John 20:19-23 (New Creation People - Part 1)

Thank you for subscribing to the Shepherds Church podcast. This is our Lord's Day Sermon. We pray that as we declare the

Word of God that you would be encouraged, strengthened in your faith, and that you would catch a greater vision of who

Christ is. May you be blessed in the hearing of God's Word, and may the Lord be with you.

If you've ever been to Bryce Canyon in Utah, you will know that it is one of the most beautiful and interesting spots,

I think, in all of the United States. I rank it as one of my top two or three places that I've been in all of my little travels that I have gotten the chance, by the

Lord's grace, to see. But one of the best things about it is this breathtaking sunrise that occurs on Inspiration Point.

It's the highest point at Bryce Canyon, and it looks perfectly down into this little canyon where there's,

I think it's called stalagmites, but it's formations that grow upward, not the ones that grow downward. And what happens is across the horizon, it's as flat as it can possibly be, except for where you're up on this high point, and upon the horizon you'll see the sun just barely starting to creep over the skyline, and all of these little formations, these stalagmites, are starting to get lit up.

The shadows are going away. The light is casting detail on all of these beautiful different things, and it's honestly breathtaking.

If you want to see more, you can obviously Google it. I've got a great picture on my phone from the moment.

My grandpa and I actually slept in our rental car, which was a very small little

Chevy Volt, and I'm not a very small man, so it was not comfortable. We slept in Zion National Park just so that we could see the sunrise.

We had heard a lot about it, and it was breathtaking, and it revealed so much beauty that we couldn't see just minutes before.

Now that's sort of a comparison to what we're going to look at in John chapter 20. Mary comes to the tomb, and it's dark, and it's empty, and she comes as a woman who's blind.

She can't see the things of God, and she's wondering what is happening. Instead of the sun rising, the sun rose, and he brought light onto everything that was dark, and just like me standing up on top of this thing straining, and then all of a sudden

I can see everything, this is what we see in John chapter 20, that Jesus brings light, and that all of the beauty and the complexity of the scriptures is revealed to his people because he's the light of the world.

Now what we're going to do today is we're going to look at just a few verses in John chapter 20, and we're going to see that there's a lot underneath them that we would not see if we didn't have the light of Jesus's new creation shining on it.

We're going to see as he shines his light on this passage that Mary's story, like we saw last week, becomes our story.

The disciples' story becomes our story, and the reason we can have so much confidence in who we are in Christ is because today we're going to see that he has brought new creation upon us.

Like I said in our law homily, we are new creations. The old things have passed away.

The new has come, and today we're going to see eight points. There would have been 14, but I decided to divide the sermon into two.

You're welcome. There's eight things that we're going to see today about new creation.

We're going to see that Jesus is the one who...oh, and they're all C's. So I'm trying to make this helpful. When I have a lot of points,

I try to make it helpful. Jesus is the one who commissions new creation. He's the one who resets the new creation clock.

He's the one who overturns the old creation's chaos. He's the one who makes new creation carne.

I couldn't think of a word for body, so there you go. Jesus gives us new creation companion, the

Holy Spirit. He makes us new creation chapels. He turns us into new creation cities, and he gives us a new creation commission or a craft.

So with that, turn with me to John 20, 19 through 23, as we see eight things that Jesus has done to us by manner of bringing new creation.

So John chapter 20, we will begin in verse 19. I'll wait just a moment for you to get there, and now that moment is finished.

John 20, 19 through 23. So when it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and when the doors were shut where the disciples were for fear of the

Jews, Jesus came and stood in their midst and said to them, And when he had said this, he showed them both his hands and his side, and the disciples rejoiced when they saw the

Lord. So Jesus said to them again, And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them,

If you forgive the sins of any, their sins have been forgiven them. If you retain the sins of any, they have been retained.

We'll wait for that verse next week. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, thank you for the fact that you are bringing new creation.

The old creation fell into sin and misery. The old creation fell into ruin and chaos, and because of your resurrection, new creation is coming and has already come.

Lord, help us today to see that right now as we live on earth, there are two creations that are existing.

One is growing and one is decreasing. One is becoming greater, one is becoming less.

One is the old creation of sin and idolatry and misery and separation from God, and the other creation that is overtaking that creation, that old creation, is new creation.

