Synoptic Gospels John 16:17-33

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I'm actually going to fly through some sections here because, well, we can't.
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We've pretty much wrapped up the section on Jesus' teaching on the
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Holy Spirit, which hopefully you have noted now is primarily contained in 14, a little bit in 15, and then the rest at the beginning of chapter 16.
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Very important material. I'm not sure how much that's going to come up.
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I don't know why I accepted this, but out of the blue I was invited to do a televised debate with Michael Brown on divine healing and divine healers.
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The odd thing is we're going to have to fly to Spain to record it. So, I will be flying over there on the 22nd of January for that.
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So, we may, who knows, step out of our study briefly sometime over the next few weeks and take a look at that subject.
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I do not claim any particular expertise. I guess they asked me because I've debated
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Michael Brown on other subjects and we would certainly get along and have an amicable debate on the subject,
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I would assume. But, maybe some of that material from John 14, 15, and 16 will come up, at least as far as the role of the
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Holy Spirit is concerned. But, we're not going to make much progress,
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I'm afraid, in the study between that and then one month, less than a month later.
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I fly to Virginia and then from Virginia to Kiev, Ukraine, and maybe
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Dublin on the way back for a debate. I don't know. The only advantage to doing this much flying is
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I am now a chairman of Frequent Flyer, which means the people at the check -in counter bow to you.
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It's a really great thing. You're carried to your plane on a litter. It's wonderful. It's not quite that nice, but it is the highest level
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Frequent Flyer you can be. Never expected that. I'm having a feeling that for Christmas everybody is going to be buying me that film,
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Terminal, where Tom Hanks lives in the airport. When you start knowing the
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TSA agents by their first name and you know their kids' names, that's a really bad thing. Hey, how's
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Billy doing? Great. Wonderful. Anyway, I was just doing all that to stretch because I knew that Codex Ricketonius was –
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I could sense the presence of Codex Ricketonius in the parking lot, so I just had to wait until it arrived.
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I actually did a debate this week on the antiquity of Codex Sinaiticus. Did anybody hear that?
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Oh, you did. I saw your commentary. Yes. The next thing
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I expect is to do a debate on the antiquity of Codex Ricketonius because I don't know about anybody else.
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It looks like a fourth century document to me. It's just – I don't think it's right.
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At least no one who has made a movie about it. Some of you are going, what are you talking about? There's a movie out there that came out,
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I don't know, sometime this year, last year. I don't know when it came out. But it presents the theory that Codex Sinaiticus, which is one of the great fourth century manuscripts along with Vaticanus that was discovered in 1844 and then became known to the world more in 1859 by Constantine von
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Tischendorf, that it's actually a fraud. It's actually a manuscript that was written in 1840, and it's not from the fourth century.
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It's from the 19th century, et cetera, et cetera. The Jesuits are behind all of it. And so I debated the producer of that film this past week, and it was interesting.
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90 -minute debates are fun. They get over with real quick. You don't even know what happened. All right, let's get back to John chapter 16 because, as I said, we're going to have some interruptions here that I hadn't planned on having.
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But in the starting verse, we had gone through verse 15. All things the
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Father has are mine, therefore I take that he, I said that he takes of mine and will disclose it to you. Looking at the specific role of the
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Holy Spirit in regards to the apostles. The next section I'm just going to touch on lightly. It, again, has to do with the departure of the
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Lord, the promise of the Lord to the disciples that while they are going to weep, there's going to be joy, a joy that the world cannot take from them.
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He's obviously referring to the time after the resurrection and those issues there.
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And then you have this interesting section. Remember back in John 14, we had talked briefly there about the fact that Jesus says, if you ask me anything in my name,
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I will do it for you, talking about after his ascension to heaven. Then you have in chapter 16, in that day you will not question me about anything.
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Truly, truly, I say to you, if you ask the Father for anything in my name, he will give it to you. There, if you ask the
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Father, in John 14, if you ask me, again, the interplay of these statements,
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I think is meant to communicate to us something both about the Father's intimacy with his people as well as the
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Son's exaltation as Lord and object of prayer as well. I think verse 23 is primarily at the beginning referring to the fact the
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Holy Spirit will be ministering to them and therefore it's the Holy Spirit who will be the source of their information and things like that.
