Beloved congregation of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, I want to look into that room again. It's only been a short few days that Jesus has been with them in the upper room. We think of that beautiful time. It was sad because Judas Iscariot had left them. And the disciples were confused in some way after the foot washing and after the instruction that the Lord Jesus had given to them, the marvel and the beauty of the institution of the Lord's Supper. And in that time, Jesus said, these things I have spoken to you in a figurative language, But the time is coming when I will no longer speak to you in a figurative language, but I will tell you plainly about the Father. And that day you will ask in My name, and I do not say to you that I will pray the Father for you. For the Father Himself loves you, because you have loved Me, and believe that I have come forth from God. I came forth from the Father and have come into the world. Again I leave the world and go to the Father. Jesus spoke to them about the authority, that He says, "'You will not speak on your own authority, "'but that the Father will glorify Me, "'for He will take of what is Mine and declare it to you. "'All things that the Father has are Mine, "'and therefore I said that He will take of Mine "'and declare it to you. "'A little while you will not see Me, "'and a little while again you will see Me, "'because I go to the Father.'" Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ was getting them ready, wasn't he? In John 15, he warned them. He said, look, they're going to hate you because they hate me. They are going to throw you out of the synagogue. They are going to think that when they persecute you, that they're doing the Father's work. And so, just one more passage to read, to pull it all together, and that's from John 17, where we have Jesus Christ, high priestly prayer. And then in verse nine, Jesus prays, I pray for them, I do not pray for the world, but those whom you have given me, for they are yours. And all are mine, and all mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them. Now I no longer am in the world, but these are in the world. And I come to you, Holy Father, keep through your name those whom you have given me. Keep through your name those whom you have given me, that they may be one as we are one. While I was with them in the world, I kept them in your name. Those whom you gave me, I have kept, and none of them is lost except the son of perdition, that the Scripture might be fulfilled. But now I come to you, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves. I have given them your word, and the world has hated them, because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. I do not pray that you should take them out of the world, but that you should keep them from the evil one." I want you to see this morning that those prayers have now been answered. And that those prayers for the 10, which have been answered by Almighty God, are also being answered on your behalf. I hope that you will see the comfort of the providential care of the Lord, our shepherd, who leads us beside the still waters, who restores our soul, that even though we walk to the valley of the shadow of death, we would fear no evil, for God is with us. His rod and staff, they comfort us. We will see how the good shepherd collects his sheep by sending the shepherd, Jesus, the one who laid down his life for the sheep and took it up again, and how he now is Lord of Lords and King of Kings, and he will commission the flock, he will commission the community, the new community, and the revolution of God on earth will begin in earnest there with those ten pathetic men. Even with us in our pathetic life and weakness, God with us is a power and a strength. And how do we receive that power and strength? Through the Spirit of the King. who blows upon us, who empowers us. We're going to see that relationship once more to Genesis and the garden, to that valley of dry bones, and then also to the great beautiful day of Pentecost, as we see that Jeremiah's prophecy that there was nothing wrong with the old covenant, but in that day I will establish a new covenant with them, and I write my law upon their hearts and upon their souls. And now something great, something glorious, something amazing has happened. The world will never be the same. The world will go in this way until Jesus Christ, Lord of Lords and King of Kings comes again. Jesus reveals himself then to the ten men. And then we read there that the king commissions his disciples. First of all, we will see the king revealed in all of his glory and all of his power. Then we will see the king's command, go into the earth and be my witnesses. And then the king's spirit, Jesus blew on them and gave them the power to forgive and to retain sins. Then that same day at evening, being the very first day of the week, when the doors were shut, where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in the midst of them. How amazing, how beautiful