WWUTT 2241 The End of Mark (Mark 16:1-8)

The gospel of Mark ends rather abruptly. So abruptly, in fact, that some scribe later on down the line thought that they needed to help

Mark finish his gospel. But it ends exactly as God meant for it to, when we understand the text.

Many of the Bible stories and verses we think we know, we don't. When we understand the text is committed to teaching sound doctrine and rebuking those who contradict it.

Visit our website at www .utt .com. Here once again is Pastor Gabe.

Thank you, Becky. Well, in our study of the gospel of Mark, we are finishing up today all that Mark wrote of this gospel with these first eight verses of chapter 16.

Oh yeah, there's more text to go. You still have verses 9 through 20, which will stretch out into the lessons we'll do tomorrow and Wednesday.

But as far as what Mark has written, we're finishing that today. I'll explain that a little more here in just a moment.

Let's go ahead and read our text. Mark 16 verses 1 through 8 out of the Legacy Standard Bible. Hear the word of the

Lord. And when the Sabbath passed, Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Salome bought spices, so that they might come and anoint him.

And very early on the first day of the week, they came to the tomb when the sun had risen, 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 away, although it was very large.

And entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right side wearing a white robe, and they were amazed.

And he said to them, Do not be amazed. You are looking for Jesus the

Nazarene, who has been crucified. He has risen. He is not here.

Behold the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter, He is going ahead of 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 were gripping them, and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.

And that concludes the Gospel of Mark, at least as far as John Mark, the disciple of Peter, has written.

Now somewhere along the line, someone came along and thought that Mark didn't finish his gospel.

It seemed like an abrupt ending. It didn't seem like a fitting conclusion. So some Byzantine monk centuries later decided to help

Mark out and filled out the rest of it, and that's why we have verses 9 through 20. But your

Bible, you may have a translation that will tell you that section of Mark was not in the earliest manuscript.

So it's unlikely that Mark was the one who wrote it. It was somebody else who came along later and wrote it.

Now it's been in so many Bibles for so many centuries, it's better to just leave it there. And I am content with the note that says that this text was not originally written by Mark.

We're going to look at this section of text a little bit more tomorrow and Wednesday, and you'll see why it doesn't fit.

And it's also not even necessary to have it. But again, we'll wait until later lesson to talk about that.

Something else that I want to do as well, and I'll do this tomorrow, is looking at the identity of these women who come to the tomb.

We've had one account in Matthew. Here in Mark, we read that there was Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Salome.

When you get to Luke, it throws in a gal named Joanna. So who are these women and why are there so many varying lists of the women who come to the tomb?

That's something that we'll look at tomorrow. Even understanding the identity of Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Mary the mother of Jesus.

What is the difference between these three women and how are they identified in the Gospels?

So those are our lessons we've got coming up Tuesday and Wednesday. For today, let's look at Mark's resurrection account.

So we're starting here in chapter 16. And by the way, the way that we finish this up, the way that Mark concludes, this is totally fitting.

Even though it seems like an abrupt ending, this is exactly what we've been used to from Mark. It fits the tone of everything else that we've read in this particular

Gospel. So when the Sabbath had passed, he said, Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Salome bought spices so that they might come and anoint him.

Now it says when the Sabbath passed. Well, Sabbath ends at sundown.

It begins at sundown. It ends at sundown. And if this was a high Sabbath, like John notes, and if perhaps there was a

Sabbath on Friday and a Sabbath on Saturday, then the Sabbath Friday, the high

Sabbath, which would have been connected with the Passover, began at sundown on Thursday night.

So as soon as the sun goes down, that was like midnight to the Hebrews, to the Jews. That was when the next day started, was at sundown.

And then that day concluded, of course, at sundown the next day. So again, our

Western world thinking, we think of that as midnight. When I began recording this episode, it was at midnight on Sunday.

So the clock turning over to Monday, right? So I started this on Sunday night and I finished it on Monday morning, technically.

That was how I recorded this particular episode. So our clock changes at midnight, whereas for the

Jews, the next day begins at sundown. So where we read when the

Sabbath passed, would this have been after sundown on Saturday night?

We know that Jesus rose on the first day of the week. That's verse 2. Very early on the first day of the week, they came to the tomb when the sun had risen.

So would this have been after sundown on Saturday, the Sabbath is concluded, and so Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Salome bought spices so that they might come and anoint him.

