Mark 16:1-8
Date: July 30th, 2023
Speaker: Samuel Crites
Scripture: Mark 16:1-8
Exegetical Outline
Main Idea of Text: When the women visit the tomb, an angel tells them Jesus is risen and commands them to tell the disciples, but they flee in fear.
1:1-3 – On the day after the Sabbath, the women make their way to the tomb, wondering who will remove the stone so they can anoint Christ’s body.
1:4 – When they arrive at the tomb, the stone is rolled away.
1:5-7 – Upon entering the tomb, they meet an angel that told them that Jesus has risen, and to go tell the disciples to meet him in Galilee.
1:5-6 – They are told that Jesus is risen.
1:7 – They are told to tell the disciples to go to Galilee to meet Jesus.
1:8 – They fled from the tomb, trembling and afraid, and told no one.
Homiletical Outline
Main Idea of Sermon: The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the first fruit of resurrection for those that believe in the Gospel.
Jesus is the first fruit of the true resurrection.
The Gospel must be believed in order for the fruit of resurrection to be enjoyed.
Introduction:
The importance of this week’s sermon text cannot be overstated. Without the resurrection, there is no Gospel. There is no forgiveness for sin. There is no hope for those that have preceded us in death. Jesus of Nazareth would have been proven a liar and gone down in history as either a mad man or a fraud. It is the resurrection that makes Mark a Gospel and not just another historical work from the first century. If Christ did not walk out of the grave then every single person on the planet should look at Christians as the most pitiful and deceived people group in all of history. Our faith is meaningless.
But Paul says this in 1 Corinthians 15:20:
1 Corinthians 15:20-26
20 But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. 21 For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. 22 For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.
Brothers and sisters, after 32 sermons, it is a joy to say that the tomb is empty. We have passed through the suffering and death of Christ and now we get to see his triumph over our greatest enemy, death and the grave. Let’s read Mark 16:1-8 and celebrate the victory of our king.
Mark 16:1-8
16 When the Sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. 2 And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. 3 And they were saying to one another, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance of the tomb?” 4 And looking up, they saw that the stone had been rolled back—it was very large. 5 And entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a white robe, and they were alarmed. 6 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. 7 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.” 8 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 main idea of our sermon today is this: The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the first fruit of resurrection for those that believe in the Gospel.
Our sermon will have two points. First, Jesus is the first fruit of the true resurrection from the dead. In our previous sermon, we saw that the death of Jesus was the death of the true Passover lamb. We knew that because we followed the flow of the Passover week closely. When Jesus is entering the city at the beginning of the week, the people are choosing their Passover lamb. As he is preaching against the false worship of the temple and winning the hearts of the crowds, the people are letting their lamb live in their homes and eat from under their table. On the day he is crucified, they slaughter their lamb and celebrate the Passover Supper. Now, after the Sabbath has passed on the day of the Feast of first fruits, when the Israelites are offering their grain offering from the first fruits of their harvest, Jesus walks out of the grave as the first fruit of a spiritual harvest of resurrection. This should not have been a surprise to anyone, and all of the spiritual fruitfulness that we enjoy is because Jesus Christ has preceded us the first fruit.
The second point of our sermon is this: The Gospel must be believed in order for the fruit of resurrection to be enjoyed. As we bring our study of the Gospel of Mark to a close, we come to the most important part of the story. Paul teaches us in 1 Corinthians 15 that if Christ has not been raised from the dead, then the Gospel is meaningless, and we are still in our sin. Our problem is that we have a poor understanding of what it means to believe. Belief is not merely agreement. Someone could affirm that Jesus rose from the dead and still not be saved from the wrath of God. The Gospel must be believed, meaning we must have an assurance of hope, a certainty that we are justified by grace through faith alone. He stood in our place to receive our punishment, so we could stand in his place and be robed in his righteousness. It is only those that truly believe in the Gospel that can be certain that they will follow Christ in resurrection to eternal life.
