The Counterconspiracy of Heaven
Series: John
John 20 - Ryan Romeo
We’re wrapping up our series in John and so, last week, if you were with us, David was in John 19. So last Sunday we had Good Friday on Sunday. We talked about the crucifixion. This Sunday we get to talk about the resurrection. So it’s Easter for Christmas. I know it’s very confusing, but we promise we’re going to be right back to the birth of Jesus in a couple of weeks. We’ll be right on time. It’s going to come full circle. After the resurrection we’ll come right back to the birth.
If you were here and you know David’s heart, last week he really unpacked the crucifixion. I think those of us in kind of pop Christian culture, we kind of gloss over that. The message of the cross, so powerful. But David talked about the reality of the cross. It wasn’t just that it was really hard and Jesus had a hard time going through it. It was a brutal, brutal thing that he went through. It was humiliating. It was something unlike any of us have ever really experienced. And he brought that to life. It was a little bit heavy.
But it should be heavy. Because what Jesus carried for us was not light. What Jesus paid on the cross was not a light price. He paid a very heavy price on the cross. And before we dive into the crucifixion, or to the resurrection, we have to understand the power of the crucifixion, that God loved us so much that he went through what he went through for us—for you and I.
And the resurrection without the death on the cross is not a good story. And the death on the cross is not a good story without the resurrection. They really n need each other. So we’re going to dive back in.
In the context of John 20, the disciples, Mary—none of them know about the resurrection yet. They are still living under the shadow of the crucifixion that had just happened. So let’s pick it up in verse one, chapter twenty:
1 Now on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb. 2 So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” 3 So Peter went out with the other disciple,
The other disciple, by the way, is John. He’s writing in t he third person.
So Peter went out with the other disciple, and they were going toward the tomb. 4 Both of them were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first.
Which John feels like is a really good tidbit for us to know, that he beat Peter to the tomb.
5 And stooping to look in, he saw the linen cloths lying there, but he did not go in. 6 Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen cloths lying there, 7 and the face cloth, which had been on Jesus' head, not lying with the linen cloths but folded up in a place by itself.
So they’re coming in and they’re going, “This doesn’t look right. Something about this does not seem right. Everything seems too perfect. And Jesus’ body is gone.” And they’re starting to realize as they’re paying attention to details.
8 Then the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first,
In case we had forgotten by this point.
also went in, and he saw and believed; 9 for as yet they did not understand the Scripture, that he must rise from the dead.
We have to go back to what the disciples were experiencing at this point. As a disciple of Jesus, all of them left friends and family to follow him. They probably had a lot of friends and family go, “are you sure? Are yo sure you want to leave your business? Are you sure you want to leave your family to go follow Jesus? This guy seems a little ‘off.’” And there were plenty of times in the Bible when people came and the them and was like, “You know what? I think Jesus is losing it a little bit here.”
The disciples gave up everything to follow this man, Jesus, whom they believed was a the Messiah. The Messiah who was going to come and restore Israel. The Messiah who was going to bring political power back to Israel. They had in their mind what they could see with their eyes, and this was what they imagined Jesus bringing.
So all along the way, when Jesus’ teaching got a little squirrely, like, “You have to eat the body and drink my blood,” and when everybody abandoned Jesus, his inner circle stayed with him. And they’re going, “One of these days…” You’ve got to imagine these disciples were thinking, “One of these days all of our friends and family are going to realize, once Jesus gets into power and we’re sitting at his right hand, that we made the right call.” You’ve got to imagine they were wrapping their whole life and the future of what they believe God is doing into Jesus.
And they’re not hearing things ten chapters before this. You know, Jesus said, “I am the Good Shepherd and I lay down my life for my sheep. And if I lay down my life then I can pick it back up again.” Jesus has been intimating very clearly that there is a serious curve ball getting thrown their way—that a death and resurrection is about to happen. And they just can’t wrap their heads around it. They’re seeing with their eyes, but they’re not seeing with their hearts. They’re not seeing what God’s doing in the season.
