STUDY THEME: ONE SOLITARY LIFE: THE LIFE OF JESUS 07-29-01

UNIT 7: JESUS IS ALIVE: “BELIEVING IN THE RISEN LORD.”

JOHN 20: 19-23, 24-25, 26-29, 30-31.

LUKE 24:36-43, MARK 16:14.

PLEASE OPEN YOUR BIBLE TO JOHN 20..

The July 15 lesson focused on the results of believing. Today’s lesson focuses on the reasons for believing. The theme of today’s lesson is that we are to believe in the resurrected Christ even though we haven’t seen Him. Our text focuses on the transition through which Thomas went from doubt to faith. Many of us will be able to find ourselves in his story. The Life Question is “Why should I believe in a risen Lord I cannot see? We will explore the Biblical Truth: Christians believe the testimony of those who physically saw the Lord, and they trust Jesus Christ as personal Lord and Savior. The desired Life Impact is to help us follow the risen Lord and tell others about Him. The purpose of every Christian life should be to lead others to a saving faith in our risen Lord.

On the night of Jesus’ resurrection, some of His disciples met behind locked doors because they were afraid. The risen Lord appeared to them and showed them He was alive. Thomas was not present. When the others told Thomas they had seen the Lord, he said he would not believe unless he could see and touch Jesus for himself. When Jesus appeared to the disciples a week later, He spoke to Thomas; and Thomas worshipped Jesus as His Lord and God. Thomas response to Jesus is one of the most beautiful professions of faith in the N..T. Jesus knew that only that generation of His followers would see Him physically, and He spoke of later generations believing without seeing Him. John wrote his Gospel so people might have life by believing in Jesus.

1. PLEASE READ JOHN 20: 19-23.

Rumors that Jesus was alive again begun to circulate, no doubt causing greater confusion. Some women had claimed that Jesus’ tomb was empty and that angels had told them Jesus was alive. It was time for a meeting so the disciples could make some sense out of what was happening.

The disciples met on the evening of that first day of the week, the Sunday evening of the day Jesus had arisen. We are not told where they met. Perhaps it was in the upper room where the last-supper had occurred just three days earlier. This was the home of Mary the mother of John Mark. They met with doors locked for fear of the Jews. The disciples were probably afraid that the Jewish authorities would start rounding up all of Jesus’ followers so they could purge the nation of the religious movement Jesus had started. This was a common approach ancient civil authorities used to suppress actual and perceived threats. If this turned out to be the case, Jesus’ closest associates would be the first ones taken into custody. So they met in something very like terror. Luke 24:37 says that when Jesus appeared, they were startled and frightened, thinking they saw a ghost. Remember, all the appearances of Jesus after His resurrection were to those who believed in Him, close friends and disciples.

It was on this occasion when the disciple were together, that Jesus came and stood among them. John says only that He “came---and stood in the midst.” Jesus came into their locked room and stood there before them. They said nothing when He showed His hands and side. They needed such proof to strengthen their faith, and they got it. It is the final irrefutable proof of the Sonship of Jesus. Christ is risen! This is the best attested fact in history. Belief in it is the test of saving faith. Even now the power which raised Jesus from the dead is operative within us.

John gives us the story of the morning and the evening of that first Sunday. We know from the other writers that other things happened in the interval but John omits these and records the story of the evening, in the upper room. We have the appearance of Jesus, on the evening of the first day, and again a week later. We have no record in John or anywhere else, of anything that happened in the interval between those two days.

To whom did Jesus appear that night? We know that one of the apostles, Thomas, was not there. Were other disciples than the apostles present? If this is the same appearance recorded in Luke 24:36-43, those present may have included other disciples, like the two who saw Jesus on the Emmaus road and reported to the apostles. We do not know whether the eleven had stayed together from soon after the arrest of Jesus. At least most of them were together on the night of His resurrection.

The fact that the doors were locked did not require Jesus to knock on the door to be allowed into the room. He simply appeared to them. His resurrection body, though the same body that had died on the cross (wounds and all), was also a different, changed body. Jesus, in His resurrected, glorified body was no longer bound to the physical laws as He was before, and according to I Cor. 15:50-55, such is the nature of the resurrection that we as believers will enjoy also.

