Tremble Before the Risen Christ

Mark 16
Richard Spencer | Sunday, April 04, 2021
Copyright © 2021, Richard Spencer

We are going to look at the final chapter in Mark’s gospel today, and what a final chapter it is! It tells us about the most important and astounding event in all of human history, the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

This resurrection is a historical event. Nearly 2,000 years ago, Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God become incarnate through the virgin Mary, willingly took upon himself all of the sins of all of his chosen people and bore them on the cross. He suffered the punishment that was due us and, having finished that work of atonement, he died, was buried, and was then raised to new life. In this chapter we have Mark’s short account of that first Easter Sunday.

This was not a resuscitation; it was a resurrection. Jesus became the first person to ever receive a new resurrection body fit for eternity in heaven. As Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 15:20, Christ is “the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.” And as the firstfruit, Christ’s resurrection points to the harvest to come. Therefore, we must all pay careful attention as we come to this chapter.

But, before we get to our main topic of the resurrection, I need to point out that this final chapter also contains a passage at the end, Verses 9 through 20, which does not appear in the best and earliest Greek manuscripts and which has been the subject of much speculation. People have suggested that the ending we have here was added later. Some have also suggested that the original ending to Mark’s gospel has been lost, or that he was prevented from finishing for some reason. There is even a much shorter version of the ending that appears in some manuscripts. It is, of course, also possible that Mark deliberately ended his gospel with Verse 8, even though that strikes some as a rather abrupt way to end.

Now, I am certainly not qualified to weigh in with an opinion on this issue other than to point out that Verses 9-20 as printed in our Bibles provide a very brief summary of material that, with one small exception, all appears elsewhere in the New Testament. The one exception is the statement in Verse 18 that believers will not be hurt when they drink deadly poison. Certainly, this one statement should not trouble us, it is entirely within God’s power to protect anyone whom he so chooses from being harmed by poison. The most important point though, is that there is no doctrine of Christianity that would be affected in any way if we didn’t have these verses.

And, I might add, that it wouldn’t be at all difficult to believe that Mark’s gospel, which we must remember is really Peter’s gospel told to us through his faithful helper Mark, would end so abruptly. In fact, it would be perfectly in keeping with his nature to end the story here. Sinclair Ferguson says, quite reasonably I think, that it is likely that Mark intended to finish his gospel just this way to convey to his readers that in spite of Jesus’ teachings, his disciples were truly stunned by his resurrection because it confronted them with the irrefutable fact that Jesus really is the eternal Son of God![1]

Now, obviously, they had some understanding before this time of who Jesus is, Peter had even testified that “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” in Matthew 16:16. But it is one thing to have an intellectual grasp of this fact and quite another to have it brought so forcefully to your attention.

The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the high point in the narrative of his earthly ministry. It is, as many have said, the Father’s “Amen” to everything that Jesus said and did, especially his statement from the cross that “It is finished.” The resurrection is the final, unassailable vindication of the fact that Jesus Christ is the unique God-man, the only Mediator between God and men. He is both our great High Priest and the only efficacious sacrifice for our sins. He is the perfect, sinless Lamb of God. And the Father accepted this sacrifice as the full payment to atone for all of the sins of all his chosen people.

With the exception of the important 40-day period of post-resurrection appearances, the resurrection marked the end of Christ’s earthly ministry. Therefore, it would be fitting for Mark to end his gospel with the statement in Verse 8 that “Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.” And, as a result, we are going to focus on the first 8 verses of this chapter.

These verses bear all the marks of a genuine account of the events. First, the account speaks about women, not the male apostles of Christ. Given that the testimony of a woman was not accepted in a court of law at the time, this is very surprising and is not at all what you would expect if someone made up the story. We see these faithful women taking the first opportunity available to go to the tomb and anoint Jesus’ body. But we also see that they had not carefully thought through and planned their activity well because they had not considered beforehand how they would roll the large stone away from the entrance to the tomb. This oversight is completely understandable given the extraordinary circumstances. We are then told that they looked up and saw that the stone had been rolled away, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe, who was obviously an angel as related by Matthew, and that the women were alarmed, which I suspect is a gross understatement. Then, in Verse 6 we read that the angel said to them “Don’t be alarmed, You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him.”

