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Reading John 14:15-21 where Jesus says, "If you love me, you will keep my commandments," and the Father will be with us. Visit wwutt.com for all our videos!
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. This is the heart that desires God when we understand the text.
This is when we understand the text, studying God's word to reach all the riches of full assurance in Christ. Thank you for subscribing. And if this has ministered to you, please let others know about our program.
Here once again is Pastor Gabe Hughes.
Thank you, Becky.
We continue with our study of the gospel of John 14. And I'll read verses 15 through 24 to get started today. Jesus said to his disciples, 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. 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.
In 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.
Judas, not Iscariot said to him, Lord, how is it that you will manifest yourself to us and not to the world? 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. 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 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. 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 God and made ourselves worthless. So we were good to be cast into the flames.
But Romans 5, 8 says, 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, Jesus, to die on the cross for our sins.
By faith in Christ, we have eternal life. This is the way in which 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 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. 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.
James says in James chapter one, 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 God.
What we say and what can be observed by our actions are the same. 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 Jesus said in John chapter eight 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 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 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 1 Corinthians 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 our bodies in a holy way. Romans 12 .1, in view of God's mercies, present your bodies as a living sacrifice unto the Lord.
And this is your spiritual act of worship. When Jesus said the greatest commandment was to love the 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 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 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 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 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 wholly, W-H-O-L-L-Y, unable to love 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, wholly, 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 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 as righteous, or even live in such a way that is holy and pleasing unto the Lord, being able to keep the commandments of Christ in a way that is pleasing to him.
It is because Christ has sent us the helper, the 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 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 and 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 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 challenged 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 5, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control.
Against such things, 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 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. 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 Christ's workmanship, created to do good works, which 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 Christ who has saved us. The obedience doesn't save us, but it is a display that we have been saved. Jesus says, if you love me, you will keep my commandments.
The 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 Lord. This is a promise that Jesus has given to his disciples and not just those who are with him 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, Jesus says the following, John 14, 18, I will not leave you as orphans. 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 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 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 Hebrews 11, one 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 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 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 1 Corinthians 2, verse 14, the apostle 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 in 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 14, 19 could also been a reference to his resurrection. Jesus wasn't gonna show himself to everybody.
In the world.
Those who were the Judaizers, the Jews, the Pharisees, the law keepers, those who were the scribes, they would not be the ones who would see Jesus resurrected, only the disciples would be the ones that saw the resurrected 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 his 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 Judas, who would also be called Jude, who wrote the epistle of Jude, second to last book in the Bible.
These were persons whom 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 God.
Only those who have the spirit of God, who believe in Jesus Christ, know the father and see the son. Jesus says, because I live, you also will live. As Paul said to the Galatians, I am crucified with Christ and it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives within me.
And in Romans chapter six, talking about being buried with Christ in our sins and risen with him to new life. Jesus says, John 14, 20, in 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 Gabe Hughes. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, Gabe will be going through a New Testament study. Then on Thursday, we look at an Old Testament book.
On Friday, we take questions from the listeners and viewers. Tomorrow, we'll pick up on an Old Testament study when we understand the text.