that must have been. So when we pull all the Gospels together, in Luke chapter 24, after Jesus has appeared to the women, we read that He walked with two men to a place called Emmaus, about seven miles or so out of Jerusalem. And he walked with them, and they, of course, were very surprised that Jesus had not heard of all the things that were going on, that Jesus of Nazareth had been crucified and he is dead. We thought that he was the Messiah, and they couldn't understand these things. They were in deep grief, if not shock. And then Jesus, we read, began to speak to them of all that these things that must happen according to the word of God. From the very beginning to the very end, Jesus showed how the scriptures were about him. And then they sat together at a table at the end of that walk, and as Jesus prayed, and he blessed the bread, as he will do for us this afternoon, he appeared to them, and they understood this is Jesus, and then he disappears. And disappearing, we know then from Luke that he went to be with the disciples. And he went to be with the disciples in that room that is shut. There's been a lot of talk about that. Does shut mean that those doors were locked? Were they locked from the inside or inside of a locked building? How did Jesus appear in there? I don't know. There is a lot written of joyfulness. Is Jesus now in His glorified, resurrected body, able to move through great distances in a short amount of time? Is He able to appear into a room without opening doors and moving through walls? It seems like He could. Absolutely he could. Whether he did that now, I don't know if it's so important. You know what's important here? Is that he went to go to the disciples. Now he's let them sit. Mary Magdalene has told them, I have seen the Lord. He is risen. He talked to me and he said to call you brothers. And brothers, he said, I'm going to be with my father. My father is your father. My God is your God. He's alive. He is risen from the dead and he is Lord. Hallelujah. Praise ye God in his temple. Shout his laud. Jesus laid down his life and he took it up again. But John and Peter who have seen the empty tomb, They're still confused. They need some clarification, don't they? They need some way to be certain, some way to have this made true for them. Faith does not come from within a man. Flesh and blood do not reveal these things to us. It must come from God. It must come from a God who must come and collect us. The anointing must happen by the one who does the anointing. The adoption must happen by the one who does the adoption. So first of all, I want you to see God in all of this. I want you to see the Father. And I want you to think of the Father and the mission and the ministry of the Father. What is it? God so loved the world. God so loved the world that He gave His only Son. God created Adam and Eve in the beginning in His image, and He loved them. And He said, have dominion over the earth, love each other, fill the earth, be fruitful, and multiply. And I give you all of these trees, I give you this garden, I give you harmony, the harmony that I have with my Son and my Holy Spirit, that beauty, that love, I now give to you, I share to you, I've created you to love you, love me, with your heart, soul, mind and strength. Trust me, you can have everything, just don't eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and you will live forever, you will love forever, you will be loved forever. And Adam and Eve, we know, fell into sin, they ate of the fruit, they were broken, And then God came to them, didn't He? And God loved them again. And He promised them a son, a seed, a seed of the woman who would crush the head of the serpent, who would bring salvation, who would bring redemption. God the Father going to His broken children and loving them. by giving them the promise of the Son. Now God has so loved the world that He's given His only Son. And His Son has died. But now He is risen from the dead. God the Father has kept the word, the Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. We have Jesus now. But on my own I can't see Him. On my own I'm like Mary looking in the midst of the garden M-I-S-T. And Jesus is faded to me. I know something's there, but I don't know who he is. Mary, oh, Al, and your name, Adam, where are you? My 10 disciples, where are you? God the Father not only sent the Son to the Earth, God the Father so loved the 10, because he loves the world and he's going to redeem that world with them and through them that he sends the sun to them. After a time of confusion, after a time of misunderstanding, after a time without faith, that they would see the power and the glory of the risen Lord. Praise God. Praise God because he's coming to you this morning in the same way. Jesus will say, blessed are you who have not seen. Peter says, even though you have not seen him, Jesus, in heaven, yet you believe in him and you love him. Blessed are all who have heard and believed. Do you believe it? Do you believe that Jesus Christ is