Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Reformation Covenant Church

with grateful hearts and fervor never ending. May God grant that to us today that our hearts may become more grateful. Our commitment and fervor to the Lord Jesus Christ be never ending. To that end, we turn to his word to us found in John chapter 20 verses 1-18.

Please stand for the reading of God’s word.

Now the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb early while it was still dark and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb. Then she ran and came to Simon Peter and to the other disciple whom Jesus loved and said to them, “They have taken away the Lord out of the tomb and we do not know where they have laid him.” Peter therefore went out and the other disciple and was going to the tomb. So they both ran together and the other disciple outran Peter and came to the tomb first. And he stooping down and looking in saw the linen clothes lying there. Yet he did not go in.

Then Simon Peter came following him and went into the tomb. And he saw the linen clothes lying there and the handkerchief that had been around his head, not lying with the linen clothes, but folded together in a place by itself. Then the other disciple who came to the tomb first, went in also, and he saw and believed. For as yet they did not know the scripture that he must rise again from the dead. Then the disciples went away again to their own homes.

But Mary stood outside by the tomb weeping. And as she wept, she stooped down and looked into the tomb. And she saw two angels in white sitting, one at the head and the other at the feet where the body of Jesus had lain. Then they said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “Because they have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.”

Now when she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there and did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?” She supposing him to be the gardener said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.”

Jesus said to her, “Mary.” She turned and said to him, “Rabboni,” which is to say, “Teacher.” Jesus said to her, “Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to my father. But go to my brethren and say to them, I am ascending to my father and to your father and to my God and your God.”

Mary Magdalene came and told the disciples that she had seen the Lord and that he had spoken these things to her.

Let’s pray.

Father, we are filled with joy and wonder at this text before us. We pray now that your spirit would open our hearts to it. Help us to understand it. Help us to remember that we can’t understand it without the aid of your Holy Spirit illumining our hearts with the brightness of this word. We thank you that our Lord Jesus Christ shines forth out of darkness, shines from that cherubim, saving and delivering his people in our text. Help us, Father, to recognize these things, to see, to believe, and to be transformed by them. In Christ’s name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated.

Many of you have seen the new Luther movie. We’ve talked about it a little bit. I also have a DVD. I was going to bring it and show it, but there was a PBS one hour special on Luther—maybe two one-hour specials, I think—narrated by Liam Neeson a couple months ago, and that’ll be put in the church library. I promised it to Victor already. So I won’t go in quite yet, but I brought it for him today. It’s also very good.

One of the wonderful things about Luther that’s not touched on in the movie, at least much, is his passion for music, his understanding of it, and of course the greatness of the Reformation was due in large part—at least certainly in part—to the wonderful music that came out of the Continental Reformation and the beauty of those songs. And now to have our ongoing Reformation at Reformation Covenant Church matured through the addition of more glorified instruments playing trumpets, trombones, these horns. This is a wonderful thing and puts us in mind of the beauty of Luther’s contributions in the field of music as well as his theological contributions.

In a recent post I saw from a man, he was not particularly pleased with the movie. His concern was over the fact that the term “justification by faith” never really came up in the movie. So this doctrine that we associate so much with the Reformation—and we could add to that the solas, I suppose: sola scriptura, sola fide, and so on—these things were not really stressed in the movie. But you know what was stressed in the movie was Luther’s union with the Lord Jesus Christ. That his breakthrough is described more in terms of his appropriation of Jesus Christ and cleaving to him and him alone as he lived his life. And that’s not a bad way to put the doctrine of justification by faith.

We have doctrines. We have systematic theologies that produce doctrines. We have definitions in the Westminster Catechisms. These things are all very helpful. But these things should not be seen as the sum of the matter. The story of Luther portrayed in the recent movie—episodic though it is, it’s short, it moves from story to story—it’s a story of a man’s life. And I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad way to picture Luther’s breakthrough as focusing on union and communion with the Lord Jesus Christ in personal relationship.

Yes, it has these doctrinal formulations that are useful to us, that we normally think of at Reformation time. Today, throughout Reformed churches across the country, they’re going to be doctrinal formulations preached on—the solas, the doctrine of justification by faith, various doctrines that can be seen as abstract things. And now, they don’t have to be. They’re good and proper. But in the providence of God, this Reformation Sunday we are at a story. We’re at a narrative in the Gospel of John. This is not doctrinal formulations. They are proper. In the Epistles, for instance, it is not a set of imperatives or things we’re to do. It’s not law. It’s not really wisdom literature that’s meant to wise us up. It’s a story.

I was at an ordination exam at Presbytery, and the man who was responsible for the component of the exam having to do with the Bible—I just loved it. He said, “Tell us the story. Story of Rehoboam,” and the man being examined sort of stumbled. He tried. He started to give some technical answers about Rehoboam’s place in succession, et cetera. But what the evaluator wanted was: “Do you know the story of Rehoboam? Do you know how he didn’t listen to the old guys? He listened to the young Turks and how the kingdom was divided because of that? Do you know the story?”

It’s important to know dates and all that progression, but know the story. We could almost say—and I think I did make this point in my Proverbs class this morning, my wisdom literature class, where we’re talking about Job—the story of Job. I think we can almost say that story is the best way that God has of communicating with us. Now, maybe that’s overstatement, but the point is this: it’s a point I’ve made before.

