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Pastor Tim shares a message on fear, shame and the Resurrection from John 20:19-21.
The following study questions and transcript are AI generated and may contain errors.
The pastor describes the disciples’ fear as a “poorly packed bag” that became too full of shame and anxiety. What “bags” are you carrying right now that keep you from fully trusting God or stepping into what He’s calling you to do?
When Jesus appears to the disciples, He greets them with “Peace be with you” rather than judgment or condemnation. Why is that significant, and how does it shape the way we approach God after our own failures?
The sermon uses the story of a veteran student who believed the gospel was true but couldn’t accept Jesus’s forgiveness because of shame over his past. Have you ever experienced a similar gap between believing something is true about God and actually being able to receive it? What changed, or what would help break through that wall?
Jesus restores the disciples and immediately commissions them: “As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.” How does receiving Christ’s peace and forgiveness empower us to step into the mission He gives us—and what calling might fear have been holding you back from?
The sermon emphasizes that Jesus’s worthiness covers our unworthiness—we don’t earn His peace through our performance. How would your daily life look different if you truly believed and acted on this truth?
The following study questions and transcript are AI generated and may contain errors.
Welcome back to Steadfast, Little Hills livestream. We’ve been having some technical difficulties tonight. You may have heard me talk about that briefly a moment ago. Technology is always interesting, but thankfully, while God is interesting too, He’s a much more reliable sort of interesting. And we’re going to find comfort in God’s word tonight as we begin “Closed Doors,” a brand new series.
Last night, if you joined us on our brief this week at Little Hills livestream, we did a quick devotional from Luke chapter 24. In it, we looked at the women who went to the tomb to prepare for what they thought was the final moments that they’d ever see Jesus’s body. They didn’t expect to see Him live again. When they went, they found the empty tomb. They came back to the disciples, and what did the disciples do? They didn’t believe them. They thought it was idle talk.
We’re going to pick up in the Gospel of John chapter 20 tonight, where we find the disciples continuing not to believe. We’re going to look starting at verse 19. And as we begin tonight, let’s go ahead and open with prayer.
Let’s pray. Father, we thank You for Your goodness and Your love. We thank You that You are with us all the time. You’re with us when we know that You’re with us. You’re with us when we’re feeling uncertain or shaken or fearful or so many other things. Lord, whatever we are going through, we know You are with us. And so would You help us as we reflect on Your word tonight to feel comforted and encouraged by it. We pray in Jesus’ name, amen.
As we turn to the Gospel of John chapter 20, verse 19, we read these words: On the evening of that day, that first day of the week, the door 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.”
What do we find here? I think we find the disciples acting an awful lot like we would act in their situation. They’ve been following Jesus for three years. They had believed what He had said, and yet they didn’t fully understand it, just like we don’t fully understand it. And now they’d watched Him crucified, they’d watched Him die, they’d seen Him placed in the tomb to be buried. They heard some quote-unquote idle talk that the tomb was empty, but people don’t rise from the grave when they’re dead; they’re dead. So they locked the doors. They go into this room; they lock the doors because everyone seems to want to kill them—until they find the religious leaders that want to kill them. They’d seen that. They’d fled from them after the religious leaders sought Jesus’s death, and the leaders had succeeded. So the last thing they wanted to do was be out and about, to be seen, and to be added into the tomb next door to Jesus.
To the Romans, the crucifixion was a horrid, terrible form of execution specifically for those who were viewed as enemies of the state by the Roman Empire. So the disciples locked those doors presumably because, as they thought about it, they knew that everyone wanted to kill them. Maybe they felt the shame of failing Jesus, too. They believed that Jesus was from God. What did Peter say? He said he’d never deny Jesus, that he would follow Jesus anywhere, even to death. What had Peter done? He denied Jesus. What did the other disciples do? They ran and fled.
