John 20:19-23
Listen link is a video: https://www.facebook.com/gregory.dubois.547/videos/10157895789206195
You see the picture? About ten guys huddled in an upstairs room. The door is locked. Their beloved leader, Jesus, has been unjustly condemned and executed by the powers that be. If they can do that, they’ll come after his followers next, especially since they posted a guard at the tomb and the body is gone in spite of their efforts to secure it.
Of course, these followers are the prime suspects in that “crime,” so they are scared for their lives! Since they all ran away when Jesus was arrested, we already know they aren’t very brave. Even Peter, the supposedly bravest one among them, who cut off the servant’s ear at the arrest, later denied that he even knew Jesus, three times!
This little group was talking nervously, very likely quite tense, expecting some soldiers to come pounding at the door at any moment. If there was a knocking at the door, they might have jumped out the windows to try to escape! Maybe that’s why Jesus didn’t knock, but just showed up! Another plausible reason why Jesus just showed up without knocking was his sense of humor. He could have stood outside and knocked on the door. He still knew how to do that. But perhaps, he wanted to see their faces as they reacted to his sudden appearance and living presence. Even if He didn’t say, “Boo,” they probably still jumped when he did speak. But at least they immediately saw that it wasn’t a soldier come to arrest them. It was Jesus, come to arrest their fears.
So now that he is among them, they are all startled and amazed, still nervous, though now with new motivation, they all start exclaiming their shock and surprise, as well as their delight. They were overjoyed to see him alive again. So, Jesus just had to say, “Peace be with you!” which is the polite Biblical way to say, “Come on guys, pipe down! Relax. It’s just me!”
Then he offered proof. Then, once Jesus got his friends all settled down so they could listen to him, he got to the really important thing he wanted to say to them. Again, Jesus said, “Peace be with you!” By which he meant, “Settle down now. I have to tell you something.”
When they were finally all ears, and had stopped fidgeting he said, “As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” There’s a lot of meaning packed into that! Let’s ponder this a while.
How did the Father send Jesus? He sent him as a baby, weak and vulnerable, gentle as a lamb, meek as a dove. He sent him small, born in obscurity, not into royalty. So, there’s no reason for anyone to think anything like, “God can’t use me and won’t send me. I’m a nobody. I don’t amount to much.” No, Jesus sends you, just as God sent Jesus.
God also sent Jesus to suffer. Yes, but not just on the cross as we usually think. In his humility, Jesus suffered hunger and needing his diaper changed, and every other normal physical hardship that comes with growing up. He suffered poverty too. Mary and Joseph were not rich. Just as God sent Jesus into ordinary life, with a message of hope and love, so Jesus sends all believers into our ordinary lives, but with the same message of hope and love.
There is also an old-fashioned use of the word “suffer” that shows up in the King James Version where Jesus says, “Suffer to the little children to come unto me.” We moderns read that as “allow” or “permit” the children to approach Jesus. But it means more than that. Jesus was responding to his disciples’ disdain for children as if they were beneath Jesus’ dignity, and theirs.
Jesus was really saying, “If having kids around bothers you so much, put up with it for now, suffer the indignity, because I love the kids!” That use of the word suffer tells us that Jesus suffered being human in the sense that it really was beneath the supposed dignity of God, the Divine Being, but he willingly humbled himself, acted beneath his dignity, and put up with us, so that he could save us, because He loves us so much!
The Bible makes this ordinary suffering of Jesus something of great significance too. The writer of Hebrews tells us, in Heb. 4:14-16, that, “we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin.” Chapter 5, verses 8-9 adds: “Although He was a son, He learned obedience from what He suffered and, once made perfect, He became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey Him.”
