FBCWest 446 | Continued Appearances of Jesus after His Resurrection
Recorded On: 04/11/2021
Bulletin
FBCWest
April 11, 2021
“God is Spirit, and those who worship Him
must worship Him in Spirit and truth.”
Praise and Worship
SCRIPTURE READING – Psalm
“This is What We Live For”
“Raise a Hallelujah”
Proclamation of the Word
Message by Pastor Joe
“The Earthly Life and Ministry of Jesus the Messiah”
“Continued Appearances of Jesus after His Resurrection”
PRAYER TIME / Time of Reflection
“We Believe”
Giving of Selves and Our Offerings
“He Lives”
OFFERTORY PRAYER
SPECIAL MUSIC – By Pru Hungate
Continued Praise and Worship
“Holy Water”
“The Stand”
Benediction “Egypt”
Acknowledgements and Announcements
Sermon Notes
John 20:19 – 23 Jesus appears to ten of His disciples in a locked room
John 20:24 & 25 Thomas was not there when the other disciples tell him they have seen Jesus, he refuses to believe
John 20:26 – 29 Thomas sees Jesus and Thomas’ response
Scritpures
Transcript of Service
Generally speaking.
Year after year after.
The church celebrates the resurrection by whatever name it calls it. Many call it Easter, some call the Resurrection Sunday. We call it first fruits, 'cause that's the biblical name. But usually what happens is that there's the celebration of the resurrection and then the following week.
Go back to the typical sermon series or how to have a better Monday or whatever the various churches.
Teach
but since.
The series that we've been going through is the earthly life and Ministry of Jesus the Messiah.
We've seen that his death and burial did not end the story.
Because according to the scriptures, he rose again on the third day.
So the story continues and we took a look at.
The Angels announcing to the women that he was not in the tomb that he had arisen, that they were to go tell the disciples and to meet him in Galilee.
And then we saw that he had met with Peter, and he had met with the two disciples on the road to Emmaus.
And had a conversation with them about the scriptures and how it was necessary for the Messiah. And I'll be buried and raised again, and that.
When they in.
Prevailed upon him to continue with them, and to be with him, and when he broke bread, they then recognized who he was, and he disappeared, and they went back to tell the disciples. Yes, he is in fact arisen we've seen him.
Anne, that's where we left the story last time.
Anais likes it alot of times. Then when we go on summer and people tend to think well whatever Resurrection Sermon was talked about that day, that that.
Is it in Jesus?
Then went to heaven and we're all here.
Do whatever to do, but the scriptures tell us that Jesus remained here for 40 days, giving many convincing proofs of his resurrection.
And So what we're going to do is we're going to continue in the next couple weeks, taking a look at those various resurrection appearances. And so if you'll turn in your Bibles to John Chapter 20, starting with verse 19, we're going to see.
This continued appearances by Jesus, and so it says when it was evening on that day, the first day of the week. So now.
Last message was on the during the daytime of Sunday.
His resurrection appearances now we've gone to the evening this so, and when the doors were shut.
Where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, and so that the door wasn't probably just shut, it was probably locked, and it says for the fear of the Jews.
And there's a.
Many reasons why they'd be afraid. Reason number one was Jesus had told them that they were to take up their cross and follow him and that the master was not above the slaves were not above the master and so they quite reasonably good. Suspect that they too are next.
Also, the disciples were accused by the religious leaders of stealing the body.
So there.
Assumption is, well, we could be arrested for theft, and they're going to want to find the body and blame us an and whatever. So there's this fear that they have, so they've they've shut the door, probably locked it.
Because of their fear.
Jesus came and stood in their midst.
Now.
If you are one of those naturalists, you would say, well, Jesus somehow unlock the door the door was locked and he just showed up.
Others who might say ooh spooky. He showed up as a ghost in their midst an whatever.
The scriptures don't teach either one of those.
The scriptures tell us that that he had a resurrected body just as we will have.
So I suspect.
That this resurrected body that Jesus has in the resurrected body that we will have.
Will not distill it be.
Tell to the three laws of the work familiar with.
I will.
Link.
Or even time.
