Peace Be With You

Amen.

Sacred mission.

He is risen.

Amen.

Amen.

Hey, here's something the New Testament tells us.

Paul is writing to encourage saints, and he says this statement.

I think it's extremely profound for us to ponder this morning.

If the resurrection didn't happen, we are to be pitied above all people.

Think about that for a moment.

Think about the people you may pity in your life.

Think about those maybe who were born with severe disabilities or those who live in such impoverished states that even their humanity is cloaked by the brokenness they're submerged in.

Imagine for yourself those type of people.

But then imagine you, if the resurrection didn't happen, are to be pitied even more than them.

Because our life is banking on this event.

This is not just a normal Sunday.

Yes, should we look at and celebrate and recognize the resurrection of Christ every day of our life?

Absolutely.

We are people of the resurrection.

But this day in history changed eternity.

And it means something for us.

It means something about our relationship with our Maker.

It means something about our relationship with one another.

And my hope this morning is that we're able to see what Christ has accomplished for us in his death, burial, and resurrection and how we are called to live it out in everyday life.

As we come into John's Gospel, by the way, we're spending two years through the Gospel of John as a church family.

We've just kind of fast forwarded a lot for this year's holy week.

We're going to kick back off chapter two next Sunday, but we're here in the 20th chapter of John, and we see the resurrection.

Here's kind of the scene set for us this morning.

Already, uh, two uh we have the women come to the uh the burial.

And they went and they observed that the body was no longer there, and there was distress in them.

They had left to go tell the other disciples that Jesus was missing from the tomb.

And then here comes two other disciples, Peter and John.

And you gotta love John.

John never refers to himself by John in his gospel, he leaves that for John the Baptist, but he does refer to himself in a few ways.

One is the disciple Jesus loved the most.

That's one way that he refers to himself.

And then as the dude who outran Peter to get to the tomb, right?

Uh, not that John loved himself very much, but uh nonetheless, Peter and John run to the tomb, they see that it's empty, they go back to tell the disciples what they had seen, and here comes Mary Magdalene.

Now she had already been at the tomb, she had already witnessed that the body was gone, but there's this reality in her, this distress that causes her to try to find out what's happened to the body of Jesus.

And so she comes back to the mouth of the tomb, and it says that she stoops down and peers in and she sees two angels there.

And they ask her a question Why are you weeping?

Well, that seems obvious.

I don't know about you and me, but if you're if someone you loved so deeply, you had just witnessed brutally crucified on a Roman cross, and then you know where he was buried because you helped preserve the body, and then you come back to continue out the rituals of your time, and all of a sudden this person's gone.

I think you'd be in distress.

I think you'd be uh heartbroken, I think you'd be in despair.

But they pose this question nonetheless, why are you weeping?

She says that he's gone.

And then she feels this presence behind her, and she turns and there's a man.

We know it's Jesus.

John kind of lets us into that truth.

She didn't.

She presumed it was the gardener.

Now we have to understand, Jesus was buried in a borrowed tomb.

One of his friends was a man named Joseph of Arimathea.

He was a rich man, and he had just hewned out his own tomb in a garden near Galgotha.

And so he allowed Jesus to be buried there as he pleaded with Pilate to be able to have the body of Jesus for burial.

And this presumed gardener looks at Mary and says simply this ask the question again, why are you weeping?

Whom are you seeking?

You see, there was no reason for weeping.

For he who was dead was now alive.

She was seeking a corpse, but what was in front of her was the risen Lord.

Mary begins to plea with this gardener to reclaim the corpse that she was looking for, and then all of a sudden, with one word, Mary.

Mary, faith flooded Mary's heart to not see this presumed gardener, but to see Jesus in front of her.

Can you just for a moment stop to ponder and think about how he would have said her name?

The intimacy, the tenderness, the love that he would have proclaimed with one word, Mary.

And in that, her response, Rabbini, teacher.

And then she just falls on him and clings to him.

I mean, can you imagine?

She thought that she had lost Jesus forever.

Not just in death, but also in the taking away of his corpse.

She thought there was no way she was ever going to be able to mourn and grieve over her beloved friend, teacher.

But here she falls and clings on him, and Jesus is like, Mary, hey, look, you can let go.

I'm not going anywhere again.

I'm here.

I haven't yet ascended, he says.

And he tells Mary, go and tell the others that you have seen me.

Go and tell them what I have spoken to you.

And so we come into the summary of verses 19 through 23, and we see the declaration of peace.

The declaration of peace.

That same day in the evening, the disciples of Jesus are in a locked room.

