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Today's Reading: John 15:26 - 16:15
Today's reading is from John chapters 1526 through to 1615 and if you have the Red Bible, that's on page 1677.
John 15:26-27
When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who goes out from the Father, he will testify about me. And you also must testify, for you have been with me from the beginning.
John 16:1-4
All this I have told you, so that you will not fall away. They will put you out of the synagogue. In fact, the time is coming when anyone who kills you will think they are offering a service to God. They will do such things because they have not known the Father or me. I have told you this, so that when their time comes, you will remember that I warned you about them. I did not tell you this from the beginning because I was with you, but now I am going to him who sent me.
John 16:5-11
None of you asks me, where are you going? Rather, you are filled with grief because I have said these things. But very truly I tell you, it is for your good that I'm going away. Unless I go away, the Advocate will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you. When he comes, he will prove the world to be in the wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment, about sin, because people do not believe in me, about righteousness, because I am going to the Father, where you can see me no longer, and about judgment, because the Prince of this world now stands condemned.
John 16:12-15
I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. 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. He will glorify me, because it is from me that he will receive what he will make known to you. All that belongs to the Father is mine. That is why I said the Spirit will receive from you what he will make known to you. This is the word of the Lord.
The Farewell Discourse
Well, we're continuing today in our series from the upper room. I'm not sure where it was to from the upper room to the cross. There we go.
And the passage today is right in the middle of this journey, this section, and it's this whole journey is called Jesus' Farewell Discourse, where Jesus is speaking to the 12 disciples specifically. So chapter 12 in John is the end of Jesus' public teaching, where he's outside teaching the crowds. And then he enters into the upper room for the Passover.
And the rest of his teaching, up until his arrest and betrayal by Judas, takes place with just the 12 disciples. So chapters 13 to 18 is Jesus just talking to the 12 disciples, or the 11 once Judas departs to betray him. And we're in the book of John, and it is John the Apostle who was there, one of the 12 who wrote this down and was listening to Jesus' teaching and was part of this journey.
So these five chapters from 13 to 18 are unusual, and they're not like a collection of Jesus' teaching over time. But all of this takes place and is taught in just one night. And most of it is on a walk through the city of Jerusalem.
A Walk Through the City
So today we're talking about Jesus giving his spirit. Hopefully you can see on this map, the upper room they think was likely there in the kind of left of the new part of Jerusalem at the time. And then they walked through the city to one of the gates.
So there's a number of different gates, but the fountain gate is around there. And we think that's one of the gates that they probably exited through. And it says they then went out across the Kidron Valley, which you can see there, over to the Garden of Gethsemane.
So the Kidron Valley runs along the edge of the mountain that Jerusalem is built on. So we're right in the middle of this kind of crazy night where they take this journey and when Jesus teaches them on the way. So I thought I'd just quickly recap kind of the steps that have happened.
A Night of Preparation
So this is the night before Jesus' death. And he enters the upper room of a house in Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover with his disciples. And he knows that it's his last chance to prepare them for what is to come.
You might remember some of these things.
- He washes his disciples' feet in that room.
- He predicts that he'll be betrayed by Judas.
- He predicts that Peter will deny him.
- He then tries to, well, he comforts them with the idea of heaven and seeing him again in the future.
- And he says very clearly that the way to the Father and the way to heaven is through him.
- He then promises the Holy Spirit will come.
- And he teaches them that loving him is the equivalent or is very strongly connected to obeying and being faithful to him.
And it's around this point where Judas leaves the group and goes off to betray Jesus. And then soon after, they leave the upper room and they start to walk through the streets of the city, through that kind of area down there. And as they walk, he continues to teach them things.
We still haven't got to the passage today. As they walk, he says that they are his friends. They're not servants.
They're not anything lesser, but they are his friends. He tells them that he loves them. He loves us, but that love includes discipline to encourage healthy growth.
And he talks about how we are to obey Jesus' commands and to love each other in order to be marked as his friends, to be seen as his friends. But then as his friends, that means we will be hated as he was hated. At this point, it's very late.
It's after midnight and they get to the gate at the edge of the city. And that's where we read this chapter, chapter 16, which is almost like a summary of everything that he's already said during this walk. And after this chapter, they leave the city and they head out across the Kidron Valley to the Garden of Gethsemane.
A Silent Walk and Serious Words
And as far as we know, they were silent on that walk through the valley. There's nothing recorded about what was said there. So I don't know if you can imagine it, standing at that gate on the edge of the city, looking out over the dark, quiet Kidron Valley in the middle of the night.
