Clough John Lesson 53
Perseverance and the Teaching Ministry of the Holy Spirit – John 14:22-31
Once again we reflect upon the command that is given by Christ, the new commandment, the commandment to love one another. This is a new command; the word “command” ought to be emphasized. The Lord Jesus Christ is assuming the prerogatives of the commanding Jehovah of the Old Testament and He says in addition to the corpus of the revelation of the Old Testament I add this, and this is a new command, that you love one another as I have loved you. It’s an operational command, it should characterize life from that point forward in history. Jesus Christ, when He gave this command had very definite things in mind.
When he finishes this particular discourse He says My “peace I leave unto you, My peace I give unto you; not as the world gives, give I unto you.” The word “peace” there is the Greek word that would be translated from shalom. Today in Israel shalom is just the word goodbye; in fact the English word “goodbye” comes from the word God be with you, if you look at the word “goodbye” it’s just an abbreviation of that expression, so even our word goodbye, much like the Jewish word shalom is something for welfare. And since we know the originating verse of all this passage began in John 13:34, actually it’s the content, the key verse, this new commandment is to love one another and all of the subsequent answers and questions and answers and questions that go on between Jesus and these four disciples has to do with how that new commandment will actually operate. And therefore this passage is extremely crucial in our day when evangelicals are falling by the wayside into the charismatic camp where subjectivism and where feelings are substituted for the original content of this command to love one another. And this is why I’ve reviewed and reviewed as we’ve gone into this passage so that hopefully when we finish you’ll have an idea of what this loving one another is and what it is not, and that it is not referring to some sort of evangelical goo that passes for true spirituality.
Jesus, of course, loved us in a very particular way and it requires a knowledge of His character and this is why we said Jesus Christ loved us and I’ve gone through some of the attributes to illustrate it, He loved us sovereignly, He loved us lovingly in graciousness and He loved us omnisciently and this would be the wise sense. And obviously this presupposes one understands who and what Jesus is before you can understand how in fact He really did love you. So it’s foolish to walk into a passage like this in the Bible, see the command “love one another” and immediately think one is qualified to go out and fulfill this commandment. One is not qualified to even understand the commandment, leave alone fulfill the commandment, unless he has the understanding that Christ wants us to have as He develops in this text.
So again, to review the four questions that have come up, from John 13:36 to 14:4 we have the first question that Peter asks, treated in its general sense and paraphrasing because Peter from his perspective didn’t see this big question but his question really was this: why this departure, or as we said last time, why the Church Age. The disciples are becoming agitated over the fact that Jesus Christ is going to be absent. Why were they so agitated? It isn’t just that they were going to miss Him; so many times you hear people say well, you know the disciples enjoyed Christ and they were going to miss Him. Well, of course they’d miss Him, that was one reason why they were a little upset about His leaving but that really wasn’t the heart of the problem. The heart of the problem was that in Old Testament Judaism the Messiah was never supposed to be absent once He came; that’s the heart of the problem. They had no idea of any sort of a concealed absentee Messiah, and because they didn’t it was very unnerving to have Jesus make all these Messianic claims, claim in fact to fulfill prophecy after prophecy after prophecy and then turn around and introduce this new radical idea of an absentee Messiah. Who ever heard of an absentee Messiah?
We thought, the Jews, that when Messiah came He’d stay, that He’d set up His kingdom, what’s this business about He’s going away.
So Jesus has to deal with this problem, and this going away is intimately related to the commandment, “love one another.” So Peter’s question, why this going away, why the Church Age, is answered by Jesus Christ by saying to build the New Jerusalem. That is, to build phase three of God’s plan of salvation or glorification. Jesus Christ has got to accomplish this ultimate act and the Church Age is the means and we do not know exactly this is operating. How on earth somebody trusting in Christ on planet earth and how somebody being sanctified would inch further along on planet earth has anything to do with another spot in the universe, where God’s throne room is, we do not know. But all we do know, that at the end of history, the Apostle John, looking at his preview, saw the heavenly Jerusalem coming toward planet earth, coming out of the other part of the universe, and this distance creation of New Jerusalem was somehow linked in a one to one relationship between what spiritually was happening on planet earth with the body of Christ. Jesus Christ, when He gives Peter this reply, gives us as we have applied His answer to the new commandment, a reason for loving one another, an insight as to why this was a new commandment given. And the answer is because we’re going to live together for all eternity in the New Jerusalem. So just think of whose going to be your roommate forever.
The next question that was asked, again John reports all the doctrine in a very interesting way, in a dialogue. He’s not making it up, it actually happened, but John remembers selectively portions of what happened and arranges his material to present the truth. So Thomas is the next man and he asks a question. We might paraphrase Thomas’ question: where does all this lead? What’s the ultimate end? Where’s it all going to. You know you talk about this business, all of a sudden now we discover the Messiah isn’t going to be present, now we discover He’s going to go away some place, we’ve got to conceive of a concealed absentee Christ, now what’s going on. Then You tell me we’ve got to have a New Jerusalem. What’s the purpose of all these details? And this is the famous passage, “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no man comes unto the Father, but by Me.” “Unto the Father,” that’s the ultimate purpose; “Unto the Father,” man in eternal fellowship with God, that is the ultimate purpose of history, that God is moving history toward that goal.