And that because of this body which is a body and not a ghost, he's able to appear.
As if he were in the fourth dimension or fifth dimension or whatever it might be, but the body is different. He is not a spirit, but he appears amongst them and says to them peace be with you.
Now you can look and say, well, this is a common Jewish expression of how you do it.
It is so long.
But I think it carries a very important weight here because they are fearful.
And Jesus is peace.
Be with you.
Which would cause them to remember my peace.
I give to you.
Not as the world gives you peace, peace, I give because peace.
Be with you and when he had said this, he showed them both his hands and his side.
So Jesus again says, I'm not a spirit. I'm not a ghost. See there is physical manifestations of who I am and I am not another.
I am if you will.
The Lamb of God.
Who is the lion of Judah?
You would think with the resurrected body that Jesus his body wouldn't be absent of those wounds.
But to me.
It tells us.
He is the worthy lamb that heaven will cry out, and we who are the redeemed will say so, and say worthy is the lamb who was slain.
And those marks.
Will show us for eternity his love.
His grace and the reason that we are praising him.
We showed him showed them his hands, even showed them his side.
That they might understand.
And the disciples then rejoiced when they saw the Lord.
So now they've turned from fear.
Apiece.
In celebration there rejoicing because the one that they had been with for 3 1/2 years or so who had taught them who had loved them, who had showed them suddenly is not dead.
But a lie.
So they rejoice and notice. So Jesus said to them again.
Peace.
Be with you.
Because this world tries soul often to steal our peace.
Even when we rejoice in the Lord, and we have a wonderful service and you say, well, wasn't that sermon good or it was tolerable? Or wasn't the worship great or whatever? Within Monday comes and you get those bills that all of a sudden you're fearful again.
The world always wants to steal our peace, and Jesus reminds us.
He's
be with you.
And then he says something.
As the father has sent me, I also send you.
Jesus says.
The whole point of my ministry for three and a half plus years is not been to just educate you, not to have a very effective seminary on understanding the scriptures.
But that you might be equipped to go out.
And be my witnesses. So he says the job is not to hang around in this room.
The job is to be sent.
Just as the father has sent me.
Now, unfortunately.
Oftentimes, many churches in the church tends to teach that.
God has a wonderful plan for your life.
And so you should get saved and. And yes, you should get saved. But the problem is God.
For all of us has a wonderful plan for eternal life.
But between our acceptance of him and that time, when we go to meet with him.
May be filled with heartache and pain and suffering, just as disciples will experience.
Because the world hates him.
And because we follow him, the world hates us.
They don't want our success.
They want us silent.
And so if you take a look at being blessed when we do as a Lord, and even though there may be conflict, and there may be difficult, and it may be persecution, we will live.
A blessed life where we can rejoice and even at in the book of acts, we see that when the disciples suffer and are persecuted, they rejoice because they say they are considered worthy to suffer for the name of the Lord.
And we need to change our perspective to say he censor things us.
And he may send us to Mozambique. He may send us to Nigeria, he may send us to the Middle East, he may send us a basis, or he may send us to Orange County.
Or may keep us.
Somewhere.
Because as we share.
This place.
When you look at who some versus this place, we are the remotest place of the world.
So God may have sent us by keeping us here, that we might testify of him.
Who says I'm sending you?
Just as the father sent me.
I'm sending you in, however the father do he sent Jesus.
To teach of the father.
To redeem us.
To love us.
Learn to make the cycle.
So he says.
He's sending them.
And when he had said this, he breathed on them instead of them, receive the Holy Spirit.
Now there are some people say well were confused here because.
In another 50 days.
There's gonna be Pentecost when the Holy Spirit is going to come, well, Jesus breathed on them. So how is it that all is fair?
Because Jesus told them.
That it was necessary for him to die and go so that they might receive a helper.
And every believer receives the Holy Spirit.
He indwells end of them, but there are times when the Holy Spirit empowers us to do things that earthly people cannot do, that things that happen, like, for instance, when Peter preaches and people respond, it wasn't a Peter was an effective preacher. It was that the Holy Spirit.
Came upon the crowd and they received them.
Cancel Jesus breathes on them. The Holy Spirit tells them to receive it.
