Let's open up God's Word. We're turning to John 20. And we'll read just some verses here. Verse 19 down to verse 23. So John chapter 20. And verse 19, so let's hear the Lord's word. Then the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, came Jesus and stood in the midst and saith unto them, peace be unto you. And when he had said so, he showed unto them his hands and his side. Then were the disciples glad when they saw the Lord. Then said Jesus to them again, Peace be unto you, as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you. And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost. Whosoever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them. And whosoever sins ye retain, they are retained. Amen. We'll just end there at verse 23. And we trust the Lord will bless that short reading to our hearts. Let's just look to the Lord now in prayer as we gather around his word. Loving Father and eternal God, we thank the Lord for this privilege to join together to offer our praise to thee. Lord, it's been a blessing to our soul, and we trust, O God, that our praise will be acceptable in thy sight. Lord and Father, we pray that thou wilt grant unto us now the Holy Ghost. Help, Lord, this preacher. Fill this preacher with thy Spirit. Help me to speak as I ought to speak. Help my people to hear as they ought to hear. And Lord, help us, Lord, then, as we get down to prayer, to pray as we ought to pray. Loving Father, we pray that thou wilt take from us that stiffness, And Lord, at reticence there is at times to pray, but Lord give the spirit of prayer and supplication. Come to these hearts of ours and help us in these moments around the word. We ask this in Redeemer's precious and His worthy name. Amen. I was going to return to our study of Nehemiah, the burden builder. I had most of the work done for tonight's sermon last week, but I feel we would do well to linger in the blessing of the week that has gone past. who praise the Lord for the sense of His presence, to thank the Lord for His mercy towards us, for the stirrings in our soul, for the privilege of sitting underneath the preaching, the powerful preaching of God's Word, where we have known the comfort of it, the challenging of it, and also the chastising of the Word. And then to top the week off on the Lord's Day evening, how he visited the house with salvation blessing. And we give the Lord all the glory for that. Salvation is off the Lord. And we trust that that is but the cloud the size of a man's hand. It is a harbinger, as it were, to the sound of the abundance of rain. even in our district here, in our town, in our community, that the Lord would add daily unto His church in this vicinity. We know the Lord is always doing that. But here in our town, in our congregation, that the Lord would add daily unto His church such as should be saved. And that's why, because of the blessing received, that's why I believe it was right and proper that we did offer and have a time of praise and give praise unto our God. Sometimes we can become too rigid, and we sometimes think if we're going to do something different, well then, it's something wrong, or it's something that might grieve the Spirit of God. But that is not the case. God does different things in revival. God does new things in revival. God doesn't do anything that is contrary to the Word of God. Of course we know that. But God nevertheless does those things that are different to the norm. And I think the majority of us, if not all of us, would agree that the Bible conference that we had last week was blessed by God. We prayed. for the Lord to bless us. We prayed for the Lord to be with us and he did just that. And what I don't want to happen, and what I know the Reverend Higginson doesn't want to happen, and what I know you don't want to happen, that it is as if we would just drop off the face of a cliff. And we would come down flat and fall flat and come down again to the level, the plane that we were on, that we were at in our experience with God before the Bible conference last week. Now, we wouldn't have a spiritual come down, so to speak. You see, what we heard last week, brothers and sisters, was really only something to whet our appetite. You see, God wants us to follow on. God wants us to press on. God wants us to go higher and at the same time to go deeper with him, to cultivate our relationship with him, to do as we have been instructed in the week gone by, to put away our sin, to continue to plead his promises that he would open the windows of heaven, that we would prove him. that we would continue to wrestle on with God in prayer until the blessing we receive. That we would become those people, those willing people that God is able to bless with revival if he so sovereignly willed it. You see, the Lord is able to give us much more than this. And I wonder, do you believe that? Do I believe that? We can never come to the end of our God. There's always more of God to know and to experience. He's a glory that is inexhaustible, a glory that is manifest, a glory of which Moses, we heard about this in the Lord's