The big idea
John ends his gospel by telling you why he wrote it: not so you would know a fact, but so you would believe and have life in Jesus’ name. The risen Christ speaks one word — a name — and everything turns. And the power that raised him is not filed away for later; it is meant to be walked in now.
Key takeaways
- “It is finished” is not the moment the suffering had added up to enough. The death was the point — not an unnecessary appendage tacked onto a payment already made.
- The unbroken bones and the pierced side are not coincidences John noticed afterward. They are the Passover lamb’s own preparation and Zechariah’s own words, landing on the right week.
- Jesus did not open Mary’s eyes with an explanation or a sign. He said her name. That is still how he does it.
- The garden is not scenery. Nearly every wound of the first garden is answered in this one — the tree, the side, the thorns, the nakedness, the hiding, the fear.
- Thomas asked for evidence and got it. Jesus did not scold him for wanting to see, and he accepted “my Lord and my God” without correction.
- An intellectual Christianity keeps Jesus in a well-studied compartment where he never touches the controls. That is a real and common way to be bored while being saved.
- Faith is not strengthened by anything that does not require faith. If you want to see resurrection power, obey somewhere that costs you.
This was the last message in Hope’s series through the Gospel of John, and Matt took the last two chapters in one sitting — the death, the burial, the empty tomb, Thomas, and John’s own statement of why he bothered to write any of it down.
The death was the point
“After this, Jesus, knowing that all was now finished, said (to fulfill the Scripture), ‘I thirst.’ … When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, ‘It is finished,’ and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.”
John 19:28–30A common assumption is that after some finite quantity of pain Jesus had paid enough, and “it is finished” marks the moment the ledger balanced. Matt pushed back hard on that. If it were true, the death becomes a strange unnecessary appendage — “he didn’t cross some finish line and then decide, well, I guess I may as well die, I’m already here.” Yes, by his stripes we are healed; but the stripes and the blows and the piercing all run in one direction, poured out all the way to death.
Bones unbroken, a side pierced
The soldiers broke the legs of the other two, found Jesus already dead, and instead put a spear in his side — blood and water (John 19:31–37). John stops the narrative to swear he saw it. Both details fulfill scripture: not one of his bones broken, which is not one stray verse but part of how the Passover lamb is prepared — fitting for the week, and more fitting for what he was doing.
“And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and pleas for mercy, so that, when they look on me, on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child.”
Zechariah 12:10Matt admitted Zechariah is hard reading — mystical, and grammatically knotted right here. God is the speaker; the one pierced is also him; the sentence only resolves in Christ.
Joseph, Nicodemus, and a race against sundown
Burial was family work, so for Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus to carry it on the family’s behalf was a genuine honor — and a public one, which tells you Joseph was a known and trusted disciple and that Nicodemus had finally cast his lot in. Seventy-five pounds of myrrh and aloes, and a new tomb in a garden close at hand, because the Jewish day turns at sundown and the Sabbath was coming. Expedient, Matt said — and maybe more than expedient.
The tomb, and a folded cloth
Mary comes while it is still dark, finds the stone moved, and runs. Peter and John run back — and John, writing his own account, cannot resist recording that he got there first. “I wonder if Peter in the Lord’s presence will ever have a moment to turn aside and say, John, why did you have to tell everybody that.” Inside, the linen cloths lie there and the face cloth is folded in a place by itself. Matt declined to explain it: a distinction is plainly being drawn between the head and the body, but what it means he could not say.
“Then the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; for as yet they did not understand the Scripture, that he must rise from the dead.”
John 20:8–9This is the first belief in the resurrection itself — not that Jesus was special, or blessed like Lazarus, but that a supernatural event had fulfilled God’s word.
He said her name
Mary stays, weeping, sees two angels, then turns and takes the risen Christ for the gardener (John 20:11–16). No explanation, no prayer for her eyes to be opened, no secret handshake — “he says her name, and she knew right away.” Matt let that sit: how do you put words to that kind of intimacy, being called by name by the resurrected Lord? “That’s actually why you’re here. He’s still doing that.” And once you have heard it, you want it for your friends, your family, your neighbors.
Why a garden
This was the long middle of the message, and the part worth rereading. In a garden mankind was made from the ground; in this garden the Son of Man is buried. To make Eve, God put Adam to sleep and took a bride from his side (Genesis 2:21–22); the Son is put to sleep on a cross so that from his pierced side blood and water flow and purchase a bride.
