Unfailing Hope (John 16:1-11 Jeff Kliewer)

The Ethiopian Eunuch and the Pattern of Baptism

The Lord worked in the early church. So this is the person we call the Ethiopian eunuch. He was approached by a man named Philip, we call that man Philip the Evangelist, who testified of who Jesus was.

Let me read what happens here. It says, and the eunuch answered Philip and said, please tell me, of whom does the prophet say this? The Ethiopian eunuch was reading from the book of Isaiah, Isaiah chapter 53.

Does he say this of himself or someone else? And Philip opened his mouth and beginning from this scripture, he preached Jesus to him. And as they went along the road, they came to some water and the eunuch said, look, water, what prevents me from being baptized?

And Philip said, if you believe with all your heart, you may. And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God. And they both, or he ordered the chariot to stop and they both went down into the water, Philip as well as the eunuch and he baptized him.

Saul of Tarsus, Conversion, and Public Testimony

Now I'm gonna turn the page once over because this pattern happened again. This time salvation came to a person named Saul of Tarsus, but we know him better as the Apostle Paul, but he wasn't always the Apostle Paul.

The Lord had to do a miracle in his heart just the way he does in any person that comes to know Jesus Christ. Paul was given salvation. Let's read the story here. It says this. Now Ananias departed and entered the house.

Ananias was a believer and he was sent to Saul of Tarsus after a great vision that Saul saw on the road to Damascus. And after laying hands on him, he said, brother Saul, the Lord Jesus who appeared to you on the road, which you were coming has sent me to you so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.

Paul was temporary or Saul was temporary blinded, but the Lord came through Ananias. He put his hands on him. He was healed. The Holy Spirit came upon him. Salvation came to Saul of Tarsus. So what happened then?

It says immediately from his eyes, something like scales fell and he regained his sight and he arose and he was baptized. That's the pattern we see. A miracle is done in a person's life where they are transformed by the power of the spirit of God.

They accept Jesus Christ. They are saved. They are his child. And then the first thing they want to do is testify publicly of the amazing work that God's done in their life. And they want to be baptized.

That's what we're going to see today down at the shore. We're going down to the shore. Hey, great. Still, we're still summertime. We're going to go down to the shore and have this baptism. It's going to be at, it's going to, the doors at Island Baptist Church in Beach Haven are going to be open at 1 .30.

We're going to be having some fellowship before that time. And then about two o 'clock, the testimony time and some singing of hymns will commence. And a pastor might say a few short words, but then after all the testimonies, then we're all going to go down to the beach or the bay and we're going to baptize about 11 folks.

So very exciting. It's going to be 1 .30 to two. We're going to meet at Island Baptist Church in Beach Haven, and then we're going to go on to the bay. So please, if you can, come on down, because when people give a testimony of how great God is, there needs to be witnesses.

So we're going to be their witnesses today. Next, starting next week, the second service, this service, we're going to have a starting point class in the back classroom there. That class is for those who are possibly desiring to become members or just learn more about Cornerstone Church and the EFCA itself.

What does the E-Free Church stand for? And if you just want to get to know how things work around here, that would be great. And if you do want to become a member, these classes are needed. So please come to that if you'd like.

And then after that, the three weeks of those classes, then starting in October during the second service, we're going to have a new believers class. And that's going to be very exciting. We'll talk about that later.

Also, we have a congregational meeting on October 16th. So members and those who would like to participate in that, keep that in mind. That's Monday night at seven o 'clock. Now, last week, we gave out these cards.

And the ushers have them again. They would like, this is for new folks, but also folks that have been here for a while. What's on this card is the opportunity on the front page to put your name down, if you'd like, and then check off a box, because there's many, many opportunities for fellowship and study during the week.

And if you would like to take part in that, what you would do is check off the boxes, put your name down and email, and then you can either give it to one of the ushers, as Rod's coming up right now, or put it in the black box at the back of the sanctuary.

And then on the back is even more important. Well, important in a different way. Opportunities to serve. If you wanna serve in the church, you can do that. Check off those boxes. But here you go, QR code.

If you scan that in on your phone, you're gonna get the Church Center app. And this is the way you find out what's going on in the church. The Church Center app has a calendar on it. And for instance, if you wanted to know where the baptism was today, you can just go on the calendar and click on that, and it would tell you right where and when.

And then Rod's also holding up these red cards. And if anyone would like to fill out this red card, this is a contact card. And this, again, would contain your name and contact information so that we could come out to you, either with an email or a phone contact, or if you'd like to be visited.

