The Resurrected Lord-God | Sermon 04/21/2023

Biblical Marriage and Upcoming Teaching Plans

Like Pastor Andrew said, we're going to be going over biblical marriage this Wednesday night. So if you've been married 50 years, 30 years, 20 years, 10 years, 5 years, if you've never been married, if you're single, if you're seeking marriage, or you're a young person, 18, and you just want to know what biblical marriage is about, this Wednesday at 6 p .m. at Mission, we're going to talk about what biblical marriage is.

We're going to define it from Genesis 2. We're going to talk about conflict, conflict resolution, intimacy, things like that. That's at the same night that we're doing our REACH Kids. So the kids will be in the other room learning their creation study, and we're going to be going over marriage.

So I'll be teaching that. Be sure to come to that if you're interested. But for now, if you would, please turn with me to the Gospel according to John. We're going to be in chapter 20, verses 11 through 29.

We only have, I believe, three to four more sermons in the whole Gospel of John, and I've told several of you I'm for sure now going to go to a topic that I really want to discuss, but then we're going to be in the book of Ruth in the Old Testament for possibly four to six weeks.

It's only four chapters, but we're going to go over the book of Ruth. Very exciting. And then Lord willing, I'm thinking after that, we're going to be going to First Corinthians, the letter to the Corinthians.

So anyways, please be in prayer for all my study and preparation for those books. Read Ruth. That's going to be next. Get ready for that. It's just a wonderful story of the Redeemer. Okay, the title of the sermon today is The Resurrected Lord God.

It's hyphenated there, The Resurrected Lord God. That'll make sense very soon here. So starting in verse 11 of the Gospel according to John, chapter 20, And she saw two angels in white sitting, one at the head and one at the feet, where the body of Jesus had been lying.

And they said to her, Woman, why are you weeping? She said to them, Because they have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him. When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there and did not know that it was Jesus.

Jesus said to her, Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking? And supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.

Jesus said to her, Mary. And she turned and said to him in Hebrew, Rabboni, which means teacher. Jesus said to her, Stop clinging to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father, but go to my brethren and say to them, I ascend to my Father and your Father, and my God your God.

Mary Magdalene came announcing to the disciples, I have seen the Lord, and that he had said these things to her. So when it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and when the doors were shut where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in their midst and said to them, Peace be with you.

And when he had said this, he showed them both his hands and his side. The disciples then rejoiced when they saw the Lord. So Jesus said to them, Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, I also send you.

And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, their sins have been forgiven them. If you retain the sins of any, they have been retained.

But Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came. The other disciples were saying to him, We have seen the Lord. But he said to them, Unless I see his hands, the imprint of the nails, and put my finger into the place of the nails, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.

After eight days, his disciples were again inside, and Thomas with them. Jesus came, the doors having been shut, and stood in their midst, and said, Peace be with you. Then he said to Thomas, Reach here with your finger and see my hands.

Reach here with your hand and put it into my side, and do not be unbelieving, but believing. Thomas answered and said to him, My Lord and my God. Jesus said to him, Because you have seen me, have you believed?

Blessed are they who did not see and yet believed. Thus ends the reading of God's glorious and magnificent word. Let's pray once more as a church body. God, we ask that you would reveal your word to us today, that you would, God, edify us through it, that you would show your goodness and your grace through it, Lord, that you would encourage your people today.

Those who need to be encouraged, encourage them. Those who need to be uplifted, uplift them. Lord, those who need to be humbled, humble them. And Lord, exalt the lowly and do a transformation in the hearts and minds of your people today with your glorious word.

I ask you that you would fill me with your spirit, and you would equip me to exposit this word before your people today. Lord, we praise you. We give you all the glory. We thank you for this blessed resurrection.

We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, church, it has been since Easter Sunday. But we are back in the gospel according to John. We got to see the details of the scourging and the crucifixion of Christ leading up to his death.

And there were so many symbols in the various aspects of his humiliation, not to mention numerous moments of the fulfillment of Scripture. What Jesus performed demonstrated he is the actualization of prophecy, and not just prophecy, but he is the climax of redemption and goodness of God in all history.

You see, Jesus bore that wrath, the wrath of God, on that cross at Golgotha. And if you remember, he declared, It is finished, to Telistai. It is finished. But I told you, even though Jesus said that, things weren't over yet.

