Moody Church Hour

Guest (Male): Breakthrough. It's the moment when everything changes. The old categories are shattered. A whole new paradigm is born. And the greatest breakthrough in all of history is when God raised Jesus from the dead. In John chapter 20, we find a four-dimensional breakthrough from the resurrection of Jesus. Today, you will hear about all four. Stay with us.

Guest (Male): From Chicago, this is the Moody Church Hour, a weekly broadcast of worship and teaching with Pastor Philip Miller. Today, another in a long series of messages from the Gospel of John, a series we're calling Loved by Jesus. Our focus: The Lord. Here now is Pastor Philip, along with worship leader Tim Stafford.

Philip Miller: Well, good morning, everybody, and welcome to Moody Church. We're so glad you've joined us today. Would you stand where you are, and let's give this service to the Lord in prayer? Let's pray.

Father, we thank you that you've gathered us here this morning so that we might lift high the name of Jesus. We're going to sing songs to remember who we are in Christ, all that Jesus has done to save us and make us new. We're going to turn to your word and we're going to immerse ourselves in the truths of who you have revealed yourself to be. And Father, we are hungry to hear from you. We don't need to hear the voice of a mere man. We need to hear the voice of the living God. And so would you come and meet us? Would you teach us? Would you make us new today? We pray for Jesus' sake. Amen.

Guest (Male): Then I looked, and I heard around the throne and the living creatures and the elders the voice of many angels, numbering myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice, "Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!"

Guest (Female): And I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, saying, "To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!" And the four living creatures said, "Amen!" and the elders fell down and worshipped.

Philip Miller: Breakthrough. Rarely, but every once in a long while, breakthrough happens and the world is never the same. It's the Wright brothers' 12-second flight at Kitty Hawk, or when Albert Einstein publishes his theory of general relativity, or when Roger Bannister breaks the four-minute mile, or when Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce invented the silicon chip.

Breakthrough moments. Breakthrough is when everything changes. The old categories are shattered and set aside, and a whole new paradigm emerges and is born. And often, there's a cascade of breakthroughs. One breakthrough leads to other breakthroughs in a rapid acceleration of change. Breakthrough.

The greatest breakthrough in all of world history took place when Jesus Christ rose from the dead. It absolutely shatters the old categories and gives birth to a whole new paradigm. Benjamin Franklin famously said, "In this world, nothing is certain except death and taxes," and Jesus just overruled one of those. Now if only he could do something about the other, right? Amen, anyone? Yeah.

So grab your Bibles. We're going to be in John chapter 20 this morning, verses 19 down to 31. And we're going to see, in the resurrection, the risen life of Jesus Christ, there is a cascade of breakthroughs here, four of them that we will see in this passage this morning. We're going to see a breakthrough resurrection, breakthrough blessings, breakthrough confession, breakthrough opportunity. Those are our four things: a breakthrough resurrection, breakthrough blessings, a breakthrough confession, and a breakthrough opportunity. Would you bow your heads as we turn to God's holy word?

Heavenly Father, we pray that this morning as we pause and declutter from all the chaos of life, of all the things that vie for our attention, of all our worries and concerns, of all of our hopes and dreams, that in this moment as we open your word and gaze upon the power of the resurrected Son of God, may this be a reality-calibrating moment where we see the world as it really is. May this be a moment of breakthrough into our world, breakthrough in our lives even this morning, by the power of Jesus. And in his name we pray, amen.

So the first thing here in our passage that we see is a breakthrough resurrection. Just to remind you of the scene that we're in, we're on the very first day. Resurrection has happened in the morning. Mary was the one who discovered the tomb empty. Peter and John have run to the tomb and confirmed that it was indeed empty with their very own eyes, but Mary alone has seen the risen Christ and she has told the disciples all about it. "I have seen the Lord," she says. But now they are about to see for themselves. It is evening and we open the scene here, John chapter 20, verse 19.

"On the evening of that day, the very first day of the week, the doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, 'Peace be with you.' When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side, and then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord."

Just pause for a moment. Can you imagine being there this evening? Here they are, scared to death, holed up in this room, the doors are locked so no one can come in. They are no doubt engrossed in conversation with each other, speculating about the events of the day, so much they don't know. And then all of a sudden, unnoticed by them, Jesus slips into their midst and he just opens up with "Shalom. Shalom. Peace be with you," the Hebrew greeting.

