The Promise of Presence
Download MP3Good afternoon. It's good to see you all. We are continuing on in our study of John's gospel. We started it a year ago, but we will find ourselves in John 14 tonight. John 14, beginning with verse 15.
Jeffrey Heine:John chapter 14, beginning in verse 15. We find ourselves, still in that upper room discourse where Jesus is talking to his disciples. John chapter 14. I wanna give you time if you if you did all the hard work of actually bringing an analog bible with you. I wanna give you time to find it.
Jeffrey Heine:So John chapter 14, you brought it with you. Might as well put it to you. So here we go. John chapter 14. Let us listen carefully, for this is God's word.
Jeffrey Heine:If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another helper to be with you forever. Even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans.
Jeffrey Heine:I will come to you. Yet a little while, and the world will see me no more, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. In that day, you will know that I am in my father, and you in me, and I in you. Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me.
Jeffrey Heine:And he who loves me will be loved by my father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him. Judas, not Iscariot, said to him, 'Lord, how is it that You will manifest Yourself to us and not to the world?' And Jesus answered 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. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words, and the word that you hear is not mine, but the Father's who sent me. These things I have spoken to you while I am still with you. 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 that I have said to you.
Jeffrey Heine:Peace, I leave with you. My peace, I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. You heard me say to you, I am going away, and will come to you.
Jeffrey Heine:If you loved me, you would have rejoiced because I am going to the father, for the father is greater than I. And now I have told you before it takes place, so that when it does take place, you may believe. I will no longer talk much with you, for the ruler of this world is coming. He has no claim on me, but I do as the Father has commanded me, so that the world may know that I love the Father. Rise.
Jeffrey Heine:Let us go from here. The word of the Lord.
Caleb Chancey:Thanks be to God.
Jeffrey Heine:Let's pray. Father, we gather in Your name in confidence because of the finished work of Christ. In boldness, we approach your throne because of his blood. We live because he lives. And, spirit, we ask today that you would give us ears to hear your truth, and that you would help us to respond in love and obedience.
Jeffrey Heine:Stir our hearts to faith and good works tonight, Lord, All for your praise and your glory and your name, now and forever. Amen. Amen. Earlier this month, I read, a book by, doctor Paul Kalanisi. It's called When Breath Becomes Air.
Jeffrey Heine:Since it came out in January, for the last 11 weeks, it has been number 1 on the New York Times best seller list for nonfiction. It's an amazing book. It's, it's very raw. The story is that Paul was in his last year of his residency, neurosurgery, at Stanford. Sharp guy.
Jeffrey Heine:And, he started feeling unwell, and was pretty quickly diagnosed with lung cancer. And the book is about his life before the diagnosis, living with the diagnosis, and then up until his death. His wife finishes the book out. And the last paragraph of the book is to his 9 month old daughter. If you've read the book, you're already crying.
Jeffrey Heine:It is very emotional by the time you get to that point, and he's writing to his daughter. You see, when when the word count has a limited number left and there isn't much time to say many more things, we start to become very deliberate with the words we say. And in this paragraph, this charge to His daughter, it's what He hopes for her, what he wants for her, what he wants her to hold on to, though she will never remember him. And so Jesus has a handful of hours left, a handful of hours before he is betrayed, before he is sentenced to die. There's not much time left.
Jeffrey Heine:When that Passover meal began, which begins at sundown, that really was the the beginning of the next day, and so the day was upon him. The day of suffering. Not just physical suffering, but he who knew no sin was going to become sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus. The time had come, and he had still some more things to tell his disciples. He had things he still wanted to talk to them about.
Jeffrey Heine:But as we saw in verse 30, he says to them, I will no longer talk much with you. But there are some things that need to be said. There are some things that bear repeating. Some things that can now finally be said because now they can finally begin to make sense. And so they must be said.
Jeffrey Heine:And as we have highlighted over the last couple of weeks, the disciples are not really understanding what's going on right now. They are confused, they are conflicted, and they struggle to make sense of what Jesus is saying. Jesus says to them, I am I'm leaving. I I have to go away. And they say, don't go.
Jeffrey Heine:And he says, no. It's good that I'm going away. And they say, then we're coming with you. And he says, no, you can't come with me. I'm going to die.
Jeffrey Heine:And they say, don't go. And he says, no, I have to go. I have to die. And they say, well, we will die with you. And he says, no.