alive? Do you believe that Jesus Christ appeared in the room to those 10 people? Do you believe that by faith he's appeared to you this morning and he's calling out to you? And what does he say to you? Shalom aleichem in Aramaic. Irenae, Irene, peace. The first is a greeting. Now that may not be such a big deal. We might say Jesus came in and said hi. That's really kind of how informal it is in a way. And yet there's something more going on because of the way and the marvelous attitude that Jesus comes to those ten. So if we could flip it and we could see the lens and we could see Peter for a minute. And Peter's sitting there somewhere in that room and Jesus appears. And he remembers that the last time he saw Jesus is when Jesus went and he bawled his eyes out, remember? That's the last time he saw Jesus after he denied him three times and Jesus looked at him. And Jesus doesn't do it now, does he? He doesn't go, hi, and just stare at Peter. I don't know how you were raised, but I was raised by a fairly passive, aggressive father. He never hit me. He would just stare at me, and then you wished he hit you because you just stand there going, the guilt just hangs on you. It's like, well, say something. And you would just by that look, and you would crumble because you knew you had done wrong. What did Peter feel? the moment that Jesus appeared in that room. What did those disciples feel, beloved? Because beside John, they all took off. They all fled. They're all in that room, scared, aren't they? And just an aside on that, don't you find that interesting that they're still there? Don't you think Satan wants to annihilate the little group? Don't you think he wants to destroy the seed of the woman? Don't you think he wants to crush them? I'm kind of reminded when Israel goes over the Jordan River, And as they're getting ready to take Passover, God says, hold it, you men aren't circumcised. And there was a whole generation of them that weren't circumcised, so they all had to be circumcised. And Jericho's looking, and they can see the mighty men of Israel, 600,000 plus, in agony. Why didn't they destroy Israel then? Because the Lord God was with them. God had a mission for them to do, to show the love of God to Canaan, to those who rejected the love of Canaan. I am with these people, look how I have blessed them. The same thing is happening now. It would have taken nothing for Rome, it would have taken nothing for the Jews of that day to wipe out those ten cowards. But they're there, aren't they? Because the Lord is their shepherd. This is the preserving grace and the power of God who has plans for these men. You are going to be my missionaries of love into the world. My son, now go to them. And Jesus does the work of the Father. And now he appears to them who are safe and says, peace be with you. There's no rebuke. There is no anger. There is no resentment. Because don't you think some of you would have said, come on guys, where were you? You didn't take care of me. It's because Jesus knew what he had had to do, which was to die for them. He had told Peter, this is the work I must do. He had told them in the upper room. This is my body. This is my blood, given out for a complete remission of all your sins. He had given them the signs and the wonders. He's not now going to resent or be bitter about the thing he had to do. He's coming with joy. Brothers, peace be with you. Look at me. See me. I'm not some ghost here. I'm not some ethereal body. And when he had said this, he showed him his hands and he showed him his side. And then the disciples were glad. Do you see how Jesus always puts the elect, always puts his sheep in a position of comfort? Peace be with you. When you die, If Jesus doesn't come, and you die, and you go to heaven, what do you think that day will be like? Do you think about it a lot? There's that song we used to sing, I Can Only Imagine. Will you stand up, and will you leap for joy, will you dance, or will you just kind of cower? Well, the point is that in Revelation, when John, who wrote this, who says, Jesus, at peace be with you, and John now appears in heaven, and he sees all the glory of God, and he falls down, Jesus says the same thing. Get up. I'm with you. He puts his right hand upon him. It is well. So that the response now can be, it is well with my soul. I am your shepherd. Brothers, I love you. Look at my hands, look at those holes in his hands. So that transition body that even in heaven we read that we will be able to cast our eyes upon the wounds which Christ has suffered for us. It's me. I was crucified. I was forsaken for you. It's me. Be at peace. And then he says it again, doesn't he? So Jesus said to them, again, peace to you. So there's these bookends. Hi, I'm here. It's okay, brothers. I'm alive. But now the second piece to you is emphatic. I have made peace between you and God. And because I have made peace between you and God, there's peace between you and me. I have come to do the Father's work. And the Father's mission was to show love