Now just that you don’t take that too quickly, we have a little pause here to consider something to chew on, and you’ll never get to the end of this answer because it’s one of those “what ifs” but let’s just imagine something. Let’s just imagine history didn’t go the way it went. Let’s suppose God created, put Adam and Eve in the Garden, and there they are, and He gave them the command. Adam and Eve could have children and so they propagate a vast human race that is unfallen. Now that vast human race that would be so propagated, including Adam and Eve themselves, would be unfallen and not sinful, and therefore not excluded from God on the basis of sin. Yet the Bible would insist they are not yet ready to dwell with God for all eternity. Mankind has to pass some sort of a spiritual qualification to come into the very presence of God. Now we say in a way Adam and Eve lived in the presence of God before the fall, but not like we will in eternity future. There’s a difference.
When Adam and Eve lived in the Garden before the fall and Jesus Christ, or God the Son came walking in that Garden to discuss issues with them, teach them, for it was Jesus who taught the human race language, when Jesus taught man language and walked in the Garden Jesus was communicating with them but apparently in a diminished semi-glorified state compared to the glory that will one day be those who dwell in the eternal Jerusalem. And apparently, although Scriptures don’t tell us directly, we can infer it theologically, that it’s necessary that man have a time in which his volition will be tested, a time during which he will have to face the responsible decision, under pressure of an option: do you or do you not submit to My authority. Do or do you not wish to live in My presence forever, for God has created man with volitional responsibility and He doesn’t coerce. We’re not like rocks that are going to be in the streets of Jerusalem that are just there because God said there, I create you and you’re going to be there and people are going to walk all over you and that’s your job; you have no choice in the matter, I create you. But that isn’t the way He operates with men; men made in God’s image have to choose their way and so God in eternity future wants men who have faced a choice and have made the choice. And so when Adam and Eve made a negative choice, of course, God then in grace came back and enabled through the cross to come back and to positively become loyal to His Word.
But the emphasis is always upon qualifying to be in that presence of God forever. So that second question that Thomas asked, where does it all lead, that’s a question you’ve asked. You’ve asked the same thing Thomas has asked, you’ve asked it a hundred times if you’ve asked it once, where are all these details in my Christian life leading? What is the meaning of all this pressure, what is the problem here? Why do we have this, this, this, this, this, this, this, why does history go on this way. The one answer that Christ would give if He could stand here and reply to your question tonight would be the same one He gave Thomas, “unto the Father,” I am the way and “no man comes to the Father,” that’s it, “comes to the Father” and dwell in the presence of God forever. That is man’s ultimate goal; notice man’s ultimate goal is not to be at peace with other men. That’s going to be true but that’s not the highest goal in history. That’s the highest goal the humanist can think of; that’s the highest goal that the Marxist revolutionary can think of but it’s not the highest goal possible. The highest goal possible is what the Christian thinks of and that is man living forever in the presence of God Himself; nothing less will satisfy the true Christian.
Therefore that leads us to an application of the new commandment. Thomas’ question and Jesus answer gives us a chance to add something; that commandment by the first answer to the first question is well one reason to love one another is that you’re going to live forever together, but another reason is because the ultimate environment in which you will live if you have personally trusted in Christ, the ultimate environment in which you will live will be an environment in which God loves that other person dwelling next door and if you don’t love the person dwelling next door you will be out of harmony with God Himself and so can you then dwell in the presence for all eternity of a God who is actively loving the person that you do not love? How can one be at harmony with a loving God of that type unless one therefore is also loving what that God is loving. So that’s the second application, amplification and added illumination to this new commandment, “love one another as I have loved you.” All of this, this magnificent cosmic reason sing that is going on here with the disciples is a backdrop for that commandment. It’s not some trivial evangelical [can’t understand word], it’s something far more important than this, far more theological, far more deep doctrinally.
Now we come to that third question, Philip asked, John 14:8-21. Philip asked a third question that men have asked down through time. When Philip asked, well, just “show us the Father, it will suffice,” and as we pointed out what Philip was asking Jesus to do was cause a theophany, that is, an appearance of God in history so you could physically stand there with your little instamatic camera and take His picture. That’s what Philip was asking, that we can actually see God physically as we will one day see Him physically. So Philip asked, in essence, can we experience the eternal future now? Can we get a glimpse of eternity future right here, right now in the present moment? That’s what Philip said, that’s what He wanted, after all, if we are going to go into this absentee Messiah bit I want some assurance that I’m going to have what He’s getting out there in the future, I’d like a little installment right now. And Jesus says yes, you can have that eternal future relationship with God now but you have to get it in a very new way, Philip. You can’t get it by taking a pill, getting high, having a vision of God, nor can you get it by having some sort of miracle happen, I flick my magic wand and all of a sudden produce Mount Sinai. That’s not how to get it either. The answer that Jesus gives tells us something about why we’ve got 1900 years delay in time.