Jeffrey Heine:This is this is this is a cup that only I can drink. But there is this confusion. They they want more signs. They want him to reveal the Father. They still don't understand.
Jeffrey Heine:And so a question comes up. How do these scared men hiding out in Jerusalem become these apostles? The the the men that we see in Acts who who speak with all boldness, who take on not only not only Rome, but the whole world. How do we get there? How does that happen?
Jeffrey Heine:40 days from now, they will go from hiding out, scared after the crucifixion of Jesus. And then they will stand before kings and rulers and declare the kingdom of Christ. How do we get there? And this is why I think that what's going on here in John 14 is so critical. What he is talking about here, this information that he's discussing with them, the night of his betrayal, it's so critical because it has to do with that transformation for those disciples.
Jeffrey Heine:And bear in mind, what's being said here is not just theological information. He's not just teaching them a class in doctrine here. He's making them a promise. About 400 years before this upper room scene, there was another teacher with his students, his his disciples, who are gathered together on the eve of his execution, conflicted and confused as to what was going to happen next. You see, when the great philosopher Socrates was sentenced to death by poison, he gathered his disciples around, his students.
Jeffrey Heine:And his wife came, and his children came. And as the women and the children began to cry and to, to to make a loud noise of weeping, Socrates sent them away because he wished to die with a quiet dignity. But then, the quiet dignity was disrupted once more when the disciples themselves started crying out and weeping. Socrates, Plato writes in the death and trial of Socrates, he writes these words. We all felt as if we had lost a father, and would be orphaned for the rest of our lives.
Jeffrey Heine:Jesus makes a promise in verse 18 that he will not leave his disciples as orphans. He promises them, I will not leave you as orphans. I will not leave you abandoned and alone. Jesus promises His disciples presence. And this promise is 3 fold in how it's going to be fulfilled.
Jeffrey Heine:We see in in verse 18 that Jesus says that he will come to them. In verse 16, he says that he will send the Holy Spirit, the helper will come to them. And in verse 23, he says that the father and the son will make their home with the disciple. Father, son, and spirit presence forever. Jesus is saying that I'm going to make a way for you, to bring you back to God.
Jeffrey Heine:And we, father, son, and holy spirit, will make our home with you. We will dwell with you and be in you forever. Do not be afraid. This is how the terrified disciples hiding out in Jerusalem become the brave apostles of the gospel. This is how.
Jeffrey Heine:And this bravery, this boldness that comes from life, from presence, union with the triune God, It has manifesting elements. That is to say that we can see evidence of this promise being true in our lives. This promise of presence has evidence. And Jesus gets very direct with his disciples that we should be able to see, it should be made evident to us that we are disciples of Jesus. And so there there are 3 aspects, the 3 3 different parts of evidence that I think we can look at here in verses 15 through 30, evidence of presence in our lives.
Jeffrey Heine:The first one is this. The first one is love. The second one is obedience. And the third evidence of the presence of God in our lives is peace. Love, obedience, and peace.
Jeffrey Heine:We will look at each one of these and kind of how they relate to one another, too. We will begin where Jesus begins, with love. Jesus begins this section here you see in verse 15, talking about love. And we have to begin with love because if we begin with obedience, if we begin with the doing, the activity, then we are beginning with that spot that so many religions do. Obey first.
Jeffrey Heine:Even if you don't understand, even if you don't like it, even if you don't care, you obey first. And the first call to the Christian is not obey, it is love. The ability to love Jesus is not conjured up from our own affections or our own will. We we have seen plenty of people in John's gospel who despise Jesus. Plenty of people that don't love Jesus, from the local rulers to Judas.
Jeffrey Heine:Love for Jesus is not universal. In fact, we are told that we ourselves were enemies of God when Jesus died on the cross. So how do we come to love Him? How do we come to a place that we confessed, actually, just earlier at the beginning of the service, from 1st Peter. Though you have not seen him, you love him.
Jeffrey Heine:How do we get there? Joel mentioned a couple of weeks ago, as we've been looking in John's gospel, that a good commentary, a good way to understand the the theology and and what's going on in John's gospel is actually to read John's epistles, to to read first John. And to see what John is talking about there as it kind of talks back and forth to John's gospel. And we read this in chapter 4 of 1st John. So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us.
