In the last few weeks we have been looking at the various aspects of apostasy as a contrast to believing the truth.  Apostasy, as you know, is the act of turning away from the truth.  We started out examining the apostasy of the church in the example of the disciples at the arrest of Jesus.  Peter’s denial of Christ exemplified the apostasy of the church.

Then last week we looked at the apostasy of the world, particularly as evidenced by religion and politics.  The Jewish religious leaders under Annas exemplified apostate religion, and Pilate illustrated apostasy in politics.

Today we are going to look at one last example of apostasy, and that is the apostasy of government.  Government is a divinely appointed institution, which God uses for HIs purposes.  Romans 13:1 says, “Every person is to be in subjection to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God.”  However, even though God has established government, and has given it the authority to govern, we will see in this passage how as an institution it has turned away from the truth of God, or become apostate, and instead serves the purposes of man.

We might further define those three entities which are apostate as follows; Religion is man’s attempts to reach God; attempting to administer divine truth by mans methods. Politics is the art of compromise; attempting to manipulate truth to reach a consensus among men. And government is the rule of the people (the rule of law); attempting to enforce man’s truth through law.  In each case, truth is subservient to man and not vice versa, as God intended it.

Now as we go through this passage, we will see seven ways in which government evidenced apostasy.  As I have previously pointed out, Truth is on trial.  Jesus is the manifestation of divine truth.  And He is on trial for that truth which He manifests from God.  

So in rebellion against the Truth, Jesus is arrested and put on trial.  And we see seven characteristics of apostasy on the part of the government which I have outlined to help us see how this apostasy on the part of government is played out; they are exchanging the truth, mocking the truth, rejecting the truth, examining the truth, judging the truth, killing the truth, and rewriting the  truth.

First let’s consider exchanging the truth.  In chapter 18 Pilate declares, “what is truth?”  And ironically, Truth is standing right in front of him, and yet he does not recognize it.  So Pilate does what people have done for centuries, what people do even today.  As the representative of government he offers the people a choice; man’s version of the truth versus God’s designation of the Truth.  He offers them either Christ or a man called Barabbas.  Now John tells us that Barabbas was a  robber.  He was a convicted criminal. And yet when faced with the choice of choosing a criminal or an innocent man, they chose the criminal.  So basically, they chose to exchange the truth for a lie.

Paul in his letter to the Romans, says the world is condemned because of that very thing.  He says in Rom.1:25, “For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever.”  Paul isn’t just talking about pagan idolatry here, he is talking about serving the devil himself, the father of lies.  

I want to point out something interesting about the name Barabbas.  Barabbas means “son of a father”.  So we have here son of a father, Barabbas, and on the other hand Jesus who claims to be the Son of God the Father. So here is the choice that Israel is faced with. Will you release Barabbas, son of the father? Or shall I release to you Jesus the Son of God the Father?  And of course we know that they chose the creature, rather than the Creator.  So given a choice by government, the people chose to exchange the truth for a lie.

But in this travesty of human justice, let us not miss the picture of divine justice presented for us here.  In God’s court of justice, mankind stands before God as Barrabas, guilty of sin and condemned to death.  But God offers His Son, Jesus Christ, to die in our place, so that we might go free. It is the divine principle of the just dying for the unjust, the innocent taking the place of punishment for the guilty- pictured in the law as the innocent, spotless lamb slain for the sins of the people.  And this principle is stated succinctly in 2Cor. 5:21, “ [God] made [Jesus] who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”

Secondly, in it’s apostasy, government mocks the truth. As we look at the beginning of chapter 19, we see Jesus mocked by Pilate and his soldiers.  Pilate is almost obsessed with this idea of Jesus as King. Pilate of course is only a governor of Judea.  He would have to bow to a King. So when He asks Jesus in chapter 18 if He was a King, Jesus asserts that He is in fact a King, but not of this world. He is really saying “I am a King, but not of this government.” He is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords reigning throughout the world spiritually.  But rather than that statement undermining Christ’s authority, in reality it means that Pilate’s authority is subservient to Christ’s authority.  But perhaps Pilate fails to comprehend this principle in entirety, or maybe he does comprehend it, but instead of bowing to Christ as Lord, he mocks Christ’s rule.

So Pilate takes a man who he himself has declared as innocent, Jesus Christ, and has Him scourged.  John doesn’t give us the details of this scourging, but typically it was with a whip called a cat of nine tails, whose lashes were tipped with bits of glass or steel.  The law had limited the maximum number of strokes to 39, because 40 were known to kill a person.  So they scourged Jesus, probably to within an inch of His life, though He was innocent of any wrong.  Pilate reveals how cruel and evil he is, being willing to scourge an innocent man for the sake of appeasing the Jews and perhaps satiating his own jealousness towards anyone who challenged his authority.

The mockery though is even more fully revealed by the crown of thorns and the purple robe the soldiers placed on HIm, and then parading the bleeding, lacerated Christ before the mob pronouncing “Hail, King of the Jews!” and slapping Him in the face.

The mockery of apostasy as revealed in this example shows that it’s possible to espouse the truth and yet not really believe it. It’s possible to proclaim Jesus is Lord and yet live for the devil.  It’s possible that one’s actions can make a mockery of their professed faith in God.  2Peter 3:3 says, “Know this first of all, that in the last days mockers will come with their mocking, following after their own lusts.”  Claiming to be set free by the truth is made a mockery by living in sin. Faith is more than just lip service.  As James said, “show me your faith by your works.”

Thirdly, the apostasy of government rejects the truth. Vs.4, Pilate came out again and said to them, “Behold, I am bringing Him out to you so that you may know that I find no guilt in Him.”

Jesus then came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. Pilate said to them, “Behold, the Man!” So when the chief priests and the officers saw Him, they cried out saying, “Crucify, crucify!” Pilate *said to them, “Take Him yourselves and crucify Him, for I find no guilt in Him.”

Pilate asserts again and again that Christ is guiltless of any crime.  Yet in spite of that, the Jews still reject Him.  This rejection of Christ really began a long time before this trial.  Jesus spoke of this rejection in a parable found in Luke 19:14, in which the citizens of the kingdom say, “We do not want this man to reign over us.”  Jesus was speaking allegorically of the citizens of Israel, who would reject God’s reign.  And as Christ prophesied in yet another parable, they would kill the Son in order to try to thwart God’s sovereignty over them.

Government either recognizes God’s rule over the world, and they are merely stewards of that responsibility given to them by God, or they have rejected God’s rule, in order to rule themselves according to their lusts.  And far too often in our society today, we see government capitulate to protests, in spite of whether or not the signs and slogans of the crowds are true or not.  As Isaiah 59:14 says, “Truth has stumbled in the street, and uprightness cannot enter.”

And I would suggest that this is the crux of man’s rejection of salvation.  Man rejects the idea that Christ should rule over them. They may not mind the idea of Christ dying in their place, but they reject the notion that they give up their right to self rule.  Most people reject salvation because they want to live their life by their standards, by their rules, and as such reject the rule of Christ as Lord of their life.

That brings us to the fourth aspect of apostasy in government, and that is the examination of the truth. When Pilate has said they should crucify Him themselves, they respond, “We have a law, and by that law He ought to die because He made Himself out to be the Son of God.”  This accusation strikes fear into the heart of Pilate.  Pilate was more than willing to punish an innocent man who claimed a spiritual kingdom, but the thought that Christ was actually God in flesh concerned him greatly. 

So Pilate brings Christ out to the Praetorium, his private residence, in order to examine Him. In effect, Pilate had already examined Christ by scourging, a method used to soften up the criminal so that he would be ready to confess.  But at that point, Pilate had no charge to condemn Him with.  Now he has this assertion by the Jews that Christ had committed blasphemy by declaring Himself as the Son of God. 

But the Jews appeal to their law, probably referring to the law of Moses concerning blasphemy.  However, they do not examine Him according to truth.  Truth affirms that He is the Son of God.  He was foretold by the prophets, heralded by angels, acknowledged verbally by God in the heavens, transfigured before His disciples, and He had performed hundreds of miracles that could only be of God and which served to validate the truth of His teaching.  All of which, if they would have considered, would have eliminated the charge of blasphemy and caused them to fall on their knees in worship.  But they aren’t interested in the truth, only in finding fault.

For Pilate, however, the possibility that Christ was the Son of God was alarming, and he takes Jesus privately into his quarters and begins to question Him saying, “Where are you from?”  But Jesus gave him no answer. 

Listen, God is not obligated to answer man’s questions as to where He came from, or how or why He does certain things.  Job became angry with God and asked God for answers on the assumption that God wasn’t fair and just, and when God finally did respond, He did not answer the question “why”.  God is good and just and merciful, but He is God.  He is the eternal sovereign, and finite, mortal man cannot ascertain Him.  So Jesus did not answer Pilate.

Vs.10,11So Pilate said to Him, “You do not speak to me? Do You not know that I have authority to release You, and I have authority to crucify You?” Jesus answered, “You would have no authority over Me, unless it had been given you from above; for this reason he who delivered Me to you has the greater sin.”

As Romans 13:1 which we looked at earlier says, “Every person is to be in subjection to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God.”  Pilate thinks that he has authority to judge, but he fails to realize that actually the great Judge of all the earth is judging him.  

Thomas Jefferson wrote that the the US Government has no powers but such as the Constitution gives it.  And as I said last week in regards to the Constitution, the founders recognized that certain truths from God were evident, from which they established certain laws.

That principle is expounded in Jesus’s statement which is that government’s authority comes from God and God alone.  Without such truth as a foundation, there can be no justice.  But in the case of the government under Pilate, we see that truth is rejected for what is considered popular and expedient.  And so he judges Christ according to the dictates of the people, and the pressures of the moment.

And by the way, we see that being played out today as well. Society is trying to change laws and influence government by protests, by mob violence.  And as we have seen it is effective to a great degree.  That method has been used with great effect since the 60’s to change American policy, to make the general public and particularly the politicians think that it is the majority opinion, when in fact many times it’s just the louder opinion.  Oftentimes the silent majority suffers injury from a more vocal and violent minority.

That leads us to the next aspect of the apostasy of government;  judging the truth. Vs.13, “Therefore when Pilate heard these words, he brought Jesus out, and sat down on the judgment seat at a place called The Pavement, but in Hebrew, Gabbatha.” 

John’s gospel is full of irony.  And the height of irony is that Pilate sits on his judgment seat to cast judgment upon the Son of God.  This same Jesus, whom Pilate and worthless men put to death, will one day sit on the Great White Throne.  And all judgment will be given to Him to judge every man according to his deeds.  John writes in  Rev. 20:11 “Then I saw a great white throne and Him who sat upon it, from whose presence earth and heaven fled away, and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, the great and the small, [that includes kings and governors and celebrities and all who are considered great in this world) standing before the throne, and books were opened; and another book was opened, which is the book of life; and the dead were judged from the things which were written in the books, according to their deeds. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead which were in them; and they were judged, every one of them according to their deeds. Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire.

And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.”

So here is the governor of this tiny region called Judea, sitting in judgment of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, the Judge of the whole earth.  What irony.  Who is man that dares to judge God?  And how will God judge him that has passed judgment on Christ by refusing to submit to Him as Lord and King? 

Vs.14, “Now it was the day of preparation for the Passover; it was about the sixth hour. And he said to the Jews, ‘Behold, your King!’ So they cried out, ‘Away with Him, away with Him, crucify Him!’ Pilate said to them, ‘Shall I crucify your King?’ The chief priests answered, ‘We have no king but Caesar.’ So he then handed Him over to them to be crucified.”

In their judgment of Christ they sealed their own judgment. Here is a nation that was designed to be a theocratic nation. Here is the nation that claimed Jehovah as their God and King. But they renounce their theocratic relationship to Jehovah God, by saying, “We have no king but Caesar.” And so Israel, guilty of blasphemy in the denial of the Son of God, and guilty of apostasy in turning from God as King to Caesar thus denounces the theocracy, their own unique position before God, and so in just a few years they will receive their judgment and be scattered to the four corners of the earth, until there is no longer any Israel at all. 

God is patient with the government of mankind, not wishing for any to perish but all to come to repentance.  But one need only look at history to see the long line of governments that have abandoned God and become apostate, and as a result are no longer a power any longer on the earth to be reckoned with.  The great Egyptian empire is no more.  The Babylonian empire has been destroyed. The Roman Empire has crumbled.  The Greek Empire is no more to be found.  England’s once grand empire is no longer.  Nazi Germany’s empire was destroyed.  And America, as the  modern world’s greatest superpower, is on the brink of imploding under the weight of it’s own corruption.  But the truth of God endures forever.  God’s empire is increasing and will never end.

So the apostasy of the government results in killing Truth.  That is the only solution to a world who hates the truth.  That is their only way they think they can silence the truth, and thus silence their consciences.  So they crucify Christ. Vs.17,  “They took Jesus, therefore, and He went out, bearing His own cross, to the place called the Place of a Skull, which is called in Hebrew, Golgotha. There they crucified Him, and with Him two other men, one on either side, and Jesus in between.” 

And governments have been killing Christians ever since, trying to silence the gospel.  Trying to silence the truth of God.  Christianity Today magazine has put the number of Christian martyrs since Christ walked the earth at 70 million people.  And the persecution has not slowed down.  Many sources say that Christians are the most persecuted group in the world today.  Jesus said in John 15:20, “Remember the word that I said to you, ‘A slave is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you.”

There is one final aspect of apostasy in government that we will look at today, and that is rewriting the truth. Vs.19, Pilate also wrote an inscription and put it on the cross. It was written, “JESUS THE NAZARENE, THE KING OF THE JEWS.” Therefore many of the Jews read this inscription, for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city; and it was written in Hebrew, Latin and in Greek. So the chief priests of the Jews were saying to Pilate, “Do not write, ‘The King of the Jews’; but that He said, ‘I am King of the Jews.’” Pilate answered, “What I have written I have written.”

Pilate wished to frame the argument his way.  His argument was that Jesus was a Jew, and his death was a result of Jewish law.  He wanted to absolve himself of any responsibility in the matter. He wanted to wash his hands of the whole affair.  But Jesus did not let Pilate off so easily.  Jesus made it clear that He was a King, but not of this realm.  However, He also made it clear to Pilate that His realm superseded Pilate’s realm.  He said Pilate would have no authority if God did not give him that authority. 

So Pilate in one last desperate brazen act, writes a sign to be placed on Jesus’s cross, “The King of the Jews.”  In one sense it was true.  But it was only part of the truth.  The full truth was that Jesus is King of Kings, and Lord of Lords.  He was the very Son of God.  And so Pilate failed to comprehend the full truth.

Instead, Pilate writes his version of the truth.  And says, “what I have written, I have written,” as if to say that his word was law.  But as we have already stated, God’s law is the final authority.  Governments may write enough laws to fill up the Atlantic Ocean, but all of them cannot equal the truth of God’s Word, the Bible.  It is the “sola scriptura”; the sole authority for life and practice.  It is the source of truth, regardless of the revisionist historians, regardless of what the scientists say, regardless of the consensus of the courts of men.

The question for Pilate is the same for men today.  What will you do with Jesus? If he was just the king of the Jews 2000 years ago, that was martyred, then we can write him off as inconsequential to 21st century Americans.  But if He was the Son of God who gave His life as the Passover Lamb slain for the sins of the world, so that we like Barabbas might be set free, then we must fall at His feet and worship Him as King of Kings and Lord of Lords.  Do not turn away from the truth.  Everyone will one day stand before the Great White Throne Judgment and answer this question:  “What did you do with Jesus Christ?” I pray that you will confess Him as your Lord and Savior.

Romans 10:9-10, 13 says,  “that if you confess with your mouth Jesus [as] Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved;  for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation. …  for “WHOEVER WILL CALL ON THE NAME OF THE LORD WILL BE SAVED.”

As I have previously pointed out, John isn’t presenting a blow by blow account of the arrest and trial of Christ.  By the time he is writing this epistle, the other three gospels have already presented all of the chronological events in detail.  Instead, what John is doing is specifically highlighting certain events in order to illustrate particular principles which he is attempting to teach.  And as we have seen from our previous studies, John is very focused on presenting the gospel as the truth of God.  He quotes Jesus reaffirming this principle again and again in statements such as “God is Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.”  And “I am the way the truth and the life, no man comes to the Father except by me.”  And another, “You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.”  Finally one more, “Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth.”

In fact, 83 times in his writings John writes about either truth or what is true.  I firmly believe that for the apostle John, truth was the preeminent theme of the gospel.  So what I think he is doing here in addition to presenting the events leading up to Christ’s crucifixion is he is including a sub plot, which is contrasting the truth with the dangers of apostasy.  The truth of Christ is contrasted with the apostasy of Peter.  And Peter is representative of the church.  Remember, Jesus had said in Matt. 16:18 “I also say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades will not overpower it.”  So the apostles, and especially Peter, are emblematic of the church because they are the foundation of the church.  And in this passage we are looking at today, John is highlighting the dangers of the church slipping into apostasy.

