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Join Pastor Tim this week as he shares from John 20:22-23 on how Jesus equips us even in our weakness and brokenness.
The following study questions and transcript are AI generated and may contain errors.
The following study questions and transcript are AI generated and may contain errors.
Good evening and welcome to Little Hills Steadfast. We are so glad to have you here tonight. I am so excited to get to dig into God’s word with you once again. Tonight we are looking at John chapter 20 once again. We’re looking at a passage wedged between the two passages we’ve looked at in the past few weeks.
Two weeks ago we looked at the disciples, ten of them at least, and their fear of their fellow human beings and of God and how they locked themselves into the room. And then last week we looked at Thomas and his doubt, his doubt that Jesus could really be alive again after the crucifixion. And we looked at these broken men, these fearful men, and how Jesus restored them into relationship with him.
Tonight, though, we look at something that’s really exciting, which is that he doesn’t just forgive them, but he prepares them for the mission that he has ahead for them by giving the Holy Spirit. And that’s what we’re going to look at tonight. So would you please join me in prayer as we begin tonight?
Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for your goodness. We thank you for your love. We thank you that you restore us when we are afraid, when we doubt, when we fail, that you don’t send us off on our own, but you give us your strength. You give us your spirit that we might have the power to do the things that you have called us to do. Lord, would you be with us as we study your passage that you’ve given us tonight? We pray in Jesus’ name, amen.
I think all of us have had the experience of having a car with a dead battery. A few months ago, I tried to start my car and I needed to go someplace. I was actually in kind of a hurry, and you probably had this experience. You get in the car and you think, you know, the lights seem a little dim. No, it’s just my imagination. Everything is okay. And you stick the key in the ignition and you try to start it and it goes, and my car for added benefit flashed and flickered and went, and it was really unpleasant, most unpleasant because I couldn’t go anywhere. I was stuck.
Well, I couldn’t really even get to jump it from another car because it was in a garage. And so what was I going to do? I called AAA and they sent out a guy with a little battery pack charger and he hooked it up and hooked it to the battery, started the car, it started perfectly fine. Everything seemed good. He said to drive it for a couple of hours and hopefully everything was okay. He said the battery seemed fine. So off I went, parked it a couple of days later, tried to go someplace again. Same awful feeling when the car wouldn’t start.
And I think we’ve all run into that, right? Because we try to fix things and they don’t really get fixed. And eventually I had to replace the battery and now it will start, but we all know that those batteries will fail again. We know the things that we fix are only temporary. How often is it that we fix something and it feels like we just fixed it the other day and maybe it’s actually been a couple of years, but it’s broken again?
And we look at Jesus coming to the disciples and we think, okay, he’s going to restore them, he’s going to forgive them, and then they’re going to go and they’re just going to mess up again. That’s what we do all the time. We just mess up and we don’t do what we intend to do. And it feels sort of inevitable and hopeless.
But what Jesus begins to do in the disciples’ lives here is not a temporary repair. It’s not a jumpstart that’s going to go for just a little time. It’s a restoration to true eternal life. And so while it doesn’t happen all at once, what we see is something that lasts, and it lasts for them and for us. And that’s why it’s so hopeful what we find in this passage tonight.
Let’s go ahead and begin by looking at verse 22. We read there, “And when he,” that’s Jesus, “had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, Receive the Holy Spirit.” So again, to set the context, this is after he appears to the ten. They’re in that room locked, fearful of human beings that might want to kill them, the religious leaders, the Roman leaders. They’re in this room. And Jesus provides restoration to them. And then he says, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”
And so he’s taking these broken, fearful men. We can imagine their faces as they’re trying to figure out how to make sense of Jesus. He’s just said, “Peace be with you.” And then he says this, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” The spirit that he’s been promising, this comforter that would come, he offers it to them. And then it says he breathed on them, or perhaps a better way to say it would be he breathed in them.
Now that sounds familiar if you’re thinking about the Old Testament. And if we go all the way back, all the way back to Genesis chapter 2, we see why it sounds so familiar. If you look there, at the very creation, we see, “Then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils, and breathed the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.” God from the beginning breathed life into us. Every breath we take, we know that comes as a gift from God.
And Jesus, as he appears, the very creator of the universe, restoring his disciples, what does he do? He breathes into them again. This time, not just that physical initial life, but he breathes into them eternal life. He’s restoring them with his spirit. He’s providing them with the hope that we talk about in the gospel. He’s taken them from being fearful and hopeless, to equipping them with the very best thing.
