John 20:19-23 (New Creation People - Part 1)

Thank you for subscribing to the Shepherds Church podcast. This is our Lord's Day Sermon. We pray that as we declare the Word of God that you would be encouraged, strengthened in your faith, and that you would catch a greater vision of who Christ is.

May you be blessed in the hearing of God's Word, and may the Lord be with you. If you've ever been to Bryce Canyon in Utah, you will know that it is one of the most beautiful and interesting spots, I think, in all of the United States.

I rank it as one of my top two or three places that I've been in all of my little travels that I have gotten the chance, by the Lord's grace, to see. But one of the best things about it is this breathtaking sunrise that occurs on Inspiration Point.

It's the highest point at Bryce Canyon, and it looks perfectly down into this little canyon where there's, I think it's called stalagmites, but it's formations that grow upward, not the ones that grow downward.

And what happens is, across the horizon, it's as flat as it can possibly be, except for where you're up on this high point, and upon the horizon you'll see the sun just barely starting to creep over the skyline, and all of these little formations, these stalagmites, are starting to get lit up.

The shadows are going away. The light is casting detail on all of these beautiful different things, and it's honestly breathtaking. If you want to see more, you can obviously Google it. I've got a great picture on my phone from the moment.

My grandpa and I actually slept in our rental car, which was a very small little Chevy Volt, and I'm not a very small man, so it was not comfortable. We slept in Zion National Park just so that we could see the sunrise.

We had heard a lot about it, and it was breathtaking, and it revealed so much beauty that we couldn't see just minutes before. Now that's sort of a comparison to what we're going to look at in John chapter 20.

Mary comes to the tomb, and it's dark, and it's empty, and she comes as a woman who's blind. She can't see the things of God, and she's wondering what is happening. Instead of the sun rising, the sun rose, and he brought light onto everything that was dark, and just like me standing up on top of this thing straining, and then all of a sudden I can see everything, this is what we see in John chapter 20, that Jesus brings light, and that all of the beauty and the complexity of the scriptures is revealed to his people because he's the light of the world.

Now what we're going to do today is we're going to look at just a few verses in John chapter 20, and we're going to see that there's a lot underneath them that we would not see if we didn't have the light of Jesus's new creation shining on it.

We're going to see as he shines his light on this passage that Mary's story, like we saw last week, becomes our story. The disciples' story becomes our story, and the reason we can have so much confidence in who we are in Christ is because today we're going to see that he has brought new creation upon us.

Like I said in our in our law homily, we are new creations. The old things have passed away, the new has come, and today we're going to see eight points. There would have been 14, but I decided to divide the sermon into two.

You're welcome. There's eight things that we're going to see today about new creation. We're going to see that Jesus is the one who, oh, and they're all C's. So I'm trying to make this helpful. When I have a lot of points, I try to make it helpful.

Jesus is the one who commissions new creation. He's the one who resets the new creation clock. He's the one who overturns the old creation's chaos. He's the one who makes new creation carne. I couldn't think of a word for body, so there you go.

Jesus gives us new creation companion, the Holy Spirit. He makes us new creation chapels. He turns us into new creation cities, and he gives us a new creation commission or a craft. So with that, turn with me to John 20, 19 through 23, as we see eight things that Jesus has done to us by manner of bringing new creation.

So John chapter 20, we will begin in verse 19. I'll wait just a moment for you to get there, and now that moment is finished. John 20, 19 through 23. 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, and the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. So Jesus said to them again, 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.

We'll wait for that verse next week. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, thank you for the fact that you are bringing new creation. The old creation fell into sin and misery. The old creation fell into ruin and chaos.

And because of your resurrection, new creation is coming and has already come. Lord, help us today to see that right now as we live on earth, there are two creations that are existing. One is growing and one is decreasing.

One is becoming greater. One is becoming less. One is the old creation of sin and idolatry and misery and separation from God. And the other creation that is overtaking that creation, that old creation, is new creation.

The new creation people of God who've been bought and paid for by Christ, the first fruit of a new creation. Lord, help us to see that we've been caught up into that, that we are fundamentally different as the people of God from the people of the world.