They've locked themselves, they barricaded themselves in a room because they're afraid.

You have to realize what they just witnessed just a short time earlier.

They saw a bloodlust mob call for the crucifixion of Jesus, and they watched him be brutally murdered right before their eyes.

And then they started seeking out.

Stands in the midst of them.

And what does he declare to his disciples?

Peace be with you.

Peace be with you.

And then he shows them his nail-pierced hands and his spear-pierced side.

And this revelation of who Jesus was, that he had risen from the dead, and that he was there in their presence brought the disciples such great joy.

And Jesus again, he doubles down on it and says, Peace be with you.

But this time he doesn't say it in an effort to comfort.

He sends it in a moment of, he declares it in a moment of sending.

He says this after he says, Peace be with you, he says, Just as I have been sent, so I am sending you.

We have to realize that there's this perpetual senteness about the Son, that he is the only begotten of the Father, that he comes forth from the Father, that Jesus is the sent one from all eternity.

And then what is he doing?

He's transferring over the mantle of being sent to his followers that we might go and proclaim peace in the same way that he has proclaimed peace to them.

Paul helps understand and distill down what the message of the gospel is for the church at Ephesus.

He says this in Ephesians 2.17, and he, speaking of Jesus, came and preached peace to you who were far off, and peace to those who were near.

And so Jesus saying, Peace be with you, as I have been sent, so I am sending you.

There's a tension of hostility within us.

And we want peace.

We don't know how to accomplish it.

We don't know how to attain it.

It seems just out of reach for each and every one of us.

But we'll get to the root of the why here in just a moment.

First, let's start off with what is peace.

I like functional definitions.

So let us help you understand when we say peace, what do we mean?

Here's what we mean: a relationship of love and loyalty with God and one another.

A relationship of love and loyalty with God and one another.

This is the biblical definition of peace.

Now we have to go on further and define a couple of words, right?

One would be love.

If there's any word in our human context that is the most twisted or misconstrued, it would probably be love.

You see, the Bible actually helps us understand love and put it into biblical truth so that we can live it out rightly.

And when the Bible's talking about love in this instance, it's meaning the agape love of the Father.

You see, when we are brought into relationship with God through the finished work of Jesus, we are called to live out the same love of which he loved us.

This is the agape love of God, meaning this: that the agape love of God is the steady intention of the will to another's highest good.

Let me say that again.

The steady intention of the will to another's highest good.

What does it help us understand?

Number one is love is not based on emotions, love is based on choice.

That's a good thing.

Because the scriptures actually reveal to us that God goes through a waves of emotion about his people.

Emotions like jealousy and vengeance, wrath and anger, kindness, love, mercy.

There's all these emotions that God has with us.

But guess what?

God never falls in and out of love with his people, he stays fully loving them because he has chosen of his own will to love them.

And why does he love them?

So that we might actually experience our highest good.

Now we have to understand that that's rooted in relationship with him.

Our highest good is not possible to achieve without relationship with our Maker.

But what do we mean when we say loyalty?

Here's what I mean.

There's this Old Testament word that's used a lot throughout Scripture called uh uh steadfast.

Steadfast.

Here's what that means: inseparably fixed toward one another.

Inseparably fixed toward one another.

You see, the steadfast love of God is fixed on us.

We're not able to be separated from it.

Actually, the New Testament helps us understand that.

That nothing can separate, right, right, from the love of God in Christ Jesus for us.

There is nothing in all of creation, no power or authority, no trial or suffering that can separate us.

Why?

Because God is a loyal God, He's steadfast to His people.

And so we experience the peace of God first and foremost through Christ.

As we enter into a relationship of love and loyalty with him.

But let's discover why we need it.

The first reason that we need peace is because our relationship with God is rooted in hostility.

The Bible actually shows us that we are enemies of God, not friends of God.

In our natural state, as we are entrenched in our own rebellion and sin against the holy God, we are not found as friends, we are found as enemies in hostility with our very Maker.

Romans 5.10 helps us understand this.

Paul writes to the church at Rome, for if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his son, much more now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life?

So there's hostility between us and our God.

We need peace there.

We need peace there.

But there's also hostility between man and neighbor.

You see, all the way back in Deuteronomy, the Lord helps us understand what his will and desire is for us as his image bearers.

And it's summarized in just two commands.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.

You see, the loving one another is flows from our loving God with everything that we have.

But in our natural state, we're at war with our Maker.

There's hostility rooted in our relationship with Him.

So what does that mean?

It means that we actually can't have the relationship that we were created for with one another because our relationship with our God is broken.