He hasn't ascended yet. And so he did many great signs in his earthly ministry. And Jesus said, though, if you remember, in John chapter 2, that he would one day perform his greatest sign. He said that he would destroy this temple and in three days raise it up, speaking of his own body.

And so we saw in divine resurrection power, he rose again. We talked about how he would have simply come out of his grave clothes. He would have come out of those tightly wrapped linen wrappings. He just came through them.

Those things constrain other people. Those things constrain other people who are buried in the grave, but not Jesus. He came through them. They were lying there perfectly. Everything was set away perfectly.

All of it was undisturbed. Even his face veil, his face covering was rolled up and set aside. Mary Magdalene came that morning and she saw the tomb door rolled away. She assumed what? She assumed a grave robbing.

Someone's desecrated the temple of my Lord. They took his body. They took Jesus. And John and Peter, then what? They ran out of the city and they came racing to the tomb and they saw the tomb door rolled away and it said that John believed, but he didn't understand everything.

But Peter went away unsure. He went away unsure of what to make of all these things. And so two things were certain that day. Number one, Jesus's body was not taken. They resolved that in their mind. Mary came and said someone's stolen his body.

And I think what we gathered was at least John and Peter thought, no. No one's taken his body. And the wrappings are too perfect. They're undisturbed. They would have had to been ripped open. And why would anyone transport a dead body with taking the wrappings off?

When it's been several days of decay. And so they knew. No one took his body. But the other thing they knew was his body's actually gone though. We know no one took him, but we know that his body is gone.

Something has happened. Is he no longer dead? That's the question. And so as you have seen, we have a rather large section of Scripture today. I'm going to try to condense this down, okay? What we're gonna look at is three appearances.

Keep that in mind. Three appearances. Three blocks of text. Three appearances of the resurrected Christ. The first appearance is with Mary Magdalene in the garden by the tomb. That's the first one. Okay, the second appearance of the resurrected Christ will be in a room with the disciples minus two of them.

Okay? Judas Iscariot is gone. So there's 11, but one of them is not there. Okay? And the last one, the last appearance of Christ today will be with the one who doubted. The Apostle Thomas, who wasn't there that day.

So let's take a look right now. Verses 11 and 12. But Mary was standing outside the tomb weeping. And so as she wept, she stooped. And she looked into the tomb. And she saw two angels in white sitting, one at the head and one at the feet, where the body of Jesus had been lying.

So at some point after alerting John and Peter, Mary had made her way back out of Jerusalem to the garden tomb area of her Lord. We don't know why. It doesn't say why she came back. I would assume that she had a sense of grief and loss.

And that drove her to at least come back to the area where she had last saw him. She possibly participated in the wrapping of his body, or at least observing it, and weeping, and seeing him laid in that tomb.

And so she goes to the last place she saw Jesus. And so Mary is weeping. And she sees it opened as she reported to them. And she stoops down and she looks in. She wants to see where he last was. And two angels are there.

Two angels are right there sitting in white clothing, one on each end of where Jesus used to lay. And so in this dark tomb, there are these dazzling angels. They stand out in this dark tomb with brilliance.

Matthew 28 reports the angels moved the tomb door and later spoke with the women. Matthew said their appearance was like lightning. So that gives you an image. Mark 16 says that there was a man with bright, with a bright robe.

Okay. Luke 24 records two men suddenly appeared at the tomb in dazzling clothing. This is the common theme in all four Gospels. There are angels here in bright white clothing. That bright white clothing is characteristic the garments of angels.

So you white shirt people, you look great today. Okay, so I don't do white well. All right, you know, but anyways, this is the garments of heaven, so to speak, at least the the garments of angels so often do we see in the Bible are wearing this white.

And what we understand these two to be are visitors from the heavenly realm.

I.

Think how amazing would it be if God Almighty is like, okay, I need two angels to go to the resurrection, to go to the tomb. And I don't know, I don't, I don't really think God was like, who is willing to go and like all these angels put their hand up.

I don't think that it happened. I think God appointed two angels. We don't know who they were, but I'm excited to meet them. You should be excited to meet the two angels who were there at the resurrection.

