The Old Testament reading is Isaiah 25:6-9, and this is the infallible and inerrant word of God. 

On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined, And He will swallow up on this mountain the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death forever. And the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of His people He will take away from all the earth. For the Lord has spoken. It will be said on that day, behold, this is our God. We have waited for him that he might save us. This is the Lord. We have waited for him. Let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation. 

And now let’s turn to the New Testament. Mark 15:40 through chapter 16:8. And this is our sermon text this morning as well. Mark 15:40 through 16:8. 

There were also women looking on from a distance, among whom were Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James, the younger, and of Joseph, and Salome. When he was in Galilee, they followed him and ministered to him. And there were also many other women who came up with him to Jerusalem. And when evening had come, since it was the day of preparation, that is, the day before the Sabbath, Joseph of Arimathea, a respected member of the council, who was also himself looking for the kingdom of God, took courage and went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Pilate was surprised to hear that he should have already died. And summoning the centurion, he asked him whether he was already dead.

And when he learned from the centurion that he was dead, he granted the corpse to Joseph. And Joseph bought a linen shroud, and taking him down, wrapped him in the linen shroud, and laid him in a tomb that had been cut out of the rock. And he rolled a stone against the entrance of the tomb. Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joseph saw where he was laid. When the Sabbath was passed, Mary Magdalene married the mother of James and Salome, bought spices so that they might go and anoint him. And 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 see Jesus of Nazareth who was crucified. He is 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 anyone for they were afraid. 

The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. 

Today, of course, we are celebrating the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ from the dead. But before there could be a resurrection, Jesus had to die. And our passage this morning begins with the death of Jesus, not the actual Crucifixion itself, Mark describes that for us in the verses before our passage, but in the immediate aftermath of his death, and particularly, he describes for us what we must assume was a profound sense of regret, not regret, but sorrow, pain, grief, on the part of those who knew Jesus, who loved Him, they felt as we feel at the death of a loved one, sadness, grief, loss.

Mark tells us about the group of women who had followed and served Jesus during His earthly ministry, and they loved Jesus. They loved Him as their teacher, their rabbi, their Lord, One of the women was Mary Magdalene. Jesus had rescued her from the awful oppression of seven evil spirits. Mary, the mother of James and Joseph, we can’t say for sure, but it’s possible. This is actually Mary, the mother of Jesus. And she too, of course, loved Jesus. She loved Jesus as a son. And these women, they did not just hear about the death of Jesus secondhands, but they watched him die.

And they watched him die, not just a natural death, passing from life to death on a bed in a hospital, but they watched him die the most horrific death imaginable, death by crucifixion on a Roman cross – torture he suffered, the humiliation of the cross, the profound injustice of all of it. All of this would have only compounded the intensity of the grief, sorrow, the pain that filled the hearts of these faithful women. But what could they do? What could they do but grieve? It was all over. Jesus was dead. They saw with their very eyes his lifeless body hanging on the cross.

Death leaves us feeling so helpless and hopeless, at least in terms of bringing someone back from the dead. There’s nothing we can do. They are gone forever, seemingly, from our world, from our lives. But in the wake of death, at least we can care for the body of the deceased. We can honor the memory of our loved one with a memorial service, a funeral. These things, of course, don’t take away the grief that we feel, the pain, the loss, but they do give us some way to deal with the reality of death, to bring some sense of closure, and to help us prepare for what is the unavoidable truth, fact that life must go on even after we lose a loved one life must go on and that is what the followers of Jesus are doing here in this passage they knew that there was nothing they could do to bring him back he was gone, he was dead but at least they could care for the body at least they could give Jesus, a decent and honorable burial.

They could put his body to rest and hopefully that may bring some bit of comfort to their anguished souls. And the fact was that as horrific, as unjust as his crucifixion was, it was all over now and life would have to go on somehow. And this is how the story of the resurrection of Jesus begins. It begins in a very ordinary way. People doing what people do, what they can do to somehow deal with the death of one whom they loved and adored, whom they will miss so much. But of course, what these followers of Jesus did not know is that God was about to turn their world upside down.

And life for these followers of Jesus would not just  “go on”, but their lives would never be the same again. And indeed, this world would never be the same again. So as we look at this passage of the resurrection of Jesus, we’ll consider three lessons. First of all, how the followers of Jesus dealt with the body of Christ. Secondly, the wonder of the empty tomb in chapter 16. And thirdly, what all of this means for us, our resurrection life in Christ. So first of all, the followers and how they dealt with the death of Jesus.

