Well, thank you.
Hello, everybody, again.
It's my great privilege to tell you the greatest story ever told.
It has been told probably to billions of people on this earth,
and today hundreds of millions will hear it again.
It may be the first time you'll ever hear it,
or you've heard it a lot before,
but I do want to say to you,
if you hear this story and believe it,
it will change everything.
In fact, this story is the story.
This story is the one thing that changes everything.
I wonder if you remember 9-11.
Judy and I were on our wedding anniversary,
and we thought we'd put the telly on.
We'd gone away.
I thought we'd put the telly on,
and there it was, a plane going into a building.
And I just remember we were consumed by the event.
We couldn't turn the telly off.
We were transfixed in shock,
and I could actually say we were bewildered.
Bewildered is the idea,
I don't know how to process this.
Bewildered is, I am completely thrown.
I've been hit for a six.
This is, I just don't know what to make of it.
And I do remember saying something like,
you know, the world will never be the same again.
That was sort of like what I thought.
As a person, you've certainly had your ups and downs,
and either way, you can be bewildered.
Bewildered is when you're just taken aback
by the enormity of what's happened.
Yesterday, got a phone call.
My brother-in-law, serious accident,
smashed in by a car, thrown, neck injury.
So I go and visit him in the hospital,
totally bruised, millimetres.
They said millimetres,
and he would have been a quadriplegic.
Can you imagine?
So I'm sort of going,
imagine if it had been a few more millimetres.
Everything.
Everything would have been changed.
Whatever you may have faced,
you can look back and say,
with the big things,
that you were changed in your life deeply.
And today is a story where I would say
that when you do get it,
I mean, everything.
We say, oh, now that I get this,
everything has changed.
Like, there is nothing without exception
that is not changed by what's happened.
Now, we're looking at a passage,
and it's quite intriguing.
This Bible passage is from the Bible,
and it's from a part of the Bible called Mark,
and what was just read to you
was from part of that Bible story.
And I want to talk about three people.
First of all, Mark, who is he?
Secondly, about a man called Peter,
who is sort of what the story is about,
though it's Jesus,
and then actually some women.
The women get a Guernsey,
they run,
and they win the race,
which is very appropriate.
So the story I have to tell,
remember I said I have a story to tell you,
the biggest story I've ever heard.
You won't get all of it necessarily,
but if I was to tell you the story
in less than a minute,
the God of all the universe,
there's only one who is the creator of all things,
loved his world so much
that he sent his son,
and Jesus became a man.
He lived on this earth the perfect life
that we could never possibly live,
but the reason he came was not to show off,
but to having lived the perfect life,
he chose to die the death we deserve,
because we've not lived the perfect life
so we could be forgiven.
That's the cross.
Then he's risen from the dead,
saying to anyone that puts their faith in him,
I now can forgive you,
and having conquered death,
I can give you life forever in heaven.
It's amazing.
Changes people's lives.
Well, let me start talking to you
about the three people,
because we'll get to that story as it unfolds.
Mark.
Who's Mark?
Now, I know you've done a series on Mark,
but please forgive me if everything I say,
oh, yeah, yeah, we've heard this,
but just be patient.
Mark lived in the first century.
When Jesus was crucified in the 30s AD,
he was still a boy.
In fact, he'd most likely met Jesus,
heard Jesus, seen him do miracles,
even followed him,
and when he grew up,
he wrote Mark.
Mark was a scribe.
A scribe was a professional writer.
People would pay them to write.
In Jesus' day,
virtually not a single person could write.
Do you remember what it was like in school?
First class, second class,
third class,
and I have all these couples
filling out their notice of intended forms.
They still can't write.
Writing is hard.
It takes a long time,
and back in those days,
you needed to be a professional scribe
who'd spent many, many years
learning how to write.
So Mark ended up being a scribe
for a number of people,
including the Apostle Paul,
writing a lot of letters,
and sometime in about 60s AD,
he helped Peter write his gospel.
Now, this is most likely how it worked out.
Peter was the boss of Jesus' disciples.
He was the leader.
He had spent the last 30 years
since Jesus had died.