And Lord, help us with joy in our hearts to be missionaries and servants to declare these good things to the nation so that the nations would come in. Lord, we ask these things in Jesus name. Amen. Now in John 20, John chapter 20, we have finally arrived in the New Testament.

And maybe you're like, how is that possible? We've been in the book of John for three and a half years, Kendall. I think probably four. You're like, we're already in the New Testament. And I would say, well, in one way you're right.

But John chapter 1 through John chapter 19 is before Jesus is raised from the dead. So the old covenant pattern still exists. The temple still exists. There is no resurrected Savior. So in some way, we're now in the New Testament.

After four years of being in the Old Testament, watching Jesus do ministry, now he is alive and he is.

Reigning.

So in that sense, we come to our text today. We're in the New Testament. New creation is only 10 hours old at this point, and it only has two members. Well, three. The thief on the cross, who Jesus said today, you'll be with me in paradise, and two living members, Jesus and Mary.

Mary's the only one so far who's come into the new creation kingdom, and we saw that last week. Now, just 10 hours into this new creation world, Jesus is going to multiply his followers. He began, as we talked about last week, like Adam and Mary or like Adam and Eve in the garden.

Jesus began with him and Mary. But now he's gonna do what Adam and Eve should have done and multiply to the glory of God. And what's he gonna do? He's gonna take his new creation light to the disciples and he's gonna win them over so that we go from 2 to 14.

13, technically, Judas is dead. From 2 to 13 people.

Instantly.

He's gonna start with a small spark in Mary and he's gonna cause it to be a wildfire that has now gone to 2 .5 billion people or more on earth. Pretty amazing. Our first point is that Jesus is the one who brings new creation.

And in this point, I'd like to actually prove to you that new creation is a part of this passage. I want you to see that old creation as it existed, types, shadows, and separation from God is passing away and that Jesus has brought something fundamentally new.

He's made a new world and that new world is overtaking the old world. When John begins this passage, he says, so when it was evening on that day, the first day of the week. John is being very deliberate here.

You remember last week we talked about John said and so it was morning and now he says so it was evening. So you have an evening and morning.

Pattern.

Just like where? In the book of Genesis. In the book of Genesis, the old creation was began by evening and morning. Now the new creation has begun by morning and evening. Now we start from light instead of starting from darkness.

In that original creation week, it was light that first came into the world. It was light that broke through the darkness and that is exactly what happened when Mary found the tomb of Jesus. The world was dark.

You remember when Jesus on the cross, darkness came upon the land. You remember that the earth was shaking and breaking because the old world was falling apart. And when Jesus came out of the tomb, light had come the first morning.

Now, why am I saying that this is a new creation? Because the old creation had this evening and morning pattern. Evening and morning the first day, evening and morning the second day, evening and morning the third day, and it goes on until the seventh day.

You'll notice that there is not an evening and morning the eighth day because God established a heptamerous structure for the world. A seven-day week so that old creation was finished on the sixth day and God reigned on the seventh because there was no more evening and morning.

God's continued to reign ever since. But now the next evening and morning passage in the Bible is John 20. After thousands of years of no evening and morning new creation patterns, now God is doing new things again.

He's made a new evening and morning and he's made it in his Son. This is not the beginning of the eighth day of the old creation. This is the beginning of the first day of a new creation. And we know that because Jesus is the light of the world who broke forward out of the tomb just like God spoke light and in the first creation.

Again, remember the old creation began with darkness. The new creation begins with light. You remember that in the old creation story, God took his presence and he began ordering the chaos and here Jesus is taking his presence sharing it with his people and bringing them into peace.

He's ordering the chaos in the same way. So you have a new creation cycle. You have new creation that's commissioned, but there's more. The second thing I'd like to share with you is that he restarted, he fixed the old creation clock.

He fixed time because time was broken. You remember in Genesis 1? This is like the stalagmites that I talked about in the introduction. I'm just going to talk about eight of them that the light is shining on and hopefully we'll see beauty in the new creation that Jesus is bringing.