You see, John helps us understand this as he wrote more than just the Gospel of John.

He wrote other epistles.

In 1 John 4.19, he helps us understand why do we love?

We love because he first loved us.

We're able to actually love one another in the way that God has designed us because he first loved us.

It's a flow from the gospel that allows us to actually live out the relationships with one another we were designed for.

And so the first thing that happens in this pursuit of peace is that Christ has to abolish hostility.

And he abolishes hostility between us and our Maker, and He abolishes hostility between you and me.

But often when we think of peace, we just think about the absence of hostility, right?

As long as everything's good, as long as we're not fighting, as long as there's no tension, then we have peace.

But that's not the biblical understanding of peace.

The biblical understanding of peace isn't just the absence of hostility, but it's the presence of wholeness.

It's where hostility is gone, welfare can flood in.

You see, we don't just want the absence of hostility.

We want the presence of our ultimate good.

Jesus tried to help his followers understand his intentions for coming to earth and for his intentions of the ministry that he performed and the death that he suffered under.

He says this in John 10, 10.

You know, it's the thief.

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.

I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.

And so Christ doesn't just come to abolish hostility to establish peace, the full peace of God for us is that also the presence of wholeness floods in where hostility once reigned.

That we would have life and life more abundantly.

And so, what was the risen Christ declaring to his disciples as he stood in the midst of that locked room?

He declared to them who belonged to him that peace was now theirs.

All hostility had been abolished, and welfare would now overwhelm their being.

But then in verses 24 through 25, we see peace evades a skeptic.

Peace evades a skeptic.

So there's this guy named Thomas.

He showed up kind of late to that meeting, right?

I don't know what he was doing, but he wasn't there when Jesus presented himself before the disciples.

He comes late and they say, Thomas, you won't believe what we just saw.

And he says, uh come again.

You did not see Jesus raised from the dead.

There's no listen, unless I put my finger in the holes in his hands, unless I place my hand in the wound of his side that the spear caused, I will not believe that Jesus raised from the dead.

Now we fast forward a little bit.

There's eight days have gone by.

Imagine if so, we're on next Sunday, right?

So not Easter Sunday, but the Sunday that follows.

Thomas is actually with the disciples this time.

They're meeting still in a locked room.

There's still this presence of fear that seems to be controlling their behavior and action.

But then again, here comes Jesus.

The glorified risen Lord stands in their midst.

And you know what he does?

He looks at the skeptic and he says, Peace be with you.

You see, in that moment, before Jesus had showed himself, peace seemed to have evade Thomas.

He was still full of despair, hopelessness, and doubt.

His skepticism would leave him restless.

But in 26 through 29, we see that the evidence of Christ causes Thomas to praise the Prince of Peace.

So in 26 through 29, we see praise to the Prince of Peace as Jesus stands there and says, Thomas, peace be with you.

And just like he did before, immediately he shows Thomas his nail-pierced hands.

And he invites Thomas to come and put his finger in them.

But Thomas didn't need the physical touch of the scars of his Messiah.

All he needed was the sight of them, and he calls out, Praise, my Lord and my God.

You see, this is the first time that God had ever even been uttered by a disciple of Jesus.

They had called him many things: the Christ, the Messiah, teacher, prophet.

But here Thomas's eyes were fully open to the reality of who Jesus was.

God with them.

Jesus responds to Thomas, Have you believed because you have seen me?

Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.

Blessed are those who without seeing are unable to believe that Jesus is the risen King.

Blessed are you and I.

When through faith we receive peace.

You see, when Jesus is Lord over our lives, we dwell as citizens in the kingdom of the Prince of Peace.

And that is good news for us.

That the peace that He acquired is given to us by grace through faith.

But here's what I want us to walk away with this morning in understanding.

His piercings, our peace.

His piercings, our peace.

I don't think that it's any type of incidental reality to the narrative that John is putting forth.

That every time Jesus says, peace be with you, it's immediately followed by him showing his nail-pierced hands and his spear-pierced side.

Those two realities are actually inseparable from one another.

Because the peace of Jesus is accomplished through the piercings of Jesus.

We see this foretold by the prophet Isaiah, hundreds of years before the birth of Christ to the Virgin Mary, before his brutal crucifixion and glorious resurrection, Isaiah prophesied that this would be the case.

He says in 53 verse 5, but he, speaking of the Messiah, Jesus who was to come, was pierced for our transgressions.

He was crushed for our iniquities.

Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace.

And with his Wounds, we are healed.