The new creation people of God who've been bought and paid for by Christ, the first fruit of a new creation.

Lord, help us to see that we've been caught up into that, that we are fundamentally different as the people of God from the people of the world, and Lord help us with joy in our hearts to be missionaries and servants to declare these good things to the nation so that the nations would come in.

Lord, we ask these things in Jesus name. Amen. Now in John 20,

John chapter 20, we have finally arrived in the New Testament, and maybe you're like, how is that possible?

We've been in the book of John for three and a half years, Kendall. Actually, I think probably four.

You're like, we're already in the New Testament, and I would say, well, in one way you're right. But John chapter 1 through John chapter 19 is before Jesus is raised from the dead.

So the old covenant pattern still exists. The temple still exists. There is no resurrected

Savior. So in some way, we're now in the New Testament after four years of being in the

Old Testament, watching Jesus do ministry. Now, He is alive and He is reigning.

So in that sense, we come to our text today. We're in the New Testament. New creation is only ten hours old at this point, and it only has two members.

Well, three. The thief on the cross, who Jesus said, today you'll be with me in paradise, and two living members,

Jesus and Mary. Mary's the only one so far who's come into the new creation kingdom, and we saw that last week.

Now, just ten hours into this new creation world, Jesus is going to multiply

His followers. He began, as we talked about last week, like Adam and Mary, or like Adam and Eve in the garden.

Jesus began with Him and Mary. But now, He's gonna do what Adam and Eve should have done and multiply to the glory of God.

And what's He gonna do? He's gonna take His new creation light to the disciples, and He's gonna win them over so that we go from 2 to 14, 13 technically,

Judas is dead, from 2 to 13 people instantly. He's gonna start with a small spark in Mary, and He's gonna cause it to be a wildfire that has now gone to 2 .5

billion people or more on earth. Pretty amazing. Our first point is that Jesus is the one who brings new creation.

And in this point, I'd like to actually prove to you that new creation is a part of this passage. I want you to see that old creation as it existed, types, shadows, and separation from God is passing away, and that Jesus has brought something fundamentally new.

He's made a new world, and that new world is overtaking the old world. When John begins this passage, he says, so when it was evening on that day, the first day of the week.

John is being very deliberate here. You remember last week, we talked about, John said, and so it was morning.

And now he says, so it was evening. So you have an evening and morning pattern.

Just like where? In the book of Genesis. In the book of Genesis, the old creation was began by evening and morning.

Now, the new creation has begun by morning and evening. Now we start from light instead of starting from darkness.

In that original creation week, it was light that first came into the world.

It was light that broke through the darkness, and that is exactly what happened when Mary found the tomb of Jesus.

The world was dark. You remember when Jesus on the cross, darkness came upon the land. You remember that the earth was shaking and breaking because the old world was falling apart.

And when Jesus came out of the tomb the first morning.

Now, why am I saying that this is a new creation? Because the old creation had this evening and morning pattern.

Evening and morning the first day, evening and morning the second day, evening and morning the third day, and it goes on until the seventh day.

You'll notice that there is not an evening and morning the eighth day because God established a heptamerous structure for the world.

A seven -day week. So that old creation was finished on the sixth day and God reigned on the seventh because there was no more evening and morning.

God's continued to reign ever since. But now the next evening and morning passage in the

Bible is John 20. After thousands of years of no evening and morning new creation patterns, now

God is doing new things again. He's made a new evening and morning and he's made it in his Son. This is not the beginning of the eighth day of the old creation.

This is the beginning of the first day of a new creation. And we know that because Jesus is the light of the world who broke forward out of the tomb just like God spoke light and in the first creation.

Again, remember the old creation began with darkness. The new creation begins with light. You'll remember that in the old creation story

God took his presence and he began ordering the chaos.

And here Jesus is taking his presence, sharing it with his people, and bringing them into peace.

He's ordering the chaos in the same way. So you have a new creation cycle. You have new creation that's commissioned.

But there's more. The second thing I'd like to share with you is that he restarted, he fixed the old creation clock.

He fixed time because time was broken. You remember in Genesis 1?

This is like the stalagmites that I talked about in the introduction. I'm just going to talk about eight of them that the light is shining on and hopefully we'll see beauty in the new creation that Jesus is bringing.