Now you often wonder, well gosh, it seems like God was working along quite regularly in the Old Testament, why this fantastically long delay in history. It’s as though the clock of time in history has stopped and nothing’s gone on, really, actively in history for 1900 years. Why is this? What Jesus says is that we can perceive God now spiritually as well as we will ever perceive Him spiritually. Now watch this; we’ll run back over this answer. God can be perceived physically in a theophany. That’s a God-appearance. And physically if He showed up in a theophany you could take His picture, draw it and so on, like the book of Daniel, Isaiah 6, Revelation 21:22. But God says that that’s not the highest way to see Him and so therefore what God does in answer to Philip’s question is He says Philip, you say you want to know Me. Now Philip, you’re going to have to believe that I have your best interests at heart because I’m going to make a deal with you Philip, in fact, I’m going to make a deal with the entire human race, that for 1900 years I will not give a theophany, I will not show Myself physically, the human race will have to pass through century upon century upon century of dead revelatory silence. I will not speak again until, of course, the Second Advent.
And during this long, long era of the silence of God, when there’s no active physical revelation occurring, Philip, you’re going to train yourself and millions and millions of believers are going to train themselves to know me spiritually because I deliberately keep you from knowing me physically. I have deliberately structured history that way so you can’t know Me physically. You are not going to be able to see the New Jerusalem with your eyes, you’re not going to be able to touch it, you’re not going to be able to enjoy the resurrection body like I am going to shortly. And so Jesus says to Philip therefore it will force you, it will force you to come to know Me spiritually as you should. Then when at last there are millions and millions of men and women who know Me spiritually I will show Myself physically. But you see, Philip, if I show Myself to you physically now, before you are spiritually qualified, you can look at Me and still never perceive because there are things about My character that can’t be perceived physically and therefore you’re going to misinterpret a theophany. I can’t give you, Jesus is in fact saying to Philip, I can’t give you a basic theophany at the moment because you’re not ready for it. And this is why in verses 9-11 Jesus says to him I’ve been with you, and you who have seen Me have seen the Father. Now they didn’t see a theophany.
The Lord Jesus Christ was God and He was man, we call that His theanthropic person or the doctrine of the hypostatic union. Jesus Christ was undiminished deity and true humanity but although He was this His deity, His divine nature, was diminished from physical appearance. Only at one point in the life of Christ did He all of a sudden show to the disciples what He looked like. You remember, it was on the Mount of Transfiguration and suddenly they were upon this mountain and He changed character. All of a sudden there was that glory that we were speaking about that occurred in the Old Testament, that was the God of glory that Stephen was talking about. And so we have God’s nature, and this is another doctrine we will study, kenosis, God’s nature was shielded. The best illustration I can think of is a lampshade. The bulb is burning, the glory is there, Jesus is undiminished, the bulb is the same with the lampshade on as with the lampshade off, but during His incarnation Christ kept His divine nature encapsulated in this lamp shade so that it was not physically observed in its glowing full glory sense, except that one time.
John, the Apostle, in the book of Revelation, on the island of Patmos, looks around, he hears this vast noise, he turns around and he sees Christ as he never saw Him before except that day on the Mount of Transfiguration because when John sees Jesus Christ in Revelation 1 he sees Him with the lampshade off. And suddenly they realize the glorious person of Christ as full God as well as true humanity. But during the days of His incarnation and Jesus is talking about that right here, you have seen Me, Philip, you have seen the Father. In other words, Philip, I have contracted My glory down to manageable proportions so that it doesn’t overpower you, and as it were I turned the bulbage down so you can handle it and so you can come to know Me before the sudden glare of My full deity blinds you.
And so this is why in John 14:10-11 Jesus says Philip, there is a way to know Me properly, and the way to know Me properly is to know Me by what I have done, My life, My words and My works. Now the words and the works that Jesus Christ has done are available to us today in only one place—the New Testament. So the only place that you can come to know Jesus Christ today according to these verses, through His words and His works, are the report and the picture of those words and works in the pages of the New Testament. You are not going to come to know Christ by going in your closet and thinking about Him. And people who do this, this mystical experience, are actually quite arrogant people because they think that they are so sinless, that their imagination is so untainted by their depraved sin nature, that whatever they dream up in the closet automatically is the illumination of the Holy Spirit, that they are so important that God is going to give them direct revelation when He has gone to all the bother of encapsulating what He wanted in the canon of the New Testament Scripture.
So therefore Jesus Christ says to you and He says to me, do you want to know God as you will know Him in the future? What He in fact challenges us is that we know Him now in history spiritually as we will know Him forever. We will have added data in the sense that all of a sudden we have the physical aurora and all of a sudden you’ll be able to see Him but the person that you will see is the One you ought to be knowing now through the pages of Scripture. As the details work out hour by hour in your life and you put them together and it falls together in a Scriptural pattern and you pray and sometimes you don’t get answers and sometimes you do, but there’s a battle that you’re actively going on with a person and you have this sense of confidence that in fact when you do pray there is One listening and that He is actively answering prayer, and you’ve developed in your own mind slowly as you work spiritually and grow spiritually, you have an inner image of what this person is like. What Jesus is saying here, as you Christian in history get to know Me through the pages of the New Testament, as My Spirit teaches you, through these pages, you’ll recognize Me and when I meet you in eternity I won’t be strange to you, you’ll have that feeling, I’ve met you before, and where have I met you? In the pages of Scripture. I will be the same person that you’re studying here.