I think what we have to see about the nature and the character of the God that we serve, of whose image we were made in, is that peace cannot come without conflict.

There is nowhere in our existence, in all of creation, that we would ever be able to obtain peace without conflict.

It's impossible.

There's no sense of hyper passive passivism where we can just allow things to happen and believe that on the other side peace will just kind of somehow naturally fabricate itself.

No, peace must come through conflict.

That's the very nature of the God whom we serve.

He shows it first and foremost in the garden.

When Adam and Eve fell, when they transgressed and sinned against God their Maker, he slaughtered an animal that he might skin them and clothe them and cover their nakedness.

God engages with conflict in the effort to obtain peace for his people.

You see, our ultimate source of hostility is between us and God.

There had to be conflict toward our sin because God is holy.

In the letter to the church at Colossae, we see how this was accomplished for us.

In Colossians 1, 19 through 20, we read this: For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.

So here's what you have to do.

You want to see what God is like?

Look at Jesus.

All the fullness of God was pleased to dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace.

How?

Conflict.

The blood of his cross.

That's how peace came.

A holy God engaged in conflict to establish peace for his people.

And this enables us to have peace with one another.

It's a response to the gospel of peace that we have received, that now we are able to live in peace with one another.

All of us desire peace in our lives.

It's evidence within us that something in creation, something in our existence is broken and not as it should be.

Our souls long for something that seems so out of reach.

Yet we strive and strain to create it in our own power and might, and all we see is more brokenness and more chaos, more turmoil and hostility.

Our own pursuit of peace apart from Christ leads us to sinful actions.

Some of us we desire peace through unrighteous conflict.

We believe that peace comes through conflict.

The problem is we try to obtain it through unrighteous conflict.

You can see this in the story of culture today.

I don't care what side of the culture war you are on.

If you are on the progressive left or if you're on the conservative right, if you're far out on side poles or you're somewhere in the middle leaning one way, I believe here's the benefit of the doubt I will give every one of you.

You want peace.

That's the benefit of the doubt.

You want peace.

Here's what we're discovering: peace will not come without conflict.

So what's happening?

Both the left and the right are becoming militant in their desire to create and obtain peace.

It's not just right-wingers who are walking into schools shooting.

Now we have left two.

Both of us want peace.

And we're led to sinful means to try to obtain it in our own strength.

Our pursuit of peace leads to unrighteous action.

But this isn't just a societal problem or cultural problem, it's a personal problem.

Man, I don't know about you, but I try to obtain peace through force way too much.

I try to exert my own strength and force over my relationships with my children.

Like if I can just be bigger than them and louder than them, I'll get peace in my home, but I don't get peace in my home.

I get children who become fearful and just try to fall in line so they don't get yelled at anymore.

I mean, that's horrible.

I do that.

I know you do that too.

Don't look at me that way.

Like, who's this guy?

I'm just a person.

But maybe you do that with your spouse.

Maybe your spouse is just afraid of you.

You don't have a peaceful home, it's fear-filled.

Maybe your coworkers are that way, and the people that you're supposed to be in charge of.

Like, if we're honest with ourselves, this isn't just extremes that we see in media.

This is something that happens in our living rooms.

We try to use force in this pursuit of conquering to be able to establish peace in our lives, and it's failing us.

You know it is.

Jesus didn't obtain peace for us through a sword and a spear.

He did it through a cross and a thorn-crowned brow.

He didn't obtain peace by taking life through the power of his own hand, but by having his life taken by ours.

Jesus accomplishes for us our peace.

And here's the reality: when we try to obtain peace through unrighteous means, there's a part of the gospel you and I are failing to believe.

Here's what we're failing to believe about the gospel of Jesus: that he has already conquered all powers and authorities that would cause us harm.

And he has secured for us our eternal good.

Did you catch that?

When we try to use unrighteous means to acquire peace in our lives, we're failing to believe that Jesus has already conquered every enemy that would wish us harm.

And he's secured for us our eternal good.

Man, that's good news for you this morning.

But some of us, we don't try to obtain peace through unrighteous conflict.

Some of us try to obtain peace absent of any conflict at all.

Man, I know some of you are like, I'm a peacemaker.

I'm a peacemaker.

I don't like conflict.

You're not a peacemaker, you're a fake peacemaker.

Let me show you how.

I get it, right?

Some of us think that if we just kind of turn a blind eye to it, if we just kind of don't bring it up and make it a thing or a deal, it'll just kind of work itself out over time and we'll have peace, right?

And we try to sweep everything under this proverbial rug, like we just don't have to engage with it.