Jesus died at the age of 33,
another 30 years,
telling the story of his eyewitness account
of being with Jesus
and seeing him do all the miracles.
And at some point,
he decided,
I'm going to have to have this written down.
I can't write.
So I'm going to get Mark to be my scribe.
And what would have happened?
Mark wouldn't have just said,
you know,
tell me a story and I'll write it down.
Now, they would have done it together.
And Peter and Mark together would have,
well, Peter would have told him
and they wrote it down.
And,
but it's really unusual.
How do you tell the story of Jesus
over three years
when writing took forever?
So even Mark's gospel,
which is only a few pages,
was extremely expensive to do and to copy.
So how do you do it?
Well, Peter decided,
let's ignore the first 30 years of Jesus' life.
We'll start at age 30.
And then he said,
also Jesus dying is really important.
So halfway through this book,
why don't we just talk about
the last few weeks of his life
and when he dies?
So that's an interesting way of writing a book.
And I'm particularly interested,
you may not have noticed,
but Mark finished
with the angel appearing to the ladies.
And then we're told the ladies are so frightened,
they run away and they're bewildered
and they don't tell anyone.
Now you think,
why did he finish there?
By the way,
obviously some people didn't think
that was good enough.
So later on,
some people added stuff at the end of Mark.
But we know that,
and if you look at your Bibles,
it says someone added this later.
This is not what Peter wrote.
So I'm just interested,
why did Peter finish like that?
Well, let's talk about Peter.
You've heard about Peter?
Be patient.
Peter was the leader of the disciples,
but as I put in the outline,
he was a tragic failure.
In fact,
Mark 14 just describes
how terribly hopeless
and despairingly,
betrayingly,
gutlessly,
he reacted to Jesus' hardship.
In fact,
I'm very impressed.
Peter was very honest.
He did not let Mark write his story
so that Peter was the hero.
Peter made sure that Mark wrote down
all the times he got it wrong,
so no one thought,
oh, isn't Peter amazing?
I'm sure if you had a chance
to have your biography written,
you would sort of come out pretty good,
but not Peter.
So a number of things happened.
Let me just,
I'm sorry I know you've heard this,
but let me just go back,
because apparently
I only got up to Mark 8 recently.
It's Thursday night.
Jesus gets crucified the next morning.
And what happens is
Jesus is walking to the Garden of Gethsemane
where he's going to pray
and be arrested.
And as he's walking along,
he says to his disciples,
actually,
you're all going to deny me
and run away.
Peter says,
well,
they might,
but not me.
Jesus says,
oh,
Peter,
I'm telling you,
tonight,
you're going to actually deny me
three times
before the cock crows twice.
And then Peter said to Mark,
write down what I said.
I said,
I,
Peter,
insisted emphatically,
even if I have to die with you,
I will never disown you.
Peter says,
write that down.
And that's what Mark writes down.
When they get to the Garden,
Jesus actually tells
just Peter,
James and John,
I am absolutely devastated.
This is what Peter told Mark
to write down.
Peter says,
Jesus began to be deeply distressed
and troubled,
saying,
my soul is overwhelmed with sorrow
to the point of death.
He said to them,
stay here and keep watch.
Now,
never really before
had Jesus ever spoken like that
to his disciples.
And it's just to Peter,
James and John,
he's saying,
guys,
I am overwhelmed.
I am frightened.
I am fearful.
Would you watch for me?
Peter goes and prays.
Sorry,
then Jesus goes and prays.
But what happens is
Jesus comes back
and he finds them asleep.
So Peter said to Mark,
write this down.
He came up
and he said,
Peter,
are you asleep?
could you not keep watch
for one hour?
Watch and pray
so that you will not
fall into temptation.
The spirit is willing,
but the body is weak.
I mean,
how did Peter feel?
How often did
Jesus reach out
and say,
look,
I've always been there for you,
but right now,
could you be there for me?
I really need your help.
I'm really frightened
and scared.
Would you be there for me?
And Peter falls asleep
with James and John.
Well,
he must have felt dreadful.
Jesus went away
and to make things work,
Jesus comes back
the second time
and they're asleep again.
