial cloth that had been around Jesus' head. The cloth was folded by itself, separate from the linen. Finally, the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside.

He saw unbelieved. They did not understand from scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead. And to continue to verse 18.

Then the disciples went back to their homes, but Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white seated where Jesus' body had been. One at the head and the other at the foot.

They asked her, Woman, why are you crying? They have taken my Lord away, she said, and I don't know where they have put him. At this she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus. Woman, he said, why are you crying? Who is it you're looking for? Thinking he was the gardener, she said, Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him and I will get him.

Jesus said to her, Mary. She turned towards him and cried out in Aramaic, Rabboni, which means teacher. Jesus said, Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet returned to the Father.

Go instead to my brothers and tell them I am returning to my father and your father, to my God and your God. Mary Magdalene went to the went to the disciples with the news. I have seen the Lord and she told them that he had said these things to her.

We're going to join in together and sing Thine be the Glory, which is number 689 in mission praise. Please stand and sing. Thine be the glory, risen from the dead.

Heaven and earth are filled with Thy glory. Jesus, Jesus, risen from the dead. Thine be the glory, risen from the dead.

Jesus, Jesus, risen from the dead. Heaven and earth are filled with Thy glory. Thine be the glory, risen from the dead.

Do be seated. So glad to have your company this great morning. Celebration which outlies any other celebration in the Christian calendar and indeed in the history of the world.

I can tell Mr. Blair what the Millennium Dome should have within it. Some reminder of the remarkable birth, life, death, resurrection of Jesus Christ. The 2000 years represents His birthday and intelligent human beings should have in their mind to thank God for His grace toward us in sending Jesus into the world as our Savior.

Sometimes told a story, I like it. It captures a point that comes from friends of mine who look after what's known in Jerusalem as the Garden Tomb. Two at least sites which are claimed to be the possible place where the Lord Jesus was raised.

I like to think that the tomb outside of the ancient walls of Jerusalem which has been left unspoiled by the years, no sepulcher, no chapel, no church has been built on it. I like to think that that was the place. And there's an evangelistic team that's always there taking visitors around.

On one occasion a young American staying in Jerusalem wanted as a student to earn some pen money and so he needed casual labor. And he rang up one of my colleagues in the Garden Tomb and he said, Have you got a vacancy? My colleague said, Man, we've had a vacancy here for 2,000 years. The vacancy, Jesus Christ raised from the dead in the power of an endless life.

When I survey the wondrous tomb from which the Prince of Glory rose, what happens there dispels my gloom and makes my heart with worship sore. There were women present at the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. Faithful women who were there when he needed somebody to show some empathy, some sympathy.

Women were there when that bedraggled bloodstained figure was taken down from that torture rack and accompanied those two secret disciples who somehow managed to leave their secrecy and anonymity on one side and gained the confidence that Jesus' closest associates patently didn't have. They took the body with the women watching. They placed our Lord Jesus in a tomb and there the tomb sealed by a stone.

His body received in the death of our Lord Jesus a place amongst the rich for the tomb was owned by Joseph of Arimathea and in that garden area we're told that remarkable things were to happen in 72 hours time. I didn't preach here last Sunday, Easter Sunday, I was in Nairobi, but the previous year when I had the privilege of speaking from this pulpit on Easter Sunday, I talked about God's three gardens. The Garden of Eden, that's where the whole cycle of creation started, the commencement of the human story.

The Garden of Gethsemane, where our Lord suffered so much in anticipation of his death. And then the Garden of Resurrection, where he's brought back. The Garden of Triumph.

The Garden of Trial. The Garden of Great Glory, which was made at the very beginning of time. The Garden of Eden.

So you've got these three gardens. And it's to the third one that we come, this morning. And as we do so, we notice that a woman is already there.