And to prove that it's really him, he shows them his hands, the nail-printed hands. He shows them his side where the spear was plunged in. Luke tells us that he even ate a broiled fish just to prove he wasn't a ghost. This is not a hallucination. No ghost, no. This is the resurrected Son of God. And in such an understated way now, John reports, "And then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord." In the same way that you're glad when your team wins the World Series or something like that, right? They were glad.

Now the narration is straightforward enough, isn't it? But I don't want you to miss the breakthrough of this moment because Jesus' resurrection body broke all their categories. The Greco-Roman culture, like most cultures, had a concept of an afterlife. Both the Greeks and the Romans viewed the afterlife as an immaterial existence, a spirit world, if you will. They viewed the body as something that was weak and corrupting; some even viewed it as evil. And so they believed that in the afterlife, they would leave their bodies behind and there would be no physicality. They would be transcended into the higher eternal spirit realm forever. This was their concept.

So the Greco-Roman world anticipated an afterlife that was full of spirit beings. But that's not what we see here, is it? That's not what we see. Jesus has an actual body. Now, somehow he gets into the room while it's locked, and we're not told how that happened. There's something going on there. But his body is physical. It's material. It's touchable, right? He eats a fish. They can touch his scars. In other words, his life beyond death existence is one that is physically embodied. It breaks open the Greco-Roman categories.

Not only that, it broke open the Jewish categories as well. The Jews who believed in the resurrection, and not all of them did, by the way, believed it wouldn't happen until the very end of time. And of course, Jesus' resurrection here is taking place right in the middle of time, isn't it? So that breaks the categories in and of itself.

But more than that, if you look in the Old Testament at passages like Daniel chapter 12, for example, you will see that the Jewish anticipation was that the wise and righteous would one day shine like the sun and the stars in resurrection glory. So the Jews believed, some of them at least believed, in a bodily resurrection, but it was a resurrection that also involved transfiguration. It would transform the body into something radiant and effusive and gloomed.

But Jesus' resurrection here, his body is relatively ordinary. Don't you see that? He's not shining, shimmering splendor. In fact, much of the time people don't even realize it's him, right? Mary thinks he's just a gardener. The folks on the road to Emmaus, they don't recognize him for hours as they're conversing with him. So neither the Greco-Roman nor Jewish thought categories fit what we see here in the resurrection of Jesus, which is important for two reasons.

The first reason is it explains first their incredulity. They were totally unprepared for what happened here. The resurrection utterly rocked their world and it took them a long time to adjust to the realities of what had happened. But the second thing, the second reason this is so important, is it explains why they couldn't have made this up. Historically speaking, if you're going to make up something, if you're concocting a story of someone who came back from the dead, if you're a Greco-Roman person, you would have written a story about a spirit being without a body. That's what you would have come up with. If you were a Jewish person, you would have written a story about a dazzling, shimmering, and resplendent being whose body has come back from the grave. But neither Jews nor Greeks or Romans would have come up with this story. No, Jesus broke all their categories.

And this is true for you and me as well. In fact, my question for you is: will you allow Jesus to break your categories? Will you allow Jesus to break your categories? You know, it's very cliché in our late-modern Western culture to say things like, "Well, I prefer to believe in a God who is like this," or "I can't believe in a God who's like that." In other words, we have our categories of how we think God ought to be and we believe in him only if he actually fits the categories we've already assumed ought to be. In other words, he has to fit our preconceived notions or we don't believe in him.

And of course, if we do that, then we end up believing in a God who looks strikingly like ourselves, don't we? In other words, he tells us exactly what we already believe and he affirms us in the life choices we were already planning to make. And any thinking person will quickly realize that when we do that, we're not actually encountering the real personal living God. No, we're simply idealizing ourselves.

