Speaking of Christ here, He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of His nature. And He upholds, notice in the present tense, He upholds the universe by the word of His power. After making purification for sins, He sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high, having become as much superior to the angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs." And what is that name, I would ask you? If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Yahweh, Lord, and believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, you will be saved. This is a glorious promise. Now we jump down to chapter 2. What are the implications? Therefore, we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it. The message declared by angels proved to be reliable, and every transgression or disobedience received a just retribution. How shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? It was declared at first by the Lord, and it was attested to us by those who heard it. Notice the author of Hebrews is saying, I'm not an eyewitness. I'm not one who heard the words of Jesus himself, so it seems that Jesus spoke, the apostles heard, and then the author of Hebrews is part of that third generation. It was attested to us by those who heard, while God also bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit. distributed according to his will. All right, so this is quite a bit later in the unfolding of the New Testament. So again, this is at least one verse, verse four, that is used to argue that the author of Hebrews is not an apostle. And again, not what we would expect Paul, for example, to say. We don't know for sure who wrote Hebrews. It doesn't sign off with a name, but wanted to read that this morning. Then let's turn to John chapter. We're gonna just touch on a few highlights from both John 20 and 21. And so I'm gonna argue today that there are six, not distinct appearances, but there are six, context in which Jesus appears in these two chapters. And so we need to not seek the eyewitness status, but we need to hear the message of those, including the Apostle John, who heard the words of Jesus and saw the resurrection of Jesus with their own eyes. So we'll begin in John 20. And again, this would remind you that this chapter is taking place on the first day of the first Lord's Day of the New Covenant, what John calls the first of the Sabbaths. And then in chapter 21, we have several appearances a little bit later, or two appearances specifically. So let's think about, and again, in the bulletin today, there's a list of six contexts in which we need to be seeking Jesus. So John 20, we'll begin with verses 8 and 9, but let's begin at verse 3. So they've taken the Lord out of the tomb, verse 3. So Peter went out with the other disciple, and they were going toward the mouth, 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 in to look, he saw, there's the first use of this word, 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' 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 own homes." So, first day of the week, very early in the morning, they all go back, but Mary now remains there. And let's read verses 14 through 17. Having said this, she, that is Mary Magdalene, turned around and saw Jesus standing, but she did not know that it was Jesus. 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. Jesus said to her, Mary, She turned and said to him in Aramaic, Rabboni, which means teacher. He 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 God, to my father and your father, to my God and to 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 unlocked 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. Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord. And then we come to Jesus' encounter with Thomas, and we'll look at verses 27 through 29. Let me begin at verse 26. Eight days later, so the next Sunday, His disciples were inside again and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, peace be with you. Then he said to Thomas, put your finger here and see my hands and 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. Then we jump down to chapter 21 and sometime later, an unspecified time, there are seven of the apostles who go and are fishing. And we pick up here in verse three. Simon Peter said to them, I'm going fishing. They said to him, we will go with you. Then they went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing. Just as day was breaking, Jesus stood on the shore, yet the disciples did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to them, children, do you have any fish? They answered him, no. He said to them, cast the net on the right side of the boat and you will have some. So they cast it. And now they were not able to haul it in because of the quantity of fish. That disciple whom Jesus loved therefore said to Peter, it is the Lord. When Simon heard that it was the Lord, he put on his outer garment for he was stripped for work and threw himself into the sea. And then He's out there. And then the one other verse that I wanted to read is down in verse 17. This is still the same appearance, but really Jesus is making a different point here. Jesus said to him, that is to John, the third time, sorry, to Simon, Jesus said to Simon the third time, Simon, son of John, do you love me? Peter was grieved because he said to him the third time, do you love me? And he said to him, Lord, you know everything. You know that I love you. Jesus said to him, feed my sheep. This is the word of God. Well, we're coming now to the end of this long study in the Gospel of John. But I think it's been a very fruitful study. We're going to be taking a break for a few weeks doing some topical studies. And then either in December or more likely in the new year, we'll be continuing on and beginning in the book of Acts. And so I want you to kind of be aware of that. thinking about how you approach and what are the ways that you begin a study of the Book of Acts. But