The Power of Jesus Name

There is a popular song that says, “There is power in the name of Jesus.”

I grew up singing, “There is Power in the Blood.”

These songs speak a truth that can transform our lives.

We all face enemies in life.  However, our struggle is not against flesh and blood.  The Bible tells us as much.  In Ephesians 6:12, it tells us, “For we are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places.”[i]

The struggle we are in can impact us in a number of ways.  For example, the struggle we are in can bring fear and trouble, doubt and uncertainty and/or leave us lost and in the dark.

The death of Jesus on the cross brought all of these on His disciples.

Jesus spent 3 years building into the lives of a core group of 12, plus an assorted group of followers.  If we go by the number of people gathered together after the resurrection in Acts 1:16, we can number these followers at about 120.  The training of the 12 was especially intense as it was a 24/7/365 deal.  They were with the Teacher constantly, and developed a close relationship with Him.

When Jesus went to the cross, He confronted all of the evil rulers of the unseen world.  He confronted the mighty powers in this dark world, and He fought against the evil spirits in the heavenly places.  He battled all of these and won.  This was the ultimate confrontation of good and evil.

When they laid Jesus in the tomb, His followers thought the battle was over.  Fear, uncertainty and dark ruled the day.  John 20 tells us of the resurrection, and through this account, we will see how the power in the name of Jesus overcame the fear, uncertainty and darkness of that day.  We will also see how this same power works in our lives today.

First, let us talk about fear and trouble.

Notice that John 20:19 says, “The disciples were meeting behind locked doors because they were afraid of the Jewish leaders.” 

They had a lot to fear.  There was more than a strong possibility that the Jewish leaders would try to round up all of Jesus’s followers and make sure that this was the last they would hear about Jesus.

These people were not being cowardly.  They were in danger.  The angel at the tomb told the women to tell the disciples that Jesus would meet them in Galilee.  The Bible does not say why Jesus chose to meet them in Galilee, but one obvious reason was safety.  Jerusalem was not safe.  This was trouble, trouble that brought on the fear they were experiencing.

We all confront troubles in life that threaten our safety.

Trouble comes in all shapes and sizes.

Sometimes trouble keeps us awake at night.  At other times, we hide from it behind locked doors.  We all have fears that we have to face as a part of our troubles.

In John 14 Jesus was preparing His disciples for the trouble they were about to face.  He said, “Don’t let your hearts be troubled.  Trust in God, and trust also in me.”  (John 14:1)  In John 20 at the conclusion of the trouble, He appeared in their midst and said, “Peace be with you.”  (John 20:19)  He gave the same message before and after the trouble. 

Notice He came in spite of locked doors.  This is consistent with His character.  When we shut the world out because of our fears and troubles, He still has a way of getting in.

He does not just give us words of comfort.  Jesus gave His disciples an assignment.  “As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you.”  (John 20:21)  And then, He gave them His power, the Holy Spirit. 

Jesus did not take away the troubles.  He reassured the disciples that they could trust God.  He gave them purpose so there was a reason to face their fear.  Then, finally, He gave them power to face the trouble.

Because of the Holy Spirit, we have the mind of Christ, the presence of Christ and the power of Christ in our lives.  This is the meaning of Jesus’s promise to be with us to the end of the age.

Whatever the trouble, we have His reassurance that we can trust God.  We have the purpose of being His witnesses in all our trials.  Then finally, we have the power to face the trouble. 

There is power in the name of Jesus to help us face fear and trouble.

Next, we will talk about doubt and uncertainty.

John 20:24 tells us one of the twelve named Thomas was not there when Jesus appeared.  When they told Thomas what had happened Thomas said, “I won’t believe it unless I see the nail wounds in his hands, put my fingers into them, and place my hand into the wound in his side.”  (John 20:24) 

Thomas was no different from the other disciples.  If you look back at verse 20, you will see that as Jesus was standing among them, He still needed to show them the wounds in His hands and side in order to convince them.

They had been through a traumatic week.  They had seen Jesus stripped, beaten, nailed to a cross and pierced with a spear. 

Luke tells of two men on the road to Emmaus who walked with Jesus and did not recognize Him.  Mary, at the tomb, did not recognize Jesus until He said her name.  Whatever else was going on, these individuals were not able to see past what they had experienced.  In other words, the beating, hanging and death were such great realities to them that they could not process what their eyes were telling them.

There are times in life when the physical reality of life seems to negate everything we profess to believe.  We all face doubt and uncertainty.  It may be different for you than it is for me, but we will all face it.  It may be the death of a loved one, sickness and disease, financial collapse or the failure of a relationship.  Whatever it is, the reality challenges our faith and brings us doubt and uncertainty.

This is what happened to the disciples and to Thomas in particular.