So time. Time began when God said, in the beginning. There was no time before in the beginning because time hadn't started.

But when Moses says in the beginning there was God, time and space began to exist at that very point.

God before that was existing eternally in infinite timeless glory. But when he started earth, the cosmos, time began.

Time was created. Space was created. And the clock. Our understanding of time began, but it didn't last for very long because in Genesis chapter 3 the clocks were broken.

Before Genesis chapter 3, time was a blessing to God's people. Time was the accumulation of days.

If you'd lived for 800 years, if Adam had not had sinned, time would have been a glory to him.

It would have been, I've lived with God for 800 years, 8 ,000 years, 800 ,000 years, but Adam sinned.

And because Adam sinned, time now became a curse. Now everyone in this room understands this.

The more time you accumulate, the more cursed your body feels. Time was broken.

Time, instead of causing greater blessings, now invites greater brokenness.

So time itself was broken. But in a way, time itself was fixed in John chapter 20.

Not perfectly, because that'll happen at the end, but time spiritually was fixed.

Why? Why do I say that? Because in the original creation, we died spiritually instantly and our body started to decay over time.

Here, for all those who are in Christ, they're alive. They're alive in a spiritual way and they have been given eternal life.

The clock has been fixed. No longer is time a curse to you. No longer is death a curse to the

Christian. Everyone else on earth can legitimately be afraid of death because death welcomes them into an eternity of sorrow, not the

Christian. The Christian need not be afraid of death because death welcomes us into the presence of Christ.

And death ushers us into a place where now we wait on the end when it gets even better, where our body and our soul are joined back together again, and we live with Jesus physically in a garden paradise forever.

Time is now our friend as Christians. Time is now that thing that's been given to us so that we can live and serve the

Lord. One of my favorite poems I tell this to my children a lot is by C .T. Studd, which is a great last name if you're a man.

Who are you? I'm Mr. Studd. C .T. Studd said, all things shall soon be passed, only what is done for Christ will last.

And that's a longer poem, but that's the only part that I remember and that's vibrant to me because now time is my friend.

Now time has been given to me as a gift so that I can love and serve the Lord and death has been given to me as a gift so that I can go and be with him.

So Paul says that whether I live it is good and whether I die it is well because to live is

Christ, to die is gain. Now time is a blessing. It's no longer a curse.

Jesus has brought new creation time. That's the second thing. The third thing is that he is now crushing the chaos, old creation chaos.

Do you remember when God made the world, what does he do? I want to prove something to you.

It's really fascinating. The very first thing that God does after he declares that light comes, he's hovering over the chaos.

He actually does that before he declares light. He hovers over the chaos. He's hovering over the waters. This is a fascinating thing.

Why would God hover over waters? What does that even mean? And where did the waters come from?

Well in the ancient world, waters were the untamable realm.

Waters represented chaos. You can read it in Babylonian literature. You can read it in Canaanite literature. You can read it in any of the ancient societies.

Water meant chaos. Why? Because it was untamable. You couldn't tame the waters.

You build a ship and the waters destroy it. You try to go across the sea and you take your life in your own hands.

Water is something that refuses to be ordered by man, and it's still the case today.

Our elites are talking about going to Mars and we haven't even explored the oceans. I think they're more afraid of the oceans because the oceans are perilous.

Who knows what's buried underneath there? What I find so interesting about water in the ancient world is the great shipmakers, the

Philistines and even the Romans. Do you know how they sailed? They didn't sail through deep water.

That didn't happen until much, much, much later. If you wanted to sail from Jerusalem to Rome or from Rome to Jerusalem or across a large body of water, you would sail along the coastline so that you would never lose sight of the land.

Why? Because if you crash, because the water is so dangerous, you can at least hopefully swim back to shore.

So the way that they sailed was they took the long way, right hugging up against the land.

Because why? The water is dangerous. It's chaotic. In some ways, I think this is why

God reveals himself as being the one who hovers over the water. Because no one can tame the water but God.

No one can bring order to the chaos but God. That's why in Genesis 1, he hovers like a bird over the water.

That's why when the flood happened, the symbol of the Holy Spirit being that dove hovering over the water.

That's why he sets his throne upon the flood in Psalm 29 10. He says that I the

Lord reign over the flood. You talk about a chaotic body of water.