After appearing to them Jesus said, “Peace be with you!” They all knew Him. This was the common greeting among the Jewish people at that time and remains so today. It means: “May God give you every good thing.” In John 14:27 the night before He died, the Lord promised to them His legacy of peace. It may have been based on Psalm 122:8 where David said, “For the sake of my brothers and friends, I will say, ‘Peace be within you.’” However, Jesus’ greeting was much more significant than a greeting, for He had told the disciples on the night of the last-supper, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you.”

The peace that Jesus gives is not only peace with God in salvation, but, a calmness of spirit for one who knows that God is in control. Nothing could give the disciples greater assurance of both aspects of peace than seeing the risen Lord with their own eyes. To underscore that the one before them was indeed the Jesus who died on the cross, He showed them His hands and side. Luke 24:41 states that “they still did not believe it because of joy and amazement.” So Jesus ate a piece of fish. Yes! It was He!

We next read one of the great understatements of the Bible: The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord. During Jesus earthly ministry, they had been confident He was the Messiah. This confidence was crushed at the cross, or so it seemed. But now the disciples’ faith had been vindicated. He is the Messiah! He is the Lord!

Two points to note here are, (l.) None of the disciples were expecting Jesus to be raised from the dead. (2.) Most of them had to see Him before they believed He had been raised. This is the reason for not speaking of Thomas as the doubter. They all doubted until they saw Jesus for themselves. What made them glad? The risen Lord!

As the risen Lord, Jesus then gave the disciples their marching orders. He repeated the greeting “Peace be with you!” likely to emphasize that even during the difficult days that were to come the disciples could be assured of His peace in their lives. These difficult days involved their mission: “As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.”

Jesus had finished His part in God’s redemptive mission toward sinful men back in John 19:30. However the message must be taken to all people for the purposes of God to be consummated in the end times. Thus He commissioned the apostles to continue their part in God’s redemptive mission. The Father had sent Jesus to live, die, and be raised from the dead. Jesus had done that. Now was the time for His followers to spread the good news.

The Father sent His Son to accomplish redemption for a lost world of sinners, and now the disciples were being sent to proclaim the message of redemption through the cross of Jesus—and that alone.

How could this little band of people be able to launch such a great Mission? They could not do it in their own strength. They could do it only as they were filled with the Holy Spirit. And that is what Jesus did in Vs. 22: He breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” Just as God gave life to the first man by breathing life into him, so Jesus empowered the disciples by breathing on them to receive the Holy Spirit. Jesus sent the Spirit since He was returning to the Father. Jesus infusing of the Spirit here is best understood as an anticipation of the coming of the Spirit in power on the day of Pentecost a few weeks later in Acts 2..

Jesus also explained the nature of the disciples’ preaching ministry: “If you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.” Jesus’ words were not a promise of ecclesiastical control over forgiving sins. No clergy or lay person can forgive sins. Our Catholic friends picked up on this in Matt. 16: 18-29 “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it. And I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” Thus we had the first pope.

In Vs. 23, Jesus was saying that the believer can boldly declare the certainty of a sinners forgiveness by the Father, because of the work of His Son, if that sinner has repented and believed the gospel The believer, with certainty, can also tell those who do not respond to the message of God’s forgiveness, through faith in Christ, that their sins, as a result, are not forgiven. After the coming of the Spirit, the disciples pronounced forgiveness on those who believed in Christ and the lack of forgiveness on those who did not believe. Today Christians can pronounce what sins God has already forgiven.

Jesus was not conferring the power of forgiveness upon the clergy. Only god can forgive sins, for sin is primarily an offense against God. Jesus was saying that the nature of proclaiming the gospel allows the messenger to tell those who believe in Christ that they are forgiven and those who do not believe that forgiveness has been held back. This ministry of the Spirit is for all believers since, according to Rom. 8:9 and 1 Cor. 12:12-13 He indwells them at the point of salvation. The ministry of forgiveness is for all believers as well since we are to proclaim the gospel to everyone.