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Until now you have asked for nothing in my name. Ask and you will receive, so that your joy may be made full. So there is partly where we get the idea of prayer in the name of Christ, which is not just simply something you tack on at the end of a prayer to make it sound right and orthodox, so on and so forth, but it refers to the character of the one in whose name you are approaching
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God, by whose merits you are approaching God, everything that comes along with that.
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I think, to be honest with you, we Westerners struggle with the whole concept of names, especially anymore where you have sites you can go to and say, random boy's name, oh,
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I like that, let's go. And that's how the poor kid gets names like Jupiter Barbell or something like that.
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The weirder it is, the better, evidently. Names in this culture had significantly more meaning to it than certainly in our culture attaches to names.
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And, in fact, in that culture there were significantly fewer names. I didn't bring the information with me.
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I really wasn't thinking about this. I think
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I have mentioned, and if I haven't I apologize, but it is rather fascinating.
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A study was done, I remember back when the tomb story broke, you know, the
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Jesus tomb stuff, and I wrote a book in 17 days on the subject, and one of the things that was fascinating is the names, the studies that have been done on the names found on the bone boxes, the ossuaries, in Jerusalem and in Palestine in general.
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And people who have nothing better to do in life have collated entire databases of all the names that you can determine from sources in antiquity.
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And what would those sources be? Well, not just literary sources. Obviously, if you can find tax rolls and stuff like that, that's great.
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But especially when those names are inscribed on stone, on ossuaries, on tombstones, even though they didn't use tombstones the way we do, that kind of stuff, that stuff lasts a while.
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Though, I have to admit, if it's out in the weather, ever been to New England or something like that, look at some of those tombstones from back in the 1700s, and a lot of them you can't even read anymore.
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You'd think it was going to last forever. Not so much. But anyway, they've taken all those names and put them together and come up with percentages of how many people would have borne certain names.
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Like I said, we go for uniqueness and stuff like that. And so we probably wouldn't have more than two or three people in a room that would be sharing the same name.
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And so, back then, though, one of the reasons that so many of the names in the
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New Testament are either associated with their father's name or a location is because you had to, to have any idea who in the world you were talking about.
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I mean, Mary, I think the estimates were, again, I didn't bring the numbers with me, but off the top of my head, if I recall correctly, if you yelled out
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Mary on a crowded street, you could expect one -third of the women to turn around and look at you.
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It was just that common. And you go, why? Well, I can't answer the question why.
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I don't know why there was such a narrow spectrum of names.
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This is just, when we look at the data, that's just the way that it is. And so names,
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Miriam, of course, hero of the people of Israel, that's really what it was.
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You wanted to be named after someone who had a major role in the history of Israel, and there's just only so many names.
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I mean, you don't want to name your kid Mabel or something like that, which means fool in Hebrew.
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You know, that ain't going to work real well.
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And so it is very interesting that the concept of name has changed greatly in our day in comparison to what it was back then.
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So I think sometimes being baptized into the name of the Father, Son, Holy Spirit, things like that just almost become sort of shallow for us.
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Same thing with kingship. You know, we don't have a king. Well, not supposed to, anyways. And so it just doesn't strike us as having the same level of authority, and it doesn't really communicate to us the way that it normally would for those who are reading this in the context in which it was written.
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These things, verse 25, I have spoken to you in figurative language, an hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figurative language, but will tell you plainly of the
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Father. And that day you will ask my name, and I do not say to you that I will request the Father, on your behalf, for the
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Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have believed that I came forth from him. Again, I think this is all in the context of after the ascension of Jesus and the ministry of the
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Holy Spirit is active amongst the apostles.
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And Jesus says, I came forth from the Father and have come into the world. I am leaving the world again and going to the Father. Straightforward.
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Straightforward. And what does that phrase mean in verse 28?