So in this passage, it’s very characteristic of Mark. He’ll tell us about one thing, then he’ll move on to tell us about another thing, and then he’ll go back to that original thing that he was describing for us. So here, he first talks about the women, how they watched from a distance, Jesus being crucified, then he tells us about Joseph of Arimathea and what he does, and then he goes back to tell us what the women do in the aftermath of the death of Jesus. And so we’ll first take a look at Joseph, Joseph of Arimathea.

We meet him in verse 43. Mark tells us that he was not just a member, but a respected member of the council. And the Council, this was the Sanhedrin. This was the ruling body of the Jews, the Jewish people, the Pharisees, the Scribes, the Sadducees, the chief priests and so on, these religious leaders. And it was this council or Sanhedrin that had condemned Jesus and sent him off to be crucified and Joseph was a member of that body and yet we know from the Gospel of Luke that Joseph did not approve. He did not consent to their actions; he was against what they did to Jesus. We also know that he actually believed that Jesus was the Messiah he believed in Christ. In verse 43, Mark tells us that he was looking for the kingdom of God.

And Joseph demonstrated his faithfulness to Jesus by asking Pilate for the body after Jesus died. And this was not an easy thing for anyone to do. Mark tells us in verse 43, he took courage. He took courage and went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Remember, Jesus had just been executed by Pilate as an enemy of the state. And by asking for the body, Joseph is putting himself at risk that in the eyes of Pilate, he might be associated with this rebel, this enemy. Then Pilate grants Joseph his request, which probably indicates that Pilate probably didn’t really believe that this was a rebel or an enemy of the state.

But he grants Joseph his request. And so Joseph can begin the process of taking care of the body of Jesus. And there wasn’t much time to do that. Jesus was crucified on a Friday, what Mark calls in verse 22, the day of preparation. And so when the sun set that Friday evening, the Sabbath day would begin and of course, the Sabbath day was the day in which the Jews did no ordinary work, and that included even the work of taking care of a body, preparing the body for burial. And so there was not much time for Joseph to do what he could do in order to prepare Jesus, his body, for burial.

And so there was just a few hours, but in that short time, Joseph bought a burial cloth, which Mark calls a linen shroud, Joseph took down the body, probably he cleaned the body, and then he wrapped the body of Jesus in the linen shroud, and then he laid him in the tomb, and then he rolled the stone in front of the mouth of the tomb. And this whole process was hurried, but at least it was a respectful, a decent burial. And no doubt it gave Joseph a little bit of comfort knowing that at least the body of Jesus would not undergo any further humiliation and disgrace.

At least the body was resting in its grave. And now the women who also were grieving and mourning as Joseph no doubt was. They were doing what they could do to deal with the death of Jesus. As soon as the Sabbath was over, which would be Saturday evening at sundown, the Sabbath officially ended, the women went out and they bought spices in order to anoint the body of Jesus so that when the daylight came, when the sun rose on the first day of the week, they could be at the tomb to properly anoint the body of Jesus for his burial.

The spices were probably some kind of oil or ointment, and they used spices to anoint a dead body, not in order to embalm it, as the Egyptians did, to keep it from decaying, but they did it for a very practical reason, because the decomposing flesh would put off such a terrible odor. The spices would help mask that odor. Now, so far as we read this in Mark, there’s really nothing too extraordinary about what Mark has told us here. Joseph, the women, they’re simply doing what they had to do, what they could do to give Jesus a decent and honorable burial.

Again, no matter how terrible and unjust, no matter how awful the death that he died, they had to go about the rituals, the practices of the funeral because life would have to go on. They had to accept that Jesus was dead. And if the Gospel of Mark ended here, this would be no gospel. There would be no good news here. In fact, all of this would be just another sad story of the pain and the grief that fills the hearts of those who lose a loved one. They’re doing what they can do, what they have to do in the wake of death to try to bring some closure, some comfort, And this is the story that has been told over and over and over again throughout all of human history.

The pain of death, the grief of the loss, the mourning, the sorrow experienced by those who are left behind. And of course, the need to deal with it and to prepare to go on living. But praise God, this is so much more than just another story of death and loss and sorrow. Everything changes. Everything changes in the dawning rays of the sun on that first Easter morning. What began with the heartbreaking sadness of the death of Jesus ends with the greatest discovery that has ever been made or that ever will be made, and that is the discovery of the empty tomb.