And then he says something.
But I think many people miss understand.
1st 23 says.
If you forgive the sins of any, their sins have been forgiven them, and if you retain the sins of any, they have been retained.
And there are some denominations and some people who say well what this means is in essence.
Princeton, since I'm the pastor, you're supposed to come to me and confess, or if I were appreciated, come and make confession, and if I absolve you of your sins, and therefore you're absolved. And if I don't, or you don't come and confess, then you're retaining your sins. That is not what this Scripture teaches, and that is not what the scriptures teach. The scriptures teach that you have a high priest already.
Who is introduce his own offering?
To the heaven Holy of Holies and that we can go there with boldest and find grace and help in time of need. You do not need any person to intercede for you on behalf of you, because Jesus said it is finished and he is already paid and this Scripture doesn't teach that as I want you to notice something. It says if you forgive the sins of any, then if.
What they're teaching is true. Then the next part of the sentence was me, and their sins will be forgiven.
But it does not say that it says if you forgive the sins of any there, since have been forgiven, which means it's past tense.
And if you retain the sins of any, they have been retained. It's not if you retain the sins of any, they will be retained.
Then you might say, well, OK, that argument might, but that's not what the Scripture says.
So let me tell you what I think it says and notice I say I think.
Jesus is same, I'm sending you.
If you don't go.
And those who are understand who is all of us.
Things will be retained.
Because the only way we have forgiveness of sins is because of sacrifice of Christ.
So when we communicate to those that message.
Then they have the opportunity.
They have their sins forgiven.
But if they reject that.
Their sins will have been retained.
There is.
A person I won't mention his name.
A famous magician who is an atheist.
Proud so and he has the right to be wrong.
But he did say something that is very true. He says if Christians believe what Christians believe that if you do not accept the blood sacrifice of Jesus that you will go to hell. But if you do accept that you will go to heaven. He says it would be.
Hate
for you not to share that message.
Jesus sends us.
Because the father loved the world.
And we are to go to the world because the father loves them.
And gave the son gave himself for them. So we are there to present the Gospel so that people might believe and have their sins forgiven.
1st 24 but Thomas, one of the 12 called Didymus. Now Dennis means twin so it may very well be that Thomas was a twin.
And if he were today, his brother would be probably called Timothy, because everybody likes to duties and azan whatever, and so Thomas, who was probably a twin, wasn't there.
But then when Jesus came?
Now it doesn't tell us where Thomas was.
But you know, it's amazing how many people in the scriptures miss out on things when they're not there.
Or how people get in trouble when they're not to be where they're supposed to be. So for instance, David wasn't where he supposed to be with the Kings at war. He was hanging out on his rooftop.
Having lost full thoughts about a ***** *****.
And here's Thomas.
The other ten are gathered together there in his up room and for some reason Thomas is now babies, saying, well, I'll hide out differently because if they get them they won't get me or.
Maybe had planned that he did not know, but he wasn't there.
It kind of reminds me of people who are like casual churchgoers.
When we come to worship together.
We don't just come to hang out and say boy, it's good to see you in the service.
But we come to worship God.
When we come to worship God, you know God might just do something.
And wouldn't be terrible.
But if God did something.
And you weren't here.
Well, God was doing something in their midst and Thomas wasn't.
And because of that, let's see what happens. So the other disciples were saying to him we have seen the Lord.
So their capacity should look at Thomas. I know you weren't here.
Peter Song, Mary Madeline's on the women were told about the resurrection. The two disciples on the road saw him and he showed up in Armets. We saw him. We saw the hands that we saw than the side we saw him. You need to believe.
But
he said to them.
I'm going to paraphrase a little bit before hand. In essence, I don't care your testimony.
I don't care what you have to say.
It doesn't matter if you saw him or not.
Unless I see in his hand the influence of the nails and put my finger into the place of the nails and put mind hand into his side, I will not believe.
Now Thomas is called.
Doubting Thomas.
I don't look at it that kindly.
This is refusal talk.
He goes, unless God does what I say he should do and prove to me how he should prove to me. Then I will not believe I'm not just Downing, I refused.
