Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2561
“Jesus said unto her, Touch Me not, for I am not yet ascended to My Father: but go to My brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto My Father, and your Father; and to My God, and your God.” John 20:17.
I COMMENCE my discourse by remarking that it was very amazing that our Lord Jesus Christ, after His Resurrection, should give so early and so clear a manifestation of Himself to Mary Magdalene. Out of her He had cast seven devils. I suppose it was literally so and that there had been in her a great deal of spiritual as well as moral defilement. It may not really be so, but it certainly was the current notion of the early Church that Mary Magdalene was not only a great sufferer who had been relieved, but a great sinner who had been purified. Yet she is the first to hear a word from the risen Christ and to behold Him face to face! I may be addressing some great sinner at this moment. Dear Friend, the greatness of your sin may not prevent you from yet occupying a first place among the saints! If you seem to be sorely beset by Satan, as though seven devils were in you, there is no reason why you should not be filled with the seven spirits of God and become even a leader in the Church of Christ! There are first that shall be last, but there are also last that shall be first. Such a case as that of Mary Magdalene should give great encouragement to those of you who seem to be far away from Christ—if He calls you to humble penitence and childlike confidence in Himself, you may yet be one of the nearest and dearest of His disciples—and His manifestation of Himself to you may be even clearer and sweeter than to some of the more publicly known among His people.
The special thing to be noted about Mary Magdalene is that she had gone to the grave to find Christ. She had made a mistake about the condition in which she would find Him, but she had made no mistake about this point, that she must somehow find Him—and when the other disciples, having repaired to the sepulcher and not seen Him, had gone their way—she still remained. There she stands, to weep if she cannot find her Lord, for she feels that nothing else will content her. She must wait at the sepulcher until she finds Him. And, my dear Friends, if there is anyone here who will find Christ, it is the one who mustfind Him! When you are at such an extremity that you say, “Give me Christ, or else I die,” you shall have Christ! And when, as a child of God, your heart and your flesh cry out for Him. When you have a hungering and a thirsting after Him that cannot be stopped, then He will manifest Himself to you as He does not to the world. It will be a happy thing for you, if, having come into this place seeking the Lord, you should, all of a sudden, discover Him to be here and would even hear Him speak your name as he said, “Mary,” and she responded at once, “Rabboni, my dear Master.” Oh, that your eyes might be opened, my Brother, if they are shut! My Sister, may you have given to you the spiritual perception which will discern the Presence of the spiritual Christ who is in the midst of His people even now! May you, on the seat where you are sitting, feel as you have not felt of late—ravished, carried away into a holy ecstasy with this thought, “My Lord has come to me! He has spoken to me! He has revealed Himself to me! I perceive Him and I rejoice in Him!”
Well then, if you are in that happy state, my text is addressed to you, for no Scripture is of any private interpretation. If true to Mary Magdalene, it is also true to all who are in the same condition as Mary Magdalene was. Right down these 18 or 19 centuries, the voice of Christ comes sounding to persons who are like her to whom that message was first uttered! He who said to Mary, “Touch Me not, but go to My brethren,” says the same thing to every Mary and every John who has suddenly discovered Him to be present with them! As far as the language of Christ on that occasion is capable of adaptation to anyone’s case, so far does the Spirit of God speak it to that person now.
I. The first thing that I see in my text deserving of notice is THE CAUTION. There stands the Lord Jesus Christ and Mary perceives that it is the Lord. And the first impulse of her being is to grasp Him and hold Him lest He should vanish. Yet the Master keeps her from too near an approach, saying, “Touch Me not, for I am not yet ascended.” What does this caution teach us?
Well, first, it teaches that we may make mistakes even when we are nearest to our Lord and enjoying the most rapturous fellowship with Him. There are things which we may try to do which we are not allowed to do. O Brothers and Sisters, where will not sin follow us? If we lay our hands upon the horns of the altar, sin will follow us even there! We cannot shut our door so fast as to shut out Satan—neither can we be so engrossed in prayer as to be sinless even then. Our very prayers need to be prayed over! Our tears need to be wept over! Our repentance has something in it that needs to be repented of! Our faith is mixed with unbelief and our spiritual life, itself, often has much of death about it. Sin penetrates our holy things and however near we may get to Christ, we may still make blunders and mistakes—and the Master may have to say to us, as He said to Mary, “Touch Me not.”