Mark 15:42-16:8 - Christ Is Risen and Bonus Ending

Hello, and welcome back to Tabernacle Talk. It is wild to think about, but we have reached the very end of the Book of Mark today.

And I've been so thankful to go through this Gospel and to see Jesus' heart for us, despite the fact that when He came, we didn't understand who He was.

And though there were people that believed in Him, even as we saw last episode, everyone pretty much ended up forsaking Him.

Obviously, there were some of those women and John that ended up being at the foot of the cross, but all of the people that, through various points in the narrative, had proclaimed their greatness and how they would never betray Jesus, those were the

ones that ended up doing it. And so Jesus died for our sins, that He died alone. It wasn't Jesus and Peter or Jesus and John or Jesus and Mary that died for our sins. It was Christ alone that died.

And we ended last episode with Jesus dying on the cross, the centurion crying out the same thing that Mark had written at the beginning of the Gospel, that Jesus was the Son of God. He was truly divine.

And the Messiah was the one not just that would rule over all of this earth, He was also the one that would die in our place, die purchasing our redemption. And that's where we're going to pick up in verse number 42.

And this is headed very quickly towards Friday evening, 6 p.m., which would start Saturday or the Sabbath for the Jews. Verse 42.

When it was already evening, because it was the day of preparation, that is the day before the Sabbath, Joseph of Arimathea, a prominent member of the Sanhedrin, who was himself looking forward to the Kingdom of God, came and boldly went to Pilate

and asked for Jesus' body. Pardon me.

So here this member of the Sanhedrin, one of the Pharisees, he was looking forward to this kingdom that Jesus was preaching about, that John had been baptizing, calling people to be aware of the fact that the Kingdom of God was coming, and this

Sanhedrin member, this Pharisee, did believe. And so he comes to Pilate, asks for Jesus' body to be taken down from the cross. Verse 44. Pilate was surprised that he was already dead.

Most of the other people, it would take them longer, but because of the anguish that Jesus had already been experiencing, even as we learned about, I think it was two episodes ago, when Jesus was in the Garden of Gethsemane, and I mentioned at that

point with him sweating drops of blood, like his pores would have been incredibly open, very, very easy for him to bleed out and die. So Pilate is surprised that Jesus had already died. It would normally take longer for this to happen.

He says, summoning the centurion, he asked him whether he had already died. When he found out from the centurion, he gave the corpse to Joseph.

The other Gospel accounts would tell us that in making sure that Jesus was dead, they pierced his side with a spear, and blood and water came out.

That particular mixture would have shown, okay, he has passed, it wasn't just blood, but that blood and water was the sign of that. Jesus did not just faint on the cross, as some people have alleged. He didn't fake his death.

He didn't take something to bring his pulse down to one beat per minute, and then he revived inside the tomb, and he wasn't really the resurrected Lord. No, no, no. Jesus was truly dead.

He really did give his life for us. Verse 46, after Joseph of Arimathea bought some linen cloth, he took him down and wrapped him in the linen. Then he laid him in a tomb, cut out of the rock and rolled a stone against the entrance to the tomb.

The other Gospel accounts would let us know that this was actually Joseph's family's burial cave. At different spots in Israel, the ground is exceptionally tough. Sometimes it would almost be easier to bury your loved ones in these caves.

You would have the different holes in the cave that would be chipped out, cut away, and there would be the central spot where you would lay the body. They would slowly decompose and pass away, or decompose away rather.

Then once they were completely gone and all that was left was the bones, then you would put all of that inside a bone box. Then you would put the bone box into the little holes, the outcroppings, in your family cave.

Here Joseph of Arimathea has Jesus laid to rest on that center stone thing. Jesus was not cremated. They didn't dig a hole in the ground for him.

They buried him that way. A couple of times, even as I've said, Jesus was buried, rose again three days later.

It's often come to my mind, I need to make sure that people don't realize that this wasn't like a zombie situation, clawing out of the grave. It wasn't like that. He was laid to rest on this stone table bed thing that would have been carved out.

Then he would have just sat up and walked out from that, even as we would read about in some of the other Gospels.

I think Luke's account in particular gives us some cool insight there that Jesus even takes off his linen cloths and folds them and leaves it right there on that burial table, if you will. Then Joseph rolls a stone against the entrance to the tomb.

This would make it so, number one, you don't just have a horrible stench coming from out of there. You don't have wild animals that come and eat the body. You don't have people that are messing with it.

It provides some safety. We would also learn from some of the other Gospels that the priests genuinely believed that what Jesus had said about his raising from the dead, that there could be something to that.

And so they asked Pilate if he would put some guards in front of the tomb, which he did. Their reasoning to Pilate was, okay, he said this was going to happen, and so we think his disciples might try something.

