Comfort for Troubled Hearts, part 1-6, complete edition

Comfort for Troubled Hearts, part 1-6, complete edition

By John MacArthur

Leave Me Alone; I Can't Cope

Turn to Philippians, Chapter 4. Philippians, Chapter 4, and we'll be looking at verses 1-9. And I've entitled this "Don't bother me, I can't cope." or "How to get rid of tension headaches." or, "How to be an adequate Christian."

E. Stanley Jones said that, "The art of living is the least learned of all arts." In his book entitled "Mastery," he went on to say this, "Man has learned the art of existing, of getting by somehow with the demands of life, of escaping with half-answers, but he knows little about the art of living with all its demands."

It's for sure that most people can't cope with life - that is for sure. For many people life is a very horrible experience if they really carefully examine it. Many people don't like their families, they don't like the one they're married to very well, at least they think they like somebody else better. They don't like their jobs, they don't like their income. They live a kind of a situational misery that really is personal ministry [sic] imposed on every situation because it doesn't matter if the situation changes, they seem to remain about as miserable.

And the reason is that inside, they really don't know how to live life. And if you really get down to it, it isn't the circumstances at all that's the problem. It's the person that's the problem and he imposes upon every circumstance his own inadequacy. And there are so many things that monitor this but perhaps the best monitor is television. And if you watch television you see all of the problems of coping with life. If he kissed you once, (Laughter)will he kiss you again? (Laughter)Are your floors yellow? (Laughter)Or your teeth? (Laughter)Is your coffee making your husband nauseous each morning? (Laughter)Are you desiring to be a man among men, strong and attractive? Grow a mustache and smoke. (Laughter)Winchester.

After offering us these kind of stupidly simplistic answers that real happiness is found in good breath produced by Certs, clear floors produced by Johnson's Wax, white teeth according to Crest, coffee made by Mrs. Olsen (Laughter). And manliness produced by stuffing leaves in your mouth and setting them on fire (Laughter)which immediately necessitates that you go back to Certs and start all over again (Laughter). After having said all of that, we haven't really gotten anywhere, have we?

And yet these super simplistic answers are offered to us and the commercials are invariably couched in the most blissful situations. If you do all of this, you will be happy, beloved, wise, winsome, moderately wealthy, with well behaved children and personal charm. And life becomes a gentle breeze, a happy-go-lucky experience thanks to Right Guard (Laughter).

And when you really get down to it, nobody's kidding anybody. Because it is the same media that also produces the fact that they know that all of this doesn't work. Because the same people go right about, after these commercials, selling you a list of products to get rid of the tension that mouthwash and all the rest of it doesn't relieve. And the next step in the line is to tell you about all of the little things you can get at the drug store so that you will be able to cope with life.

And I listed the ones I saw at the drug store that I go to to buy shaving cream. Aspirin, orange flavored for kids; Anacin; Excedrin; Tegrin; Zeramin; Measurin; Ascriptin; Aspergum; BC; Bufferin; Empirin; Dissolve; Tylenol, Persistine; Miles Nervine; Quiet World (Laughter); Compose; and if all of that doesn't work, there's one called Cope which says it's a unique formula for the relief of tension headaches. And if you haven't gotten it together by bedtime there's Sleepeze, Sominex, or Nytol (Laughter).If none of that works you can go to the doctor and the doctor will invariably give you a prescription that involves Valium, Miltown, Compozine, Librium, or Thorazine and you can go home and take those and then you'll be able to cope.

But none of it seems to work. And everybody's psychosis and neurosis seems to be multiplying. Somebody said in one area of Hollywood there's so many psychiatrists that it's called the mental block (Laughter). If that doesn't do it, there's alcohol, usually combined with drugs, marijuana, heroine, cocaine, morphine, LSD, and so it goes. And it's just another level of trying to live life. If that doesn't work, kill yourself.

The number four cause of death in the high school campus is suicide and it's now number one on the college campus. People can't cope, let's face it. They don't know what life's all about. They haven't got the foggiest idea. E. Stanley Jones is right, "Man doesn't know how to live."

I think of the account of Ernest Hemmingway, the well known author. Playboy Magazine, at one point, featured an article on him as a man who really learned how to live. And the article had a by-line that said that, "Hemmingway had proven that you could, you could beat sin." The old antiquated, Victorian, Puritanical concept of sin could be done in very easily and Hemmingway was living proof. It went on to say that he had done everything possible, traveled everywhere, fought in revolutions, tumbled women, and so forth and so on, and he was living proof that you can cheat so-called sin and get away with it and really live life to its fullest.

Ten years to the very month later that article came out, Hemmingway took a gun, put it to his head, and blew his brains out. As always, Playboy was wrong. He never learned how to live and he paid for it a high price.

Now everybody's got problems. Job said, "Man is born into trouble." Everybody's got problems. The question is not who's got problems, the question is who's got victory over problems. That's the question, who can cope with it?

Now there are only three ways to handle problems in life, only three ways to live life. You either break out, you get a rash or a panic or you get angry; or you break down, you go inside and silently withdraw and eat your insides out and get all kinds of psychosomatic illnesses; or you break through in victory. You either break out, break down, or break through.

And to breakthrough is the only way to live. That's the only way, there is no other way. To be really alive to the fullest in the richest sense is to break through the trouble and come out victorious. You say, "Yeah, I understand, how?" Well, in order to see how, and I'm not going to try to be a over-simplistic, I do want to give you what the Word of God says as a basic answer. I think to see how, we look at the Apostle Paul. If ever a man lived in adverse circumstances and broke through incessantly, it was Paul. And he becomes the pattern in our text, Philippians 4, look at verse 9. "Those things which ye have both learned, and received, and heard, and seen in me, do." Stop there.

Now Paul says, if you're gonna live life, look at it as you see it evidenced in the way I live it. Now boy, you gotta be confident of your Spiritual life to be able to set yourself up as the pattern. For a Christian to be able to say to the rest of the Christian community, "If you want to know how to live life, look at me." You say that's the height of egoism. Not necessarily. It is if you're not really the best one to look at. The Apostle Paul even went further than that, he said, "Be followers of me." You say, "Paul, no, that's not right." "Yes it is because I'm following Jesus Christ. I'm translating the Life of Christ into my life in order that you might pattern yours after mine."

And so Paul set the standard up there. This is not pride, this is Paul saying, "I've learned how to cope with life and I want share it with you." It's not pride, it's being desirous of communicating what he's learned to everybody else. It's generosity, dear ones, not pride. He's learned the secret of coping with life. He's learned the secret of victory and he says, "Now you watch me and the way I do it, you do it." And he was adequate, he was so adequate that he could sing in jail. He was so adequate that he could stand boldly before the Greeks on Mar's Hill and declare his faith without flinching. He could stand nose-to-nose with Felix, Festus, and Agrippa with his life in their hands and do so fearlessly.

The adequacy in the life of Paul allowed him to be prisoner in his own house and never complain. It finally allowed him to lay his head on a chopping block and somebody severed it from his body. And all of that because Paul was adequate. And he says, "What you've learned, and received, and heard, and seen in me, you do it. Pattern your life after me. I know how to meet life, I've learned the secret." This is not pride this is generosity, sharing with us.

You say, "Well, what was it that brought about such adequacy?" All right, we're going to back up now from verses 1-8 and we're going to see the keys to real adequacy. There are many keys to adequate living. Key No. 1, an adequate stand, an adequate stand.

The first thing that comes into my mind when I think about this is that, if you don't know where you are, if you don't understand your place in the universe, as my dad used to say, "If you're nothing but a piece of protoplasm waiting to become manure, and that's your philosophy of life, then you're in real trouble." If you only exist for Boxing Day to be slapped in a pine box and dropped in the ground and have somebody throw a lily on you, you're in real bad shape.

There must be a reason, there must be something upon which I can plant my feet and firmly stand. I've got to have a reason for living. There's got to be a rhyme for my existence. And, I think, in a sense, this is what we begin to see in Chapter 4:1. At least it's alluded to and we're stretching it a little bit in its initial sense but let's look at verse 1. "Therefore my brother and dearly beloved and long for my joy and crown, so stand fast in the Lord, my dearly beloved." Now that's the first principle of adequacy. A firm stand, an adequate stand. Adequate living begins with being firmly grounded.

Now notice it says, "Stand fast IN the Lord." Now this adequate stand is in Christ. There is no other adequate stand. The term, "in Christ" is all over the place. One hundred and thirty-two times in Paul's Letters he talks about being "in Christ." The Christian lives in Christ as a bird lives in the air, as a fish lives in the water, as roots of a plant live in the soil, so the believer lives in Christ. He is in a union, his whole existence is pervaded by the presence of Jesus Christ. He is in Christ.

And what it means is simply a total union with Christ. Paul goes so far as to say we are -- he says, "I am crucified with Christ. Nevertheless I live." What's the next line? "Yet it isn't even me that's living, it's Christ in me." I am indissolubly linked in a common life with Christ. And we read about it in the text it says, "Christ in you." In some places, the hope of glory. In other places it says, "You in Christ." We are connected to Christ. Jesus says in John 15, "True branches abide" where, "In Me." And so there is a sense in which we are in Christ.

Now that is the basis of a firm stand. If a man attempts to live in the world apart from Christ, he has nothing to stand on. Everything is shifting sand. So, to begin with a man must be in Christ. You see, existence. It's like the ancients said, "You know, man is restless until he finds his rest in God." Existence is a floating thing. It's a great, mysterious, variable, until a man meets God. And then all of a sudden, he knows why he exists and he knows what living's all about. And he knows what loving's all about. And he knows what time is all about and what forever is all about. And he knows what purpose is.

But he doesn't know it until he meets God. And the only way a man can ever meet God is through Christ. "'No man cometh unto the Father,' said Jesus," what? "'except by me.'" And the only way you can ever know Christ is to hear about Him, read about Him in the Gospels, see what He did, and believe it with your whole heart.

And so, to begin with, an adequate facing of life demands an adequate stand. Adequacy begins with a personal relationship with a living God, through a living Christ, by faith. Now I wanna illustrate this to you from one of my favorite people in the Bible, Habakkuk. Turn to Habakkuk.

Habakkuk was having a problem. He looked at Israel, Chapter 1, he looked at Israel and Israel was messed up. And so he said, "God, you gotta do something in Israel. Israel is going down the drain, there is iniquity and there is all of this." And, Verse 4, he says, "The law is slack and justice doesn't go forth and the wicked compass the righteous, and justice is perverted" and, ahh, it's terrible here in Israel. God, bring revival, do something. And God says, "All right, I'll send the Chaldeans to wipe out Israel." And Habakkuk says, "That's not what I expected. The Caldeans." And he can't figure - the Caldeans are worse than the Israelites. How can God use somebody worse than they are to judge them? Why doesn't God just come down and give them a spiritual revival? Why does He wipe them out like that? And he doesn't understand it.

And you say, "Uh, oh, he's on the border of not being adequate." And you're right, he's beginning to waiver, see, and he's on, he's on what we call the soft soil. You see, he's standing out there where he doesn't know the answers. But he's smart. And immediately he jumps back on solid rock and plants his feet and says, "All right, all right, now I gotta go over this thing right."

And this is where we begin in Verse 12, look at it. "Art thou not from everlasting, O Lord my God?" Stop right there. The first thing he says is, "God, you're eternal. Okay, I got that down, that's good. In other words, God, you're outside the flux of history. That's good. You preceded history, You created history, you'll be here when history is done. You're above the world, you're outside time. Therefore this little picky thing, you can handle that. I feel better already, God. Just knowing you're eternal."

So you see what he's doing? He's gotten off the soft soil of what he doesn't understand and he's standing on the rock of what he does understand, you see? That's the only way to handle your problems, is to firmly stand on what you do know. God is eternal, He reigns in eternity. Hum, good. The second thing he comes up with, God is self existent, "Art thou not from everlasting, O Lord my God, mine Holy One." The word, Lord, Jehovah, from the Hebrew word Yahweh, from the verb, to be, I am, that's self existence. God is self existent. He is the Eternally Existing One.

There's a second vital fact about God, Habakkuk says, "God is not in any sense dependent on what happens in this world. He is self existent within Himself and this world doesn't affect Him." So God is Eternal and He's self-existing. In other words, He's outside the flux of these petty little things and He's in control.

The third thing he comes up with is, God is Holy. He says this, "Mine Holy One." And, in Verse 13, "Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil and cannot look upon iniquity." He says, "God, you're Holy, what does that mean? God, you won't make a mistake. God, you always do what's right. Hey, God, I'm feeling the rock under my feet, see." He says, "God I know You'll do right." God always does right, "God is light," said John, "and in Him is no" what? "darkness at all." Always does right.

And he comes up with this, "God is almighty." He says, "O Lord, thou hast ordained them for judgment, and Almighty God, thou hast established them for correction." You see, he's getting his answer. "God, you're so strong and powerful. You're sovereign and you're at work."

And then, lastly, he says, God is faithful. Look at it, middle of verse 12, "We shall not die. God said of Israel, "I'll be their God and they shall be my people." And Habakkuk says, "Hey, God made a covenant, God made a promise, and God doesn't tell lies. God is faithful."

And so Habakkuk feels so terrific and he just takes off and he just starts praising the Lord. I call it PTLA, praise the Lord anyhow. He doesn't understand the issue, he doesn't even understand why God's doing what He's doing, but he does understand God. And he knows that God is powerful, and self existent, and outside the flux of history, and does what He wants to do and never does wrong, and takes care of his own.

And having established that in his mind, he is believing what he believes and he's standing firm. And when you get to the end of Chapter 3 he makes this great statement in verse 17, "Although the fig tree shall not blossom," boy, that'll be the day won't it? "neither shall fruit be in the vines; the labor of the olive shall fail, the fields shall yield no food; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, there shall be no herd in the stalls; yet I'll rejoice in the LORD, joy in the God of my salvation."

You say, Habakkuk, you've come a long way. That's right, and God still hasn't changed the situation. He came a long way because he got off the soft sand of what he didn't understand and stood on what he did. Now there's only one way to handle problems of life, there's only one way to live with life and that's to back up and stand on what you know is true. That's having a firm stand.

Now go back to the end of Philippians. And this is such a basic point that we're spending a little more time on this than we will on the others. The word, interestingly enough, to stand fast, in verse 1 of Chapter 4, is staketa. It even sounds like driving a stake - staketa. And it means to stand - it's used for a soldier, standing firm in his position in the midst of battle. With the enemy all around him and he never moves. Now I say, if you're frustrated and if you're not able to cope with life then you're letting your practice get messed up. If your practice is consistent with your position, you're adequate, you got it?

Listen, positionally, you're adequate because God's on your team. But if you want to wander away from your position and practice out here, you're gonna mess up. What you need to do is line up your practice with your position and you can stand firm. The first key to adequacy then, is an adequate stand.

Second one, an adequate love. An adequate love. You know that not loving makes unhealthy, miserable people. Let's look at this adequate love in verse 1. Watch how it just gushes out of Paul. "Therefore, my brethren dearly beloved and longed for," can't you just read love, he just loves these people, "my joy and crown, so stand fast in the Lord, my dearly beloved." Now, if my English grammar teacher had been looking at that and I had written it, she'd say, "You're redundant, you don't need to say, 'dearly beloved' twice in the same sentence." You know what, grammatically, she would be right.

But in the sense of the heart of the Apostle Paul, she's wrong. Paul says it because he means it. And says, yeah, but, I mean, you know, those are wonderful people. Oh really, let me have you meet two of them. "I beseech Euodias, and I beseech Syntyche, that they be of the same mind in the Lord." You know who he loves, those two women that are bickering. You say, yes, that's real love. That's the real thing. It's not just loving the lovely, it's loving Euodias and Synthyche.

The Apostle Paul loved two ladies that weren't helping his work one bit. That's the test of love, isn't it? That's an adequate kind of love. An adequate love loves the unlovely. Euodias means sweet fragrance and Synthyche means pleasant. And they were anything but. And Paul says in verse 3, " I entreat thee also, true yokefellow," In the Greek the word yokefellow was Syzygus and it's very likely that it's a proper name and that it shouldn't be translated into yokefellow, it should remain Syzygus. That he is saying, "Syzygus, help those women." In other words there's a guy in the Philippian church names Syzygus, and he's saying, "Syzygus, will you go get those two ladies together?" "Syzygus help those women who labored with me in the gospel, with Clement also, and with other my fellow workers, whose names are in the book of life." So Paul sends a man named Syzygus, very likely, to get them together.

And, so you see, that's the kind of love He's talking about. He's talking about loving the unlovely. He's talking about loving the people even that are problematic. And that kind of love, as we've said so many, many times, only springs out of humility, doesn't it? And, you know, this has a great effect on your mental health. Dr. McMillan in his book, "None of These Diseases" says this, "For centuries, scoffers have ridiculed the advice of Jesus, 'love your enemies.' They say it is impractical, idealistic, and absurd. Today, psychiatrists are recommending it as a panacea for many of man's ills. When Jesus said, 'Forgive 70 times 7,' He was thinking, not only of our souls, but of saving our bodies from ulcerated colitis, toxic goiters, high blood pressure, and scores of other diseases."

You know there are people who are sick in hospitals because they have been eaten apart by bitterness and animosity and hatred toward other people? Paul put it this way in Colossians, this is Moffett's translation, which is very good. He said, "So put to death those members that are in earth. Off with anger, rage, malice, and slander." Those are all things that come about as a result of the lack of love. You have stripped off the old nature and its practices. Be clothed with compassion, kindliness, humility, gentleness, and good temper, forbear and forgive each other and above all, you must be loving, for love is the link of a perfect life." You can't really live life adequately unless you love people. You'll eat yourself alive.

Running around with bitterness. It's disastrous, not only spiritually but physically. Real living is real loving. And if there's somebody you don't love, you need to spend some time on your knees and ask God to help you love that person. And then you need to go to that person and ask their forgiveness for not loving them and see if you can't build a relationship of love. It's the healthiest thing you'll ever do in your life. Apart from knowing Christ. The love of Christ is yours, yield to it's flow in your life. You don't even need to generate the love, it's there, just let it get out.

So, adequacy then is an adequate stand and an adequate love. The third thing that makes for adequacy in life - and we're hurrying a little - is adequate joy. You know happy people are healthy people. And happy people are people who really live life. Voltaire, the atheist, once exclaimed this, "Men are tormented atoms in a bit of mud devoured by death, a mockery of fate, this world, this theatre of pride and wrong, swarms with sick fools who only talk of happiness." Well, that is a really lousy outlook. You know what? He's right. He hit that thing right on the nose, "This theatre of pride and wrong, this world swarms with sick fools who only talk of happiness." He's right.

People are inadequate and they're unhappy and miserable. Over ten million Americans suffer emotional and mental illness. As many hospital beds are occupied by the mentally ill as by all medical and surgical patients combined. And according to some statistics, the majority of the medical and surgical patients have their illness directly as the result of emotional stress. One out of every 20 Americans will have a psychotic disturbance severe enough to confine him to a hospital for the insane. Now that's the number one health problem in America.

And the funny thing is, this is the land where we have all we need to make us happy. You gotta have an adequate joy, look at verse 4, "Rejoice in the Lord, always." You're saying, oh, that's impossible. No, "Rejoice in the Lord always. And again I say" what? "Rejoice" just in case you didn't get me the first time. And again I say rejoice. You say, "Well I don't have anything to rejoice about. It's easy for you to say, you don't have my problem." What did He say? He wasn't talking about problems, He said, "Rejoice" what, what are the next three words? "In the Lord." I'm not - I don't rejoice in my problems either, Paul said, "I have continual sorrow and heaviness of heart for Israel." I cry a lot. And he said, "I'm sick of my physical infirmity, I'd like God to take it away. But he won't. I'm not real happy about that either."

And I can't honestly say that I just love getting beat up all the time everywhere I go. I mean, from a physical standpoint it's not really a lot of fun. But I rejoice in the Lord. You see God? Always I'm rejoicing in the Lord and my circumstances I can't always rejoice in. The Lord I can. That's how the same guy can say, "rejoice always" and the same guy can say "I have continual sorrow and heaviness of heart." In my circumstances I have sorrow, in my relationship to Jesus, I have constant joy.

So whenever your circumstances get heavy, who do you rejoice in, you rejoice in the Lord. The Apostle Paul is in a jail. That's bad circumstances. He's singing, that's rejoicing in the Lord. You always can rejoice in the Lord. It's interesting, it's 70 times in the New Testament we're told to rejoice. You know what rejoicing is, watch this for a thought, it's reckless abandonment to Jesus Christ in any circumstance. It's just constantly saying, "Hey Lord, I'm yours and I don't understand what's going on but I'm so glad I belong to you." That's rejoicing.

Now, let me give you two things about it. This kind of Christian joy has two qualities. One, it's incessant, always, always, always. Why? Because it's in the Lord, it's not in the circumstances. Got it? It's in the Lord. And I don't mean it's some kind of a stupid grin on your face all the time. I mean the kind of, the kind of, the kind of joy that comes because of your relationship to Jesus Christ. Have you ever gone through those times of real sorrow and just begun to turn and put your thoughts on Jesus Christ and all of a sudden sense some joy? And so, consequently, there can be joy in the midst of sorrow. It's incessant, it abides over the circumstance.

Second thing about it, it's independent. It's not joy because of, it's joy in spite of. It's PTLA, praise the Lord anyhow. The circumstance is immaterial.

So, adequacy. Adequacy involves an adequate joy, as well as an adequate love, as well as an adequate stand. Let me take you to the fourth one. This is good. An adequate gentleness. An adequate gentleness is in verse 5, let your moderation be known unto all men. Now that's a - the wrong word, of all words to choose is probably moderation. It means gentleness. Let your gentleness be known unto all men.

You know there are some people who just go through the world like a bull in a china closet. No wonder they've got ulcers. No wonder they're always upset. No wonder they've got coli - they're just, boom, leaving a trail of strewn people, you know, as they go. They don't even have - they don't understand how to adjust themselves to people and be gentle and loving and tender hearted, you know? Ahh, it's such a rich quality. One of the fruit of the spirit, you know, is gentleness isn't it? Gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and so forth.

I like 2 Timothy 2:24 which says, Paul's wisdom to Timothy, "The servant of the Lord must not strive; but be gentle" be gentle. And, oh, I love so much 2 Corinthians, if, pray God that this could be so in my life some day in God's grace and timing as He refines me, but listen to this, "Now I, Paul, myself beseech you by the meekness and gentleness of Christ." Ahh, there's something about Christ that is just desirable in terms of being gentle. And yet he was firm. He wasn't Casper Milk Toast, you know? He wasn't always condescending and watering down His message. He was firm and when it needed to be, He was a lion. But somehow there was a kind of pervading gentleness about Him that drew women and little children to His side. Oh, that's the beautiful relationship.

I think of David, you know, who was a great warrior who slew Goliath and, you know, Saul has killed his thousands, David his ten thousands, great warrior. And yet it was David who could sit down with a harp in his hand and soothe the savage breast. Yeah, there was something gentle, as well as something vigorous and bold and brave about the man. And I think this is the kind of thing it's talking about. There needs to be expressed in the life of a Christian a gentleness.

Now, it's illustrated by Paul as are all of these things. 1 Thessalonians 2, I love this. When Paul had gone to Thessalonica with the Gospel, it had been with a very, very certain attitude and he explains what that attitude was. Verse 3 of Chapter 2, listen to this, it's so beautiful. He says, "Now we came to you guys and gave you the Gospel some time ago, let me just tell you how we did it." Verse 3, "For our exhortation was not of deceit, nor uncleanness, nor in guile" we weren't trying to deceive you, "But as we were allowed of God to be put in trust with the gospel, even so we speak; not as pleasing men, but God, who tests our hearts.

We didn't give you the flattering things, "verse 5, "as you know, nor with a cloak of covetousness;" we didn't do it for money, but watch this, number 7, "But we were" what's the next word? "gentle" isn't that good? You say, well, how gentle were you Paul? We were "gentle among you, even as a nurse cherisheth her children." "We were gentle" watch this one, "like a nursing mother" that's what it means. Now there is nothing more tender in terms of expressing relationships than that nursing mother and that little infant. Oh what a gentle picture. And Paul says, "that's the way we were with you." Ahh, that's something admirable.

Paul had a great gentleness in his heart. You know the old song said, "try a little tenderness." That's good, instead of crashing into every situation, instead of always asserting yourself, try a little gentleness. Oh, we need to be reminded of this so often. Learn to treat everybody like a nursing mother treats that little precious life in its arms. Oh, that's gentleness.

Paul was a lion of courage, Paul fought violently tooth and nail against sin. But Paul was like a lamb when it came to being gentle. And you know these are the kind of people who are healthy people. Because these are the kind of people whose fire and whose fury is not out of their personality, but it is in response to something that is evil and something that is wrong. And at that point they have a right to show some fury, you see? But in their hearts there is a basic kind of gentleness. That's a healthy person.

And so adequacy involves an adequate gentleness. An adequate stand, and adequate love, and an adequate joy. Fifth, an adequate security. And I love this, as well. It says, watch it, verse 5, in the middle, "The Lord is at hand." Now, what's the next one? "Be anxious for nothing." Now stop there. Is he talking about the Second Coming? That's absolutely foreign to the text. There's nothing in this thing about the Second Coming at all. You say, what does it mean, "The Lord is at hand." He means this, don't ever forget the Lord is near, don't worry about anything. Did you get that? That is so good. What have you been worried about, the Lord's right here. What is he saying, practice His presence.

Years ago, under Stalin a group of 30 Russian peasants were met in secret to worship Jesus Christ. Suddenly it was - their worship was halted by the arrival of Stalin's agents. The soldiers marched in and ordered the name of every person taken down and one of the other men came up and started taking names. And it all was finished, and an old man spoke up. And he said, "There's one name you don't have." "I have them all." snapped the soldier. The peasant said, "No you don't." And a little argument began. Finally the soldier says, "Who is it then?" To which the man replied, "Well, it's the Lord Jesus Christ. You see, He's here too." You know, he was right, and he was conscious of His presence. Practicing the presence of Christ.

There was an old Indian who would come to church and sit on the front row and, always a half an hour early. He'd sit there. Kind of face set, you know. And after he'd come early, finally somebody said, "Why is he doing that, every week he just sits there." One of them said, "Tonto," or whatever his name was. Can't remember his name. "Why do you come early like this and just sit there?" And this is what he said, I love this, he said, "Me come early, me sit down, me think Jesus." It's good, isn't it. Me think Jesus. He became preoccupied at the presence of Jesus Christ. And that became his security. That's everybody's security. I am so secure when I rest in the presence of Jesus Christ.

Paul Reese tells a story of a man on a ship being torpedoed during the Second World War and eventually the ship was sunk and the people were in a little life raft and they were picked up by a freighter that was piloted by the Germans. They were all thrown in a big hold area and it was kinda dirty and it was a terrible thing and they were fearing for their lives. And the strain on their nerves was terrible and all this. And one of these men who was in that situation recounted the story, apparently, to Dr. Reese with these words, "I began to commune with the Lord. At first I couldn't sleep, then He reminded me of the 121stPsalm, which says 'My help cometh from the Lord which made heaven and earth. He that keepeth thee will not slumber, behold he shall neither slumber, nor" what "sleep.' So I said, 'Lord, there's no use both of us staying awake. If you're gonna keep watch, I'll thank you for some sleep.' And I got it."

That's security. What do you have to fear, the Lord is here. Manmade securities are never more than tissue paper towers. Money, fame, friends, bombs, armies, medicines, hospitals, are just little expediencies to postpone the inevitable. But we have a real security, the presence of Jesus Christ. God promises that I'll be a friend that sticketh closer than what? Is it true? It sure is. Practice His presence. Oh, Christ-conscious living. You say, but, oh, I'd like to live that way, how do you, how do you just constantly have Christ in your mind?

Practicing the presence of Christ is having your mind saturated with His thoughts. And there's only one way to do that and that's to study the Word of God. The more you study the Word of God, the more God's thoughts are in your mind. The more God's thoughts are in your mind, the more the presence of Christ is in your mind. The more His presence is in your mind, the more secure you are.

