25th March 2024

25th March 2024


Pray (ACts)


Read (John 20:1-18)


Message (Alan Burke) 


What happens in the past defines us more than we often care to think, that is our past as individuals as well as this nations past and while it is waining for the society we live in, the impacts of what happened on Calvary’s hill near two thousand years defines the believer and is their hope in this sin cursed world. This coming Lord’s day, one of fifty two which celebrate the resurrection of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ we turn to the account of the Resurrection in John’s gospel that reminds us that although we were brought forth in iniquity, in sin did our mothers conceive us (Ps 51:5), we are by our nature sinners each and every one that we have been reconciled to God through a meditator, his only begotten Son the Lord Jesus Christ who being both God and man in one person made an atonement that was acceptable to God for us. In this first encounter with the risen Lord Jesus in our haste we often just want to get to the wonder that Jesus had risen but this week we are going to slow down a little and draw some truths out that we can easily miss with a passage we have heard a hundred times or more. 


Strikingly as John beings his account of the resurrection there is nothing mentioned of the intervening days, from when Jesus was laid in the tomb. There is nothing mentioned of the reality that the family and followers of Jesus had found themselves in, nothing of their sorrow, their despair. The Jewish Sabbath that had come would have exacerbated their sense of loss, of sorrow, of despair, there was nothing to distract from the painful reality that everything they had hoped and believed about Jesus in those hours was left in shatters, the in-between time that the scriptures are silent on would have no doubt been a time of great grief. Those emotions, of loss, sorrow and despair are ones that all of us can relate to at least to some extent, the loss of someone we love, the grief that comes, the pain of deaths sting. What makes the death of Jesus different is that he had come to deliver all those through fear of death were subjects to life long slavery (Heb 2:15). He came to deliver us from that fear that is natural to all, for through Adam’s sin all of us are condemned to death.


For the family and followers of Jesus, his death would have been a painful reminder to them all that this life was far from how we would want it or desire it to be. They simply did not understand at this stage that the death of Jesus was a necessary part in God’s plan of salvation that was first announced in the garden as the Lord preached the gospel to the devil of one who would come to crush the head of the serpent, who is Satan, the Devil himself (Gen 3:15, Rev 12:9). That very first Lord’s day as every Lord’s day since declares to the world that Jesus the Christ is risen. From the beginning of the world to this day, the resurrection of Christ God had appointed the seventh day but ever since it is the first day of the week, and will continue to the end of the world (WLC 116 paraphrased). 


From a cultural perspective, a human point of view, for Mary to have be the first eyewitness undermines this account. In the culture at the time she was a woman with no standing in society or a court of law who in a state of distress, her testimony would have been unreliable, unbelievable, but Mary was the one. She was the one who was the first eyewitness of his resurrection, John if he was trying to convince his first readers of the reality of the resurrection then he would have not had Mary, he would have had Peter, John but it wasn’t, Peter or John it was Mary. John isn’t trying to convince us, he wants us to know the reality of what took place. And while there were others with Mary he wants us to focus on Mary and her encounter with the risen Lord Jesus. How are we made right with God? It is only through the Lord Jesus Christ. If you know him then know he has done for you everything required to reconcile you to God so that you have a sure and steadfast hope of eternal life with him. 


Pray (acTS)


Sing


WSC
Q102 What do we pray for in the second petition?
In the second petition, (which is, Thy kingdom come, (Matt. 6:10)) we pray, That Satan’ s kingdom may be destroyed; (Ps. 68:1,18) and that the kingdom of grace may be advanced, (Rev. 12:10–11) ourselves and others brought into it, and kept in it; (2 Thess. 3:1, Rom. 10:1, John 17:9,20) and that the kingdom of glory may be hastened. (Rev. 22:20)
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