John 14
- David Fairchild
- Oct 19, 2003
- Series: Gospel of John
CONTEXT
If you remember last weeks study, Jesus gives His disciples some fairly troubling news.He tells them that He is only going to be with them for a little while and then He is leaving.Not only is He leaving, but He tells His friends that they can’t follow Him.
Peter, being proud and loud, thinks that Jesus is saying that they aren’t tough enough to follow and tells Jesus that he would be willing to lay day his life for Him, and if the news of Jesus leaving and not letting His disciples follow were not bad enough, Jesus tells Peter that before sunrise, before the rooster crows, you will deny me three times.
This is obviously difficult news to hear from their teacher and friend and I am sure that their grief was quite visible.
Jesus then responds to their grief with words of comfort…
Chapter 14
Verse 1 "Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me.
The context of this verse implies that their hearts were already troubled.They were already stirred and agitated with Jesus words, and yet Jesus says to them as He says to us today that when He brings words of difficulty, when He brings news and information that disagrees with our plans and opinions, when we become agitated and uncertain about our future, Jesus says for us to settle our hearts on your faith in Him.
He gives them the solution to a worried and troubled mind, believe on Him!
Jesus then gives them a promise of what is to come after their troubled hearts.
Verses 2-4 "In My Father's house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. 3 "And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also. 4 "And where I go you know, and the way you know."
Jesus uses a metaphor of a house to describe where the Father will dwell with them.
He says that His Fathers house has many dwelling places or rooms, and He is going away to prepare a place so that they can dwell with the Father and the Fathers family, His children.They can be together forever with Him in His home.
He then tells them that He is going to come back and receive them to Himself so that where He is, we are going to be also.
Yet Thomas asks Him a great question that Jesus just said they already know the answer to.
Verse 5 Thomas said to Him, "Lord, we do not know where You are going, and how can we know the way?"
Thomas simply says, “we don’t know where you’re going, so how would we know the way?”
Jesus again uses their lack of understanding as a way to declare who He is.
He declares to them, yet again, that He is in fact God come in the flesh.
He is echoing the statement that God makes to Moses when Moses asks Him what name He should use when telling them who sent Him, God replies in Exodus 3:14 “tell them that I AM has sent me to you.”
Jesus uses this same construct of I AM to declare His deity as He has on 5 other occasions in this Gospel.
Verses 6-7 Jesus said to him, "I am the way (singular), the truth (singular), and the life (singular). No one (not one person) comes to the Father except through Me. 7 "If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; and from now on you know Him and have seen Him."
Jesus essentially says that if they want to go to the place He just described where they can be with the Father and with His family, they need to go through Him alone.
Jesus makes an exclusive statement.There is no way of forgiveness of sin, salvation, living in the kingdom of God, in heaven, except by Him.
Our unbelieving friends struggle with this truth.No one struggles with claiming spirituality, prayers, miracles, healing, or the supernatural, but what they struggle with is exclusivity.
That we would dare say that one religion is right and no other, that one God is true and no other, that one sacred book is right and no other, that one way of salvation is provided and no other, seems either tremendously arrogant or just plain mean spirited.
It is the exclusive claims of Christ that people have such difficulty with.
The reason people say we are narrow minded and exclusivists, is because we are because Jesus was.
Logically speaking, all religions can’t be true, because all religions make exclusive claims about their religions being true or right.
Either one is right and the rest are wrong, or all are wrong, but not all can be right, because all claim to be the way.
The difference as I have stated in the last few weeks, is that Jesus didn’t just point to a way, He stated He was “the way,”He didn’t just point to a truth, He said He was “the truth,” He didn’t just point to a life, He said He was “the life.”
And we know from this Gospel that Jesus didn’t just offer you some bread, He said “I am the bread of life.”He didn’t point you to a light, He said “I am the light.”He didn’t just point you to the door, He said “I am the door.”He didn’t just say there was going to be a resurrection with eternal life, He said “I am the resurrection and the life.”And we will see next week that He didn’t point you to the vine, He said “I am the true vine.”
Unlike other world religions that have their proponents of that religion and teaching and way, Jesus identifies Himself as the very crux and center of the faith.He is all that there is to look for.
This message makes us counter cultural and even causes some to be frustrated or angry with us, but that is to be expected since they nailed Him to a cross.
It is not that we don’t love those individuals within those religions, it is not that we don’t love those that disagree with the claims that Jesus makes, but we love them in truth.
The next time someone tells you how mean you are to say such intolerable things, to be so exclusive and so narrow minded, ask them what they would think if it were true.Would we then be so mean and so narrow minded, or would be the most loving people on this planet since we are willing to put our own fears and our own experiences of rejection aside to tell them the truth.
