In last week’s sermon, we said that the last section of chapter 20 taught five principles of the gospel.  And one of those principles was the abiding presence of Christ.  That is an essential doctrine of the gospel; that Jesus Christ is alive – that though He died on the cross, He arose from the dead, and ever lives to make intercession for us.  

That’s an important doctrine, because it reveals that Christ has procured two essential things for the Christian life.  One; that the death of Jesus Christ provided the payment for the penalty of our sins.  But two, His resurrection has provided new life for those who have been forgiven.  Jesus died on the cross that we might die to sin, and that our penalty for our sin would be paid.  But Jesus rose from the grave to show that we have new life, a life free from sin and death, a life of fruitfulness and purpose and an eternal inheritance.

The reason we are given new life is so that we may have a life of fellowship with  God. Our justification is the beginning of spiritual life. But God desires not just that we have the forgiveness of sins, but that we enter into the relationship of communion with him, constant communion with him. True spiritual life is life in communion with God. That is what enables this new life to be the abundant life which Jesus promised.  It’s abundant, because the Lord is with us, in us, and working through us, and it’s everlasting life.  You cannot have more abundant life than that.

So that is what John is illustrating in this record of yet another post resurrection appearance of Jesus Christ.  There is obviously recorded here an additional confirmation of His resurrection, but even more importantly, it serves to teach us the presence and power of Christ that is available to us, even though He has bodily ascended into heaven.

Now notice that John intentionally uses a word to describe Jesus’s appearance which helps us to understand this principle.  Twice in vs.1 and again in vs.14, in the NASB translation, John uses the word “manifests” to describe Jesus’s appearance.  On the one hand, we might recognize that means He suddenly appeared, as if to say He was instantly there.  But more concisely than that, “manifest” means that He made what was already there,  visible.  He made the invisible, visible.  That is the important principle; Jesus is always there.  He is always with us.  We may not see Him, but like Thomas discovered in last week’s message, Jesus was aware of all that he had said to the disciples in Jesus’s physical absence.  So as both Moses and David stated in the OT, the Lord will never leave you nor forsake you. He is always with us, whether we see Him manifested in presence or in power or simply known by faith, He will be with us always.  Jesus said in Matt.28:20, “lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

Now while it is easy to proclaim such principles in times of peace and plenty, it is another to hold to such belief in times of feeling abandoned, or discouraged, or frightened, or in times of persecution.  I’m not sure what the disciples were feeling as we catch up to them in vs.2, but I assume it might have been a little bit of all of the above.  The last time Jesus had appeared to the disciples was the second Sunday after His resurrection.  Eight days after the resurrection, on a Sunday evening, Jesus appeared in the locked room to meet with Thomas who was disbelieving the disciples report of the resurrection.  And so Jesus made a divine appointment to reconcile Thomas. 

But now it’s probably been a couple of weeks or more since that day.  Jesus was on the earth for a total of 40 days after His resurrection.  And John tells us in vs.14 that this was the 3rd time that He had appeared to the 11 disciples.  We don’t know how long had it had been between the eighth day and this day.  But we do know that Jesus had told the disciples in Matthew 28 to go to Galilee and that He would meet them there on a particular mountain.  And we can surmise from vs 14 that they had been waiting for Jesus to show up at the mountain as He indicated, but He had not yet appeared.  It might have been a week or more that they had sat on this desolate mountainside waiting for the Lord.  There probably wasn’t much to eat.  It might have  been the same mountain that Jesus fed the 5000.  There were no supermarkets out there.  And maybe the disciples managed for a few days, and then they began to get hungry, frustrated and tired of waiting.  

So Peter wakes up one morning, looks down the mountain at the Sea of Tiberius below, also known as the Sea of Galilee, and says, “I’m going fishing.”  And the other six disciples that were there with him said, “We will come with you.”  

By now, we all should realize that Peter was a natural leader.  If Peter said it was a good idea, then everyone else did too.  Peter is always presented first in any list of the disciples.  It was because he was a natural leader.  He was also probably a pretty big guy, a strong man. Verse 11 makes it sound like Peter pulled the net to shore all by himself. I’m not sure that’s what it means, but that’s a possibility.  But no doubt he was a big, strong guy.  A courageous man.  He wasn’t afraid of too much.  He hardly ever held up his finger to see which way the wind was blowing. He just jumped in.  And the disciples followed his leadership.

But we also need to learn a lesson from this. There are a lot of men out there that are natural leaders that have found their way into the pastorate in churches across this country.  They may have a natural talent for communication.  They may be funny, they can tell interesting stories. They may have a talent of convincing people to follow them.  They may be naturally charismatic people.  It’s easy to follow charismatic people. But they may not always be acting on behalf of God.  They may be acting on their ego, or on their appetite, or they may be on a power trip.  And we need to be careful to discern whether or not such men are being led by God or not.

Well, it’s obvious that in this situation that Peter was not being led by God.  He was led by his appetite.  He was led by his desire to do something, to make something happen.  Nothing was happening up on that cold mountain.  But down at that lake he knew he had his little fishing boat docked and ready to go fishing.  

Another lesson to be learned here is that man’s timing is not always God’s timing.  Peter was ready to get moving.  It had been weeks since the crucifixion, Jesus hadn’t shown up again and Peter was restless.  But to move when God hasn’t told you to move is a foolish thing.  As a pastor of this church, I can assure you that I constantly have to check my motivation.  Is it God appointed, or man appointed?  Is it God’s timing, or my timing?  In my opinion, most of the time God seems to move really, really slowly.  And sometimes, to be frank, God seems really late.  

I have to confess that I get a little irritated when some self righteous person pontificates about how God is always on time.  I don’t doubt that God is always on time.  But I also believe that God has a different clock than what we use.  Peter said as much in  2Peter 3:8 when he said, “But do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day.”  I think it’s possible Peter learned that valuable lesson on this very fishing expedition.  God’s clock looks a lot different than our clock.  So learning to wait on the Lord’s timing is a difficult thing for us, as it was for Peter and the disciples.

Another lesson to be learned from this is that man’s talent is worthless in the new life of a Christian without God repurposing it.  Peter and all of those guys with him were experienced fishermen.  They were professional fishermen.  They had made a career out of fishing prior to becoming disciples.  But they were supposed to be fishers of men now.  They left their nets, remember, to follow the Lord.  That occasion was another fishing expedition when Jesus told Peter to cast on the other side of the boat and Peter said, “Lord, we’ve been fishing all night and caught nothing. And we are expert fishermen.  But to show what an understanding guy I am, I will do it at your request.  Just to show you I know what I’m talking about.” And on that occasion, they caught so many fish that the boat started sinking.  So afterward when Jesus said, “Come and follow Me and I will make you fishers of men,” they left their fishing business and followed the Lord.

But now here they are after the resurrection, obviously still not understanding what this post resurrection ministry was all about, and so Peter thinks he’s going to take matters into his own hands and get the ball rolling. He decides to go back to his old profession.  After all, they are going to need to eat.  They have to make a living. Jesus isn’t here to feed them, so they have to provide for themselves.  Makes perfect common sense.  If we had of been there, we would all have said, “Wait for us, we’re coming too.”  Especially Nick.  He always wants to fish.