It's gonna be wonderful, but you can see this is such an honor, these two angels here in this moment. Angelic visitors are recorded quite a bit in the Old Testament, and they're recorded quite a bit also, especially in the incarnation of Christ when he was born, or at least when he was being conceived and born.

And what we need to understand is these messengers are from God. The explanation of where Jesus is does not lie with the Romans. The explanation of where Jesus is does not lie with the Jews. The explanation of where Jesus is doesn't lie with humans.

It lies with the heavenly realm. That's what we see with these angels. It lies with God. This is, something heavenly has happened here, something supernatural. Not anything the Romans or the Jews did, okay?

Now, why does John make a mention of where each angel was sitting? This is really important. Listen to this. Why did John mention where each angel was sitting?

I believe.

What John was trying to do and what the angels were doing, sitting on each side, was they made a living ark of the covenant. Do you remember in the instructions in Exodus, when Moses was to build this ark of the covenant, that there would be an angel on each side of that ark?

There would be two cherubim angels, and in the center would be the mercy seat, which is the very presence of God. The presence of God was symbolized there in the ark of the covenant in the center. And so here in this tomb, you have two angels, one on each side, just like the ark of the covenant.

And this makes sense, because when you think about it, also, the ark of the covenant is where sacrifice would take place, where atonement would take place, where the blood would be shaken of the spotless lamb.

So what's the angels doing there? They're symbolizing that ark of the covenant. Exodus 37 says that then they would bring fragrant incenses and spices to the ark of the covenant. And what was on Jesus's body when he was buried?

Fragrances, spices, incenses. The ark was to be in the inner chamber of the tabernacle, covered by the veil. It was to be in the holy of holies. It was to be in the interior of the tabernacle. And we even see angels are depicted on the tabernacle veils.

They're often in the threads. They're in the the the weaving angels. And so Jesus is in the interior of the earth. He's in the deeper part of the earth, the interior, like the holy of holies. We even see with that veil that separates the holy of holies, or the most holy place, Jesus had a veil too.

What did it say when we looked at this three weeks ago? It said that his veil, his facial veil, was removed. His facial veil was rolled up. It was taken away. It was gone. And so what we have is an image of Jesus is the one who tabernacled among us.

That was John chapter 1. The fullness of deity dwells in him in bodily form. That is to say the angels here show us that Jesus is no mere human. But he is truly God and truly man. Jesus is the very presence of God.

Okay? Verse 13, And the angel said to her, Woman, why are you weeping? She said to them, Because they have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him. So again, this is basically the mercy seat symbolizes the Ark of the Covenant, the throne of grace, so to speak, where the death of another atones for others.

That's what happened with Jesus. This is where God's presence is, and Mary is looking at this scene with grief. The angels aren't trying to get information out of Mary that they don't know, that they want to know.

Why are you weeping? As if they're curious, and she'll reveal something to them about her weeping. It's a gentle rebuke. Why would you weep at this sight, woman? Why would you cry now? This is no occasion for weeping, Mary.

The perfectly maintained grave clothes, the empty tomb, the presence of angels, the symbolizing of the Ark of the Covenant, and Mary Magdalene still doesn't get it. She doesn't see it. In fact, we see that in her response.

She doesn't say to them, Oh, you're right. It's empty. He's risen. She goes, Because they've taken my Lord's body. I don't know where they've laid him. She's speaking to angels. But she's still thinking about these things.

She almost, she repeats almost verbatim what she told the disciples earlier, verses 14 and 15. When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there and did not know that it was Jesus.

Jesus said to her, woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking? And supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him and I will take him away.

So,.

Mary is stooping down. She's looking into a dark tomb. There's a garden behind her and she's looking in and she says, I don't know where they've taken my Lord. And the angels are like, why are you weeping?

And then all of a sudden it's as if she, maybe she feels something behind her and she turns around and it's Jesus. She turns around and it's Jesus. Maybe the person behind me has the answer to the question that I'm longing to have answered.

Where is Jesus? And so she turns and the ironic thing is it's Jesus himself. It's Jesus. It's pure irony. But she didn't recognize him. This is very similar. Maybe you've read in Luke chapter 24, verse 16, on the road to Emmaus after Jesus resurrected.

It said that the disciples were shielded from basically seeing that that was Jesus. They couldn't recognize him on the road to Emmaus. And then later on they're like, didn't our hearts burn within us?

