John 2:13-22 Good News—The Temple is Rebuilt

This morning we’re reflecting on one of the more shocking stories of Jesus’ life, a time where he actually makes a whip in the temple and drives out the cattle and sheep that were being sold in the temple, along with moneychangers who were exchanging the people’s Roman coins, which had the image of Caesar on them, for Jewish coins which did not, so that the people could pay the temple tax. Jesus forces us to think about what worship is, and about who should be the true focus of our worship. A hint, it’s not about us and our wants, it’s all about God, all about Jesus.

The chaotic noise and busyness of the business was being done in the area where the women and foreigners worshipped. The temple area was divided into various sections: at the very front of the temple was the Holy of Holies, the place of God, then came the area of the priests where the priests offered the sacrifices, the next section is where the men worship, and in the back was the Court of the Gentiles where the non-Jews are allowed, and this is where the animals and money exchangers are set up. The historian Josephus tells us that one Passover over 255,000 lambs were bought, sold and sacrificed in the temple courts. You try worshipping God and praying in that chaos, yet this is where the Gentiles are expected to find God through reflection and prayer.  It seems as if everyone had forgotten the real purpose for the temple as the place to meet God and worship him through offerings and prayer, it had turned into a business.

Alicia Meyers writes: “In verse 16, Jesus calls the temple an “emporium,” or a marketplace. Rather than a scene of spiritual preparation, Jesus instead sees a place focused on monetary exchange. Like Old Testament prophets, he challenges the temple economy, questioning whether it was focused more on wealth than prayer.” What are we really focused on? Is our worship more about what we want than on prayer and helping others to encounter Jesus? Satan is always working behind the scenes to distract us from truly worshipping God and Jesus, encouraging us to focus on ourselves and our wants first instead. How often does it cross our mind on how someone who is looking for Jesus might experience worship here in Bethel? It’s important to make Bethel a place where people can find Jesus, can see how the worship of Jesus shapes who we are into grace filled followers of Jesus who care about leading people to Jesus and praising him. Worship is central to who we are, but worship is always God focused, always about pleasing God rather than ourselves; it’s a time of praise and helping others to praise Jesus.

Imagine being there at the temple that day, you’ve just come down from the north where Jesus did his first miracle, turning water into wine at a wedding. Jesus has miracle like power and is willing to use his power to help others, to make sure that people like the groom aren’t embarrassed by their inability to provide proper hospitality to their guests. As you stand there with Jesus, you see him get angrier and angrier as he watches what’s going on around him in the temple, then you see him pick up cords and start to make a whip, and you start wondering what’s Jesus going to do?

Then Jesus turns towards the animals and drives them out of the temple courts, every single one of them, cattle and sheep. Then Jesus turns to the money changers and walks towards their tables where coins are all stacked neatly. The men behind the tables see Jesus coming and the look in his eyes and they begin to panic. Jesus strides up to the tables and sweeps the coins all over the temple floor and overturns the tables, shouting to those selling doves, “Get these out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a market!” There’s a fierce and holy passion in Jesus! Matthew tells of Jesus coming into the temple on Palm Sunday, “entering the temple area and driving out all those who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves. “It is written, he said to the, “My house will be called a house of prayer, but you have made it into a den of robbers.” Worship for many had become shallow, no depth to it, it was often simply going through the rituals.

Jesus has a passion for God’s house and worship. The disciples’ eyes are opened as they remember what the psalmist wrote in Psalm 69, “for zeal for your house consumes me.” For Jesus, faith and his relationship with God is a passionate consuming fire inside him. People are often uncomfortable around those who are passionate about God, about Jesus, because of what such passion demands much of us. We’re so used to thinking of ourselves first, even in worship, that someone with a passionate willingness to sacrifice and put the needs of others first, being deeply other-focused because of their passion for Jesus and his mission to make disciples of all people, can make other followers of Jesus uncomfortable. When this passion shapes our worship, when it’s all about God and Jesus, listening to the stirring of the Holy Spirit in our hearts, many are unsure of how to relate to us.