This is the resolution to the story Mark has been weaving for us from the beginning of his Gospel. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the first fruit of resurrection for those that believe in the Gospel.
Jesus is the first fruit of the resurrection from the dead.
Let’s consider our first point: Jesus is the first fruit of the resurrection from the dead. To be able to see this point, we must first understand the story in our sermon text today and how it fits into the broader narrative that Mark has been telling.
Prior to Chapter 11, one of the distinctive features of Mark’s Gospel is its immediacy. In Chapters 1-10, Mark tells the story at lightning pace while giving us almost no commentary on the events of his narrative. Beginning in Mark 11, his style changes. He spends the first ten chapters, basically summarizing the first three years of the ministry of Christ, and spends the last 6 chapters crawling through the last week of Christ’s life, telling us the story with a chronological detail that was foreign to the first half of the book. We should ask the question, why?
It is because Mark wants us to see how the Passover week mirrors and foreshadowed the Passion of Christ. To help us, turn in your Service Guide to page 9. You will find a timeline that you will find helpful as I explain how the Feasts of the Lord explain the Passion Week.
The Passover took place in the first month of the Jewish calendar known as Nisan. On the 10th day of Nisan, the Sunday before Christ rose from the dead, the Jews would select the lamb that would serve as their Passover sacrifice. They took that lamb into their homes to live with them for four days. As the Jews are choosing their lamb, Jesus makes his triumphal entry into Jerusalem as their true Passover lamb.
The Passover was celebrated on the 14th day of Nisan, so four days after choosing their Passover lamb. The day after the Passover was the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread. For seven days the people of Israel ate bread that had no leaven in it. So, in those four days between choosing their lamb and eating the Passover meal, the Jews aggressively cleaned their houses, removing all sources of leaven from their homes and burning it. Leaven was a symbol of sin and also reminded the Jewish people how their ancestors had to flee in haste to escape Egypt and didn’t have time to leaven the bread that they ate. During this time, the crowd falls in love with Christ’s teachings as he deals with the leaven of the religious leaders, ultimately condemning the false worship in the Temple.
The 14th of Nisan began on Wednesday night, because the Jewish day began at sundown. So Jesus and his disciples celebrate the Passover meal and on the same day, which would have been Thursday to us, he was crucified. Now, I know this might be confusing to some of you, but Jesus was crucified on Thursday, not Friday.
Let me briefly explain. Catholic Tradition says he was crucified on Friday, because it says that they have to get Jesus off the cross before the Sabbath. What we Gentiles fail to understand is that there was an extra Sabbath day during the feasts. Turn with me to Leviticus 23:4-8. Listen to Leviticus 23, beginning in verse 4:
Leviticus 23:4-8
4 “These are the appointed feasts of the LORD, the holy convocations, which you shall proclaim at the time appointed for them. 5 In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month at twilight, is the LORD’s Passover. 6 And on the fifteenth day of the same month is the Feast of Unleavened Bread to the LORD; for seven days you shall eat unleavened bread. 7 On the first day you shall have a holy convocation; you shall not do any ordinary work. 8 But you shall present a food offering to the LORD for seven days. On the seventh day is a holy convocation; you shall not do any ordinary work.”
So, the Feast of Unleavened Bread began the day after the Passover, the 15 of Nisan, and began and ended with a high day, a day of rest where no work was allowed to be done. So the 15 of Nisan and the 22 of Nisan were High Sabbaths. So the Sabbath being referenced in all the Gospels is not normal Sabbath that took place on Saturday, but the special Sabbath that took place on Friday. John makes this explicit in his Gospel in John 19:31. He says,
John 19:31
31 Since it was the day of Preparation, and so that the bodies would not remain on the cross on the Sabbath (for that Sabbath was a high day), the Jews asked Pilate that their legs might be broken and that they might be taken away.