So in John 14:12-15 He goes on and expands this, and He says, “…greater works than these shall the believer in Me do,” now why does He add that, because we’re still on the subject of knowing Him in history. And so how are men across the face of the earth going to come to know this absentee Messiah. Only one way; as the disciples fan out and do these greater works. What are the greater works? Taking the content of the New Testament out into the world, demonstrating it by life and by lip, training one’s self in the doctrines and impressing it upon the faith of men on every continent of the world. Those are the greater works and that’s why tied to this question of knowing, Philip, you’re going to be able to know Me and men, millions and millions of men on other continents are going to come to know Me quite intimately and they’re never going to see Me once physically, there will be no theophany for centuries to come, yet it can be said that the men who lived 300 AD, 500 AD, 1000 AD, 1500 AD, during the days of the Reformation, 1700 AD during the days of the Puritans, 1800s, even in the 1900s, people can know Me, Philip, and they will know Me spiritually as well as they could know Me if I were physically present. This is the stupendous claim that is being made here and it’s a very sobering claim because what this does, it throws back into the teeth against those people who say that the Word of God is boring to me. They are in effect, in the light of this passage, confessing that Christ Himself is of no concern.
You see, Jesus is testing the volition of man at this time in history because if Jesus walked in here physically there’s be the issue of His physical appearance that would overwhelm people and they’d start reacting to just His physical appearance. And then suppose Jesus pulled a fast one and somehow He could be present here spiritually so His physical appearance would not over-awe people and there’d be a genuine response on the part of man. Suppose He did it that way; then wouldn’t He secure a real response. For example, suppose a man in a corporation is a well-known executive of that corporation and down on the first floor of this company there is a common every day laborer, he’s working on the production line and they make certain comments about he has certain opinions about the executive. You can just think in your imagination, if that executive of that company wanted an honest opinion of what this person thought of him would he go down there as executive, or would he come down in some semi-disguised way? Obviously he would come down in some semi-disguised form because it would only be in that form that He could solicit a genuine response, unintimidated response toward who he was.
Now that’s the mystery of the 1900 years of the silence of God. Jesus Christ is approaching you, He is approaching Me, He is approaching the entire human race in absentee form because He wants to secure our genuine response. He doesn’t come as the glorious Messiah, precisely because He wants us to honestly respond to Him. And so men can say well, huh, I’m bored with this, this doesn’t make any sense to me, I could care less, I could give a damn for that kind of … that’s great because Jesus that’s your real honest view of My person and I’m glad that you have this honest response to My person because now it’s all clear; you can’t argue that I’ve intimidated you, I’ve twisted your arm, I’ve suddenly overshadowed you, I have let you respond to Me in a genuine way.
So the answer to Philip goes on and this is
why in John 14:17 He mentions “the Spirit of truth.” Now the Spirit of truth is mentioned in the
context because it’s going to be the Spirit of truth that causes this knowing
process to occur. The Spirit of truth is
going to be the One who makes Christ real to people today. He’s the main teacher that is involved. So much then for Philip’s answer.
How do we apply the answer Jesus said; again, Philip’s question, Lord can we enjoy that future spiritual relationship with You now? Jesus says yes but you can’t enjoy it if I overpower you physically. The only way you can come to know Me is an unintimidated environment where you’re free to let it all hang out about what you really think about Me and then you’ll come to know Me and you’ll come to know Me and you’ll come to know Me through the report of My words and My works as those are carried on and the Spirit of truth teaches you.
Application to the command that started the whole passage: what about loving one another? During this absentee period the emphasis is upon what draws those people together who are coming to know the absentee Christ. Here’s a believer, here’s a believer; here’s Jesus Christ. Now this believer, believer number one, believer number two, believer number one is getting to know Christ in a spiritual way; believer number two is getting to know Christ in a spiritual way. Now as these two believers are getting to know Jesus Christ what must be happening to them in their relationship to one another? Obviously as they converge toward Christ they’re going to have to be converging toward each other and that’s another of the profound reasons why Jesus says love one another as I have loved you. If this great process of coming to know the Lord is really occurring in history believers have to be drawn together to the common point, like spokes of the wheel to the hub and the hub is the Lord Jesus Christ.
Now we come to the fourth and last question, Judas who is not Iscariot, John 14:22 and following.
Judas’ question follows quickly on the footsteps of Philip’s question. “Judas saith unto Him, not Iscariot, Lord, how is it that You are going to show Yourself then [wilt manifest] unto us, and not unto the world? [23] Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love Me, he will keep My words: and My Father will love him, and We will come unto him, and make our abode with him.
24 He that loves Me not keeps not My sayings: and the word which ye hear is not Mine, but the Father’s which sent Me. [25] These things have I spoken unto you, being yet present with you.”
