John 20, “Where There’s Life, There’s Hope”, Dr. John B. Carpenter

All right, John chapter 20, be reading the entire chapter, hear the word of the Lord. Now, on the first day of the week,

Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb.

So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them,

They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him. So Peter went out with the other disciple and they were going toward the tomb.

Both of them were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first.

And stooping to look in, he saw the linen cloths lying there, but he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came following him and went into the tomb.

He saw the linen cloths lying there, and the face cloth which had been on Jesus's head, not lying with the linen cloths, but folded up in a place by itself

Then the other disciple who had reached the tomb first also went in and he saw and believed, for as yet they did not understand the scripture that he must rise from the dead.

Then the disciples went back to their homes. But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb and she wept.

She stooped to look into the tomb and she saw two angels in white sitting where the body of Jesus had lain, one on the head and one in the feet.

They said to her, why are you weeping? And she said to them,

They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him. Having said this, she turned around and saw

Jesus standing, but she did not know who, she did not know that it was Jesus. And Jesus said to her,

Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking? 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.

And Jesus said to her, Mary. She turned and said to him in Aramaic, Rabboni, which means teacher.

And Jesus said to her, do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the

Father, but go to my brothers and say to them, I am ascending to my Father and your

Father, to my God and your God. Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples,

I have seen the Lord and that he had said these things to her. On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of the

Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, Peace be with you. When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side, and then the disciples were glad when they saw the

Lord. And Jesus said to them again, Peace be with you, as the Father has sent me, even so I am sending 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, they are forgiven.

If you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld. Now Thomas, one of the twelve called the twin, was not with them when

Jesus came. And so the other disciples told him, We have seen the Lord. But he said to them, unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails and place my finger into the mark of the nails and place my hand into his side,

I will never believe. Eight days later, his disciples were inside again and Thomas was with them, although the doors were locked.

And Jesus came and stood among them and said, Peace be with you. And then he said to Thomas, put your finger here and see my hands, put out your hand and place it in my side.

Do not disbelieve, but believe. Thomas answered him, My Lord and my

God. Jesus said to him, Have you believed because you have seen me?

Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed. Now, Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book.

But these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

May the Lord add his blessings to the reading of his holy word. Where there's life, there's hope.

I still have life. There's hope that I may survive the sickness. You ever heard that? It's a very old saying going back to Roman times.

Where there's life, there's hope. Sometimes it's said to seriously ill people. I don't think I'm seriously ill, but I'm ill.

But it's said to them to encourage them. You keep fighting for life. Keep taking the medicines or doing the treatments or whatever, the therapy.

You can keep looking for medicines. Do the physical therapy, homeopathic remedies, treatments, whatever it is.

Hang on to life. Keep scouring every resource nature has. Everything in medical science, traditional remedies, chicken soup, make a doses of vitamin

C, the right kinds of exercises, acupuncture, ginseng, positive thinking.

Maybe watching comedies to unlock the power of laughter. All to keep hope alive.

Where there's life, there's hope. But think about the flip side of that statement. Where there's no life, then there's no hope, right?

And in our experience, that is true. In the confined box that is our world of biology, of cause and effect, of science, of nature, that statement is startlingly, soberingly, depressingly, true.

But there's no life. There's no hope. It was Sunday morning and Jesus was dead.

He received a brutal flogging that could have killed many weaker people. He trudged to the execution site, not quite able to carry his own cross there.

He was diagnosed as dead by people who had seen many men die. They were experts on what death looked like.

They were professionals at inflicting death. That was their job. But just to make certain, one of them jabbed a spear into his chest and he was definitely dead.

Wrapped in cloths, just before the Sabbath started, he was put in a rich man's tomb. There was no life.

And as far as his followers were concerned, there was no hope. Mary Magdalene comes while it's still dark, perhaps just before the first, you know, light of dawn.

And she comes to put the finishing touches on the burial process. She didn't come with hope because, after all, there was no life as far as she knew.

And yet she finds the stone rolled away from the mouth of the tomb. Now she probably had expected for it to be a chore, maybe to get the soldiers who were stationed there to help her roll away that stone because it'd be probably too big for her.

And so she's surprised to find stone rolled away. Maybe at first happy, relieved, but as she looks inside and she sees no body.

Notice she doesn't conclude that Jesus has been raised. That's not her immediate conclusion.

She doesn't go skipping back to the disciples, you know, skipping with joy, singing, Christ the Lord is risen today.

No. Immediately she runs to tell Peter and John in verse 2. There's a lot of running in this chapter.