And that’s the second lesson that we’ll consider from this passage. The Wonder of the Empty Tomb. Mark tells us in verse 3 of chapter 16 that, as the women were on the way to the tomb, they said to one another, who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance of the tomb? Now that was a very good question for the women to ask. Most likely the stone was a large disk carved out of solid rock. It was covering the opening it tells us, and this is also very characteristic of Mark, he loves to give us these little details that add color to his gospel account, but he tells us, it was very large. This stone disk was very large. It was too large for two or three women to move. And apparently in the midst of their grief, as they had set out for the tomb, they realized that they had forgotten about this very important detail. How in the world will they even get into the tomb? But when they arrived to the gravesite, their question was answered because when they looked up at the tomb, the stone had been rolled back. And when the women entered the tomb, what they saw was not the body of Jesus resting as it had been laid there three days ago, but instead they found what Mark calls a young man sitting in the tomb, dressed in a white robe.

Mark calls this person a young man, but there’s no question as to what he really was. His white clothes are the garments of heaven. This was an angel of God. And now the women, standing in the tomb, seeing this strange young man, all dressed in white, they’re beginning to wonder what in the world is going on, and they are terrified. And the angel says this to the women do not be alarmed you seek Jesus of Nazareth who was crucified. He has risen. He is not here. He has risen. He is not here. We are so familiar with the truth of the resurrection of Christ we are so familiar with these words, “he has risen”, that we fail to feel the force of these words and the way that the women would have felt these words when they were first announced to them by this angel from heaven.

He has risen. He is not here. Think about what these women have come to do. They came to the tomb to care for the dead body of Jesus, to prepare the body to decompose, to decay, to eventually become nothing but a pile of bones. Essentially, they were going to the funeral of their friend. And what they might have expected to hear from this strange person in the tomb, whatever he was, whoever he was, would be the words that you expect to hear at a funeral. You would expect them to hear something like, “I’m so sorry for your loss”. “He was a good man”. “We’ll all miss him so much”. 

But this angel didn’t show up to a funeral. This angel didn’t come to give words of comfort or consolation to this woman. He was there to declare a message, to proclaim to them good news, that the Lord whom they sought, “He is risen. He is not here. He is alive. He lives”. And all of a sudden, this is no funeral anymore. This is no burial service. This is not just another sad story of the death of a loved one and the survivors coping with it as best they can.

No, this is now the story of the glorious work of God of conquering death forever and ever. This is God doing the impossible of bringing life from the dead, of raising the dead to new resurrection life. This is the resurrection of Jesus as the first fruits of all who belong to Christ. We also will be raised up with him. And so when God raised his son Jesus from the dead, he brought about for us an entirely new reality in the face of death. And that is we now have in the face of death, we have the hope, the promise of victory over the grave.

We have now in Christ the death of death, the promise of the hope of resurrection life. And so the empty tomb is not just the good news that God raised Christ from the dead. It is certainly that, but there’s more to it than that. The empty tomb is the good news that whoever comes to Jesus by faith, whoever belongs to him, by trusting in him, whoever believes that he is the Son of God, whoever submits to him as Lord and Savior, that that person also will be raised from death to life. 

John tells us the words of Jesus, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live.” 

This is our hope. This is your hope in the face of death. And what other hope is there that we could possibly have? There is none. Death conquers all. Death overcomes us. We are helpless and powerless in the face of this great enemy. But Jesus Christ has given us victory over death. There is no other hope except in Christ. And people will try to do something, anything, to try to overcome death. But it is all vain. It is futile. 

There are some people now spending millions of dollars to try to pursue some technologies that somehow will stave off death for them. There are people who make arrangements so that when they die, their bodies will be deep frozen in some crypt somewhere, and with the hopes that medical science someday, somehow, will find a way to bring life to the dead. It’s a desperate hope, if you can even call it a hope. But apart from Christ, what other hope is there? For resurrection life, to conquer death, there is no other hope but in Christ you have a true and a certain hope. 

One day, unless the Lord comes again, one day you and I will also go to our grave. We will meet death, death will come to us. And yet, though we must die in these perishable bodies, God has promised you as a believer in Jesus Christ that he will raise you up in a body that is imperishable and glorified, a body in which you will live forever and ever, a body without sickness, without aging, without deterioration, without dementia, a body in which there will be no cloud of death hanging over you and me as it does in this world. And so as a believer in Jesus Christ, the empty tomb of Jesus is the guarantee that one day the tomb or the grave that your body will occupy will be emptied as well. It too will be an empty tomb. 