Day morning, of Moses when he saw the back parts, just a little bit of the glory of God, and yet it was such a blessing to him, and such a blessing was conferred upon Moses that he lived in that blessing for his days, and through that blessing, he was able to bless the nation of Israel. My thoughts for this evening, therefore, were directed yesterday morning to this portion in John 10. And especially the words which we find in verse 22. And when he had said this, he breathed on them and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost. Now the context is well known. The Lord Jesus had been crucified and even though he told his disciples that this was something that would happen and that he would rise again the third day, well this was a body blow to them. They had witnessed the Lord get out of many a sticky situation before. Before he was threatened to be killed, he was threatened to be stoned, but he was able on those occasions to confound his accusers, to silence them, or at other times he was able, mystically and imperceptibly, to depart out of his enemies in the very midst of them. But not this time. He was taken, he was crucified. Disciples, they were gathered together for fear. Fear had taken hold of them because, it tells us there, of the Jews. You probably thought that now that their leader is taken out, well then surely his followers are next in the sights of the Jews. Then the same thing might happen to them and if not crucifixion, well most certainly and probably persecution. You see, before when those men, they had faced opposition and persecution, well, the Savior was always beside them. The Savior was always with them to answer their critics, to defend them, and to protect them, and to answer for them, but now he was not present with them. And so they were, they were gathered there for fear of the Jew. They had shut themselves into the upper room. They did something wise. They went back to the place, the last place that they had intimate fellowship with their Lord. They went back to the place where he had instituted the Lord's Supper and where he sang praises with them. It's good to get back to the place where we have communion with God and wait for him there. But I don't know if these men were waiting. Rather I suspect, as we read, they were simply worrying. But it's into the midst of this group of few fearful disciples that the Lord Jesus comes. I wonder what they were thinking or speaking about prior to this. I wonder were they trying to come up with a plan or what we do now? What were they saying one to the other? Or maybe they were just stunned in absolute silence, looking at each other, wondering what next. And Christ comes. He comes and he manifests his presence, real, tangible, immediate presence with them, and he speaks those wonderful, comforting words to them, peace be unto you. A sight and sound of the crucified Christ that made a difference, changed a scene that turned their sadness into gladness. And it's in this little section that we have those words of verse 22. And when he had said this, he breathed on them and saith unto them, receive ye the Holy Ghost. And I want to consider that verse under the heading this evening, he breathed on them. Three simple points. Before we get down to prayer, we heard much about prayer last week. The necessity of prayer and the forerunner of prayer to revival, personal, collective, whatever it is. And so we must pray on. Three simple things. Firstly, the sign of the Spirit. We read here that the Lord Jesus, He breathed on them and said unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost. Now the symbolic action that the Lord Jesus performed here, well it reminds us of the creation account. When into the nostrils of Adam was breathed the breath of life and he became a living soul. You see up until that point, Adam, he had all bodily parts, he had bodily functions and faculties, and yet, and yet he had no vital life within. That was until the Lord did what he did. See, he who has eternal life, the one who possesses life that is underrived, he imparted the gift of life into Adam, and from that point onwards, Adam was able to do what God had created him to do, and then was able to do the tasks that God would eventually give him to do, like dressing the garden and keeping it, like naming the animals, like being fruitful and multiply, and replenishing the earth with offspring. And what the Lord Jesus did here in this account, it's not to suggest that the disciples were spiritually dead up until this point. Some people I read today in this, and that's what they believed. That's absolute nonsense. Those men believed and followed Christ. No, rather this was a sign that unto them was imparted the spiritual vitality and dynamic power of the Holy Ghost. which they needed in order to fulfill the commission that they had been given in the verse prior to this. In verse 21, the Lord said unto them, As my Father has sent me, even so send I you. Just as Jesus was sent by the Father to accomplish a work, so these men were being sent by Christ to do a work. And this was a sign, the Lord