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John 14:15-27
This evening we will look at one of
the richest passages in the Bible about the Triune God. About His relationships
amongst Himself, and about our relationship to Him. We’re looking at John
14 this evening and I hope that as we do so it’ll remove from our our
thinking, and hopefully remove from our lives, a lot of the excess
baggage that often gets bound up in the Christian life.
The Christian life is NOT a set of
ethical guidelines.
The Christian life is NOT a world-view to inform your thinking.
The Christian life is NOT a social program.
The Christian life is NOT a spiritual crutch.
The Christian life is NOT the sum total of church events.
The Christian life is NOT ritual. It is NOT charity, it is NOT morality
The Christian life is NOT religion.
The Christian life IS a dynamic and
personal relationship with the Living God. That is what it is to be a
Christian. It is to be swept up into the life of love shared from all
eternity between the Three Persons. That is the Christian life. The
normal Christian life is a life lived in the loving communion of the
Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Let’s hear the reading:
[READING]
Sermon
In the movies - death bed scenes are
always very tragic. The light is going out on a brilliant life. And with
the last few lung-fulls of air, the hero tries to offer some hope for the
grieving friends and family around. Usually they say something like “Make
sure Jimmy takes care of the family business.” They try to leave some
kind of legacy but the whole scene is generally one of despair. Here is
what is effectively Jesus’ death-bed speech. Jesus has just seen the sun
set for the last time. In a little over 12 hours He’ll be hanging on a
Roman cross and here He is with His closest friends in the world.
But what is amazing about this
death-bed scene is that it is not a scene of despair. Jesus had provided
for His followers in His life, and He would provide for them in His
death.
Even as He faces Godforsaken torture
His concern is for His friends. Verse 18: “I will not leave you as
orphans; I will come to you.” This is strange isn’t it. Jesus is going
away, but He’s also coming to them. How can Jesus go to be with His
Father and come to be with His people?
Well the answer is there in verse 16 –
look with me:
Jesus says “I will ask the Father and He will give you another
Counsellor to be with you forever – the Spirit of truth. The world cannot
accept Him, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him. But you know Him,
for He lives with you and will be in you.”
The disciples are not left orphans
because Jesus will send the Holy Spirit, who will be another Counsellor.
Did you notice that word “another.” Just as Jesus has been their
Counsellor – representing the Father to them, teaching them, comforting
them – so He will ask the Father and they will receive another Counsellor
just like Jesus.
Now the Counsellor – the Holy Spirit
is the third Person of the Trinity. He is fully God and has existed with
the Father and the Son from the very beginning. He’s right there from the
second verse of the Bible, intimately involved in creation – intimately
involved in everything the Father and Son have ever done. All the works
of God from all eternity have been from the Father, through the Son, in
the power of the Spirit.
And Jesus here says that the Spirit
Himself will take up residence in the believer and that means three
things from this passage.
The first is that the Spirit will
bring Divine Presence into the Christian life.
[SLIDE – His Spirit Brings Presence]
The Spirit brings Divine Presence to
the believer. That’s why Jesus is able to say verse 18 :“I will come to
you” – not because He will haunt His followers from beyond the grave –
but because they will have the Holy Spirit.
Jesus is so closely related to His
Spirit that when He sends the Spirit to set up home in someone, He can
talk as though He Himself were setting up home there.
So where is Jesus right now? Well He’s
definitely in heaven. Jesus is definitely seated at the right hand of the
Father. But more than that. Because He has sent His Spirit, because of
verse 18 – Jesus is also in believers. Christ by His Spirit is in
Christians. And He’s in us forever. Do you see verse 23 – the Spirit in
us, means that the Father and the Son are making their home with us. What
an incredible thought!
I’ve just put a deposit down on a flat
to rent. I’ve signed a 12 month tenancy agreement and to me 12 months
sounds like a long time. You have to like a place to be committed to it
for a year. Well God has signed an eternal unbreakable tenancy agreement
with anyone who loves Jesus. He loves the place. He can’t wait to move
in. He may want to make some changes – but He is sold on you. Absolutely
committed!
