Classic Christianity – Book of John Part 68 (09-04-19)
Synopsis
Bob George continues sharing from the 14th chapter of John. Jesus is very soon going to the cross to complete the work His Father gave Him to do. He received the command from His Father, to lay down his life only to raise it up again. His disciples are not understanding these things. They do not yet understand why Jesus is going away. Jesus is comforting them to let them know the unfolding plan God had before the foundation of the world. He will not leave them as orphans. A day is coming when he will send the promised Holy Spirit, that the prophets testified about. That day happened at Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit, for the first time, took residence in the hearts of men. That is what Jesus had said to Nicodemus, about what it means to be born again. Jesus will come to make his home in us and he will speak truth into us individually, so that we will know Him. The moment we understand the totality of what Jesus did for us, believe and are saved, the Holy Spirit takes residence in our hearts and is there to stay within us forever. Eternal life is knowing God and His Son, Jesus Christ.
So God sent Jesus into this world to show us what life is, what righteousness and peace is, in a dark and temporary fallen world, that we too can live as Jesus lived. We live not to imitate his actions but to imitate his faith, his total dependency on God His Father. Living by faith is having the same Spirit of God that is in Jesus. Jesus came to be a servant to all. He humbled himself and became obedient to death, even death on a cross. He did so out of total love for His Father. For the joy set before him, he endured the cross, scorning its shame. The joy is in the resurrection life, the life he gives to all men. His life is the only hope for man, who is born dead in sin, having been destroyed by the deceitfulness of Satan in the garden of Eden. So Jesus was sent by God for God’s purpose to restore mankind to Himself. He did what He saw His Father doing. He said what His Father told Him to say and exactly as His Father wanted to Him to say it. He spoke truth into the hearts of men. He emptied Himself of his divine attributes, living as a man like us, who are not God, so that we can know how we were originally created to live, according to God’s perfect design for mankind, to walk in a living relationship with God.
So Jesus came to create a new body of Christ. That is why it is better that he went back to His Father, for our sake, so he can be in all men at the same time, to those who put their faith in Him. He wants us to know Him. That is why he told his disciples what is going to happen ahead of time, so that when these things do happen, his death, burial and resurrection, that they will believe. Jesus is the resurrection and the life. He is the only way to the Father. Just as the Father is in him and he is in the Father, so too will we be in him and he in us. Jesus shared all these spiritual truths with men, even though they could not understand then. For some day, they will understand unto eternal life. Jesus sowed the seed of truth into the hearts of men and one day that seed sprouted into new life.
Many people do not understand what church is. The church is not a building on the corner of walk and don’t walk. It is the body of Christ, all over the world, those who are born again, having the Spirit of God living in them. Church has been reduced to a religion. Religion teaches what your denomination has said. The Spirit speaks to you what God has said.
It seems church has become like a factory, trying to tell people what to do and not do, to do things at the same time, the same way, with the same enthusiasm. If it is not a factory, it has become an entertainment center or social club. It keeps the people busy and barren. It speaks things often contrary to what God has said. People wander around exhausted yet singing songs exalting Jesus. They are busy but have not learned what it means to walk in the Spirit, to hear God instruct them personally what he would have them do or not do, say or not say. They have not grown up in the knowledge and grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. Believers meet together, wherever that place may be they choose to meet, to encourage one another and be an avenue in which to love one another. The body cares for one another, and you are a part of the body, with Christ as the head.
The true church meets because they want to meet to encourage one another in all truth so as to walk in the new life God has given. They want to mutually encourage one another with what God has taught them. They want to love one another. The world will know we are his disciples when we love one another. The church is not a place designed for the lost. You reach the lost out there, in whatever sphere of influence, in your work or play. When you go out there, Jesus is right there with you, instructing you what to say or do or not say or nor do.
People often also have incorrect thinking. They are in error in regards to sin. You may have heard a person say, “A Christian will not continue in sin”. Well, what does that mean? Nobody has ever stopped worrying when they became a Christian. Worry is not a healthy concern but it is sin. People get all focused on the dirty nine or the terrible twelve sins, but do they really stop to think about what sin really is. Anything that does not come from faith is sin. The opposite of faith is worry. So what does religion tell people. Oh, go to the confession booth or go confess that directly to God or quote John 1:9 to keep clean with God, making sure you do not forget one sin, as if it depends on you to have to stay clean. So people are not free to go boldly to the throne of grace, but instead looking over their shoulders to see if God is mad at them or even if God accepts them. You are accepted already in Christ, who has said he lives in you and will be in you forever, and that he already took away all yours sins at the cross. Your sins were already forgiven when Jesus died on the cross never to be seen again. Let us move on to life, walking by faith. You are not accepted by God based on your performance. God did something for us we could not do for ourselves. We are not under law but under grace. Grace is what calls us into a new way of living, with the love of God poured into our hearts. Keep your thoughts and mind on Christ, the author and finisher of your faith. The righteous will live by faith.