First, Mary Magdalene is running back to Peter and John. Notice her report. They have taken the

Lord out of the tomb and we do not know where they have laid him. She still assumes that Jesus is dead. They have no expectation otherwise that he was going to be raised.

Jesus told him they were going to be, but they just didn't they didn't remember it. They didn't believe it. One of the explanations some skeptics try to make to deny

Jesus's resurrection is they say, well, it's wish fulfillment. They just, his followers so wished that he would rise that they imagined that it happened.

But here Mary Magdalene doesn't have any such wish, no expectation of a resurrection.

She assumes that someone took Jesus's body. That's the only logical conclusion that she could think of because after all

Jesus was dead. And when there's no life there's no hope. Then there's more running.

This time a race, sort of. Peter and John run to the tomb even though the Lord Jesus told them that he would take up his life again.

They didn't understand what had happened. They had no expectations, no hope of resurrection because after all there was no life, but they're curious.

So they run to the tomb. Notice the little detail in verse 4. There's a lot of little details in this chapter that, you know, some people try to say they're symbolic for this or that.

I don't think so. I think it's a sign that it actually happened. It's actual history. The detail in verse 4 is that John outran

Peter. First it suggests they were running together in verse 3 and then John in his eagerness couldn't hold himself back to stay at Peter's pace.

Peter can't run as fast as John. He surged ahead. John surged ahead and beat Peter to the tomb. That's the kind of little detail you find in true eyewitness accounts.

The kind that show that there's not some symbolic myth like, you know, not just a metaphor for overcoming despair.

But the reporting of what really happened one Sunday morning. John outran Peter and when he got to the tomb in verse 5 he stooped in, look at the entrance and sees what's inside.

He sees only the cloths lying there. Impetuous Peter is not reserved so dares to rush in and finds no body.

Notice that it says twice in verses 5 and 6 that the cloths were lying there. And the implication is that they were lying as if they were enwrapping a human body, but there's no body inside them.

Perhaps they were still in the shape of they were around the body of Jesus that his body had just passed right through them.

Just as later he would appear through locked doors twice in this chapter. They're locked and he comes right in.

It looked like it didn't look like it would if grave robbers had been at it.

Kind of Mary Magdalene's first thought. Someone took him. But if it had been robbed, you know, everything would have been taken, especially the cloths.

You know cloths soaked in all those spices. Remember that 75 pounds of spices that Nicodemus brought?

That would be worth something. People would pay for that. But they were just lying there. Thieves would have taken everything or if they left something it'd be a mess.

Not like this. Only the piece of cloth wrapping around the head is separate in verse 7.

Folded up tidily by itself. Revealing a hole where the neck would be so they could see inside the cloths and clearly see that there was no body in it.

So with all the spices that they had used to wrap the body of Jesus, the cloths likely formed a kind of shell like a discarded chrysalis after a butterfly has emerged.

Finally in verse 8, John follows Peter to the tomb and he sees the whole scene.

Now seeing this, John believes. He sees that even after Jesus was dead, that death on a cross that he described for us so that we would believe.

Remember we believe Jesus died for our sins. We believe he is who he said he is simply because of the cross.

Here he believes that where there's still life even when there doesn't look like there's any still life, there is life after death, resurrection.

And so there's still hope. Only after seeing that proof of the resurrection did he understand scripture in verse 9.

Only after seeing this and then believing was he able to make sense out of scripture.

Scripture had all along said that Jesus must rise from the dead, but until they experience it they wouldn't believe it.

And it's the same today. People need to experience the reality of the risen Christ before they can understand scripture.

Until they encounter the resurrection the Bible will remain for them a mysterious sometimes weird book.

Something disturbing. Incomprehensible. Often they say it's boring because it's about God.

It's not about them. But when you are raised from the dead now you have spiritual life then the interest, the appetite, the passion for God and his word will inevitably come.

It will come just as naturally as hunger does to a newborn baby. It will come just as naturally to you because you now have that life that produces the hunger, the hunger for God.

You see the problem for those who have no real appetite for God, who find the Bible and the church is so boring.

Their problem is not that they just lack discipline and they need to make themselves do what they should do.

They should read the Bible and they should go to church. Their problem isn't a lack of discipline. The problem is they are not yet alive to God.

They've not yet encountered resurrection life. There's no life in their heart and where there's no life there's no hope.

Well, John sees the proof of the resurrection. So he believes. But before seeing him on the cross, pierced, hearing him announced, it is finished.

Remember before John believed he was the lamb of God come to take away sins. Now John believes

Jesus is raised, that he is alive. He believes both now. Do you?