Apostasy means the abandonment or renunciation of belief, particularly religious belief.  So to become apostate is to abandon or renounce your faith, or the principles of truth which undergird your faith.  In 2 Thess. 2:3, Paul speaking of the second coming of Christ says, “Let no one in any way deceive you, for it will not come unless the apostasy comes first.”  The Bible teaches that in the last days there will be a great falling away from the truth. False prophets and false teaching will fill the church to the extent that Jesus said if it were possible even the very elect would be misled.  

And we know from church history that has in fact already happened. When Jesus speaks for the last time to the church in Revelation 2 and 3, which was also written by John by the way, He speaks to the seven churches in Asia, which were symbolic of the church universal, and in practically each of His messages to the churches, He emphasizes their need to stay true to His word, and warns them to repent of their apostasy, lest He remove their lamp stand from the Earth.

Now last week we looked at the first part of this passage set in the Garden of Gethsemane where the mob came to arrest Jesus along with the Pharisees and the Roman cohort.  And particularly we focused on the response of the disciples as an example of how the church often responds to a hostile world.  We talked about the natural response of the human psyche to fear or intimidation known as the  fight or flight syndrome which was exemplified by the disciples fleeing, and Peter swinging his sword and cutting off the ear of the High Priest’s slave. And if you will remember, my application contrasted the church’s natural response to the world as opposed to what should be the true response of the church as identified by Acts 2, in the first church of Jerusalem immediately following Pentecost.

In a similar fashion, I want to show a subsequent application to the church through the events recorded in this passage that may not at first be apparent from a superficial study of the chronology of events.  But if you will bear with me, I hope to show you how the denial of Peter and the trial of Christ mirror the choice confronting the church today, namely, remaining steadfast in the truth, and on the other hand, denying the truth, or becoming apostate.

So what we see from the passage is that really what  was on trial was the Truth. That becomes apparent in Jesus’s response to both Annas and Pilate later on in the chapter.  It was all about the truth that Jesus taught and represented.  Jesus was the Truth personified.  That is what the Pharisees and Sanhedrin hated.  They weren’t interested in the truth, they were interested in the law.  The law was their religion.  They had learned to manipulate the law.  They could take advantage of the law. They could enrich themselves through the law, administered through ceremonial religion.  But Jesus focused on the truth.  The truth trumps the law because the law comes from the truth.  However, as I said, they were not interested in the Truth, they were interested in law, which was administered through their religious ceremonies.  

And sadly, we see today in the church that there is an emphasis on religion as they define it, but there is very little emphasis on the truth. Truth is relative today in our culture, and the church in it’s efforts to be relevant to the culture has become a mirror of the culture, rather than a reflection of Jesus Christ who is the Truth.

So John’s record at this point doesn’t focus so much on the illegality of the trial or on the  hypocrisy of the Pharisees, but he seems to deliberately juxtapose Peter’s denial with Christ’s affirmation of Truth.  Twice John shows another side of what was going on, that which was happening in the courtyard below with Peter.  And I am proposing that his intention is to show the counterpoint to the truth of the gospel, which is apostasy, and how easy it is and possible it is for the church to fall into it.  

So without further introduction, let’s look at four steps to apostasy as illustrated in this text.  And I will give you each step in advance; First, the steps to apostasy begins with acting in your own wisdom, which leads to # 2, distance from God, which produces #3, a desire for acceptance from the world, and #4, results in blasphemy and denial.   That’s the four steps to apostasy.  

Let’s consider how this is illustrated in the text.  The first point, acting in your own wisdom we pretty much covered last week.  When confronted with the hostility of the mob, Peter did what he thought was right according to his own wisdom, according to his own strength.   When he should have followed the Lord’s example and looked to him as to how to respond to the attack of the mob, instead he acted in his own strength, according to his own wisdom, and it resulted in disaster.  He pulled his sword and whacked off the High Priest’s servant’s ear.  That was a bad move.  It could have been even worse had not Jesus healed the man’s ear.  Because as we see later, Malchus’s kinsman was sitting at the fire later in Annas’s courtyard, and he recognized Peter and called him out in front of the soldiers.  

We see this same attitude played out today in the church all the time, though perhaps in a little less dramatic fashion.  More and more we see the church relying on philosophy, psychiatry, science, survey’s,  and business practices in order to achieve their goals. The average sermon today is an impotent mixture of psychology, positive thinking  and sentimentality, with a few jokes and a poem thrown in for good measure.  Rather than looking at how the Bible says we should approach things like sin and righteousness, we follow what science or business or common sense tells us to do.  But we need to remember that God has given us a blueprint for the church, and when we deviate from it to follow our own wisdom, we do so at our own peril.  

I want to point out another contrast inherent in this scene.  Peter decides to fight with his sword against the forces of darkness that are arrayed before him.  And though he manages to wound one out of possibly hundreds of armed soldiers, it was not a very effective strategy.  And as I said earlier, if Jesus hadn’t stopped it and healed the servant, it would have probably ended badly for Peter.  But then notice the contrast of the truth.  In vs. 4, it says, “So Jesus, knowing all the things that were coming upon Him, went forth and *said to them, “Whom do you seek?” They answered Him, “Jesus the Nazarene.” He *said to them, “I am He.” And Judas also, who was betraying Him, was standing with them. So when He said to them, “I am He,” they drew back and fell to the ground.”  

Here is the irony of the contrast.  Peter takes his sword and wounds one man, and potentially sets up a disastrous situation.  Jesus uses the sword of His mouth, the very word of God, and the entire Roman cohort are knocked flat on the ground.  I believe that John shows us this contrast to illustrate that even the foolishness of God is greater than the wisdom of men.  We must not underestimate the word of God.  It is powerful even to the destruction of fortresses. 2Cor. 10:3 says, “For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh, for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses.”  The  efforts of our flesh in our wisdom and strength fail to make a difference for the kingdom.  Whereas God’s word is living, and powerful and sharper than a two edged sword.  Because it is the truth of God.

Well, as we see in Peter’s case, acting in your own wisdom leads to the second step towards apostasy, which is distancing yourself from God.  It’s really amazing that Christ demonstrates His divine power even in this hour of darkness, in both knocking the mob on the ground and healing the man’s ear, and yet the mob is unmoved.  They are resolute in their hatred and determination to put Jesus to death.  Their hearts are hardened. 

But what’s even more amazing is that the disciples, also seeing these things, and having seen so many other miracles that Jesus had done over three years,  are unmoved as well.  Their response is to run away.  You would think that they would have recognized that the safest place for them to be was with Jesus. 

I have said that from this pulpit many times and I will say it again this morning.  There is no safe place outside of the will of God.  And there is no safer place than to be in the will of God.  Yet how quickly we forget that.  The disciples thought that it would be safer somewhere else.  So they ran.  Peter, I will give him some credit, doesn’t run.  Instead he follows from afar, according to Matthew 26:58.  And so when Jesus is in the house of the High Priest, Peter is hanging around outside in the dark, outside the courtyard door.  

Over the last few months or so, I have had a number of people tell me that they felt as if they were far from God.  They didn’t feel close to God anymore.  They feel like God didn’t care, or He didn’t love them anymore.  They felt distant.  And I will tell you what I tell them every time.  When you feel distant from God it’s usually because you have moved away from God, not vice versa.

It’s like the old couple that had been married for 30 some years, back in the day when pickup trucks had bench seats, not like the bucket seats we have today.  And the couple were driving down a country road, and the wife looked over at the husband who was driving and said sort of reproachfully, “Remember when we used to take a drive when we were dating, and how you used to put your arm around me, and hug me close?  Don’t you ever miss that kind of closeness?”  And the husband looked over at her on the passenger side of the car and said, “Well, I didn’t move, you did.” 

God doesn’t move to distance Himself from us.  Even when we are in rebellion against Him, He pursues us. The Lord is like the husband of Hosea, who watches and provides for his love from afar, waiting for her to return to Him, and never stops loving her.  James gives us the prescription for a healthy relationship with God in James 4:8, “Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded.”  

Distance from God usually happens as a result of a lack of dependence upon God.  You stop reading His word.  You start skipping your devotions.  You hardly pray.  Start missing church services.  It’s usually characterized by a desire to keep a comfortable distance from God, while all the while claiming to be in fellowship with Him.  You want to be free to make your own decisions, and then that leads to neglecting the word of God so that you can operate independently without a guilty conscience.  

Thirdly, distancing yourself from God leads to a desire for acceptance by the world.  We see this illustrated in Peter’s example.  There is an unnamed disciple in the text, who John says was known by the High Priest’s family.  Most commentators believe that this is John himself.  And so John realizes that Peter is outside the door, and  he speaks to the girl watching the door so that Peter can come inside.  I’m not sure that Peter really wanted to come inside.  But nevertheless, he more or less had to come in when John came to the door.  

But where he ends up is not back beside Christ as you might think.  He hasn’t felt enough remorse over his earlier actions so that now he just wants to be next to Christ again.  No, instead he sidles over to the fire where the enemies of Christ are hanging out getting warm.  So it’s apparent where his sentiments are at this point.  There are two sides in this mock trial.  There is Jesus standing all alone, and there is everyone else.  Peter gains entrance to the house, but he chooses to stand with the enemy.  He wants to keep his distance from Christ.

We see that in Christianity all the time.  There is a crisis in one’s life, and so they feel remorse that they were caught up in some crime, or put in jail, or totaled the car, or messed up their marriage somehow, but rather than come all the way to Christ, the natural tendency is to come only so far.  To hang on to their autonomy, to hang on to their sin.  The choice Peter should have made was to come all the way to Christ, even to the death if necessary, which was what he had boasted earlier that he would do.

So of course in our text we see that the enemy recognizes Peter as having been with Christ. And they start to call him out.  First the slave girl says, “You are not also one of this man’s disciples, are you?” And He said, “I am not.”  He denies being a disciple.  He doesn’t deny knowing Christ at this point, just denies being a disciple.  

I don’t think that Peter was afraid of this slave girl.  I think Peter suddenly is getting a clearer understanding of what Jesus has been saying all along about what it really means to be a disciple, to  suffer for Him.  I think it was easier being a disciple when they had this miraculous power to call down fire from heaven or cast out demons.  But now this hour belonged to the power of darkness.  And in this hour he begins to remember  how Jesus had just told them they would be persecuted and killed for following Him.  It suddenly is no longer theoretical, but an immediate possibility.  And maybe he realizes at this point that this being an outcast from society, being persecuted, being publicly ostracized was going to be part of what it means to be a Christian.  And at that moment, he wasn’t sure that he really wanted to commit to that.  

So he chose friendship with the world, which Paul tells us is enmity with God.  He found himself at odds with Psalm 1:1 which says, “How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked,Nor stand in the path of sinners, Nor sit in the seat of scoffers!”  

Acting in your own wisdom results in distancing yourself from God, which leads to a desire for acceptance from the world.  And we see that all the time in the church today among Christians.  Who at some point, come to realize that following Christ completely and being stedfast to the truth of God puts them in opposition to the world. It’s makes us social outcasts, fools for Christ. So  to appease the world we want to soften our stance on things that the Bible speaks clearly about.  We start to accept the dictates of the culture, because if we spoke out about adultery or homosexuality or evolution or a host of other subjects then we would become ostracized  by our families, outcasts in our communities.  We could lose our job.  We might get “unfriended” on face book. We might get ridiculed at school.  

And before we know it, we have moved from walking according to the counsel of the wicked to standing in the path of sinners, and before we are done we end up sitting down with the scoffers.  We find ourselves like Lot, who moved from living in the country near  the city of Sodom to living next to it, then finally moving downtown.  On the road to apostasy you get comfortable with the world, and uncomfortable with discipleship.  So you move further and further towards apostasy.  When you start to accommodate the world’s views in one area, it leads to another area, and soon its like yeast in a lump of dough- it corrupts completely.

That takes us to the final point, which is a desire to be accepted by the world leads to blasphemy and denial of the truth.  Peter is getting warm by the fire.  Notice that John repeats that twice in vs 18 and 25.  That accommodation of Christ’s enemies leads to Peter denying the Lord three times.  You will remember that Jesus prophesied that before the night was over Peter would deny Him three times.  Peter had denied such a possibility vigorously.  Once again you see this disregard of God’s word.  We think we can disregard God’s word with impunity.  But we cannot.  If the word of God convicts you, then you need to repent and ask God to forgive you.  Because when you disregard the conviction of the Spirit of God through the word of God your heart becomes hardened, and you give the devil an opportunity to destroy you.

In his later years, Peter illustrated that he come to appreciate the schemes of the devil and how his strategy is to destroy you.  Peter writes in 1Peter 5:8, “Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.”  But at this point in our story, Peter had not learned that lesson yet. He thought he was good, he was strong, he could handle things himself.  But in fact, Jesus had warned Peter earlier that Satan had demanded permission to sift him like wheat.

Peter didn’t believe that he was weak, however.  He was confident that he could stand up to the devil’s temptations.  Peter exhibited overconfidence in himself, and a lack of confidence in God.  It would have been good for him to know  1Cor. 10:12 which says, “Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed that he does not fall.”  

Well, as we see here, one denial of the truth leads to another lie, which leads to yet another lie. That’s the way sin is.  A little leaven soon leavens the whole lump.  And so we see Peter get deeper and deeper into sin, until he ends up not only denying Christ, but blaspheming and cursing in order to prove himself not a friend of Christ.  It’s really just incredible to watch the fall of Peter.

John 18:25 “Now Simon Peter was standing and warming himself. So they said to him, “You are not also one of His disciples, are you?” He denied it, and said, “I am not.” One of the slaves of the high priest, being a relative of the one whose ear Peter cut off, *said, “Did I not see you in the garden with Him?” Peter then denied it again.  (Matthew 26 tells us that Peter denied it with an oath, and then when asked again he resorted to cursing,)  and immediately a rooster crowed.

Most of us when confronted with the possibility that we would deny Christ would protest as Peter did that we would die before denying Him.  But that is in theory.  In actuality, it doesn’t often go the way we think it might.  Satan gets us to deny Him first by denying the Lord’s power in favor of our own.  We do it our way, kind of like Frank Sinatra bragged about.  We deny the authority of the word of God and want to exercise our own will according to the wisdom of the world.  That leads to further distance from God, as we think we are doing fine, and don’t really need to depend daily upon God.  Skipping devotions or prayer time or church time becomes more commonplace as everything else starts to take precedence over the things of God. And that distance from God leads to a desire to find acceptance from the world, from our friends, maybe even our family.  Maybe that is even our original motivation.  We like the approval of men, so we seek out ways of pleasing the world, rather than pleasing God.  And then finally, that leads to out right denial of Christ.  

Oh, we may not be cursing God, or uttering blasphemies directed towards Christ directly, but in many ways I’m afraid we deny the truth of the word, we deny Christ’s Lordship over us, we deny Him control over our lives, and we don’t trust Him to take care of us.  And if we don’t turn and repent of such things, it can lead us into outright apostasy.  We end up denying the truth of God.  We deny the truth of God’s word.  We fail to stand up for Christ when He is attacked by the world.  

I think the lesson to be learned from this story is that if apostasy can happen to Peter it can happen to the best of us.  Because, contrary to the way many commentators and pastors portray Peter, I believe Peter was the best of us.  I believe he was passionate about following the Lord.  He loved the Lord.  He was faithful to the Lord.  He was an intimate friend of the Lord.  And yet, he fell from faith in denying Christ three times on the night of His crucifixion.  It is a tragedy that is possible for all of us.  And many of us have already done as bad if not worse at some point in our lives.  I know I have.  

But like Peter, I am a child of God.  Thank God my disobedience and denial of my Lord does not negate the fact that I am His child.  God is a God of restoration.  He came to seek and to save sinners.  And just as Christ made a point to meet with Peter specifically after His resurrection and reconcile Peter to Himself, so He will do with you and with me if we are truly His people and we are willing to repent.  If you don’t repent, Satan will use your rebellion to try to destroy you.  But if you turn back to God, He will heal you and restore you.

In Peter’s case, not only did Christ reconcile with Peter, but He still used Peter to be the foundation of the church.  Peter’s past mistakes did not disqualify him, but once he was reconciled to Christ he was used as the chief apostle of His church.  God has a plan to use us, even when we have been broken and beaten up by the devil and by our failures.  The key is we learn to trust God, let Him have control of our life, and we don’t trust in our own strength or wisdom, but trust in the word of God.  

I don’t know your situation, but if you have recognized in yourself some aspect of Peter’s denial  this morning, then I urge you to repent and be reconciled to God. Don’t continue down the road to apostasy.  Come back to the Lord and let Him have full control of your life. 

My message today is titled, “Fight or Flight.” And I hope that the reason for that title would be evident from the content of the verses we just read.  We know from this text and the other gospels that all the disciples fled as a result of this incident, and also we see Simon Peter trying to put up a fight by taking out his sword and cutting of the ear of the high priest’s servant. That’s the basis for calling it, Fight or Flight.  

