God’s Word for You

Mark 16:4 The stone

by Pastor Timothy Smith on Tuesday, April 2, 2024

4 They looked up and saw that the stone, which was very large, had been rolled away.

We have already described the way the large, disk-shaped stone fit into a groove in front of the tomb entrance. Someone had already opened the tomb! What might have happened? Could Joseph have returned, anticipating their task? Had some soldiers, or Caiaphas in his jealous fury, decided to vandalize the tomb and desecrate or mutilate his body? It couldn’t have been the apostles trying to bring aromatic perfumes of their own (the women knew their financial position and perhaps knew about Judas’ thievery by now). When Mary Magdalene spoke a little after this, she wondered whether the gardener of the little cemetery had moved him (John 20:15).

But it was none of these things. The stone had been rolled away by an angel (Matthew 28:2). Angels had done such things in the past and continue to do them now. An angel opened the doors of the prison in Jerusalem to release Peter to do more preaching in the temple (Acts 5:19). Angels pulled Lot to safety and shut the door of his house (Genesis 19:10). An angel shut the mouths of the lions when Daniel was threatened (Daniel 6:22). Sometimes they keep danger out; other times they release God’s people from danger. But now they opened the door for only one reason: to show that the tomb was already empty. Christ did not need to be released. He was already risen; he was already gone.

Even before the angel speaks (verse 6), the evidence of Christ’s resurrection is here for anyone with faith. The tomb could not be opened from the inside, and no one outside did this. “But what no man can do, God does.” God knows our weakness, and therefore besides the empty tomb and the miraculously rolled stone (not to mention Jesus’ folded graveclothes, John 20:7), the Lord adds the message given by the angel so that no believer will doubt at all, but trust and rejoice in what happened.

Only unbelief rejects the simple truth: Christ is risen. Only unbelief attempts to add more doubt. And yet Mark also warns in this very chapter: “Whoever does not believe will be damned” (Mark 16:16; John 3:18; Psalm 34:22).

Here in the tomb we see the preaching of the law, for the tomb is both the symbol and the physical receptacle of death; and death is the penalty on mankind for sin: “You will surely die” (Genesis 2:17). For death naturally brings fear into our hearts. That fear is not about the life one leaves, but about the house into which we are going. We remember that sin brings death and we are afraid because of it. Luther said, “Fear is natural because death is a punishment and therefore something sad. According to the spirit one dies willingly, but according to the flesh the saying applies, ‘Another will carry you where you do not wish to go’ (John 21:18).” It is also right and Christian to mourn for those who die because we don’t want to be separated from them; we loved them and we are coming to terms with missing them. Sometimes we are plagued by the devil at the very moment of grieving through well-meaning people who try to say the most outrageous things to us. And what I say here I say with a heart that is full and a conscience that wants to hold me back from saying more: When you encounter a friend who has just lost especially a wife or a child, do not try to preach to them if they already know the gospel. Offer your sympathy quietly, briefly, and with respect, and let them seek out comfort from their minister or from a friend.

But here in this text we also have the gospel preached in such a new and strange symbol! A rolled-away stone! If I went to the little cemetery in the country where my mother is buried and I found her grave stone shoved aside and a hole there where we laid her body forty-five years ago, I would not be overjoyed. I would be shocked, enraged, furious. What have you done with her?! Why would anyone violate her body’s rest? Not so with Jesus. The stone was set aside by an angel, to show that he had not been moved, he has risen! In fact, the resurrection of Jesus was the natural consequence of his obedient suffering and death. For it was impossible for Jesus’ body to remain in death, and therefore his resurrection, which was inevitable, is also the supreme proof of his divinity. “He was declared with power to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead. He is Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 1:4).

The rolled-away stone either tipped against the side of the tomb or fallen down into the grass, displays the work of God and the freedom of all who die in faith, whether we died at home in our beds or far away in distant lands, or in the sea, or in the sky, or above the sky. All of our graves will be opened and emptied of us in the end, no matter what the circumstances or conditions of our bodies. “The dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed” (1 Corinthians 15:52). This joyful result comes on account of the first resurrection, as Paul proclaims: “Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, descended from David. This is my gospel” (2 Timothy 2:8).

In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith

 

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