And Jesus is saying these very serious things like the time is coming when anyone who kills you would think they're offering a service to God. It was quite the walk and talk that evening, not your usual after dinner stroll. And I hope you come back next week to hear the exciting conclusion when they reach the gates of the Garden of Gethsemane.
There's more. But this was really Jesus' last chance to tell his disciples the things they needed to know before he wasn't around anymore. And his goal was to encourage them and prepare them.
And it says in verse one, so that they do not fall away or stumble. He wants to prepare them so they won't lose their faith, especially when difficult times come. And that's what that idea, that fall away means in this context that he wants them to make sure that their faith is strong.
Recalibrating Reality
So as we read this passage, we have this context that Jesus knows he's going to die and go away from them. And everything he says is to encourage and prepare them for what is next. But it's not just jollying them along or cheering them up or giving them false hope.
It's deeply realistic. He tells them that things aren't going to be easy. They'll be kicked out of their communities.
They'll be killed. They will suffer for their faith. But he's also trying to recalibrate their view of reality to give them the perspective they need for their faith to survive.
So what is that perspective that they needed? And most likely that we also need for our faith to survive. When I was at high school, I was very good at maths.
And I would say the teachers thought I was a bit of a brat. In my maths exams, I would just write down the answer after calculating it in my head. And they would tell me that I needed to show my working.
And I would say, no, I don't. You might need to, but I can just do it in my head. And they get a look on their face.
And then they would calmly say, no, we need you to know that you got to that answer in the right way. And I would say, but if it's the right answer, what difference does it make? If there are teachers here today, I apologize.
And I sympathize now for what you have to put up with. I mean, I did win a lot of certificates of distinction in the state maths competitions, but still I shouldn't have been so much of a brat. I also used to correct the Christian studies teacher quite a lot, but that's a different story.
I had to make a public apology for that. However, today I do want to jump to the end and tell you the answer, but then I promise I'll go back and try and explain how I got there. So the answer, I believe the perspective we need to have for our faith to survive is this.
Finding Endless Love and Truth
We have to expect life to be hard and sad and to often feel overwhelming. But in our Trinitarian God, there is so much love for us to be drawn into that it can outshine anything that we experience in this life. And there's also so much truth for us to absorb more and more and more that can enlighten any darkness and guide us through any challenges that we experience.
There's so much love and so much truth in Christ that we can spend our whole lives and never get to the end of it. Neither of these things appear for us all at once, but as we draw close to God, we experience more and more and more love and truth. And there's a guy called David Ford, who wrote a commentary on the Gospel of John.
And he says, this farewell discourse is oriented to realistic, humble, faithful, vulnerable, and joyful participation together in the ongoing drama of being loved and loving. The first bit of the working to get to that answer, I think, is to think about the Trinity. This passage is really a significant passage for understanding the Trinity.
We see Jesus speaking about the Father and the spirit of truth and the advocate in this passage. And there are different ways of referring to the Holy Spirit, because the advocate is testifying to the truth. It's kind of, there's ideas of kind of trial setting context in this.
The spirit testifies to the truth about Jesus. The Holy Spirit is also referred to as the spirit of Christ, the comforter, the counsellor. And as Trinity, our God is one, but is also three.
The Mystery of the Trinity
It's hard to understand. The Athanasian Creed says that we worship one God in Trinity and the Trinity in unity, neither blending their persons nor dividing their essence. For the person of the Father is distinct person.
The person of the Son is another, and that of the Holy Spirit still another. But the divinity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is one, their glory equal and their majesty co-eternal. I hope that clears it up for you.
It's a hard picture, especially for those of us who are really good at maths, because we know that one plus one plus one does not equal one, it equals three. But we're not really talking about a created being whose existence is governed by the laws of physics or even human logic. Those are things that are part of creation.
God is the creator. He's outside of that.
And I don't think that we should have an expectation that as part of the creation, that we will be able to understand the essence of the creator. So I'm not going to try to attempt to explain the details of the nature of the Trinity. But what I do want to focus on is the relationship of the persons of the Trinity between the Father, the Son, and the Spirit.
But I do think I figured out a really amazing and unique mathematical formula to explain the Trinity, which I'll show you and you can decide for yourself. So here you go. One plus one plus one equals three.
But one times one times one equals one. You can ponder on that over the rest of the weekend. The love between the Father and the Son is something that John refers to many times leading up to this passage.
And it's a really important part of the context that we have here. So in John 3, he talks about the Father loves the Son and has placed everything in his hands. John 5, for the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does.
And John 15, as the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. So beyond the mathematical formula, I imagine the Trinity kind of like a group hug situation.