The medical professionals tell us that fight or flight is associated with a physiological reaction which occurs in humans or animals in response to a perceived harmful attack, or a threat to survival. It is an automatic, instinctive response that activates our nervous and muscular systems in order to help us survive.  It is natural.  It is instinctive.  It is normal.  But in the realm of the spiritual that which is natural and physical is not necessarily the kind of reaction that is in alignment with God’s purposes.

And we find that natural vs spiritual response illustrated in this text.  The disciple’s reaction to the mob coming to arrest Jesus would have been pretty typical.  It was a natural reaction.  Some fled, and some attempted to fight.  That is the way the body is engineered.  We are told in Mark 14 that even as the disciples fled, one  young man, probably Mark himself, was caught and he slipped out of his clothes and ran away naked.  And of course, we know what Peter did.  He drew a sword to defend Christ.  He was going to fight the spiritual battle in his own strength, with his skill and bravado.

I think that the church is often guilty of similar responses as we try to find our way in a hostile world.  We tend to try to use human ingenuity to accomplish spiritual goals.  But when we do so we fail to understand Ephesians 6 which says we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers in the heavenly places.  

Jesus made the same principle clear in this chapter, in vs 36. Jesus answered to Pilate, “My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, then My servants would be fighting so that I would not be handed over to the Jews; but as it is, My kingdom is not of this realm.”  So if, as Jesus indicates, the kingdom of God is spiritual, not physical, and our enemies are spiritual and not physical, then it stands to reason that the church’s strategies must be spiritual and not physical.

So Jesus and the disciples climb the Mount of Olives in the dark of night to engage in a spiritual battle, the battle between the will of God and the will of man. It was in the Garden of Eden that man first encountered  spiritual warfare with the enemy of his soul. There the battle with Satan was lost by man, there he forfeited his right to rule over the earth and gave it over to Satan by yielding his obedience to Satan’s will. Now Jesus as the second Adam enters another garden to do battle with Satan. The issue again is God’s will versus the will of Satan.

But the disciples react in the flesh instead of according to the Spirit.  So Christ rebukes Peter in vs.11 saying, “Put the sword into the sheath; the cup which the Father has given Me, shall I not drink it?”  The Lord Jesus had known ahead of time how all this was going to come about.  He knew that Judas had planned to betray Him there.  And yet He did not try to avoid arrest  by fleeing from the soldiers or by planning a defense.  Instead, we are told that Jesus went boldly out to meet the mob.  I’m sure it would have been possible for Jesus to have easily eluded them in the dark in the olive grove.  But that wasn’t the Father’s will.  And Jesus had prayed in the prayer recorded in Luke 22 that He was concerned that the Father’s will be done, and not His own.

John’s record of this event in the Garden of Gethsemane is selective.  He doesn’t make an attempt to mention a lot of what the other gospel writer’s have already written about. Out of all the events that transpired in the garden, John emphasizes the fact that Jesus initiates His own capture. John doesn’t mention the night spent in prayer, or the sweat drops of blood that Christ spilled as He prayed.  He doesn’t mention the disciples falling asleep.  He doesn’t mention Judas’s kiss of betrayal.  And what we can deduce from that is that what John does record is to illustrate certain facts that he felt served his greater purpose. John wasn’t writing a biography, he was writing a gospel.  As he said in chapter 20 vs.30, “Therefore many other signs Jesus also performed in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing you may have life in His name.”  So John emphasizes that Jesus went boldly forth to offer Himself as a sacrifice by doing the will of the Father.

That sacrificial love is illustrated in vs.8, in which Jesus says in effect, “Take Me, and let these go.”  That is the same sacrificial love that takes Jesus to the cross for us all. In bearing our judgment for sin, He said in a sense the same thing to the Father’s justice.  “Take Me, and let these people go.”

So what John has recorded for us is selected to teach us certain truths.  Now there are many applications that one could get from this passage.  But there is one particular application that I would like to make, which may seem like a stretch perhaps, but which I think is appropriate. Rather than doing my normal exegesis of each verse, I want to use this text to make an application that I feel God has laid on my heart this morning; and that is the purpose of the church.  I see in this situation an illustration of how the church is to respond in a hostile culture.  

Now I think this application is  justified because these 11 disciples represent the church. It took only 10 Jewish men to constitute a synagogue, or a local assembly. So these 11 men were Christ’s church.  We know from other scriptures, particularly Ephesians 2:20, that the apostles are the foundation of the church.  And at this point there is very little else but the foundation.  Christ has spent the last three years building the foundation, teaching the disciples the doctrines of the kingdom of God.  

You will remember that Jesus said to Peter in Matthew 16:18, “I also say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades will not overpower it.”  So the disciples were the foundation stones upon which Christ would build His  church, and Christ is the cornerstone.  But the main point I want to emphasize is they are the church at that point.  Eleven guys, and they have all sorts of shortcomings, and they are facing all sorts of challenges, and their response is often completely wrong and yet Christ has chosen them to be the foundation of His church.  

So the Lord will use this situation and others like it to teach them so that when Jesus is no longer with them in person, they will know how to lead the church in order that the church will not only survive, but thrive.  The disciples will learn from even their failures how to continue Christ’s ministry.

But on this particular night, it must have seemed to the disciples that the gates of hell were prevailing against the church. And so while Peter attempts to fight, and the other disciples flee into the darkness, Jesus stands firm knowing that He is acting according to the Father’s will. 

However, notice that Jesus’s promise to the church that the gates of hell will not prevail against it, is conditional.  His promise is conditional upon the fact that it has to be His church, and He has to be the builder of it.  If He is, then there is the promise that hell will not prevail against it.  But if it is not His church, and He is not the builder of it, then there is no such promise.

As a pastor, I am routinely asked from time to time about our plans for this church.  What are our goals?  What is our long term plan?  Where are we going with this thing?  I guess those are valid concerns.  But I can’t help but feel that they are often prompted by unbiblical expectations.  And that is because the Christian community today has a picture in their mind of what they think church should be, what the church should look like.  That vision may have been influenced by many factors, such as what seems to be working elsewhere, what church was like when they grew up, or what they’ve been told the church has to do to reach our modern culture.  

And I can tell you that from a pastor’s perspective that answering this question isn’t easy for me either.  There are many, many books out there which purport to tell you how to build a church.  Or what a successful church should look like.  Rick Warren wrote a very popular book many years ago now which had a tremendous impact on the modern evangelical church, called “The Purpose Driven Church.”  There are some things in that book that sound good.  But there are also some things that I feel are misdirected. Namely, that there is a formula, a tried and true business style model for how to build a successful church.

Whether Rick Warren intended to imply it or not, the average church pastor who uses that book as a template does so hoping that it will result in building a large church.  Because Rick Warren has a huge church and he used that formula.  And because large numbers are what practically everyone thinks is emblematic of a successful church.  How many people you have, how many Sunday morning services you conduct, what kind of programs you have and how big your building is indicates how successful you are.  

But for the most part I have disregarded such handbooks for church growth. Instead, several years ago, I began a study in the book of Acts on Sunday mornings because I wanted to address some of these fundamental questions concerning the church.  And what better source is there to determine how God builds His church than to study the first church in Jerusalem from the book of Acts.  However, that was a long time ago, and some of you weren’t here at that time to benefit from that study.  

So I want to go back to Acts chapter 2 in order to refresh our memory.  If we are going to have a church which is Christ’s church, and which is built by God, which will stand against the gates of hell, then I can think of no better example than the church in chapter 2 of Acts which was birthed by the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost.  And first of all we note that 3000 people were saved as a result of Peter’s preaching on the day of Pentecost. But don’t focus on the numbers and miss the important part. The key is  that if you’re going to have a church that is built by God, and protected by God, then it must start with a saved congregation.  The church is the congregation of the saints.  Saints aren’t dead people, they are saved people.

And church buildings that are filled with unsaved people aren’t actually Christ’s church. The people may be the social pillars of the community, they may have all the trappings of the church, they may look like what we think churches are supposed to look like, but if they are not made up of born again saints then they do not constitute the church according to God. That eliminates a whole lot of so called churches right there. Nice people practicing religion in pretty buildings does not constitute a church.  The first church in Jerusalem did not even have a building. But the church is made up of sinners who have received and believed the truth of Jesus Christ are granted righteousness, resulting in salvation. In Acts 2:47 it says, “And the Lord was adding to their number day by day those who were being saved.” So a saved congregation is the first prerequisite.  

And then again in Acts chapter 2 we find in one verse the purpose of the church, as designed by God, and given to us.  Acts 2:42 gives the divine blueprint they followed: “They were continually devoting themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.” Those are the four essential elements that make up the actual function and life of the church.  

To be saved is to become a disciple of Christ, to follow Christ.  That’s what Jesus’s mandate was to the apostles as recorded in Matthew 28:19. Go into all the world and make disciples. And a disciple is a learner, a student.  So then the first order of the church is to teach Christ’s doctrine. To teach Christians how to live as Christ would have us live according to what Christ had taught them. This was the primary responsibility of the apostles.  

And in Ephesians we read that as the church goes forward, Christ gave to the church first apostles and prophets, then evangelists, and then pastor’s/teachers.  So if we are going to pattern ourselves according to God’s blueprint for the church, then the church must continually devote themselves to the teaching of the word of God.  And we do that not just so that we might have an intellectual knowledge of the Bible, but so that we might know the truth of God, that we might know how to live as Christ taught, and that we might be obedient to that truth.  That is sanctification, being conformed to the truth of God.

A godly church then is made up of saved people who apply themselves to the teaching of the word, and then are obedient to the word, so that they might be witnesses to the world.  The purpose of teaching is that we might be conformed to the image of Christ.  That we might become in practice like Christ, that we might have the mind of Christ.  We have become righteous by justification through Christ, now we must be sanctified in practice like Christ.  We must be obedient to what we are taught. It is to no advantage whatsoever if we meet to have a worship service, but there is no evidence of the transforming power of God in our lives.  If the church is filled with people living in adultery, if it’s filled with people who are living in sin, who are still enslaved to sin, then what kind of witness is that to the world?  It’s a self aggrandizing exercise in hypocritical religion.  The purpose of the church is to make disciples that look like Christ and act like Christ as they live like Christ.

We conform to the image of Christ because He was conformed to the image of the Father.  He was obedient to the Father’s will.  Hebrews 5:8 says, “Although He was a Son, He learned obedience from the things which He suffered.”  That’s what Jesus was referring to in His rebuke of Peter.  He had prayed in the Garden in Matthew 26:39, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; yet not as I will, but as You will.”  He was apprehensive in His flesh not at the prospects of death, but at the prospects of taking the sin of the world upon Himself.  But when the mob came, Jesus was obedient to the Father’s will saying to Peter; “Put the sword into the sheath; the cup which the Father has given Me, shall I not drink it?”

Listen, we can learn from this example that God’s purposes are not always apparent to men because they are counterintuitive to the common sense of the natural man.  God’s purposes do not always lead to our immediate exaltation.  His purposes sometimes takes us through thorny ways before we meet the joyful end. As the hymn writer says, 

“Be still, my soul; the Lord is on thy side;  Bear patiently the cross of grief or pain;

Leave to thy God to order and provide;  In every change He faithful will remain.

Be still, my soul; thy best, thy heavenly, Friend  Through thorny ways leads to a joyful end.”

So the first priority of the church is continually devoting yourselves to the apostles teaching.  That’s the word of God.  Because the word of God has power to transform lives.  Programs don’t have that power.  A lot of so called Christian music doesn’t have that power. Activities and outreaches don’t have that power.  But the word of God has transformative power as Heb 4:12 says, “For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”

Now I don’t want to neglect the other three essentials of the church; fellowship, the breaking of bread and prayer.  But the teaching of the word is a priority, and then fellowship comes from the unity we have in the truth.  Our church name is the Beach Fellowship.  Fellowship means communion, with God first and then with one another in the truth of God.  We talked about that last week; Christ prayed for unity.  And we discovered that unity is found in the truth.  Not in organizations, but in truth and never at the expense of truth.  When we have fellowship in the truth, then we are able to build up one another, love one another, help one another as we grow in our faith.

And then the breaking of bread could be referring to the Lord’s Supper.  But in all likelihood it was just simply the daily taking of meals together.  Vs.46 says they were breaking bread from house to house, they were taking their meals together with gladness and sincerity of heart.” Eating and sharing together is a basic form of fellowship.  That’s why we eat breakfast together when we meet at the men’s prayer breakfast or other events as a church.  We believe it promotes fellowship.  In sharing a meal together, we get to know one another, so that we might be able to meet one another’s spiritual needs. 

And of course prayer is the last vitally important component.  I spoke about prayer at the beginning of chapter 17.  And for three weeks we studied Christ’s prayer as a template for our own.  As I said then, if we are a praying church, then all the other disciplines of the church would be elevated.  But even in prayer, it must be in truth.  Prayer must be grounded in Biblical truth, or it is not effective prayer.  And as James 5:16 tells us, the effective prayer of a righteous man accomplishes much. The key is that we are righteous, and then God hears our prayers.

When you have those four vital aspects of the church in effect, then you will see the result noted in Acts 2:43 which says, “everyone had a sense of awe and many wonders and signs were taking place through the apostles.” Though we may no longer see the same kind of miracles and wonders of the apostolic age, God’s power still remains on display in the church. What could be more miraculous than giving life to people who are dead in sin? He heals people of their hurts, puts broken homes back together, and brings people out of the bondage of sin to Christ. In short, He transforms lives. When the church follows God’s design, He will do marvelous and powerful things in individual lives before a watching world.

But it has to start with a saved congregation who submit to the teaching of the word of God and then are obedient to the will of God in their daily lives.  Even though many times in the Jerusalem church to obey God meant that they would experience suffering.  We too suffer some times if we are going to be obedient to God.  We may suffer the loss of a job which does not honor God.  Or we suffer the loss of friendships that are of the world or that are ungodly associations.  There are lots of ways that we might suffer, but through thorny ways, God leads us to a joyful end.

The church that is willing to suffer with Christ is a church that experiences a sense of awe or reverence for the Lord.  That’s what is meant by they felt a sense of awe.  It doesn’t mean they were oohing and ahhing over the drama of the  miracles.  It means that they felt a holy reverence for the Lord.  They had a reverence for the holiness of God.  And if you read further in Acts, you will see the Lord’s response against Ananias and Sapphira who did not revere the Lord as holy.  So God struck them dead in the middle of the church service because God wanted to teach us that He demands reverence.

And then there is one more point that I would like to make from the example given to us in Acts.  It says in Acts 2:47  that “the Lord was adding to their number day by day those who were being saved.”  If you want a formula for success in the church there it is.  You start with God saving men and women, and then the church being transformed and sanctified by the teaching of the word of God, add fellowship and prayer and then you add to that the reverence for the holiness of the Lord, and you end up with God adding to the church day by day those that were being saved. That’s God’s church growth plan.  

It has nothing to do with building projects.  It has nothing to do with appointing committees or Sunday School directors.  It has everything to do with being saved according to the truth, then  taught the truth of the word and then being obedient to it and living it out in the community.

I don’t think I need to belabor this point any longer this morning.  I’m sure most of you are here today because you want to follow Christ’s teaching.  You want to be transformed, to be set free, and to be a witness to the world of the saving power of Christ.  But neither do I want you to be discouraged or distracted by what the world might tell you is important.  The disciples acted on their instincts, they acted in their own strength, and they acted out of an emotional, natural response.  And they found themselves at odds with the purposes of God.  After the resurrection, Jesus will spend the next 40 days to open their minds so that they would understand the scriptures so that they would be ready to take charge of His church when He left to go back to His Father.

But we have an advantage that they didn’t have. We have the advantage of learning from their mistakes.  We have the advantage of the complete scriptures right in our hands.  So the teaching of the word is the first priority of this church.  Because it is everything we need for life and happiness.   As 2Timothy 3:16 says, “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: that the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works.”  

Let’s not forsake the assembling of ourselves together as the scriptures tell us, and let us continually devote ourselves to the teaching of the word of God through pastors/teachers “for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ; until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.”  That is how the church is supposed to look.  That is the plan of God for the church.  That we all grow to mature men and women, being conformed  to the full measure of the image of Christ.  

For the last few weeks we have been studying the prayer of Jesus on the night before His crucifixion.  And as we have noted, there are three sections to His prayer; He prays first for Himself, then for His disciples, and then for those who will be saved in the future (that is the church at large).  But in addition to that purpose, there is an underlying application to His prayer, which is not only for our edification, but for our education.  We can learn from Christ how to pray effectively in a way that is acceptable to God, and we can learn doctrinal truth.  We have focused on both of those perspectives in past messages.

This week, in addition to studying what the Lord is praying concerning us, we are going to examine the underlying doctrine of Christ’s prayer.  And if I had to pick one word to encapsulate the doctrine of Christ’s prayer it would have to be the word “truth.”  Truth is the key doctrine emphasized in Christ’s prayer.  And as such, truth should be the foundation of our prayers.  Our prayers have to be grounded in the truth, or they will accomplish nothing.  As Jesus told us in chapter 4 vs 24, “God is Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.”  