As they knew that the Romans wanted to kill them and that the Jewish leaders wanted to kill them, it wouldn’t surprise me if the disciples also wondered somewhere in their heads if maybe God had it out for them, too, for they had failed. Maybe they thought the reason that it hadn’t worked, that Jesus was now dead, was because of them. That if somehow they had stood firm, they could have done something. They could have mustered a way for Him to escape. Maybe they were responsible for His death. All these things had to be filtering through their heads, and they had to wonder, what are we going to do now? We’re in the middle of a hostile city with people that want to kill us, and our leader, for whom we’d given up our lives or livelihoods at least—they hadn’t yet given up their lives—is dead.
So often we feel like in our lives that we don’t know what’s going on, and we start to really just want to lock ourselves up. It’s not hard to understand why the disciples were doing this. Yes, we look back and we think, come on, disciples, Jesus told you He was going to rise from the grave. And yet in the moment, is it really so hard to believe? No, not at all. We’d probably do the same thing. I know I would.
I was thinking about plans, and I thought about my grandma and her love of grocery shopping. She’d go in with the best kept plan. She was going to go in and pick up one thing—maybe it was a gallon of milk. Now I quickly learned as a little kid that one thing meant a cart full that was as heavy as possible. She could never resist picking up more things. Her plan to go in and just get one thing never worked. Maybe you’ve experienced that. Maybe you’re even experiencing that now—not perhaps going into the grocery store or maybe using Instacart, but letting me start picking up all these things. She’d see this and that that she needed, and she’d have all sorts of things. If we started with a basket, we’d have to go back and get a cart. I’ve done that a number of times myself.
We do that in so many ways in our lives. We think, “I’m going to serve God, and so we grab this little bag that’s going to hold our failures in it, and we think, this won’t be so bad. I can do this on my own. I only have this little bag. I won’t fail more than this. Otherwise, I’ll serve God.” So we start going through the grocery store, and we start loading it up. What do we find? We only were able to pick up one thing, and yet we start being loaded down with fear and shame—just like in the cycles—until suddenly, this bag is on the verge of breaking, and it’s completely full. And, well, I’m not going to hold it up any longer so it doesn’t break, and we go rushing for more, and it won’t stay up. Why? Because we’re so loaded down with all these things that we didn’t plan to have.
The disciples didn’t plan to have fear and shame. They planned to stand boldly for Jesus. They planned to go out and proclaim what He had taught them. And yet they ended up with this poorly packed bag, too full, loaded with fear of the religious leaders, fear of the Roman Empire, fear—in other words—of the world, of people, and presumably of God.
Scary to face those with power. Scary to face those even we care about in ways that we start to constantly be wracked with fear. Maybe it’s fear God’s calling us to do something, to go someplace, and yet we wonder what people are going to think as we serve God. Even just simply the choice to follow Jesus is one that causes us often to feel fear because of how out of sync with our society it is to actually stand firm for God’s truth. Maybe it’s a boss. Maybe it’s family. Maybe it’s friends. Each of us has people that we fear, places that we fear, situations we fear. As we start to fear those things, we do like the disciples and we run from what God’s called us to do.
As we do that, we run into exactly the situation I believe the disciples are in, and that’s one where not just the world scares us, but God scares us. Why would God scare them? They abandoned Jesus, whom they believed was sent from God. Even if they didn’t fully understand He was the Son of God, even if they didn’t completely get it, they knew that they had failed Him. They had this toxic mix of feeling like everyone was against them. Literally, it probably felt like both earth and heaven had it out to kill them because who would want them? Failures to God and to man.
And I think too often we feel that, too. We run from the fear of the world and find ourselves then ashamed and fearful of God. But what does Jesus do in verse 20? This is so important for them and for us. Take a look there with me if you would.
It says, “When He had said this,” remember He said, “Peace be with you,” He showed them His hands and His side, and the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord. Their shame and their fears quickly transformed because Jesus—Jesus appears in a locked room to them. So if there were any doubts left in their minds of who Jesus was—for one, they knew that He was alive. They knew that the promises that maybe they thought that idle, that quote-unquote idle talk was maybe starting to seem true.