2. PLEASE READ JOHN 20: 24-25

The four Gospels indicate that none of Jesus’ disciples expected to see Him alive again. Also, the empty tomb did not lead any of them to believe in Jesus’ resurrection except the apostle John. Further, the disciples scoffed at the reports from the women that they had seen the Lord. As we look at the verses in this section we need to keep these things in mind. Thomas has been pegged “Doubting Thomas” for centuries, but he was not the only disciple who doubted. They all did, at least for awhile. And only John believed in Jesus resurrection before seeing Jesus alive again.

For some reason Thomas (also called Didymus, meaning “twin”) was not with the other disciples at the earlier meeting. John did not explain why Thomas was not there the first Sunday evening when Jesus appeared to the others. Thomas may have heard the reports of people seeing the Lord alive but totally rejected this. He may have feared the enemies of Jesus. When they told him that Jesus was alive, Thomas wanted proof that was verifiable. “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it.”

This is the only place in the N.T. that mentions the use of nails in the crucifixion. Thomas was not present at the cross as far as we know, so he must have heard about it and the spear wound from an eyewitness, perhaps John. Despite the fact that Jesus had said He would rise again, Thomas was walking by sight and not by faith. The other 10 disciples had several days to convince him, but they couldn’t do it. The Gospel of John is the only Gospel to tell of Thomas’s doubts.

Herschel H. Hobbs did not believe that it is fair to label this man “doubting Thomas.” Hobbs wrote: “In the first place, he only asked for the same evidence which Jesus had already given to the others. They did not believe until Jesus did this. In the second place, he did not say flatly, ‘I will not believe.’ He prefaced this with “except…’ showing that he was open to proof.”

Many people in every generation have refused to believe in Jesus Christ’s resurrection from the dead. Many are unwilling to consider the evidence fairly. Some people refuse to believe the biblical account of Christ’s resurrection because they do not want to give up their sins. Others have an intellectual basis for their doubt. That is they share the secular world-view that the only realities are what we can see and prove by scientific methods. But those of us who believe the biblical account of the resurrection are convinced that there is more evidence for the resurrection of Jesus than there is evidence against it. From experience we can say with the hymn writer, “I know that my Redeemer liveth.”

3. PLEASE READ JOHN 20: 26-29

It seems reasonable to assume that this resurrection appearance was for Thomas’s benefit. A week later, the Sunday after Jesus’ resurrection, the disciples were in the same house, and Thomas was with them. Once again, though the doors were locked, Jesus appeared to them and greeted them with the words, “Peace be with you!” Jesus then challenged Thomas to verify for himself that He was alive, which Thomas had claimed would be necessary before he would believe. Jesus said “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.” Jesus’ offer to allow Thomas to touch His wounds shows His compassion for Thomas and His desire to remove all doubts about His resurrection from the mind of one of the disciples.

The disciples were going to be commissioned to proclaim Jesus’ death and resurrection to the whole world, so they must be convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that Jesus was truly alive. The last part of Jesus’ words are, literally, “Be not faithless but faithful,” that is, don’t be lacking in faith but be full of faith. Faith in Jesus’ resurrection is absolutely essential for salvation, and so it must be for those who take the gospel to others.

Thomas’s response is one of the great confessions in the Bible and rivals Peter’s confession at Caesarea Philippi. There is no indication that Thomas actually touched Jesus, though this would have been appropriate since Jesus had invited him to do so. Seeing Jesus was enough, for Thomas exclaimed, “My Lord and My God.” Thus Thomas announced that Jesus, the Man of Galilee, is God manifested in the flesh. This is the high point in the Gospel.

This is the only place in the Gospels where someone actually referred to Jesus as God. Nowhere else in Scripture is the deity of Christ more clearly taught than in this verse (though others are equally clear), and here Jesus’ deity is in juxtaposition with His lordship. This is the climatic statement about Jesus’ identity in John’s Gospel, just as the centurion’s confession is in Mark’s Gospel, in Mark 15:39 “Surely this man was the Son of God!”

In Matt. 28 the truth of the resurrection was established by many infallible proofs. Matthew introduced four groups of witnesses: The women, the angels, the guards, and the eleven disciples. Paul says in 1 Cor. 15: 6 that in Galilee “Jesus was seen by over 500 brethren at once, and of whom the greater part remain to the present.”