Now consider: what if the disciples had acted like we do, believed like we do, and tried to fit God into their categories? What if they'd only believed in the resurrected Jesus if he fit into their preconceived notions? Well, they would have missed him completely, right? They would have missed him entirely. He was breaking open their categories completely. And friends, that's how it always is when we encounter the risen Christ. He blasts beyond the limits of our limited understanding. He shatters the confinement of our idols. He breaks through our reductionistic categories. Our God, friends, is utterly free. He is truly alive. He is boundless and unfettered. And if we are to know him as he really is, we must allow him to break our categories. We must allow him to surprise us, to shock us, to cross our will and assumptions. We have to allow him the freedom to tell us things we don't want to hear. In fact, it is this very breaking of our categories that tells us that we're encountering the very real living God and not just some figment of our imagination. So the question is again: will you allow Jesus to break your categories? Will you allow him to do that?

So there's a breakthrough resurrection. Secondly, we see breakthrough blessings, verse 21. "Jesus said to them again, 'Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.' And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said, 'Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them. If you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.'"

This resurrected Jesus is here. He's alive forevermore and he's more powerful than he's ever been. And so his blessings now are breakthrough blessings that are flowing from his breakthrough resurrection. And there are four of these blessings here. The first one is peace. He says it here three different times in this passage: Shalom, Shalom, Shalom. Peace be with you. This is a common Jewish greeting, of course, and it has both personal and cosmic dimensions to it.

When you say shalom, it is a personal blessing. You are wishing peace and wholeness and well-being upon the person you are speaking to. I want there to be peace and wholeness and wellness in your life. But there's also a cosmic dimension to this because the Jewish people believed that shalom was the thing that would typify the universe in the kingdom of God. That when God's rule and reign is present on the earth, there is peace and shalom among all peoples everywhere. The universe is set a-right. It is full of well-being. Shalom.

And so now when Jesus says shalom, you see this has even more weight on the lips of the crucified, buried, and resurrected Christ. This is more than just a greeting. It's an announcement that the days of shalom are at hand. The disciples have personally experienced shalom. They have been reconciled to the Father. They have peace with God, shalom with God, through Jesus' death, burial, resurrection from the dead. They have been reconciled as children of God now and forever. Peace with God. Shalom.

And the shalom of the cosmos is underway because the shalom of the kingdom of God is coming. The King of kings and the Lord of lords is now ascending to the right hand of God the Father Almighty, where he will be enthroned forever as he awaits his footstool, his enemies to be made his footstool, and then he will return and he will set the world to rights. This is the shalom of the risen Son of God.

The second blessing is the sending. Verse 21, "As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you." Just as the Father sent Jesus into the world on mission, now Jesus is sending his followers, his disciples, into the world on mission. Jesus says it this way in Acts 1:8, "But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth."

So the resurrected Jesus, who is the conqueror of death and the Savior of the world, is now commissioning his disciples as emissaries to represent him and proclaim his good news in all the world. And if they're going to do that, they're going to need help, which is the third blessing: the Holy Spirit. Verse 22, "He breathed on them and said to them, 'Receive the Holy Spirit.'" If they are to be his emissaries, his ambassadors, they will need his power and thus the Holy Spirit.

Now John is writing this well after the Book of Acts is written and in circulation, and so he knows and his audience knows and we know that the Holy Spirit did not come down with wind and fire until the day of Pentecost. So the question is: what's up with this breathing that Jesus does here? Well, there's lots of debate, but it appears to be a kind of symbolic enactment that prefigures and anticipates what is coming on the day of Pentecost. So that when the wind blows on the day of Pentecost and the Holy Spirit comes in fire, they will remember what Jesus did here. This is Jesus' gift to them and it helps them in their mission.

It comes with authority, which is the fourth blessing here. Verse 23, "If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them. If you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld." Now at first blush, it almost sounds like Jesus is saying here that the disciples are free to whimsically give and withhold forgiveness based off of whatever they feel is necessary. And that's, of course, not what's going on here.

If you look closely, there are three parties involved in this. "If you," talking to his disciples, "forgive the sins of any," that would be any other person, "they are forgiven them." It's passive. It's a passive verb. Who's doing the forgiveness here? They are forgiven them. Implication: by God. Because only God can forgive sins. That same construction is found in the second half of the verse. So what we have here is that God can only forgive sin, and those sins are only forgiven on the basis of Jesus' substitutionary life, death, and resurrection. And now the disciples are being sent out into the world with the good news that if anyone would believe in Jesus, that he died in their place and for their sake and bore all of their sin and shame on the cross and rose again to make them right with God, his children forever. As they announce this message, Jesus is authorizing his disciples to pronounce forgiveness to those who respond in faith to the good news of Jesus because they are indeed forgiven by God. And he is also authorizing his disciples to pronounce unforgiveness to those who reject this good news of Jesus as well.