breathing on them, that he was imparting to them vitality and the dynamic power of the Spirit of God. The Spirit of God himself in order that they might be able to do this. See, the breathing upon them was a sign, that's all it was. The church of Rome. may have the practice of their priest breathing upon certain people or certain things. For example, the priest breathes upon water, and that turns it into holy water, supposedly. Or the priest stands and he breathes upon the candidate for baptism, and apparently that sets apart or sanctifies the candidate. I thought about that and I just hope that that priest had a breath mint before he did it because it might be rather unpleasant. But joking to say that's false teaching. False teaching. The Lord Jesus did this. He performed a sign to show the disciples that the spirit of God proceeded from him and the father. We have a proof text for that in John chapter 15 and verse 26. That the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and the Son. John 15 verse 26. But when the Comforter Christ is speaking, when the Comforter has come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me. Brothers and sisters, the Holy Ghost is sent. The Holy Ghost is outpoured. The Holy Ghost proceeds. The Holy Ghost comes. Give it whatever term you want. But He comes from the Father and the Son. Therefore, it is to the Father through the Son that we need to plead for the outpouring of the Spirit so that we might be enabled to do what God has tasked us to do. Now this act of breathing on them, it is not thought to have been done individually. It wasn't as if, well Peter came up and the Lord breathed upon him, and then next in the line came John and the Lord breathed upon him, and then James and breathed upon him. But it's believed that the Lord Jesus did it collectively as they were joined there together in that one place. Don't we read about that happening in the pages of Holy Scripture? The Holy Ghost coming upon a company of people as they were joined together in one place. Didn't we hear about that a little last week and some of those accounts of revival? You know what that indicates to me and this is something that bless my soul. They all got the same spirit. Which means they'd be all led in the same way. And they would all have the one mind because it is the Spirit of God that reveals unto us the mind and the will of God. But listen, they also all got the same measure. They got the same measure. You see, there was no class system there of believers. There was no disciple there that day that got more of the Holy Spirit than another. Isn't that wonderful? And it'd be a great thing for the Holy Ghost to be breathed upon us, even as we have joined together in this fashion, as we praise and pray to our God. So there's much more I could say about the breath of God and the Holy Spirit. So that's the sign of the Spirit. But secondly, this evening, I want us to think about the seal of the Spirit. See what happened here was in part a fulfillment of the promise that the Lord had made onto his disciples before he died. He told them that he would send onto them the comforter and here that is what he is doing. It was a seal to them that he was able to do and would do what he had promised. Now we know the ultimate fulfillment of this promise to say in the spirit of God it came at the day of Pentecost. Nevertheless what happened in the upper room was a stamp of approval by the Lord Jesus that he would do what he said he would do and that Pentecost would fully come. This event of which we read did not as Alexander McLaren said It didn't make superfluous the further gift on the day of Pentecost. He went on to say this, the communication of the divine spirit to man runs parallel with, depends on and follows the revelation of divine truth. So the ascended Lord gave more of that life to his disciples who had been incapable of more of it by the fact of beholding his ascension. than the risen Lord could give on that Easter day. This is a point that really got me in the study as I thought about this. We follow his line of thinking, but I'll have to say it actually came to me before I read McLaren on it. It wasn't in that moment, this moment here, which we read, that these disciples could become any more fuller. Because the Lord filled them with the Spirit that first day of the week as the doors were shut. And that would mean then, if that was the case, well then the outpouring of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost would have been redundant and would have been unneeded. No, what it rather means is that in that intervening period between the Lord's death, His resurrection, when He showed Himself unto them with many infallible proofs and talked to them as they saw His ascension, as they wrestled with the promises that He gave and stretched their heart in prayer, those men, those men, had a greater capacity to be filled with more of God and more of the Holy Spirit. Their capacity to be filled increased. You see, they would always receive a fullness. You see, there is a fullness in God as inexhaustible. You and I