On one occasion, Billy Graham met alone with Winston Churchill. At one point in the conversation, the Prime Minister looked Billy in the eye and said, “I am a man without hope. Do you have any real hope?”
Billy asked, “Are you without hope for your own soul’s salvation?”
Churchill responded, “Frankly, I think about that a great deal.”
Billy had his New Testament with him. Knowing that they had only a few minutes left together, Billy explained the way of salvation. Churchill seemed receptive. Billy talked about God’s plan for the future. Churchill’s eyes seemed to light up at the prospect.
At precisely 12:30, Churchill’s assistant knocked. “Sir Winston, the Duke of Windsor is here for your luncheon.”
“Let him wait!” Churchill growled.
The two men went on talking for another 15 minutes, then Billy asked if he could pray. “Most certainly,” Churchill said, standing up. “I’d appreciate it.”
Billy prayed for the difficult situations the Prime Minster faced every day and acknowledged that God was the only hope for the world and for us individually. Churchill thanked Billy and walked him out. [1]
Did you know that Winston Churchill arranged his own funeral? There were stately hymns in St. Paul’s Cathedral and an impressive liturgy. But at the end of the service, Churchill had an unusual event planned. After the minister pronounced the benediction, a bugler high in the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral on one side played Taps, the universal signal that the day is over. There was a long pause. Then a bugler on the other side played Reveille, the military wake-up call.
It was Churchill’s testimony to his belief in the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the promise that Jesus makes to all of us of eternal life.[2] Churchill faced his own death differently because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
In John 20:19-23 we read of no less than five results of the resurrection. Listen for God’s word to you…
When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” 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 retain the sins of any, they are retained.”
In this passage I believe we can see five results of the resurrection of Jesus. The first result is peace.
Is it not intriguing that the first word the risen Lord Jesus speaks to his disciples in this encounter is “peace”? Perhaps that is his first word because he knows how much we need it. And he knows we need it repeatedly. We need continual reminders of the peace Jesus offers. Thus, he speaks peace to his disciples a second time.
William Barclay notes that this was “the normal everyday eastern greeting”. However, as Barclay says, it means far more than: “May you be saved from trouble.” It means: “May God give you every good thing.”
The first disciples had anything but peaceful times after Jesus’ death. They were worried about the same things some of us are worried about right now: death and unemployment, not necessarily in that order.
The disciples were worried that they might be next in line for crucifixion. Furthermore, they must have wondered what they were going to do with their lives if they did live. They had pinned all their hopes on Jesus and dedicated their lives completely to his service, giving up their jobs and even their families for a time. Now what were they to do? Go back to fishing?
But in the midst of their quandary, the living Jesus meets them. Jesus appears to his disciples while they are hiding behind locked doors in a state of fear and perhaps panic. But locked doors provide no obstacle to the risen Lord. He comes and stands among them and speaks his word of peace…
Junior Seau was a passionate, fist-pumping, emotional leader and superstar for the San Diego Chargers. In his 13-year pro football career, Seau made the Pro Bowl 12 times. He was also part of the NFL 1990s All-Decade Team. But sadly, on May 2, 2012, at the age of 43, Seau took his own life.
Seau’s death in northern San Diego County stunned the community who adored him for his service and seemingly outgoing personality. In an interview with Sports Illustrated, his former teammate and friend, Rodney Harrison, explained that in Seau’s last days he was desperately searching for peace. Harrison said:
He would tell me that the only time he truly felt at peace was when he was with his children or in the surf. He would say, “When I’m on those waves, it’s the greatest feeling. I have no worries, no stress, no problems. I just forget about everything.” Junior was always searching for peace.
Even the world’s most successful people still have a deep spiritual hunger, a restlessness that I believe can only be satisfied by Jesus. Like Junior Seau we are all searching for peace, but we will not find it in success or fame. The risen Jesus can give it to us.
The second result of the resurrection that I see here is joy.
