John 20:21 • I Am Sending

Listen to the audio version of this message with the player below.

Transcript

(This transcript was prepared using software tools and has not been reviewed for complete accuracy.)

We're thankful for the Teen Choir that's reminding us that you don't just wait until someday to minister in the Lord's name; they're leading us in worship this day.
And so we're thankful for young people willing to do that.
John chapter 20 verses 19 and following:  In your Grace bible that's pages 906 and 7 and I'll ask as you stand as we read the Lord's Word together.
John chapter 20 verses 19 to the end of the chapter.
"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 had said this, he showed them his hands and his side.
Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord.
Jesus said to them again, 'Peace be with you.
As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.'
And when he had said this, he breathed on them and 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 Thomas, one of the Twelve, called the Twin, was not with them when Jesus came.
So the other disciples told him, 'We have seen the Lord.'
But he said to them, 'Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe.'
Eight days later, his disciples were inside again, and Thomas was with them.
Although the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, 'Peace be with you.'
Then he said to Thomas, 'Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side.
Do not disbelieve, but believe.'
Thomas answered him, 'My Lord and my God!'
Jesus said to him, 'Have you believed because you have seen me?
Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.'
Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name."
Let's pray together.
>>> Heavenly Father, on this day we praise You for the Son who came, that we by believing might have life in His name.
But He spoke to those who were full of fears and doubts.
Not only did He speak to them:  He came to them.
And we would be so bold as to ask that You would come to us by Your Spirit and by Your Word even now, though we be full of fear and doubts.
Minister to us we pray in Jesus' name.
Amen.
>>> Please be seated.
The selfie craze whereby you take your own self picture with your smartphone has moved beyond just celebrities and presidents and grandparents who have discovered how to use this with their grandkids.
Right?
[Laughter]
The craze has advanced so much that now they will sell the app to tell you how to control your image as you take your selfie.
Have you seen that?
You can get the app, take your picture and then select if you want your picture to show you less five pounds or ten pounds or fifteen pounds.
You can control your own self image.
And, of course, it's not just about pictures.
There are now selfie obituaries.
Have you read about that?
Where people want to control their image even beyond their lives, not just leave it to some junior reporter who are the ones assigned to write the obituaries, not just leave it to some junior reporter what will be said to them after they're gone, but you actually write your obituary ahead of time:  a selfie obit that allows you to control what other people may think of you after you're gone.
Sally Soper is a former magazine editor who is now actually doing a business of helping people write their selfie obituaries.
And sometimes the selfie obituaries are poignant.
One person who struggled with addictions wrote, "Well, I have to stop now, because I'm dead."
[Laughter]
"Don't wait as long as I did."
[Laughter]
Some are humerous.
"Well, at least I don't have to use sunscreen anymore."
[Laughter]
Some are a little more self aggrandizing.
There's a particular celebrity in Australia who discovered that a major Australian newspaper had prewritten his obit, and it was only 30 words.
And so he wrote his obituary with 300 words.
The goal:  To control the image.
Well, if somebody did not get the memo that you should control your image by writing your account well before you're gone, obviously the apostles did not get that memo.
Think of it.
I mean, they wrote these gospels and often the people who looked the worst in the gospels are the disciples of Jesus Christ.
It's plain again in this passage, right?
I mean, Jesus has risen.
He's the victor.
He's triumphed over the grave.
And what are the disciples doing as we meet them on the day of the week of resurrection?
They are hiding for fear of the Jews in a locked room.
And a week later, we see them locked in a room hiding again.
And, yet, Jesus comes to them and says, "I am sending you with the message of the gospel."
I mean, we, it just creates incredulous questions.
I mean, why would Jesus use such messed up people to be the proclaimers of the gospel?
Could it possibly be that messed up people are better than dressed up people for proclaiming the gospel?
It does, after all, seem to be the pattern of the Bible.
If you think of it, you recognize, of course, Jesus is using messed up people when He speaks to His disciples who are controlled by fear.
The fear is obvious in verse 19 of chapter 20.