to the world. And I have shown God's love to the world by hanging on the cross and rising again and coming to the sheep, coming to the elect to bring the love of God. For Jesus came into the world not to condemn the world, but to save the world. And now He is saving these men. who are gladdened. Hallelujah! He's alive. Can you imagine the joy in them? The joy that now supersedes the understanding of their guilt. And I want to leave that with you this morning, please. Especially as you're headed to the Lord's Supper table. Do you struggle with guilt? I think we all do, and I think there's something healthy in the sense that guilt makes us not want to do the sin again. But please, not at the expense of what God has done. Our joy in being forgiven, our faith in being forgiven ought to lead us to the faithful response of joy and thanksgiving. Praise and thanksgiving let everyone bring unto our Father for every good thing. We have been forgiven. We're at peace with God. My heart was glad to hear the welcome sound. Jehovah's call to the house of prayer. I'm at peace with you. Come and worship me. Beautiful, eh? Only to be found in Jesus who says there's peace between us too. Shalom. Alachem. Peace, I leave with you. Remember he said that? I'm going to leave you, but I do not leave you as orphans. My peace, I leave with you. And if I go, I go to prepare a place for you. I am the way. I am the truth. I am the life. I will lead you through the valley of the shadow of the darkness of death into the beauty of the table of anointing, and your cup will overflow. On that great day when you die and you stand before God and his angels and all the saints in glory, if you die in Christ, he will say, well done, oh good and faithful servant, and he will give you the crown of salvation promised to all who believe and are faithful. This is the power of the appearing of Christ. Believe, repent, and believe. Believe that Jesus is alive, repent of your sins, and believe that you are forgiven. The kingdom of God is at hand. And so he appears now to bring them a commission that begins with, we are one. Remember that prayer? I pray, Father, that you make them one as we are one, that you would make them one with me. I pray that you leave them in the world. They're still there. They're still surviving. I pray that you leave them into the world so that they will continue the mission of God, the mission of love. God's given it to Jesus, and Jesus is now going to give it to the 10. And so Jesus said to them, peace to you as the Father has sent me, I also send you. Now some people get all uptight about this passage here because they say, oh, John has messed up the day of Pentecost. Really? I mean, there are people who just spend their whole life picking away at the Bible, trying to see, oh yeah, you can't trust John, because obviously he was older and he was having a mental lapse. You really don't believe that Jesus said to these men who are preserved by the power of Almighty God, didn't he say to them, I will make you fishers of men? Didn't he say to them, you will be my witnesses? Hadn't he prayed for them in their hearing? I pray, Father, that you leave them into the world. I am giving to them now, I'm giving to you men the mission of the love of God my Father. I am sending you into the world this is the beginning this is the calling this helps us understand what is going on in the preservation of the 10 and it goes back to the original covenant statement which is Adam and Eve have dominion over the earth be fruitful and multiply represent me on the earth The earth is mine, you are mine, I want you to walk in that earth, to minister to each other in bringing the image of God to one another, showing the love of God to one another, that all may know that we are here. Adam, Eve have dominion over the earth, they fall into sin, it's broken. And just before Jesus goes to the cross, while he's praying in the garden of Gethsemane, Father, I know that all authority in heaven and on earth, I am the new Adam, all dominion in heaven and earth has been given to me, it's time for me now. and I will be fruitful, and I will multiply in a way different than Adam, and yet using that same understanding of Adam. I am going to build the kingdom of God, says Jesus. I am gonna go into this world to bring the love of God. And now, remember he said that to Mary, I need to ascend so that I can go to be with the Father. The reason he needs to ascend to go to be with the Father is because of the land. Now we heard the commandments this morning. Honor your father and your mother that your days may be long in the land that the Lord our God is giving you. The understanding of submitting to authority, so that we have peace in the land. A land promised to Abraham, who is also promised that his descendants will be greater than the numbers of the stars, greater than the numbers of the sands of the sea. From the land of Canaan, from the land of Israel, there is going to be an explosion of love into the whole earth. From that piece