So just make sure you have guards put there, because otherwise if people think that he's risen, you know, it's game over for Rome. And so Pilate listened and stationed some guards there. But as you would know the story, it doesn't really work out.

Verse 47, Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Jesus were watching where he was laid. Verse 16, when the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Salome bought spices so that they could go and anoint him.

So here you would put the smell good anointment on the person that had passed and it would keep it from just being horrible stench. Now, I do think it's really interesting.

We just learned a couple of chapters previously right before the Last Supper that there was the woman that anointed Jesus with that very, very expensive anointment. And Jesus said, hey, she has anointed my body beforehand for burial.

And now these ladies are going to come and anoint him as well. Verse number two, very early in the morning on the first day of the week, Sunday, that's why we worship on Sunday.

In the Book of Revelation, John the apostle would call Sunday the Lord's Day. And so that's where that phrase came from. Obviously, there's nothing prohibiting that.

There's nothing prohibiting us from worshiping the Lord on any other day as well. But Sunday is a special day because that's the day Jesus rose from the dead. And so that's the day that we celebrate it together as churches.

Verse number three, so they go to the tomb at sunrise on Saturday, or sorry, on Sunday. They were saying to one another, who will roll away the stone from the entrance to the tomb for us?

It was so big in order to keep out any, you know, ne'er-do-wells or something like that, that these women go, okay, we don't know if we're going to be able to do this. Like, we might need to ask someone else for some help.

Maybe some soldiers will help us or something. Verse four, looking up, they noticed that the stone, which was very large, had been rolled away. When they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side.

They were alarmed. Don't be alarmed, he told them. You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, 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 to Galilee. You will see him there just as he told you. They went out and ran from the tomb because trembling and astonishment overwhelmed them.

And they said nothing to anyone since they were afraid. So here as they come to the tomb of Jesus, there is an angel that's there. Some of the other Gospels would let us know there was another angel who didn't say anything.

This guy is the one that Mark highlights. And this spiritual being communicates Christ is risen from the dead, that they had done everything they could. The religious leaders had wanted to stow him away.

The Romans, the religious world, have been happy to let the people choose whatever they wanted to do with him. They didn't exact justice. The religious leaders didn't worship God.

But Jesus overcame. And because he overcame the grave, there is nothing in your life that will not ultimately be undone by the power of our resurrected Lord.

If you are struggling right now with your health, know that he has promised a new body like his own, free from sickness, free from tears, free from death forever.

If you are struggling with your existence and you're struggling to put food on the table, you're struggling with clothing, you're struggling with knowing where you're going to be or with a job, being able to have what you need.

Know that for all of eternity, all of your needs will be taken care of by our Heavenly Father.

You will never go a day in eternity without his abundant blessings that he had planned for you from before the dawn of creation that God has planned to make you his child and to give you the fullness of his riches forever and ever through what Jesus

purchased for us. There is no sadness. There is no heartbreak. There is no difficulty.

There is no sickness. There is no sin that will not be destroyed and trampled on either when you pass or when Jesus returns. And when that day comes, for a hundred million, billion, trillion years into the future, you will know God.

You will be known by him. You will experience what the Apostle Paul would describe as eye is not seen and ear is not heard, nor is entered into the heart of man what God has prepared for those that love him.

What an incredible thought that because Jesus raised from the dead, we have the promise that our loved ones that have died in the Lord, they are not dead, but they live because he lives.

I think of the old Gaither song, because he lives, I can face tomorrow, because he lives, all fear is gone, because I know he holds the future. Life is worth the living just because he lives.

And here this spiritual being, he lets him know, he says, hey, the Lord isn't here. He left me behind to let you know what's up. And he reminded them, Jesus told you that he would see you again after he raised from the dead.

He would see you in Galilee. And so tell the guys to head back on up there. And I love that he mentioned specifically.

And hey, tell Peter that Jesus wants to see him up in Galilee, that Peter, the last we'd read about him, he was a denier. He was a betrayer.

He might not have sold Jesus over like Judas did, but he did deny him publicly three times, just as Jesus had told him that he was going to. And Jesus forgave him.

If Jesus forgave Peter for that, if Jesus has forgiven you for all of your sins, who can you forgive today? Who can you extend some grace to?

I promise you, no one has ever publicly disavowed you of even knowing you publicly three times, even cursing that they don't know your name. And if Jesus can forgive Peter, then certainly we can forgive others in our lives.

The rest of the Gospels would fill in the ending of this particular story. They would tell us of Jesus appearing in the upper room to the disciples before they even make it to Galilee.