In other words, they are his emissaries. They're his ambassadors. They're his legal representatives on earth, if you will, authorized to represent the risen Christ. And it is this package of breakthrough blessings that Jesus gives to his disciples. And the bottom-line point is this: that Jesus' mission will go on through his disciples by the Spirit. Jesus' mission will go on through his disciples by the Spirit.

And this is the mission, friends, that continues all the way down to this very day. It continues in you and me. We are Jesus' ambassadors, emissaries, representatives in the world, and there is no plan B. So here's the question: will you join Jesus on mission in the world? Will you choose to do this? The mission of Jesus, friends, is not just for pastors or missionaries or so-called professional Christians. It's for all of Jesus' disciples. All of us. Every week we go to be the church to people far from Jesus but near to us. We scatter to places where we live, work, learn, and play, and we bring the light of Jesus wherever we go. And our lives, friends, are going to tell some sort of story. The question is: will you join Jesus on mission in the world? Will you choose to do this?

So we have a breakthrough resurrection, breakthrough blessings, and now a breakthrough confession. Verse 24, "Now Thomas, one of the twelve, called the Twin, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, 'We have seen the Lord.' But he said to them, 'Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails and place my finger into the mark of the nails and place my hand into his side, I'll never believe.'"

Now growing up in church, we had a name for Thomas: Doubting Thomas. And it's because of this right here, his insistence, "I won't believe." He wouldn't believe the disciples' claim that they've seen the Lord. Now, his reticence is quite reasonable, actually. This is the first and only time in history someone has been resurrected to eternal life, never to die again. So we can get where Thomas is coming from. And he says, "Listen, I'm not going to take your word for it. I've got to see what you saw. I've got to touch him or I'm not going to believe unless I get that."

Verse 26, "Eight days later, his disciples were inside again and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, 'Peace be with you.' Then he said to Thomas, 'Put your finger here. See my hands. Put out your hand, place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe.' And Thomas answered him, 'My Lord and my God!'"

Isn't this amazing? Jesus appears and makes a beeline for Thomas. It's like he knew what was going on. Thomas, put your finger right here. See my hands. Put out your hand, touch my side. Don't disbelieve, but believe. And just like that, Thomas moves from doubting Thomas to believing Thomas. "My Lord and my God!" This statement, his confession here, is like a theological earthquake. It's a breakthrough confession. He says, "My Lord." Throughout the Old Testament, God is referred to as the Lord, the Lord God, Adonai. He takes that title and applies it now to Jesus. And he says, "My God!" an unequivocal statement of the deity of Jesus Christ. Friends, this is the highest Christological confession in the Book of John.

And it wasn't just academic for Thomas. It was deeply personal. "My Lord. My God." Because Jesus has risen as the divine Lord of all. So friends, let's not remember Thomas as doubting Thomas. Let's remember him as believing Thomas because it's not where you start, it's where you end that counts. And Thomas reminds us that doubting is not the opposite of faith. In fact, doubting may actually be the soil in which faith begins to grow.

So here's the question, friends: will you invite Jesus into your doubts? Some of you have maybe never occurred to you that it's okay to doubt. That Jesus doesn't run away from doubtful people. That Jesus presents and pursues himself with doubting people. Have you ever prayed your doubts? Have you ever brought your doubts before the risen Christ and said, "Hey, I'm stuck. Would you help me with this? Lord, I believe, help my unbelief! I want to believe but I'm stuck here. Would you help me?" Will you invite Jesus into your doubts, friends?

It's a breakthrough resurrection, breakthrough blessings, a breakthrough confession, and then finally here, a breakthrough opportunity. Jesus responds here to Thomas's confession in verse 29. "Jesus said to him, 'Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.'"