Maybe they bought those spices on Saturday night after the Sabbath was over. The shops open again, the merchants, so they may go and buy these spices that they're going to take and anoint the body of Jesus.

Jesus was taken off the cross hurriedly. He was wrapped and prepared for burial.

He was set in a tomb. There was probably a quick embalming process that was done. It wasn't a thorough embalming process.

So here the women are coming to anoint the body of Jesus, to do the further embalming process that wasn't done.

And these spices, these fragrant ointments that they would put on the body of Jesus, would be an offering of their own, but also would help to make the body in the tomb last a little bit longer.

It would not stink as bad as quickly. So that's what they're off to do. And when they buy these spices, maybe they bought them

Saturday night after sundown, but then they don't go to the tomb until the next morning, Sunday morning. So, you know, some amount of hours have passed.

Or maybe it's early enough in the morning, but before the sun rises, that they go to the merchants and buy these spices.

That might seem to us to be a little unusual. It's not like they had a 24 -hour Walmart or something like that.

But I don't think that our present -day capitalism is necessarily something unique to time.

Like, we have 24 -hour stores, but that's never been in history before. It may have very well been that way even back then, that there was some merchant that was willing to be open all night.

Maybe it was somebody that specialized in spices and embalming ointments and things like that exactly for this purpose.

And maybe it's somebody that's all night in order to be able to sell those things. Who knows? But we know that the women bought these when the

Sabbath had concluded. So, it was either after sundown on Saturday that they went and bought them, or it would have been really early on Sunday morning, even before the sun rises.

So then in verse 2, very early on the first day, first day of the week, they came to the tomb when the sun had risen.

Now, it's interesting to note that each of the four Gospels kind of mention the arrival at the tomb at a different time.

All of them record that it was real early in the morning on Sunday, but there's some slight variations as to the approximate timing of their arrival.

Matthew says it was at the end of the Sabbath when it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, so he kind of condenses the time even a little bit more than Mark does.

John 20 says that it was at the rising of the sun, so you have some variation there with the arrival of the women, but we can still handily conclude that it was at the conclusion of the

Sabbath, and it was at the very start around sunrise of the first day of the week.

On that point, all four Gospels agree, even though there may be some variation as to, you know, what was the relationship to dawn or something to that degree.

So then in verse 3, they were saying to one another, who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance of the tomb?

Now, if you've ever seen pictures of what this might have looked like, there was a big stone. Now, the entrance of the tomb was not large enough for a man to enter standing up.

It wasn't that big an entrance, like what's your standard door frame? Six foot eight or something like that?

It wouldn't have been that big. It wasn't large enough for a man to enter without stooping down.

It was likely a small hole. It could have been three feet, four feet, something like that.

A little wider as well, but somebody would stoop to get into it. The body would be handed in, and that person who's inside the tomb would take the body, lay it in the spot, and then they would crawl back out of the tomb.

The inside of it may not have even been big enough for somebody to stand in, not be able to stand all the way up anyway.

Now, if it was a catacomb, that would be different. If you've ever seen catacombs, these are numerous laying places for bodies.

There would be a lot of different sort of beds carved into the walls so that somebody's bodies would be kind of stacked within these laying places.

You know what I mean by a catacomb? There's also family tombs that would kind of be built the same way.

They might not be as large as a catacomb, but you would still have several different places where bodies may be laid.

This would have been in a cave of some kind. It would have been a tomb that was hewn out of the side of a mountain.

In this particular case, it may have been right around the Mount of Olives. There were many bodies that were buried there, many tombs that were there on the

Mount of Olives. The reason for that was because it was believed that that was where the

Messiah was going to touch down, according to the prophecies, that he was going to set foot once again on the Mount of Olives.

So even as those prophecies existed before the time of Christ, there were Jews that had their tombs there, their graves marked out on the

Mount of Olives, because they wanted to be the first to rise when the Messiah arrived.

So it could have been that that was the location of the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, which was the place that Jesus was buried.

I know for several hundred years the tomb of Jesus was known.

I can't remember where I read this exactly, but it was something like up until somewhere between 6 to 900

AD. It was known exactly where the tomb of Jesus was. So for hundreds of years after his resurrection, you could go to that place and it would be known this was the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea.

This was the tomb where Jesus' body was buried, and he has risen from this place.

So he is not here any longer. And that was a historic marker.

People knew that. You could go to the grave of the greatest man who ever lived, and it was empty, because he had not died.

