John 20:19-23
Jesus Appears to His Disciples
19 On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” 20 After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord.
21 Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” 22 And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23 If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.”
Transcription
(Transcribed by TurboScribe)
Thank you to my brother, Jim, who helped out last week. I called him on a Friday and I said, Jimmy, I'm not doing well. Do you think you can do something for me Sunday? And he says, it's no problem, my brother, I'll do that.
So thank you for doing that. It is a blessing to have someone like you around that I can call. And I know the Lord will bless the folks at Central.
So thank you for that.
Congratulations, or congratulations, happy birthday to our clerk of session. She's sweet 16 today.
It's her birthday. Happy birthday, Lynn. I was so blessed this morning.
I'm sitting there and this beautiful team is singing behind me. Sam is singing. And on this side, Mel is doing a descant or whatever kind of camp on the other side.
And I'm sitting there and it's like, holy Hannah, I'm sitting here and I'm getting this music in 3D. It was just so beautiful to worship. Thank you.
Poor Gary, she's singing double bass this morning. And thanks to Scott, she called in the week again. And it's just like Central is.
Scott just got a call and said, Scott, I can't sing. Can you come on and do this? And he's here this morning. Thank you so much.
Appreciate it. Let me pray with you. Father, thank you for this amazing book with your word.
Thank you that we can just dwell in that and you speak into our lives. This morning, Lord, like those disciples, we just want to see Jesus. For when you appear, Lord Jesus, the most amazing things happen.
And we thank you that you do that again in this morning. In your precious name we pray. Amen.
Going to the book of John chapter 20. This is usually an Easter reading, but we're still busy with grace. I'm going to talk about grace from the book of John chapter 20.
I'm reading from the New Living Translation, verses 19 to 23. That Sunday evening, so that's the Easter Sunday evening, morning Jesus rose from the dead. So that evening, that Sunday evening, the disciples were meeting behind locked doors because they were afraid of the Jewish leaders.
Suddenly Jesus was standing there among them. Peace be with you, he said. As he spoke, he showed them the wounds in his hands and his side.
They were filled with joy when they saw the Lord. Again he said, peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you.
And then he breathed on them and said, receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone's sins, they are forgiven. If you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.
If we, if we look at the church of Jesus Christ in the world, it is an interesting body, diverse, but yet one mission. That mission is to bring the gospel of Jesus Christ into this world. Whether we're Presbyterians or Baptists or Christian Reformers or Methodists or Catholic, we name them.
The same one thing that we do is that we've got this thing in our hearts that we need to make disciples, that we need to be the salt and the light in the world. Now, when you look at the people who make up the body of Jesus Christ, that's a different kettle of fish. We're so different.
We're not perfect. We mess up often. We stumble.
We sometimes even struggle with our faith. And despite that, for 2,000 years, the church of Jesus Christ has grown and become stronger and will continue until the day that Jesus comes back and he takes us home with him. How? How in the world with all this mess, with all of us, how in the world does that work? I think John 20 is the key to all of that.
Let me walk you through that just a little bit. So that Sunday evening, we find the disciples in the first meeting of the first church ever. Where do we find them? Behind closed doors, locked in a room.
Boy, an interesting bunch that we meet there. One of the leaders is already abdicated, Thomas. He's not even there.
He left Jesus at the grave. He's out of touch. One of the other big leaders, not too long ago, he was the one who denied that he even knew this Jesus.
One of them, at least now, he's wearing clothes, John Mark. Do you remember John Mark? There in the garden when the soldiers started grabbing people, John Mark wanted to get away so fast. And when they grabbed him, he just left his clothes behind and he ran away naked.
At least in this meeting, he's got some clothes going. And most of the folks who are sitting in that meeting are with John Mark. They were all those who ran away and left Jesus behind.
First church, first meeting. And what a welcoming church they are, right? They lock the doors. They have no welcome team at the door.
And the sign on the door says, stay away, keep out, leave us alone. And you're thinking, how in the world? But here's the interesting thing. Just a few pages later in the book of Acts, we read about these strange people.
And we read, Acts chapter 2, then those people accepted what Peter said, were baptised. And about 3,000 people were added to the number of believers. Really? From that bunch? The church everywhere in Judea, Galilee, Samaria, had a time of peace and became stronger, respecting the Lord by the way they lived and being encouraged by the Holy Spirit.
The group of believers continued to grow. Really? That much? Acts 16, and so the churches became stronger in their faith and grew larger every day. How in the world? Secret is there.
So let's go back. So here they sit like hens on their perch after a thunderstorm. They don't know what to do, just sitting there.
And all of a sudden, Jesus appears in their midst. And here's the amazing thing that happened. No word of reproach.
No word of judgement. No word of, look at you bunch, look at who you are. Did you hear the words he said? Peace be with you.
These are the words of grace in action. Because here's the thing about those words, peace. We're so easy to talk about peace.
Some folks are fighting because they want Nobel prizes for peace and all kinds of stuff like that. And we, sorry, forgive me. And we kind of water this amazing word down.
The Hebrew, and I know this is Greek, but when Jesus spoke to them, he spoke either Hebrew or Aramaic. And the word for peace is the word you know, it's shalom. And he would say to them, shalom.
