John chapter 20, looking again at verses 19 through 23 today, really a continuation of the message we began last Lord's Day. Let me read our text. John 20, beginning of verse 19. 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 anyone, they are forgiven. If you withhold forgiveness from anyone, it is withheld. As we said last week, we see here in this text that the church of Jesus Christ is on the mission of Jesus Christ, bringing the life of the new creation. Now, in our text here, Jesus made three crucial statements which compel us to be what the body of Christ is designed to be, to go on the mission that Christ sends us on in the world today. Just as a quick review, first, Jesus said, Peace be with you. He gave to His disciples resurrection peace. Really, this resurrection peace is the peace that says, may the salvation accomplished by the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, all of that means be yours. Everything that Christ provides for us as our Savior is ours. His salvation, the resurrection peace is then the foundation of the mission that we go on. In fact, without this, We wouldn't go on the mission. In fact, without this, we wouldn't have a mission. Peace be with you is the foundation of everything. But then that resurrection peace leads us into that second statement Jesus said, which is, as the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you. In other words, Jesus gives resurrection mission. We participate in that mission now. That becomes the singular goal of our lives. But now the question arises, how do we carry that out? We consider what a great mission that is. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you, you are now participants in the great mission of the Triune God, the greatest missionary that there is. That's what you're doing. That's what I'm sending you to do. How do you do that? Yes, Jesus has died. Yes, He has risen from the dead. That's the foundation. He sent us on the mission. That's the goal. But what about the authority and the ability then to carry it out? That brings us now to the third statement that Jesus gave to his disciples here and what that means for the resurrection mission. This third statement is, receive the Holy Spirit. And it is right here that I think we see this resurrection ability and authority that Jesus is imparting to his disciples. Now, this is kind of a fascinating text. Perhaps you've puzzled over it before. I know I have. We'll get to think through a little bit of what it means here today. So before Jesus makes this third statement, He does a special action. Now, both His action and His words in this text are very significant. In fact, they help us understand each other. The words help us understand the action. The action helps us understand the words. They work together here. First of all, before He says this third statement, and this is recorded specifically for us here in verse 22, He breathes. He breathed. Now, obviously, just by the fact that John recorded this for us, this is a significant action that Jesus is doing. He's not talking about the normal breathing that we all do all the time. In fact, what storyteller have you ever heard that stopped to say, oh, and by the way, Little Red Riding Hood is still breathing at this point in the story. You don't throw that in unless that's significant to the action. And here John stops and says, Jesus breathed. What was he doing here? I think this action done by Jesus, who is the Word made flesh in the Gospel of John, the One on whom the Spirit rests, is extremely significant. In fact, even by the very word that is used here to describe what Jesus is doing, which is a very rare term in the Bible, in fact, this is the only place it's used in the New Testament, used very rarely in the Old Testament, but right away what it does is it connects us to the same term, actually, and the same kind of action going on in two very significant texts in the Old Testament. Jesus is doing this action to recall and build off of very significant action that had already taken place before. The first place we come across this term in the Old Testament, of course, we're talking about the Greek translation of the Old Testament, the New Testament being written in Greek. The first place we come across this term is in Genesis 2, verse 7. or read that God formed Adam from the dust of the ground, and then He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. And Adam then became a living soul. God imparted life to Adam by doing that. Gave him created life. Made him a living being. A second, then, very significant Old Testament text that we find the same term being used is in the prophet Ezekiel, in some of his most famous sections of this long Old Testament prophecy. Ezekiel 36 and 37. Perhaps you're familiar with those texts. In Ezekiel 36, God promises through the prophet that He would put His Spirit into His people, that He would give them a new heart. that He would take away their heart of flesh, their heart of stone, excuse me, and give them a heart of flesh, a heart that was alive to Him. And then in Ezekiel 37, God does this amazing enactment, so to speak, this vision in Ezekiel's life to unpack a little