Jeffrey Heine:God is love, and whoever abides in love, abides in God, and God abides in him. By this is love perfected with us so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment. Because as He is, so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.
Jeffrey Heine:We love because he first loved us. That's how. That's how we grow in this love and affection for Jesus Christ. The way that it's even possible for us to love Jesus is because we have been loved first. We love Jesus because he first loved us.
Jeffrey Heine:And this love is not like worldly love. It's not contingent upon certain actions and agreements. No, it is based on covenant, the covenant love of God. And we are brought into that love through the work of the spirit joining us to Christ. We begin with love.
Jeffrey Heine:The first evidence, the presence of God in your life is love. Love for God, love for neighbor. The second aspect, the second evidence of the presence of Jesus that Jesus promises us is obedience. Love for Jesus manifests in our lives, in our obedience to Jesus. And Jesus says in verse 15, If you love me, you will keep my commandments.
Jeffrey Heine:Now, there's a tendency within the church today to sidestep talking about obedience. Maybe for some of you, the the just hearing the word can bring up some archaic image of blind adherence, maybe abusive authority figures, and it can bring up some old time image maybe that you have of God that it's obey everything that I say or eternal torment awaits. And and you really can't build a trendy church on that message. So so what we do is we we take obedience and we just kinda put it at the very back of our Christian vocabulary, or maybe eliminate it altogether. Because we don't wanna be a church with a bunch of rules.
Jeffrey Heine:God's not like that anymore. And if we talk about obedience, then we're disregarding or diminishing the grace of God. And and so the message becomes God is all grace, and if you get some spare time and you think about it, if you really want to go to like pro level Christian, then maybe you can think about obedience, but if you don't get to it, that's okay. There's grace. And we treat it like that.
Jeffrey Heine:We end up we end up treating obedience like your coworker who has a cover band, and they they put a flyer up in the break room, and they've got a show on Saturday night. It would be great if you could go, but you don't have to. It'd be great if you if it accords with what with what you already have going on on Saturday. If you've got nothing else going on, make it over to the show. But if you don't, that's fine.
Jeffrey Heine:Just to be clear, the illustration is that our obedience to Jesus, we treat it like our coworker who has a cover band. But we do that, because it would just be a nice thing to do that we we could do God a favor and obey a little bit. And the reason that we do this, the reason that that that makes sense to us is because we see on the flip side that we think that in doing God that favor of a little obedience, there should be a corollary positive thing going on in our life. And if something bad happens, instead, we blame God for not holding up his end of the deal. It's like the next time you have an event and your coworker doesn't come out, and you say, I went to that dang thing on this Saturday night.
Jeffrey Heine:I spent my whole Saturday night at that Yeah, you've been there. So what do we do? We just wanna take that obedience and make it something that we don't have to talk about. Because when we talk about obedience, what we really have to start talking about is disobedience, and we don't wanna go there. Because more often than not, if I bring up the word obedience, you're not high fiving yourself with all the ways that you were awesome this past week.
Jeffrey Heine:No. You think about the times, the explicit occasions when you overtly and, consciously chose not to follow Jesus, to disobey. And so we don't wanna talk about it. And I'm sure that some of you grew up in a church where grace was not held up as the glorious gift of God. And maybe it was diminished, or at least not emphasized the way that it should be.
Jeffrey Heine:And so any time obedience comes up, you you get a little prickly. It it it it's not as sweet to the ear as that call to grace. But we make a serious error when we don't talk about obedience. But the key to talking about obedience is this. It's chronological for 1.
Jeffrey Heine:The the key is 2 fold. Chronological and topological. That's the most boring sentence I'm gonna say tonight, I promise. Make sure the person next to you is awake. Unless it's a baby, don't wake the baby.
Jeffrey Heine:But, chronological, so the first thing, Means that sequence matters. It matters when we're talking about obedience because we're talking about obedience in light of love. Jesus says, if you love me, you will obey me. So what's critical here is that we don't obey our way to love, we love our way to obedience. We're not we're not trying to obey our way into this loving relationship with God, that maybe at some point, he will finally accept me, and He will finally love me if I can just obey Him enough.
Jeffrey Heine:That's wrong. But no. We we love our way to obedience. And so let's be clear, because Jesus is being very clear here with his disciples in John 14. If we love Jesus, we will obey him.
