Sermon.970
See # 534, 638, 854, Sack.105, 12Dis.004
From the pulpit of Bayview Baptist Church, Easter Sunday, April 15, 2001
“ 4 Perspectives”
Text: John Chapter 20
I’m always amazed at how a person can recall different personal perspectives from the exact same event!
There’s an old story of a dead mule lying beside a long South Carolina highway.
Many people passed by and expressed the horror of seeing a dead mule lying beside the highway.
Then came along a wise man, who looked upon the repulsive dead mule and said, “What beautiful teeth that mule had!”
However obscure hidden beauty may seem at first, we can all rest assured that it is there!
The same is often true of our faith!
Christianity is a belief system based upon our personal faith and God’s amazing grace!
This belief system has its foundation upon the resurrection of Jesus Christ, for it was the resurrection of Jesus from the dead that proves Christ to be exactly who He claims to be.
Had there been no resurrection, the cross would have been an absolute disaster, and the Christian religion would have become just another religion in a world of religions containing no hope.
We have 4 gospels in the New Testament: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
Matthew, Mark, and Luke are what are known as the Synoptic Gospels, meaning they are from the same perspective.
John, on the other hand, is not a Synoptic Gospel, in that John is obviously written from a different perspective.
This morning, we look at 4 individual perspectives concerning the resurrection of Christ.
These 4 people are mentioned by name.
I. The first person mentioned by name in John Chapter 20 is Mary Magdalene.
Read John 20:1-2; 10-18
Mary Magdalene had become a follower and believer in Jesus during the early Galilean ministry or our Lord, after Christ cast out from her 7 devils (Mark 16:9; Luke 8:2), which by the way is a complete number signifying that Mary was completely healed.
She then became one of Christ’s most devoted followers, and was one of the little company of Christ’s immediate followers who ministered to Christ with their stewardship.
It was Mary Magdalene who was one of the women at the cross, and who was an eyewitness account of our Lord’s burial in the tomb borrowed from Joseph of Arimathaea, the member of the Jewish Sanhedrin ruling body who had become a secret follower of Jesus.
It was early on the third day, which we attribute to Easter Sunday morning, that we find Mary Magdalene, along with the other Mary, wife of Clopas and Salome, going to the tomb to anoint the body of Jesus.
God wanted credible eyewitnesses to the empty tomb, so when Mary Magdalene arrived at the tomb, she and the other Mary found immediately that the heavy stone weighing over 1,000 pounds had been rolled away, or removed from the entrance of the tomb.
Mary quickly returned to Jerusalem and told Peter and John that the body of Jesus had been stolen; for to Mary, that had to be the only solution to the fact that Jesus’ body was not in the tomb.
Mary Magdalene is like so many Christians today.
She went to the tomb, but she did not expect a miracle.
From Mary’s perspective, she missed the miracle of God’s work because she was not looking for God to work in a mighty and powerful way.
You know this kind of person.
It’s the person who can give you 40 different reasons why something cannot be done, and then they can back up those 40 reasons with 40 more reasons why if it is done, everything will be wrong.
I remember in a previous church situation, our Property Committee was undertaking a new project to construct an out door picnic shelter.
We had the blueprints drawn, and the deacons were looking over the drawings, and one well-meaning deacon spoke up.
He said, “You can see from the blueprints that it will never work!”
He continued to say that the ceilings were too high and there was no way in the world we could ever heat and cool this type of building.
Of course, we had no intention of providing heating and cooling because it was an outdoor picnic shelter designed with open walls.
Mary Magdalene was that kind of person.
She simply could not believe what was before her eyes.
Mary was in for a glorious surprise as she made her progression from deep despondency to resurrection joy.
She was like so many people today who learn over and over again that nothing is impossible with God.
II. The second person mentioned by name in John Chapter 20 is the Disciple, Simon Peter.
Read John 20:3-9
Don’t you love the stories in the Bible about Simon Peter.
When Peter arrived at the tomb, he was huffing and puffing; gasping from running so fast.
Peter looked into the tomb and saw the strips of linen lying there, as well as the burial cloth that had been around Jesus’ head, which is biblical proof that the Shroud of Turin could not have been the cloth that covered Jesus’ body.
Both Peter and John saw that the covering around Jesus’ head was a separate piece of cloth from the wrappings that covered the rest of His body.
In fact, Matthew’s Gospel makes it clear that when Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea prepared the body of Jesus for burial, they wrapped it in linen strips, or sheets, meaning more than one, not a single piece of cloth as is the Shroud of Turin.
Long before that first Easter morning, Peter had enjoyed leadership as the spokesman for the 12 disciples.
He had walked on water and witnessed the transfiguration of our Lord Jesus upon a mountain.