Which is a lot of the world today.
They will not take a look at the facts of the resurrection. They will ignore it.
They will say, oh, science is the thing that we are to believe and I'm going to use this word precisely.
Believe in.
Now, science is a way to know thing.
In science, used to be one of those things where we would have a hypothesis and then we would conduct an experiment and if experiments have proved itself over and over and over, we would come to a realization of a law or some type of.
Agreement and so, for instance.
If you were to take a pot of water and take a Bunsen burner and heat the water.
At sea level.
Water tends to turn to a boil at 212 degrees Fahrenheit.
And you can test that you can test it here on the West Coast and you can go to the East Coast and test it and you can do all these things and you can discover that it's kind of unanimous that when you're at sea level, water will boil at 212 degrees.
Now, if you take that presumption and say, well, it it boils everywhere at that temperature, you will be wrong is if you go to Denver or it's a Mile High or so the water will not boil at 212 degrees because the atmosphere has a difference of it. But we, that's why people say at sea level water will boil it 212 degrees.
That's science.
Because you can experiment.
But science now says there was a Big Bang.
But the first question I have is the questions got asked.
Job.
Where were you when I formed the world?
And the answer was, you weren't even thought up.
So you weren't there.
You can only presume that that's how it started.
Now I agree with The Big Bang theory. The sense of the universe are not always exist.
But to believe?
That everything in the universe composed of a dot so small and so dense that we couldn't.
Fear.
My first question is who made the dot?
'cause it had to come from somewhere.
So even if the little dot came everything.
Wherethe.com
or will say even though that there's millions of different types of life here on Earth. Whether it's plant life or organisms or whales are humans or gorillas.
Or Kitty cats?
Not poodles. 'cause they're not really dog, but all of those. All of those different animals.
Science tells us come from one little Organism. And yet Science says that you can't take an inanimate object and make it animate.
Mary Shelley has a very interesting book called Frankenstein.
That book is not about reading life. That is a book about reanimating life.
We can't even do that yet.
So let's say we can or. Let's say we take God materials and we're able to make something.
Are you telling me when you make that thing?
But there was an intelligent life there. Make it.
Or are you saying you're unintelligent when you made the light?
And so science will tell you.
Surely this is what happened. I'll give you one other example of circular logic. They will say the strata of Earth will tell you how old something is.
But then they also say that fossils will tell you how old something is.
And so they say that if Fossil is found at a certain level, that it must be this old. But if they find out fossil at a higher level, then they say, well then that's right. It has to be that age because of the fossil. That circular argument that saying we believe this because it's here, but it's not here. We believe it's there.
That's belief.
The convincing proofs of the Resurrection to be far more persuasive.
Then how?
Lucifer is a person who wasn't there tells me how old something is.
So he refuses.
We believe.
Just like many people refuse.
Today
to believe it will come up with any other belief system.
To avoid the fact.
That God is your creator and has a demand on your life.
1st 26.
After eight days.
I want you to notice something.
8 days.
Thomas
lived in refusal or doubt.
For eight days.
The disciples who had seen the Lord and testified of his resurrection were rejoicing.
And Thomas is still miserable.
Convinced that his Lord had died.
And refuse to believe.
So after eight days his disciples were again inside, and Thomas within was good for him to show up.
This would be really terrible if you missed this opportunity, and so Thomas was there with him. And just Jesus came the doors having been shut and stood in their midst and said, peace.
Be with you.
He gives them the same.
Salute Shalom peace be with you again. My peace I give to you.
Making the same appearance as he had done previously.
The doors being shut.
Then he said to Thomas, now, notice I want you to understand something. Jesus wasn't there.
When the disciples told him.
That Jesus was alive.
He had Jesus knows all.
Not only knows what you say, but he knows what's in their heart and what's in your intent. And I want you to see the love that Jesus has for Thomas. They refuse her.
Not just the doubter.
Because you know, thank God I'm not God.
Is added probably not showing up to Thomas.
Jesus did.
Or if I ever showed up to Thomas, I'd have been rated him. How dare you not believe your brothers when they told you something?
And he said to Thomas.
Reach here with your fingers.
