All right, let's turn to John's
Gospel chapter 20. And this morning we're going
to be dealing with verses 19 through 23. I think I might have
put 24 on the title up there, but 23. I'm not going to deal
with Thomas this morning. Now we've seen what's happened.
Jesus has risen from the dead. Mary has talked to him. John
has believed without seeing. Peter has yet to come to believe
that he was alive. And Jesus has told Mary to go
and tell the disciples that she has seen the Lord. So verse 19,
let's read together. On the evening of that day, the
first day of the week, the doors being locked where the disciples
were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and
said to them, Peace be with you. When he said this, he showed
them his hands and his side. Then the disciples were glad
when they saw the Lord. And Jesus said to them again,
Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even
so I am sending you. And when he said this, he breathed.
And then he said to them, Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive
the sins of any, they are forgiven them. If you withhold forgiveness
from any, it is withheld." Now there's some textual variance
here in this that I do not like. I'm just going to say, and you
heard me read that verse 21, I mean verse 22, and when he
said this, he breathed. and then said, receive the Holy
Spirit. Some of your text may say he
breathed on them, he blew on them, etc. But the better reading,
let's just put it that way, is that he just took a breath. Maybe a sigh, I don't know. I
believe he blew, but he did not blow on them. Did not blow on
them. And there's a reason that John
wrote it this way. We see that John has purpose to teach us
a lot about Christ and we see that John has purpose to focus
intimately on the divine nature of Jesus and to reveal his human
nature. Theologically, it's important
because to know God is to know that Jesus is also man and he
is also God. So as we saw Mary clinging to
Jesus, he had a body. He was physically there. He was
warm to the touch. He was not a ethereal being. He wasn't a spirit. He was a
glorified man. He is now the God man. He bears,
as we see in this discourse, he bears the scars of his crucifixion. And differently than anybody
else, he bears the scar in his side. But the disciples were fearful
of the Jews. Because at this moment, as you
can imagine, Jesus being arrested, tried, and condemned, and now
his body missing, I'm certain that the Pharisees were probably
very actively pursuing the disciples, wanting to know where the body
of Jesus might be, wanting to figure out what plan or or schism
that they had concocted in order to make it appear as though he
was alive. And not even at that, just the
very fact that he had disciples, they wanted to round them up. For by implication, just logically,
if Jesus was a usurper, then they too were usurpers. So here,
the disciples are behind locked doors. They bar the doors. And
this, as we see in one of the synoptics, is very congruent. But the point that John is making
here is not to teach us that they were fearful of the Jews,
but the point that John wants to bring to our attention, just
like he did with the grave clothes, is that they could not hold Jesus. That Jesus in his divine essence
and his divine self, even in his physical now glorified body,
he was no longer restricted to the human humanity that he once
was. He was no longer bound by the
earthliness of his creaturely form in the incarnation. He was now the glorified God-man. And so therefore how his body
is and how he operates in his flesh is as it was before as
Jesus would talk and walk with Adam in the garden in the cool
of the day. As Jesus would meet with Moses.
As Jesus would eat with Abraham. As Jesus would wrestle Jacob. As Jesus would come and be worshipped
by Joshua, and so on and so on, the theophanies, the appearances
of the God-man, eternally the God-man, throughout the Old Testament
history. Now this same God-man bearing
the scars of redemption as the Lamb of God in His incarnation
was alive again by His own power, by His own will, and by the will
of the Father in obedience to the Father's will, Jesus Christ
is alive. But it is not His living in this
earth that matters. This earth is a temporary place
Everything that takes place here is nothing. I used to say for
a long, long time, I would talk about how eternity is just a
breath, just a puff, and that life as we know it is less than
that in the glimpse of eternity. There is no beginning, there
is no end, there is no time, there is no night. It is always
equally presently eternal. And that is not something that
we can fathom. Even the greatest philosophers of the world have
never been able to articulate any real and true definition
of how to control that in our minds. But God, the Son, Jesus
the Christ, is not about the business of this world. He is
about the business of taking out of this world His elect sheep
and bringing them so that He can say to them, you are not
of this world as I am not of this world. On the cross, Jesus
cried out, it is finished. In the discourse that he had
at the Last Supper, he promised his disciples that his peace
would be theirs. He promised his disciples that
their pain would turn to joy, that their grief and sorrow would
turn to gladness, and that he would not orphan them, he would
not leave them alone, and he would not just disappear on them,
but he would send the paraclete, the one that comes alongside,
and he would be with them always. in the synoptics we see in specifically
Matthew 28 in what we know as the Great Commission rather than
the Great Proclamation where Jesus tells them to be about
the business of teaching all the nations concerning Him to
believe in Him the obedience of faith and that in the work
that He has called them to do He will be with them in the presence
of God the Spirit. Remember, as we talked this morning,
my initial intentions today were to, in my preparation throughout
the week, were to deal with some nuances about God the Spirit. But I feel like this text, before
I do those things, I feel like this text here and these few
verses, it's necessary for us to really get the gist of what's
happening here. Because there are a lot of problems
when it comes to the teaching and the doctrine, if you will,
of God the Spirit. First we need to understand that
God the Spirit is a person. He is one of the three persons
of the Godhead. He is God fully and always just
as the Son of God Jesus is God fully and always just as the
Father is God fully and always and together they are equally
individually God and together one God. And neither of them
are the other, nor at any time have they ever been the other,
nor at any time have they not been who they are. They are persons
with personalities, with wills, with decisions, with power, with
action, with moving. All three distinct, yet all three
God fully. Yet there is one God, and His
name is Jesus Christ. He is the Spirit, and He is the
Father. And so sometimes people like
to take that and just destroy it. Well, maybe the Spirit is
just this. Maybe the Spirit is a force.