It’s far better than any jumpstart that any car could ever receive, far better than any training we could ever go to. He’s giving them the very spirit of God, his own spirit, to go with them as he’s sending them out.
Now you might say, well what does this have to do with Pentecost? You see, a few weeks later, right after Jesus ascends, we have Pentecost, and Jesus gives them the Holy Spirit, and there’s tongues of fire, and they go out preaching in different languages. What does this have to do with that?
And I think this is where we see the process in which God works on us over time. You see, when we trust in Jesus and we become a believer, we receive the Holy Spirit just as the disciples did this night, and that begins that process. At some point, as God calls us to different things, he may allow us to see how the Spirit’s working in us in more profound ways. He may speak through us. He may give us boldness in a time of fear. He may do all sorts of things, and we see that at Pentecost, but here we see that beginning of the process of our God caring about those whom he’s called and restoring them and equipping them.
I think so often we look at our own failures. I look at mine, and after I’ve messed up, after I’ve failed to do something I know God’s wanted me to do, or I’ve made a plan and it just hasn’t worked out, what do I do? What do we do? I think we start to say, well, can I really serve? Do I really have anything useful to give? If everything I thought I had planned is just falling apart, if my life and my service to God feels like a car with a dead battery, then what do I really have to give in the future? Can I ever?
And what we see here is that here are disciples who have experienced the exact same thing that we go through. They fled. They’ve denied Jesus. What does he do? He equips them. He says, “I’m going to dwell. My spirit is going to dwell in you.” I’m not going to even just say, “Okay, I forgive you. It really stinks that you weren’t there when I wanted you to be, but I forgive you now. Go and do better. Go take a training course. Go sign up for a class and somehow become better.” No, he says, “I’m going to dwell in you. I’m going to give you strength.”
And as you do all those other things, as you do do training, some of them may have spent time training under others, studying God’s word. We know certainly that as the apostle Paul is later called, he had all kinds of training he tapped into. But what happens, God takes that training. He takes the circumstances of life. He takes all the different pieces of how he’s formed us and given us life, and he pulls them together and he uses those things through the power of his Holy Spirit in us.
This is what we have to remember because so often we stop at the first part of the good news of the gospel, which is that, that Jesus saves us and that’s incredible news. We need that. If we don’t have that, then we’re just lost, but he doesn’t stop there. We often do in our minds, we stop and think, okay, now everything else is up to me. He got me out of the ditch. Now I need to go.
What does he do? Jesus doesn’t just save us, he equips us. He continues to equip us throughout life, and so the apostles weren’t going to be perfect after this. We know of the different things that occurred. For example, the times that Peter would start to fear men again, the apostle Paul would be called to straighten him out. We know these things happen, and yet Jesus doesn’t just save us, he equips us and he continues to equip us throughout life.
It’s what theologians often call sanctification. This idea that God makes us more and more holy throughout life through the working of his spirit in us. We see in verse 22 that picture of Jesus giving life again, mirroring Genesis chapter 2, and why does he do that? Well he does that, we see in verse 23, so that we can give life to others through him. Let’s look at chapter, rather verse 23.
Jesus goes on to say, “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them, and if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.”
Now when I was preparing to talk about this passage, when the series was being planned out, I almost wanted to skip over this verse. Not because it’s not a great inspired verse, but because it’s intimidating. This is a profound thing. If we forgive, people are forgiven. If we don’t forgive, people are not. What do we do with that? How do we make sense of that? How do I make sense of the idea that if I’m saved through grace alone, through faith alone, if I’m saved because I believe in Jesus and his spirit’s in me, then what about this idea that those whom we forgive are forgiven and those whom we don’t forgive aren’t forgiven?
It’s a very hard passage to wrestle through. There are a couple of parallels in the Gospels, and they’re challenging. But here’s the amazing thing, and this is why it’s so good that we wrestle with these difficult passages. What do we find in it? That when we dig into it, it’s actually incredibly hopeful.
Let’s just consider this passage again. I’m going to bring it back up. We see, “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them. If you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.” And what Jesus is talking about here is a bit more nuanced than it appears at first hand.
What he’s saying here is, if you are proclaiming my message of forgiveness, guess what’s happening underneath the surface already? Because when he phrases that “they are forgiven them,” that’s already happening before that first phrase, as he says it in the original language. And likewise, when he says, “if you withhold forgiveness from any,” the withholding is already happening.
