Friday | Week 15
The Gospel of John finishes with the best of news: the tomb is empty! Jesus is Lord! He is risen from the dead and He is the Lord! Every knee shall bow, every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord! He has conquered death, and through the power of His resurrection, we are offered new life! As the final entry in this devotional, let’s focus on John 21:25, the very last verse in this Gospel: Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.
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Thursday | Week 15
I am a big fan of the disciple, Thomas. If I am being completely transparent, Thomas and I have a lot in common. We are both hard-headed skeptics. We don’t just want answers, we want proof. Doubt is an integral part of my testimony. It wasn’t until I prayed bold and honest prayers, admitting to God that I was incapable of having faith to believe in Him, that He gave me just that.
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Wednesday | Week 15
This is the passage upon which the case for Christian movement rests. Either Jesus was resurrected from the dead, or we are forced to believe something far less. Either the greatest miracle ever actually occurred, or we are a deluded people—hoping for eternity but without any proof that it exists. The account from John 20 is amazing at so many levels. First, two women, Mary and Mary Magdalene, were the first to witness the empty tomb and to be in the presence of the living Christ. That John speaks to this is no small thing. Women had no legal standing to be believed in a court of law or any other place for that matter. Yet these two women weren’t just ahead of their time, they were ahead of the male disciples!
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Tuesday | Week 15
At the end of John’s Gospel, we encounter the impossible becoming possible: Jesus, who was killed, has been raised. But he has not simply been brought back to life (compare to Lazarus, John 11); Jesus has been made new. He is the first of the promise that God has made to all creation. In John 20, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb of Jesus while it was still dark on the first day of the week. Readers of the Bible might pick up on this language about the first day: it echoes Genesis 1. John 20 begins by bringing readers into the first day of the new creation. A new day has dawned; all things have become new.
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Monday | Week 15
We move from Jesus’ death and burial in chapter 19 to the amazing events of chapter 20. Jesus is not in the tomb! He has risen! That profound statement is the foundation of our Christian faith. However, as we read in John’s account, it takes time for this to fully sink into Jesus’ downcast followers. Mary Magdalene is the first to believe, having had an encounter at the empty tomb with two angels, then with the Lord Jesus himself.
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