And yet all the natural talent in the world couldn’t fill their boat with fish.  They caught nothing.  And they fished all night long.  Not a bite.  Nothing to show for it.  I think the lesson is pretty clear.  Our talents, our wisdom, our experience, are useless in the Christian life if they are not directed by the Lord as He would have us to work.  I don’t care how much talent some musician or singer may have.  I don’t care how much natural ability to communicate a person may have.  

You know, there is a worksheet that has found its way into many churches which you can fill out and supposedly discover your spiritual gift.  And maybe you have done that worksheet.  I did it once.  Let me tell you something.  That’s man’s approach.  God doesn’t use a worksheet.  He doesn’t look at your natural talents or abilities. He doesn’t consider your proclivities – He looks at your potential.  He looks at your heart.  He looks at your willingness to yield to the Holy Spirit’s leading.  He looks at what He can do through you, and not what you can do without Him.

Listen, make sure you understand this very important principle.  Natural talents do not equate to spiritual gifts.  Spiritual gifts are things that God wants you to do which you may not have much talent to do naturally.  So God gives you the Holy Spirit to equip you and lead you and develop you to do what He wants you to do. It’s not of the flesh, but of the Spirit.  God doesn’t look at your capability, but your capacity.  Your willingness to be obedient to Him.  Then He will fill you with the power to do it.  A work of God doesn’t come from you, it comes through you from God.

A good illustration of that is found in the previous chapter. In John 20:22, it says Jesus breathed on the disciples and *said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”  So they received the Holy Spirit then, several weeks before Pentecost.  Then on the day of Pentecost, in Acts 2:4, it says that they were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages that they had no previous knowledge of,  as the Holy Spirit was giving them utterance.  See, the principle is having the right capacity, and being yielded to the Lord in obedience, He is able to fill you to fulfill His purposes.  He is able to give you the talent or wisdom or strength to do what He wants you to do.  And as we see in Acts, this unlearned fisherman named Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, stands up and preaches from the word of God and has an unbelievable harvest of 3000 souls.  That’s the secret of fruitfulness that is being taught here in this passage.

So back to our story, they worked all night but were unfruitful. They accomplished nothing because they were relying on their own experience and talent and wisdom.  And then Jesus appears.  He manifests Himself to them, standing a hundred yards away on the shore.  But at first, they don’t know it’s Jesus.  That’s been the typical response in all of Jesus’s post resurrection appearances.  No one recognizes Him until He is ready to be recognized. But Jesus has been there all night long.  Watching them, listening to them, waiting for them to get tired of doing it their way.  Waiting for them to come to the realization that they had accomplished nothing.  And then Jesus kind of rubs it in, just a little bit.  He calls out to them, “Children, have you caught any fish?”  I think it’s funny that Jesus calls them children.  Not an especially endearing term to fishermen.

And the disciples have to say what no fisherman ever wants to admit; they had caught nothing. I’ve asked Nick that very question many times before, and he never gives a straight answer.  He always start talking about the one that got away.  No fisherman likes to admit failure.  So they said, “No.” I bet they said a little more than what John records for us.  But maybe it’s better he didn’t record it.  I’m sure they had a few choice words to say though when Jesus responded, “Cast the net on the right-hand side of the boat and you will find a catch.”   But again, discretion being the better part of valor, John simply records that they cast their net on the other side and then were not able to haul it in because of the great number of fish.

Listen, the principle being taught here is not fish on the right side versus the left side. It’s not one method over another method.  It’s not one program over another program. The answer to a church’s fruitfulness is not a children’s ministry or a youth ministry or this program or that program, or following a prescription in a book about church growth.  The point is it’s God’s way or no way.  If you want real fruitfulness in God’s church, you need to do it God’s way.  You may have a lot of activity, you may have a lot of enthusiasm, you may have a nice boat, and a lot of people rowing and shouting commands.  But if it’s God’s church, you need to do it God’s way.  God has a blueprint for the church.  And I got to tell you, most churches don’t have a clue what that is.  But if you want your church to make a difference for the kingdom of God, then you better find His blueprint and stick to it.

Isaiah 55:9 says, “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts.”  So also if we are going to see fruitfulness, we need to make sure we rely not on common sense but on uncommon grace.   1Cor. 1:27, “but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong, and the base things of the world and the despised God has chosen, the things that are not, so that He may nullify the things that are, so that no man may boast before God.”  

Now what does fruitfulness look like?  Well, it may not look like what you think.  Let’s notice what happens here when the disciples obey Christ.  First, it produced recognition of Christ.  John immediately recognizes when they start hauling in this load of fish that it has to be the Lord.  He tells Peter, and Peter gets so excited he puts on his clothes and throws himself in the water and starts swimming to shore.  He wants to be first to see Jesus.  I have to say that I love Peter’s enthusiasm.  He may not have been the sharpest tool in the shed, but he was enthusiastic.  And I think this shows how much he loves the Lord.

Listen, when real fruitfulness happens, it produces the realization of Christ likeness in His people.  That is what fruitfulness looks like.  It’s not just converts. It’s not members.  It’s not the size of your building or your congregation. But people recognize Christ in your church. Fruitfulness produces the nature and character of Christ in the church which is recognizable.  And secondly, it produces love for the Lord.  You know how you can tell Peter loved the Lord?  He left his boat, he left his nets, he left this incredible haul of fish.  Peter didn’t care about fishing anymore. He didn’t care about his career anymore. He cared about being with Jesus.

Well, I’m sure some smart guy out there is saying, “Well sure, but fruitfulness is also defined by 153 fish.”  But I would suggest that it isn’t the numbers that we should focus on.  I’m suggesting we focus on the abundance that the Lord provides, and in particular the capacity of the nets.  The text says that even though all those fish were in them, they did not break.  In other words, the Lord increases your capacity.  That’s the true nature of a spiritual gift.  It’s not a natural thing, it’s not according to natural talent, but when you are yielded and  obedient to what God wants you to do, He increases your capacity.  Matt. 13:12, “For whoever has, to him more shall be given, and he will have an abundance; but whoever does not have, even what he has shall be taken away from him.”

When Peter got to shore, he discovered that the Lord already had a fire going, and fish and bread already cooked ready to eat.  And the Lord told them to come and eat breakfast, and to bring some of their fish as well.  

Listen, we can read a lot of things into this breakfast that aren’t necessarily there if we’re not careful.  But what I can say with certainty is that the Lord wants us to bring to Him our contribution, but it is His grace that provides the resources that we need for our new life in Christ.  He is the provider, He is the means of power, the means of provision.  He wants our contribution, but mainly, I think He wants our fellowship.  He wants communion with us.  Jesus said to the church in Laodicea in Rev. 3:20, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will dine with him, and he with Me.”  

We tend to use that verse as an invitation to unbelievers.  But in reality it is an invitation to believers, to a busy, self absorbed church that has no time for real fellowship with the Lord. He is calling us, knocking on our heart’s door, wanting to have intimacy and communion with us.  That is the purpose of the gospel.  To restore us to the relationship man enjoyed with God back in the Garden of Eden.  To restore us to fellowship with Him.  And when we abide with Him in fellowship, we will have fruitfulness in the church.

Jesus talked about this relationship of fruitfulness and fellowship in John 14:15, and I will end with this passage as a summary of the message this morning.  Jesus said, “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments. 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. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. After a little while the world will no longer see Me, but you will see Me; because I live, you will live also. In that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you.He who has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me; and he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and will disclose Myself to him.”

