John 20 Jimmy Draper

The speaker begins by mentioning Mark Moore, a person he knows and admires. He then talks about the excellent staff members at their church, specifically mentioning Jeff Reese and Mark Moore. He shares some details about Mark Moore's previous church and his sons who are involved in ministry. The speaker expresses their gratitude for having Mark and his wife at their church, highlighting their pastoral and ministerial qualities. The speaker encourages the listeners to attend a luncheon to get to know Mark and his wife better. The speaker then mentions that they are currently studying the book of John and will soon transition to studying the book of Romans. They discuss the challenges of dividing up the book of Romans for study. The speaker shares their plan for introducing the city of Rome and the church at Rome before delving into the actual text of Romans. They emphasize that the book of Romans is a significant doctrinal treatise. The speaker then shifts the focus to the last week of Well, good morning. Good morning. Good to see you all this morning. I forgot last week to say a word about Mark Moore. Eddie asked me last week if I knew him, and I said yes. I preached in his church when he was a Kenton, so I've known him for a long time. Then I forgot to tell you that, you know, we are very fortunate here at our church to have some outstanding staff members. For instance, Jeff Reese could pastor any church I ever preached in. I mean, he's that good. But he's a great minister, loves what he's doing, loved us. Mark Moore is the same way. Lakeside Baptist Church in Kenton was a great church, running 1,000. It's a really big country church. Great music. One of their sons became minister of music at First Houston, First Baptist Houston. He got two sons that are very active in the ministry. The music director, Boland, was music director there. I preached for him. He asked me, I said, I preached down at your church. He said, yeah, I remember that. I said, I do too. I remember preaching too long. I did. I got carried away. The singing made me so happy. The next thing I knew, I'd preached 45 minutes. I don't usually do that when I preach. I don't think. Maybe when I teach. But anyway, we're very blessed that Mark and his wife are sweet people. They'll be a great addition to our church. He knows how to pastor, knows how to minister to people. We're very, very fortunate to have a very, very successful pastor to be willing to look after us older folks. Not old. Older. Everybody gets older, but you don't have to get old while you're getting older. That gets harder every day, doesn't it? We've got a good man to help us. I just wanted to say a good word for him. I hope you will come. I finally made my reservation last night online. I couldn't remember to do it on Sundays. Anyway, I'm so pleased they're here. I encourage you to come Wednesday for the luncheon. You get a better chance to get to know him and talk to him and his wife. I just want to say a good word. We're in chapter 20 of John. Now, we've been spoiled. John is a wonderful gospel, but it does not include great details in doctrine. Now, when we move into Romans, you just can't do a chapter at a time in Romans. Now, Jack and I would like to have a disclaimer here. We're not really sure how to divide it up. We think maybe the best way to do it is just to say, okay, we're going to start with verse 1 today, and when we get through, wherever we stop, we'll start there next Sunday. It is so. I've gone through and looked at some books, and I laid out and gave him a copy of potential maybe groups of lessons we could teach, but I don't know what details in those. That's why you've got to deal with just two verses, and then you've got one with ten verses. So, we're not sure how we're going to do it, but we're going to start. He'll do chapter 21 next Sunday, and then we'll start in Romans. Now, our plan is for him to do the first introduction to the city of Rome. When I preached through 1 Corinthians here years ago, I had two sermons on the first verse, because you have to know certain things about the city and the culture, and then certain things about the church. So, he's going to introduce us to Rome on July the 9th, and then on the 16th of July, he's asked me to talk about the church at Rome. And then, with the next week, we'll get into the actual text. Is that right, Jack? You're preaching that next week. On the 23rd, I'm preaching down in Cleburne, so I won't be here the 23rd. But anyway, that's kind of where we're going to start. The book of Romans is probably the primary doctrinal treatise in the entire New Testament. It's not simple. It's very complex. And it'll be a great study for us. Now, I want you to look for some things. First, let me say a word about John again. Do you realize that the last nine chapters in John deal with one week? Now, think about that. Think about that. Thirteen chapters, twelve chapters, deal with thirty-three years. Nine chapters deal with the last week. The last five chapters deal with the last night. Now, I say that because thirty percent of the Gospel of John, if not more, deal with the last week. So that's obviously a very important place for us to dwell, as I tried to say last week. We're dealing with things that are so deeply spiritual and personal to us that we're overwhelmed with