That's demonic. The Spirit is not a force. The
Spirit is God. He is a person. God the Spirit. God the Holy Spirit. God the
Father. God the Son. And some people
get it all mixed up and say, well, the spirit of God was not
working, was not active, was not here. That's ridiculous.
God is omnipresent. It's the only time that any of
the Godhead were not omnipresent is when Jesus took on humanity
as we know it. And then in his humanity, he
did not exercise his omnipresence. but yet God is still omnipresent.
The Spirit of God has been at work from the very beginning. Some people also don't understand
the subordinate relationship between God the Father and the
Son and the Spirit. Sometimes, as we learned over
in 14 and 16, that we see where Jesus says, I will send. People
say, oh, the Spirit is God's, the Son's little powerful thing
that He does. No, that's not the point. What
we see in the revelation of God's Word is that the Godhead, every
person of the Godhead and the Trinity operates according to
the counsel of His own will. Which is the counsel of the Father
who sent the Son who sends the Spirit. It is about the relationship
and the workings of God in His interpersonal triune self. Maybe that's not an error the
way I said that. But it's not about the ontological reality
of either of these persons. We need to, just like here in
chapter 20, we need to see what the text says simply, rather
than infer what the text has not said at all. And here's what
the text is not saying. Jesus did not breathe on the
disciples in order to give them God the Spirit. That's not true. It's not here. And then extremely
brilliant people want to take John's Pentecost, if you can
say it like that, and pit it against the Pentecost of the
Synoptics and want to make much to do about nothing in the sense
that, well, what John is saying is different. So there were two
Pentecosts. Friends, God the Spirit, omnipresent, active in
the world, before the world existed, and the Spirit of God hovering
over the waters of the deep, and then God said, let there
be and there was. Remember back when we talked
about the Incarnation, and I sort of gave the illustration for
a couple of weeks about how, and it might have even been in
my Tuesday class with our high schoolers, how often we are able
to forget that Jesus is God, and we look at him as a little
baby, we look at him as a weak little man, and then he died
on the cross, oh poor Jesus, no poor Jesus. Jesus submitted
to all these things according to the counsel of his own will,
which was the will of the Father, and he submitted to the will
of the Father, which was his will. I have food that you know
not of, he says in John 4, and they said, who gave him something
to eat? And he says, my food is to do the will of the one
who sent me. He says in John 4 that as the Father is speaking,
I am speaking. As the Father is working, now
I'm working. So that Jesus, by everything that he ever taught
and ever was in his human ministry, in the incarnation, he is only
and always doing exactly what God was always doing. And so
the Spirit of God at work in the world, God the Holy Spirit
has been in the lives and in the hearts and in dwelling and
operating in his people since the Garden of Eden. First, the
Spirit of God is necessary for existence. The Spirit of God
is necessary then also for physical life. The Spirit of God is necessary
for the revelation of God. The Spirit of God is necessary
for regeneration. The Spirit of God is necessary
for the knowledge of the truth. The Spirit of God is necessary
to grow in grace. The Spirit of God blows where
He wishes, when He wishes, as He wishes, with no occasion. except as He wishes. These narratives are not proof
texts of the theological intricacies of the working of the Trinity.
They're assertions because the promises of God revealed to His
people, Jesus says, I will give to you and send to you a helper. When Jesus said it was finished,
everything that was supposed to be accomplished for the redemption
of the elect was done. And now the work of God continues,
not in redemption, but in the proclamation of redemption. Isn't
that what Jesus did? He proclaimed redemption, proclaimed
redemption, then became the Redeemer, the Lamb of God, the sacrifice
that was crucified. Now he's raised from the dead,
and now he is continuing to proclaim the message of redemption, the
revelation of God for his people. And then he commissions his disciples
to do that and to teach others to do that. You realize that's
the point. And so John wants to show you
something about the physical nature of the divine person glorified
who is God the Son. He wants to show us that as these
doors were locked because of the fear of the Jews, it was
not common to have door locks. I don't know how they barred
the doors, probably with some big board or beam or tree trunk
or stone. I don't know how they did it.