"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."
I mean, the fear is obvious.
They're locked away; we're told it's because of fear.
But it's not just obvious:  It's offensive.
He has risen from the dead.
They should be saying, "Go, tell it on the mountains."
And instead, they're hiding in a locked room.
And, yet, despite their fears, more surprising is Jesus' response.
The very first words He says to them at the end of verse 19:  Those words are, "'Peace be with you.'"
It's just a greeting.
Even if you were in Israel today, you would hear an average Jewish person giving you the greeting of, "Shalom Aleichem," peace to you.
But it's made special here by our recognizing what could have been in its place.
Jesus comes to the disciples who were in hiding.
Though He is already risen from the dead, the tomb is empty, the women have reported His absence, and He could have simply said, "What are you doing here?
How dare you!"
But there is no blame, no shame, no recrimination.
He just says, "Peace to you."
And the reason for the peace is the presence that is also a blessing.
Jesus comes and when He comes, verse 20, we see this:  "When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side.
Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord."
He shows them hands and side.
If you were to look in Luke's gospel, you would recognize that even though the disciples had heard that He had risen, they weren't sure it was physical at all.
They thought maybe He'd just become a ghost.
And now when He shows them hands pierced, the side with the hole in it, He's saying, "Physically, really, this is My flesh; this is My body."
The reality is I am here, which means not only that I am present but My work is done."
The penalty of sin was death.
When Jesus took upon Himself the sin of the world, His penalty was death.
But now if He is alive, that means His task was done.
The penalty is paid.
Jesus has made it right.
The wrath of God was poured out upon Him so that we would bear it no more, and the evidence that the wrath is done, the sin paid for, is Jesus is here; He is present.
And that's why the disciples are glad.
He gives them peace.
He gives them His presence.
And then something more that we don't understand entirely.
Verse 21, "Jesus said to them, 'Peace be with you.
As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.'"
Now, again the peace comes.
This is the second time.
It will happen three times in the passage.
But with this peace comes purpose.
"As the Father as sent me, so I am sending you."
You haven't disqualified yourselves.
You have betrayed Me.
You have abandoned Me.
You are locked away in hiding, and, yet, I still have a purpose for you.
It's an amazing statement for people who are such a mess, who have failed so awfully that Jesus would kind of lift them up, not only with the peace of His presence but the peace of saying, "I've still got a job for you to do.
As the Father has sent me, I'm sending you."
Now, how has the Father sent Him, and what is He sending them to do?
To understand that, you must know that where Jesus is speaking here He's actually quoting Himself.
In John chapter 17, and I'll ask you to turn there in your bibles:  In John 17 and verse 18, in that High Priestly prayer, that long prayer that was at the end of the Lord's Supper just before Jesus goes to the cross, He actually in prayer uses these words.
In speaking to the Father in John 17:18, Jesus says, "'Father, as you sent me into the world, so I have sent these,'" these apostles, "'into the world.
And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they may also be sanctified in truth.
I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word.'"
Jesus in the High Priestly prayer says, "God, as You have sent Me into the world to be consecrated for the truth, that You are making people right, sanctified, holy by Me as I consecrate Myself in death upon a cross, so I am giving them the word that they will take that word to others that they may believe.
Father, I'm giving them the gospel that You have given Me:  that people will be made right with God by the work of a Redeemer who will die in their behalf.
If they believe in Him, they are made right with God."
Now Jesus appears to the apostles after the resurrection.
He says, "I'm sending you as the Father has sent Me."
To do what?
To declare the gospel:  that people are made right with God through the work of Jesus Christ.
Now you need that information to be able to deal with the very difficult verse that's back in John chapter 20.
And I want to take you there, back in John 20 and verse 23.
I imagine even as I read it in the scripture reading, you stumbled over it a little bit.
What does that mean?
In verse 23, just after Jesus has said, "I am, I'm sending you as I was sent," we read these words.
Verse 23, "'If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.'"
Now, what does that mean?
That the disciples had the ability to forgive sin?
