Encountering the Risen Christ #3 - Mission
Description
Dr. Kurt Bjorklund continues the Encountering the Risen Christ series looking at John 20:19-23. Experience how encountering the risen Christ brings genuine peace and a transformative mission to share this peace with others—not through self-righteous moral demands but as "one beggar showing another beggar where they found bread," offering hope to all who know they're insufficient on their own.
Summary and Application
In John 20:19-23, we find a powerful encounter between the risen Jesus and his disciples that reveals the heart of Christianity and our mission as believers. Dr. Kurt Bjorklund unpacks this passage to show us how encountering the risen Christ brings both peace and purpose to our lives.
The Gift of Peace
When Jesus appears to his disciples, his first words are "Peace be with you" (John 20:19). This wasn't just a casual greeting but a profound gift. In John 14:27, Jesus had promised, "Peace I leave with you. My peace I give you..." Now, as the risen Lord, he delivers on that promise.
This peace isn't merely the absence of conflict but a deep sense of well-being that comes from being reconciled with God. Many of us, like the character in Kafka's novel, feel the weight of guilt without resolution. We try to convince ourselves we're "pretty good people," yet something inside us knows better. True peace comes not from denying our guilt but from bringing it to Jesus.
The Call to Mission
Jesus doesn't stop with giving peace. He immediately says, "As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you" (John 20:21). The peace we receive comes with responsibility. We are sent into the world just as Jesus was sent.
To equip the disciples for this mission, Jesus breathes on them and says, "Receive the Holy Spirit" (John 20:22). This echoes his promise in John 14 to send "the comforter, the counselor, the advocate." The Spirit empowers us to carry out our mission with authenticity.
The Heart of Christianity
What exactly is this mission? It's not about self-righteous people telling others how to change their moral behavior. Rather, as Kurt beautifully puts it, Christianity is "one beggar showing another beggar where they found bread."
This captures the essence of the gospel. It's not about self-improvement or moral conformity but about what Jesus Christ has done. When we've experienced the peace that comes from Christ, we naturally want to share it with others who know they're insufficient.
This mission requires both words and actions. The popular saying "preach the gospel at all times, and if necessary, use words" can be misleading if it leads us to never actually speak about Jesus. People need to hear about the source of our peace, not just observe our virtuous living.
Our Church's Mission
At Orchard Hill Church, this mission is summarized as "helping people find and follow Jesus Christ" – a restatement of the Great Commission in Matthew 28. When the church lives as instruments of peace in God's world, we see God work.
The beautiful thing about this mission is that it's not burdensome. It's not about telling people what they must do, but inviting them to receive what God has already done and to celebrate it with others on the same journey.
Practical Application Questions
Personal Peace Assessment: On a scale of 1-10, how would you rate your experience of God's peace in your life right now? What specific areas of guilt or anxiety might you need to bring to Jesus to experience deeper peace?
Mission Authenticity: Dr. Bjorklund suggests we won't share what we don't genuinely have. How might your personal experience of Christ's peace (or lack thereof) be affecting your willingness to share the gospel with others? What steps could you take to deepen your experience of peace?
Beggar to Beggar: Think about the metaphor of "one beggar showing another beggar where they found bread." How might this perspective change the way you approach evangelism compared to seeing yourself as a "moral expert" telling others how to live? Who in your life needs to hear about where you've found what you needed in Christ?
Remember, the peace of God can be yours today. As Kurt reminds us, it comes through acknowledging your need for a Savior, recognizing that Jesus lived a sinless life, died on the cross, rose again, and that your faith in Him counts His goodness to your name. In this truth, we find both peace and purpose.
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Quotes Referenced
"The man that is will shadow the man that pretends to be." - T.S. Eliot
Works Referenced
The Trial (1925) - Franz Kafka
NIV Theological Study Bible (2018) - D.A. Carson (Editor)
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Couple weekends ago on Easter weekend, we began a series that we've called encountering the risen Christ. We're looking at the resurrection appearances of Jesus, John twenty and twenty one, to see how Jesus related to people in those moments, how they encountered the risen Christ. And I realized as we titled this series, I think I said this last weekend, that at first when you hear it encountering the risen Christ, it sounds kinda churchy, like okay, what whatever. Like yeah, I guess we should encounter the risen Christ. But in a way, this is probably one of the key significant aspects to having a vibrant faith is realizing that faith is not simply affirming a group of doctrines or even having a a group of behaviors that are settled in your life, but it is relating to a God who is alive.