In today’s passage, we are continuing to look at the first day of Christ’s resurrection from the dead.  He arose early in the morning on the first day of the week, which is, of course, Sunday.  In the preceding verses we saw Mary Magdalene and John and Peter’s response to the resurrection.  But in presenting the chronology of the events on this most important of days, John does so in such a way as to teach a lesson.  He is teaching, in this last section of chapter 20, the gospel, and he does so by showcasing for us the first Sunday church service in the New Testament period.  

We meet as a church as 21st century Christians on Sunday’s to celebrate the Lord’s Day, so named because Jesus rose from the dead on the first day of the week.  And so John is showcasing this first church service on Sunday, and he does so by giving us a classic sermon outline, featuring five principles of the gospel, followed by a personal illustration of the gospel, and then a closing synopsis of the gospel.  

As we look at this passage, we see that the disciples are gathered together on Sunday evening, and they have locked the doors for fear of the Jews.  This is a closed door church service.  And John tells us why they have locked the doors, because of the fear of the Jews.  What that means is that the Jewish religious leaders are incensed over Jesus having risen from the tomb, they have paid off the Roman soldiers to lie about it, and they might very well have schemed to arrest or even put to death the disciples so that they might not broadcast Jesus’s resurrection. 

But I think that God has intentionally put the disciples there at such a time to set an example for generations of Christians yet to come that we might meet on Sundays to assemble together for fellowship and to worship the Lord, and to proclaim the gospel.  The gospel, by the way,  meaning simply the good news of God’s plan, the Way of life, the Way of salvation.  

Now there are as I said five principles of the gospel that are being taught here.  The first principle of the gospel being presented is the assurance of the presence of Christ.  The whole premise of the gospel is that Jesus has triumphed over death, so that we might know that God had accepted His atonement, and that we might not fear death.  He died on the cross, but He also rose from the dead, securing our salvation.  And so as the disciples have heard testimony earlier from Mary that she had seen the Lord, and heard from Peter and John that the tomb was empty, they were certainly talking among themselves as to what to make of all of this.  And as they meet together, behind locked doors, suddenly Jesus appears in their midst.  

Luke’s gospel tells us that the disciples were alarmed.  They thought they were seeing a ghost.  And so Jesus says to them, “Peace be with you.”  And when He had said this, He showed them both His hands and His side. The disciples then rejoiced when they saw the Lord. (vs20).  

This was a direct fulfillment of the Lord’s prophesy in which He said “If you destroy this temple, in three days I will raise it up again.”  But it is also a fulfillment of the promise in Matt. 18:20 which says, “For where two or three have gathered together in My name, I am there in their midst.”  And while that was true for the disciples,  that is also a promise for all who believe in the gospel even today.  We believe that the Lord is with us today as we gather in His name.  He is present with us when we have Bible study on Wednesday evening.  He is present wherever and whenever we gather together as a church.  And we can be assured of that because He rose from the dead.

Much is made by theologians over the fact that Jesus appears in a locked room without having to go through a door.  They attribute this ability to the nature of His resurrection body, and offer us the hope that we too will one day have a body that can walk through doors.  But I would say such a view is shortsighted.  Jesus had power to walk through doors before His death.  The fact that He appears in such a way is just further evidence that He is Jesus.  I will say this about His resurrected body.  He does not seem immediately recognizable in any of the post resurrection appearances unless He produces some evidence of who He is.  In this case, He shows His wounds, which are unmistakably those of His crucifixion.  They are convincing proof of His resurrection and identity.  

And as modern day Christians, we are promised His living presence with us, that He will never leave us nor forsake us.  And we can rely upon that promise because He lives, because He rose from the dead, and was witnessed alive not only by the disciples gathered there, but Paul tells us in 1 Cor. 15;6 that He was seen by 500 people at one time after His death.  The great principle of the gospel is that Jesus is alive, and He is with us, and because He lives He can assure for us the benefits and blessings of the gospel, and that one day we will be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is when we are resurrected even as He was.

The second principle of the gospel presented to us is that He gives us not only His presence, but His peace.  Twice Jesus says, “Peace be with you.”  Anytime you see something stated twice in scripture you can rest assured that it is a undeniable promise that will surely come about.  The first peace that Jesus gave was to quiet their fear, to calm their alarm.  The second peace is to assure them of their peace with God.  

This great promise is reiterated in  Romans 5:1 which says, “Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”  Men are searching today for peace – peace of mind, peace with men, peace from strife and war.  “Peace, peace!” they cry, but there is no peace.  But Jesus said in  John 14:27, “Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be fearful.” 

How can Jesus give this peace?  Because He took the offense of our sin against God upon Himself.  He bore God’s wrath towards our sin upon His shoulders, bearing our sins upon the cross, paying the ultimate price on our behalf.  And His resurrection is evidence that God was satisfied by His sacrifice for sin, that we might be made right with God, justified by faith in Christ, so that we have peace with God. 

So we might know that if God is for us, who can be against us?  If God so loves us that He spared not His only Son, what have we to fear?  We have an Advocate with God, even Jesus Christ our Intercessor, so that we need not be afraid of anything.  God is for us.  We have peace with God.  What a great tenet of the gospel; the peace of God has been established for us through Christ.

Thirdly, we have through the gospel not only the presence of Christ with us, and the peace of God with us, but we are given the same purpose which God gave Christ.  Vs 21, Jesus says, “as the Father has sent Me, I also send you.”  Jesus Christ came to Earth with a specific purpose; that is that He might manifest to the world the truth of God.  Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth and the life, no man comes to the Father except by Me.”  Furthermore, He said, “I have come that you might have life, and have it more abundantly.”  

Listen, this is what the world doesn’t understand about the gospel. Christianity is not some method by which God restricts man, takes away the joy of living, by which God condemns man.  But the gospel is God’s plan for man, to give him life, abundant life.  It is God’s plan to restore man to the innocence of the Garden, to restore man to the joy before the fall.  It is God’s plan for man to have a life of joy and peace and all the blessings which God originally designed man to have but were taken away by man’s fall into sin.  The gospel is not just a list of what you can’t do.  It is a list of promises of what God will do, when man comes under His plan of reconciliation. 

2Cor. 5:17 says, “Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come. Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.”  

This is our purpose, having been reconciled to God, we become ambassadors of Christ to the world, so that we might announce to all men the promise of reconciliation.  We are ambassadors.  We have the same ministry that Christ had.  We tell the world the truth of God, we tell the world the promise of the gospel, the hope of the gospel.  

Listen, some of you Christians are missing out on your purpose.  And you wonder why your Christian experience seems lacking.  Perhaps it’s because you are not recognizing that just as Jesus was sent to a lost and dying world to tell them the good news, so He has sent us also.  We are not saved just so we may selfishly bask in the love of God for us, and reap all the blessings of God for ourselves, like the lepers in the OT that found the enemy camp deserted and full of food, knowing that their own people were starving.  But it is better to give than to receive. It is better to serve than to be served. There are hundreds of men and women that you come into contact with everyday, and God has sent you to them to tell them the gospel of salvation.  We have a commission to be ambassadors for Christ, to carry on His work, His ministry of reconciliation.  I hope you take that commission seriously. I hope you understand your purpose is that Christ is sending you to tell your unsaved family, your unsaved friends, your unsaved coworkers, your unsaved neighbors about the good news of the gospel. If we would all take seriously this commission, that Christ is sending you to share the gospel with your neighbor,  I think we would truly see a revival in our communities.  