At this point, they just went through the horrific death of their friend. They just saw him humiliated and bloodied. They’ve got to be so incredibly sad at this point in what happened to their friend, knowing that he didn’t deserve it. Knowing that he was a part of a victim of a conspiracy that was going on, from political leaders to religious leaders, down to people in Jesus’ inner circle—who turned their back on Jesus and turned him in and whipped up the crowds to the point that they started saying, “Crucify him. Crucify him. Give us Barabbas. We don’t care. Give us that guy. We don’t care. This is not about justice. Right now we want blood and we want Jesus dead.” And this is what the disciples experienced.
The main player, especially in the beginning of this chapter, is Mary. So, if you notice, Mary runs to the tomb and she notices things are amiss and she runs and gets John and Peter, who is a little slower than John. She brings them back to t he tomb. And Mary says this thing that is really telling. She says, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.”
You could see her going, “We just saw this whole conspiracy that was going on behind the scenes start to turn into this full blown thing that killed Jesus, that brought this injustice into my life, and now it’s continuing. Whoever they are, I don’t know who it is, but it’s somebody that’s in charge that came and took Jesus’ body and I don’t know why they did that.”
And Mary—this is most likely Mary Magdalene—if you remember, Jesus delivered her from demons when she was younger, earlier on in the story. She was a prostitute. And that’s not a job that you just waltz into. That is on the back of her probably going through some very heavy things the were outside of her control and being desperate enough to find herself in that red light district of Jerusalem. She is used to men taking advantage, men of power getting away with big things. She sees men, political leaders coming in and out of the red light district and nobody has any idea. And she sees men of power getting away with things left and right. Injustice is happening all over the place.
Then she meets Jesus. She meets this men that looks at her in a pure way, in a way that she’s never seen anyone look at her. She sees this man who loves her without any agenda. He sees her. Sees who she is through any of the outward things that she was involved in at the time.
Beyond that, Jesus was somebody who stuck up for her. You remember when all the religious leaders were going to stone Mary, Jesus comes to Mary’s aid and says, “Stop.” And she sees a man who loves her with purity, who stands up for her when she needs it the most. And she starts to have those knots in her heart, those knots of injustice, those knots of, “I guess nothing’s going to change,” start to slowly be undone by Jesus. And she starts to have hope and again and goes, “Man, this guy Jesus, maybe he is the Messiah. There’s something different about him. He makes me feel different.”
And then the crucifixion happens. And you have to imagine Mary went through everything all over again. Going, “See? Here it is. Here’s the men of power getting away with things like they always do. Jesus being crucified for absolutely no reason. This man who loved me, who I’ve wrapped so much of my future in, who just brought life and light to a dark life that I’ve had up until this point. And now that light is snuffed out.”
You feel that emotion in verse 11. Let’s pick it up there:
11 But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb,
I just have to pause here. Like, you’ve got to imagine even for her. This desperation. She’s outside of the tomb. She is crying. She hasn’t seen Jesus. You could just see this desperation. “Let me at least go take care of his body and serve Jesus one last time before I don’t see his face anymore.” She is desperate at this point.
11 But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb, and as she wept she stooped to look into the tomb. 12 And she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had lain, one at the head and one at the feet. 13 They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?”
She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” 14 Having said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing, but she did not know that it was Jesus. 15 Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?”
Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.”
16 Jesus said to her, “Mary.” She turned and said to him in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means Teacher).
She’s in this frenzy. She’s like, “I don’t know where Jesus is at.” She turns around She sees Jesus abut she doesn’t recognize Jesus. And how many times in our darkest moment do we see Jesus but we don’t recognize him?
And maybe she has tears in her eyes. Maybe it’s blurry. Maybe she can’t tell. But Jesus does something that stops her right in her tracks. He says her name. He says, “Mary.” And she knew that voice. She knew nobody said her own name like Jesus did. She was like, “Teacher. I see you. I see you.”
