Mary Magdalene E-Book

Charles H. Spurgeon

• Herausgeber: Selected Christian Literature
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

Mary Magdalene was one of the prominent women present in the New Testament. She is one of Jesus' most faithful speakers, and always believed that he was the true Messiah. Resurrecting, the first person Jesus appeared to was Mary Magdalene. She had gone to the tomb to prepare the Jesus body with perfumes but when she saw the body was no longer there she began to cry. At that moment Jesus appeared and asked why she was crying. Without the Master, at first, he wondered what had been taken from the body of the tomb. Then when Jesus called her by name she was the one standing before her was the resurrected Messiah. She left the place and went at the same time as the others. Charles Spurgeon on Mary Magdalene and what woman represents for the Christian life. What can be called the word of life! Amen!

Leseprobe

Summary

Summary

About the Author

Synopsis

Jesus Appearing To Mary Magdalene

Mary Magdalene

Christ's Manifestation to Mary Magdalene

Magdalene At The Sepulcher — An Instructive Scene

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Charles Haddon Spurgeon (19 June 1834 – 31 January 1892) was an English Particular Baptist preacher. Spurgeon remains highly influential among Christians of various denominations, among whom he is known as the "Prince of Preachers". He was a strong figure in the Reformed Baptist tradition, defending the Church in agreement with the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith understanding, and opposing the liberal and pragmatic theological tendencies in the Church of his day. He also famously denied being a Protestant, and held to the view of Baptist Successionism.

Spurgeon was the pastor of the congregation of the New Park Street Chapel (later the Metropolitan Tabernacle) in London for 38 years. He was part of several controversies with the Baptist Union of Great Britain and later he left the denomination over doctrinal convictions. In 1867, he started a charity organisation which is now called Spurgeon's and works globally. He also founded Spurgeon's College, which was named after him posthumously.

Spurgeon was a prolific author of many types of works including sermons, an autobiography, commentaries, books on prayer, devotionals, magazines, poetry, hymns, and more. Many sermons were transcribed as he spoke and were translated into many languages during his lifetime. Spurgeon produced powerful sermons of penetrating thought and precise exposition. His oratory skills held his listeners spellbound in the Metropolitan Tabernacle and many Christians hold his writings in exceptionally high regard among devotional literature.

Synopsis

Mary Magdalene was one of the prominent women present in the New Testament. She is one of Jesus' most faithful speakers, and always believed that he was the true Messiah. Resurrecting, the first person Jesus appeared to was Mary Magdalene. She had gone to the tomb to prepare the Jesus body with perfumes but when she saw the body was no longer there she began to cry. At that moment Jesus appeared and asked why she was crying. Without the Master, at first, he wondered what had been taken from the body of the tomb. Then when Jesus called her by name she was the one standing before her was the resurrected Messiah. She left the place and went at the same time as the others. Charles Spurgeon on Mary Magdalene and what woman represents for the Christian life. What can be called the word of life! Amen! 

Jesus Appearing To Mary Magdalene

"Now when Jesus was risen early the first day of the week, He appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom He had cast seven devils.'" Mark 16:9.

THE doctrine of a risen Savior is exceedingly precious. The Resurrection is the cornerstone of the entire building of Christianity. It is the keystone of the arch of our salvation. It would take us many a discourse to set forth all the streams of living water which flow from this one sacred source—the Resurrection of our dear Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. But to know that He has risen and to have fellowship with Him as such—communing with the risen Savior by possessing a risen life! Seeing Him leave the tomb by leaving the tomb of worldliness ourselves—this is even more precious!

The doctrine is the basis of the experience, but as the flower is more lovely than the root, so is the experience of fellowship with the risen Savior more lovely than the doctrine itself. I would have you believe that Christ rose from the dead so as to sing of it and derive all the consolation which it is possible for you to extract from this well-ascertained and well-witnessed fact. But I beseech you rest not content even there.

Brothers and Sisters in Christ, I bid you aspire to see Christ Jesus by the eye of faith, and though you may not touch Him, yet may you be privileged to converse with Him and to know that He is risen—you yourselves being risen in Him to newness of life. To know a crucified Savior as having crucified all my sins is a rich kind of knowledge. And to know a risen Savior as having justified me and to realize that He has bestowed upon me new life, given me to be a new creature through His own newness of life—this is a high style of experience. Short of it, none of us ought to be satisfied to rest.

In fine, I would have you this morning, like the blessed Magdalene, among those to whom Jesus Christ should manifest Himself after His Resurrection, as He does not unto the world. Let us come at once to the consideration of this first appearance of the Savior after He had left the tomb. He appears to Mary Magdalene. There must have been some reason for the choice. We shall notice first of all, who she was. Then, how she sought. And, thirdly, how she found.