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I came forth from the Father. Now, if we, again, look at New Testament material in such a way that we are limited to only the immediate context or we cannot bring in everything the
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New Testament says, our choices are rather limited and not necessarily all that deep.
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But if we look at all the New Testament says, if we see this in light of the
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Carmine Christi, in light of Colossians chapter 1, in light of Matthew chapter 11, and all these texts that would shed light on what is being said here,
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I think that we can fairly, anyways, make connection of these words to a broad theology of the relationship of the
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Father and the Son. I'm sometimes uncomfortable with how readily people will quote, especially in the
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Gospel of John, as if an entire deep theology is just stated in a few words.
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Like, I am the Father of what? Oh, there is the Oneness of the Father and the Son, and ontologically in the Trinity, and so on and so forth.
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Well, John chapter 10, that's not really what Jesus is talking about there. I mean, you can get there,
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I think, but just throwing it out there like red meat isn't really going to accomplish anything.
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But here, in the context of speaking plainly of the
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Father to the disciples, Jesus says, I came forth from the Father and have come into the world.
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I am leaving the world and going to the Father. Well, it would seem pretty obvious that whatever, he's truly come into the world, so that means he truly came forth from the
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Father. It wouldn't make any sense if all he was saying was, well,
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I'm a creature that God created and sent into the world. Okay, that really doesn't answer to what the text is talking about here.
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And in fact, Jesus is going to say, you've loved me and believed that I've come forth from God.
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So, he's identifying this as an object of faith on the part of the disciples.
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And so, there has to be something more than I'm just some creature that God created. Instead, you have a very unique relationship between the
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Son and the Father. I came forth from the Father and have come into the world. It's impossible,
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I think, to read these words without hearing of Jesus' pre -existence. And again, you may be saying, well, of course.
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What else would you say? And the reason I emphasize that is the fact that you go to most, even seminaries today, and there's going to be a big old argument about whether there's really any evidence of Jesus' pre -existence.
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Certainly, Jesus didn't know about his pre -existence, if there was a pre -existence. You know, all this kind of stuff.
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And it just seems so self -evident in the words of the
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Lord recorded here. And of course, in most seminaries, I don't think Jesus ever studied this anyways, which is why they have the arguments.
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But, I came forth from the Father. I think it's important to keep this type of text in mind once we get to the next chapter.
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Because in the first few verses of the next chapter, you have some of the key texts in all the
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New Testament on who Jesus is and who Jesus was in eternity past. And I think it greatly strengthens the conclusions that we will come to, especially in verses 3 through 5 of John chapter 17, which, let me tell you right now, if you want to be prepared, or at least to understand, or if you've got relatives involved in unorthodox movements like Jehovah's Witnesses or the
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Way International, Islam utilizes these texts a lot.
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John 17, 3 is one of their favorite verses to use. But, John 17, 3 has to be seen in light of this text and verse 5 of John 17, as we will see when we get there.
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And so, you might want to, if you take note of something, mark verse 28 as being part of the context of Jesus' high priestly prayer.
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This is what he has just said to the disciples. He has confessed that he has come forth from the Father, and he is going to the
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Father. So, that ascension into heaven, the resurrection and ascension altogether, is part and parcel of Christ's purpose for coming into the world, and whatever it means to go to the
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Father is clearly meant to be the direct parallel of having come forth from him. And he goes to him as a person, so he came from him as a person.
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Why else is that important? Well, maybe you've got some friends who are into the Oneness Movement, the
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Jesus Only Movement, Oneness Pentecostalism, the United Pentecostal Church International, the largest group out of St.
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Louis. And, of course, they deny the doctrine of the Trinity. And it's key to be able to demonstrate that the
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Son, as a person, preexisted his birth in Bethlehem, because their belief is that Jesus was the
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Father and the Son. The Father was his deity, the Son was a human being who came into existence at his birth in Bethlehem.
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So, from their perspective, the Son, as the Son, came into existence as a created being.
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Jesus was God because the Father dwelt in him, and the Father is the deity. So, that's something to keep in mind here.