And if you're new to the church and could fill one of these out, we'd very much appreciate it. So thank you, Rod. And raise your hand just if you'd like either one of those cards, and Rod'll get that to you.

Okay. I'll give Rod a second to do that. As I said, we're very excited today, and I'm very excited about the opportunities for folks to have fellowship in the church. There's a lot of studies going on, and hopefully you'll be able to avail yourself to one of those studies, one of these nights.

Like Sunday nights, things are going on. Monday nights, a lot of things are going on. But Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, a lot of things are going on. Tonight as well, we are gonna have prayer time at the church.

Even though this is gonna be a long afternoon down at the shore, and we're gonna enjoy that, we're gonna come back here for prayer tonight as well. So if anyone would like to come back for prayer tonight, we'll do that as well.

I think Rod's good, and let's go to the Lord in prayer. Lift up the service. Father, thank you so much, Lord. We realize that it is you who's working, Lord. And Father, we are dependent upon you. We thank you so much, Father, that we can come before you this morning and worship your holy name.

We thank you so much, Father, for the worship band that is up here, Lord, that is just ready to shout out praises to you. We thank you that we can also lift our voices with the worship team, Father, and just rejoice in who you are.

We thank you for our pastor who will open your word to us today, and that you would be with him and fill him with your spirit, Father. We are so grateful, Father, and thankful, Father, for those who are going in the waters of baptism today.

Lord, you've done miracles and worked in people's hearts to bring them into your family, Father. And we're gonna rejoice in that today, in Jesus' name, amen.

Christ Alone and the Sole Mediator

Will you join us this morning? It says in 1 Timothy 2 .15 that Jesus is the sole mediator between God and man. There is no reconciliation except through him. And there are a lot of modern hymn writers that are writing songs that allow us to take those truths and ingrain them deeply in our hearts.

So let's sing one of those this morning. Christ alone, my hope is found He is my light, my strength, my song This cornerstone, this solid ground Firm through the fiercest drought and storm What heights of love, what depths of peace These are still when strivings cease My comforter, my all in all Here in the love of Christ, I stand in the ground I am moved by darkness slain Then bursting forth in glorious fame Up from the grave again, this is my first cry To final breath, Jesus can ease my debt, no power Let us continue to praise and sing praises to him as it says in Psalm 148 .13.

It says, let us praise the name of the Lord for his name alone is exalted. His splendor is above the earth and above the heavens. Beaches of heaven, starry heights Lights of the evening, dancing in silent skies Brilliance of morning, breaking days All things made by his decree Hear creation's melody, praise him Pray again, Lord Jesus, thank you that we can sing praises to your name, that, Lord, you are awesome in every way and that you allow us to wait on you, allow us to trust in you, to be our solid rock, our forever hope, our comfort, our foundation.

When the enemy surrounds And my heart grows faint within When the darkness overwhelms And my fears are pressing in I will trust in you, O Lord In the silence I will wait I will stand upon your Word For my solid rock and my salvation My steadfast hope that won't be shaken My soul, my ship, I'm sure in your power My salvation, my stead foundation This is love I can't explain This is mercy unreserved Through your sacrifice so great I have peace that's undeserved For the battle has been won And I fear no shame or loss Now the sting of death is gone You're my salvation, my steadfast hope That won't be shaken, my soul will wait, my soul will wait Pour out our hearts for Jesus.

Hang on, let's be full of trust And save your strong defender of trusty Is that your prayer this morning? Hang on, let's be full of trust And save your defender of trusty You may be seated.

Prayer for Worship, Transformation, and Hope

Good morning. Let's go to the Lord in prayer. Our gracious Heavenly Father, we thank you for the opportunity to sing praise to your name for you are worthy. You're worthy of everything that we could ever bring to you.

Our highest praise, hallelujah. God, you are worthy. And Lord, this morning as we open your word, we pray that you would do a work in our hearts. God, I'm asking for a supernatural miracle in each of our hearts.

Lord, we have ways of thinking. There are patterns in our minds, even chemical paths and electrical paths in our brain that cause us to think certain thoughts again and again. But Lord, we pray that we would be conformed this morning to your way of thinking, that your word would transform how we think.

And with that, Lord, we pray that our hope will rise, that you will change our perspective. And Lord, we're asking that you do this by the Holy Spirit. Help us, Holy Spirit, help us to be more like Christ in whose name we pray, amen.

