4/20/25-Easter John 20:1-18 “Go and Tell Everyone!”

16 Apr 4/20/25-Easter John 20:1-18 “Go and Tell Everyone!”

4/20/25-Easter     John 20:1-18     “Go and Tell Everyone!”

Once again, I would like to wish everyone a very happy Easter.  It is hard for me to believe that we have been pastoring for19 years.  This is our 19^th Easter as a pastor.  Time sure flies.  I also think that this holiday is much more important than Christmas because it is in these final days of the life of Jesus and the days of the resurrection that follow that we find our freedom, our freedom from sin.  Now you may be wondering ‘how can we be free from sin?’  It’s really pretty easy.  We now have a place to take our sin because of what Jesus did.  He will forgive your sin which is very freeing.  Today, we are going to take a look at the resurrection from the Book of John.  Let’s see if we can get around things that get in our way of a personal relationship with Jesus.  Let’s try to be free in Jesus.

Last Sunday I finally got to sit down and watch the end of the Masters Golf tournament.  It reminded me several years ago that a golfer named Paul Azinger was diagnosed with cancer at the age of 33.  He had just won the PGA championship and he had many other victories on the PGA.  After the diagnosis, it dawned on him that he could die from this.  At the same time, he realized that he was going to die anyway whether it be from this cancer or something else.  It was just a matter of when.  Golf became quite meaningless for him as he just wanted to live.  Then he remembered something that Larry Moody, the then chaplain of the PGA tours, said.  “Zinger,” he said.  “We’re not in the land of the living going to the land of the dying. We’re in the land of the dying trying to get to the land of the living.”  Paul Azinger recovered from chemotherapy and returned to the PGA.  He did pretty well after all this. But his perspective had changed.  He wrote, “I’ve made a lot of money since I’ve been on the tour and I’ve won a lot of tournaments but that happiness has only been temporary.  The only way you will ever have true contentment is in a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.  I’m not saying that nothing ever bothers me and I don’t have problems but I feel that I’ve found the answer to the six-foot putt.”  Professional golfers have a tough time with a 6’ putt while guys like me struggle with a 3’ putt.

Anyway, that is what we are all looking for, the answer for the 3’ putt.  In other words, we have to find a way to come to Jesus and today we find that the path has been blocked by a huge stone.  The tomb was sealed after Jesus’ body was placed in there.  No one could get in or out.  Jesus was not available at this time.  Unfortunately, this is still the mindset that many people have today.

These are the people who aren’t churched at all.  They think, and that is part of the problem, they think that Jesus isn’t there for them because they have been too sinful or they aren’t worthy of being with God.  Or maybe they have read some of the worthless books on the market that try to tell us that there is no God.  We all know people like this who think the way to Jesus is blocked.

Well, guess what?  The stone has been rolled away.  In those days, no one traveled at night so we don’t know exactly when the stone was rolled away.  But at the first crack of dawn, it wasn’t there.  The barrier to Jesus was removed.  There would never be a barrier to Jesus again unless you build it.

So that’s one of my questions for you today.  What stone is keeping you from Jesus?  What keeps you from being with Jesus all the time?  Many people are kept away from Jesus because of their love of money.  I know for a fact that you sure don’t need money or even a credit card in heaven.  Many people get blocked because they think that there is some sort of law against being a Christian or practicing some of our beliefs.  People think there is a law against praying in certain places so why should they pray at all.  When was the last time you prayed before a meal in a restaurant?

Hopefully you can see that all these reasons are nothing but garbage.  The stone has been rolled away.  There is nothing to keep you from Jesus.  He is asking you this Easter morning to come to Him and start to enjoy, reap the lifelong benefits of knowing the very maker of the universe in a very intimate, personal way.  This is an invitation of a life time and it is offered to everyone in the universe.  Come to Him.  You will never regret it.

As we read our passage, we find that the stone isn’t the only problem we encounter.  Notice what happens to Mary Magdalene.  The Scripture tells us that all the other disciples went back to their homes.  They weren’t hanging around because they thought it was all over.  They were in despair over Jesus.  The others went home but Mary Magdalene returns to the tomb crying.  Please keep in mind just who Mary was.  She definitely was not the wife of Jesus.  This myth is so against Scripture that I just want to scream.  But Mary had been a very broken person.  She had been demon possessed with many other problems.  It was only, only through Jesus that she got her life back together.  She owed everything in her life to Jesus.

She is standing there crying when Jesus comes up and talks to her and she doesn’t even recognize Him!  She has known Him for 1-3 years but doesn’t recognize Him.  Her grief keeps her from seeing Him.  So here comes my 2^nd question today.  What keeps you from recognizing Jesus?  If Jesus Christ walked into your church service today, would you recognize Him?  Or would you avoid Him because He is not known to you?  Sometimes we really miss the boat on this one.

I get asked this question quite often.  How do I know when Jesus is talking to me?  My question back to you is ‘how does it feel?’  When you are doing something for Jesus, it feels good.  There is no guilt.  There is no shame.  There are no negative thoughts or feelings.  It is the same way when we come in contact with Him in this world.  We have all come face to face with Jesus and many of us have never even known it.  When was the last time you gave a dollar to a panhandler?  When was the last time you gave to a homeless shelter in Fargo?  When was the last time you embraced someone right here in your own church because you knew they were hurting?  I know that there are people who come to our services who are really hurting.  You can meet Jesus here every Sunday or even every day if you want.  Instead of looking at everyone’s shortcomings, instead of sitting there and judging those who disagree with you, try being Romeo and Juliet or Antony and Cleopatra or Mother Teresa where the only thing that mattered was love.

