Worship Service Programs

Theme:

"Kingdom Power"

by

Lt. Colonel William MacLean

Easter Sunday - Sermon Outline

A MODEL FOR MISSION !

John 20:19-31

So you think you know what Easter's all about, do you? A Sunday school teacher thought he would see how informed his students were. He posed the question, "What is Easter?" The first student said, "I know what that is; it's the time of year when we all get together and eat a lot and all the guys watch football." The teacher said, "No, that's not it." He asked the second-class member, and he said, "Well, it's that time when we put up Christmas trees and we give presents to each other and we celebrate the birth of Jesus."

The teacher was getting a bit flustered at this point. He looked the third youngster square right in the eye, and asked, "Now, I want to know, what is Easter?" Herewith the answer: "I know what Easter is. Easter is a Christian holiday. Jesus and His disciples were eating at the Last Supper. Then Jesus was betrayed by one of His disciples. The Romans took Him to be crucified. He was stabbed in the side, made to wear a crown of thorns and was hung on a cross. He was buried in a nearby cave which was sealed off by a large boulder. Every year the boulder is moved aside so that Jesus can come out, and if He sees His shadow there will be six more weeks of winter."

Interesting concepts, but not quite in sync with the Word of God!

On the first Easter Sunday, at the end of the day, the disciples were gathered together in an upper room. The door was locked so that the authorities could be kept out. It would seem that the occupants of that room had been on an emotional roller coaster that day. They must have been deeply disturbed. They were disillusioned about what had happened to Christ. To be sure, they had seen Him alive or they had at least heard that He was alive, but they were not fully certain about those circumstances yet. They were bewildered, because if the Lord indeed was dead, what would the future hold for them? Quite likely, they also were frightened. That's why they were behind locked doors. They feared that they might be the next candidates for crucifixion.

Then, all of a sudden, despite the security of that upper locked room, there was Jesus standing in their midst! And when the Lord spoke, He presented a model for mission. "As the Father has sent me, I am sending you." Although they harbored fear of the future, the risen Christ announced their mission. He told them that although they had isolated themselves from the world behind locked doors, He challenged them to go back into the world as a sacrificial offering to further His plan of salvation. "As the Father has sent me, I am sending you." On that first Easter Day, Jesus gave His followers a mission, and in so doing He gave them four things they would need in order to fulfill the offering of their lives.

1.ASSURANCE OF PEACE

You can see how this begins to develop in John 20:19. "On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, 'Peace be with you!'" When He said this, He showed them His hands and His side. The Lord said, in effect, I'm going to send you into the world. Go back into that world from which you have come and of which you are afraid, but I want you to know that as you go back, you'll need the assurance of peace.

And so He stood in their midst and said, "Peace be with you!", and as He did, He showed them His hands and His side. There was a verbal word and there was a visual identification. It really was Christ who had been crucified, buried and who had come back from the dead. And He is saying, "On the basis of My death, burial and resurrection, I am granting to you the assurance of peace."

I think that this is the peace of His death. Romans 5:1 reads, "Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." When we come to the place where we realize that we are sinners, and that Christ died on the cross to pay for our sins, and that He was raised again from the dead, we look to Him as our perfect sin-bearing substitute, and we say, "Thank You, Lord Jesus Christ, for dying for me, I trust in You as my personal Savior." At that moment, God gives to us eternal life, and the Bible says we will never perish.

The Lord Jesus put it this way in John 6:47, "I tell you the truth, he who believes has everlasting life." That's a remarkable saying, and that's what the Lord is saying to us. "You can look at My hands and My side. You can see the scars, you can know that I'm alive, and you can know that by faith in Me you can have peace."

But that wasn't the only thing He said. He continued to speak. You'll notice that He said "peace" for the second time. Now when He said this, He showed them His hands and His side. And then Jesus said to them again, "Peace be with you!" It's as though He was saying, "Not only have I been crucified, buried and raised again for the sins of the world, but now I am the Savior who lives by the power of an everlasting life. Now it's not the peace of My passion; now it's the peace of My presence that will go with you all the days of your lives."

So when the Lord says, "As the Father has sent Me, I am sending you," the first thing He suggests is that you need an assurance of peace. It's the peace of coming to know Christ personally and the peace of knowing that He is the risen, living Savior on a day-to-day basis. That's the first thing that develops in this paragraph.