I mean, after all, Jesus Himself through the ministry to other says only God can forgive sin.
In what way are disciples made able to forgive sin?
Is it because they are disciples that they have some special right to forgive or to withhold forgiveness?
Or is this perhaps the ministry of the church down the road:  that the disciples are establishing the church that has the right to forgive or not to forgive sin?
I must tell you, I don't happen to think this church has that right.
Do you?
Fallible, human people:  that we have the right to forgive or withho--?
What could Jesus mean except that He has just said?
Father, I am sending these into the world to declare the gospel:  That people are made right through faith in Jesus Christ, the sacrifice that I have made for sin, not what they do, not their performance, not their goodness but My goodness in their behalf.
In that sense, Jesus is establishing a line of truth.
And He is saying to His disciples, "Listen, you tell people they have to be on one side or another of truth.
And the truth is they are made right with Me by faith in Me, not by faith in themselves."
So that even you and I have the right to say to people, "Listen, do you believe that Jesus Christ is your only hope of salvation, that you are made right with God not by your goodness but by faith in His sacrifice on Your behalf."
Because I tell you:  If you are not on the side of truth, what Jesus said, Jesus said, "Those who believe in Me have eternal life, and those who do not believe in Me are condemned already."
I don't say that on my authority.
I don't have the right personally to grant or withhold forgiveness.
But I have the right to speak truth.
If you do not believe that Jesus is your hope of salvation, then you do not have the forgiveness of God.
If you believe that Jesus has made a way for you, that you're not banking on your goodness, on your efforts, then you have forgiveness of your sin now and forever.
I tell you with the authority of Christ who sends me and every one of you who believes in Him to say the same thing.
We are not granting or withholding forgiveness based upon our authority.
We are simply declaring what Christ has said.
There is a side of truth, and you, friend, must be on the side of truth that says Jesus is my hope, or you don't have hope.
That's trough--, tough to hear and sometimes tough to say.
And so that is why it's so important that we hear verse 22 right between verse 21 and 23.
There we read this:  "And when Jesus had said this," that He is sending people into the world to do what He has commended them to do, "when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, 'Receive the Holy Spirit.'"
Now, at one measure, you recognize that what Jesus is doing is He's recreating the creation of humanity itself.
Do you remember there when God made Adam out of the dust of the ground and we read that He breathed into his nostrils to breathe life into him, the breath of God?
And now Jesus says to His disciples, "I'm sending you to do a job," and He breathes on them, and He says, "Receive the Holy Spirit," which means there's to be a life force of Christ Himself by His Spirit that is enabling them to do what is beyond them.
After all, that role of the Holy Spirit, Jesus said before He went to the cross, was to glorify Christ:  that this Spirit would come upon His disciples in such a way that they could testify of Him in power.
And they will need that power if they are truly to say, "There is a side of truth, and you must be on that side.
And I do not tell you on my authority or in my power, but I tell you what is truth so that the Holy Spirit might apply it to your hearts."
And I need to remember that.
And you need to know that.
That we, when we go and speak the gospel, we are not on our own.
But the Holy Spirit is working by and with His word in the hearts of others that they might see and receive the truth.
And I desperately need to remember that.
As I was in high school, one of my very good friends was a football hero.
I was a debate nerd; he was a football hero.
[Laughter]
And though he was a friend, he was not a believer, not a Christian.
And he did not live in any way like a Christian.
As I began to minister, I ministered in the same town where the two of I--, two of us had grown up and gone to high school.
And so we knew each other and began to raise family in parallel.
My oldest son, his oldest son:  same grade, same age, went to school together.
But there were great differences between our children.
My son, healthy, strong, able:  his son, sweet spirited, wonderful, but diagnosed in kindergarten with a progressive and terminal brain tumor.
As our two sons grew together in grade school, Robbie, the other son, lost his ability to walk.
As they got into early grades of high school, though my son remained strong and able, Robbie lost his ability to see.
And then a little bit later as the tumor advanced, he lost the ability to formulate his thoughts and to talk.