A woman whose name is Mary, Mary Magdalene. And the events that happen in this Garden of Triumph, following our Lord's time in the Garden of Tears, which follows 2,000 years or more than that, after that event in the Garden of Tragedy where men and where man and woman fell. So this lady finds herself in the Garden of Resurrection, and such wonderful things happen that she might well have sung as she left the scene on that particular occasion.

I came to the garden alone, while the dew was still on the roses, and the voice I heard falling on my ear, the Son of God discloses. He walks with me and He talks with me, and He tells me I'm His own. The joy we share as we tarry there, none other has ever known.

You see, this woman who was present in the Garden of Resurrection, she didn't expect the events to turn out just as they did. She was there, as I shall explain in a little while, with tremendous grief, with tremendous sorrow, and yet, the beloved Christ comes alongside her. He speaks, and the sound of His voice is so sweet.

The birds hush their singing, and the melody that He gave to me within my heart is ringing. He walks with me, He talks with me, He tells me I'm His own. The joy we share as we tarry there, none other has ever known.

So we stay with this woman. I've preached so many addresses on her. She fascinates me.

Her name, Mary, Mary from Magdala, one of the women who was present during the ministry of our Lord Jesus, a woman who owed Him a great deal because she knew what it was to be possessed with demons. She knew what it was to lose her dignity, and when Jesus died, that was the end of her day. Nevermore would the sun shine.

Nevermore would there be any hope. He is gone. And with bewildered love, she follows that entourage to the tomb.

And then in keeping with Hebrew tradition, believing that somehow the spirit still hovers with the body until the third day, this confused lady, the very early hour of the first Easter Sunday, finds herself in the garden with a foolish task in mind to continue the process of embalming the body of Jesus as though she, failed creature that she was, could put her shoulder against that stone that sealed the tomb and move it as though she, frail that she was, could carry that blood-stained, decaying corpse of the Lord and place it somewhere that she felt perhaps might be safe and more appropriate. When she got there, what did she discover? Well, the tomb is open on either side of the tomb. Inside there are two angels.

You may not know very much about the Bible. That's fine. We're glad you've come here because one of our stocking trades is to try to teach the Word of God.

In the Old Testament, you'll find reference to the temple that the Jews built in Jerusalem. Temple's a very holy place, a church, so to speak, only more lavish than this one and far more capacious. The holiest place in the temple is curtained off and behind the curtain there is an ark known as the Ark of the Covenant, well attested in the Bible and made perhaps more famous by Hollywood in these days because of a couple of films that have been built around it.

On either side of the Ark of the Covenant, there are angelic figures carved in gold. The Ark of the Covenant was the place where the Hebrews believed God would come down and as the priests came into the holiest of holies once per year with some blood from an animal, so God would forgive the people their sins symbolically. And you don't need to have a great deal of imagination or to apply logic to any great deal to realize that what Mary sees that early morning is the true Ark of the Covenant.

Either side of the place where the body of Jesus was laid are angelic figures. Angels were present when Jesus was born. Angels were there when our Lord was in the wilderness having been baptized by John.

Angels are there in the Resurrection Garden. The logic of Scripture is unassailable for we are told that when God mounted His plan of redemption, it so astonished the angelic hosts that these things appertaining to salvation were such in their reaction to them that they want to inquire, they want to know what's happening. So they're present at the scene in the Garden of the Resurrection.

So, we see this woman as she finds herself there, verse 1 of chapter 20 early in the morning. The tomb, well, it's open. The body is no longer present.

So she rushes and tells Peter, probably she was there at the beginning with a handful of other women and they too go off to various parts of Jerusalem to inform the disciples. Peter comes and has a look, and John also. They stay for a while.

John appreciates what's happened, and Peter and he depart and leave this woman once more on her own. Verse 10, the disciples went back to their homes, but Mary, faithful, beloved Mary, stands outside the tomb crying. Mary, who perhaps like some of you this morning, was looking in the wrong direction, looking at the tomb, looking towards the place where Jesus' body had been put, and not looking at Him.

You see, that's my problem. That really is my problem. Isn't it yours in life? I mean, here's Peter.