today I want to focus on application. I think it's important for us as we come to God's Word to always keep in mind the distinction between interpretation and application. Interpretation is a respectful way of treating a text. Interpretation believes that the original author had an original message to the original audience. Now, you may or may not get to that message. That's where there's lots of discussion. But an originalist believes that there is that message and that it is clear. By the way, I've spoken to two authors in the course of my life who have written books and have found themselves extremely frustrated because people don't listen to the message. They had a specific reason why they wrote their book And then in some literature class, they're often left field, making stuff up that has nothing to do with the actual message of the book. All right? And so, we as people who approach the Bible, we are originalists. We are looking for the one right interpretation. That's important. If you don't have the right interpretation, then your applications will be off. So, we've been focused, and even the last few weeks, on interpreting the Bible correctly. Now, and so, how many interpretations are there? Well, there may be many, but there's only one right one. And I'm not saying I have it. Do a better job of interpreting it than me, and I would love to hear how you approach the text. But that's the issue of interpretation, one interpretation. There's one interpretation. And there's 1,000 applications. Once we've established the meaning of the text, then we can say, now, how does that apply to us in our circumstances? In John 20 and 21, we've looked carefully and sought to interpret these multiple appearances. There are, by the way, in the New Testament, at least 12 distinct appearances of the resurrected Christ, some to a single person, some in shady areas where they may not have even known it was Jesus for a little while, all the way up to 500 people all at the same time. It's a very interesting list to compile, and I've compiled that. If you're interested, talk to me. I'd love to share that with you. The Apostle John and the early church had a visual, sensory experience of the resurrected Jesus. that we will likely not have in this world. I know many of us would love to have that sensory experience of Jesus. Yet, their unexpected sight of the resurrected and reigning Christ, and I would point you here to chapter 20, verse 17, Jesus is on the brink of ascending to the Father. Notice he says, to my father and your father, to my God and your God. Christ teaches us to look for Christ in the routine areas of life. So, while there is a type of seeing in this passage that we are not able to have, there is nonetheless a valid application in terms of seeing, not with our senses, but with the eyes of faith, as the eyewitnesses recount for us these things that are happening. Christ teaches us to, quote, look for Christ in our routine lives. If we seek Him, we will find Him. Pursue the sight and certainty that comes from a strong faith. Being fully convinced that God is able to do what He has promised. That's how the Bible defines a strong faith. Jesus shows up when we least expect Him. And He orders the lives of His saints in the wisdom of His truth. So there's six steps here today, and again, now viewing these two chapters really as a whole, I think there's a powerful message here for us in learning to seek not sight, vision with our eyeballs, but to seek the presence and the comfort and the joy of Christ in the mundane elements of life. Or in the pieces, what I'm envisioning today, that if you took your day and you broke it up, most of your day would be in one of these six areas. Or if you took your week and you broke up your week, much of your time would be spent in these six areas of life. So let's think about these today. Point number one, We need to be seeking Jesus in the facts of life. In the facts of life. Notice that Peter and John are suddenly accosted by this message from the women that they've taken the Lord out of the tomb and we don't know where they have laid him. Suddenly this is extremely concerning and so Peter and John go out to the tomb clearly from the context with no expectation that Jesus has risen from the dead, but hopefully catching the grave robbers. Hopefully identifying who is it that has done this indignity to the Lord. And then they begin to encounter facts. Now the facts are very simple. The stone was rolled away from the tomb, and so they could see inside. And he's describing how one got there first. John got there first. He didn't go in. Peter, impulsive Peter, crowds right by him, rushes in. He sees. It doesn't say he believed, but it does say that John saw the cloths lying there. And the face cloth, which had been on Jesus' head, not lying with the linen cloths, if these were something else, they would not have been laid in this orderly way. But it seems that before Jesus walked out of his tomb, he took the time to neatly take that long kind of mummy-looking cloth and fold it up and lay it by itself. It's not that Jesus' body vaporized. It's that he took the time to clean up his room before he left it. There's a lesson there about the mundane factors of life. But I want you to see that when John sees this again with his eyes at the tomb on that first day, he believed. He saw and he believed. John came to the tomb. And suddenly, there was a whole new thought in his head. Wait a minute. This is not what this would look like if grave robbers were here. This is forensic evidence. This is a scene not of a crime. This is a scene of a supernatural event. Why were they so slow? Verse 9. Because they didn't yet understand the scriptures. And if you haven't studied Psalm 16 and Isaiah 53, then you may not know why Jesus must rise from the dead. If God's promises are going to be fulfilled, Jesus can't stay dead. And he doesn't stay dead. Because those scriptures must be fulfilled. So I ask you, Do you