Hudson Taylor, China, and the Limits of Marxism

In the late 1800s, a missionary named Hudson Taylor moved to China. He was one of the first to go inland. Before him, there were some missionaries that had gone to the major cities, but Hudson Taylor went inland and began to reach people with the gospel.

And after his career, he had founded the China Inland Mission, and more and more missionaries came and began to reach that enormous country with the gospel of Jesus Christ. I preached this first service not knowing that there was a China Inland Missionary in the building this morning.

First service. It's now called OMF. It was Neil and Wani Thompson were here with us. Well, in the late 1800s, there was some progress of the gospel, and early into the 1900s, that gospel message continued to increase.

But in 1950, halfway through the 20th century, there was a major, major change in that nation. And some of you can guess what that was. It was Chairman Mao, Mao Zedong, bringing a communist manifesto.

He was influenced by Marx, and his first round of reforms in 1950 were called the Land Reform Campaign. What the Land Reform Campaign did was create two classes of people. According to Marx, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.

Well, these were termed the red class and the black class. The red class were the victims. These were the poor. These were the peasants living out in the countryside and working the fields. The rich landowners were the blacklist.

And so the reform in the 1950s, early 1950s, allowed the peasants to overthrow the landowners, to kill them, and to seize the land for themselves and divide it up amongst themselves. This was a communist revolution.

And the result of these reforms were two million dead in those first three years. Between 1956 and 1957, they had a second campaign. Now notice this about Marxists. They always name their campaign something flowery that sounds so innocuous.

But here's what this was called. Let 100 Flowers Bloom. The Let 100 Flowers Bloom campaign invited the input of the intellectuals. They invited everyone to give input into the communist government and let them know how they're doing.

Well, the intellectuals and the leading members of society said there's one thing that we want, free speech. Let us speak freely. Well, of course, the Let 100 Flowers Bloom campaign was a ruse, and those who spoke freely and sent their information to the government were summarily arrested and sent to prison camps where another million people died.

It's the fruit of Marxism. Between 1958 and 1960, they instituted what was called the Three Banners. And the most famous of this campaign was the Great Leap Forward. Have you heard of it? The Great Leap Forward in the Three Banners campaign, remember how the peasants had seized the land?

Well, now the government, the CCP, took ownership from the peasants. It became a command economy where the Chinese government owned everything and collectivized the economy. They began to tell everybody what to do.

And one of their first great ideas was they're going to outproduce the United States of America in making steel. I'm sure Pittsburgh was intimidated. But their plan of doing this was to ask everybody to bring the metal from their homes, spoons, pots, and bring it to have them melted down to produce steel.

Of course, this form of steel was not very helpful for the building of buildings. It was not forged as steel ought to be. Because under a command economy, you don't have the experts doing what they're capable of doing.

You have incompetent government telling people what to do. Now, I don't tell this story just to kick around communism. That's easy enough to do. I tell this story because between 1959 and 1962, 50 million Chinese people starved to death.

Under communism, 50 million Chinese people starved to death in the Great Famine. Because now the peasants were not working the land. There was no food in the countryside. The cities did okay. They survived.

But 50 million people died. There was yet another movement in the 1960s. After the famine, Mao lost his authority and they put in a different president. But Mao, Chairman Mao, then took authority again in the late 1960s and instituted the Chinese Cultural Movement.

This was the dismissal of the Christian missionaries. China Inland Mission, all of the missionaries were kicked out of the country. They tried to silence Christianity and make everybody a Maoist. They could read Marx and they could read Mao, but they could not read the Bible.

They instituted the Three-Self Protestant Church and a government-run Catholic Church, but all of the missionaries were kicked out. And it looked like Christianity was on the ropes in the 1960s and 70s.

But I wanna tell you something about the hope of Jesus Christ. It's a living hope. We serve a living Savior and the Holy Spirit that was in those believers was the same spirit that lived in the people that lives in us today, in this full room of believers in New Jersey.

The same spirit living in us was living in them. And in the 1980s, as freedom began to be introduced back into China, the failure of communism and the Chinese economy began to grow, listen, the number of believers in Christ living in China increased exponentially to the point where today there are between 30 million and 100 million believers living in China.

Did you know that? The hope of our gospel cannot be snuffed out by any government. It cannot be quenched by any worldly power. The persecution of this world is to be expected, but greater is he who is in us than he who is in the world.

There are more Chinese Christians meeting in houses of worship in China today than there are meeting in Europe in churches. More people will go to church this morning in China than they will in the entire continent of Europe.