People, you are a church of love.  Jesus is here.  Throughout the country there are people in church today that have been coming to services all their lives and they still don’t get it.  They come marching right into our churches today with all their baggage from Satan.  They are looking for sympathy, a fight, a hand out; they are looking for anything but Jesus.  I don’t want us to be that kind of church.  Learn to recognize Jesus as He shows up in your life.  Then learn to love the way He has taught you.  Jesus Christ has nothing but love for you and He shows it.

I want to go to a sidebar for a minute.  In verse 10, John tells us that all the disciples went home.  They didn’t gather in the upper room or at Gethsemane, they went home. Only Mary Magdalene stayed.  Of all the disciples, only a woman stayed.  Remember that women in those days were only treated slightly better than property.  Jesus chooses a woman to be the first one to spread the news.  This shows to me that you ladies are very important to Jesus and to the rest of us.  Maybe this should be a Mother’s Day sermon.

Let’s look at another sidebar.  Have you ever wondered why Jesus tells Mary not to hold onto Him while in other places after the resurrection He welcomes our touch?  Remember that Mary Magdalene owed her whole life to Jesus.  She had been on her way to her prolonged death through sin when she encountered Jesus.  One of the things that she might have been doing, and this is just my theory, is squeezing the life out of Jesus, physically.  She thought He was dead and here He is.  She is hanging onto and squeezing Jesus for all she is worth.  She loves Jesus and He is back from the dead.  Jesus is reminding Mary and us, not to hang onto Him so tight that we don’t go into the world spreading the Good News about His resurrection.  I don’t think there is anything strange here.  Jesus is just telling Mary, a woman, to go out and be the very first preacher, the first evangelist to the world.  This is pretty remarkable as is everything that Jesus does.

So, we have stones that block our way and we have blindness so that we cannot see.  All this leads us to total desolation.  You can get to this point in many ways.  You can gamble until all is lost.  You can use alcohol or drugs until nothing is left.  You can even use relationships to get yourself lost.  Desolation comes to Mary when she realized the Jesus was gone and she thought she would never see Him again.  We all do the same thing.  There are many who are like the other disciples who just went home.  They just gave up and were ready to join the world.  You don’t belong to the world and you are not to accept the current worldview, whatever that may be because it changes all the time, just like the wind.  Don’t ever think that the worldview is right because it is so wrong!

But Mary did the right thing.  She came looking for her Jesus.  When she found Him, she was beyond excited as she squeezed Him like He had never been squeezed.  She remembered the wreck of a person who she had been in her previous life.  She was more than elated that she didn’t have to go back to that former, terrible life.  She now had some realization of who Jesus really was.  He was her Lord and Savior.  Praise the Lord because He is ours also.

All this brings us to our freedom.  There is no freedom in this world unless it comes from Jesus Christ and what He did on the cross with each one of us in mind.  When you get your stones out of the way and your blindness cured, then you have a chance for freedom.  For many people it is the first time they have a chance to be free in their lives.

Let me put this in a little different perspective for you.  We like to think that we are free in this country.  We like to think that this country was founded on freedom.  Well, it was but not in the way you might think.  Patrick Henry was a colonist during the Revolutionary War.  He was a great statesman and a Christian.  He said this.  “It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded not by religionists, but by Christians – not on religions, but on the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”  He also said that the greatest gift he could leave his children after his death was Jesus Christ.  If his children had all the riches of the world but they didn’t have Jesus, then they had nothing.  This is the real freedom talked about in our history.  Nothing else mattered to our founders except Jesus Christ.

We have the same opportunity today.  This empty tomb gives you total freedom if you accept it.  When you step out of that tomb with Jesus, you enter into the world that is meant for you.  People who don’t know Jesus remain dead in the tomb.  Their world consists of that small room inside the tomb.  But when you leave the tomb with Jesus, He gives you the world.  You can have everything if you just believe.

There used to be a TV show on called “Monk.”  Mr. Monk was a little phobic to say the least.  He had a brother named Ambrose who lived in the family house.  Ambrose was a little phobic also as it had been years since he had gone outside of the house.  For some psychological reason he was a prisoner in this house.

It is exactly the same way with us spiritually.  You can either stay in the tomb and have a miserable, confined life as Ambrose did, who never left his house, or you can accept what Jesus did on the cross and in His resurrection and have total freedom.  This is the love that Jesus shows us during this whole ordeal.  For us, our lives have never been about ourselves but rather they are about Jesus.  But for Jesus, His life was all about you.  You!  It was so much about you that He willingly gave up His life for you.  That is some kind of love.

So, this is Easter.  It is a time of year when we get together with family and friends.  For the children we have Easter egg hunts, Easter baskets and different kinds of candy.  There are Easter parades and Easter outfits as the season of spring is upon us.  We have Maundy Thursday services, Good Friday services and sunrise services.  There are all kinds of ways to celebrate Easter and they are all good if, if we begin with the correct meaning of Easter.

God began this work before the Garden of Eden and He continues the story today in each and every one of you.  The Easter story is another chapter in the book of God that shows us once again the love He has for all humanity.  Jesus told Mary on that first Easter morning to go and tell the others.

That is your mission as Jesus tells each and every one of you to go from your church on Easter morning and tell all you see this great story.  Use the spiritual gifts that we have talked about and you have received.  Use them to tell or show your neighbors Jesus Christ.  You will feel good about this, the person hearing or seeing you will feel good and best of all, Jesus will feel good.  All we can say is ‘thank you Jesus for first loving us.’  Let’s pray.