This explanation makes the most sense of the Jewish Passover Week and of Christ’s own prophesy in Matthew 12:40. Jesus said,
Matthew 12:40
For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.
Jesus didn’t say that he would be in the grave three calendar days, as in Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. No, he is very explicit. Three periods of day and three periods of night. So he is in the tomb Thursday before the sun goes down, the first day period; Thursday night, the first night period; Friday day and Friday night, day period two and night period two; Saturday day and Saturday night, day period three and night period three; and he is out of the grave before sunrise on Sunday, which is technically already Sunday, because Sunday starts at sundown on Saturday night, three day periods, and three night periods.
He rose on Sunday morning, before sunrise, on the 17th of Nisan, which was itself a special feast day. The Sunday after the normal Sabbath, the week of Passover, was known as the Feast of Firstfruits. It was a day when the people of Israel would bring the first fruit of the Harvest before the Lord and wave it as an offering before the presence of God in the Holy of Holies. It was this day that Jesus, the first fruit of the resurrection from the dead, walked out of the tomb, conquering death and the grave.
Mark expects us to understand the Feasts of the Lord. He slows down his narrative to help us see that this is the way to interpret Christ’s Passion Week. Israel has been practicing these feasts for thousands of years, so that when Jesus walked out of the tomb, they would be able to see what God has been doing. Jesus is the true Exodus. The first Exodus was merely a foreshadowing of the true liberation that God accomplished through Christ.
And the story of feasts doesn’t end there. This is just for free, but the Feast of Firstfruits kicked of a festival known as the Feast of Weeks, specifically seven weeks or 49 days. During this time, they would harvest their fields. On the fiftieth day, the Jews finished their harvest and celebrated the Feast of Weeks, also known as the fiftieth day or Pentecost. On this day, they celebrated how God had provided for them. Oh man, this just gets me so excited. What happened fifty days after Jesus walked out of the grave? Listen to what Luke tells us in Acts 2:
Acts 2:1-4
When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place. 2 And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. 3 And divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them. 4 And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.
On the day when the Jews were celebrating God’s provision, he provided the Helper, the Holy Spirit, sent by both God and Christ to seal the promise of a new and better covenant. Peter got up, preached from Joel 2 and Luke says this in verse 40:
Acts 2:40-41
And with many other words he bore witness and continued to exhort them, saying, “Save yourselves from this crooked generation.” 41 So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls.
The day the Old Covenant was ratified, 3,000 Israelites were killed for turning away from God and worshipping a golden calf, and on the day the Spirit is given, the Church is born, and we begin to enjoy the promises of the New Covenant, 3,000 souls are saved.
That Jesus is the first fruit of resurrection leads us to two important conclusions. First, the Gospel is the most astonishing story that should not be astonishing. God has alluded, telegraphed, hinted, and explicitly told us all that would take place. He was trying to prepare the people to see what he has been doing from the beginning. The death of Jesus was no accident. He is the true Passover lamb AND he is the first fruits of the resurrection from the dead.
So, given all of this, one of the striking things about our sermon text this week is what did not happen. As Chapter 16 opens, I think Mark means for us to be surprised that we find Mary, Mary, and Salome approaching the tomb, carrying spices to prepare Jesus’s body for burial. What does this say about their expectations? Are they expecting to celebrate the first fruits of resurrection or are they expecting to finish a job that was left incomplete because they were in a rush to get his body in the grave before the High Sabbath?
But we should not be too hard on the women. What about the disciples? The fact that the women are alone tell us even more about those that followed Jesus so closely. No one expected Jesus to be alive. They all expected him to be dead.
Given all that Mark has taught us, this should seem outrageous to us. Listen to what Christ taught his disciples on the way to Jerusalem in Mark 8:31.
Mark 8:31
31 And he began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again.
And again in Mark 9:31.
Mark 9:31
for he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, “The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him. And when he is killed, after three days he will rise.”
And again, while they were on their way to Jerusalem in Mark 10:33-34.
