Most of us hear the word “will” and instinctively envision a celestial frown. The phrase “will of God” often conjures up the mental impression of an inflexible and colorless lawgiver whose sole concern is for his own reputation. But when I hear Paul speak of God’s “will” for human sexuality I think of his heart’s desire, his yearning, his fatherly passion for our maximum enjoyment of one of his most precious gifts. I hear God saying, “This is what I long for you to experience as a sexual being. I made you. I put those sexual impulses in your spirit and in your body. I created hormones. Trust me when I say that I know far better than you what will bring the greatest joy and optimum pleasure.” The point is simply that God’s “will” for you and me is always an expression of his love. So what exactly is it that God “wants” of us when it comes to our sexual behavior?
Sam Storms

They Rolled Back The Stone

They Rolled Back The Stone

“They rolled back the stone” A Resurrection Message.

by Don Gooch

“And looking up they see the stone is rolled back”.—Mark 16:14

“The stone is rolled back”. That declaration, as it introduces us to the fact which it indicated constitutes the answer to all the forebodings to which “the stone against the door of the tomb” gave rise. Let us consider the fact indicated by that stone being rolled back from the tomb.

The stone rolled back was not the supreme fact, but rather an indication of the fact, something which was intended to draw attention to the fact itself. The rolling back of the stone happened after the resurrection. Matthew gives a full account of the event. It was not rolled back from the tomb in order that Jesus might pass out of the tomb. By no means is this the case. It was rolled back to show that He had gone.

When the stone was rolled back, what was there to be seen? An empty tomb, and undisturbed grave-clothes. These grave-clothes were lying in the very folds that they had been in, around the body of the dead Christ.Thats what Peter and John saw when they looked into the grave, those clothes lying exactly as they had been around His body; but His body was not there! It was that vision of the undisturbed grave-clothes, that convinced Peter and John that He was risen. If the grave-clothes had been disturbed and carefully folded up, then they might have imagined that somebody had unwrapped them, and that the body of Jesus had been stolen. This then was what they saw when the stone was rolled back–an empty tomb and undisturbed grave-clothes.

What then is the fact that was thus indicated? The very fact which the angel announced:”Ye seek Jesus the Nazarene…..He is risen: He is not here.” Jesus of nazareth had been raised from the dead; had emerged from all its material bondages and bandages; had passed into a new life, the same, yet, entirely different; had proved Himself Victor over death, and Conqueror of the grave. That is the central fact of Christianity through all the centuries. If that is not true, then Christianity is doomed. But, it is true.

It is the central fact of Christianity. It is the fact that cannot be explained except by revelation and revelation has never explained the process of the resurrection. But it is declared that “God hath raised Him from the dead”. Whether that declaration be believed or not, may rest upon our concept of God. But if God is greater than His universe;if in brief, He is the God of the bible, Who spake and it was done, Who commanded and it stood firm, Who upholds all things by the word of His Power, and is able out of apparent nothing to bring cosmos and beauty into being, and to deal with chaos and disorder, and destroy them; If this be our God, then though we never have an explanation of the process of resurrection, we have a fact upon which we can rest. “God raised Him from the dead.”

Not only is it a fact that cannot be explained away; not only is it a fact that cannot be proved; it is also a fact that cannot be denied except by ignorance. This is the only way that fact can be denied and I say this with sympathy for one who is that ignorant. The word “ignorance” is derived from the Latin. We may more politely use the Greek equivalent and say, It cannot be denied, save by agnosticism. The Greek “agnostic” sounds more poetic than the Latin equivalent “ignoramus” but they mean the same thing; the man who does not know. No intellectual soul finds its last resting-lace in ignorance. The resurrection cannot be disproved by agnosticism. Such action can never disprove it. The resurrection cannot be disproved by denying it. Nor can His appearance after the resurrection be disproved. The appearances of Jesus of Nazareth, alive from the dead, after He had been most certainly crucified, are as well authenticated as any facts of history. To deny them is to deny all history as well. Perhaps there is no history?

The final and conclusive fact, however, is that the whole Christian propaganda is the last proof that He rose from the dead; for the whole of it is based upon this belief, and inspired by this fact. Had there been no resurrection, what then? Then there would have been no Christian Church, no Christian propaganda, no Christian influence. Everything for which the lonely Nazarene stood, lay murdered, dead, in the tomb when they rolled a great stone against it. His disciples had been scattered like chaff before the wind, and the whole movement had been stamped out. How did it live again? It lived again and still lives because He lived again and still lives!

Let us consider the values resulting from the rolling back of this stone. The one main, inclusive result is Christianity. I want to show three aspects of that one result, which also have been continuous. the result of the empty tomb, and the fact of the risen Christ which it indicated, was first, the transfiguration of the Cross for His disciples; secondly therefore, it was the vindication of His teaching for His disciples and all such that consider that teaching; and finally, it was for His disciples and for all time an interpretation of His Person.

It was the personality of Jesus which made an appeal to these men in the earliest days. It was His Person they first came into contact with. Then as they walked and talked with Him they came to know His teaching. At the last they knew His Cross. The resurrection transfigured the Cross, vindicated His teaching, and interpreted His personality.

