WWUTT 948 If You Love Me You Will Keep My Commandments?

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Yesterday we read that Jesus said, whatever you ask in my name I will give it to you. Today we will read him saying, if you love me you will obey my commandments.

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This is the heart that desires God when we understand the text. This is when we understand the text studying

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God's word to reach all the riches of full assurance in Christ. Thank you for subscribing and if this is ministered to you please let others know about our program.

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Here once again is Pastor Gabe Hughes. Thank you Becky. We continue with our study of the gospel of John chapter 14 and I'll read verses 15 through 24 to get started today.

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Jesus said to his disciples, if you love me you will keep my commandments and I will ask the

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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.

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You know him for he dwells with you and will be in you.

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I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you. Yet a little while in the world will see me no more but you will see me because I live you also will live.

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In that day you will know that I am in the Father and you in me and I in you.

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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.

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Judas not Iscariot said to him Lord how is it that you will manifest yourself to us and not to the world.

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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.

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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.

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I'll go ahead and read to the end of the chapter verse 25 these things I have spoken to you while I am still with you but the helper the

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Holy Spirit whom the father will send in my name he will teach you all the things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.

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Peace I leave with you my peace I give to you not as the world gives do

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I give to you let not your hearts be troubled neither let them be afraid you heard me say

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I am going away and I will come to you if you loved me you would have rejoiced because I am going to the father for the father is greater than I and now

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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 let us go from here so verse 15 which we read briefly yesterday as well if you love me you will keep my commandments how do we show our love for God we know how

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God has shown his love for us he created us he gave us life he formed us in the depths of our mother's womb as is expressed in the psalms including psalm 139 he gave us his very breath every breath that a human being has breathing in and out of this world it's not just a physical thing that we do that is inhaling oxygen to feed our blood to give us life but the very breath we have has come from God himself breathing a little bit of himself into us that we might have life and live and we are to take this breath that we have been given and praise

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God with it but we blasphemed God instead instead of using the breath that he gave us the mind and the body that he blessed us with for the purpose of giving him glory we instead blaspheme

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God with these things and glorified ourselves instead and when Romans 3 says that together we have become worthless that's why because though we had been made with great worth we had been made in the very image of our creator we had been shown something special by our

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God that even the animals did not receive and even the holy ones of heaven do not have the grace of God that we receive the book of Hebrews says that there are things well the book of James rather there are things into which even the angels long to look and that would be the grace of God that he shows those who have been made in his image and yet even though we had been shown such favor we had blasphemed

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God and made ourselves worthless so we were good to be cast into the flames but Romans 5 8 says

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God demonstrated his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us so he shows his love for us first by creating us and then he shows his love for us in sending his son

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Jesus to die on the cross for our sins by faith in Christ we have eternal life it's this is the way in which

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God has chosen to bless us with the righteousness of his son and make us heirs of his kingdom just by faith in Jesus we are saved now this is how

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God has shown his love for us how do we show our love for God we show our love for God by obeying his commandments if you love me you will obey my commandments

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Jesus said if you abide in my word you are truly my disciples and abiding in the word of God means that we would listen to it and we would do what it says

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James says in James chapter 1 do not merely be hearers of the word and then turn around and walk away from it you'd be like a man who looks at his face in the mirror and then turns around and immediately forgets what he looks like so we should not just be hearers of the word we should do what it says and in this way we display that we have a genuine faith in God it's not just merely a confession that comes out of our mouths but cannot be observed by our lifestyle it is not something that was just a passing opinion at a particular time but actually had no transforming power upon our mind and heart when we follow the commands of God we display that we truly love

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God what we say and what can be observed by our actions are the same

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Jesus said if you love me you will keep my commandments and I will ask the father and he will give you another helper capital h in your bible a reference to the holy spirit 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 remember what

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Jesus said in john chapter 8 to those who did not believe in him and follow him he said to them that they followed the father of lies their father was the devil he had been a murderer from the beginning and what comes out of his mouth is nothing but lies so if you do not walk in Christ you do not walk in the truth if you do not walk in the truth you walk in lies if you are walking in lies you are following after the father of lies and that is satan and a person who follows lives and worships the devil will be cast into the lake of fire with the devil and his angels at the final judgment but those who know the spirit of truth the holy spirit of God whom

