Classic Christianity – Book of John Part 69 (09-09-19)
Transcript
We will pick up where we left off last week. Let us start at the 14th chapter of John, beginning at verse 25.
John 14:25-31
25 “All this I have spoken while still with you. 26 But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you. 27 Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.28 “You heard me say, ‘I am going away and I am coming back to you.’ If you loved me, you would be glad that I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I. 29 I have told you now before it happens, so that when it does happen you will believe. 30 I will not say much more to you, for the prince of this world is coming. He has no hold over me, 31 but he comes so that the world may learn that I love the Father and do exactly what my Father has commanded me.
“Come now; let us leave.
Christ is coming to the end of his earthly ministry. Therefore, if any of us knew we were coming to the end of our lives, then the words we would say would probably be the most important words that we would ever speak to our loved ones, especially on our death bed.
Jesus assures them, “Yes, for when I do go away, I will send my spirit to live in you and you are going to be my body here on this earth.” If you were to look for the body of Christ 2000 years ago, you would have to gone to Israel and look up Jesus of Nazareth and there you would have found the body of Christ. Jesus says, “This body will go away. Even though my physical body is going away, I will be with you because I will send my Spirit to be with you. So it is good for you that I am going away”.
Jesus said again, “I am going away because when I do, I am going to send my Holy Spirit to you, and you are going to be my body on earth. I am going to send my Holy Spirit to live in you and you are going to be my body.”. Over 2000 years ago, the body of Christ was in singular form. Now the body of Christ is all over world at the same time. We have become the body of Christ and He is the head.
1 Corinthians 12:12-13
12 Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. 13 For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body – whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free – and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.
Ephesians 4:4-6
4 There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; 5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism; 6 one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.
It is all oneness now in Christ Jesus. Those who have come to Him by faith have become the body of Christ.
John 14:25-26
25 “All this I have spoken while still with you. 26 But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.
This was true in regards to the disciples or the apostles. That is why we have our bibles today. Our bible was written by an apostle or an emisserant of an apostle, or a scribe. They were the ones with Jesus, who Jesus said, “I will teach you all things and I will remind you of everything that I have said to you”. So when the apostles wrote the New Testament, they were reminded by Christ Jesus of everything that He taught us.
That same principles also applies to those of us who are in Christ Jesus today. The Holy Spirit living in us is our teacher and He will guide you into all truth. So even though your eye cannot see, and your ear cannot hear, and your mind cannot conceive of those things that God has prepared for those who love God, truth must be revealed by the Spirit.
1 Corinthians 2:8-10
8 None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. 9 However, as it is written:“What no eye has seen,
what no ear has heard,
and what no human mind has conceived” –
the things God has prepared for those who love him –10 these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit.
The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God.
So the Spirit of God whom the Father sends, taught the disciples, and reminded them of everything Jesus said to us. They were taught by the Spirit and wrote those things down in a book we call the bible. So when we are indwelt by the Spirit and are reading the book that was authored by the Spirit through his apostles, then we have the ability to discern the meaning of the word of God.
The meaning of the word of God must be revealed by the Spirit of God who lives in you. You cannot do it by human means. If you do, then you will have human means of understanding. If you approach the bible with a huge ego, saying, “I do not need anyone to teach me because I know Greek”. So do the Greeks know Greek, but they also considered the wisdom of God as foolishness. The ones who crucified Jesus knew Hebrew. So if you think that understanding the original languages help you understand the meaning of the word of God, then you are rejecting what Jesus said. The Holy Spirit must reveal the meaning to you. If you are leaning on your own understanding, for that only leads to the creation of denominational persuasions, and often with error, then you have rejected or ignored what Jesus said.
You do not have to go to seminary to have the Spirit of God reveal the meaning of the word of God to you. So what do you have to do? You need to depend on the Holy Spirit to lead you into all truth.
John 16:3
3 But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come.
Is that true? Or are you counting on your professor to lead you into all truth? I cannot lead you into truth. I can tell you what God has revealed to me. But God has to reveal it to you. God will reveal truth to you as you study the scriptures, depending upon the Holy Spirit to reveal to you the meaning of it, or as you are listening to truth being taught, while relying on the Holy Spirit, then you will know the meaning of the word of God. It does not matter how educated you are or not. The Holy Spirit is stronger than our education. You will know the meaning of the word of God as you study the word of God, relying on the Holy Spirit to teach you.
John 14:27
27 Peace [Shalom] I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.
In this world, you have all kinds of peace. You can get peace going to a mountain stream with a fishing pole, and have a day of peace while there. But when you leave that mountain stream, you go back into the hassles of the world. You can get temporary peace taking drugs but when the drug wears off, you are back to where you were. So there is a temporary peace that the world offers. It is a happiness you experience that depends on your present circumstances.
