Mark 16:1-8 - The Resurrection of Christ

We come to the most essential claim of the Christian faith—the resurrection of Christ. Mark’s record of it is concise and to the point. This was my introduction to this sermon:

[None of the gospel writers actually describes the resurrection. They don’t take us to the scene and give us detail. They can’t, for no one was there to witness it—not the actual event. What the writers do is record for us what others witnessed after the fact—the empty tomb, angels, post-resurrection appearances of Jesus. They don’t offer proof, they offer a witness. But it is a very powerful witness.

One could make the case that if Jesus had not risen from the dead we would not have any gospels at all. At Jesus’s death his disciples have been scattered, his family is in a state of unbelief, one of his closest confidants has betrayed him, another has denied him. He has no one left except for a few women who have neither the means nor the social status to carry on his teachings.

Had Jesus not risen from the dead there would be no Christianity. This is true not only from a theological standpoint (the resurrection vindicated Jesus’s teaching) but also from a historical standpoint. If Jesus had remained in the tomb his ministry would have been over, his disciples forever disillusioned, and his legacy would have been one line penned by Josephus—barely a footnote in history.

“But in fact Jesus has been raised from the dead.” Those are the words of Paul writing some ten to fifteen years before Mark. That is the adamant belief of the apostles and the early church. And that they believed this is the only adequate explanation for the bursting forth of Christianity on the world in the first century. The best evidence for the truth of the resurrection is the existence of the New Testament and the existence of Christianity itself, for without a resurrection we would have neither.

But we are here this morning somehow, aren’t we? And we’re holding in our hands a record, a witness, of something astounding which must have taken place two thousand years ago or what we’re holding in our hands probably wouldn’t even exist. If Jesus was laid in that tomb never to rise again then he is just another in a long line of would-be Messiahs and prophets and teachers. But if he indeed rose again from the dead then the world is forever changed.”]

To listen to the sermon in its entirety just click the link below. The audio is found at SoundCloud along with the rest of the sermons from the gospel of Mark. God bless you.

Click here: Mark 16:1-8 - The Resurrection of Christ


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