And that is radically different than simply believing certain things or behaving a certain way. Now, I'm not suggesting that beliefs aren't important or behaviors don't matter. What I'm saying is that the essence of Christian faith is actually tied up in knowing Jesus Christ, not simply in affirming things. And so how we relate to this risen Christ really matters in our lives. And today we're going to look at the event that you just heard read where the disciples were gathered in this room after the resurrection and we're told that they were together because they were afraid and they had locked the door.
Now, they were afraid in all likelihood, we're told because of the Jewish leaders, because the Jewish leaders had had Jesus put to death because they saw him as a threat, a revolutionary, and what usually happened is once somebody had had been killed as a revolutionary, their closest associates would be rounded up and put death as well. So so they had good reason to be afraid. But one of the things we see when we read through the gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, is how many times the word fear or the issue of fear is addressed. Often the people that Jesus interacted with would be afraid and he would say, don't be afraid. And he would say things like, you don't need to fear.
I'm here. And fear isn't just something that happens in the gospel stories. We may put different words on it today. You may not walk around saying, I'm afraid, I'm fearful, but fear is one of the dominant emotions that still exist in many of our lives today. Sometimes it's a fear of being alone, saying I'm afraid that maybe my future will leave me without people around me who love me.
Maybe you're younger and you're saying I'm I'm fearful that I'm not going to meet somebody or you've met somebody and you're fearful that they're not going to feel the same way about you that you feel about them. Or you've met somebody, you've gotten married and you're fearful that they aren't the one. Or you have maybe a fear of something with health in your life or a relationship that I mean, fear is just part of our experience and Jesus consistently addresses it. But here specifically after his resurrection, when his disciples are gathered together in fear, Jesus comes, we're told, and he stands in their midst and he instructs them in their fear. And I think we learned something about how we can address our fear today, really wherever we're coming from.
And the first thing that we see is that Jesus gives them a new reality. And I see this in this word peace that's here. And what happens is Jesus, says very simply, peace be with you, and then he says this another time in verse 21 just in case it was missed. It says, again, Jesus said, peace be with you. Now in one sense, peace is a way of just greeting one another in those times, but it was also a word that had much greater significance.
In John 14 verse 27, Jesus was teaching and here's what he said. He said, peace I leave with you. My peace I give you. I do not give you peace as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.
Do you see the tie of fear and peace? He says, I'm giving you peace. It's not peace like the world. You don't need to be afraid. In the NIV Theological Study Bible, there's a note that references an article in the Bible on this in their back of their study Bible.
It's on shalom, and here's what the author writes. He says, Jesus says, and then he repeats John 14, which I just read to you, peace I leave with you, my peace I give you. I do not give you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not be afraid. When Jesus meets his disciples after his resurrection, he continually says to them peace.
John 20 verse nineteen twenty one, we just looked at that verse 26 as well. Under these circumstances, it's obvious that the term peace is extraordinarily full of meaning. What is this peace that Jesus gives us? In order to understand Jesus' words, we must reflect on the many facets of the crucial Hebrew term Shalom, which lies behind the English word peace. Shalom is one of the key words and images for salvation in the Bible.
The Hebrew word refers most commonly to a person being uninjured and safe, whole, and sound. In the New Testament, Shalom is revealed that too as the reconciliation of all things to God through the work of Christ. God was pleased through Christ to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through Christ's shed blood on the cross. That's Colossians one verses 19 through 20. Shalom is experienced as a multidimensional complete well-being, physical, psychological, social, and spiritual.
It flows from all of one's relationships being put right with God, with oneself and with others. And what this is driving at is that when Jesus says peace I give to you and and when you tear tear, pair it with John 14 verse 27, what he's saying is is when you experience troubledness or fear or agitation in this world, that there is a well-being that is available to you in Jesus Christ that transcends the peace that you can experience in this world. Now sometimes, we don't experience this because peace seems foreign to us. And what I mean when I say foreign to us is even this idea of peace with God seems unnecessary. Romans, chapter five verse one says that we can have peace with God.