The Old Testament with all its different genres of literature leads up to the Gospels. You cannot understand them properly without the Gospels. Now, you can’t understand the Gospels without what came before. They’re linked. And then the Epistles come, and we have these various stories being given right in the Gospels that then are extrapolated in the Epistles. So the focal point of the revelation of God is the person of Jesus Christ, and the Gospels give us a whole bunch of stories about Jesus.

Now young people, these are true stories. I’m not saying “story” in what you normally think of. These are accurate descriptions. Everything we just read in this text happened literally the way John presents it here. But he doesn’t tell us everything. There’s all kinds of other details of that resurrection Sunday—Easter Sunday we could call it—that are not given by John. He puts together a story, and it’s important to recognize that story.

And I think that if we think of this story and the ongoing reformation in our lives personally, in our families, in our businesses, in our communities, and in the church, I think if we see ourselves in the story and think of our lives as part of the story of what Christ is accomplishing in the world, it will aid us in our ongoing reformation.

So I want to look at this first as kind of a story, and it is. My goal, I guess, with looking at this text today—my primary hope is that we go away from the text with a renewed sense of wonder at the story of Jesus and the presentation of what he has accomplished, and the way so many themes and echoes are all brought to focus in this little eighteen-verse story that’s told.

Okay. Now, it is eighteen verses. I mean, nineteen. We could say there’s a time marker at the beginning and a time marker at the end, right? So Mary goes to the tomb when it’s the beginning of the Sabbaths—the beginning of the week. Well, the word “week” in the Greek is basically the same word for Sabbath, because that’s how the weeks were reckoned, right? But it’s interesting if you think about it: the beginning of the Sabbath. In Matthew 28, in that account of this event, we read that at the end of the Sabbath and the beginning of the week.

So immediately we have very pregnant terminology in this story. We have a story that begins by showing us that we are in transition here—from one reality to a new one, from the old creation, the Old Testament Sabbath system, cycle, and all that stuff, flowing into the new creation. We could profitably spend the rest of our time talking about the eighth day Sabbaths of the Old Testament prefiguring this movement into the new week. That this story, given to us in the Synoptics and in John’s Gospel, tells us about is the end of the old world. It’s the beginning of the week, the beginning of the new Sabbath, the new world, and the new movement of time. That’s what’s going on. This is the great historical, chronological cusp, the turning point of all history that is being discussed here.

There’s a time reference, and then after these events are over, it’s then the evening, and Jesus goes and appears to the disciples. And that’s interesting, isn’t it? That we begin with morning. It’s still dark, but it’s morning. The sun has started to come up. The day is breaking—that’s the idea of the terminology. Remember the old creation: how did it move? “Evening and morning were one day,” “evening and morning the second day.” But now in this story that John puts together for us in John chapter 20, he starts with events of the morning and then dramatically talks about the events of the evening. Christ’s appearance in the morning and then Christ’s appearance in the evening. Morning and evening of a new day. The world has turned. We’ve moved forward into the new creation.

Beautiful! Simple time markers, but what a beauty they add to our story. And what anticipation they give to us. How is this going to be manifested? You know, we sort of see where it’s going now. We’re moving from old world to new world, from old creation to new creation. The light’s going to start shining out of that tomb. But you notice how often the word “tomb” is used. Tomb, tomb, tomb, tomb. Nine times in these eighteen verses, you see the emphasis. What do we think about this tomb? And we’re going to meditate on—we’re going to talk a little bit about some of the associations with the tomb.

The tomb is a place of darkness. But out of this tomb will shine great light. The Lord Jesus Christ will draw associations to what’s going on connected to this tomb. People coming to it, entering into it, looking inside of it, stooping down to get into it, moving in terms of it. That’s important to this wonderful and beautiful picture.

I’ve given you a little structure of the text here on the top half of the outline with these time markers moving from darkness to light, morning and evening. “Let there be light.” I mentioned that Matthew 28:1. And basically the elements of the story—sort of at the beginning, after the time marker at the beginning—Mary then runs. She sees that the tomb is open. She runs to the disciples. At the end of the text, she’s going to run to the disciples again. The beginning of the story, Mary runs with bad news: “The Lord’s been stolen.” By the end of the story, you know, she’s running with good news, that the Lord Jesus Christ has appeared to her.

It’s—I don’t want to miss making this point due to lack of time later on. So let me make it here. This is the first person—Mary—who brings the kerygma, the good news, the gospel. Mary is the one who begins the transmission of the Gospel of the risen Christ, right?

I mean, the disciples—they come to the tomb and they go through a little interesting progression. They race to the tomb. And then, you know, John waits for Peter. He gets there faster. Peter comes, and then Peter goes in. John sees—as he’s looking into the tomb, he stoops over and looks, and he sees linen clothes—but he doesn’t go in. Peter goes on in, and then Peter sees the linen clothes in a particular way: they’re separated off, there’s this veil or this head covering, and then there’s the rest of the clothes. They’re all neatly in place like whoever was in them just left. And so they see that, and then John then enters after Peter has entered, and he believes.