So then how do we live? We do not live by human effort but by trusting Jesus, just as Jesus trusted His Father. We love because He first loved us. God only gives us two commands. Love the Lord Jesus Christ and love others even as I have loved you. So do we manufacture that love? No. Next time, Bob will explain this relationship we have with God as we read John 15 together. Here, Jesus explains our relationship with God. Consider the vine and the branches. You cannot live the Christian life. You let God live His life in you and through you. He produces the fruit of the Spirit that is born through us as we abide in Him. We were never designed to produce fruit but to bear fruit. This is the fruit Jesus produces in us and through us.
Galatians 5:22-23
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.
Transcript
John 14:1-4
1 “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. 2 My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. 4 You know the way to the place where I am going.”
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 go to Israel and look up Jesus of Nazareth and there you would have found the body of Christ. Jesus says, “I will go away. I am with you now in physical form, but it is good for you that I am going away”. Imagine the response of the disciples. They are pondering, “Good for us that you are going away? How can that be?”
John 14:5-13
5 Thomas said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?”6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 7 If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.”
8 Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.”
9 Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? 10 Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you I do not speak on my own authority. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work. 11 Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the works themselves. 12 Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. 13 And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14 You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.
Jesus said again, “I am going away. My body will still be on this earth, but in mystery form. It is going to be in you and you are going to be my body. I will always be the head and you are my body. So I am going to send the Counselor to you”.
John 14:15-17
15 “If you love me, keep my commands. 16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever – 17 the Spirit of truth.
But the world cannot accept him. The world does not know anything about Him.
John 14:17
17 The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him.
Bob said, “Before I was saved, prior to the age of 36, I seldom knew anything about Jesus. I had a cursory understanding. As far as the Holy Spirit, you might as well have been talking Swahili to me. I did not know anything about the Holy Spirit.” The world cannot understand nor accept him because he neither sees Him or knows Him.
John 14:17
17 But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you.
You who are in Christ, you do know Him. Why? For he lives with you and will be in you. How many of you believe that Jesus lived with his disciples? If you believe that then you will have to believe what Jesus said, “I will be in you”. He said he lives with you, and in a few days, Jesus said, “I am going to be in you. In a few days, I will come to you”.
Colossians 1:26-27 (TLB)
26-27 He has kept this secret for centuries and generations past, but now at last it has pleased him to tell it to those who love him and live for him, and the riches and glory of his plan are for you Gentiles, too. And this is the secret: Christ in your hearts is your only hope of glory.
John 14:18-20
18 I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. 19 Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. 20 On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you.
“I will not leave you. I am going away, but I am not going to leave you. I will come to you”. When did He ultimately come to you? What day was that? On the day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit came, for the first time, to permanently indwell believers.
“I am not going to leave you as an orphan, I will come to you. In a few short days, you will not see me any longer. I will not be here on this earth. But you will see me. Because I love you, I also will live. Because I was raised from the dead, you will be raised from the dead. In that day, you will realize I am in the Father and you are in me and I am in you.“ I am in Christ Jesus and Christ Jesus is in me.
John 14:21
21 Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me. The one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love them and show myself to them.”
We will see what those commands are in a minute. There are just a few.
John 14:22-27
22 Then Judas (not Judas Iscariot) said, “But, Lord, why do you intend to show yourself to us and not to the world?”23 Jesus replied, “Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.
John 1:12
12 Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God
You must be born again of the Spirit. When you are born again of the Spirit, is what Jesus is saying when he says, “I will come and make my home in you”. Christ Jesus lives in you and me.
John 14:24
24 Anyone who does not love me will not obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me.
He is not going to obey what I came to do. When you ask the question, “Why do you show yourself to us and not to the world?”, it is because the world does not want to see him. To the world, it is like putting a person at the Grand Canyon, and having him say, “I cannot see it”. “Well, turn around and look at it. The reason you cannot see it is because you have back turned”. You can stand in front of the most glorious sites in the world and not see it by just turning your back on it. That is the world. Why don’t they see Jesus? They have their backs turned to Christ, just like I did for 36 years. I knew about him, went to church, took my kids there and picked them up too, and tried to be a good father, and all those things, but I had my back turned on what Jesus said. I really did not want to know what Jesus said because then I could always plead ignorance. My back was turned and your back was turned until the day you came to Christ. You might have been religious but your back was turned on what He said. Religion is counting on what your denomination said but not coming to what He said.