So, an adequate security, the Lord is near, what do I have to worry about? Sixth, and lastly, an adequate knowledge. And this is so important. Verse 8, "Finally brethren, whatever things are true," Oh, that's important, "whatever things are honest, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise," do what? "think on these things."

What are you supposed to spend your time thinking on? Things that are true, first of all. You say, "I'm supposed to always be thinking of the truth, the truth, the truth. Pilate said, "What is truth?" Jesus said, "Thy Word is truth." John 17:17. Wanna think on the truth, get this book and make it your own. Make it your own. Thy word is truth.

You're going to think on true things, and honest, that means nobly serious. Just things, that means things that are right. Lovely, things worth of being loved. Of good report, things with good reputations. If there is any virtue, if there's anything in being a Christian, then think on these things.

Well, it's a simple thing, you know, you are what you think. Pump garbage in and the garbage will pump itself right back out again. Whatever you feed your brain is what'll determine the way you live.

Kids will say to me sometimes at camp and stuff, they'll say, "John, I don't know why, I want to live for the Lord, and I can't seem to live for the Lord. I have all these evil thoughts in my mind and all. I can't get rid of these things. I'd like to get out of the gutter once in a while. I don't know what to do about it." I say, "Well tell me something, what do you read." "Well, I don't know..." They always get these silly looks on their face. "Well, what do you do in your spare time?" "Well, I go to the movies." "What do you look at?" "Well, I don't wannna say..." "Well, what do you expect?" Feed garbage, you're gonna pump garbage out. Put the Word of God in and you're gonna find that you begin to live of the Word. Saturate yourself with the Word of God.

I've shared this with you before, I'll give it to some of you because you're new. It's just a little thing that I learned. When I wanted to really learn the Bible, I developed a little pattern. And that was to read the same book over repetitiously because you learn line upon line, line upon line, precept upon precept, precept upon precept, here a little, there a little, etc., as Isaiah said. You learn by repetition.

And so I began a little study that helped me. I started in 1 John, which is a good place to start. Sit down and read it straight through. For some people that would be a first time they ever read one book straight through. But it's written in flow and context and so I sat down and read 1 John straight through.

Second day sit down and read 1 John straight through. Third day sit down and read 1 John straight through. Fourth day sit down and read 1 John straight through. Then the fifth day, that's the key, you sit down and you read 1 John straight through. Thirty days. You know what happens at the end of thirty days? You know 1 John. You've got it. And you've hidden away the words.

And then you move around, you go to the Gospel of John and you do the same thing. Only it's 21 chapters so you divide it into three sections of seven chapters each. In 90 days you've got the Gospel of John. And somebody says to you, "I'd like to ask you some questions about the Bible. Do you know where it talks about, 'I am the vine, you are the branches.' Yes, John 10, left hand page, halfway down the left column..." (Laughter).

See, you're beginning to, you're beginning to saturate yourself with the Word of God. And you begin to talk about all these things, somebody says, "Where does it talk about God - the love of God?" "That's 1 John over here, so forth, 'confess our sins.' Chapter 1 and all this and the characteristics of a Christian, Chapter 2" and all the various things we can - fall in line. You do this through the whole New Testament and you say, "It'll take forever." Two and a half years, in two and half years you can do the whole New Testament and really know something.

And you'll begin to say, when you're reading through one, "Hey, I remember that's over there." And you can cease being a Concordance cripple and really be a student of the Scriptures (Laughter). Because you can begin to relate these things back and forth.

But, you see, you must read to retain. You must read at the level of saturation reading so that you're really learning what you read. Otherwise, you're just wasting your time. Don't read the Old Testament that way. Just read it through in the narrative fashion.

But you see, you must establish priorities. Think on these things. What do you spend your time thinking? We've got a book store here with things that you can enrich your life with. The Bible in your hands, there are tapes here, there are tapes put out by Bible teachers all around the world that would be so good. What are you saturating yourself with? It will reproduce itself in your living.

If you really want to be adequate, you put the right stuff in, the right stuff will come. Adequacy climaxes in an adequate knowledge. Feed the new man, see, feed the new man. And then I like this, he makes a little contrast, in closing, in verse 7 he says, "The peace of God which passes all understanding shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus." And then in verse 9, he says, "And the God of peace shall be with you."

An adequate Christian has the peace of God and the God of peace. A marvelous promise. Not only is God with us but His very peace pervades us. We have the peace of God for our guiding and the God of peace for our going.

Listen, I believe we can cope with life, I can. I really can. And many of you can too. And it's because we have these priorities.

Somebody's written this, and I close with it, "I cannot know why suddenly the storm shall rage so fiercely round me in its wrath. But this I know, God watches all my path, and I can trust. I may not draw aside the mystic veil that hides the unknown future from my sight nor know if, for me, awaits the dark or light, but I can trust. I have no power to look across the tide to see where here the land beyond the river. But this I know, I shall be God's forever, and I will trust.

Let's pray. God, whatever it be we pray tonight, that all of us might commit ourselves anew and afresh to the principles that can bring about real adequacy that we might live lives that will put to silence the ignorance of foolish men. That we might shut the mouths of the critics who would condemn our faith because our lives don't match what we say. God help us to be able to live what we preach and to make Christianity believable because it works. We'll give you the praise for what you can do and desire to do as we yield to you in Christ's name, Amen.

Who Goes When Jesus Comes?

John 14, beginning in verse 1. Jesus is speaking and He says this, "Let not your heart be troubled. Ye believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father's house are many dwelling places. If it were not so I would have told you, I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I'll come again and receive you unto Myself that where I am, there ye may be also. And where I go ye know and the way ye know. Thomas saith unto Him, 'Lord, we know not where Thou goest? And how can we know the way?' Jesus saith unto him, 'I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No man cometh unto the Father but by Me.'" May God bless this reading of His Word.

Turn in your Bible to the fourteenth chapter of John and we want to examine the text the Holy Spirit has brought before us this morning. The marvelous thing about expositional preaching which is the only kind, really, verse by verse, is the fact that you know where you're going every week and the Spirit of God has time to make His plan surrounding where you're going to be. Kind of exciting to just follow the flow of the text of the Word of God. And as we come to chapter 14 and these six verses, we come to one of the most familiar texts in all the Bible to Christians. This is a part of Scripture which has become so familiar to many of us. Probably at some time if you were like I was, raised in a Sunday School, I memorized this periodically. This was always a favorite text and has so much in it. As we look at these six verses this morning, I've entitled the message, "Who goes when Jesus comes?" And that really is kind of the broad idea in this text and yet there are many, many other things to see here.

Now we all realize that Jesus is coming back. That very subject is on the lips of Christians all over the world. It always has been. But today there seems to be a new kind of anticipation that Jesus is coming. This is our great hope. And we believe that Jesus could well come in this generation. He could come this week, in fact. Nothing needs to happen prophetically prior to His coming, everything is ready. The stage is completely set for the return of Jesus Christ. But our hope in Jesus Christ is not just a pie-in-the-sky kind of thing. It is not just anticipating His return because many times we have to ask ourselves the question...Yes, maybe Jesus is coming back but in the meantime, can Jesus provide some real comfort for us in those hours of deepest tragedy and the times of severest pain? Is our faith only a faith in the future or is it a faith in the future which gives us comfort in the present?

Well this chapter, the fourteenth chapter of John, answers that question. This whole chapter is the promise that Christ is the One who is giving us comfort. Not only that He's returning but in the very anticipation of His return there's comfort in the present. You might call this the comfort chapter, the whole chapter deals with comfort. How Christ presents to His disciples the promise that He'll be back to get them, but in the meantime comforts them with other words and even promises to send them A comforter who is the Holy Spirit. So it's the comfort chapter. And our faith is not just a faith in the future, but it is a faith in the future which gives comfort in the present.

Now the scene is in the upper room where the disciples gathered with Jesus the night before He went to Golgotha, the cross being on that hill, this is the night before His death. Judas has been dismissed, sent out to carry out his betrayal. And Jesus has begun His valedictory address to the remaining eleven disciples. This is the last council, the last dialogue, the last address that He gave them prior to His death. And in a very short time the world of those eleven men is going to collapse. It's going to collapse into a kind of a chaos that's unbelievable. Their sun is about to set at mid-day and their whole world is going to fall in all around them.

It hasn't quite collapsed yet but the pains have already begun. And by the time we come to chapter 14, they are already hurting. They are bewildered. They are perplexed. They are confused. They are worrying. They are filled with anxiety. They have already been informed that Jesus is leaving, that their blessed and beloved Master whom they loved more than life is going away. That one that they had been willing to die for. As back in John 11 Jesus said, "I am going to Jerusalem," and Thomas says, "Well, let's all go and die with Him." The one they loved more than their own life was leaving and it would tear out their hearts to lose Him. If you've been in love, you know what it is like to be separated from the one you love permanently. You can imagine that kind of feeling when they loved One who was a perfect one, whose love for them was without flaw and the loss of such a one was an excruciating horror. And so in this chapter Jesus anticipates their troubles. Jesus anticipates their problems of losing Him. Jesus anticipates their already breaking hearts and He gives them comfort, upon comfort, upon comfort, just kind of stacking it all up. This is the comfort chapter, as I said.

In fact, Martin Luther called this chapter, he said, "It was the best and most comforting sermon that the Lord Christ delivered on earth, a treasure and a jewel, not to be purchased with the world's goods," end quote. And as we read these words in the first six verses, we'll find how blessedly they not only reveal comfort, and they do deeply, but how they reveal the person of the God/Man, Jesus Christ, in all of His glory and it's all right in the same verses.

As I read this over I couldn't help but realize the uniqueness of Jesus. I mean, any other man placed in our Lord's circumstances, about to be nailed to a cross and full well knowing it, about to bear the sins of every man who would ever live, about to be cursed with a curse of God, about to be forsaken by His own Father God, about to be on and mocked and everything else, any other man in that situation would have been so preoccupied with his own problems, would have been in such a state of uncontrollable agitation that he would never have been able to focus his attentions on the needs of somebody else. But Jesus is different. Here is Jesus Christ, human 100 percent while divine 100 percent, but nevertheless totally human anticipating the most horrible kind of experience, totally unconcerned at this point about His experience, but totally absorbed in the needs of the eleven beloved friends who were going to be shocked, ripped and torn when it happened. Completely aware of everything that awaited Him, feeling the weight of the awful load of sin that He was about to bear, realizing that He was about to taste the bitter cup of death for every man, He still took a primary interest in the sorrows and the fears of His apostles. And instead of being occupied with what was going to happen to Him, He was occupied with them and that tells you something about Jesus. And it reminds me of what John said in chapter 13, wasn't it verse 1, when he said, "He loved them to the end."

And so it is that their hearts are broken, full of sorrow. And Jesus' great loving heart is occupied with their sorrow, rather than His own. And as these six verses unfold, they become the foundation for comfort, not only for these disciples but for us. If you ever get to the point in your life where you think you've run out of escapes, there aren't any more places where you can rest, well you find a tremendously soft downy pillow in John 14:1 to 6, it's all here, comfort in all of its great foundations. Tremendous truths.

And He basically says, and you have an outline in your bulletin there and it needs a little editorializing. The first point should be His presence, not His power. But comfort, the basis of comfort comes by trusting, by trusting Christ. Now watch that. The basis of comfort comes out of trusting. If you're discontent and if you don't have any comfort, and if you're worried and anxious, bewildered, perplexed, confused, agitated, whatever it is, stirred up, the reason is you don't trust Christ. That's the reason. And so in these verses Jesus says, "I want you to trust three things. Trust My presence, My promises, and My person. Trust My presence, My promises and My person." And in trusting Christ, there's comfort.

If you really trust Him, what do you have to worry about? What do you have to be agitated about? The reason the disciples were so stirred up is they began to focus on their problems and they didn't seem to be able to put their trust in Christ and so in these verses He says, "Trust Me." That's what He says and you'll hear it repeatedly, "Trust Me....trust Me."

First of all, He says, "Trust in My presence," verse 1, listen to it. "Let not your heart be troubled, ye believe in God, believe also in Me." You know what He's saying there? He's saying this, "Friends, don't worry, trust Me." Tremendous. "Let not your heart be troubled." Now in the Greek language He is not saying, "Don't begin to be troubled," no He's not saying that. He's saying, "Stop letting your hearts be troubled." He knows they're already troubled. He's saying, "Don't let your hearts be troubled any longer." That's what He's saying. They're already rattling around inside. They're already perplexed. They were filled with a...with a medley of emotions. Everything seemed to be falling apart. All their dreams and desires were unraveling. And the gloomy prospect of Jesus Christ dying and leaving left them terrorized. You see, they had been fully convinced that this was the Messiah, but the only real concept they ever had of a Messiah was as an illustrious conqueror, a kind of a super hero, a sovereign ruling king. And their hopes had risen even higher when Jesus came riding into Jerusalem and everybody threw palm branches down and cried hosanna and this is the son of David and they were really laying it on heavy. And their hopes were rising inside, it was exciting. The whole thing was at a kind of a fever pitch. And then they had heard Him gather the people around Him and then He began to talk about His dying, like as a grain of wheat buried in the ground dies and brings forth life, He was saying that's what I'm going to do. And they were shaken and they were filled with sorrow because they really loved Him and the thought of losing Him was unbearable.

And not only that, the theological implications, how in the world could they reconcile this with His messiahship? And what about them? What kind of a way is this to treat them? They had forsaken all and followed Him, and now He's going to forsake them and go away. And not only that, He was going to leave them in the midst of enemies who hated Him and them. It was all so strange, nothing seemed to fit. A Messiah who is going to die. Here we are stuck in this situation, hated by all men. Where are our resources going to come from? We forsook all to follow Him and He's leaving us.

And then to add to that, the realization that they had been so proud and so selfish that they wouldn't have even shown love to each other and when it came time to wash each other's feet, they wouldn't do that. And Jesus had to finally do it Himself. And they had so wanted to show Him they loved Him and they didn't. And then they were so perplexed because Jesus had actually said that one of them was going to betray Him and they didn't know who it was and they didn't understand why Judas left. They thought he went to the store to buy some bread or something. They didn't understand, "one of us is going to betray?" And then to make things worse, they had just heard Jesus say to Peter who was on the surface the strongest of all of them that Peter was going to deny Him three times.

And everything seemed to be coming to an unbelievably crazy kind of climax. All the strong virile character of Peter was going to fall apart and somebody was going to betray them and they hadn't shown their love to Jesus and He was going away and they were alone and could this be the Messiah? And what's going on here? And even though they were wavering and shaking, they still loved Him and so in the mixture of all of this was the kind of undying love and they were sort of hoping against hope.

Well Jesus read their hearts like a billboard, He knew exactly what they were thinking. He was well aware of their minds. He was able to be touched with the feelings of their infirmities. He could sorrow their sorrows and hurt their hurts. And it's kind of an interesting thing that they couldn't feel His pain but He could feel theirs, and He did. There was always room in His heart, as there still is, for the troubles of others. He feels their griefs just like they were His own and so He kindly moves to comfort them. And all the time He's doing this, He knows that they're going to scatter and forsake Him. He knows that. But He still offers them this comfort.

Isaiah said this, "In all their affliction He was afflicted. And the Lord who anointed Him to comfort those who mourn and to bind up the broken hearted had indeed given to Him the tongue of the learned that He might speak a word in season to them who were weary." Isaiah said when the Messiah comes, God will give Him the ability to feel the pain of others and to offer comfort to the weary.

So Jesus says to them, "Friends, stop being troubled." There's the agonizing shepherd facing the cross, comforting the sheep who are going to be scattered and forsaken. Somebody said, "Was there ever kinder shepherd half so gentle, half so sweet?" I think not. Don't be troubled.

Now He says, "Because I want to comfort you." And how does He begin to comfort? Look at the second part of verse 1, "Ye believe in God, believe also in Me." Now what's He saying here? Oh there's so much in this. He's saying, "Trust My presence."

Let me show you what I mean. You'll notice that Jesus puts Himself on an equality with God there. "Ye believe in God, believe also in Me." Now it can be an imperative. The Greek imperative and indicative takes the same form. He could be saying, "Believe in God," command. "Believe in Me," command. Or He could be saying, "Ye believe in God, ye believe in Me," it's the same form, but it seems as though this translation is the best, "Ye believe in God, believe also in Me." That's the natural attitude that Jesus is expressing. One is a fact, the other is a command. Ye already believe in God, now believe in Me. Now that puts Him on an equal basis with God. He is asking them to trust His presence.

Now watch and I'll show you what I mean. He calls on them to trust Him even though He can't see Him when He goes. And He says, "You believe in God whom you cannot see, believe also in Me." The psalmist said this, "I had faded unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord and the land of the living." The psalmist also said, "But mine eyes are unto Thee, O God, in Thee is my trust." Listen, it was historic in Israel, they believed in God. Even the Pharisees believed in God. Men believe in God. And Jesus says you believe in God, you might as well believe in Me. And in the darkest hour He says, "Trust, trust, you already trust God, trust Me. Just because you won't be able to see Me doesn't mean I'm not there. Trust Me."

Now the idea of believing here is not so much the idea of saving faith. He's not saying believe in Me and you'll be saved, not at all. They already believe in Him at that point. He is saying, and the word is in the linear, "Keep on trusting Me, you are trusting God so trust, keep on trusting Me. Even though I am not visible, keep trusting Me." The apostles already by divine illumination recognized Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God. Well let's face it, their faith was typically Thomas faith, right? Thomas after the resurrection was told He is alive and He appeared to us and Thomas said, "Sure, right. I wouldn't believe that if I couldn't see Him and put my hands right in the nail prints." And so that's exactly the ground upon which Christ met Thomas. Thomas kind of faith. What they...what they saw they believed, that's the lowest level of faith. They believed in Jesus, how could they reject Him, He was standing right there. They had seen everything He did. But He was about to be removed from them and become invisible to the physical eye. So He's saying you...you shouldn't have any problem with this, folks, just because I'm leaving that shouldn't make you fall apart. You don't see God but you believe with all your hearts in Him.

Back in Deuteronomy, I think 31 is the chapter and verse 6, I'll just read it to you. It says this, and this is the word of Moses to the people of Israel. "Be strong and of good courage, fear not nor be afraid of them." Watch this, and here shows Moses' faith, typical of Israel, "For the Lord thy God, He it is who doth go with thee, He will not fail thee, nor forsake thee." And, my friends, the Jewish people believed that to the soles of their feet they believed it. And Jesus says to them, "You believe in God and He's invisible. You believe in His love and you've never seen His form. You believe in His care and you've never seen His hand that protects you. You have full faith in an invisible God. So believe also in Me even though I'm not here. You can have full faith in Me, just because I'm not visible doesn't make the difference."

Over there in John 20:29 after Jesus got done showing Thomas His nail prints, He said, "Thomas, it's a good thing you saw and believed," but watch this, "blessed is he that hath not seen...what?...let believe," see. The visible presence of Christ isn't the issue, and that's what He's trying to get across. Jesus said, "Though I am with you...how long?...always, I will never leave you nor forsake you." And there He parallels what God said about Himself in the Old Testament. The ever-present Christ, so what He says to the disciples is, "Just because I can't be seen, don't let that bother you, you have full faith in an invisible God, have full faith in Me." Look at John 16:13 for a second. He's telling them here that He's going to send the Holy Spirit to them and notice what He wants the Holy Spirit to do. You know, it would be kind of easy for these poor disciples after Jesus left to think, "Oh, He's gone and He may be, for all we know, out of existence, you know, it's all over with." But watch what He does. "But nevertheless, when He, the Spirit of Truth is come, He will guide you in to all truth for He shall not speak of Himself; but whatever He shall hear, that shall He speak and show you things to come." Verse 14, watch it, now the Holy Spirit didn't come to talk about Himself, 14; "He shall glorify...what?...Me." Do you know that the Holy Spirit's ministry is to point to Jesus Christ, to keep reminding us that He's there? See? "For He shall receive of Mine and show it to you." Do you see? The Spirit's ministry is to show us Christ is still there. He is the guarantee that Christ exists. All things that the Father hath are Mine, therefore said I that He shall take of Mine and show it to you. The Spirit's ministry is to show us Christ. And so Jesus says here, "Listen, fellows, you believe in the invisible God, believe in Me," and then He sticks the Holy Spirit in them, sends them the Comforter and the Holy Spirit's ministry is to remind them that Christ is there, that He's alive. The ministry of the Spirit is to testify of Christ. And that's why it's very dangerous whenever you see a ministry that is centered around the Holy Spirit where it's constantly the Holy Spirit and evidently the Holy Spirit's getting all the glory. That's not the Holy Spirit's ministry. His ministry is to point to Christ, not to Himself.

And so, the first comforting awareness is to know that Christ is alive and present, though invisible. Now Peter finally got this message because over in...let's see, it's 1 Peter 1:8, listen to what he says. Christ, Jesus Christ, verse 7, "Jesus Christ whom having not seen, ye love." Now listen to this, "In whom though now you see Him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory." I have never seen Jesus Christ. Now that's not shocking, but it's true. But there is no one in existence in whom I believe more than I believe in Jesus Christ. He is alive. He's for real. I know Him, I've talked to Him already today. I've sensed His presence. You will never convince me that He's not alive, the Spirit of God witnesses in my heart continually that Jesus Christ lives. And although I can't see Him, I trust Him.

So He says to the disciples, "Keep on trusting Me. You believe in God, believe in Me even though you can't see Me." What a fantastic thought. And the little word "also" is so important in that verse because it gives an equality between Christ and God. "Believe also in Me," on the same level. So the first point of our comfort then is His presence. Whatever your trouble, friend, whatever your fouled up problems, whatever mess you're in, whatever anxiety or perplexity you're in, just remember this, the Lord's there, He's there.

You say, "Well, it sure would be nice if He was visible." No it wouldn't because if He was visible He wouldn't be where I need Him. He needs to be the way He is so He can be everywhere. The Christ who was in the New Testament was not nearly so marvelous, personally, of course, but the way it worked in the New Testament, Christ could only be in one place at a time. And now He's able to have His presence revealed by the Holy Spirit to all believers everywhere at the same time. And so, Jesus says, "Trust Me, men, I'm there. You may not see Me, but I'm there."

All right, secondly, not only trust My presence, but My promises. Oh this is good! Trust My promises. Now watch the promises He's going to give them. Verse 2, "In My Father's house are many dwelling places. If it were not so I would have told you, I wouldn't woof you guys, I'm not going to tell you a lie. I mean, if it wasn't true I would have told you. If there was nothing after this life, I'd have told you that. I go to prepare a place for you." Boy, can't you imagine how that must have rung a bell? "Ah, You mean, You're just going away to get some place ready for us to get there?" That's the whole idea, that's His promise. I'm going up there just to get it ready for you guys. Terrific, that makes a whole different ball game out of it. You're not just going away to leave us. "No, I'm going to go get it ready for you." What a thought. And He says, "I'm going...I love this...to My Father's house." That's good, that's so good. The grandest name of all, God is My Father. Jesus who had dwelt forever in the bosom of the Father came forth so that He could reveal the Father and what the Father had been to Him through all eternities and now His glory was done, He was going...His being glorified was to be done and He was going back to full glory with the Father again.

Now what is "My Father's house" mean? My Father's house, friends, is heaven. Did you know that? That's just another name for heaven. My Father's house is heaven. In the New Testament heaven is called a country, emphasizing its vastness. Heaven is also called a city, because of the large number of inhabitants. Heaven is called a kingdom because it's a structured ordered thing. And heaven is also called a paradise because of its beauty. It's called a country, a city, a kingdom, and a paradise. But you know what I like best, I like it best when heaven is called "My Father's house."

You know, when I was a kid raised and I'd go away somewhere, the best thing I could possibly do was go back to my father's house, be home. I was flying home from San Diego last night, late about eleven o'clock on American Airlines and I sat down next to a guy who was returning from the service. And he was just excited. He said...I said, "Where are you going?"

He said, "We're going to Los Angeles, this is the last leg."

I said, "Where are you coming from?"

"Way out in the Philippines somewhere, hip-hopped all over." He said, "I've been on five planes, helicopters, all kinds of things."

I said, "It's good to get home, isn't it? Good to go home."

He said...he said, "Man it was great to see things, but home...I just want to go home." See.

There's something about the comfort and...it's not like...when we go to heaven it's not like going into some giant palace where the....you just go right in and just flop, see. Throw your coat off, kick your shoes and whew...that's it. I mean, that's home, that's My Father's house. See. Tremendous realization. And you remember that Jesus had called the temple His Father's house, same way. When He went to cleanse the temple He said, "You've made My Father's house a den of thieves." He called the temple His Father's house, but Matthew 23:38 Jesus looked over Jerusalem and He said, "Behold, your house is left unto you...what?..desolate," and from there on heaven became the Father's house. That's home, that's not some weird place where you're uncomfortable, that's home. Home like home has never been.

Then He says this, "In My Father's house are many dwelling places." Now your text may say "mansions," which is given to Christianity the wrong idea for years, that heaven is full of all these big mansions. And when you get up there it's like going to a new development when the real estate guy gives you the little map and says, "Well, let's see, you go two blocks down and four to the left and that's your mansion. You know that Peter will be at the gate with real estate maps pointing out on a little golf cart to take you to your mansion." It's not, you know, eight blocks and to the left. When you go, it's dwelling places and what it means is this, the word "dwelling places" referring, of course, to the context in the day that it was written, can be explained thus: the father would build a house, then one of his sons would be married and he would attach another wing to the house. Another son would be married and he would attach another wing to the same house. Pretty soon they would marry and they would close it in almost so that the patio was in the middle and everyone lived around the patio...the father, the sons all the way around and the relatives. Now that's what it's talking about and it's not talking about tenement rooms, it's the idea of total dwelling, like a very full and complete apartment but all surrounding the same patio.

When I go to heaven God is not going to live there, and I'm going to live eight blocks down here, I'm going to be in the Father's...we'll have the same patio. We are going to live right together. And that's the idea of "dwelling places," not detached, but attached to the Father's house, right in the same house with the Father.

You say, "Oh, is there going to be room for all of us?" Well look at this, "In My Father's house are...what, what's the next word?...many..." Listen, there's just enough for everybody. Remember the old spiritual, "Plenty good room in my Father's house?" No overcrowding in heaven, no weary traveler will be turned away, no "no vacancy" signs. It's as wide as God's love, there's plenty of room. I can...in fact, I can show you how much room there is if you want to look at Revelation 21:16.

Verse 16 of Revelation 21, "And the city lieth foursquare and the length is as large as the breadth and he measured the city with the reed, twelve thousand furlongs. The length and the breadth and the height of it are equal." Now that's 1500 miles approximately, 1500 miles in every direction of a cube. An Australian engineer named Thomas calculated that would be two million, two hundred and fifty thousand square miles. To give you a reference point, London is 140 square miles. That city is two million, two hundred and fifty-thousand square miles. And at the ratio of population in London, it could hold a hundred thousand million people unglorified. Glorified, who know? It could hold thirty times the population of our world right now and still have plenty of room to spare. Now that's many dwelling places.

Now let me show you a little bit more about heaven while you're over there in Revelation 21. Verse 1, just to give you an idea of what it's going to be like. "I saw a new heaven and a new earth for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away and there was no more sea." Revelation 21:2 now, "And I, John," and I told you in Revelation the reason he throws "I, John," in there is because he gets so excited, you know. It's like, "And I, John, saw the holy city, new Jerusalem coming down from God out of heaven as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a great voice out of heaven say, 'Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men.'" You know what that means? God is living with man and that is in the Father's house, we're all there. "And He will dwell...what are the next two words?...three blocks away? With them and they shall be His people and God Himself shall be with them and be their God and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain for the former things are passed away." In the Father's house He takes care of all the hurts and the needs of the children, He eternally drives them away.

Listen, I already feel bound to heaven, don't you? I mean, I...I just...my Father is there, my savior is there, my home is there, my name is there, my life is there, my affections are there, my heart is there, my inheritance is there and my citizenship is...I don't know what I'm doing here, in fact. And the great promise that Christ gives to His disciples and to all of us is that He went up there just to get it ready for us.