It's a rerun of the same principle though the situation is different. He steps out from the boat, you remember? He starts to walk on the water. Jesus is also coming towards him, and Peter sees the waves, they're so high, and he hears the rush of the wind down the slopes of the Syrian mountains, and he looks at them and takes his eyes off Jesus.

When you look in the wrong direction, you're in trouble. Some of you are like that. You've come with your rationality.

You've come of a man as a woman, possessed with an intellect. Oh yes, you understand these things, the whole phenomenon of life, this absurdity of Jesus being raised from the dead. And you think things through philosophically.

You try to reckon that your wisdom is greater than the wisdom of the ages. You look at the events. You look in the wrong direction.

To understand Christianity, you need to turn from the tomb and from the cross and look at him. So in her confused condition, she espies someone, maybe sees a shadow falling on the rock, and assumes that he actually is the man who caretakes, the man who looks after this garden, this garden which shall be forever amongst Christians in retrospective evaluation, the garden of triumph. And as she turns, she says, Sir, if you've carried him away, tell me where you have put him and I will get him.

The lovers of Jesus receive the greatest of privileges. It's a peculiar passage, is this? Really very strange. Unique.

I mean, you don't find it anywhere else in the Scriptures, just here. And here is one of the lovers of Jesus, who feels that the whole world must know about what has happened. I mean, she doesn't even mention his name.

She speaks to this unknown character and assumes that, well, he and everyone else in Jerusalem is privy to the events of the cross, forgetting that hundreds and hundreds have been crucified by the Romans. This is the blindness of love, the lover of Jesus, assuming that everyone else loves him. I tell you something, I can't understand why anybody doesn't love Jesus Christ.

I really can't. I fully grasp Mary's predicament. She assumes that the gardener will know.

I would assume that common sense would direct every thinking man and woman today to the person of Jesus Christ. If you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him. Strange, bewildered creature is Mary, but blessed is Mary.

Blessed art thou amongst women who asks these questions, who assumes this knowledge has pervaded the whole of Jerusalem. She comes there in the early morning. She comes mourning, mourning the death of her beloved Savior.

I tell you she has an experience that is unparalleled in Scripture. Ah, even Moses, who takes off his shoes as he stands before the burning bush, the bush that burns that is not consumed. Even he has no greater privilege than Mary, who shall stand beneath the empty grave of the beloved Lord and have an interview her unwittingly at the beginning with none other than God's own Son.

You know, sometimes it's good to know about Jesus. In fact, I would argue it's important to know about Jesus, not just because the preacher tells you about him. There's an interesting verse in 1 John chapter 2 and verse 3. And those of you who bring Bibles, you might like to have a look at it because I guess you've not noticed it before.

1 John 2 and verse 3. Now as you turn into it, let me remind you that John who wrote the epistles is also John who wrote the gospel. Maybe one of the reasons why he writes this particular comment is because, well, he knows Mary. That's the reason why he brings into his gospel this account that you don't find anywhere else in Matthew, Mark, or Luke, the three synoptic gospels.

He has heard of Mary. He has spoken to Mary. He has interviewed Mary.

And this is what he has to say about Jesus. We know that we have come to know him. Now that's almost tautology, isn't it? A repetition of two verbs.

And you think that it almost means the same thing. Why does he bother? Well, because there is logic behind his statement. We know that we have come to know him.

You can know about Jesus through the preaching of the Word. You can know about the Lord Jesus through the reading of the Word. You can feel a sense of Jesus' presence as we're singing in a large congregation such as this.

But the most important thing is to know him for yourself. We know that we have come to know. You see, Mary's knowledge of Jesus as this whole story opens up is seen to be something that's very personal, very intimate, emotional, if you please.

She knows him. She has come to know him for herself. Lovers of Jesus receive the greatest privilege.

My wish for you is that you might have a personal experience of him. The writer says, sometimes the light surprises the Christian as he sings. It is the Lord who rises with healing in his wings.