Wasn't there something different about that man who talked to us on the road to Emmaus? So they didn't recognize him. They didn't identify him. This is the same thing going on here. But not only that.

I would argue that there's something different about the resurrected Jesus. There's something different about him now, okay? He still bears the marks of the nail holes in his hands and in his feet. He still has the spear wound in his side.

And we'll even see that he can cook fish and he eats it. But he rose through his grave clothes. He can appear in locked rooms. He can materialize and wield himself and wield creation with power as God himself.

And Paul speaks of something that you and I will be a little bit different too. Not even a little bit, quite a bit different. Paul says our bodies will be sown into the ground one way and are raised another.

We will be different. We will be sown perishable, raised imperishable. He said buried in dishonor, raised in honor, raised in glory, raised in power, sown into the ground with a natural body, but raised, he says, with a spiritual body.

And that's what's interesting. Paul says something like an oxymoron. Spiritual body. Interesting. We won't just be spirit, spiritual and body. Now Jesus's body is different than when he first entered the tomb in a way that is likely unique to us.

He's God. But still something's different about him. And so Jesus standing there gently asks her, Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking? And the first question is like the angels. No tears are needed at the blessed resurrection.

And the second question is an invitation for her to consider if she is looking for a dead man or she looking for a living man. Whom are you seeking? You looking for someone who's dead? Are you looking for someone who's alive, Mary?

Despite her great devotion to Jesus, her views of him are not that great. They're not grand enough. Mary doesn't think rightly of Jesus enough yet. Her views are too small of him. And so she supposed him to be the gardener.

He's tending the garden. And that's interesting. Tending the garden. For her to consider him to be the gardener, I think he had to look as if he was tending the garden in some capacity. What that looked like, I don't know.

You see,.

There has been a theme being established of gardens since chapter 18. In the Garden of Gethsemane is where Jesus prayed to his father and he accepted the cup given to him. He did not choose his own humanly will but the divine will.

And when you think about it, Adam, when Adam was in the Garden of Eden, he did the opposite. He rejected God's will and chose his own. In the Garden of Eden is where sin and death came into the world.

But here in this garden is where sin and death were facing down defeat. Adam was to keep and tend the garden, to guard it, but failed against the serpent. Here in this garden is where Jesus keeps and tends and guards.

He protects. The fact that he lives and stands here right in front of Mary means death has lost. Death has lost. And he's taking us, church, he's taking us to the eternal garden. Jesus was God who walked in the garden of the cool of the day in Genesis.

And here he is again, bringing us back into the presence of God. You see what I'm saying? John has been trying to establish this for 20 chapters. Jesus is Genesis. Jesus is our Genesis. He is our exodus from sin and slavery.

Jesus is the priest and the atoning lamb from the book of Numbers. Jesus is our guide through the wilderness of this life in the book of Numbers. He will take us to the garden. He will guide us there.

And Jesus is Deuteronomy. He is the word that was given in that book that we would have the living word established for us. Jesus is Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. John has been trying to show this this whole time.

Jesus is the gardener of his garden.

Okay.

Now Mary is so distraught. She demands Jesus, whom she cannot recognize, to tell her where Jesus's body is. Jesus, can you know, she doesn't say Jesus, but can you tell me where Jesus's body is to Jesus?

Where has it been laid?

What does she want to do?

Mary wants to bury him again.

Okay.

She thinks Jesus's body has been desecrated and she believes that she has to take him maybe to a new grave. But that won't do. The grave won't keep him. It can't hold him. That's not where he's supposed to go.

So verse 16, Jesus then said to her, Mary. I wonder how he said it, Mary. And she turned and said to him in Hebrew, Rabboni, which means teacher. You see, the good shepherd knows his sheep by name, Mary.

And he calls to her and she, according to John 10, knows the shepherd's voice. And so she comes to him. Or should we say she finally comes to. She recognizes Christ and she calls him by what she so endearingly called him for all of his ministry previously, Rabboni, teacher.

It's her way of speaking with affection, Rabboni, teacher. It is significant that John mentioned earlier she turned toward Jesus, supposing him to be the gardener. So she was stooped in looking into the tomb, looking at the angels.

