The Great Commission

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.”

The Disciples Were Living In Fear

Just like we’ve seen in previous weeks, after the resurrection, the disciples are living in fear. They are hiding. They are worried about their own lives. They just saw the authorities just take the life of Jesus and now they feel like they are being hunted.

So they are all huddled up in a house with the door locked. There’s something about locking the door that makes you feel a little bit safer doesn’t it? I’m the one that every night, I check every single door in the house to make sure its locked. As far as I know, no one has ever tried to break into our home, but I am constantly checking doors.

The disciples were full of fear. Fear paralyzes us. It’s one of the biggest reasons people don’t fulfill their calling. We get scared. Fear overtakes us. We become afraid of everything.

The remarkable thing about fearing God is that when you fear God, you fear nothing else, whereas if you do not fear God, you fear everything else.

Oswald Chambers

Chambers is right here. We do not fear the right things. We fear those that can only cause us temporary harm, while neglecting for fear the one who can throw our souls in hell. When you think about this, it really doesn’t make sense.

So let me ask you, where are you hiding behind locked doors? What areas of your life are closed off? Are you like the disciples, hiding from what you know you should be doing?

Remember in our passage, we’ve discussed this, but in John’s gospel its even more evident. The disciples were trained by Jesus. They were sent by Jesus.

John 17:18 ESV

As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.

So they’ve already been told the game plan. They know what they are supposed to be doing, but they are hiding behind a locked door. So what does Jesus do?

Peace Be With You

Jesus breaks into the room. We lose a little bit of the impact of this because of the language, but Jesus appears in this room. In other words, he walks through the walls. The disciples are hiding behind locked doors and he just lets himself in.

He does this with us as well. There is no room in your heart that is off limits to God. He can walk in, whenever he feels like it. And in the midst of our fears and anxieties, he can speak peace.

This is precisely what he does with the disciples. He speaks peace to them after breaking into their room. He wasn’t invited, but he went in anyway. Thank God that he invites himself into our situations. So he walks right in and speaks peace to the storm, he speaks peace to our situation, he speaks peace to our fear.

If we lose inward peace, we lose more than a fortune can buy.

Charles Spurgeon

Spurgeon’s not wrong, and when the Lord speaks peace to your fear, it’s more valuable than anything that money can buy. He knows we can’t earn peace or buy it, it must be given to us and it must come from the Prince of Peace!

The words here for peace is eirene in Greek, but in the Septiugent, this word is translated as the Hebrew word Shalom. In other words, Jesus walks into the room and says Shalom. Now in the Hebrew, this word means complete peace, peace with wholeness. This isn’t just about peaceful moment, it’s about complete peace.

Jesus wanted his disciples to have complete peace. This was incredibly important to him. In fact, before his death, when the disciples were gathered in the upper room, which is known as the upper room discourse, Jesus saturates that discourse with the topic of peace. Here’s a couple:

John 14:27 “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.”

John 16:33 “I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.””

Jesus Reveals His Wounds

In verse 20 we see what happens, the action of this passage. Jesus appears, he speaks and then he shows. He shows the disciples the wounds on his hands and his side. Now, there’s a lot to this and I won’t spend all day here, but this is an incredibly important idea.

Jesus, the great physician, the great healer, is, even in his resurrected body, wounded. He is carrying the wounds of the cross with him. And in this, I beileve, he sets the stage for what all Christians must do.

Here’s the truth, when you become a Christian, you do not magically forget about your past wounds and hurts. You don’t. Those wounds, while forgiven, still exist. You still have to deal with them. Now there’s a beauty in this, Jesus lived a perfect life, but the wounds he’s carrying are our wounds. Remember Isaiah 53:5 “But he was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities: The chastisement of our peace was upon him; And with his stripes we are healed.”

So Jesus took our wounds and he carried them around after the resurrection. He showed them to his disciples. He wasn’t ashamed of those wounds. In fact, those wounds identified him as savior. The disciples knew it was Jesus by his wounds.

Now think about how this applies to us. We carry our wounds around with us. Every hurt, every pain, every wrong that’s been done to us and the wrongs we have done to others. We have wounded ourselves and been wounded by others.

But we typically have two responses to our wounds:

We hide them.

We are bitter toward them.

When we decide to hide our wounds, and this is the most common response, I don’t believe we receive full healing from them. Jesus can’t really take our wounds from us if we hide them from him. I believe he is a gentleman like that. He will only take that which we give.

The second has to do with the bitterness. When we hold resentment towards our wounds, we won’t be healed of them. In fact, when we hold bitterness, its like picking at a scab. We can’t move on, it can’t heal properly, because we keep picking at it. Bitterness is the root of that. We are upset that we got hurt in the first place. Negative self-talk - I’m so stupid, I can’t believe I allowed myself to be hurt in that way, I’m worthless, I’m unlovable, etc. These are all examples of a bitterness in your wounding.

So when it comes to our wounds, we have to show those to others. We have to admit our hurt, admit our pain if we truly want to see God heal that in us. This is what the Apostle James means when he says.

James 5:16 ESV

Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.

As we confess, as we show our wounds, God heals us. And this is one of the messages I think we are to proclaim to others. In describing the messiah’s mission, Isaiah the prophet says that Jesus would be sent to bind up the brokenhearted. In other words, that was his mission, to bring healing to those that are broken.

So if you are feeling broken today, then you are in good company. God wants to heal your brokenness. At the end of service, I’ll offer you a chance to come forward, confess and receive your healing.