He had risen. Oh, he had died bodily, sure. He was wrapped. He was put inside this tomb, but he rose again, and his body was no longer here.

Evidence of the resurrection was known for centuries. But because of different wars going on in the

Middle East, occupation of different groups of people in that particular region, so on and so forth, eventually the exact location of the tomb was lost.

And now there's, I believe, several locations that you can go to that are potential spots where Jesus may have been buried.

There is, of course, the tourist traps. The tourist locations may not have actually been the tomb of Jesus, but there was known for a long time the exact place, and even

Jesus' critics could not dispute the fact that Jesus was buried there, and the body was gone.

The best they could say was that his body had been stolen, not wanting to acknowledge that he had actually risen from the dead.

But nonetheless, they couldn't produce a body, and so they still had to acknowledge the body was not there in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, where he had been placed.

Now, even though the entrance to this tomb may have only been, you know, four feet tall or something like that, it still had a very large rock.

I don't know if you've ever tried to move a four -foot rock, but that's still some pretty substantial weight.

It would have been bigger than that, of course. So if the entrance to the tomb is four feet or something to that effect, the rock is going to be quite a bit bigger to cover that space, maybe five feet or something like that.

And it's a round stone, like you've seen in most depictions, a round sort of flat stone, not exactly flat.

It's got some depth to it, of course. But it rolls in kind of a groove, so you would have that stone that would roll in place over the entrance of the tomb.

Somebody wanted to enter the tomb. It would have taken a couple of people, men especially, to try to move that stone out of its place.

Now, as we had read in Matthew's gospel, there was a seal that was even placed over that stone.

It was the Roman guard that had been put there and the seal that had been made with ropes and perhaps a wax seal that had been put over that so that the tomb could not be opened.

But then, of course, the angel descends, the guards are knocked out, the stone is rolled away, and Jesus is risen anyway, no matter how much the

Pharisees and the Romans had tried to stop this from happening. It's a big enough stone that these women are not going to be able to move it on their own.

So they're hoping that there's some sort of a gardener or somebody like that, or maybe it's known that the guard is there at the tomb, so perhaps they will be there and they will roll the stone away for them.

So thus, they're saying and they're just kind of talking amongst themselves who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance of the tomb.

But then looking up, verse 4, they saw that the stone had been rolled away, although it was very large.

It would have been large enough, it could have taken several men to try to move it, and here they are seeing that the stone had been rolled away.

If anybody would have wanted to get into that tomb, it would have taken more than one person to do it. So they are now under the impression people have been here, not just one person has been here, but several people have been here.

And they entered the tomb and they saw a young man sitting on the right side wearing a white robe and they were amazed.

Now I'm not going to get into the variations of whether there was one angel or two or anything like that till we get to Luke's gospel,

I'll talk about it there. But for now, this is what Mark records for us that they enter the tomb and there they see a young man sitting on the right side, white robe, and they're amazed.

That's important. We see that word come up a couple of times in this account. Verse 6, and he said to them, do not be amazed.

You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene who has been crucified. He is risen. He is not here.

Behold the place where they laid him. So the angel's sitting right there and he's able to gesture, this is where the body was.

And we had read at the end of chapter 15 that Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses were looking on to see where he had been laid.

So they knew that Jesus' body had been put in the tomb. But here this angel's gesturing and saying, well, he's not here.

This is where his body was, but he's risen. And so the word that he tells to them next in verse 7, but go tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee.

There you will see him just as he told you. Now it's quite interesting that the angel singles out Peter. And remember that Peter had wept bitterly when he realized that he had denied

Jesus three times. It could have been that Peter felt so ashamed. Why would

Jesus ever want to see me? And so became necessary for the angel to have to single out

Peter. Make sure you include Peter when you go and tell his disciples that he is risen.

It could also be that because this is John Mark who is an understudy of Peter, that that's why

Peter is singled out. Could be that as well. But go and tell his disciples and Peter he is going ahead of you to Galilee and there you will see him just as he told you.

Jesus had said that previously to them that he would go ahead of them to Galilee. And we read also in Matthew's gospel that that was where Jesus was when the disciples came to him and he gave them the great commission there in Galilee.

Go into all the world baptizing in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.

So we finish with this last verse. Verse 8. And they went out and fled from the tomb for trembling and astonishment were gripping them and they said nothing to anyone for they were afraid.