After Jesus spoke that blessing of peace to his disciples, he showed them his nail-scarred hands and his sword-pierced side. We read that the disciples rejoiced when they saw him. When they realized that Jesus had actually risen from the dead, that the same Jesus whom they had known for three years, whom they had heard preach, whom they saw heal countless people, this same Jesus who had hung seemingly helpless on the cross just days before, when they saw this Jesus and realized he had overcome the final obstacle, death, that is when they were filled with joy.
Richard Stearns, President Emeritus of World Vision, once reflected on his visit to a church in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, nearly a year after the devastating earthquake that rocked that country. The church’s building consisted of a tent made from white tarps and duct tape, pitched in the midst of a sprawling camp for thousands of people still homeless after the quake. This is how he describes the church and the lesson he learned there:
In the front row sat six amputees ranging in age from 6 to 60. They were clapping and smiling as they sang song after song and lifted their prayers to God. The worship was full of hope… with thanksgiving to the Lord.
No one was singing louder or praying more fervently than Demosi Louphine, a 32-year-old unemployed single mother of two. During the earthquake, a collapsed building crushed her right arm and left leg. After four days both limbs had to be amputated.
She was leading the choir, leading prayers, standing on her prosthesis and lifting her one hand high in praise to God… Following the service, I met Demosi’s two daughters, ages eight and ten. The three of them now live in a tent five feet tall and perhaps eight feet wide. Despite losing her job, her home, and two limbs, she is deeply grateful because God spared her life… “He brought me back like Lazarus, giving me the gift of life,” says Demosi… [who] believes she survived the devastating quake for two reasons: to raise her girls and to serve her Lord for a few more years.[3]
What an example of what can happen when a person experiences the power of the presence of the risen Lord Jesus in their life! If Demosi in Haiti can overflow with joy in the midst of her circumstances, maybe we can too.
A third result I see here, stemming from the resurrection of Jesus, is a sense of mission.
After filling his disciples with peace and joy, Jesus said to them, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”
How did the Father send Jesus? He did it in love. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
Jesus, the Son, is sending us in love, just as the Father sent him as a love message to the world. My father used to say, “When love is felt, the message is heard.”
You might say that God spoke in three separate but related ways in order to send my father from a peaceful home-life in Oregon on a hundred-acre ranch to the slums of New York City to reach teen gangs with the Good News of Jesus. First, my father had a speaking engagement at the Eastern State Penitentiary in Pennsylvania. After his talk, a sixteen-year-old young man approached him. He was sentenced to life in prison for killing a police officer. The young man said to my father, “That was a good talk you gave. I just wish you would have reached us before we got here.”
Shortly after that, my father was speaking in New York City, and he happened to pick up a copy of Life magazine from a newsstand. He read an article about the teen gang problem in New York City and he was intrigued.
Then, finally, around the same time, my father helped a singing group record a song by John Peterson and Margaret Clarkson entitled “So Send I You”. The lyrics of the song tugged on my father’s heartstrings…
So send I you to labour unrewarded
To serve unpaid, unloved, unsought, unknown
To bear rebuke, to suffer scorn and scoffing
So send I you to toil for Me alone
So send I you to bind the bruised and broken
O’er wandering souls to work, to weep, to wake
To bear the burdens of a world a-weary
So send I you to suffer for My sake
So send I you to loneliness and longing
With heart a-hungering for the loved and known
Forsaking home and kindred, friend and dear one
So send I you to know My love alone
To serve unpaid, unloved, unsought, unknown
To bear rebuke, to suffer scorn and scoffing
So send I you to toil for Me alone
So send I you to bind the bruised and broken
O’er wandering souls to work, to weep, to wake
To bear the burdens of a world a-weary
So send I you to suffer for My sake
So send I you to loneliness and longing
With heart a-hungering for the loved and known
Forsaking home and kindred, friend and dear one
So send I you to know My love alone
So send I you to leave your life’s ambition
To die to dear desire, self-will resign
To labour long, and love where men revile you
So send I you to lose your life in Mine
So send I you to hearts made hard by hatred
To eyes made blind because they will not see
To spend, though it be blood to spend and spare not
So send I you to taste of Calvary
“As the Father hath sent me, so send I you”
To die to dear desire, self-will resign
To labour long, and love where men revile you
So send I you to lose your life in Mine
So send I you to hearts made hard by hatred
To eyes made blind because they will not see
To spend, though it be blood to spend and spare not
So send I you to taste of Calvary
“As the Father hath sent me, so send I you”
God may not be calling you or me to reach teen gangs in New York City. But he calls each of us to share the love of Jesus in word and deed with others. Ask Jesus how he might want you to show his love to others right now, and he will show you how.