And then it says she turned toward a gardener and she was face to face with Jesus not knowing it. But what's interesting is John says the same word again. It says she turned to Jesus. The first time she turned to him as a gardener, the second time she didn't move herself at all.

She wasn't, she didn't have her back to Jesus. She turned to him, she turned to him as Savior and Lord this time, not just a gardener, not just a man. And it's personal. She turns to her Lord. This turning signifies something that has happened to all of us, turning to Christ.

Seeing him as Savior and Lord, seeing with regenerated eyes. Seeing with eyes to see and ears to hear. That's what she had, Mary, ears to hear. Turning to him, eyes to see.

She believed.

Their interaction continues in verse 17. Jesus said to her, stop clinging to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brethren and say to them, I ascend to my Father and your Father and my God and your God.

Now I have to tell you, this verse is regarded as one of the the most confusing and difficult verses in the Gospel of John, okay? This word, clinging, is actually just the most basic Greek word for touch.

So in the Greek New Testament here, it literally says, he told her, touch me not. Touch me not, Mary. And we can't spend a lot of time here since we have two more resurrection appearances to cover, but I will speak about this real quick, okay?

Many get carried away with whether Mary was at Jesus's feet and she was grasping his feet and touching him, or if she was about to touch him and he said, touch me not. If she embraced him and he said, touch me not.

So many people get caught up in actually what's happening. That's not the point. People will also get distracted by verse 27 because Jesus will invite Thomas to touch his body. Okay? That may seem like a contradiction of this.

Jesus says, touch me not, Mary, and then in verse 27, we're gonna see he says, touch me, Thomas. So what's going on? He's not yet ascended. Some are like, does that mean he ascended in between his time of talking with Mary and Thomas?

That's not what it is.

Okay?

Those are the wrong things to keep in mind. Think about the context. The context has been as a disciple of Jesus, a woman named Mary has now three times expressed her great longing to find Jesus's physical body.

Okay?

She wants to find Jesus's physical body. Like Peter, like the disciples, like the Jews, everyone has wanted a physical human Messiah to rule and reign on a throne made by men. But Jesus corrects Mary to show her and every other disciple and even us how he is to be approached post-resurrection.

You see, in a sense, the question is, how can the Lord be encountered now after the resurrection? How is he to be found after he leaves? Jesus is gonna leave. How will he be found? You see, church, Jesus is not the Jewish rabbi.

He's the cosmic Christ who rules and reigns from his throne made without human hands over heaven and earth. She doesn't need to keep looking for his body or to be consumed with his physical being, staying on earth.

Who and where Christ is has to now be seen in light of his death, burial, resurrection, and ascension. You see, he said before, a time is coming when he is to go back to the Father. He said that in chapter 14.

In fact, for Jesus, we talked about this, for Jesus to be fully present with all his people, he must leave. He says, it's better for you that I go. Because then Jesus's presence isn't constrained to one locality, one place.

Mary, stop clinging to me. Touch me not. Don't hold on to my body. I won't be staying here forever. Come to me the way I have called you to come to me, the way I call everyone to come to me, by faith.

You see, the Holy Spirit can then come and be given to each one of us so that he is with us always. And that's why later when Jesus invites Thomas to touch his body, it's for a very different category.

You see,.

He tells Thomas, touch my scars, touch my wounds, because Thomas wasn't trying to keep Jesus's physicalness here. Thomas didn't believe. And so, Jesus telling Mary, touch me not, but telling Thomas, touch me, is under the same vein.

It's in pursuit of the same thing. It's for belief. It's for faith. It's for the mission ahead. It's for the ascension. It's for the fact that Jesus won't be just that Jewish Messiah in Judea. He'll be the Messiah of every tongue, tribe, people, and nation over the entire globe.

He must go. He must leave. He must ascend. So Jesus prohibits Mary to cling to his body. One commentator paraphrases a section like this, as if Jesus is saying, stop holding on to me, for I am not yet in the ascended state.

So you do not have to hang on to me as if I were about to disappear permanently yet. You see, Jesus is going to be on the earth for 40 more days. In fact, Hebrews 5 .7 says, previously were the days of his flesh.