Now that word for astonishment is the same sort of thing that we read earlier about them being amazed.

We've seen that word come up multiple times in Mark's gospel and it becomes a term of astonishment and he will even conclude narratives with that word with people being amazed or astonished.

And so it's fitting then that we get to the end of the gospel of Mark with what we know

Mark wrote which concludes at the end of verse 8. And it ends just the same way as we've seen many other scenes conclude over the course of the gospel of Mark.

They said nothing to anyone for they were afraid. They were amazed. They were astonished.

Astonishment gripping them. Back when we were in the very first chapter of Mark.

Mark 1 22. The crowds were astonished at his teaching for he taught them as one who had authority and not as their scribes.

Mark 1 27. They were all amazed so that they questioned among themselves saying what is this a new teaching with authority?

He commands even the unclean spirits and they obey him. Mark 2 12. He rose and immediately picked up his bed.

This was the paralyzed man went out from before them all so that they were all amazed and glorified

God saying we have never seen anything like this. Mark 5 42.

Immediately the girl got up and began walking. She was 12 years of age and they were immediately overcome with amazement.

Mark 6 2. And on the sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue and many who heard him were astonished saying where did this man get these things?

What is the wisdom given to him? How are such mighty works done by his hands? Mark 7 37.

And they were astonished beyond measure saying he has done all things well. He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.

Mark 9 15. And immediately all the crowd when they saw him were greatly amazed and ran up to him and greeted him.

Mark 10 24. The disciples were amazed at his words. Verse 26. And they were exceedingly astonished.

Mark 10 32. They were on the road going up to Jerusalem and Jesus walking ahead of them and they were amazed and those who followed were afraid and taking the 12 again he began to tell them what was going to happen to him.

Mark 11 18. The chief priests and the scribes heard it and were seeking a way to destroy him for they feared him because all the crowd was astonished at his teaching.

Mark 15 5. But Jesus made no further answer so that Pilate was amazed.

So why should it surprise us that this is exactly the way that Mark intended to finish his gospel with the women in amazement.

That's right there in verse 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.

Now then we know that they had to have said something to somebody because otherwise we wouldn't be reading about this.

So that is certainly implied. They are filled with amazement so that they said nothing to anyone because they were afraid.

It finishes with their astonishment. But nonetheless it is yet implied that they did go and tell the disciples.

They did go say something to somebody for we have heard this gospel and we have come to know that Jesus is the

Christ. The theme verse to Mark was Jesus saying for the son of man came not to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.

In the first half of the gospel of Mark we read about how Jesus is that Messiah.

Exactly the way that the gospel of Mark began. The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ the son of God as it is written in Isaiah the prophet behold

I send my messenger ahead of you who will prepare your way the voice of one crying in the wilderness make ready the way of the

Lord make his paths straight. So everything in the first half of Mark is pointing to the fact that Jesus is that Messiah who was prophesied to come.

The second half of Mark tells us what kind of Messiah he is and he is a loving

Savior who has come not to be served by his subjects but to serve and gave his life for us as a ransom for our sins.

The penalty for our sins has been paid by the death of Christ on the cross so that whoever believes in him will not perish but will have everlasting life.

We have fellowship with God now our relationship with God restored through Jesus Christ and then the promise of life with God forevermore so that we will receive a resurrection even like his.

Mark shows us the Savior and we have come to see him and know him and really the way that Mark concludes with this they're afraid and so they say nothing to anybody and they go away filled with astonishment there's kind of an implied question here

Mark doesn't outright say it but here's the implied question how about you you have now heard of the

Savior you have now come to see what kind of Savior he is you have been filled with amazement and astonishment at his words and all that he has done and so now what will you do will you go away and say nothing to no one or filled with amazement will you share the gospel with the world remember that another one of Mark's favorite words here was that word immediately so how about you will you immediately go follow

Jesus and tell others of him we'll finish there for today we have more a little bit more of Mark to cover tomorrow

Heavenly Father we thank you for what we have read we thank you for showing us the Savior and if we are filled with amazement and astonishment may we not keep it to ourselves but we are driven to immediately go out and share the gospel with others if we know this truth is the truth that saves why would we keep it to ourselves we share it with others so that they too may know the

Savior and live it is in Jesus name that we pray amen

Gabe is the pastor of Providence Church in Casa Grande Arizona for more information about our ministry visit providencecasagrande .com