Philip obviously feels comfortable after Thomas’s question and jumps in as well…
Remember the context.This is Jesus last night, He is spending His last night with His friends, Judas Iscariot has already left after he was filled with Satan, to go out and betray Jesus and have Him turned over to be murdered.Jesus knows all this and yet remains with His friends to teach them these truths which become truths that last 20 centuries up to this day that we read these stories.
Verse 8 Philip said to Him, "Lord, show us the Father, and it is sufficient for us."
You can see from Philips question that this response to Jesus truth is not unique.
Jesus, you have been a perfect friend for 3 years, you have given miracle after miracle, you have walked on water, raised the dead, healed the sick, commanded the weather to obey you, had your Father speak to you from heaven so that others could hear, turned water into wine, fed 20 thousand people out of 5 loaves of bread and two small sardines, but could you do us one more favor and show us the Father….then we’ll believe!
Really?Because I thought the whole raising a stinky dead guy 4 days after he died would have been enough!
Jesus responds to Philips question…
Verse 9 Jesus said to him, "Have I been with you so long, and yet you have not known Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; so how can you say, 'Show us the Father'?
Philips problem is familiarity.Philip has been with Jesus for quite some time, seeing Him teach and perform for so long that He has become familiar with Him.
He has become so accustomed to Jesus power and magnificence, His beauty and deity that it no longer has the same effect it once had.Some of us are the same way.
Christ becomes so familiar to us, that we become comfortable and complacent to the point of no longer revering Him for who He is and what He has done.
Some of you here were raised in church where you heard bible stories and played with felt cutouts of Jesus and He became very tame and manageable for you.He has become very familiar to you.
But this is not a familiarity that breeds love and respect, it is a familiarity that breeds apathy and lukewarm hearts.
Perhaps you have come to accept the historical Jesus that once lived some time ago and said some things that sound pretty moral.
The problem is that you have a little Jesus in your daily life.He is still that little felt cutout you played with in your Sunday school class.
He has now become a comfortable pair of jeans that just hangs out with you and is declawed and defanged so that He doesn’t hurt your feelings or disrupt your plans.
Philip have you been with me for so long that you no longer know me?
Does this happen in human relationships?
How many of you have had a wife or boyfriend that has become familiar to you.So familiar that you have actually grown apart and say things like “I don’t know who you are anymore?”
You have taken your spouse or friend for granted and now your comfort with them has become your downfall.
This is what Jesus is saying to Philip.
Word to the wise; don’t get that comfortable with Jesus.
Jesus says to the church in
That is a good word.If you find yourself with this familiarity, if you have left your first love, remember where you once were and repent.
He continues with Philip…
Verse 10a "Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me?
If you remember our study in John 10:30, Jesus declared to the Pharisees “I am my Father are one.”
We then took an excursus into the doctrine of the Trinity and established from Scripture that the Bible teaches that there is One God in three Persons.The Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God.Yet the Bible also teaches very clearly that there is only One God.
We see The Trinity in the act of Creation, we see the Trinity in the Baptism of Jesus, we see the Trinity at Mary’s conception, and we are going to see from this section that there is a discussion about God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.
We are going to see how they work together to glorify the Father and to save and send us.
Verses 10b-11 The words that I speak to you I do not speak on My own authority; but the Father who dwells in Me does the works. 11 "Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father in Me, or else believe Me for the sake of the themselves.
Jesus says that there are three things to look for if you want to understand who I am Philip.
First-Listen to my words.What have I taught you and instructed you?
Second-Look at my works.What have I done, how have I lived?
Third-Look at my miracles.Is there evidence of the power of God in me by my works of miracles.
That’s it, my words, my works and my miracles.That is how you can have assurance of who I am Philip.
You already believe, now believe in me in a deeper, more meaningful way.As you look at those things, you will come to understand that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me.
Jesus then continues with a statement that is tremendously comforting for us.
Verse 12 "I tell you the truth, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do he will do also; and greater works than these he will do, because I go to My Father.
These next few verses have been terribly abused by freaky nutjobs that are trying to whip you into an emotional state of lunacy.
This verse in the last 150 years has been misquoted more frequently than it is quoted correctly.
The first thing Jesus says is that Christians will do greater works than I do.
So it is very important that we know what Jesus did.
He proclaimed, He taught, He loved, He fed, He served, He sacrificed.The things He did, Christians should be doing.He just taught us that in the last chapter as He gave us the model for serving by washing the disciples feet, then He tells us to love one another to show the world we are His disciples.