See, friends, Jesus here blesses those who will come to believe, but unlike Thomas, will not have the opportunity, the benefit of seeing the resurrected Jesus firsthand. And if you think about it, he's actually blessing us, isn't he? We who have come to trust in Jesus based off the witness and testimony of those first disciples who have recorded these events in Holy Scripture for us. In fact, that's what John says his whole gospel is about. Verse 30, "Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples which are not written in this book, but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name."

John says, "Look, everything I wrote, every story, every conversation, every bit of narrative, every moment, every inflection point in this story, everything here points to Jesus to help you see that he is the Christ." This is the Greek word for the Hebrew concept of Messiah. He's the Messiah, the promised one, the fulfillment of God's covenant and kingdom. And that he is the Son of God, the divine Son sent into the world to reveal the Father to us, to reconcile us to God so that we might become children of God forever. That by believing we may have life in his name, in the name of Jesus.

Because friends, Jesus offers life in himself to all who will believe. And this, friends, is a breakthrough opportunity. That life, real life, the life you were made for, the life that was stunted and lost and put to death through our sin and rebellion before God, the life that Jesus comes and embodies and lives out in front of us, the life that even death itself could not restrain, that that life, that abundant, overflowing, everlasting, ever-enduring life is on offer in Jesus to you and to me even now. And so the question is, friends: will you dare to believe in Jesus?

You know, all along in this series through the Gospel of John, I've been praying that through this study of who Jesus is, we would see him. That we would be arrested, captured, captivated by his life, that we would be attracted and drawn in, that it would be contagious. And I've been praying for some of you. I don't know you, but I've been praying for you because you come to church all the time. You come to make somebody else happy, and you're here, you're doing your thing. But my prayer is that this would wake you up. That something would grab your heart, that you would awaken a longing for the life that only Jesus can give you.

I've been praying for you that God by his Holy Spirit would grab you and you would not be able to shake this or look away. And so right now I want to invite you, if you've been kicking the tires, if you've been hanging around, today's the day. Today's the day to come into the light, to fall at the feet of Jesus, to say, "My Lord and my God," that you might have life and be more alive than you could ever imagine.

How would I do that? It's simple as A, B, C. A: we admit. We admit that we are sinners far from God, helpless on our own. B: we believe. We believe that Jesus has done everything to make us right with God when he died in our place and for our sake and rose again to give us life. And C: we commit. We commit our lives to him. Say, "Come be my Savior, be my Lord, be my everything." If that's something you want to do, if you want to open your life to the life of Jesus Christ today, I'm going to pray in just a moment and I'd like you to just repeat these words after me as I pray. As a matter of fact, if you're here and you're a follower of Jesus Christ, as I pray, would you just say these words with me just to make everyone comfortable? But if you're for the very first time praying this prayer, would you just pray it, repeat these words after me with all your heart? Commit your life to Jesus Christ. Would you pray? Let's pray.

Wherever you are, just repeat after me. Heavenly Father, I admit that I am a sinner. I've wandered far away from you. I'm helpless on my own. And I believe. I believe that Jesus died for me. That on the cross he paid the penalty for my sin. And that he rose again to give me life. And I commit myself to you. I ask that you be my Savior. I ask that you be my Lord. I ask that you be my everything. And I pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Amen.

Guest (Male): On today's Moody Church Hour, we heard Pastor Philip Miller with another message in a series he's calling Loved by Jesus: The Book of John. We heard about the Lord, four incredible results of the resurrection of Jesus that transform everything. Next time, we follow the story of Peter, who denied Christ but found restoration as can we. Plan to join us for The Redeemer.

Mother's Day is coming, and a great gift would be a book by Rebecca Lutzer. It's Life-Changing Bible Verses Every Woman Should Know. They cover the whole gamut of life difficulties and how God can see us through them. This book, in turn, is our gift to you when you give a gift of any amount to support the Moody Church Hour. For details, call 1-800-215-5001. That's 1-800-215-5001. Online, go to moodychurchhour.com. That's moodychurchhour.com. Or write to us at Moody Church Media, 1635 North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois, 60614. Ask about Life-Changing Bible Verses Every Woman Should Know. Join us next week for another Moody Church Hour with Pastor Philip Miller and the congregation of historic Moody Church in Chicago. This broadcast is a ministry of the Moody Church.