When the Lord comes again from heaven, when Jesus comes with the shout of the archangel, the shout of the trumpet, and he calls the dead to life, and he will call you out of your grave, and you will be risen to live body and soul in a new heavens and new earth forever and ever. That is the hope that Christ gives you and me as a result of the empty tomb because he was raised. You too will be raised up with him. And the question that confronts us today is, is this your hope?

Again, every single one of us will face death. What is your hope? Is it the Lord Jesus Christ? That he will give you victory over the grave? And so that is our hope for the world to come, but it’s not as though the resurrection of Christ has nothing to do with us in this life. Quite the opposite. As a believer in Christ, You have been given a life in which the power of the resurrection of Christ is already at work in you. And that’s the third lesson that I want us to consider from this passage.

Our resurrection life in Christ. First of all, the resurrection of Christ means that your sins are forgiven. Your sins are forgiven. I once spoke with a woman who had been to Israel. If I remember right, she had been there several times. She was interested in the fact that I was a pastor. I believe she was a Christian, I’m not sure, but her husband spoke Hebrew and she thought it was interesting that I had studied Hebrew in seminary. She was telling me about how great it is to visit Jerusalem and to see the various sites that are described in the Bible.

And she told me that you can see the tomb where Jesus is buried. And I thought, maybe she didn’t mean to say that. Maybe that was just a slip of the tongue on her part, but it really caught my attention. She said, you can see the tomb where Jesus is buried. Not, you can see the tomb where Jesus was buried. And I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt. She just slipped. But what a big difference one little word makes. Because if there is some tomb in Jerusalem, if there is some cave somewhere, where the bones of Jesus are still interred, they’re still there, that’s not just some interesting fact, but it changes everything.

It changes everything. If Jesus is still dead, you and I are still under the condemnation of God. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:17, “and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins”. He goes on to say this, “if in this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied”. We can put it this way. The death that Jesus died on the cross, the sacrifice he made upon the cross when he bore the wrath of God for our sin, It would have no saving value. It could not redeem us. It would not be anything good for us at all if Jesus remained in the tomb, if he is still dead. because if Christ is still dead, that means he is still under the curse of sin and death. And if Christ is still under the curse of sin and death, it means that we are still under the curse of sin and death. And therefore we would be not only under the judgment of God, the condemnation of God, because we are still in our sins, but we would be the most pathetic people, the most pitiable people in all the world, because we would be worshiping a dead savior.

And what’s more, what we are doing here today, what we do here every Sunday, worshiping God in the name and by faith of his son Jesus Christ, all of this would be a colossal waste of time. This would be a supreme act of folly. If Christ is still in the grave and therefore we are still in our sins, what are we doing here? We might as well be out in the world. It’s a beautiful day out there. We might as well be enjoying that. We might as well be trying to get all of the profit and the pleasure that we can possibly squeeze out of this short life that we have in this world until we die and enter into the judgment of God.

If there is a tomb in Jerusalem in which Jesus is buried, we are without hope. But praise God that Jesus has been raised. He has given the testimony of the truth of the resurrection in his word. His word is true. What the women saw is true. An empty tomb. They heard the words of God from the angel. He is risen. And so when God raised Christ from the dead, he not only demonstrated that he is the victor over death and the grave, but the resurrection of Christ was God’s way of proclaiming to the world, my son has satisfied my justice.

His sacrifice is satisfying to me. It is sufficient to atone for the sins of my people. I am pleased with my son. He bore the sins of my beloved people, and it is over, and life is His, and life belongs to all that I give to Him. And so the resurrection of Jesus is the guarantee that His death was truly a death that takes away our sins forever. And for that reason, then, the empty tomb is the guarantee, along with the crucifixion, that you are forgiven. 

That’s why we rejoice today on Easter Sunday. That’s why we rejoice and give thanks to God every Lord’s Day because both of his crucifixion and resurrection we know that our sins have been taken away from us for all time, for eternity. God counts them against us no more. Now Mark doesn’t tell us all of this in his gospel. However, there is a story of forgiveness here, a beautiful story of God’s mercy and forgiveness. Notice what the angel says to the women in verse 7. He says, “but go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee”. He doesn’t just say, tell his disciples, but the angel goes out of his way to say, tell his disciples and Peter to go and meet him in Galilee. 