Maybe they had furniture packed. I don't know. But they barred
the door. because they didn't want the
Jews to find them, they didn't want the Jews to arrest them,
they did not want to be persecuted. But this barring of the door
in John's gospel is congruent with his purposes to show that
the Word of God became flesh and now we have seen the glory
of God through the Son of God. The fullness of all that God
is is revealed to us. And here is Jesus, just like
He appeared to Mary Magdalene in the garden, He materialized
before her. Now we can see what? Jesus cannot be constrained by
physical locks. He never could. But here is Jesus in the room
all of a sudden. It just says they were locked
up by themselves because they were scared. And the point that
John wants to show you is that though the door was locked up,
Jesus came and stood among them. There are many illustrations
of fiction that I could use to depict this, where people just
appear out of nowhere. There are recent depictions in
certain movies that make that illustration very obvious. How'd
you get here? Where'd you come from? But for
the sake of the sublime, I don't want to waste the time. The point
is here are the disciples and the people that are with them
and they are in this room locked for their fear of the Jews, locked
in and Jesus is poof, he's there, he's right there. And most of us look at this narrative
and we continue to be perplexed and we think well that's enough,
if somebody just appeared before me, oh I know that it was some
kind of a spiritual sense, I know it would be some kind of divine
stuff. It's not true. The human mind would go to the
supernatural surely. Or to the metaphysical, surely.
But to confess God as the one who is there is much different
than just saying, I know that's a spiritual thing. That's why
angel worship is so easy. That's why the nature of the
Spirit of God being a force or a presence is so common. I mean,
there are some people in our culture right now, people that
I know that I would consider to be friends, whom I have told
this is wrong, but they believe that the Spirit of God is some
type of presence that they can, by faith, force to do what they
want to do. In other words, they think God
is a genie in their own bottle, and that faith, if they have
enough faith, they can do whatever they want to do using God the
Spirit as their power. Beloved, that's wicked. And for
those of you who are watching this today or looking at this
later, you might think, well, you know, you're talking about
me. Yes, I'm talking about you and you know you are because
I've said this to you. And I'm not going to let you just slide
because I love you. You can still be friends. We
can go to the range. We can do whatever. But this is a serious
issue. Just like many things that take
Christ out of context are serious issues. But Jesus is here. John is showing he's God. His
divine power is at work. He just materialized before them. I love it when well-meaning so-called,
quote, apologists in the Christian communities try to make scientific
explanations for miraculous experiences. It's not supposed to be like
that. Well, let's show you how the flood really looked. Let's
show you how the age of the earth really is. Ignorant, dumb, stupid
scientists. That's what they are. And they
make much to do about all the evidences. When Jesus pops into
the room, when the angels are standing in the tomb, when the
folded clothes are seen by two of the most beloved disciples,
only one of them is granted the sight to see and believe that
my Redeemer lives. And until Jesus calls the name
of Mary, she cannot see because at that moment God the Spirit
granted her the eyes to see that He was alive. Now don't confuse
knowing that He's alive with regeneration. These are not salvific experiences. These are revelatory experiences
for the purpose of showing the power of Christ in the Gospel. We've got to quit trying to be
critical of everything. Faith must be like a child. Accept
it at what it is. And the only way you can do that
is by the Spirit of God. Intellectualism has blasphemed
the simple grace of Jesus Christ. And I never thought I'd say this,
but I believe it's probably one of the most dangerous infusions
into the church of Jesus Christ. Let's understand it, let's explain
it, let's detail it, let's systematize it, let's pick it apart, let's
work on it like this. And I think that above wicked
living, intellectualism, at the cost of the gospel of grace,
is grounds for expulsion from the body when it becomes divisive. What are you talking about? This
text. This text. I'll be honest with
you, brothers and sisters, most people who would take this text
and most pastors, the way they're taught, they would not even be
in the scripture for the first three weeks before they get here.
They'd be in grammar books. They'd be in translations, they'd
be in the original languages, they'd be looking at this, they'd
be looking at that, and unless you've got a terminal degree
in the original languages, as far as time-wise and experience,
you shouldn't be in them. And then if you've got that,
if you're not in the Bible, it's worth about a bag of poo anyway. Because the text is where God
teaches, not the textbook. He will not teach from the textbook.
if you're not in the text of Scripture. And this is the call and the
command of God Almighty to the shepherds of the church of Jesus
Christ today, yesterday and tomorrow. But people with pastors, they
wouldn't know what to do with this, so they'd placate to the
field, the solar fields of the culture. So you ain't got to
be scared, Jesus is with you. That's about as far as they get
it. And he gave the Holy Spirit. Look at that. He breathed on
them. You need to get Jesus to breathe on you. You want to get
Jesus to breathe on you? Breath. In order to breathe out,
you got to breathe in. I mean, it's easy for rednecks like me
to get real country and real excited about something that
ain't written in the Bible because we're really creative in a dumb way. But then they'd say, well, I
can't figure this out, this pastor would say, so I'm going to go
to some critical commentaries. No, they wouldn't. They'd go
to some literal commentaries. They'd just go to some commentaries.