And some of us in our day and age say, well, I don't know if I really need peace with God. It's a nice concept but but in a way what many of us have done is we've said there is no such thing as guilt, no such thing as sin. We don't need to ever think in those categories, we just need to be. And as a result, we run from the concept that this was driven home years ago by a book by Franz Kafka. And that's a name that if you had to take philosophy in college, you might remember.
You may have even had to read the book if you took 01/2001, maybe 02/2001. The book I'm referring to is called The Trial by Franz Kafka. And in it, what he does is his main character is arrested for a crime, but he's not told the crime that he commits. And what he does in the book is he goes through this process of first basically saying, I didn't do anything. I'm innocent.
And then as he sits with the accusation over his head, he starts to go through his life and he starts to realize that he has done a lot of things that could bring guilt into his life. And he starts to become overwhelmed by the feeling of having let people down of the times that he misrepresented truth, that he did things, said things that were unkind, that that that he lived in a way that wasn't in accordance with even the way that he wants to live his life. And Kafka himself later basically said this. He wrote and said said this story is a parable because in the modern world, and this is written years and years ago, he said in the modern world, we've done away with the idea of guilt, but yet we still feel the weight of our sin and we don't have anything to do with it. The reason some of us don't feel peaceful is because we haven't actually come to Jesus to get our spiritual peace.
What we've done is we've tried to say I'm a pretty good person. And the teaching of Scripture is very clear and that is that the way that we come into peace with God is by acknowledging that we can't be good enough, that it's Jesus' work on our behalf that gives us the standing. And if we don't have that peace, then we don't feel peaceful in any real context of our world because we're always saying, I don't know what's around the corner or how to live in every area of my life. And so there's this peace that God offers, and I would guess that some of us who are gathered, even if you've been around church a long time, would say, well okay, I I get that I could have peace with God but I don't always feel peaceful. I still feel agitated, worried, concerned about all of the things that are in front of me.
And that's understandable, but what Jesus I think, is doing just in this moment is he's saying you don't have to live with agitation, with fear, with concern. You can live with a sense of well-being, with a sense of peace that says I know who holds the future in his hands, who holds life and death in his hands. Therefore, I do not need to live with the kind of fear that can grip me from time to time. Now Jesus doesn't just stay here. He moves on and he says this.
He says, peace I leave with you, verse 21, as the father has sent me, so I'm sending you. And so he has this that this sense of saying, I'm giving you a new reality which is peace, but I'm also responsibility. I'm sending you. And it's true that we won't share what we don't genuinely have. So if we don't experience peace, we won't necessarily give peace, and we'll see the mission of God to send us as being a shallow mission.
It'd be a little bit like saying, you know, somebody gives us fitness advice who isn't very fit or somebody gives us financial advice who has made a mess of their finances. You'd be like, I'm not sure that that's really all that I need from you. But when you hear it from somebody who's experienced the peace of God, you begin to say, okay, there might be something to this. And what happens if you don't have peace sometimes is you end up in a place where you say, well I guess I should live out the mission of Jesus. So you start to want to tell other people but you don't have a corresponding sense of authenticity.
What you end up with instead at that point is a sense of responsibility but not actually having something that you're offering that's genuine to you. T. S. Eliot once put it like this, he says the man that is will shadow the man that pretends to be. Meaning a lot of times it's unavoidable, not a lot of times, it is unavoidable that that that whatever we portray is always tailed very closely by what our reality is.
And sometimes people will rightly say, well this means, when he says, so send I you, as I came into the world that Jesus gave the Great Commission, Christians should be in the world sharing the message of Jesus Christ, so we should be talking about it. And that's right, this idea of evangelism. But sometimes it ends up just being verbal and only verbal. Have you been to a ball game ever or seen it on TV when somebody does the banner over the, over the railing? I call it banner man where they throw out the banner John three sixteen over the banner and and and the idea often is this and that is, you know, I'm I'm here, I paid $700 for these seats, so I might as well make a witness of it, you know, maybe I'll take it from my tithe, who knows, you you know.
And here's, okay, I'm jesting a little bit. Come on. We'll work with me. And here's, you know, my contribution. John three sixteen.
Now God can clearly work in any way God wants to work, but I don't know that I've ever heard somebody tell me the story that said, you know, I went to a ball game. And when I was at the ball game, I was just there having a good time, and I saw a banner of John three sixteen, and I said, Yes. That's what I need. And they went and looked it up, and they decided that that that they even knew it was a Bible verse. They looked it up, and they said, God loves the world.