Now there never was an interior or exterior decorator like Jesus. And you read the twenty-first chapter of Revelation and read what that place is going to be like, it's absolutely unbelievable. Let me just read a little bit of it. Revelation 21:18, "And the building of the wall of heaven was of jasper and the city was pure gold like clear glass." Have you ever seen pure gold that's as clear as glass? It doesn't exist but He's going to make it. "And the foundations of the wall of the city were garnished with all manner of precious stones. The first foundation...and it's listed...sapphire, jasper, sapphire, chalcedony, emerald, sardonyx, sardius, chrysolite, beryl, topaz, chrysoprasus, jacinth, amethyst. And the twelve gates were twelve pearls." Each one of the gates was one pearl, giant pearls. In verse 22, "I saw no temple in it for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it." We're going to be with them there. That's the temple...the whole of the city is the temple. "I had no need of the sun, neither the moon to shine in it for the glory of God did light it." Can't you just imagine the glory of God lighting that city and flashing out through all the jewels that stud the walls of that city, fabulous city. Just unbelievable. "And the gates are never shut," verse 25. And verse 27, "There shall in no way enter into it anything that defileth nor he that worketh abomination or maketh a lie, but they who are written in the Lamb's Book of Life." What a city, a golden, transparent, diamond city with diamond walls and light from the Lamb's glory flashing through the colored jewels and forming a spectacle of dazzling beauty and no defile and glory all over the place.

And you know what? Jesus is just getting it ready for us. And I love this, He says, "If it were not so I would have told you." That's so good. "Trust Me, I've always told you the truth. I'm not just saying this to try to make you feel good." Over in 18:37 of John it says, this is good, "Pilate said unto Him, 'Are You a King?' Jesus answered, 'Thou sayest that I am King, to this end was I born, for this cause came I into the world that I should bear witness unto...what?...the truth.'" Jesus always speaks truth, always. "I go to prepare a place for you, I'm just getting it ready, trust Me."

Verse 3, the second part of the promise. "And if I go and prepare a place for you, I'll come again and receive you unto Myself that where I am there ye may be also." Listen, I'm not only going to get it ready, this is great, I'm going to come back and get you to take you there. It's a beautiful thought. But He says this, the Lord doesn't send somebody to get us, what does He say? "If I go, I will...what?...come again." Listen, He does it Himself. The Lord will not send somebody, He will come and get us in person to take us home. How precious we must be for Him to do that.

My Dad used to tell the story about a little boy who was dropped off on a corner by his father. His father told him he'd be back and took off to do some business. His car broke down, he was gone about four or five hours while this little kid, he was only supposed to be gone about twenty minutes...four or five hours while this little fella stood on the corner by a store. The father was panicky. He had no way to phone the little boy. And so he just panicked. He couldn't get where he had to go because his car had broken down. He got some help and gotten it fixed and five hours later, it was eleven o'clock at night, came back and the little guy was standing on the corner just whistling a little tune, rocking back and forth. The father pulled up to the curb and said, "Get in," and grabbed him and hugged him and kissed him. And he said, "Oh, I'm so sorry. Oh gee, I'm so sorry." He was just panicked. He said, "What are you sorry about, Dad, you said you were coming." You see, that's the kind of trust that we can put in God. Jesus said, "Listen, I'm coming back. It may get dark and it may look like it's getting to be pretty much close to night, and it may look like I forgot, but I'll be back. Trust Me, trust My promise, I'm getting it ready. When it's done I'm coming to get you."

You want to know something that I think is so exciting? Jesus is just as anxious to get back and get you as you are to go. In John 17:24 it says this, "Father, I will that they also whom Thou hast given Me be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory." See, He says, "I want them up here with us." And as soon as the Father pushes the green light, you better know it's going to happen fast because Jesus wants you up there just as much as you want to be there.

Again and again Jesus had told His disciples that He wouldn't forsake them. And now He reminds them. So the call, trust My presence, trust My promises, I'll be back to get you. Then He says this, trust My person, and we'll close with this thought.

Verse 4, "And where I go ye know..." He said, you know, I've told you, back in John 7:33 He told them He had to go to the Father. "You know where I'm going and the way you know, you know how to get there." Thomas, speaking for the disciples who by this time don't think they're sure of anything, "Lord, we know not where Thou goest. And how can we know the way, I mean, if we don't know where we're going, how do you know how to get there?"

That's a pretty good question. He said, "I'm going to the Father, where's the Father?" What's Thomas saying? He's saying this. "Our knowledge of anything stops at death. You're going to die and go somewhere. Listen, we don't know what's going on after death. We don't have any maps on how to get the Father after you die." Thomas says we don't understand anything. They're a blank after death, and so am I. Listen, if Jesus said, "Look, after you die, just come on up," see? So he says, "You know the way," and Thomas says, "We don't even know where You are, how do you know how to get there if you don't know where you're going?" I mean, they drew a blank after death and they didn't know what to do. And it was a good point.

And then Jesus says to them in verse 6, it's so good. Trust Me, listen to what He says, "Jesus saith unto them, 'I am the way, the truth and the life.'" Stop right there. That's so good. He says, "Guys, you don't need to know how to get there, I'm coming to get you." Isn't that good? I don't need to worry about how to get up there. He says, "Trust Me, I am the way. When the moment comes, I'll take your hand, you don't even need to know the directions, I'll just take you right up to the Father's house." That is so beautiful.

You know, if you went into a town, and you've had this happen probably, and you didn't know where you were and you wanted directions. It would be one thing for a guy to stand there and give you all kinds of directions and you don't know where you're going anyway. It would be something else for the guy to say, "Look, come on and follow me, I'll take you there." That 's what Jesus is going to do. He's not going to show you the directions, He's going to get your hand and take you. You don't even need to know, just...all you have to do is die, that's all, to begin the process, spiritually. Christ will take you the rest of the way. That's death for the Christian, I trust You, Jesus, I don't know where You are up there and I don't have any idea how to get there. I'm just going to die and You can just take me. And you fall asleep in death or when you're changed in the Rapture, He'll take you, don't worry. He's coming back for you.

Do you trust Him in death? Do you trust Him? What if you die, do you trust Him? Are you ready to just die and He'll just take you? Do you believe Him for that? He says to those disciples, "Trust Me, I'll bring you."

Augustus Toplady(????), died in London at the age of 38. He was the author of these immortal words, "Rock of Ages, cleft for me, let me hide myself in Thee. Let the water and the blood from Thy wounded side which flowed be of sin that double cure, saved from wrath and make me pure." He wrote those words. When death drew near he rejoiced. He said this. "It is my dying vow that these great and glorious truths which the Lord in rich mercy has given me to believe and enabled me to preach are now brought into practical and heart-felt experience. They are the very joy and support of my soul. The comfort flowing from them carry me far above the things of time and sense." Then he said this, "Had I wings like a dove, I would fly away to the bosom of God and be at rest." About an hour before he died, he seemed to awaken with from a gentle slumber and this is what he said, "Oh, what delights, who can fathom the joys of heaven? I know it cannot be long now till my Savior will come for me." And then bursting into a flood of tears, he said, "All is light, light, light. The brightness of His own glory, O come, Lord Jesus, come, come quickly." And he closed his eyes.

About to die, Clement Brown pointed his finger and said this, "I see one, two, three, four, five angels waiting their commission. I see them plainly as I see you, Hester. How I wish you could see them." Then he beckoned, "And my Jesus bids me come."

Trust Me, Jesus says, you don't need a map, I'm the way, the truth and the life. I am the way to the Father, I am the truth whether in this world or the world to come. I am the life that is eternal. It's all in Christ. He's everything a man needs. Everything Adam lost, you regain in Jesus Christ. Trust Me, trust My presence, trust My promises, trust My person, I'm the way.

Listen, friends, no matter how bad it looks, there's comfort because you can trust Him.

Father, we thank You, this morning, for teaching us trust. We thank You that Jesus Christ is so worthy of our trust. And, Lord, we just...we want to tell You we trust You. Thank You for comforting us with these words. Thank You for saying You'd always be with us, Your presence. Thank You for the promise that You're up there getting it ready for us. Thank You for the wonderful fact of Your person that You are the way that after we die and leave this world or are taken in the Rapture, whatever it is, You're our personal escort. We don't need to have a chart or a map, You're the way, You're the truth and You're the life. We thank You for that.

While your heads are bowed for just a quick second. I purposely didn't read the last part of verse 6 because I want to quote it for you right now. Jesus then finished off this statement by saying this, "And no man cometh unto the Father but by Me." Maybe you listened this morning and you heard about heaven and about the comfort that comes by trusting Christ, but you will never be there, you will never go there because the only way to get there is through faith in Jesus Christ and you've never put your faith in Jesus Christ. Disaster of all disasters. No man cometh unto the Father but by Me. Don't go out of this building this morning until you've invited Jesus Christ to come into your life to be your Savior and your escort into the presence of the Father.

Father, as we sing, we pray that Your Spirit will have freedom to move in Christ's name. Amen.

Jesus Is God

John Chapter 14, beginning at verse 7. Jesus speaking to the eleven disciples the night before his death says, "If ye had known Me, ye should have known my Father also. And from henceforth, ye know Him and have seen Him." Philip saith on him, "Lord, show us the Father and it suffices us." Jesus saith unto him, "Have I been such a long time with you and hast thou not known Me, Philip? Ye that hath seen Me hath seen the Father. And how saith thou then, 'Show us the Father'? Believeth thou not that I am in the Father and the Father in Me? The words that I speak unto you I speak not of Myself, but the Father that dwelleth in me he doeth the works. Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father in Me or else believe Me for the very works sake. Verily, verily I say unto you he that believeth on Me, the works that I do, shall he do also, and greater works than these shall he do because I go unto my Father. And whatever ye shall ask in My name that will I do that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If ye shall ask anything in My name, I will do it." May God bless through our hearts this reading of His word.

Turning then to John, Chapter 14 we come to the passage which we shall deal with this morning, John, Chapter 14, verses 7 to 14. If we were to give a title to this perhaps we could call this section, "Jesus is God." That's the claim that Christ makes here in the first part of it, although there is much more than that in these verses. As we come to Verse 7 of Chapter 14, we come to a very important moment in the life of any disciple of Jesus Christ. Whether you were with that group on that particular evening in the Upper Room the night before Jesus died, or whether you're sitting here in Grace Church in 1971, this is a very, very important portion of Scripture. It was important to them as they heard it; it's important to us as we study it this morning. The reason I say it's important is because it just may be the most staggering thing that Jesus every said. There are so many unbelievable things just to the superficial understanding that when we gather them all up in these few little verses they are almost overwhelming. The fact that He claims to be God is staggering enough; the fact that He says we will do greater things that He did is even more staggering and then the concluding statement that if we ask anything in His name He will do it is even more staggering. These words are monumental words in declaring not only who Jesus is, but what He intends to do in and for those who belong to Him. And needless to say, we could spend weeks and weeks just on these verses, but we'll endeavor to do it all up in just the brief time we have this morning.

Now as I said these words, every time I read them, they stun me a little more and I don't think that I'm ever­ going to find out all that's in them until someday when I have that perfect knowledge with the Lord, nevertheless, let's unfold as much of it as we can to our understanding this morning. And I'm sure you'll be thrilled as you see what Jesus is saying here. Now let me review just a little of the scene so you'll get a grasp on what's happening. Jesus is about to die and this is the night before his crucifixion. Many, many things have transpired in the years, three brief years, of his ministry, and now it all comes down to his death. And on that last night as I have been telling you, He is giving his final address to His eleven disciples. He has already dismissed Judas to carry out the deed of betrayal and Judas is out doing that now and in the meantime Jesus deals with these eleven disciples. These are strategic hours because He must prepare them for the traumatic shock of His death and so he instructs them, he warns them, he teaches them, he loves them a little bit, he commands them, He gives them some promises. He basically wraps up all his final instruction and revelation and gives it to them on this last occasion. And so these are Jesus' final words to His beloved eleven disciples. And you remember back in Chapter 13 He began this final evening with them by teaching them a profound lesson of loving humility. He washed their feet. Then beginning in verse 21 of the same chapter he began to tell them that he was going to die; that he was going to leave them and that he would leave and they wouldn't be able to come. Well, needless to say, there was sorrowing. He told them, however, in the meantime to just keep loving each other and they would survive if they loved each other and not only that but that they would be a tremendous witness to the world if they loved each other. And so, he has taught them loving humility by example, he has told them to love each other by command, he has told them that he is leaving them.

Well the fact of his leaving is a tremendous blow to these eleven disciples and so their hearts are seriously troubled. And as he comes to Chapter 14 he spends the entire 14th chapter comforting their troubled hearts. They don't want him to leave. Their hearts are broken over the fact that he's going. They have put all their love in that one man, and it's easy to see how they could do that, and the fact that he is going away and leave them in a hostile, hating world is a sad thing to realize. They don't quite understand how he can be the Messiah and become a victim of the people. They don't quite understand how it fits that the Messiah is going to die. It doesn't seem to register. Then on top of that to be told that one of their own is a traitor and will betray Jesus is even a more disastrous blow. And then to hear that the most vociferous, the loudest mouth of all, the leader of the group, Peter, is going to deny Jesus three times just sort of tops it all off and they don't quite understand how all of this can happen to them. The Messiah who dies doesn't figure, Peter denying him, one of them a betrayer; all of these things. Then the fact that he's going to leave them and leave them alone and so their hearts are broken and then in 14 Jesus begins to deal with their broken hearts. And you notice in verse 1 he says this: "Let not your heart be troubled." And with that statement he launches into an entire chapter of comfort for their troubled hearts. Chapter 14 is the comfort chapter of the New Testament. It's comfort to troubled hearts. And we've already seen how he comforted them in the first six verses by telling them held come back for them. He says, don't worry, I'll be back to get you. If 1 go away, I'm only going away to prepare a place for you so I can come again and take you there. That's his first promise of comfort.

Now as we come to our verses, verses 7 to 14, Jesus continues to comfort them by giving them three great revelations. Three great revelations, and you have them on your outline. The revelation of his person to them; the revelation of his power in them; the revelation of his promise for them. Three great revelations. And they are comforting revelations. To know this is comforting. And these are things that are brand new revelations in one sense and yet they are things that he has really been saying all along. Perhaps the fact that he forcefully puts them in a new phraseology gives them a kind of a freshness. Revelations, then, designed to bring comfort.

Let's look at the first one. And first of all we see the revelation of his person to them. You can see how important it is in the midst of all of their questions about who he is and questions that perhaps were answered a few days before and now are unanswered because they can't figure out why he's going to die and why it is that held become a victim if he's really the Messiah and why it is he can't seem to defend himself and he's being victimized not only by the hostile world but by two of his own disciples who betray him and deny him, and so he need to reiterate to them who he really is. And so he reveals in kind of a fresh way his person to them. And as I said earlier, it may be the most staggering words that Jesus ever said because the claim is so tremendous. What does he reveal to them about himself? He reveals one thing; he reveals to them that he is God, just that simple. He is God. And of course this is the running debate of all history about Jesus. Everybody who studies about Jesus faces that issue because of the claim of Jesus to be God. Some people conclude that Jesus is a madman. He's simply a psychological basket case; somebody who had delusions of grandeur. He was some kind of a paranoid. Other people conclude that Jesus was a fraud and other people say he was just a good teacher which is one option you don't really have because good teachers don't claim to be God. Others say he was God. But the running debate has to be over whether or not Jesus is God or not and that's really the issue. And here Jesus makes the very simple claim to be God. No less than God.

Now you say well, in what way can this be a comfort to the disciples. Well, keep this in mind. Go back to verse 4 and I'll show you how to know he's God is a comfort. Verse 4 Jesus has said, "Now I'm going to go away and he says in verse 4 now where I go you know and the way you know. You know where I'm going." Well, what do you mean by that? Well, you know where I came from, right? He's told them many times that he proceeded from whom? The Father. He's told them that all along. Now he says you know where I'm going to go. He's also told them prior to this that he's going back to the Father so he says, "You know where I'm going and the way you know." And the disciples are kind of scratching their heads and Thomas pops up and says, "Lord, we don't know where you're going. How would we know the way?" Thomas isn't really too sure about it. Thomas doesn't know what to expect after death and we talked about this in our sermon several weeks ago.

So Jesus says to him, I am the way, don't worry how to get there, I am the way, I'm the truth, I'm the light, no man cometh unto the Father but by me. If you know me, you know the way to get there. That's all he's saying. But they're still not too clear about the Father. They're not too sure what God looks like; they're not too sure about how to get to God and they kind of look toward the time of their death and figure, boy, after we die it's kind of a mystery as to how to get to the Father. We don't exactly know where he is or what he's like and they're not too sure that they really do know the way. Jesus says I'm going to God and I'm going to take you to God. But they're uncertain about it. Their faith isn't really too strong. And, they're not at all sure about the way to get to the Father. They're not too sure even about the Father. What's God really like? And so in their confusion about God, Jesus declares to them that they don't need to have any confusion about God at all because he is God and if they know him they know God. You see, Jesus says I'm going to the Father and someday you'll come along to the Father's house. But they're not too sure about the Father. They don't know too much about him and it's hard for them to believe, and so, Jesus wants to bring it back down to earth by declaring, Look fellows, I am one with the Father. I am God. Don't worry about it. And you remember back in John 1:13 the great statement of John regarding Jesus, he said this: "And the word was made flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father." Jesus Christ is God. And so with that in mind we come to verse 7 and watch what the dialogue has to say.

Jesus says then to them; they're kind of quizzing about God; they're not too sure about the Father or the way to get there ..."If ye had known me ye should have known my Father also." Stop right there. Now Jesus says if you guys really knew me you wouldn't be worried about who the Father was. Now in a sense it is true that the disciples did not know Jesus. They had some knowledge of who he was. They had declared that he was Messiah, the anointed of God. Peter himself even made the statement that he was the son of the living God; that he was God in that sense,

but Jesus said to him you didn't make that on your own, Peter, the Father gave that to you to say. And so, even though they had a knowledge of Jesus, that knowledge was somewhat limited. And Jesus is saying if you really knew me in depth, fully, you'd know the Father also. If you're so quizzical about the Father because there must be some loopholes in your knowledge about me. Because if they had fully known Jesus they would have fully known God. That's what he's saying. If you really knew me you would have a full, rich knowledge of God and when I say I'm going to my Father and there's a dwelling place in the Father's house for you and some day you'll go there, you wouldn't worry about how to get there or who the Father was or any of the details if you really knew me you'd know the Father. You see they had really failed to see Jesus fully as God. And so, they have these fears and these doubts and these questions because they're not too sure.

Now Jesus obviously is making a tremendous claim. He not only said in verse 6 that he is the way to God, the truth about God and the very life of God; now he says he is God. Now keep it in mind Jesus is not a manifestation of God, Jesus is God Manifest. The old subvalion error was that Jesus was just a radiation of God. A manifestation of God. No, He is not a manifestation of God. He is God manifest. And there's a big difference. So Christ reveals to them his person. That he is God. And he'll unfold a little more of it in a minute. And you see, they know Jesus loves them. They know Jesus cares for them. And he wants them to know that God feels the same way so that when Jesus is absent they can still maintain a confidence that God will carry out his love and his protection because God and Jesus are one.So they don't need to worry about how to get to God or about the Father if they really knew Jesus they'd know the Father also. But having said that, Jesus makes a very puzzling statement in verse 7. Look at it. "And from henceforth, ye know him," that is the Father, "and have seen him." Now that's a very difficult statement to interpret. It has two possible explanations and I've going to give you both of them and then I'll tell you which one I feel is best. There are adequate scholars on both sides. More adequate scholars on one particular side. All right.

"From henceforth ye know him and have seen him." Now he's saying to the disciples, from now on, that's what henceforth means, from now on you know him. Now he just said in the same verse you don't really know me so you don't really know him, but he says from now on you'll know him. Now the question is, when does the "now on" begin. The first possible interpretation is that it is immediate. That what he is saying is, Men, from this moment on, right now on this evening before my death, this hour, this split second that I have just declared to, the statement if you knew me you'd know him, from this moment on you know. And you have seen him from this moment on. You've got it all straight from this moment on. That's one interpretation. Christ has just declared that he is God in the statement of verse 7 and now they know it.

Well, that's possible but it's got some problems. The problem is this: First of all he had declared it before and they didn't get it. Right? Why would they necessarily get it this time when he just said it? The other problem is this: In the very next verse Philip gives evidence that they don't get it. Because Philip says, well, Lord, if you'd show us God that would take careof it. He still doesn't know who Jesus is in the full sense, does he? If he asks Jesus to show him God then he doesn't understand. So you see, I don't feel it could have that immediate fulfillment because in the very next verse it's proof positive that they didn't understand.

That leaves another interpretation possible. And that is that it has a continuing future meaning. Now I'll explain this to you and it's got to get a little grammatical, so hang on. The Greeks often said things in the wrong tense as we would look at it in the English. Greeks did a lot of things with tense, you know, past, present and future. And one of the things they did was they often used the present tense and the past tense to speak of the future, which can be a little confusing, right? And they used it when future events were so positive that they had to happen, that they were absolute, they would speak of them as if they had already taken place. You see? They did this all the time. And that is what I believe Jesus is doing here. He is saying from now on into the future and in a little while you will fully understand, but it is so positive, it is so secure that it's just as good as if it's already happened. You see? That has a future meaning. He is saying in a little while starting from now, through the events that are going to happen, in a little while you'll get it all straight. And they would. In the events that were coming, the death of Jesus Christ, his resurrection, his ascension and the coming of the Holy Spirit, when all of that would happen in the next 40 days, you know what? They understood, didn't they? They had it all. They got it. In fact, even after the resurrection, just the death and the resurrection of Jesus were convincing to some of them, at least Thomas looked at Jesus and said what? My Lord... that's one thing, but then what did he say? My God. You see, Thomas got the message. And he didn't really get it until after the resurrection. So you see what Jesus is saying, Thomas obviously didn't understand before the resurrection, did he? Obviously. He didn't even believe Jesus arose. And so Jesus here is saying in the events that will follow up until the day of Pentecost when the Spirit comes to indwell you, at that time, fully and completely, you'll have it all. And can't you imagine what a day it was in the day of Pentecost when the Spirit of God came and everything fell into place and they understood it all? Jesus will tell them later, and we'll study it in days to come, when the Spirit comes he will lead you into all what? Truth. He'll bring all things to your remembrance. He will show you the things of me. See. And when the Spirit came at

Pentecost he cleared up the whole fog and they understood who

Jesus was and they understood total his person as God. It all falls into place. As I say, even a prelude to that time, Thomas understood it after the resurrection when he said Jesus was God.

And so then Jesus is saying you're going to understand and it's positive. It's secure. The understanding will come. Particularly at the coming of the Holy Spirit. And you remember the Holy Spirit's ministry was to point to Christ and declare who he was. And the Holy Spirit did that in the light of these apostles even as he does it in our lives.

Well, now we come to verse 8. And this shows, as I said, that they didn't understand at this point. Philip says unto him, "Lord, show us the Father and it suffices us." Now, as I said, verse 7 couldn't have been immediately fulfilled or Philip wouldn't have asked this question. It shows his ignorance. It's a shallow, faithless, ignorant question. And it reveals his lack of knowledge. He had heard what Jesus had said but he still didn't understand. His knowledge of Christ was incomplete; his knowledge of God was incomplete. And he did what so many people have done throughout history, he said Jesus, I need to see. See? It's a contrast between faith and sight again. It wasn't enough for Philip to believe, he wanted to see something. Maybe he remembered back in the Old Testament in the 33rd chapter of Exodus where Moses was tucked in a rock and he saw the glory of God, the after glory of God pass by. Maybe he was thinking about was it Moses, Aaron, Nadab and Abihu and the seventy elders of Israel who saw the God of Israel, it says as a body of heaven in its clearness. Some kind of a revelation of God's presence. Maybe he even recalled the words of Isaiah, I think it's in the 40th chapter where Isaiah says the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.

Maybe, he thought of those things, but I don't think so. I don't think at this point he was a biblical scholar at all. I think he was a faithless disciple who wanted sight to substitute for faith. He wants full visible proof. Well, you know, you can understandhis mind. Well, if you're going away, Lord, and it's all going to really get bad, and it's going to be a little insecure, could you just let us see God so we'll know for sure you're not whipping us, that when you do go away, you'll really go to the Father's house, you're really going to set it up, up there, you're really going to come and get us and really going to take us there. Could God come and confirm it? Well, that's a typical, faithless idea. He wants him to show God to them. And of course he's probably in the back of his mind figuring, well, if Jesus could do that, then we'd know he's for real, right? I mean if Jesus could just call up God and say God, could you step out for a moment and show yourself, then they would really know that Jesus was who he claimed to be, right? So he wants this kind of security of sight. Show us God and that will take care of it. And they just really didn't trust much.

I'm thinking of Acts, chapter 1. They really wanted to just be sure about everything. And in Acts, chapter 1 you remember when Christ was ascending into heaven? They stared at him all the way up and the two angels stood by and they said you men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing into heaven. Now I don't know why they were gazing into heaven in particular, but I have a secret idea that somebody had a pencil and they were trying to chart the course, see, to make sure they could get there, right? That's stretching the point. But they were really afraid that this might not all be, you know, just what they thought it would be and Jesus would be gone and they wouldn't know what to do or how to get there. They figured if Jesus could bring God into the scene that would just kind of clear it all up. God would be kind of a guarantee pledge that the future that Jesus promised them did really await them. Well, that's so typical. So typical of little faith. The demand to see everything before you can accept it.

Now watch verse 9. What an answer. "Jesus saith unto him, "Oh, this is powerful, "have I been such a long time with you and yet hath thou not known me, Philip?" Oh what a statement. And you know, I believe in that statement. There was not only a rebuke to Philip, but I believe there was a pathos in the voice of Jesus. Can you imagine the heartbreaking realization in Jesus that three years he had poured his life into these 11 guys, or 12 to begin with, one of them was a traitor, one of them a swearing denier, and the 10 that were left were of little faith. Life could get discouraging, you know? The night before his death and they still don't know who he is. Philip, have I been so long with you and you still don't know me? It's a sad thing to realize that after all the displays of Jesus' deity repeatedly; they still didn't get the message, fully. Nobody ever promised the ministry would be easy. It wasn't easy for Jesus to make those disciples. It was absolutely difficult. If you get discouraged about the person you're trying to disciple, don't feel bad. Jesus must have been just as discouraged as you or more.

Then the middle of verse 9 says this: Here's the great He that hath seen me, hath seen the Father. What a statement. Now that makes Jesus either a lunatic or else God to make a statement like that. If you've seen me, you've seen the Father, and how sayest thou then show us the Father. Philip, you're standing there staring me in the face and asking me to show you God. Open your eyes. You've been looking at me for three years. The writer of Hebrews says in chapter 1, verse 3 that Jesus Christ is the express image of God's person. The apostle Paul said in Colossians and I read it to you in verse 15 of chapter 1, that Jesus Christ is the image of the invisible God and later on in Chapter 2 he says verse 9, in him dwelleth all the fullness what? of the Godhead bodily. Jesus is God. And he's saying, Philip, Philip, three years you're staring me in the face and asking me to show you God?

It's a sad thing. It must have been a deep pain in the heart of Jesus. The last night before his death; three years of pouring his life into these men and they haven't gotten it yet. And you know, we can expect that from a non‑believer, right? You go back to Chapter 8 of John, I think it's Chapter 8, verse 19, and the unbelieving Jew saith where is your Father? They say this to Jesus. Jesus answered "Ye neither know me nor my Father. If ye had known me ye should have known my Father also." See it's the same claim, isn't it? Only we can understand how the unbelievers didn't know him, right? But for the very same statement to be made to disciples who have spent three years with Jesus doesn't seem to make much sense. A heartbreaking moment. And I'll tell you, follow‑up and discipleship can be heartbreaking. It was heartbreaking for Jesus and it's been heartbreaking for me and it's probably been heartbreaking for you. I can think of people that I had the privilege of leading to Jesus Christ that I poured my life into for a year, two years and three years and today you wouldn't even want to claim them. It happens. It happens. It's a tragedy. They're not all like that but there's enough of them like that to occupy a little section of your mind.