The gospel has advanced in that way. The hope of the Christian will never utterly fail. But I suspect that as we gather here today, I can't see into anybody's heart. I don't know if you're plunged into the depths of depression or if you're soaring with unspeakable joy.

And often we can mask those emotions. Our faces often don't tell what's really going on on the inside. But we're gonna read in the text today about disciples whose hearts had plunged into sorrow and how it is his hope, the hope of the Holy Spirit lifted them.

What are the keys to living a hopeful, unfailing, hopeful Christian life? You're gonna get a PhD in hope this morning. Sound good? Turn with me to John 16, 1 to 11. The proverb said, hope deferred makes the heart sick.

Many hearts in this room, I'm sure, are sick this morning for lack of hope. We'll read John 16, 1 to 11. And I want you to watch for three concepts. One is expectations. Two is perspective. And three is the Holy Spirit, the helper.

These are the three keys to hope in our text. When your expectations are set right and you keep perspective right and you're filled with the Holy Spirit, your hope will soar. John 16, 1 to 11. I have said all these things to you to keep you from falling away.

They will put you out of the synagogues. Indeed, the hour is coming when whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God. And they will do these things because they have not known the Father nor me.

But I have said these things to you that when their hour comes, you may remember that I told them to you. I did not say these things to you from the beginning because I was with you, but now I am going to him who sent me.

And none of you asked me, where are you going? But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your heart. Nevertheless, I tell you the truth. It is to your advantage that I go away. For if I do not go away, the helper will not come to you.

But if I go, I will send him to you. And when he comes, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment. Concerning sin because they do not believe in me. Concerning righteousness because I go to the Father and you will see me no longer.

Concerning judgment because the ruler of this world is judged. Interesting passage and complex. We'll dig deep into these words, but I want us to begin in that first verse with the point that our hope will not fail.

Keeping Yourselves in the Love of God

Now, if you notice in verse one, the words that he's been giving us in this upper room discourse, remember he told us he is the true vine and his father is the gardener. We are the branches and we will bear fruit.

A genuine branch will bear fruit and this is what proves that we are his disciples. Chapter 15, verse eight, it's not that you earn anything from God by the fruit that you bear, but the fruitful Christian life proves that you are abiding in Christ.

You're connected to the true vine. So the word abide means to remain. It means to stay with Christ, to remain connected to him. You made a profession when you were younger, I would say most of you. Maybe there's some here that are not yet believing in Christ, but a majority of you have put your faith in Christ.

Maybe you walked in aisle at an evangelistic festival or you prayed a prayer to accept the Lord. It is your remaining with him through every trial, through every storm, until you breathe your last breath and enter into his presence, it is your abiding, your remaining in him that proves that that decision to follow Christ was genuine.

The salvation actually happened. So in verse one, notice what Jesus is doing here. He's giving them words to strengthen and help them and keep them, but he's saying more than if you'll simply do this, you'll make it.

He's not only giving them the tool to make it, he's saying you will make it because I'm giving you this tool. He will wield this tool in your life. I have said all these things to you to keep you from falling away.

These words will be the instrument that he uses to keep you. This becomes very explicit in the book of Jude and we're gonna turn there just briefly. Jude, it's only one chapter. If you can't find it, it's the second to last book, so just go to Revelation and it's only one page just before the last book in the Bible.

Jude chapter one, it's only one chapter, so it's just Jude, verses 17 to 25. I want you to notice the human responsibility to abide in Christ, to keep the faith. But then juxtaposed next to that, verses 24 and 25, it is Christ who's keeping us.

Verse 17 and following, but you must remember, beloved, the predictions of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ. They said to you, in the last time, there will be scoffers following their own ungodly passions.

Are there some scoffers in our world today? Following their passions, the lustful desires of the flesh, and really making that sexuality their religion in many cases? Verse 19, it is these who cause divisions.

Worldly people, notice, devoid of the Spirit. But you, beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit. You have responsibility as a Christian to keep praying. If you stop praying, you need to pray.

You need to abide and open the Word and hear the Word of God. It says keeping yourselves, building yourselves up, praying in the Holy Spirit. Verse 21, keeping yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life.

Have mercy on those who doubt. Save others by snatching them out of the fire. To others, show mercy with fear. That's warnings of coming judgment if you don't remain. Hating even the garments stained by the flesh.

But here's what I want you to notice. In this closing praise, this doxology, or benediction, verse 24 and 25, notice who it is that's keeping who. Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling. And to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy.

To the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority before all time and now and forever, amen. The genuine believer must use the means of grace. You must come to church and worship.