And so we read
in Mark 14,
40,
when Jesus came back,
he found them sleeping again
because their eyes were heavy.
They did not know
what to say to him.
Peter was bewildered.
He was lost for words.
He could not believe
he'd fallen asleep.
And when Jesus woke him up again,
he's sort of going,
I'm so sorry.
I don't know how this happened.
Jesus went away
and comes back again
and again.
Peter's bewildered.
He's lost for words.
He's flummoxed.
But when the time comes
for Jesus
to be arrested,
Peter is all brave.
He actually has a sword
and I suspect
he'd never used it before.
And so when the baddies come,
he sort of goes like that
and cuts off an ear,
which doesn't sound
very fatal to me.
Jesus basically says,
stop it.
Don't do that anymore.
And he lets them arrest him.
And we're told,
Peter says,
write this down,
verse 50 of 14,
everyone,
everyone deserted him
and fled,
including Peter.
They all ran into the darkness,
including Peter.
But then comes
one of the really saddest points
for Peter,
the failure.
Jesus is taken
to the religious leaders
and because it's pitch dark,
I mean,
Peter could have done this.
He just would have followed
in the darkness,
the torches,
and eventually
they get to the high priest's place
and Jesus gets taken in.
But there's a courtyard
and it's all dark
and there's some fires burning.
So Peter sort of sneaks in
and warms his hand
and you probably know the story.
You know,
weren't you with Jesus?
No,
no,
of course not.
Then someone else,
weren't you with Jesus?
No,
I don't even know the guy.
Then the third time,
I'm sure you were with Jesus.
You are Galilean like him.
And Peter says to Mark,
write down what I said.
I began to call down curses on myself.
I swore to them,
I don't know this man you're talking about.
He called down curses on himself.
May God himself strike me dead.
I don't know this man.
Immediately the cock crowed
the second time.
Peter remembered the word
Jesus had spoken to him
before the cock crows twice.
You will disown me three times
and he broke down
and he wept
and he must have run out
and again,
the idea of being bewildered is
I am so overwhelmed
by what has just happened.
I cannot think straight.
I am weeping.
I am devastated.
All that I live for has been lost.
Peter was an abject total failure
and he says,
make sure that's down there.
Don't write me as some kind of super guy.
But then we come to the women
and I like this.
I didn't even occur to me.
I had to read the Bible.
Oh, the women are the heroes.
Go ahead, ladies.
That running thing was very clever.
Not sure how accurate it was.
If Peter's a total failure,
it turns out the women are the heroes.
In fact, from this point,
Peter is not even mentioned again.
We don't know whether he was at the crucifixion or not.
He's not mentioned.
I think he may have.
He's just not mentioned anymore.
He's probably away licking his wounds
and feeling sorry for himself.
Well, the passage that was printed,
sorry, the reason I did it a bit longer,
it starts with,
then Jesus, with a loud cry,
breathed his last and died.
And we're told in verse 40,
which is there,
the women were there.
So let me read to you from verse 40.
We now learn,
even though Mark has sort of recorded the disciples
and all the other guys,
we only now learn
that Jesus had been accompanied
by a number of women the whole time as well.
And basically their job, if you like,
was to meet the needs of Jesus and the disciples.
And just so you know,
the two that are mentioned,
there's four times the women are mentioned
and there's two that are in every time.
One is Mary the Magdalene
and the other one is Mary,
mother of James the Younger and Joseph,
which is actually Jesus' mum.
And then later on,
she's called Mary the mother of Joseph
and then again,
Mary the mother of James the Younger.
They're his brothers.
Very interesting.
Mary's never,
not really referred to as the mother of Jesus anymore.
She's the mother of his brothers.
Anyhow.
So the women are there.
All the disciples have run away
and we're told they're there watching the crucifixion.
Now we heard about it on Good Friday.
May I briefly tell you what they saw.
Because remember we hear them running away,
bewildered after they find the tomb empty.
What did they see?
I suspect the first time the women saw him,
they noticed that Jesus and the disciples
didn't come home Thursday night
or just the disciples.