bit of what that means. You're familiar with the story, I'm sure. It's Ezekiel in the Valley of the Dry Bones, right? There's even a spiritual all about that. And so God, by the Spirit, takes Ezekiel to this valley, and it's full of dead bones. In fact, it makes very clear to express to us in the Scripture text there that these bones were very dry. It wasn't just that the corpses had rotted. They'd been laying there bleaching in the sun for years and years and years. There was no life here whatsoever. And God then tells Ezekiel, or first of all, He asks Ezekiel, Can these bones live? Is it possible for something that is so dead to actually be brought back to life? And God tells Ezekiel to prophesy over the bones and say to them, O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God to these bones, Behold, I will cause breath to enter you and you shall live. I will lay sinews upon you and will cause flesh to come up upon you. and cover you with skin and put breath in you, and you shall live, and you shall know that I am the Lord." And so, what did Ezekiel do? I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I prophesied, there was a sound, and behold, a rattling. And the bones came together, bone to its bone. And I looked, and behold, there were sinews upon them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them, but there was no breath in them. Then he said to me, and here's where we run into this same term that John uses, prophesy to the breath, prophesy, son of man, and say to the breath, thus says the Lord God, come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain that they may live. So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived and stood on their feet an exceedingly great army. Breathe on these slain, that they may live. That's the same exact term John uses to describe Jesus' action. To breathe on them. And I think Jesus does this action, of course, very intentionally. This is a symbolic action that He is doing. He is intentionally bringing to mind what God did when He made Adam live. and what God had promised to do for His people by sending His Spirit to them to make them live. And Jesus breathes and then He says, receive the Holy Spirit. What is He doing here? I think what Jesus is doing is symbolically imparting His own life Remember, He's already talked about in the Gospel of John how He would send His Spirit to His people. He's imparting His own life to them, the life of the Spirit, who would empower them then for the mission of Christ. And this symbolic action particularly looks forward to Pentecost. Jesus was here symbolically enacting it, and we see it come to pass then historically on the day of Pentecost. When the ascended Christ sends His Spirit, pours out His Spirit, and takes this little band of disciples, this little band of believers, not just the twelve, but those who are with them, and says, you are now my new covenant community, just as Ezekiel had prophesied about that God would do. You are now my new covenant community. You are the community where the forgiveness of sins is found. You are the people who have my life in you. And I send you on my mission. And really, by giving them His Spirit here, He is authorizing them for His mission. They would now work in partnership, in participation with Jesus, by His Spirit, to bring about the mission. To bring about, as we'll see in verse 23, both salvation and judgment. You see, by giving them His Spirit, Jesus was constituting them as His new covenant people, the church. The Old Testament prophets looked forward to the day when the people of God would be characterized by the Spirit. In fact, that's why the Apostle Peter on the day of Pentecost when he preaches, cites the Old Testament prophet Joel. This is what's coming. And now it's here. This is the inauguration of the age of the Messiah. Back in John chapter 7, At the Feast of Booths, Jesus had cried out, if anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. Whoever believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his belly will flow rivers of living water. Now this He said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were to receive, for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified. The Spirit had not yet come in this way to accomplish this work. But now Jesus has died. Now He's risen from the dead. Now He's saying to them, the Spirit is coming. And He symbolically enacts that here before them. He endows His disciples with the Spirit. The age that the Old Testament believers longed for, the age of the Messiah was about to begin, and the Messiah Jesus gives His people His Spirit so they have His life flowing through them. what then happens when these spirit-endued people of Christ, the church, go about doing the mission. Well, that's what Jesus talks about next in verse 23 when He says, If you forgive the sins of anyone, they are forgiven. If you withhold forgiveness from anyone, it is withheld. Now, just on the surface, this text presents a little bit of a conundrum, doesn't it? already learned that God alone can forgive sins? In fact, earlier in the Gospel of John, what was recorded? Why did the Pharisees get angry at Jesus? He said, your