Small Steps: What is God saying to me and what am I going to do about it?

John 20:19-31

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.”

Jesus Appears to Thomas

24 Now Thomas (also known as Didymus[a]), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. 25 So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord!”

But he said to them, “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.”

26 A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” 27 Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.”

28 Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!”

29 Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

The Purpose of John’s Gospel

30 Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. 31 But these are written that you may believe[b] that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

Listening guide

“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!” (verse 19)   

What do you think “peace” is? _____________________________ 

“Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe” (verse 27) 

God _________ up for us. 

“What is God saying to me? And what am I going to do about it?”  

Sermon

(picture of letter)

If you received a formal letter in the mail from a legitimate law firm saying that you were the long lost heir of an important family and had just inherited the family name and many millions of dollars....wow. You would be skeptical for sure. You would probably think it is too good to be true. I still think you would investigate that kind of a claim.

You would look at the letter and see that it had a return address and a real signature at the bottom of the page. You would get on the website and see that the firm looked legit and that the lawyer existed. You would check the better business bureau. You’d look the family up. You would think, this can’t be true! This has to be a scam...It looks so real.

Finally you would call and say, hey, I got this letter. It must be a joke. It says I’m part of this other family and I’ve inherited millions. It’s a joke, right? The lawyer might say, no joke, no scam. Come in, I’ll show you the will and the evidence.

So you would. You’d get the millions. You’d get the name. You would walk out of that office as someone else.

At that point, you’re just getting started. If you want, you can go back to your old life. Your old family, old ways, and old routines. The better way, I think most of us would say, is you go forward. You learn what it means to live with millions. You learn what it means to live with a new name and a new family.

I think a lot of us would find that really hard. We’d say, I don’t want to give up my old life, my old friends, and my old family. I like it. But we know we really should go forward. We should learn how to live with money. We should embrace our family.

We got to start by learning our new family facts. Who are our parents. Where they’re from. What do they value. Our siblings.

We need to learn the rules. We say, I always thought murder was wrong. Is it wrong for you? What about stealing?  Do you lie?

I think most of us would find hardest part changing the behaviors that make us who we are. For example, I think all of us are used to financial scarcity. Our entire life is dictated in part by how much money we have. How do we live differently when you can do whatever you want?

Or I think all of us are used to having other people tell us the rules and how to behave. We don’t have much authority. How do we live differently when we’re important and we’re making decisions?

I think this is the tough part. Getting the inheritance and the family is just the first step. Becoming a new person is a whole different thing. That’s what we want to do for the next few weeks.

Adventure/Promise

I would say Easter is the best letter from a law firm you could ever get.

With Easter, Jesus says, I give you the greatest fortune you could ever imagine. You can be God’s long lost child. I want to give you a new family, a new identity, and a new fortune.

And especially if you’re just starting out, you’ve got to learn all the doctrines of this family. Who is the father, who is the mother, what do they value, and all that. Maybe you already know that.

You’ve got to learn the rules as well. They’re the 10 commandments. They tell us what’s right and wrong, what we can and cannot do.

(small steps picture)

I think the hardest part, you have to figure out how to behave like you belong in the family. We have to live like we’re worth more than we’ve ever imagined as long as we’re connected to Christ. We have to live like we’re part of an eternal family. And we have to learn to depend on Jesus’ goodness, his righteousness.

That kind of life doesn’t happen in a moment. You don’t change like that overnight. You take small steps. That’s what we’re going to do.

Let’s take smell steps.

Development

We’ve got a great lesson here today. The lesson leads us to a man named Thomas. He could very well be the person most overwhelmed by Jesus’ resurrection. Jesus invites him to take just a small step.

That is the only way anybody can process what happened. Small steps. Jesus rising was basically more than everyone could handle. Let me remind us of a few of the people.

The first people at the tomb were a few women. They did not leave the tomb with joy and laughter. They were trembling and fled from the tomb and did not talk to anyone right away. The first men did not know what to think about it and ran to see for themselves. Jesus met a woman named Mary who did not even recognize him after he rose! The first men who got to talk to Jesus were so overwhelmed by the experience that they left the village they had walked to and ran a few miles back to Jerusalem at night. Men in ancient times didn’t run. There aren’t many middle aged men who could run a few miles at night. The most overwhelmed people … Let me read you this verse.

“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!” (verse 19)

Did you see this? Jesus has just risen from the dead and the disciples were locked in! They had no idea how to process what was going on. That could have been Jewish religious leaders arresting them for stealing the body of Jesus. That could have been the Jewish mob coming to kill them like Jesus. They could have been afraid that all the people were going to rise up in rebellion and insurrection. Whatever it was the resurrection of Jesus was more than they could process. And here is how much more.  