And the first time they see Jesus
was when he was leaving Pilate's palace.
He was unrecognisable.
Spikes beaten into his head,
face swollen,
eyes and lips from being punched.
His whole body was covered in blood
because he'd been flogged.
It was horrific.
No doubt they were absolutely gutted
when they saw him.
Horrified,
screaming,
weeping,
sobbing.
Then they're there
and they see him crucified.
I won't go into great lengths,
but the way a person was crucified,
which is what they saw,
a major beam's there.
They would carry the cross beam,
they'd put it down
and then they'd lie the person down,
tie their arms on,
put spikes through their wrists,
put their ankles together,
spike through the ankles,
then lift them up
and drop the cross
in about a half a metre hole,
clunk,
hit a wedge so it would stay there.
They saw it happen.
They saw the next six hours
people screaming and yelling and jeering.
It's a little bit hard to imagine,
but in some respects perhaps not.
People go and watch stonings today.
People would go and watch crucifixions.
Not quite the same,
but like going to a footy match.
They'd all yell and jeer.
They'd probably take wages.
Who's going to cry for mummy first?
It was a terrible, voyeuristic,
gut-wrenching, bloodthirsty sport
that people like to watch.
And so the women saw them
yelling, ridiculing, mocking.
And then we hear Jesus
at the top of that reading,
verse 37,
he cries out with a loud cry.
He actually says just before it,
my God, my God,
why have you forsaken me?
And he dies.
Then we read at the end,
verse 47,
that what happens was
not only did Jesus die,
but eventually the others were killed
and all taken off the cross.
And what happens when everyone would go home?
So everyone went home,
the bodies are still on the crosses
and Mary Magdalene
and Mary,
mother of Jesus,
are just there.
And while they're there,
we're told a man,
stranger to them,
but obviously an important man
who's dressed up
in his religious regalia,
came to take the body of Jesus down.
Now, I've noticed paintings
have people lovingly
trying to get Jesus from the cross.
There's only one way
they'd get him down.
They'd lift it out of the thing
and it'd slam on the ground.
The only way to get the spikes out
would be to hit them like this,
which would totally destroy
hands and feet.
And then the corpse
was thrown into a grave.
Well, this man took his body,
put some kind of shroud on it,
probably on a donkey or something,
and took it to a tomb.
And we're told the women
followed them.
They actually followed them
and saw where Jesus was put.
Then we're told,
verse 1 of chapter 16,
after all,
so that was Friday night
and when the sun goes down,
the Sabbath began,
which means they couldn't do anything
except go to synagogue
and be sort of,
there's no markets.
So at the end of Saturday,
could you imagine,
just how devastated,
gutted,
grieving,
overcome,
bewildered you would be,
the one you thought
was the king of the world,
now dead.
So we're told that night
when the Sabbath was over,
they could go and buy spices.
Women were the ones
that normally would embalm the dead
and, I mean,
they weren't necessarily
thinking straight,
but he wasn't prepared properly,
so they were going to go
and do it.
And now we come to Sunday morning
and let me read to you,
it's printed there for you,
from verse 2.
Very early on the first day
of the week,
just after sunrise,
they were on their way
to the tomb
and they asked each other,
who will roll the stone away
from the entrance of the tomb?
See, they hadn't even thought about it.
How are we going to get in there?
We saw this massive stone
put across.
They weren't thinking straight,
this is what you do
when you're grieving.
They just hadn't worked out
what they were going to do.
But when they looked up,
they saw that the stone,
which was very large,
had been rolled away
and as they entered the tomb,
they saw a young man
dressed in a white robe
sitting on the right side.
They were alarmed.
The angel says,
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.
But go tell his disciples
and Peter,
he's going ahead of you
into Galilee.
There you will see him
just as he told you.
Now, there is absolutely
no way in the world
these women expected this.
They saw Jesus
so brutally murdered,
they knew he was dead
and they had been
grieving enormously.
They were not thinking
straight about
embalming his body
but that's what
they'd come to do.
The last thing,
the last thing
in a million years
was that Jesus
would come back
from the dead.
The last thing.
It was absolutely impossible
for someone like that
to come back.
