WWUTT 933 A New Command to Love One Another?

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Jesus said to his disciples, a new commandment I give to you, that you love one another.

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Wait, a new commandment? Wasn't there a commandment in the Old Testament to love each other? Yes, but not like this, when we understand the text.

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This is When We Understand The Text, a daily study in the word of Christ, for the sake of the faith of God's elect, and their knowledge of the truth, which accords with godliness.

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Find all our videos and other ministry resources at www .utt .com

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Here once again is Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky. We come back to our study of the gospel of John, and we'll finish up chapter 13 today.

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I'll start reading in verse 31 through verse 38. The apostle John wrote,

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When Judas had gone out from them, Jesus said, Now is the

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Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him. If God is glorified in him,

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God will also glorify him in himself, and glorify him at once.

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Little children, yet a little while I am with you, you will seek me, and just as I said to the

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Jews, so now also I say to you, where I am going, you cannot come.

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A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.

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By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.

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Simon Peter said to him, Lord, where are you going? Jesus answered him, Where I am going, you cannot follow me now, but you will follow me afterward.

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Jesus said to him, Lord, why can I not follow you now? I will lay down my life for you.

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Jesus answered, Will you lay down your life for me? Truly, truly, I say to you, the rooster will not crow till you have denied me three times.

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There's something that Jesus says here that I'm often asked about. When Jesus said to his disciples, a new commandment

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I give to you, that you love one another. I've been asked many times, what did Jesus mean by that?

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Were there not commands, even before Jesus gave this one to his disciples, that we're supposed to love each other?

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And sure enough, you can go back to the Old Testament in Leviticus 19, 18, and other places it is said, love your neighbor as yourself.

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So indeed, the command to love one another is certainly there. In fact, all of the law, whether you're talking about the

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Ten Commandments or any of the other laws that God gave to his people, the entire law can be summarized in these two.

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You will love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and you will love your neighbor as yourself.

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In Luke chapter 10, when a lawyer came and asked Jesus, what must I do to have eternal life?

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And Jesus said to him, how do you read the law? How do you understand it? The lawyer replied, well,

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I am to love the Lord my God, and I am to love my neighbor as myself. And he clung to the

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Ten Commandments when he gave that answer. He summarized the Ten Commandments in the two tables of the law, and Jesus responded to the lawyer, you have answered wisely, do this, and you will live.

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So the command to love one another was there. It had always been there. It had been there in the law from the time that God had given it.

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So what did Jesus mean when he said a new commandment I give to you? Well, when you see it, it really becomes rather obvious.

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Let's look at verse 31. When Judas had gone out, remember that Judas had plotted to betray

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Jesus. Jesus said to his disciples that one of you will betray me this night. And they're going, oh, who is it?

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Which one is it going to be? Peter kind of motioned to John who was right there next to him to get some more details from Jesus, find out what it is that he's talking about.

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And so John asked Jesus, who is it, Lord? And Jesus says, the one with whom

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I dip this morsel of bread is going to be the man who will betray me. And he gave that morsel of bread to Judas.

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And so he said to Judas, what you are going to do, go out and do it quickly. And it doesn't seem like the disciples really saw this interaction take place.

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They saw Judas get up and go out and they're all thinking, why is he leaving? Well, he's in charge of the money. Maybe he's going to get some more stuff for Passover.

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Maybe only John saw that interaction. And even then, we don't know. But of course, it certainly became obvious to them later when they were writing the gospels,

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Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and all four of them account this betrayal of Judas. It became rather obvious then which one it would have been that Jesus had broken bread with and had given the sign that this was the man who was going to betray me, whether or not they saw that transpire.

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Jesus said it, and there was that exchange between him and Judas. And so Judas is the one who turns

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Jesus over to the hands of his enemies. He goes out in the cover of night, it says in verse 30, and it was night, but he's being guided by Satan who works at night.

