After Jesus resurrection His disciples did not recognize Him

Welcome to episode 223, In the Beginning Was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Spending time in the word of God is the best way to spend time with God. Welcome to No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe podcast, where we will encourage, inspire, and empower you to live your best life in Christ. Here's Greg.

Welcome to episode 223. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, I am going to continue on talking about what I ended with on the last episode, and I want to pick back up. Let's go to the scriptures. Let's start with 2 Corinthians 5:15. And he died for all, that those who live should live no longer for themselves but for him, who died for them and rose again. Therefore, from now on we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know him thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. Old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new. And I want to remind you that when Jesus died and was resurrected, that he was unrecognizable to the people who were closest to him as he walked on the earth. Jesus walked with his disciples for 3 years in the flesh. He walked around, he prayed, he laughed, he had a relationship with all these men. And when he came back, when he returned, he was different. Now, I don't know what was different, But something was different. He was not the same. He did not— he could not have looked the same. I don't know how to describe it any better than going to the scripture, and you just listen and read it for yourself and see if you believe Jesus looked the same after he died. Let's pick it up in John 21, and we're going to start in verse 4. But when the morning had now come, Jesus stood on the shore Yet the disciples did not know that it was Jesus. Then Jesus said to them, "Children, have you any food?" They answered him, "No." And he said to them, "Cast the net on the right side of the boat, and you will find some." So they cast, and now they were not able to draw it because of the multitude of fish. Therefore that disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, "It is the Lord!" Now when Simon heard that it was the Lord, he put on his outer garment for he had removed it, and plunged into the sea. But the other disciples came in the little boat, for they were not far from the land, but about 200 cubits, dragging the net with fish. Then as soon as they had come to the land, they saw a fire of coals there, and fish laid on it, and bread. Jesus said to them, Bring some of the fish which you have just caught. Simon Peter went up and dragged the net to land, full of large fish, 153. And although there were so many, the net was not broken. Jesus said to them, come and eat breakfast. Yet none of the disciples dared ask him, who are you? Knowing that it was the Lord. Now I want you to think about it. If they were using their physical eyes, they weren't walking around with their eyes closed. These disciples had just been fishing, and they had some yahoo on the bank asked if they had caught any fish, and they said no. You know, and he also said, children, Have you any food? And I want you to think about if you saw some guy that you didn't recognize and he asked, children, have you caught any food? Would you even answer the guy? But they answered him. Maybe back in the day that's what they did, you know, people, hey, I'm hungry, did y'all catch any food? And they said no. And then he says, cast the net on the right side of the boat and you will find some. This is another thing that you just got to understand. These guys had been fishing all night and didn't have any fish. And then some person on the bank said, do you have any fish? No, we don't have any. And then he just randomly says, hey, cast the net on the right side of the boat. And the cool thing is these guys, you know, I guess they were thinking, well, what else have we got to lose? And so they cast it on the right side of the boat, and then the net fills up with fish and does not rip. And then John is— because John is the writer of this, and I think it's, it's kind of clever that John never says, "And then I said." John describes himself as the disciple whom Jesus loved. Yeah, that's me. I'm the disciple whom Jesus loved. If you're writing a book, just call yourself the disciple whom Jesus loved. May or may not be a little pride in there. I don't know. I don't know that I would have said, "I am Greg, the disciple whom Jesus loved." But I wasn't there, and John is the love guy. I mean, if you look at 1 John, 2 John, 3 John, everything the Apostle John talks about is love. So he is the love disciple, and I'm just— I'm not trying to give him a rash. I'm just trying to, as I'm reading this, and I kind of try to picture these things in my mind. If you've been with me a minute, I mean, I try to get a personality to the disciples, and I try to get— kind of flesh them up in my mind. John kind of has me with my head kind of tilted because I really don't know what to think. I mean, this guy loved you. He was the closest of anyone to Jesus, and he is all about love, and God is love, and children, you need to love. And so I think part of, as I read John and as I dig into this, I need to get closer and closer to that love. And it, I don't know if it's just the dog in me or if it's just the guy. I really honestly don't know. It's probably have something to do with being dropped as a child. I really honestly don't know, but I, I just have a hard time sometimes feeling my feelings. And I, and maybe it's just the guy. And when I get the squishy, I don't know what I'm even trying to say, but that love when I see that and when I see John leaning up against Jesus, I mean, I just— I'm not there yet. I guess that's the best way I can put it. I want you to recognize— and I don't know why I'm chasing rabbits lately, but that's a rabbit that nobody needed to run after. But I want you to see in John 