Mark 16:1-8 — He Is Going Ahead of You

FRANK EDWARDS: "And I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever." Psalm 23 ends at a house. Today three women walk at sunrise to a different house, the one Scripture calls man's eternal home: the grave. They find it empty. Today is about why that empty grave turns the last line of the psalm from a hope into a promise. LINDA BROWN: Welcome to Dig Deeper. I'm Linda Brown, here with Frank Edwards, and this is step fourteen of our sixteen steps through Psalm 23. Last time Jesus died on the cross, and a Roman centurion said, "Truly this man was the Son of God!" Today, three days later. Mark chapter sixteen, verses one to eight. When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so they could go and anoint the body of Jesus. Very early on the first day of the week, just after sunrise, they went to the tomb. They were asking one another, "Who will roll away the stone from the entrance of the tomb?" But when they looked up, they saw that the stone had been rolled away, even though it was extremely large. When they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side, and they were alarmed. But he said to them, "Do not be alarmed. You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here! See the place where they put Him. But go, tell His disciples and Peter, 'He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see Him, just as He told you.'" So the women left the tomb and ran away, trembling and bewildered. And in their fear they did not say a word to anyone. FRANK EDWARDS: Start with the two houses. Ecclesiastes 12 says that at death "man goes to his eternal home." In Hebrew that is literally "the house of his forever." Psalm 49 says of the dead, "Their graves are their eternal homes." Psalm 23 uses the same word for house: "the house of the LORD forever," literally for length of days. Two houses, and two kinds of forever. One is the grave, where the dead stay. The other is God's house, where his people live. LINDA BROWN: The women in this reading have every reason to think the first one is final. Mark has been naming them carefully, hasn't he? FRANK EDWARDS: At the cross, he says, "there were also women watching from a distance," and names Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joses, and Salome. At the burial, "Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joseph saw where His body was placed." So these women saw him die, two of them saw where he was laid, and now they come back to that very place. Paul's summary of the gospel follows the same three steps: "that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day." LINDA BROWN: They come with spices. Why, if he had already been buried? FRANK EDWARDS: Because the burial was rushed. He died on Friday afternoon, "Preparation Day (that is, the day before the Sabbath)," and the body had to be in the tomb before sunset. When the Sabbath ended on Saturday evening, the women bought spices, and at sunrise on Sunday they set out. Days earlier a woman in Bethany had poured perfume on his head, and he said, "She has done what she could to anoint My body in advance of My burial." Her anointing turned out to be the only one his body needed. LINDA BROWN: On the way, the practical worry. "Who will roll away the stone from the entrance of the tomb?" FRANK EDWARDS: Mark says Joseph of Arimathea had "placed it in a tomb that had been cut out of the rock" and "rolled a stone against the entrance." A door of stone on a house of the dead. Mark says it was "extremely large." The women knew they could not move it. And the verb in verse four is a perfect tense: the stone has been rolled away, and it stays rolled away. Someone had already done what they could not. LINDA BROWN: David spent his life longing for the other house. Psalm 27: "One thing I have asked of the LORD; this is what I desire: to dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life." FRANK EDWARDS: For David the house of the LORD was the tabernacle, the place where God's presence lived among his people. He wanted to build God a permanent house, and God answered in Second Samuel 7, "Are you the one to build for Me a house to dwell in?" Then God turned it around: "He Himself will establish a house for you." God would build the house, and he would do it through David's Son. LINDA BROWN: That connects to something Mark records at the trial. False witnesses said, "We heard Him say, 'I will destroy this man-made temple, and in three days I will build another that is made without hands.'" FRANK EDWARDS: The mockers at the cross threw it back at him: "You who are going to destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days." John's Gospel tells us what Jesus had really said, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up again," and John explains, "Jesus was speaking about the temple of His body." Now it is the third day. The temple they destroyed has been raised. The house of the LORD stands again, and it is the risen Jesus himself. LINDA BROWN: Inside the tomb the women see a young man in white, "and they were alarmed." FRANK EDWARDS: On step twelve we heard that "deeply troubled" in Gethsemane is a word only Mark uses in the New Testament. "Alarmed" here is the same word. The alarm Jesus took into the garden falls on the women at the empty tomb, and the young man's first words answer it: "Do not be alarmed." Then he names Jesus in a striking way: "Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified." In