John 14:24
24 Anyone who does not love me will not obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me.
This is the totality of the Godhead. These words I am speaking to you belong to the Father who sent me.
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.
That is how we got our bibles. The apostles, who were the writers of the bible, were instructed by Jesus under direct revelation or by those who were with Him. So the Spirit caused them to remember everything that was said to them. Everything in the gospels came not only from their memory but what God caused them to remember, of everything He said to them.
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 world peace.
Then there is a peace that surpasses all understanding. 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.
Hebrews 4:8-10
8 For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken later about another day. 9 There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; 10 for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from their works, just as God did from his.
Do you see what the Christian world has done to annihilate resting. We do not want to rest. We want to sing, “He is exalted and I am exhausted”. The Christian world works people to death. Everybody talking about church but not Jesus. You have morning and evening services that you are expected to attend. Even Wednesday service and all kinds of stuff that exhaust and burns you out, working for Jesus. Everyone has lives to live. You have the mindset that you have to come to church, a building on the corner of walk and don’t walk. That is not church. That is a place you meet.
The church is the body of Christ. The universal church is born again people all over the world. The born again is the church, not the church goers. As you are working and going out to play, who is out there? You and Jesus. Where are you going to do evangelism? Here or out there? Here is just preaching to the choir. Oh, but there might be someone who drifts in, so let us have the hired gun shoot him down. Where you work and play, you and Jesus are there together, and you are aware of people.
If you are in Christ, you are probably talking to people. If you are talking to people, you will start hearing the heartaches and trials they are going through. That is when you start applying Jesus, about the hope that is in you. You can share, “I too was in a situation I did not know where I was going. I did not know who I was. Then one day and time in history, Jesus touched my heart and brought me into a personal relationship with Jesus.”
When we meet together as believers, it is not my job to work you to death, as I once did like others, lacking understanding. No, now I share to build you up in the knowledge of Christ, whom I came to know. This is why believers meet together. Everywhere you go, share what you learned with people you encounter. When gathered here, a huge percentage are in Christ. This is a place to grow and be discipled. Where should evangelism and ministry take place? Out there.
John 14:28
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.
You are already working. I do not need to tie you down on a prayer meeting on Wednesday. You can pray at home just as effectively as you pray in a meeting. I got tired of praying for Aunt Nellie’s toe nails when I do not know Aunt Nellie or her toe nails. I was busy and barren. Busy for Jesus and barren inside. I had to come to the realization of what these truths are. If I am a part of the body of Christ, and if Jesus is alive, living in me, and if Jesus wants to work in and through me individually, then I am going to let Him do that.
I do not need to become a part of a sheep-mentality, where all we sheep get together and move at the same time. To realize that God saved me individually and he will use me individually just as he used you individually. I led more people to Christ as a lay man than I did the first ten years as a full time worker. Why? I was out with lost people. I was out eating lunch with lost people. Bob recalls one time that he had said to God, “I am tired of talking about you”. He went to lunch with a credit manager, intending not to speak about God. I asked him, “How are things going?” “Not too good. I have a kid on drugs. This and that”. “Okay, Lord, one more day”. I led him to the Lord that day and he was saved. That happened all the time. Just go out and make yourself available.
That is contrary to going out to visitation day and picking up my cards to go visit and putting them in my pocket and driving home. Then telling people that the people I called on were not home. Is it a lot better to do what is natural than get involved in this activity that all of us will do the same thing, at the same time, in the same way, with the same enthusiasm. His body is all over this city at the same time. When you leave here today, you are going all over the place. That means you and Jesus are going some place. That means that if you and Jesus are going some place, then Jesus has the ability to use you if He wants to use you. In the schools, wherever it might be. If you are sensitive to the voice of God, He will tell you when He is ready to use you. All He is saying is obey that and follow up on that. If He is telling you to talk to someone about the Lord, then talk to Him about the Lord.
John 14:27
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.
We ought to be able to live in peace, not with the peace of the world, but with the peace of God that surpasses understanding. If I have the peace with God, I can experience the peace of God.
Philippians 4:4-7
4 Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! 5 Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. 6 Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 7 And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
Do you experience the peace of God? If you don’t, then you probably do not have the peace with God. Religion comes in to strangle Christians so they do not have peace with God and therefore never experience the peace of God. I want to experience both of them, don’t you? I cannot experience that when I am anxious.