of land, the land will grow. the land and the love and the power of Abraham and the seed of the faithful by the power of Jesus Christ is going to start a revolution so that when we go to Acts and Jesus is ready to ascend into heaven we have it also in the end of Luke we have it also in Mark we have it also in Matthew I am going to send you first into Jerusalem then Judea then into Samaria, and then into the whole world. And what had Jesus said? The gates of Haiti cannot prevail against it. I send you into the world. And I want you to think about that. These 10 men, these fishermen, these former tax collectors, these Jews who are scared of the Jews, who are scared of the tribulation, who think they can't stand from the tribulation, who are hiding from the tribulation. Jesus says, no, I'm sending you into it. Remember I told you I'm sending you like lambs among the wolves. I am sending you like sheep against the predators. I am sending you as animals who have no defense mechanism against those which can rip you apart. But I will be with you even to the end of the age. Brothers, the time has come. It's time to mature. It's time to move on from three years of seminary. It's time to be ordained. It's time to pick up the task. It's time to go into the world. Beloved, we need to understand, seriously need to understand that if we are not a missional church, in the truest sense of that word, we really don't need to be here. If this is only about us, if this is only about protecting our children from the wicked one, if we're only going to use this place to hide out then we've missed it. It's not faith. It's not faith if I'm so chicken I won't talk to anybody. I'm going to give you an example right now when I'm a chicken. When I know my child is doing the wrong thing, and I'm tired at the end of the day, and I don't want to have trouble, and I want my kid to like me, so I just say nothing. That's not faith in God. That's not being a minister of love. That's not being a missionary of love. When I hear a little kid blaspheming the name of God, and I say nothing, because, well, I don't want the parents to be mad with me, and this is Canada, and we don't rock the boat, then we've missed it. And it's not just okay to always say, the way I do missions is to write a check for Pastor Zegfeld, or for Pastor Zieger, or for Pastor Prasad. There's good in that, we need to do that. But God has placed all of you with your talents, your gifts, he's given you things to take in care of, to manage, to be stewards for him. That He has put you in a certain place to send you with the mission of love. To teach them all. And sometimes the greatest missionary work we can do is when we fall short, especially in front of them, and say, I'm sorry. And I went to God and I asked forgiveness. We need to stop working from the place of fear. Canada's going badly. Things are dark around us too. Look at the new adventure. Canada needs you, beloved, more than they've ever needed you. They don't know it. And they probably don't even want it. But you know it. You know that God has appeared to you this morning and Jesus has come to you with the power of the commission. As the Father has sent me, now I send you. Whose work are we doing? Jesus. And whose work is Jesus doing? The Father's. Whose work are you doing? The Father's work. He will give you what you need. He'll give you the power. But what do we especially need? We need the Holy Spirit. And he breathed on them. And he said to them, receive the Holy Spirit. That brings us to our last point. The king commissions by appearing, here I am, and you are here. Here's the calling, the command, go into all the world. I'm sending you, but I do not leave you as orphans. I'm sending to you the counselor. That must have been really interesting, right? Because he blew over them. And the word for spirit and breath are the same word. in Greek, and interestingly, in Hebrew. So our word for air power tools, pneumatic, it's that word, and ruach in the Hebrew. And in the beginning, God created Adam, and he made him out of the dirt, and formed the body, and then he blew on him. He breathed into him the breath of God. Breathe on me, breath of God. Fill me with life anew. Receive the Holy Spirit. Was he giving the Holy Spirit? No. He was symbolically teaching them of the Spirit that was going to come. You cannot do the missionary work of God. You cannot be missionaries of love without the power of the Holy Spirit, without the authorization of the Holy Spirit. The same thing had happened to Jesus. When Jesus was ready at 30 years old to start his ministry, where did he go? He went to John the Baptist and John the Baptist baptized him with water. But John had said, I can only baptize you with water, but he, the Lamb of God will baptize you with what water and the spirit, the breath of God. And Adam became a new and living being. And unless a man is born again, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. He must be born by word and blood in the spirit. We need to have the