It's not like a gentle little pond that is in your backyard where you fish for, you know, little fish or whatever else you do there.

This is a flood. The dam waters have been released. It's raging. It's flowing. It's drowning.

It's breaking and yet God puts his throne above the waters. Why do you think

Jesus walked on water? Was he showing off? Or was he saying, you know God in the Old Testament, Yahweh who puts his throne above the water.

I'm that God. I'm the one who rule. I'm the one who ordered the chaos. I'm the one who speaks in the storm stops.

He's showing that he is the one who breaks and orders the chaos. He's the one who pushes it back.

Now in the first creation, God orders the chaos. We see this in six successive days.

He separates light from darkness. That's him ordering what was disordered. He separates sky from water or sky water from sky.

The waters above from the waters below. That's him ordering what was disordered. He separates the ground from the land.

The water from the dry land. That's him ordering day three. And then in day four, five, and six, he installs rulers who will extend his order to creation.

He installs the rulers in the sky, the sun, moon, and stars who rule over the day and the night. He installs rulers in the air and the water, the birds and the the sea beasts that team and and fill the waters in the air.

He installs rulers over the ground. Humans who will bring his order to the world. Do you remember the first job that God gave

Adam is to till the garden. To order it. To bring order to disorder.

And if he was successful in his job and he would have filled the garden full of worshiping people, he would have had to order the whole world.

Because he would have had to extend the borders of the garden until the whole world was a garden paradise.

He would have had to bring God's order to a disordered world. So God in the first chapter of Genesis is deliberately showing that he's the one who tames the chaos.

He's the one who brings order to the disorder. And yet, what do we see in our sin in Genesis chapter 3?

Humans were supposed to partner with God in bringing order to the world. And what did they do? They unleashed chaos back on the world.

Sin is chaos. That's a really good definition if you want to know what sin is. Sin is the welcoming of chaos on your life.

When you sin, you're not just breaking a rule. You are welcoming disorder, confusion, and chaos.

And what we see in the rest of the Old Testament is people, nations, and institutions that can't bring order.

Moses and the people of Israel, they can't do it. The temple, the priests, the kings, the prophets, the sacrifice, the feast, all of it.

All of it. So that at the end of the Old Testament, there is more chaos than ever. Jesus is the one who began the pushback.

Because Jesus is God, he's the one who came and ordered the chaos. He's the one who put sin and misery to flight in his resurrection.

He's the one who's going to bring every curse under healing. Jesus rose from the dead in order to begin the ministry of restoration.

So that all the world that's filled with chaos and sin and misery will come under his lordship. So that after his reign is finished, the world will look like he wants it.

He will bring order to it in a world that's still filled with disorder. And maybe you're like, well, that takes a long time.

Of course it does. It took 4000 years for the earth to get in the shape that it was in. If that's the case, we're only halfway through the restoration plan.

And I think there's more time than that. You remember every year when you go to get your Christmas lights out of the attic, the knot that they're in.

If you've ever seen Christmas Vacation, the knot that those lights are in. Jesus is the one who untangles the knots, who brings order to a chaotic world.

Let me give you some examples of this. You think about government. If there's one place on earth that is perpetually knotted up, where people are tripping over each other and abounding in confusion and chaos, it is government.

And yet Jesus has slowly over the last 2000 years been unwinding the chaos that is inherent in human government.

How do I know that? Well, in John chapter 20, there was one

Christian alive and there was Jesus, Mary and Jesus. Then his 12 disciples came later.

Do you know today that over the last 2000 years, there have been more Christian nations than I can count to you right now that I could even find in my research?

There's been nations who declare that they are Christian nations. Right now, and I'm not saying that all of these are genuine, but right now there are at least that I could find.

30 presidents, kings, prime ministers, leaders of countries who say that they are Christian.

In 2000 years, Jesus went from an entirely unknown messianic figure in the backwater area of Judah to now entire nations call themselves

Christians. And we're now people in halls of power say that they're believers. Do you see how multiplicative the gospel has been over the last 2000 years so that now it's grown and so that now it's even infecting the halls of power in a good way?

Praise God for that. I think before this world is over, we will have a world filled with Christian princes and kings and politicians, and he will,

Jesus will finish the job of taming the chaos. So that now we don't have governments that celebrate evil.