2. MODEL FOR MISSION   

The second thing that happens is an additional provision. Look again at verse 21. "As the Father has sent me, I am sending you." What we need in the second place is a model for mission. The Lord said He was sending his followers back into the world with peace for the foundation of life, but then they need a model by which they are to minister in the world. The model is this: "As the Father has sent me, I am sending you. This suggests three parallel concepts.

The first thing that this means is that the Lord Jesus was sent into the world with a mind-set central to everything that He was doing. Central to Christ's life was mission in the world. In John 17:3, Jesus says, "Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent." Then verse 18: "As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. Verse 21: ("I have sent them) that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me."

In John 17, over and over, the Lord uses the strong word, "sent." Many other times in John's Gospel the Lord uses the word "sent" to say that central to His life is the fact that He was sent on a mission by God. That was the driving principal of His life. Now He says, "As the Father has sent me, I am sending you." What that means is simply this, that as the central driving passion of Jesus Christ in the days of His flesh is the fact that He was sent by God, so the driving passion of your life and mine should be that we are sent by God as well.

What is the central passion of your life? What is the driving principle? What is it that really motivates you in what you do? Can you say that you are motivated by knowing that as Christ has been sent into the world, so you have been sent into the world, and that is central to everything that you do? This entire concept of being on a mission must be the passion of your life.

Another thing that is important to notice about Christ being sent is this: over and over again we read in the Gospels that when Christ saw the people, when He saw the multitudes, He was moved with compassion. Matthew 9:36: "When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd." Christ had a mission, but that mission was marked by compassion. He had a deep concern for people. Nor was it just for the need for them to have eternal life. He also had concern for the need that they had for the basic necessities of life to be met. When a congregation is on a mission like that of Jesus, it will be a church filled with compassion for the needs of the people.

Another thing about the ministry of Jesus is that it was costly. Mark 10:45 : "For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many." Recognize that Christ was with His Father in heaven. It was an unblemished, perfect atmosphere, and the Father told Him of the need for Him to move into a world of people where there is loneliness, where there is brokenness, where there is pain, where there is despair. Jesus was sent to step out of heaven into that world, and it was going to cost Him something to minister to the people. And Jesus' response was, "As the Father has sent me, I am sending you," which means that if we're going to minister to people, it's going to cost us as well. We're going to have to step out of our world into their social world, into their heart world, into their thought world, into their loneliness, into their despair and into their pain. That's what Jesus means when He says, "As the Father has sent me, I am sending you." So the Lord says, as you go, the first thing you will need is an assurance of peace. The second thing you need is a model for mission. Said Jesus to His apostles, "As you go, preach this message: 'The kingdom of heaven is near.'"

3. POWER OF THE SPIRIT

Look at the text again in John 20. He says there's a third thing that you need, and that is the power of the Holy Spirit. You need the power of the Spirit of God upon your life. Verse 22: "And with that he breathed on them and said, 'Receive the Holy Spirit.'" This is prior to the Day of Pentecost, the day on which the Holy Spirit was given. The Lord knew the Spirit was coming on the Day of Pentecost because He advised both in Luke 24 and in Acts 1, to wait in Jerusalem to be clothed with power from the Spirit on high.

But to encourage these men about that coming promised gift, Jesus comes to them and with sign and with word He communicates to them. He breathes on them and at the same time says, "Receive the Holy Spirit." It's sort of an acted parable. What the Lord is saying is that you have to have the active power of the Holy Spirit as you go out to minister. If you go into the world without the power of the Spirit your mission is going to be ineffective, and defeat inevitably will ensue. For the Lord says, in order to go back into the world on mission, you need the power of the Holy Spirit.

There was a Dutch theologian who visited this country a number of years ago, and as he was looking at the church scene, he evaluated it and said, "My impression of you Americans is that you think that technology and methodology can accomplish anything." He continued, "You have completely forgotten the power of the Holy Spirit." The business of the church would go on as usual, if we have become accustomed to functioning without the power of the Holy Spirit. The Lord knew that His followers would need power when they went out to minister, and so He breathed on them and said, "Receive the Holy Spirit."