Okay. So the first person that believes in the risen Christ—not seeing him, who believes—is John in the text, right? Not Peter. It’s interesting how Peter has preeminence in terms of the institutional church, but John is a picture of something else. He’s a picture of us who maybe are not of the institutional church, who are deeply loved of Jesus, who come to believe.

So then they go back to their homes. But then we have Mary left at the tomb, and she goes through that same kind of three-fold thing. John stoops and looks in. Mary stoops and looks into the tomb. She doesn’t see linen clothes. She sees two angels though, so the story does move ahead. And Peter goes into the tomb. Mary interacts with these angels in the tomb and sees this gardener behind her. She turns to see Jesus.

And then as John perceives now what’s going on, when Jesus speaks Mary’s name, “Mary,” she turns again. She turns twice. She’s stooping, looking into the tomb. She sees the angels. “Where’s my Lord? Why are you weeping?” they say. “Well, where’s my Lord?” And then she senses here is the gardener behind her. She thinks it’s the gardener. It’s Christ. So there’s a turning to Christ first in terms of thinking he’s the gardener. And then when he speaks her name, she hears the name and recognizes this is the Savior.

We don’t know why she didn’t recognize him at first. It’s not important for the story. The story says that when Jesus speaks her name, when Jesus speaks your name, there’s a communication, and you recognize Christ, and she turns to him. You see, so John turns in belief as he understands the significance of what he sees. And Mary turns in belief when Jesus speaks her name.

And then Jesus, like he always does in these resurrection stories—if we have the time, you can go back to the Synoptics—when he appears to people, he doesn’t appear just so they can have a good time together. He says, “Stop clinging. This is great. I know you love me, but I got work for you to do.” Jesus always commissions on this first day in his appearances, and he commissions Mary to run with the good news to the disciples that he is ascending—in the process of ascending—to the father.

Beautiful picture, is it not? You’re in a garden, weeping woman, you know, doesn’t know what’s happening. She sees her Savior but doesn’t know him. He speaks her name, her personal name, and she, you know, based on other accounts, clings to his feet, grabs him and hugs him on her knees before him, hugging him. And then he says, “Stop hugging. Time to get to work. Time to go on a mission for you.” And it is a woman. This is the point I was going to make. It is a woman that is the first preacher of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in an informal sense. You understand that he doesn’t commission the disciples, even though they’ve come to believe. He commissions Mary to go to those same disciples and to tell them that he’s been resurrected.

Very significant things going on here. She had to go and tell them the tomb was empty. Then she’s got to go and tell them that Jesus—she’s actually seen Jesus. And the other Synoptics tell us that they don’t believe it. They don’t believe the woman. God sees fit to exalt woman here in this picture of Mary. Now she’s a picture of the church. The church goes to the rest of her disciples, et cetera. But this is a real, live, breathing woman here. And God takes the estate of this woman and exalts her through this scene with the Lord Jesus Christ in this beautiful story.

And so this story has its component elements. There’s a movement. There’s a progression first on the part of the two disciples as John comes to believe. Then there’s a progression on the part of Mary as she comes to believe as well. And in the midst of all of this, the text is put together. The story is written in such a way as to bring us a series of echoes from the rest of the Scripture. The story is written in a way to help us to remember the significance of the events that we have here before us.

And I want to talk now—and they’re listed on your outline—about some of these significant echoes.

Now, we’ve talked about this first one before. We just sang, “May the light shine forth from the cherubim and destroy your enemy. May your face shine and we be saved.” So here we have Jesus. The veil is off of his face. The facecloth is off. He shines forth from the earth. The cherubim—the two angels—are sitting on either end of this slab, right? This Holy of Holies, this place where Jesus has done the priestly work in the linen garments and left them behind, as the high priest had done.

And maybe this is the explanation. Earlier in the text, of course, in the arrest scene, Peter has been linked to the high priest, and Peter sort of becomes the high priest of the church. And maybe that’s why John doesn’t go in immediately—lets the high priest go in, in terms of Peter. We don’t know. But we do know that any right-thinking person who sees angels at two ends of a flat piece of stone slab is going to think about the Holy of Holies.

Jesus Christ has made full atonement for our sins in the Holy of Holies. Jesus Christ has taken off the facecloth, and his face, so to speak, shines forth from that place, and there’s this burst of light. The tomb is the Holy of Holies. Death has been conquered, and the place of darkness is now the place from which light begins to shine forth. And John is illumined by this light of the knowledge of the actual events in the Holy of Holies, and the arrangement of things, and he comes to believe in Jesus Christ. So there’s those echoes that are clearly set forth, and I’ve talked about them before.

We have the echo of the wedding feast at Cana. On the reverse of your outline, there’s just a reminder for your family use, devotions, or whatever. We remember that the Holy of Holies is a piece of furniture in the tabernacle and temple. We said that one way that the Gospel of John is structured is this movement through the holy place—goes through the light and the bread and the altar of prayer with the disciples. I got all that for you there.

And there’s another reason to think of the tomb as the Holy of Holies. But the other thing I’ve got on the bottom of that reverse page are the eight signs of Christ. Now, most commentators make it seven. I believe that the Resurrection of Christ is something he said he would accomplish earlier in the Gospel of John: “Tear this temple down in three days I will restore it.” So it is a sign of the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. And secondly, it’s a sign because John believes as a result of it. He goes in, sees the linen cloth laying there, and sees not just the wrappings but the significance of the event. And it says he believes. That’s what happens with signs or miracles earlier in the book. Jesus does a sign, and people believe. And here the term used for belief means full understanding. It means belief as we would normally think of it.

