Sermon Tone Analysis
Overall tone of the sermon
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Unleashed Power
Easter is a magnificent day!
It is the most significant day of the entire year.
It is a day of celebration ... the finest clothes, lilies trumpeting their beautiful fragrance, Christian fellowship, joyful greetings ... nothing can be too good.
On Easter we celebrate new hope and the possibility of living life to its fullest.
God is saying to us that his blessings and love are ours.
Good and even great days are now possible for us with the best of days still to come in heaven.
What problems lurk in your life?
Are you afraid of death?
Are you afraid of life?
Easter proclaims that you can be victorious over any problem that you might face.
Victory can be yours by believing in Easter and by appropriating Easter into your daily life.
But what is Easter?
Easter is power.
The power of God released which raised a dead Son after he had been in the grave for three days.
Many gravestones carry the inscription, "Here lies ...," but on Christ’s tomb are the words, "He is not here."
In Joseph’s garden is history’s only empty grave.
I believe Christ rose from the dead, and I believe the resurrection power of God is still being unleashed today.(1)
John writes that it is still Sunday - it is still Easter Sunday.
The disciples are in that upper room behind closed and locked doors.
They were in fear.
They were afraid that the Jews were on the look out for them.
They were afraid that their fate would be the same as Jesus.
I’ve often tried to put myself in their places.
Mary Magdalene had seen and talked with Jesus.
She had told the disciples everything that Jesus had told her.
John and Peter had been to the tomb, they found it empty just like Mary had told them.
John wrote
What did he believe?
Jesus had told them that he would die and that he would be resurrected.
They had witnessed Lazarus being raised from the dead so John knew that it was possible.
Matthew tells us that when Jesus died that graves broke open in the cemetery.
With all that had happened did John believe that Jesus had been raised from the dead?
We know he did not understand what all was happening because he says so in verse 9.
The reality of the resurrection had not hit them yet.
They are hiding out behind a locked door.
They are in fear that they will be arrested and die that horrible death that Jesus died.
They are wondering what happened to Jesus body even though Mary said she had talked to him.
It is evening time, the doors are shut and suddenly the reality of Easter hits them.
Jesus is standing there among them!
For a moment time must have stopped for them.
They were hiding out in fear for their lives and suddenly there is Jesus.
Jesus spoke to them he said:
Peace be with you.
Jesus knew exactly what they needed.
He said to them Shalom, a very familiar greeting.
Bruce Milne in his commentary on this passage wrote about Shalom by saying:
It gathers up all the blessings of the kingdom of God; shalom is life at its best under the gracious hand of God.
Jesus’ use of it on that Easter evening therefore represented the first truly authentic bestowal of shalom in the history of the world!
Precisely because he has brought the kingdom of God into realization by his death and rising, now and only now is shalom a realizable blessing.
Thus his “Shalom!” on Easter evening is the complement of his “It is finished!” on the cross, for the peace of reconciliation and life from God is now imparted.
“Shalom!” accordingly is supremely the Easter greeting.
Jesus talked about this peace.
He is talking about his upcoming death.
He is telling them that he is leaving them with a gift.
It is the gift of peace - wholeness, completeness.
This idea of peace got me thinking.
I looked up how Jesus used that word.
I discovered there were several times when Jesus healed someone that he told them to go in peace.
The thought that ran through my mind was that he was telling them to go in wholeness or fulness or completeness.
When Jesus healed someone, he didn’t just heal them a little bit, he healed them completely.
That woman who had been sick for twelve years was healed completely.
When Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, he not only brought him back from the dead, but he healed him from what ever it was that took his life in the first place.
When that woman who anointed Jesus with the perfume from an alabaster jar left his presence he said to her:
She was not just a little bit saved, she was saved wholly, completely, fully.
I believe that ties in to what Jesus says to the disciples.
He says Peace be with you.
He was offering them something that they did not have.
He was offering them true and lasting peace.
John says that he showed them his hands and his side and then he says it again.
He didn’t stop with offering them this peace.
He identifies a mission for them.
He says that just like the Father sent him, he is sending them.
Jesus was not done with his mission, but he was commissioning or deputizing the disciples to continue on in Jesus name.
They weren’t to just sit around in Jerusalem.
They were being sent on a mission.
Jesus does something interesting that we might pass over quickly.
John says there in verse John 20:22 “22 Then he breathed on them.”
He breathed on them.
That seems a curious thing to do.
A couple of incidents came to mind as I pondered this thought.
The first was in the valley of dry bones.
God said to Ezekiel
The breath of God entered that army and they came to life.
It was new life because they were nothing but an army of bones.
The more significant passage that came to mind is found in Genesis.
Here is the creation of man.
God formed the shape out of dirt.
I picture in my mind a sand sculpture.
Some of them look amazing.
Some seem so realistic.
God created this dirt sculpture and then he “blew life’s breath into his nostrils.”
The sculpture became a living breathing man.
New life was born that very moment.
Life that had never existed before in history.
When God created the animals at creation he did not breath the breath of life into them.
He simply created them with life.
With man, who was made in God’s image, he breathed the breath of life into him and he came alive.
Coming back to our text, the scripture says that He breathed on them.
Could it be that he breathed on them to give them this new life that he has been talking about all during his ministry?
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