Jesus showed up and he said to them, “peace be with you”. This is the common Jewish greeting. It really isn’t that surprising. What is surprising.... Jesus never announces peace to his disciples until he gets to his death and his resurrection.

Jesus has always said, I didn’t come to bring peace. I came to bring a sword and division. He brought it.

He brought conflict. He brought justice. He brought death. He stirred up the hatred and the violence of the people. He let them pour out all their anger at the injustice of life against him. He took it in his body on the cross.

He took their wrath. He took their rage. He took their sickness. So when he says, “peace is yours” you know he isn’t talking about a smooth lake on a Saturday morning where you can sip some coffee and catch fish.

What do you think “peace” is? _____________________________

I’m guessing because of American culture, we all imagine peace wrong. Here is how Walter Brueggeman describes peace in the Bible. “In the NT the word “peace” indicates more than the absence of war. .... šālôm included “everything necessary to healthful living: good health, a sense of well-being, good fortune, the cohesiveness of the community, relationship to relatives and their state of being, and anything else deemed necessary for everything to be in order” (Westermann, 24 [cf. Brueggemann, 13–23]).” (Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, peace) 

“everything in order”. Jesus has just risen from the dead and for the first time, he says to his disciples, peace. You cannot overestimate what Jesus did when he rose. He has finally started to make everything right.

Let me just give you one example. When the apostle Paul tells us what it means that Jesus has risen from the dead, he writes, "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come:[a] The old has gone, the new is here!” You look at what Paul says here.

He says if you are in Christ, a new creation has come. “in Christ” doesn’t mean inside of Jesus Christ. It means connected to Christ or in relationship to Christ. Paul says if you are connected or in relationship to Jesus, a new creation exists.

I’ve had people say to me, not a lot, say to me, I don’t feel much different after knowing Jesus than I did before. Some people say that. I would say by and large, far and away, the people who stay around say, I am not the same person I was. I’ve been transformed.

Some people say, I behave differently. I used to ___ and now I act this way. Other people say, I feel differently. I’m more compassionate, more thoughtful.

Friends, this is  God’s peace breaking in. This is the new creation remaking you. This is everything, even you, in order.

I want you to imagine for a moment one of those movie scenes where a team of people rush in to take over an office that isn’t really theirs at the moment. So there is an office, let’s pretend it is financial counselors and belongs to Fred and Fred. Then a team of people rush in. They have a new sign that says, “Jane and Fred”. They cover over the old one. They change all the nameplates on the doors. They swap out the business cards. They throw away the old fake plants and put out fresh new flowers. They dump the silly magazines and put out a nice array of public interest publications, newspapers, and even a few books.

At first it all feels out of place. It feels weird. It doesn’t feel right. Over time you get used to it. And over time you change to feel like you belong.

Friends, this is why you and I have such a problem with Christianity. It’s not because there aren’t enough facts. I would be glad to talk with you about the facts and the evidence for the resurrection of the dead.

What is the problem? Someone has rushed into our world and changed all the signs, all the flowers, all the magazines, all the newspapers, and the couches and everything else. It’s all still the same size and shape. But it’s new. And we feel out of place.

The resurrection of Jesus from the dead isn’t something you can wish away. You can just learn to embrace it.

You can see the signs that he puts up. You can touch them and see. You can notice how the flowers look different. You can read the books and the magazines and the articles. You can notice every piece of new life in this world and say, this is where God is speaking to me of a new life that is so much greater.

What I mean is, Jesus comes to Thomas and says, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe” (verse 27)

Jesus has put everything in order, everything right. You can simply begin to touch all the marks of the new life

One of the neat stories of Easter is a woman named Joni Eareckson Tada. She was in an accident at 17 and has been a quadriplegic ever since. While she was getting around in her wheelchair, she went to church. The problem was she couldn’t kneel at any worship events. Everyone did except Joni. She said, “With everyone kneeling, I certainly stood out. I couldn’t stop the tears.”

She wasn’t crying from pity. She said that the sight of hundreds of people on their knees before God was so beautiful – “a picture of heaven”. She went on to say, “the first thing I plan to do on resurrected legs is to drop on grateful, glorified knees. I will quietly kneel at the feet of Jesus....Can you imagine the hope that the resurrection gives someone who is spinal cord-injured like me?”

Friends, Easter means God shows up for us. He is showing up for you and me with his new resurrected life. He is showing up as he puts everything in order. He is showing up with his peace.

Action

And like Thomas, like Tada, I want you to look at those signs and say “What is God saying to me? And what am I going to do about it?”

Easter is this great letter that says you and I have a new fortune and a new family. What is God saying to you and what are you going to do about it?

This is where God has shown up.