So time. Time began when God said in the beginning. There was no time before in the beginning because time hadn't started, but when Moses says in the beginning there was God, time and space began to exist at that very point.

God before that was existing eternally in infinite timeless glory. But when he started earth, the cosmos, time began. Time was created. Space was created and the clock, our understanding of time began, but it didn't last for very long because in Genesis chapter 3 the clocks were broken.

Before Genesis chapter 3, time was a blessing to God's people. Time was the accumulation of days. If you'd lived for 800 years, if Adam had not had sinned, time would have been a glory to him. It would have been, I've lived with God for 800 years, 8 ,000 years, 800 ,000 years, but Adam sinned.

And because Adam sinned, time now became a curse. Now everyone in this room understands this. The more time you accumulate, the more cursed your body feels. Time was broken. Time, instead of causing greater blessings, now invites greater brokenness.

So time itself was broken. But in a way, time itself was fixed in John chapter 20. Not perfectly because that'll happen at the end, but time spiritually was fixed. Why? Why do I say that? Because in the original creation, we died spiritually instantly and our bodies started to decay over time.

Here,.

For all those who are in Christ, they're alive. They're alive in a spiritual way and they have been given eternal life. The clock has been fixed. No longer is time a curse to you. No longer is death a curse to the Christian.

Everyone else on earth can legitimately be afraid of death because death welcomes them into an eternity of sorrow. Not the Christian. The Christian need not be afraid of death because death welcomes us into the presence of Christ.

And.

Death ushers us into a place where now we wait on the end when it gets even better. Where our body and our soul are joined back together again, and we live with Jesus physically in a garden paradise forever.

Time is now our friend as Christians. Time is now that thing that's been given to us so that we can live and serve the Lord. One of my favorite poems, I tell this to my children a lot, is by C .T. Studd, which is a great last name if you're a man.

Who are you? I'm Mr. Studd. C .T. Studd said, all things shall soon be passed. Only what is done for Christ will last. And that's a longer poem, but that's the only part that I remember and that's vibrant to me because now time is my friend.

Now time has been given to me as a gift so that I can love and serve the Lord and death has been given to me as a gift so that I can go and be with him. So Paul says that whether I live, it is good, and whether I die, it is well, because to live is Christ, to die is gain.

Now time is a blessing. It's no longer a curse. Jesus has brought new creation time. That's the second thing. The third thing is that he is now crushing the chaos, old creation chaos. Do you remember when God made the world, what does he do?

I want to prove something to you. It's really fascinating. The very first thing that God does after he says, declares that light comes, he's hovering over the chaos. He actually does that before he declares light.

He hovers over the chaos. He's hovering over the waters. This is a fascinating thing. Why would God hover over waters? What does that even mean? And where did the waters come from? Well in the ancient world, waters were the untamable realm.

Waters represented chaos. You can read it in Babylonian literature. You can read it in Canaanite literature. You can read it in any of the ancient societies. Water meant chaos. Why? Because it was untamable.

You couldn't tame the waters. You build a ship and the waters destroy it. You try to go across the sea and you take your life in your own hands. Water is something that refuses to be ordered by man, and it's still the case today.

Our elites are talking about going to Mars and we haven't even explored the oceans. I think they're more afraid of the oceans because the oceans are perilous. Who knows what's buried underneath there?

What I find so interesting about water in the ancient world is the great ship makers, the Philistines and even the Romans. Do you know how they sailed? They didn't sail through deep water. That didn't happen until much, much, much later.

If you wanted to sail from Jerusalem to Rome or from Rome to Jerusalem or across a large body of water, you would sail along the coastline so that you would never lose sight of the land. Why? Because if you crash because the water is so dangerous, you can at least hopefully swim back to shore.

So the way that they sailed was they took the long way right hugging up against the land. Because why? The water's dangerous. It's chaotic. In some ways, I think this is why God reveals himself as being the one who hovers over the water.

Because no one can tame the water but God. No one can bring order to the chaos but God. That's why in Genesis 1, he hovers like a bird over the water. That's why when the flood happened, the symbol of the Holy Spirit being that dove hovering over the water.