Mark 10:33-34
saying, “See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death and deliver him over to the Gentiles. 34 And they will mock him and spit on him, and flog him and kill him. And after three days he will rise.”
Three times Jesus told them what was going to happen to him at the end of their trip to Jerusalem. Why were they not waiting for him on the morning of the third day? It should not have been three women coming to finish the preparation of Jesus’s body for burial. There should have been a crowd of Jesus’s disciples waiting for him, eager to watch him walk out of the tomb.
Imagine the heart ache they have been through the last 3 days, the wondering, the waiting, the crying. At different points, I am sure that all of them have been overcome with despair and fear. Think about Peter, how he must feel. Having betrayed Christ, fulfilling Christ’s prophesy about him, and coming to the self-realization that he is not who he thought he was. All that pain and heart ache could have been avoided if they would have just listened to Christ. If they had just understood what God had already revealed in his word.
Isn’t that true for you and I? The peace and assurance that we have been offered in the promises of Christ that we forfeit because we do not know what he has said to us. We are simply unaware of what he has revealed to us in his word. It is so common in contemporary Christianity to desire an experience with God that is uninformed by what he has told us to be true. We want community without effort, we want peace without faith, and we want intimacy without knowledge. You cannot love what you do not know.
So, we need to look long and hard at the Scriptures because that is where God has revealed himself. We need to know his word. Not merely individual books, but we need a working biblical theology across all the Bible. We need to understand how it fits together and how the books depend on one another. It is a progressive revelation that builds on itself from beginning to end. We should not be caught by surprise by what God has said he will do for us.
This is why our worship services are so word centric. Our goal is to read the Word, pray the Word, sing the Word, preach the Word, and see the Word in the Lord’s Supper and Baptism. We do this because meaningful worship begins with beholding the glory of God as he has revealed himself.
This is why we encourage you to discuss the sermon with each other throughout the week and why we ask you to read the sermon text before the next worship service. We want our relationships to be founded on our communal study of God’s word. We aren’t merely a group of friends. We are a community that worships God together based on how he has revealed himself in his word. We cannot have meaningful friendships without the common denominator of faith.
This is why we pray as a Church in our Sunday morning prayer service. We want our hope to be set on the promises that he has made to us. Not on our own personal strength to endure.
Second, as the first fruit, he goes before us and is our model for fruitfulness. Not only do we follow him in resurrection, but we also follow him in fruitfulness. The second Adam has become the head of a new race of humanity. He has restored and redefined what it means to be human. We must bear fruit because he is fruitful.
Paul prays this for over the Church in Philippi. Listen to what he says in Philippians 1, beginning in verse 9:
Philippians 1:9-11
And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, 10 so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, 11 filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.
The logic of Paul’s prayer is so helpful for understanding the connection between Christ as the first fruit and the fruitfulness that is required of us. Paul desires that the Church in Philippi grow in the fruit of righteousness that comes from Jesus Christ so that, at the day of Christ, they may be found to be pure and blameless. It is because Christ is the first fruit of righteousness that the Church at Philippi can develop the fruit of righteousness in their lives, and this fruit is so important because without it, they will not escape the judgment of God coming in the last day.
So how does one grow in the fruit of righteousness that is so essential to the Christian life? We grow in righteousness by abounding in a genuine love that is informed by true knowledge and wise discernment. Said differently, to become pure and blameless in the future day of Christ, we must have the fruit of righteousness in our lives that comes from Christ by affectionately approving what is true and discerning what is false. Growing in love and knowledge leads to the fruitfulness of righteousness being developed in your life.
So to follow Christ is to love the things that he loves and hate the things that he hates. To become more like him by seeing and discerning what he is like through what he has taught us about himself. The Christian life is not only a relationship, but it is also a process of having our appetites changed to desire the righteousness that only comes through him. Christ is the first fruit of the resurrection from the dead and is our model for the righteousness without which no one will see the kingdom of God.