So you know what Jesus did and I love it and I've claimed it many times. Jesus went as far as he could go then he went to heaven and turned it over to the Holy Spirit, right? Is that what he did? Sure. And you know it's a great principle for you to remember in discipleship. You take it as far as you cantake it and move on. And Jesus said I'm going to go and send you the Comforter. Turn it over to the Holy Spirit. Then Jesus hits the key to everything. Philip has said show me, show me, show me and what's the first word in verse 10? What is it? What is it? Believest. Jesus doesn't do any trick for him. Jesus doesn't give him any display. He just says, "Believest thou not that I am in the Father and the Father in me." Believest. Look at verse 11. Believe me. He doesn't not show, he says believe. Philip asked for sight; Jesus gave him faith.

Now that is exactly what Christianity is all about, my friend. Christianity is all about believing. If you came here to Grace Church this morning expecting to see a miracle, you won't see one. If you expected to hear the voice of God booming out of the ceiling, you won't hear it. If you expected to see the face of God, you won't see it. If you expected to experience a supernatural revelation and some kind of ecstatic phenomena, you won't experience it. If you expected to hear voices from heaven, you won't heart them. If you expected to see your dead aunt, you won't see her. Or anybody else. This is not a séance. Now Satan can duplicate all those things in counterfeit, so if you want that, you can go to a séanceand get it. But this church is all about faith, not sight. You know something; I have never seen Jesus like those disciples saw him. I have never seen Jesus. I have never had a vision, except after eating chili and ice cream late. I have never met, knowingly met an angel, except my wife who is an angel. I know it because she is always up in the air happy about something. I have never heard heavenly voices, except the choir. I have never seen my dead aunt, except in her coffin. I have never seen God with my eyes and yet there is nothing that I know any surer than I know that God is Christ is and the Holy Spirit is and my spiritual eyes can see things that my physical eyes could never even conceive of.

Christianity is all about believing. It is not all about seeing. It is not all about miracles and strange phenomena. I don't want visions and I don't want super fantastic ecstatic things to happen; I want one thing; I want what those disciples asked for in Luke chapter 17, verse 5 when they said this, "Lord, increase my faith." That's what I want, because it is by faith that I perceive God. I don't want anything but more faith, and Jesus is operating on faith and this book is a faith book. Christianity is all about believing. And three years had gone by andPhilip and probably he's a spokesman for the other 10, didn't have sufficient faith to settle their troubled hearts just by believing, they had to have visible signs. No wonder Jesus calls them the little band of little faith. God deals in faith.

You say what's faith. Well, a little boy wants to find faith this way: He said it's believing in something you know ain't so. That's not faith. That's the opposite. Faith is believing in something you know is so. Faith has support. Faith has evidence. Now watch how Jesus gives the evidence for faith. He said, Philip, you're to believe me. On what basis? Verse 10, in the middle. "The word that I speak unto you, I speak not of myself." Philip, have you been listening for three years? Have you been listening? Did you hear what I said all these years? The words that he spoke. What kind of words? Let me just reiterate some of them to you so you'll know.

John 3:34. Don't try to follow me; I'm going to go fast. For he whom God hath said speaketh the words of God. This is John the Baptist's testimony to Jesus. For God giveth not the spirit by measure unto him. You see, he whom God hath sent speaks the words of God. This that Jesus has said is right out of the mouth of God. In Chapter 7 of John's gospel, verse 16 we studied this: Jesus answered them and said, My doctrine or teaching is not mine, but his that sent me. Then we saw in Chapter 8 in verse 28 these words: Then said Jesus unto them when you have lifted up the son of man then you shall know that I am he and that I do nothing of myself listen to this...but as my Father hath taught me, I speak this things. Verse 38 of the same chapter. I speak that which I have seen with my Father. Verse 40. But now ye seek to kill me a man that hath told you the truth which I have heard of God. In Chapter 12, verse 49, I think of another one. Jesus said this: For I have not spoken of myself, but the Father who sent me he gave me a commandment what I should say and whatI should speak, every word that came out of the mouth of Jesus came out of the mouth of God. And it was devastating. The disciples daily word is affected by it even as the world was.

In Chapter 7 of John, verse 46 you remember the rulers in the temple wanted to catch Jesus Christ and capture him so they sent the temple police after him. The temple police went to get him but when they got there they were so dumbfounded they came back without him and here is their report: "The officers answered, never man spoke like this man." All they had to do is hear his words and they couldn't lift an arm to touch him. In Matthew Chapter 7 we found a great illustration of the power of the words of Jesus. Matthew Chapter 7, verse 28 says: "And it came to pass when Jesus had ended these sayings the people were astonished." For he taught them as one having authority, not as the Scribes. The words of Jesus ought to be enough to penetrate the mind and the heart of any man and conjure up faith. Jesus says, Philip, haven't you been listening? All of his great I AM's; all of his teachings, his insights probing into the heart of a man, the times when he spoke revealing an innate knowledge of a human heart where there was now way to know what was in that heart except that he could read it. The times that he answered questions that men wouldn't ask with their lips but would ask in their hearts. Hadn't they heard this?

Listen, our faith is based on the words of Jesus. But not only that, take a look at verse 10. At the bottom of the verse he says, "The father that dwelleth in me he doeth the works. Believe me, not only for my words that I am in the Father and the Father in me, or else believe me for the very works' sake." He says to them; listen, if my words aren't sufficient proof, how about my works. Have you been watching the miracles? I always think of the blind beggar in the 9th chapter and they came to him and they said, well, where did this guy come from? We don't understand this person. Where did he come from; this guy that gave you sight? And the blind beggar looks at them rather sarcastically and says, Whew, funny. You don't know where he came from and he opened my eyes? It's obvious where he came from. Even the blind beggar knew he was from God. He says, Philip, haven't you been watching? Haven't you been seeing what I've been doing? The miracles of Jesus Christ are proof positive. John Chapter 5, verse 36 gives us an insight into that. But I have greater witness than that of John (Jesus is speaking) for the works which the Father hath given me to finish, the same works that I do bear witness of me. And you can read it in Chapter 10 of John as well. And so Jesus says, you don't need to see anything, Philip. You see it. Here I am. What am I going to show you? This is God manifest. Believe it by my words. Believe it by my works. But believe it.

You see as I said Christianity is all about believing. And so you see he reveals to them the tremendous truth that he is God. What a comfort it is to know. And if they could grasp this they could rest easy, knowing they were secure.Not only the love of Jesus, but the love of God.

Secondly he reveals his power in them. Verse 12. Now in verse 12 and in verses 13 and 14 we come to some fabulous promises. I mean they are so fabulous that we can't begin to plumb the depths. But let me just put it as quickly as I can. Verse 12. Here is the revelation of his power in them. He's given them his person and here is his power in them. This is tremendous. "Verily, verily," truly, truly, Amen, Amen, "I say unto you, he that believeth on me" Now watch this one, "the works that I do shall he do also." Now that's pretty astounding, right? You believe on me you'll do the works that I do. But get this one. "And greater works than these shall he do because I go unto my Father." Now the key to that verse is the last statement. "Because I go unto my Father." The only way that you'll able to do the works that I have done and greater works is if I go to the Father. Why is that true? Because, when Jesus went to the Father he sent the Holy Spirit. And it was when the Holy Spirit came that the tremendous ability of the disciples to do miracles became just‑what really started their world with, started worldwide. They were able to do what Jesus did and greater than he had done in his lifetime, not in power, but in extent. The greater is not greater in power but greater in extent. And they were able to do it because he went away and sent the Holy Spirit.

You see friends, it's better, and we'll get to this later on in the chapter, it's better to have the indwelling Holy Spirit in every believer than to have Christ present on earth, isn't it? Because every one of us has the resident power of deity in the indwelling spirit. So he says, because I go away, you're going to do not only what I've done but greater things than I've even done. Fantastic promise. Now do you see how this is going to comfort them? They're thinking there, oh, man, Jesus is leaving. There goes the power, guys. That's it. I mean, we're going to be reduced to nothing. I mean, it's all over. And Jesus turns the tables and says, When I go away you're going to do greater things than I've done. What a promise. And it's only possible in the Holy Spirit. Kind of like when Paul said in Ephesians 3:20. "Now unto him that is able to do exceeding, abundantly beyond all we ask or think, according to the power that works within us. Greater. Greater in extent, not greater in power. You couldn't do any works that are greater in power than Jesus did, but greater, broader in extent is what he's saying. And you can think about it from a lot of angles.

For example, Jesus had never preached outside Palestine. His voice had never gone to the world of men. Within his lifetime Europe had never received the word of the gospel, but in that little lowly church in the first century of the church it had began to spread and it's still spreading today in 1971 by plane and ship and train and radio and TV and short-wave and tapes and who knows what else. The gospel is spreading to an extent that Jesus never even saw in terms of his own ministry. He saw it in terms of his own knowledge but not his own ministry. When it comes to the numbers and the extent and the power and the triumphs of the message of the cross, they were greater than ever in the days of Jesus, but there's more to this than just that. He's talking about miracles.

How is it that he can say to those disciples that you'll be able to do the things that I do. Work by the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit. And they did. You can read them in the book of Acts. In chapter 3 Peter and John performed a miracle, didn't they? Later on in chapter 5, and I want to read you just a section of verses in Chapter 5 to let you know that this is exactly what they did. Verse 12 says this. And by the hands of the apostles were many signs and wonders wrought among the people. Now watch this. Verse 15. In so much that they brought forth the sick into the streets and laid them on beds and couches that at least the shadow of Peter passing by might overshadow some of them. That's how much power they had. There came also a multitude out of the cities round about into Jerusalem bringing sick folks unto them who were vexed with unclean spirits. Now watch this. And they were healed, every one. I mean to tell you friends, those guys had power. And in Hebrews the writer tells us in chapter 2, verse 4, God bearing them witness with signs and wonders and diverse miracles and gifts of the Holy Spirit. Bearing more witness, the apostles who had first spoke the word, verse 3. Those apostles literally reproduced the miracles of Jesus. They had the same power to do the works that he did. And there he's talking about physicals works. But watch it, verse 12. He then says "You'll do greater works."

Now what would be greater than physical works? What kind? Spiritual works. And that's exactly what he's talking about. They did spiritual works. They did spiritual miracles to an extent that Jesus never did in his day. Just to begin in Acts chapter 2, Peter stood up and prayed and how many people were saved? Three thousand people. Did that ever happen in the ministry of Jesus? Never did. Never did. Did the gospel ever go to the Gentiles in the time of Jesus? No. It took Peter in the house of Cornelius and Paul and his great ministry to reach the Gentiles of the Gospel. It wasn't that Jesus couldn't do it; it was that Jesus designed not to do it that way, except for works through his apostles. Conversions took place everywhere. And as I was in Israel I kept realizing that the fact of the smallness of Israel. That's a little, tiny country. It's so small. And the sphere of the work of Jesus was so limited. And the people were so few. And to think that now today there are spiritual miracles happening every tick of the clock all over the world. We are seeing greater things in extent than Jesus ever saw in his own lifetime by the power of the indwelling spirit. Spiritual miracles being done by believers all over the world and you and I are in on it. What's the greatest spiritual miracle that God can perform? What is it? Salvation. It's the new birth and you and I are literally involved in that every time we introduce somebody to Jesus Christ. We're doing a spiritual miracle.

Now mark it, friends. This verse has primary reference to the disciples. Unless you don't believe that, you just go down to Forest Lawn and holler all you want "Come Forth," and when you get tired you come back home. This has primary reference to the apostles. You say does that mean we can't heal the sick? In a sense it does but if you want a good verse for that take James chapter 5 which says if somebody is sick don't say he be healed, call the elders of the church, anoint him with oil... that means give him a little medicine, oil was used for medicine; it's what they put on the wounds of the man in Luke 10 ... give him a little oil God for medicine and then pray for them and the prayer of faith shall save the sick.

You and I can see God heal by prayer, can't we? Even by the time of James which was written so early the apostolic‑‑they knew the apostolic healing belonged to the apostles. So, when somebody got sick, James didn't say, Find a healer and zap him. No. James says as early as 50 A.D. 50. He says call the elders and pray for him. Even that early. The age of miracles was fading away because the word of God was coming together. And those miracle gifts were only for those who confirmed the word before the word was complete. And so we can be in on God's marvelous healing miracles by prayer, but primary reference here is to the apostles. And yet there are spiritual miracles which we see happening in our own lives as we minister. And it's a marvelous thing to realize.

How exciting it is to be able to be involved in what God is doing spiritually and to do things greater than even Jesus saw in his own day. Do you know that there was never a revival in the whole ministry of Jesus? Did you know that? And yet in the history of man we've seen revivals all over the world, haven't we? Scotland, Ireland, England and America. Korea, Indonesia. Revivals are going on today. Spiritual miracles are happening in tremendous extents today and you and I are in on it. And it's all because Jesus went away and sent the Spirit.

All right, lastly. The revelation of his promise for them. And this is so good. This is so good. Verses 13 and 14. "And whatever ye shall ask in my name that will I do that the Father may be glorified in the Son if ye shall ask anything in my name, I will do it." What a promise. You can just think, these guys are standing there and one of their thoughts has to be this: Oh, boy, Jesus is going away and where do we go for our resources? Right? I mean Jesus had fed them. He had helped them catch their fish. On one occasion he even provided their tax money out of the mouth of a fish. He supplied all their needs and now he's going away and the world doesn't like them. How are they going to get a job? How are they going to get a job? How are they going to fit back into the culture? It's going to be really rough. They don't have any resources. We're going to be all alone. Where are we going to get what we need? And they're just kind of mulling this over and so Jesus says, Men, I may be gone, but whatever you need ask me and I'll shoot it to you as fast as I can get it there. Well, that's a promise, isn't it? That's a fantastic promise. Whatever you need, it will be there. You see, the gap between where he is and where we are is closed as instantly as we pray. Do you know that? He says, just ask me. Even though I'm going to be absent you have access to all my supplies. But my God, Paul said, shall supply all your needs according to his riches in Christ. What a promise. Prayer will remove the distance and supply your needs.

You say well, you mean I can just ask God for anything? Is that Carte Blanche for every whim of the flesh? No, it's not. There's a qualifying statement repeated twice and I want you to get it and it will qualify every prayer that God answers. In both verses you see three words. In my name. You see it there? Whatever you ask in my name. Anything you ask in my name. What does that mean? Does that mean to tack on at the end of your prayer "in the name of Jesus, Amen"? No. That's not what it means.

First of all it means ‑‑ now watch this. I'm going to give you these and then we'll be done. But these are critical. It means that we pray in his person. The name of Jesus means all that he is, right? It's not a little formula. It's an acknowledgment of all that Christ did. It means first of all that we pray in his person. 'Watch what I mean by that. That means that when you pray, it is really Jesus Christ doing the asking. Did you get that? It is Jesus Christ doing the asking. You are praying in your full identification with him. You might even do it like this: "Dear Father, I'm asking for Jesus that you do this." Isn't that good? That kind of qualifies it. It kind of eliminates your "gimme, gimme, gimme" prayers. Because you're asking for Jesus that he do this.

Secondly it means that we are pleading the merits of his son. But we are asking it to be granted because of what Jesus ha s done for us. That's another little way: "Father, here's my request. Give it to me because of what Jesus has done." See, that gets your prayers up, doesn't it? A little loftier.

Thirdly, it means that we pray only for that which is consistent with the perfections of Christ. That what it means. Now let me give you a little practical formula. Here's how to pray. After every request that you make to the Lord, just say this: "I'm asking this for Jesus because it will bring glory to him." Did you get that? "I'm asking this for Jesus because it will bring glory to him." It's just that simple. Now I don't know about you, but that eliminates an awful lot of things that I'm prone to ask God for. You know, all those things that you want.

God, I want a new TV, because I'm asking for Jesus . oh, man. That doesn't make it. See, it gets your prayers up there where they belong and you begin to pray for the things that really matter. It's a wonderful promise.

And then I like this, what he says at the end of verse 14: "I will do it." Did you get that? That's so good. Jesus didn't say, All right, you guys, carry that out. He says, I will do it. You know who answers your prayers? Who? Jesus does. I will do it. He's operating in our behalf. Tremendous. So there you have it. The loving Jesus wanting his disciples to be comforted; gives them three great revelations: the revelation of his person, his power and his promise. What a comfort it is to know that he cares. And he cares in the same measure for you and for me and our prayer should be the prayer of those disciples. Not Lord, show me this and show me that, but just increase my faith to believe you for this kind of power and for this kind of prayer in order that I can see you really work in my life.

Father, we thank you this morning that these truths are in the word. Lord, how rich we are because of them.

Sorrow Turned to Joy

We want to look in our continuing study of John's Gospel at verses 16 to 24 today, and I trust that God will really enrich your heart as he has mine. And I'm really learning some things about how God is working in my own life just from these verses.

To be sure the greatest word that could ever be given to a person in sorrow would be the promise that their sorrow is only temporary. To bring to a sorrowing person anything else kind of falls a little bit short, you know. And even since chapter 13 Jesus has been dealing with the sorrowing disciples; all of this taking place the night before his death, as you know and in all of this he is sort of alleviating their sorrow with promises and wonderful hopes and the gift of the Holy Spirit and I'll be with you, you know, and you'll do greater things than I've done and you can ask anything in my name and I'll do it and I'll give you the power to be victorious over the hating world and you'll witness to me and it's going to be a great thing when I go away.

But they're really not comforted, see. They're still sorrowing and so Jesus moves in these verses to give, what I think, is the greatest comfort possible and that is the promise to the sorrowing person that the problem is only temporary. It will all be over pretty soon. And that's a real comfort because you can look ahead to that and that's the hope that keeps joy where there could be nothing but sorrow.

You can imagine this, for example, in the case of the nobleman's son that we studied, how it must have ‑‑ you knowthe sorrow when he came to Jesus must have turned to joy when he told him by the time you get home it'll all be all right. Or you remember Girus who told him about his daughter and he said don't worryabout it. When you get back everything will be set. And you can imagine him racing into the house and finding that his daughter was doing well. And so in each case Jesus Christ expressed to them the possibility that their sorrow would turn to joy. And that's exactly what he does right here with his eleven disciples. And this is sorrow's greatest relief. It has to be, because it's hope. And he's already told them that he values their sorrow and twice in chapter 14 he said let not your heart be troubled. And once in chapter 16, verse 6 he says I'm looking at you guys and I can see the sorrow that fills your heart.

And so he knows they're grieving about losing him. And they don't understand and they don't understand not only the theology of the thing, but they don't even understand what's involved in a physical sense. So the thought of Jesus is turned to them and he has endeavored for these chapters to give them comfort and finally he caps off the message of comfort with this which must be the most comforting of all, the statement that soon their sorrow will be turned to joy because it's only temporary parting at best.

Frankly, if you want to really be honest about it, they should have been happy anyway, right? I mean they should have been overjoyed. He told them when I go away it's going to be better for you; you ought to really be happy because I'm leaving. You ought to be happy, number one, because of all the promises I've given to you. All through chapter 14. And because of the Holy Spirit who is going to live within you and activate all these promises. You ought to be happy just for what you're going to experience. But beyond that, he said, you ought to be happy for my sake. After all, do you realize what it means when I go to be with the Father? Do you know what kind of joy that's going to be for me? To be back where I was before I got into this cursed earth and went through all the hatred? Don't you know what it's going to mean to me? Couldn't you at least be happy for me if not for yourself? And in their selfishness and self‑centeredness, there's nothing but sorrow and they can only see it from their own perspective. And Jesus intended everything he'd been telling them for their joy. In chapter 15 remember what he said to them in verse 11? We studied it. He said, "These things have I spoken unto you that my joy might remain in you and that your joy might be full." I've been saying all this to take away the sorrow and turn it to joy. You guys ought to really be excited about all of this, hit instead they're still sorrowful.

So Jesus then turns to the only other option really left to him, and that is to tell them that it's only a temporary parting, anyway. And this of course, comes out as the greatest kind of comfort. So verses 16 to 24 of the message Jesus to his disciples that the parting is only temporary and very brief. And in this passage I want to pull out four things: The pledge, the perplexity, the parable and the promise. You have a little outline; you can follow along. In these four things, we'll see the unfolding of this tremendous promise that Jesus makes, and I'm sure you're going to be as excited about it as I am when we get done. And the thing that is so amazing about it, is to see Jesus, who has problems in his own mind as he anticipates the cross that are beyond our understanding at all, who could totally be preoccupied with himself and understandably so, but who is totally selfless. And whereas he's already anticipating everything about the cross and it's only a matter of hours away, yet he stops those thoughts, condescends to minister to the sorrow of those selfish disciples. But, that's like Jesus.

So he stoops to their weakness because he's gentle and because he loves them and he ministers to their anguished hearts first of all with the pledge. Number one, in verse 16. Here's his pledge to them. And this is very, very interesting; notice it. "A little while and ye shall not see me and again, a little while, and ye shall see me, because I go to the Father." Now that's a very confusing statement. It's very confusing for somebody to say, a little while you won't see me and in a little while you will see me because I go. That doesn't make a lot of sense right off the bat, see. I mean, it's confusing. So we need to consider what it is that he is saying. Let's take it piece by piece.

First of all he's saying a little while and ye shall not see me. Now that we understand; right? It's about two hours or three hours, maybe, before his capture and the events that lead to the cross, so indeed, it is a little while and they will not see him any more. It's just a brief time and he'll be out of their midst. And then he adds, in a little while you will see me. And you see he's ministering in the most humble kind of fashion to their particular problem. I hope you can grasp what an insight this is into the person of Jesus Christ. I hope you get the picture of his selflessness.

You know, this reminds me of what Paul said ‑‑ this is kind of a footnote ‑‑ in Philippians 2:4, where he says, you know, I want you to be of one mind and of one accord and I want you to look not every man on his own things, but every man on the things of others; in fact, here's how to do it: Let this mind be in you which was also where? In Christ Jesus. What mind was it? The mind that thought it not something to hold onto all that he had as God, but stripped himself of everything and humble. It's a mind of humility. It's a mind that says, I don't care for me, I only care for you. See that's the nature of the real body life of the church when everybody cares for somebody else and not form themselves. And that was Jesus' mind. So Jesus doesn't care for himself; he doesn't worry about those things that must be ripping and tearing and shredding his pure heart to pieces; the anguish in anticipating the sin that he would bear and the hatred and all that is going to come in a matter of hours, and yet he stops that completely from his mind and entertains totally the sorrow and the care of his beloved disciples, who are selfish and in the simplest sense undeserving of any of it. And so he says to them, Men, I realize I'm going away, but it's temporary because a little while and I'll be back. This is his gift of hope and this is the greatest alleviation of sorrow that is possible. The fact that it's only brief.

Now we must consider the key phrase in this verse, which is a little while, and it appears twice, although we'll not understand the interpretation, and I'm going to take a little time to do that. Jesus has used the phrase a little while to refer to both weeks, days and hours. And I'll show you what I mean. Back in John 7:33, Jesus said to them, "Yet a little while am I with you, and then I go unto him that sent me." Now that refers to weeks there. Keep that in mind because it's going to become very important in an interpretation that I'll give you in a moment. But you see, there a little while is a reference to a period of weeks; it has not particular designation other than that. A little while later as you come over to chapter 12, verse 35 it's a matter of days. And he says in verse 35, "Yet a little while is the light with you. Walk while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you." So there it's a matter of days in exactly the same phrase, a little while. In chapter 13, verse 33 says it again. "Little children, yet a little while am I with you." And there it's a matter of a large amount of hours, but by the time you get over to chapter 16, it's a matter of maybe two hours and it's the same phrase. So, watch this interpretive principle of building a kind of a little hermeneutic ‑‑ heh, heh, that's one for me ‑‑ that means principles of interpretation, and we're building a little principle that the phrase little while can refer to anything from weeks to hours. And we use it the same way, don't we? Sure. All right. So, he says, a little while and you will not see me. Now, we know what that means. In a matter of hours, he will move into the garden; some interpreters think that in the chapter 16 that we are studying, he is actually en route to the garden now, he having left the upper room. Other's think he's still there. And so at this point, it's only hours, maybe as few as two hours and he will be arrested in the garden and the disciples will not see him any more. In fact they will flee and they will be separated.

But then he adds this confusing statement. "A little while and you shall not see me and again a little while and you shall see me, because I go to the Father." So after the first little while, he has a second little while and says you'll see me again in a little while. Now what is this second little while? When are they going to see him again? Some writers feel that he's referring there to his second coming. And that what he is saying is that I'm going away but in a little while I will be back. And the reason they use that interpretation is because very frequently, now watch this one, very frequently in the Old Testament, the period of time prior to Messiah's coming to set up his kingdom, is called the birth pangs of the Messiah. And since in verse 21 he uses the illustration of birth, they feel that that is consistently interpreting the passage so that what he is saying is that I will come back for my kingdom and he illustrates it by saying like a woman bearing a child, there will be birth pangs, the tribulation and then the kingdom.

There's a problem with that, though. I don't think that's the correct interpretation, first of all, because it eliminates the rapture, doesn't it? It eliminates the rapture altogether. It's just like saying; you'll be here until I come back for the kingdom. That's not true. Seven years before the kingdom, we go; right? And he said that already in 14:1, 2, and 3 and all the way down the line. I go to prepare a place for you; I'll come and get you and take you where I am. So it eliminates the rapture. That's the problem. Not only that, it would be a little bit of a false comfort to say to the guys, look men, I realize in a couple of hours I'm leaving, but in 2000 years, I'll be back. So, you know, be comforted. Heh, Heh, that's really not the kind of warm comfort they're looking for. So, it's a little bit out of whack if you take a little while one place to mean two hours and a little while another place to mean 2000 years.

Now other people say ‑‑ we'll file that interpretation ‑‑ other people say ‑‑ in the round file ‑‑ other people say, well, it refers to the resurrection. What he's talking about is I'll be back in three days. Now that's possible. That sounds more like it, doesn't it? Three days is a little while. Jesus used it to refer to days, didn't he, in Bethany when he said, a little while is the light with you. And so perhaps this is it. What he's talking about here is his resurrection which is only in a matter of three days and that is consistent. But I believe there's even a problem with that. The problem with that would be this: When he comes back from his resurrection, he'll only be around a few weeks and then he'll go again. And he'd have to go through the whole thing again. It would be kind of a false comfort to say, men, don't fear because in a few hours I'm going away but in three days I'll be back. Of course, I'll go away again and you know. That's not permanent kind of comfort, either. And that leaves a lot to be desired.

What is it referring to then? Well, catch the statement at the end of the verse. "A little while and ye shall see me because I go to the Father." You will see me because I go don't really make a lot of sense. How in the world are they going to see him because he goes to the Father? Oh, you know, don't you? If you've been coming the last few weeks, you know. Because when he goes to the Father, whom does he send? The Holy Spirit who is the Spirit of Christ: Romans 8:9. And so what is Christ saying? He's saying I'll be back, only this time it won't be in a physical body with you; it will be in the form of my Spirit where? In you. He is with you he shall be where? In you. Chapter 14. Sure. So what he's saying is, I'm going to go away and send the Spirit.

Backing up for minute to verse 7 of the same chapter you see it there. "Nevertheless, I tell you the truth; it is expedient for you that I go away, for it I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you." You see, he couldn't send his Spirit because the Spirit ‑‑ watch this one ‑‑ was a reward to him from the Father for the accomplished work. Remember that one? And so when he went to heaven and he accomplished the work the Father gave him the Spirit whom he sent in his place. And so he's saying, you will see me again; when I go to the Father I will come back to dwell in you in the form of the spirit. And my friends, there's no distinction between Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. Remember that. Christ said I'm going to send you another Comforter and he used the word, two words: heteraus and allaus. Heteraus, another of a different kind. Allaus, another of the same kind. And he used allaus. The same essence as me. He sends back his own Spirit. And so Jesus says I'm coming again in the Spirit.