And the interaction that they had, I think it's John's Gospel that would tell us about Peter and John running to the tomb when the women eventually come back and they go, it's empty, like he's gone.

And they would go in and they would see the folded grave clothes of Jesus, that he was not there anymore, that the stone had been rolled away.

And because Jesus was gone, the punishment for our sins is gone, and there's no more condemnation left for us, but he has taken our sins as far as the East is from the West. Freely and forever we have freedom.

Some of the other Gospels would also tell us what Jesus did and his interactions with them.

Up in Galilee, we would read in Luke's Gospel that Jesus appears to a couple of disciples, Cleopas, and Church history would suggest his wife that walked all the way on the road to the town of Emmaus and that he explained to them everything in the

Old Testament and how it all pointed to him. It all pointed to Jesus. And when they sat down to eat a meal and that town of Emmaus that they had gotten to, then Jesus opened their eyes so that they realized, oh, this was Jesus we were talking to.

It wasn't just some random person. And they were so excited they went, and they walked all the way back to tell the other disciples what had happened. So many wonderful accounts of what Jesus did.

That he didn't just raise from the dead, he wasn't just gone, and, you know, a spiritual being or something told everyone, okay, yeah, he raised from the dead, you can trust us. Jesus appeared to person after person after person, groups of people.

Paul would tell us in 1 Corinthians 15 above 500 people at one time, and his formerly disbelieving brother James would all be included in those groups of people that Jesus saw.

Now, Mark's Gospel ends there, but there are some manuscripts, Greek manuscripts, that include some different endings to the Gospel of Mark. So there's one that's kind of more famous. In your Bible, it might be labeled verses 9 through 20.

There are some other manuscripts that we have that have kind of an adjusted form of like 9 through... It doesn't match up perfectly well. It's about another two or three sentences that's a different ending than the 9 to 20.

And so if you have any translation post about 1800 or so, you'll see an indicator that says some of the earliest manuscripts conclude with Mark 16, 8.

Here from verses 9 and on, the style, the Greek vocab, and the Greek grammar is substantially different than in all the rest of Mark's Gospel. It's like a different writer.

And the assumption that we have as a result, also because of some of the reasons that I'm going to mention here from the book, Why Should I Trust the Bible, it would lead us to the realization, okay, from verse 9 and on was not original, when Mark

penned his Gospel. Mark ends the Gospel with the thought, what are you going to do with this message of Jesus? That the women have been told that Jesus is raised from the dead, what are they going to do with that information?

It's almost a call to us, what are you going to do with the information? From the beginning, Mark said he was the son of God, Peter in the middle said that he was the son of God, and the centurion at the end said that he was the son of God.

What do you think about it? What are you going to do as a result of it? But, so the verse numbers that we have in Scripture, they are not inspired.

Those were added in the 1500s to help us be able to locate, okay, where is this verse, where is that verse? So the chapter headings like here, Chapter 16, and then the verse numbers were added in the 1500s.

So, occasionally, it will look like, oh no, I'm trying to think of one of the verses. We went over this in the Book of Acts, Chapter 8 with the Ethiopian eunuch and his baptism.

Acts 8.37 is the reference there, that if you're reading through in a modern translation, you'll see it goes from verse 36 to 38, and then there will be a little footnote thing that says, some manuscripts or some late manuscripts add verse 37, and

that would let us know, okay, we've got about 5,000, 5,500 Greek manuscripts that all contain portions of the New Testament. Some of them are whole books. Some of them are collections of books. Others of them are just a couple of chapters.

Some of them as small as a couple of verses, and so when we put that picture together, what we discover is we have absolute certainty on 100% of Scripture, but there appears to be about another 2 to 5% more with the manuscripts.

We go, okay, everyone's completely agreed that 100% of this puzzle is complete, but there appears to be another 2 to 5% that could be added on, and it would be totally fine.

So if you've got maybe an older translation, the King James Version, if you have the New King James Version, the Modern English Version, and I feel like the World English Bible might also be from this kind of line, that if you have one of those,

it'll have some of those extra, I'm putting air quotes here, extra verses. So Acts 8.37, the last half of 1 John 5.7, some different places there, that they would say, hey, what we have, like the Greek things that we're working from, we don't have

the full picture. We've got about 16 or so of the manuscripts, and so we're working from a text put together by Desiderius Erasmus or by Theodore Beza or by Stephanus.

And that thing that we're working with has all of these things, that as we look at the full picture of all of the manuscripts that we have, we see we have more in these couple of manuscripts that are not found in the earliest manuscripts and are not

found in the majority of our manuscripts. So, I want to give very, very briefly Mark 16, 19 through 20 from the book Why Should I Trust the Bible by William Mounce, who's a Bible translator, literally wrote the textbook on translating scripture and

coining Greek, Biblical Greek. He says, The other long passage still included in most Bibles today is the longer ending of Mark 16, verses 9 through 20.

