Forgiven Much, Loved Much

Forgiven Much, Loved Much

John 20:1-18

Good morning, HE IS RISEN!!!!

The first Easter Morning didn’t start with an Easter egg hunt or worship music, unlike the worship we enjoyed this morning.

There were no Easter lilies, and the children did not wake up to chocolate bunnies and jellybeans.

The first Easter began with a grave site and a tomb.

If the story ended there, Easter would be a really sad story, but the story didn’t end there, because Jesus is alive, He is risen.

The Resurrection of Christ is the central belief of the Christian Faith. Without the Resurrection, there would be no reason to trust in the Lord and or to worship Him on Easter Sunday.

The Apostle Paul said, 1 Corinthians 15:13 But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ is not risen.

1 Corinthians 15:14 And if Christ is not risen, then our preaching is empty and your faith is also empty. NKJV

Please open your Bibles to the Gospel of John 20,

The portion of scripture we will study today records what happened right after the Passover holiday weekend in Jerusalem.

The Jewish leaders had asked Pilate to make sure Jesus was dead on the Cross before the special holiday was complete.

So, the soldiers broke the legs of the two condemned men who were hanging beside Jesus, to speed up their death.

But when they got to Jesus, He was already dead, because He said, “It is finished” and He had given up His Spirit. To be sure, Jesus was dead, the soldiers drove a spear through His side.

I. Where’s the body?

Read John 20:1-4

None of Jesus’ followers were expecting His Resurrection.

Hundreds of years before Jesus was on Earth, the LORD gave many predictions about the death and the resurrection of Christ.

Prophesying about the Messiah 800 years earlier, Isaiah said…

Isaiah 53:12 Because He poured out His soul unto death, and He was numbered with the transgressors, and He bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors. NKJV

500 years earlier Zechariah 12:10 "they will look on Me whom they pierced. Yes, they will mourn for Him as one mourns for his only son and grieve for Him as one grieves for a firstborn.

Before the Cross, all of Jesus’ followers were sure that He was the Promised One from God and that He was going to set Israel free from the Roman oppression they were under.

All of Jesus’ followers were sure Jesus was the rightful King, so how could they have been wrong?

Here we are re-introduced to a woman named Mary Magdalene.

Mary Magdalene was the woman Jesus cast the demons out of in Luke 8, and she was so grateful to the LORD for her new life in Christ so, she was the first one at the grave that morning.

Mary noticed the huge stone rolled away from the tomb and immediately ran to tell Peter and John that someone moved the body of Jesus because she still thought He was dead!

In vs. 2, John calls himself the disciple whom Jesus loved.

Jude 20 But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit,

Jude 21 keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life. NKJV

If you are a true follower of Jesus Christ, you can call yourself the one whom Jesus loves as well!

Peter and John were not expecting the Resurrection, so when Mary reported what she witnessed, they didn’t know what to make of it so, the men ran to the tomb to see it for themselves.

Every one of these people thought Jesus’ body was moved by someone because they were not expecting a Resurrection.

I wonder if we are expecting God to do something this morning.

This reminds me of the movie “The Incredibles”, when Mr. Incredible asks the Tricycle kid, “What are you waiting for?”

The kid replies, “I don’t know, something amazing I guess.”

That first Easter morning, Jesus did the most amazing thing, when He kept His promise and rose from the dead.

John was the youngest of all the Apostles, so it is funny he said in his Gospel how he beat the old man Peter to the tomb.

II. Seeing is believing.

Read John 20:5-10

John arrived at the tomb first and we don’t know whether it was reverence or fear, he didn’t go in, he looked in from the outside.

John immediately saw the linen cloths lying there and he wasn’t entirely sure what to make of what he was seeing. But Peter, true to his personality, showed up and pushed past John into the cave

John saw the folded linen cloths and he was convinced that Jesus had risen from the dead.