Even though the word “truth” is only mentioned specifically in vs 17,  it’s theme is found throughout all of the prayer.  In the first section Jesus is the manifestation of the truth.  That produces sanctification through the truth in the second section, which in turn produces unification in the truth in the final section which we are looking at today.  Now as we look specifically at Christ’s  prayer for the church, we see that unity is His predominate concern.

Jesus mentions unity three times, in verse 21, verse 22, verse 23, each time praying that we might be one. So unity is obviously the theme of the conclusion of Christ’s prayer.  And I would suggest that He makes four points in reference to the unity of the church that I would like to look at today; unity in  congregation, unity in glorification, unity in consummation, and unity in manifestation.  

First let’s look at Jesus’s prayer for unity in congregation.  I have used congregation as a substitute for the church.  The church is a congregation of the saints; whether local or universal.  That is who we are, and that is who Christ prays for at this point, saying, “I do not ask on behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in Me through their word.”  So He is speaking of all those who will believe in the future as a result of the apostle’s doctrine.  The apostles would become the foundation of the church in the sense that what they taught and wrote concerning Christ’s teaching is the truth by which we are saved.  They established the doctrine of the church.

Notice that Jesus says unity in the church is established by belief in the word.  This is immensely important. Unity must never come at the expense of the truth of God’s word. Unity is not found in an ecclesiastical organization or denomination, but only in compliance with the word of God, as the church is true to the word.  The unity of the church then is a spiritual bond, not necessarily a physical one. Those that are in agreement with the truth of God are one with God and thus make up one body of Christ.  There may be different parts of the body, but all are one spiritual body. 

However, when a church strays from the truth, then we are under no compulsion to be unified with it, but rather we are actually commanded to break fellowship with them in order to protect the truth. Jude warns of this deception that had entered the church in Jude 1:3, “Beloved, while I was making every effort to write you about our common salvation, I felt the necessity to write to you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all handed down to the saints. For certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.”

So to counter that corruption from within the church Paul wrote in  1Cor. 5:11, “But actually, I wrote to you not to associate with any so-called brother if he is an immoral person, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or a swindler—not even to eat with such a one. For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Do you not judge those who are within the church? But those who are outside, God judges. REMOVE THE WICKED MAN FROM AMONG YOURSELVES.”  

There was an article in the news some time ago about a certain Baptist church in South Carolina.  Several years ago they made the decision to break away from the Southern Baptist Convention primarily because they wanted to accommodate the practice of ordaining women to the pastorate.  And so they broke away and for a few years had a woman pastor.  But a deliberate rebellion against the truth of God’s word always brings with it a continual hardening, which often results in further apostasy.  And in their case, that culminated recently with the church appointing a married lesbian couple to be the pastors of their congregation.  With such churches we cannot be unified.  We must in fact rebuke such who go against the clear teaching of the word in favor of the culture of the world.  The culture will change with the times, but the word of God endures forever. 

So the unity of church is made possible by salvation, and salvation comes through the word of God.  Paul said in Romans 10:17, “So faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.”  We are saved by the apostle’s doctrine which has been written for us as the scriptures.  There is no other way to saving faith.  Nature may teach us enough about God according to Romans 1:20 to incriminate us, but not enough to save us.  There must be the preaching of the word of God. 1Cor. 1:21 “For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not come to know God, God was well-pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe.”

And unity comes through the word, so that the world might know the truth of Jesus Christ.  Jesus continues praying in vs.21, “that they may all be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me.”  Our unity then is not for purposes of organization, but for the preservation of the truth, that the world might know the truth of the gospel; that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, that Jesus Christ the Son of God died in our place on the cross, and rose again, and sits at the right hand of God, and that salvation comes through faith in Christ alone.  There is salvation in none other.  Jesus said, “I am the way the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father except by Me.”

Secondly, Jesus prays that the church might have unity in glorification.  Vs.22, “The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one.”   What is the glory that was given to Christ from God? I have read a lot of suggestions as to what glory represents, but I would suggest that it is the truth of God.  That is Christ’s glory; that He was God and was sent from God. And that is the glory of the truth that He gave to the apostles.  

John affirms this glory in John 1:14 saying, “And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.”  So Jesus goes on to say that when they receive that glory of the truth, they will be “perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me.”  Perfected means completed.  Our unity with God is completed when we know the truth of God in Jesus Christ.  And when we are complete in our knowledge of the truth, then we can fulfill the mission of the church, which is to go into all the world and make disciples.  When we know the truth about Christ, then we can make Him known to the world, that the world might come to a saving knowledge of God.

Notice that twice Jesus prays the same phrase; vs 21, “so that the world may believe that You sent Me.”  And then in vs 22, “so that the world may know that You sent Me.”  This is obviously important to Christ, that the world would come to know that He was sent from God to save the world from sin. That He was God come in human flesh to be our substitute as a sacrifice for sin. This is the core of the gospel.  “For God so loved the world, that He gave HIs only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” This is God’s love for the world; that through faith in Christ they might be saved from sin and death. 

This truth is worth dying for.  Did you ever realize that Christ died for telling that truth? How then can we diminish what Christ died to prove?  The truth is obviously important to God.  And the truth is that God sent Jesus to die for our sins that we might be saved from sin and death.  Our job is to make that truth known.  That is job one of the church.  That is our unifying mission. And any so called church that diminishes the gospel of Jesus Christ or His deity cannot be unified with His church.

Thirdly, Jesus prays that the church might have unity in the consummation of His kingdom. The Kingdom of God is bookended by the inauguration and the consummation of Christ’s kingdom.  We live in  the time between the inauguration and the consummation.  Jesus here prays that we may see His consummation of the Kingdom. Vs.24, “Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given Me, be with Me where I am, so that they may see My glory which You have given Me, for You loved Me before the foundation of the world.”  

After His crucifixion, Jesus was going back to the Father.  He has told the disciples this again and again.  In fact, at the beginning of the Upper Room Discourse He said to them, “Let not your heart be troubled: you believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there you may be also.” (John 14:1)

So what Jesus is praying for is that the church would be united with Him at His second coming, at the consummation of His kingdom, that they might see His glory, even the glory which He had before the world began.  The disciples had come to know a veiled glory, but He desires that we might know His full glory. He is speaking of His second coming when every eye will see Him coming in the clouds with glory.  And when we see Him in glory, it will result in our glorification.  The children of God will be given glorified bodies like Christ.  As John describes for us in 1John 3:2, “Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it does not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is.”

When we see Him come in the consummation of His Kingdom, we are going to be given glorified bodies like Him.  We are going to be seated on thrones with Him.  We will share in His glory.  And then the bride of Christ will be joined to Christ in a celestial union the likes of which our earthly marriages are but a pale shadow.  This union with Christ at His consummation is what we call heaven.  Heaven is an actual place, but more importantly it is a eternal state of being with the Lord. We will be with Him, and as such be like Him, and share in His glory.

When most people think of heaven, they think of the streets of gold, and the pearly gates.  Such themes are described for us in Revelation chapter 21.  But if you will turn there for a moment I want to show you something interesting.  Revelation 21:1-3, “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth passed away, and there is no longer any sea. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be among them.” 

Then skip down to vs.9: “Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues came and spoke with me, saying, ‘Come here, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.’ And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great and high mountain, and showed me the holy city, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God.”  So I want you to notice that twice in this passage the New Jerusalem, that city which we think of as heaven, is said to be the bride of Christ, which we know from Ephesians 5 in particular and other places is a metaphor for the church.  Now I will save the full exegesis of those verses for another time, but suffice it to say that our union with Christ will be as His bride, and that constitutes heaven. Wherever Christ is, heaven is.  Thus Paul could say, “to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. And that is ever more better.” 

But before we leave Revelation 21, let me show you one other thing.  Look at vs.14, “And the wall of the city had twelve foundation stones, and on them were the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.”  Note how synchronistic that is with Ephesians 2:20 which in speaking of the church says it is  “built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the corner stone.”  That is what Jesus has been praying for in this prayer of John 17, that those who believe in the Lord as a result of the apostle’s doctrine would come to know the fullness of the truth of Christ, and being unified with Him in doctrine, we will one day be unified with Him in the consummation of the Kingdom.  And then we will share in His glory, for we shall be like Him, having seen Him as He is.

The fourth and final thing that Jesus prays for here for the church is that we might know unity in manifestation.  Look at vs.25,26; “O righteous Father, although the world has not known You, yet I have known You; and these have known that You sent Me; and I have made Your name known to them, and will make it known, so that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them.”  When we are unified with Him in truth, then we will be unified with Him in presence, in HIs manifestation to us both in revelation and incarnation.  

But first I want you to point out here that Jesus calls His Father righteous. It’s interesting that Jesus ascribes two characteristics to God the Father in His prayer.  The first is in vs 11, Jesus calls Him Holy Father.  And now in vs25, Jesus calls Him Righteous Father.  Holy and righteous, two great distinctives of God the Father.  These are the two characteristics that are important to Christ.  Not the only characteristics that are important.  He goes on to speak of the love that God has for Him and for the church.  But above all else, God is holy and righteous.  God is also just, He is merciful, He is compassionate, His is loving, He is wrathful, He is Mighty, He is awesome in power.  There are a multitude of characteristics of God.  

But I would warn that the danger in the church today is that we want to boil down God to just one characteristic.  Rob Bell says that God is love and that one characteristic eclipses all other considerations of God.  So that the love of God overshadows the righteousness of God. Therefore he says that God will not send anyone to hell because love overwhelms all of God’s other aspects of His character. In his view, God is not concerned about righteousness any more.  But notice Christ includes both righteousness and love.  God’s righteousness demands justice and consequently punishment for sin, but God’s love requires that He substitutes Christ to be punished on our behalf.  

So Jesus isn’t teaching some watered down version of the gospel.  Jesus goes on to say that the world does not know the Father.  And I would suggest that is because they aren’t concerned about knowing the truth of God, nor the word of God.  They have devised a version of God according to what they think is right or correct in light of the present culture.  But God is unchanging.  He is God from everlasting.  He must be worshipped in truth, or He will not be known at all. So then intimacy with God is predicated upon fidelity to the truth of God, of which the pillars are righteousness and holiness.

As the bride of Christ we must be concerned about righteousness and holiness.  Because God is concerned about righteousness and holiness. Jesus said if you love Me you will keep My commandments.  The commandments are God’s standard for righteousness.  If God did not care about righteousness and holiness then the death of Jesus Christ was a great tragedy and a waste.  It need not have happened at all.  But we know that it was not a tragedy, but a triumph.  Christ died to take away the penalty of sin, God’s punishment for an affront to His righteousness.  Now in return for Christ’s righteousness which was given to us, we are commanded in the scriptures such as 1Peter 1:16 to be holy, even as He is holy. 

But though the world doesn’t know God, Jesus says these disciples do know Him, and because they know the truth of God, and know that Jesus is the manifestation of the righteousness of God, then He will make God ever more known to them.  Listen, that is speaking of what I have said many times from this pulpit.  And that is that the revelation of truth is progressive.  As we are obedient to the truth given, then the Lord will give us more truth.  When we keep the truth of God as revealed through His word, then He will lead us into more truth.  He will lead us into intimacy with God, that we might know the love of God.  That is the intimacy of the bride of Christ with the bridegroom; that we might share the love of God.  

And that love of God towards us is manifested by the Spirit of God who indwells us. In that sense we share in the incarnation of Christ, in that the Spirit of God dwells in His people, and we are His temple. Vs.26, “so that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them.”  You cannot know intimacy with God more than that, can you?  To know God,  to know the love of God and to know the presence of God.  I said a few weeks ago, that the greatest thing in the world is to know God and to be known of God.  And we can know God because we have the Spirit of God in us, to lead us and guide us into the truth of God.

The Spirit of God is given to us that we might know the truth of God, and that we might do the works of God.  He is given that He might write the law of God upon our hearts according to Hebrews 10:16.  That the truth of God is manifested within us by the Spirit of God who is in us. The Spirit conforms us to the image of God from the inside out.

Listen, the defining characteristic that Christ desires for HIs bride is not that we all have some sort of charismatic experience which may unify us.  But the vital characteristic of the church is that we be in union with the truth of the word of God.  The Spirit of God is given to us that we might know the truth, and that we might have the truth written in our hearts, so that we might have the power within us to work the works of God. The Spirit is in us, so that we might do the work of Christ, which is to manifest the truth of God to the world.  That is why Jesus calls the Holy Spirit the Spirit of Truth.  

And that is why Jesus prays that the church will know the truth, and that truth will produce unity in  congregation, unity in glorification, unity in consummation, and unity in manifestation.  I pray that you know God in truth.  I pray that you have come to believe in the truth of God manifested in Jesus Christ, and having believed in Him for salvation, you have been born again, and are the dwelling place of the Spirit of the Lord.  I pray that you will come to know God more fully, and that you will become complete in Christ, as you are conformed to His image.  So that one day, when Jesus Christ returns for His bride, He might find you ready and waiting, dressed in the spotless robes which were provided by Christ’s righteousness, and that you might enter into the marriage supper of the Lamb in the presence of the Lord and there be forever with the Lord.  

Last week we began to look at what is the longest prayer of Christ that is recorded, and perhaps the most instructive of His prayers.  It is exemplary from many different perspectives.  The prayer can be broken down into three main sections; vs1-5 Jesus prays concerning Himself, vs 6-19 Jesus prays concerning the disciples, and vs20 -26 Jesus prays concerning the church. 

Now as we saw last time, one of those perspectives is that Christ’s prayer teaches us to pray. His prayer as recorded in the first five verses is an example of effective prayer, prayer that is acceptable to God.  In vs 1-5, we noted that Christ’s prayer was to the right person,  then in the right timing, for the right purpose, according to the will of God, according to the knowledge of God, that He might do the work of God, that all would be done to the glory of God’s Son.  If we emulate Christ’s example of prayer, then we can be confident that God accepts our prayers.

This week, we are looking at the middle section, or His prayer for HIs disciples.  And in this section we see that Christ is obviously praying for our benefit.  He prays for the benefit of His disciples and also for us, as evidenced by vs.6 and 20. But in praying for us, He is also praying as an example for us. He is praying not only to edify us, but to educate us.  And so contained in this prayer is a healthy measure of doctrine that is being taught.  

Doctrine is simply a term used to designate truth or principles of truth.  So as Jesus prays for the disciples, He is also concerned that He prays for them according to the truth.  That is the key to effective prayer, or prayer that will be accepted by God.  Prayer, to be acceptable to God, must be in accordance with God’s nature and character.  I frequently find an attitude among naive Christians that uses prayer as a form of existentialism.  Whereby acting in what they think is faith, they speak things that they want to be true, but which often are not founded on the truth.

Such prayers are not effective, because God is concerned about truth.  There is no truth outside of God.  God is truth.  Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father except by Me.”  So we cannot access God without truth.  Jesus said again, “God is Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.”

So as Jesus prays for the disciples, He prays according to the truth, and He is teaching that truth as He prays.  There are three points He makes in this middle section of the prayer, which is particularly directed towards the disciples, but exponentially to us as well. The three principles build on one another.  The first principle is the manifestation of the truth, which produces separation by the truth, which produces sanctification through the truth.

I want to focus our attention first upon the manifestation of the truth.  Jesus praying in vs.6 said, “I have manifested Your name to the men whom You gave Me out of the world; they were Yours and You gave them to Me, and they have kept Your word.”  

The first way that the truth of God was manifested to the disciples was by Jesus Himself.  “I have manifested Your name.”  That means that He manifested, or revealed, brought to life, the nature and character of God.  He was the invisible God made visible.  To make manifest is to take what is obscure or mysterious, and make it clear. Jesus Christ made God visible.  Hebrews 1:3 says, “And He [that is Christ} is the radiance of [God’s] glory and the exact representation of [God’s] nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power.”  

Also, Colossians 1:15 says, “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.”

And John 1:14 speaking of Christ says, “And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.”  The point being, that Jesus Christ was the exact representation of the nature and character and word of God. He is the visible image of the invisible God. He is the truth of God, made manifest to the world.  

There used to be a popular song on the radio that had the lyric, “tell me all your thoughts on God.”  And that is a popular sentiment in society today.  I saw an interview with a well known rock musician the other day in which she was expounding on what she believed God was like.  But in reality, they are telling you what they want God to be like.  However,  to design a god according to your sense of what he should be like is actually a form of idolatry.  That is creating a god according to your image.  God has already declared Himself as to who He is, through Jesus Christ. And we must worship Him in accordance with His truth.

And then Jesus says there is a second way that God is manifested.  Starting in vs.6b, “they have kept Your word. Now they have come to know that everything You have given Me is from You; for the words which You gave Me I have given to them; and they received them and truly understood that I came forth from You, and they believed that You sent Me.”  

It’s no coincidence that in John chapter 1 Jesus is called the Word who was with God and who was God.  And now that person called the Word, who is the manifestation of God, gives them the word of God and that word manifests the truth of God; that Jesus is from God, and is sent by God. 

