The Book of Mark #106 chapter 16:9-20
The Book of Mark
The Fitting End to Mark’s Gospel
Mark 16:9-20
 
We have before us tonight a fascinating part of our Bibles as we come to Mark 16:9-20.  It is fascinating because of its controversy.   And it is controversial because of the questions regarding its reliability. 
 
You might notice in your text that there are brackets or some kind of demarcation around these verses.  It might be a notation in the margin or an asterisk that points you to a footnote explaining that this text is not found in the best manuscripts available. 
 
It needs to be3 inserted that our Bible is reliable and accurate and I say that, not just because I believe it, but science and history bear it out.  If you ever need to be encouraged to read and study the Bible, be encouraged by the fact that you can trust it. 
 
It is amazing to consider how the Holy Spirit, not only inspired the Scriptures, but has preserved the Scriptures for us. 
 
For instance, the printing press didn’t show up till around 1500. Everything up to that time was copied by hand. Scribes understood the seriousness of what they did. There are some amazing stories about scribes.  One scribe considering what he was doing to be so sacred that while copying down the Hebrew Old Testament, he would write one letter, then go and take a bath, come back write another letter, go take a bath and repeated that process until it was finished. 
 
And when you think about the fact that they were copying the original texts, written by Moses and David and Isaiah and Paul, it’s easy to see why they considered them to be so special. 
 
And God used that to preserve for us a complete Bible as He wanted it to be.  Because of that, we have twenty-five thousand ancient manuscripts of the New Testament alone with many of them dating back to within just a few years, 75 or so, to the time when Jesus was on the earth. 
 
In fact, Baptist scholar A.T. Robertson said, “The vast array of manuscripts has enabled textual scholars to accurately reconstruct the original text with more than 99.9 percent accuracy.” That’s pretty good.
 
One of the things these multiple manuscripts allowed was those who compiled the Scriptures to see if something was added at a later time by a scribe. 
 
And most scholars believe that is the case with the verses before us tonight, and that explains the brackets and notations.
 
As I said last time, we can be fairly sure that Mark’s original account ended at verse 8.  So why were these verses added at a later time?  If they are not in the original, and they aren’t in the earliest and most reliable manuscripts, although most Greek manuscripts include them, then why are they here? 
 
Well, let’s think about it logically. 
 
 
 
Look back to
 
verse 8
 
This is Mark’s closing statement. Is it possible that after a little bit of time passed, those who were studying the Bible would read the book of Mark, come to his closing statement and say, “Hmm.  That’s an odd way to end.” 
 
After all, the language is dramatic. The resurrection is shocking. The women are convinced of the resurrection by the empty tomb and by the angelic announcement. They are trying to process what has just happened, and suddenly Mark ends the narrative and says nothing else. 
 
And in reality, what more needs to be added?  After all, you have an empty tomb. You have an angelic announcement. And you have the wonder of eyewitnesses. And with that, Mark has accomplished his purpose in writing.  What did he say in chapter 1, verse 1?  I’m going to tell the story of the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
 
Mark wants his reader to be convinced that Jesus is the Son of God. And if an empty tomb doesn’t do that, nothing else can be said to convince you.  So Mark makes his point and sits down and says no more.  By the way, a lot of us preachers could learn a valuable lesson from that! 
 
The empty tome is the crown jewel in the evidence that Jesus is the Son of God and Mark doesn’t need any human voices or testimony added to the record. 
 
After all, it wasn’t until the crucifixion, through a Roman solider that any human voice is heardin the book of Mark acknowledging that Jesus is the Son of God.  Mark isn’t depending on human to verify the story.  The proof is in the resurrection, and appartenly Mark was satisfied to end there. 
 
But it must have bothered some of the folks in early church history. After all, they had read Matthew’s account and Luke’s version and John’s gospel and those early Baptists must have said, “Mark doesn’t write like Luke does!  John gave us a lot more information that Mark did!”
 
Well maybe that’s why Mark didn’t include it!  The other guys had it covered!  Maybe they talked about it.  Maybe the Holy Spirit put it together just like He wanted it. 
 
I don’t know if any of those conversations happened. I don’t know if collaborated on what to include and neither does anybody else.  Speculation doesn’t work so well when it comes to interpreting Scripture.
 
Some eve suggested that the reason Mark ended like he did was because he intending to use an open-ended rhetorical device. Really? We now know that Mark was intending? I don’t know what he was intending, I only know what he wrote and that he wrote under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
 
And I know no harm is done by including these verses.  They are in complete agreement with the rest of the New Testament and if God chose to use some well-intentioned Scribe after the fact, He can do that. 
 
Is verse 8 an abrupt way to end the book?  From our perspective, yes it is, but only because we have three other gospels against which to compare it.  
 
Yes it’s abrupt. Yes it’s a shocking ending. But it is incomplete? That was the complaint. Some people said, “Well, there’s an ending somewhere, but it’s lost.” So how can you determine say something was lost if you didn’t know it existed?
 
Others said, “Well, we’ve got to put an ending on this.”  So they added the details from other writings. didn’t say anything that wasn’t correct, they just added it.
 
What we read in verse 9 about Mary Magdalene being delivered from 7 demons, we find in Luke 8:2.  John 20 gives us the details about Jesus appearing to her in the garden after His resurrection. 
 