They just did not expect it.
So when the angel
said that,
it's like,
you know,
slap it,
I just cannot process
what you have just said.
My world has gone
from complete,
total devastation
to,
is it possible?
No,
surely not.
Is it,
is it,
I,
can you understand
what bewilderment means?
I just cannot
take this in.
And so we're told,
verse 8,
trembling and bewildered,
the women went out
and fled from the tomb.
They said nothing
to anyone
because they were afraid.
And that's how it ends.
That's how Peter
and Mark
decided
to finish the story.
Well,
why did it end
that way?
I mean,
we know this isn't
the end of the story
because they literally did
when they came to their senses
thinking hallelujah,
went and told the disciples
and off it went.
We know Jesus
then appears to them
and to the other disciples.
In fact,
that's how Christianity
started.
This is 30 years later.
Peter had been telling
his story
for 30 years.
Everyone who was a Christian
or heard of Christianity
knew Jesus had risen
from the dead.
In fact,
I think it would be impossible
for someone
in Mark's day
to not know
that Christians taught
Jesus died
and rose from the dead.
I mean,
if they knew anything else,
but they would have known that.
That's what Christians
were all about.
He died
and rose from the dead.
So why did they
write it like this?
Well,
who knows?
You realise
it was extremely expensive,
this gospel.
It would have been endorsed
by the apostle.
It would have been started
to be distributed
at great cost,
probably only to major
church leaders
or major churches.
Copies were extensively done,
but it took a long time.
And the only way
you would have heard it,
you wouldn't go to the local library
and get your own gospel.
You would have to be
in a group of Christians
and it would be read to you.
Why did they finish like that?
Well,
it normally would have been read
out loud
and I guess
when it finished,
people would have responded
and commented.
But I think more than anything,
they could have related
to the women's
bewilderment,
terror,
fear,
fleeing.
Their lives have been
turned upside down.
I mean,
this is the most significant news
of human history.
If Jesus did actually rise
from the dead,
that changes everything.
In fact,
I would argue
there's nothing more important
than Jesus rising from the dead.
You obviously have things
that you consider
very important
and the temptation
that every single Christian,
including people
who are not Christians,
sorry,
wherever we are,
we always have something
that's more important
than this.
That's what sin is all about.
And so,
I don't know who you are,
but there'll be some here
that I'm shocked,
I'm horrified,
except I'm not surprised
because I'm identical.
This massive truth
is no longer
the most important thing.
My prayer for you
would be
that you are bewildered,
that you are knocked
off your perch,
you are hit for a six,
you are totally
knocked to the ground
by this truth,
realising
what I'm living for
at the moment
isn't worth living for.
My latest statement is
if what you're living for
isn't worth dying for,
it's not worth living for.
And there's a lot of people
who think real estate,
money, career,
that's not what life's about
because believe me,
it's not worth dying for.
You never hear someone
on their deathbed
saying,
if only I'd invested more
in the share market.
If only I had just
nailed that deal
with that new real estate.
It's not important
and they know it.
So my prayer is
whatever it is for you
and same for me,
we will be totally bewildered
when we realise
this is worthless.
Okay?
And last thing,
Peter does get a mention.
Did you notice
verse seven?
Very wonderful.
The angel told the women
to tell the disciples
and Peter.
See verse seven?
Go tell his disciples
and Peter.
He's going ahead of you
into Galilee.
There is a very good chance
that Peter
had completely lost face.
Saw himself as having
absolutely no authority,
no credence.
He was immoral,
he was faithless
and he could not lead
and yet the angel says,
tell Peter,
Jesus has said
he'll meet him in Galilee.
Can I just say
the last thing I want to say?
It does not matter
what you have done.
Peter could not have done
much worse
than what he did.
But Jesus says,
tell him,
forgiveness and future,
forgiveness and future.
I pray for any of you
who do not yet
serve and follow Jesus,
I pray that you will be
bewildered
by the truth
that sets people free.
You will be so unsettled
by the fact that
what you live for
is just not worth living for
and you realise
this
is
everything
and it changes everything.
Let me pray.
We will take you