The difference between us and the disciples is that we don’t have the physical person of Jesus Christ here with us today.  We cannot see Jesus.  But we do have His word.  And His word manifests Christ and manifests the Father.  God has manifested Himself to us through His word, and the Holy Spirit works through the word in us to make known to us the truth of God.  Thus Jesus refers to the Holy Spirit again and again as the Spirit of Truth.  

I said last week that it was important to pray.  Perhaps one of the most important disciplines we can exercise as a Christian is to pray.  It should stir up our faith in all areas of our lives.  But I do not say that to diminish the importance of the word of God.  It is the foundation for all that we do.  So when we pray, we must pray according to the truth of God’s word.  If our prayers are to be acceptable to God, then they must be in accordance with the character and nature of God, which is revealed to us in the word of God.

Note also vs 8 shows that the manifestation of God through the word produces salvation. “for the words which You gave Me I have given to them; and they received them and truly understood that I came forth from You, and they believed that You sent Me.”  That is salvation in a nutshell.  To receive Christ, to believe in Him and all that He has said concerning Himself constitutes saving faith.  We are saved by grace through faith. Simply seeing the light of the truth of Jesus Christ and receiving Him as your Savior and Lord and believing in Him constitutes saving faith.  And Romans 10:17 tells us that faith comes through the hearing of the word.  Romans 10:17, “So faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.”

That leads us to the second doctrine that Christ is teaching in His prayer, which is separation by the truth. Once we are saved, the truth of God separates us from the deception of the world.  Jesus prays in vs 9, “I ask on their behalf; I do not ask on behalf of the world, but of those whom You have given Me; for they are Yours; and all things that are Mine are Yours, and Yours are Mine; and I have been glorified in them.”  

Look at how this works; we are chosen by God, given to Christ, separated unto God and Christ, and as a result we glorify Christ.  That’s amazing, isn’t it?  God glorifies Christ, Christ manifests the Father to us, we are saved, and then we glorify God by manifesting Christ.  It comes full circle.  And don’t miss the security that is given there.  We are not only separated unto Christ, but kept by God and by Christ.  Jesus spoke of that security in  John 10:28, saying, “I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish; and no one will snatch them out of My hand. My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand.”  He will not lose those who are His.  He keeps us, forever.

Then back in our text in vs 11 Jesus says our salvation results in us being unified with Him, and in turn unified with the Father. “I am no longer in the world; and yet they themselves are in the world, and I come to You. Holy Father, keep them in Your name, the name which You have given Me, that they may be one even as We are.” We are unified with God by the indwelling Spirit of God. Paul said in 1Cor. 6:19, “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own?”  And in  1Cor. 3:16, “Do you not know that you are a temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?”  

Listen, we are not of the world, but separated unto God, because we are the temple of God and He dwells in us.  We aren’t separate from the world because we think we are better than they are, but because we belong to God.  

1John 2:15 says, “Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.”  So we separate from the world because we are not of the world.  We belong to Christ.  We have been bought with a price. And we have been separated unto Christ, we are unified with God,  because the Spirit of God indwells us.

When we are unified with Christ through separation from the world, then we know the joy of the Lord. Vs.13, ““But now I come to You; and these things I speak in the world so that they may have My joy made full in themselves.”  I said last week and I will say it again; a life lived for God’s purposes produces joy.  Whereas a life lived for yourself produces dissatisfaction.  Living for God will bring you true joy.  Living for yourself will maybe garner a few moments of happiness, but in the long run it is a joyless experience. But when you live to glorify God, then you can know the joy of Christ, which is everlasting joy, even in the midst of tribulation.  Hebrews 12:2, “fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”

And let me just add this thought; if you are truly a Christian, living in the world will make you miserable.  The devil will try to seduce you with promise that you can find happiness in the lusts of the world, but it will only end up making you miserable.  Because if you love the world, then you are in rebellion with God, and that goes against your new nature.  So don’t fall for the temptations of the world.  They will not bring joy.  Joy comes from separation from the world and unity with God.  But I’m not suggesting that you need to become a monk and go live in a monastery on some remote mountain to find joy in the Lord.  We are in the world, but not of the world.  That simply means we don’t fulfill the sinful lusts of the world. We don’t live according to the dictates of the world’s philosophy.

While separation from the world unto Christ produces joy, it conversely produces hatred from the world.  Vs.14, “I have given them Your word; and the world has hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.”  Because they hated Christ, they will hate us as well. They hate us because we are different.  We have a different perspective about life that separates us from them. That hatred of the world is why we endure tribulation.  But that is also why He promises us joy first.  So because of the joy set before us, like Christ we can endure the suffering and despise the shame. Knowing that if we suffer with HIm, we shall also be exalted with Him. That one day we too will sit on thrones with Christ.

Vs.15, Jesus prays, “I do not ask You to take them out of the world, but to keep them from the evil one.”  Now how is that accomplished?  How do we keep ourselves from the sin which so easily besets us, from the snare and trap of Satan?  I suggest that the answer is found in Christ’s prayer.  Note that He has bracketed vs15 on the front end and the back end with the same phrase: “they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.”  Twice Jesus says it, to show it’s imperative for keeping ourselves unstained by sin, and unfettered by vice.  To be not of the world is to keep oneself from the captivity of the evil one.  

When we try to see how close to the world we can get and still be ok, we put ourselves at risk from the trap of the evil one, who goes about as a roaring lion seeking whom he can devour.  But when we stay far away from the lusts of the world and the paths of sin, then we free ourselves from many temptations.  Paul illustrates this through the lust for money in 1Timothy 6:9, “But those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a snare and many foolish and harmful desires which plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil, and some by longing for it have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.” Jesus said you cannot serve God and mammon, or money.

The third major principle Jesus illustrates in His prayer builds upon the principle of separation we just looked at, and that is sanctification through the truth. Jesus prays in vs.17, “Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth.”  This is one of the greatest principles in the New Testament.  First, a definition of terms; sanctification means to be set apart.  To be consecrated, set apart from profane use to holy usage.  It means to be made righteous. That is the purpose of separation.  We are no longer of the world, but we are set apart for fellowship with God.

Now note that Jesus says, sanctification comes through the truth. What does that mean?  It means when we look at Christ, we see the standard for righteousness.  We see God’s standard for holiness.  And when we emulate Christ and obey His word we become conformed to His image, we become conformed to His righteousness. 2Cor. 3:18, “But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.”

So the Spirit of God, working in us through the truth of God’s word produces obedience to the word, produces in us the image of Jesus Christ, by which we manifest Him to the world. That is sanctification, when we become holy vessels used for service to God.

Secondly, Jesus affirms, “Your word is truth.”  That’s extremely important.  Because the inerrancy, inspiration and sufficiency of scripture is under attack today.  But Jesus says unequivocally  that His word is truth.  Absolute, irrevocable, eternal truth is found in the word of God. 

Every year, Oxford Dictionaries chooses a word or expression to “reflect the passing year in language.” For the Word of the Year in 2016, they chose “post-truth.”  They define  “post-truth” as “Relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.”

So basically, what they are saying is that our society doesn’t believe in absolute truth anymore.  They believe in relative truth, as defined by their emotions and personal inclinations.  

And that’s why the world hates us. Because the Christian’s worldview is completely opposed to this post-truth mindset. Christianity is grounded in objective truth. Jesus said in John 8:32, “And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”  Objective truth only exists because we have God’s Word.  Jesus says in vs17, “Sanctify them in Your truth. Your word is truth.”  Both Paul and James describe the Bible as “the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15; James 1:18). Psalms 119:160 says, “The entirety of your word is truth.” When Jesus said, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except by me” (John 14:6), He wasn’t expressing His personal belief or opinion. He was speaking the truth of God, a fundamental reality that doesn’t change from person to person or age to age. It doesn’t matter if our culture thinks truth is subjective or dependent upon their preferences. The truth of the matter is “no one comes to the Father but by Jesus Christ.” There is God’s truth as revealed in the scriptures, and there is no other truth.

The final principle we see in this section of Christ’s prayer is that sanctification not only comes through separation and the word, but through service.  Vs.18, “As You sent Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world. For their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they themselves also may be sanctified in truth.”  

So sanctification means to be set apart for good works. Eph. 2:10, “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.”

The temple of God was for service to God, for worship of God. They are really one and the same; service and worship.  You cannot have one without the other.  Romans 12:1 illustrates that perfectly.  It says, “Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.”  And notice how that service and worship is accomplished by the way; by separation from the world, vs.2, “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.”

What is our purpose in sanctification? That in being conformed to the image of Christ we may be the manifestation of Christ to the world. Jesus models this Himself. “As You sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.” Just as Christ was God’s instrument, sent to be the Light to  a blind and dying world, so He sends us to do the same. We are sent to the same work, sent with the same resources, and thus we are continuing the work of Jesus in the world. That is the process of sanctification.  We serve the Lord, as the temple of God.

Further, he prays, this will be made possible by his death on the cross: “For their sake I sanctify myself.” He dedicated Himself to be used as an instrument of righteousness by going to the cross. In order that we might be sanctified in the truth. And as the outcome of that death of Jesus on our behalf we are granted righteousness, and holiness, and the indwelling  power of the Spirit by which we too may become ambassadors for the Kingdom of God.

Once we are born again, we are converted, become a new creation in Christ Jesus, it is necessary that we grow in our new life, mature to the full stature of Christ Jesus.  And to that end, if I had to make a recommendation for a spiritual goal that you could make which would have the greatest possible impact in your life, not only for yourself, but also on your church, your family, friends and coworkers, I would suggest that you resolve to be a better man or woman of prayer.  That doesn’t mean that I think reading your Bible is not essential to Christian health, or that other godly disciplines are not profitable.  But it simply means that if you become a man or woman of prayer you cannot help but become more attuned to the things of God.  A committed prayer life will immeasurably enrich all areas of your spiritual life.  You cannot have a vibrant prayer life and be a lukewarm Christian.  A diligent, effective prayer life will elevate your spiritual maturity in all areas.  It will improve your devotional times, it will improve your ministry involvement,  it will empower your witness to others, and it is a means of loving one another. 

However, I should emphasize that for such results, there must be effective prayers.  Not merely going through the motions.  As Jesus said in  Matt. 6:7, “…when you are praying, do not use meaningless repetition as the Gentiles do, for they suppose that they will be heard for their many words.” Obviously, praying the rosary over and over again is just meaningless repetition. So it’s not the quantity of our prayers that matters as much as the quality of our prayers. As James said, “the effective prayer of a righteous man accomplishes much.” I think that James is saying that for a prayer to be effective with God, you must be righteous.  As David said in the Psalms, “If I regard iniquity in my heart the Lord will not hear me.”

So with effective prayers as our goal, then we should look to the supreme example, and that is of course Jesus Himself.  The Bible records many instances of Jesus praying.  But while we see many instances in which we are told Jesus prayed all night or that He spent much time in prayer, the Bible records only brief sentences of His prayers.  We have what is called the Lord’s prayer, but it isn’t a prayer which Jesus prayed.  It was a model prayer for the disciples so they could learn to pray.  But as we come to this 17th chapter of John, we have a tremendous opportunity to study the prayer of Jesus in full.  It is a comprehensive prayer, and as such it is one in which we can study and emulate in full confidence that we are praying according to the will of God, which Jesus told us is the key to effective prayer.

We’re going to look then at the beginning of this prayer which Jesus prayed on the night before His crucifixion.  This is widely known as His High Priestly prayer.  In that sense, it is a prelude to His heavenly ministry.  Jesus ends His earthly ministry by interceding through prayer in His heavenly ministry.  Hebrews 7:25 says, “He ever lives to make intercession for us.”  And so this prayer is a foretaste of His ministry in heaven as our Great High Priest, the mediator between God and man.

I want to point out for you seven essential components of effective prayer as illustrated in the first five verses of this prayer of Jesus.  First we must pray to the right person, then in the right timing, 3rd, for the right purpose,  4th, according to the will of God, 5th, according to the knowledge of God, 6th, that we might do the work of God, and last, that all would be done to the glory of God’s Son.

Now there is some overlap there, but I think that will serve as a sort of outline by which we can examine this prayer for our benefit.  Let’s notice first, praying to the right person. Jesus addresses His prayer to the Father.  Of all the ways God could have chosen to be called, and out of all the names of God, Jesus uses the title Father.  And we know that in the disciple’s model prayer, known as the Lord’s prayer, Jesus told the disciples as well to address God as our Father.  

The title Father illustrates that God is not some distant, aloof, or abstract god far off in the universe, or far beyond our comprehension.  But God is our heavenly Father, which speaks of the person and the personality of God.  It reveals the relationship we can have with the Father through Jesus Christ.  And it reveals the love of God towards His children.  It reveals the privilege we have with God, by which we can say, “Abba, Father.” 

Now of course, you must have been born again by the Spirit in order to call God your Father. If you have been born again, then you are a child of God, and as such, you have a special privilege to come to God as your Father.  There is no one else we are instructed to pray to.  We are never told to pray to Mary, or to the Saints.  We pray to God our Father.  To pray to anyone else is really a form of idolatry. 

So Jesus calls God “Father” and He instructs us to call God “Father” which means that we are the children of God and thus co-heirs with Christ.  As Jesus is the Son of God, He has brought many sons to glory, bought by the redemption of His blood, so that we may be called the children of God.  That relationship of Father and child is the basis for effective prayer.  Because as Jesus said in Matt.6:8, “your Father knows what you need before you ask Him.”  It means we can come to Him whenever we want, wherever we are and know that He hears us, and that He loves us and  wants to help us, and that He will give us what is best for us, even with the same confidence that Jesus could appeal to His Father.

Secondly, note that Jesus prays not only to the right person, but in the right timing.  Jesus says, “the hour has come, glorify your Son.”  All throughout the Lord’s ministry He has said, “My hour has not yet come. My hour has not yet come.” But now as he approaches Calvary the hour has come. He is speaking of the hour in which He is offered up as a sacrifice for sin on the cross.  

Jesus makes it clear that His hour was the hour of His crucifixion in John 12:27, Jesus said, “Now my soul is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour.”  He went on to clarify what that meant in vs.31, ‘Now is the time for judgment on this world; now the prince of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.’ He said this to show the kind of death he was going to die.”

We too must pray according to the timing of God.  Our timetables are not necessarily God’s timetables.  I’ve seen that illustrated in my own life time and time again.  For instance, we want a new car, so we get a loan for a car, and that becomes a monthly bill.  Now every month when the bill is due I look to God to “supply my needs.”  I think, surely, God knows that it’s the first of the month.  What’s He waiting for?  And when He doesn’t supply what I want just when I think He should I start to doubt the goodness or the love of God.  But I need to remember that God didn’t sign that contract, I did.  I let my glory, and my lusts and my desires set a timetable that God didn’t have any say so over.  We need to remember Isaiah 55:8, “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,” declares the LORD.  

Ecclesiastes 3:1 says, “There is an appointed time for everything. And there is a time for every event under heaven.”  Jesus knew that God had appointed Him to die at the right time, and so He prayed in accordance with the timing of God, confident that God’s timing was perfect. We don’t always know the timing of God, but we can wait patiently for it, trusting that our heavenly Father knows what His perfect time is.

Thirdly, Jesus prays, and we should pray, according to the purpose of God.  “Father, the hour has come, glorify your Son, that the Son may glorify You.” It’s interesting that Jesus asked to be glorified, because the hour had come to be glorified, but that glorification resulted in His death.  That’s ironic, isn’t it? You know, the word glory can have different meanings, but the one I think is appropriate for this use of glory is; “high renown or honor won by notable achievements.”  Jesus considered it glory to die on the cross for us, that we might be reconciled to God, so that He might bring many sons to glory.  His glory came at the expense of His suffering.  And His glory was to glorify the Father.

The Westminster Shorter Catechism asks the question; what is the chief end of man?  And the answer is, to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.  When we aim to glorify Him, then we will find the joy of Christ that He promised we would have.  Joy is not found in self glory, or self gratification, but it is found in serving the Lord, and doing all for His glory.

So when we pray, we need to remember that principle.  We must ask ourselves when we pray for things, are we praying to achieve God’s purposes or for ours, for our glory or for God’s glory?  God’s glory requires that we die to ourselves first and then He will glorify us.  James said in  James 4:3, “You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures.”  Selfish motives in prayer is a form of self glorification.  Our desire should not be to glorify ourselves, but to glorify God.  Jesus could ask God to glorify Him because everything He did glorified the Father.  How can we pray for God to glorify us?  To reveal us as His people, as His children, as made in HIs likeness and conformed to His image.  When we are obedient to Him, and thus reflect Him, then we glorify God, and in return He will glorify us.

Romans 8:17 tells us though that our glory comes the same way Jesus did; through suffering.  “and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him.”  