A fourth result I see here, stemming from the resurrection of Jesus, is the indwelling Holy Spirit.
We read that Jesus breathed on his disciples and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” What an earthy way to convey his spirit to others and yet mysterious at the same time! Of course, the word for breath and the word for Spirit are the same word in Greek—pneuma. And what clearer sign could there be that Jesus was raised bodily from the grave than the fact that he was breathing! In a way, this verse demonstrates the intimate connection that God created there to be between body and spirit.
Of course, right now, there are people all over the world who need Jesus to breathe into them the breath of life. Some with Covid-19 may be healed. Others may not. But certainly, what is more important than having physical breath is having the spiritual breath of the Holy Spirit.
Without the Holy Spirit of Jesus, we cannot carry out the mission of Jesus. Wherever we see real, self-sacrificial love at work in the world today, there, I believe, we are seeing the work of the Spirit of Jesus.
How does Jesus breathe his Spirit into us today? Often it happens through reading the Bible, especially the Gospels. Sometimes Jesus breathes the Spirit into us when we pray. Other times it happens while we are worshipping, singing praise to the Lord, or partaking of Holy Communion. There are, perhaps, countless ways that Jesus can breathe his Spirit into us. The question is: are we open and ready to receive?
Chuck Swindoll once wrote something I imagine many ministers can identify with…
By the time I graduated from [seminary], I had many convictions and few questions, especially regarding the Holy Spirit… But during a lifetime of ministry that has taken me around the United States and to many countries abroad, I have found that the work of the Holy Spirit continually keeps me off balance. I’m not alone in that. Those in church leadership seem afraid the Spirit is going to do something we can’t explain. I’ve found that disturbs many folks… but I’ll admit it energizes me.
I’ve come to realize there are dimensions of the Spirit’s ministry I have never tapped and places in this study about which I know very little. I’m on a strong learning curve. I have witnessed a dynamic power in his presence that I long to know more of firsthand. I now have questions and a strong interest in many of the things of the Spirit I once felt were settled. To say it plainly, I am hungry for more of him. I long to know God more deeply and more intimately.[4]
I think that hunger is the key to unlocking a deeper experience of the Holy Spirit, If we are open, if we are asking the Lord Jesus to breathe his Spirit into us, then it will happen, perhaps in ways we do not expect and cannot fully understand, but it will happen. Then we will be empowered for the mission of Jesus… and for one thing more…
A fifth result of the resurrection we see here is forgiveness. After breathing the Spirit into his disciples Jesus says, “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”
Perhaps the most powerful gift from Jesus that we have to share with others is the gift of forgiveness. By our words and deeds, we can either release people from the things that bind them, or we can lock them in. We can lift people up, or we can press them down.
Not only can we release ourselves and others by forgiving others when we have been wronged, we can release others by reassuring them of Jesus’ forgiveness.
I believe there may be no more important part of any Christian worship service than the declaration of forgiveness that it is my privilege to declare as a representative of Jesus. Though we can read about forgiveness in the Bible and hear it preached about in a sermon, we all need to have another human being look us in the eye and say, “Jesus loves you and forgives you.” And I don’t believe that is something that needs to be restricted to a priest or minister. Each of us as disciples of Jesus has the privilege of declaring God’s forgiveness to others.
Who is there, within your spheres of influence, that desperately needs to hear and know the forgiving love of Jesus? Why not ask the Holy Spirit to give you an opportunity, even this week, to declare that love and forgiveness in word and deed?
When we experience the power of the presence of the risen Lord Jesus, the result is peace, joy, mission, the Holy Spirit and forgiveness. Those results are not something we can keep to ourselves. These are gifts that simply must be shared…
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