Mary Magdalene

Pastor author and Bible teacher Alan Wright. When Mary supposed Jesus to be the gardener seemed like she could be more wrong. But when you consider the whole story, you realize she couldn't of been more right because Adam was our gardener who failed it is vocation so God sent us a new gardener who would not fail. That's faster. Alan welcome to another message of good use that will help you see your life for no hold. I'm being pretty excited for you to hear the teaching today. In the series titled God used to and you may just be surprised as presented it right know the church in North Carolina. If you're not able to stay with us throughout the entire program I want to make sure you know how to get our special resource right now. It can be yours for your donation this month to Alan Reich Minister as you listen to today's message go deeper as we send you today's special offer.

Contact us at pastor@an.org or call 877-544-4860 that's 877-544-4860. More on that later in the program but now let's get started with today's teaching here is Alan Wright are you ready for the good news of the resurrection of Jesus is that Jesus is resurrection proves his cross to have been authentic, meaning that everything that Jesus taught in all that had been prophesied about him as the Savior is proven to be true because Jesus was raised from the dead and if he had not been raised from the dad, then we would still be left in our sense, because the cross and the saving work on Jesus would not have been of Jesus would not of been valid.

It was validated by the resurrection.

So what's happened is that Jesus has become taught us a second Adam, the first Adam fell into sin, but the second Adam came and lived in righteousness, so anybody who trusts in Christ is no longer in sin and Adam but there in the second Adam, you're in Christ and it's wonderful, wonderful news.

I hope to explain all that today where in John chapter 20. This is the account of the first witness of the resurrection of Jesus.

And it's quite fascinating that it's Mary Magdalene, a woman is the first witness and in the ancient world. Women were not allowed to be witnesses in the courtroom and this is therefore something as radical and beautiful because God highlights the fact that a woman is the first witness. If you were just making this stuff up.

You wouldn't position a woman in this position because everyone knew, and that time they were considered to be witnesses. This beautiful tropical Mary Magdalene is what she's called and we pick up reading John chapter 20 verse 11.

But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb and as she wept she stooped to look into the tomb and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had lain one of the head and one of the feet. They sent her woman, why are you weeping, she said to them taken away my Lord and I do not know where they laid him. Having said that, she turned around and saw Jesus standing. She did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus at her. Woman requires you weeping. Whom are you seeking supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, sir. If you've carried him away, tell me where you've laid him and I'll take him away. Jesus said to her. Mary, she turned and said to him in Aramaic, bony, which means teacher, Jesus sent her to not cling to me five not yet ascended to the father but go to my brothers and save them to send it to my father and your father to my God and your God, Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples I've seen the Lord and that he had said these things to her. It seems like at first this is a case of mistaken identity.

So the people who are most easily confused about biblical matters.

At times are little children who may not hear something exactly the right way and get it confused and I chuckled out loud.

I heard about a little girl who was so excited about her family's Easter activities, and she came to her mother said mom when are we going to kill the egg's and her mother said what are you talking about kill the eggs. She said you know when when we got to let things I'm looking forward to and what do you mean she said would put the collar on that on the eggs and was it. Oh, you mean when are we gonna die that acts as an I read that some child thought that Noah's wife was called Joan of arc, another child thought lots wife was a pillar of salt by day and a ball of fire by night some child thought Moses went to the top of Mount cyanide to get the 10 Commandments another child thought the seventh commandment is now shalt not.

It did adultery oneself all. Joshua led the Hebrews in the battle against cherry coke and some children thought the wives of the apostles recalled the epistles and my favorite one child said a Christian should have only one wife, and this is called monotony heard must've been skilled plan to many video games because he was praying the Lord's prayer and he said leave is not in the PlayStation but deliver us from evil. Sometime children are confused about the nature of God we have a little boy in our church, first served.

In the end in Durham and he came to his mother one day and said why is God so tired. She said me said you know that song we sing all the time. He is exhausted he is exhausted and my personal favorite case of mistaken identity really happened in that first church. We served I was walking down the hall and a teacher was taken her class of three and four-year-olds out to the playground. I want mine I said hi children and one three-year-old girl just raised up with a big smile and waved at me and said hi God, mistaken identity, and this is a story that is about Mary mistaking Jesus for the gardener.

What I want to show you today is the beauty of God's word, that is so multi-textured, multilayered is such that at one level. She couldn't be more wrong.

But at another level. She couldn't be more right. I want to show you how Jesus is the new gardener and why that's so important to know it and why such good good news, Mary Magdalene. She was from this town Magdala, which was known as a prosperous town in Galilee, just a few miles away from Capernaum.