That's why he sets his throne upon the flood in Psalm 29 10. He says that I the Lord reign over the flood. You talk about a chaotic body of water. It's not like a gentle little pond that is in your backyard where you where you fish for, you know, little fish or whatever else you do there.

This is a flood. The dam waters have been released. It's raging. It's flowing. It's drowning. It's it's breaking and yet God puts his throne above the waters. Why do you think Jesus walked on water? Was he showing off?

Or was he saying, you know God in the Old Testament? Yahweh who puts his throne above the water. I'm that God. I'm the one who rule. I'm the one who order the chaos. I'm the one who speaks and the storm stops.

He's showing that he is the one who breaks and orders the chaos. He's the one who pushes it back. Now in the earth the first creation God orders the chaos. We see this in six successive days. He separates light from darkness.

That's him ordering what was.

Disordered.

He separates sky from water or sky water from sky. The water is above from the waters below. That's him ordering what was disordered. He separates the ground from the land. The water from the dry land.

That's him ordering day three and then in day four five and six he installs rulers who will extend his order to creation. He installs the rulers in the sky the sun moon and stars who rule over the day and the night.

He installs rulers in the air and the water the birds and the.

The.

Sea beasts that team and and fill the waters in the in the in the air. He installs rulers over the ground humans who will who will bring his order to the world. Do you remember the first job that God gave Adam is to till the garden to order it to bring order to disorder and if he was successful in his job and he would have filled the garden full of worshiping people he would have had to order the whole world because he would have had to extend the borders of the of the garden until the whole world was a garden paradise.

He would have had to bring God's order to a disordered world. So God in the first chapter of Genesis is deliberately showing that he's the one who tames the chaos. He's the one who brings order to the disorder.

And yet what do we see in our sin in Genesis chapter 3? Humans were supposed to partner with God in bringing order to the world. And what did they do? They unleashed chaos back on the world. Sin is chaos.

That's a really good definition. If you want to know what sin is sin is the welcoming of chaos on your life. When you sin you're not just breaking a rule you are welcoming disorder confusion and chaos.

And what we see in the rest of the Old Testament is people, nations, and institutions that can't bring order. Moses and the people of Israel they can't do it. The temple, the priests, the kings, the prophets, the sacrifice, the feast, all of it.

All of it. So that at the end of the Old Testament there is more chaos than ever. Jesus is the one who began the pushback. Because Jesus is God he's the one who came and ordered the chaos. He's the one who put sin and misery to flight in his resurrection.

He's the one who's going to bring every curse under healing. Jesus rose from the dead in order to begin the ministry of restoration. So that all the world that's filled with chaos and sin and misery will come under his lordship so that after his reign is finished the world will look like he wants it.

He will bring order to it in a world that's still filled with disorder. And maybe you're like well that takes a long time. Of course it does. It took 4 ,000 years for the earth to get in the shape that it was in.

If that if that's the case, we're only halfway through the restoration plan and I think there's more time than that. You remember every year when you go to get your Christmas lights out of the attic the knot that they're in, if you've ever seen Christmas Vacation, the knot that those lights are in.

Jesus is the one who untangles the knots who brings order to a chaotic world. Let me give you some examples of this. You think about government. If there's one place on earth that is perpetually knotted up where people are tripping over each other and abounding in confusion and chaos, it is government.

And yet Jesus has slowly over the last 2 ,000 years been unwinding the chaos that is inherent in human government. How do I know that? Well in John chapter 20, there was one Christian alive and there was Jesus, Mary and Jesus.

Then his 12 disciples came later. Do you know today that over the last 2 ,000 years there have been more Christian nations than I can count to you right now that I could even find in my research? There's been nations who declare that they are Christian nations.

Right now, and I'm not saying that all of these are genuine, but right now there are at least that I could find 30 presidents, kings, prime ministers, leaders of countries who say that they are Christian.

In 2 ,000 years, Jesus went from an entirely unknown messianic figure in the backwater area of Judah to now entire nations call themselves Christians and where now people in halls of power say that they're believers.