it. We're standing now where the disciples stood. Now, bear in mind, I haven't said this to you, but the disciples were the last ones to believe that Jesus rose from the dead. You're going to see it in this chapter. Mary Magdalene, when she came to the tomb, looked in and saw that the tomb was empty, and immediately, the Scripture says, she ran to tell John and Peter and the disciples. I think it's Matthew. It could be Mark. Matthew or Mark 1 say that the disciples did not believe her. Now, I know sometimes we get frustrated because we don't understand things. You know, you've got to frustrate a little bit. The disciples walked with Jesus three years. They had Old Testament prophecy plus Jesus' word, and they still didn't get it. They just didn't get it. And so the most skeptical people about Jesus at this point were the disciples. They loved him. They knew who he was. But they didn't really—I mean, they were surprised when he was resurrected. When he told them, they didn't get it. So maybe that's why so much of John is spent with this last week, because it's the point—I mean, it's easier to believe all the other stuff leading up to this last week, but probably spent a lot of time on it because it was so difficult for anyone to accept. Anyway, well, so I want you to look through this chapter today at the reaction of the disciples, because they were—Thomas is called Doubting Thomas, but he really wasn't Doubting Thomas. He was a realist. He kind of wanted to make sure he had personal proof. Anyway, so we begin with chapter 20, and it's the first day of the week. Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early, and it was still dark, and saw the stone had been moved away, and she went running to Simon Peter and John. John, since he's the author, says the other disciple that Jesus loved. And so he was doubtless hidden. Peter was the favorite and obviously the leader. The resurrection is the hinge point of Christianity. It is the authentic foundation of Christian faith. Without the resurrection, we have no foundation. I mean, Paul spent a great deal of time in 1 Corinthians 15 talking about that. Christ wasn't raised from the dead. You're still in your sins. You're preaching His reign. I mean, this is the foundation stone. This is why one of the signal markers of liberal theology is they deny the bodily resurrection of Jesus. Now, back in a time when we were in the conservative resurgence, I was president of the convention. I made a proposal for the folks that didn't agree with us. And I gave five things that I said, let's just agree on these five things. If we just agree on these, we can move forward together. One of them that I put in there was bodily resurrection of Jesus. I knew they'd never accept that. They do not believe that. They believe there's some kind of a spiritual resurrection, but not a bodily resurrection. There are two things that the liberals will not accept, bodily resurrection and substitutionary atonement. I put both of those in there. And I knew. And one very well-known liberal from over in Louisiana said to the liberal brethren, you're going to regret not taking Jimmy up on this. And he was right, because we could agree on those things, except they didn't agree with it, which shows you what the controversy was all about. When I was president of the convention, Carol Ann and I visited every seminary. The only time she cried was at Southern Seminary. I preached in chapel. And then we went into a stadium classroom that would seat about 200, and it was basically filled with faculty and administration. And I stood, and they asked me questions for an hour and a half. That was interesting, to say the least. Now, just remember, I was a pastor. Wasn't a theologian. Didn't teach in seminary. But they wanted me to hear their academic questions, and so I did. The first question they asked me was, what is a liberal? So I said, well, I wish I had more time to think about that, but what I said was, I think anyone who denies any portion of scripture would be a liberal. I thought that was a good answer. We had a young graduate student who had picked us up at the airport, and they took us around that day, and then they took us back to the airport after that session with the faculty and the administration. And he told me, he said, when they ask you who is a liberal or what is a liberal, if you had said anyone who denies the bodily resurrection of Jesus, you would have nailed 85% of the faculty. Well, Louis Drummond, my good friend, who, by the way, has written the classic biography of Charles Spurgeon, there have been 45 or 50 biographies of Spurgeon, but this is absolutely the best. He actually took a sabbatic and did it at Spurgeon College in London. He did all the research for his book. But anyway, I called Louis, and I told him that story, and I said, is that true? And there was a silence on the line for a moment, and then he said, yes, it probably is. That's what we were facing. The resurrection is the hinge point of our foundation of faith. If we have no resurrection, we have no faith. I'll say a little bit more about it in a minute, but just say without the resurrection, there's no foundation upon which we can believe or preach or teach the Word of God. John now simply tells us as we begin this chapter that Mary came to the tomb alone. Now, we have a problem if you don't