Jesus becomes a target for his enemies. We see some of that in this account, “What sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?” Basically, they’re saying, “How dare you come in here and act like this, who do you think you are?” Jesus answers them with a very unexpected response, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.” We look back and understand Jesus is pointing to his death on the cross and resurrection three days later; we see that Jesus is saying that the temple of God, that God’s glory is now found in him, not in bricks and mortar, but his listeners have no clue as to what Jesus is talking about. Jesus comes into our fallen world as the true temple that links heaven and earth. The temple will be destroyed and rebuilt in three days, just as he said. This is the good news of the gospel! We who believe in Jesus as the Son of God are the body of Christ on earth who are here to make disciples of Jesus, creating relationships and spaces where they can meet Jesus and learn to worship in spirit and truth as Jesus later on tells the Samaritan woman.

The Jews who are confronting Jesus remember what Jesus says here, becoming the major part of the case against Jesus in his trial before the Sanhedrin the night of his arrest, and leads to Jesus’ conviction. While on the cross Jesus quotes Psalm 69:21, “They put gall in my food and gave me vinegar for my thirst.” For those at the cross and those reading John’s account of Jesus’ life, they’re being invited to remember Jesus’ actions and words here in the temple, to remember Jesus’ passion for God and his house as a place of prayer and worship where we can come close to God and remember who we are as children of God who need to connect with God regularly. Jesus’ disruption of the worship practices in the temple is God’s critique of how far they had drifted from him again. 

Worship centers us on Jesus, on who he is, what he has done for us through his life, teaching, death on the cross for our sin, and resurrection. Worship is not about us and what we want to experience, but about coming in humility before God and offering him ourselves, as Paul reminds us in Romans 12:1, “Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship.” Matt Redman wrote the song The Heart of Worship to remind us of what worship is really all about:

When the music fades
All is stripped away
And I simply come
Longing just to bring
Something that's of worth
That will bless Your heart

I'll bring You more than a song
For a song in itself
Is not what You have required
You search much deeper within
Through the way things appear
You're looking into my heart

I'm coming back to the heart of worship
And it's all about You, it's all about You, Jesus
I'm sorry, Lord, for the thing I've made it
When it's all about You, it's all about You, Jesus

King of endless worth
No one could express
How much you deserve
Though I'm weak and poor
All I have is Yours
Every single breath!

Worship is about coming to Jesus with a spirit of reverence, wonder, and a sense of mystery about who Jesus is that brings us to our knees in humble gratitude for calling us to be his children, while calling us to share the good news of Jesus with the world and help others worship Jesus too.

 

Mark 8:31-38 Good News—Worth Dying For

 

Hailey, what a special day for you: a faith milestone, a day where you’ve taken a deeper step in your relationship with Jesus by telling the world that Jesus is your Lord and Saviour, and committing to being a member of the Bethel family. Our Scripture passage this morning gives us a glimpse into what this faith milestone means, how it shapes your life as a follower of Jesus.

Jesus has just asked the disciples what are the people saying about him. Many think he’s a prophet, then Jesus asks, “what about you,” and Peter jumps in, “You are the Christ.” Christ means “the anointed one,” and for the Jews this means “the Messiah, the King to end all kings, the King who’s going to put everything right,” as Timothy Keller writes. This is good news, news the people have been waiting for, for centuries! Jesus basically says, “You’re right, you got it,” and then turns and tells them things that they don’t want to hear, that he’s going to suffer, be rejected, killed, but then raised from the dead. Jesus knows this is what being the Messiah from God means, what the King who’s going to make all things right again has to do; it’s going to be a rough road, one the disciples didn’t expect.

Listen to Jesus’ words, “the Son of Man must suffer and be rejected, he must be killed and rise again.” Tim Keller points out, “By using the word must, Jesus is also indicating that he is planning to die—that he is doing so voluntarily. He is not merely predicting that it will happen. This is what probably offends Peter the most. It is one thing for Jesus to say, “I will fight and will be defeated,” and another to say, “This is why I came; I intend to die!” that is totally inexplicable to Peter.” Peter is having a hard time wrapping his head around what Jesus is saying. Jesus has shown he has power over demons, he raised a dead girl from death, he fed thousands of people with only a few loaves of bread and a few fish, how can someone with such power have such an attitude? Jesus should be aiming for the throne, not the cross.