And so there’s two lines of evidence to support what happens here in this tomb as the eighth sign of this “Book of Signs,” the Gospel of John. And if we think of it that way, it sets up some associations in terms of the relationship of this to the wedding feast at Cana.

Now, we cannot help but think of weddings anyway in our text because we got a guy and a gal in a garden. And if we listen to good music, if we read good poetry, we know what a guy and a gal in a garden alone is supposed to be about. It’s a romantic encounter. It’s a relationship-building thing. And we can talk about Mary and make her into a symbol of the church. And that’s okay. The church is the bride of Christ. He’s the bridegroom. And what we have here is that picture for us: that Jesus now has been given the bride by the Father, right?

Opening chapters of Genesis, the father gives a bride and brings her to Adam. And here God—through his set of providences, the father has delivered the bride to Christ—and they embrace in the garden. She becomes an immediate helpmate to her husband, right? He immediately wants something done, and she goes and does it for him. So it’s automatic, you know. You think of this, and you should think about a wedding anyway. But then the connection of the wedding feast at Cana, the best of wine ultimately—of course speaks to the work of the Lord Jesus Christ and the wedding feast, et cetera.

And so there is this relationship. It’s interesting too that the wedding feast at Cana happened on the third day. The introduction to it says, “On the third day this wedding feast happened.” And if you count the sequential days leading up to that place—remember we talked about this way back when, that the first couple of chapters there’s a listing of days, and it seems that you can count up eight of them, and that eighth day is the third day, and that’s the day of the wedding feast at Cana in Galilee.

It’s a picture of what’s going to happen after the three days of death and then the Resurrection. It’s a picture of the whole thing rolling ahead into the new world, into that eighth day, the Christian Sabbath or Lord’s Day, beginning the rest of the created order. And so there’s these echoes from the Gospel itself, the wedding feast at Cana.

Jesus has moved from interaction with woman via mother to now interaction with woman via bride. It’s interesting because he tells his mother, “My hour has not yet come.” And he means his hour of his glorification. And all those—all that is compressed in John’s Gospel. The death, the Resurrection, the Ascension, Pentecost—it’s all lumped together as happening before the Gospel is over, right? Jesus says here, “I’m ascending to the Father.” Now, we know that’s not going to happen for forty days. But here Jesus says, “I’m ascending right now.”

And then Jesus, when he gets together with the disciples in the next part of this text we’ll look at, he breathes on them and says, “Receive the Holy Ghost.” We know that’s not going to happen till Pentecost. It’s little pictures or slivers of these events. So in John’s view, in this story of what the Lord Jesus Christ accomplishes, they’re compressed together. And he wants the story element to have in it Resurrection, Ascension, Pentecost—all these things rolling together in this wonderful account of the significance of that first day of the rest of time that is given to us here.

Jesus has told his mother at Cana, “My hour is not yet come.” His hour is come now. And his hour has come to be not a guest at the wedding feast. His hour has come to be the bridegroom and to have the bride. In the picture of a forgiven woman, cured of sevenfold spirit possession—she was the texts tell us, cured of some sort of very difficult physical disease, and cured, the church history tells us, of her moral depravity, being a prostitute. We don’t know that for sure, but this is what the church has always thought of her—in terms of the woman who was forgiven much and because of her being forgiven much has loved much.

Father, you know, I heard up in Moscow, you know, was a fellow named Warren Gage. And I might have mentioned this last week. I don’t remember. But one way to look at the history of what the Scriptures are, what history is, is that God brings a prostitute, gets a prostitute for his son’s bride, and turns her into a virgin. You know, in the genealogy of Christ, we have prostitutes in there. Those are the only—not just prostitutes, adulterous women. And those are the four mentions. I think it’s in Matthew’s Gospel. The four women all have problems sexually.

The world is idolatrous. The world has gone after another husband. And so God is in the process of redeeming woman, redeeming fallen mankind, redeeming man who has gone after idols and gone after the wrong sorts of satisfaction. And so God here shows that he brings this bride to his son who has had problems, and yet the wife is now cleansed and made pure for the son.

And Jesus Christ has gone from mother interaction to bride interaction. The tomb is a bridal chamber. The tomb and its environs, right in the context of it, are seen not just as the Holy of Holies where all this work has happened and the new creation has been affected through the atoning work of Christ, but this whole situation is a bridal chamber as well. There’s a wonderful story of marriage being given to us in this text.

And another—this brings to mind another echo of another woman at another well early in John’s Gospel. Remember in John chapter 4, the Savior meets with the Samaritan woman at the well, another adulterous woman, right? Seven husbands. And Jesus has this interaction. And here we have it. The text told us, remember, Jacob’s well. Jacob’s well is where he met his bride.

Jacob’s well is where marriage is supposed to happen. You look in the Old Testament, and if you know your biblical literature, you know that if you’re at a well and you got a guy and a gal meeting together at a well alone, what’s going to happen is they’re going to get married. They’re going to fall in love with each other. And that’s what happens with the Samaritan woman at the well. She becomes enthralled with the Lord Jesus Christ. Just as Mary is enthralled with the Lord Jesus Christ.