Jesus handles this by showing Himself to Thomas, addressing Thomas’s doubts and challenging Him to be more trusting.

However, Jesus waited 8 days. 

These must have been the most difficult days of Thomas’s life.  For some reason, the growth of our faith requires these dry, silent times.  These are days when God does not seem to be there.  These are painful, trying days.  Job went through them.  Thomas went through them.  We all go through them.

These are days worth enduring.  The reason is that at the end, we see Jesus more clearly.  Jesus singled out Thomas, and showed him exactly what he needed.  He does this for us too.  James tells us, “Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy.  For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow.”  (James 1:2-3)

Look at Thomas’s response.  He says, “My Lord and my God!”  (John 20:28) 

Once we pass through the doubt and uncertainty and are confirmed in our faith, it results in praise to God.  This is why I say these are days worth enduring.  I never want to go through these days again.  However, I am so much richer for having endured them.

Jesus then challenges Thomas to be more trusting.  It is the same advice He gave the disciples before He went to the cross.  Trust in God.  Trust also in me.  (John 14:1)  I find this meaning strongest in the words, “Blessed are those who believe without seeing me.”

Isaiah 26:3 teaches this when it says, “You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in You.”[ii]  (ESV)

This is the key to weathering the storms of uncertainty and doubt.  We must trust God.  We cannot allow what has so clearly been displayed to us in the light of day to be stripped away by dark days.

The disciples had just been through the darkest days in all history.  The sun had been darkened and an earthquake had accompanied the death of the Son of God.  Now they were on the other side of these events. 

Jesus won victory over death, hell and the grave.  Jesus was alive.  Jesus is alive still today.

John tells us, “The disciples saw Jesus do many other miraculous signs in addition to the ones recorded in this book.”

This world is a dark place.  John starts out His account of the life of Jesus by saying Jesus was a light that shined in the darkness.  He healed the sick, freed those oppressed by demons, gave the blind their sight, turned water to wine and even raised the dead to life.  According to the gospel writers, He did too many of these things to record them all.

The ones that are recorded are for our benefit, so that we can believe.  They are for light and hope in this dark world.  

The disciples had found hope.  All of them were willing to die for what they believed, and all but John had the privilege of dying for their testimony.  They had seen the darkness in the world and had tasted of the victory over it that Jesus won.  They knew that there is only one place to go for life.  There is life in Jesus.

They wanted us to know that there is power in the name of Jesus.

They wanted us to know: “by believing in him you will have life by the power of His name.”  (John 20:31)

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[i]  Unless otherwise noted Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation. Copyright © 1996, 2004, 2007 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Steam, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

[ii] Scripture quotations marked ESV are from The ESV Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version) copyright 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

The Resurrection

Read Mark 16:1-8

Jesus rose bodily from the grave.

It is necessary to say bodily, because there are inventive storytellers in the world.

There are those who say that Jesus never died.

The theories, explanations and denials are too numerous to list.  Some say the disciples stole the body.  Some say that Jesus fainted.  Some say that Jesus is a mythical figure that never really existed.

There have been recent claims that the tomb of Jesus has been discovered and that He stayed dead.

The very morning He rose from the dead the resurrection was attacked.  The soldiers came back to Jerusalem with the report of the resurrection and immediately the Jewish leaders invented a story and paid the soldiers to tell everyone that the disciples had stolen the body.

Muslims dispute the fact of Jesus's crucifixion, arguing that Allah would never have dishonored His prophet by allowing Him to undergo such a death. Muslims believe that Jesus was miraculously caught up into heaven and that someone (perhaps Judas Iscariot) surreptitiously took His place on the cross.[i]

It is not surprising that there is such a concentrated attack on the resurrection.  It is the single most significant event of history.

I am not going to try to give all the historical proofs and evidence for the resurrection in the short time we have together.  Rather, I am going to point out some relevant facts that can help us in our lives.  Lee Strobel recently wrote a book titled, The Case for the Real Jesus, where he brilliantly lays out many convincing arguments and evidences for the historical facts surrounding the life of Jesus.

What is significant for you and me today is that Jesus rose bodily from the grave.  Notice, I said, “Bodily.”  This is an important point.  To deny that Jesus rose bodily from the grave is to deny the resurrection.  The body is not evil.  However, the body also must be redeemed.  It has been corrupted or damaged by sin.  The consequences of sin are far reaching. What God created perfect is now subject to pain, suffering, disease and death.  The body also has to be freed from the effects of sin.

Notice that I say, “the body also.”  The soul is separate from the body and is also subject to death because of sin.  A resurrected body is no good to a condemned soul.  The resurrection is the proof that God accepted Jesus’s sacrifice on our behalf.

The bodily resurrection also shows us that Jesus was completely human.

One might think that it would not be necessary to say this.  However, we tend to forget just what it means that Jesus was human.