Then there is a peace that surpasses all understanding. This is an internal peace. If we are going to have peace in our hearts, we must understand that we have been justified by faith. That is ultimately where peace comes from. That is peace with God. You have peace with God when you understand Jesus has done it all. Is it not peaceful and restful, the Sabbath rest, when you realize who you are, a child of God? I did not earn it or work for it. It was a gift. I am totally forgiven. This peace is a fruit of the Spirit.
So Jesus gives us peace the world cannot give. The world gives you a temporary peace that depends on circumstances, happiness but not joy. God gives you permanent peace, a joy un-explainable that does not depend on circumstances. When you have God, you have peace. He has promised to never leave you or forsake you. That is a permanent relationship between you and God. The Spirit of God in you produces fruit of the Spirit; which is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness and self-control. The world cannot offer you that. That only comes from God.
Hebrews 13:5b
because God has said, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.”
Galatians 5:22-23
John 14:28
28 “You heard me say, ‘I am going away and I am coming back to you.’
That sounds like a contradiction. “I love you Lord but I am not glad you are going away“. Jesus is replying, “If you really understand what I came to do, and you really loved me for what I came to do, then you would be glad I am going away for the Father is greater than I.”
John 14:28-29
28 “If you loved me, you would be glad that I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I. 29 I have told you now before it happens, so that when it does happen you will believe. 30 I will not say much more to you,
There are so many things that the disciples could not understand right now, but Jesus is saying to them, “when these things I told you about do happen, then you will believe”. I will not be able to talk to you verbally much longer.
John 14:30
for the prince of this world is coming. He has no hold over me,
The prince of this world is Satan.
John 14:31
31 but he comes so that the world may learn that I love the Father and do exactly what my Father has commanded me.
Jesus is saying, “Satan is coming to the world to perform his action, and that is to crucify me”. How many times, if you saw Mel Gibson’s, “The Passion”, how many ways was Satan trying to kill Jesus before he got to the cross? He has no hold on Jesus. Jesus is saying, “So even though the prince is coming to fulfill his role, he has no control over me. I do exactly what the Father has told me to do. I go to the cross when the Father tells me to go, and not when Satan tells me to go. I walk in total dependency on my Father in heaven.”
“Come now; let us leave.”
Palm Sunday is what is occurring at this time.
Luke 19:28-35
28 After Jesus had said this, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem. 29 As he approached Bethphage and Bethany at the hill called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples, saying to them, 30 “Go to the village ahead of you, and as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, which no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here. 31 If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?’ say, ‘The Lord needs it.’”32 Those who were sent ahead went and found it just as he had told them. 33 As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, “Why are you untying the colt?”
34 They replied, “The Lord needs it.”
35 They brought it to Jesus, threw their cloaks on the colt and put Jesus on it.
You would think a king would come in on a great, big white horse. You would think he was born in a castle, but he was born in a manger. Yet the king is coming on a donkey.
Luke 19:36
36 As he went along, people spread their cloaks on the road.37 When he came near the place where the road goes down the Mount of Olives, the whole crowd of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen:
They are rejoicing for all the miracles they have seen. Here again, how easy it is for us to see someone that has done a miraculous thing and say, “let us follow him”. Remember what Jesus said, “You follow me because of the miracles but you do not know me”. At the end of time, people will go into the presence of God and say, “Do you not see all the miracles I did and the signs and wonders I did” and Jesus will say, “I do not know you.”
John 6:26-27
26 Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw the signs I performed but because you ate the loaves and had your fill. 27 Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For on him God the Father has placed his seal of approval.”
Matthew 7:22-23
22 Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ 23 Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’
We are so prone to follow for what he can give us. They followed him when he fed the five thousand. The next day Jesus said to them, “The only reason you are following me is because you were fed on the other side of the lake”.
I have seen this again and again so many times in people today. In church work, working down on the streets, a guy says, “Give me a meal. What do I need to do? Get baptized. Lead me to the water”. So he gets baptized to get a meal and not to get Jesus. Thousands of times people take advantage of that to get numbers to their credit. The only reason they went to the water was to get a meal and not to get Jesus. You have to have discernment on that kind of thing to determine if they are sincere or just following you to get a meal. That is one of the dangers of just giving a meal. All you have accomplished is satisfying someone’s hunger for a couple of hours. You have not accomplished anything.
Luke 19:38-44
38
“Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!”“Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!”
So they were praising Jesus, this king who has done miracles, and who is different than anyone they have ever seen.
Luke 19:39-44
39 Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples!”
The Pharisees, who are enemies of the gospel, were the most religious people on the face of the earth. According to orthodoxy, by the age of 18 they had the Pentateuch, the first five books of the bible memorized. Then by the age of 23, they have the entire scriptures memorized. So stringent were they. They had scriptures memorized and posted on their doorposts and were always quoting scripture, but not having a clue of what any of it meant.