Invited Into the Divine Love
They're connected by love. These three people just hugging each other with all the love that you could imagine. And the love between the members of the Trinity is a depth of love that we can't comprehend.
However, we are actually invited into it. Jesus is saying to the disciples and us, as the Father has loved me, so I love you. Now remain in my love.
Let's get in on that group hug. This picture captures a little of how it makes me feel when I think about it. That lady in the middle and the look on her face as she's being right in the centre of this group hug.
I don't know who that guy at the back is. Just ignore him.
I won't try to take that metaphor too far. But I think this captures a little bit of that, like you've snuck into the middle of a group hug or you've been pulled into it. It's just a beautiful, beautiful feeling.
And that's kind of what is happening when we're invited into the love of the Trinity. I pray, you know, sometimes you read words in the Bible and they come through just as words, but part of the Holy Spirit's job and what I pray for us is that he will reveal the depth of God's love to us in a real and deep way as we read these verses. So there's that love in the Trinity, but there's also this idea, the Trinity has all knowledge as they are truly one.
Guided Into All Truth
They share all knowledge between them. So along with the love, the Trinity contains all truth about everything ever. And the coming of the Holy Spirit connects us to that truth.
This chapter today says that the Spirit will guide us in all truth. Jesus says just before that, that he's holding things back from the disciples because they can't actually bear it all at once. It's too much to take on.
And then immediately afterwards he says, but the Holy Spirit will come and guide you into all truth. So it's this idea that, you know, Jesus is giving them what they can understand now, but the Holy Spirit will come and there'll be more and more and more and more. It's an ongoing kind of thing of being guided into truth.
Now you might've heard some people say that this is a promise just for the disciples who would be guided to write the Bible and that's what that's referring to. But the context of this is more of an ongoing situation. It's a never ending imparting of truth, more and more truth.
And it is, I believe, for us as well. Guiding into all truth though, is not saying that we will become infallible, but that we will continue to grow and to learn for our whole lives as that source of truth never ends. There's so much truth in the Trinity for us to learn and to grow in.
So the Trinity is the source of all love and truth and we're connected into that, into both of those things through different roles of the members of the Trinity, but particularly now in this context as the Holy Spirit has come. In verse five, it says, none of you asks, where are you going? And it might seem a little strange that Jesus says that there, but it's because earlier in John, the disciples asked a number of times, how can we follow you if we don't know where you're going?
They seem obsessed. Whenever Jesus said, I'm going away, they'd be like, where are you going?
And it's like, no, that's not quite the point. But this comment, he says, none of you asks me, where are you going? He's like, finally, you're not asking me that question.
But it shows that they've finally understood or at least come to terms with the fact that Jesus is going away and that their confusion has kind of now turned into grief. But Jesus takes great lengths to assure them that it's better that he goes away as then the Holy Spirit can come and that will be a new and a permanent experience of the Trinity, making access available to this unending source of truth and love. Apparently even better than hanging out with Jesus at the city gates in the middle of the night, which sounds pretty fun.
Proving the World Wrong
This next section from seven to 11 we'll focus on a little bit now. It says that the Holy Spirit will prove the world wrong. And that's kind of using legal kind of trial language.
It's like he will mount a full legal process to demonstrate beyond doubt the truth about Jesus. He will build a case. It speaks of sin, righteousness and judgment.
And that's kind of an all encompassing statement. It covers everything that impacts the world in a kind of moral and spiritual way. And the Holy Spirit's work is to show the world that it's only through Jesus that things can be made right.
So there's three kind of sections here.
- The first one is that the world is wrong about sin because it doesn't believe in Jesus. We know that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life. And Jesus is the foundation of the only way of life that can bring peace to the world. So not believing in Jesus is the root of sin.
- In the context of the time and the Jewish leaders, they thought sin was not following the rules. But Jesus says, no, sin is not following me. It's a different perspective. So to be right about sin is to know Jesus, to trust Jesus, to love Jesus, to be faithful to Jesus and to know that sin comes when we're disconnected from him.
The next section talks about the world being wrong about righteousness. And what we see here is that they're wrong about righteousness because righteousness isn't about us acting right, but it's about being in a right relationship with God. And Jesus going to the father demonstrates what it means to be in right relationship and gives us access to that relationship.
They thought to be righteous was to show all the outward signs of a righteous person. Looking righteous, but true righteousness is not from us and our actions, but from our relationship with God. The relationship that Jesus has with his father within the Trinity shows that perfect example of what right relationship is.
And it shows us how we get into a right relationship with God only through Jesus. So righteousness is not about doing what's right, but about being right with God. To be wrong about righteousness is to think that it comes from you and your actions.