Fourthly, the principle of the gospel presented here next is the means by which we are able to fulfill our purpose, and that is by the power of the Holy Spirit.  John says in vs.22, And when He had said this, He breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”  Someone once said, I think it was Alistair Begg, that the difference between the OT and the NT is that in the OT we were given the law but we couldn’t perform it, but in the NT we are given the gift of the Holy Spirit that we might have the power to do the works of God.

It’s interesting that when Jesus gives them the permanent presence of the Holy Spirit to dwell in them, He breathes on them.  There seems to be in the language a deliberate reference to Genesis 2, when God made Adam and breathed in him the breath of life, and man became a living soul.  Paul speaks of this parallel in 1Cor. 15:45, saying “So also it is written, The first MAN, Adam, BECAME A LIVING SOUL.’ The last Adam became a life-giving spirit.”  Jesus breathed on the disciples, giving them the Spirit to dwell permanently in them. 

It’s also interesting in light of what Jesus said earlier about us being sent as He was sent, to notice the parallels between Jesus’s ministry  and the disciples’ ministry.  Jesus you will remember, after coming up from the water of His baptism which symbolized the resurrection, had the Spirit descend upon Him in the form of a dove.  And immediately He went out into the wilderness being led by the Holy Spirit and for 40 days He was tempted.  It’s interesting that the disciples receive the Spirit through Christ breathing on them, and then they will wait for 40 days before receiving power through the filling of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost.  So again, we have the same benefit for our ministry that Christ had in His.  After the forty days of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness, Luke 4:14 says, “And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee.”  And such power is given to us as well that we might fulfill the ministry of Christ.

The last principle of the gospel presented here is that of authority.  Jesus says in vs.23, “If you forgive the sins of any, their sins have been forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they have been retained.”  What Jesus is saying here is not that we have the power to forgive sins.  The Bible makes it clear in many other places that only God has the power to forgive sins.  But rather He is saying that as we fulfill our ministry of the gospel, to share the good news, that we have the authority to announce the forgiveness of sins for those that confess Jesus as Lord and have faith in Him.  

We have the authority of the gospel to say that if you confess your sins He is faithful and just to forgive you of your sins and cleanse you from all unrighteousness. But there is also the flip side to the gospel. If you reject Jesus as your Lord and God, then we have the authority to tell them that they are still in their sins.

That’s the message that Peter and the apostles had after Pentecost. They spoke with authority.  They spoke with the authority of the Holy Spirit.  They preached with the power of the Spirit, and through the authority of the Word of God.  And we have that same resource.  So many people want to focus on the apostles speaking in tongues as their manifestation of the power of the Spirit.  But I would suggest that more significant was the message of the sermon Peter preached.  Suddenly this backwoods, unlearned fisherman was preaching a message to thousands of people, quoting and interpreting scripture and people’s hearts were cut to the quick under conviction of their sins.  Three thousand people weren’t saved by hearing someone speak in tongues, they became saved by hearing the gospel preached.  That is power.  The Holy Spirit works through the gospel, works through the scriptures, to bring men under conviction that leads to salvation.  That is edifying to the church, and not just self edification. (Romans 1:16) “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes…”

So those are the five principles of the gospel that John records for us here as he really begins to wrap up his gospel.  And like a good preacher, he gives a personal illustration for his message;  he presents the account of Thomas, who had been missing from the first service when Jesus appeared.  And though Thomas knows well these disciples, having been with them constantly for three years or more, yet he rejects their testimony.  When they tell him that they had seen the risen Jesus, he says quite callously that unless he sees the nail prints in His hands, and actually puts his finger in them, and unless he puts his hand into the wound in His side, he will not believe that they have actually seen Jesus alive.  

Well, 8 days later, it’s once again Sunday evening.  And the disciples are having the second Sunday service, and they have locked the doors again. But this time, Thomas is with them.  And Jesus suddenly appears in the midst of them and says to Thomas, “Reach here with your finger, and see My hands; and reach here your hand and put it into My side; and do not be unbelieving, but believing.”

Thomas is undoubtedly taken aback.  For one because he sees the risen Savior.  But also because he hears the Lord repeat back to him the things he said privately to the disciples.  And so he understands in a special way what it means to have the presence of Christ in his life.  Realizing that Jesus had heard him when he said that must have had a major impact on him.  I would to God that we might realize that Jesus hears everything we say.  That He is watching us, and walking among us every day. Jesus told the Pharisees in Matt.12:36 that they would give an account on judgment day for every careless word that they spoke.  And Jesus told the 7 churches in Revelation, “I know your deeds.”  He is described as walking among the churches, watching and hearing all that they have to say and do.  If we truly understood that it would be hard for us to continue living the way we do, wouldn’t it?  We need to realize the presence of Christ 24/7, as we go through our daily lives.

Well, Thomas suddenly doesn’t want to put his finger in the nail holes.  He doesn’t want to put his hand in Jesus’ side.  Instead, Thomas gives the strongest confession of any of the disciples up to that point.  He says, “My Lord and my God!”  That is the confession that John has been working towards in the gospel up to this point.  It’s to bring the reader to the point of confessing Jesus as our Lord and our God.  That we might come to the place where we are willing to accept Jesus as our Master and Lord, that He has the right to determine for us how we are to live this new life He has given us.  Because He is also God.  He is the Creator of all things.  He has formed us for His glory.  

That confession of Thomas is what is meant by believing in Jesus.  It is to declare Him as My Master, and My God.  And therefore, my allegiance and commitment is given completely to Him. And having faith in Him, we are made righteous, we have peace with God.  We are given new life by the Spirit of God.  We are a new creation.  Old things have passed away and all things have become new.  We have new life in Christ, and a new purpose in life.

Jesus accepts Thomas’s confession.  But He gives a rebuke for his lack of faith.  Jesus says, “Because you have seen Me, have you believed? Blessed are they who did not see, and yet believed.”  Listen, we need to guard against the carnal desire of seeking of physical verification of the Lord like that which Thomas exhibited.  We all get discouraged from time to time.  We all may have doubts from time to time.  To do so is human.  But to stubbornly seek that is carnal. It is fleshly.  It is to want special validation from God just for me, according to exactly what I think God needs to do to prove Himself.  Jesus was gracious to Thomas.  But that attitude is not what He desires.

A lot of Christians may feel like we are disadvantaged because we don’t have the physical validation that the early disciples had.  We don’t have the physical signs of power perhaps.  We don’t have the physical presence of the Lord.  But Jesus is saying in this statement that not having Him physically here is not a disadvantage, but it is really a blessing.  Blessed are they who did not see and yet believed.  There is a special blessing for us Christians today that don’t have the physical evidence to validate or prove our faith.  But then if we did, it wouldn’t be such great faith would it?  And we know that God rewards and blesses great faith.  And that kind of faith is what is required.  We believe the testimony of faithful men, trustworthy witnesses and the record of the scripture. God will bless you for it.  Matt. 5:8, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”

And that brings us to the conclusion, or synopsis of John’s gospel.  It comes a chapter early.  But it’s really like the conclusion of John’s gospel.  He says in 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.”  