You must sing, read the Word, pray, remain in the love of God, exhort one another, give that phone call to snatch someone from the fire when you see them wandering. These are means of grace, the fellowship, the community.

But ultimately, the means are in God's hands. He is the one that is working in you to will and do according to his good pleasure. And ultimately, here's the good news, church. If you're born again and that spirit lives in you, he will never take his Holy Spirit from you.

You will make it safely to the end. Back to John 16, one. So what Jesus is saying here, I'm telling you these things. What things? Abide in the vine, love one another deeply. This is the new commandment, love.

John 15, verses eight and following. You will be hated in the world. I'm telling you that they're gonna hate you. Isn't that encouraging? They're gonna hate you. He's telling you that. And then finally, the promise of the helper in John 15, 26 and 27.

He's telling you this so that you make it. Church, when expectations are rightly set, hope isn't dashed against the rocks. Very often, your hope will fail and you will begin to stumble because your expectations were set not according to the word of God, but according to your own vain imagination.

Expectations are very important in the Christian life. When we set our expectations according to the word of God in this world, you will have trouble. But take heart, I have overcome the world. When you set your expectations properly and then things turn out even better than you expected, you go from joy to joy.

When you set your expectations wrongly and then you don't get what you had hoped for, hope deferred makes the heart sick, you begin to lose hope. So think about the expectations that the prosperity teachers promote.

Send your seed gift and God will make you wealthy. God will heal your every disease. It's up to you to have enough faith and there's never a time when he leaves Timothy sick with a stomach ailment or another sick in myelitis.

God's will is never for you to suffer. The prosperity teacher does not love you. He's fleecing you. He's fleecing the flock that you would send your seed gift so that he gets wealthy, but he leaves you expecting nothing but a seed gift and a seed gift.

He's not a shepherd. He's a wolf, but the good shepherd tells you the truth and sets your expectations. In this world, you will have trouble. In this world, you will have cancer. In this world, you will have a wayward son or daughter.

In this world, you will have death, pain. Look at verse two and three. He specifically tells the apostles what to expect. They will put you out of the synagogues. Indeed, the hour is coming when whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God and they will do these things because they have not known the father nor me.

But I have said these things to you. Notice the expectations. I'm setting your expectations that when their hour comes, you may remember that I told them to you. If this was expected, if this comes from the hand of God and he's in this pain, I can endure it.

My hope will not fail when something is going wrong at the workplace, a boss who's acting crazy or a marriage that's struggling and you can't get on the same page with your spouse and you think, well, if there's a God, why isn't he answering my prayer?

When your expectation is that you will have some struggle, you can trust him in the storm. You remember what he said. This is to be expected. So picture the 12th. Judas has been dismissed, give him a morsel of bread.

This indicates the betrayer. Jesus kind of kicks him out the door. He wants to spend some time with the 11, the genuinely saved. And what does he say to them? Philip, they're gonna kill you and they're gonna think they're offering praise to God.

And Philip goes to Carthage in North Africa and he begins to proclaim the gospel there and there is a mighty move of God. Many Africans coming to saving faith. And then they tell him, well, if you don't worship our Roman gods, if you don't worship this son God, you're going to die.

And Philip says, I worship the son of God, not the sun in the sky. And they tortured him to death. And Peter, they crucified him. And Peter said, what? I don't deserve to be crucified like my Lord. Crucify me upside down.

And Paul lost his head and Thomas run through with spears and all but John martyred for the faith. What Jesus said to them is what happened. Now, listen, church, this applies specifically to the apostles.

And throughout church history, the percentage of Christians who will be martyred is less than 0 .001%. That's good news. But if you start with this expectation and you say, I am willing not only to live for Christ, but to die for him.

That if the Lord brings into my life nothing but persecution and famine and nakedness and sword, I am willing to endure all things for the sake of the gospel. If your expectation is set like that, and then you wake up in the morning and you realize that you weren't born in Maoist China.

You weren't born in 1959. And your concern is how can I feed my starving child? There's not a scrap of food to eat and you watch your child die. But instead you're born in the United States of America.

A country built on individual rights. Do you see how your expectation set for suffering actually becomes a boon to your hope because you're being given so much more than you ever expected. When you think that everything above six feet underground is nothing but blessing and grace upon grace, that when you endure some suffering, your hope only rises all the more.

All the more reason to praise. We live in a culture that gives PhDs in covetousness. What Rosa Parks did in 1955, while Mao was taking over the country of China and causing the starvation of a nation, Rosa Parks on a bus recognized that she's made in the image of God.

