The other day I was listening to a Christian radio broadcast as I was driving back from seeing someone who is in prison in Princess Anne, Maryland. I won’t say the name of the pastor, but doctrinally he is considered sound and he seems to be relatively popular. And at the end of the sermon, the announcer came on and gave a commercial for the opportunity to go on a luxury cruise with the pastor to some exotic destination which I think was in the Caribbean. I found myself feeling a little jealous, I guess. I had just spent four hours visiting some guy in prison who is facing a life sentence, who lost his career, his wife divorced him, and now he just lost a custody hearing for his children and he has no way of seeing them or contacting them anymore. And I had to try to comfort him as he sat there and wept openly behind the glass partition. I had to try to convince him that God still loved him. That God would use this for good in some way. And I felt that I had failed to comfort him as I would have liked to. I found myself wanting to question God’s goodness and justice just as he was doing. Both of us struggling to keep the faith in the face of terrible circumstances. And against that background, the incongruity of the commercial juxtaposed with the reality of the prisoner’s ordeal seemed almost ludicrous.

There is nothing wrong with going on a luxury cruise with a Bible teacher I guess. But somehow I have a hard time reconciling drinks by the pool, and dancing on the Lido Deck after the evening Bible teaching seminar as being the epitome of the Christian life. That sort of thing sounds great and is certainly appealing on some level, but I find it at odds with the reality of my own and very many other’s experience as a Christian. And I find it at odds with the teachings of Christ and the apostles as well. We are told in Romans 8:17 that our glorification with Christ is directly tied with whether or not we partake in the sufferings of Christ. It says we are “heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him.”

So at the risk of sounding “gloom and doom” and offending someone, I urge you to consider the context of the passage of scripture today, because Jesus is preparing His disciples for the rigors and trials and tribulations that are a real and present companion to the Christian experience which was true not only for the disciples, but for the modern church as well. So as we begin this chapter, let’s remember the context; it is dark, and the disciples are walking from the Upper Room where they had just observed the Passover, and where Judas had deserted them after being prophesied by Jesus that he would betray Him. Jesus has just told them that He is going to die, that He is going back to the Father, and that He is leaving them. He’s told them that He is going to send the Holy Spirit from heaven to comfort them, but they aren’t sure exactly what that means. Now it’s dark, and they leave the room and wind their way through the city of Jerusalem and around the temple walls, down into the ravine where the Kidron brook is flowing dark red with the blood of thousands of lamb sacrifices offered in the temple, as they make their way up towards the Mount of Olives.

The disciples are undoubtedly disillusioned, saddened, and probably more than a little depressed as they climb the hillside expecting to spend yet another cold night out under the stars as was their custom. And as they walk, Jesus is still talking to them. He is still teaching them, right up to the last moment. In spite of all the stress and concern that Jesus must have been feeling as He anticipated the torture that was in front of Him, yet His primary concern is for His followers. He has just said to them, “Let not your hearts be troubled, you believe in God, believe also in Me.” “Peace I leave unto you, my peace I give unto you, not as the world gives. Let not your hearts be troubled or afraid.” Then He said, “Let’s go, Let’s get out of here.” And they began their journey to the Mount of Olives, not knowing what distress was ahead of them, yet Jesus knew it full well.

As they are walking in the dark up the hillside, perhaps they passed a vineyard that someone had planted. And as was His custom, Jesus picked up on the metaphor at hand to teach them an important final lesson. He speaks of a vine, and it’s branches, and the fruit that one would expect from a vineyard. It was a metaphor that they were very much familiar with. Vineyards were everywhere in Israel. And Jesus had spoken of vineyards many times in His preaching, using them often as settings for parables. But they certainly also knew of them first hand. They were quite common in Israel.

In fact, they were a common metaphor for Israel in the Old Testament scriptures as well. For instance, Psalm 80 says in vs.8, “You have brought a vine out of Egypt and planted it in this land.” And Isaiah expounds upon that picture in the 5th chapter, vs.7, “For the vineyard of the LORD of hosts is the house of Israel and the men of Judah His delightful plant. Thus He looked for justice, but behold, bloodshed; for righteousness, but behold, a cry of distress.” Isaiah goes on to paint a picture of a nation that had abandoned righteousness, and justice, and had spent it’s affection on drinking and carousing and taking advantage of others so that they might live luxuriously. And he prophesied that God would take vengeance upon them, vs.24, “Therefore, as a tongue of fire consumes stubble and dry grass collapses into the flame, so their root will become like rot and their blossom blow away as dust; for they have rejected the law of the LORD of hosts and despised the word of the Holy One of Israel.”

As the disciples walked past the temple, they may have noticed on the gates of the temple was carved a large gold covered vine, symbolic of Israel. Israel had been the chosen vine of God, illustrated by the temple, the religious system which God had planted in Israel to give life to the Jews. But everything that the sacrifices and temple and ceremonies had portrayed, was actually a picture of Jesus. All the religious life that had been centered in Judaism, actually found it’s source in Him. The true vine was Jesus. The religious system centered in the temple was just a picture of Christ.

So Jesus says, “I am the true vine and My Father is the vinedresser.” Jesus is the life, He was the source of life for creation, nothing was made without Him it says in chapter 1 of John. He was the source of life for Israel, of which the temple and sacrifices merely pointed to. He was the Lamb that was sacrificed for the sins of the world. He was the rock in the wilderness from which came the living water. He was the manna from heaven. He was the light that was over the Tabernacle. And in the same way He is the source of life for the church. He is the Word of God. He is the Way, the truth and the life and no one comes to the Father except through Him. The disciples make up the first church who will represent Christ even as the temple and Israel was to have represented the Lord.

“My Father,” Jesus declares, “is the vinedresser.” This is the Father’s work – he is the “vinedresser,” the gardener who takes care of the vineyard. In Verse 5, Jesus clearly identifies that believers, the church, are the branches of the vine: “I am the vine, you are the branches.” Furthermore, he indicates there are two kinds of branches – fruitless branches and fruitful branches. Thus right at the beginning of this teaching there is a clear indication that there are two kinds of believers. The difference between them is whether they produce fruit or not.

The first work of the Father in this great vineyard is: “Every branch in Me that bears no fruit” (every fruitless believer) “he takes away.” I believe that this statement is actually made about believers, not unbelievers. In vs.6, Jesus speaks of branches that do not abide and are thrown away and burned. They are the unbelievers. But notice Jesus says in vs.2, “In Me.” He is talking about branches that are His, they are in Him. He is talking about a believer. But He is not saying that if they do not bear fruit God will condemn them to be burned with the unbelieving branches in vs.6. The Greek word translated “takes away” is airo, which actually means to raise up, or lift up from the ground. It’s not producing fruit because it isn’t getting enough sunlight, it’s lying on the ground. So there is a work of the vinedresser to lift up unfruitful believers by exposing them to the light. Fruitfulness is the result of maturity and training and discipline. So there is a need for that with unfruitful believers and God knows those who are His, those who are in Christ, and He will lift them up to make them productive. He will raise them up to get them up out of the earth, out of the world, so that they might be exposed to the light of truth, which will train them in righteousness, producing productivity. So lifting up is speaking of training, discipline which leads to greater fruit. As Heb. 12:11says, “All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness.”

The second work of God towards believers is to cleanse the fruit bearing branches. Jesus said in vs.2, “every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it so that it may bear more fruit.” The word here, “prunes,” really should be “cleanses.” Because vs.3 uses the same word translated as prunes and has it as cleans. “You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you.” Now they are both referring to the same thing, so it’s just a matter of semantics. But for consistency they should be the same.

But perhaps the reason why the word “prunes” is chosen is because it’s speaking not as being “cut off” but “cut back.” This is also what vinedressers do. They not only go through a vineyard and cut off shoots, but they cut back others so that they will bear more fruit. They are cleaning up the branches by cutting them back.

I have these knock out rose bushes by my house that I transferred years ago from a development that I was working at. And in the development, every so often the landscapers would prune those rose bushes back so much that I thought it was ridiculous. I thought it looked terrible when all these thriving rose bushes were cut so far back. I didn’t understand why it was necessary. So I left our bushes alone. I let them grow bigger and bigger. Today I have the biggest knockout rose bushes that I’ve ever seen. But the thing is, they don’t produce many roses nowadays. They have bare areas where nothing grows and sometimes hardly any roses bloom at all.

So it is with vines and fruit. God sometimes cuts back fruitful vine to the point of one thinking that they are cut too far back. They look like He might have killed them. But God knows that the trials and tribulations that we experience which we think are killing us are only designed to make us more productive. As the hymn “Great Is Thy Faithfulness” we just sang says, “The flame shall not hurt thee, I only design, thy dross to consume and thy gold to refine.”

Pruning, or cleansing is a drastic process. Jesus is clearly teaching here that this is what the Father will do in our lives to make us bear more fruit. He will drastically cut back our lives in a cleansing process. In a vineyard, pruning also removes dirt, cobwebs, dried leaves, and fungus that chokes out growth. And according to the Lord in vs.3, in the life of the believer, this is done by the “word which I have spoken unto you.”

God will use circumstances and trials in a Christian’s life to bring us to the point where the word of God can cleanse us. Hebrews 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.”

So the word of God is the knife that does the pruning. Affliction exposes those areas that need pruning. Charles Spurgeon spoke of affliction as the dresser, someone that dresses out game. He said, “Affliction is the dresser that removes our soft garments and lays bare the diseased flesh, so that the knife may get at it.”  Affliction makes us ready for the knife, to prepare us for the Word of God. So Spurgeon continues, “It is the Word that prunes the Christian.  It is the truth that purges him.  The Scripture made living and powerful by the Holy Spirit eventually and effectively cleanses the Christian.”

Has the word of God ever corrected you in some painful way? I know in my life I went through a time of severe trial, of severe affliction, and I turned to the scriptures to try to understand what was happening. To know what God was doing, or if in fact it was Him that was doing it. And why was He doing it. And ultimately, the word worked in me to prune away deadness, to cleanse me from corruption, chipping away to change me and make me look more like Christ. To conform me to the image of Jesus by taking away things that were hindering me in my Christian life. It was painful, but it was necessary if I was going to be fruitful.

Many of you have had some experience of this. Sorrow, disappointment, los, or some experience of life left you shocked and hurt, feeling cast off and rejected. Yet here we are encouraged to remind ourselves that this is the work of a loving Father who does it so that we may “bear more fruit.”

But that raises a very important question. “What exactly is this fruit that God is expecting from us?” The reason our Lord does not identify it directly is because it was already clearly identified in the Old Testament. There, in the passages on the “vine,” especially in Isaiah 5, the prophet says that God came to the nation Israel, the vineyard of the Lord of Hosts, “looking for fruit,” which he identifies as “justice and righteousness.” But what he found was oppression and misery – mistreatment of others without, and hurt and misery within. He calls these “sour grapes” – not fruit of justice and righteousness that he had every right to expect, but twisted, self centered, sour fruit.

Paul speaks of the fruit of self centeredness and fleshly living and contrasts that with the fruit that God desires in Galatians 5:19. “Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these, of which I forewarn you, just as I have forewarned you, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit.”

it is clear that the fruit which Jesus is referring to here is Christlikeness – his character reproduced in us. He is refining us, changing us, transforming us through trials and through the Word into representatives of Christ. 2 Cor.3:18 says, ”We all with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another.” It”s a process. Sometimes it’s a painful process. It does not happen by magic, all at once. We are being changed from one degree of glory to another, “for this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.” The image of Christ is the “fruit” that God is looking for.

I used to think that fruit was people that I had led to Christ. That was the emphasis that my church gave to fruit when I was growing up. Another misconception is that fruit is how much a church grows or how many people attend. But that’s not accurate. Bearing fruit is bearing the image of Christ in all that I do and say. Fruit is not more people, but people more like Christ. And doing that is made possible as you abide in Christ. Look at vs.4 and 5. “Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.”

That makes sense doesn’t it? If we are going to look like Christ, then we must have Christ in us, and we have to be in Christ. Now how does that work? Well, first of all, we must have the Spirit of Christ abiding in us. This is a supernatural transaction that comes as a result of our salvation. We repent of our sins, we are made holy by faith in Christ, and we are given new life by being born again in the Spirit. The Spirit of God takes up residence in us.

But we can have the Spirit of God in us and yet not be filled with the Spirit, nor do the works of the Spirit. It takes more than just a spark to make a car’s engine run. It also takes gas. So though we have the Spirit in us, we must also be attuned to the Spirit through the word. It’s not enough to say we have the Spirit in us, we can just lay back and cruise through the Christian life and if God wants something done He will do it all by Himself. We need to depend upon God, but we also need discipline. That’s the spark and the gasoline.

Some Christians emphasize dependence on God. But they don’t like the idea of discipline. They never read the Bible. They don’t go to church unless it’s a holiday or some special occasion. They don’t want to worry about training in holiness. They expect God to speak directly to them, and put them into automatic pilot. They float around expecting God to do all the directing, open all the doors, and they seldom bother to deny themselves. That kind of dependence without discipline results in empty spirituality, a fake piety that sounds good, but is in fact worthless. It’s what James referred to as “faith without works.” It’s dead. It’s like dead branches that produce no fruit. Abiding in Christ is a very practical thing. It’s abiding in the word. It’s abiding in His body, that is the church. It’s abiding in His commands, which produces holiness and Christlikeness. That’s the peaceable fruit of righteousness according to Hebrews 12:11.

But not everyone who says that they are in Christ actually are. Jesus said twice in Matthew 7, “By their fruits you shall know them.” So He says in Vs.6, ”If a man does not abide in me, he is cast forth as a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire and burned.” If you are not Christ’s, then God will remove the fruitless branch and cast it into the fire. He is speaking obviously of the judgment against the ungodly.

That again is the work of the Father – removing the fruitless branches. Those like Judas who gather with the people of God for awhile and appear to be believers – they show a certain degree of life. Leaves may be present, they hang around with all the fruit bearers, but there is no fruit in themselves. Ultimately these people eventually leave the vine. They do not stay with the body. As the Lord makes clear, it is a process: There is first the “withering” of the life they apparently had for awhile. Then the branches are “gathered,” then “thrown into the fire,” and ultimately “burned.” This is a reference to Matthew 25:41, when Jesus speaks of the end of the age, when the angels will come and gather out of the Kingdom of God all that are not His, and throw them into eternal fire, and they are burned. These are those that are not truly saved.

Like Judas, they may have looked the part. They were part of the church. They even performed works like healing and casting out devils. But they are not saved. Jesus speaks of these folks in Matthew 7:21, saying, “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter. Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; DEPART FROM ME, YOU WHO PRACTICE LAWLESSNESS.’”

Listen, this is a fact about church growth that doesn’t get any traction today in the relevant, seeker friendly church. God is not interested in numbers. He isn’t interested in large crowds of people that give lip service, but who are not truly being transformed into the image of Christ. He cuts away those that are not abiding in Him. He doesn’t want pew fillers. He wants disciples who are being made in the image of Christ. Don’t be discouraged when people leave the church. God adds, and God takes away. The church is the Lord’s and He will build the church. And God in HIs wisdom knows which branches to cut away so that the church will bear fruit.

Finally, let’s look really quickly at four evidences of fruit in the last five verses. Vs.7, “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you will, and it shall be done for you.”
The first evidence of a fruitful life is the impact of answered prayer. You become effective at praying. I’ve said it before, when James says the effective prayer of a righteous man accomplishes much, the emphasis should be on righteous. God hears the prayer of the righteous. So when you are abiding in Him, and His words are abiding in you, then you will receive what you ask for.

We must never forget that prayer and promise are linked together. Prayer is not a way of getting God to do what you want him to do, rather it is asking him to do what he has promised to do. We pray according to the promises. So if you want to make your prayers effective begin to read and study the promises of God. When you do, you will pray according to the mind and will of God. And, as Jesus says, whatever you ask will be done. That’s the first fruit. Abiding in Christ produces effective prayer.

The second fruit is in vs.8, ”By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be my disciples.” Your righteous life will be a testimony to the transformative power of God. There is no greater witness for God than that of a transformed, sold out life. And that is how you glorify God. Again, not by lip service, but by proving to be a disciple. Abiding in Christ produces righteous living, which proves you are His disciple to a watching world.

Thirdly, vs.9-10, ”As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love.” The third fruit of abiding in Christ is that you will keep HIs commandments, and thus you will love Him. The fruit of love is that you keep His commandments, even as Christ kept the Father’s commandments. We are like Christ, because we are to Christ as Christ was to the Father. So abiding produces love, and love produces obedience.

Then the last evidence of fruit is in vs. 11, “These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.” Notice, that My joy may be in you…What was his joy? In the 12th chapter of the book of Hebrews vs.2 it says of Jesus, “who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame.” What was it that filled his heart with joy as he faced the cross, and enabled him to go through that terrible ordeal? It was the expectation that he would be the instrument of redemption for the entire world – that a host, a great harvest of people, would be changed and redeemed and restored, real life given to them – by his work on the cross. In other words, his joy was the joy of being used of God.

That is the greatest joy anyone can know. There is the inheritance of the believer; the fruit of the Spirit – love, joy, and peace. Those are the three themes of chapter 14 an 15. Not as the world gives, but as God gives, as Christ illustrates, and we imitate. And as we abide in Christ and He abides in us, we can experience true love, joy and peace because He is the source, the Vine, and we are the branches which abide in Him.

The two biggest themes of the 60’s generation, aka, the hippie movement, were peace and love. When you look at images from that era, whether they be concerts or sit ins, or protests, or whatever, you often see them holding signs professing their desire for both. In fact, it was trendy in those days to espouse both of those as ideals. I remember very well as a young person holding up two fingers in a peace sign and saying “Peace, man,” in place of the usual hello and goodbyes. It was the thing to do. Young people drew peace signs everywhere. It was a popular concept, but unfortunately, they had a much different type of peace in mind than that which was traditionally thought of up until that point in society.

I have spoken many times in my messages concerning love, and the biblical view as opposed to the world’s view, particularly as expressed by that generation, but I have not said as much about peace. However, today we find ourselves at a passage of scripture when Jesus Himself speaks of peace. The peace which He offers though, He said is not as the world gives. So once again, we see biblical principles co-opted by the world, and a need to define our terms according to sound doctrine in contrast to that of popular conceptions.

In the 60’s, peace came to mean a lot of things. Peace came to mean a state of mind, like “a peaceful, easy feeling,” according to the Eagles, perhaps induced by drugs or dropping out of society and forming a commune. But I would suggest that it’s origin as a mantra of the hippie movement stemmed from their desire to see the war in Vietnam come to an end. And that ideal seems to still be most associated with the concept of peace in the world today. For many in the world, peace is an ideal that is worth any cost, even the loss of many freedoms. Many people just feel that peace, or the absence of war or hostilities or violence is an end that justifies any means necessary.