Holy Spirit blown within us so that the image of God will be restored, that faith will be given, that joy will be brought into our hearts. And when they saw him, they were glad. And by faith, you read about it and you know who he is and you are glad. Breathe on me, breath of God. or as we will sing together. from these beautiful words. Oh breath of life, come sweeping through us. Revive your church with life and power. Oh breath of life, come cleanse, renew us, and fit your church to meet this hour. What is the hour? This is the hour of darkness. This is the hour that we will go into the world. These are the last days. And what is the mission of love that you will bring? That there is forgiveness. That there is a way to be made right with God. Jesus will appear to the elect through you. In a particular way through me and the preaching. In another way, through the missionaries, but then also through you as the witnesses of the power of the changing Spirit of God. And what is the greatest truth of that changing Spirit of God? I'm a forgiven sinner. God saves sinners. Jesus Christ died on the cross, we saw it together. Though the world does not believe it, that the world mocks us, that the world ridicules us. The Spirit of God dwells within our hearts and says, no, you are forgiven. And we need to declare that to the world. By the way, that's what that means. I'm not going to get into all the controversies, all right? But if you forgive the sins, you plural, forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them. If you retain the sins of any, they are retained. What does that mean? The Roman Catholic Church believes that the church has the right to absolve. Do penance, do Hail Mary, do the rosary, and then you will be forgiven. No, that's not what that's saying. goes back to Matthew 16 who do men say that I am Peter says you are Christ son of the living God yes Peter on this rock I will build my church I give to you men the keys of the kingdom that first key of the kingdom is the declaration of the word of the Lord so in the catechism what is preaching The open declaring of the promises of God that whoever believes in Jesus Christ has their sins forgiven, but whoever does not is condemned already. If they believe these things, their sins are forgiven. If they do not believe, their sins are retained. So, you know, when I talked to you about that calling you have, now you need to understand you have an authority. And by you, I mean all of us, we. together with all the true churches around the world. We have been given the authority of the gospel. We are to preach this with boldness and promiscuity. We don't care who we'll preach it to. Whoever needs to hear it. John the Baptist didn't care. If Herod needed to hear it, I'm telling Herod. If the Pharisees needed to hear it, I'm telling them. And we need to do that too. Believing in the power of God that he is continually through Jesus blowing out that spirit that is going out through the work that you do in the way that you live and the way that you live a new and changed life and true righteousness and holiness by the power of the image of God. And then God is drawing people unto himself to hear the preaching through you, through me, through the church of Jesus Christ, through men who are as pathetic as those 10 cowards there in that room. And Jesus says, peace, peace to you. Go therefore and teach them all that I have commanded. This is the ministry of love. The spirit will empower you in your place in the kingdom as part of the ministry of love, bringing you to the one who embodied that love, grace and truth and in love appears to us in the word made flesh. by the power of a father who loved you, to saved you, to incorporate you, to use you to love and to save others. And so on that Easter morning, the revolution began. Oh, it was small. It wasn't that grandiose. Jesus didn't appear at the temple, did he? He didn't appear in the halls of Caesar. He didn't appear in the synagogues of the Pharisees. But he appeared to a woman in a garden that remind us that life begins in a garden. He appears to ten men who remind us of those dry bones in the valley of dry bones that Ezekiel saw and then what did God say? Blow, breathe, let the winds come from the four corners of the earth and they became alive and they became the army of God. And now these 10, the church in its beginning, in its inception, and now there's almost nowhere you can go in the world where they haven't heard about Jesus. Come quickly, Lord Jesus. Come quickly, but till then sustain us, hold us, Heavenly Father, protect us, and preserve us. Jesus, blow on us the Holy Spirit, breathe on us breath of God. Fill us with life anew. Revive us, Lord. Is zeal abating while harvest fields are vast and white? Revive us, Lord. The world is waiting. Equip your church to spread the light. This is our story. This is our song. This is our commission. This is our God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This is our mission of love. And this is our prayer. Amen.