The last time that Mark tells us about Peter, it is such a grievous sight that he gives us. Peter is a broken man. He is weeping bitter tears. He has done the very thing he vowed so foolishly that he would not do, he denied knowing Jesus as his Lord. And all he could do was weep. But the angel had a message from Jesus for Peter, from the risen Lord. And the message is not what we might think it would have been, “Go and tell Peter that traitor. Go and tell Peter who denied me, who rejected me in this way. Go and tell him that I am alive and I am coming after him.” That’s what we might expect to hear.

But the message from Jesus was, tell Peter that he too must come to meet me. In other words, Peter, the dark night of your guilt and sin is forgiven. It is over. You are forgiven. I love you. You are my servant. I have a mission for you. Come and meet me in Galilee. Yes, even you, Peter. And in the same way, if your hope is in Jesus Christ, the resurrection of Christ is God’s message to you as well. You are forgiven. Your sin against me, your guilt is taken away. Christ says to you, I love you. You are mine and come meet me. Come to me. You are my servant. I have a mission for you. And so the resurrection is God’s guarantee that our sins are forgiven in Christ. Secondly, the resurrection of Christ means for you today, the power to live a new life, the power to live a resurrection life. There was never a greater display of the almighty power of God than on that first Easter morning when Jesus was raised from the dead. God is infinite in power. And this is a manifestation of the power of God that is perhaps even greater than His power that was displayed in creating all things of nothing.

Imagine a God creating all things from nothing. What kind of power is that? But here is an even greater power, that God can bring life out of death, that He can raise the dead. And if you belong to Christ by faith, then that same divine, almighty resurrection power is at work in you by the same power with which He raised Jesus from the dead. The Spirit of Christ is at work in you to enable you to walk in new life, new obedience, resurrection life. And isn’t this something we so desperately need? We can try to change our habits, we can try to change and reform our lives, but we cannot live by faith, we cannot live in obedience to the Word of God, we cannot enjoy walking with Christ apart from the resurrection power that Christ gives to us by His Spirit. And that’s the power He gives you. 

Romans 8:11, “if the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his spirit who dwells in you”. 

And so this resurrection life that Christ gives to you by his almighty spirit, this is a life of overcoming sin, of living to righteousness, dying to sin, growing in obedience, becoming more and more like Jesus himself. You are called to be like Christ, but you cannot apart from the power of the Spirit at work in you, the power by which Jesus was raised from the dead.

And so the empty tomb means not only that your sins are forgiven, but it means you have the Spirit of the risen Christ at work in you to further and further conform you to the image of Jesus, who is the true image of God. Mark ends his gospel with the women fleeing from the tomb. He says that they were seized with trembling and astonishment. They’re too afraid to say anything to anybody. You’ll notice in your English Bibles that verses 9 to the end of chapter 16 that those verses are bracketed off and there’ll be some footnote or explanation saying why.

Most likely this longer ending in Mark was not part of the original gospel that Mark wrote, so that’s why we’re ending the passage on verse 8. But when the passage ends at verse 8, it seems a little strange that the gospel ends that way. It’s not a note of joy and triumphant faith and rejoicing in the resurrection, but the women are terrified. They’re trembling. And whatever else that may mean. Mark is making at least this much clear. The women were totally unprepared for what they encountered in the empty tomb. The sheer magnitude of what they experienced, the angel, the declaration that Jesus had risen from the dead, all of that left them stunned and speechless and terrified.

And one thing is for sure, that after going to the empty tomb, life would never be the same for these women. They went there that morning to make the best of a horrible situation, to cope as best as they could with the profound grief and sorrow that they felt, to deal with the body of their beloved teacher, to anoint his body, give him a decent burial. But they left that morning with the awesome realization that God was doing something in their midst that was more wonderful and magnificent than anything they could have imagined in their wildest dreams.

And the question that I want to leave you and me with is this. Have you been to the empty tomb? And I’m not talking about the actual tomb in Jerusalem. We don’t even know if we know where that is exactly. But have you by faith come to Jesus Christ as the resurrected Son of God, who died for your sin, who was raised to give you eternal life like these women like the disciples after them, and like so millions and millions of people after them, everyone who comes to the empty tomb leaves a different person, a changed person, a person who has now new life and hope in the resurrected Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Let’s pray.

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