But Mary had come back to the tomb of Peter and John and lingers after they've returned home.

She still doesn't understand. She still doesn't believe, unlike John. All she knows is that Jesus was dead.

And she's weeping over that and weeping that now they have to suffer one more indignity.

They've already been humiliated. Their master has been crucified, put in this tomb, and now they can't even bury him properly.

She assumes that Jesus's body has been stolen and two angels appear in the tomb. You know, you would normally think that would must have startled her.

She probably didn't know at first that they were angels. She probably knew they were angels after. She could go, oh, that's who they were.

She probably assumes that they were just passers -by who came and sat on where the body had been.

One at the head, one at the foot. And they ask her why she's crying in verse 13. Now from her point of view, crying seems like the only thing to do.

They've lost Jesus, their Lord, and now they can't even bury him properly, have a proper funeral.

What are they to do? You know, there was no life. There's no hope. But from the perspective of heaven, never was there more, a more inappropriate time or place to cry.

She turns around in her tear -blurred vision, sees another man, apparently off to the side.

She's looking at these two men who turn out to be angels, trying to respond to them, and she there's another man on the side that she takes to be the gardener.

And he too asks her the same question. Woman, why are you crying? Why are you weeping? The implication is that she doesn't need to be weeping.

There's life and there's hope. He asks whom are you seeking?

Notice the implication of whom. Now you seek someone who is alive. He doesn't ask what are you seeking?

Like for a dead body, she thinks she's looking for a body, but she's really looking for someone who is alive, even if she doesn't know it.

She still doesn't get it though. She says courteously, sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.

She's still looking for a body even up to this point. She just wants to complete this burial process, give him the right funeral.

After all, Jesus was dead. She has no hope for him. Then in verse 16, the man says one word to her.

One word which remakes her world and transforms her forever.

The word that opened up to her the realization that with God there's always life and so always hope.

The word was her name, Mary. Suddenly she knew who he was and she declares in verse 16,

Rabboni, our master, teacher. She instinctively runs him, grasp him, cling to him, not wanting to let him go.

And the Lord Jesus gently, kindly pushes her away. Don't cling to me. He is alive, but he's not going to stay here on earth.

He is life and his hope and he will not always be waiting in the garden. There is a mission to accomplish and soon he will ascend to the

Father and empower us to continue that mission. Mary's part in that mission was to go and tell the disciples.

In verse 18, she does that. She announced to the disciples, I have seen the Lord. She's the first missionary of sorts.

The first one to called to tell others that Jesus is raised from the dead. Notice in verse 17,

Jesus refers to his disciples as his brothers. He's talking to Mary. Go tell my brothers.

You know, all but one of them had fled from him when he was arrested. One of them even denied that he knew him.

You'd think he'd be disgusted with a whole bunch, right? Tell those lousy, no good bums. I'm getting rid of them.

Starting over with another 12. But he knows that as far as men are concerned, there's where there's no life. There's no hope.

They had yet no life in them. They were not yet raised to new life in their heart. They didn't have a new heart out of sins and their weaknesses.

And so they could not help themselves. They were just as we are. Hopeless. Until we are raised.

Until life comes to us. And gives us hope. Now, that's happened.

Now it's happened to them. He's been raised. So they can be raised spiritually.

And so now they are brothers. We are Christ's brothers or sisters.

His Father is our Father. Our God is no longer the

God of this age. Our God is Jesus' God. In verses 19 to 23, the disciples are meeting.

It's the first day of the week, Sunday. We now meet on the first day of the week because that's the day

Jesus was raised. We have 52 resurrection Sundays a year because the resurrection is that important.

They were probably speculating, wondering about what all this means. Mary had told them her story.

John believed. Maybe Peter did too. Probably most did not yet. They were afraid.

The authorities had already killed their leader. Maybe they would come and hunt them down too. So the door was locked. And then the

Lord Jesus appears in verse 19 just through the locked door somehow. He calms them peace.

Be with you. Showed them his mortal wounds, his hands or wrists, and grants them peace, life, and hope.

They rejoice in verse 20 because they had life and hope again. They were glad, it says.

Raise your joys and triumphs high. Hallelujah. Jesus says it again in verse 21.

Peace, be with you. He repeats that twice. Peace is wholeness. It's everything right.

Everything in place. Everything's restored as it should be. Full of life. No death.

That's peace. And that's why Jesus, Jesus's resurrection begins. But their peace, their hope, you know, wasn't just kind of a drug to revel in.

I have peace. I'll just stay home and enjoy my peace. Like the peace an opioid can give you if you're in pain.