My goal here today is not to debate that kind of idealism, or the politics of appeasement in the name of peace. But my goal is to explain what kind of peace Jesus was referring to. Because it is important to note that Jesus is making a promise of peace. He is leaving them a promise of their inheritance. He has said repeatedly that He was leaving the disciples. He was speaking here in this passage on the night before His crucifixion. This whole passage of several chapters is called the Upper Room Discourse. And as the disciples begin to understand that He has been betrayed by one of their own, and that He is leaving them to go back to heaven, they are troubled. They are understandably upset. So He begins this chapter by saying, “Let not your heart be troubled.” He offers them assurance and comfort that He will be with them in the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit. And that one day He will physically return for the church and they would be with them for ever.

Last week we looked specifically at the promise and purpose of the Holy Spirit, and that Jesus refers to Him as the Helper, or the Comforter. So today’s passage must be considered in that same context. Jesus’s promise of peace is given in the context of “don’t let your hearts be troubled.” It’s the context of “I will send you a Helper, I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you.”

So in that same train of thought, Jesus says, ““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.” It’s an echo of verse one, to some extent. I would say that it is an extrapolation of verse one. You should not be troubled in heart because Jesus leaves you peace, He gives you His peace.

So within that context we can be pretty certain that Jesus is not talking about the cessation or absence of war. He is speaking of a peace of soul, of the heart, of the mind. It is the peace spoken of in Philippians 4:7, which says, “And the peace  of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” Now that is the peace that we all need, is it not? That is the peace which Christ promises. And yet I would suggest that is not the daily experience of most of us.

I believe that most doctors would agree that stress and anxiety are at the root of many of our health problems today as a society. And I can assure you that Christians are not exempt from it either. I read an article the other day that claimed antidepressants showed up in significant, measurable amounts in most cities tap water in the United States. That gives a whole new meaning to the phrase, “drinking the koolaid,” doesn’t it? I don’t know what that means for the safety of our drinking water, but I will say that it indicates that our society is still trying to find some sort of peace through drugs. So I believe that this promise of Christ is one that is especially pertinent today. And it’s especially pertinent for Christians whose hearts are troubled by the trials and tribulations that we endure in this world. That we might find the peace that Christ spoke of at the end of this Upper Room Discourse, in chapter 16:33, saying, “These things I have spoken to you, so that in Me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world.”

So as we consider this vital text, I would like to break it down into four points, which hopefully will help us to see it in the light it was intended. First let’s look at the principle of peace, then the promise of peace, then the possession of peace, and finally the practice of peace.

First the principle of peace. And I deliberately use that phrase because it is sort of a play on words. See, the principle of peace belongs to the Prince of Peace. Jesus says, it is “My peace.” It belongs to Him. It is His to leave to us, and it is His to give. It is His peace. We just inherit it, if we are His disciples.

This title for Christ is found in the prophecy made familiar by Handle’s Messiah. It finds it’s origin in Isaiah 9:6, “For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us; And the government will rest on His shoulders; And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace. There will be no end to the increase of His government or of peace, On the throne of David and over his kingdom, To establish it and to uphold it with justice and righteousness, From then on and forevermore.The zeal of the LORD of hosts will accomplish this.” Now that is obviously referring to the Kingdom of God, of which Christ rules. In this present age we experience the Kingdom of God spiritually, but upon Christ’s return we shall see it in glory. But for now, Christ rules over His people, through whom He rules the world.

But there is a rebellion against the Kingdom of God. That rebellion began in ages past when Lucifer desired to be like God and took with him in his rebellion one third of the hosts of heaven. And then Satan seduced God’s creation, the crown of His creation – man who was made in the image of God, to be like God, who was to rule the world with God – Satan seduced mankind to join him in that rebellion, and so mankind fell and has become a slave of the kingdom of darkness, even willfully participating in that rebellion against God. So that James 4:4 says, the world is an enemy of God.

Christ then is the Prince of Peace because He came to earth to reconcile mankind to God. To make peace with God through His atonement for their sin. Hebrews 2:14 says, “Therefore, since the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise also partook of the same, that through death He might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil,
and might free those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives.” Christ defeated the power of death, and Satan, so that whosoever believes in Him, would be saved from their sin and be transferred from the kingdom of darkness to the Kingdom of LIght, being born again as sons and daughter’s of God.

That transaction, where God places the punishment for our rebellion against Christ, and transfers Christ’s righteousness unto those who by faith believe in Him, is what Ephesians 6:15 calls the “gospel of peace.”

And that is how Christ can refer to it as His peace. It is His gospel, it is His good news, it is His victory which produces that peace, it is His to give to those who by faith believe in Him, because He won it, He purchased it with His blood. So because He purchased peace with God, we can have peace of mind. I have made a statement for the last couple of weeks, and I will say it again this morning: The greatest comfort in life is to know God, and to be known by God. Perhaps you have seen the bumper sticker which says, “Know God, know Peace. No God, no peace.” Because we are His, and He is mine, I can have a peace that passes all understanding. Because I know Him who knows the future. I know Him who triumphed over Satan. I know Him who stilled the storm, who raised the dead, who healed the sick. I know Him who was from the beginning, and who always will be, even through eternity.

Now there is so much more that I could say, but let’s move on to the next point. But that first point, the principle of peace is foundational. All the rest build upon that rock. So we had to establish our foundation for peace, which is the principle of peace, made possible by the Prince of Peace.

Secondly, there is the promise of peace. Really, it is our inheritance. This is in effect the last will and testament of Jesus Christ. He who had no earthly goods, left us the most priceless treasure that no amount of money can buy. He leaves us peace. You know, a will is only a promise while the person is living, but when they die, the executor acts in accordance with the will and makes it so. However, I’m sure you have all heard of cases where the people who were supposed to receive an inheritance ended up getting cheated out of the will of the deceased. And in such cases, it is possible to hear someone say, “Oh if so and so were alive, he would have wanted this person to get the inheritance, and he would make sure that they did.” But of course, the person is dead, and that sometimes doesn’t happen. But we have an inheritance made sure, because Jesus Christ rose from the dead and lives and rules from heaven. We can be sure of our inheritance because He lives to make intercession for us.

We are entitled to this promise because we are the children of God by faith in Christ. We are not of this world, as Jesus says His peace is not as the world gives. But a peace from God. Rom 8:16, “The Spirit itself bears witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God: And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together.”

Our promise then is not founded upon wishful thinking. The world cries for “peace, peace, but there is no peace.” But peace is promised in God’s word. And His word cannot fail. His word is forever settled in heaven. HIs word is doubly guaranteed by the Father and by Jesus Christ, and He has given us the Spirit of God as a pledge of that promise, the same Spirit who is called the Comforter. The very presence of God is our peace. The Comforter is who Jesus was promising would come, who would testify of Him, who would indwell His disciples and be with them forever. That is why He could say in vs.28, “You heard that I said to you, ‘I go away, and I will come to you.’ If you loved Me, you would have rejoiced because I go to the Father, for the Father is greater than I. Now I have told you before it happens, so that when it happens, you may believe.”

We know that the promise is sure because we know that Jesus died and rose again and is now seated at the Father’s right hand. Because God raised Him from the dead, we know that we have the things that He has promised us. Because Christ was counted righteous, and His sacrifice was sufficient, and the penalty was paid in full, therefore God did not allow Him to stay dead, but raised Him to show that He had triumphed over the devil and sin and the grave. That is why Jesus says in vs.30, “the ruler of the world is coming, and he has nothing in Me; but so that the world may know that I love the Father, I do exactly as the Father commanded Me.” His resurrection proved His words were true, and thus we can have the assurance that His promise to us of peace will be true. Thus, I am His and He is Mine, and nothing can touch us without His approval.

Thirdly, not just the promise but we have the possession of peace. How do we go from the promise to the possession? I would submit to you it is by the same principle found in all of our salvation. The just shall live by faith. It is by faith that we possess the promise of peace. That is how we receive peace with God. And that is how we will achieve peace of heart and mind.

The best example of having that kind of peace is found in the life of Jesus. What kind of peace did Jesus have? Did he have the peace of a placid, stress free existence? Did he have the peace of an emotionless, stoic kind of life? Well, no, he had peace born out of the confidence that He was God’s Son. But if you look at our Lord’s experiences, his experiences were anything but emotionless or stressless. He was a man of griefs, of sorrows, of emotions like anger and heartache and feelings of rejection and unbelief. Often we have seen that Christ was troubled in spirit. Yet in HIs troubles He had peace.

It’s interesting to note that at the very time that our Lord talks about peace and presents this peace as His own peace that He’s granting to His followers, He is at the most dramatic, disturbing, distressing moment in His life.  He is leaving the world in hours through the means of execution on a cross, and He knows that, and He knows the details of it full well. And yet He is at peace.

Why? Because He knows that He is in the will of God. He knows that He is working in conjunction with the Spirit of God. He believes in the sovereignty of God. He believes in the Word of God which prophesied all that happened and would happen to Him. He had peace because He knew that He was the Son of God and all that happened was working according to the plan of God.

But, you might protest, “that was Christ. Christ was sinless. I am not. How can I have that same peace?” Well, we can have that same peace when we abide in Christ. That is what Jesus goes on to teach in the next chapter. As we abide in Christ, specifically, as we walk in the Spirit of Christ, as we follow His leading, as we live by His teaching, we have peace knowing that we are in accordance with God’s will, and He hears us in whatsoever we ask of Him. Jesus was confident, at peace, in spite of the circumstances, because He knew that the devil had nothing on Him. He had not given the devil a foothold in His life. He had not lowered the armor of God to allow the devil an opportunity in any way. He knew that He had been faithful to the word of God, that He was living in the will of God. And that confidence is available to us as we abide in Christ.

Listen, you may not be able to say that today. I think all of us will find ourselves from time to time compromised in our spiritual situation. That is why we need our feet washed on a regular basis. We need the daily cleansing and confession and restoration every day to maintain that peace with God. Our possession of peace is tied to our perseverance in our faith. That is why we are commanded to be sanctified, to be holy even as God is holy. That is why James says we are to cleanse our hands and purify our hearts, so that we might have a clean conscience before God. That the devil will have no hold on us, no part in us. That is how we possess the promise of peace.

If God is the source of peace, then we need to draw near to God and He will draw near to us. When you know that you are right with God, then you will know the peace of God. You will know that peace which transcends our circumstances, without the fear that we are experiencing sin’s consequences. There is a great difference between the two. Those who are out of step with God and running after the lusts and passions of the world suffer the consequences of doing wrong. And there is no peace for the wicked, says the Lord. But those who walk in the Spirit, know the peace of God which transcends whatever circumstances that may come.

And that brings us to the final point, the practice of peace. About 20 years ago, I found myself at a point where I had no peace. I almost lost my mind. I went through about 4 years of daily anxiety attacks which were absolutely crippling. In the process, I lost my home which I had built with my own hands, I lost my career as a nationally recognized antique dealer and authority, and I lost all my money, furniture, and cars eventually. During that time, God used those circumstances to prune away all those things which were keeping me from communion with Him.

I wanted nothing more in those days than peace. I wanted mental peace. And so I turned to the source of peace, the word of God. But it wasn’t just as easy as name it and claim it. It was a long process of proving scripture to be true and trustworthy. There was one passage of scripture in particular though that came to mean a lot to me, and through it I found the formula for peace. We like formula’s, don’t we? “Three ways to prosperity.” “Five ways to peace.” “Ten steps to marital reconciliation.” Pastor’s obviously love them too. But this passage really does seem to be a formula from God specifically to help us find this peace that Jesus promises.

It’s found in Philippians chapter 4, and I will read from vs.6, “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.” Well, that sounds an awful lot like the first verse of John 14, doesn’t it? “Let not your heart be troubled.” And also vs. 13 and 14, when Jesus says, “If you ask Me anything in My name, I will do it.” Maybe there is a pattern here. Peace starts with prayer.

Then Paul says in vs.7 of Phil.4, “And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” Well, that’s what Jesus promised in vs27, isn’t it? That’s what we want, our hearts and minds at peace. Notice that Paul says that peace is found in Christ Jesus. But then Paul goes from the theological, to the practical, as he so often does in his epistles. First he gives us the doctrine, and then he gives us the application. And so he does in vs8: “Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things.” So the formula so far is pray, praise, and ponder. Ponder means to think on these things. Meditate on them.

So peace comes as we think on those things, whatever is true, honorable, right, pure, lovely, good repute, worthy of praise, let your mind think on these things. Listen, there is so much there that I could preach on that list for a week. But let me just highlight one, briefly. Our trouble is in our minds. The mind is the battlefield, more often than not. And where we get off track usually is in the first one on the list; truth. Whatever is true. We need to start practicing peace by telling ourselves the truth. The devil is the father of lies. And he has engineered the world system to be a system of lies. So that the average person doesn’t or can’t tell the truth from a lie. They want to believe the lie because it sounds so appealing to the flesh. A person becomes a drug addict because they have bought into the lie that drugs are fun, that they won’t hurt you. A person becomes an adulturer because they believe the lie that a little flirtation is harmless, or a little pornography isn’t such a big deal. You get the picture.

I believed the lies of “what if’s” that constantly bombarded my mind during my anxiety attacks. If I believed the lies, I was crippled and couldn’t work or travel. But when I believed the promises of God, then I found deliverance. So let your mind dwell on the truth. And I can assure you that the truth is found in God’s word. And all of Paul’s list can be found in God’s word.

Then Paul says in vs.9, “The things you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.” Practice what things? The things which are taught in God’s word, the truth, the right things, the honorable things, the principles of sanctified Christianity. Those things. Practice the application of sound doctrine. Practice those things. Oh my! Sounds like legalism doesn’t it? You mean peace doesn’t come by just giving lip service to God but living like the devil? No, I’m afraid not. If you are truly a child of God, then He says He chastises those He loves when they disobey. So instead practice righteousness. Practice holiness. You say, well I’m not very good at it. I sin a lot. I can’t help it. Well, Paul says practice some more. It’s like learning to play the piano. It takes practice. And the more you practice, the better at it you will get. Practice makes perfect. And Isaiah 26:3 says, “You will keep him in perfect peace, Whose mind is stayed on You, Because he trusts in You.” So practice what we learn by pondering God’s word and we will have perfect peace.
Heb.5:14 tells us, “that because of practice we have our senses trained to discern good and evil.” Peter tells us in 2Peter 1:10, “Therefore, brethren, be all the more diligent to make certain about His calling and choosing you; for as long as you practice these things, you will never stumble.” So we practice the things which Paul and Peter and John give us as applications of righteousness in their epistles. and when we do them, Paul says, the peace of God will be with you.” “The peace that passes all comprehension.”

Listen, in this world you will have trouble. If we get caught up in the lies of this world, we will not have peace. But I can assure you that Jesus has left us His peace, it is a gift of God. By faith in Christ we have peace with God. And then practically we let our minds ponder on the truth of God, and we practice the doctrines of God, so that we might have our hearts and minds fixed by the peace which only God can give, in spite of whatever circumstances we might find ourselves in. We know we are His, and He knows us. That is the comfort which we can all appropriate through faith in Christ.

John 16:33, “These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.”

In today’s passage we are continuing our study of what is called the Upper Room Discourse. It spans several chapters, and yet it all occurs in just one evening; Christ’s last evening with His disciples before He is crucified. In this talk that Jesus gives, He tells His disciples that He will be leaving them very soon, and that where He is going they cannot now come. Of course, they are very troubled by this revelation. And Jesus knows that they are upset over this. So He says to them not to be troubled, but that He will return for them one day, that they may be with Him forever.

But in the meantime, He says that He will send the Comforter, the Helper, who will take His place and come alongside of them. That is found in vs.16. He says He will send “allos Parakletos” another Helper to come alongside them who is just like Him. That is the translation of the Greek.

Then in vs.17, Jesus reveals the name of the Helper; the Spirit of Truth. He is sending the Holy Spirit to help them. Now this is very important for the disciples, because they are not going to make it if they don’t have some divine help. That much has been proven in the last 3 years of Jesus’s ministry. And even before this night is over, they are all going to fall away when Jesus is taken from them by force. They are going to be scattered. So they need to realize that they are not being forsaken.

But it is also important for the church today as well. Because we live in a time that we cannot touch and see and experience Jesus as they did. We live by faith in what He taught, but we cannot experience what the disciples experienced. And so it is even more important for us, because in some respects, the Christian life is harder for us than it was for them.

You may remember after His resurrection, Thomas did not believe the other disciples who said that they had seen the risen Lord. He said I’m not going to believe unless I put my finger in His nail prints and His wounded side. And Jesus shows up a few days later and says “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 answered and said to Him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus *said to him, “Because you have seen Me, have you believed? Blessed are they who did not see, and yet believed.”

So it is important for us as it was for the disciples, to understand what Jesus is telling them here. Because Jesus is describing for them the ministry of the Holy Spirit. They needed to know what that was going to look like. And in the same way we need to know what the ministry of the Holy Spirit is supposed to look like, and what He is supposed to accomplish. Because we are living in the in betweens, the time between Jesus’s first appearing and His second appearing. And for those of us who are saved, we have this same promise of the Holy Spirit, the Helper, and without His help we cannot really know Christ and we are powerless to live the Christian life.

Furthermore, I think this is important for the modern church because no other doctrine is so misunderstood and twisted today than that of the ministry of the Holy Spirit. The devil is a deceiver, and he spreads confusion and chaos in order to try to derail naive Christians, and to keep the Church from the victory which is possible and promised in Christ. So let’s try to unpack these verses and see if we can’t demystify some of the misunderstandings and mischaracterizations that surround this important doctrine of the Holy Spirit.

First note in vs.16 that Jesus identifies the primary work of the Holy Spirit in the very title that He uses for Him. As I mentioned earlier Jesus says He is the “Allos Paracletos.” Paraclete means one who is called alongside to help. And then “allos” means another of the same kind. So that Jesus is saying, I am going to send you another Helper to come alongside of you of the same kind as I am.

Now that is important. Because many people think that the Holy Spirit is something completely different than Jesus. But as He recorded in vs.10, Jesus said He didn’t do anything on His own initiative, but He spoke the words of God and He did the works of God. And He said that is how you could know that He was of God. He told Philip in vs.9, “If you have seen Me you have seen the Father.” So if you wanted to know what God was like, you simply had to watch and listen to Jesus. The same principle is true of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit does not glorify Himself, but glorifies Jesus. Jesus said in chapter 15:26, “When the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, that is the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify about Me.” And in chapter 16:13 He says, “But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come. He will glorify Me, for He will take of Mine and will disclose it to you.”

