Christs Mission - Our Mission Series

From Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday, we walked through the journey of Jesus from Bethany, the triumphal entry into Jerusalem, to the Garden of Gethsemane, to the trial with the religious leaders & Pilate, to His cross, His death, burial, and finally His resurrection on Easter Sunday.

Jesus was resurrected early in the morning and appeared to Mary Magdalene outside the tomb and tells her to go tell the disciples that He is alive and would soon be ascending to His Father. In this same chapter, John records the multiple appearances of the literal physical resurrected Jesus. Why is the resurrection so critical to the Christian faith? Because His physical resurrection gives us the guarantee of our own bodily resurrection. Jesus’ victory over sin and death is our victory over sin and death, His future is our future, and His inheritance is now our inheritance. Today, we are looking at what happened right after Jesus’ resurrection.

John 20:19-22 NASB

19 Now when it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and when the doors were shut where the disciples were together due to fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in their midst, and *said to them, “Peace be to you.” 20 And when He had said this, He showed them both His hands and His side. The disciples then rejoiced when they saw the Lord. 21 So Jesus said to them again, “Peace be to you; just as the Father has sent Me, I also send you.” 22 And when He had said this, He breathed on them and *said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23 If you forgive the sins of any, their sins have been forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they have been retained.”

In these post resurrection encounters with the disciples, Jesus gives the disciples His:

Assurance

Mission

Spirit

1. Assurance

After Jesus was seen by the women in the morning, we know from Luke's account (24:13) that later in the afternoon, Jesus met two disciples (not the apostles) on the road going towards the town of Emmaus. The journey was about 11 kilometers from Jerusalem to Emmaus and along the way these two disciples were in an intense discussion about Jesus. As they were talking, Jesus walked up to them and casually asked them what they were talking about. They were amazed that this traveler from Jerusalem had not heard about the things that just took place and Jesus asks, “What things?”

They began explaining to Jesus everything that had just happened to Him - how He was unjustly arrested, crucified and was now dead but how they had hoped He was the Messiah. They told Jesus that some of the women told them that they went to the tomb earlier in the morning and found it empty and were told by angels that Jesus is alive. As they are relaying the events, Jesus responds by saying, “You foolish people! You find it so hard to believe all that the prophets wrote in the Scriptures.” In other words, He was saying to them, “you are selective hearers, you only listen to what you want to hear, not what God is actually saying. Jesus then explains God’s prophetic plan from Genesis onward, how the Messiah had to suffer for the sin of the world to make salvation possible.

He walked with them for quite some time and as they were getting close to Emmaus and He acted like He would continue on; the men urged Him to stay with them. We are not sure why they hadn’t recognized Him the whole way, but some speculate that Jesus was in His glorified physical form and that is why. But once He sat down with them, broke bread, and spoke a blessing over it, God opened their eyes - and then just as they recognized Him, He vanished.

Now everything from the OT began to make sense and they got up and immediately went back to Jerusalem to tell the 11 disciples (even though there were only 10 present) what had happened. So far on the day He was resurrected - Mary had seen Him, the other women at the tomb had seen Him, Peter, and now these two disciples had seen Him. Here in John 20:19, it is the evening of that same day and when these two disciples meet the apostles and other disciples who heard about these sightings of Jesus, but still didn’t believe He was raised from the dead. When the two got back to Jerusalem, the rest were hiding in fear behind locked doors and while the two are telling them about how Jesus showed up in front of them, Jesus is suddenly standing there in the room with them.

Wouldn’t we be shocked? The disciples thought Jesus was a ghost, but the first thing He said to them was, “Peace be with you!” He didn’t say, “shame on you for doubting Me,” or “Hey you cowards, where were you when I was dying on the cross!” Instead, He showed them His hands and His side - proof that it was really Him. Jesus was saying - “Look at me, I am real, I am risen, just like I said I would be.” His first words to these anxious, fearful disciples were words of peace, assuring them of who He is.