And they'd pick up five, or they'd go to Google and they'd just
search it. And they'd see five different views. Then they'd
find the higher critics. And the higher critics would
begin to pit Luke and Matthew against John. Then they would
take Dr. Luke's account in the book of
Acts, and they would begin to pit Pentecost against John. And
then they would come to the conclusion that maybe this shouldn't belong
in John's writing to begin with, and then they would write books
about it. And then they would teach pastors about it. And the next thing you know,
we're not even hearing. what this text is about. This text
is a simple little narrative showing that Jesus keeps His
promises. I will not leave you as orphans. Now you realize Jesus has already
been to the Father. He didn't ascend. His ascension
hasn't happened, but when He died, He was with the Father. Today, you will be with Me in
Paradise. He's been to the Father. If I go to the Father, I send
the Spirit. I send the Helper. When Jesus
goes back to where He came from, that's the point. When His body
stopped breathing, He was back where He came from. And he was
sent by God the Father. It's important. This is the point
of what Jesus is doing right here. This is the main meat and
potatoes of the promise of Christ. I will not leave you as orphans.
I will turn your sorrow to gladness. My peace will be your peace. And that's what this is about.
It's not a doctrinal mudhole of the Holy Spirit. It's not
a doctrinal mudhole of higher criticism. It's not a doctrinal
mudhole of this is why you need to go to seminary. Beloved, if the preaching of
the simple Word of God does not move your soul, the Spirit of
God is not working in you. And there's a lot of reasons
that that could be true. But here's the primary reason.
You're not reading the Bible to begin with. It is not the preacher's job
to move your soul. It is God's work when you spend
time with Him. Read the Bible. Don't get through
it, get in it. And read John's Gospel every
day. Read it. It is amazing how men
in their 50s, men in their 60s, men in their 70s will sit down
with me and confront me about something I've taught and all
I tell them to do is the first thing I always tell them, go
read that letter every day over and over again until you start
to see the truth. And it only takes about a week
if they read it every day. But that's not the custom. We
believe in Sola Scriptura, but we sure as heck don't live it.
We believe in the power of God through the gospel, but we surely
do not grab hold of it if we're not reading the Bible. We want
to see the Lord overcome our fears, and we're not in the scripture.
We're not going to have our fears overcome. We want to see joy
in the midst of sorrow, but we're not in the word of God. We do
not want to see our joy fulfilled. We do not want it. We want somebody
else to give us the pill to give us our happiness. And the pill
is obeying the Bible and the men who shepherd you when they
tell you to read it. You know, it's like going to
the doctor. My eyes are bleeding. I mean, I wake up every day and
my eyes are full of blood and they're bleeding all down on my sheets.
I have to wash the bed every day. Oh, you need to take this pill.
This little pill right here. It'll stop that. Okay, you wake
up the next morning, your eyes bleeding, you look at the pill.
Put it back in the, I just can't swallow that. Doctor, what you
gonna do? My eyes are still bleeding. Take
the pill. Well, I just, I put it in my
mouth and it tasted bad and I took it out and I didn't have to,
I didn't have water, I didn't have this and that and the other.
And it's just always some excuse. Take pill. Read the scripture. Jesus has promised that He would
be there. Jesus has promised them peace.
When Jesus was in the Garden of Gethsemane, He had peace.
When Jesus hanged on a cross, and that is the correct grammar,
when Jesus hanged on a cross, He had peace. When Jesus died, He had peace. When Jesus rose from the dead,
He had peace. while all of His disciples and
all of His family and all of those that loved Him were just
discombobulated. They were distraught. And He promised, My peace I will
give you. And He enters the room because
He's God. And they are in the midst of
fear and hopelessness. They have been told by Mary Magdalene
that the Savior is alive, that the Lord is alive, and the first
thing He says to them is, Peace be with you. Now this is a common
phrase in first century Palestine, which is where Jerusalem is. It's a common phrase. Jesus is not using it in a common
way. How do we know? The context of what we read.