One day, my son called his mom from school.
And Colin said to his mother, "Mom, there has been a miracle today.
Today, for the first time since we were in kindergarten, Robbie can walk and Robbie can see and Robbie can talk, because today Robbie went to be with the Lord."
As beautiful as it was to know that Robbie was a dear Christian, I must tell you, I have never dreaded a phone call more than calling his father, the man that I had known for so many years.
I called knowing he was a man sometimes with a sharp temper, knowing he was a personality that was often kind of brazen and strong.
And I didn't know how he would react on the phone.
And I called to say, "Bill, I'm so sorry."
And his response was, "Bryan, this is the greatest day of my life.
My son is whole for the first time since he was a child.
He is with Jesus, and I am filled with joy for my son."
And I must tell you that my first thought was:  You know, I am really a great preacher.
[Laughter]
Was that my first thought?
I thought:  Praise God for the Holy Spirit who can take a heart that is hard, a heart that questions, a heart that has fought and somehow melted into the beautiful understanding of the gospel so that it is rejoicing in the truth of the Word of God.
That you can lose a child and still believe that Christ who suffered for you is your advocate in heaven for your own child, and your child is whole and you'll see him again.
And you can rejoice in the worst day of your life, because it's the best thing forever for your child.
What an amazing power of the Holy Spirit.
And Jesus, to His disciples, says, "I'm going to send you into the world, but before I send you, I want you to know I'm going to breathe upon you the Holy Spirit so that you are not on your own."
If you speak My truth, reminding people that there is a side of things that is real, that is true, you have to put your faith in Christ for an eternity of blessing or else you don't have it.
That the Spirit truly grants power beyond our own.
And I desperately need to remember that in all kinds of moments.
But sometimes we doubt, don't we?
Not just the truth of the Word but the power.
Is it there really?
And perhaps that's the reason that after this great commissioning of the disciples with the authority and power of the Holy Spirit we somehow get the account of doubting Thomas.
I mean, we need it there to deal with our own humanity.
After all, what Jesus is saying here is not just that He's going to use people as those sent who are such a mess because of their fear:  He apparently is willing even to come and to use people who are a mess because of their doubts.
I mean, the doubts:  It's obvious in verse 25, right?
The other disciples told Thomas, "'We have seen the Lord.'
But he said to them, 'Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe.'"
You have to recognize:  This is not something new and different for Thomas.
This is par for the course.
This is his habit.
You may remember back in John 11 where Jesus began to tell the apostles He was going to have to go to Jerusalem.
And they say, "Don't go there.
The--, they'll arrest you.
They'll kill you.
Don't go there."
Jesus says, "I must go."
And Thomas said, "Well, let's just go with him and die."
[Laughter]
There's faith.
You know.
[Laughter]
You know.
You know, he's just a fatalist, you know.
I mean, he doesn't believe anything special's going to happen.
He's even doubting way back then.
And now, of course, Jesus has risen.
The testimony has come from the women and the other disciples:  They've seen Him.
But lest we blame Thomas too much, remember where Thomas is when Jesus comes.
He's with the other disciples.
It's eight days after Jesus has already appeared to them.
And where are they again?
[Chuckles]
They're still locked away in the room.
They're still hiding.
Which means Thomas isn't the only doubter.
They're all questioning.
Thomas is just the master doubter among the various doubters who are there.
And that's why he's so special and why it's so important that Jesus will say to him in verse 26 the same words that He said to the others.
You see that right at the end of verse 26?
"Jesus came and stood among them and said, 'Peace be with you.'"
Now, what's so amazing is what immediately follows.
Verse 27, "He said to Thomas, 'Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put your, put out your hand, and place it on my side.'"
Now, He's taking up Thomas' challenge.
But remember, Jesus wasn't there when Thomas issued the challenge, which means Jesus is not just present:  He is showing omniscient.
I know what you said and did, even when I wasn't here.
I know all about your doubt.
I know all about your challenge.
And, yet, what are the first words from Jesus' mouth?