It's not just something for them to enjoy like sunbathing on a beach or soaking in the rays.

Oh, I love this peace. Their new peace and life and hope sends them on a mission in verse 21.

As the father has sent me, Jesus talking, as the father has sent me, even so I am sending you.

Just as he was sent into the world to bring life and hope, so too are the disciples sent.

So too are we sent. God saves us to send us.

So if you're a truly saved person this morning, you are a missionary. You've been given life to give hope to others.

You can tell your family. You can start there, especially your children. You're sent to anyone who will listen to you.

And not just you by yourself, kind of doing what you think best, what suits you, but as part of a body.

Here Jesus here speaks to all his disciples, to them as a group, to them as the church, and he sends them.

He sends us. Gives us a mission together. Jesus sends his community, one body bound together with one mission sent forth to gather, remember, his other sheep.

And that's what we do here. That's what we do here with Jim Jr. and Jim. That's what you can do in your own families or as you have opportunity.

The resurrection makes a difference. We formerly had no hope and no life. Now we have both.

If we really have these things, if we really encountered the Lord Jesus, we believed, we've been made alive, it will show.

Right? Life has vital signs. Go to the doctor. They look for your vital signs indicating how healthy is your life.

We have the Holy Spirit, the helper in us. In verse 22, he breathed on them. Remember, he says he's going to send the

Spirit to them. Now he's done that. He's breathed on them. The word breath is the word for spirit. Spirit comes into them.

So their spirit is new. If they've received, if we've received the Spirit, it will empower us, give us life.

Resurrection is not simply a kind of a comforting thought at a funeral. Resurrection here leads to mission.

So we will be energized because we have a new spirit to do our part in the church's mission, to invite people that we can invite, to witness when we have the opportunity, to give what we can give to, to share with our own families.

Again, especially to our children. As a church, we will be propelled by a mission to spread the gospel.

The way we use our money or our building or our time should be consumed with this mission the

Lord Jesus gave us. Because as he was sent, so were we to declare the good news that with God, there's always hope because there's always life.

When we go forth in the name and the authority of the Lord Jesus, seeking to fulfill our mission, spreading the gospel, we offer to the world forgiveness.

We offer them life. Forgiveness is being reconciled with God. That's what eternal life is, spiritual life is.

But in so doing, we also offer them the opportunity to walk away, to turn away from that offer. We offer them death.

We hope they don't take that, but they sometimes do. This is what verse 23 is getting at. If you forgive the sins of any, by recognizing that they have life from God, they have resurrection life because they have faith like John, they have the

Holy Spirit, then they are forgiven. The church has authority.

If you, Jesus is saying, plural, the church, if you withhold forgiveness from any because they don't show that they believe in Jesus, it is withheld.

Notice the importance of the church here in these verses, verse 23. Modern, individualistic people, just think it's them, it's me, alone and God walking together.

You know, walking on the beach, there's only two sets of footprints on the sand, or alone in the garden. But here Jesus says the church is in the middle.

If you forgive, if you forgive or withhold, you forgive or you withhold, you have the keys of the kingdom, you, the church, plural, you do that by being sent.

You're going with the gospel. And if people believe, you accept them.

And they're accepted by God. If they don't believe, they're not accepted by us or by God.

Not all the church was there. One member was missing. And until he saw for himself, he would not believe.

So we have the famous doubting Thomas. He adamantly declares in verse 25, unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side,

I will never believe. He makes his unbelief sound like it's a matter of principle, doesn't he?

I'm such a noble person, I'm not going to believe just because you tell me to. I have to see for myself. Show me.

He thought that was something noble about himself. He's probably a down -to -earth guy, practical, you know, the kind of man who knew the realities of life.

You know, come on, Jesus died and we know where there's no life, there's no hope. He would believe, he said, and he didn't really have to believe anymore when

Jesus condescended to show him personally. Until then, he's thinking, don't bother me with this fairy tale stuff about Jesus rising from the dead.

He was determined to believe only what he could put his hands on. And there are a lot of people like that today.

They're too consumed with all the hard realities of life. They're practical people. They know the way the world works.

In a world where when there is no life, there is no hope. That's just the way it is, they say.

And so they can't be bothered with talk of worship, talk of God, the impracticalities of you dreamers, all your chatter about trust

God, trust Jesus. No. They have bills to pay. They have jobs to keep. They have businesses to run.

They might even say that they're Christians. They like Jesus. They say they respect his teaching. But they don't believe that they can put worship ahead of money -making on Sunday mornings.

All the talk about seeking first the kingdom of God, trusting him to provide while we close the business to worship.