remember what Jack and I said earlier. The Gospels were not particular about chronology. They were more interested about things that happened, but they didn't necessarily happen in the same sequence that they're reporting it. The synoptics say that there were other women who came to the tomb. There was Mary, the mother of James, and Salome, and other women. So, how could she have come by herself if there were other women there? Well, the truth is, we don't have any way of knowing whether they came at the same time or separately. There's no indication. We know John was not incorrect, so when she came, she must have come by herself. Because when the disciples, Peter and John, go back to wherever they were staying, she stayed, and she's there by herself. So, anyway, we don't really have a contradiction here if you remember that all the Gospels agree that certain people came to the tomb. We don't know exactly when or who they came with or what not. But Matthew 28, by the way, verses 2 and 4, speaks of a violent earthquake that came at the same time the angel came and rolled the stone away. Now, the stone was huge. How many of y'all have been to Israel and seen the tomb? That stone weighs several tons. I mean, that's a big stone. And, you know, we really, the simple answer is, that stone was moved by heavenly hands. An angel undoubtedly moved the stone. And when Mary came, she saw the stone was removed. That alarmed her. She immediately ran to tell Peter and John that somebody had stolen the body of Jesus. First clue about the disciples, it never occurred to her that he was alive. She said, they've stolen his body. Now, let's not be too hard on her. Maybe she hadn't heard everything Jesus said to the disciples when Jesus told them about dying and being raised and all this. Maybe she hadn't heard that, so we can give her a little bit. But it just never occurred to her that he was alive. She goes and tells the disciples and they didn't believe her. They didn't believe that he was alive. It never occurred to them that he was alive. They were surprised for the resurrection. And the interesting thing about when she told Peter and John, they both immediately ran to the tomb. Now, John ran faster than Peter did. So you say, well, why did that happen? Well, probably because he was younger. And when John got there, he didn't go in the tomb. Now, why didn't he go in the tomb? Well, there are several reasons. For instance, he could have hesitated and not gone in because he wasn't sure what he'd see. Maybe he was anxious about it. Or, and that probably was a little of whatever caused it, but he could have been respecting Peter's age. And just respecting him as the older one and not going to precede him in the tomb. We really don't know what the reason why he did not enter. But we do know that the two of them did enter. And in verse 9, we have an interesting thing saying in verse 9, for they did not yet understand the scripture that he must rise from the dead. And that's verse 10. That's my eyes. Do y'all have problems seeing sometimes? Verse 8 is what I really want to say. The other disciple who had reached the tomb first then also went in, saw, and believed. And then when Peter went in and talked about him, he saw. Well, what did John see and believe? It wasn't that he wasn't saved. He believed in the resurrection. He believed a miracle had actually taken place. Now then, he believes Jesus is alive. That's why he and John immediately left and ran back to tell the other disciples. And even they didn't believe it at the time. So there are two different words there for saw. When John saw, it's a Greek word which means he glanced. You know, he kind of just glanced at it out of the side of his eyes. See Charlie over there? That's my peripheral vision. He just glanced at it. He didn't see or end on it. Peter, on the other hand, he came in and investigated. He came in and checked it all out. He wanted to see every detail. And so you have two different words. The first word means just a quick glance. But when it talked about Peter seeing, it meant that he really studied the situation. He looked in. He described what he saw in the linen clothes. I've tried to imagine this all week. The scripture said that the clothes were still laying as they were when his body was in it. So can you imagine the grave clothes still looking like a body's in it, only it's not? Peter saw that. He saw the napkin folded carefully and put to the side. Now, I'm not going to allude to the Jewish tradition that you will hear about why the napkin was folded to the side. You can look that up for yourself. But the basic thing was for the Jews, when a person was going to leave the table and come back, they folded the napkin a certain way and put it on the table. And that indicated he was coming back. Now, I don't know whether that's what it really signaled at that time or not. But we do know that Jesus is coming back, right? And so that certainly was indicated there as we come to this miracle. And in verse 9, it says that they did not understand the scripture. The Old Testament had prophesied this, but they didn't get it. I mean, there's vivid description in Psalms and some of the prophets about the crucifixion of Christ, what took place, the piercing of his side, the cry, I thirst. All of these things were told in the Old Testament. They