Jesus marries the Samaritan woman, so to speak—marries all of Samaria. All the men come and say that Jesus Christ is the Lord of the world. You remember why they came? Because the Samaritan woman ran to them, right? With the news of this guy that they just had to come see.

Then at the end of our story in John’s Gospel, Mary runs to tell her friends, “You got to come see. Jesus Christ is risen.” You see, it’s all the same thing. We’ve been prepared for this: to think of this event as a wedding event, not just by Cana, but also by the well in Samaria and the woman at the well. And another wedding. So the tomb is a well, because now we’ve made these echo associations, not just to marriage but also to a well, right?

It’s at the well that Jesus meets with the woman of Samaria, and that nuptial arrangement, so to speak, happens. And we then can see echoes in the context of our text of Jacob again. If we’re brought in connection with the echo of the Samaritan woman, she brings us the association with Jacob’s well and all that entails.

You remember Jacob. Jacob’s the guy who saw angels ascending and descending. We can’t forget Jacob. We’ve already met him, mentioned twice in John’s Gospel. Remember Nathaniel, when Jesus comes to him. Jesus talks about angels ascending and descending on the Son of Man. “This is what Nathaniel will see,” Jesus says. “Nathaniel will see. He’ll see the greater Jacob involved here.” Jesus has already identified himself as the greater Jacob both to Nathaniel and to the woman at the well.

And now we think of the rest of the Jacob story. What did he do after he dreamed that dream? He woke up from his sleep, and after awaking from his slumber, he then goes to where he’s going to find his bride. What happens where he finds his bride? Do you know the story, children? You know this beautiful story. Your mom and dad should know it. They should tell it to each other. Remind them of their deep love like Jacob and his wife.

Jacob comes, and his poor wife can’t get a drink for her sheep. Jacob, strong Jacob, he takes that stone that’s plugging the well, the cover of the well, and he moves it. He rolls it away. He opens that well up, children, and he gives to his wife, rather, water.

Jesus has told the Samaritan woman—she says, “The water’s so deep you can’t give me water.” “Oh, I can give you such water as you would not believe. I can give you the wine of heaven. I can give you the water, bride, that’ll make you never thirsty again.” And now he’s doing it. Jesus has rolled away the stone from the tomb, and he’s come forth. And he’s brought people in and brought them out, and he’s administering the water of life to people as he rolls away the tomb as the greater Jacob.

That tomb as a bridal chamber. The tomb is the Holy of Holies. The tomb is also a well, and it’s a well that Jesus Christ has definitively rolled off that rock, and the waters of life now will flow out of that tomb to fill all the world. Isn’t that where the water came from? The Holy of Holies, the nuptial place where God would meet with his people in the Temple, and then the water flowing out of the Temple.

This is the tomb. Tomb, tomb, tomb. What is it? Is it death? Is it darkness? Is it defeat? No. It’s bright brilliance. It’s the Holy of Holies. It’s the bridal chamber of joy and delight. And it is the well of life from which Jesus Christ now ushers forth water to all of mankind.

Jacob. Jesus, the greater Jacob. He wakes from his sleep. He rolls away the tomb, and he gives water to his bride. Echoes throughout the Scriptures.

Of course, the ultimate echo here has got to be Adam and Eve. We have a man and a woman in a garden on the first day, the rest of their lives, so to speak. And we have Adam and Eve on the sixth day, right? Their first day of creation of them. And here we have the greater Adam, the Lord Jesus Christ, and the greater bride, Eve.

It’s interesting, isn’t it, that she goes and takes this life-giving message to the disciples. You remember what Eve means? “Mother of all living.” Mary, first individually, personally, this particular, living, breathing woman, becomes in a sense the mother of all living as she takes the Gospel to the disciples who are waiting behind doors. And then, of course, by way of picture or symbolism, Mary is that church forgiven of much, loving Christ much. And that church goes and takes the Gospel and becomes the mother of all living.

And so we have here echoes certainly of the garden, Adam and Eve.

It’s interesting, too. People wonder about this veil that’s left. You know, the way it reads—they look in, and Peter goes in, and the clothes are laying right where Jesus had laid, and the headpiece, a piece of cloth that would go over the face, is in its place. And you know, the language is a little funny. It could—you could think that it was folded up somehow. That doesn’t seem to be the implication. It’s more literally the cloths were in their folds. They were the way they were when Jesus laid in them. He just went through them—that’s the idea. New body, Resurrection life.

But why the particular mention of the facecloth separate from the rest of the garment? Why that association? Some have talked about Moses, echoes of Moses and the veil that lies over Israel’s face. The way that Moses had a veil over his face to hide the Shekinah glory. And now that the veil is off, the Lord Jesus Christ will shine forth and save his people. And they’ve associated the veil with the exterior rituals of the Old Testament now brought to their completion in the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. And these are all good echoes and associations.

But there’s a more interesting one. The particular word used for this facecloth—the root term in the Greek comes from sweat. This is a sweat cloth, more in its literal sense. And the idea was that as you worked and labored, you’d sweat. And you’d wipe the sweat off of your brow with a sweat cloth. And so the Lord Jesus Christ, his sweatcloth is mentioned here. Why? Well, as soon as I say it, you all know now, right?