Now, that still sounds a little confusing, doesn’t it? Well, let’s think about that for a moment. Here’s what Jesus is describing. He’s sending them out. He tells them that a moment ago, and he’s giving them the Holy Spirit, and what are they going to go do? They’re going to go preach the Gospel, preach the good news to the people all across the land, all across the world. And as they do, people’s sins are being forgiven as Jesus works in their hearts and restores them.
Well, what he’s saying here is, their power to forgive or not forgive is really a reference to the forgiveness that comes from the Gospel. When they stay in that room all locked up, what’s happening? People don’t know what God’s already doing under the surface. He’s already offered them forgiveness, because they’re not out there sharing that. But when they go out there, they can proclaim what God is already doing.
Jesus is saying, this is already happening, this forgiveness, this withholding, the whole bit, every, the fate of people is happening, and they need to know that. They need to know the hope, the forgiveness that he’s equipped them to share. It’s a weighty mission.
It’s a mission he calls us to as well, and that’s what is both the overwhelming and the wonderful thing about this passage. Our job, when we trust in Jesus, is to share with others the hope that they have, the forgiveness that we’ve experienced. When Jesus breathes his life into us and takes us and restores us, that’s what he’s inviting us to do.
We see an example of that in Ezekiel 37, verses three to five. If you turn there with me, we read, and he said, as God said to me, “Son of man, can these bones live?” And I answered, “Oh Lord God, you know.” Then he said to me, “Prophesy over these bones and say to them, oh dry bones, hear the word of the Lord.”
Christ says the Lord God to these bones, “Behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live.” If you think about it, before we have salvation, before we have forgiveness in Jesus, what do we have? What are we? We’re just dry bones. We’re dead.
And Ezekiel spoke God’s word to these bones, and Ezekiel himself couldn’t bring dead bones to life. I can talk all day as much as I want to dead bones as I want. I can talk all day. I can talk for the rest of my life until I join them as dead bones. I can do that, and nothing is going to happen because they’re dead.
Ezekiel got to speak and see them be brought to life. Why? Because God works through his word. We’re told in Romans 10 that faith comes by hearing. God communicates the hope, the forgiveness that he’s worked out for us when people share the gospel, when you share and I share the gospel with those around us.
You think about it, and I think we know this if we believe. If you’re wrestling, I pray tonight that you would hear God’s word and hear that forgiveness for you. But as we do, then there should be an urgency in us to make sure that others who are dying, who are spiritually dead, can have the hope of the gospel. You know, you think about it, if you knew a family member had bought some meat at the grocery store and you heard on the news that it had been recalled because it had some kind of deadly bacteria in it, you’d call them, you’d rush over, you’d make sure that they knew before they ate that meat that it was dangerous.
If you knew someone was in a car that had a massive recall that would cause it to lose power, you’d make sure that they knew before they got in a situation where it stalled on them and left them in the middle of the highway. We do these things, and yet how often is it that, like the disciples were in that room, we get all afraid. We get afraid of what other people will think, what the world will think of us, and we forget about the urgency to communicate something far more wonderful than the life-giving communication not to eat deadly meat.
Because you know what? The most that that can do is kill the body, but the gospel saves lives eternally. Why is it so often that I don’t feel enough urgency around that? We become so used to the status quo, and we forget about that urgency. We think, well, I always have tomorrow, but what Jesus is saying here, when you really get down to it about this forgiveness and withholding, is that we are called, God is working through us, just like he worked through Ezekiel.
He’s using our words, that when we’re speaking the word of God, to communicate his forgiveness to the people that accept it. And how important is it that we take the time to do that?
We’re at the end of an academic year, and I’ve been seeing people posting about graduation, and it reminded me of my temperament at the end of every academic year, which was sheer panic as I wanted to know what my grades were. And if any of my old professors happened to be listening, they would be nodding their head, yes, yeah, Tim was the one that was always emailing us wanting to know what his grade was.
And I just, it didn’t matter how great the exam felt like it went, I wanted to know, so I could just rest in that. And until I got that email back, or I finally got the little printed card in the mail and I could see what the grade was, I kept fretting over it.
And in life, I think a lot of times people aren’t fretting over pleasing God, because they’re occupied with other things, but I think all of us are fretting over our sense that there’s something that’s not right in the world, there’s something that’s not right in our lives, we sense something’s broken, we want it fixed.