just didn't understand the scripture. And here in this passage, the scripture had clearly said that he must die and then rise from the dead. Now, just think about that a minute. The only way to provide salvation was for him to die and rise again. Matthew 27 tells us that Pilate apparently took this whole thing very seriously. He sealed the tomb, stamped it with a seal of the Roman Empire, and stationed soldiers outside to keep the disciples from stealing the body. And what that tells us is that not all the fire of Rome or Satan himself can stop the plan of God when he institutes it. He is going to finish what he started. And so it wasn't in a way that they were going to stop it, but that was their effort. So the tomb is empty. The body of Jesus was gone. And it says simply that Peter and John left to return to where they were staying because they knew Jesus had done what he said he would do. And so they were satisfied with that. Now, they believed in the resurrection. Now, here Mary is. She's at the tomb by herself. We're not told why she stayed. Why did she stay at the tomb after Peter and John left? Maybe it was because Jesus had cast seven demons out of her and had totally, radically changed her life. Maybe her deep love for him because of that was, and she was so grateful for it, maybe she just didn't want to leave the last place where she knew he had been. I don't know why. But at length, she stooped and looked into the tomb, and a wonderful surprise. She saw two angels. And they were dressed in white, one sitting at where the head of Jesus had been, one at where the feet of Jesus had been. Now, let's just stop there. Again, your curiosity may not be like mine. She was not surprised by the angels. Go figure. I mean, she didn't seem frightened at all. Nearly everybody else that saw angels, it says they were frightened. She wasn't scared at all. She didn't question who those angels were. And they asked her, they said, why are you crying? And she said, because they've taken away my Lord, and I don't know where they put him. She could only think of one thing. The body was gone. Never occurred to her yet that he was alive. She thought somebody had moved the body. She turned around, though, through her tears, and there stood Jesus. She did not recognize him. Now, that would be a good place to chase a rabbit, wouldn't it? Why didn't she recognize him? Well, apparently there was something different about him. He still had his scars in his hands and his side, but she just didn't recognize him. So I'm not going to go there. Use your imagination, and then when it's through, know that you could be wrong. Because God doesn't tell us. It's like I've told you before, Dr. Bell and I had some differences in theology, and we'd get to discuss them sometime, and he'd grin, that little impish grin that he had. I told him, I said, you can smile without ever moving your lips. I've never seen anything like it. He'd say, well, you know we could both be wrong. It's so true. Use your imagination, but don't believe it, because we're just not supposed to know. We don't know why she didn't recognize him. He must be the gardener, caretaker. And he asked her, Jesus said, why are you crying? Now, she told him that she wanted the body of her Lord, and if he'd tell her where it was taken, she'd take him away. Now, pause a minute. How was she going to take him away? I mean, she's a woman, probably a slight person, not a big person, and Jesus was a full-grown man, and he's bone dead. If she's going to take him away, how on earth would she do that? She didn't think about that either. She never thought about the fact that he might be alive. She never thought about how on earth she'd move him, but she did find him. So there's certain comical things. If it weren't so sacred, we could laugh more, but the disciples just never got it. They were always in the dark, it seemed like, and she was so distraught that she never thought about what she would do if she actually found the body of Christ. Then Jesus called her by name, Mary. She recognized his voice. Isn't that what Jesus said in John chapter 10? I know my sheep. They know my voice. She recognized his voice, and she called him Rabboni, teacher, master. Now, verse 17 is sometimes hard. My translation, which by the way is the best translation, it's the Christian standard translation. That's the one we did while I was at Lifeway. I'm the one that said we're going to translate the scripture from the original languages, and this is what came out of it. I told you some of this before, but the night that we named that Bible, there were about a dozen of us met at a retreat center outside of Nashville and spent the evening from suppertime up until bedtime discussing what to name a Bible. I can't tell you what a heavy burden it seemed settled upon us in that room because we were about to name a Bible. It was a heavy, heavy thing. We wanted to call it Christian Standard Bible from the first because there was no translation that had the word Christian in it. We had the American Standard and a lot of standards, but no Christian. Now, long story, I won't get into that, but I will tell you that another pivotal time was when my vice presidents and I flew to Detroit and out to Grand Rapids and watched the first copy of the Bible roll off the press. Anyway, my translation is the right