Perhaps, Jesus did learn something by having these experiences as a man, since as God he would never have suffered at all. Perhaps, He learned how hard it is to obey as a human. Human nature, independent thinking, and self-will, challenge the act of obedience, of submitting your own will to another. Jesus’ choice to suffer being human, to live an obedient life, subduing self-will and wanting to do only what the Father wanted, as a human, enabled Him, in the garden of Gethsemane to say, “”Father, if You are willing, take this cup from Me; yet not my will, but Yours be done.” (Luke 22:42)
When Jesus grew into manhood, God sent Him to teach, to minister, and to heal. All disciples who have the gospel have something that comes from God to offer the world. God sent Jesus to offer himself as a living sacrifice for the sake of saving others. And Jesus did not go unwillingly but volunteered for this. They both love us all very much.
Similarly, Jesus commanded us to love one another and he sent us into the world to offer our selves as living sacrifices too. It won’t look exactly like Jesus’ sacrifice. There are an infinite number of ways for us to offer ourselves to serve God. Romans 12:1 says so: “Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship.” Some of our brothers and sisters do risk even death to share the gospel in places where there is serious persecution. They ought to inspire us to greater boldness here, where we won’t be arrested just because we’re Christians.
Now, we have unpacked a lot of the meaning behind Jesus saying, “As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” The next thing Jesus did and said, in that upper room, shows how much we need to depend upon Him to live up to His call to go into the world sacrificially loving as Jesus did. He breathed on them. That was a symbolic act and a small imparting of the Holy Spirit that would sustain these disciples until Pentecost. Then God, the Holy Spirit, would really come with a mighty rushing wind!
So here, Jesus said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” The Holy Spirit is God dwelling within us as believers. New agers and other spiritual people will tell you that the Holy Spirit is in all of us, that every human has something of the Spirit of God in them since we were created in His image. But if Jesus can instruct his followers to “receive the Holy Spirit,” it becomes very clear that the Holy Spirit of God is someone believers receive, not something that all people already have.
God, the Holy Spirit in us is what makes us alive to God by the same power that raised Jesus from the dead! Only believers in Jesus are allowed and enabled to receive Holy Spirit, because he comes to us through faith in Jesus. If you do believe in Jesus and have asked for forgiveness of your sins, with a true knowledge that you deserve death because of your sins, but that Jesus’ work on the cross takes the punishment for you, then you have received Holy Spirit too, and can live for Christ and can be sent in to the world as Jesus was sent into the world. Without Holy Spirit, you are not truly Christian.
Even if you attend a Christian Church, without knowing that Holy Spirit is in you, you are not truly Christian. You are just religious. But if you have received God the Holy Spirit, then you know who you truly are in Christ. You are a child of God. John 1:12 says, “To all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.” And Romans 8:14 says, “Those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God.”
When you are truly saved by faith in Jesus you know you are, for as it says in Eph. 1:13-14, “You also were included in Christ when you heard the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation. When you believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession—to the praise of his glory.”
That is why Jesus told his disciples to receive the Holy Spirit, and then he said, “If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.”
Think on this, Jesus is saying that if we hold a grudge, and refuse to forgive a sinner, it is a very serious matter. “If you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.” What?! Is Jesus actually saying that we do have the power to condemn our enemies to hell by not forgiving them? What if he is? What would it mean for your life and mine?
It may be a tantalizing temptation, to think about making sure that sinner gets what he deserves. But remember, in another place Jesus also warned us, “If you do not forgive, neither will you be forgiven.”
This makes me think of the end of the animated Disney movie called Aladdin. The evil grand vizier finally gets the lamp and wishes to be a genie so that he can use phenomenal cosmic power to punish all his foes and take all he wants. But he did not realize that being a genie also means being a slave and a prisoner in the lamp. So, to the same extent that he had wanted to condemn others with his evil and unforgiving heart, he himself got locked up in his own misery. Then everything the evil vizier had done before he swirled away into the lamp got undone and put back to rights.