That must mean me. I'm in. Now, again, I'm not saying that that's not a helpful thing, that is that you should never do it. What I'm saying is there's a mindset sometimes that says that detaches our words from our life. And whereas what scripture often is portraying is that when you have peace and you have a relationship with people, it is much easier to talk to them about who Jesus is.
I think it was this kind of thinking that led to the the the line, and I don't know exactly who this should be attributed to, but that is preach the gospel all the time, and if necessary, use words. But the problem with that is sometimes you can say, well, I'll live my life so well, but then you never use words, and there will be people around you who can live and die, and wonder why you had such peace, why you were so good, because the gospel ultimately does involve words. It involves talking about the peace, the hope that you have because of Jesus Christ, not just living a virtuous life. And the idea here is Jesus is saying, listen, when you encounter me you're going to have a peace that is different, and I'm giving you a mission, a responsibility to say I want you to use what I've given you so that other people will have it. I I used a quote a few weeks ago that is what Christianity basically is, is one beggar showing another beggar where they found bread.
And the idea of that is saying when Christianity is rightly understood, it's not self righteous people telling other people how they ought to change their moral behavior. It's one person saying, I found what I needed and I wasn't sufficient for it, showing somebody else who knows they're insufficient for what they need, where they can get what they need. That is the essence of the message of Christianity because it is the message of the cross. It's not the message of self improvement or moral conformity. It's the message of what Jesus Christ has done.
And that is why it's peace, and that is how it can be shared. And ultimately, when the church, the church in general, lives its mission of saying we want to be instruments of peace in God's world, that is when you see God work. In fact, here at Orchard Hill, one of the ways we talk about this all the time as we say, our mission is to help people find and follow Jesus Christ. And really all that is a restatement of the great commission. Matthew 28, go into all the world, make disciples.
We want to help as many people as possible find and follow Jesus Christ because we believe that Jesus said to his disciples, go into the world as I have gone into the world. As I was sent into the world, I send you. Take the peace that I've given you and go into the world. And there there's this odd little verse here in verse 23 that says, if you forgive anyone their sins, their sins are forgiven, but if you don't forgive them, they are not forgiven. And that's led to a lot of debate among some different people over the years.
But really, I think it's as simple as that's Jesus' way of saying, when I have sent you, you are carrying the message of forgiveness. And if people don't respond to it, their sins aren't forgiven. And if they do, they respond to it. It's not a statement of saying churches can decide for other people what happens. It's the message is brought to people and through that they come or don't come to faith in Jesus Christ.
But you know, when a church is functioning the way God calls it to function, what happens is people who've encountered this gospel, this message, this peace, are living with peace. And other people are drawn to it, and they're able to speak about it, and more and more people are drawn to who Jesus Christ is. But he doesn't leave them there. He doesn't just say, find peace and go and share it, but he has one other resource for them. And this is really the third thing.
I'd say he gives them a new resource. It says he breathed on them, and then he says, receive the Holy Spirit. Now breathing here, the word in both Hebrew and in Greek, is a word that means spirit. So so so in a way, he's symbolically saying, here's my spirit, but he says, receive the Holy Spirit. And, again, this has led to some people who study these things having a lot of different opinions.
Did the Holy Spirit, have a presence in the Old Testament? Did it start here? Did he start at Pentecost? How does this all work? I think Jesus' point here is saying, I am going to the Father.
Just a few verses earlier he said to Mary Magdalene, we looked at it last week, don't cling to me. I'm going to my father. I'm ascending. And then he says here, receive the Holy Spirit. What I think he's doing is he's saying, I am in your midst today.
You are encountering this but moving forward my spirit will be in your midst in perpetuity. You will always have the Spirit of Christ nearby. You can always be in a place where you know that God is near. And what happens, I believe, is that when somebody comes to faith in Jesus Christ, they have the Holy Spirit of God who permanently enters them and they have this resource that God has given them. And they are then equipped to do the work of God and as John 14 talks about the Spirit who is the comforter, the counselor, the advocate, meaning the one who comes alongside is present in your life as a never ending resource to give you the peace that you need and to equip you for the mission that God has given you wherever that is.