Yet Jesus tells us that if we believe in Him, we will do greater things than He did.
There are individuals that don’t teach this passage in context and they make Jesus look like the younger brother because they will be doing bigger, better, greater things than He did.
He was God, He walked on water, raised people from the dead, lived a perfect life and after He was crucified, rose Himself from the dead and defeated Satan and death.
Now I am a pretty decent guy, but I know that there is no way I will be doing greater things than Jesus did, if that is the context.
What Jesus means is this.In His human state as He lived on earth, He could only be in one place at one time, teach in only once place at one time, and was limited in the amount of time He had.He only had a 3 year ministry.
But, those that are the children of God are now millions and we are scattered throughout the entire world.Our reach and ability to love, and to serve and to feed and to teach and preach His word is far reaching from Jesus human state.
It’s not in the magnitude of the things we do that are greater than Jesus, but the multitude of the things we do and have done for the last 2000 years.
Jesus continues and says…
Verses 13-14 "And whatever you ask in My name, that I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14 "If you ask anything in My name, I will do it.
Again, widely misused and misunderstood.
When Jesus says that “whatever you ask in My name, I’ll do it,” He is not saying that He is the cosmic vending machine that you drop a quarter in and get your candy bar.
He isn’t an infinite piñata and holds all the blessings, and you come along with your prayer in Jesus name, which is the stick, and you hit it so that the blessings fall from heaven.
The prayer of Jabez is not the model prayer.You can’t manipulate or coerce God into doing what you want Him do if you pray a certain number of times in a certain way for a specified period of time.
I want a car in Jesus name.I want a big house with tons of cash in Jesus name.I want the women to want me in Jesus name.
This attitude of name it and claim it, blab it and grab it, is simply not biblical.Some preacher get paid huge dollars to tell you that it is the model.What you should do is take the stick and hit them with it.
Prayer is not designed for you to get more materialistic stuff.The last thing we suffer from in this country is a lack of things and stuff.
We should pray, and God will answer, but the prayers are always designed to be according to the will and glory of God.
The writer of this Gospel tells us in his first letter in 1 John 5:14-15 14 Now this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. 15 And if we know that He hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we have asked of Him.
What is the confidence we have that He will hear us and answer our petitions?If we ask according to His will.Whose will?His will.
The problem we have is most of our prayers is about self-glorification.Make me this, make me that, give me this, give me that.Often our prayers are not to the glory and will of God.
Jesus says if you want to pray, pray for things that glorify the Father.Make them about His business, His honor, His glory.
Since we don’t need more stuff, we need to start praying for things that will glorify the Father.
How do you do that?Pray in Jesus name.What does that mean?Pray according to the will of Jesus.
If you are praying for the glory of God, in the will of the Son, you should pray for those things that Jesus began and has asked us to complete.Pray for the things we know God hears and is according to His will.
If we are thinking about God’s glory and the will of the Son, what things should we be actively praying for?
Salvation of the lost.Jesus came to seek and save those that were lost, He gave us commission to preach the Gospel to every nation for the purpose of reconciling the lost to the Father.
In doing that we could pray for specific people.We could pray for courage.We could pray for wisdom and insight into God’s word.We could pray for discipline to study so that we can preach God’s word in truth.We could pray for strength and boldness in the times of rejection.
Prayers for the people of God.God said that He desired to build up the body of Christ, so we pray for that.
We pray that people are healthy and cared for and loved by God and each other as we build up Christ’s body.We are told in James that if anyone is sick, let him come to the elders and have them pray for them.
We should pray for opportunities to serve.Christ calls us to wash each others stinky toes, we need prayer that we don’t catch anything!
We should pray for God to show us where to serve Him by serving others.How, when, in what way, where?Those are things to pray for.
If you are finding that your prayers are not being answered, it could be that you are not praying things that glorify God according to His will.
You may be praying for things that are only self-centered and not God centered.
The primary function of prayer is to change the heart of God’s people.
When you pray for someone, what ends up happening to your heart for that person?
When you pray for God’s to be glorified, what ends up happening to you in your life?
I am not saying that prayers are not effective, I am saying that God is not going to be forced into doing anything against His will or plan, and that He allows us to pray so that we may change!
What happens when you pray for someone to be saved and the come to faith?Did your prayers force God to save them?No, but you get to see your prayers coupled with God’s will accomplish His purpose and in experiencing that you grow as His child.
Jesus says you can ask anything in my name and I’ll answer it, but it has to be to glorify my Father.
