John wrote his gospel with the expressed intention of helping people come to faith and continue in their faith in Jesus Christ. It is through faith in Jesus that we receive eternal life. But what about Jesus must we believe? There are many opinions about Him, but what must we know and believe in order to be saved? The Apostles were always very clear on this point - it is not enough to know Jesus as anything less than the Risen King - the One who died for our sin and rose again for our eternal salvation. In John 20:1-18 we discover the journey of three people - Mary Magdalene and the Apostles Peter and John - as they are confronted with the empty tomb and the challenge to believe that Christ has indeed risen. We see their different journeys toward faith in His resurrection and are encouraged about the journey that those around us may also be on and the part we can play in helping others come to faith in the risen King.
Discovering Jesus in the Gospel of John pt 44
Coming to Faith in the Risen Lord
John 20:1-18
24/07/2011
1) Introduction – The Importance of Faith in the Risen Lord
a) Salvation is by Faith
1) John 3:16
“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son[1]
“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son[1]
2) John 20:30-31
30 Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. 31 But these are written that you may a believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.
30 Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. 31 But these are written that you may a believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.
b) But what exactly should we believe about Jesus? Who is it that we are placing our faith in?
1) John 3 simply talks about believing or not believing “in him”
2) John 20 talks about believing that He is “the Christ, the Son of God”, but what does that mean?
3) If you browse almost any bookshop you will come across many different theories about who Jesus really was and what His kingdom is really all about.
- Jesus the travelling magician
- Jesus the moral teacher
- Jesus the revolutionary, the social campaigner
- Jesus the mystic
- Jesus the deluded dreamer
4) There’s no way that all of these different theories can all be right, so how are we to know for sure what we should believe in order to be saved?
5) He entrusted that information to a special group of men, who with the help of the Holy Spirit would pass on to others the exact truth of who Jesus is and what we must believe about Him in order to have life in His name and live out that life as witnesses to Him.
- In Acts 2:42 we read that the early church was devoted first of all to the Apostle’s teaching – it was the foundation of all that they did. It’s what informed them and guided their practice.
- In Acts 1 we read the story of how Matthias was appointed as an Apostle to replace Judas the betrayer of Jesus. An essential qualification of the person to replace Judas was that he must be (in the words of Peter) “one of the men who have been with us the whole time the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, 22 beginning from John’s baptism to the time when Jesus was taken up from us. For one of these must become a witness with us of his resurrection.”
- It’s interesting that the key thing that Peter mentions was not witnessing to Christ’s teaching, His miracles or even His death, but rather His resurrection. When you look at Peter’s first sermon, recorded in Acts 2, you see that the bulk of it is concerned with proving from Scripture and from personal testimony that Jesus rose from the grave.
- In 1 Corinthians 15 Paul makes it very clear that if Jesus didn’t raise from the dead the Apostles must all be liars and the faith of the believers is in fact useless. He understood the importance of the resurrection in understanding who Jesus is and how He saves us. That’s why he lists so many different witnesses, so people could be confident in the truth of what he said about it.
6) If your faith in Jesus does not include the reality of Jesus as your risen Lord and Saviour, then your faith is not saving faith. It is not life-giving faith. It is not faith in the real Jesus, but faith in some imaginary, lesser Jesus. A Jesus unable to save.
7) It’s easy to believe in Jesus the mystic, or moral teacher, or dreamer, or activist, or even liar. These false Jesus’ meet their end on the cross, there can be no next chapter for them. But Jesus’ resurrection proves that He is more than any of those things others try make Him out to be. Jesus Christ, the Son of God died on the cross, but that was only part of His mission. He rose again as the first of many, proving that He can save all those who trust in Him, giving us life eternal that no power can snatch away. So don’t go thinking those lesser things of Jesus, His resurrection makes that impossible.
c) Today we are going to meet three people who are going to have their beliefs about Jesus challenged. These are all people who knew Jesus very well, but not yet well enough. Their journeys I hope will be an encouragement to us as we think of our own journey of faith and that of the people around us.
2) The Journey to Faith in the Risen Lord
There were quite a few people involved in the early morning scene in the garden, but John focuses on just three: Mary Magdalene, Peter and himself.
There were quite a few people involved in the early morning scene in the garden, but John focuses on just three: Mary Magdalene, Peter and himself.
a) Peter
1) Hears the news from Mary that the stone has been moved, so he takes off for the garden with John.
2) John outpaces him, but is too hesitant to go in. Peter, true to form, boldly enters the tomb and discovers the graveclothes.
3) We tend to think of the strips of linen as broad bandages wrapped around the body mummy-style!
- the jewish burial process did not seek to preserve bodies, but encourage their decomposition while masking the smell.
- Strips of linen – probably
(a) one long, broad strip which went from the feet, over the head and back down to the feet
(b) the sudarium – the cloth that was around Jesus’ head. Commonly worn around the neck, it was used either to cover the face or to tie under the chin to prevent the mouth from gaping open.
(c) Thin strips of linen used to tie the legs together and the arms to the body.
4) Verse 9 tells us that both Peter and John did not yet understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.
5) So what is Peter thinking at this point? Is he dismayed that the body is missing? Is he hopeful? Is he excited?
6) This passage doesn’t tell us, but in Luke 24:12 we read that after he had seen the graveclothes, Peter went away wondering about what had happened.
b) John
1) John really got moving when he heard the news from Mary, he outran Peter to the tomb, but did not go in. Even when Peter entered, John waited for some time outside.