That is how unforgiveness really works. It is a power yes. You’re unforgiveness can hurt the person you refuse to forgive, to some extent. But it is a power that will enslave you to unending misery. It is as they say, drinking a poison yourself and expecting the other person to be hurt by the poison you are drinking. Jesus, in saying, “if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven,” seems to be granting that your refusal to forgive does have a power to hurt the one you don’t forgive. But we should know that it comes at great cost to ourselves! It is a price we all ought to want to avoid by any means.
So, let’s end on a much more positive note. Jesus said, “As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” God, the Father, sent God, the Son, into the world to offer forgiveness to all! So, we are sent to do the same. We are given the gospel message of faith in Jesus by which all kinds of sinners, if they believe the message, may receive forgiveness from God, and peace with God, along with a joyous eternal life!
So, when we share this gospel message we are in a sense given the power to forgive sins, or at the very least we are given the authority of God to say to the repentant sinner, “Your sins are forgiven.” And by their faith in Jesus, we know that they truly are forgiven! What a blessed ministry! “If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven!”
Fellow believers, my brothers and sisters in the Lord, let us go joyfully into the world where Jesus sends us and proclaim the good news of forgiveness and grace!
And if you are listening today but have not yet given yourself whole heartedly over to this saving faith. I pray that today you are believing the message. I pray that you will ask for the forgiveness being offered through faith in Jesus who loves you and died for you. I pray that you will receive the Holy Spirit! I pray that you will know this hope and joy and that you will join the happy chorus of those who are saved. For then you will be sent to tell others! And you will rejoice in so great salvation and be delighted to give thanks publicly to the God who saves. Then, I will find out that you have become a believer so that I can rejoice with you!
Let us pray!
Awesome Lord! You are kind and merciful, forgiving and gracious! In this you have provided what we need and you have shown us how to forgive and be gracious like you. Ah, but, Father, we must confess, that it is often still hard for us to forgive, even when it is just our feelings that are hurt. Please forgive us for the times and ways we are unmerciful with our brothers and sisters.
Thank You Jesus for helping us and Thank You Holy Spirit for being in us to help us live like Jesus.
Listen link is a video: https://www.facebook.com/gregory.dubois.547/videos/10157895789206195
You see the picture? About ten guys huddled in an upstairs room. The door is locked. Their beloved leader, Jesus, has been unjustly condemned and executed by the powers that be. If they can do that, they’ll come after his followers next, especially since they posted a guard at the tomb and the body is gone in spite of their efforts to secure it.
Of course, these followers are the prime suspects in that “crime,” so they are scared for their lives! Since they all ran away when Jesus was arrested, we already know they aren’t very brave. Even Peter, the supposedly bravest one among them, who cut off the servant’s ear at the arrest, later denied that he even knew Jesus, three times!
This little group was talking nervously, very likely quite tense, expecting some soldiers to come pounding at the door at any moment. If there was a knocking at the door, they might have jumped out the windows to try to escape! Maybe that’s why Jesus didn’t knock, but just showed up! Another plausible reason why Jesus just showed up without knocking was his sense of humor. He could have stood outside and knocked on the door. He still knew how to do that. But perhaps, he wanted to see their faces as they reacted to his sudden appearance and living presence. Even if He didn’t say, “Boo,” they probably still jumped when he did speak. But at least they immediately saw that it wasn’t a soldier come to arrest them. It was Jesus, come to arrest their fears.
So now that he is among them, they are all startled and amazed, still nervous, though now with new motivation, they all start exclaiming their shock and surprise, as well as their delight. They were overjoyed to see him alive again. So, Jesus just had to say, “Peace be with you!” which is the polite Biblical way to say, “Come on guys, pipe down! Relax. It’s just me!”
Then he offered proof. Then, once Jesus got his friends all settled down so they could listen to him, he got to the really important thing he wanted to say to them. Again, Jesus said, “Peace be with you!” By which he meant, “Settle down now. I have to tell you something.”
When they were finally all ears, and had stopped fidgeting he said, “As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” There’s a lot of meaning packed into that! Let’s ponder this a while.