So we have then the question of Judas, who is not Iscariot, we don’t really know his last name though there are intimations from this from other portions of Scripture. Let’s paraphrase Judas’ question to get it in a form that we can use. Judas is saying, how can an absentee Messiah become known selectively? What is it about this knowing process that operates so selectively that only believers will know Him? Why is it that the non-believer who operates in the world, why can’t he come to know Jesus? Why is it that only those who are born again can come to know Jesus? Why is the knowledge of the absentee Messiah selective?
Now Jesus’ answer, verse 22, notice in verse 22 how he paraphrases a word of verse 21, look at the end of verse 21, watch how it ends, “I will love him, and I will show Myself to him,” and the word “show” in verse 22 is identical to it and obviously what this Judas is asking about is… he’s not quite clear yet that it’s a spiritual kind of knowing. He’s still thinking in terms of gosh, if the Messiah is going to show up, the only kind of Messiah show-up deal that he can think of is what he’s learned out of the Old Testament. Now when Messiah shows up in the Old Testament it’s a glow and the stars start falling in and the end of the world occurs, certainly everybody is going to know that Messiah is there. So he’s still struggling with how are we going to know and nobody else know; what’s the secret deal about all this. Now this is when Christ ties his knowledge together with the canon of Scripture; the intimacy of the knowledge of Christ and the canon of Scripture come almost one to one right here.
Notice what He does: [John 14:23] “Jesus answered, and said unto him, If” third class, maybe it is so and maybe it won’t be so, “If there is a man who is loving Me, he will keep My words, and My Father will love him, and We will come unto him, and make our abode with Him.” Now the word “love” and “keep” are in present tense, it’s a continuous type of action and there in verse 23 Jesus Christ is simply reiterating what we learned about the aim of sanctification which was loyalty. And what was loyalty? Loyalty to what He told us to do, loyalty to His will. And so here there’s nothing new about this particular statement; Jesus says just if you love Me, you’ll be loyal to Me, and you’re going to show your loyalty to Me by how well you conform to what I told you to do, if you will keep and hold to My words. Jesus says when that starts, when that process works, when the moral, spiritual bowing of the knee to Christ, to the authority of the Word happens, lo and behold, He says to Judas, you will come to know Me better. And so contrary to every philosophic system on the face of this planet that men have ever thought up to this time, Jesus grounds what we call epistemology or the science of knowing on the foundation of ethics or the study of what is right and what is wrong. Jesus says the knowing process goes back to your moral direction.
So the answer to Judas: the reason Judas, that only some men are going to know Me is because only some men are morally qualified to know me; I do not cast My pearls before pigs and I am not going to make Myself known to pigs and dogs, I am going to make Myself known to those members of the human race who really want Me and want Me in an unintimidated atmosphere, like the workers on the assembly line when the executive comes down. And they really want to know, then the executive might tell them, do you know who I really am, kind of like Joseph and his brothers. Joseph wanted to see what his brother’s attitude was and when Joseph saw that his brother’s attitude was genuine then he said okay guys, come closer and look at my face and see who I really am. And so this is the same game that Jesus is doing, He is seeing how we respond.
So He says “If a man has loved Me, he will keep My words;” and then “We,” that is the First and Second Persons of the Trinity, “We will come unto him and make our abode with him.” Now that is a very striking word because the very word used here for “abode” is used somewhere else in the context; it is used back in verse 2, it’s the word for mansions. It’s the very word that was used back there when He was saying I am going to prepare mansions for you to dwell in. Now here He takes this same word, He turns around and He says now look guys, He says as you, in positive volition respond to what My Word tells you to do, you are going to find Me and My Father dwelling in you, or we should say “with you” to be accurate to the Greek prepositions; this is with the Church, the Father and Christ, Me, are going to be with the Church. “Where two or three are gathered together in My name there I shall be,” the Father and I will be with you in history. And we make our mansion with you.
Now isn’t this interesting? During the time of the absentee Messiah, during these 19 long centuries you’ve got two opposite programs going on. In heaven you’ve got God making rooms for us; on earth you’ve got God making Himself room in us. One is earthly, one is what the Holy Spirit is doing; in some way in which we cannot describe any better than doing it the way the Scripture is describing it, but somehow every person who accepts Christ provides room for the dwelling of the Father and the Son, and yet at the same time, when that’s happening in heaven a room is being made for that person. It’s reciprocal. And this is what has led thinkers down through the centuries of the Church to reason like this, and this is just a speculation, a tempting one but remember this is not the Word of God, this is just a speculation, but down through the centuries theologians have reasoned that as people trust in Christ there is an angelic council, we know that, that runs the universe. On that angelic council are a group of evil angels that are Satan’s group, one-third of it actually, and as people trust in Christ one of these angels is bumped out legally, he is removed and this person has a place on the council. Another one, bumped out, removed, and so as the process continues in the throne room of God there are drastic legal changes that are occurring every time someone trusts in Christ. Every time sanctification begins to move there’s an intimacy of what’s going on in the throne room with what’s going on down here on earth. The Bible doesn’t go into all the details, it just makes these very tantalizing hints.