Fourthly, we need to pray as Jesus prayed, not only to the right person, in the right timing, and for the right purpose, but also according to the will of God.  Now that may seem a little redundant. There cannot be much daylight between the purpose of God and the will of God. But perhaps we might think of the purpose of God as referring to His eternal purpose.  Ephesians 3:10 speaks of this eternal purpose; “that the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known through the church to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenly places. This was in accordance with the eternal purpose which He carried out in Christ Jesus our Lord.”  So that speaks perhaps of the eternal plan of God, whereas the will of God achieves that purpose as it is acted out in the daily events and exercises of our lives.  

So in an example of praying according to the will of God, Jesus says in vs.2, “even as You gave Him authority over all flesh, that to all whom You have given Him, He may give eternal life.”  The will of God is rooted in the authority of God, which He has delegated to Christ.  The Lord Jesus Christ has all authority over life.  He is the Creator of all. John 1 tells us “All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.”  Hebrews 1:3 tells us that Christ upholds all things by the word of His power.

So doesn’t the Creator have authority over His creation?  And since the Creator gives life to His creation, should not  creation recognize His authority to determine the ebb and flow of our lives?  Should we not recognize that He gives us life, and thus His will should be our will?  Then certainly when we pray, it shouldn’t be to try to shape the will of God, but to seek and to submit to the will of God.  

Jesus prayed according to the will of God.  In the Garden of Gethsemane a few hours later, He prayed while sweating drops of blood, “not my will, but yours be done.”  When we are attuned to the Father’s will, then our prayers will be answered.  We subordinate our will to the Father’s will because He knows what is best for us.

Doing the will of God is kind of like going on a diet. The diet says, no ice cream.  But you want ice cream.  You love ice cream.  And so the diet is hard for you. It’s difficult to stay on track and you are constantly in a battle of will power.  But if you could somehow become a different person – one that hated ice cream, well, then you would have no trouble in keeping the diet, would you?  Because you hate ice cream, and the diet restricts ice cream.  Now your will is in agreement with the diet plan.  And so the diet is no longer difficult.  

So it is with God’s plan for us. When we were of the world then we loved the things of the world. But when we are saved we become a new creation. We are converted, changed.  God gives us a new nature.  Now we hate what God hates, and love what God loves.  So His will becomes our will.  And our prayers are not a battle with God to get what we want, but they are in accordance with His will. And His will is clearly laid out for us in His word.  Knowing the will of God is found in the knowledge of God revealed in His word.

That leads to the next point, we need to pray as Jesus did, according to the knowledge of God.  Jesus prayed in vs.3,  “This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.”  We can know God, and know the will of God, because we have known Jesus Christ and believed in Him.  Hebrews 1:3, speaking of Christ says, “And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature.”  

So if we want to know what God is like, we need only to look at Christ.  He was God in the flesh.  God made manifest to man.  And when we believe that, then we exhibit saving faith, by which we are saved from our sins and given eternal life. Jesus came to teach us the truth of God, the knowledge of God, and to give us the word of God.  So when we pray, we can pray according to the revealed knowledge of God. And we can know the will of God, because we have the word of God, which reveals the mind of God.

Sixthly, we need to pray that we might do the work of God. If we really want to pray according to the will of God, then we must do the work of God.  Jesus prayed in vs 4, “I glorified You on the earth, having accomplished the work which You have given Me to do.”  So many times when we pray, we pray that God will do something for us.  And God does many things for us.  The Bible says that every good and perfect gift comes from above.  The Bible says that God gives us the ability to make money, to be prosperous and successful.  Jesus said God causes it to rain on the just and the unjust.  

But how often do we pray that we might do the works of God?  That God would strengthen us to be a witness at work?  Or that God would give me the opportunity to talk to my neighbor about the Lord?  How often do we pray that God would give us a gift that we might serve His church?  Prayer is an essential part of service.  And service to God is worship of God.  Far too often we think that all God requires of us is to attend a meeting once a week or so and sing some songs and that constitutes worship.  That may be the beginning of worship, but it certainly is not the end of it.  Romans 12:1 says you are “to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.”  

Present your body to God as a living sacrifice, which is your spiritual service of worship, to do what?  Well, the rest of the passage says it is to exercise your spiritual gifts within the body of Christ, that is within the church.  Paul goes on to say these spiritual gifts are not for self edification, or to glorify yourself, but to build up the church through means of prophecy (that is preaching), or in serving, or in teaching, or in exhortation, or through giving, or in leading, or in showing mercy, and all is to be done in love for one another.  “Not lagging behind in diligence, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord; rejoicing in hope, persevering in tribulation, devoted to prayer, contributing to the needs of the saints, practicing hospitality.”  Those are just some of the good works we have been saved to do. And we need to pray that God will give us His grace that we might do them.

Finally, we need to pray that all would be done to the glory of Christ. Our godly works are to bring honor to Christ. Jesus prayed in vs 5, “Now, Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was.”  We traditionally tack on the end of our prayers the phrase; “in Jesus’s name we pray, Amen.”  And we do that because Jesus Himself said whatever we ask for in His name the Father will do.  

But to ask in Jesus’s name is not just some ritualistic appendage to our prayers, but it is an understanding and desire that all would be done to glorify Jesus Christ.  He is worthy of all glory.   Philippians 2:6 says about Christ that “although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, (or held onto) but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus EVERY KNEE WILL BOW, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”  

Jesus was asking in this prayer that He might once again take His rightful place in glory with God, with the same glory that He had with God before He laid it aside to be humiliated in the flesh.  And God answered that prayer, according to Philippians 2.  God gave Him the name above every name, that every knee would bow, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.  

This really goes back to the authority of Christ.  He is King of Kings, and Lord of Lords.  And so when we come before Him to pray in His name, we pray to the Father in the name of His beloved Son, whom He has exalted at His right hand, and with whom He shares all glory.  This same Jesus is our Redeemer, our Advocate, our Mediator, our Great High Priest, who ever lives to make intercession for us.

All of our works then should be for His glory.  Our lives should be lived for His glory.  Everything we do should reflect Jesus Christ.  That is the purpose of the Spirit of Christ who now lives in us, that He might do the works of Christ in us.  That is the purpose of the gifts of the Spirit, that we might be enabled to do the works of Christ.  

When we understand these principles of prayer as illustrated by Jesus’s prayer, then we will find our prayers effectual.  We will pray without ceasing.  We will pray fervently.  We will pray for leading, for strength to do His will. We will pray for our fellow believers. We will pray for our enemies. We will pray for our government. We will pray for the expansion of Christ’s kingdom.  And when we pray that way, it will elevate all areas of our spiritual lives to a higher plane, so that we may even more reflect Jesus Christ.

We are going to continue to look at Christ’s prayer for at least a couple of more weeks.  But for now there is a lot here that we can begin to emulate.  Peter said that Christ is our pattern, that we might trace our lives over His example.  Considering how important our prayer life is, there can be no more noble goal than to become a greater man or woman of prayer.  And the way to do that is to pattern our prayers after Christ’s example. That we might pray to the right person, in the right timing, for the right purpose, according to the will of God, according to the knowledge of God, that we might do the works of God, and that all would be done to the glory of God’s Son.

I want to focus our attention this morning on the last few hours before Christ’s death.  And in that timeframe, Jesus was detailing His plan and purpose not only for His life, but also the life ahead for His disciples.  We have been looking for weeks now at this last evening of Jesus’s life, in the passage known as the Upper Room  Discourse.  We are now down to the last few sentences.  And Jesus makes five statements in these last 9 verses of chapter 16 that I want to look at today.  Each one of them is so pregnant with truth that we might easily spend a sermon on them individually. But in the interest of time, we are only going to look briefly at these statements.  

At first glance, they seem disconnected. There is little to tie all of them together other than the impending departure of Christ.  So from that perspective, we might suppose that Christ gives them these final principles in order to strengthen them and prepare them for what is to come. 

The first statement Christ makes is found in vs.25, which we could summarize by saying, “the veil is lifted.”  The actual words of Jesus are as follows: “These things I have spoken to you in figurative language; an hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figurative language, but will tell you plainly of the Father.”

Now I summarize this statement by saying “the veil is lifted,”  because it refers back to the Old Testament period which the disciples were a part of, but are now transitioning out of.  In Hebrews 9, the author tells us that in the old covenant, there was a tabernacle, and within the tabernacle was the Holy of Holies where the presence of God dwelled. Though God’s presence was there, He was veiled to the people.  And only once a year the high priest offered sacrifices for himself and the people and went in before the presence of God to intercede on their behalf.  

Hebrews tells us that  the sacrifices and the altar and the high priest and the Holy of Holies  separated by the veil were earthly pictures of heavenly realities.   Hebrews 9:11 says, “But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things to come, He entered through the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this creation; and not through the blood of goats and calves, but through His own blood, He entered the holy place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption.”  And then in vs.24, “For Christ did not enter a holy place made with hands, a mere copy of the true one, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us.”

That means according to chapter 10 that we too have full access to God through Jesus Christ.  Hebrews 10:19, “Therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which He inaugurated for us through the veil, that is, His flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.” By faith in Christ, the author is saying, we have entrance through the veil to God, having been made righteous by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

So to go back to vs.25 then, Jesus is saying, the time has come when I will perform the ultimate sacrifice and make it possible for you to enter into the Holy of Holies.  And as you will remember, on the next day as Christ was crucified on the cross, the veil of the temple was literally torn from top to bottom, signifying that access to God had now been made possible through Christ’s death. That which was up to this point figurative and ceremonial, will now be done away with because the One who completes the picture has come.  So that no more will there be need for pictures and symbols and parables and figurative language, but Jesus will now tell you plainly of the Father, because He has offered the supreme sacrifice so that we are not separated from God by this veil, through which the disciples could now see through only dimly, but the veil will be torn in two so that they may draw near to God and be taught of God fully.

Jesus is stating that it was a new age in man’s relationship with God. Where there was once enmity, there is now peace. Where there was once separation, there is now full access. Where there was once pictures and symbols and parables, there is now the truth of the gospel made manifest in Christ, revealed through His word, and written in our hearts through the Holy Spirit. Thus Christ can say as He did earlier, that it was to our advantage that He went away.  So that’s the first principle; that through Christ as our high priest offering Himself as the sacrifice we now have full access to God.

Secondly, because of this veil being lifted, Jesus says you will know the familial love of the Father.  That’s the second point; to know the familial love of the Father.  Jesus says this in vs.26 and 27, “In that day you will ask in My name, and I do not say to you that I will request of the Father on your behalf; for the Father Himself loves you, because you have loved Me and have believed that I came forth from the Father.”

I think the key to understanding this statement is to understand the word love that  Jesus says the Father has towards us.  Contrary to most references in the New Testament, this love is not agape love as we are used to seeing.  But this word for love that Jesus uses here is  the Greek word “phileo” which means the love of family.  This love speaks of a new relationship we can have with God that is made possible through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.  

This love is the result of a familial relationship with God which had not been possible before the veil was lifted in Christ.  Having been cleansed by the blood of Christ, we are not only able to go directly before the throne of God, but He has also come to us.  He has given us His Spirit to dwell in us.  So that our bodies have now become the Holy of Holies where the Spirit of God dwells. As 1 Cor.3:16 says, “your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you.”

God no longer dwells in temples made with human hands, but in the hearts of His people.  Our faith in the sacrifice of Christ on our behalf makes us part of His family.  And God has a special love towards His family.   Romans 8:14, “For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, “Abba! Father!” The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God,  and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him.”

There’s a classic Christmas hymn written in 1739 by John Wesley and Charles Whitfield, both famous for their preaching during the Great Awakening which proclaims, “Pleased, as man with men to dwell, Jesus, our Emmanuel.”  Emmanuel means “God with us.”  Not just as a baby born to men, but “Born to raise the sons of earth, Born to give them second birth.”  And as we are born of God, then we enjoy the love of the Father as His children.  We have access to God as His sons and daughters.

That’s a privilege that is beyond our comprehension.  I can’t help but think of a famous photograph taken in the 60’s of President John F. Kennedy in the Oval Office of the White House.  And in the photograph of the President sitting at his desk, you can clearly see his son, little John F. Kennedy, Jr. playing under the desk.  That’s a good illustration of the privilege that we have with our heavenly Father, if we are born again into the family of God.

Thirdly, the basis of that relationship that both the disciples and we enjoy with the Father is founded in the gospel of Jesus Christ.  This gospel Jesus condenses into four statements, which constitute a creed, or confession of faith.  We simply believe this creed, and the blood of Jesus Christ is applied to us, and we receive all these benefits of being sons and daughters of God. 

Romans 10:9-10 says, “that if you confess with your mouth Jesus [as] Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved;  for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation.” 

 So Jesus extrapolates this confession in one sentence containing four major points in vs.28; “I came forth from the Father and have come into the world; I am leaving the world again and going to the Father.” This statement is tremendous in its simplicity and conciseness. One sentence with four points, and yet it contains the major doctrines of the gospel upon which we base our faith.  Notice, “I have come forth from the Father (that is speaking of His deity). I am come into the world (that is speaking of His incarnation.) I am leaving the world (that speaks of His death by crucifixion). I go to the Father (that speaks of is His resurrection and ascension).”

This illustrates that simply recognizing Jesus as a baby in a manger, or as a good teacher, or simply that He existed in history does not really constitute saving faith in Him.  We must believe in His deity; that He existed in the beginning with God and He was God. Secondly, we must believe in His incarnation; that He is God who became flesh and dwelt among us yet without sin.  Thirdly, we must believe that His death on the cross was the supreme sacrifice for the sins of mankind, and it was the substitutionary atonement by the grace of God on our behalf.  And fourthly, we must believe that God, having found no fault in Christ, and having paid our debt in full,  raised Him from the dead and He ascended to the right hand of the Father after all authority and power had been given to Him.  That is what it means to believe in Him.  And upon confession and faith in this gospel, the sacrifice of Jesus Christ is made effective for us, cleansing us from sin, and His righteousness is imputed to our account, making us righteous as we are born again into the family of God, so that  as sons and daughters of God we share in the inheritance of Christ.

Fourthly, we see in this passage the faltering faith of the faithful.  Vs.29, His disciples said, “Lo, now You are speaking plainly and are not using a figure of speech. Now we know that You know all things, and have no need for anyone to question You; by this we believe that You came from God.” Jesus answered them, “Do you now believe? Behold, an hour is coming, and has already come, for you to be scattered, each to his own home, and to leave Me alone; and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with Me.”

I think this statement by the disciples is sincere but it is incomplete in the sense that they have an immature faith at this point. What this principle teaches is the progression of our faith.  God gives us trials in order to refine our faith, but also to strengthen our faith and mature it.  Our faith grows in the fires of adversity.  Up to this point, the faith of the disciples was mostly academic.  I mean, they had certainly left all to follow Him, and thus suffered some as a result of that decision.  But the real tests of their faith was yet to come.  Consequently, their faith was still immature.  

Consider Peter’s boast that though all fall away, he would never fall away.  He was sincere, but he had no idea of what it would require of him to stay by the Lord’s side.  They believed up to a point, but it was  untested, and as a result, it was immature faith. And yet all the disciples were in the same boat as Peter.  They all would fall away that night.  They all would desert the Lord. And there is little difference between those first disciples and us.  We come to Christ through faith, but initially our faith is not fully developed. As we encounter trials and tribulations, as as we are fed by the word of God, God works in us to strengthen our faith, and to conform us in the image of Christ as we participate in the fellowship of His sufferings.

So to prepare the disciples for this testing what Jesus wants to emphasize was His relationship to the Father.  He says “I am not alone because the Father is with Me.”  This is what their faltering faith needs to rest upon in this time of testing; that Jesus and the Father were One. The plan of God did not fail due to the death of Christ.  Actually, the plan of God was in full effect. Their conviction of the deity of Christ was essential to their faith, so that though they may stumble, they would not fall headlong.  Because their relationship with God depends upon Christ’s relationship with God.  And Christ and the Father are One.  They need to know that Jesus is Lord, even when circumstances may seem to be declaring it untrue.

The great 19th century English preacher Charles Spurgeon gave a sermon on this passage.  He said, “There he stands. They have left him alone; but there he is, still standing to his purpose. He has come to save, and he will save. He has come to redeem, and he will redeem. He has come to overcome the world, and he will overcome it.”  

He also said, “I remember that passage about Abraham going with Isaac to mount Moriah, where Isaac was to be offered up. It is written, ‘So they went both of them together.’ So did the Eternal Father and his Well- beloved Son when God was about to give up his own Son to death. There was no divided purpose; they went both of them together.”

Fifthly, Jesus wants to remind the disciples of the peace of God and the good will of God in the face of tribulations.  Vs.33, “These things I have spoken to you, so that in Me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world.”  

When Jesus says in verse 33, “These things I have spoken unto you that in Me you might have peace,” He’s not saying that you’re not going to have tribulation, or difficulties, or trials and troubles. He’s simply saying that in the midst of the difficulties, and trials, and troubles, amidst the hostility of the world, the persecution, perhaps even the loss of life, He will give us peace – a peace not as the world gives.  A sense of calmness that comes from the assurance of the expiation of our sins and of a heavenly Father whose presence  through the Spirit is with us in all the experiences of life.  That no matter what comes my way, no matter how dire the circumstances may seem, even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, yet God is with me.