Hebrews 5:8 speaks of Jesus learning obedience from the things that He suffered.  Isaiah 53 speaks of Him growing up before Him.  Jesus was not born with the ability to speak.  He was not preaching after 3 days on Earth, nor was He doing advanced calculus within the first weeks of His birth.

We cannot comprehend how Jesus could be fully God and fully man, but this is the truth that we learn from Scripture.

The women were bringing burial spices to the tomb to anoint a dead body.  The spices would have been used to cover up the smell of a corpse.  While the Psalmist said that God would not allow His chosen one to undergo decay, these women were not thinking in these terms.  They were thinking “dead body.” 

This serves to point out the fact that Jesus was very human and that His death was very real.

Hebrews 4:15 teaches us one of the meanings of this fact.  “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are--yet he did not sin.”  (NIV)

We worship Jesus.  He is our Savior and our God.  Yet, during His time on earth His stomach would have gurgled when it was empty. In John 4, John tells us that Jesus was tired from the journey as He sat by the well.  The gospel writers tell us that Jesus was asleep in the back of the boat, apparently tired from a long day of teaching.

It is essential to our faith that we understand that Jesus was a historical person.  That He had a body with needs, appetites and desires like you and me. 

This is important for us to be able to understand how He can both identify with us and intercede for us.  This is what Hebrews 4:15 points out.  He understands.

However, the bodily resurrection is also important to us for our understanding of our hope.

1 Corinthians 15:22-23 says, “²²Just as everyone dies because we all belong to Adam, everyone who belongs to Christ will be given new life.  ²³But there is an order to this resurrection: Christ was raised as the first of the harvest; then all who belong to Christ will be raised when he comes back.

We who are believers live in hope of the resurrection of the dead.  We speak of heaven quite frequently.  The stories of people who have apparently died and come back to life are fascinating and spark our imagination for what life will be like after death.  However, this is not the end of the story.  1 Corinthians 15 goes on to tell us:

⁵¹But let me reveal to you a wonderful secret.  We will not all die, but we will all be transformed!  ⁵²It will happen in a moment, in the blink of an eye, when the last trumpet is blown.  For when the trumpet sounds, those who have died will be raised to live forever.  And we who are living will also be transformed.  ⁵³For our dying bodies must be transformed into bodies that will never die; our mortal bodies must be transformed into immortal bodies.

⁵⁴Then, when our dying bodies have been transformed into bodies that will never die, this Scripture will be fulfilled:

“Death is swallowed up in victory.

⁵⁵O death, where is your victory?

O death, where is your sting?”

This is it!  Victory over death!

Jesus is still fully God and fully man. 

We will have a body like His resurrection body.  He is the first to be raised, and we will all be raised with Him.  Please do not misunderstand.  We will not become God like Him.  We will have a resurrection body like His.

This is the great hope of the believer and we must not lose sight of it.  One reason we must not lose sight of this hope is given in 1 John 3:3, “All who have this hope in Him purify themselves, just as He is pure.”  (NIV)  Our joyful hope in the resurrection is a purifying influence in our lives.  It gives us perspective.  It helps us to see and choose what is truly good, rather than having vision limited only to what our physical eyes can see.

Jesus was completely human and we see it gives us hope that He can identify with our weakness.  It also promises us the great and final victory over death.

I want us to notice one more thing.  It has to do with His bodily resurrection and His humanity.  It is His consideration of His friends.

Jesus had just won a tremendous battle.  He had sweat drops of blood.  He had cried out, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken me?”  Now He was on the other side of that battle.

The women came to the tomb.  Mark tells us they entered the tomb and were shocked to see a young man clothed in a white robe sitting on the right side.  Mark also tells us this is an angel, a messenger of God.  There are so many miraculous details: the stone rolled away, the empty tomb and the announcement that Jesus had risen.  Mark tells us that the women left so terrified that they did not speak about it.

In all this victory and all this joy, Peter’s name comes up.  The angel said, “Now go and tell his disciples including Peter . . .” 

Peter had failed Jesus.  When Jesus was going through the worst part of the battle, Peter had denied he even knew Jesus.

We can see ourselves like Peter.  Easter and the resurrection are exciting for the rest of the world, but Jesus cannot love me.  I have done something that I cannot forgive myself for; why would Jesus forgive me?

One of Jesus’s first concerns upon His resurrection was Peter.

Jesus told a story about a shepherd who at the end of the day was missing one sheep.  That shepherd left ninety-nine sheep alone in their pen to go and search for the one missing sheep.

At the resurrection, He showed what this meant.  His first order of business was to check on His friend.  Can’t you see He does the same for you?

Whatever your failure, put your name in here:

            Go tell my disciples and ____________.

He is just that human.

He is just that Divine.

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[i] http://www.christiananswers.net/q-aiia/islam-cross.html