Peter takes Jesus to the side and began to rebuke him. Peter rebukes Jesus! Rebuke is a word that is used in other places to describe what Jesus does to demons. Peter is condemning Jesus with powerful language; it shows just how upset Peter is as he listens to Jesus talk about his upcoming suffering and death. Jesus reveals what kind of Christ he’s come be: a suffering servant, as the prophet Isaiah kept saying. The disciples expected the Christ to be a strong political leader who would crush their enemies! They didn’t understand that only the way of the cross would bring the kind of salvation that humanity needs more than anything else, salvation from our sins and transformation of our sinful nature.

Don’t we often have the same feeling, that because Jesus is king and has power over everything, we should be able to tell the world how they should live and what they should believe. Yet Jesus keeps calling us to humility and servanthood, to wash feet instead of sit on a throne. How many of you became followers of Jesus with the intention of suffering for him, of carrying a cross and a towel instead of a sword? We focus so much on what we get from following Jesus: forgiveness, grace, the gift of the Holy Spirit, a new identity as a child of God, that we ignore what we’re called to give up or to do: to love our enemies, to serve in the humblest of ways, to make disciples of all nations. We’re called to love others so much that we put aside our wants in order to share the good news of Jesus. Telling someone how they should live, before you share with them who Jesus is and help them come to really know Jesus, doesn’t work.

Jesus’ reaction to Peter is quick and harsh, “Get behind me, Satan! You do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.” Jesus is accusing Peter of setting himself up against God, making his concerns more important than God’s concerns, it’s harsh and yet sometimes it’s harsh that breaks through our own deafness to Jesus’ teaching and leading. Why do we so often seen Jesus’ concerns as aligning with ours when that’s so seldom the case. We’re more like Peter than we want to admit, thinking we know better than Jesus how things should go and who should be in charge. We all need to listen more and follow and imitate Jesus better.

Hear Jesus’ words, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” Just as Jesus said he must suffer and he must die, he tells us that we must deny ourselves and take up our cross and follow Jesus. This isn’t a suggestion, if we’re going to be disciples of Jesus, it begins by denying ourselves, making Jesus first always. Jesus doesn’t call us to an easy life, he calls us to crosses; to God’s ways over our ways, obedience over self-determination, slaves over ruler. Karoline Lewis writes, “To “deny yourself and take up your cross” invites us into what the cross can also mean — not just death and suffering, but God choosing human relationships. The cross represents God’s commitment to humanity.”

Marilyn Salmon writes, “According to Mark, Jesus defines discipleship as a contrast between human values and God’s values… Jesus contrasts the life of discipleship with the ways of the world. Jesus rebukes Peter for focusing on human values rather than God’s values.” The disciples are focused on power and greatness, on the throne in Jerusalem, and they naturally assume that Jesus wants the same thing they want. When we live our faith out publicly, persecution and death can become the result of our mission work in our communities. In Canada we have become comfortable with holding to a private faith that costs us nothing. Are we willing, like many of our brothers and sisters around the world to put our very lives on the line for Jesus instead of chasing our own kingdoms? In 2015, 21 Coptic Christian men were executed by ISIS for following Jesus. They were told that if they renounced Jesus, they would be saved. Every one of them died with the words “Ya Rab Yesua!” on their lips, “Oh, Lord Jesus.” Jesus warns us in John 15:20, “If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you.” People don’t want to hear that they are sinful and need a saviour, that they need Jesus; that we are called to a life of sacrifice instead of power.

Are we open to speaking the good news of Jesus, even if it offends others to the point they persecute us? Do we value others as much as Jesus does? Are we willing to be misunderstood as followers of Jesus, are we willing to truly follow Jesus into the uncomfortable and scary places of our community and culture with the grace and love of Jesus leading the way? Do we really care about the lonely and lost, the broken and hurting enough to seek them out and come alongside them to share with them the love of Jesus and the hope and strength he brings to us, before we ask them to change their behaviour? We’re called to live out the good news; loving the unlovable, protecting the vulnerable, while calling for all of us to “Go, sin no more.”

Jesus isn’t done yet, he turns to the crowd and asks two really important questions, “What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?” Have you ever thought about these questions? What can you give in exchange for your soul? Psalm 49:7–9 tells us, “No one can redeem the life of another or give to God a ransom for them— the ransom for a life is costly, no payment is ever enough—so that they should live on forever and not see decay.” We can’t even redeem our own lives because of our sin.

