Mark 16: 1-13
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The New
Testament Witness of the Apostle
Peter |
The Pulpit at Pilgrim's Rest Christ Covenant Reformed (PCA) |
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In this last chapter of Mark, verses nine through twenty were missing from several of the important early copies of this Gospel. One of my commentators, Dr Keener - says that this is not all that unusual to find an abrupt ending in ancient manuscripts. This type of ending would enhance the dramatic events that followed after. Such suspension was a literary and rhetorical technique in the days of our Lord's coming to earth. In addition, the resurrection was a complete surprise to the disciples and followers of Christ. Yes, He had told them what was about to happen, but they forgot in their sadness.
Well did they appreciate at that moment what Paul would report some years later in his letter to Corinth: "And if Christ is not risen, then our preaching is empty and your faith is also empty" (1 Corinthians 15: 14). Oh the tragic despair that they must have felt for three days. Just this week I spent three days on a web site describing the worldly failure to comprehend the hope that is truly in Jesus Christ. No wonder, the world turns to entertainment, alcohol and drugs to escape from reason, as Francis Schaeffer so brilliantly puts their deep dark despair. Just think as James Kennedy wrote in a 1994 book - What if Jesus Had Never Been Born? In sixteen chapters (which our Thursday Bible Study will be looking at by late summer or early fall), Kennedy aptly describes a world gone mad - had Jesus never been born.
Calvin also comments on this idea in these words: "Justly, therefore, does Paul say that there will be no gospel, and that the hope of salvation will be vain and fruitless, unless we believe that Christ is risen from the dead. For then did Christ obtain righteousness for us, and open up our entrance into heaven; and, in short, then was our adoption ratified, when Christ, by rising from the dead, exerted the power of his Spirit, and proved himself to be the Son of God. No though he manifested his resurrection in a different manner from what the sense of our flesh would have desired, still the method of which he approved ought to be regarded by us also as the best. he went out of the grave without a witness, that the emptiness of the place might be the earliest indication; next, he chose to have it announced to the women by the angels that he was alive; and shortly afterwards he appeared to the women, and, finally, to the apostles, and on various occasions."
The resurrection comes completely as a strategic and tactical surprise, not only to Satan and his minions in power, but also to the disciples and followers of Christ. By strategic and tactical I mean what General Douglas MacArthur achieved in his famous landing at Inchon during the Korean Conflict. Seldom in the history of warfare had a war been so dramatically changed by such a strategic and tactical surprise. Had he not gone on to make other mistakes, the Korean Conflict might well have been remembered as one of the most famous campaigns in history.
But then, MacArthur was his own most dangerous enemy. And so are we all, just like the disciples and followers of Jesus. We become pig headed in our ignorance and fail to comprehend what the Lord may do. And like the disciples who heard the first testimony of Mary, we refuse to believe what God can and will do. "And when they heard that He was alive and had been seen by her, they did not believe."
In the context of verse eleven, Calvin again comments on our all too human condition: "The testimony of Mary alone is related by Mark; but I am convinced that all of them in common conveyed the message in obedience to the commands of Christ. And even this passage confirms more fully what I have just now said, that there is no disagreement among the, Evangelists, when one of them specially attributes to Mary Magdalene what the other Evangelists represent as common to all the women, though not in an equal degree. But the disciples must have been held bound by shameful indifference, so that they did not recall to their recollection that what they had often heard from their Master was accomplished. If the women had related any thing of which they had not formerly heard, there would have been some reason for not immediately believing them in a matter which was incredible; but now they must have been uncommonly stupid in holding as a fable or a dream what had been so frequently promised and declared by the Son of God, when eye-witnesses assured them that it was accomplished. Besides, their unbelief having deprived them of sound understanding, they not only refuse the light of truth, but reject it as an idle fancy, as Luke tells us. Hence it appears that they had yielded so far to temptation, that their minds had lost nearly all relish for the words of Christ."
Are we not all found out in that apt description? Certainly, we do not deny the Lord publicly as Peter had done, but seriously may I ask - How often have you lived a moment, an hour, a day or even weeks and months as if Jesus had never lived or been raised from the dead? Isn't this the reason He came in the first place - to give us the hope described by Paul and the surprising joy known to the followers and disciples of Jesus once they realized the fact of the resurrection? Let us hold fast to our faith in this blessed hope and perish the day or hour when we do not live according to that hope. Amen.
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Cole, Alan. |
Tyndale New Testament
Commentaries: |
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Keener, Craig S. |
The IVP Bible Background Commentary:
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Kennedy, James & Newcombe, Jerry. |
What if Jesus Had Never Been Born? |
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Pringle, William. |
Calvin's New Testament
Commentaries: |
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Schaeffer, Francis. |
Escape from Reason. |
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"Bringing the Light of the Reformation to Scripture" (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1995) |
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B2b30 |
23 April 00 |