Listen, these truths have been written that you might have life in His name.  Abundant life.  Real life.  A life of joy and blessing.  Life that never dies.  Jesus did not come to teach philosophy.  He did not come to show us how to be prosperous or successful.  He didn’t come as God in the flesh to make new inventions that would make our lives easier. He didn’t die on the cross to give us a cure for cancer. But He came that we might believe that He has come from God, to teach us the truth of God, that we might be reconciled to God, that we may have the new life which God has designed for us to enjoy, and that we might enjoy fellowship with Him forever.  I hope that you have confessed Jesus as your Lord and your God, that you might have the life which He died on the cross to procure for you.  If you believe in Him,  I announce to you by the authority of Christ that your sins have been forgiven you.  But if you reject Him, I must tell you that you remain dead in your sins and will face the final judgment without Him.  I pray you come to Jesus today and receive all that He has done for you.  

Secret Disciples, John 19:38-42                                                                 Psalm 56

We live in a culture today when death is portrayed in movies and television with all sorts of blood and gore and people are unmoved by it.  But on the other hand, in reality, in our day to day lives, we go to great lengths to avoid seeing death.  If the average person even saw a steer killed and butchered they would probably be so traumatized that they would swear off eating meat forever.  

We have an unrealistic perception of death, and perhaps because of that, we have an unrealistic perception of life.  Even in the death of a loved one, it is rare that we really see much of the person as they die, or after they are dead, but rather doctors and nurses and morticians whisk the body away as soon as possible and what we end up seeing eventually at the funeral doesn’t even look like the real  person anymore. And a funeral is rare today.  The person is usually cremated, and so no one even sees the dead body.

It must have been a tremendously shocking thing to witness the crucifixion of Jesus.  The savagery of it is something that is hard for us to fathom.  The suffering is something that would not be tolerated today even in the execution of the worst criminals.  The Romans view of a merciful hurrying of the death by crucifixion was to break the legs of the victims so that they ended up suffocating due to being unable to push their chest up enough to breath.

Christ, as we saw last week, gave up His life before the soldiers would have finally taken it from Him by breaking His legs.  But that doesn’t mean He didn’t suffer immensely. Not only did He suffer in His flesh, but He suffered shame that only a righteous God could suffer.  To be holy and innocent of all sin and have all the sins of the world put upon your back and then be stripped naked and hung on a cross as the worst of criminals, and have your mother and a few friends watch you in your agony is beyond our comprehension.  But to have the wrath of God upon you as you take on the weight of the sins of the world is even more incomprehensible for our mortal minds.

We are not given in John’s gospel all the details of Christ’s crucifixion.  Even if we piece together the four gospels there are still gaps in what God has given us in the gospel record.  John says that there were many other things that he could have included, but that these were given that we might believe that Jesus was the Son of God and that believing we might have life in His name.

So as we come to this last section, the burial of Christ, it is important that we understand the full significance which John intends for us to gather from  this passage.  And I think that one of the main things that John wants to illustrate for us in the end of this chapter and the next chapter is the various responses of the disciples to the crucifixion and the resurrection.  There are many different responses that are presented in chapter 19 and 20. And I think that John illustrates these various responses in order to show that salvation is an individual response to the gospel.  Salvation did not come to all the world simply through the crucifixion of Christ, but salvation comes through an individual’s faith in what Christ did on the cross.  Salvation requires more than a head knowledge, or an intellectual assent to the facts, but it requires the response of faith for it to be efficacious.

To become saved means not only to be justified by faith in what Christ has done for us, but to be saved, practically speaking,  is to become a disciple.  To follow Christ, to follow His teachings, to be led by Him in all aspects of our life.  Jesus said in Matthew 28:19, “Go into the world and make disciples of all the nations…teaching them to observe all that I commanded you.”  Discipleship then is the goal of evangelism. Not just to make converts, but disciples. Not just to have people raise their hand or repeat a prayer and then they are given an insurance policy from hell, but to have people become transformed into the image of Christ. 

Micah tells us what discipleship is. Micah 6:8 “He has told you, O man, what is good; And what does the LORD require of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God?”  To follow Christ is to walk with God. And to walk humbly is to walk circumspectly in His footsteps, following His example in all things.

Now in this last section of chapter 19, we see two men, who are called secret disciples.  I think that is somewhat of an oxymoron.  But if we give them the benefit of the doubt, let’s say that they had come to a saving knowledge of Christ, but that faith had not become public, and therefore not transformative.  I’m not sure such a thing is possible, but God knows the heart, not I, and He knows what are the intentions of the heart even before we act on them.  

So if John, under the influence of the Holy Spirit calls them disciples, then maybe they have been saved prior to the cross.  However, I will remind you that in John 6, after Jesus said “my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink,” it goes on to say in vs66 that after this “many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him.”  So there is a sense in which you could be considered a disciple of Christ but not be saved and turn and walk away from the Lord.  Not that you can lose your salvation, but that you never had it.  You were considered a disciple because you were in the group, but you never truly believed unto salvation.

And I think that is indicative of many in the church today.  There are some who have a head knowledge of Christ, they attend  church occasionally, holding on loosely so to speak to the things of God, but in times of difficulty they will expose their true nature; they will turn away and stop following.  They will turn to something more edifying to their ego.  Something not as demanding.  And so we have churches today filled with people who move from group to group, from church to church, in an attempt to avoid the rigors and demands of true discipleship.

So Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus were secret disciples up to this point.  Whether they had truly been saved or not we don’t know, but we do know that as they came face to face with the crucifixion of Christ they came all the way into discipleship. At the cross of Christ they faced the true nature of Christianity, and they chose to identify and  suffer with Christ.

Now who were Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus?  Well, I’m sure most of you are familiar with Nicodemus.  We met him in the third chapter, he came to see Jesus at night. And we are told there that he was a ruler, that means a member of the Sanhedrin.  Jesus calls him a teacher.  John also calls him a Pharisee.  That means that he believed in the afterlife, and he practiced the law to the nth degree. In that famous discourse in chapter 3, Jesus told him that he needed to be born again of the Spirit. And so we can assume that message resonated with Nicodemus, and eventually produced saving faith. 

There is one other note about Nicodemus in chapter 7, around vs 50, we see Nicodemus coming to the defense of Christ, saying that He should be given a fair hearing before they judged Him.  And in that passage, the Pharisees rebuked him for that defense.  So at that point there is an indication of the Spirit at work in him, but he has not yet come forward completely as a disciple.

The other man we know less about.  Mark tells us that Joseph of Arimathea was a prominent member of the Sanhedrin as well. Matthew says he was a rich man. And Mark also adds that he was waiting for the kingdom of God. That means he was looking for the Messiah. Some traditions say that Joseph and Nicodemus were actually brothers.  They both were rich men, they both were members of the Sanhedrin. They both were very prominent in Jewish religion and society.

And because of those things, they had a lot to lose for becoming disciples of Christ.  John says that Joseph was a disciple, but secretly for fear of the Jews.  He doesn’t mean just the Jewish people at large necessarily, but the Jewish leaders, the ruling party.  There were 70 men that were part of the Sanhedrin.  And there were undoubtedly thousands of Pharisees.  These were the leaders of the community, and these two men were considered the most prominent of the leaders. And so to come out publicly as Christ’s disciples meant the possible loss of their positions in society, their careers, and their wealth. So up to this point they hid their growing faith. I personally think that most of the Sanhedrin and the priests knew that Jesus was the Messiah.  But they were not willing to confess Him as such because they wanted to preserve their authority and position. And they would actually murder the Messiah in order to maintain their positions. So also Joseph and Nicodemus were believing, and until the crucifixion had not yet reached the point of confessing Jesus publicly as Lord.