It adds depth to your story. It adds beauty, a sense of wonder, doesn’t it? To what this account is telling us, the beautiful way it’s being described to us.

Jesus Christ is the greater Adam. He’s the second Adam. And he’s rolled back the curtains. The sweatcloth is gone now. It’s discarded. No longer necessary. You see, Jesus has definitively changed the entire nature of work. Work is now different this side of the Cross. Now there’s still some sweating that goes on, but less and less, less and less.

Now, the Reformation ushered in a whole technological and industrial revolution that followed it, on the very basis of the foundation of what those Reformers taught: that we have assurance of peace with God and we can know his world. Jesus Christ is rolling back the curse. That great Christmas song: “As far as the curse is found, it’s being rolled back.” And I’m telling you, I think it is exceedingly significant that the Reformation has produced labor that has less and less sweat associated with it.

Jesus Christ has discarded the sweatcloth. He’s rolled back the curse of Adam. He’s moved from death to life. Adam was supposed to work himself to death. That was his curse. “By the sweat of your brow, you’ll labor until you die and return into dust. From dust you came, to dust you’ll return.” Jesus has finished that. Death is now transformed. The tomb—the place of death—is a place of wellsprings of life. It’s a place of bridal chambers and joy. It’s a place of the Holy of Holies and the light shining forth and delivering us. That’s what death is now to us.

You see, Jesus has rolled it back.

Then we had this woman there. What did the woman—what was her curse? Eve. “With pain and suffering you’ll bring forth children.” Children. What did Jesus tell his disciples earlier about their sense of loss for him in the upper room discourse? You remember he said, “It’s like a woman in childbirth. It’s going to be really tough for you. But then things will be better, and the child is brought forth, and my presence will be with you.”

That was in John 16:21-22. “A woman when she’s in labor has sorrow because her hour has come. But as soon as she has given birth to the child, she no longer remembers the anguish for joy that a human being has been brought into the world. Therefore, you now have sorrow. But I will see you again, and your heart will rejoice, and your joy no one will take from you.”

Can’t we see this echoed in our account? Of course, we can. The pain of Eve, the suffering, the suffering of Mary. She weeps. She weeps. She weeps. And then she hears the voice of the Savior: “Mary.” And all weeping is gone. He has wiped away every tear from her face, so to speak. She moves now in terms of joy. Why? Because man has been reborn. The new man, the new Adam is in front of her. She enters into that joy. The child having been brought forth.

Jesus has brought humanity into relationship with the Father. He tells her to go tell the disciples, “I’m ascending to my Father and your Father. My God and your God. I’m in communion with mankind. I’m bringing humanity into this presence of the Triune God and into that delightful fellowship.”

Awe and wonder should fill us at what is going on in this beautiful story as the curse of Eve is now rolled back and the sorrow is definitively gone. And again, I think that the technological developments based upon the Protestant Reformation have given us increasingly less and less pain in childbirth. More and more women have to read the Bible and imagine what it was like when the curse ruled the world and women died frequently in childbirth. And if they didn’t die, they went through horrific times. Child mortality huge before, but now not so. Praise God for the Protestant Reformation. Praise God for God ministering this new creation and for, through time, rolling back sweat, rolling back pain in the context of childbirth.

What a beautiful picture.

She was demon-possessed. Mary was a woman was demon-possessed. Adam was just a horrific moral rebel in terms of his wife. The woman was truly deceived. Mary’s been delivered of a sevenfold set of demons upon her. And she’s been restored to being true Eve, mother of all living, and also being the helpmate for her husband because, as I said, he immediately sends Eve on a mission to help him out. “Go. You’re my disciple now. Go and preach the Gospel. Tell the disciples to get ready. They got a lot of work to do.”

And so Jesus brings these echoes of the new creation fully together. Now, all these other things are really aspects of this central significance here of the new creation.

It’s interesting too. People think, “Why is she clinging? What does it mean? Stop clinging to me.” And in the Song of Solomon, let me read a few verses of the Song of Solomon, first four verses of chapter 3.

“By night on my bed I sought the one I love. I sought him but I did not find him. I rise now, I said, and go about the city, in the streets and in the squares. I will seek the one I love. I sought him, but I did not find him. Thus, the watchmen who go about the city found me.”

Mary, she’s seeking Christ, right? She’s looking for Christ. He’s going to the gardener. She’s going to the angels. Where is he?

“Verse three: The watchmen who go about the city found me. I said, ‘Have you seen the one I love?’ Scarcely had I passed by them when I found the one I love. Scarcely had Mary interacted with these angels seeking Christ. Then she finds her love that she had been seeking.

“‘I held him. I would not let him go.’”

The text goes on to say, “until I had brought him to the house of my mother and into the chamber of her who conceived me. I held on to him. I looked for him. I found watchmen. Soon as I started to talk, I found him. Then I clung on to him.” And Jesus had to say, “Okay, end of echo. No more clinging. Now I want you to go forth on mission. I’m not going to your mother’s house.”

But that’s the picture. And so again, it reinforces the idea that what’s going on here is the bride and the bridegroom meeting in the garden. And the new creation has been affected and is moving on.