They were known for their textiles. They make clothes there and it was known as a prosperous place so Mary might've come from a prosperous family is conjectured by scholars that she was one of the women that traveled with Jesus and help support the ministry. The main thing you need to know about Mary of Magdala or Mary Magdalene issues called the main thing in the know about her is she really love Jesus a lot.

The reason that she loved him so much as he had healed her of so much. Luke chapter 8 says that she had been delivered of seven demons. We don't know the exact nature of how this spiritual oppression had afflicted her, but you can imagine she was in a constant angst, perhaps living with a chronic discouragement or even some physical impairment. We don't know until she met Jesus and he had delivered her. Unfortunately, early church fathers associated Mary Magdalene because she's mentioned in Luke chapter 8.

They associated her with the woman in Luke seven who is called a sinful woman who anointed Jesus feet and because of this, some of the early church fathers said well Mary Magdalene must be that woman. And so they labeled Mary Magdalene as the quote sinful woman and she gained his reputation as being a prostitute or center adulterous and none of that is true according to the Gospels is no indication of that about Mary Magdalene, Mary Magdalene was a follower of Jesus, and she loved him because he had healed her of so so very much and he simply looked her in the I and he called out her name. It would have been in Aramaic and he said Miriam when he spoke that were she looked in his eyes and she saw the love of the Savior, and she knew an instant that he was alive and in that moment all the hopes and dreams and longings of her life were met and every bit of the confusion she'd ever had in life was answered. At that moment simply by Jesus calling her name. This is by the way, beloved, how faith come when God calls you see this is the way faith happens, you begin to ask the question of yourself. What am I weeping about what's my problem.

What I long for, and where am I looking for an answer and something happens when you began to seek when you begin to look when you begin to wonder about these things, God is using that maybe you're here this morning and and that's where you are is like. I know I need some answers for my life is in the midst of that right will have more teaching moment from today's important series you've heard about it with you years you believed in my experience at the left but lover of myself as a love story from beginning to end spiritual bride of Christ, the perfect bike. The Bible tells you when you walk with her anymore and tasted the sweetness of God's love for your site for any woman who researched for 2525 Gary Chapman Dr. the five love languages size incredible and left comes to F myself ancient biblical extent. This proposal enjoy traveling after the match made in heaven, lover of my soul. Today is the last day. This special offer is available to you at 775-4448 61 come to our website pastor.like today's teaching now continues you once again is the Lord God took the man and put them in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. Adam was on gardener the first human being was on gardener and he had a job he was to work it and keep it. The Hebrew language more literally means to kill it and to guard it, and I'm not much of a gardener, our first house was a little cluster house in Atlanta and the previous owner had built the most beautiful vegetation in the backyard had a gorgeous strawberry patch hey big barrels would goldfish women and it had beautiful flowers and vegetation.

It is sure good thing. We only lived there three years, the strawberries been eaten by the birds that goldfish were down one by one.

The grass was weathering the pompous grass look peaked and is a good thing we got out of there.

While we could, but a real gardener works the ground and towards and the first thing Adam should've done to guard his garden is don't let a snake into it, but he did and the serpent that represents Satan in chapter 3 begins to lure the woman by saying maybe God didn't say what you think. He said because God said if you eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, you will surely die, but the serpent said verse four will not surely die. God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opening you will be like God, the serpent was saying he was saying if you will do this thing eat this tree. Then you will be more like God. Do you see the irony this sad, tragic irony, she was already like God, they been made in the image of God but the serpent planted this thought there something you need to do in order to make your self more like God and by the way, is the primal lie in it is at the root of almost all temptation. It is what leads us away from God because God made us for relationship as human being, but the tree of knowledge of good and evil is the duty to be tree do this and then you'll be somebody and they fell for it and when sin entered the world immediately. Adam and Eve felt like they were naked and they were ashamed. As soon as sin came in. Shane came in shame is that horrible feeling that I don't measure up.

I got it do something about this and I don't want anybody to see this. It is a lonely feeling.

It is an anxious feeling. It is a horrible feeling will do most anything to cover it up and we don't use fig leaves but we use our perfectionism and we use our drugs and we use anything we can find to get away from feeling that horrible shame in our souls and they felt that in a fascinating thing happens in verse 22 of Genesis 3, the Lord God said the whole. The man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil.

Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat and live forever. And if your Bibles like mine is – there is far as I know, it's the only unfinished sentence that God speaks in the Bible he doesn't finish the sentence he says now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat and live forever, and God can't bear to say there have since like I might say I came here to say it monocyte because how he would finish that sentence would've been like this.

If in his state of condemnation.

Man now comes back in takes of eternity.

He will live eternally in a state of condemnation and all humanity will. I cannot let him in his state of sin also make it permanent. So God didn't finish the sentence is too unthinkable to him and so instead he put Adam and Eve out cherubim. There flaming sword so they could not get back in and get to the tree of life, the fall into sin is a story of how humanity got put away from the tree of life in the middle of the garden of Eden and God's mercy is there because he had a plan. He can finish the sentence because God had a plan already in mind the dilemma the Bible calls sin is not just that we do bad things and you look around you.

So, will there are good people there bad people, you might be sitting here today go live a good person. I'm not as bad as other people and that's the whole point of life is to be a good person and so forth. What the Bible calls sin is something much deeper than that. It is to say that we've all been born in sin and the reason for this is if you trace everyone back were all the children of Adam and Eve. They are the beginning point everyone is in somewhere. Another is been the great great great great great great great great great great great grandchild of Adam and Eve. They were in sin they send to everyone who is been born has been born into a condition of sin and the way the Bible describes it is a condition that, by necessity, has caused a massive separation between humanity and God never changing God's love for his creation now God will love so much. Nothing could change his God's holy and he's just and he sat.

If you either that tree going to die and if there is disobedience, there's going to be punishment. So if you bring sinful people into the presence of this holy God.

There's only one result from that the righteousness of God demands, so this is a problem, the predicament of sin is the way the Bible speaks of it, not just good things about thing, but the condition of separation from God.

That's the problem and the problem was it. If were all born in Adam.

How will we ever be delivered so that were not in the same condition what God saw and it makes sense. Is it we needed a whole new breed we needed a whole new race of humanity. We needed something to happen, but God looked, and there was no one righteous, and they are always fallen short. Even the best person in this room. In other words, when Mary supposed Jesus to be the gardener.

First, it seems like she couldn't be more wrong.

But when you consider the whole story you realized she couldn't of been more right because that was our gardener who failed it is vocation so God sent us a new gardener who would not fail. There is therefore now no condemnation for this is what has happened for anyone who's accepted Jesus. The Bible says he who knew no sin became sin so that we who were so sinful would be reckoned as his righteousness. That's at the heart in the center of the gospel is that Jesus came to do what Adam couldn't do and to pay a price that we could never have paid when you accept him. You're in him forever and forever is a strange way to end an Easter message but is true. Jesus is your gardener MSA gospel message reached on Easter Sunday but very much applicable to our lives today.

It's from the greater series. It's coming to a conclusion.

God used who today's teaching is unmarried back Allen is back in a moment with additional insight on this for your life and today's final word that you believed in mind while experiencing the left but lever of myself love story from beginning to end spiritual bride of Christ, the perfect bike. The Bible tells my mom when Fremont missed on the sweetness of God's love for you is pretty woman who researched for 25 inches long and fully doctor the five love languages size incredible reality that God pursue this in life comes to lever of myself ancient biblical accept this proposal and showing his embrace. Traveling after the match made in heaven, lever of myself.

Today is the last day. This special offer is available to you. 544-4861 come to our website pastor at Gatwick Valley know this was Easter Sunday message. We also know this is the conclusion of God used who which is subtitled how God used unheralded women in astonishing ways. Yet I like Mary Magdalene is one of the more prominent women in the Bible. So what when you are preparing this message. How are you filtering the list. Well, I think that I was just so drawn to the figure of Mary Magdalene, though she is more familiar than who would run the daughters of the low-fat.

I don't know that we've always stop just under considered her her life and and and when she thought Jesus was the gardener right right that's the focal point of today's message. Wonder if we always thought while she made a big mistake. Jesus was at the gardener wonder if in a deeper sense she was absolutely right.

This whole story began with a garden garden of Eden, and it it finds its climax in a garden. The garden of Easter and in the Eden garden that first garden. The woman was born without sin. But she became a sinner but in the Easter garden. This woman was born in sin, Mary Magdalene.

She becomes a forgiven St. she sees something she sees the resurrection, and I think there's an invitation for us here as well and for all our listeners this week include this series seen how God is using is unheralded women and how God puts the gospel on display in their lives. How much more so in everyday life and you see the gospel on display three ways. God is using you and so the on watch, they can use anybody at any time.

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