What causes anxiety? Thinking of all the things that might happen tomorrow. Anxiety is emotion connected with futuristic thinking, or fantasy. All futuristic thinking is fantasy. You do not know what will happen tomorrow. Anything we are thinking about what is going to happen tomorrow is fantasy. The only thing you know about tomorrow is that Jesus is with you, if you are in Jesus. If Jesus is already in your tomorrow, then why be anxious about tomorrow? Jesus who is in your today, will be in your tomorrow.
Do you beat yourself to death over all the failures you have done in the past, and wonder if God will accept you today? So you wonder if God is going to accept you for all the bad things you have done. What would you tell somebody? It is over. He has already taken care of that. Are we supposed to do something to keep clean? No. We have Catholics running to a confession booth. We have “Christians” keeping short accounts with God, misapplying 1 John 1:9 to death, and then wondering how well their memory is. Just in case I forgot one, a person says, “Oh God please forgive me if I forgot one that I have not confessed yet’ and then hoping you do not have a bad dream. It is over. Jesus said, while shedding his blood on a cross, “it is finished”. He meant what he said. So rest.
You will never have peace until you rest in the finished work of Christ Jesus. You will never rest if my forgiveness depends on me, whether I forget one or I may be doing something I have not quit yet. Have you ever heard someone say, “Anyone who is a Christian cannot continue in sin”.” I said to a pastor one time, “How long have you been a Christian?” He said, “40 years”. “How long have you had a critical Spirit?” He said, “40 years.” “Seems pretty persistent to me”. We do not think about those things. We think of the nasty nine or the terrible twelve.
Romans 14:23
23 and everything that does not come from faith is sin.
That which is not of faith is sin. What is the opposite of faith? Worry. How many of you have never worried since you became a Christian? How many of you have not stopped worrying since you became a Christian? Now that is persistent sinning. You can call it a healthy concern but that is not what God calls it. God calls it sin. Aren’t you glad that you will not be going into the presence of God because of your ability to keep sin away? We are too dumb to know what sin is. That which is not of faith is sin. How many times do we not exercise faith?
John 14:27-29
27 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.
He wants us to come to faith. He came to accomplish for us what we had no ability to accomplish for ourselves.
John 14:30-31
30 I will not say much more to you, for the prince of this world [Satan] 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.”
Jesus did nothing of is own initiative. He said what his Father told him to say and how to say it. He did only what he saw his Father doing. Jesus said, “As the Father sent me, so I send you.”
There was a generation of people walking around with bracelets with the letters ,“WWJD”, which stood for, “What would Jesus do?” So we try to copy Jesus. Well, he walked on water, so are you going to walk on water? Jesus never told me to walk on water. He raised the dead. Are we going to raise the dead? We do not emulate the actions of people because God did not tell me to act the same way as Jesus acted. If you are going to act like Jesus, act on his faith. What did Jesus do? He walked in total dependence of His Father. His faith is what you emulate. For what He told him to do is not going to be what He tells you to do. We imitate His faith. We imitate his attitude of dependency. Your heart is where attitude is formed. What kind of attitude do you have? I want my attitude to be like Christ Jesus. What was his attitude?
Philippians 2:1-8
1 Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, 2 then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. 3 Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, 4 not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.5 In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:
6
Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
7
rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8
And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death –
even death on a cross!
Jesus adopted the attitude of servitude. We look at a servant as a secondary person. No, that is the greatest profession of the world is to be a servant. Adopt the attitudes in Jesus, to be generous, loving, accepting, merciful, and kind. Those are the attitudes of heart to adopt. Be merciful for I am merciful. If I have forgiven you, you forgive one another. If I am kind to you, be kind to one another. Have the attitude of Christ Jesus. So you, like him, can do exactly what the Father commanded us to do, and that is to love one another.
The only commands he left us with are these two commands. Love the Lord Jesus Christ and love one another as I, the Lord, have loved you. Those are not laws of Moses. They are not there. Those are the laws of Moses but the laws of Jesus is to love one another. Upon those two laws is the fulfillment of the entirety of the Old Testament. Love one another.
John 14:31
I love the Father and do exactly what my Father has commanded me.“Come now; let us leave.
Next we will discuss the vine and the branch. It is of necessity to understand this relationship between God and us. The vine is the producer of fruit and the branch is the bearer of fruit, in harmony with one another. The branch cannot produce fruit. A branch can only bear fruit of the life of the vine. The best a branch can do in human effort is to go out and buy some artificial fruit and hang on it and hope nobody comes along and takes a bite out of it. That is the condition of religion today, sitting in the desert, not in the promised land, hanging artificial fruit on us and hoping nobody gets close enough to realize it is not real. When abiding, the vine is producing true fruit, the fruit of the Spirit, which is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control, and against such things there is no law. Those things can only be produced by Christ Jesus.
Galatians 5:22-23
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.