Peace be with you.
Such an amazing thing.
Not scared of your doubt.
I'm not running away from those who doubt.
But Jesus deals one, deals with one whose doubt He knows, one whose doubt has been stated, and Jesus enters right in, comes to face it, comes to deal with it, as though our doubts don't turn Jesus away.
He comes right in.
We need that truth too, because there can be moments when the, you know, when the music is playing and the hymns are great and the people are gathered and it's a wonderful Easter and we, you know, we could hardly not believe.
And then comes the diagnosis or the marriage struggle or the job gone, and then it is hard to believe.
And we doubt.
And you need to hear me say the doubt does not drive Jesus away.
Some of the greatest proclaimers of the gospel that we know are those who were simply honest about their doubt.
Francis Schaeffer, the philosopher who is known for the last generation of having set up the L'Abri Centre over in Switzerland in which young people who were questioning their churches and their parents and the gospel could go his mantra with honest answers to honest questions:  Ask the hard question.
Go ahead, do it.
I can take it.
And the reason Schaeffer was willing to do that was because he himself had faced his doubts.
Francis Schaeffer was actually the pastor, years before I was ever there, but the pastor of the church that Kathy and I attended in St. Louis for many years.
But he was the pastor at that church during the time of what was called the Battle for the Bible, as denominations across this country were coming apart over whether the Bible was true or not.
And Schaeffer stood with those who said the Bible was true.
But he was also standing with those who got so animated, so agitated, so angry, not just with other but with, who were outside the church or of a liberal perspective, but began to debate one another about whether they had the proper interpretation of any point or whether their view of true.
They began to fight with such vigor and such lovelessness that Schaeffer began to doubt the Bible was true, not because of its words but because of how God's people treated each other.
He actually left the pastorate and left the church because he was saying, "If God is love, how could His people be so unloving?"
And his journey to Switzerland was to kind of dig a hole for intellectual investigation just to say, "Is it true or not?"
But it was only in facing his doubts that he became credible dealing with young people to say, "You tell me your doubt; I'm not telling you I can fix your problems, but I will at least tell you what I struggled with too."
One of the greatest proclaimers was once one of the greatest doubters:  Billy Graham.
Remember the story?
I mean, Billy Graham had pastured a church, then become one of the youngest presidents of a Christian college in U.S. history, had begun the crusades when a friend of his named Templeton had gone to a liberal seminary that did not believe the truth of the Bible and came to Billy Graham and say, "Billy, you can't believe what the Bible says," and was so persuasive that even Billy Graham began to doubt.
He'd already seen amazing things happen through his ministry but began to doubt.
And some of you have read the account of how he went to a garden park on the outskirts of Los Angeles, went up into the hills and began just to pray into the night, "God, I am not sure anymore.
Help me."
And God began to minister to him not only by the Word but by the Holy Spirit to have his heart say, "If this is not true, I have no hope.
It must be true."
And Billy Graham becoming such a great proclaimer because of the Spirit working through him in his doubt to confirm what had to be true.
Listen, I'm not going to have an answer for every doubt.
Your life circumstance may be too hard or too difficult for me to be able to answer, but what I want you to hear me say is God doesn't run away because we doubt.
Jesus comes right in, knowing what Thomas has said.
It's not a mystery to Him.
He d--, He knew before He was in the room.
And Jesus comes right in.
And then the work of the Holy Spirit is truly profound.
When Jesus demonstrates Himself, Thomas says, "My Lord and my God!"
The master doubter utters the statement, claiming the divinity of Christ that has been used by Christians as the most clear and definitive statement of the nature of Jesus for all the ages.
Whether you're dealing with Muslims or Jehovah's Witnesses or those who just kind of want to say, "Well, Jesus was just a good man," almost all of us know John 10:28, if not the reference we know the words.
Thomas declared who Jesus really was:  My Lord and my God.
Not just a good man.
Not just a ghost.
He is the Lord present.
And He comes in in the midst of the greatest doubt in order to create the greatest proclaimer.