Just as Jesus restored Peter to ministry after his three denials, so Jesus also restored Thomas in this passage. The faith of both disciples failed miserably, but Jesus brought them back to a place of faithful service for Him. Thomas’s confession was genuine, for early church history tells us that Thomas took the Gospel to India before being martyred.

Jesus responded to Thomas’s confession with His last beatitude. Thomas believed because Jesus had appeared to him, but Jesus said, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believe.” Jesus pronounced a blessing on all of those who would believe in Him without seeing Him alive as Thomas and the others disciples had. This refers to Christians of all centuries, including our own. We believe in Jesus’ resurrection through the convicting power of the Spirit and through the testimony of the early witnesses as recorded in the N.T. We are the recipients of this special blessing.

In Vs. 29 like the other apostles, Thomas believed because He saw Jesus alive after His crucifixion. We can be grateful to Thomas for his refusal to believe without proof. We can b e grateful because we know that the testimony of the apostles, which is found in the N.T. is based on reality. Jesus coming, life, death and resurrection were real events, not the dreams of mystics or the musings of philosophers. Because Thomas had to be shown, we know that what he saw is real. Our faith in Christ is founded on the gospel, which is found in the N.T. This gospel is based on the inspired Word of God and includes the testimonies of those who saw Jesus alive after being crucified.

In Vs. 29 Jesus did not put Thomas down: instead, He contrasted the basis for his faith with the faith of later generations and of most of the people in the first century. Our faith is not based on seeing Jesus in the flesh but on believing the testimonies of those who did see Him and then trusting Him for our selves. When we believe in the living Lord, we have personal experiences that confirm the reality of the living Lord. “He lives. He lives. Christ Jesus lives today! You ask me how I know He lives: He lives within my heart.”

4. PLEASE READ JOHN 20: 30-31

An important connection exists between Jesus’ last beatitude and John’s purpose in writing his Gospel. Vs.30 shows us that the Gospel writers had more material about Jesus than could be placed in one book. That explains why each of the Gospels tell of the same Lord but has some distinctive material.

There were only a handful of people who were privileged to see Jesus after His resurrection, and all of them were believes. Saving faith would come to untold millions of others through the testimony of these eye witnesses, especially testimonies that were written down in the four Gospels. John explained that Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of His disciples, which are not recorded in this book.

John’s purpose in writing his Gospel was so that those who had not seen the risen Lord could be saved. He wrote that 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. No greater purpose for writing a book could be found. To be saved, a person must believe that Jesus, the Messiah and Son of God, died on the cross as the only sacrifice for sins and that He arose from the dead.

This faith is more than just a creed that requires a person to accept certain facts about Jesus. The historical facts are essential and cannot be compromised, but saving faith includes a trust in the person of Jesus as Messiah and Lord. This is the only way to have eternal life. John 3:16 says, “For God so loved the world that He gave His Only Begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life.” I love Vs. 17 also, “For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.”

John’s grand and noble purpose in writing his Gospel has been realized during 19 centuries that people have come to faith in Jesus as a result of John’s written testimony about Him. And this is true about the other three Gospels as well. We are not only to believe in His resurrection; we are to witness to it. Witnessing is not just talking; it is exemplifying. We must live the resurrection. We must live as thought the Living Presence of the Crucified One were our constant companion.

Gypsy Smith used to sing: “Let The Beauty of Jesus Be Seen In Me.” If He isn’t risen in us—then is He really risen? or is this whole story a hoax, and a delusion? Paul wrote in 1 Cor. 15:14 “If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain.

SUMMARY:

When Jesus appeared to the disciples, they saw Him alive and became convinced that He had been raised from the dead. Thomas, however, was not there; and he said that he would believe only if he could see Jesus and touch his wounds. A week later, when Jesus challenged Thomas to touch Him, Thomas worshipped the risen Lord. John said that his purpose in writing his Gospel was so that people might believe in Jesus and have eternal life.

A good Bible Study for this week would be to do a word study of the verb BELIEVE particularly in John’s Gospel.

NEXT WEEK FROM JOHN 21 PETER HAS OPPORTUNITY TO EXPRESS HIS LOVE FOR JESUS. A.V. DAUGHERTY 7-29-01

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