He says it again. And then he says, look at verse
21, and I'm skipping over some stuff, because I just want you
to get the point here. He says, peace be with you, and they were
happy. And he says, peace be with you, as the Father sent
me, even so I'm sending you. So this is different than just,
yo, what's up, how you doing, good day, glad to see you. Everything
well? Yeah, Lord bless, God speed,
well met. Peace. This is different. Jesus is declaring
peace is with them. Jesus is showing them He is their
peace. He is their Passover. He is their
atonement. He has finished the work. So
beloved, I think that peace be with you is the perfect compliment
to it is finished. And that's not a speculation
on my part, that's a contextual realization of the Gospel of
John, and that everything was written for the reason of showing
these things as light. And not only that, but almost
every apostolic letter takes that piece and couples it with
grace and introduces everything they teach concerning the Gospel
and Gospel living by grace and peace. Be with you. Grace and
peace to you, as Paul says, and grace and peace be with you as
Paul closes all of his writings. Grace and peace. And he always
qualifies that in many times. By what? By the Lord Jesus Christ,
by the God of our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. By our God,
the Lord Jesus Christ. And so on and so forth. So that
when Christ enters into the circumstances, peace is with us, you see. Jesus doesn't give us peace,
Jesus is our peace. How do we get that? Being in
the presence of Jesus. How do we get that? Being in
the Word of God. Where is that going to see its
effect? By being with the people of God. Beloved, I'll tell you this,
if you're not in the word of God today, your flesh will overrule
you when we drop this social distancing stuff and we're able
to get together. And I'm not saying this as a
way of a guilt trip, I'm saying this as a way, as a manifestation
of the reality of the flesh of God. People will pick vacations
over intimacy with the body of Christ, and that is a crying
shame. And they'll say, well, I don't
want to be in service because I might still catch something. But they'll
be at the beach, or they'll be at the playground, or they'll
be at the museum, or they'll be at loads of Walmart. And then they'll be like, where's
my peace? The prescription for peace is
the promises of Christ. The promises of Christ is that
he's here. And he materializes and he says,
peace be with you. Obviously, the supernatural experience
has taken place, but then he shows them. In verse 20, he says,
when he had said this, he showed them his hands. He showed them
his side. The scars. of His crucifixion. Then the disciples were glad
when they saw the Lord. See, we come to a place in our
culture that everything is experiential. We're always trying to relive
that same feeling, relive that same experience. We think that
marriage is going down the toilet because it doesn't feel like
the wedding day. We think the job is a little
old cake because it just doesn't feel creative. I don't have the
authority that I used to have, not the authority, but the esteem
that I used to have. The boss man doesn't look at
me the way he used to. In ministry, you know what? People
aren't excited like they used to be. Something's wrong. We
need revival. No, we don't. It's called life. Life is mundane
and boring and tragic and frustrating and boring. and irritating and
boring, but Christ isn't boring. And we're talking about something
historically that took place, the crucifixion and resurrection
of Jesus, over 2,000 years ago on a timeline. Yet the freshness
of the power of God in remembrance and focused living around the
person of Jesus is as new today as it was to the day Mary Magdalene
turned around when she heard her name. But we're looking for that experience.
We're looking to feel something. Well, you know what? Let's take
the lights down low. I'm about to step on some aggravations right
now. Let's get the music wind up.
Julie, I want you to play for 30 minutes straight while I do
this invitation. I want everybody to be quiet, every
head bowed and every eye closed. And let's get the ambiance right.
That's manipulation. It's manipulation. Let's pray
and pray and pray boldly and pray again and have the music
going and pray and pray. That's manipulation. But it does
something. It does something. When I watch
the Summer Olympics and I see these gymnasts do crazy stuff,
I'm like, man, that was amazing. If I were there and saw those
people flip up in the air and do all that stuff and land on
their feet like, ta-da! And I'm thinking, I'd get up
out of the bed and fall down sometimes. I mean, what in the
world? That is amazing. It gives me chills. When I hear
an orchestra tune, I get chills up my spine. When I see a good martial artist
spar, I get chills. Sometimes I get excited to see
somebody who can run and gun real well. I love creativity,
I love artistic expression, and it moves me. It's never boring. But those are just experiences
of the flesh. The experiences of the peace
of God is most often not moving. but it results in a, listen to
what I'm about to say, because it sounds contradictory, in a
logical, inexpressible, certain, foundational joy that cannot
be comprehended. Cannot be comprehended. Yet in
our creativity, we know how to move the soul, right? We know
how to move the body and mind of humans. We know that if we
talk in a certain way or if we emphasize certain words or if
we just really get excited, I mean, we can change people's feelings. We can change their emotions.