Now, I I recognize that as I say this, some of you are still saying right now, okay, that that that's nice, but I still end up fearful, troubled, agitated. I don't always experience this idea of saying, yeah, okay, the presence of Christ. So if you were to ask and say, well, how do you then get this? Here here's what I would say. This text and really none of the New Testament gives us an a, b, c, d, do these things and you will encounter the presence of Christ.
In fact, what you see here and in other places is these men, these disciples, these followers were in a place. Jesus came in their midst, and they recognized Him in their midst, and then they were given what they needed. So if there is such a thing as a pattern, it's not go do these things, it's recognize the spirit of God that is already in your midst. You could think about it like this. This last week, there was a windstorm that came through our region here.
Some of you are familiar with this. Some of you still may not have power. And one of the things that that you know about wind is that you can't really see it when it's happening, but you know it when it's happening. I mean you can see the trees bend, but you can't see the wind, and you see effect of the wind. You know that that wind is happening, but you don't know where it comes from, where it goes, and the Spirit of God is compared to wind in John seven.
It, it is God's movement, but there's another piece of this. If, if you lived without electricity for a few hours, a few days over the last week, you know a little bit about what it is to not have power. But imagine if you were given a resource like electricity and you just simply said I choose not to use it. I mean that'd be dumb, right? Because electricity makes life easier.
And if you don't think that then try to live without it for a little while and you quickly say I like electricity. Electricity is nice. It's a it's a it's a good thing. And yet, what many of us do spiritually is we have this resource, the Spirit of God that's in our midst, and because we don't always see it or recognize it, we live as if we don't have it. And the way that you have it is to say, where is God at work around me, and how do I continue to put myself into that place?
For some of you, there was a day when you used to enjoy worship in a place like this, or Bible study personally, or with good friends. You used to find some joy in serving, and now you find those things laborious. Can I just say to you it's not likely that those things have changed, but it's more likely that there's something in you that is saying I don't want that power, and the reason that you're experiencing a lack of peace in your life is because you're not in proximity to where God is for you? Now, some of us maybe are here and you're saying, well, you know what? I'm somebody who doesn't have, like, this real strong God thing going on in my life.
But maybe there's somebody in your world who has this peace that I'm talking about. Maybe it's a friend, a neighbor, a coworker. Maybe for you, just simply saying, how do you have such peace? What is it that that that gives you this kind of sense of God in your life? May maybe if they're a person who's part of a worshiping community saying, I want to experience that over a period of time with them.
Maybe you've been coming here and you're not even sure why for a while but when you come you sense something that God is doing. Continue to lean into that. And if you're a person who's been around church and it's been part of your habit for a long time and your peace feels like it comes and it goes, maybe for you it's just going back to some of the places when and where you first experienced that peace. And when I say go back to the places, what I mean is sitting in the presence of God, whether it's public worship, personal bible study, community relationships, small groups, things that help to feed you again so that you say, I sense the presence of God. Because when you do, what happens is you start to experience peace, and the idea of a responsibility of mission becomes not a burden, not a have to, but, I'm sharing something that is life giving with other people around me.
I see the mission of Jesus Christ, the mission of the church, the mission of this church, is not a burdensome mission of saying you have to come and do. It's come and receive what God has already done. And celebrate it and enjoy it with people who are also on the same journey. And when that's true, the peace of God lives in you, the sense of well-being, and the desire to invite people and to say God has given me a resource to use. And so that is how you and I can experience the risen Christ in our day and age.
Let's pray together. And just before I pray, I just want to say this to those of us who are gathered. If you're here today and watching online, and you're saying, you know, I don't know if I have peace with God. You can have that today according to scripture. You acknowledge your need for a savior, that you've sinned, that Jesus came to this earth, lived a sinless life, went to the cross, died, rose again, ascended into heaven, is coming back to reign, and that your faith in Jesus counts his goodness to your name.
And in doing that, you have peace with God. God, I pray today that you would help each one of us who are gathered to encounter your peace on such a level that it's unmistakable to people around us, that it's unmistakable even in our own hearts and lives, that your spirit would be so real in our sense of who he is. And God, I pray it would push each one of us to live with the sense of as you were sent into the world, we are as well. And we pray this in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
Thanks for being here. Have a great week.
This transcript was automatically generated, please excuse any errors.