Jeffrey Heine:And our love for Jesus is manifested. It is evidenced in our obedience to Him. And we love Him because He first loved us. The chronology matters. God loves us.
Jeffrey Heine:We love God. God directs us. We obey God. And if we change that order up, then we get religion of its most unhelpful sense. Jesus makes sure His disciples hear what He's saying.
Jeffrey Heine:He actually repeats it 3 different times in different ways. He says in verse 21, whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me, and he who loves me will be loved by my father. And I will love him and manifest myself to him. This might not be easy to hear, but if we love Jesus, we will obey him. Because Jesus says, your love for Him is evidenced in your obedience to Him.
Jeffrey Heine:Why is Jesus talking about this now? There's not much time left. But why is he talking about it here, Right before his betrayal, right before the cross, why now? Look with me at verse 30. It's where he emphasizes that he doesn't have much time left.
Jeffrey Heine:He says, I will no longer talk much with you, for the ruler of this world is coming. He has no claim on me, but I do as the Father has commanded me, so that the world may know that I love the Father. Jesus is teaching about love and obedience, because that's what He's doing right now. That's what he's doing. Jesus loves the Father, and because he loves the Father, he is obeying the father.
Jeffrey Heine:And it's because of Jesus' great love for the father that he is obeying the father and going to the cross to die. 1st and foremost, when we look at the cross, we are seeing an evidence of the love of the son for the father and His obedience to the Father. And Jesus says, What you see me doing right now, you do that. You love and obey. Because that's how we understand what Jesus is doing right now.
Jeffrey Heine:Jesus loves and obeys, and He calls us to love and obey. This is challenging. This is tough. I wanna acknowledge that. I was once at a conference a number of years ago, and I heard a preacher tell a bunch of preachers, You don't need to challenge people in your sermons.
Jeffrey Heine:People are challenged by the world. They need to be comforted. And there's an element of truth to that. There's also an element of crazy. And the element of crazy is that you can't read John 14 and not be challenged unless you're not a disciple.
Jeffrey Heine:But if you're a disciple, if you are seeking to follow your lord and savior Jesus Christ, when you read these words, it's challenging. Because we have to look at our actual love of Jesus and our actual obedience to Jesus, our actual Lord and King. Not just ideas that we can agree with and nod our heads on Sunday and approve of, but what we actually do and live, where our belief actually has a place of action and makes an actual difference. Jesus calls us to love and obey, just as He loves and obeys the Father. So that's the first one, love.
Jeffrey Heine:The second one, obedience. The third, evidence, peace. Look at verse 27. He says, Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you.
Jeffrey Heine:Not as the world gives to you do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. Peace is talked about a lot in the New Testament. 5 times, God is called the God of peace. And here in John 14, we see that Jesus is promising his peace as as he gives his peace to his disciples.
Jeffrey Heine:The apostle Paul says to the Ephesians, Jesus Himself is our peace. To the Colossians, Paul says, let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts. He says to the Philippians, and the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Peace is an evidence of the presence of God in your life, His peace. Peace with God, peace with those around you, your neighbor, insofar as it lies with you, and peace within your own soul.
Jeffrey Heine:And this peace is not like the world gives, But this peace is tied inseparably to the person of Jesus Christ Himself. He is our peace. And we have to go back and remember, we were at war with God. We were at war. We were His enemy, Romans 5.
Jeffrey Heine:We were His enemy. We we were sons and daughters of destruction. Ephesians 2. We were against Him, and he made peace through the blood of the cross. Just like we cannot love or obey on our own, we cannot have peace on our own.
Jeffrey Heine:No matter how hard we might strive and work and try. We are dependent upon God for these things. And we we evidence His presence. His presence is made evident, made manifest in us when we see love and obedience and peace in our lives. At the core of what Jesus is promising here in love, obedience, and in peace, at the core is the promise of the Holy Spirit to lead the disciple to all truth, to bring to bear, to bring to mind remembrance of the things that Jesus has taught them, to comfort them, to bring that peace when chaos is all around the disciples.
Jeffrey Heine:I mean, you think about in Acts, when stones are being hurled at the disciples, they look up and see Jesus. Right? They behold his glory. How? The work of the Spirit.