21:12, Jesus said to them, come and eat breakfast. Yet none of the disciples dared ask him, who are you? Knowing that it was the Lord. Well, they knew it was the Lord, and the only reason I think they knew it was the Lord, because he did something that he had done earlier, talking about throwing your net on this side of the boat when he started his ministry. If you go back, I'm not going to go back to that, but that's kind of how he started with Peter and John, is he told them to cast their nets in on the other side of the boat. And they cast one net, which I'm not going to teach on that either. But they— that's when John said, hey, that's the Lord. So Peter, which I relate marvelously with Peter, the ready, fire, aim disciple— this guy throws a jacket on and jumps in the water. I mean, he don't wait to help anybody. I mean, he's going to go see Jesus. And he gets there, and I got to be thinking, he looks up and goes, Well, you know, this don't look like Jesus. That's the— my whole point on this episode is that Jesus came back looking different. And if you go back to Mark, and if you go back to Matthew, and if you go back to Luke, you will see after Jesus has resurrected, he is not recognizable. And I want to tie it in from last episode, and specifically 2 Corinthians 5:16. Therefore From now on we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know him thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. Old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new. And I just want to remind you what we started talking about the last episode, is that we are not to look with our physical eyes anymore. We're supposed to see with the eyes of our heart. And the ears of our heart. You know, we— God give us physical ears and he give us physical eyes, and it's to navigate in this physical world. But in the spirit realm, we need to navigate with our spiritual eyes and our spiritual ears. And this, I think, would be the cure— and I'm putting air quotes up— but this is the cure for any kind of racism for any kind of division, anything. If we could see people with our spiritual eyes instead of our physical eyes, and we could listen with our spiritual ears instead of with what we hear— because if you hear somebody's voice and it kind of grates on you, you know, there's some voices that when they talk, it just instantly— and I don't even know why, I mean, I'm just talking, I'm not trying to pick on or anything. And I don't know if you've ever noticed this, but sometimes just somebody's voice makes you go, "Wow, really? That's your real voice?" I, you know, I don't say that out loud. I think that to myself. If we could just hear with our spiritual ears how God hears, or see with our spiritual eyes how God sees people. And Father God sees people as his son. If you've accepted Jesus as your Lord and Savior, you are a new creation. Old things have passed away. Behold, all things have become new. You are a brand new creation. When God looks at you, it's just exactly like him looking at Jesus. I've got to have you see this. And one of the things I've said, I hadn't said it in a while, God, you are God's favorite. If God had a refrigerator in heaven, your picture would be all over it. This is how God sees you. God sees you as perfect. He looks at your spirit man, and your spirit man is just like Jesus in the spirit. Now, if you have not accepted Jesus as your Lord and Savior, he is still a loving and kind God. He knows how horrible the punk is. He knows that you've been deceived. He knows all of this stuff, and he's not counting. He's already put all sin on his Son and nailed it to the cross and buried it in the tomb, sin is no longer the issue with Father God. And I've just got to get you to embrace that. I know it's too good to be true. It's called the good news for a reason, because it is not about how you mess up. The only thing it's about is what have you done with Jesus? What have you done with God's only Son? Did you accept him as Lord of all, as your Savior? Or did you say, "Meh, I don't care about that. I don't believe in none of that garbage." Because if you think the second thought, that you don't care about it, if you separate yourself from his Son, God will in eternity separate you from him and his Son and his Holy Spirit. So just be careful how you choose, and I just want to encourage you just to dig in. If you've made it this far in this episode, I've got to believe you're probably closer to a fanatic than you are to a non-believer. But if you haven't accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, I want to encourage you just to keep digging in and keep asking. Holy Spirit is there. Holy Spirit will help you discover who the Son of God is. And I'm going to stop right there. I wanted to kind of make this a little bit shorter than the previous episodes. God, I want to thank you for your word. First off, I want to thank you, Jesus, for coming. And Holy Spirit, thank you for never leaving us nor forsaking us. God, your word is so good. Jesus, you are so wonderful that it's hard to put into words what I'm feeling right now, but I really want this person, this listener, to just know that you are God and that you love them and that you're not looking down on them. You are trying to call them into the family, or you are trying to tell them they are your favorite. God, we thank you for your word. Father God, we thank you for your plan and for your wisdom and all of the things that you've done thus far and what you are doing. Holy Spirit, thank you for staying. Lord, thank you and continue to lead and guide and direct us as we walk through this life with you. Lord, we thank you, we love you, we ask it all in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Well, thank you for being a part of this, and I look forward to visiting with you on the next episode.

Thanks for listening to the No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe podcast at www.nodoubtonlybelieve.com.