What a glorious climax – Jesus Christ is risen! In Peter’s sermon on the Day of Pentecost, he told the people that after they crucified Christ and buried him, “God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him.” (Acts 2:24)

Satan and death had no hold on Jesus because he was sinless. Jesus himself had told his disciples in John 14:30-31 that “the prince of this world … has no hold on me, but the world must learn that I love the Father and that I do exactly what my Father has commanded me.” And Christ’s greatest act of obedience was taking our sins upon himself and going to the cross to suffer in our place. This is the greatest single expression of love that has ever, or will ever, be given. The perfect God-man gave his life as a ransom for rebellious creatures. As we read in Romans 5:8, “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” This love is beyond comprehension. And notice that we are not asked to believe without cause. The angel said to the women, “See the place where they laid him.” And we are also called to examine all of the evidence: the empty tomb, the fulfilled prophecies, the transformed lives, the work of the Holy Spirit throughout the centuries and so on, all of it. We are to examine it and then draw the only rational conclusion; that Jesus Christ is the promised Messiah, the Savior of the world, the only name given to men by which we may be saved. He is Lord and we must submit fully to him.

The angel then concludes his statement to the women with a command. He says to them in Verse 7, “go, tell his disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.’”

And then we come to the verse I want to spend the rest of our time on today. In Verse 8 we are told that “Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.”

We must ask ourselves, “Why were these women trembling and afraid?” We can easily understand their being bewildered, but you might initially think their other major emotion would be pure joy at the news that Christ was risen, and I’m sure there was joy, but it was mixed with fear and bewilderment. We can argue that had their faith been great enough, they would have expected the resurrection given that Christ had so clearly taught about it. But the reality is, that whenever anyone is confronted with the true and living God, the only rational response is fear, although as we shall see, the fear a believer has is different than the fear of an unbeliever.

Nevertheless, look at the apostle Peter when Christ used his boat as a platform from which he spoke to a crowd and then, when he was done speaking, Jesus told Peter to put out into deeper water and let his nets down. We read in Luke 5:5 that Peter said, “Master, we’ve worked hard all night and haven’t caught anything. But because you say so, I will let down the nets.” He then caught so many fish that he called his partners, James and John, and they needed both boats to hold the catch, and even then the boats started to sink. As a result, Peter was confronted with the truth that Jesus was not just a man, and in Luke 5:8 we see his response, “he fell at Jesus’ knees and said, ‘Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!’” But Jesus then comforted Peter, saying, “Don’t be afraid; from now on you will catch men.” (Luke 5:10)

Friends, if we understand who God is and who we are to even a tiny degree, we will respond in awe and fear. Because we are finite, dependent, ephemeral, sinful rebels and God is the infinite, independent, eternal, unchangeable, thrice holy, Almighty God. He is the perfectly just Judge of all. We are told in Acts 17:31 that God “has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead.” The resurrection of Jesus Christ confronts all men with this truth. In our heart of hearts, we all know that we deserve punishment, and we also know that God is worthy of all worship and honor and glory. And so fear is the natural response.

And this fear is good and proper. Psalm 111:10 and Proverbs 9:10 both tell us that “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom”. In Job 28:28 Job tells us that God said, “The fear of the Lord—that is wisdom, and to shun evil is understanding.” And, most incredibly, in Isaiah 11:2-3 we are told that “The Spirit of the LORD will rest on [Jesus Christ]— the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of power, the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD—and he will delight in the fear of the LORD.”

Now think about that. The only person in whom both godhead and humanity dwell together delights in the fear of the Lord. The only sinless human being who has ever, or will ever exist, delights in the fear of the Lord. He has a deeper understanding than any creature of the vast gulf that separates creatures from their Creator, and he delights in this perfectly rational and reasonable fear.

John Calvin famously begins his Institutes of the Christian Religion by saying that “Our wisdom, in so far as it ought to be deemed true and solid Wisdom, consists almost entirely of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves.”[2] And Calvin’s statement agrees with what the Bible says precisely because, as I have noted, and as Calvin also goes on to point out, the only possible response to the knowledge of God and of ourselves is awe and fear.