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Clearly, the Son, speaking as the Son, says, I came forth from the Father. Now, they will say, oh, no, no, no, we believe in the eternality of the
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Son. What they mean by that is that God eternally planned for the Son to exist. But that would mean, since we exist, it was an eternal plan that we would exist, too.
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So, obviously, they're meaning that in a very different way than we are. So, it's an important text to keep in mind at that point.
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The disciples say, you're speaking plainly to us now. Notice it says, by this we believe, the end of verse 30, by this we believe that you came from God.
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And so, there is, in this Gospel, expressed to us a doctrinal, theological element to biblical faith.
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And the only way around that is to dismiss John as having any relevance to us in the determination of our theology, which, again, very commonly done.
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But, when we look at everything the New Testament teaches, basically, the theory that is presented by most people today is, well, the simple stuff in the
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New Testament is the primitive stuff, the stuff that doesn't talk about the faith. Nobody, at this point in time, thought there was going to be a religion called
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Christianity. And, therefore, anything, for example, 1
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Timothy, it talks about the faith as a body of truth. Here, you have the concept of faith in Jesus having a direct object and having content to it.
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All that has to be pushed later. That's just later stuff. And, what it is, is it takes a theory and then you force a theory on the text and get rid of anything in the text that contradicts your theory.
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And you would say, well, that's not very scholarly. Well, one thing you've got to realize is that sinners do scholarship.
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And they're the only ones that do it, in that sense, in our world. And so, there's a whole lot of bias going on, let's put it that way.
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And you have to keep that in mind, no matter who you're looking at or who you're listening to, for that matter. Everybody has their biases.
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But, certainly, those who stand in rebellion against God have a real good reason to be extremely biased when it comes to issues like this.
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Then, Jesus prophesies the fact that at the time of his arrest, that they are going to be scattered.
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That he is going to be left alone. He says, and yet, in verse 32, I am not alone because the
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Father is with me. I keep that verse in mind at times when
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I hear the very, very popular sermons that are delivered all the time around Easter.
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When Jesus' words from the cross, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani, are quoted. And God turns away from Jesus and all the rest of this stuff.
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And I just keep in mind, Jesus said, the Father is with me. And the very next words of Jesus are addressed to the
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Father. And the reality is, what Jesus is doing when he says, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani, is he's quoting from Psalm 22.
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And I read Psalm 22 very frequently on the Lord's Supper night. And if you've thought about the
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Psalm, which begins with those words, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? You follow that through.
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And by the end of the Psalm, the suffering servant is vindicated. And through his testimony, there is a proclamation of the glory of God in the nations.
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And so, it's a Messianic Psalm. And by singing the first line, it would be similar to someone in their dying breaths saying, amazing grace, how sweet the sound.
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Or if they're a Reformed Baptist, how sweet and awful is the place. Something like that.
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And if they had the old trading hymn, the awful, not awesome, is the right term. But it's meant to bring to mind the entirety of that poem or song.
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And I think that's what's going on there. So, Jesus has a confidence. And yet, I am not alone because the
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Father is with me. Of course, again, people say, well, it's another reason not to accept John. Because it's so clear in Mark and other places that Jesus is completely out of control.
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He doesn't know what's going on. Just gross misreadings of the text. It's amazing to see people with numerous letters piled after their names.
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I mean, entire words and phrases. They can look right at them and not see them. I think often of Paul's phrase, a veil lies over their mind, speaking of the
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Jews, the reading of the law. And traditions and rebellion can function very much in the same way.
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In keeping someone from seeing what's right on the page in front of them. It really, really can. I've seen it happen.
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It has nothing to do with your IQ. I have debated men with IQs far beyond my own meager self.
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And yet, been amazed at their statements.
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Not because I didn't understand what they were saying. Because I couldn't understand how they came up with anything like that. Given the plainness of the text in front of them.
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These things I have spoken to you. So that in me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation.
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But take courage. I have overcome the world now. When you think about it, these are pretty much the last words of Jesus to the disciples.