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And so there's really nothing here that's preventing Judas from now enacting this thing that had even been foreordained from before the foundation of the world, that this would bring about the crucifixion of the

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Son of Man that by his blood shed on the cross, we would be forgiven our sins.

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So once Judas had gone out, Jesus said, now is the Son of Man glorified.

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Everything that is needing to happen for Jesus' crucifixion has now happened.

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The very last thing that needs to take place has taken place. And that's Judas going out to get the Pharisees and the small army that they have gathered to go and arrest

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Jesus. So Jesus and his disciples will go out to the Garden of Gethsemane. And of course, that's where Judas and the rest of them are going to find him there.

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So the Son of Man is now to be glorified. The last piece has been put in place.

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And the one whom Satan had filled was no longer in their midst. So now Jesus is with them and there is no evil among them, for Jesus is there.

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So here in this place with his disciples, those whom Christ had chosen for himself, whom he would use to build his church, he says to them, now is the

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Son of Man glorified. And God is glorified in him. With all that Jesus had done, had accomplished, had taught, now that he was even going to be crucified, buried, and risen again,

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God would be glorified in all of this. In Philippians 2, starting in verse 5, where we have that hymn of Christ, it says,

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To have the mind of Christ, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but he emptied himself, made himself nothing, taking on the form of a servant, and being found in human form, he humbled himself, becoming obedient, even to the point of death, even death on a cross.

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Therefore God has highly exalted him and given him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is

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Lord, to the glory of God the Father. That's verse 11, to the glory of God the Father.

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So Jesus did all of these things to his glory, and God is glorified in him.

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Verse 32, If God is glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself.

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And that's kind of a prelude even to something that Jesus is going to pray coming up in John 17, where he says,

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Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.

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So Jesus returning to that place of glory that he was in with the Father and the Holy Spirit, glorifying in themselves, which had been going on for all eternity before God ever said, let there be light, and created the heavens and the earth.

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So God is glorified in him, and God will also glorify him in himself, and glorify him at once.

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So even in this very moment, God is being glorified through what Jesus is sharing with his disciples.

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And this is his last address with them. This is his farewell address. These things that he is teaching to them conclude what he is going to be teaching to them this side of heaven.

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Now, of course, there was still some more teaching going on between his resurrection and his ascension into heaven.

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The 40 days between his resurrection and ascension. We know that Jesus appeared to them and still continued to teach them.

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But what he taught them was opening their eyes to understanding how the

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Old Testament scriptures pertain to him. There wasn't anything else new that he would necessarily say to them, other than just helping them to understand how all of this had been about him.

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All the Old Testament had been pointing to Christ, and how all of these things had been fulfilled with his crucifixion and his resurrection, and even his glorification as he was going back to the

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Father. So that was primarily what Jesus taught them between his resurrection and ascension.

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There wasn't a whole lot of new things. Because one of the things that Jesus says in this farewell address is that there's more that I have to teach you, but it's going to be the

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Holy Spirit that's going to do it. So the Holy Spirit is going to come upon you not too many days from now, and he will guide you in all truth.

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So that is where a new revelation of God would continue through the

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Holy Spirit, not in what Jesus taught. So these things that Jesus is teaching to them here, this kind of concludes the teaching that he is going to give to them.

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So in this way, God is even glorified at once. Even in this moment, the

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Father is being glorified. For Judas is no longer among us. Here we are without Satan in our presence.

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He has been purged from us. And so even in this place, in the upper room,

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God is being glorified among those who are going to be the foundation of the church with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone.

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Jesus says in verse 33, little children, yet a little while I am with you.

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You will seek me. And just as I have said to the Jews, so now also I say to you.

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And you see, once again, the way that John uses that word Jews really to believe in the children of Israel that are really sorry not to believe, really to refer to the children of Israel that did not believe.

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That's the way that he uses that term. So just as I said to the Jews, so now also

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I say to you where I am going, you cannot come. We saw Jesus say that earlier, said that to the

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Pharisees, a new commandment I give to you that you love one another just as I have loved you.