And she has rights that are inalienable. That means they come from God, not from men. And when this man comes onto the bus and says, give me your seat because my skin is lighter than yours, she rightly stood by the imago Dei, the image of God and said, no, I'm gonna stay here.

I'm not gonna get up. And from that decision, there was a civil rights movement and so much good came of that. The Democratic Party was pushing what was called Jim Crow laws at the time. Williams Jennings Bryan had run for president three times in the late 1800s, early 1900s.

He was a strong supporter of this separation based on skin color. But while this country was fighting off that kind of nonsense, China was institutionalizing Marxism. And Marxism does the same thing wherever it was tried.

Now, I said that our culture is giving PhDs in covetousness. Marxism is the coveting of what other people have. It's a hatred of private property. But the cultural Marxism that's being introduced to our country is very much like the Maoist Chinese Marxism, but listen, it's being taught in the institutions, the schools, much more subtly.

You still have a red class and a black class. The red class are still the victim class, those supposedly oppressed. And based on any mark of identity, whether it be gender or economics or sexuality or how big or small or able or disabled, the victim class is owed things from the blacklisted, those who are considered the oppressor.

And this is what is taught in our universities and going on to graduate schools to the leaders of this nation. It's Marxism. It's teaching people that they are owed not individual rights that were all made in the image of God, but what James White calls Uber rights.

You are owed a living, finances, healthcare, housing, your student loans repaid, whatever it is, this is owed to you on account of some identity marker because you're part of the red list group, the victim class or as Marx called it, what?

The proletariat, a two-class system. This is what's being taught in our culture. Now, listen, our culture is drowning in anxiety and depression. Robert Jeffress recently spoke at a faith and freedom forum that myself and Bob Nichols attended.

And he said he was reading an article that talked about church attendance in the United States of America at all time lows, plummeting, people turning away from Christianity. And the very next article was about anxiety and depression reaching unprecedented levels in this country.

And he said, do you think that the two are connected? Our culture is moving away from Christianity towards Marxism, which teaches entitlement, being owed things. And the result of that is the expectation is set that I should be given these things.

And when it doesn't happen, people are anxious and tired and depressed. But what Jesus is doing here in verses one to four of chapter 16 is setting your expectation that even if God were to take you to the point of death, he's worth it.

And what he's doing, we'll read on, is changing your perspective on life. And this is why I prayed early on that God would change how we think, because these words, first of all, describe our natural state, how we tend to think as victims.

And the result is sorrow that fills our heart. Let's read verses four through seven. He's already said these things that when their hour comes, you may remember that I told them to you. Your expectations should be set by these words.

But now look at the perspective change. I did not say these things to you from the beginning because I was with you. But now I am going to him who sent me, and none of you asks me, where are you going?

He's a little frustrated with them, isn't he? Not because he's surprised, but he's showing them they're not thinking rightly. Why didn't you ask me where I'm going? None of you asks me. Go on. But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your heart.

I think if each of us were honest, there are times when sorrow fills our heart. And it's not the appropriate lament that comes from grieving loss. Sorrow has filled these guys' hearts because their perspective is wrong.

There is an appropriate time to mourn, Ecclesiastes three. But here, the sorrow is because they're not thinking rightly. Look in to the text. Nevertheless, I tell you the truth. It is to your advantage that I go away.

This should be giving you joy, instead you're in sorrow. It is to your advantage that I go away. For if I do not go away, the helper will not come to you. But if I go, and to go there, picture is going to the cross.

What's to come? They don't understand, they haven't seen it. If he goes to the cross, he dies for their sin. And their sin debt, which would have crushed them into hell, is now lifted from them, and they are set free as a bird.

If he goes, he dies for them. If he rises, he goes to the Father and is seated to be their advocate, as their high priest in the Holy of Holies, to plead for them, for their forgiveness, for their protection, for their life.

But notice what he says next, there's more to it. It's a Trinitarian salvation. The Father has planned this. The Son has accomplished this redemption. But in this plan, the Spirit only comes once the Son returns to the right hand of the Father.

He says, the helper will not come to you. If he hadn't done this, if he doesn't ascend and leave them behind, the very thing that's making them sad, if he doesn't do that, they don't get the helper. They don't know who the helper is.

He's only just introducing the Spirit. Their perspective needs to be formed by the Word of God, rather than the outward appearance. The helper will not come, but if I go, I will send him to you. Naboth had a vineyard in ancient Israel.