Reading: Mark 16:3-6. "They were saying: Who shall roll
us away the stone from the door of the tomb? ...for it was
exceeding great".
This is one of those many human
problems which have heavenly solutions. Let us look to see what
this stone represented for those concerned.
The
Disappointment of Expectations and Hopes
Firstly, it represented the
disappointment of all their expectations and hopes. If they had
been near when that great stone was rolled into position at the
entrance to the tomb and if they had seen (as we are told
elsewhere) the seal put upon it, they would have turned away,
saying in their hearts, 'That is the end of all our expectations,
that is the disappointing of all our hopes'. We know how two of
the followers of the Lord went on a journey after that very time,
and being interrogated as to the despair upon their faces and in
their tones, they said, "We hoped that it was he who should
redeem Israel" (Luke 24:21). For them all hopes for the
redemption of Israel had gone with the closing of the tomb, and
every expectation on which they had set their hearts was
finished.
The Power of
this World
Again, that stone represented
the apparent triumph of the power of this world. The world had
concentrated its power upon the One in that tomb and had
seemingly triumphed. At that time the world had gained the day;
all the evidence declared that its power had conquered.
The
Spiritual Problem of Death
But more, that stone
represented the terrible spiritual problem of death. Death is a
great spiritual problem. I will not dwell upon that now; but in
the presence of death you are confronted with tremendous
problems, and are always asking all kinds of questions. There is
about death such an utterness of helplessness, and demand for
something that is beyond our giving. No one has ever come back
from death to us personally, literally, to tell us anything of
what we want to know. Death is always a tremendous mystery, and
it was doubly so for those followers of the Lord; for they were
not only perplexed by the general problem but also by the
specific problem of His death. You can almost hear them
inwardly asking questions. That He should die, that this
should have happened to Him! What could it mean?
That stone really was a very
great one, viewed from every angle. Indeed, it is true, that
"it was exceeding great". And we have to enter as we
can into the spirit of what we will call the negative side, the
dark side, of its meaning before we can really appreciate the
other side - that is, what the stone came to symbolize for them
and for us all in Christ.
The
Imminence of Another World
In the first place, it
symbolized the imminence of another world than this one. That
young man in his white robe - we read in another record that
there were two in dazzling raiment, but here it says one - was a
visitor from another world; and everything associated with this
stone and its rolling away, as given in the four records that we
have, speaks of the intervention of another world. It declares
that this world, after all, is not all that we have to reckon
with, or that death or men or our disappointments have to reckon
with. There is another world entirely, in close touch with this
one, and mightier than it, acting in relation to the purposes of
God centred in His Son, and which can never, on any account, be
swallowed up in a tomb. That entire other world is interested in
this stone, in all the problems that are bound up with it in the
hearts of true, sincere, simple, devoted followers of the Lord
Jesus. The imminence of that world was gathered into this stone
when it was rolled away, declaring that that world is very near
and to be counted upon when God's eternal interests in His Son
are at issue.
We do not know - for we have no
evidence on which to work - but it would not be surprising if
from time to time in after years they referred to it. 'You
remember our great problem about the stone, how helpless we felt
that morning, how utterly impotent, how every hope was gone; that
stone represented for us an impasse, an impossible situation. But
it was not there when we arrived on the spot! It was as simple as
that! It is good to remember that God can do it like that'. There
is another world so superior as to make of our problems nothing,
as to dismiss the greatest causes of disappointment and despair
as simply as though they had never been; to wipe them out so
thoroughly that at one time we feel the situation to be utterly
impossible and yet when we arrive on the spot there is no
situation at all to be faced. Afterward that was how it seemed to
those women. God is like that. That is our resource in a day when
there is an exceeding great stone. Yes, the imminence of another
world.
The
Triumphant Power of Life Over Death
Further, that stone became the
symbol of the mighty, triumphant power of life over death. We are
so familiar with phrases like that that perhaps they have lost
their point; but is not God constantly solving our problems along
this very line? We are looking for things to happen, and yet all
the time the power of His risen life is silently working and
solving so many problems. We look back and remember how often we
felt that we could not go on any longer, that we could not
survive very much more, that we were at the end of our resources
- the situation was really beyond us, and some tremendous thing
had to happen. The tremendous thing we expected did not happen.