After teaching about these things Jesus then moves to call you to us to obedience.
Verse 15 "If you love Me, keep My commandments.
What comes first, keeping the commandments, or loving Jesus?
Some of you think that if you keep His commandments, you automatically prove your love for Him.
Some of you also think that if you say you love Him, that is sufficient and you don’t need to worry about the details of following what He commands.
The problem is, you can never truly keep His commandments without first loving Him, because part of His commandments are to love.How can you keep the commandment of love if you don’t love?
If you are having a problem keeping His commandments, it is because you may not love Jesus as much as you say you do.
In 1st John 5:3 it says that His commandments are not burdensome.
Love produces obedience, not the other way around.
Verse 16 "And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever—
You might ask, how am I going to love God, how am I going to obey God, how am I going to do the works of Jesus, how am I going to glorify the Father?
It’s simple..Jesus says that He will give us the Holy Spirit.
Verses 17-20 "the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you. 18 "I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you. 19 "A little while longer and the world will see Me no more, but you will see Me. Because I live, you will live also. 20 "At that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you.
It is difficult to even fathom the depth of that statement.
Isn’t that overwhelming to think about?The Spirit of Truth lives in you, and will never leave you, and Jesus says He will come to us, and like He was resurrected we will also be resurrected, and on that day we will know and fully experience Jesus being in the Father, and us being in Jesus and Jesus living in us.
How are you going to glorify God?By doing Jesus will and work.How are you going to do Jesus will and work?By loving Him.How are you going to love Him?By the Spirit being given to you.It is all God.
Verse 21 "He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him."
Do you see the importance of loving God?If we love Jesus we will obey Him, and if we love Jesus we will be loved by the Father, and if we love Jesus, Jesus promises to show Himself to us.
It is all predicated upon love for Him.Remember, no one comes to the Father but by Him.How do you come through Him?Love.Who gives you that love?The Holy Spirit.
Judas also wants to ask Jesus a question (this is not Judas the betrayer).
Verse 22 Judas (not Iscariot) said to Him, "Lord, how is it that You will manifest Yourself to us, and not to the world?"
Jesus has just revealed God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, the plan of God through His people, the key to following God, now why would you only tell us 11 guys?
How is Jesus going to change the entire planet with only 11 guys?
He is going to love 11 guys over dinner, that’s how.
Why don’t you get a big crusade, have a telethon, get some bumperstickers and ads on the radio?
11 guys?C’mon Jesus.
Jesus explains…
Verse 23 Jesus answered and said to him, "If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him.
What this means is that the child of God should be a foretaste of heaven.Heaven is not just a place that you will live when you die.Heaven has come to you as you moved from death to life, you have become of citizen of heaven the moment you became His child.
As we come into contact with other, we are to give a taste of heaven to those we are in contact with, by showing ourselves to be children of the King and ambassadors for Him to represent His Kingdom in this land.
Verses 24-31 "He who does not love Me does not keep My words; and the word which you hear is not Mine but the Father's who sent Me. 25"These things I have spoken to you while being present with you. 26 "But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you. 27 "Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. 28 "You have heard Me say to you, 'I am going away and coming back to you.' If you loved Me, you would rejoice because I said, 'I am going to the Father,' for My Father is greater than
Judas question was-how are you going to change the world with 11 guys over dinner?Jesus promises the Spirit that will come in power, He will bring you peace, take away your fear, He will bring things I said to remembrance, He will give you words to say.You have everything you need, now go and you’ll accomplish everything I have said, and when you do, you’ll remember I said it!
Is it true?Did Jesus change the world with 11 guys?Yes.
Here we are 2000 years later speaking about this very conversation and we have now witnessed Christ words to be true.
How did this story get from a private room in
He gave love to someone, and then gave love to that person, and then the next, all the way to the day that He gave someone love enough to tell us.And here we sit, connected to those 11 men sitting at that table by the same story.
We sit here because God took 11 guys over dinner and gave them love, and the world changed.
Jesus gives a series of promises.Did they come true?
He predicts the future.
Has He defeated Satan like He promised?
He promised He would resurrect from the dead.Did He do that?
He promised He would go to the right hand of the Father.Did He do that?
He promised He would sent the Holy Spirit.Did He do that?
He promised that He would be with us when we live in faith and love for Him. Has He done that?
He promised us that He would send us out to do the things He was doing, by bringing the good news to all nations.Has He done that?
He promised that He is now preparing a place for us.Is He doing that?
He just promised that He is going to come to take us there.Will He do that?
That is good news.
Do you love Jesus?Do you obey Him?Do you glorify the Father?
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