
Easter People: The Ten
John 20:19 On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” 20 After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord.21 Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” 22 And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23 If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.”
We don’t like the middle. Why? Because in the middle, we feel stuck. The beginning is exciting, and the ending is a celebration. It’s the middle where you get bogged down. - The Disciples are in the middle…they are scared..
Then Jesus shows up in the middle…
Five things that Jesus’s entrance did:
His presence
Why because his presence brings
Now, we then have to reframe our understanding of what peace is because we often think that peace is the absence of trouble, but peace is not the absence of trouble. Peace is the presence of God. If Jesus is the Prince of Peace and He is present in a situation, then even in trouble, you can have peace.
They we’re calmed by his
Jesus is the word in flesh, …it was God’s word spoken to them
They were calmed by his
It showed even there greatest fears could be overcome by God
The Resurrection and the promise of eternal life tells us that Jesus will not only make up for the difficult things that we’ve had to face by giving us a life forever, but He actually will restore dreams that died in our hearts before we left this world … Moses, after dying, got to come back at the transfiguration and step foot for the first time in his entire life inside the Promised Land.
They were calmed by the
There is Peace in gathering and Scattering they realized they had a mission higher then earth
They were calmed by the
Genesis 2:7 same word for breathe, that was the life breathed into the first Adam, this is the breathe of the New Adam…life starting again.
No matter what you find yourself in the middle of today, when Jesus breathes in the middle of it, things change….when Jesus shows up he transforms the 10 from prisoners into victors over every situation…
Peace is your’s, not the absence of troubles…..but the presence of Jesus.