The word shalom means to be in a state of complete wellbeing, the state of completeness, of fullness. So when Jesus stops in and he looks at them, he's not saying, look at you, what have you done? You're messed up. He says, how are you doing? Are you okay? Are you doing fine? Is your life complete? Are you filled with what I've given you? How are you doing? What a way to speak.
That's called grace because that's who he is. And then he shows them that grace. He lifts up those hands that were pierced and he shows them the side and he shows them the wounds, the wounds of forgiveness.
The wounds that say no judgement, the wounds of release. And in that moment, those wounds become more than just scars in a hand or scars in a side. They become an image of God's grace at work.
Because in that moment, that grace just flows over all of our sin, all of our brokenness, all of the messes, all of the struggles. It washes them away. How are you? How are you doing? Because you see, that's how God looks at us.
When God looks at us, he doesn't look at us to find the messes, to see the messes, to see the things that we do wrong. God puts on those glasses that are coloured by the blood of Jesus Christ. And when he looks at me, he looks at me with grace and forgiveness and love.
And he asks me, how do I help you? How do I lift you up? How do I give you my shalom? Shalom. No wonder when he says those beautiful words. And we see that grace, forgiveness, or forgiving grace, whichever way you want to say that, in action.
We see a very action. Verse 20, as he showed them the wounds in his hands and his side, they were filled with joy. Now, that's an interesting word in the Greek.
Eschareisen is the Greek word. It speaks of a joy that is not the kind of thing that we associate with joy immediately, jumping up and clapping hands and blowing trumpets and yelling, yes, yes, yes. It's a silent joy.
It leaves you breathless, speechless. Because that's what joy does, isn't it? That's what grace does. Grace gives freely.
Grace gives what I never expected. Grace gives without bounds. Grace gives what I don't deserve.
How are you? And in that moment, they could say, wow, we're okay. Because that's what grace does. It takes that which is broken and messy, and it gives us the new life.
Let me show you that. After he said to them, peace be with you, and they're stunned in the silence, he looks at them and he says, as the Father sent me, I send you. And when I read that the first time, I think, really? This bunch? Really? Us? Yes.
As the Father sent me, I am sending you. But we're messed up. So what? But we don't make it always.
So what? But we don't know how to do that. So what? But as the Father sent me, I will send you. And how did the Father send him? He sent him to those who are broken.
He sent him to those who were on the periphery. He sent him to those who had nothing. He sent him to those who needed a Saviour.
And then he looks at us and he says, and that's how I am sending you. Because there's a world out there who needs to hear about me. There's a world out there who needs to experience my grace.
There's a world out there who needs to hear the kind of Father and God and Saviour that I am. And you have experienced that. You need to go out there and you need to start saying, shalom.
How do we bring the fullness of Jesus Christ? Do you know Jesus? Can I tell you about Jesus? Because who better to do that than those who have experienced the grace of Jesus Christ in their own lives? To go talk about forgiveness, to proclaim forgiveness, and above all, to live forgiveness. We are the ones. Recovering sinners who have been washed in the forgiving grace of Jesus Christ.
And once you've received that grace freely, it freely starts flowing from your body. Can't do it on our own. That's why there's a little promise in there.
And then he said to them, receive the Holy Spirit. Because you and I cannot do that in our strength. And that's why we could have read in our book of Acts all of these moments where that church grew like nobody's business.
Because this happened when the Holy Spirit came into those scared chickens sitting in that perch. And all of a sudden, it's flying in the breath of Jesus Christ. But grace, grace needs to be given.
Listen. Listen to what this man says, and then we need to ask ourselves, can I do that? His name is Paul. 1 Corinthians chapter 15, verse 19.
And I am the least important of all the apostles. In fact, I cause so much trouble for God's church that I don't even deserve to be called an apostle. See where he starts.
I messed up. Look at me. What have I done? But, and there's my wonderful biblical but.
But God treated me with undeserved grace. Through that grace, he made me what I am. And his grace wasn't wasted.
I worked much harder than any of the other apostles, although it was really God's grace at work. And not. That's the gift of grace.
Undeserved. But once it comes into your life, you just can't stop it. It just flies.
Thank God for his grace. But break the chains and send me out to go live that grace. Amen.
Take a few moments of silent prayer, and then I'm going to pray with you. Thank you, Lord, that we are no longer slaves. Slaves to fear and slaves to sin and slaves to this world.
For that Sunday evening, you not only appear to those, those scared, struggling, stumbling folks in a room that was locked, but you appear to us. And when grace, when grace came into our lives, that fear, Lord, of the world and of the stuff and of my brokenness, you took that away. The song says, from my mother's womb, you have chosen me.
Love has called my name. I've been born again into your family. Lord, your blood runs through my veins.
So thank you, Father, for doing that. But when you do that, Lord, it's because you call us to go be in this world who you need us to be. To live as those who know you, who have lived and live your grace every day.
May that grace be seen in our actions. May that grace be heard in our words. May that grace just permeate everything that we are and who we are.
Thank you, Lord Jesus, for asking. How are you? And when you ask, it's because you, you want to give and you want to live. Amazing grace.
The chains are gone. Help us then, Lord, to live that every moment of our lives. In Jesus' name, in the name of all names, we pray.
And all of God's people said, Amen.