Because Jesus sends His Spirit to us –
we have His presence with us. He’s not just passing through, He’s not
just a house guest – He makes His home in us. He is the rightful tenant
within every believer.
As King David writes in Psalm 139:
[SLIDE – Ps 139]
“Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your
presence? If I go up to the heavens you are there; if I make my bed in
the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I
settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast.”
The Holy Spirit brings us the Presence
of God. The Spirit unites us to the Presence such that nowhere in
creation am I outside of God's enfolding arms.
So we must remember that the essence
of the Christian life is not distance but presence. The Christian life is
not about believing in a far-off Creator God, nor is it about studying an
ancient figure of history. The Holy Spirit comes because the Christian
life is not about distance but presence.
The Christian life is an intimate,
personal divine relationship of utter commitment with the living God.
[SLIDE – Psalm 139 OUT]
Now that may seem overly-ethereal.
Impossible to grasp in its other-worldliness. How can we know come to
this indwelling experience? Candle-gazing? Well no, this personal divine
encounter is grounded in something very solid. Jesus tells us all about
it in verses 22 – 26. These verses are crucial to understand so let’s see
if we can pick our way through them.
Judas (not Judas Iscariot) in verse 22
asks why Jesus is being so secretive. Why is He showing Himself to the
disciples and not the world. It’s a good question. Many people ask that
question. Have you ever asked that question? Why doesn’t Jesus just show
up all over the earth and say “ta da”! Why did He show Himself to His
disciples but not everyone else. Surely a better thing to do would have
been to saddle up the Resurrection Road-show, visit 200 cities worldwide
and get the whole thing over and done with. Why doesn’t He do that?
The answer that Jesus will give in
verses 23 – 26 is that it’s not His job but it’s the Spirit’s job to
convert the world – as His followers spread the proclamation of Jesus.
[SLIDE – proclamation]
That’s the second P that the Spirit
brings. The Spirit empowers the proclamation of Jesus throughout the
world – and that is the way that people in all ages, in all places will
become Christians.
Let’s follow Jesus’ argument starting
in verse 23. Look with me:
“Jesus replied, “If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching.”
This is the key point. If you love
Jesus you’re going to love His words – you’re not going to have to see
Him to believe. You can tell if a person loves Jesus – they listen to His
teaching and they put it into practice.
And if you do love Jesus, He says
(still v23) “My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make
our home with him.” So this is how a person becomes a Christian – when
someone encounters the teaching of Jesus, they fall in love with Him –
that’s when they receive the Holy Spirit – and God takes up residence in
their life. That’s how people are converted.
Conversely, verse 24 – “He who does
not love me will not obey my teaching.”
So if you love Jesus – you love His teaching.
If you don’t love Jesus, you won’t love His teaching. Very simple. And –
it means you don’t need Jesus to parade around the world in His glory to
see whether people will love Him or not.
It is not Jesus Himself who needs to
spread throughout the world – it is His teaching.
Well who’s going to pass on all of
Jesus teaching? Well verse 25 tells us. Jesus addresses His disciples and
says “All this I have spoken while still with you.” Jesus has spent three
years with these men, teaching them and equipping them because it is
these men, and Not the Resurrection Road-show, that are going to turn the
world upside down.
Now understandably the disciples would
be feeling a little daunted by this task. So Jesus comforts them in verse
26: “But the Counsellor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my
name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have
said to you.”
How were these 11 men – the eleven
faithful disciples of Jesus – going to spread the gospel throughout the
world? Only through the omnipotent power of the Holy Spirit. He Himself
will teach these apostles. The Spirit Himself will remind the disciples
of exactly what Jesus said and how exactly to pass on the teaching of
Jesus to the world. The eleven disciples (and remember John who’s writing
this is one of them) had been taught personally by Jesus. And just as
they had been personally taught by Jesus, so they would personally be
taught by His Spirit.