We can change the space in which they live and the ambiance of
their psyche, whatever that is. And then in doing so, we can
plant certain things into their hearing that causes them to respond,
react, think, or consider whatever it is that we're wanting to plant
there. It is manipulation. But what cannot be done is the
clear, bold proclamation of Jesus as my peace. Because the next
question is how do I have that? How do I get that? How do I feel
that? How do I experience that? You experience it not by being
removed out of your circumstances or that your fear is gone or
that your trials are over. You experience it with a sense
that cannot be explained. Peter says it that way. Our joy
is inexpressible. But it comes to the place where
we have a resolve that while our left foot is trembling with
fear, our right foot is cemented in the hope of Christ because
He is with us. And the only experience that
you need is to be with God's people, having fed yourself so
that you can be worth your weight to be able to feed someone else
so that when you are also fed that there is a mutual feeding
that takes place. Like I talked to a pastor brother
last night on the phone for a little bit. And you know, I need preaching. And I'm praying that the other
elder brothers of this church who preach, when this is all
said and done, I can take some time to sit on the front row
and have someone teach me the word. Because if not, I am usurping
the very promise of Christ as my peace. I'm missing part of
that. Of course I can be in the Bible
and I can teach you, but I need to hear it. So one of my favorite
things to do is to listen to my wife read the Bible, just
read it. I wish she could just walk around
all day and follow me and just read the Bible constantly in
my ear. It would be fantastic for me. All right, honey, wait
a minute, get back to Ecclesiastes again, what were you? It wouldn't
be a really nice job for her. But we need the Word. Christ
becomes our peace. But His presence here was not
just showing up. It didn't give them joy when
they knew who He was. When they saw His scars. When He had revealed Himself
to them in such a way that they knew He was their Lord. They were glad. See the difference? Fearful of the Jews, glad with
Jesus. Had their circumstances changed? No. Were they still
going to suffer and be persecuted and die? Yes. But were they focused
on those things or were they focused on the presence of Christ
with them? That's the prescription. Paul says it everywhere we look
in the Bible. As we look to the things that
are unseen, not to the things that are seen. by renewing our mind on the truth
of Christ, on the Word of God, and et cetera, rather than focusing. But what we believe that the
Christian life is all about is, I need to get in the Bible and
find the spot that'll give me the pill that'll take me out
of the problem. And you just take spot and put
point, and then you've got three points outlined. I got the point in the Bible.
It gives me the pill to take care of the problem. There you
go. And it's not the way it works. It's like in a marriage relationship,
if all one of the spouses do is clean and cook and take care
of things. If that's all you're supposed
to do, if that's all you're needed for, if that's all that matters,
you're just getting something. He just wants what someone does,
not who they are. What Christ does is who He is.
He has redeemed us, and He is our peace. He doesn't grant us
peace through any other means except Himself, you see. Because
if God was in the business of making everything good in life,
then we wouldn't need Him to begin with. Then these people
who have this really silliness about the Spirit of God are right.
And it's all up to me in making sure that I use the right incantation,
the right spiritual witchcraft with the right amount of faith
and ambition and I can get what I want from God. I can rub the
genie out of the bottle and poof, here it comes, now it's working.
And then they'll be told when things don't change it's because
you didn't have enough faith. How much more faith do you need
to see the risen Lord materialize before you? What keeps us in Christ, God
the Spirit, who gave us life to begin with in Christ? And they were glad, verse 21,
and Jesus says to them again, peace be with you. And then he
says, as the Father has sent me, even so I'm sending you.
So let's talk about that for a second. Here's a natural progression. God the Father sends God the
Son to do His work, which is the Son's work. God the Father
is speaking. God the Son is speaking. So God
is speaking when the Son is speaking. Jesus the Son, who is not of
the world, comes into the world to save His own out of the world.
then He does so by leaving the world and ascending to the Father,
and then sending the Spirit of God to continue the work that
God began in the beginning to send the Son to do, to find the
people who are in the world, who are now out of the world,
and so on and so forth, so that the work of God continues through
the people of God by the Spirit of God. That's the reason Jesus
promises the Spirit. So when the Spirit, quote, comes,
it means that the Spirit is going to work to that end. He's going
to empower His people in order for them to continue the teaching
that Christ came to teach concerning Himself. No one else has to die
to save sins. No one else has to be risen to
life. No one else has to be Messiah
or Savior or anything else. No one else can be the Lamb of
God. That is done, so the work of the Redeemer is finished,
but the work of Revelation is continuing. The work of preservation
is continuing. And so now Jesus, as the Father
sends me, I send you. What this doesn't mean in this
mojo mess that I briefly talked about earlier, is that we're
going to raise the dead and heal the sick and speak in tongues
and all this other stuff. Because Jesus never did speak
in tongues. He spoke in the tongue of God
every time he opened his mouth, because he's God. So as the Father sent me, I am
sending you, to what? To proclaim the grace and the
mercy in the Savior, in the Messiah, in me, for I am peace with you. The cults have often understood
it better than the evangelical world. The cults, and sometimes
I don't think there's much difference, The colts have even come to my
door before. Can I help you? As Abigail said
one time when we looked at the ring and there were people standing
there with Bibles, she comes running. Daddy, some of your
friends are outside. Because they had Bibles. But
they knock on your door and they open the opportunity for discussion
by asking. Are you looking for peace? Do
you want peace in your life? Wouldn't you like to see peace
in the world? What moron says no? The moron that gets woke
up at 8 o'clock on Saturday morning. That's it. But I love those opportunities.
Absolutely. Oh my goodness, peace. We're
all looking for peace. But see, that's the problem. They're looking
for peace in the world. And they have conformed a so-called
Messiah to give peace in the world, to create a kingdom of
the world, to create a future in the world. Islam, same way. We find Allah,
He is judge, He is wrathful and vengeful and just. Man is sinful,
no problem there. They believe the prophets that
we have here. And yet the way to find peace
is to do certain things, is to be a certain way, is to walk
in a certain manner, is to dress in a certain dress, is to pray
certain prayers, and to hope that your outcome in the end
is not balanced or upside down in the negative, but that you
have come to the place where your good outweighs your bad. That is your peace. That is where most of the evangelical
cults have developed a gospel of their own, where they'll go,
okay, it is all about the work of Jesus, but now that you are
saved, let's measure whether or not you really are doing what
you're supposed to be doing. Let's measure you. Nope. Nope. You're not growing high
enough. You're not getting wide enough.