translation here. It doesn't just say, he didn't just say, don't touch me. There are several words for touch, and so if you take touch to mean just touch, you're not going to get the point. The word that is used there is, don't grab hold of me, don't cling to me. So our translation says, don't cling to me. That's exactly what the word means. He said, because I've not yet ascended. Now, the point was, he didn't rise to stay. I'll talk a little bit more in a minute about that because that's extremely significant. He arose to ascend back to the Father. In fact, he told Mary, now listen, he told Mary to go tell the disciples that I am ascending. He didn't tell her to tell them that he had risen. He didn't rise to stay. He arose so that he could return to the Father. So he didn't want them to get attached to a physical body because it wasn't going to be there long. And so that's probably the reason for that. He was coming. She was coming toward him, and he knew that she was about to grab him, hug him. Now, you understand, I'm a hugger. By the way, this is mean. My successor at Lifeway was Tom Rainer. He was a very private person. He did not like hugs. So every time I saw him, I hugged him. Anyway, Jesus knew she was going to give him a big bear hug. He said, don't do that. Don't do that. Now, he didn't mean that it was bad for her to touch him or cling to him. It wasn't bad or sinful. He just didn't want her to cling to him because he was about to return to the Father and would not be on earth as he had been during his incarnation. And, in fact, when Matthew described Christ meeting with disciples in chapter 28, verse 9, it says they came and held him by the feet and worshipped him. And Jesus told Thomas in chapter 20 here, and we'll see it a little bit, to touch his hands and side. They could touch him, but he didn't want them to cling to him because his time on earth was coming to an end. And here's the point. What did Matt say today? Here's the people who don't know now. What's the application? Well, here's the point. You never can take control of Christ. He has us, but we never really have him like that. He's not our servant to us to tell him what to do. We don't have him like that. He has us like that. We can obey him, but he doesn't sit around waiting for us to tell him what to do. And so it's interesting. He knew what she was about to do, and he said, Look, it's a bad first step if you don't do that, so don't grab a hold of me. By the way, the synoptics don't record this. The synoptics don't record this prohibition. John presents Jesus as very God in the flesh, and since he was about to leave and return to the Father, Mary was not to become attached to the visible God that was on earth. And by the way, Mary was honored to be the first person Jesus saw when he was raised. Think about that. He didn't appear first to one of the disciples, not to that inner circle, Peter, James, and John. He didn't appear to them. He appeared to Mary. She's the first one to hear his voice, the first one to see him, the first one to be a witness to the resurrection. Amazing. God highly honored women, dedicated holy women. A woman prepared his body, anointed his body for burial before he ever came to the cross. God honors women. He still does, and we all should. And in all the furor about whether a woman can be a pastor or not, don't lose sight of the fact that we're talking roles, not importance. There are different roles for men and women. Now, pardon me if you don't believe that. Ask all the men how many babies they've had. There are different roles for men and women, but not different importance. And the scripture from beginning to end is saturated with wonderful, holy, believing women. So don't get distracted. The thing that made the discussion in New Orleans at the convention so awkward was that the people who favor women as senior pastors kept saying that you're saying women can't have ministry. Well, that's not true. That was never true. It was never said. We're not saying that. It's just that either we believe the Bible or we don't. And another silly question is, how can a woman be the husband of one wife? Of course, with our gender disparity today, I guess you could do that. But it's like in East Texas. We say, if you call a dog's tail his leg, how many legs does he have? And the answer is he only has four legs. It doesn't matter what you call his tail. So if you believe scripture, you know God didn't stutter when He said these things. How many times does He have to say something? So, you know, the reason for the concern about how you interpret the role of women is that there is a biblical role, and you compromise that, you compromise the Bible itself. Let me give you an illustration. Back 10 or 15 years ago, the Southern Baptist Convention had a motion at the convention that the NIV, the revised NIV, shortly after the turn of the century had come out, and there were people that said it was a heretical view, it was a heretical translation. And they made a motion at the convention that the Baptist bookstore not sell the NIV any longer. Well, they likely had to deal with it. So they appointed a committee, and they studied it carefully, and then they called. Zondervan was the publisher of the NIV, and the International Bible Society was the translators of the NIV. So I called a meeting with Zondervan