Greek that is a perfect participle, the one who has been crucified. The risen Jesus is still the crucified one. LINDA BROWN: "He has risen!" Is that something Jesus did, or something done to him? FRANK EDWARDS: The form is passive: he has been raised. God raised him. Peter preached it a few weeks later: "God raised Him from the dead, releasing Him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep Him in its grip." And Peter quoted a psalm of David to explain it. Psalm 16: "You will not abandon my soul to Sheol, nor will You let Your Holy One see decay. You have made known to me the path of life; You will fill me with joy in Your presence." LINDA BROWN: Psalm 15 asks who is allowed into God's presence at all. "O LORD, who may abide in Your tent? Who may dwell on Your holy mountain?" And the answer is someone "who walks with integrity and practices righteousness." FRANK EDWARDS: Read honestly, that answer shuts every door, because no one walks with perfect integrity. Except one. Jesus is the person who fully meets Psalm 15, and God did not leave him in the grave. He walked out of the house of death and into the presence of God as the one who belongs there. That is the ground of "I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever." The sheep do not get in on their own record. They follow the Shepherd who went in first. LINDA BROWN: Then the message: "Go, tell His disciples and Peter, 'He is going ahead of you into Galilee.'" Peter, named on his own. FRANK EDWARDS: The man who had denied him three times, named so that he could not think the news was for everyone but him. Luke records the disciples later saying, "The Lord has indeed risen and has appeared to Simon!" And on step twelve we heard that "go ahead" is the word for a shepherd walking in front of his flock. The night they all ran, Jesus had promised, "after I have risen, I will go ahead of you into Galilee." The struck Shepherd has gone ahead of his scattered sheep, through death, to gather them. LINDA BROWN: The same night, in John 14, he told them where the road ends. "In My Father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you?" FRANK EDWARDS: Then, "I will come back and welcome you into My presence, so that you also may be where I am." The Shepherd goes ahead into Galilee, and then into his Father's house, and he prepares a place there. On step ten we heard that the Greek translation of Psalm 23:5 says "You prepare a table" with the same verb Jesus uses here. The Host who prepares the table also prepares the room. Psalm 23:6 is the end of that road. And Hebrews says something remarkable about the people who belong to him: "we are His house." LINDA BROWN: Mark's own ending is strange, though. "So the women left the tomb and ran away, trembling and bewildered. And in their fear they did not say a word to anyone." FRANK EDWARDS: Bewildered is ekstasis, astonishment so great it takes you out of yourself. Mark used the same word when Jesus raised a twelve-year-old girl and her family "were utterly astounded." The two earliest complete manuscripts of Mark end right here, at verse eight. Later manuscripts add more verses, and the BSB prints them with a note. This series stops where many believe Mark himself stopped, on the women's fear. It is the fear of people who have just seen death lose its grip. LINDA BROWN: The other Gospels make clear they did speak. Matthew says they hurried away "in fear and great joy, and ran to tell His disciples." Luke adds that "their words seemed like nonsense to them, and they did not believe the women." FRANK EDWARDS: In that culture a woman's testimony counted for less than a man's in court. Yet every Gospel says women were the first to find the tomb empty. They record it because it happened. LINDA BROWN: Paul has a picture for how Jesus' rising connects to everyone else's. He calls the risen Christ "the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep." FRANK EDWARDS: Firstfruits were the first sheaf of the harvest, brought to God as a pledge that the rest of the harvest was coming. Jesus' resurrection is the first of a harvest that includes all who belong to him. That is why the psalm can say "I will dwell," and not only "He will." The sheep follow where the Shepherd has already gone. LINDA BROWN: The psalm says "forever," and you said the Hebrew is "length of days." Does that phrase show up anywhere else? FRANK EDWARDS: Psalm 21, a psalm about the king: "He asked You for life, and You granted it, length of days, forever and ever." On Easter morning God gave that to David's greatest Son. The risen Jesus says in Revelation 1, "I was dead, and behold, now I am alive forever and ever! And I hold the keys of Death and of Hades." The one who holds the keys to the grave has opened God's house to his sheep. Peter wrote that God "has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead." Hear the young man's words again, and then the psalm. "He has risen! He is not here!" And I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever. [long pause] LINDA BROWN: For a way to take this into an ordinary week, the Apply This Today section in the app picks it up. Next time, Luke chapter fifteen, where Jesus tells of a shepherd who goes after one lost sheep, and the first half of verse six: "Surely goodness and mercy will follow me." FRANK EDWARDS: Dig Deeper is a free app, and you can find it at dig deeper dot A I. LINDA BROWN: Thanks for listening, and for coming to the empty tomb today.