How did the Father send Jesus? He sent him as a baby, weak and vulnerable, gentle as a lamb, meek as a dove. He sent him small, born in obscurity, not into royalty. So, there’s no reason for anyone to think anything like, “God can’t use me and won’t send me. I’m a nobody. I don’t amount to much.” No, Jesus sends you, just as God sent Jesus.
God also sent Jesus to suffer. Yes, but not just on the cross as we usually think. In his humility, Jesus suffered hunger and needing his diaper changed, and every other normal physical hardship that comes with growing up. He suffered poverty too. Mary and Joseph were not rich. Just as God sent Jesus into ordinary life, with a message of hope and love, so Jesus sends all believers into our ordinary lives, but with the same message of hope and love.
There is also an old-fashioned use of the word “suffer” that shows up in the King James Version where Jesus says, “Suffer to the little children to come unto me.” We moderns read that as “allow” or “permit” the children to approach Jesus. But it means more than that. Jesus was responding to his disciples’ disdain for children as if they were beneath Jesus’ dignity, and theirs.
Jesus was really saying, “If having kids around bothers you so much, put up with it for now, suffer the indignity, because I love the kids!” That use of the word suffer tells us that Jesus suffered being human in the sense that it really was beneath the supposed dignity of God, the Divine Being, but he willingly humbled himself, acted beneath his dignity, and put up with us, so that he could save us, because He loves us so much!
The Bible makes this ordinary suffering of Jesus something of great significance too. The writer of Hebrews tells us, in Heb. 4:14-16, that, “we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin.” Chapter 5, verses 8-9 adds: “Although He was a son, He learned obedience from what He suffered and, once made perfect, He became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey Him.”
Perhaps, Jesus did learn something by having these experiences as a man, since as God he would never have suffered at all. Perhaps, He learned how hard it is to obey as a human. Human nature, independent thinking, and self-will, challenge the act of obedience, of submitting your own will to another. Jesus’ choice to suffer being human, to live an obedient life, subduing self-will and wanting to do only what the Father wanted, as a human, enabled Him, in the garden of Gethsemane to say, “”Father, if You are willing, take this cup from Me; yet not my will, but Yours be done.” (Luke 22:42)
When Jesus grew into manhood, God sent Him to teach, to minister, and to heal. All disciples who have the gospel have something that comes from God to offer the world. God sent Jesus to offer himself as a living sacrifice for the sake of saving others. And Jesus did not go unwillingly but volunteered for this. They both love us all very much.
Similarly, Jesus commanded us to love one another and he sent us into the world to offer our selves as living sacrifices too. It won’t look exactly like Jesus’ sacrifice. There are an infinite number of ways for us to offer ourselves to serve God. Romans 12:1 says so: “Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship.” Some of our brothers and sisters do risk even death to share the gospel in places where there is serious persecution. They ought to inspire us to greater boldness here, where we won’t be arrested just because we’re Christians.
Now, we have unpacked a lot of the meaning behind Jesus saying, “As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” The next thing Jesus did and said, in that upper room, shows how much we need to depend upon Him to live up to His call to go into the world sacrificially loving as Jesus did. He breathed on them. That was a symbolic act and a small imparting of the Holy Spirit that would sustain these disciples until Pentecost. Then God, the Holy Spirit, would really come with a mighty rushing wind!
So here, Jesus said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” The Holy Spirit is God dwelling within us as believers. New agers and other spiritual people will tell you that the Holy Spirit is in all of us, that every human has something of the Spirit of God in them since we were created in His image. But if Jesus can instruct his followers to “receive the Holy Spirit,” it becomes very clear that the Holy Spirit of God is someone believers receive, not something that all people already have.