The tomb is a garden. It’s the High Holy of Holies from where Jesus’ light shines forth. It’s that bridal chamber. It’s that well of life. And it is a garden as life begins anew in the context of the new creation effected through the Lord Jesus Christ.

You know, John’s Gospel—what’s the big picture? The big picture of John’s Gospel after the prologue: you got John the Baptist. Where is he baptizing? You know, where is he baptizing? He’s baptizing explicitly, the text tells us, in the wilderness. And at the end, where are we? We’re in the garden. The new creation is the movement from wilderness to garden. The rolling back of the effects of the curse and the ushering in of a new world in which we now really do have our existence.

This is the beautiful art of the Gospel of John: from wilderness to garden.

Another echo. We got a marriage. Probably want to have some kids. Well, we got Rahab and the two spies. Remember Rahab? Two spies. And she lets those spies out of the wall. And when they come back, they come out of that window rather, through the window.

I saw a movie which probably our best movie critic didn’t like, didn’t think much of, but I liked it. It was George Schaefer Jr. who saw it, didn’t like it. It’s called “Lulu on the Bridge,” but it has a beautiful scene where there’s this place where a guy is walled up. He’s being held against his will, and he crawls out of this little window to escape this place. And in the director’s commentary, the guy that did the movie explicitly, he wants you to think of birth. You’re coming out of a womb. The womb is in a place of difficulty and struggles, and you’re being born as you struggle forth from that window. That’s what it is, you see.

And if we bring that imagery into this, these two men have been let out the wall. They’ve gone through death and Resurrection, right? And they’re being released now from the place where they’d been sought by the men of the city. And so Rahab brings them delivery. The men emerge, and the Promised Land now awaits them. They’re born again, so to speak, and they’re born to conquer the Promised Land and go into that.

And so here we have Mary going and telling two men. And the effects of her going and telling them about the absent tomb—at least one of them comes to belief and gets born again, I guess we could say. And the implication is when she goes back and tells Peter that she saw Jesus, he’s brought forth.

And so, mother of all living—we can see that the tomb here is a womb ultimately, you know. Not womb to tomb, but tomb to womb is the way the Christian Gospel proceeds. And this wonderful story tells us that the tomb amongst all these other images is also an image to us of the womb itself.

It’s a beautiful story. I hope I’ve given you some echoes from the rest of the Scriptures that, you know, make you just delight in this story. See the echoes and associations. Love the tremendous way God has focused all these truths into this beautiful, compact story that should cause our hearts just to delight in the fullness of what Jesus has affected by his Resurrection from the dead.

Beautiful story.

There’s a response I suppose we could ask for. We could say that this is Gospel. This certainly is Gospel, and Gospel always implies with it a response. Today’s response I suppose we could say that being Mary, we are to take the Gospel of the ascended Christ—or taking the Gospel of the ascended Christ to the disciples.

Mary is told to tell the disciples that he has brought humanity into this Ascension state of ascending to my Father and your Father, my God and your God.

Again, echoes of the garden, because Yahweh described himself to Adam and Eve as both sovereign and Father. He was the God who was both sovereign and Father. When Satan tempts Adam and Eve, he leaves out the Father part of it. He refers to God just as sovereign, maybe correctly, for a beast. But the temptation for us is to forget God’s fatherliness to us.

And Jesus says the great message we are to take to one another and encourage each other with is our state of being children of God. “As many as believe, to them he gave the right to become children of God.” Jesus associates with us. And this mission is one of telling the church of Jesus Christ and encouraging each other in God’s sovereignty. He is our God, but also of his fatherly care for us as well.

And then it’s put directly in the connection of the Ascension. And the Ascension is power. The Resurrection happens. Then the Ascension—he ascends to the right hand of God, from whence he shall rule till all enemies be made his footstool. The message we have to each other and to the church is a message of victory, power, Ascension, not just for Jesus, but for the church, for the children of the Lord Jesus Christ, the children of the Father, I should say.

We are brought into that, and we want to encourage each other. You know, the first thing we want to do when we have people that are troubled, Christian people—and these men were deeply troubled—is to bring hope to them. A hope based upon this beautiful story of what happened literally two thousand years ago in which all the world was sort of turned inside out again and made right. Everything that was wrong has now been righted.

And this is the great message of hope that we bring to one another: hope and victory through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

You know, Reformation men—men who are Reformers—are not men without troubles. God sees fit to put us through many troubles. These disciples had gone through troubles. They had their hopes completely smashed. They had hoped that Jesus somehow through this process would all of a sudden start raining and the Romans would be thrown off and this that and the other thing. They didn’t know what to make of it. They really didn’t.

And we don’t know what to make of it. We live our lives and we hear these wondrous things. But somehow at our home, it doesn’t quite work out so wondrously. Somehow in our state, it doesn’t work out so wondrously. Somehow at my job, it still seems pretty old creation. The guy seems like old Adam to me. We’re frustrated. We’re frustrated.

But understand that the message always comes to us in that state. God wants to build character. And he builds character through putting us through difficult times, but bringing the message of hope to us in the context of those times.