I think that it should be obvious God does not save us, He does not shine His light in us, that we might hide it under a basket. Jesus said in  Matt. 5:14, “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden; nor does anyone light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven.”  So we are not saved to hide our discipleship, but to reflect the light of Christ.

The application to disciples today should be pretty obvious as well.  Christ died to save us not just to escape the sentence of hell, but that we might shine His light through us to the world by looking like Christ, by acting like Christ.  That the world might see our good works, and bring glory to our Father in heaven.  

What stops us from doing that?  Well, it’s the same things that stopped Joseph and Nicodemus.  They feared the excommunication of the ruling party.  They feared what their peers might say if they really stepped out and followed the Lord.  They were afraid they might lose their friends.  Lose their social standing in the community.  And I’m afraid that the same concerns keep many of us from truly following Christ today.  If we really gave Christ 100% it would cost us friendships or jobs or money or something that we hold dear.

You know, tradition says that these men did eventually lose all those things.  Not so much is known about Joseph, but there are traditions about Nicodemus that say that as a result of his coming forward to claim the body of Christ and becoming a true disciple that  he lost his position in the Sanhedrin, he lost his wealth, and one historian recounts one of his daughters being so destitute that she was seen picking grain from manure.

Jesus speaks of what it means to truly follow Him, to be a true disciple.  In Matt. 16:24

Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me.”  

So it would seem that Joseph and Nicodemus attended the crucifixion. They would have had to have been there, to be able to respond so quickly to Jesus’s death that they were able to appeal to Pilate for His body and prepare His embalmment before nightfall and the Sabbath began.  It’s ironic, all His disciples save John had fled Him in the darkest hour.  And yet in the providence of God, these two fearful, secret disciples are the ones who are there to take Him to a tomb and prepare Him for burial.  

Somehow in the death of Christ, these men’s reservations fell away.  When they saw the way that He died, they must have come to the same conclusion that the Roman centurion did, saying, “Surely this man was the Son of God!”(Mark 15:39)  All their reservations fell away.  And in that moment, they realized that they had participated in some way in the crucifixion of the very Son of God. They knew that their sin had caused the death of God’s Son. And in light of that realization, they knew that their lives meant nothing if they were not sealed in Christ.

I can’t help but think that Nicodemus remembered what Christ had told him back in chapter 3:14, “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up; so that whoever believes will in Him have eternal life.”  When He saw Jesus lifted up on the cross, I’m sure this statement came flooding back to him, and He realized not only the fulfillment of prophecy, but also realized that for the deathly sting of his sin to be removed, he had to look unto Christ as his Savior and Lord.  That instead of death from the serpent’s sting he might receive the eternal life that God promised to those who believe in Him.  And so I believe Nicodemus and Joseph came to full discipleship when they saw Jesus hanging on that cross for their sins.

And that is where true discipleship starts for us as well.  When we consider the horror of our sins, when we consider the Son of God taking our penalty by His death, when we consider the shame and suffering that we deserved, placed upon Him who did not deserve it, then the least that we can do is to follow Him in forsaking our sin, being willing to give up our hold on this life, so that we might have spiritual life, even eternal life through Him. 

So I think that Joseph and Nicodemus not only got a vision of the cross, but they considered the cost of discipleship in light of what Christ did for them, and they realized that whatever it cost them, He was worth it all. In Mark 15:43, it says Joseph went in before Pilate and gathered up his courage, and asked for the body of Jesus.  I think it took a lot of courage to do that.  Pilate had after all just condemned Jesus to death.  What prevented him from doing the same to Joseph for revealing he was Christ’s disciple?  

But it also took a lot of courage because it would have been known to all his colleagues in the Sanhedrin.  With this one bold act, he pretty much sounded the death knell on his career.  That kind of courage and commitment to Christ, no matter how great the cost, is what is required of disciples.   Jesus said in  Matt. 10:37, “He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me.”  So to take up your cross means to count the cost, and consider as Paul said the things I once thought valuable in this life as nothing but rubbish for the sake of knowing Christ.  Phil. 3:8 “More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ.”  

That kind of abandon in following Christ is illustrated in two sacrificial gifts that each man gave to the Lord in His death.  First of all, Joseph gave Jesus his own personal tomb.  If not for this act of love on the part of Joseph, Jesus’s body would have been dragged off to Gehana, a trash pile outside of town that was always burning.  Gehena was a picture of hell that Jesus had often referred to.  But Isaiah 53:9 had prophesied that  “His grave was assigned with wicked men,Yet He was with a rich man in His death, Because He had done no violence, Nor was there any deceit in His mouth.”  

John gives us some information about this tomb.  It was a tomb fit for a King.  He says that no body had ever been laid in it.  And he also mentions that this tomb was in a garden.  It’s interesting that when the first Adam sinned it was in a garden, and when the second Adam atoned for that sin, He was laid to rest in a garden.The fellowship with God that had been broken by sin in the first garden was restored by atonement in the second.  

So Joseph’s gift to Christ was fit for a King.  A new tomb, in a garden.  An extravagant gift to honor Christ as his King in death.  And of course God used this gift of Joseph to prove conclusively that the resurrection of Christ had taken place.  If Jesus’s burial place had not been well known, there would not have been the numerous witnesses to His resurrection.

And then Nicodemus also gives an extravagant, sacrificial gift suitable for a king. John tells us that he brought a hundred pounds weight of spices, made from myrrh and aloes.  Myrrh was brought at the birth of Jesus as well, by the wise men, who noted that a King had been born and came to worship Him.  Now in Christ’s death, another wise man brought myrrh to honor the King.  A hundred pounds weight would have represented a fortune in perfume.  Much more than simply sprinkled in the folds of the shroud, it would have filled the tomb where Jesus’s body was laid.

And so I suggest that a true disciple is known by his extravagance, by sacrificial giving to honor God.  Material things are recognized as merely offerings we give back to God.  Whether it be our time, or our treasure, we realize that no sacrifice is too great, when we consider the sacrifice He gave first for us.

When Joseph and Nicodemus stepped up to full discipleship, they claimed Christ’s body and boldly took on all the associations that came with that.  So we too as Christians  must  claim His body – which is His church – and embrace all the associations that come with that.  All the stigma.  All the social rejection.  There is no cost too great for the sake of Him who suffered for me.  It requires stepping out of our comfort zone.  It requires fellowship in His suffering.  It requires a sacrifice of time, money and resources for the sake of the Kingdom of God.  Being a true disciple requires that we lose our identity in the world, and claim our identity with Christ.  And when we give up our hold on this life and follow Him completely in true discipleship, then we will know the spiritual, abundant life that God promises to those who trust Him. 

I would ask you to consider your relationship to Christ this morning.  Are you living in effect as as secret disciple?  Are you trying to hold on to control of your life?  Are you holding onto things that are keeping you from fully committing to the Lord?  True discipleship demands our all, renouncing sin and clinging to the cross of Christ.  And when that kind of commitment has been made in our life, then it will be revealed in an extravagant love for Christ that considers anything that was once considered gain as loss for the sake of knowing Him.  I pray that today you see clearly what Christ did for you at the cross, and that you fully commit to take up your cross as well and follow Him.