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You also are to love one another. By this, all people will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another.

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So once again, what did Jesus mean when he said a new commandment

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I give to you if that commandment had always been there? It even existed in the

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Old Testament. In fact, God had enacted for his children Israel that they would even have a system of welfare so that they would be caring for the fatherless and the widow and the poor and needy with all of their gathering, with the crops that would be left over, even with some of the flock that even the poor would be cared for.

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So there was love that existed within Israel for each other, loving their neighbor as themselves, even loving the sojourner.

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All of those commands were there. So what is meant by this regarding a new commandment

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I give to you that you love one another? Well, as I said earlier, when you understand what it is that Jesus is referring to, it becomes rather obvious, and I think it's better qualified with the next statement that follows.

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A new commandment I give to you that you love one another just as I have loved you.

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You also are to love one another. The kind of love that Jesus has shown to his disciples,

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God had not yet shown to his people. It was mysterious. There was a mystery of the love and affection that God had for his people, his chosen ones, prior to Christ appearing.

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There is so much more revelation of God that has been given to us, more than we would have any other way, than what has been shown to us through the

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Son himself, entering into humanity and revealing to us the

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Father. So God, the Father, demonstrated a love for us unlike he had ever demonstrated before when he sent his

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Son to die for us, to die for our sins. A humility that we would never be able to copy.

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Not on the level that God has shown it to us anyway. A level of love we would never be able to reach.

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Nevertheless, this is the greatest love that has ever been displayed for mankind. That while we were yet sinners, while we were yet enemies of God, Christ died for us.

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And so it's this love that Jesus is saying that we are to show to one another.

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This is how the commandment is new, because it's the love of Christ that we are to be displaying to one another.

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A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, just as I have loved you, so you also are to love one another.

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Just consider the ways that Jesus has loved his own disciples. And in a way, unlike we have seen love anywhere else in the

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Bible, or anywhere else in human history for that matter, up until Christ's first advent.

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I wrote down ten things. I made a list of ten. I mean, you could go on and on with a list of all kinds of ways that Jesus showed love for his own disciples.

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But this helps to quantify it a little bit, I think, and maybe give you an idea of even how we are to show love for one another.

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How God shows love for us, and how we are to show that sacrificial love for each other, especially of those who are in the household of faith, especially to them.

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So what is one of the first ways that Jesus showed this kind of love to his disciples that we might show this kind of love to each other as well?

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Number one, he taught them. Now, why would I include that as number one at the top of the list?

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Well, it's because he taught them that makes them disciples. The word disciple means learner.

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So for them to be called a disciple, there must be a teacher, and Jesus has taught them.

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He has taught them many great things. When you look at the pantheon of mythical gods and goddesses, all the false religions that are in the world, you do not ever see a

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God who comes to his own and teaches them. That doesn't exist anywhere in mythology.

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There are people who will try to say that it does, like they'll say Horus, the Egyptian god, he had 12 disciples, so Jesus is just a rip -off of Horus.

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That's not even remotely true. There's nowhere in Egyptian history where you find that. In fact, you don't find that among Horus until after Christianity.

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So the likelihood is more that somebody was taking an Egyptian god and then shaping it into something else that mimicked

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Christianity rather than Christianity ripping off something that is Egyptian.

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We know that that's not what happened. But you'll find that in various different places, especially among the mystery religions and the

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Roman cults. Back in like the 2nd and 3rd century, there'll be things that attempted to copy

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Christianity. But there is not ever, even in mythology, a god that enters into humanity and teaches them things.

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Like you might think of Prometheus, who was the god who gave people fire, but he doesn't teach them anything.

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It's just the people trying to come up with an explanation of how we got fire. Oh, well, the god

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Prometheus gave us fire. But there's no teaching being done. There's no disciples. There's not a god who is showing to people how they can become like him.

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How they can even ascend into the heavens and dwell where the gods are. The gods never did that.