We see this response in many places in the Bible. For example, when God revealed himself to Job, Job replied, “I am unworthy—how can I reply to you? I put my hand over my mouth.”  (Job 40:4) When Ezekiel saw God he fell face down (Ezek 1:28) and, perhaps most famously, when Isaiah was given his great vision of God on his heavenly throne, we read about his reaction in Isaiah 6:5, “Woe to me! … I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty.”

Friends, this is what we all need. We need to see God for who he truly is and to see ourselves for what we truly are. And if God graciously grants us new hearts to understand these truths, we will respond in fear and awe as any creature should in the presence of his Creator.

But what about those whose hearts are hard and refuse to believe? They will also respond in fear. But their fear is different, it will be the terrible, dreadful fear of coming judgment, which a guilty person always has in the presence of a just and powerful Judge. Christ’s resurrection proves that this life is not the end. In Acts 24:15 Paul testified before Felix, saying, in part, “that there will be a resurrection of both the righteous and the wicked.”

So, both those who are saved and those who are perishing have fear, but different kinds of fear. And I want to take time to examine these two different types of fear. Let me begin by first examining the fear of the unbeliever. We will then move on to consider the fear of a believer and then I will close by answering the question, “What shall we do in response to this fear?” So, let’s begin with the fear of the unbeliever.

I. The Fear of the Unbeliever

Unbelievers live in a perpetual state of suppressing the truth as Paul tells us in Romans 1:18, for, as Paul goes on to say in Verse 19, “what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them.”

Although they are often not conscious of the fact, unbelievers are driven by fear. They fear being alone, they fear being rejected, they fear failure, they fear being sick, they fear having their secrets known, they fear death. Many of them do a good job of hiding these fears even from themselves sometimes, but they know in their hearts they are there. And underlying all of these fears is the knowledge that they are sinners and will someday be judged by the God they have rejected. In Psalm 21:8-9 we read, “Your hand will lay hold on all your enemies; your right hand will seize your foes. At the time of your appearing you will make them like a fiery furnace. In his wrath the LORD will swallow them up, and his fire will consume them.” And with reference to God’s judgment of Babylon, in Isaiah 13:13 God speaks through the prophet saying, “I will make the heavens tremble; and the earth will shake from its place at the wrath of the LORD Almighty, in the day of his burning anger.”

And, lest we believe the lie that it is only the Old Testament that speaks of God’s wrath and that Jesus is somehow a kinder and gentler God, Revelation 6:16 speaks of the wrath of the Lamb, which is referring to Christ himself. And Revelation 19:15-16 is speaking about Christ when it says that “Out of his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations. ‘He will rule them with an iron scepter.’ He treads the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty. On his robe and on his thigh he has this name written: KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS.”

And it isn’t just blatant unbelievers who are in danger, nominal Christians are as well. We dare not believe the modern lie that you can accept Jesus as your Savior without obeying him as your Lord. In Hebrews Chapter 10 the author speaks about people who have received the revelation of the gospel but rejected it through disobedience. In Verses 26-27 he wrote, “If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God.” And he goes on to say in Verse 31 that “It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” Then, in speaking of believers coming to the heavenly Jerusalem, Hebrews 12 concludes, in Verses 28-29, “Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our ‘God is a consuming fire.’” So, if you think you are a believer, check yourself carefully! Don’t be deceived.

But, getting back to self-proclaimed unbelievers, they fear God for good reason and usually work hard to suppress that fear and claim that God doesn’t exist, or that he doesn’t judge evil. But the truth is, as John wrote in John 3:36, that “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on him.” John Murray wrote that “it is the essence of impiety not to be afraid of God when there is reason to be afraid.”[3] And unbelievers have very good reason to be afraid.

Friends, my counsel to anyone who has not yet surrendered to Jesus Christ is to do so now. God’s wrath remains on you until you do. But, if you will truly repent and believe, God will fill your heart with love, and John tells us that this love will remove the kind of dreadful fear that the unbeliever has. In in 1 John 4:18 he wrote, “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.”

Therefore, let’s move on to my second point and consider the fear of the believer.

