He Overcomes Unwillingness • John 20

48:28 Teaching begins

Notes

Jesus overcame death when He rose from the dead. How do we describe that?

He overcomes the separation of death. He renews our lives and restores relationship with God.

He overcomes the direction of our lives. We’re going our own way, He changes that direction to go His way.

The most amazing, I think, is He overcomes unwillingness and stubbornness, and pride, to make us believers.

I’m reading in John 20 from verse 1.

1. Mary Magdalene and the disciples grieve the loss of Jesus, vv. 1-15

A. The situation up to now is, Jesus has been arrested, tried, condemned, and put to death.

B. We are seeing this part mostly from Mary’s perspective. She is completely devastated by the death of Jesus, maybe more than the other disciples.

1. Remember that she had been demon possessed. She was a prisoner in her own body, being oppressed and controlled and defiled by seven demons.

2. Jesus saved her and set her free from bullies. She experienced His power and goodness and love from God the Father. She poured that fabulous perfume ointment on Jesus’ head and feet and wiped His feet with her hair.

3. Then she saw Jesus oppressed by bullies Himself, and put to death. It was devastating.

C. She’s not prepared for what happens when she goes to honour Jesus’ body in burial and discovers that the body is not there and the stone rolled away. She’s perplexed. Does this mean the humiliation isn’t over? Something worse is happening?

D. She runs to tell Peter and John and they check out the tomb. They believed that the body was gone, but they didn’t understand the scripture that He had to rise from the dead.

E. So all the disciples are dealing with a broken world. 

1. Corrupt religion kills a good man out of envy, to protect their power and prestige.

2. An ineffective government can’t do good but finds it easy to let evil happen.

3. She wanted to do good to Jesus at the end but can’t even do that because someone took the body.

F. She’s grieving. She’s missing Jesus. He’s gone.

G. It’s right here that she talks with the gardener and finds out it’s not who she thinks it is, and everything radically changes.

2. Jesus’ resurrection means you can say, “Hello,” again, v. 16.

A. Jesus calls Mary’s name just like He used to before He died. She’s hearing Him say it again.

B. She says, “My Teacher,” just like she used to say. She’s talking with Jesus again.

C. The resurrection is a reunion, bringing together again what was separated by death.

1. We say, I lost that person. They’re gone and I’ll never see them again. A funeral is how we say, “Goodbye.”

2. That’s what my Mom used to say to me when our trip to Seattle was over and we were at the airport: “GOODBYE.” She never expected to see me again. This was it. But then I would come back and she would say, “Well, whaddya know? Still alive.” We got to say “Hello” again.

3. The resurrection of Jesus is better than that. We don’t look forward to GOODBYE. We look forward to “HELLO!” We will see our friends and relatives alive in Jesus again. We will be reunited with people from all history that we don’t know but we will know them. Because of Jesus’ resurrection we will be raised with all the believers and it will be one big, “HELLO!” just like, Mary! My Teacher! Wow! Hello!

3. The reunion is to greater relationship than before, v. 17.

A. Jesus says, Go to My brethren. He has never called them brethren before. Disciples, slaves, friends, yes. But only after the resurrection does He call them brothers. You see this in Matthew 28:10. Take word to my brethren to leave for Galilee and there they will see Me.”

B. Jesus says, My Father and your Father. The disciples are joined back into a greater relationship than You are the Creator, and I am Your creation. Or, You are Holy God and I am a sinner under Your wrath. As the writer to the Hebrews quotes Jeremiah, “They did not continue in My covenant, and I did not care for them.” Hebrews 8:9 That’s no relationship at all.

C. There are two ways of becoming related as brothers.

1. One is to be born of the same father. It’s a little late for Jesus and the disciples to be born of the same earthly father. But through the resurrection the disciples are born again from above. God really is their Father.

2. The other way to become related as brothers is to be adopted. That’s where a father takes a child by choice into legal relationship with all the privileges and rights to be his own child. Ephesians 1:5 He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will.

3. So we are both born of God, and we are adopted by God, through the resurrection of Jesus, and He proves it by immediately calling His disciples, brethren. That turns out to be the name for Christians in the Book of Acts. It appears over 50 times. Not spiritually symbolic but really brethren!

D. Jesus also says My God and your God. We are back in relationship with God forever, never to be divided again. Jesus goes on to say I am with you always, even to the end of the age. Nothing can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

4. The resurrection means changing the direction of our life and going His way, vv. 18-23.

A. Up to this point I have gone my own way, whatever way that was. That’s been the problem. As Isaiah says, all we like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; but the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him.