approach the facts of life humbly and patiently, seeking to understand the world as it actually is and to grow in your understanding of how the world actually is? Do you see the glory of Jesus in the facts of creation, in an unfolding plan of history? Do you see the glory of Jesus in your own experience? of learning and growing and discovering new things. Point number two, we also want to be seeking Jesus in our fears. Seeking Jesus in your fears. Here we look at Mary Magdalene. One of the things I think that I know I forget when I read this passage is that Mary had previously been an extremely unstable person. She's described as being from Magdala and as having seven demons that Jesus cast out of her. This man is not simply her friend. This man is her rock. This man is the one that she has faithfully followed now for years. This one that she has entrusted her soul to This is the one who helped her to get clean. Psychologically clean. There may have been other addictions that were manifested in that demon possession. When Mary is standing outside the tomb weeping, saying, just show me where you put his body so I can mourn. This is a woman whose world has fallen apart. This is someone who is facing the rock, the immovable rock of her life vanishing. And she's left devastated. Friends, have you had the immovable thing in your life devastated? You stand there melting down, having a mental breakdown, lost and completely directionless in your life? Well, remember Mary, because He delighted to show up in the midst of Mary's fears. He comes And he says, woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking? And she, again, clearly not in the headspace of, oh, there's gonna be a resurrection today. She also doesn't know the scriptures. And she supposes him to be the gardener. And then he simply says her name, Mary. and suddenly she flips back to reality. Again, I'm doing a little bit of interpolating here, but with this demonic background, I wonder what kind of psychological trauma she found herself in. And when Jesus says her name, Mary, you're mine. Mary, I've created you. Mary, I am with you always to the end of the age. Mary, do not fear, the Lord is with you. Mary, you belong to me. And I have a purpose for your life right now. Conflict is often one of these times when the things that have been stable suddenly melt. And we make the conflict worse when we fail to remember that conflict is an opportunity to glorify God, to serve other people, and to grow to be like Christ. And it has been the joy of my heart to see with some of you as well, that when we just remember this thing that we know, it's like, oh wait a minute, Jesus didn't fall off the throne. This is a classroom in His kingdom. Jesus didn't abandon me here. Jesus put me here. Think of the footprints in the sand when there's only one set of footprints. That was when I was carrying you because you had melted down. When it was most difficult. That's when I'm with you. Find Jesus. Seek Jesus. Cry out to Jesus in the midst of your fears. Have you found Jesus ministering to you in the midst of your fears? Perhaps in a hug? Perhaps in someone who's just willing to cry with you? When all of a sudden, out of nowhere, a name comes to mind in your phone of the exact person that you need to talk to right now, someone you trust, someone you know will minister the gospel to you in the midst of your fears. Oh, friends, we need to be ready to meet one another and to meet our neighbors in this place. Because this is a scary place to be. Do you see, though, how even though it doesn't feel like Jesus is King, Jesus not only is King, He's the resurrected King who is alive forever, making intercession for us and ministering to us in the midst of our fears. So, Jesus, we need to seek Jesus in the facts of life. We need to seek Jesus in the midst of our fears. Number three, We need to seek Jesus in faithful worship. One of the things I love about John chapter 20 is that it has a morning and an evening service. It's one of the few passages in the Bible that I think is the divine example of a gathering in the morning and then a gathering in the evening. And it's amazing to see how, and then the next Sunday, first day of the week, the first of the Sabbaths, that they're once again gathered together. And so in verse 19, we have that first day of the week, the doors being locked, Jesus came and stood among them. He said to them, peace be with you. I was thinking this week, This is a benediction at the beginning of the worship service. Maybe we should try that sometime. Jesus did it. We know it's right. But what a thing to say, to start and say, peace be with the saints. Jesus blessed these who had gathered in fear, but nonetheless to be together and to seek the Lord. When he had said this, again I imagine him walking among them, he showed them his hands, probably not his palms, remember? There's good medical evidence that that is not the way that people were crucified, but rather through his wrists. And here he's pulling up his robe and showing them his wrists, pulling up his shirt and showing them his side. Resurrected, but still bearing the marks of grace. still bearing the wounds that He took on our behalf. And it says, then the disciples were glad, for they saw the Lord. And here, I think, this is not just, oh, they saw with their sensory perception. I think this is that they got it. They understood something about, oh, Jesus still has continuity with his body, but now his body has different properties. The doors were locked, remember, when he stood among them. Do you see how, right here, in the person of Christ, we see that we too will be raised in our resurrected bodies, but with different properties. And when we come to worship and we see the resurrected Christ, He is the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. I want to challenge you. I give a lot of leeway on this, but I want to challenge you that one of the things that's going on in John chapter 11, when Jesus