Now he said this once earlier and I want you to note it. Chapter 14, verse 17. This will kind of clear this interpretation. Chapter 14:17 says this:"Even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive because it seeth him not," this is who he is going to send, "neither knoweth him, but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you and shall be in you." Now watch this: "I will not leave you," ŏrphanŏs orphans, "I will come to you." "I will come to you." In the verse before he says the Spirit will come and in this verse he says I will come. Same thing. That's why the Holy Spirit is called the Spirit of Christ. Verse 19. "Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more, but ye see me." See. I'll be back in the Spirit. You say, you mean not only does the Holy Spirit dwell within us but Christ? That's right. The Spirit is the Spirit of Christ. Christ in you, the hope of glory, see. It's a resident Spirit. And so his promise is thrilling. It's a permanent promise. It not I'll be back and I'm going again; it's not I'll be back in 2000 years; it's I'm going and I'll be back and when I come back I'll be there as long as you live and throughout eternity you'll never be without my presence. Lo, I'm with you always, even until the end of the age. I will never leave you or forsake you. And you know what happened on the day of Pentecost, don't you? The Spirit came and dwelt within us. The Spirit of Christ. And he began to teach them Jesus Christ. And here you see in our context, for when he says I go to my Father, it's the same thing. Backing up, for example, to verses 13, 14 and 15, he is detailing the work of the Spirit. And now in verse 16, he says, when I go to the Father this work will begin. I'll send my Spirit.

So, it's a simple interpretation. The disciples can't figure it out, but then, they never figured out anything, anyway. So what he's saying to them is, I'm going to go away and because I go to the Father, I'll come to you, you see, in the form of my Spirit, to dwell within you. That's the wonderful promise that every believer has. There's no such thing as a Christian who doesn't possess the indwelling Christ. No such thing. Yet, people will be running around trying to find the Holy Spirit, like he's lost. The Holy Spirit lives within the believer. Paul said to the cruddy Corinthians, who had problems all over the place. He said to them, "What? Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit? What you haveof God?" See. Don't you know that? I mean everybody ought to know that. That's basic stuff. Christ in you the hope of glory. And so he makes this pledge. What a fantastic pledge it is. He says, don't worry, I'll be back. It's temporary, and this time it will be better. It won't be just physically me, and I can only be in one place. I'll be in every one of you all the time. What a pledge; what a promise.

Then a few weeks later it happened, didn't it? And you see now we can take that phrase little while and apply it to weeks, can't we, because Jesus himself applied it to weeks in chapter 7, so it fits. The first time little while means hours, the second time it means weeks. All right. So Jesus went away and he sent the Spirit. What he's promising them is a great truth. He's promising them the dispensation of his indwelling presence and we live in that age now, don't we? This is the dispensation of the Spirit. This is the age in which the Spirit lives within the believer. And that was his promise to them; that the Spirit would live within them. And during this age -‑­ mark it now ‑‑ what is it that the Spirit wants to do? What is that the Spirit does in this world? What is it that the Spirit does within you? It is that he manifests Jesus Christ. Isn't that right? Sure it is. Look at verse 14. "He shall glorify me." See. He shall take of mine and show it to you. The ministry of the Spirit pure and simple is to manifest Christ. And so Jesus says, you see, I'm going to go away and send back my Spirit who will manifest me within you. What a pledge. And by the perceptive eye of faith we know it. Do you know the Spirit dwells within you? Have you ever seen the Holy Spirit? I've never seen him. But I know he's there. I perceive him with the eye of faith. Don't you? I see him through the eye of faith, operating and working in my life. I sense his presence. And that's just what happened on Pentecost; he came.

So Jesus is including in this the day of Pentecost. Now let me say this: I think he's also thinking in reference to the resurrection. Because the cross, the resurrection, the ascension and the coming of the Spirit are all one climax to Christ's ministry that begin the age of the Spirit. So when he says I'll be back a little while, he means resurrected, ascended and in his Spirit. It's kind of encompassing. In fact, in II Corinthians 5:16 Paul gives us a little insight into this with a great statement that he makes there. II Corinthians 5:16, "Wherefore, henceforth, know we no man after the flesh, yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more." Paul says in this passage, I know Christ, but he says I don't know him after the flesh any more. See. It's not a physical relationship with Christ. It's not that he's here in the body like he used to be. We used to know him like that, but now we know him in the Spirit. We know him in the Spirit. What a comfort this is. What a comfort.

Now, they didn't understand how much comfort it is. And so we see secondly their perplexity. They always responded with the same attitude. What does this mean? It was always their response. And so we see their perplexity. And it's interesting because we see here in chapter 16, verse 17 their silence is broken and it hasn't been broken since chapter 14:22. They haven't said anything. At least anything the Holy Spirit felt worthy of including in the text, but since then there's not been anything said. But now, the question has gotten to them and they don't understand what he means about this little while idea. You know, I think they'd half committed themselves to the fact that he was going to leave; right? He was going to die. I think they were kind of getting that and then all of a sudden he says this and they say, oh, how do you die for a little while, see. That didn't make a lot of ‑‑ maybe they were thinking, well, I mean, Lazarus, he died for a little while. But anyway, they were confused. Verse 17. "Then said some of his disciples among themselves." You see they didn't have the courage to ask Jesus, so they just started talking between themselves. "What is this that he saith unto us, A little while and ye shall not see me, and again, a little while and ye shall se me and, because I go to the Father?" I mean that's the capper. That's what makes it so confusing. What is he talking about? And they're mumbling back and forth. And the problem of the confusion is little while and also the fact that he's coming because he's going, see. And it's very, very confusing. Don't be too hard on them. You wouldn't have understood it either on that side of the cross. They didn't get it. How can Messiah leave in the first place if he's going to set up his kingdom? They had really been battling with that one for a long time. Now that they had figured out that maybe he was going to leave, what is this about his coming back again? And so the statement became very confusing and in muffled tones and low voices they were confused, and they begin to talk about it.

In Mark, chapter 9 we get another insight into their confusion. They were indeed spiritual babes. Mark 9:30: This is a different occasion. "They departed from and passed through Galilee and he would not that any man should know it. For he taught his disciples and said unto them, "The son of man is delivered into the hands of men and they shall kill him and after he is killed, he shall rise the third day." Now that's pretty simple, wouldn't you say? You can read that and you can say oh yeah, he'll be killed and he'll rise the third day. Next verse. "But they understood not that saying and were afraid to ask him." They didn't understand that. That did not fit in with their Messianic hoax at that point and now at this point when they finally realize that maybe he means it that he's going to die, they can't figure out what it means that he's going to come back. And they are really confused. Verse 18, "They said therefore, What is this that he said, a little while?" What's that mean? "We cannot tell what he saith." They were confused to say the least. And so rather than be rebuked, they are silent.

You know it's a sad, thing, but you know, there's been a lot of things lost by people who were afraid to ask questions. How many times in John have we kind of just thought about the possibilities of little sections that would have been in here if somebody had opened his mouth and asked the question. But evidently they didn't want to reveal their ignorance or else they didn't want to suffer gentle rebuke at his lips and so they just would rather stay ignorant. That's a shame, really, you know. I mean many people are like that. You teach a class or a Bible class or a class wherever it may be and some people will sit there and they're not getting it but they won't ask the question because they're afraid they'll appear ignorant. Where the wonder of the thing is if they ask the question, they would probably find that in many cases the teacher is just as ignorant as they are and they could kind of fellowship in their ignorance. See. And together be stimulated. See, when we find ourselves ignorant, we are stimulated to go find the answer. Enjoy your ignorance. It's the foundation of your understanding. It's the foundation of your learning. I mean look for those areas in your life diligently where you're ignorant. Then you canfind out something to fill that hole. Learn the truth that applies at the point of your ignorance. But they didn't know the truth and they never bothered to ask about it. And so they just sat there blindly in their ignorance, afraid to ask.

Yet, Jesus wants to tell them. He really wants to tell them. I love this, you know, because I think that Jesus was so human that he needed to unbear his heart. He really did. I mean the anguish of the cross, I think if one of them would have said, Lord, just tell us all about it, will you? We want to feel this with you. We want to pray along with you. We want to care, you know, and just kind of share what this means to you. What a volume of fantastic things he could have shared with them. But in their selfishness they couldn't see past their own nose.And he needs to tell them; he needs to open his heart to them. He doesn't like to look at the cross. He needs to look beyond the cross with them and see the joy that's going to be his. That's the reason he went tothe cross, you know the Bible says, for the joy that was set before him. The joy wasn't necessarily in the cross; it was after the cross and what it accomplished. And so rather than caring about himself and accepting their indifference toward him, he just decides well, I'll just comfort them; bring them joy. And I think in his own heart he wanted to do it because I think it helped him look past the nails and past the thorns and past the spear and past the cross and see the victory coming to them in the Spirit. I think he looked past Calvary as much as he possibly could because it was anguish.

You know that, don't you? You know he sweated great drops of blood when he contemplated Calvary. And so he faces their question and he's not so concerned with their ignorance; he's only concerned with their sorrow, and I want you to notice that. Very important. He doesn't try to deal with them theologically; he tries to deal with them in love and comfort. That's a beautiful thought. He could wait three days to let their ignorance be taken care of, but he couldn't wait three days to take care of their sorrow, you see. Three days later their ignorance was over; they understood; right? He died and rose again. That was clear. Three days later their sorrow was gone. Because they saw him again. He could wait the three days for their theological education, but he couldn't wait three days for their comfort. Isn't that a beautiful insight into how much he loved them? He had to comfort them right then. That's the essence of his care and his love and that's how he deals with us. I believe that. I believe the comfort that Jesus gives in our lives is his concern. Even before our theological education. Even before all of our knowledge comes his care of our lives and that we know joy and peace and comfort. And so rather than worry about the theology of it, he just files it and figures well, in three days these guys will be theologians without parallel and in 40 days after that, you know, I'll send and 10 days later Pentecost will come and they'll be walking scholars, theologically. And I can wait for that; they'll get that all in time, but I'll deal with their sorrow right now. Now that is a loving Savior. That is not an indifferent God. So many people portray God as indifferent and uncaring. God is not. He is loving. He is all caring and all concerned with the comfort and the tender care of his beloved children. And so he moves then not to eliminate ignorance but to eliminate sorrow. And he reads their minds like a billboard.

We learned that back in chapter 2 of John how he could read what was in the heart of a man. It's a fantastic thought to know that he reads our minds. It's both a positive and a negative. Sometimes I'm glad that he can read my mind. Remember that? Remember what Peter said, Lord you know that I love you. Aren't you glad sometimes that the Lord can read your mind and know that you love him because you don't act like it? But other times I'm not too sure I like the fact that he can read my mind and I'm not going to illustrate those. But anyway, he reads their minds and he knows that they've got this question that they're fighting and they're struggling with, see. And he's concerned with their comfort, so in verse 19, I love this statement. What a wealth of knowledge. "Now Jesus knew that they were desirous to ask him" So what does he do? He puts this question in their lips. Fantastic. He knew that they were puzzled. He knew that they couldn't figure out the little while; they couldn't figure out what was going on, so he moves to comfort them. Watch what he says in verse 19. "Do you inquire among yourselves of that I said, a little while and ye shall not see me and again a little while and ye shall see me?" He says is this what's confusing you fellows? They're all murmuring and buzzing back and forth. And you can imagine how quick they jumped up. He's read their minds. Is this what's bothering you men? You know, it's a fantastic thing. The Lord knows our problems before we ever articulate them, doesn't he? He knows exactly where to meet us before we say a word. Don't you love Isaiah 65:24 where he says, "Before they call I will answer." Isn't that good? Before they call I will answer. And he also says, "While they are speaking, I will hear." And the hearing there is the act of hearing. Before you call he'll answer. That's fantastic. And so they haven't even formed the question yet and he's got the answer for them and so he moves to comfort them. There they are in their perplexity.

Now in order to comfort them he uses an illustration and I call it the parable. So we see the first the great promise or the pledge, then the perplexity and then the parable. And in this parable he shows them a tremendous spiritual principle and I want to share it with you this morning because it's just fantastic. So applicable to us.

Now here comes this parable and it begins in verse 20. The parable itself is in verse 21; the lead in is verse 20. "Truly, truly," Amen, Amen, you know the double Aramaic here is very important, because it makes this a critical, solemn, strategic statement. "Verily, verily, I say unto you, ye shall weep and lament, but the world shall rejoice, and ye shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy." Now that's a great promise to a sorrowful person, isn't it? Hey your sorrow is going to turn into joy, see. That's the greatest kind of promise.So he moves to comfort them and he predicts that their sorrow will be turned to joy. Notice he kind of paints their sorrow a little bit. He says, you'll weep and lament. Mark chapter 16, verse 10, in that particular verse he talks about ‑‑ the writer, Mark talks about the sorrow and how they were all crying and weeping and so forth and so on and the women were crying along with them, you know. Kind of a sad deal. They were all crying and weeping and lamenting and sorrowful. The world, of course, was just really living it up because they finally had gotten rid of Jesus; that's the evil system. The evil system was glad to have done in the Son of God and so the world rejoiced but they were sorrowing and Christ was a bloody corpse, wrapped up and stuck in the tomb of Joseph. That was it. The murderous world was out there laughing in its unholy glee and they were cut to the heart; they were ripped open. Their blessed, beloved Christ was dead and their hearts were broken. And so Jesus paints the picture of their sorrow in order that their joy might look all the more beautiful. He puts a black backdrop and then he fires in the joy at the end of verse 20: "Your sorrow shall be turned into joy."

Now there's a principle in that you could miss so easily, so I want you to hang in there and get this principle. It's tremendous. Notice this. He is saying the very event ‑‑ now watch it ‑‑ the very event that caused your grief will be the very event that causes your joy. He doesn't say I will take certain events that made you sorry and replace them with certain events to make you happy. He says your sorrow over something shall be turned into joy over the same something. Did you know that that's what God wants to do in our lives? It's not a matter of, well, that's a bad, that's a grief; I'll put it in that grief box. That's a happy, that's a good; I'll put in the good happy box. And everything has its own thing. Not at all. It's the idea that he takes the sorrow and turns it into joy the same eventhat causes grief causes happiness. That's the structure of the Greek. His sorrow shall be turned into joy. Sorrow becoming something. He doesn't say your sorrow willbe replaced by joy. No. It will become joy. Now that's fantastic. The thing that plunges you into grief will lift you into joy. And it happened. You say what was the thing? Well, it was the cross. Was the cross the cause of their sorrow? Sure it was. And after the sorrow was all over, what was the cross. The cause of their joy. Paul says, God forbid that I should glory in anything save the cross. That's their joy. And they went on happily praising God, rejoicing all over the book of Acts, preaching the cross.

Somebody might say well, how can you be so happy about the crucifixion of your leader? You know, outside Christianity. How canyou? They don't understand. What looked like sorrow on that end became joy on this end. It just had to get past the cross and it turned into joy and this is how God wants to work. Mark it. This is how he wants to work. He takes the sad things and makes them happy. It's not a matter of here's a lot of sads and here's a lot of happys. That's what Paul meant when he said, "All things work together for good to them that love God and called according to his purpose." He a way of turning the bad into the good. See, turning the sorrow into the joy. It's like when he made the wine out of the water. He didn't replace water for wine, did he? He turned water into wine and that's how he does in our life. He takes the sorrows and turns them into joy. And oh did this happen to them. In the light of Easter, in the light of Pentecost when the Spirit came, the source of their grief, which was the cross, became the source of their greatest undying joy, didn't it. And it's ours, too. You know what the source of our joy is? The cross. Don't ever forget it. The cross is the source of our joy. Not circumstances. No. Circumstances are not the source of our joy at all. The cross is and nothing can ever violate that. That's the basis of our joy. If you just worry about your circumstances, you're going to find problems. Now we'll talk more about that in a minute. But anyway, the basic idea is the cross was the foundation of their joy and it is of ours.

Now we have joy in all other things, as God turns them from grief to joy, as he turns them from grief to joy, which he constantly does, but the basis of all of it is the cross. And this was true over in chapter 20; in John in verse 20 it says after Christ rose and met with them they were glad. They were happy. They were blessed. And those guys who were on the road in Luke 24, Jesus started talking to them and they got so happy. Their hearts were burning within them, to be with their resurrected Christ. And so their sorrow did turn to joy. And that early church; boy, were they a happy bunch. That early church was so happy and so blessed that the world couldn't believe it. They were happy over the cross. The event of sorrow became the cause for joy. That's a tremendous truth. God wants to take the sorrow in your life and turn it to joy. If you've never had any sorrow in your life, and you had nothing but joy, joy would be neutral. And so he takes the sorrows that you have and he turns them into joy, if you can wait long enough. And trust him. Let me give you an idea of how this works.

I think there are two things; sorrow comes into your life maybe, for two main reasons. Number one, testing, right? And if it tests you and you come out strong, there's cause for joy, isn't it? Secondly, chastisement. And if you're being punished by God, you're being punished so you'll know not to do it again and that's cause for joy, see. In everything that comes into your life, try to find that glimmer of joy that's beginning to break and accept it as joy. You know, I've seen so many times when somebody has died and the family has been very grieved and very, very concerned, and everybody is weeping and crying, and sometimes you'll talk to the people three or four months later and they'll say, you know, we can see now all the wonder of God's grace in this thing and how he's done this and how he's done that and the death of this person has brought about the salvation of this person and this happened and that happened and the other. And isn't it wonderful? And all of a sudden you say, yeah, your sorrow turned to joy, see. You just have to believe God for this. You have to believe God for that. Oh, you say, in my situation I got a real disaster going. I believe God can take your real disaster and turn it into joy, if you believe him for it. I like what Paul said, II Corinthians 6:10 he said this. This is good. He said, "As sorrowful, yet always rejoicing." Isn't that good? He says I got problems. I've got a lot of them. In fact he says I have continual heaviness of heart. That's when he also said rejoice and again I say what? Rejoice.

You say well, how could you be as sorrowful and always rejoicing? Because you see, you can always rejoice, number one, the cross; right? Always. Always. Always. Always. Secondly, you can rejoice because you believe God that in every sorrow, there's the water out of which he makes the wine of rejoicing. Do you see? And so you just believe him. And in chapter 15, you know, in verse 11, didn't Jesus say that? Everything I've told you, I've told you that my joy might remain in you and that your joy might be full? I'm just telling you this to make you happy. Your sorrow will turn to joy and there it did. They were the happiest bunch that ever walked on the earth after that Pentecost and the Spirit came. Tremendous truths.

So then having given them this little concept that sorrow turns into joy, not replaced by, he illustrates it with a parable in verse 21. This is good. "A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow." Travail means childbirth. Has sorrow. You know that's part of the Edenic curse when Eve sinned. She brought upon women the pain of childbirth. Read it in Genesis 3. That's why women have pain in childbirth. It's a part of what happened in the garden. All right. "A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow because her hour is come." It's time to have her baby and the pains start coming and all these things start happening, I hear, and all this goes on. You know, my wife always says I hope you understand what I go through for this. I say oh, I understand ‑‑ as best as I can ‑‑ I don't know ‑‑ But anyway, I know it's a lot of pain and all this and the woman goes through this pain, "but as soon as she is delivered of the child," and the event happens, it says, "she remembers no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world." I mean it's not even bad when a girl is born, but when a man is born into the world. I mean the joy that comes. You see, here's a perfect illustration. It's not that the event of sorrow is replaced by an event of joy; it is the same event which starts out in grief and ends up in joy. Do you see what he's saying there? It's the same principle again and he's illustrating it graphically by childbirth. The sorrow and the anguish and the pain is just completely washed out when that baby comes to life and you see that precious life God has given and the joy that is in that thing and the anguish just ‑‑ you don't really remember that any more. It's that life that means everything. And you see, that's Jesus' illustration. He is saying when the death comes to me and I'm taken from you and you don't see me, it's going to be hard; it's going to hurt; it's going to be lonely and it's going to be sorrow. But he says, will you believe me that out of that sorrow will come the greatest joy. The greatest possible joy. And you can usually ask any woman and she'll tell you that the greatest joy is in childbirth; to have that precious life. Of being a woman, that has to be the climax. And so he uses the greatest illustration of human joy to illustrate how great the joy is when we believe God that out of sorrow can come joy.

Then he kind of interprets the parable in a limited way in verse 22. "And ye now therefore have sorrow." He says, you guys are going through the birth pain, see. And it hurts, because you anticipate your loneliness and you know I'm not going to be around, "but I will see youagain," he says. You can imagine how thrilled they were just to hear this, you know. "And your heart shall rejoice." Isn't that good? Then he says this. Here's a great statement. "And your joy no man taketh from you." You get that? Listen friends, the joy that is ours because of the cross, is eternal. Did you get that? You know your life may fall apart, and you may lose the joy of circumstances, and you may not be able to believe God that out of sadness he can bring joy, but I'll tell you one thing, the cross,the cross can be constant joy, because no man can ever undo the work of grace that God did in your life through the cross, can he? Can never violate the cross. Somebody may mess up your circumstances; somebody may hassle your life pattern; somebody may bring grief; you may bring it on yourself, and it may be no cause for joy and you may not believe God that out of it can come joy, but I'll tell you one thing, even though everything else gets messed up, nobody will ever be able to violate the perfect work done on the cross, in your behalf. And he says, joy based, men, on what you re going to see at Calvary, no man will ever take from you and that is what is known in theological terms as the absolute security of the believer. It is irreversible. The cross cannot be reversed. No man can violate the cross. It is done; it is finished. And this is permanent joy. And again, I feel this verse is one good reason why this can't just refer to the resurrection, see. It has to be more permanent than that. It's a forever joy. And so he is saying to them, this is a kind of a joy that will never pass away. Never pass away. And this is what causes Paul in all the midst of the hurts of his life to say rejoice always and again I say, rejoice. Not because he always could see maybe through every circumstance. He had a way of seeing the joy coming out of the circumstances He believed God for that. He didn't care that he was all beaten up and he was staying in jail. You know, he was mature in Christ enough to see the joy coming out of the grief. But that wasn't always true. There were times in Paul's life, I'm sure, when he didn't see that and he was discouraged, but one place where there was joy that never could be violated was at the cross. For no man could ever take that cross and undo what it had done in his life. That's always our source of joy; the cross. And that's so basic.

So we've seen then the pledge that Christ gave them; their perplexity and then Jesus' parable to teach them what he meant. Now I want to close by giving you the promise. And this is a very beautiful thing in the last two verses. Verse 23, just the start: " And in that day ye shall ask me nothing." What day? That day? We're back to verse 22. The day when the Spirit comes. The day when your sorrow turns to joy. The day when I come back to be within you. See, that day. The word day can very often be used to refer to an era. For example, the day of Christ. The day of the Lord, which means a period of time. We talk about a day in the sense of an era. This is the day of science orthe age of science. Whatever you want to call it. The word day can be very broad. And here it is. In that day beginning at Pentecost, when the Spirit comes and from then on out, men, you'll ask me nothing. It's a great statement. What a promise. You'll ask me nothing.

What you mean we won't ask you anything? Two reasons: Number one, I won't be here. Physically you won't be able to come to me to give me your questions. Number two: When the Spirit comes, he shall teach you what? All things. Bring all things to remembrance whatsoever I have told you. Lead you into all truth. Guys, when he comes, you're going to be scholars. And they were. We talked about Peter how he must have been preaching those sermons and trying to figure out where all that information was coming from. Because he was on a direct line from God, see. He's saying I won't be around to answer your questions and you won't need me for the basics, because the Spirit will be your teacher. The Spirit will be your teacher. But then he realizes they'll still have needs. He doesn't want to just say that. You'll ask me nothing ‑‑ zap ‑‑ close it off and sign off chapter 16. No. In his mind he says, I'll know they'll have needs. And they won't know everything. They'll know the basics. The Spirit will teach them.

Then he says this. Look at it, verse 23. It's really beautiful. "Verily, verily I say unto you," this is important, men. "Whatever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will give it to you." Isn't that beautiful? He says, it's going to be a new age, you guys. No more am I going to be here physically for you to ask all your questions to. In the new age you'll just have to ask the Father in my name and he'll what? He'll give it to you. This is the character of prayer in the new age. This is a great dispensational statement. In the Old Testament they didn't pray to God in Jesus' name, but they do now. This is God's new age. We go to the Father in the name of Jesus. That's a tremendous thing. They had always sought all their knowledge and all their needs by asking Jesus physically. But he says, guys, I'm not going to be around. In the dispensation of grace, the age of the church, the age of the Spirit, there's going to be a new thing: You're going to ask the Father in my name. Now isn't that what he's been saying all along, clear back in chapter 14, verse13? Whatever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the son. If you ask anything in my name, I'll do it. Chapter 15, verse 16: at the end he says, "Whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it to you." And here he's said it for the third ‑‑ fourth time, really. And so here's the principle of communion with the Father. Whatever we ask in the name of Jesus, he gives.

Now, what does it mean to ask in Jesus' name? We've talked about this. Does it mean you just say I want this and I want that in Jesus' name, Amen. That guarantees it? No, no. To ask in Jesus' name means you're asking in behalf of Christ. You're asking for his sake. You're saying Father; I want this because Christ wants this. Boy that will clean up your prayers, won't it? That's how to pray in his name. I want this because this is what Jesus would want. That's the way we ought to pray. You know, there's not a lot in the Bible that tells us to pray for ourselves. We don't need to pray for ourselves, very much. There are times when we ask God to give us wisdom and so forth. But we really don't need to ask him for a lot of things. You know, people spend all their time asking God to guide them and he's up there saying I'm trying to guide you, why don't you follow. We need to pray the things that we know would be Jesus' will. Lord, I need wisdom. Lord, I need to know your word better. Teach me by the Spirit. Do you think that's Christ's will for you? I do. And I think God will answer that prayer. There are many thingsthat are Christ's will. If you can askthe Father in the behalf of Christ for the salvation of a soul I believe the Bible says he's not willing that any should perish. I believe we can pray that God will move and I believe God will answer. And so we pray in Jesus, name. What a promise.

That's the new age. New age. And he shows us it's the new age by verse 24. "Hitherto," prior to this, guys, "have ye asked nothing in my name." This is something new. He's not bawling them out. Some commentators say, see, he's really ripping them up. You guys haven't been asking anything in my name. Wait a minute. This is something new. We don't even know about this. It's a whole new thing. He's not bawling them out. He's giving them the character of the new age. Hitherto you've asked nothing in my name. Now, keep on asking ‑­- linear verb ‑‑ and ye shall keep on receiving, that your joy may be full.

Now there's three things in the Christian life: no joy, joy and full joy. And some Christians live no joy and that's really kind of sick. Others have joy and they can kind of glory in the cross and that's it. Others have full joy. You say how do you get full joy? I'd like to have full joy. I'll tell you. It's very important. Full joy is connected with a couple of things but I want you to see one primary key to full joy. Verse 24, listen to it. "Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name, ask, and ye shall receive that your joy may be full." How do you know full joy? Asking God for things and receiving them. Prayer. Prayer. It is answered prayer. That brings full joy. Do you ever get excited when God answers your prayer? Oh, that's exciting, isn't it? This is also in Scripture. I Thessalonians 5:16. Listen to this. "Rejoice evermore." Short verse. Somebody says how? Next verse. "Pray without what? ceasing." See, this is connected right up there. Beautiful. In Philippians, same thing. 4;4. "Rejoice in the Lord always and again I say, rejoice." How, Paul? Simple. "Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, let your requests be made known unto God." Full joy comes from prayer.

I mean when you really tap God's resources and you see God move in your life, that's cause for joy. And the Christians that go around kind of mealy mouth, down in the mouth, grippy, bitter, cynical, they are that way because they haven't ever activated the power of God in their behalf and are not basking in it in a praying‑without‑ceasing kind of life where God is moving and doing miracles that are bringing joy. If you want joy you find it on your knees; that's where you find it. Deep communion with God. Just to pray to him. Just to talk to him. Boy, what joy. Just to be in his presence. That's joy. Your cup of joy will overflow in prayer as you see God answer and you behold his grace and you behold his love and you're overflowing with joy. And so what Jesus is driving at in this passage isn't theology; it's joy. He's saying, guys, you know, you're going to have joy. You're just going to have joy because you're just going to see the cross. But you can have ‑‑ watch this one ‑‑ full joy by constant communion with the Father. Now we can all have joy, a measure of joy, can't we? By the cross. And maybe we can even see the circumstances turning into joy, but there's that full joy when we pray without ceasing. When in everything with prayer and supplication we let our requests be made known to God.