Job was supposed to rule for God. Jacob was supposed to rule for God. His program of elder evaluation and training is to make life hell for him, to make it as difficult as can be for a while, and then to bring the message, and they submit to him and bow the knee one more time, and he causes them to rise up in that Ascension power of the Lord Jesus Christ.

We should do that with one another. We shouldn’t assume that nobody should be down around here. We should all be down at various times. And we want to bring to each other this message of the Ascension of the Lord Jesus Christ, this great Gospel message of our text today.

So Jesus says that’s the message. R.J. Rushdoony put it this way in describing when Jesus tells Mary to stop clinging to him: “All relationships had now been altered because all his followers had been given a task to cling to. A task to cling to. A calling to fulfill. A world to conquer for Christ. A relationship to him was henceforth to be defined by service to his kingdom, service to one another, service to all peoples. Close ties to him would be gained by doing his will rather than through personal presence.”

That’s a nice comment, isn’t it? Stop clinging to me. The Christian life is not a devotional escape from duty. Now you have union and communion with Christ as you act out who you are. You are the bride of Christ by being his helpmate and doing the mission, fulfilling the mission, clinging to the mission that he gives to us instead of clinging mystically to some personal, pietistic, devotional aspect of Christ. That’s all good and proper. We’re supposed to love it. But our main concept of presence of Christ now is embracing the mission he sends us on as we go into the week.

And when you cling on to the mission of mothering, when you cling on to the mission of school, work that you’re supposed to complete for the King, when you cling to the mission of going to work tomorrow and moving that a little bit more into the perspective of the garden, you are clinging to the Lord Jesus Christ in its proper sense.

So the text does call for Gospel response from us, and that response is to embrace and cling to the particular callings and missions that the Lord Jesus Christ has given to us.

So Jesus has ascended into heaven and is powerful. And one of the aspects of our proper response is to do that. And then secondly, we’re to understand that we’re the children of God. We live in the reality of the new creation. Everything we’ve just said is not some pie-in-the-sky story. It is historical fact that happened two thousand years ago and informs us about our reality today.

I had lunch this last week with some pastors and a state representative, a freshman state representative, and he couldn’t understand—when I told him I was working with CSE, Citizens for a Sound Economy, and other groups in political action. He said he doesn’t understand how it is that Christians have anything to do with an anti-tax group like CSE. How is that a moral issue? He said, “Oh, well, how much time do you have? Because I’d like to talk to you about that one, right?”

To us, everything is a moral issue, right? Everything is. Because Jesus says all of creation is what he has come to roll the curse back from. Now obviously, how much money people have to raise their kids is pretty important in terms of family structures and churches, et cetera. But the point is that what this man doesn’t understand in his Christianity—and he is a Christian, a good Christian—is the comprehensiveness of Christ’s claims, the comprehensiveness that this text, among others, tells us is affected by what he has done. It’s a new creation, folks. That means every last detail must be understood. To not be insane about things, to understand reality, is to understand the significance of the Crown Rights of Christ over every square inch of this earth.

And that’s what the Reformers taught. They understood the Crown Rights of King Jesus—a phrase we’ve used for years, comes directly from the Scottish Reformation.

You see, re-creation is vital for Reformation because it lays the foundation that everything is subject to King Jesus. Not only that, but remember how the first creation was made. Was it made good or bad? Is the world ultimately defined by violence, which is what evolution believes, or is the world defined by harmony? What’s ultimate? Well, the creation was good. It’s defined by harmony. Now a bad thing happened. The Fall happened. Violence has come in.

But we’re not operating on the basis of trying to create a reality that isn’t already in reality. When Jesus comes and makes over the creation, he reestablishes the ultimate harmony of interests. That what we have at heart in everything now is harmony interrupted by violence and a lack of peace.

So it gives us the dynamic to affect Reformation by understanding that the creation is the model for what we have in Christ, and the creation is good. That there is an ultimate harmony of interests in the world, not an ultimate disharmony of interests.

So vital to our motivation as we go about doing the work of Reformation that we have to do here. We’re to believe that we’re children of God, and we are to see all things in terms of this new creation. This is reality in our world. This is how God defines the real world as we now have inherited it through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

All this is true in the abstract, and it’s true for you. Just as Jesus spoke to Mary both as a picture of the church but as a real-life individual, right? Jesus Christ speaks to you. So when she hears her name, when he says “Woman,” she doesn’t get it. But when she hears her name, “Mary,” immediate response. “Rabboni, Teacher. I’m your disciple, right?”

Love permeates the text. What’s your love for Christ today? Do you hear him speaking to you just abstractly or in terms of the group? Or do you hear him speaking to you—that you as an individual, George, Matt, Howard L., Roger W., Masha, Karen—you hear his name to you today, describing his love for you, telling you what he has accomplished for you through the picture of this wonderful, all-inspiring story?

I hope you do. And our response then is to cling to the task that he has given us to do, to love him because we’ve been given so much by him. We devote ourselves afresh to him. That’s what we do now in this offering.

Let’s pray.

Almighty God, we thank you and give you great joy. Father, it’s our great joy and delight to meditate upon the great story you have put for us here in this text. We pray now you would help us to respond with faith in this new creation, belief in your great fatherly love for us, and to believe indeed that you have called us and will use us for your purposes. In Christ’s name we ask it. Amen.