So these teachers of the law, who set themselves up as the authority for the interpretation of the word of God, when they came in contact with the living Word, the interpreters of the written word, denied the living Word and hung him on a cross because he did not agree with their interpretation. They were interpreting the scriptures not in light of revelation but were interpreting the scriptures in light of their tradition. That is why Jesus said, “You follow your tradition but you miss me.”
Mark 7:9-13
9 And he continued, “You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe your own traditions! 10 For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and mother,’ and, ‘Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death.’ 11 But you say that if anyone declares that what might have been used to help their father or mother is Corban (that is, devoted to God) – 12 then you no longer let them do anything for their father or mother. 13 Thus you nullify the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And you do many things like that.”
John 5:39-40
39 You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, 40 yet you refuse to come to me to have life
These Pharisees, the teachers of the law, were adamantly against Jesus. If Jesus was a teacher of the law, would they be adamantly be against him? They were not against him because he had a beard. They were against him because of what he taught. Law teaches the exterior. Jesus said, “I go under the skin and teach the internal, the matters of the heart. If anyone has anger toward his brother, then he has already committed murder in his heart. I go deeper than the law. You said you do not lust, but I say if you look lustfully at a girl you have already committed adultery in your heart. Lust comes before adultery”. Jesus is saying, “The law deals with the effect. I am dealing with the cause. Man does not want to deal with the cause. Man says, ‘Just Let me deal with the effect. Let me deal with what you don’t do and I can pretend I don’t do it and hope you can’t find out that I am not doing it. Then I am okay.’”
Luke 11:38-40
38 But the Pharisee was surprised when he noticed that Jesus did not first wash before the meal.39 Then the Lord said to him, “Now then, you Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness. 40 You foolish people! Did not the one who made the outside make the inside also?”
Matthew 23:26-28
26 Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean.27 “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. 28 In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.”
Jeremiah 17:9
9 The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?
Your actions aren’t the problem. It is your heart that is the problem.
So when they heard these people praising God, then their pride and wickedness, they have the audacity to chastise God. But, being blind, they did not know he was God. They were blind in pride. They told Jesus to rebuke his disciples!
Luke 19:40-44
40 “I tell you,” he replied, “if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.”
If you have ever been to Israel, all you see is stones. If you need to be stoned, that is where you need to go. Jesus is saying to the Pharisees, “I can use anything to proclaim the good news of the gospel. If you get rid of man, then I can get these stones to cry out.
Luke 19:41
41 As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it
Today, if you come in a bus, you will oversee the city. Normally, “Hosanna” is played on the bus. There is the city where my redemption was purchased for me. There is the city where God entered human experience and took away my sins. This is where Jesus came to solve my problem of spiritual death. That is where all of that occurred. If you can stand on the site and look down on that beautiful city and not weep, then something is wrong with your emotions. So it is with Jesus. He wept over the city. When Jesus saw the city he was going to enter, to take away the sins of the world on a cross and be raised from the dead for our justification, he wept.
Luke 19:41
42 and said, “If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace – but now it is hidden from your eyes.
If only you knew what would bring you people to have peace. There will never be peace in Israel. All the nations shaking hands with their brother, it is just a facade. There will be no peace until the end of the age, when they will look upon the one they had pierced. Only on that day will there be peace in the land. If you could only grasp who could bring you peace on that day. You are blind. You are blind by your own pride, hanging on to your own traditions.You would rather be a Jew than a Christian. You would rather be a Gentile than be a Christian. If you only had known, I would have saved your city and you people would have peace that day.
Luke 19:43-44
43 The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. 44 They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God’s coming to you.”
If you were to go to Israel today and see the excavation of the walls of the temple, there is not one stone left on top of another, not one. In 70 A.D. when Titus came, they destroyed it in its entirety. They built an embankment, they encircled them, and circled around them and hemmed them in. They killed thousands of Jewish people and their children. Why? They did not recognize God’s coming to you.
Luke 19:45-46
45 When Jesus entered the temple courts, he began to drive out those who were selling. 46 “It is written,” he said to them, “‘My house will be a house of prayer’; but you have made it ‘a den of robbers.’”
You have turned the temple into something it was never intended to be, a market place and a den of robbers. Today, we have turned the church into something never intended to be. The church was meant to be, from day one, a place to listen to the apostles teaching, to fellowship, to prayer and the breaking of bread, and that is it, period. It was not meant to be a place to be entertained, to drink Starbucks, to have bowling alleys, basketball courts, and coffee shops, to entertain the lost. When you entertain the lost, you build more buildings.
It was supposed to be a place to worship, to come and learn. Why? To be productive. The job of a pastor is to equip workers of ministry. What is the work of ministry? The work of ministry is to trust in Christ Jesus, to help people to trust Jesus, to walk by faith in Him. Yet they turned the temple into a den of robbers. So too today. We probably will not have much trouble needing a building bigger than this. Why? There are not too many people interested in Jesus. If we came to entertain people, we could pack this place out. But that is not what church is for.