Well, I tell you, he's sure given them an awful lot to make them glad, hasn't he? And us, too. He said separation will be brief, men. Secondly, he said your sorrow is going to turn to joy on the other side of the cross. Then he said the joy that you get is going to be forever. Nobody will ever take it. And then he said you can even make the joy more full if you'll just stay in a constant communion asking, asking, asking, receiving, receiving, receiving, all in my name. So we see their sorrow turned to joy. And again, I think we see the beauty and the magnificence of the person of Jesus Christ. What a Savior. I couldn't help but think of it, you know. He knew the cross was coming. Already he could see with his mind's eye the nails tearing their places in his hands. He undoubtedly could feel the thorns puncturing his brow, the spear driven into his eternal organs; he could hear the jeers and taunts of the mocking people; he could feel the spit and the hellish laughter of his killers was probably already ringing in his ears. He could feel the unbelievable loneliness of being separated from God and the hell of bearing every sin of every man and in all of that kind of anticipation, he says, you know what I wantmost? You know what I want most? Most, I want you guys to be happy. Really, really happy. You know what that tells me about Jesus? That tells me that he cares about me. In the midst of all of the things that he must be doing to uphold the universe, most of all, he cares that I have joy and he's given me every cause. And I say to you dear Christians, Jesus did everything right up to his death to assure us full joy. He provided a glorious prayer fellowship with the Father; he sent his Holy Spirit to live within us, to activate all the promises that held given us, just because he wanted us to be joyful. And I say it must break his heart. It must break his heart to see Christians who are bitter or cynical who do not use that joy that is there. It must grieve his heart, for all that he's provided is to give us joy. God forgive us if we are not overwhelmed with that sweet joy that is ours because of the cross and because we actually do believe that he can turn sorrow into joy. Let's pray.

God, we thank you that you're a miracle‑working God. We thank you that you can take the sorrow of life and make it joy. This morning we rejoice on the cross. God we confess to you that so many times we're sorrowful; so many times we get self‑centered which is always the cause of sorrow. There's nothing to sorrow about in terms of you. But Father, sometimes even our sorrow is over others who don't know Christ and that's certainly legitimate, but Father, in the midst of all this, like Paul, may we constantly be rejoicing because we see the cross and that joy which can never be taken from us. Because also we believe in every sorrowful circumstance we can turn it into joy as you turned the water into wine, and because we have an unceasing prayer fellowship of communion with you and we see you move and act and are filled with that full joy. And may we remember that Jesus said these things have I written unto you that my joy might remain in you and that your joy might be full. Father, may we realize that anything less than full joy in our Christian lives is grief to the Spirit. It grieves the Spirit. For Jesus did everything to give us that full joy. Reach into our hearts and whatever bitterness, whatever cause for sorrow is there, remove it or give us the strength to believe there can become joy. Make us joyful people, praising you in everything and may we do as Paul said, rejoice always. Always, always, in the Lord. We pray in Christ's name, Amen.

Peace: A By-Product of Faith, Hope, and Love, Part 1

Turn in your Bibles to John chapter 16, verses number 25‑33, in this particular portion Jesus Christ wraps up His conversation with His disciples the night before His death. He pulls it all together‑‑this is kind of a summary of all that He said from chapter 13 on to this point on His last night with His disciples. And the theme of what He says in these verses is faith, hope, and love, and the result of those‑‑peace. And thus it becomes a very classic passage, not on the surface, but as you dig into it you find out how deeply it really unfolds the tremendous possessions of the believer, which are faith, hope, and love, and how knowing that we have these things brings peace. It's a bleak world that we live in. I suppose it's very much obvious to all of us how really sad and sick our world is. It becomes more obvious to me all the time. As I mentioned to some of you on Wednesday night, I had the opportunity to speak on the free speech platform at Cal State Long Beach last Wednesday before hundreds and hundreds of students, and they warned me before I spoke there that there was always some hassling and some harassment and some verbal abuse and all kinds of problems when you tried to confront a whole group of people on an open platform type thing, but it was amazing how that as I stood up there and I talked about the despair of man, the lack of love, the lack of something to believe in, the lack of hope that from the beginning to the end of my talk, which lasted about 45 minutes there was not one single statement made toward me, there wasn't one moving of the crowd, I only saw, I think, one person leave within 45 minutes. It was as if, in contrast with so many other things that have gone on in a similar situation, it was as if in talking about the hopelessness and the bleakness of life I struck the major chord in everybody's mind, and people just kept gathering around to hear this, this identified with them. And it's a truism, it's a truism if anything is true, that men today are desperate for love, they are desperate for something to believe in, and they are desperate for something to hope for. There must be some value in a man. A man must be worth something to somebody, and that's what love is. Love is merely a value system that sets a certain worth on an individual. That's what love is. Love says, you are worth this much. Certain love. Other love says you are worth that much, and the supreme love that says you are worth everything. All the mentions of love are merely a valuing system by which we are assigned a certain worth. Your neighbors may love you in a certain value, your wife loves you in perhaps more or less value, depending upon your own situation, and they're all varying areas of love, and they are merely evaluations. The person you love most in the world is the one whom to you has the highest value as an individual. And people today want to know that they're valuable. They're desperate to know that. They want to know they mean something, they want to know they're not part of a cosmic machine, they want to know that there's something about them that's worth something to somebody. They want love.

Secondly, they want something to believe in -‑ desperately. In a world where you can't put your faith in anything. They want something to believe in, and then they want something to hope for. There's got to be a better world. There's got to be. There's got to be a world where the inequalities become equal. There's got to be a world where injustice becomes justice, where wrongs are put away and rights are substituted. There's got to be a world where all the things that are bad are turned around and there is good and there is a world. There is a new world coming. It's going to be created by Jesus Christ‑‑it's called the Kingdom. There is something to hope for, but the world doesn't know that. And so people in our world are looking for someone to love them, someone they can love. They're looking for someone to believe in and something to hope for. And they're not finding it, and it's a sick sad world, and it's a despairing world, because they can't find it.

The anti‑hero of Sartre's great novel; the first novel that Sartre wrote was a comment on man, and the name of it is "Nausea", so you get a little idea of what he thinks. And in his novel "Nausea" the main character, who is the anti‑hero, describes existence like this. He says, "Nothing happens while you live. Scenery changes, people come in, go out, that's all, there are no beginnings, days are tacked on to days without rhyme or reason, and interminable monotonous condition." Why just nothing? Why just meaningless? It's a series of disconnected events. There's no purpose, and man desperately looks for purpose, he desperately looks for a reason to be alive, for something that makes existence meaningful. He looksin science. He thinks that maybe science has the answer, but science doesn't seem to make it, because science is a two‑edged sword‑‑it discovers wonderful ways to keep him alive, so the longer he lives the more he pollutes and over‑populates. He figures out wonderful ways to harness nuclear energy not only to create energy to run man's machinery and to make life more comfortable but to blow himself to bits. You see, science can only deal with what it observes. It has no morality. Science can't even give him any origin answers. Science doesn't know what happens before and what happened, happened. That's why science gets into such problems when it starts talking about where it all came from, and the best they can do is say once there was a puddle with a piece of protoplasm in it, And then and where did the protoplasm come from? "Don't ask me that." Science can't talk about origins and it can't talk about destinies. It's a study of the observable, and science doesn't give him any answers as to why he exists and where he came from and where he's going and what his meaning is. Somebody says, no it's experience. The only way you can every find meaning in life is to get on the bandwagon of whatever's happening‑‑get in the revolution. Be a part of where it's at. And people have lived like this for centuries. Adventurers‑‑get on the causes, jump on this, join this, join that, better man, sociological ... whatever way you want to do it. Be a part of the cause. This is a classic example of this is Ernest Hemingway. Ernest Hemingway did this ... went all over the world. Years ago Playboy Magazineran an article (I wrote a comment on the article in Christianity Today) (Laughter). I've got to be sure and protect myself. (Laughter) No, I believe it was Eternitymagazine, come to think of it‑‑another Christian Magazine‑‑but anyway, and this particular magazine was commenting on an article in Playboy Magazinewhich had reference to Ernest Hemingway. And it was evaluating him, this Playboy Magazinewas evaluating him by saying that he was one that you could cheat sin, that you could do whatever you wanted and get away with it because Hemingway had been all over the world, he'd fought in all revolutions, held killed people, he'd tumbled women, and he'd done this and that and it went on and on and on and on about all of his exploits and how he had proven that the old Christian adage that the wages of sin is death doesn't make it. And ten years later to the month that that article was written in Playboy glorifying Hemingway he took a gun and blew his brains out. No, he didn't make it. He found out that the wages of sin was death. The answer's not an experience, not an adventure.

Somebody else says, the answer is humanism. Ultimate humanism. But you know, you got aproblem in humanism, because if man is a piece of the cosmic machine then he's worthless to begin with. So to worship man is the height of idiocy. To be a humanist has to be the dumbest possible position that a man can evertake be­cause if a man is worthless anyway, why worship the worthless? I mean, if there's nothing outside man that says he's valuable and his problem is he thinks he's not valuable, then what is he doing worshipping himself if he's not valuable. Humanism doesn't offer any answers. Man can't handle his own world, he can't kid himself into thinking bets something more than he is.

So Sartre's main character in his novel "Nausea" comes to this conclusion he says, "I dreamed vaguely of killing myself, to wipe out at least one of these superfluous lives." No reason to live. Nothing to love, nothing to believe in, no hope, oh, coming and going, bits and pieces and hope and love and faith, but nothing concrete, nothing lasting, nothing meaningful, no wonder man has no peace, no wonder he lives in a state of existential shock, no wonder he's in a state of trauma. He hasn't figured out what he is and why he is. But you see, it is to this point that Jesus speaks. That man is because God is. And because God wanted man to be, because God has wonderful things in store for man. This is where Jesus moves in, the things that man is looking for‑‑love, faith, and hope, are exactly the things that Jesus gives. You see, in I Cor. 13:13 it says, "and now abideth faith, hope and love; these three." Why does it say these three? Those are the big three, neighbors. Those are the big three. And the greatest of these is what? Is love. In I Thess. 1 when Paul was stating that the Thessalonians were saved people, he was kind of presenting them as real believers in chapter 1 in the first 5 verses, and in verse 3 he proves their salvation by saying this: "I can remember your work of faith, your labor of love, and patience of hope." Now anybody that has love, faith, and hope is a believer in Christ, and that's the next phrase, "in our Lord Jesus Christ." And if you read through I Thessalonians you'll find in chapter 4 in verse 9 he talks about their love he talks about their love, chapter 4 verse 13‑18 he talks about their hope, chapter 4 verse 13‑18 he talks about their hope, chapter 1 verse 8 he talks about their faith, chapter 5 verse 8 he says now you've got them all now use them. Faith, hope and love, all come from a relationship to Jesus Christ. Under the three big things that every man desperately needs. He cannot exist without them. Now those three are what bring us to our passage in John 16. Because those three are the features that Jesus talks about in this final paragraph. And they are really, really important to us.

Now if you were to read this passage superficially you might not even see these three. Because they are not portrayed as such, but in the discourse between Jesus and his disciples when you get into the nitty‑gritty of what he's saying these three things literally explode in your face. And we'll only be able this morning to see the first one which is love, because it's so rich in verses 25‑27 but we must take the time to be careful with it. So these verses, verses 25‑33 then deal with the three cardinal virtues of salvation, did you get that? The three cardinal virtues of salvation, faith, hope, and love. And they are the summary of all of Jesus' discourse beginning in chapter 13. This has been a great discourse, hasn't it? There's nothing like it anywhere in the Bible‑‑fantastic. And really from 14 through 16 is a transition. You don't hear anything about Judaism anymore, everything's about the new age‑‑the dispensation of the Spirit; this is the bridge that Jesus is building to the new age. It's all about the great Holy Spirit age, it all deals with the Christian's position and practice, and Judaism is faded from the scene by the time you come to chapter 14, and Jesus is building the bridge to the new age. And the offer to his disciples in this discourse, and to every man who comes to him, love, faith t and hope‑‑the three things that make meaningful existence.

First of all, let's notice love. And we're going to sneak up on it a little bit. Beginning in verse 25, Jesus says, "These things have I spoken unto you in Proverbs, that the time cometh when I shall no more speak to you in proverbs but I shall show you plainly of the Father. Now I want to talk about that for just a minute. First of all He says, these things have I spoken unto you in proverbs. The Greek word is "peroinia". There are two words in the New Testament that are used commonly, concerning the veiled statements of Jesus, "parabalas", from which we get parables, and "peroinia". Now peroiniais here translated proverb, but that perhaps is not the best translation. Because when we in English think about a proverb we think about some kind of a clever little saying like we read in the proverbs, as this word indicates. Peroimiameans a "veiled, pointed statement". A veiled pointed statement. That is a peroimia. The Hebrew equivalent is "mashal", and a meshalis the same thing‑‑it is a very important sort of pregnant with meaning statement‑‑it's like an iceberg, you know, you get the top of it and you miss the real shot that's underneath the surface. And Jesus spoke continually in meshals, continually in these peroimias, and He by doing that eliminated totally the unbeliever from understanding. Totally. I mean the wise and the prudent (quote) of the world never got anything‑‑I mean they didn't even know what was going on. But He also limited the sense in which the disciples understood. They understood some of the basic things that he was saying, and really that's all he cared that they understand. But the real depth of it He left for us on this side when the Spirit comes and begins to unlock all of these things, you see? I mean He wanted to leave more than was there on the surface, you understand that? Jesus just didn't want to say this is it and this is it and then everybody would say oh year, we all get it. They would have read it once, got it and then chucked it, right? And so He left a wealth of unseen information that needs the Spirit of God's teaching to untie and to unfold.

And so He spoke in peroimias, both by sovereign design to limit them and also because they couldn't understand more than they got anyway. We know that, right. All right, so Jesus spoke to them in veiled statements. All along. For example, back in chapter two, He said, in three days, you know, destroy this temple and in three days I will build it again. And they're all scratching their heads and saying, good night, how will He ever do that? Because they understood not that He spake of His body. You see, they didn't get it until clear on later on afterwards, did they? Post‑cross. Oh, hey. They probably went back to their notes, you know? Look at that, look at that‑‑see. I mean it just unfolded later on, but they didn't get it at that point. But don't you see, Jesus had to say these deep things, because that was proof. It was all there‑‑they just got a little of it. And the world got none of it, see. Jesus said, "I am the light of the world," they didn't get that real clearly. Jesus said, "I am the bread of life", He talked about eating His flesh and drinking His blood, and they didn't really get that, and the Jews, they didn't get it at all. They were saying, oh that's ridiculous, there's not enough of you to go around in this town let alone all over the world, you know. They were thinking pure physical. And He spoke to them, He said things like "Before Abraham was I am," and you know they didn't understand that. So many of the times that Jesus had spoken to them all through John He had spoken to them in meshals, or peroimias, veiled statements. Fortunately there was always enough proof to make it meaningful. But there was enough truth left to make it rich for the rest of the era of the dispensation of the Spirit, you see? He gave them the top and then when the Spirit came He began to unfold all the wealth of things that were hidden. The expanse of knowledge. There was enough informationso that a man waswithout excuse‑for rejecting Christ, but there was still enough left unsaid so that the Spirit of God could spend a whole age of Grace unfolding it to us.

Now you'll notice that in the beginning of verse 25 the first two words, "these things", one word in Greek, "These things have I spoken in peroimia." What things? Well, could be many things, could be everything that He said in peroimias, and I'm sure that does have a general reference to that. All of the meshalswere veiled in a sense, particularly, if you'll notice at the bottom of verse 25 the last three words, of the Father, particularly the things that He said regarding the Father. You see, He had talked about coming from the Father and going to the Father in veiled statements and they were still trying to figure out what He was talking about. We won't take the time to go all through them but there are many places in John that we've already studied where Jesus had hinted at the fact that He had come from God and was going back to God, in kind of veiled statements in context and they hadn't been able to figure them out and so held been saying to them all these things that I've been telling you in parables and particularly those that have to do with my relationship to the Father. This was the biggest mystery of all. Divine origin and the return of Christ to that divine place.

Now it's all been veiled‑‑he hasn't really given them a complete and simple statement of His connection with the Father. And may I quickly add that footnote that I hinted at that it was not only that Jesus designed a veil, and it was that they couldn't handle them anyway. You know? If you look back at chapter 16 verse 12 you'll see that that's true, because in 16:12 Jesus even said "I have yet many things to say unto you but you cannot bear them now." They couldn't handle what they had, let alone any more. They were doing real well to see the tops of the iceberg, let alone the rest of it. And so they were veiled not only by sovereign design of Christ but they were veiled also because of the disciples spiritual ignorance and their inability to understand at that point, and it's not really so much that we blame them, because they did not have the resident Holy Spirit who would be the truth teacher, do you see? And the same statements that confused the disciples when we read them they don't confuse us. They are plain to us. We understand them. When the Bible says Jesus came out from God and went back to God we understand that, we who know Christ. That does not confuse us. And so Jesus at this time is prevented from speaking to them in open and closed statements not only by His own design but by their ignorance, but He promises them, remember in chapter 16 verse 13 that the Spirit would come and guide you in all truth, He will not speak of Himself but whatever He shall hear that will He speak, and over in chapter 14 He says He will take the things that I said and He'll show them to you and He'll teach you regarding them. Bring to your remembrance whatsoever I said unto you. So until the man of sorrows actually suffers, until He actually dies on the Cross, until He's risen again, until the Spirit comes, the superhelper the teacher, they cannot understand fully Christ's teaching nor His relationship to the Father. But the great new age is coming, and age with no parables, no peromias, no veiled statements, no meshals, in the dispensation of the Spirit He will speak plainly of the Father.

Now notice the little phrase, the time cometh, in the middle of verse 25. The time cometh can be connected with verse 23 in that day, verse 26, at that day, what day is it. The day of Pentecost. It's the day and the time when the Spirit of God comes and indwells them. In the new age, in the dispensation of the Holy Spirit, you remember after Christ died, about 50 days later the Spirit of God descended and indwelt the believers, and continues to indwell believers throughout all the Grace age, and in all that period of time the Spirit of God is in them. Jesus is saying, at that time in that hour on that day when the Spirit comes then you'll know all of these things simply, because we'll begin to clarify all the mystery. And it's true. You read Paul, and Paul doesn't speak in parables. Neither does James, neither does Peter, neither does any other New Testament writer. There aren't any parables. The closest thing to mysterious truth is Revelation, and the reason it's mysterious is because we're back on the other side of it again, see. We're where the disciples were before the death of Christ in reference to Revelation, that's all stuff that hasn't happened yet. That's why it's difficult for us to understand it. But in terms of the epistles, all the epistles are designed to do is unfold the teaching of Christ to us. They are to remove the veil, to remove the mysteries, to eliminate the parables and to teach plainly the truth. And so from the time that the Spirit of God comes on Pentecost the teaching will be clear, and the coming age the meshalswill be over and it's true. In fact, in verse 23, look at the first statement of verse 23, chapter 16,"and in that day you shall ask Me (what?) nothing." Your questions will be answered. That's one of the meanings of that statement. We saw that last week. You're questions will be answered in the new age. You know sometimes we say to ourselves well those stupid disciples, what a bunch of clods. I mean this stuff isn't that tough. I mean they should have gotten a lot of that stuff. But remember whom you have teaching you, friend. Remember who lives within you‑‑the Holy Spirit of God, and let's face it without the Holy Spirit of God you'd be a dodo. You'd be worse than the disciples, because they at least had Christ around, they could ask Him. You wouldn't know anything. In case you don't believe that, I want to read you something out of the Bible that will tell you that. I Cor. 2:9, "but as it is written, eye hath not seen nor ear heard neither hath entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for them that love Him." We can't know it by our senses, can we? We can't know what God has for us just by our eyes and ears. You can't know it by that human understanding. Watch this. "But God has revealed them unto us by His Spirit." The only reason you know anything is by the Holy Spirit. People say I don't know whether the Holy Spirit's within me. I know one way you can answer that and I often do that is to say well do you know anything about the Bible, Yeah. Well who do you think taught you? God has revealed them unto us by His Spirit for the Spirit searches all things, yeah the deep things of God. He's the one that knows the deep things of God and teaches them to us, for what man knoweth the things of a man except the spirit of man which is in him, even so the things of God knoweth no man but the Spirit of God. We don't know these things. God's Spirit teaches us. "Now we have received not the spirit who is of this worldbut the Spirit who is of God, that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God, which things also we speak; I know what I know because the Spirit teaches me and so I tell you about it. Not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Spirit teacheth comparing spiritual things with spiritual. And then He goes on to say and the natural man understandeth not the things of God. They are spiritually discerned, so he can't know them. Realize where your knowledge comes from. The only reason you know anything is because the Spirit of God is your teacher, and He's the only one who knows the mind of God. He's the only one who searches the deep things of God and reveals them to you and to me. So what we know about spiritual truth we know from the Holy Spirit, either directly as He teaches us or indirectly as He teaches you through me, see. But it's all the Spirit of God's teaching. We know nothing apart from Him.

Now I want to show you how this works in the transition by having you go with me for a minute to 11 Cor. 3, and I wish you'd turn there, because there are enough verses here to make us stay for awhile. II Cor. 3:4, and I'm not going to take the time to tear this whole thing apart but I'm just going to hit some highlights. Forgive me for the part that we pass. Verse 4, "And such trust have we through Christ toward God." All right, we trust God. Through Christ we've come to God. We've got that. Now watch 5. Picking it up. Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think anything as of ourselves but our sufficiency is what? Of God, II Cor. 3:5: "our sufficiency is of God." We don't know anything by ourselves. Now watch this. Talking about God some more, God is the key to this next verse, God who also hath made us able ministers of the New Testament not of the letter but of the Spirit, for the letter killeth but the Spirit giveth life. Always comparing the New Testament with the Old Testament. The Old Testament is the letter, the law, and the law kills. You know that the law would kill? Because you can't keep it, can you? You break the law and death is the result. The law is a killer, God's law. Verse 7, it even calls it, but the ministration of death. You see that's the name of the law. The name brings death. Written and engraved in stones, let me read again verse 7, if the ministration of death written and engraved in stones was glorious, so that the children of Israel could not steadfastly behold the face of Moses for the glory of His countenance which glory was to be done away, how shall not the ministration of the Spirit be more glorious? Now what he's saying is this, if there was some majesty and glory to the Old Covenant which was deadly, how much more glory to the New? Right? And if the old law was a good thing, and it was, if the Old Covenant was goodenough to put a glow on Moses' face and bring glory to God because of it then that's great, but how much more glory in the New Covenant. Now we'll see what that means, verse 9. For if the ministration of condemnation be glory much more doeth the ministration of righteousness exceed in glory. All the law could do is condemn you, right? The law can't save anybody. The only way you could be saved by the law is to keep it all, can you do that? No. so the law could only condemn. If a law that can condemn is glorious, how much more glorious is a New Testament that can give righteousness? You see? And how much more glorious, see. Verse 10, "for even that which was made glorious had no glory in this respect, by reason of the glory that excelleth." In other words, when you compare the two the old law looks like it's unglorious. Now, we re going to get down to the nitty‑gritty. Verse 11, "for if that which was done away with is glorious, much more that which remaineth is glorious. Seeing then that we have such hope, we use great what? Plainness of speech. The old thing is gone, the old thing with all the pictures and types and all the parables and peroimiasand all the meshalsand that's what the Old Testament is full of are the types all over the Old Testament, you know there are. Pictures and all different kinds of views of Messiah, and all this that you had to kind of unscramble. And it's very difficult, and Paul says that's all over‑‑the old one is gone and the new one is hear and we speak with great plainness of speech, see. Not like Moses who put a veil over his face, verse 13, and the children of Israel could not steadfastly look to the end of that which was fading away. I don't want to go into this too long but Moses had the glory of God on his face when he came down with the tables of testimony, the law, and he put a veil over his face to veil the glory, see. Because it was fading away. He wanted to veil that glory. Verse 14, and that's just a hint at the Old Testament, because the Old Testament was kind of veiled glory, that's something to illustrate, but their minds were blinded, for until this day remaineth the same veil untaken away in the reading of the Old Testament. Did you get that? There is this, and I'm not going to give you every little meaning here, but the whole general passage is saying this, the old covenant was a veiled covenant. It was a covenant of parables and pipes and pictures, and it did not have the plainness of speech.

Jesus even said on the Road to Amaeus, if you'd really known the Old Testament you'd have known all about this, remember? Because they didn't understand even their own Old Testament. The Jews certainly didn't understand it. So much veiled statement. and here Paul says this, their minds were blinded verse 14 and until this day remaineth the same veil untaken away in the reading of the Old Testament. Do you know the Jews today still have the same veil on? 2,000 years after the veil was taken away they still have it on. One‑half block down the street they all have the veil on. They do, and it's a sad thing. They're veiled. Their minds are blinded. They get up every Sabbath and they read the Old Testament but they haven't got the faintest idea what it's talking about. They cannot untable the parables or the types or the meanings or the prophecies. They're veiled. Look at the end of verse 14. No wonder, which veil is done away where? In Christ. In Christ. But even unto this day, when Moses is read the veil is upon their heart; that's a commentary, on Jewish worship today in 1971. They read the law of Moses, there's a veil on their hearts. Oh, look at this. Nevertheless, when it shall turn to the Lord the veil shall be taken away. Then the Lord is that Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty. All of a sudden the freedom to know and to understand. And then what happens in verse 18, we all with unveiled face, don't you love that now? You know what it means to have an unveiled face? You can read the New Testament and under­ stand it. Why? Because the veil was taken away when you received Christ. You behold as in a mirror the glory of the Lord and you get changed into the same image from glory to glory by the Spirit of the Lord. That's the whole economy of the New Testament in a nutshell, verse 18. The veil is removed, and as you gaze into the unclouded glory of Christ in the New Testament the Spirit changes you into His image. That's what Christianity is, did you know? It's becoming like Christ, isn't it? And the only way to become like Christ is to gaze into His glory, unveiled, while the Spirit changes you into His image.

Now, the reason I took all that time with that is that I want you to understand what we're saying here. The old age veiled, darkness, parables, peroimias, types, prophecies. In the new age‑‑plainness of speech. No more veil, everything is clear, because the indwelling Spirit is our teacher. You see?Tremendous, tremendous things. I mean you've got to believe that there was a tremendous climactic change when the Spirit came. Has to be. The whole new concept, the whole new age is born. Now try to understand the disciples' problem‑‑they're in the veiled age. They're hearing it with mosaic, legalistic ears. And they can't decipher all that's being said, but when the graceage begins, with the resident Holy Spirit, all of that new stuff is going to be plain and clear to our understanding. Because the Spirit will be our teacher. So Jesus says, catch it again in chapter 16 verse 25 "these things have I spoken unto you in proverbs, but the time comes when I shall no longer speak to you in proverbs but I shall show you plainly of the Father." Isn't that a tremendous promise? Fantastic. And you know one thing we Christians know is about the Father, don't we? We may not know all the doctrine in the Bible but we know about the Father, don't we? You know that even a spiritual babe knows that? In I John chapter 2 you know when John was talking about spiritual babes, he says "I write unto you babes, little children, "paidea", you know, little ones, because you have known the Father." See? I mean, a little baby in your family doesn't know ‑much, but he knows mom and dad. That's it. But that proves that child is alive in your family. And so it is with a Christian. You may not know anything. You may be a spiritual babe. But you know one thing. You know the Father. You know the Father. That's the first thing the Christian learns is that God loves him and cares for him, and that's exactly what Jesus is saying, plainly folks in the new age you'll know the Father. No more questions about the Father. And then little by little it begins to unfold the beauty of Christ's own relationship to the Father and the tremendous redemptive plan which God designed which involved both Christ and the Holy Spirit, tremendous truth.