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Christ has sent who has poured into the hearts of all those who believe in him we will not perish but we will have everlasting life those who are of this world the world that is perishing the world that is under the governance of the ruler of this world who is satan those who are of this world cannot receive the spirit of truth because it neither sees him nor knows him the world neither sees the holy spirit of God nor knows the spirit of God you know him for he dwells with you and will be in you prior to Jesus giving the holy spirit prior to the spirit being poured into the hearts of men beginning at Pentecost and then every believer since then who has followed

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Jesus Christ has the holy spirit inside of them prior to that giving of the spirit the spirit of God would be with a person for example you can go to the book of judges and just about every judge it is mentioned that the spirit of God was with them but we weren't indwelt with the holy spirit of God that did not yet happen until Christ descended back to the father and the father poured the holy spirit of God into the hearts of every believer now we are the temple of God as Paul explains in first Corinthians chapter 6 among other places and so being a temple of the holy spirit we are to regard our bodies as holy vessels we are to treat them treat our bodies in a holy way

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Romans 12 1 in view of God's mercies present your bodies as a living sacrifice unto the

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Lord and this is your spiritual act of worship when Jesus said the greatest commandment was to love the

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Lord your God with all your heart with all your soul with all your mind and with all your strength don't you know that means that with our whole body our whole mind everything that we are we are to commit ourselves unto the

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Lord God and God would give us the helper his Holy Spirit who would enable us to be able to do this because on our own we cannot love

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God if left to our own devices we would not be able to exercise our wills in such a way that would be pleasing unto

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God it takes the Holy Spirit of God in us to be able to behave in such a way that we might offer ourselves as holy and living sacrifices unto the

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Lord Lorraine Bettner said the following the doctrine of total inability which declares that men are dead in sin does not mean that all men are equally bad nor that any man is as bad as he could be nor that anyone is entirely destitute of virtue nor that human nature is equal in itself nor that man's spirit is inactive and much less does it mean that the body is dead what it does mean is that since the fall man rests under the curse of sin that he is actuated by wrong principles and that he is holy w -h -o -l -l -y unable to love

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God or to do anything meriting salvation his corruption is extensive but not necessarily intensive it is in this sense that man since the fall is utterly indisposed disabled and made opposite to all good holy w -h -o -l -l -y once again inclined to all evil he possesses a fixed bias of the will against God and instinctively and willingly he turns to evil he is an alien by birth and a sinner by choice the inability under which he labors is not an inability to exercise volition but an inability to to be willing to exercise holy volitions a volition being an exercise of the will and it is this phase of it which led luther martin luther to declare that free will is an empty term whose reality is lost and a lost liberty according to my grammar is no liberty at all it is in Christ that we have been set free we come to know freedom from sin and freedom from the wages of sin which is death only by faith in Jesus Christ he has set us free from the bonds of sin and it's only by faith in Christ that we could stand before God is righteous or even live in such a way that is holy and pleasing unto the

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Lord being able to keep the commandments of a of Christ in a way that is pleasing to him it is because Christ has sent us the helper the

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Holy Spirit who dwells in us and it's through the Holy Spirit that we are able to interpret the word of God and understand the mind of God if not for the

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Holy Spirit we would not be able to read the Bible and understand it why is it that somebody could read the pages of scripture and come away believing that it's a nonsense book and somebody else could read the exact same words in the exact same translation and they come away seeing the power of God for salvation what's the difference because the person who saw the power of God in the pages of scripture has the

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Holy Spirit of God in them they were regenerated by the Holy Spirit to be able to hear the words and understand them and it would transform that person into action not just that they read some words on a page and they would be able to pass a bible literacy test but that these words actually challenge them into responding to them living according to them being obedient to them then we know that the heart has actually been transformed by the word of God when we see that a person bears fruit in keeping with repentance but bearing the fruit of the spirit as well as Paul talks about in Galatians chapter 5 love joy peace patience kindness goodness gentleness faithfulness self -control against such things there there is no law so bearing the fruit of the spirit we would display in our lives the holiness the righteousness that we have been gifted with by faith in Jesus Christ Jesus once again saying to his disciples if you love me you will keep my commandments by keeping the commandments of Christ we display that we love