were finite. Nevertheless we can be filled and we do be filled with the spirit of God but our capacity to be filled increases. God always fills his people. And this is the reality brother and sisters you and I have as much of God as we want. That's the reality. We have as much as God as we want. Are we growing. Is our heart expanding with love? Is our mind stretching with the knowledge of our Lord in order that you and I might be filled with greater and greater degrees of God the Holy Ghost? Because He infills His people. We are to be continually infilled. We read about disciples being filled, not once but again and again and again and again. And I believe those men that day, as Christ breathed upon them, were filled with the Holy Ghost. But it didn't make that gift on the day of Pentecost, the outpouring of the Spirit, superfluous. Because I believe those men in the intervening time, spending time with the Lord, they had and developed a greater capacity to be filled with more of God. be filled again and again and again, even with a greater fullness that they had known before. You see the fact that the Lord has filled us in the past, and the fact that the Lord has filled us in order that we might have been enabled to do a certain task, whatever it might be, it is a seal. It is a seal, brethren and sisters, that He will do it again. The first infilling, the continual infillings, the subsequent infillings, does not make superfluous a mighty outpouring of the Spirit of God that there's not room enough to receive. Rather, it gives us the confidence to pray that the Lord will do that very thing. And I believe this is why this is a seal to these men. The Lord breathed on them and says, receive the Holy Ghost. He had told them, and he would tell them they were to tarry in Jerusalem until they would be endued with power from on high. And the very fact they had the seal and had the assurance because he had done it to them in the upper room, it gave them the confidence to say, well, this is going to happen. So there is the seal of the Spirit, the sign of the Spirit, the seal of the Spirit, finally, and very briefly, the sanction of the Spirit. I've already mentioned that in verse 21, The Lord was sending out his disciples. In verse 23 he says, To those men whom he had breathed upon and who had received the Holy Ghost, he said, Whosoever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them, and whosoever sins ye retain, they are retained. Now time has gone. We can't go on to explaining what these words mean. But you know full well that the disciples couldn't forgive sin. No man can. Only God can forgive sin. But through the spreading of the gospel and the preaching of the gospel, sinners would know the forgiveness of sins, and they would repent and believe. And it was the infilling of the Holy Spirit that sanctioned them, or give these men the authority and the power to serve and to declare the word of God. You see, of themselves, they had no power. Of themselves, they had no authority. But being the vessels of the Lord, being infilled with the Spirit of God, they could, as Paul said to Titus, speak and exhort and rebuke with all authority. And so the anointing, the infilling of the Spirit of God gave these men the sanction, gave them the authority, gave them the power to do as God had said. So the sanction of the Spirit. Brothers and sisters, the Bible conference has come and gone, but we still have not experienced revival. We may feel as far away from it as ever. Let us pray. Let us pray that the Lord would breathe his Spirit upon us. just like he did to these disciples, so that you and I would be like the 120 that met together prior to the day of Pentecost, who experienced, listen, not simply a breath. They experienced something described as a sound, as of a rushing, mighty wind. Every day we ask the Lord and rise from our beds and ask the Lord to infill us. He does. He fills his people. But the more we walk and grow with Christ, the more our hearts are stretched and are exercised over the promises of God, the more of God you and I can know and experience and be infilled with. Long for the day that the blessing of the Spirit comes upon us in such a portion that there's not room enough to receive, but out of our bellies will flow that river of living water. We heard that last week, this He speak of the Spirit. This is what we need. May the Lord bless his word to our hearts this evening. Let's take our hymn books again. We'll have a word of prayer just and then we'll sing the hymn that we had planned to sing. Let's just look to the Lord in prayer. Let's pray. Loving Father, eternal God, we thank the Lord for this wonderful account of Christ in the midst. We thank you for the many blessed promises of our God. of how we are to be and can be, and filled with God's Holy Spirit. Loving Father, we thank Thee that the Spirit proceeds from You and from Your Son. And therefore, loving Father, we come to Thee, and we pray that Thou will pour out Thy Spirit upon us. Bless the Word. Help us, Lord, in a time of prayer. We ask this in the Redeemer's name. Amen.