But those rugs look kind of goofy in our living rooms.

Like you can't even put a coffee table over them.

You just have so much historical junk you've just swept under there.

And I understand that.

But but the problem is this there might be the absence of hostility, but you can't convince me that there's the presence of wholeness.

Because here's what happens.

Though you may be able to get together and eat and maybe tell some jokes and laugh about the good old days, and hey, nobody got into a fight, nobody created any drama.

Here's the reality of what's just under that surface.

That person that you have broken realities with, you still can't trust them.

You know you can't.

You still can't be vulnerable around them.

You're afraid they'll wound you like they did before.

You still can't give yourself wholly over to them.

Because wholeness is absent.

Hostility may be absent, but wholeness is not present.

That's the danger of the facade of fake peace.

There's no real wholeness.

They're simply pretending.

Wholeness, peace.

It cannot come without conflict.

And if we try to convince ourselves that it can, we're failing to believe this about the gospel: that the cross of Jesus dealt with every one of our sins.

You think God has some cosmic rug that he just sweeps our rebellion and depravity under and just says, hey, if I just turn a blind eye to it long enough, everything will work itself out.

No, the truth of the gospel is that every sin you and I ever committed, every sin we are living in in this moment, and every sin that we will commit in the future was nailed to a cross.

It was dealt with in holy conflict.

Not one bit will be swept under God's rug.

It will be dealt with fully in his justice, and that's good for us.

Because now we can have peace, not just the absence of hostility between us and our Holy Father, but wholeness again.

Man, that's what we long for.

You and I, we desire peace because we know all is not as it should be.

We are restless in our souls since we long for something that seems to be so unattainable, but we're not a people of hopelessness.

If we are in Christ, we are a people of hope.

Paul helps us understand this in Romans 8, talking about the groanings of our hope.

He says, For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now.

And not only the creation, but you and I.

We've been groaning.

Groaning.

The first fruits of the Spirit we've obtained, but we groan as we wait eagerly for what?

Adoption as sons.

The redemption of our bodies.

Man, wholeness.

It's in this we hope.

In this hope we were saved.

Now, hope that is seen is not hope, but for who hopes for what he sees.

But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

We're longing for something that God had promised to us, and we're longing for the fullness of it.

But there's a reality in the with statement of Jesus we're gonna get to.

Peace be with us.

Here's the beauty of the gospel for our sacred mission.

The cross bought our peace, the resurrection brings us peace.

The cross bought our peace, but the resurrection brings us peace.

Jesus died to accomplish the peace that our hearts yearn for.

The crucifixion of Jesus appeased the demands of a holy God for our sin and rebellion.

It purchased peace for us through abolishing the hostility between us and God.

And almost as if that should have been enough, right?

That the cross abolished the hostility that was between us and our Maker.

But God saw fit that it wouldn't just be abolished, but the resurrection would be the first fruits of promise for us.

That wholeness was coming to us also.

He rose again to deliver the peace that the cross purchased for us.

You see, the cross brings the absence of hostility, but the resurrection brings the wholeness of it all.

And the benefit of peace is applied to the believing by the resurrection of Jesus.

Romans 8 29.

For those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son, in order.

Here's the purpose that he might be Jesus, the firstborn among many brothers.

That's wholeness.

When an orphan becomes a child, that's wholeness.

When a person who has no name bears the name of their father, that's wholeness.

When we who were cast out are reconciled to our Maker, that's wholeness.

That didn't come through the cross, that came and was delivered to us through the resurrection of Jesus.

And that's good news, church.

Here's my hope for us this morning.

That the peace of Jesus would be with us.

We're stuck in this tension, this reality, right?

Where we're waiting for the fullness of all that Christ has accomplished for us to be ours and our possession, literally and physically.

Where we we don't just uh uh look backward to his first coming with longing and eagerness, we await his second coming when all will be made new.

But we're not just a people who hope or wait with nothing in the present.

When Jesus looked at his disciples and he said, Peace be with you, there's a reality of presence that he was communicating to us.

That you and I right now can have peace.

We can have peace because in Christ we have been reconciled with our Maker, with our God.

The hostility that was between us is abolished, and now the hostility that's between you and I is abolished also.

But also we can obtain wholeness.

Because we've been brought into the family of God through Christ, firstborn among many brothers.

So peace may not look like what you thought it did when you came in here, but we have to grasp the reality that the reason we feel the absence of peace in the first place is because the absence of relationship with our Maker exists in our hearts.

And it's only through Christ can we begin to know and understand peace.

Let's pray.