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God now keeping the commandments does not save us following commandments is not our salvation we are not saved by law we are saved by grace and it's always been by grace that a person has been saved

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Ephesians 2 8 and 9 by grace you are saved through faith and this is not your own doing it is the gift of God not a result of works lest no man should boast now add in verse 10 for you are

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Christ workmanship created to do good works which

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God has prepared for you beforehand that you should walk in them the good works that we do display that we have been saved by grace through faith and then we demonstrate the genuineness of that salvation in being obedient to the

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Christ who has saved us the obedience doesn't save us but it is a display that we have been saved

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Jesus says if you love me you will keep my commandments the

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Holy Spirit is in us that enables us to be able to keep the commandments of God and keep them in such a way that is holy and honorable and pleasing unto the

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Lord this is a promise that Jesus has given to his disciples and not just those who are with him in the in the upper room but all of us who likewise walk according to the spirit not according to the flesh but according to the spirit we are also disciples of Jesus and to his disciples in the upper room and to us now

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Jesus says the following John 14 18 I will not leave you as orphans

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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 the world will not see

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Jesus because what the world is looking for is something according to a natural mind they're looking for something that they can perceive with their eyes and their ears and their senses so when you're talking about seeing

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Jesus you've seen Jesus and I've seen Jesus if you are a follower of Jesus you have seen him not with your eyes not even necessarily in a dream you know dreaming up Jesus and seeing him in a dream doesn't make a person saved either it is the fact that you have seen him by faith it's

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Hebrews 11 1 that says faith is the assurance of things hoped for the conviction of things not seen not physically seen but we indeed see with our spirits and we behold the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ everything we can know about God we find in Christ and so we see

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God through our Savior we are seeing God we are beholding God even in these words that we are reading here in the gospel of John we see

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Christ because we see him in ways that are revealed to us by the spirit not ways that are revealed to us by our senses in first Corinthians chapter 2 verse 14 the apostle

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Paul says that the natural man cannot discern spiritual things for they are spiritually discerned it is only when we have the spirit of God that we are able to discern the word of God and in such a way that points us to God and we see his glory and his beauty all the more through the word of Christ that he has given to us so Jesus says to abide in his word and those who abide in his word are truly his disciples yet a little while and the world will see me no more but you will see me because I live you also will live now there's a possibility that this statement here in John 15

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I'm sorry 14 19 could also have been a reference to his resurrection Jesus wasn't going to show himself to everybody in the world those who were the the

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Judaizers the Jews the Pharisees the uh the the law keepers um those who were the scribes they would not be the ones who would see

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Jesus resurrected only the disciples would be the ones that resurrect that saw the resurrected

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Christ only they would see Christ because he chose to show himself to them there were even those who were otherwise unbelievers that Christ would show himself to choosing them to be as disciples in this commission to go out with the gospel to the world and I'm thinking namely of Jesus' siblings like James and Judas the son of Joseph James the half brother of Christ who wrote the gospel or the gospel the epistle of James and then

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Judas who would also be called Jude who wrote the epistle of Jude second to last book in the Bible these were persons whom

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Jesus would reveal himself to and they would become disciples because he chose them but the rest of the world would not see him so there probably is an immediate context to that John 14 19 of making a reference to himself as revealing himself to the disciples even after his resurrection but even to this day no one who is naturally minded who is of the world has seen or knows

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God only those who have the spirit of God who believe in Jesus Christ know the father and see the son

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Jesus says because I live you also will live as Paul said to the

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Galatians I am crucified with Christ and it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives within me and in Romans chapter 6 talking about being buried with Christ in our sins and risen with him to new life

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Jesus says John 14 20 and that day you will know that I am in the father and you in me and I in you 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 be obedient to the word of Christ for he cares for you amen you've been listening to when we understand the text with pastor

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Gabe Hughes Monday Tuesday and Wednesday Gabe will be going through a New Testament study then on Thursday we look at an

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Old Testament book on Friday we take questions from the listeners and viewers tomorrow we'll pick up on an