In that moment, all that injustice that had been stirring up in her again, all that hopelessness that she had was washed away; because she saw that, though the enemy had a scheme going on that seemed insurmountable, God had defeated it. Because, God, that’s what he does. The enemy has a scheme going on. He always has a conspiracy going on. Since Genesis chapter 3, he has been trying to separate the created from the Creator. He’s been trying to bring a separation between the Father, the Holy Father that loves us so much, and the rest of his children. And we see right here that, though the enemy was fighting really hard, though he was thrashing around, trying as hard as he could to kill Jesus, God did it again. He turned what was meant for evil into something good. Beyond what Mary could ever imagine.
A lot of us have that sense, when we’re up against something hopeless, when we’re up against something dark, 2020 has been that year. I mean, we’re all seeing the darkness in the world. We’re all feeling it. Maybe different than we’ve ever felt it before. It’s really easy, maybe you’re a little bit better of a Christian than I am. But I don’t lay awake thinking about all the good things that God is doing. I lay awake at night thinking about all the bad things that are going on. I very quickly allow what I see in front of my eyes to dictate what I am experiencing in my heart. The things that I’m seeing in culture really dictate how I feel about the truth that I know is not moved by culture. When those seasons of injustice and darkness come upon us, it’s really hard to see through it. Jesus could be standing right in front of us and we don’t see him.
I remember the first time I had ever experienced that sort of darkness and injustice. I was eighteen and I had just graduated. I didn’t know what to do with my life. So I decided to go on the mission field. This was about the year 2000. I felt like the Lord was calling me to Cambodia. So I worked with an organization called YWAM and went to Cambodia. During this time they had just finished a civil war. I think that was happening in ’99 or’98, something like that.
So Cambodia, it’s a pretty dark place anyway, but it was extra lawless and extra dark in this season. We showed up and the pastor that we were living with in Phnom Penh was a great guy was just an amazing guy. He had lived through the Khmer Rouge. He told us some very eye opening stories. The fact that he stayed in Cambodia was an amazing testament to the grace of the Lord.
One of the very first things he wanted to do was drive us through the red light district of Cambodia. I don’t know what I imagined it would be like and I think back on it. If you’ve done any missions work, just being in a third world country is shock enough, you know? Nothing smells normal. Everything’s loud. Everything’s different. The culture is completely different. But I remember they drove us through the red light district in Phenom Penh. I had never seen that sort of injustice to children before in my whole life. I remember driving through, hearing kids say things that you would never want to hear kids say. And I remember just feeling so overwhelmed. It was likethe people that see that sort of thing and they’re like, “I need to engage this injustice and talk to somebody, work it out, tell people about Jesus.” But I shut down. I didn’t know how to handle it. I retreated into the fetal position in my mind, just going, “Lord, this is far beyond what I thought the darkness of the world was. This is a little bit shocking to me and I can’t actually even function right now.”
I came home, came back to Tucson, that’s where I lived and grew up. I got married, my wife Blake and I got married. We decided that the Lord was calling us back on the mission field. So we went back on staff at YWAM. One night we were having a worship night. I was on my knees, going, “Lord, where do you want me to go?” And I felt him so clearly say, “Cambodia.” I thought, “Oh, no! Lord, I survived a mission trip to Cambodia. I didn’t feel like I thrived there,” like, “This seems like a bit of a mistake.”
So I told Blake and she said, “Yeah. I kind of feel like the Lord’s calling us back to Cambodia. So we get a team together, go back to Cambodia. We were there another three months. We showed up during Chinese New Year.
Now Chinese New Year is not like American New Year, where it’s like maybe for a few days before and a couple of days after we shut down. No. Chinese New Year happens, like all of Asia shuts down for over a month.