By the way, what does “keeping His words” mean? First of all it means digging constantly in the Old Testament and the New Testament. It does not mean running a church program until you’re ready to drop. It does not mean visiting everyone’s house 8 days a week so you can report back a glowing testimony of how many people you spoke with last week. It does not mean how many offices you have held in the church. It does not mean a number of other things that apparently are frequently confused with true spirituality. The keeping of Jesus’ commandments begins with your faithful taking in of the Word. That means on your own, there will be times when you can’t get around the teaching of the Word and you’re going to have to sort it out yourself and you’d better be prepared when that time comes to at least have some sort of a framework so you can sort it out for yourself, or you’re just wasting your time. But that’s where it all starts; it doesn’t start with frothing at the mouth and dedicating your life. Who wants to dedicate their life when they don’t even know what the issue is. Besides, does Jesus wanted us to dedicate our lives when we’re all screwed up? We’re not going to be dedicating… what dedication is that?
So the point is that you have to start taking in the Word of God and doing it faithfully so that you can be prepared some day to dedicate your life and then go on, and obviously as you learn more of the Word and it gels with you so you can honestly say that I believe it and you’re not secretly going oh-oh, if so and so comes up I know that they’re going to have an argument and I know that even though I can’t answer it I just know that that just shatters the core of my faith. Now you’re never going to ever be able to answer all the arguments. That’s not what we’re saying. But if you have that gnawing fear on the inside that tells you that basically there is a flaw in your faith and you really are not sure that it’s true, you haven’t believed yet. You just are not trusting. Now don’t work it up, it just has to come, as God to open your eyes as you study the text some more and some more and some more and some more. That’s the only way it’s ever going to come. You don’t go to a witch doctor and drum it up, or go through some hymn or something, oh, I’m so confident, and then you get out on the curb and fall flat on your face. That’s not the way to do it and it’s not the way to do it to go to prayer meetings where you all hold hands and talk about Jesus and all the rest of it. That doesn’t work it up. There’s only one way to do this and that is to constantly absorb what Christ has told you in His own words, and then as you do this you submit to it by faith you begin to operate, you begin to say hey, look at this principle, this principle works in my marriage, this principle works in the home, I see God’s will here, I see God’s will over here, I don’t know what it is here, I don’t know what it is here but at least I know what it is here and I’m going to do it. And as you begin to respond by faith to what He tells you is right through His Word then you find growth occurs; that’s keeping His Word.
Now Jesus says there’s obviously going to be two types of people in the world and so in John 14:24 he has to deal with the other kind, hopefully we’re not the other kind. “He that loves Me not keeps not My sayings,” you see in both verses 23-24 there’s no separation between loving the Lord and loving the Word. It is identical, there is none of this business, oh, you can get too fat, don’t stay in the Word too much; this is what always happens, it happens when you come into a Bible teaching church, we’ve had people walk in Lubbock Bible Church and they’ve realized their need for the teaching of the Word of God and so they start taking in the Word of God and then they get this harassment from their friends, their old Christian crowd, oh, you’d better be careful, you’re getting too much of the Word. What that is, is a theme song of the lazy crowd, and really they’re jealous of you and they can’t stand you to know something they don’t, and so they’re putting the pressure on for you to stop it because you’re embarrassing them; it’s very subtle form but it’s always in such pious words that you often fall for it, you often think what they’re saying is right. And again, you’re wrong. It’s the Word of God that’s the issue. So here we find the other side, identifying themselves by what? Jesus isn’t going to be here physically; for 1900 years there is no physical Jesus; minus the presence of God in a physical sense. It’s not happening. And so therefore what is present down here in the flow of history? There’s only one thing, it is the Word of God being made known through the Church of born again people who are submitting their lives to the Word of God and so on, the teaching.
Now, since that’s the only way, the only thing that is visible, therefore what Jesus is saying, your attitude to this is your attitude to this; that’s the lesson for 1900 years. If you love Me you’ll respond to the New Testament, if you don’t, bag it, forget it, don’t put on the façade, don’t pretend, just drop it and just go on and be about your merry business. But don’t pretend; your attitude is your attitude to the Word.
Now He tells us that there are going to be these who phase out,
those people who may at one time apparently believed and yet sometimes they
phase out. Well, this has been a theme
that we’ve seen and now is probably as good a time as any to, since we are
getting toward the end of John, to go back and look a chain series of
references in the Gospel of John so we’ll start in John 2:23, and as we look
through this chain notice the theme of the author. Constantly he has warned us
about this, constantly he has pointed out that there will be people who at
first glance appear to respond to the Word but do not endure. John 2:23-24, “When Jesus was in
John 6:64, as Jesus in the middle of that disaster that day when He blew the whole popularity of His movement, deliberately, it looked like from the human point of view a mistake. “But there are some of you that believe not. For Jesus knew form the beginning who they were that believed not, and who should betray Him.” So Jesus knows, He looks over the crowd and He sees hundreds of people responding, apparently, and He’s not impressed; numbers don’t impress Him because He looks into the heart and He sees, hun-uh, you people put on all the outward façade, but you do not believe on Me.