and the international translators, and we had about six or eight of the team Zondervan and the translation team come to Nashville to discuss the issue. And when we finished talking to them, they were dismissed, and we had a break, and I came back, and the chairman of that committee looked at me and said, well, what do you think? And I'm going to have to explain more after I say this, but anyway, I said, well, your best argument you can't use. You see, the argument was that certain biblical translation methods had been abused and had not been kept. The result of the study showed, now hang on, the result of the study showed that every translation that we accept uses the same techniques. The Revised Standard, the English Standard Version, the New King James, the New American Standard, all of them use the same guidelines. And I said, you can't use that excuse because if you use that as an excuse for not selling the NIV, then you discredited all translations. You see, if we say we believe the Bible, and then we say, oh, but we don't believe this. I remember, Dr. Crystal and I were on a program together after we had left Dallas and we were here at ULIS, we were on a program in southern Illinois. Somewhere. Maybe it was Kentucky. But anyway, I think it was Kentucky. I think it was in Paducah, Kentucky. But anyway, he preached at one point and then I preached maybe several times. But I'll never forget it. I would never do this. I don't know how he got away with it. He held up a Bible and he says to them, oh, you don't believe this? Well, let's just tear it out. He took it out of a plate and threw it on the floor. And he started, obviously he had a cheap Bible to do that. But he did that and finally he just threw the Bible. If you don't believe it, you just destroyed the Bible. Well, the point is, if you ever cut and run from one verse of Scripture, then you've destroyed the whole thing. I mean, it's either God's Word or it's not. So don't get mad at me if I believe something. God's the one that said it. So we need to be very careful that it's the little things. The Old Testament talked about the little foxes. It's the things that don't seem important that if we're not careful with those, we create challenges that we don't want to face. Okay. So we often understand what Jesus meant by being ascended, why that was so important. And so I need to explain that again. I don't think you need it, but I think we all probably need to be reminded that Jesus lived a perfect life. But that could not have saved us. He died and was buried. If He had remained in the grave, His death could not have saved us. If He had risen and remained on earth, then His ministry, whatever it would have been, could not have saved us. But He ascended into heaven and His role now is to pray for us. And His prayer for us and the presence of the Holy Spirit in us based upon and applied by the blood of Jesus Christ on the cross is what makes us acceptable to God. It's what saves us. The only way He could save us was to live a perfect life, die on the cross, be buried in the grave, be risen again, and be ascended. All that had to happen. That's why that is so important in this passage here. It says He must be buried and He must be raised and He must rise again and He must be ascended. And so that's the only way we could be saved. Now I want to get into something just a little bit. I like to stir up snakes Jack can't kill. So I'm challenging him a little bit here. But I want us to talk about the Lord's Day for a moment. Every time Jesus met with the disciples in those 40 days that He was risen, He met on the Lord's Day. He never met on Sabbath. Never. Never met on the Sabbath. When the disciples first met Jesus, they were meeting on the Lord's Day. They were trying to pray and absorb all the things that happened and discuss what Mary had told them. And they were scared of the Jews. They locked the doors. But they met on the first day. That's the Lord's Day. Sabbath was never used as a word for Christians. Never. There is no such thing as a Christian Sabbath. Sabbath is when God rested, not when man rested. Man hadn't done anything to rest. And God didn't rest because He was tired. Isaiah tells us He never gets tired. Never gets weary. So the rest that we talk about, we call the Lord's Day a day of rest. Well, we need rest, but God didn't need rest. But the disciples always met on the first day. And the Sabbath was about God's rest. And it was not given to Israel until the Passover lamb had been slain. It was first known to Israel in the gathering of the manna in the wilderness. Manna was bread from heaven that sustained the life of the Israelites. The manna was prophetic and satisfied the demands of divine righteousness. It satisfied their need for physical food. And when Jesus became the bread of life and He died on the cross when He was raised and ascended, He became the satisfaction of the demands of God's righteousness through sinless living and then laying down His life on the cross and rising again and ascending. And He is now the mediator to a new access to God. Resurrection Day became the new time to celebrate. Now there are some wonderful people called the Seventh-day Adventists. And they are sweet people. When I was president of the convention, the head guy, I don't know what they called him, but the Seventh-day Adventist