In Romans 8:9, Paul identifies the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of God and then again as the Spirit of Christ. So there you see the unity of the trinity. The Holy Spirit glorifies Jesus, and Jesus glorifies the Father. The Holy Spirit doesn’t speak on His initiative, but He speaks the words of Christ. And Christ doesn’t speak on His initiative, but He speaks the words of the Father. So they are in agreement. They are three in One. The ministry of the Holy Spirit then is to glorify Jesus, and Jesus glorifies the Father.

So Jesus is saying that the Holy Spirit is going to take over where He leaves off, and He is going to continue the ministry that Jesus was doing. He is going to be with the disciples every minute of every day, just like Jesus was. Vs.17, “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.”

Let’s break that down a little bit. There are two elements in this verse that I want to focus on. First, Jesus calls Him the Spirit of Truth. The second element is that He abides with you and will be in you. Two vital components of the ministry of the Holy Spirit.

First, the Spirit of Truth. Jesus has just announced in vs.6, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.” So Jesus is the Truth. In John 1, it says Jesus is the Word. So the Word and the Truth are one and the same. As Jesus concludes this Upper Room Discourse, He prays for His disciples, and in that prayer in chapter 17, Jesus says in vs.17 “Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth.”

So the Word and the Truth are two sides to the same coin. God’s word is the truth. Jesus’s whole ministry had been about teaching God’s word, teaching the truth about God. Teaching the truth about the Kingdom of God and what it is like and how we must enter into it. Jesus said in chapter 8vs31, ““If you continue in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”

So the ministry of the Holy Spirit is to teach the disciples the truth of God’s word. To help them to discern the truth of Christ’s gospel. He is the minister of the Word. This is how we can know the truth. And this is how we can know the Spirit of Truth. He will speak the word of God, He will minister the word of God. He will not speak new revelation, but He will disclose the revelation of Christ. We can verify the ministry of the Spirit by whether or not He ministers through the word. He doesn’t come to give us an emotional experience, but He comes to give us the word of God.

Secondly, the Spirit is given to help them do God’s word. Vs. 12, “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do, he will do also; and greater works than these he will do; because I go to the Father.” Jesus adds in chapter 16:7 “But I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you.” So the power of the Holy Spirit is given to help us do the works of God.

In Acts 1:8 Jesus told His disciples, “but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth.” That was the “greater works than these” which Jesus promised them in chapter 14. They would take the gospel to the whole world through the power of the Holy Spirit. And that is the same power that is available to us as we witness to the world. And that power of the Holy Spirit finds it’s root in the word of God, the gospel. Romans 1:16, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.”

So they have the same power through the Holy Spirit as they had with Christ, that they might do the works of God as Christ did. Then as indicated in chapter 14 vs 12, what are the works of God? First, it’s the will of God. Vs.14“If you ask Me anything in My name, I will do it.” Jesus is going to help us to do what He wants us to do. He is not going to ask us to do anything contrary to God’s will, and He will provide all our needs to do His will. In 1John 5:14 it says, “This is the confidence which we have before Him, that, if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests which we have asked from Him.” The disciples could continue Christ’s ministry because the power of the Holy Spirit would provide what was necessary to do the works of God.

Secondly, the works of God are found in the word of God. It’s the commandments of God. vs.15, “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.” Notice how many times Jesus speaks of this principle, equating love and obedience, keeping His word with His communion with us. Vs.21, “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.” Vs.23, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our abode with him.” And vs.24, “He who does not love Me does not keep My words; and the word which you hear is not Mine, but the Father’s who sent Me.”

So how does the Holy Spirit help us to do God’s word, to keep His commandments? Jesus says that He does that by reminding us of His words. vs. 25, “These things I have spoken to you while abiding with you. But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you.” Now that was fulfilled in two ways. One was when the disciples preached the gospel or had to give a defense of the gospel, the Holy Spirit brought to their mind the word of God. These were unlearned men. They weren’t Rabbis trained in the scriptures. And yet when you hear Peter preach on the day of Pentecost, he preaches from the word of God, quoting from Old Testament prophesies like that of Joel. And he does so with discernment, with the discernment which is given to him by the Spirit of Truth.

And in the life of a modern day believer, we have the same promise. We are told to hide the word of God in our hearts that we might not sin against Him. The Spirit of God brings to our mind the words of God in order to teach us how we are to act. He uses the preaching of God’s word to admonish us and correct us when we get out of line. Hebrews 4:12, “For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” So Paul tells young pastor Timothy in 2Timothy 4:2 to “preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction.” The Holy Spirit uses the word of God to train us so that we might keep His word. He works through the spoken word of God.

But the other purpose of the Spirit bringing the words of Christ to their remembrance was to author through them the scriptures. They would go on to write the gospels and the epistles under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. 2Timothy 3:16, “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.” And Peter adds in 2Peter 1:20, “But know this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.”

The scriptures are the great legacy left to us by the apostles under the direction of the Holy Spirit. That today we might know God and know the way to God because we have the word of God made more sure. It is written down for us by eyewitnesses, who had every word brought to their mind by the Spirit of Truth who brought it to their remembrance.

This is how we might know God and to be known by God. We cannot come to know God and be known by God apart from the word of God. I said a couple of weeks ago that there is no greater comfort than to know God, and to be known by God. There is no greater treasure. There is no greater blessing. Jesus said in vs 21 of our text, “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.” As we keep His word, He discloses more of Himself to us, that we might know Him more and more.

The second element of the ministry of the Holy Spirit as stated in vs.17 is that He abides with you and will be in you. And again, this is a principle that Jesus makes over and over again. He wants to drive this home because He knows that in a few hours He will be crucified and laid in a tomb. And so He wants to offer to His disciples the comfort of the Paracletos, the One like Him who will come alongside of them to help them and teach them and lead them in His absence.

So because the Spirit reveals truth through the word, because He is able to help us to know the word and obey the word, we come to know the love of God, which produces intimacy through the indwelling of His Spirit. That we might be one with Him, and live with Him, and be with Him forever.

Note in vs.18 Jesus anticipates that sense of abandonment and bewilderment that they will surely feel in just a few hours. He says, “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.” I think that is key to having the comfort of the Holy Spirit. That this is not something we work for, or have to apply for, or even ask for. It is the initiative of Jesus Christ that sends the Holy Spirit to us, because He will not leave us comfortless. He will not expect us to go on without Him. He doesn’t expect us to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and get our life straightened out first. No, but He sends His Spirit to us in our hour of need to help us. When we were helpless, He came to us and offered Himself as our substitute. And when He went away, He came again in the Spirit of Christ and took up residence in each of us so that He might be with us always. Matt.28:20, “I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

The word in the Greek there is “orphanos,” it means fatherless. Or one bereft of a teacher, guide or guardian. Christ will never leave us fatherless, helpless. He will come to us in the Spirit of God, to be with us forever. Look how often He reiterates this promise. Vs.16, “I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever.” Vs.17, “you know Him because He abides with you and will be in you.” vs. 20, “In that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you.” And vs.23, If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our abode with him.”

So four times the Lord tells the disciples that the Holy Spirit will be in them and abide in them forever. And that promise stands for us today as well. Romans 8:9 says, “But you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His.”

But how do we know this to be true? How do we know that we have the Spirit of Truth dwelling in us? Is it through some experience? Is it by some emotional response on our part? Is it by some supernatural occurrence that we have this confidence and comfort? I don’t believe so. There may be feelings or emotions one way or another, or no emotions at all. No supernatural occurrence whatsoever. Jesus doesn’t say anything about how you would feel. He says you will know it. Look at vs.17 again: “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.”

Notice He says that the world cannot know Him. Why? Because the world is not saved. The world has not received salvation through faith in Christ. They try to judge spiritual things by what they can touch or feel or sense with their senses. But the Bible says that the just shall live by faith. And that which is seen is not faith. Hebrews 11:1, “Now faith is the]assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. For by it the men of old gained approval.” So Jesus says you cannot try to know what is unseen by the senses.

Instead He uses the Greek word “ginosko” which means to know intimately. It was often used to imply the intimacy between a man and his wife. It is the knowledge which comes of an intimate relationship. He says that you will know that the Holy Spirit is in you, because you will have the intimacy of relationship with Me. That is the evidence that the Holy Spirit is in you and will abide in you forever. Because you know Him with an intimate relationship based on love.

And how do we have that intimacy? We have intimacy with Christ when we keep His word. Vs.23, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our abode with him.” Love is the basis for intimacy. And intimacy is the basis for the knowledge and assurance that He will never leave us or forsake us. He proves Himself to us as we study His word and obey His word. That is how we show our love for Him. And when we love Him, He will love us in return in a special way that supersedes our senses. So that whether we live or die, we know we are the Lord’s. Whether we are in comfort or in danger, we know we are the Lord’s. Whether we are in poverty or in plenty, we know we are the Lord’s.

Nothing can separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. He has sent His Spirit to dwell in our hearts by faith. He has given us His word which will abide forever. That we might be comforted with the word. So that we might know God, and know that God knows us, that we are His, and He is mine, and He will be with us, forever. Amen.

In many of my past sermons, I have established the principle that the Christian’s relationship with Christ is like that of a husband and wife in marriage. In our Wednesday evening Bible study, we are looking at that principle right now. Paul says in Ephesians 5:31, “FOR THIS REASON A MAN SHALL LEAVE HIS FATHER AND MOTHER AND SHALL BE JOINED TO HIS WIFE, AND THE TWO SHALL BECOME ONE FLESH. This mystery is great; but I am speaking with reference to Christ and the church.” So then marriage, as defined by God, is an illustration of our relationship with Christ.

In any marriage relationship, the foundation is love. But everyone here surely realizes that for a marriage to work, both members must love one another. It doesn’t work to have just one person loving their mate, but the mate not to respond in love. So it is with our relationship with Christ. There must be love from both parties if it is to be a healthy marriage.

There are two problems in the church today though that threaten the sanctity of this marriage with Christ. The first problem is that for the most part, the emphasis on the responsibility to love is one sided. The church is continually talking about and singing about Christ’s love for us, but hardly anything is said about our love for the Lord. In the church’s relationship with Christ, love is disproportionate. He does all the loving, and we do all the taking. And that kind of one sided love produces a lopsided marriage relationship. In that kind of relationship, the one being loved too often ends up abusing that love, and taking advantage of that person, becoming something of a narcissist, selfishly using the other for their own ends. They end up with a distorted view of their own importance. They end up seeking their own selfish priorities, often at the expense of the one doing the loving.

That isn’t the Biblical view of love, however. 1 Cor.13:5, which is part of the famous text on love, says that love “does not seek it’s own.” In other words, true love seeks to benefit the other partner, not itself. It doesn’t seek it’s own benefit at the expense of others. But unfortunately, this is far too often the church’s perspective on love. It’s one sided. It’s focused on God’s love for us, but hardly ever focused on our love for God.

And yet Jesus said in Mark 12:30 that the foremost commandment was “YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND, AND WITH ALL YOUR STRENGTH.” I would suggest to you that for the most part, most of us fail in that commandment. We love ourselves first and then we probably love a whole list of earthly things, and maybe somewhere down on the bottom of the totem pole we love God. That hierarchy is made evident by our day planners. It’s evident by our checkbook register. It’s evident by our to do lists. Our lips may say we love God, perhaps even our Facebook page says we love God, but our daily priorities and activities say otherwise.

There is a second problem that hinders the church’s marriage with Christ. And that is that we have misunderstood the definition of love. We’ve misunderstood both Christ’s love for us, and our love for Christ. We have misinterpreted what constitutes love. The modern church in particular has adapted the world’s definition of love to the word, and as a result we have essentially “dumbed down” the Bible’s definition of love.

I have talked about this misinterpretation of love so often that I feel redundant speaking of it again. But it is germane to this passage, and it is essential to our relationship with Christ. Let me reiterate briefly; love is not simply a feeling, love is not just an emotion, love is not an experience. Love, in the best sense, is a commitment. It’s an act of the will. There were four words in the Greek that were used for love. Christ and the apostles consistently used the highest form of it; agape love. So in the Bible love is presented as a sacrificial commitment, even to the point of laying down your life for another. Jesus said, “Greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” That’s agape love. Being willing to lay down, or better yet, lay aside your life, for the sake of another.

That is true love, by the way. It’s being willing to lay down your life for the sake of the one you love. Love is not what you say, but what you do. That love was modeled by Christ when He laid down His life on the cross for us. That sacrificial love is modeled by Christian marriage in Ephesians 5. That is the love of a Christian, who puts the other’s needs above his own. That is the mark of a sanctified believer, one who truly loves God, who has perfected love, because they were willing to lay down their prerogatives for the sake of honoring Christ.

Now it’s interesting to note that Jesus speaks quite often of love in this Upper Room discourse. But notice that the emphasis is on our love for Him. He certainly speaks of His love for the church, but He is emphasizing our responsibility to love the Lord. Four times in this chapter alone Christ talks about our responsibility to love Him. In chapter 14, our Lord reminds us that it is those who love Him who obey His commandments; once in verse 15, a second time in verse 21, and again in verse 23, and then reverses it in verse 24.  Really four times makes reference to this idea of our love for God being that we obey His commands or word.

And I would also point out the placement of these statements about our love for God bracket certain promises of God. For instance, look at how these three verses are laid out. Vs.14, “If you ask Me anything in My name, I will do it.” Vs. 15, “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.” Vs. 16, “I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever.”

Now at first glance, you might think that these are unrelated bullet points. Almost as if John is just giving us highlights of the conversation here rather than a word for word rendition. And that may be true to a certain degree. But I would suggest that there is a purpose in the way that he has arranged it. Because I believe that love for God is the condition upon which these various promises are made.

For instance, look again at vs.14, “If you ask Me anything in My name, I will do it.” We talked about last time what it meant to ask in Jesus’s name. That His will being a condition for Christ doing what we ask of Him. We ask according to His will. His purpose. His ministry. But I believe after studying this passage that there is another condition, and that is that you love Him, and to love Him He said is to keep His commandments.

If someone is not living according to Christ’s commands, then I don’t believe that God is under any compulsion whatsoever to grant our requests. In fact disobedience is a hindrance to your prayers. Psalm 66:18 says, “If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me.” You are either living in disobedience as a child of God and as such will receive the discipline of God the Father, or your disobedience is evidence that you are not a child of God at all. But either way, your disobedience nullifies the promise of God to answer your prayers. Because that disobedience illustrates that you do not love God. And if you do not love God, then that is evidence that you are not God’s marriage partner or you are in rebellion to Him.

I’ve said before that I have studied the latter part of James 5 for years, trying to find the secret to answered prayer as illustrated by James’s example of Elijah. The key verse being vs.16, “The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much.” I looked at it from the perspective of perseverance, from the perspective of faith, and just about every which way possible. And then finally one day it hit me. The key to effective prayer, the key to answered prayer, is the word righteous.

In fact, when you look at the complete verse, that becomes clearer. “Therefore, confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another so that you may be healed. The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much.” The emphasis is on confession of sins so that your prayers are not hindered.

So back in our text, I believe that Jesus deliberately juxtaposes vs.15 about love and obedience between the promise of answered prayer, and that of the promise of the Holy Spirit. Because I believe that love of God demonstrated by obedience is the key to the fulfillment of both of those promises.

Jesus makes the connection between obedience and love over and over again. He obviously is not teaching that Christianity is composed of an easy believism, of lip service without obedience. He is not teaching that God’s love for us is some sort of sentimentalism that winks at sin. He is speaking of love as a commitment, even as a sacrifice of our priorities for the Lord’s. There is a sense in which our God loves everyone in his benevolence and in the fact that He does them good. But His special love for His children is reserved, our Lord says, for those who believe in Him, love Him, and manifest their love in the keeping of His commandments. Vs.23, “If anyone loves Me he will keep My words and My Father will love him and We will come unto him and make our abode with him.” There is a special intimacy that God gives to those who love Him.

Our love for God is the key to the Christian life. And obedience and love are inseparably intertwined in this chapter. You cannot have one without the other. Let’s look at these statements. Vs.15, “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.” Vs.21, “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.” Vs.23, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our abode with him.” And then in vs.24 He says it negatively, “He who does not love Me does not keep My words; and the word which you hear is not Mine, but the Father’s who sent Me.” Again and again, love and obedience are correlated by Christ, resulting in communion with God.

I often have people tell me that they are having problems in their Christian walk. And the problem they say they feel like God is far away. They pray and they don’t feel like God hears them. They don’t feel like God cares about their problems. Notice how many times the word “feel” was used there. But God’s presence or God’s response to our prayers is not dependent upon feelings. It’s dependent upon obedience. So when someone tells me that he doesn’t feel like God is close to them, I tell them that feelings follow obedience. They rarely precede it. James 4:8 says, “Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded.” As we get into conformity with God, then He will be near to us, and reveal Himself to us. Feelings follow obedience.

Obedience is kind of like trying to get in shape. We hear all the time of the great benefits of exercise. We hear that you will feel so much better if you get into shape. So we join a gym. And we start to work out on an exercise program. But let me ask you, does feeling good precede getting in shape or follow after you have gotten into shape? I would suggest that getting into shape is often painful. It’s arduous. That’s why they call it working out. And that’s why Paul said in Philippians that we are to work out our salvation through obeying. Phil. 2:12
“So then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling.”

When you are obedient, then you will begin to experience the joy and peace of intimate fellowship with God. John Calvin, the great Reformer said, “True knowledge of God is born out of obedience.” As we obey Him, we come to know Him. And out of that obedience comes a closer walk with God, out of obedience comes our sanctification, out of obedience comes our comfort, our fellowship, our assurance of His love for us. As we love Him and keep His commandments, He comes to us and abides with us and makes His home with us as promised in vs.21 and 23.

So the key to Christ granting our requests is our love manifested by our obedience. And that obedience is tied to the next promise as well, that of the Holy Spirit. He is our Helper so that we might do those things which God has commanded us to do. Vs.16, “I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever.”