So He says, it's coming, in a new time and a new age, and I'll show you plainly of the Father. And another thing, we who know Jesus Christ know about is the Trinity. We know that God and Christ and the Spirit are three in one. We see that in the Word of God. We don't understand it, we believe it. So there he says, I used to speak to you this way but soon that will all change in the new age, Now watch verse 26: "At that day, (same day, Pentecost) from then on in the new age you shall ask in my Name." Ask who? Well, the Father, of course, and I say not unto you that I will pray the Father for you... Now hold on a minute. Is that verse saying that Jesus never prays for us? Is that what that says? Well if it does, it contradicts Hebrews 7:25 and it contradicts Romans 8:24 and it contradicts Romans 8:26. Did you ever read in the Bible that Christ is at the right hand of the Father interceding for you? Well what does this mean hear, when it says in verse 26, 1 say not unto you that I will pray the Father for you?" Well what is he saying? Look at the first part of the verse, "At that day ye shall ask in my name." Now listen, let's startright there for a minute. In the new dispensation of the Spirit, the disciples will be able to do what they have never been able to do before; they will be able to go to the Father directly in the name of Jesus. And they will be able to have direct access to God the Father. Go back to verse 23, in the middle, "whatever you shall ask the Father in My Name He will give it you, hitherto ye have asked nothing in my name‑‑(this is something new, guys, you never did it before this way) keep on asking and you shall keep on receiving that you're joy may keep on being full." There's a new age coming, guys, and you're going to go directly to the Father and I'm not going to have to ask for you. You know, and they had spent all of three years that they'd been with Him saying would you speak with God on this, if they asked Him for anything. And now He says there's a new age. You can go straight in on your own. Just say Jesus sent you. Isn't that good? When we pray in Jesus' name that's what we're doing, we're saying, Father, Jesus sent me to ask you this. Now that's how you ought to qualify your prayers. You say, you mean I can pray for anything and God will give it to me? No, you can pray for anything like this, "Uh, Father, I'm coming because Jesus sent me and I'm asking you for Him to do this. You're asking consistent with what you know is Christ's will, consistent with Christ, yet the promise, watch in verse 26, ye shall ask in my name‑tremendous. And back in verse 23, you'll get it; He'll give it to you. In the new age, the believer, will go straight to God and just say, Jesus sent me.

Now you know that the Father loves the Son, don't you? And you know that if the Father really loves the Son, anyone who comes to the Father in the Son's name is going to get what he asks, don't you? Sure. I mean if somebody comes to me and asks me for something and says I was sent by your son who wants this too, and it's something good and something wonderful, I'm going to give it all the faster because I love my son, and if he sent him on his behalf, how much quicker is my response. And the same thing is true perhaps of God. God would answer something perhaps, but how much faster does God respond in a human sense when He knows that we are sent by His Son whom He loves with an infinite love. So prayer is the power to move God's hand. Prayer is joy. Prayer is going directly into God's presence. Gerhardt said this, "The benefit of prayer is so great that it cannot be expressed, Prayer is the dove which when sent out returns again bringing with it the olive leaf of peace and joy. Prayer is a golden chain which God holds fast and let's not go until He blesses. Prayer is the Moses rod which brings forth the water of consolation out of the rock of salvation. Prayer is Samson's jawbone which smites our enemies, prayer is David's harp, before which the evil spirit flies, prayer is the key to Heaven's treasures." That's prayer.

And so when we are in the new age indwelt by the Spirit of God because we have put our faith and love in Jesus Christ we have immediate access into the actual presence of God. Then, with that in mind, look at verse 26, "Therefore," Christ says, I'mnot going to tell you that I will pray to the Father for you." No, He doesn't say that I'm not going to pray for you, he just says I'm not going to tell you that I'm not going to pray for you. I don't have to pray for you in those any more. You can go straight into God on your own, you don't need Me, you don't need to come to Me as it were and have Me beg God, just go in My name‑you belong to Me, and He loves Me so much that whatever you ask in My name for My sake He'll do it for you. We come into the presence of God and are received as He would receive His own Son, do you know that? That's a fantastic thought. You have the instant and total access to God's presence as a Christian. Now this is important, because you see, for example the Roman Catholic Church has taught for centuries that access to the Father and to Christ comes through Mary, and access to Mary and to Christ comes through angels or certain saints, and so they've set up a whole barrier of individuals to get to God. Ought, look what we've got, in the Catholic theology, the Catholics' own theology book, says this, "Mary's intercessory cooperation extends to all graces, so that no grace accruesto mankind without the intercession of Mary. The redemptive grace of Christ is conferred on nobody without the actual intercessory cooperation of Mary." Now I'll tell you, friends, I don't read that in my Bible. And I looked into the evidence of Ought's theology to try to find out by what he supported this, and he supported it by the tradition the church councils and certain decrees. It is not in the Bible. My Bible tells me the words of Jesus are very simple. "From this day on, you may go immediately into My Father's presence, in my Name." Just tell Him that I sent you. You don't need saints, you don't need priests, you don't need angels, you don't need me, you don't need anything. Just go straight to God in my name and say, "Here I am, God, Jesus sent me, "and that's enough. That's enough. We don't have to beg Mary or saint somebody to ask Christ to ask God, we go straight to God. Instant, immediate access, entrance into God's divine presence, direct. You say, well, umm, I'm still bothered by the part that says, "And I say not unto you that I will pray the Father for you." Well, I'll tell you how this works. In regards to this, Jesus doesn't need to pray for us. Now hang on a minute. I can pray for certain things in my own life, can't I? Let me give you an illustration of what I mean. In Romans 8:26, well in Romans 8:34 it says that He makes intercession for us. In Romans 8:26 it tells us how. The Spirit of Christ is within us, right? And in chapter 26 it says this, "for the Spirit makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered." Over what? For we know not what to pray for as we ought. You know where Christ is interceding for us? He intercedes for us in the areas where we don't know how to pray. Did you get that? Christ's intercession is in the area where we don't know how to pray. We can go directly to God in the area of our own need and the anxiety of our own heart, and our own request and our own desires and in the areas we don't know about Christ picks up the slack and goes to God on our behalf, do you see? I mean that's totally covering all the ground, isn't it? You go to God and immediate access for everything you need and the stuff you can't even think about Christ will take care of that. And there's one other area where Christ intercedes for you, and that's in I John chapter 2, "My little children, sin not, .‑but if any man sin we have an advocate, an intercessor with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous." You know the second place that He intercedes for you? In the matter of your sin. He constantly sees to it that the Father forgives your sin. He just constantly intercedes on behalf of your sin, see. Constantly. He's the propitiation the covering for your sins. So Jesus Christ's intercessory work has to do with sin and it has to do with that which you do not know how to pray for. And He prays for you on behalf of those two things and those are areas where you and I can't get because we can't touch those areas. He picks up all the loose areas. We pray directly to God for those things that are on our hearts. That's a fantastic thing, isn't it? And you see, that's why in Romans 8:28 it says, "All things work together for good to them that love God and are called according to their purpose. Why? Because of the constant intercessory ministry of the Spirit of Christ on our behalf. In verses 26 and 27 leading up to 28.

You say, well I don't understand one thing, I mean this is fabulous; I mean this is fantastic that I can go immediately into God's presence and I don't have to come up to you and have you do it for me and I don't have to go through the motions that God's not behind a wall and saying smash it down and pray it through, brother, and all of this and that, and I don't have to pray to saint so and so or Mary or a priest or anybody, I can go immediately to God and the rest of the stuff that I don't know how to pray for Jesus is picking it all up and praying for it and He's constantly interceding for me on behalf of my sin and everything is covered. This is fabulous. What I don't understand is why? You know? I mean, that's nice, God, I mean what are you doing this for? I mean, I'm a crumb, right? I mean, you know I'm speaking collectively (laughter). But you know, I mean, we don't deserve this. We don't deserve this, God. I mean what right do we have to expect this out of you? I mean, if I'd been a disciple and had been kind of prompted to ask a question, I would have said that, I would have said now just tell me one thing, Jesus, why in the world does God bother to do this? And that's the answer in verse 26, look at it. So beautiful. "For the Father Himself" (what?) "loves you." Loves you. That's fantastic. You know why God did this? He loves you. Now watch this. Why doesHe love me so much, what did I do? Because you loved Me, and believed that I came from God. You know, when you love Jesus Christ God loves you with a unique kind of love, and that unique kind of love prompts that kind of bounty and blessing and answered prayer on your behalf. Isn't that fantastic? God loves you. You say, God loves me? That's right. God loves you. You're worth something. That is the basis of human existence, my friend, that God loves you, did you know that? If God doesn't love you, you're a joke. If God doesn't love you God is off on some cloud just cracking up, laughing at the brutality of existence'.' If God doesn't love you, this is a sick joke, the whole thing. But He does love you. I mean, imagine being loved by the God of the Universe. Does that give you a little self value? I mean, God's made some beautiful stars and some fantastic things, He's created some massive kind of things, I was watching last night on television the ascent of Mt. Everest and I thought what a creative masterpiece, creating those mountains and all that grandeur and that beauty, it's beyond belief, you know, and then I began to think about what I'm going to preach and I thought well that's no big deal, God loves me way more than He loves all that stuff. You know that outside of the Trinity you're the hottest commodity in the universe? God loves you. You are worth something. You are so highly valued; you know how much he loves you? He loves you so much that He came to earth to die for you, that's how much He loves you. I mean, you're the most valuable thing He owns. God loves you, and that's the reason for human existence. God loves you, get that through your head.

But I want to dive in a little deeper for a minute because I want to take the word love and show you what it is. Now there's a very famous word for love in the Bible, "agape" which means divine love, you know, kind of over all divine love. That's not the word that's used here, and I want to show you something really exciting. Verse27, "for the Father Himself loves you," uses the word "philetto" for love (philethere, this form). You know what it means? It means, really likes you. God not only loves you withthe kind of sweeping grand love but He really likes you a lot. Isn't that good? You know, it's one thing to say, God loves you. You say, that's no big thing, He loves everybody. Yeah, but for some peopleHe really likes 'em, in the vernacular, He digs on 'em, see. That's what the young people say. You know, God really likes you, a lot. Very much He likes you‑God is crazy about you, That's philet, philetis a family love, it's a deep affection, In the Greek form is a duative present, you know, it's a continual. God just keeps on really having a deep affection for you. Now He loves in a divine sense the whole world, right, John 3:16. But He has a really deep, warm, fatherly caring affection for those who love Jesus. And that's why He hears and answers their prayers. They're part of the family. He cares for them. God loves all men, then with a divine love, but He has a special deep intimate warm love for those who love Jesus. I like both those loves, don't you? I mean, I'm glad He loves me with a universal divine love because that love made Him give me Christ. I'm also really excited that He likes me a lot, that He has a warm tender fatherly affection for me, because that love makes Him give me everything I ask for in Jesus' name. I'm glad for both of those loves. And you know something; you can't be a Christian and understand the love of God and how much He really likes you without having a tremendous sense of self value. Self value. You're worth something to God. You're the highest prize that He ever claimed in the universe, do you know that? When the angels fell, He never redeemed them. When men fell, He set everything in motion in the universe to redeem those men back. That's because He loves us, and especially does He really like us when we love Jesus. That's good.

So many Christians have the idea that God has a whip, you know, that He's after them, and that it's a horrible brow‑beating existence. I mean, you say to your God, "Don't do that or God won't like you." Oh, that's terrible to say that‑that's a lie. If you're a Christian God likes you. He doesn't like you because of you, figure that one out. He likes you in spite of you anyway. (Laughter) So many Christians are beaten down with inferiority feelings and persecution complexes and feelings of inadequacy and nobody likes me, you know, andkind of down‑in‑the‑mouth. Get it into your head‑‑God likes you a lot if you're a Christian. He has a deep, warm, tender loving Fatherly affection for you. If you have a saving love for Jesus, if you believe that Jesus came from God, if you believe the redemptive plan in Jesus if you've given love for Jesus Christ, God has a love for you that is deep and warm and it is real, and it is personal, and it is intimate. And that's even though He knows you're unfaithful, sinful, critical, sour, a lousy husband, a poor wife, not a very good mother and a father, don't work like you should‑‑whateverHe knows about you and whatever He knows about me. They're all in spite ofs. He loves us. And He just keeps on loving every one of us; it's a constant kind of affection. That brings up an interesting footnote. If God loves all Christians, I thought about this in my own mind, if God loves all Christians with that kind of tender affection, and He loves them all in spite of what He knows about them, how 'bout us, do we love one another? With that same kind of inclusiveness, even though we know certain things? Most of us don't. Most of us would rather elevate ourselves above God and chose whom we will desire to love. We sort of select those who receive our affection. And I ask you what Jesus asked His disciples twice, is the servant greater than his Lord? Jesus even washed Judas' feet, you know. Instead of judging others we ought to make our salvation visible by loving all in the body of Christ. God does. We ought to have the same tender, gentle affection He has. And so God likes us a lot. And He's a Father to us. That's why when a Christian prays, Romans 8:15, he doesn't go in fear to God. You know, we don't pray like, God I'm coming into your presence, I'm coming, God‑‑don't hit me. What till you hear what I have to say, you know. We don't go like that, see. There's no fear. When we pray, we say, Abba, Father, don't we? What does that mean? That's Daddy, Papa. That's a term of intimacy. When we go to God we go in complete trust, complete confidence, we come into His presence. We say, Abba, Father. Here's my need, and we just kind of unbear our hearts. We know He loves us, we sense this intimacy that God has for us. You know, you can try to explain this to people who don't knowChrist, but it's inexplicable. In a loveless world that thrives on loveless words and a kind of wordless sexual love in homes where there is no love and in lives where there is no love here comes the real stuff. Not only a divine kind of love but a divine tender kind of warm affection, that gives a soul value and worth. Listen, my friend, if you're worth something to God, you're worth something, And you know, the shock of it all is that some of us can't even assign value to people. When God does, and we're infinitely less holy than‑He is. And yet God can see in every one of you value to send Him to the cross. And when you once sense that love and when you love Him back, when you love Jesus and He loves you, it's so fulfilling. You know why you live; you know what it means to be alive.

You say, I'd like to have that experience of love‑‑it's easy. God did it all, He made it all happen. He proved His love toward us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us. He made the way open. All you need to do is love Jesus Christ, believe He came from God, accept His death on the Cross and you'll know that love. And that, my friends is the worth of a man. If a man is not loved he is worthless. Because love is pricing him. One who believes in and one who knows God makes sense out of life because he is loved. He has the chief clue to the meaning of existence, which is human value. You do matter. You matter to God. You're not just a piece of a cosmic machine. You're a beloved individual, whom God not only loves in a vast spiritual divine dimension, but for whom He has a deep affection. I'll tell you, when you think about that it makes you want to shout. Fantastic.

Well, there it is. In John 14, let me just give you two verses. Verse 21, same thing. "He that hath my commandments and keepeth them, he it is that loveth Me." Now watch this. This is how you love Christ, by being obedient to His commands. And he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father. Isn't that good. God loves those who loveJesus. How do you show your love for Jesus, by obeying His commands. Verse 23. Jesus answered and said untohim, "If a man love me he willkeep my words (same thing, and what happens when a man loves me) my Father will love him, you see? I mean you can be involved in a love relationship with God, with Christ, and then you'll find out with other believers that we're in the same love bond. You can bask in love.

So man feels the call of love. He realizes he's not truly a man apart from it. He is alienated, he is conscious of his guilt, his loneliness, and his despair. And what would a loving God do to alleviate this? He encounters man in love, expresses His love to that man in a supreme sacrifice, and asks that man to do one thing to respond and love Him back. And tells him how he can love Him‑‑by loving His Son and obeying His commands. And when that man does that then he is liked by God in the warm tender affectionate sense of the word. This is what God created you for, so He could love you. And when you love Him and He loves you in return you have meaning to existence. Apart from that you have no meaning. What you really need to know and what you really need to experience is what Paul mentioned in Ephesians when he said this: "We are accepted in the beloved. In Christ, we are beloved of God." Tremendous truth.

Father, we thank you this morning as we just kind of close our thoughts for what we've learned. Thank you that you love us. First of all, with that agape, that divine kind of love, that caused you to die for us, and secondly that warm kind of caring family love that causes you to answer our prayers, even those we don't pray. That causes you to know that we have need before you ever ask and I thank you right know for loving me, in spite of myself, and for really liking me, and just to know that I'm worth something, just to know that I have a reason to exist. That you care about me. That I'm a joy to your heart, that I'm a trophy of your grace, that I'm someone that you can love, because you need to have an object to love. Father, I thank you that you love me, and that youlove everyone here who loves Jesus Christ in that same warm caring kind of love, and I thank you that whenever I ask in Jesus' name you hear and you answer and you meet the need. I thank you for the new age of the Spirit, that I may know you, plainly and clearly, and understand. I thank you for the Spirit teaching me. Father, I also would pray right now for some who are here whom you love in a divine sense and whom you died for, to show that love, but who have never come and received Christ, and believed and loved him in return. Father, I pray that right now they would open their heart to Jesus Christ, that they would receive Him as Savior, that they would love Him, and thus would know your warm tender affectionate love. To that end we pray, Father, that even as we close this service you'll draw hearts to yourself. While your heads are bowed, as we conclude in a moment, we like to always give an invitation. Perhaps you're hearing the Spirit of God speak to you and you know you need Jesus Christ. You're really looking for so‑me kind of love that's so permanent and so rich and so full, and I offer to you what Jesus offers, that same kind of love. It can be yours, if you'll respond to Christ and receive Him as your Savior, believe in the perfect work that He did and accept His love for you and love Him in return and show that love by obeying Him. Father, as we close, we ask you to do your perfect will. Direct those who need to come and make some real decisions‑‑critical decisions of time and eternity. Direct them, Father, give them the strength to come. Defeat Satan. May this be a time of real victory. We thank you in Jesus' name. Amen.

Peace: A By-Product of Faith, Hope, and Love, Part 2

Turn in your Bibles to the sixteenth chapter of John.  We want to consider the remaining portion of chapter 16, we've entitled this message, "Peace: A Product of Faith, Hope and Love."  And really that's what peace is.  We discussed the beginning, verses 25, 26 and 27 of this entire passage which really comes as one unit and we talked about the void that is in man's soul.  We talked about the fact that in every man's soul there are three missing ingredients and they are just these three that are discussed here by Jesus...love, faith and hope.  That men desire something to love and be loved by, something and someone to believe in, and something to hope for and apart from these three things man has no reason to exist, he has no escape from the human dilemma.  Life becomes a meaningless treadmill.  And it is the plight of twentieth-century man and it is the plight really of every man to search for these realities.

Stephen Evans has written a little book entitled Despairand in this book he talks about much of this.  And he says that perhaps the uniqueness of the twentieth century man is his kill power.  His uniqueness may be in the fact that death becomes extremely stark because it is so easy for man to wipe out the entire population of the world in a matter of months at the most.  We can kill by both the bomb, germ warfare, biological warfare, as it's known, chemical warfare, pollution, and other areas.

But no matter how vast you get in your consideration of death and how sort of gigantic everything appears, the great horror that man lives with is the fear of his own personal individual death.  The real horror of life is not that man must die, the real horror of life is that I must die.  That's the real horror.  The great fear that enters into the heart of every man is the inevitability of death.  And from the perspective of the individual man, from His beginnings, death has always been the grim specter.  And twentieth-century man, though unique in many areas, is no different than any man in any century, he must also face death.  And he will die only once and he will die by himself whether he is surrounded by his family in a hospital bed or whether he's accompanied by the entire human race in a nuclear holocaust, man will die absolutely by himself.  And since man in our day has wiped out God, since God is dead in man's mind, man faces the universe, faces his problems and faces the absolute loneliness of death all by himself.  He has eliminated all of his hope when he eliminated God.

Who really loves him then?  Whom can he believe in and trust for his eternal destiny?  What can he really hope for beyond this world?  Without God there is nothing.  And because there is nothing, there is no peace in that kind of heart.  No man can know peace in a heart that has no answers to those questions.  But we saw last week that these three things are precisely what Jesus offers to every man.  The beauty of the gospel is that it is these three made accessible to you and to me.  Jesus offers love, He offers faith and He offers hope.  And by these three things peace.  Paul said, you remember, "And these three abide, faith, hope and love, and the greatest of these is love."

And it is exactly those three things that Jesus speaks of in our text.  He offers to every man a divine love, someone and something to believe in, and a hope that is steadfast and sure and eternal.  And when a man has all of those things, a man has peace.

Now last week we saw, first of all, that Jesus offered love, the greatest of all three.  Look at verse 25 and I'll just read them in review.  "These things have I spoken unto you in proverbs, or poignant pointed sayings, veiled sayings, that the time cometh when I shall no more speak unto you in proverbs but I will show you plainly of the Father."  Jesus says I've been speaking to you in paroimias, veiled sayings, that the time is coming...we know that time to be the day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit arrives to dwell within them...the time is coming when He no more will speak to them in paroimias, or veiled sayings but will show them plainly the things concerning God."  Verse 26, "At that day...again the day of Pentecost when the Spirit comes...ye shall ask in My name and I say not unto you that I will pray the Father for you."  At that day every Christian will have instant and immediate access into God's presence, they will not have to ask Jesus to ask God, they will go to God directly in the name of Jesus Christ.  And the reason for this, given in verse 27, and this is the concept of love that we wanted you to get, "For the Father Himself loves you because ye have loved Me and have believed that I came out from God."

Now there you have the basis of a love relationship with God.  First of all, God loves us, the Bible says.  John 3:16, in an agapegeneral sweeping universal kind of love that is His nature to give.  But the word here is phileowhich means to love in an intimate affectionate way as a member of a family.  And so it is that God has a general divine love for all men, but He has an intimate warm family affection for those who love Jesus Christ.  And the reason that verse 26 is true, the reason God hears and answers your prayers directly is because of that love for you.  And when a man discovers that God, the infinite cosmic God of the universe loves him, then he has reason to exist.  Then all of the mystery of the universe becomes logical and he can see that God has created all these things to display His glory that man might in viewing all of God's glory turn to God and express his love to God and know that love which God desires to express in return.

And so, Jesus is saying here that they are loved of the Father in a unique kind of family affection, caring kind of warm intimate love, different than the divine sweeping love which encompasses every man.  And we saw that to be loved by God is the pinnacle of value.  We said that love is merely a system of evaluation.  Love is putting a price on something.  And those you love the most have the highest prices perhaps are even priceless.  And God has valued you to the degree that He not only loves you with a divine love, sweeping love, but He loves you with a warm tender family affection, that's how valuable you are to God.  And to be valued by God, and mark it well, my friends, this is what the world wants to hear, this is the message we need to give, to be valued by God is the pinnacle of existence.  And it's a shocking thing to even realize, the great God of the universe even cares about us let alone has a warm, tender affectionate love for every one of us.  But He does.  Everyone who loves Jesus Christ is beloved of the Father.  God is not a cosmic indifference, He is a personal loving Father who gives to man an infinite and eternal value by loving man with an infinite and eternal love.  With all of our sin and all of our selfishness and all of our rebellion, God yet loves us.  And the fantastic thing about it is it's an unconditional love.

Now in order for you and I to know that love, it's very simple.  Verse 27 says, "You have loved Me," according to what Jesus is saying, this refers to Him, "and believe that I came out from God."  When you love Jesus Christ and believe in His deity, that He came out from God to accomplish a redemptive work, that is sufficient for salvation and the love of the Father.  And we saw back in chapter 14 verse 21 this same principle repeated twice, I just want to review it.  It says in verse 21, "He that hath My commandments and keepeth them, he that is that loveth Me and he that loveth Me shall be loved of My Father."  In other words, God will love those who love Christ.  And you can tell whether you love Christ or not by whether you obey His commandments.

Somebody comes along and says, "Well, I love Jesus Christ," and then lives like they couldn't even care less about Jesus Christ, you can evaluate them in the light of John 14:21 and say, "If you really love Jesus, you'd keep His commandments, evidently you don't love Him, consequently you're not loved of the Father."  Your love to Christ becomes evident in your obedience.  Obedience is the key to the entire Christian life, it's everything...it's everything in the Christian life, obedience in terms of the human side.  And so Jesus says then if you keep My commandments you prove you love Me, and if you love Me, My Father will love you.

Verse 23 repeats the same thing.  "If a man love Me, he will keep My words and My Father will love him."  So the principle is obvious.  If you believe in Jesus Christ and if you love Jesus Christ, you enter into a unique kind of love relationship with a cosmic God that is just beyond belief.  Now as I said, last week every man is loved by God, every man is valuable.  But those who love Christ are even more priceless because they enjoy that intimate love relationship with God that gives them an additional worth.

In Ephesians chapter 2 I think we're introduced to this concept perhaps in a little different light.  Paul says this in reference to God, "And hath raised us up together and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus."  This is what happens when you're saved, you're raised up to sit in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.  "That in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us through Jesus Christ."  In other words, God has designed to lift us up and show us His kindness in a special way because we belong to Christ.  Back in verse 4 it says, "God who is rich in mercy for His great love with which He loved us."  The tremendous unsearchable riches of the mercy and love of God lift us up to a place of eternal kindness to be the recipients of all God's blessings forever.

So when a man looks at the lovely Jesus Christ, God in human flesh, God loving and infinite sacrifice, and that man believes in Jesus Christ, and begins to love Christ in return, then God responds to that with a gentle, caring love, different than that universal kind of love with which He loves every man.  Perhaps it's the difference between, in a human sense, my love for a people such as yourselves which is a real love and a legitimate love and the intimacy of my love for my own family.  Each is a love in its own degree.  And so it is that God loving all men, yet has a special and unique love for those who are Jesus Christ's own.

This is the worth of man.  I've told you this story before but it fits so well, let me tell it to you again.  I'll never forget when I was in some of the prisons in Mississippi preaching to some of the young people, black young people.  And to show you how important it is that a man feel his worth, we came across one boy who...who had devalued himself tremendously all through his life.  He had never had a family.  He didn't know who his mother was, or who his father was, lived in orphanages and been passed around and he had acquired the name Saddy somewhere along the line.  And we were talking to him and he said his name was Saddy and that's all, just Saddy.  They had given him a last name but all he ever knew was Saddy cause he was always sad.  He said, "There is no God, God doesn't love me, nobody loves me.  All that you've been preaching and talking about is a lie."  We spent about 45 minutes with him and he came out of this room after he had talked to one of the young men who was on our little team and he had a smile from ear to ear and he was just beaming, you know.  And he ran over to me and he grabbed my hand and he started pumping it, and pumping it and saying, "Thank you, thank you, thank you."

And I said, "For what?"

He said, "Well I just learned something."

I said, "What did you learn?"

He said, "I learned that God loves me and you love me."

See, I'll never forget those words.  And it transformed his life because all of a sudden he had some value.  All of a sudden he mattered.  God loved him.  No wonder men feel the meaninglessness of life if there's no loving God.  If you want to cross out God, if you want to X out God, you've got no reason to exist and you're...you'll know nothing but waste.  To be loved is the crown of life.  To be loved is the chief clue to the meaning of existence and that's really where it all begins.

In fact, the Bible says, "Love your neighbor as yourself," and you can't really love your neighbor unless you love yourself.  You can't estimate him correctly unless you have the right valuation on your own life.  You're priceless to God.

All right, so there's the first commodity that Jesus offers.  Let's look at the second one which is faith, and we'll get in to what we want to say particularly today.  And this is very, very simple that I trust the Spirit of God will apply it to your hearts.  Faith is, as we all know, very, very basic.  We all live by faith, everyone of us.  Every waking day we operate on the principles of faith by what we eat, by the way we conduct ourselves, we believe in things.  We believe in our house, we believe in our car, we believe in the roads, we believe in the restaurants, we believe in the can goods, we believe in a lot of things.  We're losing faith slowly, but basically we believe.  We operate on principles of faith.  I'll never forget the town in the Midwest in Kansas, the Reader's Digestthat had been getting their water supply out of a huge storage tank for many, many years and they finally converted over to a pipe system and they drained the storage tank and found all kinds of dead animals and things at the bottom of the tank.  And they immediately got retroactive dysentery, you know.  We believe in a lot of things, we put our faith in a lot of things. We operate on the basis of faith.