The fact is that we are going on today after many such an
experience of trial and helplessness; we have quietly been kept
going on, and we are going on; we are not yet submerged and
overwhelmed and put out. That is the miracle of His Divine life
silently solving the problem, dealing with so many things that
seem to say, Death, an end! The power of His resurrection is the
answer to many of our problems. We look for acts; He proceeds
along the silent course of life, the mighty power of life
overcoming death. "It was not possible" says the Word,
"that he should be holden of it (death)" (Acts 2:24).
They were saying, 'It is impossible for us to deal with this
stone, this situation!' He was saying, 'It is not possible for
death to hold Me'. There are two ways of viewing the impossible.
Everything depends upon where you put the impossibility - on the
thing or on God. The things which are not possible with men are
possible with God (Matt. 19:26). And He answers these impossible
things in the normal way - for it is the normal way; the abnormal
would be by signs and wonders and extraordinary happenings:
demonstrations to our senses; but the normal way in the Christian
life is the way of the continuous transcendence of His life over
the working of death. That miracle is far more general than we
recognize. You have to live your life and do your work in a
sphere of spiritual death where everything is against spiritual
life, and there is nothing to support you at all, and yet you go
on there in the Lord, and are not swallowed up, engulfed and
destroyed by that atmosphere and by those conditions. That is the
miracle of Divine life working silently. Yours, then, is a life -
as is the life of everyone - set in the presence of the great
stone of death, spiritual death. We know it, and yet we are
preserved alive spiritually and we go on. That is the great
miracle. It is the miracle of every day. That is the testimony
that God raised Him from the dead.
The
Transcendence of Former Hopes
This stone became the symbol of
the transcendence of all their former hopes. It was not that in
the resurrection of the Lord Jesus their former hopes were
resuscitated. Their hopes had to undergo a transformation, their
expectations had to be greatly changed. The point is not just the
raising of their hopes again with the rising of Christ, but the
absolute transcendence of all the hopes that had been
disappointed. They were looking for the temporal redemption of
Israel: they had to see the redemption of Israel in another
light. In the resurrection of the Lord Jesus - or let me put it
this way - in union with the risen Christ our hopes are far
greater than all our worldly hopes. We may in His death have to
lay our treasure in the dust, we may have to let go much that is
very precious to us of hope and expectation and ambition and
outlook. Our world may have to be placed with the stones of the
brook (Job 22:24). In resurrection union with Christ something
more is given back than what we formerly wanted. God is like
that. You may say that is language and sounds very beautiful, but
is it true? Well, I appeal to those of you who have any spiritual
life and history at all. You have doubtless gone through a time
of deep and dark trial in which you have had to hand everything
over - you have come to a crisis where you have had to place on
the altar something that was very precious and let it go to the
Lord. If the Lord has not given that back to you, have you not
come into some spiritual wealth, some spiritual good, something
more in a spiritual way that makes you say, 'Well, it was worth
it!'? The answer of God through the Cross to all disappointed
hopes and expectations is, and in the very nature of God must be,
something more than that which was laid in the grave. It is the
very principle of Christ risen. He was a far greater Christ in
resurrection than He was before - if I may put it like that
without being misunderstood. He became universal and not local,
spiritual and not limited by the physical. Yes, they would say
that they had come into a greater Christ. He was not, of course,
in actual fact a greater Christ. They had come into greatness
that was always there, but which they had never before
appreciated. It is the law of death and resurrection - always
increase, always something more. One corn falls into the ground
and dies, and many corns result. The transcending of former hopes
comes that way - in the coming back again, but the coming back
with something added. The stone which seemed at one time to say,
'there is nothing left' became the symbol of increase immensely
greater than ever they had thought of.
Rebuke Unto
Instruction
But with it all, that stone
became the symbol of a rebuke, which is always, with the Lord,
instruction. The Lord never rebukes in a dead way: He always
rebukes instructively. I can imagine them saying to one another
in their elation, 'Why did we spend all night preparing those
spices? What were we up to, after all? We were going to anoint
His dead body with our spices. Ours was a prospect of utter
despair. We worked in unbelief'. If you work in unbelief it is
always despair. They were rebuked by the stone rolled away. Very
likely in after years, when they were contemplating a situation
that was humanly very difficult or impossible, the reminder would
come back to them - 'Remember the stone! Do not go down that
street again; death is that way!' Thus the rebuke would be unto
instruction.