What is the transfiguration of His Cross? Remember how these apostles had feared the Cross. They feared it for Him. They feared it for themselves. Their fear was not low or mean. The more I study these Gospels, and follow these men, the more I can sympathize with them in their shunning of the Cross. I do not think it was selfishness that made Peter say, “That be far from Thee, Lord. It was pure affection for his Lord. He feared the Cross. If He (Jesus) were to die, where were all their high hopes? He had talked of a Kingdom. All that must come to an end if He died. They did fear the Cross. From the moment when He began to explicitly to declare it to them, they could hardly bear to walk and talk with Him. They could only see the wrong of the Cross. They were right in so far as they saw. There is nothing so shameful in all human history as the Cross of Jesus. There is nothing that reflects in such unmistakable and deadly manner upon the human heart as the Cross of Jesus. Man has murdered God! If we lose that early sense of the horror of it, then we are losing a good deal more than we realize. It was a terrible thing! When the disciples saw that it really happened; that brutal men caught Him, mauled Him, bruised Him, murdered Him; they felt it was all over, and they fled.

Now, see how these men came to glory in it. “God forbid that I should glory, save in the Cross of Jesus Christ my Lord”. The apostles gloried in it for Him, and by so doing, gloried in it themselves. They “counted it all joy” that they were considered worthy to suffer shame for the Name of Jesus. What had happened? The resurrection made them look back. If ther had been no resurrection, there would have been nothing but the black tragedy of a murder. The resurrection revealed to these men, and has revealed to us for all time, that in that dark hour, God wrought in the darkness for light, through death unto life, in bondage for the creation of liberty. Come, “behold the place where they laid Him! He is risen: He is not here”. “The stone is rolled back”.

The resurrection was the vindication of His teaching. His teaching concerning relative values, His teaching concerning moral standards, His teaching concerning redeeming motives. Along these lines His teaching proceeded through all the three years; line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little, He had been dealing with these things.

Concerning relative values He perpetually insisted upon the supremacy of the spiritual over the physical; calling men always into that attitude where they sought first the Kingdom of God, remembering that all the things of material necessity should be added unto them. He persistently declared to men that the spiritual is supreme over the physical, and as insistently claimed the sacredness of the material. He lived a life that natural and beautiful in the physical and the material. They had taken that fair and beauteous body, and brutally murdered it, and put it in the grave. But said the angel, “He is not here: He is risen”; and in that rising His teaching was vindicated. His victory over death was His vindication of the supremacy of the spiritual. It was also a vindication of His Conception of the sacredness of the material. If the body were an evil thing, when He emerged into the spiritual life, after the resurrection, He would have left the body. When He came back, He came in a risen body, as John wrote about in His Gospel, eating and fellowshipping with His disciples. This is where intelligence breaks down. The senses cannot comprehend this. The supremacy of the spiritual, and the sacredness of the material were both vindicated by the fact of His resurrection.

Concerning moral standards, He taught the glory of holiness. He stood among the sons of men the most insistent demander of purity; yet to sinning men and women He had said, “Thy sins are forgiven thee”; “Hath no man condemned thee? Neither do I condemn thee; go thy way; from henceforth sin no more”. He taught two things apparently contradictory; the necessity for absolute purity, and yet the possibility of so forgiving the sins that out of the sense of forgiveness there should spring a new moral incentive. By the resurrection that teaching was vindicated. By the resurrection the glory of holiness was revealed. Said Peter on the day of Pentecost, “It was impossible that He should be holden of death”. Why? Because in Him is no sin, and by His resurrection sin was destroyed. Yet more than that–and this is the supreme thing to every human heart. By that resurrection the possibility of forgiveness was vindicated, for the resurrection is the sign and symbol to men everywhere that God has accepted the mystery of atoning work for the redemption of humanity.

His teaching concerning redeeming motives was vindicated. He had taught the beauty of sacrifice; and no one had believed Him. He had declared the strength of love; and they had murdered Him. Now, behold Him, alive from the dead! In the resurrection is the vindication of the beauty of sacrifice, the vindication of the ultimate triumph of the sacrificial life. In the resurrection is the wonder of eternal love. Love is stronger than death and mightier than the grave. That motive of compassion that would have been lost were He dead, flamed again, in light and power and beauty, by the way of the resurrection.

By the resurrection these men came to a new interpretation of His Person. They new the Man Jesus, they honored Him, and they loved Him. They knew that the Man Jesus was the Christ. They had accepted His Messiahship, they had followed Him as Messiah, and obeyed Him as such. They had gained an intellectual conviction that He was the Son of God, as Peter had himself declared as Caesarea Phillipi, “Thou art the Son of God”.

Paul, in his great Roman Letter says that after the flesh He was the seed of David, but that He “was declared the Son of God with power from the resurrection of the dead”. Literally translated “declared” is “horizoned”. “He was horizoned the Son of God with power…”. He was placed upon the horizon in a new light, so that men saw clearly, as they see the sun in it’s rising, Who He was. By that resurrection they discovered this deepest truth concerning His personality. They all came for ever after to speak of Him with reverence as “the Lord Jesus Christ”.

So “the stone is rolled back”. The conception of God lives on. The ideal of humanity not only remains, but is attainable. The passion to redeem is operative, and has been through all the centuries. The religion of Jesus triumphs: faith as its foundation, love as its structural power, hope as its finality.

I will close with these striking word’s of Mazzini…. “He came. The soul the most full of love, the most sacredly virtuous, the most deeply inspired by God and the future, that men have yet seen on earth–Jesus. He bent over the corpse of the dead world, and whispered a word of faith. Over the clay that had lost all of man, but the movement and the form. He uttered words until then unknown; Love, Sacrifice, a heavenly origin. And the dead arose, a new life circulated through the clay, which philosophy had tried in vain to reanimate. From that corpse arose the Christian world, the world of liberty and equality. From the clay arose the true Man, the Image of God, the precursor of humanity”.

Amen! Don Gooch Troy, Mi. 4/6/90