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John chapter 17 is his high priestly prayer. And he's arrested in John chapter 18.
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So you could very appropriately say that John 16 .33
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is the final word. As far as an exhortation to the disciples.
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Though obviously the high priestly prayer I think is just one huge long exhortation.
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A tremendous reflection upon Christian truth in the words of that prayer.
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But these things in the immediate context of course.
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Would be this particular discourse of chapters 14 through 16. But maybe we could not improperly make application to a sort of a gospel wide summary.
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And that is that these things I have spoken to you. So that in me you may have peace.
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In the world you have tribulation. But take courage. I have overcome the world. So there is a. You are either in Christ.
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And that is the place of Shalom. The Greek term is
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Irenae. But everyone recognizes that that is the representation of the very deep and rich term
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Shalom. Which yes can be utilized as a simplistic greeting between Jewish people.
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But it is interesting that in the Middle East. That is one of the primary ways of greeting someone.
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We normally don't think of it that way. You know we ask about how are you doing?
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Or how do you feel today? Very personally oriented at that point. But I think again it is reflective of how different things are in our context than them.
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It wasn't so much asking about an individual's state of health or possessions or anything else.
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But the idea of peace. And especially in the Christian context. Peace with God.
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Warfare is not something that most of us have had to deal with. There are even though there has been war in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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War in the memories of some of you in Vietnam. Though there is not very many in that situation anymore.
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That is an aging generation. The last of the World War II veterans are passing away.
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The Korean War veterans are getting fewer and fewer. And even in all of those situations.
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I mean really Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan.
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The other side of the world. You only see them back then in grainy black and white video clips on the
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CBS Evening News. Now of course you see things almost instantaneously through the web.
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But still it is a long ways away from here. Outside of 9 -11 there really hasn't been much here on our own soil.
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That would cause us to go about in the kind of mindset that people around the world go around fairly regularly.
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Especially in the Middle East. With car bombs and suicide bombers and warfare happening all around them.
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And so when war would strike, everyone would be affected.
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You think of what happened during World War II and the Allied bombing raids over Europe and Japan and places like that.
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I mean death falling from the sky during the Battle of Britain and things like that.
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Completely changes your life. For most of us other than the royal pain at the airport.
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In going through security screening and running into TSA agents that think that they are actually
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James Bond. Believe me I've run into some of them. The worst places are the smaller airports.
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All of a sudden that badge gets this big. You're in my airport now sonny.
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In the big airports it's like go, go. You're just a nameless faceless person.
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I'm looking into your belongings and go away. But man almost every time
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I've had to basically unpack my backpack completely. Just lay everything out.
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I was in some little podunk airport someplace and I was getting on a puddle jumper. That same bag had been through O 'Hare and Sky Harbor and every place else.
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Didn't even look at it. You get into these little places. I remember this one guy.
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I had this jump drive. Thumb drive. It's almost indestructible.
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It's actually made out of metal instead of just some plastic thing you can fall apart in your hand. You can drive over it in a car and it will still work.
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This guy is like, what's this? It's a jump drive for a computer.
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I wouldn't be taking stuff like this to my airport. That's what he said.
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I just wanted to go, wow. I didn't know they paid you so much. You could buy an airport. I did not say that, mind you, because I wanted to make my flight.
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But believe you me, the thought was there. It's like, wow, this is scary.
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How did I get on that? I have no earthly idea how I got on that. Warfare, yes.
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Other than the troublesome issues we've had along those lines.
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We haven't been staying in line, getting rationed food or stuff like that. Blessings of peace.
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Even we tend to just limit that just to peace with God, a spiritual thing, not really having any external ramifications.
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But even the Muslims, Muslims, Christians, Jews, in history, peace has been the primary.
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If you want to wish something for someone that it would be their greatest possession, really, it's to wish them peace.
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So Jesus says, these things I have spoken to you, so in me you may have peace.
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Once again, the exclusive nature of the revelation of God in Christ, the exclusive nature of the provision of peace in only one way, cannot be filtered out, lessened, minimized, whatever terms you want to use.