called me. He has a weekly television show and he said, I'm interviewing people who have different beliefs than we do. All the different denominations want you to come on and talk about Southern Baptists. So I did. A delightful person. We had a great visit. They are sweet people. But the Sabbath was never given to Christians. It was given to Israel. The law was never given to Gentiles. It was given to Jews. Gentiles have never been under the law. Follow me. Romans 6.14 tells us that the Gentiles were not under the law. So the Sabbath was a Jewish agreement or a command given by God to Israel. Jesus did not meet with the disciples one time on the Sabbath in His 40 days. He always met on the Lord's Day which was the first day of the week. 1 Corinthians 16.2 talks about that. It was the Lord's Day, by the way, when John was given the vision to write Revelation. Jesus never told the disciples to keep the Sabbath. He told you to keep every day holy. That's a great point to dwell on for a minute. For us, every day is sacred. For the Christian, nothing is secular. Everything is sacred. Everything you do, everything you say, every place you go, everything about you is sacred, not secular. There's no time when you're not in a sacred place because there's nothing secular about relating to God and being on a journey with Him. In this day of grace, every day is holy under the Lord, but we're dissembled on the first day of the week because that's when the disciples first celebrate the resurrection without which we can't be saved. Now, I don't wish to enter into a debate with anybody about that, but the Sabbath is just not given to us. It's given to Israel. The Lord's Day is given to us. And that's why... Now, you're old enough, not any of you as old as I am, but you're old enough to remember blue laws. Do you remember the blue laws? Commercial establishments, unless it was a necessity, could not open on Sunday in the state of Texas. It's only been in the last number of decades when those laws were repealed. It just... God just never told the Christians to worship on the Sabbath because that was for Israel and not for them. Peter often went to the synagogue, but it wasn't to worship. He went there to debate or to speak to the Jews. So it was never a centerpiece of worship for the disciples. They always were... You have to remember the Gospel came first to the Jews and the early church was all Jewish. That's why you had Acts 15 in the Jerusalem Council because the word came back from Antioch that Gentiles were getting saved and the Jews in Jerusalem went nuts. They couldn't believe it. Well, they hadn't even been circumcised. They hadn't even done all these things that we have to do. So they had that conference in Jerusalem 15. In the 10th chapter of Acts, you have Cornelius teaching Peter that lesson. In a vision, he showed them a whole bunch of animals. All of them that were considered unclean by the Jews. He told them to eat. Peter said, I can't do that. He said, don't call unclean what God calls clean. And the lesson was that God's not God of just a few people. He's God of everybody. And so we need to realize that the Gospel itself, it was celebrated. The resurrection without which we could not be saved was celebrated on the first day. So we worship on Sunday. Which, by the way, has always bothered me. I was raised where you did not go to sporting events on Sunday. I remember the first time I sinned deliberately. I snuck out and walked about a mile or two over to Lon Morris College in Jacksonville and looked through a hole in the fence and watched a baseball game on Sunday afternoon. He just didn't do that. Now then, what do we do on Sundays? We rush home so we can see who's playing baseball or basketball or football or soccer or whatever. That still makes me a little uneasy. Because the Lord's Day ought to be more sacred than that. Brother Jack, that's a rabbit you can chase some other day. Anyway, verses 20 and 21. By the way, I just want you to think. Imagine the first meeting of Jesus now with these disciples. Remember now, before they had the Last Supper, Jesus said, One of you is going to betray me. And who? Who me? Remember they had a discussion. Which one of us is this? Who would dare do that? And Peter said, I'd die for you. Peter said, Not only would you not do that, you'll deny me three times for the rooster crows in the morning. Thomas, after the resurrection, when they told him that they'd seen Jesus live, he said, I don't believe it. Wouldn't you like to have been a fly on the wall during that first meeting with those guys? What's he going to say to them? Is he going to reprimand them? Oh, and they all forsook him and fled, according to the Gospels. Every one of them. Now, John did have a little redemption in coming back and being with Mary at the cross. Wouldn't you love to just... The atmosphere must have been pretty electric at that time. It's the first time he's talked to them. And so, they were concerned. They were locked. We like to criticize the disciples because they locked the doors where they were. Well, the Jews had just said they had stolen the body of Jesus. I mean, they were renegades. I mean, they were fearful for their lives. I mean, they'd been accused of stealing the body of Jesus. They knew that wasn't true, but they also knew they couldn't prove they