sins are forgiven. And they said, who can forgive sins but God alone? Well, they were right. Who can forgive sins but God alone? Jesus, by forgiving sins, was showing, I am God. But now this text says, if you forgive the sins of anyone, they are forgiven. If you withhold forgiveness from anyone, if you retain their sins, then they are withheld. It is withheld. Their sins are retained. So doesn't God alone have the power to forgive sins? Yes, that is true. I think we pay careful attention to the text here. Jesus does not contradict that in any way. He says, if you forgive the sins of anyone, they are forgiven. That is, they are now in a state of forgiveness. They stand forgiven. It's a passive here. And the implication is, although he doesn't state it, is that the one doing the action is God. If you forgive the sins of anyone, then they are forgiven by God. You see, what Jesus is saying here is that our role in this, and He clearly is giving us a role in this. Remember, He's just said, as the Father sent Me, so I am sending you. You're going to do My mission. Now, here's your role. You receive the Spirit. Here's what you do. You go about the business of forgiving and retaining sins. Wow. That's a mission. But our role in this mission is not to be the one who has the ultimate power of forgiving sins, but more like that of a judge. A judge applies the correct verdict to a case. When a man stands before a judge and the judge says that he is innocent or guilty, has he done anything to change that man's actions? What that man did is what makes him innocent or guilty. The judge doesn't do anything. But what does He do? He applies the correct verdict. He makes it legally true, so to speak, through His verdict. He says, you are now innocent, or you are guilty, and thus you are in that status of being innocent or guilty. Jesus is saying to His followers, that's part of your role in the mission. You apply the verdict, so to speak. But more than that even, and this is important to consider as well as we begin to press into what this means for us, not only has Christ commissioned us to do this, in verse 23, but we have to realize He doesn't commission us just as individuals to do this, but all of us to do this as the body of Christ doing the mission of Christ together. Well, how do we do this? I think what makes it clearer for us in our minds is if we put all of Christ's great commission text together. You know what I'm talking about? We talk about Christ's great commission text. Matthew, the Gospel of Matthew, has what we often call the great commission. Matthew 28, 18 through 20. The Gospel of Luke at the very end has what's sometimes called its great commission. The Gospel of John here, we put those together. And it helps us to see the big picture and how this works out in what Jesus is talking about here. Luke, for instance, in Luke 24, verse 47, 48, Jesus says that repentance and remission or forgiveness of sins are to be proclaimed in His name to all nations. That's our job, to go proclaim repentance and forgiveness of sins. Now, clearly that's connected with what Jesus is talking about here, isn't it? Notice what he says in Matthew chapter 28. He says, Go, make disciples of all the nations. How do you do that? Baptizing them and teaching them all that I have commanded you. And Lo, he says, I am with you always to the end of the age. Again, just like he said here with receiving the Holy Spirit. I am present with you to carry out my mission. You are my workers in this mission. So, putting those together, what do we come up with? Well, we proclaim the good news of Jesus, and those who receive the Word, we baptize into the body of Christ, the Church. This New Covenant community, the Church, is those who have had their sins forgiven. Those who reject the message of Christ, we keep from the body of Christ, or remove from the body of Christ. That's the way the mission advances. And when we look at the book of Acts, is that not exactly what we see taking place? They preach the gospel. They proclaim Jesus Christ. When people respond, they say, what do we do? Peter says, repent and be baptized for the forgiveness of your sins. I mean, Peter understood the great commissions here. And what happened? Those who received the Word were baptized, and they were added that day, about 3,000 souls, to the body of Christ. And so on and so forth throughout the book of Acts. We see the mission advancing by His people doing exactly what Jesus says here. And so think about this. How do people come to faith in Jesus Christ? Through us. As the Scripture asks, how will they hear without a preacher? How are people recognized as disciples of Christ? Who baptizes them? Us. Who teaches them everything that Christ has commanded us? Us. The people of Christ. The body of Christ. The Church. How is it possible for us to do this? Through the Spirit. That's what Jesus is talking about here in our text. And so now, in order to, I think, help make this a little bit clearer, as well as to apply it to our lives, I think it would be good for us to press into a little bit more application. What does this mean for us? What does this look like for us? Now that we have seen the resurrection