John 8:31, this, by the way, will explain to you, those of you who have worked in Christian circles for a while, why it is you have this (quote) “conversion experience,” (end quote), and you never see these people around again, and by seeing them around again I don’t mean necessarily in your own local church, I mean just any local church, I mean you just never see them, they just phase out. In verse 31, “Then said Jesus to those Jews who believed on Him,” notice the addressees in verse 31, they are Jews who apparently did believe on Him. Now drop down to John 8:44-45 and look what He says to them. “Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks of his own; for he is a liar, and the father of it. [45] And because I tell you the truth, ye really don’t believe.” So again we have this very discomforting theme, what? These Jews believed it and He turns around and says “you’re of your father, the devil.” Why is Jesus so feisty? Why is He so gruff and irritable to people who have apparently believed? Because He looks with omniscience into their heart and He sees they haven’t believed, it’s just an outward pseudo faith.
In John 12:42, it’s questionable here, these people are apparently genuine believers but again, notice John points out he’s uncomfortable with this kind of belief; even though these people here apparently are true believers. “Nevertheless, among the chief rulers many also believed but because of the Pharisees they did not confess him, lest they should be put out of the synagogue. [43] For they loved the praise of men more than the praise of God.” Notice the word “love,” they “loved the praise of men.” So there’s something wrong with their faith.
Finally one other reference, turn to 1 John 2:19, the last in this series of verse references to this underlying theme of John. John here is speaking about antichrists, but he says these particular antichrists have a very interesting kind of history to them. They’re a strange kind of people. “They went out from us,” do you know what that means? These antichrists are people who were formerly identified as Christians, they professed publicly to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and were admitted to the church with baptism. “They went out from us,” but says John, “they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us; but they went out, that it might be made clear that they were not all of us.” In other words, says John, the people who keep not His commandments, they’ll show their flag eventually. John is a great believer in the purifying ministry of the Church, that as time goes on the pseudo believers will let it all hang out and it will become visible to all and eventually under pressure they will leave the ranks of the Christian faith.
Turn back and we’ll finish up Jesus’ answer to Judas. Basically stated verse 23-24 is teaching the doctrine of perseverance, the perseverance of the elect, the perseverance of those who have truly believed, who have been regenerated, they because of Christ’ intercession and grace, will persevere, they won’t be in the category of verse 24.
Now he says something about “My sayings,” and here Jesus begins to develop for us the doctrine of the New Testament itself. What is the New Testament part of your Bible. Here’s one of the central passages in the New Testament about the New Testament. “He that loves me does not keep My sayings, and the word which you hear is not Mine, but the Father’s, who sent Me.” So Jesus identifies the words we read right here on this page with His Father in heaven. These are not just words that came out of His humanity, they are words out of His deity, out of the Triunity of God Himself.
Then He says, [John
We’re going to use two examples out of John’s Gospel to explain what
is this teaching ministry of the Holy Spirit.
It means two things and these two things were the sources, historically,
of the New Testament. One is what we
will call direct memory. The memory of the apostles was supernaturally worked
upon by the Holy Spirit so that years later when they went to preach and then
to write their memory was very clear, I remember this, I remember that, I
remember this, and it was out of that supernaturally revived memory that the
New Testament came. Let me give an
example of this; turn to John
In John 2:22, “Therefore, when He was risen from the dead, His disciples remembered that He had said this unto them; and they believed the [Old Testament] Scripture,” see that? Verse 22 is an editorial remark that John put in there to tell us, to tell you, he’s trying to tell us, believer, this is how your Bible came to be. How did it come? Because after it was all over, all of a sudden we gathered around and we began to remember this and we remembered this, and we remembered this, and we started it writing it; that was the basis of the New Testament. But John also means something else beyond just straight memory. Besides direct memory John means that the Holy Spirit is going to interpret that memory; it will not just be straight memory.
John 2:17, remember the cleansing of the temple, glorious scene that’s never pictured by artists in Sunday School literature, always have Jesus holding a sweet little lamb, and they never have Him walking in a temple with a rope and [can’t understand word] someone, that’s what He did, He hit people, the gentle Jesus. And verse 17, As the disciples reflected on this temple incident, where He went in there and… by the way, these were goons of Caiaphas’ little mafia operation, the organized syndicate of the day, Jesus cleaned them out single-handedly. It gives you an idea that He wasn’t some little fairy. In verse 17, [And His disciples remembered that it was written, The zeal of thine house has eaten Me up.”] after the disciples reflected upon this thing, they suddenly remember that it had been written in the Old Testament. Now this word “remember” in verse 17 isn’t referring to the fact He said it was written in the Old Testament; verse 17 is referring to the fact that they read the Old Testament and they made the link. So this is different from verse 22; verse 22 is saying straight memory; verse 17 is saying no, that’s not what we’re talking about here, what we’re talking about is…say we went together, we had a Bible study and we were reading Psalms, and gee, the Apostle John would read this book of Psalms and he’d look over this Psalm and he’d get down there, “the zeal of thine house has eaten me up,” that’s talking about Messiah, that’s what happened that day in the temple. So John the Apostle’s eyes were opened to the Old Testament text, he took the data of Christ’s life and he plugged them together and out of it came the insights of the New Testament. That’s what we mean by point two, interpreted memory.
