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Sermon Details
- Pastor Name: Jonathan Cornell
- Date & Time: April 12, 2015 | 10:00am
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SERMON SERIES:
Easter to Pentecost
I want to begin by doing a little exercise with you. I’m going to put a verse up on the screen and I’d like for you to read it back to me. Ready?
“The Lrod is naer to the broknehreated and svaes the crsuehd in siprit” (Psalm 34:18).
Researchers at Cambridge University have confirmed that as long as the first letter is first and the last letter is last in a particular word, our minds know how to take the scrambled letters and make them say the right thing.
Jesus Christ does the same thing in our lives. He sees the beginning and he sees the ending of everything. It doesn’t matter how jumbled up the stuff in the middle gets, when God looks at our history, it always makes sense. That’s what Easter does. Easter is the final letter, the final word, the final note in the chord that brings resolution to our lives.
On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked 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. Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.” And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.”
Now Thomas, one of the Twelve, called the Twin, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But 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.”
Eight days later, 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.”
The disciples knew the beginning of Jesus’ story; they knew the boy born to Mary and Joseph in Bethlehem, the carpenter who came from that nowhere town, Nazareth. They knew and believed Jesus was the Son of God, the Word made flesh who was in the beginning. But the cross really threw them for a loop.
Download the entire transcript: John 20 19-29 Making Sense of the Message