I. First we shall have to take into consideration this morning who SHE WAS. Jesus "appeared first to Mary Magdalene." Why? One answer might be because He chose to do so. For in His sovereignty He may reveal Himself to whomever He wills and He may withhold Himself from whomever He shall please. "I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion," may be a very grating truth to human ears, but it is a Truth of God for all that and he who does not acknowledge it scarcely puts God into His true place as sitting upon the Throne and doing as He wills with His own.

I should be content to know that He appeared to Mary Magdalene first and not to ask another question if I thought it unwise to ask it, for "He is the Lord and let Him do what seems Him good." And if He will reveal Himself first to her, let it be so. Here I see His Grace and say, let His name be magnified in the sovereignty of His love. But we may go a little further into the matter, I think, and perhaps find some reasons. He revealed Himself first to Mary Magdalene, a woman. Was it not most meet that a woman should first see the risen Savior? She was first in the transgression—let her be first in the justification.

In yon garden she was first to work our woe—let her in that other garden be the first to see Him who works our weal. She takes the apple of that bitter tree which brings us all our sorrow—let her be the first to see that mighty Gardener who has planted a tree which brings forth fruit unto everlasting life! A woman let it be, for woman was last at the Cross and last at the sepulcher—let her be earliest to return. The Marys embalmed the Savior and put Him into the tomb—let one of their company be selected to be the first to see Him. Sisters in Christ Jesus, there is a curse which falls more heavily on you than on others—a curse which is peculiar to you. But here you have reason to rejoice since, "Unto you a Child is born, unto you a Son is given."

It is by that child-bearing which brings you sorrow that we have been delivered—even through the birth of Him, the Messiah, Emmanuel, God with us—whom you are privileged first to see because He is peculiarly yours. "The Seed of the woman who shall bruise the serpent's head." The text seems to indicate that the particular reason why He appeared to this woman first was because out of her He had cast seven devils. Perhaps no person mentioned in the Scripture has been more singularly slandered than Mary Magdalene. It has been supposed that she was a harlot and her name has been appended to societies which have the merciful object of endeavoring to reclaim the fallen.

In that sense let me say Magdalene never was a "Magdalen." She was not an unchaste woman. I think I can show you that it is quite impossible that she could have been. She was a woman of substance and ministered to Christ's necessities. She was possessed of wealth and property and spent what she had upon the Savior and was not likely, therefore, to have been one who earned her living by the pitiful trade of her sin. Moreover, she had seven devils and that, of itself, rendered her utterly incapable, one would think, of having been guilty of the sins of the flesh. A woman, a demoniac, mad with seven devils! Who would dream that a poor creature under so dreadful a torture as this could have been a harlot?

The thing is clearly impossible to any thoughtful mind. But mark you, I believe if Magdalene were here herself, she would not regret that her pure name has been appended to these poor fallen ones. Here she has communion with her Lord and Master who was, "numbered with the transgressors," and who gave Himself and all that He had in order that He might lift poor sinners from the degradation into which they had fallen. "No," Magdalene would say, "do not blot my name off from yonder building. Do not take it from that Rescue Society. I, though I have been kept from this iniquity, am well content to be the patron of all those who seek to win sinners from their sin."

Nevertheless, there is this about it—and here is where the mistake first arose—the possession of a devil is typical, in the Word of God, of sin. When we want to translate the miracle into spiritual meaning we are always compelled to use the indwelling of a devil to be the metaphor—the picture of the indwelling of sin. Now as Mary Magdalene had seven devils, though she was not, therefore, any the greater sinner for she could not help the devils being there, yet she was thereby the more polluted. She was sevenfold polluted and she becomes most rightly the type of the great sinner, the representative, in fact, of the very class of sinners to whom her name has been given.

She was not literally such a sinner, but she was typically so, for in her there were seven devils. Typically she stands at the head of those who are the greatest of all sinners against the Law and goodness and Grace of God, but she was not so except as a type. Now I think you see some reason why she should be selected as the first one to be seen by Christ, because she had been a special trophy of Christ's delivering power. In her He had won a special and signal victory over the hosts of Hell—a perfect number of those evil spirits had been entrenched within her and Christ's victorious arm had driven them all out. She would ever be regarded as a most illustrious specimen of what the great Savior can achieve. In this sense, I say, she was fitted to be the first that Jesus Christ should look upon and speak to. Out of all His disciples who were daily with Him I know not of one who had experienced such a cure as that which had fallen to her lot.

Let us learn from this, that the greatness of our sin before conversion should never make us think that we may not be specially favored with the very highest grade of fellowship. If Magdalene were not a harlot, yet I say she stands as the type of those who are possessors of seven sins and deadly and damnable sins, too. And inasmuch as this woman is taken into the most intimate communion with Christ and has the priority even above Peter and James and John, there is no reason, poor fallen Sinner, why you should not have as rich a feast at the banquet of Divine mercy as the very best and most chaste, the most upright, pure and clean!