And does not the Lord use our
experiences like that? I am not saying that we never do go down
that street again, and I am not saying that the Lord never allows
us to come up against further impossible situations - He does;
but in the second test we should derive something from the first,
and in the third from the second, and so we go on building up. "God...
delivered us out of so great a death, and will deliver: on whom
we have set our hope that he will also still deliver us" (2
Cor. 1:10). We have learned something of Christ. Rebuke - and
yet we need that rebuke. So often when difficulty arises we go
down, we throw up our hands, we are overcome by it. We do not
say, 'But remember, we were up against a difficulty once before,
and the Lord saw us through, we did not go under'. We are slow to
do that.
The Need
for Subjective Exercise
What is it, then, to which this
heads up? It is interesting, and I think it is instructive, to
note that of the four Gospels Mark's is the only one in which the
subjective exercise associated with this incident is mentioned.
The other three only record the objective, the external,
incidents of the resurrection. One says that there was a great
earthquake and behold, an angel! John goes as far as to say that,
coming to the tomb, Mary Magdalene "seeth the stone taken
away from the tomb". But none of them mentions what Mark
records - that they were questioning one with another as to who
should roll away the stone. Here was subjective exercise. It
amounts to this. Something has got to be done in us as well as for
us. We want to proceed on the line of having things done for
us, heaven intervening for us, our difficulties
removed for us, having a straight path made for us.
Heaven may be ready to come in, the Lord may be prepared to work
for us, but it is not sufficient for Him - and it would not prove
good enough for us - if that were all. The very principle of
spiritual growth and maturity demands that He keeps the objective
and the subjective balanced; that is, that something is done in
us as well as for us.
It is the principle of the
Cross again. He died for us - that is the objective. We died in
Him - that is the subjective. Here are two sides in spiritual
experience. He keeps the balance of things. We have to have this
balance wrought in us, and to be delivered from this tendency of
allowing our problems to obscure the Lord, this inveterate habit
of ours of viewing the position merely objectively instead of
saying, 'What does the Lord want to teach us about this? What
does He want to do in us in this matter? There is something He is
after in us.' He has something to do in us before
He can do it for us. How often we have found that when we
have come to a new position with the Lord, when the thing has
been done in us, then there has been outward movement. So the
mention of the subjective exercise suggests that we have to take
this matter to our own hearts as something which requires a
change in us. I am quite sure that is how they must have felt
when they were able to sit down and go over it all again. 'We
were terribly obsessed with our problem and were asking who could
solve it for us. The Lord has made us to see that we must be
inwardly different about these things, we must have a position of
faith, of rest, over them, we must believe God.' We must gain
inward ascendency over the stone before there is any ascendency
to be known over it outwardly. The stone is really not outside of
us in the first place. It is inside; it is in our faith, it is in
our spirit, it is in our minds.
When the Lord moves for His own
Son's sake, and has those interests governing, and when those
interests have brought us into such a relationship with Him that
we can say there is no stone so big to be removed, no problem so
great for solving, no difficulty so intense, but the Lord will do
what is necessary for His Son's sake - when we have come to a
position like that, the Lord is free to do a lot of things very
quietly. As we say, they just 'happen'. Ah, but they have been
the objects of the exercise of exceeding great power -
"There was a great earthquake" (Matt. 28:2). But here,
in this aspect of the situation, it does not seem to be an
earthquake at all. It has just happened. We must recognize that
there is an aspect of activities in which the secret, quiet
working of His immense power dismisses the greatest difficulties
as though they had never existed. Sometimes He may bring us into
the presence of the working of His power that is manifestly
terrific, but not often and certainly not always. For faith it is
more like this: there is such power at work as to make possible
the setting aside of the obstacle very quietly, so that we
afterward wonder - "And they were amazed". And the
angel said, "Be not amazed". It is good to have
amazement, but let us recognize that a certain amount of our
amazement is because we have not sufficient faith.
First published in "A Witness and A
Testimony" magazine, Mar-Apr 1951, Vol 29-2