Jesus Sends The Disciples From A Place of Peace

In this midst of this John tells us what Jesus does next. He appears into the room, he speaks peace, he shows his wounds and then he sends his disciples. He commissions them.

Jesus bases this sending on his own sending. The Father sent Him and now he is sending us. Jesus was sent by the father on a rescue mission and we have now been sent by Jesus on that very same mission. Jesus accomplished the mission, we are to spread the news of his victory. That’s the beauty of how Jesus sends us out. We aren’t being asked to finish his work. His work is finished, our work is to proclaim his victory.

“You are forgiven!”

“Salvation is yours!”

Our message is his victory. His victory is the basis for our message. And like I said last week, repentance and forgiveness is the message. We get to proclaim forgiveness to those who feel like they could never be redeemed. We proclaim forgiveness to those that are completely lost.

So Jesus sends us with his authority and with his victory as the primary message. Just like his Father sent him with a purpose, so do we have a purpose. But notice that he sends them from a place of peace.

He repeats Peace be with you to them before sending them. If you are going to do anything for Jesus, I think it needs to be from a place of peace. If you are going to be effective in ministry, it won’t come from a place of anger, but of peace.

In fact, this passage reveals something, the disciples were all deserters, they had deserted Jesus in his moment of need. We know that Judas was the ultimate betrayer, but they all betrayed him in some way that night, if nothing else by their lack of presence.

So they betray him and you can imagine that peace is a big thing they are lacking in this moment when Jesus shows up. Is he going to punish them? Will he scold them? Will he pour out his wrath on them? No. He doesn’t, he speaks peace. In other words, he’s saying, you and I, we are good. On this side of the cross, the punishment for failure is gone. If you fail, Jesus has taken that punishment. So every disciples’ failure was paid for on the cross and Jesus says we are at peace.

And then he sends them from that place. He sends them with peace. In other words, they are being asked to bring that peace to others. So not only were they to receive that peace, but they were to give it away.

“Receive The Holy Spirit”

Just like we discussed last week, Jesus doesn’t send his disciples out without power. He breaths on the them. Now, this isn’t Jesus just being weird, in the Hebrew mind, breath and spirit were two ideas that were intertwined. From what I have heard, the Hebrews believed that when we breath our last breath, that is the moment our spirit departs from our body.

This has ties back to Genesis,God breathed the breath of life into man. The symbolism of this shouldn’t be lost on us. Here is Jesus now breathing on the disciples, just as God had commissioned Adam in the garden and breathed the breath of life into him, Jesus is essentially doing the same thing. God in the garden told man to be fruitful, multiply and take dominion.

Think about it. The Great Commission isn’t that much different.

Be Fruitful - The Spirit living in us and through us creates fruitful lives.

Multiply - The Great Commission is all about multiplication, disciples making disciples.

Take Dominion - As the earth is converted to Christ, his kingdom is spread and the people rejoice.

Now I’ve spoken on these topics before, and could most certainly go deeper on this subject, but I want to keep our focus on one of the fruits of this spirit, which is peace. Jesus says peace be with them and then breathes on them and tells them to receive the Holy Spirit.

It’s important to note, that the Holy Spirit has to be received. He’s not forced upon you. God isn’t going to make you do anything. He’s not rude. He’s not unloving. If you don’t want the Holy Spirit, you aren’t going to receive him by force. You have to want Him. You have to desire Him. The greek word used here for “receive” is lambano, which means “take hold of, to seize”. In other words, Jesus instructs his disciples that the Holy Spirit is something you must take hold of.

And that’s true today. If you believe in the Holy Spirit and you want to receive Him, you have to really want to take hold of or seize him. You must desire Him.

The question could now be presented though, I thought the disciples were to wait for the Holy Spirit in Jerusalem, what is going on here? Did the disciples receive the Holy Spirit twice? Yes. And many times after that. In fact this was just the beginning. Paul would tell the church in Ephesus, that they need to be continually filled in the Spirit. (Ephesians 5:18). So there’s no confusion here, just the beginning of their lifelong relationship with the Spirit.

Forgiveness is the Key Message

Finally we get to verse 23, which I believe is the key to the passage. And this is really going to hammer home what we talked about last week as well. Forgiveness is the message. Jesus empowers the disciples with the Holy Spirit after commissioning them to go and he gives them the message. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven and those that they withhold forgiveness from it will be withheld. Now what is going on here? I thought forgiveness was only through the cross? That is correct.

Jesus isn’t giving the disciples a special power here, he’s reiterating the message. He’s telling them to go out and let people know they are forgiven. He’s not saying they are erasing someone’s sin list in heaven, but that Jesus erased their sin list, so long as they repent and believe.

John (C. A Lasting Peace (20:19–23))

Perhaps the best interpretation emphasizes the difference between absolution and proclamation. The duty of the disciples was to proclaim the forgiveness of sins; the actual forgiving would take place in heaven by the Lord who paid for those sins. Nevertheless, the claims of the gospel are clear—forgiveness only on the basis of Jesus’ death on the cross - Holman New Testament Commentary

And this is the message that we are to proclaim.

Perhaps the best way to end this is to give a few takeaways in regards to forgiveness and this passage.

Takeaways -

Forgiveness is not only the message, it is our lifestyle.

Unforgiveness results from our wounds. It’s not a hallmark of healing.

Bitterness is a hindrance to the gospel.

Forgiveness is a byproduct of peace.

Our sending is based in peace and forgiveness.

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