peace that Christ gives us as the foundation of the mission, The resurrection mission he sends us on and in the resurrection ability and authority that he gives by the spirit. I think we have to see what this means, how this works out, how this takes shape, how we can see it, so to speak. And that and that encourages, I believe, to do the work of the spirit, to do the work of this mission. I think we could sum up by saying that this work that we have to do is going to be gospel centered. That is around the message of Christ. centered around the message of Christ, Spirit-empowered, and Church-structured. I think we see all of that from what Jesus has just said. It's Gospel-centered, it's the mission of Christ, it's Spirit-empowered, and it's Church-structured. I think we readily understand the first one of those. It's Gospel-centered. I don't think in this congregation we'd have any challenge understanding that. But let me just focus on the last two. That is, it's Spirit-empowered and Church-structured because these two things really do go together. You cannot separate them out from each other as we see in the Scriptures. See, the new life of the Spirit is the life of the Church. Jesus has already made this very clear in the Gospel of John. What did He tell Nicodemus? You must be born from above. You have to be born again. The flesh cannot do this. It's the work of the Spirit. The Spirit blows where He wills. He has to bring about this new birth. Without that, there is no new life. There is no new covenant community. There is no church. The Spirit has to work in that way. The new life of the Spirit is the life of the church, and that's why Jesus is symbolically imparting that to His disciples here. The resurrection life of Christ is what we need to be the people of Christ on the mission of Christ. And that says something very important to us, just even considering, say, High Country Baptist Church, considering who we are and what we do. Too often when we think about the church, we think about it primarily in terms of the techniques that we do. That's what constitutes the church. In fact, if you look at advice how to be a church, or advice on how to grow a church, or all those kinds of things, primarily they'll focus on techniques. Do this, don't do that. Do this, don't do that. But let me just submit to you here that without life from the Spirit, all that is meaningless. There can be no such thing as the new community of Christ without the Spirit. And that applies to us, by the way, as well as it applies to anybody else. Even what we're doing here together this morning. Just for example, say our worship as a church. Now, our worship as a church is something we've worked on and we've tried to press into what do we see in the Scriptures about how God reveals Himself and how men are supposed to respond to Him. And how do we show that? How do we do that corporately even? And so we've been pressing for a very biblically rooted, deep, even historically strong worship as a church. But you know what? That's all still dead before God without the life of the Spirit. Just as much as, say, desperation bans silly and shallow and contemporary worship is dead before God without the life of the Spirit. It's not our doing this that makes makes us have this life in the Spirit. It's the other way around. It's the life in the Spirit that makes this worthwhile. We've also been talking about, as a church, growing and sinking our roots deep in terms of our doctrinal foundations. Having, again, a robust biblical theology. A robust historical theology. But you know what? Without the life in the Spirit, that still is dead before God. Just as much as shallow doctrinal statements are dead before God, we must have the life of the Spirit at work at the same time. And here's where we need to now hold on to something on the other hand. Recognizing what I've just said, that we can't just go through the motions and expect this to be what God wants, what Christ is talking about in sending us on His mission. At the same exact time, there must be church structure, for the church is the manifestation of the Spirit. The church is the temple of the living God, Ephesians 2.22. You are being built together, I should say, for the dwelling place of God by the Spirit. It's not just us as individuals, it's the body together that is the temple of the living God. 1 Corinthians chapter 3, the Apostle Paul talks about the same thing. He talks about building as a wise master builder, building a church, building with gold and silver and precious stones, not with wood, hay and stubble. And then he goes right on after that to say that every man must take heed how he builds. Builds what? the house of God, the church. Why? Because if any man destroys the temple of God, that is a very serious thing, and the church is the temple of God. You don't mess with the temple of God. I hope you picked that up from reading through Exodus in our Scripture readings. The sanctity of the temple, even down to the minutia of things like what Justin read this morning. The anointing oil that's going to be used cannot be used for anybody else and anything else. This is a sacred thing, the temple of