This highlights the major difference between the old covenant and the new covenant. A lot of people think that the difference is that in the old covenant they were under the law, but in the new covenant we are under grace. That’s not completely true. It is true that we that are saved by faith are not under the penalty of the law, but under grace, that is the gift of righteousness procured by Jesus’s death on the cross. But the commandments of God still stand. Jesus said I did not come to annul the law but to fulfill it. The difference is that in the old covenant we did not have the power to keep the law, but in the new covenant we have the power of the Spirit dwelling within us to help us keep His commandments. That is why I think Jesus juxtaposes these three otherwise unrelated statements together. He is showing the link which is obedience.

This new covenant promise is prophesied in Ezekiel 11:19, “And I will give them one heart, and put a new spirit within them. And I will take the heart of stone out of their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in My statutes and keep My ordinances and do them. Then they will be My people, and I shall be their God.” He repeats that promise word for word again in Ez.36.

The same promise is made again in Jeremiah 31:33, “But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the LORD, “I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.”

That’s the purpose of sending the Holy Spirit folks. He is not some sort of experience. He is not a feeling. He is not an emotion. He is the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit of Truth. And He is given to us that we might know the truth, and that we might be obedient to the truth. He is given to lead us in the truth. He is given to write the law of God upon our hearts, so that our desire is to be obedient, because we love the Lord with all our hearts and want to please Him. He gives us a new heart that is able to love Him, and is able to obey Him because our desires are changed.

Vs. 26, “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you.” So He is our teacher, our helper, that we might know the truth of Christ. He will bring it to our remembrance so that we might keep His word. That is why in vs.17 Jesus calls Him the Spirit of truth.

In chapter 15, you are going to see in the next couple of weeks that Jesus goes to great lengths to reiterate His commandments. It’s important to realize that in the New Testament, every one of the 10 commandments is reiterated except one. And that one that isn’t is the law of the Sabbath, because it is a ceremonial law. And when the ceremonial laws were fulfilled in Christ, they were no longer necessary. They were a picture of something to come, but once He had come, the ceremonial laws were no longer in effect. But the point that Jesus makes is that the law of God is fulfilled in two positive commandments, as opposed to negative ones. The negative commands say don’t do this, don’t do that. But the positive commandments of Christ are to do something, first, love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul, and the second is to love your neighbor as yourself. And He said all the commandments are fulfilled in those two.

It’s also interesting to draw a correlation to the passage on love I referenced earlier, that of 1 Corinthians 13. In that chapter and the one preceding it, we see that love is a gift of the Spirit. Of all the gifts of the Spirit, love is the one that remains when the others cease. Love is the greatest gift. 1Cor. 13:8, “Love never fails; but if there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge, it will be done away.” But the gift of love is going to endure, it will not cease, it will not fade away. As it says in vs.13, “But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love.”

Well, Jesus is showing that the way to accomplish His command to love Him and obey Him is through the Holy Spirit. The Helper is given that we might do the works of God. And He does that by leading us us in the truth. John 16:13, “But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come.”

So then the Holy Spirit helps us love God, because we come to know Him through the word of God, of which the Holy Spirit is the author. And He brings the word to our minds, that He might lead us in the truth. So that we might know what to do, what His will is, what His commands are. And then when we don’t do what we should, He convicts us so that we might repent and be conformed to Christ’s will. John 16:8, “And He, when He comes, will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment.”

When we sin, we grieve the Holy Spirit. And we limit the Holy Spirit. That is why it is necessary to have a daily filling of the Spirit. To confess your sins, and commit to love the Lord and be obedient to His will, so that the Holy Spirit may fill us with His power to do God’s will.

Next time we are going to continue in this chapter and really focus more on the ministry of the Holy Spirit. But for now let me just say that the Helper (or Comforter in some versions) comes from the Greek word Paraclete.  That’s the transliteration in English.  Greek it’s Paraklētos.  Klētos is a verb form of a verb kaleō which means to call, pará  means alongside like parallel – so to call somebody alongside.  That’s what the word means, somebody called alongside.

And then there is another word, Állos which is used here.  It means another of the exact same kind; and Jesus uses that:  “I will give you állos Paraklētos.  “I will give you another exactly like I am, which is to say that I’m going to send you a Helper exactly like the Helper that I have been,” and that defines for you the ministry of the Holy Spirit. We have the power of Christ in us, the words of Christ written down for us, and the mind of Christ ministering to us through the Spirit of Truth. That we might be able to be obedient to the truth. That we might know the truth, and the truth make us free. Free from the penalty of sin, and free from the power of sin.

Listen, we know that the devil is a deciever. He loves to confuse. He loves to twist doctrines. And so there is an effort on his part to confuse two vital doctrines of scripture, that of love and the Holy Spirit. We see both of those doctrines perverted and confused in the church today to the church’s detriment. We need to know that love is evidenced by obedience to God’s will. And we need to know that God has sent His Spirit that we might know His will and have the indwelling power of God to help us to do His will. And in both of those doctrines, the flow is outward, not inward. It’s not just about God’s love for me, but my love for God, manifested by my obedience. And it’s not about how the Spirit of God makes me feel, or what manifestation of God I experience, but He helps me to manifest Christ to the world. That is what discipleship is all about. Loving God and loving one another. We love because He first loved us. And then we love one another because that is His command to us, and how we show that we love God. And in both of them, the Spirit is the originator, and the supplier of our needs in all that we do. As we yield to Him on a daily basis, then we will love God by obedience to God’s commands. And then we will experience the blessings of God upon our lives.

Jesus said God is Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in Spirit and in truth. I quote that verse here almost every week. But I can’t help but believe that we need to elaborate on this doctrine that God is Spirit. The Greek word for spirit is pneuma. Pneuma is the root word from which we get our word pneumatic. It means air, or a breath of air. So a spirit is like the air. A spirit is unseen. It isn’t composed of matter that you can touch or see or feel. The best way we can describe it is a spirit is like the air or the wind. We can see the effects of the wind, but we can’t see the wind. Jesus said, no man has seen the Father at any time. He is invisible to human eyes because He is Spirit. But like when we see the effects of the wind, Romans 1 says in creation we see the invisible attributes of God and His eternal nature. We do not see God in nature. But we see the effect of God in nature and it testifies to us that God is.

John’s gospel tells us that Jesus is God who took on human form. John 1:14, “And the Word (that is Jesus) became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.” For 33 years, God appeared on the earth in a physical body of a man. Luke tells us that He was born of the Spirit of God through a young woman named Mary. But the John 1 tells us that Jesus existed from the beginning. He was with God in the beginning. So in some incredible way that is impossible for us to comprehend, God was in three persons in eternity past, and the second person of the trinity, who John calls the Word, in His Spirit subjects Himself to be born as a baby even while in Mary’s womb, and is born in flesh as the Son of God. He lives fully as a baby, then a toddler, then a teenager, then a young man, before declaring Himself to be the Son of God at 30 years old. At this point He begins His public ministry to the world as Jew, living in Israel, subjecting Himself to all that mankind was subjected to. He did so sinlessly, and after preaching His gospel to all of Israel, He offered Himself as not only a human sacrifice, but a divine sacrifice for the sins of the world, to provide salvation for those that will believe in Him.

After His crucifixion, God raised Jesus bodily from the grave, and 40 days later He ascended into heaven in the sight of 500 witnesses. Then on the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit came to the disciples and indwelled the church. Today we worship God in Spirit. The body of Christ is no longer with us, we don’t have a physical God that we can see or touch. But we worship Him in Spirit and in the truth of God’s word. His Word is the physical effect or evidence of the Spirit of God given to the world.

Now this passage before us today happens about 12 hours before He is offered as a sacrifice for sin on the cross. Jesus knows full well what is to come, and why He is doing what He is doing. But He also knows that the disciples do not understand. And so in these last hours before His death, He is speaking to them in the Upper Room, giving them His last will and testament, so to speak, revealing certain truths to them and making promises to them which are designed to sustain them when He is no longer with them.

Though His upcoming ordeal on the cross should have been uppermost in His mind, He wants to comfort His disciples, because He knows that they don’t really understand what must happen. They are going to be disillusioned and discouraged when Jesus is crucified. And so in spite of the ordeal ahead of Him, He is concerned about His disciples. He offers them principles and truths that are designed to sustain them and strengthen their faith for the days ahead, especially those days when He will be taken back up into heaven.

To comfort them then, He said in the first few verses of the chapter that He was going away, but He was going to prepare a place for them, and He would return one day to take them to be with Him. But Thomas speaking perhaps for all of them, said, “Lord we don’t know where you are going. How can we know the way?”

Jesus’s answer is one of the greatest theological statements in the Bible. Jesus says in vs. 6, “I am the Way, the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father except by Me.” Now I spent some time expounding that text last time so we don’t need to go review all that again. But suffice it to say that Jesus is declaring that He is the only way to the Father. He is the entrance into the Kingdom of God.

Now we come today to vs.7, which is a continuation of that thought. Jesus said, ““If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; from now on you know Him, and have seen Him.” The greatest comfort in life we can possibly have is that we know God and are known by God. There is nothing on earth that can compare with that knowledge. Because I can assure you that in this life you are eventually going to come to a point when you realize that no one can help you through your particular trial.

I’ve been through many desperate times when I wanted so badly to pick up the phone and call someone. And yet there was really no one to call that could help me. Our friends might commiserate with us, or sympathize with us in our trials, but there are many trials where there is no one that can help us. The doctor says that there is nothing that they can do. Or the good will of family and friends has been tapped once too many times. Or the problem is just to big, too complex for anyone to be able to help. I’ve been there a few times, and I suspect that you have too. And if you haven’t yet, then it’s going to happen eventually. And in those darkest hours, there is no hope except to hope in God. And there is no comfort, but to know God, and to know that God knows you and loves you.

So Jesus focuses their attention on that principle. Because they think that they know Jesus. But what Jesus says, is that if you know Me, you would know God. But the disciples knew that Jesus was the Son of God. They knew Jesus was the Messiah. They knew He was the Son of David. But their knowledge was incomplete. They though had some of the right doctrine, they did not have full comprehension, and therefore they were missing the full comfort that comes from knowing who He is. They did not know that Jesus was the manifestation of the Godhead in bodily form.

Hebrews 1:3 tells us that Jesus “is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power.” And that is what Jesus is saying in vs.7, you now know the Father, and you have seen Him. They had seen the invisible, unseen Father through the physical manifestation of Jesus Christ.

But Philip still didn’t understand. And most likely, neither did the other apostles. He said in vs.8, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.” We can look with 20/20 hindsight and kind of look down on those poor ignorant disciples, can’t we? It’s so evident to us, and they were so blind to what was right in front of them. But I would suggest that Philips comment is not so far off from our own thoughts about God today. Philip’s request is the same request the world makes today. Show us the Father and it will be enough. Hey, why doesn’t God show Himself to the world? Prove your existence to us. Manifest yourself to us.

In the words of modern day skeptics, we don’t accept you as you as invisible, as unseen. We don’t accept you as a Spirit. We don’t accept you as you have manifested yourself in the flesh as the historical Jesus 2000 years ago. We want you to do something that we think is fitting, according to how we think God should be. We want you to prove yourself to us today. Jesus had come with all kinds of signs, proving that He was deity, and yet they still asked for greater signs. Raising the dead did not satisfy them. And I suppose that what people really want to see today is something on the scale of the movie Independence Day. They want to see some sort of immense presence in the sky in flaming fire, or blinding light, overwhelming the senses. They want to see some sort of incredible power in a physical, tangible way. But that is putting our demands upon God to meet our standards. God has chosen to reveal Himself in a more humble way, so that we might know Him in a more personal, intimate way.

So Jesus said, “Have I been so long with you, and yet you have not come to know Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; how can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?

The fact of the historicity of Jesus is widely accepted even by most non Christian scholars of antiquity. Extra biblical evidence can be found in 1st century writings like that from the Jewish historian Josephus, or Pliny the Younger, who was a Roman governor, or Tacitus, a Roman historian, or from the Talmud, which was a Jewish Rabbinical text, or from a Greek satirist by the name of Lucian. Archeology backs up the claims of the gospels as well, such as the important find a few years ago, an ossuary, which was a type of wooden coffin, engraved with the name of James, the son of Joseph, the brother of Jesus. So there is ample contemporary evidence outside of Biblical sources which show conclusively that Jesus was a real historical figure.

But the greatest evidence is simply the word of God. The internal evidence of the reliability of the word of God is overwhelming. It is truth. It is true historically and it’s truth experientially and it’s truth practically. And Jesus uses that evidence to support His own claims of divinity. His claim to divinity is that He speaks the words of God, and His words are validated by His works, which are the works of God.

Verse 10:  “Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me?  The words that I say to you, I do not speak on My own initiative, but the Father abiding in Me does His works.  Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me; otherwise believe because of the works themselves.”

And the truth of God’s word is it’s own witness to those who believe it and obey. It is self validating. In John 7:17 Jesus said, “If anyone is willing to do His will, he will know of the teaching, whether it is of God or whether I speak from Myself. He who speaks from himself seeks his own glory; but He who is seeking the glory of the One who sent Him, He is true, and there is no unrighteousness in Him.”

So because HIs word is true, and does not glorify Himself but glorifies the Father, we know that Jesus is one with God. We believe in Him. We don’t have Jesus in person here on earth that we might know Him and examine Him. But we do have Him in scripture. And the word of Christ, the truth of Christ validates our belief.

Romans 1:17 says that the just shall live by faith. Not by sight. We receive life by faith in Christ, righteousness by faith in Christ, forgiveness by faith in Christ. We live by faith in God as given to us in the scriptures. We don’t have faith in just anything, but in what the scriptures tell us. We believe in the promises of the Bible, God’s word. That is what it means to believe in God, to have faith in Christ.

Our faith does not rest on personal experiences. Our faith doesn’t rest on supernatural occurrences, or on personal revelation through special messages we think we have received from God. Our faith rests in His written word. Our faith increases proportionately to our understanding of Scripture.  Scripture reveals God; and the more you see God revealed in Scripture, the greater your faith becomes, the stronger it becomes. As we saw in a moment ago in John 7:17, when we act in faith to what the scriptures teach, then the truth becomes clear and we learn that we can depend upon His word. And so our faith grows in response to our obedience.

Listen, we dare not believe in God because we feel something. We cannot trust our feelings as a basis for our faith. Our feelings fluctuate. And oftentimes, our feelings lie. Our feelings may tell us that God doesn’t care, that God must not even exist. So we cannot trust our feelings. We trust in the word of God, in spite of our feelings. We believe His word no matter what is going on around us.

Feelings follow obedience. You choose faith and obedience irregardless of feelings, and eventually feelings will follow. That’s why in vs.15 which we will look at next week, Jesus says “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.” Obedience brings intimacy with God, which brings assurance of our relationship with Him, which in turn produces feelings of joy and peace and comfort.

The second comfort that Christ gives is the promise of His power. Now that the disciples know who He is, that He is the eternal God who is going back into heaven to prepare a place for us, then the promise is that they will continue to have His power. Vs. 12, Jesus says, “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do, he will do also; and greater works than these he will do; because I go to the Father.”

A lot of people love to go off the tracks with this verse. They read it and it’s off to the races. Everyone wants to walk on water, or raise the dead, or heal people. And to some extent the apostles were granted that power at the beginning of the church, in what we call the apostolic age. They had similar power to what Christ had to authenticate their message. But I would suggest to you that this was limited to the apostles and a few of their proteges. And that was only for a short time, until the New Testament scriptures were written. By the end of the apostolic age, the miraculous works of the apostles had begun to die out with them. By the end of Paul’s ministry, his miracles had ceased. He told Timothy for instance to drink a little wine for his stomach’s sake. He talked about leaving one of his entourage sick. The miracles had a limited purpose, to corroborate the words of God which the apostles were preaching.

In Acts 2, you read how it flows through the Apostolic Age.  This is the power given to the apostles.  It’s defined for us clearly in 2 Corinthians 12:12, the signs and wonders, and miracles of an apostle.  And it’s in Hebrews 2:4 where it says that the message the apostles preached was confirmed by signs and wonders and mighty deeds done by the apostles. It was to confirm the word of God, that the words they spoke were the words of Christ. The same principle that was true in Him (he spoke the words, he did the works) was true in His apostles.

How then does Jesus say that you will do greater works than these? It’s because He would send the Holy Spirit to indwell each believer. When Jesus was on earth He was limited to being in one place at one time. But the Holy Spirit is not limited by place or time. He is able to be in individuals everywhere at once, doing the works of God through many sons of God at once.

So when the Apostolic Era ended there’s still a sense in which greater works are being done. Jesus works were limited to Israel. And though Jesus did more miracles than anyone had ever done or will do, there were not that many people that believed in Him and were saved. Five hundred people witnessed His ascension into heaven. But the disciples ministry was much more far reaching. It spread throughout the Roman Empire. It took over the civilized world. The greatest miracle of all is that a sinner is saved and transformed to be a saint. And in one message on the day of Pentecost, 3000 souls were saved. And in our day, greater works than these have been done, in that the gospel has encircled the entire globe, and it’s doing so more and more all the time.  The gospel is being sent all over the world right now in the air, on the Internet, and through radio and media constantly.

The third way the Lord gives the disciples comfort is that He reveals to them His provision.
There’s a third point  Our Lord reveals to them His provision.  Vs. 13 and 14: “Whatever you ask in My name, that will I do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask Me anything in My name, I will do it.”

Two times Jesus gives the condition, “ask in My name.” That phrase is the key. What does in My name mean? How are we to correctly understand that? To ask in His name, means to ask according to His identity, consistent with who He is, and what His purpose is. If someone came to you in the name of the King of a particular country, then you would expect that person to represent the purpose or mission of the King. They would be acting on behalf of the King’s will.

Notice that Jesus Himself is subjecting Himself to glorifying the Father in this verse. “So that the Father may be gloried in the Son.” The Son is working to bring about the provision that you need, in order to glorify the Father. So the Son is not working in that prayer to glorify Himself. But so that the Father may be glorified. He is not seeking HIs own glory.

So in like manner, when we pray in Jesus’s name, we are not seeking our own glory, but seeking to glorify Christ, and then Christ will answer it, so that the Father may be glorified through Him. But the request must be consistent with the Father’s will, with the Son’s purpose, so that they are glorified.

So to simplify it, ‘If you ask anything in My name, means asking consistent with Christ’s will.” And that is borne out by 1 John 5:14, “This is the confidence which we have before Him, that, if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us.”

This is the comfort that Jesus offered the apostles. He gave them the assurance and knowledge that they needed concerning the person of His deity, that He was God, and was returning back to the Father, to make intercession for them, to prepare a place for them, to send them His Spirit to be His presence in each of them. So that they might know Him, and know that He is God, and that He knows those who are His.