The Gospel must be believed in order for the fruit of righteousness to be enjoyed.
Which brings us to our second point: the Gospel must be believed in order for the fruit of righteousness to be enjoyed.
As the first fruit, Mark implies that Jesus is merely the beginning of a long line of fruit bearing trees. Since he is the first fruit of resurrection, he leads those that follow him into a new life that can no longer be touched by death. To secure your right to that new life is easy, and yet also so difficult. All that is required is faith, but what does that mean? What does it mean to believe the Gospel? This is the question we want to answer with our second point.
There are two kinds of faith in Scripture: faith that is fruitless and faith that is fruitful. Let’s look at the first kind of faith in James 2:14-19. This is what James said in James chapter 2, beginning in verse 14:
James 2:14-19
14 What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? 15 If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, 16 and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? 17 So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.
18 But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. 19 You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder!
There has been a lot of confusion about what James is trying to teach us here. Roman Catholics would argue that James clearly teaches that works are essential for salvation, but this is not what James is saying. We know this is not what James is saying because of the illustration he gives at the end.
Consider these demons and how they help demonstrate what James’s point. Demons have a deeper, more experiential knowledge of who God is than is currently possible for you and me. Prior to the fall, they all lived in the spiritual realm with God. They served him. They saw him. They heard him speak. One day, we will get that privilege, but currently the demons are lightyears ahead of us in having the experiential knowledge to know that God is who he says he is. So step one of James’s illustration is that they believe in God based on real personal experience. They have seen him with their eyes and heard with their ears and have no doubt at all that he is exactly who he says he is and will do exactly what he says he will do.
But James doesn’t stop there. Not only to the demons believe the right things about God, but they also respond appropriately based on their knowledge. Verse 19 says that they shudder. They know that the infinitely holy God will one day turn his wrath and judgment on them. It is a fact. There is nothing they can do to postpone or satisfy the impending wrath and judgment of God against them. James is saying that the demons have an unshakable certainty in the truth of God and makes the shudder in fear.
The point James is trying to make is that there is a kind of belief that doesn’t save. The demons have a correct theology, informed by real life experience, and they have no hope for redemption. This means that someone could say they believe in the Gospel until they are blue in the face and will not make a bit of difference for their eternity. Agreeing that the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus is a historical fact will not save you. Agreeing that you need Jesus to save you from your sin will not save you. Having an emotional experience with Jesus, making a show of repentance, beating your chest, and crying, will not save you. You can know all the right facts about the Bible and the message of Gospel and still be lost.
This is the faith that James is referring to, a faith that is without fruit. And sadly, this is the reality for so many people in the world that think they are Christians, and they are not. They were those that were told to pray a prayer at a VBS, or grew up in a Christian home where they prayed a prayer to please their parents, or that had an experience with Christ at Summer camp or during a college, but they demonstrate no fruit in their lives. The kind of faith they professed at some point in their past was not the kind of faith that saves. It was the kind of faith that does not bear fruit, that does not lead to righteousness, and gives them no hope to escape the wrath of God that still hangs over their heads.
Now, I want to pause hear and take a moment to recognize that this is a hard truth for Christians to submit to. As we are listening to what James is saying, every single one of us thinks of some dear loved one in our lives that has claimed to be a Christian, but is not. They prayed a prayer, but they show no affection for the Lord and bear no fruit of righteousness. Let me just say that I know the heart ache that your feel. And allow me to give you some pastoral advice about how to deal with the anxiety you feel for your loved one. First, you cannot save them, only God can, so spend time asking him to do. So long as they are alive, there is hope for salvation, so you should pray hopefully. Second, stop lying about their salvation, to them and to yourself. The most loving thing that you can do is to be honest about what the fruit of someone’s life says about their relationship with the Lord. And also keep in mind that fruitfulness can only be accessed over a long period of time. So the longer they live in apathy toward the things of God, the more confident you can be that they are not a follower of Christ. Third, be brave. Pray that God will give you opportunities to be honest about the Gospel and that you will have the courage in that moment to speak the truth to them. If you love them, you will pursue them with the Gospel, regardless of how they treat you.