So that in the future, we won't have kings who celebrate a culture of death. Jesus will bring his order to the nations.

Now you ask yourself, are we finished? Absolutely not. We have a lot of work to do. We have a lot of work to do.

There's Christians in this room who ran for office. Do it again. Bring Jesus into the political sphere.

Bring Jesus into the school boards. Bring Jesus into your job. Bring Jesus into every area of your life.

Why? Because there's a lot of chaos that needs to be untangled by the blood of Christ, and he's using you as his ambassadors.

Go on to DEI boards and wreck them to the glory of God. Go on to school boards and wreck them to the glory of God.

Bring his order and his life and his love and his peace to places that are still dark. If we don't, then who will?

When Jesus tells us that we're the salt of the earth, salt is a preserving agent in an era where they did not have refrigerators.

If you didn't put salt on your bacon, your bacon turned green. If we don't be this, if we're not the salt of this country and the salt of the world, then what will happen to our country?

It's exactly what has happened to our country. As we've pulled back, it's turned putrid.

So Jesus is using his people to bring order to the chaos. Why? Because he's the one who brings order to the chaos.

What about healthcare? Healthcare is in shambles right now. I barely want to participate in healthcare because the entire industry is built on greed.

The entire industry, and I'm a novice in this area, so forgive me, but it's built upon a subscription plan to keep you sick and keep you a customer forever.

It's not built on health. It's not built on restoring you to good health and order.

It's built on keeping you sick enough but alive enough to where you can continue to pay so that they can have the biggest buildings in town.

Do you know that God wants to reinvigorate healthcare? Why? Christians are the ones who invented hospitals.

Christians are the ones who, in the Old Testament, were the ones who brought health and healing. That's what the priests were.

Do you know God was the one who invented centralized healthcare? He put a tree of life in the middle of the garden.

Centralized healthcare. He's the one who healed people of diseases. He's the one who brought his new creation.

Jesus is the one who healed people of their sicknesses and cured them of their diseases. When they died, he defeated death.

When he died, he defeated death. He's the one who led his people to invent medicines and vaccines.

The reason that many of us today are afraid of vaccines is because the world is not godly.

Because they're weaponizing technology in ways that aren't for human life and flourishing, but they're using it for things that are breaking life and destroying human flourishing.

My point is that Jesus is the one who tames the chaos. Jesus is the one who takes us and uses us to tame the chaos.

He's the one who causes our people to be the ones who made the most beautiful orchestras, the greatest composer of all time is

Bach. Bach was a devoted Christian. You think about the great hymns of the church. You think about artwork and every industry that the world has that once flourished.

Science, engineering, the guy who invented the telegraph, all of it was invented by Christians.

Why? Because they saw their role as a Christian, as my Jesus is bringing order to chaos and me as his servant.

Now I'm going to bring order to a broken world through inventing things and making things and starting businesses and doing all of these things.

The chaos is not going to win. The reason why it's temporarily winning a few little pop shop battles in a massive war is because the

Christian church has pulled away. We've started seeing science. Oh, no, that's what the Darwinians do.

That's what the evolutionists do. No, we need to get back into the sciences. We need to be the mathematicians.

We need to be the college professors. We need to be the presidents. We need to be the kinds of people who bring life to the world.

The church is the only one. The ones who have the Holy Spirit of God are the only ones who can bring life to a chaotic world.

The rest of the world who does not have the spirit of God can only bring more death. The chaos is not going to win and it won't win ultimately, but in our generation,

I would challenge all of us to be a part of seeing it pushed back because we belong to Christ. If we do that, it's not going to win in our government.

If we do that, it's not going to win in our country, in our commonwealth, in our county, in our city or in our community.

If we do that, it's not going to win in our church. If we do that, if we're the ones who are pushing back for the glory of God, it will not win in education.

It will not win in health care. It will not win in the arts, which are pumping sewage into our living rooms via our televisions.

It won't win in our career. It won't win in our finances. It won't win in our family. It won't win in our children. The left won't be able to steal the children that we make by their godless ideologies.

If we push back the chaos and teach them the knowledge of God, it won't win in your marriage.

It won't win in your sexuality. It won't win in your heart, your mind, your soul, your body. If we would take on the role that Jesus gave to us, the church, and to push back the things that are broken for the glory of God, then we would see the gates of hell fall down again.