Secondly, that they might be comforted by His power. Though He was going away, He would give them power to continue His ministry, and even to a greater extent than He had done. They would know the power of God to transform men’s and women’s lives all over the known world. And we see the power of the gospel continuing to work today in even greater ways, as the word of God has reached every corner of the globe.

And the third comfort is that He will provide all the resources that we need to be able to fulfill His ministry. Everything we ask for according to His will He will do it. Some of us may think that limits us in our prayers. But I think that it gives us great confidence in our prayers, and great hope in our ministry. We can pray confidently about things that we know God cares about, because God has stated it in His word. That is a great comfort to me, and I hope it is to you as well. If God said it, and God promised it, then He will do it. And if we are doing His will, then there is nothing that will be impossible for us. God will provide all of our needs according to His riches in glory.

When I was a boy, I remember my Dad, who was the pastor of our church, saying that his favorite song was “Mansion over the Hilltop.” He wasn’t a very good singer, but when the church would sing that song, he really seemed to enjoy it. The lyrics were not the most doctrinally correct perhaps, but the sentiment was sound. It went something like this:
“I’m satisfied with just a cottage below, 
A little silver and a little gold
. But in that city where the ransomed will shine,
 I want a gold one that’s silver lined.”
(Chorus
)“I’ve got a mansion just over the hilltop, 
In that bright land where we’ll never grow old
. And some day yonder we will never more wander, 
But walk on streets that are purest gold”

Today we are looking at a passage in which that promise of a mansion in heaven found it’s origin. And there is a great controversy among theologians and commentators as to how the word translated mansions in the KJV should actually be rendered. Most of them say it should be rooms or dwelling places. And that may be more accurate. But I would suggest that a room in heaven is more than equal to a mansion on earth.

However, rather than quibbling over semantics, today I want expound this text in light of the greater context of this passage, which is difficult because we don’t have time to teach the entire Upper Room Discourse in one sitting. But one of the problems with studying passages like the one in front of us today is that we tend to look at it in isolation and as a result we can end up with a distorted doctrine.

So as an attempt to bring the proper context to these verses, I want to remind you that Jesus says these words in response to his earlier declaration in ch.13 that He was going away, and the dismay on the part of the disciples upon hearing that. Peter in particular said he wanted to go with the Lord, and Jesus said ““Where I go, you cannot follow Me now; but you will follow later.”

Now the question is, where was Jesus going? Many people seeing the earlier statement He made that the time had come for Him to be glorified assume that it meant that He was going to heaven. And indeed Jesus does go to heaven eventually in His ascension. But the path He would take to heaven would be circuitous. First He would go to the cross. He would suffer and die there and be buried. And then while His body was in the tomb, Peter says in 1 Peter 3:18,19 that “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,” speaking of Hades. Then on the third day He rose from the dead, appeared to the apostles for 40 days, and then in the presence of 500 witnesses, ascended into heaven. So as Jesus says in vs.12, “I go to the Father.” But it was not immediately.

Nevertheless, the disciples hear Him say that He is going away and they cannot come with Him. They heard Him speak about His betrayal and death. And so they are troubled by those statements. If they understood Him properly, Jesus, who they believed was the Son of God, the Messiah, who had walked on water, who had fed multitudes, who had healed the sick and raised the dead, was Himself going to die. And so they were confused. They were troubled. They didn’t understand. They began to realize that they were going to be bereft of their Master and Lord and they did not know how to handle that.

So Jesus statement in 14:1 is meant to assuage their fears, to offer them comfort. Jesus says, “Let not your heart be troubled.” I have heard sanctimonious Christians say that it is sinful to worry or to fret about the future. And there may be a sense in which it can indeed lead to sin. But I would suggest that to worry about the future is human nature. It is a weakness of the finite human condition, but it is not necessarily sinful.

Furthermore, I would point out to you that three times in the preceding three chapters, John says that Jesus Himself was troubled. In John 11:33, when Jesus saw the grief of the mourners for Lazarus, it says He “was deeply moved in spirit and was troubled.” In chapter 12, vs.27, Jesus Himself said that “Now My soul has become troubled,” when He considered His impending death. And in chapter 13 vs 21, knowing that the time had come when Judas would betray Him, it says, “He became troubled in spirit.” So because we know that Jesus was sinless, then I can say confidently that to become troubled, or upset, or even to worry about an impending event, is not sinful. And that Jesus has compassion, not condemnation, for those who are troubled.

So He says, “Let not your heart be troubled, believe in God, believe also in Me.” So first off, our hearts may not be troubled because Jesus has gone before us. We can face the uncertainty of our future because according to 1John 2:1 we have an advocate with the Father which is Jesus Christ the righteous. We may not be troubled about the future because we have an Advocate with the Father, eternal in the heavens, who has gone before us and taken the sting of death upon Himself, taken our punishment upon Himself, who was the first fruits of the resurrection and who lives evermore to make intercession for us. Because He overcame sin, we can overcome sin. Because He overcame the grave, we will overcome the grave. Because He lives, we will not die, but live forever with Him. So to believe in Him is to be comforted, because though He says in this world we will have trouble, He has overcome the world.

Secondly, we can be untroubled about our trials because Jesus is God. “You believe in God, believe also in Me.” This statement teaches us the doctrine of Christ’s divinity. We can be untroubled about our trials because as John 1:1 says He was with God, and He is God. We can be untroubled about our trials because Jesus and God are united in person and in power, as Jesus said in John 10:28, “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. I and the Father are one.” We are doubly secure in the love of God.

Thirdly, we can be untroubled by our trials or future because Jesus is preparing a place for us. Vs.2, “In My Father’s house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you.” Hebrews 11:8 says, “By faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed by going out to a place which he was to receive for an inheritance; and he went out, not knowing where he was going.” But God had prepared a place for him and for his descendants. It was about 500 years before Abraham’s seed inherited the promised land. But when they entered into it, each family was given property, an inheritance as the Lord had promised. Vineyards they had not planted, cities they had not built. A land flowing with milk and honey.

In like manner, Jesus has gone before us to prepare a place for us, a dwelling place for His church, and inheritance, said Peter in 1Peter 1:4, “an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you.” So we are not troubled by the trials of this world because as Hebrews says of Abraham in chapter 11, we are “looking for the city which has foundations, whose architect and builder is God.” We “desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; for He has prepared a city for them.”
Hebrews 11 goes on to say that those Old Testament saints persevered in this life, recognizing that they were strangers and aliens in this world. That is I think the secret to not being troubled by the trials and pressures of this world. It is not to simply think that God will somehow work all of it out so that we can get on with our prosperity and success and enjoy life. But it is not having your hope set on earthly things but your focus on heavenly things.

Paul said he was torn between staying here on earth or going to be with the Lord. He said to be absent from the body was to be present with the Lord, and that was very much better. But if he was to stay on in this world, then it would mean fruitful labor for him. And that is a good illustration of what it means to be heavenly minded. It means kingdom minded. Keeping your focus on what you can do to build the kingdom of God, and to manifest the kingdom of God to the world until Christ takes you home.

Last week was the anniversary of William Tyndale’s martyrdom. Tyndall was an Anglican priest in the Church of England in the 1500’s. And he became convinced that the Bible should be translated into English from Greek and Hebrew. He wanted to do that himself, but he knew that it wasn’t possible in England due to the feelings of the church about keeping the Bible in Latin. So he traveled to Germany where he translated the Bible, and eventually the first five books of the Old Testament. But to do that, he had to move constantly for fear of retaliation and arrest by the church. Eventually however, they arrested him, having been betrayed by a friend for the reward offered. and he spent about a year in prison awaiting trial. Finally, in 1536 he was convicted of heresy and executed by strangulation, after which his body was burnt at the stake. His dying prayer was that the King of England’s eyes would be opened and this prayer seemed to be answered just two years later with King Henry’s authorization of the Great Bible for the Church of England, which was largely from Tyndale’s own work. Hence, the Tyndale Bible, as it was known, played a key role in spreading Reformation ideas across the English-speaking world and, eventually, to the British Empire. In 1611, the KJV Bible was produced and printed, which borrowed significantly from Tyndale’s work. Tyndale was a man who lived his life in expectation of the reward, he was looking for a city and a country which has foundations, whose architect and builder was God. And I think we can be confident the such a man received a great inheritance in the kingdom of heaven.

Fourthly, our hearts are not troubled by this world because we know that Jesus is coming back to take us to be with Him. Notice that Jesus doesn’t really talk about heaven. He simply says that He will take us to be with Him. Heaven is where God is. And though I believe that heaven is a real place, I don’t think it aligns with our common understanding of it. I believe a lot of people misapply the visions of John regarding streets of gold and gates of pearls to a literal place that matches that description. But if you read that account in Revelation 21, you will discover that it is describing the bride of Christ, called the New Jerusalem, which will come down out of heaven to replace the earth after it is burned up.

Peter had this to say about this end of the age, in 2Peter 3:10, “But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat, and the earth and its works will be burned up. Since all these things are to be destroyed in this way, what sort of people ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness, looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be destroyed by burning, and the elements will melt with intense heat! But according to His promise we are looking for new heavens and a new earth, in which righteousness dwells.”

I don’t want to use this time today to give you a discourse on heaven. The Bible actually has very little specifics on the subject. But suffice it to say that where Christ is, that is where heaven is. Jesus said to the thief on the cross, “Today you will be with Me in Paradise.” And Paul said, “To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.” It doesn’t matter where it is, as long as Christ is there it is heaven.

But I do believe that the Bible teaches that there will be a second coming of Christ and a resurrection. 1Thess. 4:13 says, “But we do not want you to be uninformed, brethren, about those who are asleep, so that you will not grieve as do the rest who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus. For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord. Therefore comfort one another with these words.”

That is our comfort. That belief that Christ is coming back for us is how we can keep our hearts from being troubled in a world of chaos and confusion. Paul said in 1 Thess. 1: 9, that we that are saved are to turn from idols and serve God and “wait for God’s Son from heaven whom He raised from the dead, that is Jesus, who rescues us from the wrath to come.”

Then in vs.4, Jesus says, “And you know the way where I am going.” As I was studying this verse I could not help but think that the sentence construction was odd. It just didn’t seem to sound like the best way of expressing what I thought Jesus meant. At first glance, you would suppose He is saying the disciples know where He is going, and they know how to get there. That is obviously how Thomas interpreted it. He said, “Lord, we do not know where You are going, how do we know the way?”

But Jesus isn’t talking about a destination. Jesus was referring to the way of salvation. He is saying, you know the way of salvation. You know the way into the kingdom of God. And an illustration of that is that in Acts we have six times I believe when Christianity was called The Way. Paul said he persecuted unto death those of The Way. That meant Christians. It wasn’t until Acts 11 in Antioch that they were first called Christians. Prior to that, it was called the Way. And perhaps that name finds it’s origin in Jesus’s statement right here. “You know the Way where I am going.” The Way then is not just a destination but a means to get there. A path. Jesus had been preaching for three and a half years concerning how to enter the Kingdom of God. And so the disciples knew the way into the kingdom. It was by Jesus and through Jesus only.

And Jesus confirms that in vs.6, saying, ““I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.” Jesus is the Way, with a capital W. He is not necessarily making three parallel statements in this declaration. But I think He is making a declarative statement in I am The Way. He is saying, I am the means of salvation, the way to God, the entrance into the Kingdom of God. The Way to God is only through Me.

But then Jesus adds two explanatory clauses to clarify The Way; 1)the truth, and 2)the life. The Way is the truth, and the Way is the life. I think that is how He means it. He is saying this; that the Way is the truth in a world full of deception. Proverbs 14:12 says “There is a way that seems right to a man, but it’s end is the way of death.” This is the lie of Satan since the beginning of time. He told Eve that if she disobeyed God, then it would mean she would be wise like God. He told her that she would not die. But Satan lied, as he is the father of lies and the truth is not in him. And what promised life for Eve resulted in death.

Satan has propagated his lies throughout the earth. He promises life, happiness, wisdom, but it produces only death, despair and foolishness. Jesus, on the other hand, it says in John 1:14, was full of grace and truth. He spoke the truth of God. Jesus is The Way and the Way is the truth of God.

And so logically, The Way produces life. Because God is life. John says in chapter 1 that Jesus is the source of life. “In Him was life and the life was the light of men.” And there cannot be life without truth. That is why we put such an emphasis here on preaching the full truth of God’s word. Without the truth, there can be no life. A partial truth is just a concealed lie, and that cannot bring about life.

So the Way results in life, not just earthly life, but eternal life, abundant life. When you believe in Jesus Christ as your Savior and Lord, you receive life. Eternal life. Abundant life. Real life. What this world offers is only temporal life. It’s like life in black and white, like a dumb animal kind of life, without reason, without wisdom, being subject to the passions and lusts of the flesh and being held captive under the bondage of sin. There may be a sense in which one doesn’t realize that his life is futile and finite. I don’t think my dog realizes that he is a dog. But that doesn’t change the fact that he is an animal. He is not of higher intelligence. And I think the unsaved are like animals in a sense. They are ignorant of the life of God. They live in darkness. But there will be a day when the light of Christ will make their ignorance apparent. And at that point, the Bible says that the world will mourn Him who they pierced.

That certainty of Christ’s coming is a comfort for those of us who have trusted in Jesus as our Savior. But the certainty of Christ’s coming should be a cause for concern as well, because it means judgment for those who have rejected Jesus as Lord and Savior. I think while many Christians agree in doctrine with the exclusivity of the statement that Jesus made, yet in practice they seem to imagine that there will be an escape clause somehow for their loved ones who are not saved.

But Jesus makes it clear, no one comes to the Father except through Him. Those who are not found dressed in His righteousness alone by faith, will be cast out into outer darkness. They will have no inheritance in the Kingdom of God. They have no part in the family of God. They will not dwell there, but will dwell in eternal darkness, separated from God for eternity.

So while we are to be comforted by Christ’s words, we should also be warned. Jesus told us to expect Him to come at an hour we did not suspect. He is coming soon. Let us be about the Kingdom of God. Let us keep our focus on the city without foundations, whose architect and builder is God, and let us bring as many as we can to faith in Jesus Christ while it is still day, for the night comes when no man can work.

Love is a word that is so overused in the church today that it has practically lost all it’s relevance to Christian life. Ever since the Beatles sang “All you need is love,” the church has tried to tie Christian love to the world’s definition of love. Perhaps it was an attempt to woo the world to the church, by taking away any offense of the gospel and dumbing it down to a one word description which the world would find appealing. The result though has been very destructive to the life of the church. Because the Bible makes it clear that love is to be the defining characteristic of the church, but if we don’t really know what love is, then it’s unlikely that we can manifest it.

In today’s passage, we are continuing in our study of Jesus’s Upper Room discourse. There are five chapters in John which are dedicated to this one final evening of Christ’s ministry. Five chapters of last minute instructions before Jesus is crucified the next morning. So far, we have looked at the Lord washing the disciples feet, which I called an animated parable about Christian love. Then we looked at the personification of those that reject God’s love, which was the defection of Judas. Today, we are going to look at the commandment of love which Jesus gives to the church. This new commandment is found in vs.34, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another.”

And as I see it, this passage is broken down by John into three segments. First, is love manifested, second, love commanded, and thirdly, love rejected. Or you could say, what love looks like, what love does, and what love is not. Let’s look at them in that order. First love manifested. Or what love looks like.

When Judas leaves the supper and goes out into the darkness, Jesus says in vs.31, “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in Him; if God is glorified in Him, God will also glorify Him in Himself, and will glorify Him immediately.” Notice first of all that 5 times Jesus says the word glorified or a variant of it, glorify. A logical question then is what does Jesus mean by using the word glorified?

Well, we talked about this a few weeks ago, because back in chapter 12:23, Jesus had said, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” And if you will remember I pointed ahead to today’s passage as a means of answering that question – what is meant by the word glorified? And as I pointed out then, Jesus was not talking about receiving glory from the Jews, but He was speaking of the hour of His death. He was looking forward to His death in a few days, realizing that His ministry coming to an apex, and that his crucifixion was the means of His glorification.

How bizarre it is to our human ears to hear of death and glory being correlated. We tend to think of being glorified as being lifted up, exalted, praised, adored – that sounds like our version of glory. But Christ saw His death as the means of glory. He was lifted up, but He was lifted up on a cross, to bear our sin in shame and reproach, that He might redeem us from the curse of death. That He might buy us back. Glorification then was Christ magnifying God’s attributes in a visible way, which was accomplished on the cross.

So that act of self sacrifice is the manifestation of divine love. God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son to die on the cross for our sins. Christ’s death manifested the magnificence of God’s love. God displayed His love for the world by hanging on a cross atop a hill in Jerusalem.

So as the church seeks to define Christian love, we should look for our example at the cross. It was there God defined love. Jesus said in John 15:13, “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.” God displayed His great love by sending Jesus to die on the cross. And Jesus displayed His great love, by willingly laying down His life for the church.

That act of sacrifice manifested Christ’s love. And Christ’s love manifested God’s love. That is what Jesus means when He says, “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in Him.” That is how Jesus can tell Philip in the next chapter that if you have seen Him you have seen the Father. Jesus glorifies the Father because He does the works of God. And then Jesus goes on to say that God will glorify Him in Himself, that is by God Himself, and will do so straight away. God’s love for the son will be revealed in Jesus’s resurrection, and exaltation. So God was glorified in Christ by his death upon the cross in obedience to his Father’s will.

Christ’s love teaches us that obedience is always tied to Christian love. Jesus says in the next chapter, 14:15, “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.” And John says in his epistle in 1John 2:4, “The one who says, ‘I have come to know Him,’ and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him; but whoever keeps His word, in him the love of God has truly been perfected.” So you see that love is manifested or glorified by obedience.

Empty praise, or words of affection for God is simply not enough. It is meaningless unless accompanied by deeds which manifest such love. And even God’s love for the Son is predicated upon the Son’s obedience. Hebrews 5:8 says that Jesus learned obedience from the things which He suffered. The late theologian John Murray said, “God has forged an inseparable link between sufferings and glory.” He went on to say “My life has the chisel of God upon it.” As we share in the fellowship of His sufferings, we are being conformed to the image of Jesus Christ, and that glorifies God in Christ Jesus.

So then, the glory of God is revealed in the love of God which is manifested in the suffering of Jesus Christ. He laid down His life for the church. He was obedient even to the point of death. He laid aside His privileges in order to offer Himself as our substitute, for our benefit, so that we might be reconciled to God. He is our example of love. There is no better example, or more complete example of love than that of Christ Jesus. And from His example we learn that Christian love is sacrificial. It is humble. It is putting other’s needs first. It is obedient to God’s will. And that kind of selfless love was displayed most majestically in the glory of the cross.