But he was also one of the disciples who fell asleep in the Garden of Gethsemene, disowned Jesus three times, and wasn’t even brave enough to be present at the crucifixion.
We like to think of Peter as successful, but he had his share of failures too.
Peter looked into the tomb, but he wasn’t the first to go inside.
Verse 9 says that Peter and John…”did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.”
Many people today are like the Apostle Peter.
They are in the inner circle at church.
They work diligently for the Lord day in and day out, but deep inside, they are still the victim of a certain amount of unbelief.
Peter, however, is a good example of the mighty power of God in a person’s life, and even though he failed in his faith many times, God used him in his personal ministry in a powerful way to witness the Truth of the Gospel to others.
And in Acts 2:32, we read Peter’s true conviction, “God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of the fact.”
Peter, after seeing the facts, had no trouble believing with his heart.
III. The third person we find mentioned by name in John Chapter 20 is the other disciple, who is the writer of this Gospel, John.
John saw the same tomb and the same burial cloths as Peter, but John saw something much different.
He was the first to put the pieces of the puzzle together and understand that the resurrection of Jesus was prophecy from Old Testament Scripture.
To John, the resurrection was a confirmation of God’s promises to us.
The knowledge we gain from reading the Bible needs to be transformed and translated into our daily living.
We can thank the writer John for helping us with that; for John writes that God’s desire for us in our lives is that we enjoy our new position of Christianity to the full.
What does the empty tomb mean to you, this morning?
Amanda Ward, age 7, of Nashville, Tennessee said, “Easter is the day Jesus got alive!”
Easter is certainly a message of urgent importance for every person who is living today.
It’s an event that cannot stand on the sidelines of life, but demands our allegiance, and calls us to move through the process of searching, and into the most important and active process of believing and doing.
John was the only disciple who stood by Calvary’s cross beside Jesus’ mother as Jesus took His last breath.
John was the one who watched them take the lifeless body of Christ down from the cross and place it in the tomb.
And it was this same John who was the first to rationally and logically think through what had happened and realize the miracle of God that had really happened.
The whole point of John’s record is that the grave cloths did not look as if they had been taken off.
Instead, they looked as if Jesus had just evaporated out of them and left them there.
So, John saw and he believed.
That must be John’s greatest joy, to know that he was the first man to think things through, to understand the miracle of God that had happened, and to transform that miracle of belief into a miracle of faith.
IV. The last major perspective we find in John Chapter 20 is that of Thomas.
We might do well to back up first and read verses 19-23 before we begin reading the account of Thomas, which begins in verse 24.
Here in this interlude, Jesus appeared to many and we find there are many witnesses to the resurrection of Jesus.
Read John 20:19-31
Thomas is the one person who wanted everything to add up and be exactly right before he would believe.
He openly confessed his doubt about the resurrection of Christ.
“Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my fingers where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it” (verse 25).
The other 10 disciples had by now embraced a personal encounter with the risen Lord.
Thomas was not with them when they had this personal encounter, and that’s why Thomas had a tough time believing the report of the resurrection.
A week later, Jesus appeared to the disciples again, and this time Thomas is with them.
“Stop doubting and believe!” Jesus said to Thomas.
And Thomas said to Him, “My lord and my God!”
One of the most wonderful characteristics of our Christian faith is that our faith invites us to check it out.
Come and See!
For when you and I come and see for ourselves, we come to the same conclusion that Thomas reached, “My Lord and my God!”
Maybe some of you have come into our worship service this morning like Mary Magdalene, wondering and missing the great power and miracles of God because you’re not expecting to find God’s power in your life.
You can be assured that God is at work, always bringing about changes for your benefit.
Maybe some of you are here today like Peter, afraid to believe at first, but then willing to yield to what His resurrection means to you.
If you’re like Peter, remember that God is still in the business of using ordinary people to do extraordinary work.
Perhaps you’re like John with his intellectual, searching, and inquiring mind.
If you have a talented mind, and are willing to use your talents for the glory of God, you can be assured that He will open up the doors and provide for you the way.
Or, perhaps you’re like Thomas, with a stubborn will, having a difficult time making up your mind about Jesus, and finding what Jesus wants you to do.
No matter who you are, or what kind of personality you possess, remember that Jesus can meet all your needs.
The first Christians realized that the grave could not hold Jesus.
We still believe in that same miracle today!
This is the good news of Easter!
We celebrate today as a reminder that there is hope on a day when we will leave our earth.
Because He lives, we shall live also!
For John’s purpose for writing his Gospel account is: “…these are written 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 20:31).
Rev. Jimmy Davis
Bayview Baptist Church
5300 Two Notch Road
Columbia, SC 29204
e-mail: BayviewBaptist@aol.com
Telephone: 803-754-8690