The ending was probably added because it felt inappropriate to some of the ancient scribes, the copiers, to end the Gospel on this note of fear. Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb.

They said nothing to anyone because they were afraid. And for the reason Mark ended that, I already explained earlier. Here are 12 points that summarize why we should not treat Mark 16, 9 through 20, as original to the text.

It is not found in two of the most important, earliest, fullest manuscripts from the 4th century. It's omitted in some manuscripts of the ancient translation.

So if you look at the old Latin translation, the Syriac translation, the old Armenian translation, the old Georgian translation, and the Ethiopian translation. All of those end at Mark 16, 8.

He says some church fathers knew of manuscripts that did not include it, and many early church fathers don't comment on it.

So much of what we know about New Testament textual criticism even comes from preachers from the first five, six hundred years after Christ.

And as they would preach through the different portions of scripture, we're able to read through and we're able to see it.

And many of those church fathers knew of manuscripts that did not include it, and many of those pastors as they were preaching through the Gospel of Mark or Mark 16, do not mention anything about verses 9 through 20.

The passage is not accounted for in Yesubius' numbering system from the 4th century. So he had done something kind of like our chapters and verses, and he did not include that section of 9 through 20.

Verse, sorry, point 5, Yesubius said that the accurate copies of Mark ended at 16, 8, and the remaining verses were absent from almost all manuscripts.

Point 6, many manuscripts that include the passage indicate that the older manuscripts lacked these verses.

So even in the Greek copies that we have that do have this section that we call now verses 9 through 20, there's an asterisk that says, Hey, like our older copies do not have this.

Other manuscripts include asterisks or obelis, which mark additions to the text that they go, Hey, we think this was not original, this was added.

Point 7, Jerome included these verses in the Latin Vulgate in the 8400s, but said almost all the Greek copies do not have this concluding portion.

Desiderius Erasmus, who made the Greek text additions that would eventually lead to the King James Version and all of our English translations, his number one manuscript said that the ending of Mark was uncertain.

Point 9, there are other alternate endings, so it's not just, okay, some of them take out verses 9 through 20. Other ones have a different, like, paragraph that goes after verse 8.

It says, if the ending of 9 through 20 were authentic, there would have been no reason to create alternatives. Point 10, the transition from verse 8 to verse 9 is awkward.

The subject of verse 8 is the women, and the implied subject of verse 9 is Jesus, but without any clarification. And then point 11, the style, grammar, and lexical choices are clearly non-Markan.

That is that it's clearly not the same author as through the rest of the book. Even some of the things that are included in Mark 16 would disagree with other portions of Scripture.

So if you look at Mark 16 and verse number 16 and on, verse 16 says, whoever believes and is baptized will be saved. Okay, well, is that teaching baptismal regeneration that you have to be baptized in order to receive salvation?

Or verse 17, and these signs will accompany those who believe. In my name, they will drive out demons. They will speak in new tongues.

They will pick up snakes. If they should drink anything deadly, it will not harm them. They will lay hands on the sick, and they will get well.

Okay, well, we have a problem here. That that does not follow everyone who believes. It happened to some people in the first century.

It didn't happen to all of them. Not all of the believers spoke in tongues, even as you could read about in 1 Corinthians, chapter 12 or 14, that Paul specifically says. Not everyone speaks in tongues.

Not everyone prophesies. And so here, if all of those that believe are able to do these things, okay, well, is that true? Is it accurate?

Does it agree with the rest of Scripture? Can we drink poisonous drinks and be fine? The thought here that some kind of cult-like people have said is, yes, you can drink poisonous things, and if you're really saved, it won't do you any harm.

Drink the Kool-Aid. So, for all of those reasons, the ending of Mark ought to be verse 8.

If you'd like any more information about that, I have some resources that I would love to give you as to why that would be so, but the important part of the ending of Mark, I wanted to give that to you so you know, okay, why isn't he going over

verses 9 through 20? There's a reason, and it's because it's not original to what Mark wrote. The important part from the ending of Mark is Jesus is raised from the dead. He is the Son of God.

He truly died, but he truly rose again. He has forgiveness for those that did him wrong, for his betrayers, for those that had abandoned them.

He's faithful and true to his word, and if he raised from the dead, then we can believe him about everything that he says.

He is trustworthy, and if he conquered the grave, there is nothing in our life that he cannot conquer, either now or in eternity. So trust him, follow him, give your life and your heart to him, believe in him, and love him.

Thanks for tuning in, and hope that you enjoyed the Gospel of Mark as I have.