Luke 24 tells us she went and told those who had been with Him about His resurrection. 
 
Matthew, Luke and John all include the details of verse 11
 
In chapter 24, Luke tells us what we read in verse 12. 
 
The other gospels document every part of what Mark includes with the exception of drinking poison, and I wouldn’t be surprised if that happened also!
 
So if appears what we have here is a collection of Biblical truths assembled and added by some of the early scribes to finish the story.
 
Personally, I like the way Mark ends it, so let me talk about that for a moment.  Why does he end the way he ends?
 
For one thing, it’s just the way he wrote.  If you think back to the beginning of the letter, he skips everything up to the baptism.  We hear nothing about Elizabeth and Zacharias or the birth of John the Baptist.  There is no mention of the angelic visits or the Virgin Birth or what happened in Bethlehem. 
 
He just jumps in with the ministry of John the Baptist in verse 2, and then Jesus shows up to be baptized in verse 9. He tells us nothing about what happened before the earthly ministry of Jesus and he tells us nothing about what happened after the resurrection of Jesus.
 
But remember, he’s trying to prove the point that Jesus is the Son of God and how His earthly ministry validates that.  He’s the kind of guy that makes his point and he’s done. 
 
But there’s something else here that comes to mind and that is the last word that he wrote.  If, in fact, verse 8 was the last thing he wrote, then the last word he uses is the word, “afraid”. 
 
These women left the empty tomb and they were afraid.  Not in the sense that they were afraid for their lives or they were afraid of being harmed or that they were in danger. This is the word from which we get our word “phobia” which means an irrational experience. They’re literally experiencing bewilderment, amazement, astonishment, wonder. There are no human explanations for what they’ve seen and they can’t understand it. 
I want you to follow with me a little bit as we follow that thought.  If we go back to chapter 1 and look at
 
verse 22, you read this:  “They were amazed at His teaching.”
 
 Verse 27, “They were all amazed, so that they debated among themselves.” He had just cast out a demon.
 
Chapter 2, verse 12, “He healed the paralytic, and they were all amazed and were glorifying God saying, ‘We’ve never seen anything like this.’”
 
Chapter 4 and verse 41, “He calmed the storm and they became very much afraid and they said to one another, ‘Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey Him?’”
 
Chapter 5 verse 15, “They came to Jesus and observed the man who had been demon-possessed sitting down clothed and in his right mind, the very man who had had the legion and they became frightened.”
 
Chapter 5 verse 33, “He healed the woman with the issue of blood, and the woman fearing and trembling, aware of what had happened to her came and fell down before Him.”
 
Verse 42, “Jesus raised the little girl from death and immediately, verse 42 says, they were completely astounded.”
 
Chapter 6 verse 51, He got in a boat and stopped the storm, walked on the water and they were utterly astonished.
Go to chapter 9. This is Peter, James and John at the Transfiguration, and in verse 6, “They became terrified.”
 
verse 15, “Immediately when the entire crowd saw Him, they were amazed and began running up to greet Him.”
 
verse 32, “He had just spoken of His death and resurrection, they didn’t understand the statement and they were afraid.”
 
Chapter 10, verse 24, “The disciples were amazed at His words.”
 
verse 32, “They were on the road going to Jerusalem, and Jesus was walking on ahead of them, and they were amazed and those who followed were fearful.”
 
Chapter 11, verse 18, after the chief priests and scribes heard what had happened when Jesus cleansed the temple, they began “seeking how to destroy Him for they were afraid of Him, for the whole crowd was astonished at His teaching.”
 
Chapter 12, verse 17, when Jesus had escaped the confrontation with the Jewish leaders, “He wisely answers, ‘Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, to God the things that are God’s,’ and they were amazed at Him.”
 
Chapter 15 verse 5, Jesus stands before Pilate and doesn’t say anything. “So Pilate was amazed.”
 
Chapter 16, verse 5, “Entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting at the right, wearing a white robe and they were amazed.”
 
If we were to title the book of Mark in some other way, it could well be called “The Amazing Jesus”!  So when we get to the end of the gospel and Mark describes these women who’ve been to the empty tomb, what else would you expect him to say except to tell us how they trembled and were amazed and afraid? 
 
This is absolutely consistent with how Mark describes everything in the book. This is his pattern and what is included here in chapter 16 is the most amazing thing of all. So it ends where it ought to end and how it ought to end. It’s not incomplete at all. It ends just as we would expect Mark to end it with amazement and wonder at the resurrection.
 
I hope you find it amazing also.  I’m afraid that those of us who handle the Bible so often sometimes lose our amazement.  But I want you to know the story of Jesus is amazing. Every lesson is amazing!  Every word in the Bible is amazing!  Every miracle is amazing!  Everything about him is stunning and overwhelming and filled with glory! 
 
So why shouldn’t this gospel of Mark end as it does as he tells his hearers of the glory and wonder of the resurrection that puts the final amen on the proof of Jesus being the Son of God? 
 
We ought to walk away from it as these women did!  I’m amazed. I hope you are.
 
What amazes me the most is that he loves me and did it all for me. I think of the hymn, “I stand amazed in the presence of Jesus, the Nazarene, and wonder how He could love me, a sinner, condemned unclean. How marvelous, how wonderful our song shall ever be, how marvelous, how wonderful is My Savior’s love for me.”
 
Let’s pray.