says, I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he lives. And he who believes in me will never die." I think that last phrase, what Jesus is saying is, Christians don't actually die in the way the world uses the word die. That is to go out of existence. When I die, I'll be eaten by worms. There's so much more going on for the Christian. who not only has the promises of God, but has the presence of Christ with his people. Do you see how we can see? Not only see his hands and sides, which we can't physically see, but that we can see who the Lord really is. Friends, seek Jesus in faithful worship. Remember that when an invocation is given, that the leader of worship is invoking the presence of Jesus in this place. And when the benediction is given, the minister on behalf of Christ is saying, peace be with you. where biblical worship is taking place. There, the kingdom of Christ is present. What a glory that is. All right, then we come to a very interesting one, and that is Thomas. Here, I've entitled this, I was going for F's here, so Seeking Jesus in Your Frustrations. There might be a better word, But verse 25, imagine what it felt like when the other disciples excitedly told Thomas, we've seen the Lord. And 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. Thomas is setting up conditions for faith. He's now reduced faith to a work. Until you do this on my terms, I don't, I don't, I'm not going to go on. I'm not going to have faith. I reject faith. I have to have sight. And as we talked about at some length, Jesus graciously accommodated that. After all, Thomas was one of the twelve. And one of the criteria to be an apostle in the church is that you are present, visibly present, to see all of Jesus' public ministry from his baptism in the Jordan River until his ascension. That was the criteria according to Acts chapter 1. And so, what did Jesus do? He graciously accommodated during that 40 days between his resurrection and his ascension into heaven. He accommodated Thomas' quote, requirement. But notice that it was not to be normal. Verse 28, Thomas answered him, my Lord and my God. And Jesus said to him, and I imagine him kind of looking out of the corner of his eye. Have you actually believed because you've seen me? Is it because your eyeballs got satisfied? Or is it because you're one of my elect people whom I have loved from before the foundation of the world? Is it because you saw that you believed? Is that the condition of faith? In which case, salvation is not accessible to anyone except the eyewitnesses. But in fact, Jesus then metaphorically turns to the future, to all those who will hear the message through the proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And he says, blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed. Friends, why don't we get to see? Well, look with me, flip in your Bible to Romans chapter 1. Romans chapter 1, verse Verses 16 and 17. The Apostle, again, 13th Apostle, not one that Jesus himself appointed after his resurrection on the road to Damascus, the Apostle Paul. For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it, the gospel, is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it, that is in the gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed. And then here's the key words. And depending on what translation you're looking at, this might be a little different. But I like the way that ESV treats this. It says, from faith, for faith. Or, the footnote there says, or beginning and ending in faith. From the very beginning, God has always required faith of his people, not based on their experience, not based on their first-hand encounter of God, but always through the hearing of those who had encountered God. This is consistent, Old and New Testaments. In the Old Testament, God came to the prophet, and he spoke to the prophet. And then the prophet's job was to proclaim what God had said. And it was the job of those who heard the prophet to hear the voice of God in the voice of the prophet and to believe what was true. This is not some new thing. This is how God has always operated. This leads us then to the fifth point. We have faithful worship in point three, but now in point five, we need to see Jesus in our faithful work. I couldn't get either one of these, worship or work. I couldn't come up with a good F, but I also think there's a parallel here. that oftentimes, in my experience, we think a lot about one or the other of these. We love worship and then we go do our jobs. Or we love our jobs and then, yeah, we go and we worship. But I want you to think about that both worship and work are expressions of our faith in God. And so the RP testimony in the very early, early articles talks about how When we work and then rest, we are following the example of our Creator. Our Creator worked six days and then rested the seventh day. And so when we get into this weekly rhythm of work and then rest, or now in the New Covenant, we start the eighth day or the first day of the week is our worship day. This is a new day. In the resurrection of Jesus, and we worship, and then we work. We are oriented to God, and then we're oriented to our fellow man. And it's when we work, I didn't get a chance to write this down, but there's a great book, if you've never seen it by Gene Veith, called God at Work. And basically, there's a quote, and again, I wish I had had time to grab it this week. But he essentially states a poem. He says, yep, God healed me this week through the doctor that I went to see. God kept me warm this week when the AC guy came to work on my air conditioner. God kept my head dry when the roofer came and worked on my house. God has been blessing me and blessing me and blessing me. I even get to eat cereal in the morning. Like, do you know what a wonderful thing to have both cereal and milk on a regular basis at the beginning of the day. You don't have to go out and milk the cow because somebody else did it for you. Praise God. That was in