You say, I don't know what you're talking about. All right, listen. A friend of mine called me from India just a week ago.

He's a doctor. He's brilliant. I say that with measured evaluation.

He is brilliant. He could ride a fortune in the West in terms of the money that he could get as one of the surgeons and medical practitioners at the cutting edge of treating cancer. He's there in India, in Bombay, working amongst the poor for a paltry sum.

And just last week, someone died on his table, the operating theatre table. He wasn't operating one of his colleagues and this lady was not suffering from cancer, she was suffering from malaria and this had affected her heart. He sent me an email about the tragedy that he felt and the depression that he was under.

And then he sent me another one. This thoughtful man at the cutting edge of medical research. He said, Tony, we were together last Sunday in our small chapel in our hospital and he came.

I had such an experience of the sense of Jesus. I know that I know because beyond the Bible, well that's vitally important, beyond the exposition of Scripture, well that has merit, beyond worship and the emotions engendered by people coming together, there was a felt sense of Him. I know that I know lovers of Jesus receive the greatest privileges.

This woman wasn't expecting the risen Christ. None of those disciples were. Those of you who dismiss these accounts, believing that somehow in the 20th century we are sophisticated intellectual people, we think things through.

2,000 years of history. They weren't cavemen in the first century. The average condition was agnosticism bordering on atheism.

The Christian church had to cut into the quarry of unbelief and it found its early proponents because women and men were convinced that Jesus Christ had been raised from the dead. This woman did not expect what happened. This lover of Jesus received such a great privilege.

What is more, our fears and our sorrows are often proven to be needless. Mary will tell you that. She's there in a state of uncontrolled weeping.

Twice she is asked, Why are you crying? Verse 13, the angels. Why are you crying? The so-called gardener asks her. The tears seem to be unnecessary.

Sometimes our fears and our response to our fears are really quite unnecessary. Two-thirds of what we fear never happens. And sometimes if we could open our eyes and take the whole situation in, we would appreciate that the emotion that we illustrate is really quite invalid.

What do I mean? Well, you take Hagar. Hagar was the Egyptian au pair who was working for Sarah and she was chucked out of the home and she makes her way back to Egypt and she's there with a kid on her own. I've always had a love for mothers with children on their own.

A mother should never be on her own. She should have a father. But unfortunately in these days so many things break up, including the family unit.

And here's Hagar on her own with a child. She desperately needs water. But she is so upset about her need for water that she doesn't realize she's standing by a well.

Here is Mary. She's so upset because the tomb is empty. And she's standing beside the Lord of Life.

He is alive. The Lord Jesus Christ. How foolish was her cogitation.

How short-sighted was her spiritual vision. If what Mary had been looking for was actually there, Mary's predicament would have been so great. Did she really want a blood-stained, decaying corpse? No.

She wanted a mighty Saviour. And yet she's upset because the body's gone. Why are you crying? They've taken away my Lord.

I don't know where they've put him. If only I could see those fragments of bones and that decaying flesh. I'd be better off.

No, you wouldn't, Mary. You'd be worse off. I checked this with a Scottish linguist just a few moments ago.

They have an interesting range of colloquial expressions up there. Dun a fesh to sen. I probably haven't got the intonation right.

But the verb to fesh, it means to be a worrywart. To worry and worry. So Robbie Burns will tell you, dun a fesh to sen.

Why worry when the basis of your worry is completely invalid? And that was the case for Mary, wasn't it? Her fears and her sorrows, they prove to be needless because the man to whom she directs her request, take me to the body of the Lord Jesus, is none other than the Savior himself. Our thoughts and our desires sometimes are too mundane. Why do I say that? Well, look what happens in the story.

Jesus says to her, Mary, Mary, and in that he packs a punch, the best sermon as far as she's ever heard, as far as she's concerned. He spoke then one word, suddenly uses her name in a way that nobody else has spoken to her apart from one man, the man who delivered her from her demons. Jesus said to her, Mary, nobody ever spoke to her like that.