didn't. So, you know, they locked the doors. Now, some translations say the door was shut, but the Greek word actually means that the door was shut, but it was locked. So, they weren't taking any chances. And all of a sudden, Jesus appeared in their midst. Now, we don't know what kind of body he had. Mary didn't recognize him, but he still had the scars, still had the same voice. And here, with the doors locked, he just appeared. Now, just imagine. We're in this room, and all of a sudden, here comes Jesus pops in. I mean, that's what happened. Now, no wonder they were frightened. What was the first word he said to them? Peace. They needed that. They needed to hear that. And then verse 22. Now, this is unique. After this, he breathed on them. By the way, the verb breathed on them does not appear anywhere else in the New Testament. Only time it's used. He breathed on them and said, Receive the Holy Spirit. Nowhere else in the New Testament is it said that he breathed on them, and the word is not used in any other way. They were already believers, but he promised them in John 6, 44 and 63 that the Holy Spirit would not only be on them, he would be in them. And I'm going to cover just one more verse here because our time is gone. Shouldn't have chased so many rabbits. Verse 23 is a very difficult verse. After he had breathed on them, said, Receive the Holy Spirit, he said, If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them. If you retain the sins of any, they are retained. Now, you have to know the time when this verse appeared, when Jesus said this. It was before the church was founded. There is no church. The apostles were never meant to have successors. You say, well, how do you know that? Well, very simply because Jesus, according to the New Testament, never appointed any apostles. It says he appointed pastors and teachers and missionaries and evangelists, but not apostles. The apostles possessed ministerial qualifications that were peculiar to them. Their office began and ended with them. And the qualifications they had were not transmitted to anybody else. They confirmed their teachings by miracles, and in some instances, the Holy Spirit led them to write books that are now in the New Testament. They had the power to discern spirits like Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5 where they said, Why did you lie to the Holy Spirit? And you lied not only to men, but you lied to God. Why did you do that? They preached with perfect accuracy and their interpretations were correct, so they had the authority to declare that those who received Christ by repentance and faith were saved. But their declaration was based upon their observation and their discernment of the biblical steps in receiving Christ. The only way apostles forgave sins was by preaching the gospel of grace. The only way they retained or forgave sins was by proclaiming the wrath of God on those who rejected the gospel. Now remember, they had no New Testament. No explanation for some things, but they spoke inspired words. And Thomas was not present that first time. No explanation was given why he was absent. We don't know much about Thomas, but we do know that the disciples never criticized him for not being there. So he was not a renegade. He hadn't fled to faith or anything like that. But I like to describe Thomas when Jesus told him he was going back to Bethany. Thomas knew that they were going to kill him. He said, well, he's determined to do that. Let's go and die with him. That's what he said. So he was a man of faith. He was not a doubter, but he was a realist. He wanted to be sure he had all the facts. Well, I'm going to stop there because it's 10 minutes to 11. Brother Jack, you might want to drop back next Sunday into verse 25 and finish the chapter. Since you don't have enough to talk about it in the 21st chapter, you can do that. But again, I keep coming back to the fact that nine chapters of John deal with the last week. I mean, this is an important week. We cannot glide by it simply. We have to look at it seriously. And John is the simplest Scripture you'll read. That's true in the Greek. When we studied Greek in seminary, we started with 1 John because language is simple, the Greek is simple, and it's easier. When you get into Hebrews, now you've got a real challenge both with the language and with the theology of trying to figure it all out. But John is a simple Gospel in English or Greek, however you want to read it. But it focuses about 30% of the Gospels on the last week. And that's very significant, so let's don't get very far from that and remember what Christ accomplished for us and in our place that last week. Father, thank You for Your love and grace for so clearly revealing Your Word to us and for loving us even when we're unlovely. Lord, You reached out in Your love for those disciples who acted inappropriately during this last week, all of them. And yet, Lord, You loved them and You drew them to Yourself. You gave them a global commission and trusted them with that global commission. You planted the Holy Spirit in them and trusted them enough to be obedient to the Holy Spirit. Lord, we just thank You that we follow in their strain. He lives in us and we are to be obedient to what He tells us to do in thanking You all the way for what You accomplished on Calvary. In Jesus' name, amen.