Secondly, let’s look at love commanded. Or what we must do. First let’s notice the reason for the commandment. And that is because Jesus said He is going away. He is returning to the Father. And He says that they cannot come. They are going to have to stay here on earth and continue Christ’s ministry. They are going to build His church and be the shepherds of His church. So He gives them a new commandment, a mission statement for how they will carry on His ministry without Him. He has just finished giving them a new ordinance in the Lord’s Supper. And as was customary in the Passover meal celebration, the father would explain the meaning of each item of the meal, and at certain times would instigate questions for the children, so they might learn the meaning of the celebration. So it is in this meal with Christ, acting as the father administering the ordinance, He calls them His “little children.” He is instructing them in the significance of the New Covenant in His blood, which is symbolized in the Lord’s Supper.

So even as the Old Covenant was accompanied by commandments, so the New Covenant has a corresponding new commandment. And the new commandment is that they are to love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another.

Remember when Jesus was questioned about the law, and asked which was the greatest commandment? Jesus gave them two laws which encompassed all the Old Testament commandments. In Luke 10:27 Jesus answered, “YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR STRENGTH, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND; AND YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.” All of the commandments of the law were fulfilled in those two.

So in a similar fashion, Jesus gives us just one commandment in the new covenant, and all the commandments are fulfilled in this one. Love one another. Notice, He says it twice. Love one another. That is the commandment. But then in an echo of what we just explained from the previous verses, He says love one another even as I have loved you. We love one another as Christ loved us. As Christ laid down His life for the church.

Ephesians 5:25 tells us we are to love our wives “as Christ loved the church and laid down his life for her.” That’s the standard for Christian love. Laying down your life is not simply being willing to die, but willing to lay aside your prerogatives in life, laying aside your career, laying aside your rights, laying aside your dreams of fulfillment for the sake of someone else. We love others because He first loved us. Like Christ; We love those who cannot reciprocate, we love those who are unlovely, we love even those that hate us, who treat us badly, even our enemies. Those are all manifestations of Christ’s love for us.

There are two attributes then of this love towards others that Christ commands us to do. First, you will love one another as Christ loved us, and second, you will be known by your love for one another. Since Jesus is going away, He will be manifested by our love for one another. He will be served by our love for one another. We must be to the church what Jesus was to the church. We carry on His work, His ministry. And so we do that by loving one another even as Christ loved us. That means we put other’s needs ahead of our own. That means we serve one another as Christ served us. That means we sacrifice our prerogatives for the sake of a brother or sister. Christian love is not sappy sentimentalism, but sacrificial. I like Vernon McGee’s quote, who said, “I’m tired of sloppy agape.” The world’s view of love, and unfortunately too often imitated by the church, is that of sloppy sentimentalism that masquerades as love.

But Paul gives the right perspective of love in 1Cor. 13:4, “Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth;bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”

Compare that for a moment to John Lennon’s version from his song titled “Love”, which I would suggest is the world’s view of love. He sings, “Love is real, real is love, Love is feeling, feeling love, Love is wanting to be loved, Love is touch, touch is love, Love is reaching, reaching love, Love is asking to be loved.” Now that is sappy sentimentalism. If I were to draw a distinction between the world’s view of love described by Lennon, and that of Christian love described by Paul, I would say that Lennon’s love is characterized by getting, but Christian love is characterized by giving. The common or worldly view of love is all self directed. Love is how I feel, how it makes me feel, it’s all generated towards myself. Thus when it ceases to satisfy me I can so easily turn away from it and look elsewhere for satisfaction.

But even the mystics and the Greek philosopher’s agreed that the greatest end of man is to help others, and not just help oneself. It is what is known in Latin as the “summum bonum”, the highest good. To live for oneself is to descend to the depths of narcissism. And a narcissistic society is the ruin of any civilization. Unfortunately, you need look no further than the Facebook craze and the accompanying selfie fixation of modern society to recognize that we are on the downward slide of civilization as we know it.

But Christian love, agape love, is the characteristic of the saints, who are being made in the image of Jesus Christ. We are a new society, a new civilization, looking for a better and abiding country.And Jesus said as we exhibit that kind of love to one another, we will be known as His disciples. This kind of love exhibited towards one another, becomes a testimony to the world that we are transformed, we are different by design, that we are God’s children, and we are the image of Christ. Our sacrificial love becomes our testimony.

Then finally, let’s look at love rejected. Or what love is not. In vs.36 Simon Peter *said to Him, “Lord, where are You going?” Jesus answered, “Where I go, you cannot follow Me now; but you will follow later.” Peter *said to Him, “Lord, why can I not follow You right now? I will lay down my life for You.” Jesus *answered, “Will you lay down your life for Me? Truly, truly, I say to you, a rooster will not crow until you deny Me three times.”

I’ve said before that I believe Peter loved the Lord. But I think his love for the Lord was a worldly type of love. I think it was a passionate, impulsive, emotionally based love. And so consequently we see Peter always acting rashly, without thinking. That kind of passion without the tempering of truth resulted in errors in judgement.

You can see evidences of that in this dialogue. Peter is impatient, he is impulsive. His love for Christ is passionate, but lacks temperament. He wants immediate gratification. He doesn’t want to wait for the Lord’s will. He wants to conform Christ to his own will. We saw that in Matthew 16, when Jesus declared that He was going to die, and Peter said, “O no, Lord. That will never happen.” And Jesus said, Get behind Me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to Me; for you are not setting your mind on God’s interests, but man’s.”

At the crux of Peter’s problems is his superficial love for Christ. When it comes time to count the cost of what it means to love Christ he fails the test. So it was that when the persecution came upon Christ that Peter’s passionate, but superficial love for Christ was exposed, causing Peter to desert Christ, and then coming back only to stay at a distance, and then to deny Him three times. The trial revealed the shallowness of Peter’s love for Christ. When it came time to count the cost, to lay down his life for his Lord, his faith turned to fear. His love went cold.

So it is with many Christians today. We say we love the Lord, we say we love His church, we say we love one another when the sun is shining and everything is going our way, when there is no price to pay. But when things turn nasty, when the hour belongs to the power of darkness, when we stand to lose something dear to us, then our love of self takes over. Christ takes a backseat, and we take over the steering wheel of our lives again. Our love for Christ is revealed in the difficulties and trials of life. Love is tempered in the fire of trials. And “God” said Spurgeon, “gets His best soldiers out of the highlands of affliction.” That is where love is tempered through selfless obedience in suffering.

That’s why when Christ sought Peter out after His resurrection, and He wanted to bring Peter back into usefulness after his denial of Christ, Jesus asked Him three times an achingly poignant question. “Peter, do you love Me?” “Peter, do you love Me?” “Peter, do you love Me?” And Peter is almost beside himself in agony that Jesus keeps asking him if he loves Him. But each time, Jesus answer is virtually the same. “If you love, then feed My sheep.” What was Jesus saying? “If you love Me, love My sheep.” That is what Peter needed to understand. And that’s what we need to understand. Love is obedience. Love is sacrificial. Love is humble. Love is suffering for the sake of others.

Love one another, even as Christ loved the church and gave Himself for her. “Love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another.” That is our mission statement. That is our testimony. Let us lay aside our lives for one another even as Christ laid aside His throne for a cross.
I want to end by reading part of the letter from Paul to the church in Rome found in Romans 12, where he speaks of laying our lives down as our worship to God. Laying down our prerogatives, laying down our rights for the sake of Christian love. Listen to this admonition from Paul; this is the kind of love we need to have that the world might know we are Christ’s disciples.
“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. 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 [e]acceptable and perfect.
3 For through the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think more highly of himself than he ought to think; but to think so as to have sound judgment, as God has allotted to each a measure of faith. 4 For just as we have many members in one body and all the members do not have the same function, 5 so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another. 6 Since we have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, each of us is to exercise them accordingly: if prophecy, according to the proportion of his faith; 7 if service, in his serving; or he who teaches, in his teaching; 8 or he who exhorts, in his exhortation; he who gives, with liberality; he who leads, with diligence; he who shows mercy, with cheerfulness.
9 Let love be without hypocrisy. Abhor what is evil; cling to what is good. 10 Be devoted to one another in brotherly love; give preference to one another in honor; 11 not lagging behind in diligence, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord; 12 rejoicing in hope, persevering in tribulation, devoted to prayer, 13 contributing to the needs of the saints, practicing hospitality.
14 Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. 15 Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep. 16 Be of the same mind toward one another; do not be haughty in mind, but associate with the lowly. Do not be wise in your own estimation. 17 Never pay back evil for evil to anyone. Respect what is right in the sight of all men. 18 If possible, so far as it depends on you, be at peace with all men. 19 Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,” says the Lord. 20 “But if your enemy is hungry, feed him, and if he is thirsty, give him a drink; for in so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.” 21 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”

Last week we looked at the washing of the disciples feet as what I called an animated parable of Christ-like love, or sacrificial love. And according to Christ, that kind of love is supposed to be the defining characteristic of the church. Jesus said in vs.35 that “By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”

So I would suggest to you that this Upper Room Discourse is really a discourse on the foundational doctrines of the church. The disciples constitute the church. Jesus is no longer publicly ministering from this moment on. He has retreated from the crowds and taken the disciples apart to the Upper Room, and for the next few chapters, we have the record of detailed instructions for the church. Those who are saved, who have been set apart.

These next four chapters then, through chapter 17, are essential doctrines of the church, to enable it to survive after Jesus leaves Earth. And so it is fitting, that as the church’s main characteristic is that they should love one another, that there would be this animated parable of Christ washing their feet, to be an illustration of how to love one another.

But in today’s passage, we see another illustration of a characteristic of the church. And that is illustrated by none other than Judas. Today we are going to take a different approach from the usual verse by verse exegesis. I am not interested in merely regurgitating the historical facts of Judas’s treason. I think everyone here is probably very familiar with the facts of Judas’s betrayal.

Perhaps what we aren’t so familiar with however, are the spiritual applications taught by this event. So I am not going to focus on expounding historical details, but instead I would like to show you the spiritual lessons that Judas’s betrayal teaches concerning the church. Because I think that is one of the major reasons that John includes this information for us. He is not writing a day by day biography. None of the gospel writers really do that. They were not writing a biography of Jesus, but they were writing a gospel. The gospel is an account or testimony given to reveal the good news about Christ that leads to salvation. So what is included in them is selected for that purpose. And that is especially true in John’s gospel.

So to that end, I would point out first of all, that Judas is a type. A type is a person, or thing or event that symbolizes a truth or doctrine or person. Though Judas was an historical figure and the facts given here are true and happened as presented, I believe he also serves as a archetype for a certain kind of individual that is present in the church.

And I find evidence for this theory right here in Jesus’s statement in vs.18, “I do not speak of all of you. I know the ones I have chosen; but it is that the Scripture may be fulfilled, ‘HE WHO EATS MY BREAD HAS LIFTED UP HIS HEEL AGAINST ME.’” Jesus is quoting from Psalm 41:9, which says, “Even my close friend in whom I trusted, who ate my bread, has lifted up his heel against me.” Jesus is correlating Judas’s act of treason with another act of treason committed 1000 years earlier in the life of David by a counselor known as Ahithophel. Ahithophel was a highly regarded counselor to King David, whose words were thought of as the voice of God. That’s how highly thought of he was. But when Absalom rebelled against his father, Ahithophel also rebelled against King David and went over to Absalom. And though I don’t have the time to go into all of that this morning, I will say it’s interesting to note that when the rebellion went wrong, Ahithophel committed suicide by hanging himself. He suffered the same fate as Judas.

So Jesus is quoting from the Psalm to show that Ahithophel was a type of Judas. And so I think it is fair to say that in turn, Judas represents a type of a certain kind of person in the church. The church is presented often in the Bible as a place for demonic activity, and false prophets to arise, and for all kinds of error to occur. One great example is Jesus parable of the mustard tree in Luke 13:19 in which He spoke of the kingdom of heaven, which is the church, “It is like a mustard seed, which a man took and threw into his own garden; and it grew and became a tree, and THE BIRDS OF THE AIR NESTED IN ITS BRANCHES.”

At first blush, that sounds like a good thing. The tiny little mustard seed grew so huge that the birds made nests in the branches. But when you consider it, you realize that it is not a good thing. Because mustard seeds do not naturally produce giant trees, but bushes. So the tree is abnormal. It has become a monstrosity. And the birds sound innocuous enough, until you remember the parable of the sower, where Christ identified the birds of the air as the devil and his angels. So you have a picture given by Christ of the church which would grow and spread beyond it’s intended size, to encompass even the devil and his angels who would find refuge there.

Now that’s quite an alarming picture of the church. On the one hand, we just had this beautiful picture of sacrificial service and love that should exist in the church as we imitate Christ’s love for the church, and now on the other hand this grotesque picture of abnormality and demonic activity, which results in rebellion, and treachery, and which undermines Christian fellowship.

So I shouldn’t even have to point out that even in this passage this demonic activity is going on right under Jesus’s nose. Right in the midst of His most trusted insiders, the 12 disciples, one of them was a devil. One of them was under demonic influence to destroy the church even as Christ is administering the rites of the Passover, which was the precursor to the Lord’s Supper. In fact, as Jesus gives him the morsel, it says that Satan entered into him.

Let that be a lesson to all of us. Simply because something happens in a church, or during a church service, does not mean that everything that happens there is of the Lord. That’s why we are told to test the spirits. There are birds in the branches, and sometimes, there are demons in the rafters.

And I would point out another noteworthy thing. None of the disciples knew that Judas was the one who would betray Him. Jesus knew it, of course. In vs.21, Jesus “became troubled in spirit, and testified and said, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, that one of you will betray Me.’” But notice the response of the disciples. Vs.22, “The disciples began looking at one another, at a loss to know of which one He was speaking.”

The disciples were clueless as to who Jesus was referring to. In fact, the other gospels tell us that they began to search themselves, asking, “Lord, is it I?” They would have never guessed it was Judas. Judas after all was the treasurer. He carried the money bag. You know, Matthew had been a tax collector. He had been basically an accountant by trade for the Roman Empire. If there was a natural choice to be treasurer you would think it would have gone to Matthew. But instead it was given to Judas.

And I believe it was because Judas was above reproach in the eyes of the others. Literature and media often portray Judas as an evil looking character, scheming, conniving with features you would expect from such a person. But I would suggest the exact opposite. I would suggest that Judas was quite literally what we might call a handsome devil. He was sophisticated. He was educated. He was of a more noble Judean heritage than the rest of the disciples who were thought of as low brow Galileans. Judas was considered philanthropic, caring for the poor, trustworthy, above reproach. And yet he was used by the devil to conduct the most nefarious treachery known to man.

The Lord Jesus, of course, knows all of this in advance. He knows the heart and plans of Judas. He knows He is an imposter. A poseur. And yet Christ is more than accommodating to Judas. Christ never calls him out, or reveals him as a thief. Christ never publicly condemns him for his hypocrisy. And that is what Judas was, a hypocrite. The Greek word for hypocrite means to be an actor on a stage. Doing what he does to be seen of men, to gain their applause and acclaim. And if we are to believe the accusations of the world, then the church is full of them. Judas must have been a very good actor.

In some respects, Judas is presented here as a foil to Christ. He is darkness, and Jesus is Light. He is of the devil, Jesus is of God. Judas’s motives are selfish, Jesus’s motives are unselfish. Judas’s sin is pride, Jesus’s virtue is humility. Judas is the black backdrop against which the brilliance of Christ shines.

The life of righteousness of Jesus caused contrition in the disciples, but it caused frustration in Judas. But Jesus’s kindness towards Judas only served to embolden Judas to be even more conniving. He thought he was getting away with it. He may even have thought he was justified in his actions because of some perceived failure of Christ. He continued to harden his heart until he conceived of the most vile treachery the world has ever known.

The application to the church should be obvious. There are going to be people in the church who appear to be the icons of virtue. And yet they are unredeemed. They are unsaved. Or they are living in rebellion. Judas is a picture of how possible it is to be apparently so close to God, and yet be so far away from Him spiritually. In fact, it’s possible to be in the church and be used as an agent of Satan to spread dissension. The prophet Samuel said in 1Samuel 15:23, “For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry.”

Matthew Henry said it this way; “We are not to confine our attention to Judas. The prophecy of his treachery may apply to all who partake of God’s mercies, and meet them with ingratitude. See the infidel, who only looks at the Scriptures with a desire to do away their authority and destroy their influence; the hypocrite, who professes to believe the Scriptures, but will not govern himself by them; and the apostate, who turns aside from Christ for a thing of naught. Thus mankind, supported by God’s providence, after eating bread with Him, lift up the heel against Him! Judas went out as one weary of Jesus and his apostles. Those whose deeds are evil, love darkness rather than light.”

Jesus gave the reason why Judas rebelled and rejected the love of Christ in vs.20, which was because he did not receive Christ. In the first chapter of his gospel, John says, “As many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name,” (John 1:12). So it is possible to be a member of a church, a visible disciple, called a Christian, and regarded as a Christian by other Christians, and still not have your heart respond to Jesus and surrender to his will. Such rebellion spurs dissension in the church, and the result is often the same as happened to the disciples; in just a few hours they are scattered. That is the strategy of Satan to overthrow the church from within, and that is why rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft.

I want to you to see something else in that statement from Christ in vs.20, “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who receives whomever I send receives Me; and he who receives Me receives Him who sent Me.” The primary meaning of “receives” is to accept Christ as your personal Lord and Savior. That is what John 1:12 says constitutes salvation. That is the means of becoming the sons and daughters of God. But there is another aspect here of receiving that Jesus mentions. And that is, that he who Christ has sent acts as the representative of Christ. So that when you receive them, or their teaching, you receive Him. I believe that Jesus is referring not only to the apostles, but to those He will send to the church after His resurrection.

And Paul speaks to that in Ephesians 4:8; “Therefore it says, ‘WHEN HE ASCENDED ON HIGH, HE LED CAPTIVE A HOST OF CAPTIVES, AND HE GAVE GIFTS TO MEN.’”
Then Paul tells us what those gifts are which He gave to the church in vs.11, “And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and 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.”
So in the foundational years of the church Christ gave the apostles, and in these last days, Christ has given us pastors. Now that should serve to emphasize how important it is to go to a church where you know the pastor has been called by God. He is the representative of Christ to the church. He is to accurately give God’s word to the church, so that the church might grow in relation to Christ. To raise up mature Christians.