God. It's set apart to God. Now the temple's been done away with. Jesus has come. He Himself is now, as He told the Samaritan woman, the meeting place of God and man. We are in Him, and we are being built as God's dwelling place, God's manifestation of His presence on earth. It's the church. The church today is the place where the saving presence of Christ is manifested And the church is the realm of the Spirit. Outside the church is the world, the realm of Satan. That's why Paul talks, for instance, in 1 Corinthians 5 of disciplining someone out of the church and saying, delivering them over to Satan. But this is the realm of those who are set apart to God. In the church is the realm of those who have the Spirit. You see, there must be the church embodied in the world today for this mission to take place. Now, recognizing that, and I hope we get at least that, that the church is necessary for what Jesus is talking about in our text today to take place. He constitutes His disciples as the new covenant community of Christ, empowered and dwelled by the Spirit, so that they then participate in the mission. Understanding that then, if the Spirit dwells in the church, How does this forgiveness of sins and withholding forgiveness of sins work out? The reason I ask that question is because men have gone off in different directions on this very issue. And we can too. There are ways that we can actually compromise the work of the Spirit and even the freedom of the Spirit doing His work in the world today. Again, what did Jesus tell Nicodemus? The wind blows where it wills. All right. The spirit is doing his work, and yet he works in church structures. Well, how does this work out? One way that we can compromise the freedom of the spirit, even understanding that it is working in and through the body of Christ, the church, yet we can compromise the spirit's freedom by erring into the Roman Catholic view which makes the church the dispenser of grace. Roman Catholicism teaches that the authority to forgive sins that Jesus is talking about right here in this text was given, first of all, to the apostles and then passed on by succession to the bishops of the Roman Catholic Church. These bishops then, administer this grace of forgiving sins or withholding forgiveness through the sacraments. These sacraments confer the grace that they signify by virtue of the action performed. All right. So here's how it works. Jesus says you're participating with me in my mission. My mission is to bring forgiveness of sins and spread it all over the world. How do we do that? Well, I'm commissioning you apostles as my representatives. You pass that on to the bishops. The bishops then administer this grace through the sacraments. The sacraments confer the grace that they signify. And therefore, you have given it to people, those whom, for instance, you give the sacraments of baptism and then the Eucharist and others like penance. These things do the work in that person. They infuse grace into that person, unless, of course, the person has his fingers crossed in his heart. I mean, it works. The sacraments do that. They give them forgiveness of sins unless he's inside of himself saying, I don't believe this. This is stupid, but I'll do it anyway. If he's doing that, then the sacraments don't work. But other than that, they work because of the faith of the church. They do the work. And so the organized and the authorized priesthood becomes the dispensary. And grace becomes a commodity. It's like a fluid that you have a big tank of and it flows through the priesthood and they open the valve and say, here, you can have some. So it's like I know this might sound a little irreverent. The church becomes like a gas station. You pull up and if you've got the credit card that gives you access, you can fill up your tank with grace and go on your way. All right. That's it works. You've got it because this is the channel. That's how it works. I do believe that view fails biblically in a number of ways, but it does compromise the freedom of the spirit, making him subject to men's decisions. I think this view fails biblically because, first of all, in this text, even the bishops are not the successors of the apostles. Jesus did not in this text just say to the apostles, receive the Holy Spirit. He gave it to the disciples who are present. In fact, one of the disciples, one of the apostles was not present. When did this come? It came, of course, on the day of Pentecost, and it came on all the disciples. It's not the priests who are the receivers of this grace, the whole church is. We are all together a royal priesthood. And so we cannot confine this forgiveness of sins and withholding forgiveness of sins to just one class within the church, one group of people who are specially authorized to dispense this forgiveness. I think that in and of itself shows that this is not the biblical idea. But secondly, the sacraments do not work. And here I'm going to just talk about baptism in the Lord's Supper because the Roman Catholic Church obviously adds five other things to that they call sacraments. But if we just even talking about baptism in the Lord's Supper, they do not work by virtue of