Now they knew it was true because Jesus is there talking to them. But that in itself could be really scary. Jesus is talking to them, but He just went into a locked room. He managed to go right in. He’s resurrected from the dead. He is everything He said He was and is. And He then, therefore, would of course know that they are nothing like what they said they were. They said they would stand for Him and fight for Him and be those who would usher in His kingdom—and they had failed. What does He say? He doesn’t say, “Okay, now it’s time for me to show my judgment to you.” He says, “Peace be with you.” He comes back to restore them, and they sense that. They immediately can tell the demeanor.
He’s showing them His hands and His side so that they would know that He really is the Jesus they’d seen crucified and not some mere ghost. He was the real flesh-and-blood Jesus, and He was with them, and He was restoring them. And so they see these promises proven true, and then they can start to rejoice. Jesus, whom they thought was dead, is alive. Everything they had feared was shown to be weaker than the one whom they served. And most of all, they had a restored relationship.
I think many of us probably have someone who’s died in our lives that we have regrets over how we’d interacted with them, things that weren’t made right, places where we wish we had done more for them. The disciples were surely going through those things. We talked about all the ways they could have served Jesus in those last days and probably all the days before that. But now they’re being restored, and there was a new chance, a new opportunity here.
The restoration and the confidence that was coming from it leads to Jesus not just saying, “Okay, I’m here and I’m not going to judge you. I’m not going to destroy you. I’m God, and I’m not going to wipe you out,” which I think if we look in our own hearts, wouldn’t that be what we’d want to do? We’d want to say, “You fools, how could you be so foolish?” But Jesus doesn’t do that.
What does He do? Verse 21, Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.” He takes these broken men who are fearful of the leaders who had failed their friend and their Savior. He says, “You have my peace. Now it’s time for you to go do the work I’ve been preparing you for.” He offers them forgiveness—the very forgiveness that we proclaim in the gospel. And it’s not about their worthiness; they have no chance to make things right in that moment. It’s about Jesus coming to them and giving them His worthiness. And that’s what we always need to remember in our relationship with our Lord.
As I was going over this passage, I was reminded of a number of years ago, a student I had when I was teaching. He was a veteran who had been through all sorts of horrible things. He was asking questions in my religion class about who Jesus was and how the gospel worked. I remember one of the most heartbreaking moments in our conversations as we wove together the teachings of the Bible and all the things he’d been through. He said he believed it was true, but he couldn’t act on it because there was no way that God would want someone who had done the things he had done and seen the things he had seen. He was so filled with shame over his failures. He knew that he had not lived the way necessarily that Jesus would have wanted him to live.
Even though he believed that Jesus was resurrected from the grave, even though he wanted to find ways to help in the ministry, he couldn’t himself accept Jesus as his Savior because that shame put a wall up that blocked him. Maybe that’s you tonight. For some of us, that sort of thing keeps us from ever believing in Jesus. Keeps us away from church. Keeps us away from the Bible because we’re so sure that God would never want anything to do with us that we flee. We lock the doors of our hearts. We’re carrying our bags here, and we just can’t let go of them, and we’re so fearful they’re going to break. We just keep holding them and allowing them to break.
Maybe that’s you. Maybe you believe in Jesus, and yet you stay away from His word or you stay away from the church. You stay away from His people because you still feel that shame. You do trust in Him, and yet there’s still at least a half wall there. Disciples believed in Jesus. There was that wall there. I don’t know if it was a half wall or a whole wall; it may have been different for each of the disciples. But what was true was that they were hindered from truly relating to Jesus in the way that He had called them to until He came and restored them.
As we read His word, the call that He gives them—that call, “Peace be with you. Now as the Father has sent me, I am sending you”—goes to you as well, goes to me as well. Whatever things I’m carrying in that bag that I went into the grocery store and thought I could just have a manageable amount of fear and shame and ended up with this giant bag that I can’t deal with—whatever it is, Jesus takes that bag and throws it, takes it all out until it’s empty. Then we can just toss it off. Empty bag.