The peace of God is two fold.  On the one hand, we who were at enmity with God now have peace with God. When we were in our sins, we were in rebellion against God as Lord.  But due to our faith in what Christ accomplished on our behalf, our sins have been expunged.  We have been adopted into the family of God by the Father and given new life and indwelled by the Spirit of God, so that we have permanent communion with God.  That relationship we have is the foundation of our peace as we go through the trials and tribulations of this world.  How much more can we ask for than to know that the Creator of all things is with us, and that He loves us and will never leave us?  That He hears us whenever we call upon Him.  That we can come to Him whenever we need Him and He welcomes us and promises to help us.  That is a peace not as the world gives, but as only God can give to those that love Him and whom He loves. 

And notice that He doesn’t say as you might would expect, “you have overcome the world.” But that He has overcome the world. Christ is our champion.  He is our substitute.  He is our strength.  All our resources and blessings come through Him to us.  So our victory is settled because He was victorious over sin and death, and over all principalities and powers.  He is the object of our faith, and He is the source of our victory.  And so in Him, we can know the good will of God towards men, and the peace of God that passes all understanding.  

When the angel announced Christ’s birth to the shepherds in Luke 2:10 he said, “Do not be afraid; for behold, I bring you good news of great joy which will be for all the people; for today in the city of David there has been born for you a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.”  The fact that Jesus came from God to be our Savior is the source of great joy to all those who believe in Him.  God has become our Savior.  And because we confess Jesus as Lord, and believe in our heart that God has raised Him from the dead, we can say with the angels, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.”  Christ has secured our peace, He is the source of our joy, He is the strength of our life,  and His death and resurrection has made it possible for us to become the sons and daughters of God and receive an eternal inheritance. 

Today’s message is entitled “Authentic Christianity.”  This is a subject that I feel very strongly about, and I believe the Lord feels very strongly about it as well.  The meaning of  the word “authentic” is of undisputed origin, genuine, true, the real deal.  And as we study John’s gospel I believe this theme is emphasized over and over again. I believe authentic Christianity is very important to God.  And so it should be very important to us.  

God doesn’t want superficial Christianity.  He is not moved by lip service.  He is not interested in rituals and ceremonies and observing holy days which are supposed to honor the Lord, but in reality act as a facade for carnal hearts. In fact, Jesus said to the church of Laodecia in Revelation 3:15, “I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot; I wish that you were cold or hot. So because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of My mouth. Because you say, “I am rich, and have become wealthy, and have need of nothing,” and you do not know that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked, I advise you to buy from Me gold refined by fire so that you may become rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself, and that the shame of your nakedness will not be revealed; and eye salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see. Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline; therefore be zealous and repent.”  

Now that’s some pretty harsh talk for a bridegroom to say to His bride, is it not?  And yet this is how the Lord feels about superficial, sanctimonious churches that are not acting according to the truth.  David said in Psalm 51:6, “Behold, You desire truth in the innermost being, And in the hidden part You will make me know wisdom.”  God cares about the integrity of His people. Truth is important to God. The word truth is used in the Bible 235 times.  And in the book of John it is used 27 times.  

John 3:33 says that God is true.  Jesus said in John 14:6 that “I am the way, the truth and the life.”  He calls the Holy Spirit the Spirit of truth in John 14:17, John 15:26, and John 16:13. And Jesus says that the word is truth in John 17:17.  I would suggest that God defines Himself as truth.  He cares about truth.  God has declared absolute truth.  And so He cares that we walk in the truth. (2John 1:4)  So without question truth is important to God.

And truth is important to me.  It’s the reason that I preach the gospel.  It is because of a desire to know the truth, and that the truth would be known.  Many of you are familiar with my story.  But for those that aren’t – I am a preacher’s kid.  Preacher’s kids have it tough for a whole host of reasons that I won’t elaborate on today.  But be that as it may, as a genre we are notorious for rebelling and going astray.  And I was no exception. My dad had been an Army sergeant in the paratroopers before he got saved, and he brought us up by very strict standards.   So by 21 or so I had decided to leave home and try to find out if the world was as fun as it looked.  Long story short, I ended up getting as far away from God and my dad’s ministry as I could get.  I ended up in Redondo Beach, California. After a few years, I realized one day that I couldn’t remember the last time I had gone to bed sober.  I had explored all of the deviant pleasures that the world had to offer and still ended up empty and miserable.  And along the way, my love for God had become so cold I wasn’t even sure what I believed anymore.

To add to my problems, I had come to know someone that was a Seventh Day Adventist.  And in the process of discussing religion with them, I found that many of the things that I thought to be true about Christianity I really did not have any basis for believing, other than that was how I had been raised. Which caused me to have serious doubts about what was really the truth.  And so one day all of this culminated in a bout of some serious soul searching.  I became under conviction of the Holy Spirit.  I knew I needed to get right with God, but I spent all day walking the beach, trying to shake it off. Eventually though, God got me alone in my garage that evening, and I began to pour out my heart to the Lord and ask for forgiveness and express my need to have Him take over my failed life.

Especially though because of the questions I had developed due to my exposure to Seventh Day Adventism, I wanted to  know the truth.  And so I prayed to God that if He would show me the truth, I would do it.  Even if it meant that everything I had been raised to believe was wrong, I wanted to know the truth.  And I asked God to show me.  

I had always heard that when someone comes to the Lord he should read the book of John.  And so after I threw away my drugs and alcohol and cigarettes, I found a little New Testament, and began reading the book of John.  And a couple of hours later or so, I came upon this verse we are looking at in our text today.  Verse 13; “But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come. He will glorify Me, for He will take of Mine and will disclose it to you.”   I believe the Holy Spirit specifically illuminated that phrase, “He will guide you into all the truth…”  And I have been pursuing that truth for about 40 years now.

So I believe God wants authentic Christians. Jesus said in John 4:24, “God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”  To that end, God has given us the Spirit of Truth, so that we might worship Him as He wants to be worshipped.  

I saw a sign at a local church the other day which had a quote from Bishop Desmund Tutu. The sign said “Different faiths help us to realize the immensity of God.” But such a definition of God means that this big God doesn’t care how He is represented.  He must not care how we worship Him.  It must mean that He has not declared who He is. But that belief offends the very concept of an Almighty God.  God has manifested Himself to the world in the person and words of Jesus Christ, who said they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and truth. 

The concept of truth has various dimensions, depending on how it is used.  But as it relates to worshipping God, to being a disciple of Christ, Jesus indicates that the knowledge of the truth is progressive.  Jesus said in vs.12, “I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth.” 

What Jesus is indicating there is that the disciples had a limited capacity to understand the truth.  They were still struggling with the basic truths of the gospel as He had been teaching them.  The commentator Ellicott said,  “The revelation of Christ is not an imperfect revelation which the Holy Spirit is to supplement. It is a full revelation imperfectly received, and His office is to illumine the heart, and bring home to it the things of Christ.” 

So for the disciples to understand fully the truth of God, God had to give them a Helper to illumine their hearts and lead them to the truth.  And He did that through the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit is the guarantee of authenticity.  His ministry in the life of a believer is like the seal that is placed on an item that guarantees it as being authentic, the real deal.   Ephesians 1:13

speaks of that seal, saying, “In Him, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation—having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise.”

So as the disciples come to believe truth of Christ, and trust that truth and act upon it, then they will be capable of receiving more truth which will be administered through the Spirit of truth.

That principle of progressive truth is taught throughout the scriptures.  Psalm 119:105 says, “Your word is a lamp to my feet, And a light to my path.”  What that teaches is the nature of truth. A lamp in those days was an oil burning lantern.  It did not shine a beam of light like a flashlight.  But it cast a glow a few feet in front of you.  And that is the nature of truth.  It is revealed as we walk in it.  As we are obedient to the truth revealed at that step, God will reveal the next step.  As so we walk in the truth, step by step.

But Jesus is also indicating that they will receive another teacher of the truth.  As He has been their teacher for 3 years, now the time has come when He is going to be handing off their discipleship to another teacher who will take them to the next level of truth.  At this point, Jesus has taken them as far as they can go.  They are not able to bear the next level of truth at that point. And the reason is that they haven’t yet proved, or tested that truth.  

For instance, for all that Jesus has taught them concerning Himself, His divinity, His death and resurrection, the disciples have not fully understood what He was saying.  But as the next few days unfold, they will witness His death, they will witness His resurrection, and they will receive the Holy Spirit.  Those events will exponentially increase their level of comprehension.  It’s one thing to believe Christ is God in theory.  But when they see His resurrected body those theories will be proven to be actionable truth that God will build upon through the guidance of the Spirit.

That is the idea that Jesus was expressing in the quote from Revelation to the church at Laodecia I mentioned earlier.  Jesus said, “I advise you to buy from Me gold refined by fire so that you may become rich.”  There is  truth that is refined by the fire of experience, or refined by the fire of persecution or trial that proves the truth of the scriptures in a way that enables us to take the Christian walk to the next level.  It is possible to learn a biblical principle, but then God causes events to transpire in such a way that it tests your faith in that principle, so that you will really come to comprehend it.  And that testing then increases your faith.

But the main point Jesus is making is that He is ending His time with them as a teacher, and He is handing over that responsibility to the Holy Spirit who will continue to lead them and guide them as He had done for the last 3 years.  

Notice how Jesus describes the Spirit.  He calls Him the Spirit of truth.  In fact, three times Jesus refers to the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of truth.  (John 14:7, John 15:26, and of course now in 16:13) Now that’s important because it stresses the principle that the Holy Spirit will always act in accordance to the truth.  Nothing that claims to be of the Spirit should ever be relied upon if it is not in accordance with the truth of God’s word. That is how we can recognize whether or not something is of the Spirit. We may have some kind of experience which we think is spiritual, but if it doesn’t agree with the revealed truth of God in scripture, then it must be dismissed as a false spirit.  John said in 1John 4:1, “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.”  So you can test the spirits by the word of God.  The Bible is the revealed truth of God.

He also is called the Spirit of truth because He is the means of God conveying the truth of scripture.  Peter said in 2Peter 1:20, “But know this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.” And Paul also in  2Timothy 3:16 says, “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.”  Inspiration means “God breathed.”  And it’s interesting that the word in Greek for spirit is pneuma, which means breath of air.  So the scripture is breathed by God through the Holy Spirit to the agency of human writers.  That is why He is called the Spirit of Truth.  

And in this description of the Spirit’s ministry, once again Jesus refers to this principle we mentioned earlier of progressive revelation.  He says “He will guide you in to all the truth.”  To guide is to lead.  Sort of like leading someone by the hand. It is not a once and done operation.  But continually being filled with the Spirit’s leading, by being yielded to the Spirit’s teaching.

So then it is proper that there is a period of infancy in the Christian life.  After all, we are first born again by the Spirit.  But then we are to walk in the Spirit, and grow in the Spirit. It is proper to have a time when you feed on the milk of the word, but there should come a time when you begin to eat meat.  And then as you grow into maturity, you begin to feed others. 

The disciples were at this point only able to receive milk.  They couldn’t handle the meat because they were not mature.  The same situation was seen in Corinth, and Paul reprimands the church there because they should have graduated by this time to solid food, but they had not.   1Cor. 3:2, “I gave you milk to drink, not solid food; for you were not yet able to receive it. Indeed, even now you are not yet able.”  Why?  Because they were still carnal.  They had not grown into maturity in Christ.

Listen, we are called to grow up in maturity and stature in the Lord.  We are to grow into the image of Christ.  That involves being trained in righteousness, taught in sound doctrine, and practiced in godly works.  That is what the Spirit wishes to lead us into, and it is incumbent upon us to yield to His leading.  We need to be obedient to the truth revealed thus far, and as we do that He will guide us into all the truth.  Far too many Christians have accepted the basic truth of Christianity so that they are born again, but that is as far as they have gone.  And as a result the church today is carnal, worldly, and ineffective.  Being filled with the Spirit is crucifying the flesh and being yielded to what the Spirit says through the word.

Now the other way we can authenticate the Spirit of truth,  is because Jesus says “He shall not speak of His own initiative.” In other words, He doesn’t speak of Himself.  He speaks the words of Christ and glorifies Christ in all He does.  Jesus uses the same method to determine the Spirit’s truth just as He validated the truth of His own words.  Jesus said in  John 14:10 “Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on My own initiative, but the Father abiding in Me does His works.”  And in the 8th chapter, Jesus says that His words are the words of God, and that He does not glorify Himself but He glorifies God.  

So by the same standard He says the Spirit is true. Because the Spirit does not speak on HIs own initiative.  In other words, there is one source for truth and that is God.  And all the trinity is unified because as Jesus speaks the words of the Father, so the Spirit speaks the words of Christ.  They are in harmony with one another..  And I would add that they are in harmony with scripture.  

It’s important to note that Jesus teaches us that truth is not by man’s discovery, but by divine revelation.  Jesus says in vs.14, “He will take of Mine and will disclose it to you.”  We don’t need to go seeking truth on a mountain, or through some guru, or by some vision.  Truth is revealed to us through the revelation of God in the Bible, and the Holy Spirit illuminates our minds for us so that we might understand it as we believe it and are obedient to it.

I would like to make one more comment about vs.13 before we move too far from it.  And that is the truth, or all the truth, as Christ speaks of.  What is this truth?  It is not “all truth,” as some translations have it.  For the Holy Spirit does not reveal to us the truth of chemistry, or the truth of Algebra, or things of that nature.  We do not become experts on all truth by the power of the Holy Spirit.  But we are guided into all the truth.  All the truth of the gospel, and what pertains to spiritual life from God. 

That is the truth of God.  Jesus said, I am the way, the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father except by Me.  So to be guided in all the truth is to be guided to a new way of life from God.  God is the source of life.  He holds all life in His grasp.  Nothing exists without Him or can exist outside of Him.  And Jesus came to show us the way to God, the way to the source of life.  That way is through coming to believe in the truth of God as revealed in Jesus Christ.  

That’s what I mean by saying authentic Christianity. Proverbs 14:12 says, “There is a way that seems right to a man, But its end is the way of death.”  God’s way is through Jesus Christ.  That’s what Christianity was called before they were called Christians.  It was called “The Way.”  And Christ’s way is by following the truth that leads to life.  Abundant life.  Eternal life.  Authentic life.  It doesn’t concern itself with just putting on a religious front. 

Authentic Christianity is not a self righteous life.  Authentic Christianity is not religious superficiality.  Authentic Christianity is rooted in the truth of God’s word.  The truth that mankind is fallen and cannot have fellowship with God.  The truth that Christ came to die for sinners, so that our sins might be forgiven and reconciled to God.  Authentic Christianity believes the truth and is made free from the penalty of sin and the power of sin.  And so we commit ourselves to the truth. We aren’t concerned about superficial, emotionally based, feel good Christianity without regard for the truth.  Authentic Christianity realizes that we are all fallen people and that we need to know the truth to be free from the snare and captivity of Satan.  

We know we have to walk in the truth to the best of our ability.  The devil wants to convince you that you can live life in neutral spiritually.  That is a lie of Satan.  Jesus said I wish you were either hot or cold.  Authentic Christianity requires staying hot.  Staying the course, regardless of the trials.  Persevering.  Even through suffering.  But all the while believing that this Way is the truth and it requires our daily commitment to it if we are going to succeed as God would have us to. 

I would like to end with a story from Genesis chapter 24 as a way of illustrating this ministry of the Holy Spirit and summing up His purpose for us. You may remember in Genesis 24 there is the story of Abraham obtaining a bride for Isaac his son, and there is an unnamed servant, who is sent far away to Abraham’s distant relatives in order to find a bride for Isaac.  In this story, Abraham allegorically represents the Father, and Isaac of course represents Jesus, and the servant represents the Holy Spirit.  So it says Abraham sends out this unnamed servant who is to find a wife for his son. It’s interesting the servant doesn’t have a name. He has a title, but not a name. So the unnamed Spirit or the unnamed servant goes on this journey and comes to a well where a girl comes and waters his camels.  And there he is led by the Lord to Rebecca, who is the one whom the Lord has chosen to be the wife of Abraham’s son. 

Later that day  they gather around the table as they are getting ready to eat and the servant of Abraham says, “I will not eat anything until I have told you my business.” And with that he begins to tell of the glories of Abraham and the son. He says, “My master is a great man. He’s been made great, and furthermore he has given everything that he has into the hands of his son. And I’m here to obtain a bride for the son.”

Well that is exactly what the Holy Spirit does in his work of glorifying Jesus Christ. He glorifies the Lord Jesus Christ, and through his ministry He teaches us the truth of Christ, so that we might be joined to Christ as His bride, the church.  As Jesus says in vs.14-15, the Spirit takes the things of Christ and discloses them to us so that we might be a fit bride of Christ.  So that we might be taught the complete knowledge of Christ.  So that we might be conformed to Christ.  So that we might be matured in Christ, so that we might do the works of Christ,  that one day we might be glorified with Christ.  And He does that through leading us and guiding us in all the truth that is necessary for life and godliness.  