We show up in Phenom Penh. We’re all ready. We have all these plans to do ministry. And the pastor we were staying with—the same pastor we stayed with the first time—he’s like, “Hey, we’re so glad you guys are here. It’s Chinese New Year so nobody’s in the city. Maybe we’ll start doing ministry in about a month or so.” And we were like, “We’re here for three months?”
So we did what any mission trip leader would do. We started doing a lot of prayer walks. If you don’t know what a prayer walk is, go on a mission trip with some leaders who don’t know what they’re doing. They’re going to take you on a lot of prayer walks around the city.
So we were doing a bunch of prayer walks, praying over Phenom Penh. We met another missionary family that was just about to leave. They said, “We have this orphanage that we’ve been working with. They’re not shut down for Chinese New Year. The kids just live in this house. Why don’t you go check that out?”
So we got on a boat. It was about an hour from Phenom Penh, down the Mekong River. We showed up on this island and we walked in. There were all these kids. All of them were under the age of fifteen. We walked in while they were worshiping. I had been a worship leader, and I knew what it looked like to be in a room full of people worshiping. I had never seen the kind of passion that these kids had when I walked in that room. There was a little boy, probably thirteen years old, had a guitar with five strings because they probably broke one a couple of months before and didn’t have the money to get a new one. And they were singing their hearts out to Jesus unlike I had ever seen anybody worshiping Jesus.
A lot of these kids had come out of that red light district in Cambodia. A lot of these kids had been abandoned by their parents on the door step of an orphanage that could hardly feed them. You could see right through the floors. It was not like an air-conditioned, nice building. Yet these kids had so much joy in Jesus because they saw Jesus. They met Jesus on the back side of such injustice in their life. They saw the light of Jesus brighter, I think, than a lot of us have ever seen the brightness of Jesus.
There was one boy in particular who was worship, he had scars all over his face. We asked the guy who was running the ministry, “What happened to that little boy?”
He said, “The mom had AIDS and she had this child who also had AIDS and he was dying. She basically left him on our doorstep one night.”
This couple that had taken over this ministry took him in. Every night they prayed for him. The baby kept them up every minute of the night. This baby was basically dying. They thought, “Well, we’re going to pray over him and really do the best we can to show some love before that happens.”
One day they were praying and the baby started to fall asleep when he hadn’t slept in days. The next day he slept a little bit better. They noticed the sores that were all over his face had started to kind of diminish. Over the course of weeks they realized he didn’t have AIDS anymore. This little boy—nobody knows his name. Nobody’s going to see his story on the national news. But Jesus knows his name. Jesus knows his story. Jesus brought something to that little boy, brought redemption to him. When he sang worship to him, it was on the backside of injustice that he had lived and grown into. He saw Jesus for who he was, which was the only person who genuinely loved him in all of his life.
That is what Mary is experiencing. Mary turns around and she sees Jesus, who she thought was dead. We have the luxury of knowing the end of the story. She didn’t know the end of the story. She thought, This is the end of the line. This is injustice coming back around. And Jesus comes and shows her resurrected life. And it’s such a powerful thing.
I love later on, as he starts to meet with different people, the different disciples and everything. He starts to go to them and starts to meet with them one on one. Thomas, he shows the scars on his hands and reveals himself in kind of a unique way to everybody. But at a the end of the day, what Jesus did on the cross was something that God had been planning for a long time. Genesis chapter 3 didn’t take God by surprise. He knew the fall of man was happening, and he had this planned from the beginning of time, where he would connect the children of God back to a loving Father. And there’s this huge story that’s happening. You know, the schemes of the enemy are big and they seem so overwhelming until you see Jesus.
I started to read this. And I started looking and there’s this parallel started coming. It’s not just the big story that God’s passionate about. Yes, he’s passionate about what resurrection means in terms of how he fulfilled the law. Jesus didn’t come to do away with the law, he came to fulfill the law. There’s so much that goes into this big story of redemption for people. But there’s this intimacy. There’s this infinite nature to God, but there’s this intimate nature with God.