Jeffrey Heine:How do they have that boldness to proclaim the things that they are proclaiming? The spirit. They have known him, but Jesus promises he will be in you, and He will lead you to all truth. This promise of presence of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is an eternal promise. In verse 17, Jesus says, you know the spirit.
Jeffrey Heine:He dwells with you and he will be in you. In verse 20, he says, I am in my father. You are in me, and I am in you. Have you ever been somewhere that you did not belong? I mean, where it was very, very clear, you did not belong there.
Jeffrey Heine:A couple of years ago, I went with a professor at Beeson Divinity School and a handful of seminarians to England to study, the Anglican church. And there are 3 other American students, and then, doctor Gerald Bray. And, some of you have met him or studied with him before. He's a world renowned scholar, and and that was very evident there, where we got to do things and go places that otherwise you don't really get to go to. I got to visit Little Gidding where T.
Jeffrey Heine:S. Eliot, there was a chapel on this property, and and he stayed there, and he wrote poetry. I got to hold an original manuscript of Thomas Cranmer. I got to see all kinds of amazing things. But perhaps one of the one of the wildest events was, we were walking in the rain.
Jeffrey Heine:Imagine it raining in London. And we were walking in the rain, and, we came to Lambeth Palace, which is the home of the Archbishop of Canterbury, at least it has been for the last 800 years. And, and we come up to the to the gate, and there are all these tourists. And even though it's raining, there are still tourists gathered at the gate, and they're peering in and looking and taking pictures. Doctor.
Jeffrey Heine:Bray walks straight up to the gate, reaches into his billfold, and pulls out a little card that he holds up, and the big iron gate opens. And past all these tourists who look just like me, rain pants, chakos, wet backpack, They all just look at us, and we walk in. We walk into the palace. We walk into the library. And standing in the library, I get to see Queen Elizabeth I, her book of common prayer.
Jeffrey Heine:I see, John Newton's diary. I meet a count, like a count count, like a real actual count. And as I'm trying to find, like, a place to stash my wet backpack and just kind of dry off a little bit, I was supremely aware that I was somewhere that I did not belong. When I walked past those tourists, those soaking wet tourists that I should have been among, and the look of surprise on their faces, the surprise on the guard's face as he's letting us in, and he he doesn't know how we're supposed to be there, but but we're with doctor Bray. You see, I didn't get into that place based on my own name or my own merit.
Jeffrey Heine:I got into that place under the name of someone else. I was qualified to go into a place that I did not belong based on another. When you hear things like, I am in my father, you are in me, I am in you, the spirit is in you, When you hear those things, bear in mind, you are ushered into a place you don't belong. Not on your name, not on your merit, not on your obedience or your love. You are ushered into a place.
Jeffrey Heine:You are qualified based on another. You are brought in to this amazing triune relationship. Father, Son, and Spirit. That the Spirit is in you. You are in Christ.
Jeffrey Heine:Christ is in the Father. You are brought into that based upon the blood of Jesus, the engrafting work of the Spirit to unite you to that person, Jesus, and the supreme love of the Father to see that happen. So if we fool ourselves into thinking that obedience is something that gets us in there, we are dead wrong. We are ushered into that place based upon the name and blood of another. And if we didn't get into it based on our good works, we are not held in that place due to our good works, nor are we cast out because of our disobedience.
Jeffrey Heine:But we stand there in confidence, in humble confidence because of the blood of the 1 who saved us. Topology. But you're wondering when that was gonna come up again. It's the study of place. Our culture does a good job asking the questions of, who am I?
Jeffrey Heine:And maybe that's one that you're wrestling with right now. But the bigger question for each one of us is, where are we? Where is our place? Because if it is in Christ Jesus, if it's in him, if that is where we are, the question of who we are and what we're going to do fades into the backdrop. Where are you?
Jeffrey Heine:Are you in Christ? Is he in you? Is the spirit in you? And you in Christ, are you in the Father? Has he made his home with you to dwell with you?
Jeffrey Heine:And is his presence evident in your life? In love, obedience, and peace. Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him, and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with Let's pray. Spirit, help us.
Jeffrey Heine:Comfort our souls with the good news of the gospel that Jesus has made a way for us. And may your peace, may your peace surround us. May your love be poured into our souls that we might love, that we might obey, and that we might live in the peace of Christ forever. We pray these things in His name. Amen.