Ephesians 5:25 says, “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word,

That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish.”  This is the ministry of the Spirit of truth, to present us to Christ, even as Abraham’s servant presented Rebecca to Isaac.  

At the beginning of this chapter, Jesus said in vs.1, “These things I have spoken to you so that you may be kept from stumbling.”  He has given us a guide to keep us from stumbling.  To present us faultless, without spot or wrinkle, that we might be the glorious church of Christ.  That is the ministry of the Spirit of truth.  To lead us and guide us into all the truth, so that we might not stumble.  So that we might be found a fit bride at Christ’s return.  

Jesus said in John 14:6, “I am the way, the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father except by Me.”  So Jesus is the way to God, He is he truth of God, and He provides life from God to those who believe in Him.  This is the gospel in a nutshell.  You either believe the truth as presented in Christ, or you don’t believe the truth, and what you are believing is a lie.  That’s the choice that we have; believe the truth, or believe the lie of the devil.  

Now to those who have believed that Jesus is the truth, and have accepted that all that He said and taught is the truth, they have received life as a gift from God.  God recognizes their faith in His Son, and bestows upon them His grace, whereby their sins are forgiven, and they receive the life of God; spiritual life, abundant life, eternal life.  

The disciples represent the first of those who believed in Christ.  They believed in Him, that His words were the truth of God, the very words of life.  Peter said in John 6:68, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have believed and have come to know that You are the Holy One of God.”   The disciples were saved as a result of their belief.  They received spiritual life. And so as we have studied  the Upper Room Discourse over the last few weeks we have learned that Jesus has been talking to them in the last hours before His death about that new life and what it will look like, and what will be the experience of it.  

Jesus in these 4 chapters has talked about the fruit of the spiritual life, which we learned is to be like Him.  He has talked about the works of spiritual life which He said is to love one another.  He has talked about the persecution they could expect in this spiritual life.  He has talked about the reward of the spiritual life. And interwoven throughout this entire discourse, Jesus has talked about the source of spiritual life, which is the Holy Spirit.

And what I would like to do as we study the ministry of the Holy Spirit today is to read all the things that Jesus has to say about the Spirit of God.  Because as John records it in this book, it is interspersed over 3 chapters and sometimes we can lose track of all that Jesus was saying because we don’t read this discourse in sequence.  Some of these statements we have studied, some we haven’t.  But I think as we look at these statements sequentially we can begin to tie all of this together this week and next week into one comprehensive doctrine concerning the ministry of the Holy Spirit. There is a sequence in Jesus’s statements that build upon one another, which is evident as you look at them together. So Jesus starts in chapter 14:16, saying: “I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever; that is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him or know Him, but you know Him because He abides with you and will be in you.”  

Then in John 14:26 Jesus says, “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you.

Then in John 15:26 He says, “When the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, that is the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify about Me, and you will testify also, because you have been with Me from the beginning.” 

And now in John 16:7 we read, “But I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you. And He, when He comes, will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment;

concerning sin, because they do not believe in Me; and concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father and you no longer see Me; and concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world has been judged.”

And the last statement Jesus makes is in John 16:13 “But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come. He will glorify Me, for He will take of Mine and will disclose it to you. All things that the Father has are Mine; therefore I said that He takes of Mine and will disclose it to you.”  

I believe the doctrine of the Holy Spirit is one of the most important doctrines in the gospel, and yet it is often one of the most misunderstood doctrines in the church today.  I wish I had time to go line by line through each of those references, but we don’t have that luxury this morning.  However, you can go to our website and look back over my sermons on each of those texts and put them all together if you like.  But one thing that I must emphasize is that Jesus says in vs.14 the Holy Spirit will glorify Jesus Christ.  That in and of itself disqualifies a lot of stuff that is attributed as the work of the Holy Spirit.  If it does not glorify Christ, then it isn’t of  the Spirit, and it is not of God.  There are deceitful spirits working in the church as well, so we are told in the book of James to test the spirits.  We know the Spirit of Truth because the Holy Spirit does not glorify Himself, but He glorifies Christ.

Charles Spurgeon said it this way; “To begin, then, the HOLY SPIRIT IS OUR LORD’S GLORIFIER. I want you to keep this truth in your mind, and never to forget it; that which does not glorify Christ is not of the Holy Spirit, and that which is of the Holy Spirit invariably glorifies our Lord Jesus Christ.” 

Now notice that Jesus identifies the Holy Spirit with two different titles which help us to understand the ministry of the Holy Spirit.  He calls Him the Helper, which in the Greek is “parakletos”.  “Parakletos” means to come alongside.  That is what is meant by Helper.  He comes alongside us to help us, to guide us and teach us.  And the second title Jesus uses is the Spirit of Truth.  I really like that title in particular.  Because it speaks of the nature of the ministry of the Holy Spirit.  The Spirit of Truth helps us not by some experience, but by revelation or explanation of the truth.  

The Spirit of Truth does that in two ways; first He authored the scriptures.  2Tim. 3:16, “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness.”  And in 2Peter 1:20, it says, “But know this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture is [a matter] of one’s own interpretation,  for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.”  So the Spirit of Truth is the author of the scriptures.  And in the New Testament, that was given through the apostles, whom Jesus tells in John 14:26, “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you.”  That revelation of Christ through the Spirit was written down for us in the New Testament.  And I believe that revelation in that sense has been completed. I don’t think the Bible teaches that revelation is ongoing.  However, the Spirit does reveal the truth of revelation. Which is the second work of the Spirit of Truth.

So secondly, the Spirit of Truth works by revealing to us the truth as contained in scriptures.  He opens our minds and hearts so we can understand the truth of God.  He leads us and guides us through the scriptures.  John 16:13 says, “But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth… and John 16:15 says, “All things that the Father has are Mine; therefore I said that He takes of Mine and will disclose it to you.” Notice that the Spirit takes the words of Christ and discloses it to us.  That is the premier work of the Spirit.  To help us understand the scriptures.  The Spirit empowers the scriptures to us. Heb 4:12 “For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”

Now as we continue in this week’s text Jesus gives us a further elaboration on the nature of the ministry of the Holy Spirit. Jesus has just finished telling the disciples of the hostility of the world towards them.  And yet their response to that hostility, even in the face of persecution is that they will show the love of God towards the enmity of the world, and thus reflect Christ to the world.  He tells them that the way they will be able to do this in the face of hostility will be through the power of the Holy Spirit.  In 15:26, Jesus says the Spirit will testify of Me, and you will testify also.  That is how we manifest love to the world.

Now in vs.7, He says it is to their advantage that He goes away, because then He will send the Holy Spirit to them to come alongside of them, to help them. That is such an understatement it’s easy to just pass right by it.  But Jesus did not come to earth for His advantage, but He came for our advantage.  He suffered and died for our advantage.  Such a great principle.  So in like manner as He is dying, He will leave earth for our advantage, so that He might send the Spirit of Truth to lead us and guide us, wherever we are, however many of us there are, no matter what age we live in.  It’s to our advantage to receive the Spirit, because then He will be in us, and be with us forever.  And please understand that we receive the Spirit at salvation.  The disciples didn’t receive Him until Pentecost, but since Pentecost, all believers receive Him at salvation.  As Romans 8:9 says, “However, you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him.”

Now as we come to vs.8, it is a common misinterpretation to look at those verses without the context of vs.7.  The common mistake is to take those verses to mean the Holy Spirit’s ministry to the world. But that is not what the context tells us.  Looking at vs.7 more carefully, we see that Jesus doesn’t say He is sending the Holy Spirit to the world, but that He is sending the Spirit of Truth to the disciples.  And the disciples are sent to the world.  Vs.7, “But I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you.”

Now that’s an important distinction.  Because some have erroneously interpreted vs.8-11 as something that is only true about unbelievers.  As if to say that conviction of sin is not something that pertains to Christians.  But that is not actually what is being talked about here.  What Jesus is talking about, is that the Spirit of Truth will come to the disciples, and through the disciples He will convince the world of sin, of righteousness and of judgment. 

I want to spend the rest of our time explaining this testimony of the church to the world concerning sin, righteousness and judgment as enabled by the Holy Spirit.  But first, let’s consider the word which is translated as convict, or concerning, depending on your translation.  The Greek word is “elegchō”.  And there are several different ways this word has been translated.  In some other places in the Bible it is translated as rebuke, or reprimand, or expose, or reprove, and of course, convict.  But some commentators seem to think that it would be better interpreted as convince.  The distinction being to convict is to bring a charge of guilt, whereas to convince is to persuade someone of the truth of a certain matter.  I believe convince is more in keeping with what Jesus is teaching here.  He isn’t charging the disciples to convict the world, though that may happen as a result of their preaching the gospel.  But He is telling the disciples that through the Spirit of Truth they will convince the world of the truth, so as to enable them to fulfill their ministry, which is to go into the world and make disciples.  

Jesus is talking about the disciples testimony to convince the world in regards to the truth of the gospel.  The Holy Spirit will give conviction through the disciples words as to the truth of what they are preaching. So the Spirit of Truth works through the disciples to produce three things in the world.  First, He convinces the world of sin.  Note that Jesus does not say, “of sins.”  The point He is making is not enumerating individual, particular sins.  He is talking about sin in general.   And John records Jesus’s explanation of that sin in vs.9, “concerning sin, because they do not believe in Me.”  

The Lord is saying that the sin is that they do not believe in Him.  In other words the essence of sin is not what we do. The essence of sin is what we believe. And when we do not believe in the Lord Jesus that is the root of all sin.  For example; when Eve sinned it was not just that she ate of the forbidden fruit.  It was that she chose to believe the serpent rather than God.  That was the root sin, the eating of the fruit was just an expression of that unbelief  The sin took place in her heart as she turned from belief in God to believing in the word of the serpent.

For instance, immorality is sin, but the sin of unbelief is the root of immorality. The reason men do the various acts of evil, whether it be adultery, murder, thievery, burglary, et cetera is ultimately because they do not believe.  They sin in the heart by rejecting the truth and believing the lie.  And as Jesus is the truth personified, they consequently reject God.  They do not believe what He has said concerning life, and have chosen to believe the lie of the world.

That’s why in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said that if you lusted in your heart you were guilty of adultery.  If you hated, you were guilty of murder.  Sin finds it’s root in the heart.  In belief or unbelief.  In truth or the lie.  All of the outward expressions of sin such as addiction or adultery or murder are simply symptoms of the heart’s condition. The person who is the sinner before God is the person who has not believed in the Lord Jesus Christ.  And that is why our actions cannot be separated from our belief.  It is not simply enough to say you believe but your life evidences that actually you are believing the lie of the world.  Our actions will reflect what we believe.  Our faith is expressed by our actions.  Thus James could say, “faith without works is dead.” 

When the disciples, or by extension, when the church preaches the truth of Christ, then the world’s unbelief is exposed.  Their sin of unbelief is exposed.  But also that is the means of convincing them of the truth of Christ.  1Cor, 1:21, “For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not come to know God, God was well-pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe.”  So we preach the truth of God, either from a pulpit, or from a backyard fence, or from the water cooler at work.  We preach the truth of God either by words or deeds and ultimately by both.  And that is how we show the world the love of God as well by convincing the world of their sin.  Love requires that we expose sin, not condone it. Because until the world is convinced of their sin, they have no recognition of their need for a Savior.

The second aspect of the ministry of the Holy Spirit is that He convinces the world concerning righteousness.  And once again, we can run in all different directions on this unless we consider the explanation of Jesus in vs.10, “and concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father and you no longer see Me.”  So the Spirit is not convincing the world of their righteousness or the lack of it, but rather, He convinces the world of the righteousness of Christ.  

Now what is it about our Lord’s going to the Father that convinces the world of righteousness? Why does it convince the world of righteousness  if the Lord Jesus goes to the Father?

I suggest it is because we preach the risen Christ. The resurrection of Christ establishes Christ’s righteousness.  The resurrection is unique among all world philosophies and religions.  It is a major tenet of our faith.  Because the fact that Christ is risen proves the righteousness of Christ.  Peter preaching on the day of Pentecost quotes David and says, “You will not allow your Holy One to see decay.”  God declared the holiness of Christ before the hordes of hell and the hosts of heaven by raising Jesus from the dead, and He declares through us the holiness of Christ as we tell the world that Christ is risen from the grave and now sits at the right hand of the Father.  We declare the gospel to be true because Jesus was declared righteous by God in that He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at the right hand of the Father in heaven.  And as we show the righteousness of Christ, then we show the standard of righteousness of God.  And that standard of righteousness convinces the world of sin, because it shows what counts as righteousness in God’s eyes.

And as we preach the gospel, implicit in it is the fact that our salvation is not dependent upon our righteousness, but upon the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ.  2 Cor. 5:21 says, “God made Jesus, who knew no sin, to be sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.”  We are saved by faith, by which we believe God, and God grants us the righteousness of Jesus Christ to our account.

The third ministry of the Spirit of Truth is He will convince the world of judgment.  Now the common application there is that He will convince the world of the judgment to come upon sinners.  Though Jesus had much to say about hell and the judgment to come, He isn’t talking about the judgment of sinners in hell in this passage per se.  But He says in vs.11, “concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world has been judged.”

Jesus is speaking of the judgment of sin as He looks forward to the cross.  The hold that Satan has upon the world will be broken, because Jesus will take the sin of the world upon Himself as our substitute, and He will break the power of sin, and thus judge Satan.  In 2Timothy 2:24 Paul speaks of preaching to the world and says, “The Lord’s bond-servant must not be quarrelsome, but be kind to all, able to teach, patient when wronged, with gentleness correcting those who are in opposition, if perhaps God may grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, having been held captive by him to do his will.”  Notice the snare of the devil holds captive those who are lost. And that snare is ignorance of the truth, or a lie substituted for the truth.

John said in 1 John 3:8 that  “the devil has sinned from the beginning. The Son of God appeared for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil.” He destroys the lie by showing us the truth. So how Christ defeats Satan is by setting free those who Satan has kept captive, and transferring them to the kingdom of God.  Colossians 1:13, “For He rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son.”  And in Colossians 2:15, Paul declares that the judgment of the ruler of this world (Satan) has been made public at Christ’s resurrection. “When He had disarmed the rulers and authorities, He made a public display of them, having triumphed over them through Him.”

So the Holy Spirit convinces the world of sin, righteousness and judgment through the witness of Christ’s transformed people. The world cannot receive the ministry of the Holy Spirit. We receive the ministry of Holy Spirit, and we are the instruments by which the world is to be brought to the knowledge of sin, righteousness and judgment. And that is to be done through the walk of the Christian, through the witness of the Christian, through the prayers of the Christian, and through the worship of the Christian.  We are the reflection of Jesus Christ to the world through our testimony, our preaching, and through our life.

This is an important principle that Jesus is teaching not only to the disciples but to us today as well.  And that is this, that God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the wise.  He has chosen the branches of the vine to be fruitful.  He has chosen to use us to make His gospel known.  He has chosen us to be the temple of the Holy Spirit, so that the works of Christ will be done through us.  

I’ve said it many times before.  When God does a work on the earth, He usually choses to do it through a man. Can God work without man’s participation?  Of course.  But we have been chosen to be co-laborors with Christ.  He has given His Spirit to live in us that we might participate in the Kingdom expansion.  

There are many examples of this in scripture.  For instance, Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch. The eunuch had been to Jerusalem to worship.  He had acquired a scroll of the book of Isaiah.  He was providentially reading at chapter 53.  But God plucked Philip up and dropped him in the middle of the desert at just the right time to bring the man to the knowledge of the truth, and the eunuch was saved.  

Could he not have been brought to faith by the word of God alone? Of course. God didn’t need Phillip, but God has in this age generally speaking, determined that individuals come to faith in Christ through the true church of Christ, through the witness, through the walk, through the worship, through the words of believers, so Jesus said, “The Holy Spirit whom I will send to you will convict the world of sin, righteousness and judgment.”

Another example is Cornelius.  He was a good man in the eyes of the Jews.  He was seeking to know the truth, to know God.  And God appeared to Peter in a dream and told him to go to speak with Cornelius so that he might be saved. Even on the road to Damascus, God used Ananias to teach and disciple Paul. So right at this very moment he is using me as I hope he uses you throughout this week to be an instrument in the communication of the gospel of God.

God wants to use you to be His representative here on earth.  But He doesn’t give us a job to do without equipping us to do it.  And so He has given us the Helper, the Spirit of Truth to be in us, and to be with us forever.  We are the conduit, but He is the power of God working in us and through us, as we are being conformed to the image of Jesus Christ.  I pray that starting today you will testify to the world through the power of the Holy Spirit, convincing them of sin, and righteousness, and judgment.  Convincing them of the truth of God that leads to life.  

Rom 1:16 “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.”