From a tree came disobedience and punishment; in another garden called Gethsemane the trend reverses — “not my will, but yours, be done” — and Christ embraces death on a cross that both Paul and Luke call a tree.
“Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever —”
Genesis 3:22Note what they were exiled from. Not God’s presence — he is free to roam around the cabin, and you see him doing it with whomever he likes a few chapters later. They were shut out from the tree of life, and immortality was denied. That access is restored: the tree of life stands in the New Jerusalem, and the life it gives comes through a broken body — the bread from heaven that, unlike the manna, does not leave you dead.
The list keeps going. A serpent tempted in the first garden and won; here his head is crushed, and crushed under our feet too. Adam and Eve sinned and grasped for covering; Jesus was stripped, took our shame, and rose without need of grave clothes. The ground was cursed to yield thorns; he wore them into his skin. Adam was soil with breath in him; in his last hours Jesus breathed on the disciples. And where the first pair heard God in the garden and hid in fear, the word now is do not be afraid — go tell my brothers, and later, I am with you always.
Peace be with you — and Thomas
Behind locked doors Jesus stands among them and says “Peace be with you” — Matt has always wondered whether there was a small part of him that wanted the jump scare. Then he shows his hands and side, says it again, breathes on them and sends them (John 20:19–23). This is not John’s alternate telling of Acts 2 or of the Great Commission; both happened, and John is simply reporting a different evening.
Thomas, absent, wants his fingers in the nail marks. Strong words, maybe a touch gross, Matt said — but he is in luck. Eight days later Jesus comes back through a locked door and offers exactly that, and Thomas answers:
Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
John 20:28–29No berating, no curse for wanting evidence. And what Thomas said was not a devout Jewish exclamation vented at the ceiling — he called Jesus his Lord and his God, and Jesus accepted it.
Why John wrote it down
John says plainly that many other signs are unrecorded, and that these were written so that you may believe and have life in his name. Not an FYI. Matt stacked Paul on top of it: buried with him in baptism so that we too might walk in newness of life, raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God. It is good to know facts, like the times tables. This is not filed there.
“But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed.”
2 Corinthians 4:7–9The mortal frame is not upgraded. The power is his, in us.
If you believe but don’t see it
Here Matt turned pastoral and personal, and flagged it as such — take it with a grain of salt. Some in the room believe and still wonder whether the resurrection power of Christ is actually in their lives. Two preliminary things: you cannot run the counterfactual, because there is no parallel universe where you get to see your life without Christ; and doubts brought to Jesus are safe, since he met Thomas mercifully.
Then the diagnosis he called repentance from “intellectual Christianity.” Nothing wrong with studying the scriptures like a total dork — the problem is keeping Jesus in a compartment where he has no access to the control panel. The idea of Jesus is great, but he doesn’t get to touch the remote.
His own turn came the same way. He was a believer, baptized, had seen real change, and was hungry to see God’s power conquering evil — and felt the Lord talk sense into him, gently but firmly: if you want to see people healed, you could pray for the sick. His own analogy: sitting at home wishing you could see a live basketball game. They do happen in living rooms, if you have enough children — but they also happen out there, and you could go.
Where to start
He usually stops at “ask the Holy Spirit where you can obey,” partly because that is where God gives wisdom without reproach and partly because you are adults. But he went further, on limbs he named as shaky. Read the scriptures until the Spirit prompts you. If there is estrangement or unforgiveness in your heart, Jesus could have a field day with that — hard, and the resurrection power of Christ is sufficient for it. If you only ever watch on the stream, join a church; it needn’t be this one, and he offered to send recommendations. If you are in bondage to a habit, take up the old-school practice of confession to a brother or sister and actively seek grace to repent. And for Matt personally: deliberate, on-purpose evangelism is exhilarating, and it is what he reaches for when his own faith goes flat.
None of it is a threat. Jesus said his food was to do the will of the one who sent him, and his yoke is easy and his burden is light — walking toward fellowship instead of passive observation, toward forgiveness instead of estrangement, is the lighter road, not the heavier one. If you are looking around at the Christians near you and wondering why they are not feeding the deep longing in your heart: those are sheep. There is a Shepherd, and sometimes he says come, and the path is hard.
Matt closed by reframing the risk as company rather than performance. Every fumbled attempt still counts, because “I’m on a project with my Father and my friend, my best friend.” Then he prayed what the whole message had been asking for: that the resurrection power of Christ would be made manifest, that we would see God’s glory triumphing over darkness, and — like the disciples — that God would help our unbelief.