Now everybody does.  If you listen to your world carefully, you'll be able to know that.  There's a song that says, "I believe in music," that's good.  You believe in music.  That's not really a secure thing to believe in.  Somebody else says, "I believe for every drop of rain that falls a flower grows."  Well, that's terrific.  I would take you task on that, I think if you count the flowers and count the raindrops, you'll be wrong.  "I believe that somewhere in the darkest night a candle glows."  Well you're probably right there, probably a lot of candles glowing somewhere.  Religious people say, "Well I'm a believer, I believe in religion.  O, I believe in religion."  Alcoholics Anonymous says, "I believe in a higher power as I understand Him to be."  Everybody believes in something.  Most people believe in themselves.  I heard a guy on the radio on the way to the office this morning and he was preaching away on his sermon and he was talking about believing in yourself, change your life, stop being angry and be happy, stop sinning and do good, stop lusting and love.  He kept saying, "Stop lying and tell the truth."  He says, "Force yourself."  See.  He belonged to the World Council of Churches, some kind of a thing, I don't even know what he was trying to say, but whatever it was it was inept, shallow and impossible.

Oliver Wendell Holmes said, "It is faith in something that makes life worth living."  Isn't that vague?  Faith in something makes life worth living.  What can a man bet his life on?  Money?  Oh, it doesn't last.  Believing in money is pretty bad anyway because the paper doesn't mean a thing.

What do we believe in?  What can we believe in?  Listen to the words of Studdard(?) Kennedy, a great preacher of some years back.  He says this, "I walked in crowded streets where men and women mad with lust, loose lipped and lewd were promenading down to hell's wide gates.  Yet have I looked into another's eyes and seen the light that never was on sea or land, the light of love, pure love and true and on that love I bet my life.  I bet my life on beauty, truth and love, not abstract, but incarnate truth, not beauty's passing shadow but itself, its very self-made flesh, love realized.  I bet my life on Christ, Christ crucified."  And that is precisely it.

What is there to believe in?  I'll tell you what there is to believe in, God's unending love.  And so we begin with love and then we come to faith because our faith is placed in God's love.  You say, "Well how do you know God loves?"  Because His love was made visible in Jesus Christ and His love was made doubly visible in the death of Christ on the cross.

You know what I believe in?  You know what I bank my life on?  I believe that God loves me.  Do you know that?  And I'm betting my eternal destiny that He does.

You say, "You're gambling."  Not really because He proved His love for me by doing what He did on the cross.  If the father tells the son he loves the son and then the son in the midst of an emergency is rescued by the father who loses his life in doing it, no one ever has to argue with that boy about whether or not his father loved him.  And so, God loves me.

You say, "How do you know that?"  I know that because God came into this world in human flesh, went to a cross, was nailed to that cross and bore in His own body my sins and that says to me God loves me because He took my place.  I'm betting and banking my eternal destiny on the fact that God loves me.  There is something to believe in, I believe in God's love.

Notice verse 27 and see how it unfolds, the end of the verse.  "Because you've loved Me and believed that I came out from God," now there's the basis of our faith.  The basis of our faith is that Christ came out form God.  I would never know that God loved me in the fullest sense unless He showed it to me, and the greatest proof of it is the coming of Christ.  So when we're talking about what to believe in, we can believe in God's love only as God reveals it to us.  We can't find God.  We can't crawl out of our natural world and discover God's love, God has to reveal His love to us.  He has to disclose it to us.  He has to teach it to us.  And so, to begin with, God's love began to be revealed when the Old Testament was written and then was fully realized when Christ came, the end of verse 27, "That I came out from God."

Now the basis of faith, now watch this one, the basis of faith is believing Christ's deity.  Now get that one, that is the key to everything and that is the one area of doctrine that everybody's willing to give up today.  All this liberalism let's this one go and this is the basis of our entire faith.  The basis of everything we believe in is that Christ came from God that He's deity.  Listen, if Jesus Christ isn't God, then maybe this stuff that He kept telling about God's love is a lie and if it's a lie, then we're right back where we started from, we have nothing to believe in and no love at all.  And so, we must accept the fact that Jesus Christ came out of God, that He is deity incarnate.  This is the carnal doctrine of the gospel.  He is not merely a man.  He is not Jesus Christ superstar.  And to show you how meaningless that statement is, I heard a commercial on the radio the other day, it almost made me want to throw up, something about Gino's Hamburgers, I wouldn't buy a Gino's hamburger for all the money in the world.  They've got a little slogan, "Gino's prices superstar," which is supposed to be a little play on words, "Jesus Christ."  That's how commercial and crass the terminology of Jesus Christ has become, we've dragged Jesus Christ down to selling 15 cent hamburgers.

You see, this is the kind of thing that happens when you do not uphold the absolute and total deity of Jesus Christ.  This is the carnal doctrine of everything that we know and believe in and hope for.  If Jesus didn't come out from God, then everything is a lie.  And that's exactly why  Peter in 2 Peter 2:2 classifies a heretic as one who denies the Lord, you see.  That's why Paul is so rattled in Galatians chapter 1 when he talks about those who preach another Christ and pervert Christ.  And that's what John meant in his little epistle when he talks about deceivers coming, antichrists.  And later on in 2 John he talks about those who come and they present another Christ and we're not even to bid them God's speed.  We must commit ourselves to the basic doctrine of the gospel which is that Jesus Christ is none other than God in human flesh.

Now, but there's more to it than that.  At the end of verse 27, watch this, "Hath believed that I came out from God," implied in that statement is a lot else.  Why did He come out from God?  To do a redemptive work.  We not only believe that Jesus Christ was God in human flesh, and we never back up on that.  He was total God, one hundred percent God all the time that He was here and continues to be and will for all eternity.  We also believe that implied in the phrase "came out from God" is the idea that God sent Him forth to do a redemptive work.  And so the gospel is not only the deity of the person of Christ, but it is the work of Christ as He comes out from God to accomplish redemption.  So, my friends, we believe in something, we just don't believe in love, we just don't believe in music, we don't believe in religion, we don't believe in church, we believe in God revealing Himself in Christ to do a redemptive work in the world.  That's what we believe and nothing less than that.  And the real commitment of faith comes not only when you just believe that, watch it there in verse 27, but when you love Christ.  Do you see that?  Believing, the devils believe and tremble, right, James 2?  Sure.  It's one thing to believe, it's something else to love Christ.  That's the commitment end of it, isn't it?  I believe it and I love Christ and that secures my faith.

You say, "To believe it and not love Christ, what do you get?"  You get nothing.  You get nothing.  It's so important to believe this.  Jesus said in John 8:24, shocking words, He said, "Ye shall die in your sins for if you believe not that I am, you shall die in your sins."  I am what?  "I am everything I claim to be, I am the way, the truth and the life.  I am the bread of life.  I am the light of the world.  I am the resurrection and the life.  I am God in human flesh."  I am is the name of God, believe that He's deity, anything less and you make a mockery out of Jesus Christ.  But it's not just to believe but to commit in love.

Daniel Polling(?)  tells an experience that a man named Channing Pollock who was a playwright related to him.  Mr.  Pollock was particularly in one evening collaborating with another author.  Pollock and he were working on a play.  And late one night in Pollock's apartment in New York, they had been working into the wee hours of the morning and something in their conversation caused the friend of Pollock to ask him a question.  He said to him, "Have you ever read the New Testament?"  Pollock admitted that he hadn't ever read the New Testament and they continued to work and didn't say anything more about it.

After the friend had left in the early hours of the morning, Pollock couldn't sleep because he kept thinking of the question, "Have you ever read the New Testament?"  Finally, getting out of bed and searching through his books, he found an old New Testament.  He sat down and he read straight through the gospel of Mark, which presents Jesus Christ, of course.  And after reading it he walked the streets of Manhattan until dawn. 

When he returned to his apartment exhausted, he related to Dan Polling that he said, "I found myself on my knees passionately in love with Jesus Christ.  Now, see, that's the commitment of faith.  It's all right just to believe, that's the beginning.  But to be passionately in love with Jesus Christ is the essence of real saving faith.  That's the nitty-gritty.

Now let's continue to look at this in verse 28.  He elucidates on His coming forth from the Father and what He meant by this.  You see, our faith has content, isn't that great?  It's not enough to just believe.  It's not enough to just say I believe in believing.  It's got to have content.  There's got to be something there you believe in.  Verse 28, here it comes, "I came forth from the Father and I'm come into the world."  Now that's propositional, factual, actual history.  He says I came forth from the Father, I was perfect deity.  I pre-existed in heaven.  I came into the sin-cursed earth.  This is basic to saving faith.  The propositional, absolute, historical accuracy of God's revelation in Christ, Jesus came from God, He was God in human flesh, we can't let go of that doctrine or everything goes down the drain and we're finished.

Now the Jews didn't believe this, to say nothing of loving Christ.  They didn't even believe He came from God.  They missed on both counts.  You go back to chapter 8 and verse 14 and listen to what happened.  "Jesus answered and said unto them, 'Though I bear witness of Myself, yet My witness is true, for I know from where I came and where I go, but ye cannot tell from where I come and where I go.'" You don't know where I came from or where I'm going.  You don't know either the end or the beginning.  And they were the religious smarties, you know.  They were the brains.  They were the brain trust of the eastern world.  But they didn't know anything about Christ.  They didn't know where He came from or where He went.

You say, "Well that's just Jesus' opinion."  Okay, chapter 9 verse 29, "We know...this is the Jews talking here, here's their opinion of themselves...We know that God spoke unto Moses, as for this fellow, we know not from where He is."  That's not just Jesus talking, they knew they didn't know.  He had healed the blind man and the blind man even knew.  He said, "That's real funny, guys, you don't know where He's from and He opened my eyes."  See.  They didn't know. They admitted they didn't know.  They didn't know where He was from and, of course, if they didn't know where He was from, they wouldn't know where He was going.

In John chapter 1, "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God."  Verse 10, "He was in the world and the world was made by Him and the world knew Him not.  He came unto His known and His own received Him not."  They didn't know who He was.  They didn't know where He came from and they didn't know why He came and they didn't know where He was going.  They missed the whole redemptive plan of God...the whole thing.

And so, Jesus says I came forth from the Father.  Jesus is nothing less than God in human flesh.  And He's not just a human being, He's not just a reactionary, a revolutionary or religious freak, He is God in a body.  He came into the world.  Look at verse 28, "Again I leave the world and go to the Father."  Now in that simple little statement you have the entire gospel.  That's the clearest most concise statement that Jesus ever uttered in regard to His own origin and destiny.  That's the clearest statement Jesus has heretofore said.  He has indicated kind of underhandedly to them and kind of mystically that He came from God and would be going back to God, but never in a complete context like this.  This is the simplest most concise statement that He ever makes concerning where He came from and where He's going.  He came from God to do His perfect work.  When it was done, He goes back to God.  That's a simple statement.  And right there in that verse, verse 28, you have the entire gospel.  As a man said, "If you can get that in your head, you've got it in a nutshell."

All right, that will come slow....But, I mean, that's the gospel, that He came out of God, did His perfect work and went back to God.  That's the perfect picture of the gospel.  Now the earlier statements, as I said, weren't quite so clear.  Chapter 16, for example, just showing a couple of them, verse 5, He says, "But now I go My way to Him that sent Me."  Now that isn't the whole picture.  Again, verse 16 of the same chapter, "A little while and you'll see Me not, and again a little while and you shall see Me because I go to the Father." Remember we saw that statement, that didn't make any sense to them at all.  And so it has been somewhat veiled.  Even back in chapter 14, wasn't it verse 28?  He says, "Ye have heard how I said unto you I go away and come again.  If you love Me you will rejoice because I said I go unto the Father for My Father is greater than I," that is also a very confusing statement to them.  And so this is the clearest, most simple statement and in it you have the essence of Christ's perfect work and also of His person from God and back to God.

Now those are simple and powerful words.  It's kind of a beautiful thing to realize that there's a kind of a freedom in verse 28, there's no...there's no strings on Jesus.  You know, He's not a puppet.  He says, "I came out from the Father and I go back."  He's not...there aren't any hostile powers forcing Jesus to leave.  He's not running in fear from persecution.  It's not that the Father calls Him home.  He has come and He has done what He came to do and when the work is finished, He now goes back.  By His own will and act He accepted the mission of God, by His own will and act He completed the mission of God, by His own will and act He returns to the place where He came from.  They're simple words but they are infinite words in their scope for they encompass the entire plan of redemption.  That's the gospel, a real God who exists, a real God who loves men, who to redeem men must become man and enter into their world, accomplish a redemptive work, turn around and go back to energize them to live the redemptive life that He's provided for them.  Now that's a love story that's true.  That's a love story that wasn't written by a fiction author.  That's a love story that's absolutely true.

Now the disciples' response to this is beautiful.  Verse 29, this is simple enough and they're finally beginning to get it.  Verse 29, "His disciples said unto Him, 'Lo, now speakest Thou plainly and speakest no proverb," now You're talking, Lord, it's coming through.  And it was so simple, see.  And the funny part of it is that they think that the fulfillment of verse 25, "the time is coming when I won't speak in proverbs," is right then, which proves they don't really understand all of it.  They understood this statement, at the total fulfillment of these words of Jesus in verse 25 and 26 wouldn't be till Pentecost, some 50 days later, but nevertheless here they understand.  "Lo, now speakest Thou plainly and speakest no paroimia, this isn't so veiled, Lord."  I mean, we get this.

And I imagine they were kind of, you know, feeling good.  That's pretty simple, I came from God, did My work and go back to God, not too easy to misunderstand that.  It was simple.  And it's kind of a beautiful thing to see the simplicity of their faith.  They can see in this that God loves them.  They can see that God sent Christ to do the work of redeeming them and then when He's done He goes back to God.  They can see this.  The plan is clear.  Jesus came, loved them, opened up the way to God and once the way was open, gave them entrance into God's presence and then went back to God.  That's the plan.  And they're blessed with a fresh kind of understanding.  They feel like they see it all, though really they don't.  Calvin says regarding this passage, he says, "It is certain that the disciples did not understand fully the meaning of Christ's discourse, but though they were not yet capable of this, the mere odor of it refreshed them."  They were just getting a few sniffs of what it was to understand and it really smelled good.  They really liked it.  They wouldn't get it all, of course, unto the Holy Spirit came.  But they understood this much, and this is great progress, I mean at least they've stepped outside their sorrow for a minute, haven't they?  At least they've gotten off their own little problems, long enough to be able to at least be a little bit excited about what they're learning, instead of just moping around in sorrow over the leaving of Jesus.  They believed all that they understood.

Now let me give you a little point here, this is a very important principle.  All God ever asks out of a man is that he believe what he understands.  All throughout the Old Testament revelation...people say, "Well how were you saved in the Old Testament?"  Well how were they saved in Genesis?  Or how were they saved during the times of the kings?  Or how were they saved later on etc., etc.?

Men were saved by believing the revelation of God at whatever point it had been disclosed.  God doesn't expect you to believe in the whole New Testament if you were born during the time of Genesis.  God expected you to believe what He had revealed.  And Jesus Christ accepts them where they are in believing what He has revealed to them.  They don't have to know all the answers, they have to believe what He has told them.  In other words, true saving faith, watch it, is a commitment to every single thing God has revealed.  That's what it is...to everything that God has revealed.  And so they believed.  They don't understand everything.  They think they understand more than they really do, but they at least believe what they do understand.  They've advanced in knowledge.  The upper room discourses haven't been in vain.  The experience of this night of nights has left its mark on them.  They are beginning now to see who Jesus is.

Now notice verse 30, and here they kind of get a little too hepped up with what they know.  "Now are we sure that Thou knowest all things and needest not that any man should ask Thee.  By this we believe that Thou camest forth from God."  That's a great statement, the only problem is a few hours after this when Jesus gets captured, they're going to run away like a bunch of fearful sheep.  But at this point, they're really hanging in there.  "Now are we sure that Thou knowest all things."  A little while later they're not too sure, but here they're sure.

This is how life goes, isn't it?  As a Christian do you ever have those moments of doubt?  Well sure you do.  There's moments when you, "Ohhh, I don't if God...I wonder if this whole thing is really for real?"  There are moments when you begin to mistrust God and yet there's other times when you believe and you're sure that He is who He claimed to be.  Sure, we all have that.  The disciples were no different.  Perhaps even a more infantile faith than yours and thus more susceptible to this problem.  But in verse 30 they were sure that He knew all things and needeth not that any man should ask Thee.  They probably realized how much He knew because a little while later...a little while earlier, I should say, back in verses 17 and following, He had answered their questions before they had asked them.  And they had had illustrations of this all the way along.

What convinced them then evidently was the fact that He knew everything.  And all right, they say we believe You came out of God, You came forth from God.  This is a statement of their belief in His deity.  They believe in the deity of Jesus Christ.  Do you think that they loved Him?  Do you?  Sure they did.  If they believed in His deity and loved Him, that was sufficient for saving faith.  You say, "Is this the occasion of the conversion of the disciples?"  I don't know.  I don't really know if we can pinpoint when they were actually saved.  I think they believed all the way along to a degree, but here we see at least everything coming to focus.  They had believed in His divine origin, they believed in His deity, and they had shown again and again how much they loved him.  And that's what it means to be saved.  That's the essence of salvation, to believe and to love Him.  And so they make the classic confession, "By this we believe that Thou camest forth from God."  They can see the glory of His deity shining again through the veil of His humanity.  They are convinced...they're convinced that He came from God.  And right here the light is shining in the disciples' hearts as brightly as it has ever shined there in the three years they've been with Him.  We ought to kind of mark a little circle around verse 30 in our Bibles because that's the apex of the experience of the disciples in their relationship to Jesus Christ to this point.  Now after the resurrection it gets more exciting, but for the time prior to the cross, this is the time when they hit the highest peak in believing.

But the light is about to go out and be obscured.  This great confession will linger in their hearts kind of hidden.  Oh, I think down deep they believed, but they really fought it, they really fought it through the times of the trial of Jesus Christ and into the death of Christ but I think it was still there and when Jesus came out of the grave, the flame was fanned again and the light shone more brightly than it had ever shone.  And so they give evidence of their childlike baby faith.  It's kind of like Mark 9:24, you know, where the man says, "Lord, I believe, help my...what?...my unbelief."   With their doubts and their fears and their questions and their misgivings, Jesus accepted them where they were.  And that's how He accepts you.  So many people say, "I'd like to receive Jesus Christ, I'd like to come into this relationship, but I have questions, I have doubts, I have fears, I don't know how much I believe..."  This is where He accepts you, at the point of your infant faith.  Wherever you are, this is where He'll meet you as He did them.

Now I want to just review one thought.  Keep in mind that their faith had content.  They believed that He came out from God to do a work and go back to God.  Believing is a matter of putting your faith in something and someone, not in nothing.  Faith must have content.

But now watch how Jesus warns them in verse 31.  And I don't think this is a question.  There are no punctuation marks or question marks in the Greek New Testament.  Let's translate it this way.  "Jesus answered them, 'Now you believe.'" Jesus answered them, "Now you believe," emphasizing the word now.  Okay, guys, right, now you believe.  This is great, I'll take you where you are now.  For the moment your faith is good.  And, you know, it must have been a sweet moment for Jesus.  I mean, He's been working for this for a long time.  Personally down in my heart I feel that this may be the climax of the real salvation of the disciples because Jesus for the first time says to them, "Now you believe."  And yet we have to be careful of that because we can't really build a case on it.  It's possible that it could be a question although I feel it's best to take it as a statement.  Now you believe.  And this is sweet for Jesus because after all that He said and struggled through for these chapters that we've been studying to try to get the message across, they finally believe and through the gloom of the bitter rejection, the sunlight of faith begins to break and smiles come across their faces and across His where there was only sorrow.  And for Jesus, this is enough.  They believe, they believe.  Three years of miracles and loving them and teaching them and this whole long night of anguish in His own torn heart as He approaches the cross and as He's given Himself to them in word and in action of love, constantly doing these things that we've seen and finally it breaks and they say, "We believe...we believe."  And for Jesus, it is enough.

It isn't full-grown faith, it's just baby faith, but it's faith and they believe.  And the light will get pretty small and the flicker will be pretty low during the time of the cross but there will be enough left when He comes out of the grave to fan it again and they're going to set the world on fire.  At least the candle's been lit and it's enough for Jesus.  And I said earlier, that's all he asks, you see.  He doesn't ask that you come to Him with total comprehension.  He only asks that you come with a baby faith and you say, "I believe, help my unbelief."  And so He says, "You believe now, but I'll tell you something, men, there's going to come a time of testing."  They thought they were rocks, you know, but they were pebbles.

Peter back in chapter 13 verse 36 was saying, "Lord, if You're going to die, I'll die with You."  I'm sure he had his chance, and did he die?  No, rather than die he denied Jesus Christ.  They over-estimated themselves.  They failed to see the infancy and the weakness of their flesh.  They failed to see the power of Satan.  They failed to see that their faith was baby faith.  And like young recruits, you know, they had the uniform on and they knew the drill instructions but they didn't know what to do when they got in the battle, see.

Mark it, young Christian, here's a good one, the secret of spiritual strength is self-distrust and deep humility.  The secret of spiritual strength is self-distrust, don't trust yourself.  Paul said, "When I am weak, then I am strong."  In other words, when I rightly evaluate my weaknesses then I'm strong.  It's a great principle.

All right now, look at verse 32.  And Jesus describes for them their hour.  "Behold the hour cometh, yea and is now come, that ye shall be scattered...Matthew 26:31 and 56, from Zachariah 13:7 predicted this...you shall be scattered, smite the shepherd and the sheep are scattered, every man to his own, likely to his own home, and shall leave Me alone."  That's a sad thing.  What about your faith now, guys?  Was their faith a sham?  Is it not...was it not true saving faith?  Well, it was shaken at the root and they fled, they took off.  But I love the fact that there was enough of that faith left for a resurrected Christ to stir up fresh branches which bore fruit.  And I like this because it's honest.  Don't you like the fact that the Bible makes out of the greatest men, the disciples, real people, not super-spiritual pious heroes?  These guys were just like you and me, just real people.  They had their faith problems, man, their faith went down the tubes and they were just hanging on by a thread.  And after the resurrection, Jesus Christ fanned it again and they set the world on fire.

Listen, these times come to all of us.  You say, "What about when I lose my faith?  I mean, what about when I just...I really don't believe God and I can't trust Him for things, you know, and I want to pray for somebody but I don't actually believe He'll heal him?  Or I don't even know if I'm secure anymore, I don't even know if He's even working in my life.  What happens when my faith just goes down the drain and I...is that it, I mean, do I lose my salvation?  Is it all over with?"

Let me read you a verse and mark it down, if not in your book, somewhere in your mind.  Second Timothy 2:15, listen to this...pardon me, 2 Timothy 2:13, "If we believe not..." now did you get that?  Lose our faith.  Listen, "Yet He abideth faithful, He cannot deny Himself."  Did you hear that?  If we believe not, yet He abideth faithful, He cannot deny Himself.  In other words, if He has chosen you, if He dwells within you, if His Spirit is in you, even though you lose your faith He will never deny you, He will never do anything but remain absolutely and eternally faithful to you and He'll fan that small diminishing flame back to life again.

But at the end of verse 32 He says, and I love this, "Ye shall leave Me alone, and yet I am not alone because the Father is with Me."  Isn't that good?   The ever-present Father.  It's a sad word here because this is the first time that Jesus reflects on His own anguish, the first time since chapter 13 all the way through, this is the first time He really reflects on His own pain.  You'll all leave Me, He says.  Thinking of His own loneliness.  Then He says, "Well but the Father will be there."  But you know something?  Even the Father left Him for a time.  He cried on the cross, "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?" which means, "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" when He was bearing sin.

These are wonderful insights into the blessed Jesus.  And they show the depth of the faith of the disciples.  There is something to believe in, my friend, even with simple little baby faith, to believe that Jesus is God in human flesh, to believe that He came to do a redemptive work, die on a cross in your place, to believe that He'll return to the Father.  To believe that with doubts and misgivings and questions is all Jesus asks.  If you believe Him, He'll take you at the point of your faith and He'll strengthen your faith.  And faith...during the times of your life, sin may come in and temptation, your faith may begin to wane and it may begin to fall, but that doesn't mean He stops being faithful.  He'll move down and He'll fan that flame of faith again and it will rise again.  Faith is believing in Jesus in all that He claimed to be.  There is something to believe in, believe in God's love and believe in it because it was revealed in Jesus Christ.  And I'll tell you something, bet your life on it.

There's a third thing and that's hope, verse 33.  This is the ultimate end of love and faith.  "These things I have spoken unto you that in Me you might have peace.  In the world you shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world."  Is that hope?  Fantastic hope.  The world may persecute you and kill you, chapter 15.  The world may think they're doing service to God by putting you to death.  The world is hopeless, war, pollution, disaster...are there any escapes from the plagues of man?  Yes there are.  Jesus says, "Don't worry about it, I have overcome the world."  When you know and love Jesus Christ, my friends, there's hope.  There's hope.  This world holds no fear for me.  People talk about the terrible disasters that are coming, I don't believe that I'll ever experience those things.  I believe Jesus Christ cares for His own and I believe that long before all of that breaks loose, Jesus is going to take His people out of this world.  I have no fear because my hope is in Him, His resurrection hope.

Listen, the world gave its best shot.  Satan gave his best shot at Jesus on the cross.  And you know what?  Jesus took every one of Satan's shots, went into the grave and came out the other side the victor.  He defeated Satan and He conquered death and He destroyed the power of death and He destroyed the devil.  And He said, "Because I live, ye shall live also."  And I believe that and put my hope in that.  Like a mountain climber and a guide, the guide climbs to a high flat area, the rope is below and safely pulling up the climber saying, "Don't be afraid, I've made it, we're secure."  Jesus Christ has already conquered the world.  He sits on the pinnacle of conquering and just draws us to Himself.  Jesus won the victory and it's your victory and mine.

With Paul, we know that death has no sting.  The grave has no victory.  We know in Romans 8:37 that we are more than conquerors, nothing can ever separate us from God's love.  This is our hope.  And we believe that some day we're going to leave this world to be with Jesus Christ and we fear not what the world may bring because He has overcome the world.  And in 1 John 5 it says, "Who is he that overcometh the world?  Even those who believe in Jesus Christ."  If you believe in Christ and you love Him, you're an overcomer just like Jesus is, 1 John 5:4 and 5.  You're an overcomer just like He is.

There they are, three things: faith, hope and love.  And when you know those three, what is the result?  Peace, verse 33, "These things, all these things I have spoken unto you that in Me you might have...what?..peace."  When you learn all these lessons, the result is peace.  Chapter 15 verse 11, "These things have I spoken unto you that My joy might remain in you that your joy might be full."  The result of peace again is joy.  Even in a world like this, you cay you can have peace?  That's right, even in a world like this you can have joy, that's right.  Why?  Because somebody loves me and I love somebody and that somebody is God because I have somebody and something to believe in and that is God's love and my eternal salvation, and not only that, I hope and my hope is steadfast and sound and secure, I hope for an eternal life in the presence of the God I love.  Because of that I have perfect peace and perfect joy, and it can be yours through Jesus Christ.

Father, we thank You for our time together.  We rejoice in what You've taught us.  We're made aware again of the simplicity of the gospel.  We haven't said anything perhaps new to many of us, but, Father, we've covered some wonderful truths.  God, this is our message, this is our hope, our faith, our love and it all involves Jesus Christ who expresses love to us as the one in whom we believe, and who even is our hope.  Father, I pray that no one will leave this place who has not received these wonderful gifts by believing and loving Jesus Christ and that we as Christians might have grateful hearts for what we have.  We thank You for what we really can do in the strength and energy imparted to us by peace and joy as we go into the world to proclaim this message.  This we pray in Christ's name.  Amen.