Walton, New York, where they did all the milking. But just to think about how God is touching His people's lives, and indeed all people's lives, through your work. Children are being taught through your work. People are being healed through your work. People can use their computers through your work. People are being fed. People are being housed. People are being blessed. Because we do our jobs. God is at work in you. Both to will and to work. For his pleasure and to his glory. Friends, do you see Jesus in your work? It was in the midst of the physical sweaty routines of fishing. The seven disciples suddenly, unexpectedly saw the Lord. In fact, I think it wasn't in worship. And so they were a little taken aback. They were like, who's this guy? And finally John's like, Oh, Jesus is showing up on a weekday. Jesus is showing up in the fishing spot. They saw Him with their physical eyes. And by these passages, we are beckoned to understand and believe the eyewitness testimony of those blessed apostles. They actually saw Him. So, do you see Jesus in your work? It's not a physical sight, but Jesus comes to your job site regularly. Did you catch Him last time? If you cut metal or move pallets or care for patients or teach children, do you have the conscious sense that Christ is there present with you? It's amazing that in this fourth appearance in John's narrative, Jesus meets them in the routines of their work. In fact, we think we probably have an idea of how Peter at least fished. He was stripped down. He wasn't naked, but he was stripped down because this was a dirty, stinky place. And he puts his tunic on, and then he jumps into the water. It's funny to think about what all's going on here. This leads us to the sixth and final point, and that is seeking Jesus in your failures. This is not technically a separate resurrection appearance. Although, in verse 20, the word saw is used yet again here. Here we see the presence of the resurrected Christ at work in the midst of one of the most profound moral failures. It was not a failure of the commandments. It was, in fact, a failure of faith. While Mary stood strong, Peter failed. I don't know him. I have no relation to that man. There is no connection between us whatsoever. And then he heard the cock crow and he went and it says he wept bitterly. Now Jesus is restoring Peter. He's there. He's ministering grace to this one who has been wracked with guilt. Friends, one of the most important things that I and the elders of this church can do for you is to minister grace in the midst of your failures. I hope you keep your shepherding elder on speed dial. And we commit, well, I can't speak on their behalf, but I commit to ministering grace in times where you have fallen short of the glory of God. That's when you need the voice of Christ saying, but you love me, don't you, Peter? You love me, don't you, Peter? You love me, don't you, Peter? And it says Peter was grieved when he asked him the third time and he said, Lord, you know all things. You know that I love you. He's like, so give that love. to my sheep." Friends, at the end of the day, the law does not care. The law does not comfort. The law condemns. We have got to understand there is a time for formation with the law of God, instruction in what is good and what is evil, and you should live by that. But God doesn't save righteous people. God saves sinners, and some of you, boy, I'm telling you what, you are quite the sinner, and so am I. Paul teaches us to think of ourselves as the chief of sinners. So seek Jesus in the facts of reality, in the fears of catastrophe, in faithful worship, in the frustrations of life, in the faithful work of life, and especially in failures. Oftentimes it's in the midst of us bumping into the fact of our mortality that we are most receptive to the grace of God in Christ Jesus. And friends, remember that Jesus was physically present for every one of these encounters. They saw Him. Jesus is now in heaven, but what did He do? It's to your advantage I go away, for if I don't go away, then the Helper will not come. But the Helper has come, and the Helper indwells all true believers. Jesus is really and truly present in every aspect of your life. Let's close together in prayer. O Lord our God, how we thank you for your provisions for us. We thank you, O Christ, that you came up out of the grave and then you faithfully revealed yourself. It was the final crescendo of your public ministry, your visible earthly ministry that you appeared again and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, 12 times to people, to hundreds of people. Lord, it was not a thing that was quiet and mythical. It was a thing that was open and public. And Lord, those people then had a responsibility to proclaim what they heard and saw. And some of that has endured today in the words of the apostles. And Lord, that book has been translated into more languages than any book ever written. We thank you for that, Lord. We pray that you would help us to see that the Bible is not a wax nose to be played with, but it is a testimony to a person on whose existence, our eternal destiny hinges. Lord, help us to hear that announcement of John. John stood in a pulpit in churches for years and years and years because he was an eyewitness to the resurrection of Jesus. We pray that you would help us to live in the light of the resurrection And Lord, that you would surprise us when out of nowhere that thought comes, not from our own efforts, but from the Holy Spirit at work in us, that maybe, just maybe, this is a time when Jesus is present. What a novel idea. Lord, not present in his body, but present in his word, in his spirit, in His divine, sovereign power, working in us and enabling us to do what we know is right in that circumstance. Lord, help us to live in union with Christ, the resurrected, ascended, reigning, returning Christ. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, if you would, in closing, turn with me to Psalm 145.