So that’s the second thing the Spirit
brings – the Spirit brings proclamation
And here we are 4000 miles and 2000
years later. We may have missed the resurrection road-show – but here we
have in the Bible, in black and white for all time – the faithfully
preserved teaching of Jesus. We don’t need the roadshow – if people love
Jesus, they’ll love this book. If they don’t love Jesus, they won’t love
this book.
So how do we encounter the presence of
God’s Spirit? – in the proclamation of His word. Where do we ground our
personal divine encounter – in the pages of this book.
Well we must move on. We’ve seen two things already: the Holy Spirit
brings us His Presence and His Proclamation – and thirdly, the Holy
Spirit brings us Peace.
[SLIDE – Peace]
Look with me at verse 27:
“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you
as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be
afraid.”
Think of the context of these verses.
Judas Iscariot, one of their closest friends is about to be revealed as
the betrayer. Jesus is minutes away from His arrest. The disciples are
about to flee and their leader Jesus is about to be executed.
“Peace I leave with you, my peace I give you” says Jesus.
The men He says this to will end up
either executed or imprisoned for their gospel proclamation.
But Jesus says “Peace I leave with
you, my peace I give you.”
What peace could Jesus offer? Well the
first thing to notice is that Jesus describes it as “my peace.” And it is
in stark contrast to the world’s peace. The peace that the world gives
would be of no value whatsoever to the disciples. The peace that the
world offers is the comfort of good health and the security of financial
stability, a good job, a nice home, a loving family. The world offers a
conditional peace – you can have peace in your heart so long as you don’t
get sick or sacked or dumped or evicted. It is dependent on things going
right. But if things go wrong – the world’s peace disappears.
Jesus says He has a peace that can
quell fear and still a troubled heart. He has a peace that holds even as
He faces public execution. That is a lasting peace. Do you know it?
Jesus knows it – it is His peace. And
He longs to give it away.
How do you experience this peace? Well
Jesus has been talking about it throughout this passage. Look at verse
21:
“Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves
me. He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love him
and show myself to him.”
Or verse 23:
Jesus replied “If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My
Father will love him, and we will come to him.”
This is peace. This is the unshakeable
security of being loved by God. No matter what the world does to you, no
matter what the world thinks of you – so what! The God of the universe
loves you. He dotes on you. He is so committed to you – He makes His home
in you. You want peace and security? It doesn’t come better than that.
You want love? You are caught up into the divine life of love for all
eternity.
Worry and anxiety is all about
focusing on ourselves and the here and now. The life of peace which Jesus
offers is all about lifting our gaze to the awesome and the eternal. The
antidote to stress is worship. It is go from the anxiety of “If wonder
if..” to the worship of “I wonder at.” The antidote to worry is worship.
Stress and worship are mutually
exclusive – it’s impossible to do both at once. The peace of Jesus is to
realize we are caught up in this life of live and to revel in it.
Christian – have you lost sight of
what the Christian life actually is? Have you forgotten that it is this
dynamic personal relationship? Have you lost sight of the presence, the
proclamation and the peace of God’s omnipotent Spirit? It’s easy to do.
I know in my case, I lose the big
picture by focusing on Christian activities. I’ll start thinking that reading
my Bible of a morning is the Christian life. Or that sharing my faith
with others is the Christian life. Perhaps many of you are like me and
get sucked into thinking that doing church things is the Christian life.
Now all these things are great things
– reading your Bible, coming to church, sharing your faith – but if I
make them my focus, then I lose sight of the true focus for all my
thinking and acting and feeling. The true focus must be the Father, Son
and Holy Spirit as they have invited me into their life of love. That
must be the core of our Christian lives. Our love and worship and
fellowship with the Triune God must characterize our days.
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