Because Jesus does that. Whatever sin you might be ensnared in, whatever fears, whatever shame, whatever else might be hindering a relationship with Jesus—or if you have one, is getting in the way of it being truly healthy and encouraging in this moment—hand that bag to Jesus knowing that what He did for these disciples who fled in the moments before His death, He offers to us as well. You see, Jesus doesn’t discard the broken. He was broken so that we wouldn’t be any longer. That’s true for each of us tonight. That’s the hope that we have in His gospel. That’s what we see when Jesus comes through those closed doors of our lives. He offers that to me, and He offers that to you even this night.
Let’s pray. Father, we thank You for Your goodness and Your love. We thank You that wherever we are, whatever we’re struggling with, whatever bags we’re holding on to, that You offer us freedom from those bags. From all the worry, from all the shame and fear, from all the things that preoccupy us. Lord, we know that we’re not worthy. Just like the disciples were not worthy of Jesus’ forgiveness, so too we are not worthy. We know that You offer that same peace to us even tonight and every day of our lives. We pray that as we dig into Your word and as we come before You in prayer, that You would reassure our hearts that wherever we might be, we might be reminded that You came for our brokenness. You accepted it. You were broken for us, and You triumphed over death for us. We thank You for that, Jesus, tonight. We love You, and we pray this in Your precious name. Amen.
Wherever you are tonight, I think all of us need to constantly come back to that because we hold on to it. We hold on to the things in life that would call us away from Jesus. It’s so funny how that happens, isn’t it? Even though we want to hold on to God’s word, we hold on to the things that pull us away from it instead. That’s why it’s so good that even as we’re inside our homes sheltering in place, facing a very fearful situation, it’s so important that we keep coming back to His word to be comforted each and every day.
I’m so glad that you’re joining us here for this livestream. We’ll be coming back next week to continue “Closed Doors.” We’re going to pick back up in John chapter 20, and we’re going to look at the story of Thomas. We’ve been looking at the other apostles, but we’re going to come back to one whose problem isn’t fear, per se; it isn’t shame, it’s doubt. And all of us at times in our faith and our walk with the Lord are going to come into those places where we doubt, where we want to say, “You need to prove it to me, God.” What do we do in those moments? What do we learn from a disciple who isn’t ready to jump on the bandwagon even when all the other disciples are saying, “Jesus is risen, He’s here”? He says, “Nah, I don’t know about that.”
Well, I hope you’ll come back next week, 7 p.m. Invite anyone else who might be struggling with their own doubts and fears. They might come, and we can all come together and rejoice in God’s word, because this word is written for us.
Also, if you want to get more into God’s word, I hope for the men watching that you consider joining our men’s Bible study, which returns this Thursday at 7 p.m. We’re going to be digging into Isaiah 49 this week, and it ties in really well with what we’re talking about right now, because we’re looking at the servant, the prophecies of Jesus who came to take on our sin just as we were talking about tonight. So please consider coming back on Thursday night for that as well.
I hope these things have been a great encouragement to you. I know in digging into this message today, preparing for it, it was a great encouragement to me just to think about how God takes people like me, takes imperfect people, and constantly offers us peace and restoration.
I hope you’ll follow Little Hills Church on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter as we continue to offer opportunities to hear about the God who does that. Please share the good news that we’ve been reading about in God’s word with others. And if there’s any way I can be praying for you this week, or our whole team can be praying for you, don’t hesitate to contact me, because all of us face these fears, all of us face challenges just like the disciples did. But we can take them before our God together, and together we can encourage each other and help each other to keep those doors open. God works through us together. And I hope that if there’s some place that you need prayer, that you’d give me the opportunity to come alongside you and to pray for you as we come before our God together, knowing He is the God that loves you and is with you this week.
I hope you have a blessed and wonderful week. Thank you again for tuning in.
God bless you.