Mythology is filled with people willing to give up their souls for some kind of a benefit, stories that many of Jesus’ listeners would have been familiar with, but how can you get it back once you’ve given it away? Satan knows us enough to offer us our desires in exchange for our souls, yielding to Satan’s offer to fulfill our desires instead of trusting in Jesus and God. This is what lies behind Satan’s temptation of Jesus in the wilderness at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, an offer to do things the easy way.

The only reason we get our soul back from Satan’s grasp is that Jesus exchanged his life for our souls, he exchanged his life to wash our souls clean after we’ve mucked them all up. Jesus exchanged heaven for earth in order to save our souls from death. This is the good news that we hang onto, the good news that Jesus loved us so much that he considered us worth dying for, and now he calls us to be willing to give up our own lives to proclaim this good news to the world!

 

Psalm 62:1-8; Matthew 7:24-29 Standing Firm on God’s Promise

What a joy to have our GEMS ministry lead our service this morning and share about what they’re doing and how God’s working through the GEMS ministry. Every year a Bible verse is chosen to represent theme for the GEMS programme and this year it’s Standing Firm on God’s Promise from Psalm 62:2, “Truly he is my rock and my salvation; he is my fortress, I will never be shaken.” There’s a children’s song about this psalm that translates this verse, “He alone is my rock. He is the one who saves me. He is like a fort to me. I will always be secure.” I grew up in Northern Ontario on the Canadian Shield. The Canadian Encyclopedia tells us that “The Canadian Shield refers to the exposed portion of the continental crust underlying the majority of North America. The crust… extends from northern Mexico to Greenland and consists of hard rocks.” Basically, I grew up on top of a big rock. When my dad built our house in Thunder Bay, we had to blast the rock for a smooth foundation, the house never moved or shifted, it was solid and strong.

Growing up, my brothers and I lived beside a patch of woods and we spent a lot of time building forts to protect ourselves from the prying eyes of girls! We felt safe inside our fort. That reminds us of who God is, that he’s our fort and he saves us from the things that scare us. Sometimes it feels as there’s a lot of scary things going on in the world. You’ve probably heard adults talking about a new war that’s started up in another part of the world, you’ve lived through the pandemic the last 2 years and many people were scared that their grandparents might catch it and get sick, and sometimes there are things that we don’t understand that scare us. I know that sometimes I’m scared of people around me fighting and not wanting to be friends anymore. What are some of the things that you’re scared of?

Even though there are lots of scary things happening, God’s as strong as a rock, nothing can knock him down. Three times the psalm tells us that God is a rock; he doesn’t want us to forget that! Because God is as strong as a rock, even as big a rock as the Canadian Shield, and because he loves us, he will save us from the things we are scared of; he can take away our fear. Jesus tells us that we can trust God because he’s our Father, and just like your dads and granddads and uncles, he loves you and will help you when you need his help. I remember walking through the woods with my dad, and even though there were bears and wolves in the woods, I never felt afraid because my dad was there and he was big and strong and I knew he would keep me safe. That’s what it’s like with God as our Father.

There were lots of scary things going on when Jesus was here on earth too. No matter where they went, there were soldiers making sure that everybody obeyed the laws of Rome because Caesar was in charge. Even the Jewish people who were leading the people, the priests, Pharisees, and Sadducees, were always fighting and arguing with each other. When you’re growing up, it can feel scary when people in church fight and argue all the time. I believe this is why in Jesus’ last prayer before he died, he prayed that his people would all work really hard at getting along with each other.

While Jesus was here on earth, he spent a lot of time telling everybody about God, his Father. Jesus wanted everyone to follow and trust in God, he wanted them to see that God was their heavenly Father and loved them a lot. Jesus taught his disciples and all the other people what kind of people God wanted them to be and how they should live as God’s children. Because being chosen to be one of God’s children is so special and precious, it should be really important to us to want to make God happy by how we live, right? Doing the right things doesn’t make us God’s children, but it does show God and the world that we are really happy and proud to be his children.

Jesus tells everyone a short story about building houses to show us that when we do the things God wants us to, it makes our lives a lot better. I love this story, “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.” Can you imagine seeing these houses in a storm and then watching one of the houses fall down? How scary is that? If you build a house on sand, when rain storms come, the sand under the house starts to crumble or wash away and the house will come crashing down. Take a look at a video of a house built on sand.