I love the disciples, later on in John 20, they locked the door in this upper room because they were afraid. They were locked up in fear. I think there are a lot of us in this room that have been there. They’re locked in this room, they’re afraid, and Jesus shows up and says, “Peace.” He says it a second time, “Peace,” because I think they really needed some peace in this season. He reveals himself to them. And he does something that I think is so beautiful. He breathed the Holy Spirit into the disciples. It says that he breathed it.
As I was studying this week, I started praying and I felt like the Lord nudged me. It was like, “Do you remember when else God breathed on his people?” And I thought all the way back, not Genesis chapter 3, but Genesis chapter 2, when the Garden of Eden was there. When everything was perfect. When God is this perfect garden tender. And he pulls up the dust from the ground with his bare hands, and it says he breathes life into Adam. Because the Father is very intimate with his people. He loves all people. But he loves you and he knows you. He knows your story. He knows everything imperfect about you. And yet, as a good Father, he comes and breathes life and breath into our lungs.
I thought back on when Mary saw Jesus and was like, “I thought that was the gardener.” I thought, He is the Gardener. He is the gardener from Genesis chapter 2. She saw correctly. He was restoring this pre-fall position of mankind. Not because of what we did, but because of what he did. He is the Gardener in Eden, as we return to that.
I think the most powerful thing is something that I skipped over pretty quick when I first started studying John 20. But I’m going to pick it back up on verse 1:
1 Now on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb. 2 So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple…
who is John
…the one whom Jesus loved…
When I first read that I thought it was the competitive John who was telling us so many times how he beat Peter to the tomb and going, “Jesus loved me a lot, too.” And I realized, no. The Holy Spirit really spoke to me and it was like, “This is what people feel when they’re around me.”
John wrote John 3:16. He knows that God so loved the world. He knows that there was this thing that was happening from the beginning of time. He knows the grandeur of creation and the whole process of bringing us to this point of death and resurrection. John knows it better than anybody. But when he says this, “The disciple whom Jesus loved,” he’s saying, “The way that Jesus looked at me, I knew that he loved me. He saw me.”
None of us in our life have people that truly see us. Maybe they get close. Maybe spouses get close. There is nobody like Jesus who sees you for who you are and still loves you. There’s nobody that sees in you the things you don’t see in yourself like Jesus. There is nobody like Jesus when you’re locking eyes with him and knowing that he sees you. There is nothing like that.
And this is the good news of the gospel. This is the good news of the resurrection. That, yes, God spoke creation into being. Yes, he is so strong and so powerful. Yes, this is the plan that happened from the beginning of time. And yet, in all of that, he looks at you this morning and says, “I see you. I know you. I love you. I want to be with you.”
This is the Jesus we serve. Jesus is alive today. He resurrected from the dead. He didn’t die again. He is alive today and he is coming back for his people. The story is not completely over. But right now Jesus gives you access to him, just like John had access to him. And we get to say, “Jesus loves me. He sees me. He knows me.”
Let’s pray:
Jesus, we thank you that you laid down all the powers that you have. That you are a God who spoke galaxies into existence. You spoke every star in existence. In a moment, it all appeared because of the power of your voice. Yet, you chose death on a cross to reconcile us with you. Jesus, we are humbled this morning as we remember that. Thank you that you see us. Thank you that you know us. Thank you that there isn’t one person in this room that you don’t see. You don’t see the imperfections. You don’t see the things that are lacking. When we come to you your blood covers it all. You see a different us than we see.
I pray that we would be a people that would live out of resurrection. That we wouldn’t just talk about it once a year. But God, we live out of the power of resurrection. The joy of knowing that you went to that cross for the joy set before you to reconcile us with you.
So, God, how much more can we give and serve you? We love you. We worship you. In Jesus’ name.
Scripture taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.