Now, let me turn to the Church as a congregation. The reality that not all faith is saving faith should make us very careful in discerning who to accept into membership in the Church. We believe Scripture is clear, only those that are regenerate can be members of the local Church. It is our duty, to the best of our ability, not to accept lost people into our membership. Our Lord is gracious to us and knows that we will not always get this right. We are going to make mistakes because we cannot see people’s hearts. So he has given us the mechanism of Church discipline to protect the members from sin and to call those who are unrepentant back to the Gospel. But in the same way that the best defense is a good offense, to avoid the difficult work of Church discipline, we should be discerning on the front end to be careful to only accept those into membership that have a credible profession of faith and demonstrate the fruitfulness that comes from a life that is truly dependent on Christ.
Let’s consider the second kind of faith in Scripture. The second kind of faith is faith that is fruitful. This is the faith of those that are truly regenerate. I considered many passages of Scripture to demonstrate this point, but I kept coming back to Romans 10. Listen to what Paul says in Romans 10, beginning in verse 5 and following:
Romans 10:5-13
5 For Moses writes about the righteousness that is based on the law, that the person who does the commandments shall live by them. 6 But the righteousness based on faith says, “Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’ ” (that is, to bring Christ down) 7 “or ‘Who will descend into the abyss?’ ” (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). 8 But what does it say? “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim); 9 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. 10 For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. 11 For the Scripture says, “Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame.” 12 For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him. 13 For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”
In this passage, Paul makes it clear that saving faith is dependent on two things: the right confession of the mouth and the right response of the heart. Given the right motivations, people can literally say whatever they want. What Paul shows us in Romans 10 is that not only must we believe the right things with our mouth, but true faith is accompanied by heart change. This heart change is not something that can be fabricated, it is the sovereign work of God. In Ephesians 2, Paul says that it is a sovereign, free act of God’s grace, a gift of unwarranted and unmerited favor.
Understanding the role of the heart in salvation is crucial to understanding saving faith. The unregenerate heart does not love God. Paul says this in Romans 3 about the unregenerate persons:
Romans 3:10-12
as it is written:
“None is righteous, no, not one;
11 no one understands;
no one seeks for God.
12 All have turned aside; together they have become worthless;
no one does good,
not even one.”
The unregenerate heart might agree with the Gospel, but, as we have seen, intellectual agreement is not saving faith. God must change the heart. He must perform heart surgery. He takes out the heart of stone and gives you a heart of flesh, and the Scriptures call this regeneration or new birth. Jesus said in John 3:
John 3:3
“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.”
The heart is the key to faith. When you are born again through the power of the Spirit you are given a new spiritual organ that gives you life. How does it give you life? Instead of pumping blood throughout your body, it circulates faith in your life. It makes you trust in the promises that God has secured for you by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
Paul says, in Ephesians 1, that this new heart has spiritual eyes. It makes you see the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and the immeasurable greatness of his power to those that believe. The heart is everything. It is the proof of regeneration and without it, it is impossible to have faith. You cannot turn from your old desires and want God until he has given you new desires by regenerating your heart.
Romans 10:10
For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.
Saving faith responds to the Gospel, at the level of the heart, with a happy, joyful agreement. It loves the Savior. You cannot grudgingly accept the Gospel. True saving faith loves not only the forgiveness of sin, but also the one that sacrificed himself to provide it. The demons do not love God. They cannot. Their theology is so much more accurate than ours, but their hearts are stone cold dead. They cannot turn back to God, because they do not want to turn back to God.