Instead of mocking the church, the question that we have to wrestle with is that will it be

Christ or will it be chaos? If you have Christ, then peace and order and life come into everything that you touch.

It won't be perfect, but but you will have peace. If you don't have Christ, you will have chaos.

It is either Christ or chaos. We must choose who we will serve.

Jesus brought new creation to the chaos. He brought order to what was broken, and he's called us to be the ones who do the same.

That's number three. Number four, he's giving new creation bodies or to keep the alliteration going, carne.

I thought that was funny. I thought there'd be many people who looked at that and said, oh, well, so be it.

How do we know this is true? How do we know Jesus is going to bring new bodies? Well, we know that he brought this new evening and morning.

So he's the author of new creation. We know that Paul says that he's the new and better Adam, which means that he's going to triumph over everything that Adam failed.

But what does Jesus show up in in this passage? He shows up in a new body. He tells

Mary, he says, don't cling to me. Why does he say don't cling to me? Because he's in his resurrected body.

What does that mean? It means he's telling her first and foremost, Mary, I finished and completed my mission. Now you get about yours.

That's the first thing that it means. The second thing that it means is that he's transitioning his disciples away from reliance upon his body.

Jesus was local. If they wanted support, they went to him. If they want encouragement, they went to him. Now he's preparing them for the time where his body is not going to be with them.

His body is going to be in heaven and they're going to go through the Holy Spirit to receive help from Christ. Why can he do that?

Because he's got a resurrection body. But he's also emphasizing the fact that he's the first fruit of a new creation so that one day you and I also will receive a new body.

Amen. Look at Jesus in this passage. He can walk through walls.

He can show up out of nowhere. And people are like, how did you get there? Because he has a heavenly body, which one day you and I will have.

How do we know this? Second Thessalonians says that Jesus will return with a shout and he will call the dead out of the graves.

And he will reunite their old bodies with their spirit.

First Corinthians 15 says it will have an imperishable body. Can you imagine what that's going to be like? Because it's hard to.

But I think about like, imagine if you fell off a boat and like fish ate you.

Where's your body? I don't know, but he's going to remake it. What if you're cremated? I used to think you can't be cremated.

It was like a brand new Christian. I was like, well, how would you be cremated? That's weird. Jesus can put you back together again.

Imagine if you had spiritual eyes and you could see all of the atoms and electrons coming back together to form new imperishable bodies that be reunited with your soul.

And then in those bodies forever to praise your Lord. What a glorious thing. Christ is raised in his new creation body.

Why? To promise us that new creation bodies will come to us, which means that one day we're not going to have arthritis, which means that one day we're not going to squint to try to see things.

Which means that one day we want to have cancers and foot aches and plantar fasciitis or whatever else that afflicts us.

One day he is going to make new bodies for us to serve the Lord with joy forever. No more grimaces, no more pain, joy in his presence forever.

That's number four. Number five, he's given us a new creation companion, new creations all over this text.

It's everywhere. What do I mean by new creation companion? I mean that Jesus is going to give them a companion to be with them forever.

He's leaving and it's better that he leaves because he's going to give them his spirit. This is not the first time in the text where Jesus sent his disciples on a mission.

Look what it says, verse 21, 20 through 22. And when he had said this, he showed both of his hands and aside the disciples and they rejoiced when they saw the

Lord. So Jesus said to them again, peace be with you. As the father has sent me, I also send you.

And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, receive the Holy Spirit. He's connecting sent with spirit.

And this is not the first time that he sent them. You remember in Matthew 10, he sent them out two by two, 12 of them, or he sent them out 12 disciples to do mission in Judah.

And he was their support system. He was their paraclete. Paraclete is the Greek word, which means helper and defender.

So he sent them out in Luke chapter 10. He sent out 72 disciples and he told them, don't worry,

I'm going to take care of you. You don't need to take your money bag or your wallet or your or whatever else, your sandals, all of that.

I'm going to take care of you. He was their helper. Now, Jesus is sending them a new helper who's going to be with them forever.

First, John 2, one tells us that Jesus was the first paraclete. My little children, I'm writing these things to you so that you may not sin.