What is the rock that Jesus says we’re supposed to build our house on? Jesus has been teaching the people all about the ways we should live that please God and help us to be who Jesus calls us to be. When we do the things that Jesus tells us to do, it makes us better and stronger people who are learning to love God more and more, and to love other people more. It makes us strong people who will have the strength to do the right things, even when it’s hard.

What does Jesus tell us to put into practice? Jesus starts by calling us to be humble and care about other people. He tells us to be light and salt, to do good deeds so that people will praise God in heaven. Jesus tells us that anger and murder are wrong, and that men and women to treat each other with respect and honour, and take marriage very seriously. Jesus teaches us to be careful with our words, especially the words we tell God. Loving enemies instead of hating is really important, and being generous shows love. Jesus gives us the Lord’s prayer where he talks a lot about forgiveness. Jesus tells us to make God more important than anything else and not judge others. Jesus tells us to keep coming to God and seek God. This is what Jesus calls the rock we need to build the house of our lives on. When we make Jesus the most important thing in our lives, we find out that there aren’t as many scary things around and we don’t need to be afraid.

A big part of who Jesus is, is that he obeyed his Father in heaven in everything. On the last night before Jesus went to the cross for our sin, he spent time talking to God in the Garden of Gethsemane. Jesus was afraid of dying for all our sin because he knew how hard it was going to be and he asks God, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.” Jesus trusts God and obeys God, even though what Jesus did for us by dying on the cross for our sin was so hard, but by obeying God, Jesus was given the strength to obey and to wash our sin away.

Building our houses on the rock means that we obey Jesus and do and be the people Jesus calls us to be. When we obey what Jesus says, it makes Jesus happy and that makes us stronger and happier too. It’s like when you do something that your parents or grandparents tell you to do and when you do it, you see how proud they are of you, it helps you to keep obeying them the next time they tell you to do something.

But sometimes it can be hard to obey, even if it’s Jesus telling us to do something. It can be hard to forgive somebody who has hurt you, it can be hard to be generous when you think you don’t have enough, or you’re saving up for something special for yourself. Even adults can have a hard time obeying Jesus when it comes to doing something they really don’t want to do, but when we do obey Jesus, the Holy Spirit gives us the strength to do it and we become more like the house on the rock of God.   

 

Psalm 57—John 20:24-29 Resurrection Flesh

This morning we’re finishing up our brief and abbreviated look at the Apostles’ Creed by reflecting on Jesus’ resurrection and what that means for us. Today’s sermon may be a little more teaching focused as this is an important and yet often confusing topic for some believers. The Apostles’ Creed teaches, “I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.” One of the first places I turn to is the Heidelberg Catechism to find some understanding of what this is all about. Here we read “What comfort does the resurrection of the body offer you?” I always appreciate how the Catechism approaches our faith from the perspective of comfort. It goes on to say, “Not only shall my soul after this life immediately be taken up to Christ, my Head, but also this my flesh, raised by the power of Christ, shall be reunited with my soul and made like Christ's glorious body.”

When the Catechism talks about the comfort of resurrection, it talks about both our soul and our body. Often, the church has focused on the resurrection of the soul, leading to a number of heresies that led people to consider the body as something negative and the souls as somehow being more sacred. This meant that you could do whatever you wanted with your body, including adultery, and it wasn’t considered all that bad because it’s our soul that’s saved, not our bodies. I wonder if that kind of thinking is what shapes many people thinking about what happens to us after we die. I can’t count how often people have told me that when someone dies, they become angels.

Psalm 57 can even seem to lead us into that kind of thinking, that it’s our souls that are saved at death. Verse 1, “Have mercy on me, my God, have mercy on me, for in you I take refuge. I will take refuge in the shadow of your wings until the disaster has passed.” When David writes this, he’s running away from Saul, who wants to kill him. David’s hiding in a cave and Saul’s close by. David has an opportunity to kill Saul and protect his own life, but David refuses because God put Saul on the throne, so how could he ever think of overthrowing God’s decision, David honours Saul instead. Something to think about when we don’t like our own leaders.