You're not getting, you're not healthy enough. So you're probably
not in Christ. You better do something about
it. What are we supposed to do? Well, the Bible said to believe in
the finished work of Jesus and trust in Him and that it's granted
to you by the Spirit of God and that everything that comes to
you is a gift from God and that Christ is your peace. But because
you've done all that and it's not effectual, I guess you just
need to work harder and put away sin. You need to abstain from
sin. That way, at least you're proven
that you're serious about it, that you're sincere. Or if you
get uber spiritual, that God is really at work in you. It's
crazy. That's not peace, that's terrible.
That's like a constant pestilence flying up your nose, causing
your eyes to bleed and you refuse to take the pill of faith. The Father has sent me and I've
done the work. Now I've proclaimed the work
to you. Now you believe the work. Now I'm sending you. Why? Because you're not of the world,
but I'm sending you back into the world. That's why the church
cannot be isolated. We are to be in the world, but
we are not of the world because we have been snatched out of
the world by the one who is not of the world. So in that same
way, as the Father sends the Son and the Son obeys in the
same way, our love for Jesus is active when we obey Him and
we teach of Him and we share of Him and we love one another
in Him. That's active obedience. That's
the real love. Love is not about how we feel.
See this experiential thing. Well, I just love Jesus. No,
you don't. If you're not loving the church,
you're not loving Jesus. Thank God Almighty, a requirement
for eternal life is not our love. But thank God Almighty, because
of His love for us, He does teach us to love one another. And we
will grow into that. There's some stubborn people. But when you hear these things
and they hear Jesus say, now I'm sending you, it implies very
clearly that He's not sticking around. He's already told you
He wasn't sticking around. And so the promise that He made of
their peace is done, of their eternal life is done, everything
is done. Now He reminds them of what they are to have. And in the illustration, in the
illustration that Jesus does, I don't know how he does it,
but your text should read this, Jesus breathed and then said. It should not say breathed on
them. So Jesus breathed. In John 3, when Nicodemus is
talking about eternal life, and Jesus tells him, you cannot see
the kingdom unless you're born of God, the spirit, which is
the same word as wind, and Jesus uses the wind illustration, that
it blows where it wishes. I was teaching Abigail this Thursday,
when we had the storm that never blew. So, talking about the wind,
we can see where it goes, we can see what it does, but it
comes and goes as it wishes. We can just estimate the probability,
but it doesn't mean anything. I mean, at 60 miles south of
here, they had tornadoes. Here, it was just straight rain
with no wind. The wind blows where it wishes.
Jesus says the Spirit blows where He wishes, as He wishes, and
only when the Spirit blows will He awaken you to grant you to
believe in the testimony concerning Me, which is the Kingdom of God,
who is the Kingdom of God. So in this way, Jesus is illustrating
in however He made this breath, He breathed. And then he said, receive the
Holy Spirit. I'm sending you, my Father sent
me, now I'm sending you as my Father sent me to do the same
thing, to proclaim the revelation of me. And remember what I promised
you? Remember? Remember what I talked
about Nicodemus with? Receive the Spirit! He's sort
of like an object lesson. Remember, wind, breath, blowing. The Spirit. There you go guys.
There you go. That's how you should read this
text. Receive the Holy Spirit. He's
almost given a proclamation. What's next for you is that the
Spirit of God is going to guide you. God the Spirit is with you. God the Spirit has been given.
Remember, I promised that. The Spirit of God is given. The
Spirit of God is in them. The Spirit of God was in them.
The Spirit of God was working. So when we talk about giving
and fulfilling the Spirit, it's not about where the Spirit is
and in whom the Spirit dwells. It's about what the Spirit is
doing. The Spirit is now working in a way that the Son has never
worked. The Son had never come to earth, incarnate, to proclaim
the revelation of redemption and die on a cross. He doesn't
do it every ten generations. And so as the work of God the
Son changed in a temporal sense, so the work of God the Spirit
was added to now because the finished work of redemption was
done. So the people of God who are not of the world are sent
into the world to continue the work of Jesus who is not of the
world, who came into the world to save His own. And the power
behind it all is that God the Holy Spirit is with us, empowering
us and working through us to proclaim this. How do we know? Because we stick to the Word
of God alone. That's how we know. And we know that this is talking
about redemption because of what He says in the very next breath,
pun intended. If you forgive the sins of any,
they are forgiven them. And if you withhold forgiveness
from any, it is withheld. You want me to give that to you
in a simple way? If you keep doing the work that
I'm doing and preach the word that I'm preaching concerning
my salvation for my people, and people tell you that's not the
truth of salvation, By the Spirit of God, you can make judgment
when they refuse the gospel. And you can say, their sins are
not forgiven. And by the Spirit of God, those
who believe in me, you can say their sins are forgiven. It's
as simple as it gets. Just like Jesus said to Peter,
when he says, As a matter of fact, I saw this question this
week on a Facebook post and I'm going to talk about it tonight
briefly. But you have the keys of the kingdom. Whatever you
loose on earth is loose in heaven. Whatever you bind on earth is
bound in heaven. It's the same phraseology. What are the keys
to the kingdom of God? Believing by the Spirit in the
person of Christ. The only way you can enter into
the kingdom is that God the Spirit wakes you up and shows you the
truth of the revelation that he's teaching you. That you trust
in Christ. You must be born again before
you can believe. And just as the law and all of
its exercises on earth, if you speed, you get a ticket that
is binding. This happened. This is the consequence.