If anyone sins, we have an advocate that's paraclete with the father, Jesus Christ, the righteous. So what we see, let me bring all these thoughts together, is that Jesus was their helper before he died.

And Jesus is our helper at the throne of God after he rose again from the dead. But who's our helper here on earth?

The Holy Spirit of God, who Jesus breathes out onto his people, which is an absolutely fascinating thing that we're going to look at now in our sixth part.

So there's going to be some overlap in these points. The sixth one is that God creates new creation chapels. He's not only shared his spirit, his spirit is going to make us into churches.

His spirit is going to make us into temples of the living God. It starts out with God breathing onto them.

How does the Bible begin? With God breathing onto Adam. It said that he made

Adam and formed him out of the dust of the earth, and he breathed on him the breath of life. Here, Jesus is doing the same thing.

He's taking his old dusty disciples who are dead in their sins, and he's breathing life into them and making them new creations.

He's breathing the spirit on them to make them new. This is the same God, in fact, who breathed and the waters of the

Red Sea separated, and he sent his spirit to lead them. This is the same God who breathed his smoky presence in the temple.

His Holy Spirit was there to sanctify them. He's the same one who is now making us into new temples.

Think about it this way. In the temple, in the back room, in the

Holy of Holies is where God dwelt. That's where the Holy Spirit of God dwelled in the

Holy of Holies. The Holy Spirit is the one whose power was emanating over the mercy seat of the

Ark of the Covenant. And now, because of Christ, the Holy Spirit is no longer in an empty room.

The Holy Spirit is now in people. In the temple, that empty room is where the

Holy Spirit was. Now, in the upper room, the Holy Spirit has come upon Jesus' people. What does that mean?

That means that they are the walking, talking temples of God. The temple is where the

Holy Spirit lives. So, if the Holy Spirit lives in you, guess what? You're a temple. But you're a better temple than the one in Jerusalem.

The one in Jerusalem didn't have any legs. The temple in Jerusalem was stationary.

It could not move. When God makes you a temple, that means that His tabernacling presence can go anywhere on earth.

No longer do people need to come on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem or to Mecca or to whatever holy city you can come up with.

Now, when the world wants to know God and they want to see the presence of God and they want to hear the word of God, they come to you.

You are the walking, talking temple of God because the Holy Spirit now lives in you.

He's also made us new creation cities. This is point seven, if you're keeping track, so seven of eight.

I want you to remember that he says twice in this passage, peace be upon you.

There is no words that are wasted in John's gospel. Jesus is not just giving a compensatory greeting, peace be upon you.

Why'd you say that, Jesus? Because that's what I ought to say. I mean, there's nothing else better than peace be upon you. That's not what Jesus is doing.

Where is this happening? In the upper room. Where's the upper room? Jerusalem.

In Hebrew, Jerusalem is a Yerushalem, which means the foundation of peace.

Yerushalom. Jerusalem was the city that was where the peace of God dwelled.

It was the foundation of peace. So when Jesus here is speaking to his disciples in the city of Jerusalem saying, peace be upon you, he's fulfilling the prophecies of Zechariah 10.

He is fulfilling the prophecies of Revelation 22, that his church would become the new

Jerusalem of God. The old Jerusalem is going to be destroyed in 40 years. It's going to be absolutely turned into rubble.

The old temple is going to be destroyed. So Jesus is making his people into temples that cannot be destroyed by armies and cities that cannot be destroyed by fire.

You and I are the temple of God. We are the city of God. We are the place where the world gets to know the peace of God.

What is peace? Peace is not just the cessation of war. Peace is the ordering of everything into God's goodness.

My favorite example of peace in the Old Testament is a wall. A wall is said to have peace when it has no cracks, because the builder of the wall has mended it and perfected it and shaped it to where it has a unity and a coherence about it.

Your life has peace when there's no more brokenness in you and your soul perfectly has peace because Jesus said to his disciples and by extension, you peace be on you.

You are the new Jerusalem. That old city was destroyed.

Now you are the city of God. You are the place where the world comes to see true peace. When, when everyone else on earth's world is falling apart, you are the one that has peace when everyone else is freaking out because, because something bad happened in your life.

You're the one who says, no, no, no, no. My God's in control. They're like, how can you speak that way? Because I have the peace of God. When you're attacked, when you're afflicted, when you're oppressed, when you're spoken poorly about, when people gossip about you, when you have a bad diagnosis at the doctor, when your knee gives out, whatever it is, you don't freak out because you're the ones that have the peace of God.