And she knows, she knows that he's back, he's back. Now come away, you intellectuals, I'm not playing on your emotion. I'm not just telling this story in an emotional fashion, but there is emotion to it, so I have to be true to the narrative.

If you don't believe it, then you've got to explain, Mary, you've got to explain, Peter, you've got to explain, John, you've got to explain the change of all these men and women. They were not cretins, they were not idiots. She hears her name spoken by the Lord Jesus Christ, and she reacts in a natural but an incorrect fashion.

Jesus said to her, Mary, she turned towards him and cried out in Aramaic, Rabboni, teacher. Teacher. And the implication is she falls at his feet, she grasps hold of him, and the Greek language indicates she clings to him.

Now she wasn't the first person who tried to touch Jesus, not the first woman. The woman who came and tried to touch the hem of his garments. There's another woman, it possibly could have been Mary Magdalene who comes to the Lord Jesus prior to him getting to Jerusalem and takes a box of ointment, a jar of ointment, anoints his feet, she unclasps her hair, and with uncharacteristic abandonment in terms of femininity and privacy, she wipes the feet of the Lord Jesus.

So Mary clings to him. You know, as though Jesus corporeal, Jesus there is going to be the antidote, the answer to all her problems, he's back, I'm never going to let you go. But her thoughts were too mundane.

I've got a friend whose name is Ray, he's now with the Lord actually, he was a great preacher in America. I'll come back to Ray in a moment. One of Mary's problems is the problem of wanting to feel and to handle and to touch and to keep the Lord Jesus ever in her presence.

Yet he has taught the disciples that it is good for you to go away, for me to go away, and then I will come back to you, I'll come back to you spiritually, and that will be far better than me being with you corporeally. Because if I'm with you in body form, I can only be in one place at one time, or else you would need 10,000 Jesuses. No, we can appreciate that theologically, but here's a woman who is upset, her beloved Saviour has gone.

And Jesus says, don't cling on to me, let me go. Back to Ray, he had a daughter and she was about 7 or 8 years of age when this happened and she was sick and she called to my friend Ray and said, come into my bed with me. And Ray says to her after being there a while, I'm going now darling.

So he went back to his room with his wife, she called again and Ray said, darling, God is with you. And she said, yeah, I know, but I want someone with a bit of skin on. You see, Mary, she holds on, she wants skin on the Lord Jesus.

But she has to learn, as you and I appreciate, that when Jesus is not present corporeally in bodily form, he can then return spiritually so that my friend in Bombay can have an incredible experience of Jesus amongst a handful of Christians when he does need the ministry of the Savior. When we can experience him here, as some of us have done during these last few days as we've come together early morning or middle morning and stood by the cross of Christ. Jesus says, touch me not.

Let me go. I have yet to go to my Father. I've got something important to do.

The ascension, the return to heaven, the acknowledgement that what I have done on earth, Mary, has achieved the redemption of mankind. And what's more, Mary, there's something even more important for you to do than to hang on to me. Jesus said, do not hold on to me, for I have not yet returned to the Father.

Go instead to my brothers and tell them I'm returning to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God. Verse 17, which allows me to say as I bring to conclusion this address, there's always something for a lover of Jesus to do. There's always something for a lover of Jesus to do.

What? Well, who is she to tell? Jesus says, look, what you've come to appreciate right now, you now have to disclose to others. Far from hanging on to me, it's imperative that they know. Who has to know? My brothers.

Hey, Jesus, Lord Jesus, do you call that mob brothers? I mean, three days ago when you needed them, where were your brothers? They'd scattered with the exception of one. There had been total disloyalty. There'd been treachery amongst them.

And yet, when Jesus speaks to this woman who first has the resurrection experience and wants to cling on to him, his concern is not just for her, but for all those disciples. And he says, go and tell my brothers. You see, this is the Jesus I serve.