But to being right about righteousness is to know that through Jesus, you are set right with God and you are with the father in Jesus. The third one is that the world is wrong about judgment because they only see the outside appearance of things. They see Jesus' death as a judgment on him.
They see it that he has lost. They see him as defeated and irrelevant. But not only did Jesus' death deal with our sin, it also meant the Holy Spirit would come and that his resurrection from death was this great victory over death and the devil.
To be wrong about judgment is to believe that Jesus is dead, buried, and irrelevant. To be right about judgment is to see that Jesus' death made him the victor and condemned the ruler of the world, whether that be the devil or that personification of human power and pride. And this is the encouragement that he's trying to bring.
Don't worry when you see that. Don't worry when you see that haughty, worldly power.
Don't worry when the world looks down on you or persecutes you and they think they have passed judgment on you as silly or irrelevant because they are already condemned. They just don't know it. So continue to follow Jesus.
Living in a Fallen World
Continue to live in love. So our passage today is like a summary of everything he's already said on this walk. We're immersed now in a life, in a divided, violent world.
We're vulnerable to sin, evil, sickness, suffering, misperception, falsehood, and failure. But there's always more than that.
There's more truth, more courage, more peace, more prayer, more love, more trust, as we know the Father himself loves us deeply. In his farewell discourse, Jesus wants to draw the disciples as deeply as possible into himself. Into himself as the truth more and more.
He wants to draw them into the middle of the love between God, the Father, and the Son. It's like being in the middle of that group hug. And he wants to prepare them for the gift of the Holy Spirit that will be better even than physically hanging out with him.
And those things will help them to persevere and to be faithful to Jesus in a way that's inseparable from loving him and being loved by him. So this is Jesus saying goodbye and preparing them as best he can to not stumble or fall away. Because they will be facing death and martyrdom for Jesus.
So they need to know that losing their relationship with Jesus, the source of love and truth, is incomparably worse than dying for it. As we hold to Christ, there is an incredible mingling of love, friendship, suffering, joy, glory, and stretching yourself into more truth and wisdom and faithfulness. How do we do it though?
How to Stay Connected
So for me, the challenge has always been that I know that it's God who does the work. But I still need to do something to take hold of that, to understand how that connection is made. How do I allow God to do that?
He's there eager to fill me with more love and truth. But how do I let him do that? And we're so loved, but throughout the book of John, there's also a lot of mentions of this connection between love and faithfulness and obedience.
Jesus says, if you love me, you will obey my commands. And his commands can be summarized as to love him and love one another. We need to receive from God, but there's a really important part of that that we also need to give love and share truth.
It's not something we do once we're the perfect Christian. It's something that helps us to grow. So we need to be doing it all the way through.
And you could be a young person today and studying and stressed and really focused on achieving grades that like the rest of your life depends on it. But don't let that overshadow the importance of taking time to allow God to show you his love and truth. You might have a young family that keeps you busy and you're working hard as a parent and job to provide and care for your family.
But how will you make sure you are still being part of that group hug and inviting other people into it? Perhaps you're retired and you have some time on your hands. So how do you create a rhythm in your life that includes the spirit's work of bringing more love and truth?
How do you maintain your passion to love others and obey Jesus? There are always more people to bring into this ongoing drama of being loved and loving. There's lots of little things that help us do that.
- So we need to maintain meeting together.
- It needs to be a priority.
- We need to encourage each other. That's part of the way that God designed things to work.
- We need to make time to pray and read and listen to God.
- But we also need to be obeying Jesus by loving one another.
Are we being patient and kind? Are we forgiving? Are we really keeping no record of wrongs?
Are we seeking the best for others? Are we honouring others? Are we rejoicing with them in their joy and weeping with them in their sorrow?
It should not be a surprise to us that we suffer for our faith at times, that people may hate us because of it. It's not a sign that God is not in control or that he has abandoned us because Jesus has warned us very clearly that that will be the case. But it is an incredible encouragement from Jesus that we will have this connection to this endless love and truth that we're connected to it in those difficult times.
We can't just be receiving love and truth, though. We have to be loving others and sharing truth. So I want to leave you with this question.
In what ways are you going to be faithful to Jesus by loving others and sharing truth this week? This has to be a priority for us if we are followers of Christ because life can be hard and incredibly sad. But our God, who is three in one, through him there's so much love for us to be drawn into and so much truth for us to know.
And we have the spirit who comforts us and teaches us the truth of Jesus. So let's make time to listen and to learn and to love.
Amen.