And that is an apologetic and a witness to the faith that Christ has given you because the world has no peace.

And when they see you, they see the peace of God. When they see you, they see new Jerusalem. Jerusalem.

And just like we said with the temple, you're not a stationary Jerusalem. You're a walking, talking Jerusalem that showcases to the world, the peace of God to take his love, take his peace, take his kindness, take his grace, take his mercy out these doors today and bring it to the world as the new temple, as the new

Jerusalem, number eight, we get a new creation commission so far, we've learned that Jesus is the one who brought new creation.

He's the one who brought us a new creation companion and that companion has made us into temples and cities for the glory of God.

What's our job now? Our job is to go to work. Our job is to be sent.

Jesus says in this passage, again, peace I say to you as the father has sent me, I also send you.

So to be a Christian means to be one who's sent. There is no definition of a

Christian that doesn't involve being sent. If you're a Christian, you are a sent one.

If you're a Christian, then you are equipped to go. The difference between the old Testament and the new

Testament is the old Testament is come and see the new Testament is go and tell. And now that is all of our jobs.

Today, we gather in the Lord's presence. We've come and we've tasted and we've seen. We leave here to go and tell if you're a

Christian, that is our job. We are sent ones to bring the glory of God, the grace of God, the mercy of God, the love of God, the justice of God to the world that cannot see it.

Again, if you're not speaking, they're not hearing. If you're not showing, they're not understanding.

God has given you and I the duty, the privilege of being the ones who go and are sent to tell

I was telling my children this the other day, I will end with this. The word gospel is a political statement in the old world, in the ancient world.

The word gospel doesn't mean a spiritual story that makes us feel good on Sundays.

The gospel is a word that was used when emperors had babies.

It's a good news story that everybody ought to hear. Why should everybody hear it?

Because the emperor is the one who pays for the news and he gets to tell you what news you hear. He doesn't care about you.

He cares about what he wants you to know. And what he wants you to know is don't think that I'm going to die and you're going to get off the hook.

I'm going to die and my son's going to rule over you. So rejoice. We've actually found archaeological discoveries that use the word gospel in this way with Emperor Augustus.

It says, peace be upon the earth, Augustus has been born, gospel, good news.

So that word predates Christians. That word is not a Christian word. It's one that we took from the pagans and said, it doesn't apply to you.

It applies to him. Because Caesar is not Lord, Jesus is. And guess what?

When you had a gospel news story in the ancient world, you paid for heralds and you bought and paid for their service and you sent them out into the world to tell everybody your good news.

So when Christ rose from the dead and when Christ poured out his spirit upon his people and made them walking, talking temples and walking, talking cities, he gave them a job.

He made them his heralds to share the good news of Christ with all the nations. That's our job.

Every town that is represented in this room has a gospel witness in you. Go, tell, share, declare.

Because his good news is better than any news. He's the one who's reconciled you, forgiven you, saved you, and he can do the same for our families, as our sister prayed for earlier, our friends, our neighbors, our coworkers, everything.

Go and share the good news of Christ. You are a new creation. Let's pray. Lord, there's so many aspects of new creation that we talked about today.

How you fixed time so that time is no longer our enemy, how you've ordered the chaos and how you will continue bringing your order and your dominion and your rule and your power to the world.

How you're going to do that through totally reviving our spirits through regeneration and eventually giving us new bodies.

But in the meantime, while we wait on those new bodies, you've given us the spirit of God to make us into temples, to share the life -giving blessings of God with the nations.

You've made us into cities of peace to let the world know that the war is over and that Christ has come.

You've given us a commission to make us to be going and telling ones, heralds of this new creation.

Lord, I pray that as slaves you would make us obedient. Lord, I pray that our entire life would be ordered by and marked by these things, new creation.

Lord, let us not be consumed with careers and jobs, although those are good things.

Let us not be consumed with the things of the world and entertainment and vacations and bigger and better houses and cars and whatever else.

Lord, let our hearts pump and bleed for the identity that you've given us in new creation and for the mission that you've given us in new creation.

Let us be a people like the first century who turn the world upside down for the glory of Jesus Christ.