And see my hand. Notice he quotes Thomas. He goes, you said you would not believe in less. You stuck your fingers in the holes in my hand. Here they are.
And see my hand and reach here your hand and put it into my side.
You refuse to believe unless you saw these things.
Here they are.
Conduct your experiment.
Conduct.
Your investigation.
And do not be unbelieving, but believing.
Jesus comes to Thomas in love and understanding, says, OK, Thomas, you're having difficulty.
I could in my right as God to say how dare you d'abandon be anything?
'cause I am the Lord, you're my servant.
But to create belief in you.
So that you will no longer not believe.
Touch away.
Thomas
answered and said to him.
My Lord.
Anne my God.
Thomas goes from not only my Lord, my boss, my my master, my Rabba, that who I'm.
I'm willing to do anything for that. He says. Not only is he my boss, but I acknowledge that he is God.
He went from refusal.
But knowledgement that Jesus is the son of God.
So for those of you who doubt.
Or refuse.
There is hope that God may.
Remove all doubt.
But notice what Jesus will say to Thomas.
Jesus said to him.
Because you have seen me, you have believed.
Ignore it, I showed you you came to faith.
You believed.
Bless it or they who did not see and yet.
Only.
Jesus is talking about you and me.
Now, there are times that I must know Franco wouldn't have been awesome.
To have been one of those.
Well, except for Judas.
God knows I don't wanna be here, but would have been awesome to be one of those who didn't have to be Peter or James or John. Just somebody that you hardly ever mentioned.
Yeah.
To see him teach.
Seeing love Sam be who he is.
But you see, Thomas no longer needed thing.
Because he saw.
Jesus is saying.
Because we have come to faith because of the evidence. The convincing proofs that he has demonstrated.
That he lived according to the scriptures.
But he died according to the scriptures that he was buried according to the scriptures that he rose again according to the scriptures that the father testified who he is, that he is testified. Who is that his life testified who he was, that the disciple specified, who that the empty tomb testifies that he would? All of these things? The Holy Spirit, testifying of who he is?
We come to faith.
Not having seen with our eyes.
But having seen because of the grace of God.
And as awesome, it must have been to be one of those 11.
Jesus saying it is more blessid because you have come to faith.
Having not witnessed.
See Abraham.
Didn't have to have faith.
But there was a God.
Dog talked in.
Had to have faith that God would do what God said he would do.
We have come to faith not having seen physically, but having seen spiritually who God is.
And we believe that God is a God whose loving kindness is everlasting.
Who is a Redeemer? Who is good? Who loves Ann? Who keeps his promises?
And there is one thing everybody knows well. Well you know. Can God create a rock that is so big that he can move in on? I'll give you something that's actually impossible for God to do. Lie.
So when God says something, he means it.
And so when God says we are more blessed than Thomas.
And we are more blessed than Thomas.
Went in on this story that that I heard from another person. I will spend on it a little bit.
When you're walking down a pathway.
When you come to a fork in the road.
On one side of the building of the fork is a dead person.
Now there's another side of the beginning of the fork. There is a person who is alive.
Who would you ask for direction?
That dead person.
Might be.
Confucius.
That dead person might be Schopenhauer.
That dead person might be the cart.
That that person might be.
Name any of a million names.
The people.
Caesar.
Or would you ask for directions of the person who is alive?
He's
because on that pathway Jesus says I am the way.
I am the truth.
And I am the life.
If you want the way.
You pick him.
You want the life you choose him.
You want the truth. You choose him.
And you follow.
Is app.
Others will convince you that they know the answers.
And they will speak. It was such.
Confident.
And in that superiority of their.
Wisdom.
They lead not only themselves, but others astray.
Jesus does not ask you to follow Thomas.
Jesus does not ask you to follow Peter. Jesus does not ask you to follow Paul. Jesus Lord knows has not asked you to follow Jody.
He asked you to follow him.
To be with him.
They live with him and for him.
Because we believe that he is the son of God.
We believe the father loves us. We believe that the Holy Spirit is there to be a helper for us. We believe in the resurrection and we believe that he's coming again.
And we do so because we are blessed.
And all God's people said.