This is binding. The same thing is true in the
law of grace. that if the ticket to heaven
is faith and people believe by faith alone, then they are bound
and loosed just as they are on earth in the laws of man as they
are in the laws of God. And these disciples rejoiced. Just as Jesus did not operate
outside the will of the Father, And could not operate outside
the will of the Father, but did everything the Father sent Him
to do, so the Spirit will not operate outside the will of the
Son, nor can He. So that when He works in us,
we cannot either. Concerning salvation. So when
we add to and manipulate and change and transform and massage
salvation, we are not in the Spirit. And the evidence of that
is because the flesh rises up with holy fury that's not holy. And we hate the gospel of grace
when it has not been revealed to us by the Spirit of God. evangelism,
and our discipleship, and our ministry. I'm using buzzwords
for today. I don't like those words in that
way, but what we do as God's people is bound to what Christ
has done and what Christ has sent us to, to declare the finished
work of redemption for the elect of God, and the Spirit of God
does as He wishes, and that every outcome, when people reject you,
when people refuse you, when people blame you and malign you,
There is nothing more for you to do but dust off your sandals
and walk away. Because God the Spirit alone
can save, and God the Spirit alone can keep, and it's not
about us. Jesus didn't come here and had
he listened to Peter and his humanity, and this is an impossibility,
then these narratives would have been a whole lot different. Matter of fact, we'd have had
several other apostolic writings, the failures of Peter, the failures
of Jesus, the tragedies of leaving. It would have sounded like Jonah,
and still God's will was brought forth. But Jesus never once faltered
in His understanding and His obedience. He never once stepped
to the side and thought, I know a better way. And He never listened
to anybody else who would suggest a better way. He would simply
just say, get behind me Satan. You're not going to tempt me
not to believe in the promises of God. Beloved, when your joy
is dependent upon all sorts of things but Christ, you need to
have that mindset. Get behind me, Satan. I'm not
saying you speak to him. But you need to have that mindset.
I'm not going to let anybody or anything take away the promises
of Christ. Christ has promised He is our
peace. He's promised through His Word
that we will not be abandoned. He's promised that the Spirit
is with us, that God is working in us and through us, and that
the work that He's called us to do in loving one another and
being in the Scripture and everything is given to us. Are we dependent
upon the Spirit of God? Well, we cannot fail. Or are
we still working out everything in our own power? See, that's
what's wrong with the world today. One of the greatest things that
I am learning right now in this pandemic is this. Man doesn't
have a clue. Reactionary wisdom is really
just poop on a stick. And we sling it against the wall
and we see what sticks. You ever heard that? Well, that
didn't work. Well, that didn't work either.
Maybe that's just a southern phrase. That's not the wisdom of God.
The wisdom of God is clear. Christ is our peace. And His
promises are yes, and His promises are it is finished. So let's
rest therein. Let's pray. We thank you, Father. As this gospel letter has almost
come to an end, Lord, we are seeing the fulfillment of the
work of Jesus. Father, I need your promises in my life this
very moment, in my heart and in my soul. I need your Spirit
actively working in me to cause me to have the discipline to
be with your people and to be in the Scripture. Lord, I need
your Spirit to work in me to cause me to pray and to remind
me when I'm unable to pray that He is praying for me. I need Your Holy Spirit to bring
to remembrance these things that are written that I may believe
that Jesus is the Christ and by believing in His name that
I have right now eternal life. Lord, I need You. And so I pray,
Father, as we all need You, that You will empower us to abstain
from sin, to abstain from the sin of laziness and apathy, and
fleshliness and fleshly desires. And I'm not even speaking, Father,
of these carnal, evil desires. I'm just thinking of these subtle
entertainments that so easily take us away from the opportunity
to be in Scripture and to talk about Scripture and to rejoice
in Christ, who is our peace with one another. Father, help us to be at peace. to not worry or be anxious, to
not fear, but to rest. Give us this rest who is Jesus
Christ our Sabbath. And in Him we pray and in Him
we stand. Amen.