All right, those of you who are skeptical. This goes beyond human imagination to believe that somebody could have written this small point into this story. This makes sense, not by relating it to the creative mind of some author John.

It makes sense when you appreciate the psychology of Jesus, when you know what Jesus was like before his death. What did he come for? He'd come for the lost. He'd come for those who were confused.

He'd come for those who were baffled. He said, I come as a shepherd, and I know my sheep. And he knew about these men and their treachery three days back.

So what does he want to do? To continue the ministry. He commenced to bind up the wounds of the broken conscience, to reanimate their courage, to restore them to their former place. He does not deal with us after our sins, nor reward us according to our iniquity.

You see, when you realize that Jesus deals with men and women like he dealt with his disciples, then you can understand why Mary Shackleton, again, note a lady author, writes the hymn, It Passes Knowledge, That Dear Love of Thine. My Jesus, Savior, yet these lips of mine would fain proclaim to sinners far and near a love which can remove all guilty fear and love beget. Mary, tell them.

Tell who? Tell my brothers. Tell them what? Tell them that I'm back from the dead. Tell them that I'm going to your Father and my Father to your God and my God.

Tell them the spoils of the victory of the cross are being registered on the computer of heaven and not as the unknown babe in Bethlehem, not as a blood-stained figure of the cross shall I be recognized in the glory. That will be taken into consideration. But when I stand before the Father, he will give me the name that is above every name.

At the name of Jesus, every knee shall bow. Mary, go and tell them. Tell who? Tell my brothers.

Tell them what? Tell them that the spoils of the cross, my victory, is going to be registered in heaven. And so Mary does. She goes and she tells them, and she becomes the great preacher, the first preacher of the gospel.

One ancient theologian says, Sin came into the world by Eve, a woman, yet God in mercy ordered things so that a woman... God in mercy ordered things so that of a woman Christ was born, to a woman Christ first appeared after he rose from the dead. And a woman was the first to carry the news of his resurrection. Jesus made Mary Magdalene an apostle to the apostles.

She goes and she tells. She tells them what I've told you this morning. It becomes true to them as they recognize the veracity, Jesus is back from the dead.

The benefits of the cross are applied to them. They apply to you. Man, woman, be a thinking person.

Right now, forget the rest, the four or five hundred plus people who are here. Just me and you. No, forget me.

Just you and God. Interpret life as John Kennard was praying from a Christian framework will make sense. Interpret from any other.

There is no sense. There is no meaning at all. Jesus Christ God's Son comes to the earth to identify himself with you.

You've done wrong. All of us have done wrong. Some of us more than others but nonetheless all wrong, all sinners in the sight of God.

But your sin is taken upon his body. And when he dies the blood is shed and atonement is made. Reconciliation.

Those two angels who are either side of the tomb of Jesus they acknowledge that the cross is a mercy seat where God meets with sinners. The value of the death of Jesus is seen in his mighty resurrection registered in heaven so that all who call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. And know that same experience as Mary knew in her song.

I come to the garden alone when the dew is still on the roses. The voice I hear saying he is near. The Son of God rejoices.

He walks with me. Talks with me. He tells me I'm his own.

Let's pray. If you know the verse sing it, the refrain. And he walks with me.

And he walks with me. And he talks with me. And he tells me that I am his own.

And the joy he will share as he draws near. So Father make this message of a woman who in a confused love met up with a gardener and discovered that he was the Christ of God. May this message may be meaningful to all of us here.

The value of the death of Jesus may be credited to our account. For his sake. Amen.

We have two more songs. Number 278 in Mission Praise. I know that my redeemer lives.

What joy the blessed assurance gives. And we're going to go straight on to All Heaven Declares which is number 14 and we'll be on the overheads. Please stand to sing.

I know the assurance gives. He lives, he lives, who once was dead. He lives forever on earth.

I shall honor him. Create my mansion to prevail. He lives to be his savior.