II. The Fear of the Believer

As believers, we also fear the Lord. But our fear is not the dread and terror of coming judgment. We have been forgiven! We have been given new life in Christ! Therefore, we love God because he first loved us and have the reverential fear and awe that are the proper response of a creature to his Creator. The resurrection of Jesus Christ proves that God is not only faithful to keep his threats, he is also faithful to keep all of the promises he has made to his people. So, let’s look at what the resurrection means for born-again believers. There are twelve great benefits I want us to take note of.

1. First, we are justified. We are told in Romans 3:25-26 that “God presented [Jesus Christ] as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, … so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.” And in Romans 4:25 we are told that Jesus “was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.” So the justification of all who are united to Christ by faith is a direct result of the resurrection.
2. Second, we are adopted as God’s children. This is an indirect result of the resurrection. It could not happen unless we were justified – God cannot have children who are unjust. In Ephesians 1:5 we are told that God, “predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will”. And in Romans 8:14 we read that “those who are [being] led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.” Which leads straight into the third benefit we receive;
3. we have the Holy Spirit dwelling in us to guide us. In John 16:7 Jesus told his disciples, “I tell you the truth: It is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Counselor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.” And in Romans 8:11 it says that “if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you.”
4. Fourth, the Holy Spirit, who is sent by the risen Christ and the Father, works in us and with us to sanctify us. In Romans 15:15-16 Paul wrote, “of the grace God gave [him] to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles with the priestly duty of proclaiming the gospel of God, so that the Gentiles might become an offering acceptable to God, sanctified by the Holy Spirit.” And Paul tells us in Romans 8:29 that we are “predestined to be conformed to the likeness” of Christ.
5. Our fifth benefit is that the resurrected Christ is at the Father’s right hand interceding for us right now and always. Romans 8:34 says, “Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus, who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.” Then, in Hebrews 7:24-25 we are told, “because Jesus lives forever, he has a permanent priesthood. Therefore he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them.” Christ always lives because he was raised from the dead.
6. Sixth, Jesus’ resurrection, and in fact his whole life, proves that the Bible is true and is, therefore, our reliable ultimate standard for truth, the very Word of God. Many Old Testament prophecies are fulfilled in the life, death and resurrection of Christ. In 1 Corinthians 15:3-4 Paul wrote, “For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures”.
7. Seventh, the resurrection means that we are able to live a new life. In Romans 6:4 Paul wrote, “We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.” We are to turn from wickedness to a new life of righteousness. In his letter to the church in Colosse, Paul makes this same point using different language; we are to put off sin and put on our new nature. And Paul again explicitly ties this to the resurrection; in Colossians 2:11-12 he wrote, “In him you were also circumcised, in the putting off of the sinful nature, not with a circumcision done by the hands of men but with the circumcision done by Christ, having been buried with him in baptism and raised with him through your faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead.”
8. The eighth benefit is that Christ’s resurrection gives us great hope. In 1 Peter 1:3 we read, “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead”, and in Verse 21 of that chapter Peter says that we believe in God, “who raised him from the dead and glorified him, and so your faith and hope are in God.” We read this morning in Colossians 1:5 that our faith and love spring from this hope.
9. Ninth, the resurrection gives us real power. In Philippians 3:10 Paul says, “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection”.
10. Tenth, the resurrection proves that we can depend on God. In 2 Corinthians 1:9, after Paul told the people about the hardships he suffered, he wrote, “this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead.” This is an argument from the greater to the lesser; if God can raise the dead, then he can obviously take care of all our troubles in this life. We don’t need to rely on ourselves. Paul wrote in Philippians 1:6 that he was “confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”
11. Eleventh, the resurrection teaches us that we must live for God. In 2 Corinthians 5:15 Paul wrote that Christ “died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.”
12. And finally, the twelfth benefit we receive in this life is that the resurrection means that we are, even now, seated in heaven. In Ephesians 2:6 we read that “God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus”. Praise God for these wonderful benefits!

And, brothers and sisters, our blessings don’t end in this life. They go on for all eternity. I want to mention four blessings that we receive from Christ’s resurrection after we die.