Going back to the parable of the mustard tree, there are many churches to pick from today. There are many who are claiming to be pastors and teachers. But I would suggest that on a grand scale, there are not many that are sent by God. There are not many that are called by God. And though James warns us that not many should become teachers, for they shall incur a stricter judgment for their words, yet the evidence suggests that there are more teachers than ever. But the Christ and the apostles warned the church that this was to be. 2Peter 2:1 says,
“But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will also be false teachers among you, who will secretly introduce destructive heresies.”

But the hearer also has a responsibility to receive the truth and walk in the truth. We reject the truth at our peril. I doubt that Judas conceived of his treason when Jesus first chose him to follow Him and become a disciple. I’m sure that Judas had every nothing but good intentions at the beginning of Christ’s ministry. He was probably excited. He was attracted to Jesus and the whole idea of the kingdom of heaven. But little by little, he started rejecting certain truths, rejecting teaching that he found incongruent with his own ideas. We know from scripture that he began to criticize Jesus and the way He did ministry. He undoubtedly found fault with the way Jesus called people out in public. I”m sure his gentrified upbringing found such outbursts embarrassing. And so for three years though he walked with Christ externally, internally he was rebelling against Him. It was a slow decent into apostasy. Remember what Samuel said, “rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft.” It opened the door to demonic influence.

MacLaren says in his commentary: “Again, any evil is possible to us, seeing that all sin is but yielding to tendencies common to us all. The greatest transgressions have resulted from yielding to such tendencies. Cain killed his brother from jealousy; David besmirched his name and his reign by animal passion; Judas betrayed Christ because he was fond of money. Many a man has murdered another one simply because he had a hot temper. And you have got a temper, and you have got the love of money, and you have got animal passions, and you have got that which may stir you up into jealousy. Your neighbor’s house has caught fire and been blown up. Your house, too, is built of wood, and thatched with straw, and you have as much dynamite in your cellars as he had in his. Do not be too sure that you are safe from the danger of explosion.”

Well, what safeguard then does the church have? How can we defend against these demonic influences and baser tendencies among us? Well, I would suggest the best safeguard is to not think too highly of yourself. Humility is the opposite of pride. And Jesus showed in washing the disciples feet the importance of humility. Of putting other’s needs before your own. Sacrificial, Christ-like love is the antidote for the poison of the serpent’s attack on the church.

But there is another necessary hedge against pride, and that is illustrated in the disciples’ question, “Lord is it I?” The disciples exhibit a wholesome recognition of the evil which is possible in us all. They do some soul searching to see if there was any wicked way within them. None of them looked at another and thought, “I bet he is the betrayer.” But all of them save Judas looked in their own heart and recognized their weaknesses, recognized their sinful tendencies, and came to the Lord with a contrite heart.

Our defense against rebellion is recognizing that all sin has a common origin, and that is living for myself instead of living for God. Putting my agenda before God’s agenda is idolatry. Putting my needs ahead of others is iniquity. And from such seemingly inconsequential beginnings, a monstrous tree might grow that harbors the very demons themselves.

I think there is an apparent dismay in the disciples response, in Peter’s question to John, and John’s question to Jesus, that indicates how distressed they are by Jesus’s words. They are heartbroken over the possibility that one of them would betray Christ. And I think that kind of brokenness is indicative of the right kind of heart in the church that keeps one from rebellion.

That attitude is found in Eph. 5:8 which says, “for you were formerly darkness, but now you are Light in the Lord; walk as children of Light, (for the fruit of the Light consists in all goodness and righteousness and truth), trying to learn what is pleasing to the Lord.” That last phrase I think is key. If you love the Lord, you will try to please the Lord. I believe the disciples strove to please the Lord. They didn’t always do things right, but they had the right attitude. They loved the Lord and tried to please Him. Judas was about pleasing himself. He wanted to serve himself. But a child of God walks as Christ walked, imitating Him, and tries to please HIs heavenly Father.

And that is something that has to be learned. That goes back to the job of the pastor/teacher of Ephesians 4, he is teaching and edifying the saints so that they grow in maturity, they grow in Christ likeness, to ultimately please the Lord, to ultimately glorify God. And the church needs to receive such pastors that preach the truth as having been sent by God. To reject the truth is to reject Christ’s counsel. Rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft.

Well, I’m out of time and I feel like we have only scratched the surface here. But let me just try to summarize a couple of things in closing. A frequent debate in theological circles is whether or not Judas was a Christian. And I would just answer that this way. Only God knows the heart. Jesus knew the heart of Judas. But one thing is evident to us and that is that the disciples certainly believed that Judas was a Christian. They thought he was above reproach. He was the best of them, or so they thought. It reminds me of 1 Cor. 10:13, “No temptation has overtaken you but such as is common to man.” Don’t let yourself think that you are above the sin of rebellion. Don’t let yourself be blind to the possibility that you may have put yourself back on the throne of your life.

As Jesus dipped the bread into the paste to hand it to Judas, we should see in that action a choice that we all have to make, sometimes even on a daily basis. On Jesus right side was Judas. He had given Judas the place of honor at His table. And on His left side is John. After taking the sup, Judas was entered into by Satan. He went into the darkness after eating the morsel. That is a picture of eternal damnation. John on his other side represents the beloved of God. He calls himself the disciple whom Jesus loved. He doesn’t leave Jesus’s side. He is spoken of as practically sitting in Christ’s lap. HIs relationship is marked by love for Christ, closeness to Christ, fellowship with Christ, dependency, leaning on Christ. That is the type of person that Christ loves. Those who lean on Him. Who look to Him for communion, and for Lordship.

Two men, two choices, two types of relationships, two outcomes. One goes into eternal darkness and damnation, and one goes into eternal Light and Life. One hangs himself in remorse, one lives in a spirit of repentance. It reminds me of the two thieves on either side of Jesus just 12 hours later as He hangs on a cross, dying for rebellious sinners. One man cursed Christ and died, going into everlasting darkness, and one man received Christ as Lord and lived with Him in Paradise that very evening and still lives today.

F. F. Bruce said, “Satan could not have entered into Judas had he not granted him admission. Had he been willing to say “No” to the adversary, all of his Master’s intercessory power was available to him there and then to strengthen him. But when a disciple’s will turns traitor, when the spiritual aid of Christ is refused, that person’s condition is desperate indeed.”

Today everyone here is pictured as one of the two men on either side of Christ. You are either like John or you are like Judas. There is a choice before each of you as to which you will consent to. If you renounce your sin, and receive Christ as your Lord and Savior, then you will receive the blessings that Jesus spoke of earlier. “If you know these things, then you are blessed if you do them.”

Jesus has come to earth to give us an invitation. You can either enter into His kingdom, or you can reject it in favor of your own. But you have to choose. You can’t have both. I pray that you don’t reject the truth. “As many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name,”

What we have presented to us in the first 17 verses of this chapter, is what I have called an animated parable. A parable is a story that is given to illustrate a spiritual truth. And so what Jesus is doing in washing the disciples’ feet is providing a living illustration, or an animated parable in order to teach a spiritual truth.

Now that is important to understand. Because the illustration is not the object of our attention, but the illustration serves to present an object lesson. There are some that take from this text the idea that we need to practice foot washing as an ordinance of the church. And while that in of itself may not be particularly bad, I don’t believe that is what is being taught here. The foot washing is simply to teach an object lesson about Christ-like love.

Agape love, or Christ-like love, or sacrificial love is really the principle being taught here. Notice how many times we see the word love in this text we call the upper room discourse. In the next 4 chapters which is the record of the upper room discourse, you will see the theme of Christian love presented again and again by Jesus. He defines love.

For example; in chapter 14:15, Jesus says, “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.” And in vs 23 Jesus answered, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our abode with him.” Then in chapter 15:10, He says, “If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love; just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love.” And in vs .12 He says again, “This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you.” Finally, in vs13 He gives the grand summary of sacrificial love; ”Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.”

I was listening to a PBS broadcast the other day, and someone was attempting to define love according to their understanding of it, and they said, “for me, love is caring.” That was the way they defined love for themselves. And the world has done quite a job of redefining what love is. But God has defined love as He intended it to be. And that love is illustrated by sacrifice, particularly the sacrificial love of Christ, who laid down His life for us. He has defined love in Christ.

Now in this opening section we find Jesus and the disciples in the Upper Room, and right at the beginning John declares Christ’s love, and then we see this illustration, this animated parable of Christ-like love. And again I would remind you that the public ministry of Christ is over. He warned the Jews in the last chapter that He was soon to depart and their opportunity would be passed. So as John begins this passage, we see that Jesus has left the public arena, and is in the Upper Room with just the disciples. These are “His own” which John speaks of in vs 1. These are the true believers. And so in chapters 1-12 we have the public ministry of Christ, and now in chapter 13 to the end of the gospel we see the private ministry to the disciples. So it is safe to assume that this animated parable is intended for saved people. It’s not a parable to teach unsaved people, but an illustration to teach saved disciples.

Vs. 1 says that it was during the Feast of the Passover. We all are familiar with the Passover, aren’t we? It was the Jewish festival which commemorated the Israelites deliverance from Egypt, when God sent the angel of death throughout the nation of Egypt, and killed the first born son of every family. But for the Jews, God gave them the opportunity to slay a lamb and sprinkle the blood over the doorpost, and in response, the angel of death would pass over that house and not touch the first born son. The judgment upon Egypt then also served as the means of salvation for the Jews. And once a year, the Jews were commanded to celebrate this feast. Every family would provide a lamb to be slain, and would eat the Passover meal as a memorial to God’s deliverance.

So it was the time of the Passover. And according to the plan of God, it was also the appointed time of Christ’s sacrifice. He would become the Lamb of God which was slain for the salvation of the world. This was the appointed time. Throughout the three years of Christ’s ministry, He was constantly saying His time had not yet come. But now, John notes in vs.1, Jesus knows that His hour had come. The appointed hour when He would lay down His life, and return to His Father in heaven.

So John says, “having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end.” The idea there is not just to the end of His life, but that He loved them to the uttermost. He loved them completely. It speaks of the ultimate fulfillment of His love for His own. It speaks of an eternal love which continues even after He has gone to the Father. And it speaks of the ultimate expression of love, the ultimate sacrifice. As He says later in ch.15, “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down HIs life for His friends.” He would make the ultimate sacrifice for His friends.

Now Jesus would illustrate this love, but in such a way so that the disciples might imitate Him, and so commemorate His love for us, by loving one another. Jesus is going to illustrate agape love to the disciples. But before He does so, John tells us that the devil has put it into the heart of Judas to betray Christ. The question is why does John make that particular point at that particular moment? Well, I believe it is to illustrate that though God loved the world, yet the world does not all love God. It is a reminder that not everyone believes, and even within the church, there are those who do not believe. Even in the church, there are wolves in sheep’s clothing.

So Judas is the premier example of self love, which is pride. It’s the opposite of Christ-like love. But we will come back to Judas in a future message. For now, let’s just focus on the parable that Jesus provides. Basically, vs.3 indicates that Jesus knew full well that His hour was at hand, He knew who was His, He knew who would betray Him, He knew that God had already given Him the authority to lay down His life and take it up again, and in the fullness of that knowledge, He was going to spend this last night with His disciples reinforcing certain principles so that they would be better equipped to handle their mission once He was gone.

So in vs.4, Jesus “got up from supper, and laid aside His garments; and taking a towel, He girded Himself. Then He poured water into the basin, and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel with which He was girded.” Now the first principle that is being taught here is humility.

Humility is a hallmark of sacrificial love. The more humble you are, the less interested you are in yourself, the greater your capacity to love someone else.  Humility and love are related to one another proportionately.  The lower you go in self esteem, the higher you are in concern for others.  The more you sacrifice your priorities, the greater you will sacrifice for others.

In its purest form, biblical love is completely unselfish.  That’s not true of human love. Human love is based reciprocation. We turn the Golden Rule around as if we say, I’ll do unto you if you will do unto me. There’s a reciprocal quality in human love that is really selfish at it’s root. But for the Christian, love in its purest form is completely unselfish. True Christian love is not based on reciprocality. Paul summed all that up by one statement, “Love seeks not its own.”

Judas is presented here in this passage as one that is governed by pride, by self love. He is hanging around Jesus, feigning love but in reality he just wants to get rich from his relationship. But that attitude has reached it’s zenith. He has sold Jesus down the pike for a few pieces of silver. So Judas’s self love is the ultimate contrast to Jesus’ humility.

But there is another stark contrast to Christ’s humility as well. We have to go to Luke 22 for this one. In Luke 22 we learn that the disciples during the Passover are arguing over who is the greatest. This is probably an argument that has been going on for some time among the disciples. You will remember that in Matthew 20 it records that just a few days before James and John had asked Jesus if they could be seated at His right and left hand when His kingdom was established. So this is probably an ongoing dispute among all the disciples, each trying to be first, each trying to be the chief disciple, all of them vying for prominence in anticipation of when the kingdom comes to fruition.

The problem is that in spite of everything Jesus has said regarding His death, the disciples still don’t understand what’s going on. Their paradigm of the Messianic Kingdom is so entrenched, that they cannot fathom what Jesus is talking about when He said the grain must fall into the earth in order for it to bear fruit. They can’t seem to get it. So they just discard the parts of Jesus’ teaching that they can’t understand, and persist in their wrong theology. That sounds like a lot of Christians today, I’m afraid. Many people don’t understand the spiritual nature of the kingdom, and they are so entrenched in the prosperity doctrine that they simply discard a lot of what the Bible says in order to maintain their theological predisposition.

So Jesus is there in the Upper Room just hours before His death, and He wants to teach them the true nature of the Kingdom. To do that, He lays His garments aside and girds a towel around His waist and starts to wash the disciples feet. This was the job of the lowliest of the household servants. It was customary in that culture for the servant to wash the feet of people as they entered the house. Contrary to Leonardo Da Vinci’s painting of the Last Supper, they were not sitting on benches or chairs. They would lie back on pillows around a low table. Actually they would recline on their left sides so that they could eat with their right hand. And consequently, their feet would be near the next guys head. So particularly before a meal, but also just as part of polite hospitality, when you entered the house you would remove your sandals, and these water pots would be near the door. A servant, usually the lowest ranked servant in the house would wash the person’s feet. That was the custom, and it was especially important at dinner.

But this had not been done in the Upper Room. There were no house servants in attendance. So as the disciples are fighting for the choice seats around the table, which were usually determined by rank or importance, Jesus gets up, and starts to wash the disciples feet. Now this was undoubtedly an awkward thing for the disciples. They know that this is not something that He should be doing. He was their Lord, their Rabbi. He was the Messiah. But none of them dared to take His place, for fear of seeming less important than someone else.

And as I said earlier, Jesus is using this to teach them by example what Christian love is. It starts with humility. It starts with putting others needs above your own. And that is what Jesus is illustrating.

When Jesus got to Peter though, he objected. Peter said to Him, “Lord, do You wash my feet?” I think that there is an incredulity to Peter’s objection. I think he realizes that this is backwards. Peter knows he should be washing His Master’s feet. But Jesus responds, “What I do you do not realize now, but you will understand hereafter.”

What Jesus is saying is that this is an object lesson that is not understood now, but when the Holy Spirit comes, they will understand it. That is the way it is with spiritual truth. We are given the Holy Spirit, Jesus said in John 16:13, to guide us into the truth. He said, “When the Spirit of truth comes, He will guide you into all the truth.” The natural man cannot understand it, so God has given us the Holy Spirit to give us spiritual discernment. 1Cor. 2:14 “But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised.” Once the Holy Spirit came, then suddenly Peter and the apostles understand the scriptures, and they understand the truth of Christ.

Peter though I believe really loves the Lord. But Peter loved the Lord with a passionate, human love. It was a love based in emotion. And as a result, we see Peter make some critical mistakes. It’s good to have passion, but agape love must be tempered by spiritual discernment. It needs to be based on truth. It’s not enough to be passionate, or to be emotional. But we must worship Him in Spirit and in truth. Peter had the passion, but he was missing the truth.1 John 3:18 says “Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth.”

But passionate Peter says, ““Never shall You wash my feet!” Jesus answered him, “If I do not wash you, you have no part with Me.” Simon Peter *said to Him, “Lord, then wash not only my feet, but also my hands and my head.” First, he says Jesus will never wash his feet. He knows that is not the proper order of things for the Messiah to wash His disciple’s feet. But when Jesus says, “if I don’t wash you, you have no part with Me,” then suddenly Peter says, “then wash my hands and my head. Wash me all over.” Peter wants fellowship with Christ. So if fellowship is contingent upon washing his feet, then he thinks how much better it must be to be washed all over? But unfortunately, Peter is missing the point.

So Jesus responds, “He who has bathed needs only to wash his feet, but is completely clean; and you are clean, but not all of you.” Now let’s make sure we understand the significance of what Jesus is saying. When a person in that culture took a bath, it was not located in the bathroom of their house. Houses were not equipped with bathrooms and bathtubs or showers. So it was necessary to often go to a pool or stream or if they were in a village or town, there would often be a bathhouse. After bathing, they would of course be clean. But as they went back to their home, wearing their sandals, their feet would get dirty again. So as we talked about earlier, they needed to have their feet washed upon entering the house.

Now remember, Jesus is teaching to His disciples, who are already saved, who are believers. And the principle He is teaching is this, that when you are saved, you are washed, you are made clean by faith in Jesus Christ. That is a one time cleansing. That salvation is not what is pictured here in this foot washing. What Jesus is picturing is the need for daily cleansing, for daily confession of the sins we commit as we walk through this sordid world. We have been made clean by the blood of the Lamb, the coat of righteousness which belongs to Christ has been given to us in exchange for our sins. But now every day, as I go through this world, I find myself getting dirty, I find that the things I wish to do I don’t do. I sometimes inadvertently sin. Sometimes I might even deliberately sin and then regret it. So every day I need to have my feet washed. If I am going to be in fellowship with Christ, if I am going to be in communion with Christ, and that is not going to be hindered in any way, then I need to confess and be cleansed of my daily sin. I don’t need to be washed all over again from head to toe, but I need the sinful dirt that I pick up in my walk taken care of, so that I might have sweet communion with Jesus.

So Jesus says, If I don’t wash you, then you have no part with Me. What is meant by part? Well in Luke 10:42 when Jesus visits Bethany, Mary and Martha are there in the house, and Mary is sitting at Jesus’s feet listening to Him, and Martha is in the kitchen. And in response to Martha’s complaint about Mary, the Lord speaks regarding the position of the two women. He says, “Martha, Martha, you are careful and troubled about many things, but one thing is needful and Mary hath chosen that good part which shall not be taken away from her.” The good part then is to sit at our Lord’s feet in communion with him and to hear his word. So the term “part” there has reference to communion, not to the receiving of life, but the communion in life.