Do you see how multiplicative the gospel has been over the last 2 ,000 years so that now it's grown and so that now it's even infecting the halls of power in a good way? Praise God for that. I think before this world is over, we will have a world filled with Christian princes and kings and politicians and Jesus will finish the job of taming the chaos so that now we don't have governments that celebrate evil.

So that in the future, we won't have kings who celebrate a culture of death. Jesus will bring his order to the nations. Now you ask yourself, are we finished? Absolutely not. We have a lot of work to do.

We have a lot of work to do. There's Christians in this room who ran for office. Do it again. Bring Jesus into the political sphere. Bring Jesus into the school boards. Bring Jesus into your job. Bring Jesus into every area of your life.

Why? Because there's a lot of chaos that needs to be untangled by the blood of Christ and he's using you as his ambassadors. Go on to DEI boards and wreck them to the glory of God. Go on to school boards and wreck them to the glory of God.

Bring his order and his life and his love and his peace to places that are still dark. If we don't, then who will? When Jesus tells us that we're the salt of the earth, salt is a preserving agent in an era where they did not have refrigerators.

If you didn't put salt on your bacon, your bacon turned green. If we don't be this, if we're not the salt of this country and the salt of the world, then what will happen to our country? It's exactly what has happened to our country.

As we've pulled back, it's turned.

Putrid.

So Jesus is using his people to bring order to the chaos. Why? Because he's the one who brings order to the chaos. What about health care? Health care is in shambles right now. I barely want to participate in health care because the entire industry is built on greed.

The entire industry and I'm a novice in this area, so forgive me, but it's built upon a subscription plan to keep you sick and keep you a customer forever. It's not built on health. It's not built on restoring you to good health and order.

It's built on keeping you sick enough, but alive enough to where you can continue to pay so that they can have the biggest buildings in town. Do you know that God wants to reinvigorate health care? Why?

Christians are the ones who invented hospitals. Christians are the ones who, in the Old Testament, were the ones who brought health and healing. That's what the priests were. Do you know God was the one who invented centralized health care?

He put a tree of life in the middle of the garden. Centralized health care. He's the one who healed people of diseases. He's the one who brought his new creation. Jesus is the one who healed people of their sicknesses and cured them of their diseases.

When they died, he defeated death. When he died, he defeated death. He's the one who led his people to invent medicines and vaccines. The reason that many of us today are afraid of vaccines because the world is not godly.

Because they're weaponizing technology in ways that aren't for human life and flourishing, but they're using it for things that are breaking life and destroying human flourishing. My point is is that Jesus is the one who tames the chaos.

Jesus is the one who takes us and uses us to tame the chaos. He's the one who causes our people to be the ones who made the most beautiful orchestras. The greatest composer of all time is Bach. Bach was a devoted Christian.

You think about the great hymns of the church. You think about artwork and all every industry that the world has that once flourished. Science,.

Engineering,.

The guy who invented the telegraph. All of it was invented by Christians. Why? Because they saw their role as a Christian as my Jesus is bringing order to chaos and me as his servant. Now I'm going to bring order to a broken world through inventing things and making things and starting businesses and doing all of these things.

The chaos is not going to win. The reason why it's temporarily winning a few little pop shop battles in a massive war is because the Christian church has pulled away. We've started seeing science. Oh, no, that's what the Darwinians do.

That's what the evolutionists do.

No, we need to get back into the sciences.

We need to be the mathematicians. We need to be the college professors. We need to be the presidents. We need to be the kinds of people who bring life to the world. The church is the only one. The ones who have the Holy Spirit of God are the only ones who can bring life to a chaotic world.

The rest of the world who does not have the Spirit of God can only bring more death. The chaos is not going to win. And it won't win ultimately, but in our generation I would challenge all of us to be a part of seeing it pushed back because we belong to Christ.

If we do that, it's not going to win in our government. If we do that, it's not going to win in our country, in our commonwealth, in our county, in our city, or in our community. If we do that, it's not going to win in our church.