So I go back to our original question: what does it mean to believe in the Gospel? It is not merely agreeing with the historical reality of Christ’s death and resurrection. It is not grudgingly accepting the Gospel as the best option available. It is not seeing Jesus as one of many ways. Saving faith is the product of a transformed heart that turns away from the love of sin to love Jesus Christ and accept his death and resurrection as the payment for the consequences of their sin.
So what kind of faith do you have? Do you merely agree with the Gospel on an intellectual level? He was a good teacher. He was a way, but not the only way. He is my best bet, but I don’t love him. Or is he the deepest desire of your heart and your only hope to escape the consequences of your sin? The Church is full of nominal Christians that have the first kind of faith, a faith that bears no fruit. If you want to enjoy the benefits of the Gospel and all that Christ purchased for you, you must bear the fruit of righteousness without which you will not see the kingdom of God.
And here is the thing, it is not too late. So long as there is breath in your lungs, it is not too late to accept the Gospel. No one’s sin is too great. It has not been too long. You know that one of our members grew up in a Christian home. She jokes that they had a pink crib waiting for her in the nursery of the Church. Her Grandpa was a pastor and she prayed a prayer when she was a little girl. She live most of her life believing the she was saved and knowing that the secret desires of her heart really testified to her that she wasn’t a Christian. When she was 47 years old, she heard the testimony of a man that had lost his wife in a car accident. He said that in the midst of that crisis, he realized that he had performing all of his life, acting like a Christian because that is what he thought people wanted him to do. Our sister realized that she also had been wearing a mask. She was a lost person pretending to be a follower of Jesus. That day, she let go of the fear of what people might think about her. She decided to settle it with the Lord once and for all and God saved her. For the first time, God gave her the faith that produces the fruit of righteousness.
In our first point, we saw that when Jesus walked out of the grave on Sunday morning, the day of the Feast of Firstfruits, Mark was telling us that Jesus is the first fruit of the resurrection from the dead. God sovereignly orchestrated all of history to bring about this beautiful moment where his Son triumphed over death and the grave for you and for me. Now we also follow him in fruitfulness because God is working in us the same righteousness of Christ as we bear fruit for him. In the second point, we saw that if we want to enjoy the fruit of righteousness that Christ purchased for us, we must believe in the Gospel. Not a belief that merely agree with the Gospel, but a belief that is the product of a regenerated heart. A belief that loves not only the forgiveness of sins, but the one that forgives us. It is a relational love between those that have been saved and their Savior.
Conclusion
Brothers and sisters, as we close the Gospel of Mark, consider your own lives. Are you weighed down by the concerns of this life or are reminded anew that the grave is empty? It is for freedom that Christ has set you free. Do not forfeit your peace. Remember what Christ has promised you in his Word.
In Isaiah 41:10, he promised to never leave you or forsake you.
In John 16:33, he promised that in the midst of trouble you will have peace because he has overcome the world.
In Psalm 32:8, he promised to set his loving eyes upon you, to teach you and counsel you in the way you should go.
In Psalm 37:23-24, he promised to make your path firm, that when you stumble, you will not fall because he will hold you up.
In Matthew 11:28-29, he promised that you can come to him. If you are weary and heavy laden, you can take his yolk upon you and find rest for your soul.
In 2 Corinthians 12:9, he promised that his grace is sufficient for you. His strength is perfected in your weakness.
In Philippians 4:6, he promised that he hears your prayers, and he will sooth your anxieties.
In 1 Peter 2:24, he promised that you are healed by his wounds, and that you can live righteously because he bore your sins in his body on the cross.
In Romans 8:28, he promised that all things will work together for your good. There is nothing that happens to you in this life that is without purpose.
In John 14:3, he promised that this is not our home. He has left us for just a little while, but he will come again and take us home. He will wipe every tear from our eye and he will be our God and we will be his people.
Brothers and sisters, trust him. He is trustworthy. The grave is empty and we have a victorious king that has secured all these promises and more by the power of his own blood. Hope in him and you will not be disappointed.
Let’s pray.