the action performed. Grace also is not a stuff that can be stored in a heavenly tank and then dispensed when it's needed. That's not what grace is. Grace is God's personal favor. And by the way, let me just park on this for a minute. I think a lot of Christians get confused on this. We talk about getting more grace. That's fine. But what do we mean by that? Is it like there's just kind of this ethereal stuff that God takes a piece of it and gives it to you? Is it like an energy pill that God says, OK, here, you need one of these. Take this. This will help you. No, what is grace? It's simply God's personal favor. God is favorably disposed toward you. He is gracious, and therefore He acts on your behalf. It is His divine power that is doing the work. It is God personally who is doing the work. We cannot and we must not ever reduce the sovereign working of the Spirit to a rote action. Now, hopefully we all understand that side of the problem. However, since we're not Roman Catholics, there is another way to compromise the freedom of the Spirit and to fail to get what Jesus is talking about here in our text. Although we as Protestants reject the Roman Catholic error, we too have ways of putting the Spirit under human control. If we reject institutional control of the Spirit, we tend to fall into individual control of the spirit. So if the Roman Catholic problem can be called magic, you know, just take this stuff and it does the work. Our problem can be called mysticism. In other words, we measure and we monitor the work of the spirit, in one example, by our feelings, by our private feelings. And we can actually get to the place where we deny that the Spirit works really and truly, objectively in this world, apart from our feelings, apart from our senses. Really and truly and objectively in His church. Whether we feel like it or not. That He really does do that. Whether we feel like He's working or not. Here's one way it can work. And since we're talking about the Great Commission, let me just use the example of missions. Someone can say, I feel called of God to be a missionary. Let's say I feel called of God to be a missionary in Ghana. So I'm going to go to Ghana and be a missionary. How do you know that? Because the Spirit just really burned in my heart that that's what I ought to do. Okay, well, the church says, no, we don't think you're qualified for that. Did the Spirit work to burden your heart? Well, you could say, and I actually know of people who have done this kind of route. Hey, guess what, guys? The Spirit called me. It doesn't matter what you say. I've got to obey God. Is that the Spirit working? Or is that disobedience to the Spirit? It's disobedience to what He's revealed. We have just privatized the Holy Spirit, said He's my personal commodity. Guess what, guys? It doesn't matter what you think the Spirit is saying. I know what the Spirit is saying and because I know it's authoritative for me and I have to do it. That is not the working of the Spirit. That is anti-Spirit. The Spirit works through His church. We're not just little private individuals running around here doing our own thing in our own little private world with God. No, we don't privately have the authority Forgive the sins of anyone. Withhold forgiveness of the sins of anyone. Do we? Can I walk up to you and say, I now forgive your sins. But you know what? When we privatize the Spirit, we're in effect taking that kind of authority to ourselves. We're saying, I can do the mission of Christ myself. All I need is the Spirit of God, boy. I just follow the Spirit and what He says I do. And there you go. Not at all what Christ is talking about here. I think this kind of a view, unfortunately, afflicts a lot of our views even of missionary work today. Maybe not to the extreme degree I've just illustrated, but how we forget that the mission of Christ advances through the body of Christ, indwelt by the Spirit of Christ, that the body of Christ is the temple of Christ, not just us as individuals. Yes, we are individually indwelt, personally indwelt by the Spirit, That's never separate from the body of Christ. What does 1 Corinthians 12, 13 tell us? For by one Spirit, or it should be better understood as in one Spirit, we were all baptized into one body. You can't have the Spirit without being a part of the body. They work together. This is all one package deal. You don't get them separated out. You can't parcel out the Spirit. It's one deal. But we forget that that's the way the mission of Christ advances. And so we begin to look for other ways besides the church to advance the mission of Christ. We begin to try to do end runs around the church that Christ ordained and set up, like in Ephesians chapter 4, where the resurrected and ascended Christ gives gifts to His people and He gives apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers for the perfecting of the saints, equipping of the saints so they can do the work of the ministry, so the body can grow up. This is the way Christ has set it up to work. And we begin to try to skip that part. You know, let's skip this. The church is a mess today. Sometimes we get so bogged down in all this trying to work through