Previously, before the resurrection, were the days of his flesh. Not that he's no longer the God-man, but the process of ascension is beginning. The process of leaving has started, okay? You see, in the 40 days after the resurrection, Jesus would appear, and then he would go away, and he would reappear multiple times, possibly going to the heavenly realm, sometimes in the interim.

But the culmination of all of this, of this beginning of the ascension, will be reached at his dramatic and glorious ascension recorded in Acts chapter 1. That's where the ascension is recorded, Acts chapter 1.

So I hope you can now see Mary and the apostles and all of us shouldn't want the physical and earthly ministry Christ. You and I shouldn't want the physical ministry Jesus, the earthly Jesus. We ought to want the resurrected and ascended Christ.

The one not bound to the Judean locality, but who is making himself known to people everywhere and at every time.

Okay?

Now before we move on to the next verse, notice how Jesus uses my brethren. Go to my brethren. And he calls his father, their father, and God, their God. You see, what was exclusively the divine right of the Son of God from eternity past has now been given to us.

It's been given to them. And brethren here, in the Greek, is meant to include both men and women. Go to the brethren. And so this is a fulfillment of John chapter 1 When it says, but as many as received him, to them he gave them the right to become children of God.

They're his brethren post-resurrection because they're now the children of God. Those who have not been born of the will of the flesh nor the will of man, but of God. And so verse 18, Mary Magdalene came announcing to the disciples, I have seen the Lord.

She tells the disciples, I've seen the Lord, and she reported everything that he told her to say to them. Okay? John doesn't tell us how the disciples reacted, but we can assume that their faith was still very little.

The Lord is alive! And they're like, they don't believe. They can't believe it. So that was the first post-resurrection appearance in the longest account of the three. Now for the second, okay? Verse 19, so when it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and when the doors were shut where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in their midst and said to them, peace be with you.

You see this exact scene paralleled in Luke 24, 36 through 42, if you want to view it from another angle, by the way. And so, it's possible that just ten men are here. You have the twelve apostles, but Judas Iscariot, it's long gone, and Thomas isn't here.

You have ten apostles, and we learned that it's still Easter Sunday. It's still the day of the resurrection. It is evening now, and the apostles are likely going over all the events that have occurred the past few days, since they all scattered that Thursday night in the Garden of Gethsemane.

They ran for it when the soldiers were coming, and so they're possibly going over everything that has been seen and heard, and the doors were shut, locks were turned, window curtains were drawn as they were fearing the Jewish leaders may come after them next.

We were followers of this guy. Maybe they're coming after us. And so you have stress, you have anxiety, you have worry, you have fear, and not to mention confusion regarding that some women have come forth and said that he's alive.

It's like, what do we believe?

He's alive?

And fear has overwhelmed them, and all of a sudden, in a locked room with the curtains drawn,.

Jesus.

Materializes, appears suddenly in their midst. Supernatural in nature. Like he appeared or passed through the grave clothes, he came right into a locked room, and with power and joy and love and wisdom and strength and all the wonderful things about Christ, he says literally,.

Peace to you.

I know my translation says, Peace be with you, but it literally says, Peace to you. And this is no ordinary greeting of Shalom. Shalom, peace. This is a different kind of peace now with the resurrected Christ.

Peace be to you. That is the peace that it is finished, purchased for them and for us. This is, this is peace. This is eternal peace. This is not a salutation, but a declaration and an announcement of blessing.

Romans 5, 1. Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. This is peace that purchased heaven for you. This is real peace. This is not just a ceasefire.

This isn't just a pause on sin and death. It's peace for you and me, and it makes sense now. You ever notice in the, in the Pauline epistles, the letters of Paul, he often begins his letters with the combination of grace and peace.

You know, we always, we always talk about grace so much and grace is so important, but he says grace and peace. That's what Jesus says. Peace be to you. Verse 20,. And when Jesus had said this, he showed them both his hands and his side, and the disciples then rejoiced when they saw the Lord.

You see, if anyone was crucified and they had, and they had wounds in their hands and in their feet, they could potentially be taken off the cross before death and, and, and healed and recovered and they could have taken care of this person who was crucified and, and, and the wounds could have healed over and you would still see the scars and everything.

They could have done that with someone, but Jesus has something no one else has. He has no broken legs and he has a spear hole in his side. That will forever be what distinguishes Jesus from all others who are.

Crucified.