If you think of where this portion of John ends, it's so interesting.
Verse 30, "Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in the book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name."
Now, apparently what John is saying is, you know, I kind of have this reservoir of miracles I could have chosen, but instead I've chosen these to make my point.
But what is the last miracle he chooses to make his point?
It's the absolute miracle of grace.
It's not moving a mountain.
Right?
It's not feeding twenty thousand.
It's taking Thomas in the midst of his doubt and blessing him and then making him a proclaimer who will be heard through all the ages, the most powerful statement by the least deserving person.
It's just grace on display that you and I need when we do doubt and we wonder:  I--, are my questions driving God away?
If I dare even to think this, will He come to me, love me, care for me anymore?
And the blessing of this post-resurrection account is that Jesus is saying, "Listen, if you're struggling with the reality so much that you still hide in a room or you're struggling so much with the difficulties and the realities of your life that you doubt if what I'm saying is true, that doesn't drive Me away from you."
I can't answer all your questions, stop all your doubts in this one message, but I will surely say what you can see:  Doubt does not drive Jesus away.
We can come to Him with our questions and still know a grace that is greater, not just than our sin:  It is a grace greater than our doubts.
One of the people in our culture right now who works the hardest at helping people deal with their questions and their doubts is Ravi Zacharias.
Some of you know that name.
And Ravi Zacharias talks at one point about a man who struggled with great doubt and then experienced what it would mean to have the Holy Spirit come in power to work in his heart.
The man was actually one of the translators for Ravi Zacharias in Belgium at one point.
And as Ravi got to meet the man, he told him his life story.
He said, "You know, I was converted out of atheism at a conference in Switzerland.
It was a beautiful setting, you know, idyllic, Switz--, Swiss setting.
And it was a conference where they were talking about the beauty of Christ and the music was great and the people were wonderful.
And I committed my life to Christ."
But he said, "In the very service that I committed myself to Christ in that idyllic setting, I was surprised to get a message that said I had to make an urgent phone call home."
So he got up out of the service in which he'd just committed his life and called home to hear his wife in tears:  said that they had just lost their 9-month-old son.
Left the conference, got on a train to go back to his home to bury his son.
And on the train, he was in a compartment where there was an older man reading a Bible and two university students kind of sitting across the way who began to taunt the man.
"You believe that?
You think that's true?
If God is so loving, then why does your God allow war?
Why does He allow the innocent to suffer?
Why does your God allow children to die?"
And the man who was going home to bury his son said he internally raged, "Yes, you tell him.
You tell them why my God allowed my son to die."
But as his questions and his doubt fueled the rage, something else began to happen.
And so the man said, not the older man, the one who was raging inside, spoke to the university students and said, "I will tell you how you know that God's the God of love.
He gave His Son to die on a cross for our sins."
Now the university students turned their ire on him.
"How dare you speak such platitudes, such idealism, having not really experienced the pain of life?"
He said, "No, you do not understand.
I am on this train going home to bury my son of 9 months who I just learned hours ago died.
And for the first time, I understand the pain of God the Father when He gave His Son for my sin."
I will not tell you it takes away all the doubt.
I will not tell you it takes away all the questions.
But what God has done when He says to people who are fearful and doubtful, "I'm still here for you and your questions and your doubts are not driving Me away," is He is saying the God who gave His Son for us loves us.
It is not based on getting everything fixed, not everything worked out.
You know that.
The reason we love listening to Charlie Elwin, the reason that we love listening to the Frary's last week is they talked about the pain of their hearts that is still not gone but a God that they trust in the midst of it is because they know a God who gave His Son for their eternity and the eternity of their son.
That's the reality of the gospel.
We have hurt, but it does not drive Him away.
We know Him, the God who sent His Son, and He says, "Believe in Me.
You may be a mess.
Believe in Me.
I'm not waiting for you to get dressed up.
I'm not waiting for you to fix the image.
Believe in Me.
I love you enough to accept your questions and your doubts and be gracious to you still."

---