For most Christians, the events surrounding the crucifixion of Christ are very familiar.  We’ve all probably heard many messages on the crucifixion and even possibly seen movies or plays depicting it.  Not to mention, there are four gospel accounts of the crucifixion in the New Testament.  However, not all the gospels recount the exact same details.  One gospel might include some things which others leave out.  In John’s gospel, he includes some details which others have not, and also, he has left out some events that others included.  So the tendency among preachers and expositors preaching on this text is to fill in the blanks, so to speak, as if to make up for what John’s gospel is lacking. 

Now in the case of the synoptic gospel writers, Matthew, Mark and Luke, that could be considered an appropriate method of exposition, since you could make the case that those three writers were not actually in attendance at the crucifixion.  However, that’s not the case with John.  He makes it clear that He was there.  He is the disciple whom Jesus loved mentioned in vs.26 and 35 who was there and who had personally witnessed  the crucifixion.

So then the question is, why did John include some things and not others?  Well, the answer is that John is not writing a history book, but he’s writing a gospel.  He is telling and emphasizing certain events to present the gospel of Jesus Christ which leads to salvation.  That’s what he says in chapter 20:30, 31, “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.”  

My concern then is to figure out exactly how to elucidate this gospel message that John is endeavoring to give us.  And as I prayed about and studied this text, I came to a very simple conclusion; John is presenting the fact that Jesus gave His life to accomplish salvation, not just focusing on the morbid aspects of the crucifixion, but on the aspects which teach the principles of Christ’s atonement for us.  So as someone has well said, Christ gave His life not to engender sentimentality but spirituality.  Not just so that we might be mortified by the physical torture and bloody gore of the crucifixion, but that it might teach us the knowledge leading to salvation. And as another writer said, Salvation is based on believing. Believing is based on truth. And truth is revealed in Scripture.  That believing we might have life in His name.

So then, we will examine this principle of Christ giving His life to accomplish salvation through four vignettes which John presents to us.  The first is Jesus gave up His garments, then He gave up His mother, then He gave up His Spirit, and finally He gave out His water and blood.

I also want to add at the beginning that John correlates some of these events with Old Testament prophesies, showing that they were fulfilled in Jesus’s crucifixion.  And I believe three of the references he mentions are found in Psalm 22, and one in Psalm 34.  And I just want to point out that the Psalms were written  about 1000 years before Christ.  There is absolute proof of that.  It is indisputable.  In fact, the enemies of Christ, the Jews, would have been very familiar with these Psalms. Though they probably did not consider those references as Messianic prophesies. So they would not have contived to correlate Christ’s crucifixion with the prophesies even if they had wanted to.  

The Romans, on the other hand, did what Roman soldiers did, irregardless of what the Jews wanted. So they would not have deliberately acted in a way to confirm scriptural prophesies.  So these prophetic fulfillments are very important for John to point out, so that we might believe that Jesus is the Christ.  And John wanted to make sure you understood that certain events of the crucifixion fulfilled scripture.  But now let’s focus on the four vignettes of how Jesus gave His life to accomplish our salvation.

First. Jesus gave up His garments.  We’ve all heard the phrase made about someone, that “he didn’t own anything but the clothes on his back.”  Well, that was especially true of Jesus.  He had no possessions, no home, nothing of any value.  All that He had were the clothes on His back.  And we see in vs 23, that the soldiers took those clothes and divided them up between themselves.  When Jesus came down from heaven’s glory to earth, He came all the way down to the lowest level of humanity to accomplish our salvation.  He let go of all His pride, all His royal garments, becoming completely poor for us, so that we might become rich in Him.  He became naked, bearing all the shame which that brings.  It’s the same shame that Adam and Eve felt in the garden of Eden when they realized they were naked and hid from God.  Christ became naked for us, Christ became sin for us,  bearing the shame, the scoffing, the stares, as He gave Himself to be our substitute.

2 Cor. 8:9 says, “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor, so that you through His poverty might become rich.”  Now how does this incident illustrate that we became rich?  Because these four soldiers each received a part of His clothing.  There were no greater sinners than these soldiers who had stripped Jesus’s clothes from Him, whipped Him with a cat of nine tails to within an inch of His life, crushed a crown of thorns upon His head and nailed Him to a cross.  And yet we know that even as they did so, Jesus prayed, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”  

What John illustrates here is that the garments of Christ were made available at the cross for the covering of sinners.  Just as when after the fall God skinned animals to make clothing for Adam and Eve, so also He slew Jesus to provide a garment of righteousness for you and me.  Isaiah 61:10 says, “For he has dressed me with the clothing of salvation and draped me in a robe of righteousness.” 

The hymn we sing, The Solid Rock, says, “dressed in His righteousness alone, faultless to stand before the throne.”  2 Cor. 5:21 says, “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”  There is no better picture of our sin situation than that we are naked and ashamed before God.  Christ took that upon Himself, that we might become clothed in His righteousness.

But John adds that there is another piece of clothing there, which was not divided, because it was made in one piece.  It was a tunic, worn under the outer clothing.  And I see two pictures in this; first it is the inner garment, signifying the Spirit.  And secondly, it was without seams.  It’s not in part, it’s complete.  The Spirit of Christ is not given piecemeal.  

Now as we see this dividing of His clothing played out by the soldiers, it may seem that Jesus has no control over these events. Yet John informs us that the invisible hand of God guides all things, so that specific prophecy is specifically fulfilled. Psalm 22:18 says, “They divide My garments among them, And for My clothing they cast lots.” The fact that it was foreordained indicates that Jesus gave His clothing willingly, even as He gave His life willingly.

The picture teaches us that we need to be clothed in His righteousness if we are to be saved. It is the means of our justification; Christ’s righteousness is given to us in exchange for our sin. And when we are saved, then we receive the spiritual covering of  His Spirit, so that we might be joined with Christ.

Secondly, Christ gave up His mother.  I know that heading sounds awkward.  Maybe it would be better to say, He gave up His family associations.  But all we have presented here is His mother.  There are indications from this text and others that Joseph was long dead and Jesus had, as the eldest son, taken on the responsibility as the head of the family of His mother and His brothers.  His brothers at this point had not believed in Him.  There is no evidence that they were there at the crucifixion.  In fact, all his disciples had fled except for John and these four women.  

Jesus would have been very aware of the pain that His crucifixion was causing to Mary. She was the only one of His family that had believed in Him.  And now as Simeon had prophesied to her 33 years earlier,  a sword would pierce her soul.  I’m sure in some part of His humanity, Jesus would have loved to have used His divine power to come down from the cross and spare His mother this grief.  But He was obedient even unto death to the will of the Father, knowing that through His death He would accomplish salvation not only for her soul, but millions more.  And make no mistake, Mary needed salvation, just as all sinners need salvation.  She was not without sin, for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. There was only one sinless One, and that was Christ Jesus, the Lamb slain for the sins of the world.