Oh, that's too otherworldly for them. Some of these people refuse to truly believe until God arranges a personal rendezvous with them.

They will not believe until they see for themselves. They think they're so important out of all the billions of people that have lived on earth that God should take some time out just for them just to reveal himself just to them, treat them as special.

And he does that very thing here for Thomas but he lets him know in verse 29 that this kind of revelation is indeed special, very special.

Most will need the blessing of being able to believe without seeing. Thomas doesn't get that blessing.

Instead, Jesus calls his bluff. He appears, this is eight days later, so it's going to be on a Monday. He appears this time with Thomas present and challenges them in verse 27.

Put your finger here and see by hands and put out your hand, place it to my side.

Do not disbelieve but believe. Stop being a doubter.

Be a believer. Thomas, no doubt. To overcome, to actually dare touch him like that, he answers

Jesus in words that for an Orthodox religious Jew would have been unthinkable before this revelation.

Thomas answers in words that just flow out of the impact of this sight before him and these words are the conclusion, are the climax to the book of John.

My Lord and my God. Now he believed.

Do you? Now if you don't, Jesus will probably not especially reveal himself to you like that.

Instead, he sent apostles to write down these words for you so that you can read them and believe.

They were so committed to what they saw that they were willing to lay down their lives rather than deny it. Even Thomas, it is believed, died as a martyr for what he saw.

Went to India supposedly and we don't know that for sure, but that's the tradition that he was killed there as a martyr.

They wrote and they died for what they believed. They died for it because they knew, they had seen it with their own eyes, that even where there is no life, there can be hope.

Jesus may not personally appear to you, but he tells you in these last two verses of the chapter that he has already had this book written for you.

It was written so that you might believe, because it's through believing that you have life and hope.

These are written, chapter ends, so that you may believe. You may believe that Jesus is the

Christ, the son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name, in the name of Jesus.

Notice verse 31. The word gives us faith. It's not something we just kind of concoct on our own or our choices.

The word gives us faith. As Paul says, faith comes from hearing, hearing by the word of Christ. John's saying the same thing here in a different way.

Faith makes us alive. Where there's life, there's hope. If we've been raised from spiritual death with Christ, if we've encountered his supernatural resurrection power, it will show.

We'll have hope that gives us joy. We'll have peace because we've really encountered the risen

Jesus. And he's left us peace. We'll confess, my

Lord and my God. And the reality of that, of something beyond the iron box of nature, of this natural world, the reality of that revolutionizes you, turns you into someone who may have liked

Jesus before. You know, you weren't a skeptic. You weren't a mocker. You didn't ridicule him.

You didn't blaspheme him. You may have even loved Jesus like Mary Magdalene. She was a nice person.

She attended the grave of Jesus to her. He was a beloved victim.

But she had no expectation of resurrection, of hope, that when there is no biological life, that there can still be hope.

You could be turned from that into a believer in someone beyond this world of cause and effect.

And so you could be turned into a missionary. Or you may be like Thomas, practical, down -to -earth, kind of an evidence -based guy.

Don't tell me dreams. Don't tell me what you want to believe is true. What are the facts?

What do you mean that we could survive if we don't work on Sunday morning? How is that possible? I'll believe

God provides when I can put my hands on the cash Well, he probably won't do that for you.

He probably won't do for you what he did for Thomas. Actually provide the cash first and then tell you to believe.

But he can reveal himself to you in your heart so that you confess my

Lord and my God before seeing him.

That faith will show him to change life in seeking first the kingdom of God. Instead of seeking first money or relationships or thrills the word gives faith which gives life which shows like biological life has its vital signs.

Spiritual life given by faith, which is given by the gospel, shows it expresses itself as signs like fruit on a tree.

It produces works and if it doesn't it's dead. Faith without works is dead.

And where there's dead faith there's no hope for salvation. Now I tell you that not to take away your peace on this resurrection day, but to take away the lie that tells you peace, peace when there is no peace.

I tell you that so instead you'll have a living faith that shows in vital signs like real peace.

So I say to you what Jesus said to Thomas do not disbelieve but believe.

Trust him. Have faith in Jesus. Have faith that he is Lord, that he is

God, and that he has life and hope. If you have believed and if you confess my

Lord and my God today you have peace. You have life that comes from your faith.

Even if sometimes it's imperfect, if you're pressured from the world, if sometimes like Thomas, you know, you don't know if you can believe something so impractical, so out of this world, but you do.

Even in death in this world you have peace and hope and life because Jesus is raised.

So rejoice, rejoice. Raise your joys and triumphs high.