God, the Holy Spirit in us is what makes us alive to God by the same power that raised Jesus from the dead! Only believers in Jesus are allowed and enabled to receive Holy Spirit, because he comes to us through faith in Jesus. If you do believe in Jesus and have asked for forgiveness of your sins, with a true knowledge that you deserve death because of your sins, but that Jesus’ work on the cross takes the punishment for you, then you have received Holy Spirit too, and can live for Christ and can be sent in to the world as Jesus was sent into the world. Without Holy Spirit, you are not truly Christian.
Even if you attend a Christian Church, without knowing that Holy Spirit is in you, you are not truly Christian. You are just religious. But if you have received God the Holy Spirit, then you know who you truly are in Christ. You are a child of God. John 1:12 says, “To all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.” And Romans 8:14 says, “Those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God.”
When you are truly saved by faith in Jesus you know you are, for as it says in Eph. 1:13-14, “You also were included in Christ when you heard the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation. When you believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession—to the praise of his glory.”
That is why Jesus told his disciples to receive the Holy Spirit, and then he said, “If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.”
Think on this, Jesus is saying that if we hold a grudge, and refuse to forgive a sinner, it is a very serious matter. “If you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.” What?! Is Jesus actually saying that we do have the power to condemn our enemies to hell by not forgiving them? What if he is? What would it mean for your life and mine?
It may be a tantalizing temptation, to think about making sure that sinner gets what he deserves. But remember, in another place Jesus also warned us, “If you do not forgive, neither will you be forgiven.”
This makes me think of the end of the animated Disney movie called Aladdin. The evil grand vizier finally gets the lamp and wishes to be a genie so that he can use phenomenal cosmic power to punish all his foes and take all he wants. But he did not realize that being a genie also means being a slave and a prisoner in the lamp. So, to the same extent that he had wanted to condemn others with his evil and unforgiving heart, he himself got locked up in his own misery. Then everything the evil vizier had done before he swirled away into the lamp got undone and put back to rights.
That is how unforgiveness really works. It is a power yes. You’re unforgiveness can hurt the person you refuse to forgive, to some extent. But it is a power that will enslave you to unending misery. It is as they say, drinking a poison yourself and expecting the other person to be hurt by the poison you are drinking. Jesus, in saying, “if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven,” seems to be granting that your refusal to forgive does have a power to hurt the one you don’t forgive. But we should know that it comes at great cost to ourselves! It is a price we all ought to want to avoid by any means.
So, let’s end on a much more positive note. Jesus said, “As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” God, the Father, sent God, the Son, into the world to offer forgiveness to all! So, we are sent to do the same. We are given the gospel message of faith in Jesus by which all kinds of sinners, if they believe the message, may receive forgiveness from God, and peace with God, along with a joyous eternal life!
So, when we share this gospel message we are in a sense given the power to forgive sins, or at the very least we are given the authority of God to say to the repentant sinner, “Your sins are forgiven.” And by their faith in Jesus, we know that they truly are forgiven! What a blessed ministry! “If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven!”
Fellow believers, my brothers and sisters in the Lord, let us go joyfully into the world where Jesus sends us and proclaim the good news of forgiveness and grace!
And if you are listening today but have not yet given yourself whole heartedly over to this saving faith. I pray that today you are believing the message. I pray that you will ask for the forgiveness being offered through faith in Jesus who loves you and died for you. I pray that you will receive the Holy Spirit! I pray that you will know this hope and joy and that you will join the happy chorus of those who are saved. For then you will be sent to tell others! And you will rejoice in so great salvation and be delighted to give thanks publicly to the God who saves. Then, I will find out that you have become a believer so that I can rejoice with you!
Let us pray!
Awesome Lord! You are kind and merciful, forgiving and gracious! In this you have provided what we need and you have shown us how to forgive and be gracious like you. Ah, but, Father, we must confess, that it is often still hard for us to forgive, even when it is just our feelings that are hurt. Please forgive us for the times and ways we are unmerciful with our brothers and sisters.
Thank You Jesus for helping us and Thank You Holy Spirit for being in us to help us live like Jesus.
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