So in Jesus’s instructions to John, He indicates that John is not only part of the kingdom, but a child of God.  Jesus said to His mother, “Woman, behold, your son!” Then He said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother!”  Not only was Jesus concerned about her physical care, but He was emphasizing also the nature of family in the kingdom of God. There is a new family dimension in the Kingdom of God.  Our brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers are those who have been born of God. In Luke 8:21 Jesus said, “My mother and My brothers are these who hear the word of God and do it.” And in John 1:11-13 it says, “He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him.  But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name:  who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.”

Thirdly, Jesus gave up His Spirit.  Vs. 30 “ Therefore when Jesus had received the sour wine, He said, “It is finished!” And He bowed His head and gave up His spirit.” Phil. 2:8 says, “And being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.” Giving up His Spirit means first of all, that He gave up His life. That is a tremendous thing.  It was not an act of suicide.  His hands and feet are nailed to a cross.  He can’t take His life by violence against Himself. But what He does is an act of divinity.  He gives up His life willingly, of His own volition. 

But before He acts in divinity, John shows His humanity.  Jesus became thirsty and asks for a drink.  So they give Him vinegar to drink.  He suffered as any man would suffer  the torments of the cross.  His divinity did not prevent His suffering. As a man, He thirsted. We should be reminded when Jesus cried out; at the feast in John 7:37-39  saying, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.”  But this He spoke concerning the Spirit, whom those believing in Him would receive; for the Holy Spirit was not yet [given], because Jesus was not yet glorified.”

 As God, He had the power over His life. But He gave up His life, voluntarily. As Jesus said in John 10:17, “I lay down My life that I may take it again. No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again.” 

The gospels record 7 statements or words of Jesus on the cross.  John only gives us three.  One was the statement to John and His mother.  The second was He was thirsty.  And now John records another statement that Jesus made as He gives up His Spirit.  He cries, “Tetelistai!” it is finished.  Tetelistai means it is complete, perfect.  His ministry on earth as a man was complete.  He lived from the first moment to the last, a sinless, perfect life.  By the death of His perfect life He paid in full the debt of mankind who could never live a perfect life.  And by dying, He paid the complete price which we owed; that God might place upon Him our sins as our substitute.  The work of atonement that Jesus came to do in the flesh was finished, it was complete.

1Peter 3:18 “For Christ also died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, so that He might bring us to God, having been put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit; in which also He went and made proclamation to the spirits now in prison.” Not only did He give up His life, but He surrendered up His Spirit to death, to the abode of the dead.  Very little in scripture is given to us concerning the three days Christ’s body was in the grave.  But according to both Peter and Paul, though His body was in the tomb, His Spirit was alive in the abode of the dead. As the Apostle’s Creed confirms, “He descended into Hell.” A better translation would be that He descended into the lower regions of the earth, which is what the Bible calls Hades, so He might triumph over death through His resurrection.  

The human body is spirit, soul and body.  Our spirit is the spiritual part of our being that is connected to God, which has died as the result of sin. That is why Jesus said to Nicodemus back in John chapter 3 that it is necessary to be born again of the Spirit. The reborn spirit then rules over the mind and the body. We must be born of the Spirit, if we are to be spiritual. And then we must give up our self rule to the rule of the Spirit if we are going to live as God would have us live, dying to the lusts of the flesh, even as Christ died in the flesh but was alive in the Spirit.

Finally, the last vignette John presents for us is He gave up water and blood.  The soldiers, in order to hurry the death of those who were crucified, broke their legs, which would cause them to suffocate from the weight of their body.  But coming to Jesus, these executioners realize that He is already dead.  So one of them took his spear and stabbed Him in the side, presumably to prove He was dead, and John tells us that blood and water came out.  Now doctors have said that this water-like liquid was from the pericardium surrounding the heart and flowed out with partly coagulated blood.  That’s the physical explanation.  

Other, more sentimental explanations have said it was a sign of a broken heart.  I’m not sure that such a thing has been established as physically possible.  But there is no doubt that there is a symbolic reference in the blood and water coming out of His side.  And perhaps it is best stated in the old hymn, Rock of Ages, which says, “Let the water and the blood, from thy wounded side which flowed, be of sin the double cure, save from death and make me pure.”  The blood therefore representing justification from sin, and the water being purification from sin. 

Matthew Henry, an 18th century theologian said it like this; “The blood and water that flowed out, signified those two great benefits which all believers partake of through Christ, justification and sanctification; blood for atonement, water for purification. They both flow from the pierced side of our Redeemer. To Christ crucified we owe merit for our justification, and Spirit and grace for our sanctification.”

Therefore, we can say that He gave His life to save us not only from the penalty of sin, but the power of sin.  As I have said numerous times, there are three phases in salvation.  All must be accomplished for salvation to be complete.  Justification is deliverance from the penalty of sin.  Sanctification is the deliverance from the power of sin.  And glorification is the deliverance from the presence of sin.  The glorification phase will not happen until the resurrection when we will be given a glorified body.  But all three phases are necessary for our salvation to be complete. 

John has given us these vignettes of salvation tucked into the greater story of the cross, so that we might get a better understanding of what Christ gave His life for.  Salvation must be more than just believing intellectually in Christ’s existence, otherwise everyone attending the crucifixion would have been saved that night.  But we know that is not the case. Salvation is more than partaking of the elements of His body, or drinking His blood, otherwise the soldiers that were splattered with the blood of Christ would have been saved.   Salvation is more than just some sort of superficial belief in the historicity of the events. 

And I will add something else that you may find disconcerting; salvation is more than just what Christ did on the cross.  If salvation was accomplished for the world by what Christ did on the cross, then all men have been saved.  There is no need to evangelize.  Christ has done everything.  We do nothing.  Everyone goes to heaven, irregardless. 

No, we must do something, we must believe.  We must believe with saving faith. And faith is not merely intellectual, but it is also a matter of the will.   Romans  10:10 says, “with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation.”  Faith is a matter of both the intellect and the will.  It is a commitment to surrender your life to Christ to live by His Spirit.  And in those two aspects of faith, the intellect and will,  are couched justification and sanctification. So that James may rightly say, “show me your faith by your works. Faith without works is dead.”

Christ dying on the cross in our place has freed us from  the enslavement to sin that the devil has held all of mankind in.  The symbolism of the blood and the water is the crux of the gospel, it is powerful for the destruction of fortresses. And it provides complete salvation.  It is able to justify us, to deliver from the penalty of sin, but it is also powerful to sanctify us, to deliver us from the power of sin.  Sin no longer has dominion over us.  The truth will make us free from the captivity of sin when we embrace the whole truth of the gospel.  Let us take up our cross and follow Christ, dressed in His righteousness, our justification.  And being made free from the penalty of sin, let us live as free from the power of sin as we yield to the Spirit who lives in us and rules over our will. 

I hope that you have seen the purpose of gospel in these four vignettes of the cross.  I hope you have seen first of all that you are a sinner, lost and without hope. And because your are a sinner you are condemned to death by the Great Judge over all the earth. But Jesus, the Son of God, has offered Himself to be our substitute, to take our punishment upon Himself, that we might be given freedom from sin and everlasting life.  The only requirement for you is to repent and believe that He will save you and give you new life if you trust in Him as your Savior and Lord. 

John says back in chapter one that Jesus came to His own, that is His own people, and they did not receive Him. “But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, [even] to those who believe in His name,  who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.”  Receive Jesus today as your Lord, and be born again in the Spirit, that you may have life in His name.  

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.