1. First, we are rescued from the eternal wrath of God, which we deserve because of our sin. In 1 Thessalonians 1:10 Paul says that we, “wait for [God’s] Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead—Jesus, who rescues us from the coming wrath.”
2. Second, we receive a glorious inheritance. We are told in 1 Peter 1:3-4, “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade—kept in heaven for you”.
3. Third, we will receive resurrection bodies. We won’t spend eternity as disembodied spirits. We will have new physical bodies suited for our heavenly home. Paul tells us about this in several places. In Romans 8:23 he says that “we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.” And, in Philippians 3:20-21 we are told that “our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.”
4. Fourth, and finally, we will never die. Heaven is eternal. In John 11:25-26 Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.” In Luke 20:35-36, Jesus tells us that “those who are considered worthy of taking part in that age and in the resurrection from the dead will neither marry nor be given in marriage, and they can no longer die; for they are like the angels. They are God’s children, since they are children of the resurrection.”

Brothers and sisters, Christ’s resurrection is of extreme importance for us now, and for all eternity. We are children of the resurrection! The resurrection of Christ should elicit great reverence, awe and loving obedience from those of us who are privileged to be united to him by faith. And for those who do not yet know Christ, it should bring a dreadful fear of what is to come.

Therefore, I’d like to close today by answering a very important question. What shall we do in response to this fear?

III. What Shall We Do in Response to this Fear?

In Matthew 25:46 Jesus Christ tells us that that wicked “will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.” The reality is that in our natural state, we are all wicked. As Paul wrote in Romans 3:23, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”. That is the cause of all dread and fear of punishment. Prior to the fall, Adam and Eve had perfect communion with God. They had reverence and awe for him as their Creator, but no fear of punishment. That came after they sinned. And the only proper response to that fear is to fall on our knees before God and cry out, “Have mercy on me a sinner.” God is merciful and will never turn away any sinner who truly repents and believes in the saving work of Jesus Christ on the cross. That saving work that was gloriously confirmed when God raised him from the dead.

Therefore, if you have never trusted in Jesus Christ, you have a great deal to fear. In fact, you have an eternity in hell to fear. I counsel you and, more importantly, God commands you to seek God’s mercy this day. Stop trusting in yourself. Stop suppressing the truth. Repent, believe and accept God’s gracious offer of salvation. God’s perfect love will drive out fear.

And for those of you who are believers, let me add this. Perfect love drives out the fear of punishment, but the fear of God is still there to keep us from sinning. We should still tremble at the prospect of punishment if we prove unfaithful. Quoting from John Murray again, he wrote that “Even where there is no sin, and therefore no existent wrath, we cannot eliminate the fear of incurring God’s displeasure as one motive deterrent to the commission of sin.”[4]

In other words, just as a proper fear of falling to our death keeps us from walking too close to the edge of a cliff, a proper fear of God’s judgment will keep us on the narrow path that leads to heaven. We are to work out our salvation with fear and trembling. Without holiness, no one will see the Lord. Your present assurance and freedom from fear can only be as good as your present obedience to Jesus Christ as Lord. In 1 John 2:5 we are told that “if anyone obeys his word, God’s love is truly made complete in him. This is how we know we are in him”. If we let the love and fear of God keep us on the narrow path of obedience, then the paradoxical statements in Luke Chapter 1 Verses 50 and 74 will make complete sense, “His mercy extends to those who fear him, from generation to generation. … to rescue us from the hand of our enemies, and to enable us to serve him without fear”.

The fear of the Lord is a good thing. God himself told us in Jeremiah 32:39-40, “I will give them singleness of heart and action, so that they will always fear me for their own good and the good of their children after them. I will make an everlasting covenant with them: I will never stop doing good to them, and I will inspire them to fear me, so that they will never turn away from me.”

Therefore, if you have trusted in Christ, take time to make your calling and election sure. We are told in Romans 10:9 that “if you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” Have you done that? The resurrection is key; you must believe in your heart that God raised Jesus Christ from the dead. If you do that, then God’s promise is for you. As Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 4:14, “we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead will also raise us with Jesus and present us with you in his presence.”

[1] Sinclair B. Ferguson, Let’s Study Mark, The Banner of Truth Trust, 1999, pg. 275

[2] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Translated by Henry Beveridge, Hendrickson Publishers, 2008, 1.1.1 (pg. 4)

[3] John Murray, Principles of Conduct, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1957, pg. 233

[4] Ibid, pg. 235