Coming back to our passage stop at John
Let’s finish out His answer to Judas, not Iscariot. John 14:27-31 is a fast conclusion, he sums it together with a typical goodbye. That phrase that we often quote, verse 27, “Peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto you,” it’s just a goodbye, the word “peace” can be translated “my goodbye I leave with you,” but like always John the Apostle takes a word that is so common, so used that we never even think of it and he says this is the real goodbye. Remember the English word “goodbye” comes from God be with you, it’s the translation of the Hebrew word shalom, it is the word for “peace.” It doesn’t mean peace in the usual hippie way; this word means peace, shalom, it’s translated also welfare. So Jesus takes the everyday goodbye, I’ll see you around, and He transforms that goodbye into a real goodbye and that’s what this last phrase is all about. What is a goodbye? This is a classic model of a proper goodbye expanded with loads of divine viewpoint.
“Peace I leave with you,” “My goodbye I leave with you, My goodbye I give to you: not as the world gives, do I give it to you.” Now what that means is how does the world give us anything? He’s talking in context about this peace, the goodbye. The world always imbeds happiness in circumstances. Jesus is saying the goodbye I’m giving you is not rooted in this moment. You see, when the world gives you a goodbye you always think of that last moment, you said goodbye to loved ones, maybe it’s somebody going off to college, in the military, sometimes tragically it’s in the military and they never see them again. Many a woman has lived in this country never knowing whether she was a wife or a widow after the Vietnam War. Many of these women have had to live with their memories of the last time they said goodbye to their husband. And they’ve never seen him again; now they’ve had to live with that year after year after year; maybe one remembers him walking out the front door, kissing him goodbye, walking down the sidewalk and that was the last time she ever saw him. Now that’s how the world gives a goodbye; it’s rooted forever to that past moment and the only way that woman can give comfort to herself is think back and revisit her memory that day that her husband left her and walked down and said goodbye. That’s how the world gives its goodbye.
But Jesus says no, My goodbye isn’t going to be like that. You people don’t have to think of this day, this upper room discourse when I said My goodbye, it’s going to be different. Now He explains. “My peace I leave with you, but I’m not going to give it to you as the world. Stop letting your heart be troubled, and don’t let it ever be afraid.” How is this connected with the theme? Very simple, the kind of goodbye that Jesus is going to give, or is in the process of giving, is the kind of goodbye that stays with the disciples as a present thing. It’s not a memory just of the past, it’s a present, ever-present thing, the Spirit of truth is going to be here and He’s going to make that goodbye always present with you. I’m going to be with you through the Comforter. So it’s a different kind of goodbye, and He says here, “Let not your heart be troubled,” “Stop letting it be troubled, and don’t let it be afraid.” Why? You can’t love when you’re afraid.
It’s amazing to me when in early days of counseling I began to do a word study on the word “love” and “fear.” I started on the word “fear,” and it all of a sudden dawned on me that in the Bible the opposite of the word fear is not be courageous; now in our normal language we think of the opposite of fear to be courage but you know in the Bible it’s not that way. In the Scriptures the opposite of being afraid is love. Now that should cause somebody to bend their mind a little bit; how can love be the opposite of fear? For the simple reason that love builds out of a base of confidence. John says, 1 John 4:18, “Perfect love casts out fear.” Why? Because fear is basically my concern about my own destiny, it’s a self-centeredness. People who are afraid…now I’m not talking about walking out there having respect for cars or something like that, I’m talking about this morbid fear that many people torture themselves with, fear of what’s going to happen tomorrow, fear of what someone is going to think of them, fear of what you’re going to do if you happen to meet five people at the same time, fear of something else. Look, all that is is you’re just worried about yourself. And if you would concentrate on the other people that fear wouldn’t be there and you could find you could be genuinely concerned for those people. The love and the fear are opposites and they cancel each other, they fight each other, and you cannot love anyone while you are afraid. A person who is jumpy, who is nervous, who can’t settle down, is not a lover of anything; they are a lover of themselves. Now a person who can be a real lover is somebody who is stable, who has peace, who has confidence. That’s what Christ is saying. Obviously if you’re going to love one another you can’t be afraid.
And do you know this is one of those rare times in the New Testament
where this is a second class if, if and you don’t. At the end of this entire conversation He
says you guys, you don’t love Me, because if you did you would have that joy
right now, knowing that I go to be with My Father; My trial is over. See what He’s done, He’s exposed the
selfishness of fear. These disciples
don’t care about the Lord, they care about themselves and what’s going to
happen? They’re going to walk down the
He
concludes, “…My Father is greater than I,” this is not denying the Trinity, it
gets into the hypostatic union and I’ll concentrate on that some other
time. John
And He will cross the Valley of Kidron, give one more discourse and then be arrested.
Father, we thank You….