2) Finally, he did go in, and when he saw the graveclothes lying there he believed. What did he believe? The context makes it clear that he believed that Jesus had risen.
3) How did he come to that conclusion. He admits in the very next verse that at that point he didn’t understand from Scripture that it was supposed to be this way. He simply saw the empty tomb and the way the graveclothes had been left. While Mary assumed someone else had stolen the body, John knew within himself that Jesus was alive.
c) Mary Magdalene
1) She was devoted to Jesus. He had rescued her from spiritual oppression and had turned her life around. She became one of the people who travelled with Jesus and supported Him in His work.
2) She had seen Him suffer brutal torture and humiliation from Jewish and Roman authorities. She had seen His agony on the cross as hour after hour He hung there in physical and spiritual torment. She saw Him pierced with a spear and the blood and water flowing which confirmed His death, and then two men who weren’t part of their group took His body and placed it in a tomb.
3) She spends the Sabbath day in anguish, unable to do anything for the one she loved so much. Early on the Sunday morning she goes to the garden, hoping to gain entrance to the tomb in order to make sure his body has been properly anointed for burial. She is probably not aware that Joseph and Nicodemus have already used about 35 kilograms of spices to prepare Jesus’ body.
4) When she sees the stone already moved from the entrance, she panics and races back to find help. Peter and John come and examine the tomb, then they leave. Mary is left – at a loss what to do. Shattered that she cannot do the one thing she was so desperate to do.
5) How would you feel if you were in Mary’s position? If someone you loved so deeply had died so cruelly, and now even His body has been stolen away from you.
6) As she weeps, she bends down to look into the tomb, and to her amazement there are two angels sitting there, at either end of where Jesus’ body had been. They ask her why she is crying, which is not so much a question as a gentle rebuke. It’s almost like saying “Look, here is where His body was lying, here are the graveclothes now empty and neatly arranged – not strewn about as if graverobbers had been here. How can you be upset? Don’t you see that He is risen?”
7) Mary responds by saying “They have taken my lord away, and I don’t know where they have put him”. She sees Jesus as the victim of these cruel authorities that killed Him and whoever it was that must have taken Him. She doesn’t see that her lord is really The Lord – He was never a victim, He is the true King on a mission of salvation. She knows Jesus, but does not yet know Him well enough.
8) Now Jesus appears, and Mary does not at first recognise Him. In her mind, Jesus is dead. There is no awareness that this person could be Him.
9) Jesus repeats the gentle rebuke of the angels, but now adds “Who are you looking for?”
10) Mary does not even fully turn to Him, but says in desperation “Sir, if you have carried him away tell me where you have put him and I will get him”.
11) It is only when Jesus calls her name specifically that she turns and realises who He is. “Rabboni!” she cries.
12) Jesus’ response is interesting. He tells her not to cling to Him because He is not yet ascended to the Father. We’re going to explore that some more next week when we look at the rest of this chapter, but for now I simply want you to be aware that Jesus isn’t telling Mary not to touch Him, more not to hold on to Him. She needs to let Him go because He has a job for her – to go tell the disciples. We’ll explore her message more next week.
3) What does your journey to faith look like?
a) Peter, John and Mary all started out with a faith in Jesus that was not enough. They didn’t yet believe in Him as their risen Lord, and so for them His death was a tragic ending.
b) Confronted with the empty tomb, John believed, yet Peter and Mary still had some working out to do. Peter was still trying to figure it out, while Mary remained overcome by grief.
c) Even when Jesus appeared to her, Mary was trapped by her own feelings and expectations. It was only when Jesus called her name that her eyes were opened to the truth.
d) As for Peter, we don’t yet know (in the story so far) what will happen with him. John is still in the process of telling us that story, and he’ll tell us about some more people as well as the story moves toward it’s conclusion.
e) There may be people in our lives who are like John. They don’t need a lot of evidence, just enough to believe that Jesus really is who the Bible says He is. He is God’s Son who came into this world to save sinners. He died for us and rose again, and by believing in Him we will live eternally with Him. We just need to get that message out there to give them a chance to hear and believe.
f) Others might be more like Mary, overwhelmed by circumstances or locked in to expectations about Jesus that fall short of who He really is. Even when presented with evidence of His true identity as the risen lord over all creation, they are too overwhelmed by life to stop and take in the truth. Until they hear Him call their name. What that looks like is different for different people, but somehow Jesus breaks into their awareness and reveals Himself. These people won’t necessarily take the initiative to investigate the evidence for themselves, but they will stop and open their eyes when Jesus calls them.
g) You may have people in your life at the moment who are more like Peter. They’ve encountered Jesus but don’t yet know Him as they should. They’re still trying to figure things out. Maybe they are confused about who Jesus is. Maybe they’re trying to work out what it really means to believe in Him – what does it require of them? The outcome isn’t yet clear as to where they will go with Jesus. In the case of Peter, we can look back over the centuries knowing that he did come to believe that Jesus had risen again – He was the guy who preached a sermon about it that I mentioned earlier. We don’t have the same hindsight when it comes to the people in our lives who are still figuring things out. So what do we do?
1) We declare the truth and prove it in what we say and how we live.
2) We extend the personal invitation of Jesus to those around us who need to hear Jesus speak to them through us.
3) We pray. We pray for ourselves that we will be effective witnesses of the Risen Lord, and we pray for others that they will come to believe, and in believing that they will have eternal life.