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So Jesus, who is God, creator of all, enters into humanity and he serves.

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He serves his own creation. That was gonna be my number two. He served them.

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So number one, Jesus taught them. Number two, the second way that he shows love to his own disciples, he served them.

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Served them in many ways, but we just saw one example here, even in this story, where Jesus washed his disciples' feet and said that you must do this for one another as I have done it for you.

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Number three, Jesus comforted them. One of the ways that Jesus shows love for his disciples is he comforted them.

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He gave them words of comfort. And we're gonna see more of that coming up as we go through this farewell address with Jesus saying things like,

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I am going to prepare a place for you. Do not let your hearts be troubled. Number four way that Jesus showed love for his disciples, he prayed with them and for them.

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We've already seen that with Jesus praying with and for his disciples.

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And we're gonna see it even more with that high priestly prayer coming up in chapter 17. A number five way that Jesus showed love for his disciples, he commissioned them.

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And in commissioning them, telling them to go out, they've already been split up and gone to different towns and they've shared the gospel.

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In doing so, he also empowered them that they would have the power of God to do miracles so that the people who heard from these disciples would know that this was a word that came from God when they were doing the signs of God.

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So Jesus commissioned them. He included them in this work according to the will of the father.

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Number six, Jesus disciplined them. Get behind me Satan, right? When Jesus rebuked

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Peter, when Peter was trying to prevent him from going to the cross. Now Jesus will call out when it is that they do something dumb.

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So he has disciplined them in this way and done so lovingly so that he might make even more of them, sanctifying them and growing them in the knowledge of God and in Christ likeness.

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Number seven, a seventh way that Jesus has shown love to his disciples, he has forgiven them.

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So when one of them does something dumb, he has disciplined them, but then he has also forgiven them.

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And even in the Lord's supper going on here in the upper room, he says when he passes the cup, this is my blood, which was spilled for the forgiveness of sins, the forgiveness of the sins of his disciples.

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Number seven thing. That was seven. Forgiving them was seven. Number eight, he made them closer than his own family.

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Have you considered that? Jesus made his own disciples closer to him than even his mother or his brothers, biological mother or brothers.

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Like when Jesus' mother and brothers came to him and someone said, Hey, your mother and brother and sisters are there outside waiting to see you.

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And Jesus motions to his disciples and says, here are my mother and brothers and sisters, the ones who do the will of my father.

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So there is an affection that exists between Jesus and his own disciples closer than even a blood relative.

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And that's the case for me. My own church family is closer to me than my own blood brothers and sisters.

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And I've shared that with you before. Number nine, Jesus showed to his disciples the father.

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And he's going to reiterate that point more even as we go through this farewell address because Philip is going to say to him,

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Hey, just show us the father and we'll believe. And Jesus says, don't you know me? If you have seen me, you have seen the father.

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So he reveals the will of the father to his own disciples. And then number 10.

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And I think this one goes without singing, but you can't make a list like this of Jesus showing love for his disciples without this one on the list.

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He died for them. Jesus said, greater love has no man than this, that he lay his life down for his friends.

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And in the way that Jesus has showed love to his own disciples, we must show love for one another in these same ways, teaching one another, serving one another, comforting each other when we need to be comforted, praying with and for each other that we would commission one another and helping to make the best of each other, finding what one another's spiritual gifts are that we may know how to encourage one another to use those gifts.

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We discipline each other. We must forgive one another. We must be closer to one another than even our own blood relatives would be.

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We need to show one another the word of Christ according to the will of the father.

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And we must even lay down our lives for one another as Jesus has done this for us.

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So we must do for each other. And in so doing, having been revealed to us from the son of God himself, we have a new commandment.

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Love one another just as he has loved us.

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We had never known, mankind had never known a love like this before until Jesus came and loved us.

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And so we must love like Jesus. Romans 5, 5.

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God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

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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

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New Testament study. Then on Thursday we look at an Old Testament book. On Friday we take questions from the listeners and viewers.