When David writes this psalm, he uses a word, nepes, or nephesh, which translates as soul, life or personality when he talks about taking refuge in God. Because the psalms are poetry, it can be difficult sometimes to translate, so it could be translated “in you my soul, or my life, or my personality takes refuge.” But the point of the psalm is not what part of David takes refuge in God, but that God is a faithful and loving God, worthy to be praised, even in times of distress and danger and we can turn to him knowing that God will protect us. No matter what is happening, David is focused on God’s glory. This is why it’s important to read the psalm in the way it was intended to be read, with the theme of God’s faithfulness and love the focus.

This is why Jesus’ resurrection and meeting with his disciples, especially Thomas is important, it emphasizes Jesus’ physical resurrection. Thomas isn’t around when Jesus appears to the rest of the disciples. Thomas has a hard time believing that Jesus is actually, physically alive. If we’re honest with ourselves, physical resurrection isn’t always easy to wrap our minds around. One of the parts of the result of the fall into sin, as we read in Genesis 3, is that, “By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.” I’m sure that Thomas is thinking something like how does resurrection happen?

In the New Testament we see a number of resurrections by Jesus. When Jesus was on earth, he raised three people from the dead: the widow’s son in the village of Nain, the 12-year-old daughter of Jairus, a ruler of the synagogue, and Lazarus, the brother of Mary and Martha in Bethany after he had been dead four days. When Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, even his sister Martha has a hard time believing it could happen, saying, “I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.” That’s when Jesus tells her, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.” When I listen to Jesus’ words as if I’m there at the time, it all sounds as clear as mud to me. Resurrection is always the exception rather than the rule, and each of the people Jesus raised from the dead end up dying again.

Michael Horton writes about the work of the Holy Spirit and the physical creation, “Abraham Kuyper argues that there is always a subtle Marcionite temptation to imagine that the God of creation is somehow other than the God of redemption—and that perhaps the latter saves us from the former.” Michael Horton, using biblical poetic imagery, writes that the biblical story is that of a God who redeems his own creation, that Jesus becomes physically human just like us, and the Spirit turns a barren desert, because of sin, into a blossoming orchard, because of grace. The physical creation is important to God, it’s his creation and he created us in his image as physical creatures, which is why redemption is seen and understood as including all creation, including our physical body and the entire physical universe.

Marcion of Asia Minor believed that the God of the Old Testament was different from the God of the New Testament; one representing justice, the other goodness; one an angry god who demanded justice and had created the physical world which man, both body and soul, was a part. The other god, according to Marcion, was completely indescribable and had little connection to the created universe. Out of sheer goodness, he sent his son Jesus Christ to save man from the material world and bring him to a new home. To Marcion, the material world was bad, the spiritual was good.

This way of thinking has gained traction in the church at various times in history, but is wrong. God does not give up on this material world, because this means Satan’s plan to claim this world for his own wins, to mess up God’s work of creation fails, but Scripture is clear that Jesus wins. Satan’s just part of creation, a creature, and Jesus is the creator and does not give up on what he created. For developing and teaching these ideas, Marcion was kicked out of the church in 144 AD as a heretic, but the movement he headed became both widespread and powerful.

Michael Horton writes, “The world will be different, but there will not be a different world.” When Jesus returns, the Bible tells us that all those who’ve died will be with Jesus as he comes to redeem and restore the earth. We get a picture in Revelation of a creation healed and restored as Satan is defeated once and for all and there will be no more death, or mourning or crying or pain. Paul writes in Philippians 3, “But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.” Just as Thomas was able to touch Jesus’ wounds, in the same way we’ll also be raised up with transformed bodies, physical bodies to live on a physical earth, bodies we can touch.

Jesus’ resurrection is important because it reminds us that our bodies are important and we need to treat ours, and everyone else’s bodies with respect. It reminds us that when we receive our renewed bodies, that the diseases, the brokenness in our bodies that come from life, that come from addictions and brokenness in our souls, bodies that we may not love, are all precious to God and that Jesus brings healing and wholeness. It reminds us that the physical creation is important and it calls us back to our original call to be stewards of this creation gift God has given to us to look after. The resurrection takes the soul that David refers to and reassures us that it will be reunited to our physical bodies again after death. I’m not sure exactly how that will work, that’s the work of the Holy Spirit that first shaped us and formed us in the womb, and who has the power to reunite our body and soul again.

Jesus appeared to his disciples to fill them with his Spirit to send them out to bring the good news of salvation and redemption and show the world our whole person, body and soul, is precious to God and is saved and redeemed through Jesus’ sacrifice for us.