churches to do missionary work. especially when we've got a really important task, maybe something that we're really burdened about, a very narrow niche we want to accomplish. Let's do it a different way, guys. Let's start a non-profit corporation and do the work of Christ that way. And then we can send out missionaries and do that sort of thing. Are we fulfilling the Great Commission, baptizing them, teaching them everything Christ has Or are we trying to do it our own way? I think that's something we need to think through seriously. There's lots of ramifications of this today. Not that I even know all the implications of what this means. But it's something that I think is crucial when you have to realize how is Christ equipping us to do the work that He's called us to do in this world today, to spread His mission of forgiveness around the world. It's not just as individuals. In fact, I think you run into this problem today even a lot with the way missions work is sometimes even funded. This came on my radar actually right when we were coming here to begin High Country Baptist Church, just seeking the Lord's direction. And we were sent out here by our church back in Michigan. I had some time. I took a day to just fast and pray. Being new to the area, I didn't know exactly where to go, but I knew of Glen Erie, and that time it was even a little more open than it is now. You can go there, hike the trails, enjoy the beautiful place there. So I went there to spend some time seeking the Lord, praying and fasting there. It was all done. I came back. They had a bookstore there. And of course, you know me, I have to check out the bookstore if there's a bookstore around. So I went into the bookstore and lo and behold, there was a book there on on how to raise support for your ministry. So, hey, I've been praying about the Lord's provision for this. And so I picked up the book, started reading it. And one of the things that the author specifically recommended was make sure you don't Try to limit your vision to just churches. Try to raise support in all kinds of venues. Get personal friends. Get companies to support you. Get this, get that. We've got too narrow of a view here just thinking about churches doing this kind of stuff. We've got to broaden the base. There's a lot of money out there that people aren't tapping into because they're just sticking with churches. You'll get to your mission ten times faster You know, he's laying out statistics. If you just tap into all the funding sources that are out there, instead of trying to plot around all these different churches and present your ministry and do these kinds of things. All right. You see what I'm talking about? The viewpoint that says the church itself is irrelevant to the mission. It's what the Spirit tells me to do. And therefore, I'm authorized to do it. I think we need to stop and consider, what is Christ talking about here? Are we really willing to claim the Spirit's authorization for the full scope of the mission? If we are, we're saying, if you forgive the sins of anyone, they stand forgiven. That's what Christ does through His church. I think if we really realize, if we reject the church of Jesus Christ and the teaching, And even, yes, the ordinances, the ceremonies of baptism, the Lord's Supper that Christ has given to her, then we can't claim to have the Spirit of Christ. The church has a real and a vital role in the mission of Christ. Otherwise, Christ wouldn't have said these words right here. We can't ignore it. We can't bypass it. It's not a mere adjunct to salvation. Really, the church is the DNA built into the Gospel seed. If the Gospel is planted, it grows what comes out of it, a church. That's the way it works biblically. Christ has given us some amazing words here. Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of anyone, they are forgiven. If you withhold forgiveness from anyone, it is withheld. They reveal to us that the church has an active part in bringing into this world the work of Jesus Christ. We participate with him in his mission. It doesn't go out apart from that. We are His ambassadors. We are His mouthpiece. And so by the power of the Spirit, we proclaim forgiveness of sins. Those who respond in repentance and faith, we admit to the New Covenant community through baptism. Those who reject, we refuse life, the community of life and forgiveness. This is a very sobering mission. It's a very serious mission. It's not one we should take to ourselves lightly, but it is one that Christ has given to us as a church. The Apostle Paul felt it. He said that he was, and that we are, he said, the saver of life unto life, or the saver of death unto death. By proclaiming Christ, we're bringing his mission of forgiveness to all who receive him. We're also bringing his judgment to all who will reject him. And we are saying you're not part of his people. You don't have the life and the forgiveness of God. This is an awesome privilege. It's an awesome responsibility. But this is the resurrection mission. It's empowered by the Holy Spirit made into the community of Christ so that we can then show to the world and call the world to come to the true life of Christ.