If we do that, if we're the ones who are pushing back for the glory of God, it will not win in education. It will not win in health care. It will not win in the arts, which are pumping sewage into our living rooms via our televisions.

It won't win in our career. It won't win in our finances. It won't win in our family. It won't win in our children. The left won't be able to steal the children that we make by their godless ideologies if we push back the chaos and teach them the knowledge of God.

It won't win in your marriage. It won't win in your sexuality. It won't win in your heart, your mind, your soul, your body if we would take on the role that Jesus gave to us, the church, and to push back the things that are broken for the glory of God, then we would see the gates of hell fall down again instead of mocking the church.

The question that we have to wrestle with, is it will it be Christ or will it be chaos? If you have Christ, then peace and order and life come into everything that you touch. It won't be perfect, but but you will have peace.

If you don't have Christ, you will have chaos. It is either Christ or chaos. We must choose who we will serve. Jesus brought new creation to the chaos. He brought order to what was broken and he's called us to be the ones who do the same.

That's number three. Number four, he's giving new creation bodies or to keep the alliteration going, carne. I thought that was funny. I thought there'd be many people who looked at that and said, oh, well, so be it.

How do we know this is true? How do we know Jesus is gonna bring new bodies? Well, we know that he brought this new evening and morning. So he's the author of new creation. We know that Paul says that he's the new and better Adam, which means that he's going to triumph over everything that Adam failed.

But what does Jesus show up in in this passage? He shows up in a new body. He tells Mary, he says don't cling to me. Why does he say don't cling to me? Because he's in his resurrected body. What does that mean?

It means he's telling her first and foremost, Mary, I finished and completed my mission. Now you get about yours. That's the first thing that it means. The second thing that it means is that he's transitioning his disciples away from reliance upon his body.

Jesus was local. If they wanted support, they went to him. If they wanted encouragement, they went to him. Now he's preparing them for the time where his body is not going to be with them. His body is going to be in heaven and they're gonna go through the Holy Spirit to receive help from Christ.

Why can he do that? Because he's got a resurrection body. But he's also emphasizing the fact that he's the first fruit of a new creation so that one day you and I also will receive a new body. Amen! Look at Jesus in this passage.

He can walk through walls. He can show up out of nowhere and people are like, how did you get there? Because he has a heavenly body which one day you and I will have. How do we know this? Second Thessalonians says that Jesus will return with a shout and he will call the dead out of the graves and he will reunite their old bodies with their spirit.

First Corinthians 15 says it will have an imperishable body. Can you imagine what that's gonna be like? Because it's hard to but I I think about like imagine if you fell off a boat and like fish ate you.

Where's your body? I don't know but he's gonna remake it. What if you're cremated? I used to think you can't be cremated. It was like a brand-new Christian. I was like, well, how would you be cremated?

That's weird. Jesus can put you back together again. Imagine if you had spiritual eyes and you could see all of the atoms and electrons coming back together to form new imperishable bodies that be reunited with your soul and then in those bodies forever to praise your Lord.

What a glorious thing! Christ is raised in his new creation body. Why? To promise us that new creation bodies will come to us. Which means that one day we're not going to have arthritis. Which means that one day we're not gonna squint to try to see things.

Which means that one day we won't have cancers and foot aches and plantar fasciitis or whatever else that afflicts us. One day he is going to make new bodies for us to serve the Lord with joy forever.

No more grimaces, no more pain. Joy in his presence forever. That's number four. Number five, he's given us a new creation companion. New creations all over this text. It's everywhere. What do I mean by new creation companion?

I mean that Jesus is going to give them a companion to be with them forever. He's leaving and it's better that he leaves because he's going to give them his spirit. This is not the first time in the text where Jesus sent his disciples on a mission.

Look what it says. Verse 25 21 nope 20 through 22 and when he had said this he showed both of his hands and aside the disciples and they rejoiced when they saw the Lord. So Jesus said to them again, 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.

He's connecting sent with spirit and this is not the first time that he sent them. You remember in Matthew 10, he sent them out two by two 12 of them or he sent them out 12 disciples to do mission in Judah and he was their support system.