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There are so many who find that so offensive, so grossly offensive, that they have created what we can only describe as a mutant version of Christianity.
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It is a mutant version of Christianity that does not have the exclusive element of the centrality of Christ.
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There is no room for Christianity for pluralism. It's just not there. And yet, interestingly enough,
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I think a woman bishop was just consecrated and established in Australia.
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Right near the real conservative Anglicans in Sydney, it's caused quite a dust -up, who is on record rejecting the concept of the atoning sacrifice of Christ, and who is clearly universalistic and anti -exclusivistic and pluralistic and everything else.
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And it always creates a monstrosity when you try to take out what is just so plainly, in me you may have peace.
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Well, you can have peace in many other ways too. No, that's not his point.
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There is something very special about him, and when you take out that exclusive nature of how you can have peace, you take out the exclusive nature of who
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Jesus is. You can't do that. But in me, you may have peace.
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In the world, you have tribulation. So there we are. There is the now and the not yet, the two worlds of our existence.
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We are in Christ, and in him we have peace, even though we are also in the world, and in the world we have tribulation.
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But we are to take courage, because the one in whom we are united,
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Christ, has overcome, is victorious. It's the
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Greek term that would be used of a victor, a person who defeats someone else in battle.
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I have overcome the world. And so there is a...
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That also, I think, has to be kept in mind. There is that term cosmos again.
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You know, the term cosmology, study of the world, etc., etc. We've noted it many, many times, but John uses this word in a number of different ways.
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And he's going to use that word in the very next chapter in the prayer of Jesus, where he is going to clearly differentiate between the disciples and the world.
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He says, I pray for them, I do not pray for the world. Well, what does world mean?
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Here, I have overcome the world. The world is that system of things that is in direct opposition to God and to his purposes.
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And his people are in him, and while they live in the world, they are not of the world.
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So, whenever anybody tries to shoehorn a meaning into the word world, which normally is every single human being alive ever has been, ever will be, they end up doing severe damage to the text of Scripture itself.
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What does it mean for Jesus to say, I have overcome the world? What does it mean for Jesus to say, I'm not praying for the world? I'm praying for the Lord to get me out of the world.
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I think I've pointed out that scholars have identified at least ten to fourteen different uses by John alone of the term cosmos.
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I'm not just talking about the gospels, John, but the epistles and the book of Revelation.
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That's a lot. And every context has to be examined to see where in the range of meaning, the semantic domain is what it's called, of cosmos, any particular usage is actually to be found.
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But here, what you have is that contrast. We are in him. In him we have peace.
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In the world, you have tribulation. And every time we experience it and go, oh
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Lord, what's going on? We're just demonstrating we didn't listen very well the first time around. There are a lot of Christians in the world who don't have a problem recognizing, because it's their everyday experience, that believers who go against the flow of the world will have tribulation.
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But take courage, I have overcome the world. So that tribulation can never overcome us because he has overcome the world.
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So if we are in him, then we're already on the victorious side. Our problem is we want to experience that now and not in Christ and in his coming and in his victory over the world and its judgment and so on and so forth.
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Now, I must confess, even trying to work through John chapter 17 scares me.
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It is holy ground just as much as Romans 8 and 9 or anything else like that.
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But it is an amazing, amazing text.
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So I do look forward to at least touching upon the surface. I'm not sure how much more we can do as we look at chapter 17 and the future opportunities we have together.
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All right? Okay, let's close. Our great heavenly Father, we do thank you that we have your promise that in Christ we have peace.
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In the world, we do have tribulation, but we are to take courage. Our Lord has overcome the world.
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May we always recognize that we are to be in conflict with the world.
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May we never become comfortable with it. May its pleasures never appeal to us. May our eyes be fixed upon the heavenly realm.
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And may we see this world as a place of service to you, of growth and sanctification. But may we recognize that anything this world has to offer to us is passing away.
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May we seek that which does not pass away. Be with us now as we go into worship. We pray in Christ's name.
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Oh, yeah. Well, yes. I think a few episodes of The Next Generation might have some appropriate...