Now how is this principle of foot washing related to Christ-like love? Well, remember how Christ defined love in chapter 14:15, Jesus says, “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.” And in vs 23 Jesus answered, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our abode with him.” Then in chapter 15:10, He says, “If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love; just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love.”

So love is defined as keeping His commandments, and keeping His word, and that results in abiding in His love. Abiding means communion, fellowship, intimacy. So in like manner then, when we sin, we break His commandments, don’t we? And when we sin, then we break communion with God. We break fellowship with God. So it is important that we are cleansed from the sin which so easily besets us, as Paul said, in daily confession of our sins before God.

This principle is extrapolated by John in his later epistle; 1John 1:6-9 which says, “If we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth; but if we walk in the Light as He Himself is in the Light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

The same principle is expounded in 2Cor. 6:14 “Do not be bound together with unbelievers; for what partnership have righteousness and lawlessness, or what fellowship has light with darkness?” Partnership can be translated communion, or fellowship. When we sin, we need to have our fellowship restored. We are saved, we have been washed, but our feet need to be washed so that we might have communion restored with God.

That’s what David prayed to God after his sin with Bathsheba. David said in Psalm 51, “Hide thy face from my sins, and blot out all mine iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me. … Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation; and uphold me with thy] free spirit. And then David said, “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.” Now David was saved when he sinned against God. David was saved when he sinned with Bathsheba, when he arranged the death of her husband Uriah. But he did not have a right spirit within him, he did not have sweet fellowship with God. Because he knew that he had sinned against God. He needed confession, he needed restoration, that he might have the right communion with God again.

Finally, there is one more application that can be made from this illustration of Jesus washing the feet. It too speaks to the principle of Christ-like love. And this application is made by Jesus himself in vs. 12, Jesus said, “Do you know what I have done to you? You call Me Teacher and Lord; and you are right, for so I am. If I then, the Lord and the Teacher, washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I gave you an example that you also should do as I did to you. Truly, truly, I say to you, a slave is not greater than his master, nor is one who is sent greater than the one who sent him. If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them.”

The application is pretty simple. We are to imitate Christ. Ephesians 5:1 says “be imitators of Christ.” So if you love God, you will love your neighbor as yourself, even as Christ loved us. That was the commandment Christ gave in Matt. 22:37-39 And He said to him, ” ‘YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND.’ This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it, ‘YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.’”

Jesus is illustrating in this example how you love your neighbor. We just explained how you love God- you keep His commandments. And now this is the second commandment, you love your neighbor as yourself. You give the same regard to others as you would give to yourself. In fact, Jesus is showing that you give preference to your neighbor. The disciples knew that washing feet was needed, but they didn’t want to have to stoop to wash their neighbors feet. They didn’t want to have to humble themselves to a lower position than the other disciples. But Jesus showed that He was willing to humble Himself and become their servant, so that they might be benefited.

Paul says in Philippians 2:5-8 “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon himself the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.”

Now that is often quoted as a great doctrinal statement on the humility of Christ, but notice that Paul says “let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus.” That is exactly what Jesus is saying here in John 13. As He did for them, so we are to do for one another. The servant is not greater than the Master. And if you call Jesus your Lord, as you should, then you must do what He commands us to do. That is humble ourselves, empty ourselves of pride, of self love, and love the Lord your God with all your heart, keep your heart in constant communion with Him, don’t let any sin stand in your way of fellowship with God. And then love your neighbor the way Christ has loved you. Give up your life, your preferences, your prejudices, for the sake of your brother or sister in the Lord.

And even one more level of love is presented here. Love your enemies. Jesus gave the same treatment to Judas that He gave to the other disciples. Imagine Jesus, knowing that Judas had already plotted to betray Him, and yet Jesus washes Judas’s stinky feet. What humility. What an illustration of what Jesus preached in the Sermon on the Mount when He said, “You have heard that it was said, ‘YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR and hate your enemy.’ “But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” (Matt. 5:43-44)

And then Jesus said in vs.17, “If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them.” I could quote a lot of verses to illustrate this truth, but I will just pick one. In chapter 15:14 Jesus said, “You are My friends if you do what I command you.” That simply means that you will know the love of God. You will know the fellowship with Christ, the joy of your salvation. You will know the sweetness of communion as He abides in you, and you in Him. That is the blessing that comes from loving God and loving your neighbor. That is the blessing from being a servant to the brethren. I will leave you with one last word from Christ in Matthew 20:26, “but whoever desires to become great among you, let him be your servant. And whoever desires to be first among you, let him be your slave—just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.”

Just the other day I was driving behind a great big John Deere combine tractor which was going down the road, moving from one field to another field to harvest corn, and it reminded me of a verse of scripture, which to my mind is one of the saddest verses in the Bible. It is found in Jeremiah 8:20 which says, “Harvest is past, summer is ended, and we are not saved.”

Every year around this time it seems that this verse comes to mind. Once Labor Day passes, it is obvious around this town that the summer season has ended. The opportunity for so many people to hear the truth preached has passed. They go back to there homes and lives on the other side of the bay. Obviously, we are still out here preaching the word, but for many folks, their opportunity has passed.

And I cannot help but wonder how many of those people were saved? I wonder how many people that are here today are truly saved. I can’t tell by looking at you whether you are saved or not. You all look like fine, respectable people from here. But God doesn’t look at us as man does, as he looks on the outside, God looks at the heart. He knows those who are His. And He knows those who are not.

Today’s text is really the last time that Jesus preaches publicly to the multitudes. This is really the Jews last opportunity to respond to the gospel of Christ. John said in vs.36, “These things Jesus spoke, and He went away and hid Himself from them.”

And John goes on to explain I think, why Jesus hid Himself from them. Because as it says in vs.37; “…though He had performed so many signs before them, yet they were not believing in Him.” They had plenty of opportunity to believe. Jesus had done many tremendous signs in Judea. The seven signs that John records in HIs gospel were but a fraction of the total number of miracles that Jesus did in His ministry, and many of them had been in Judea. John 20:30-31 says, “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.” However, John says here in this passage that just a few days before His crucifixion they had not believed in Him. Harvest was past, summer was ended, and they were not saved.

It’s possible that for many people in His audience, it was simply a matter of procrastination. They believed in Him to some degree, they recognized that He was doing incredible things, that He spoke like no man had spoken, they believed that He could be the Messiah, but they had not committed themselves to Him. They had not decided to walk with Him, to follow Him, to become His disciple. Maybe someday, they might have thought. Maybe someday I will leave everything and follow Jesus. I know that I should. But right now I’m young. Right now I have a good career opportunity that I want to pursue. Right now I have a girlfriend that I really like and I don’t want to take a chance on losing her. But one day I will. One day I will become His disciple.

But I think in most cases, it was just simply a matter of unbelief. It was just a matter of rejecting the truth because it wasn’t convenient. It didn’t fit with what they wanted to believe. So when you reject the truth in favor of another way, you are an unbeliever. You are unsaved. There are not many paths to God. There is not such a thing as your understanding of God, versus my understanding of God. There is no such thing as worshipping God as you understand Him. Jesus said that God is Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth. And He also said, “I am the way, the truth and the life, no man comes to the Father except through Me.” We must believe in God as He has manifested Himself to be. Nothing less will suffice. Jesus said, You MUST worship Him in spirit and in truth.

So they rejected Jesus, and consequently they were still dead in their sins, they were still unsaved. And they would suffer the consequences of their decision.

But the fact they had not believed in Him did not affect the purpose and plan of God. God’s purpose was to manifest Himself in the person of Jesus as Hebrews 1:3 says, “He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature.” And His purpose was to redeem a chosen people from the earth to become His church, the bride and body of Christ.

So John illustrating that fact quotes from Isaiah 53, one of the most famous Messianic passages of the Old Testament. He quotes in vs.38, “LORD, WHO HAS BELIEVED OUR REPORT? AND TO WHOM HAS THE ARM OF THE LORD BEEN REVEALED?” John says that this rejection of Israel was to fulfill Isaiah’s prophecy of Isaiah 53. Now how was that prophecy fulfilled? Well, because Isaiah 53 says that the Messiah would be rejected.

For instance, in Isaiah 53:3 it says, “He was despised and forsaken of men, A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; And like one from whom men hide their face. He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.” Isaiah prophecies in this text that the Messiah would be rejected and despised. Rather than being accepted and adored as the Messiah come to save the world, He would be rejected by the world, the very ones He came to save. So this was being fulfilled in John 12. The Jews for the most part had made up their minds. The vast majority at that time rejected Him. He didn’t fit into their plans, He didn’t fit their paradigm. They rejected His message.

That’s what Isaiah is saying in that phrase “the arm of the Lord.” The arm of the Lord is the power of the Lord. And the power of God is the gospel. Romans 1:16 says, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.

Yet though the gospel was presented in power, by the very presence of God in the flesh, with all signs and wonders, they would not believe. They chose to not believe. Because to believe means so much more than just an acceptance of certain facts, it is to follow, it is to humble yourself, to recognize your need for a Savior and confess Him as your Lord. But they would not. That’s why Jesus wept just a day or two earlier when He came into Jerusalem. He wept over the city and said, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which kills the prophets, and stones them that are sent unto you; how often would I have gathered your children together, as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not!” (Luke 13:34) They would not accept Him, they would not believe.

So then John says, because they would not, they could not. That is the progression of unbelief. They would not accept Him, so eventually they could not believe. Vs. 39, “For this reason they could not believe.” Their hearts became hardened. And again John quotes from Isaiah to illustrate his point, this time quoting from Isaiah 6; “HE HAS BLINDED THEIR EYES AND HE HARDENED THEIR HEART, SO THAT THEY WOULD NOT SEE WITH THEIR EYES AND PERCEIVE WITH THEIR HEART, AND BE CONVERTED AND I HEAL THEM.”

Many theologians want to get hung up on the doctrine of election at this verse. But I don’t think that is what is being taught here. I think it is speaking of the progressive nature of unbelief. When you reject the truth repeatedly, there will come a point when you can no longer believe it. Your heart becomes hardened to the point of becoming unfeeling, insensitive to the conviction of the Holy Spirit. This is the danger of coming to church year after year and hearing the truth, but not believing it unto salvation. Eventually, your heart gets so hard that you cannot believe. Your capacity to believe is diminished every time you reject the truth. You will not believe, therefore you cannot believe. John Murray said that if the Word of God does not quicken, it will deaden. The fire that melts wax will harden clay.

Blindness and hardness does not happen without involving the will of the people. God’s hand is in the consequences of their choice. Romans 1:18-22 describes this process of rejection; “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools.” And so Paul then says three times in the following verses of that chapter, that God gave them over. God gave them over to impurity, He gave them over to degrading passions, and He gave them over to a depraved mind. He gave them over to the very things that they wanted, and as a result they became so deadened that they could not believe.

We just looked at a similar passage in Ephesians 4 in our Wednesday evening study. The same progression of unbelief resulting in a hard heart that is cursed to being unable to respond anymore. Eph. 4:17-19 “So this I say, and affirm together with the Lord, that you walk no longer just as the Gentiles also walk, in the futility of their mind, being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart; and they, having become callous, have given themselves over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness.” Their futile minds and willful ignorance results in a darkened mind, a calloused conscience, living purely for sensual pleasure, and their heart becomes so hard that it is impervious to conviction.

It is a dangerous thing to reject the truth of God. It is a dangerous thing to quench the Holy Spirit. To harden your heart against the conviction of the Holy Spirit. God is patient. But there will come a time when the light goes out. When He shuts the door. Peter said that God was patient in the days of Noah. Noah was a preacher of righteousness, he said, for 120 years as he built the ark he was preaching the judgment to come. And during that time God was patient, not willing for any to perish, but all to come to repentance. But one day God told Noah to go into the ark, and the Bible says that God shut the door. And the world was destroyed by the flood.

You don’t know how much time you have. As today our nation remembers 9-11, we should also consider that no one who went to work that morning, or got on a plane that morning, knew that would be their last day. None of us know how much time we have. None of us know when the Lord will return. But the Bible says that the world will mourn when they see Him who they rejected. They will mourn and wail that they crucified the Almighty God, the Lord and Savior whose gift of eternal life they rejected. The One to whom they would not bow.

Then John speaks of some who were sympathetic to the teaching of Christ, who believed in Him, but not unto salvation. Notice vs.42 “Nevertheless many even of the rulers believed in Him, but because of the Pharisees they were not confessing Him, for fear that they would be put out of the synagogue.” I believe that this refers to the ruling party of the Sanhedrin, the religious rulers of Israel. Some of them believed that He was the Messiah. Nicodemus is a classic example that we know of. And he came to Jesus at night, afraid of being seen by the Jews. But yet he said, ““Rabbi, we know that You have come from God as a teacher; for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him.” So there was a form of belief there, they believed that God had to be with Him in order to do the miracles that He did. But yet they are not confessing Him publicly. Now I believe the scripture indicates that Nicodemus did become a believer. But it wasn’t until His crucifixion or perhaps even later. Tradition says that he did eventually become a believer and he was persecuted by the Jews. He had been very rich and because of his faith he became a pauper. He suffered a lot of persecution in his family as a result of his eventual confession.

But I think at this stage in Jesus’s ministry, we can suppose that there were many like him. Many that had a degree of belief, but an unwillingness to confess Him as their Savior and Lord and follow Him. And we know that means that they were unsaved, because vs 43 says, “for they loved the approval of men rather than the approval of God.” To love the approval of men is a hallmark of the unsaved. 1John 2:15-16 “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. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world.”

So we can know that they weren’t Christians, because he says, they were not approved by God. That is what salvation is, being approved by God. And how are we approved by God? By our good works? By our inherent goodness? Because we go to church? Or because we believe in God? No, we are approved by God by being clothed in Christ’s righteousness alone. Made faultless to stand before the throne, though faith in Him, by the transference of Christ’s righteousness to us, and by our sins being transferred to Him. That is the only way to be approved by God. Hebrews 11:1-2 teaches us that the only way to be approved by God is through faith in Christ. It says, “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. For by it the men of old gained approval.” But John says that these rulers were not approved by God because they did not have saving faith, that confessed Jesus as Lord, and renounced the world.

And the supporting evidence of that fact is that John says they loved the world rather than the approval of God. They loved the approval of men more than the approval of God. That is not evidence of being saved. That is evidence of being lost.

That is exactly what Jesus is referring to in vs. 46. Jesus said, “I have come as Light into the world, so that everyone who believes in Me will not remain in darkness.” If you come into the light, you cannot remain in darkness. That is a characteristic of being saved. 1John 1:6-7 says, “If we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth; but if we walk in the Light as He Himself is in the Light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin.”

Believing the truth of Christ means that you leave the course of this world, you come out from the darkness of this world, and you walk in the light, even as He is in the Light. If you love the Lord, then you will reject the world. If you want approval of God, then you will not care about the approval of men.

Now in response to this rejection of truth, notice what Jesus does. He cries out in one last attempt to reach these people with the truth. One last attempt to turn them, to cause them to believe. One last invitation to believe in the truth of the gospel. And He does this by restating the great themes of the gospel which He has been preaching all along.

First of all, Jesus restates clearly His unity with the Father. He states His divinity, as being equal with God. Vs. 44 and 45, ““He who believes in Me, does not believe in Me but in Him who sent Me. He who sees Me sees Him who sent Me.” Jesus is emphasizing His unity with God the Father. He would tell Phillip later in John 14, “He who has seen Me has seen the Father.” Fundamental to our salvation is a the belief that Jesus Christ is God in the flesh. No one less than God could possibly atone for a world of sinners. So that doctrine is fundamental. You cannot be saved without believing that Jesus is One with God, He was in the beginning with God, and He was God. Without believing that you cannot be saved.

Secondly, He says “I have come as light into the world.” Jesus stressed that He is the truth, and the need man has to leave the darkness and follow Jesus as the source of light, the source of truth, resulting in life. As we said earlier, you cannot remain in darkness. You have to come out of darkness into the light of truth, and walk in the light, even as He is light.

Thirdly, He speaks of judgment to come. “And if anyone hears My words and does not believe, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world but to save the world. He who rejects Me, and does not receive My words, has that which judges him; the word that I have spoken will judge him in the last day.” The coming day of judgment is an important doctrine that needs to be emphasized today. It is out of fashion to speak of judgment. “Don’t judge!” Or “Who are you to judge?” is the watchword of a superficial Christianity.

And we are not the judge of who is saved and who is not. I said that at the beginning of my message. You all look alike to me from here. But God will judge the secrets of men’s hearts. And Jesus said that we will be judged by His words. The word of Christ is the law of God. And you will be judged by God’s law.

This is why we need a Savior. If there were no judgment to come, if there was no eternal damnation, then we would not need a Savior. Jesus came from God not to judge us, but to save us. He spoke the word of God which we will be judged by. But Jesus came to be the sacrifice for our sin. He came to take our place by offering Himself as our substitute. The judgment that was due to us has fallen upon Him. Going back to Isaiah 53 we read, “But He was pierced through for our transgressions,He was crushed for our iniquities;The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, And by His scourging we are healed. All of us like sheep have gone astray,Each of us has turned to his own way;But the LORD has caused the iniquity of us all To fall on Him.” Only by faith in Him, can we appropriate His substitutionary atonement for ourselves. To reject Him is to remain condemned.

And then He offers the invitation to salvation. “For I have not spoken on My own authority; but the Father who sent Me gave Me a command, what I should say and what I should speak. And I know that His command is everlasting life. Therefore, whatever I speak, just as the Father has told Me, so I speak.” Notice that Jesus correlates the gospel of Christ with the law of God, and the law with the commandment of God. And He says His command results in everlasting life, eternal life. The word of Christ, the gospel, is the power of God unto salvation. It is the means of believing unto eternal life. Believe His gospel and you will receive eternal life. You will be delivered from the judgment which results in death, and instead be given eternal life.

Today you have heard the words of God, the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is both the word of truth and an invitation. Paul said in Romans 10:9-10 “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.”

Today if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as the children of Israel did. Do not love the world and the approval of men as the rulers did. Do not put off this invitation to life. Today is the acceptable day of salvation. You do not know if you will have tomorrow. Today, call on the Lord while He may be found. As Isaiah 55:6-7 says, “Seek the LORD while He may be found; Call upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way And the unrighteous man his thoughts; And let him return to the LORD, And He will have compassion on him, And to our God, For He will abundantly pardon.”