We’re all dealing with that. And when we don’t share God’s word, when we don’t recognize the Holy Spirit has been given to us, we’ve been equipped to do this, and people are fretting needlessly. Each of us has a role to play in that.
Because Jesus has restored us, we’ve been restored, and therefore we are called to give others the hope that God has given it to us. That’s what he’s talking about here in this very challenging phrase.
It’s not anything weird or mysterious, it comes down to one of the most basic elements of the gospel, which is that we’ve been saved, that God would use us as ambassadors of his kingdom, that many more might be too.
He’s the one doing all the work, we don’t have to fear that somehow someone else is, because he’s the only one that we can trust to do that.
And yet in that, just like Ezekiel, just like the disciples, he’s given us the exciting joy and the weighty responsibility to be those who share the gospel with those around us.
Jesus doesn’t just forgive us, he equips us, he equips us for a mission that he sends each and every one of us out on, a mission that he allows us to have his Holy Spirit in us to do.
That’s where we are even tonight, those who are equipped. Whether you’re sheltering at home and you use that equipping to electronically communicate with someone and give them the comfort of the gospel, to encourage them that the God of the universe loves them and offers them forgiveness, whether it’s calling someone up who’s just discouraged and reminding them that they are a child of God, that God has breathed life into them, or maybe you’re one of those who have returned to work and it’s a co-worker who’s just really discouraged with everything that’s happened over the last few months, whether it’s losing someone to the coronavirus or it’s the economy and what’s happened there, they’re just fretting, and you can say there’s something far more wonderful than everything we fear.
That’s that the God of the universe loves you and wants to dwell in you. That’s what all of us can rest in tonight, and what I just said is true for you as well.
All of us have been offered the forgiveness of Jesus, and he offers it to us, not just to forgive us and then say, go and fend for yourself, but go and I am going with you. I am equipping you to go do my mission.
Let’s pray.
Father, we thank you that you don’t send us off just to fend for ourselves, that you don’t place our fate in our own hands or in anyone else’s but yours, that as we are called to proclaim the gospel, that in a very real way, we are bringing about forgiveness, not because of any work in ourselves, but because you are using us to say what is true, what has been done. We thank you for doing it, Lord.
Lord, would you give us boldness, would you give us opportunity that we might be ambassadors to your kingdom, and that we might rejoice each and every day as we see more and more people all around the world entering that kingdom.
We pray these things in Jesus’ name, amen.
Well, I am so glad that you joined us tonight for Closed Doors. We’ll be back next week at 7 p.m. We’re going to wrap up by considering what Jesus does by giving us the signs and the miracles that he did during his life. As part of that equipping that we talked about, his life and his teachings, and as we come to the end of the Gospel of John, the gospel itself talks about that, so that’s where we’re going to return next week.
But in the meantime, if you’re available, we have a men’s Bible study once again on Thursday at 7 p.m. as well. We’re digging once again into Isaiah 52 and 53, which meshes perfectly here, talking about that forgiveness that Jesus has accomplished through his life for us. It’s so wonderful that we have that hope, and we have this opportunity through modern technology to communicate it online, and I would love your help with that, and here’s how you can do that.
You can like us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. You can go to our pages there, like us, and then I would encourage you, would you consider sharing our posts? When we have a scriptural encouragement, or a video, or some kind of meme that communicates the gospel, you can actually use your equipping to share that online, especially as we’re all online more these days. It’s a wonderful way that you can participate, really simply, just sharing God’s promises, and we’d be grateful for that.
And also by liking us and following us, you can stay up to date on what’s going on at Little Hills. If there’s any way I can be praying for you this week, I would love to hear from you. Tim at LittleHills.Church is my email, Tim at LittleHills.Church. You can also message me on Facebook, or Twitter, or Instagram, or any other way you’d like to get a hold of me.
And if you let me know that I can share it with the whole team, the whole team of Little Hills would love to be praying for you, or I’ll pray for you individually, whatever you’d prefer. But if you’re going through any struggles right now, any discouragements, anything that you’re excited about that you could use prayer on, please share. I’d love to be able to join with you in praying before a God who equips us.
It’s been so great to have you here tonight. I hope you have a wonderful and blessed week, and I hope to see you again next week as we come back for one more segment of Closed Doors here on Steadfast, once again Monday at 7 p.m. Have a blessed week in the meantime.