B. Jesus comes and says you are no longer scattering against me, you are gathering with me.

1. As sons and daughters of God He sends us out with the same purpose as Jesus the Son of God: to seek and save the lost. To restore others into this same relationship greater than before of being born again of God, adopted into His family, being related to God.

2. It is to love the world as the Father loved the world, and as Jesus loved the world. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. The Father wants to restore many more sons and daughters because He loves them.

C. We are enabled to love the world in the same way as Jesus. He breathed on the disciples and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”

1. God Himself comes to live in us. His presence is always with us. Through our God we shall do valiantly. We come in the name of the Lord, His presence and life. That means His courage, His perseverance, His peace, all of God, more than human qualities. He counsels us, He encourages us, He leads us, He knows how to pray when we don’t, so we can groan in the Spirit and the Father knows what the Spirit is saying.

2. The most important quality we receive from God is His love. The Holy Spirit communicates to us His eternal, divine love. Love is not a thing, a substance, love is a person. God is love, and the Holy Spirit communicates His own love towards us. This is the motivation of God Himself. We’re not a business or a job where God really wants us to produce or we’re fired. We think, I’ve already got a job, I have enough on my plate, I have to what? Save the world? No, love the world. That’s different.

D. When we are filled with the Holy Spirit we have a new motivation: to love one another as Jesus loved us.

1. Everyone is dying for love. There’s less and less of it all the time. They want real love, not to be deceived and corrupted and manipulated in the name of love.

2. It’s different when you love people because you’re more concerned for them than for yourself. You might tell them about Jesus and they don’t listen to you. You’re not crushed because it’s not about you, it’s about Him. But more often people will listen because you love them. You can love unlovable people like your family, your neighbours, your work colleagues. You have more perseverance than they do. They will wear out, get tired, and long for peace and rest. Only Jesus has peace. We’ll be there when they give up fighting God.

E. We are to represent God to people.

1. We say to those who depend on Jesus’ death for them: your sins are forgiven. You are declared righteous by God right then and there.

2. If someone says I don’t need forgiveness we can say in the name of Jesus you are still trapped in your sins, you are under the wrath of God, your blood is on you.

5. The resurrection overcomes unwillingness and stubbornness, vv. 24-31.

A. You wonder why Thomas wasn’t there. He loved Jesus but he was handling it differently from the others. They were together, but he withdrew from them. So he wasn’t there when Jesus showed Himself alive.

B. This put Thomas in the same position as anyone outside the disciples. I don’t think it was good. He had the same problems to face as the others but he faced them alone.

C. The disciples didn’t want to leave Thomas out. Can you imagine knowing that Jesus is alive and not telling him? They loved him and wanted him to know. So they found Thomas and told him, “We saw Jesus! He’s alive!”

D. Evidently Thomas believes resurrection can’t happen. Therefore Jesus is not back from the dead. There is no proof that would make him believe outside of seeing Jesus and touching those nail prints and spear gashes.

E. Jesus is very kind to Thomas and appears to him but at the same time He rebukes Thomas. Don’t be unbelieving but believing. That means he should have believed the others.

F. There is enough proof for him to believe if he was willing to consider it. This proof is the changed lives of all the other disciples who were there and saw Jesus.

1. The disciples were as devastated as he was. They all went through the same experience of seeing Jesus dead. They were once just like Thomas.

2. Jesus died only three days ago. This was fresh grief and despair, and now they are ecstatic. How can this be? What in the world could produce the change in the disciples?

3. Think it through. Thomas has been with these disciples for three years, working up close with them, in the best and the worst times. He knows them. Are they liars? What else could produce such a complete change in these people after such tragedy?

G. If you think and consider you will find there is a lot of proof for the fact that Jesus rose from the dead and is the only way to be saved from your sins and come to God.

H. This means that it is not smart and intellectual to reject Jesus. It is choosing not to think and consider. It is being stubborn and unwilling to think and consider.

I. This also means that if you are struggling with willingness to follow Jesus, you don’t want to lay down your life to follow Him, you have stopped thinking and considering Jesus. That’s why church and weekly Bible study and prayer is so important. You keep thinking about the truth, that Jesus rose from the dead, therefore it’s not as bleak as it seems.

6. So what?

A. Maybe you feel “not very Easter”. Like Jesus rose from the dead, and I believe it, I just don’t feel it.

B. We can say to Jesus, please overcome my unwillingness, my stubbornness. Please renew my relationship with Yourself, with the Father, with Your people. Please fill me with Your Spirit. Please renew my life with You.

C. He’s able to do this. Philippians 2:12-13 So then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.

D. Then you say, who do You want me to love? Overflow me and work Your will through me.

Let’s pray.