“Judas (not Iscariot) said to Him, “Lord, what then has happened that You are going to disclose Yourself to us and not to the world?” 23 Jesus answered and said to 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 abode with him. 24 “He who does not love Me does not keep My words; and the word which you hear is not Mine, but the Father’s who sent Me. 25 “These things I have spoken to you while abiding with you. 26 “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you. 27 “Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be fearful. 28 “You heard that I said to you, ‘I go away, and I will come to you.’ If you loved Me, you would have rejoiced because I go to the Father, for the Father is greater than I. 29 “Now I have told you before it happens, so that when it happens, you may believe. 30 “I will not speak much more with you, for the ruler of the world is coming, and he has nothing in Me; 31 but so that the world may know that I love the Father, I do exactly as the Father commanded Me. Get up, let us go from here.”
The one thing we must keep in mind and not neglect to remind ourselves of as we study the 14th through the 16th chapters of John’s Gospel, is the setting.
These words are not being spoken in some cold lecture hall. They are not being said even on a grassy hillside or sandy seaside on a sunny, breezy day. The things being said here are not said in anger or in rebuke or correction of any kind.
This is the Lord Jesus Christ, spending what He well knows are His last hours with His closest friends. It is the middle of the night and they are already saddened by news He has announced to them at their Passover dinner.
Judas Iscariot has left the assembly and of those present now only Jesus knows that when He next sees that face it will be flanked by a very large, angry force of men out to take away His freedom and His life.
Later on in this discourse He will tell them that He has many more things to say to them but that they cannot bear them now (16:12), and we will look more closely at that statement later. But the mood that prevails in this room is that of confusion, grief, and frankly, cluelessness. What is happening is that out of His great love for them Jesus is planting seeds in their heads that will bloom into faith when they need it most, later, and bear the good fruit of understanding (14:29).
Therefore as we move through these verses let our approach to them be from the fundamental conviction that the primary goal of Jesus this night is to give information and assuring promises for the hours and days ahead of them. At any point where the translation to our language seems on the surface to appear that Jesus is avoiding a question or chiding them or reproving them, let a little red flag be raised at that point and slow us down until we have delved in thoroughly enough to get the true meaning of the text, as always asking the Holy Spirit to lead us into all truth as promised by our Lord.
JUDAS (Not Iscariot)
In verse 19 Jesus said, “After a little while the world will behold Me no more; but you will behold Me; because I live, you shall live also.”
This statement alone should have been very encouraging to the disciples if only they had understood. They did not, and they would only understand later what we understand now because we have the Holy Spirit and we have the benefit of knowing the end of the story. Jesus was talking about His impending death and resurrection.
In just a little while the world would see Him no more but these disciples would see Him. They would see Jesus after His resurrection and the fact that they and all believers will see and be with Jesus for eternity is implied in His following statement, ‘...because I live, you shall live also’.
The last time the world saw Jesus was when Nicodemus and Joseph took Him down from the cross and wrapped His body and carried Him away to the tomb. The next time the world sees Jesus He will be coming in His glory and power to judge a sinful world. But those who love Him see Him even now with eyes of faith, and as Job declared, they will soon see Him with their own eyes and not another’s. (Job 19:27)
These words were words of assurance, had they the capacity at the time to understand. Ironically, some of them would be the very ones who later, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, would write the words that have taught us; the very words we are studying today in fact.
But being in confusion as the rest, Judas asks his question. Now observe how careful John is to be clear that this was not Judas Iscariot. The betrayer has already departed and has been gone since chapter 13 verse 30.
But John wants us to know for certain that this sincere question comes from the other Judas, also called Thaddeus. The first time Judas Iscariot is recorded as saying anything is when he rebukes Jesus for letting Mary anoint Him with costly perfume. The last time he is recorded he is declaring that he has sinned by betraying the blood of an innocent man. It is a true confession, but one made out of remorse rather than repentance, and in despair he went out and hanged himself; the fitting end of a coward and a thief and a traitor.
Not so with this Judas. He asks a sincere question in his confusion because he doesn’t understand how it is they will be able to see Jesus but the world will not.
THEY WOULD HAVE A SUPERNATURAL PRESENCE (VS 23-24)
Now here is where we come to one of those places I mentioned in my introductory statements. It is one of those places where someone asks a question of Jesus and upon surface reading of His response it appears as though He has ignored the question and gone on to talk about something unrelated.
However right here in the text John writes, “Jesus answered and said to him”. So we needn’t wonder if the response Jesus gives is an answer to the question of Judas, since the Gospel author says that it is. What we need to do is consider the response carefully and extract the meaning from it.
Jesus answers Judas’ question, but what He says and goes on to say is to all of them. After all, Judas probably only voiced what was on all their minds at this point.
In His response Jesus gives them several assurances that, as I’ve said, will be of great encouragement to them later, and of eternal significance for all who are Christ’s.
And by the way, Jesus is answering Judas’ question throughout these verses from 22 to 29. His reply to Judas is not found in verse 23 alone. The full explanation of it comes out of all that Jesus says in this portion.
This is how we will approach verses 22-31 of this chapter today. We will see that Jesus tells them they will have a supernatural presence with them, that’s in verses 23 and 24; then they will have a supernatural remembrance, that is in verse 26, and finally they will have a supernatural peace, in verses 27-29, then I’ll have some closing comments from verses 30-31. So there is our outline.
First, Jesus assured them of a supernatural presence that would be with them.
“Jesus answered and said to 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 abode with him. 24 “He who does not love Me does not keep My words; and the word which you hear is not Mine, but the Father’s who sent Me.”
Now how, you might be asking, is this in any way an answer to Judas’ question? Well, the answer to the question is really secondary to what Jesus wants to teach them.
His wording, translated to English, seems on the surface to be saying ‘If you love Me you will do such and such and if you do the Father will love you and We will come and live with you’.
Let me just go straight to the most glaring reason why this cannot be the accurate interpretation of these words.
First of all, the Father and the Son making their abode with the believer is through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit; the Helper promised back in verses 16 and 17. Jesus is speaking here of salvation.
Therefore, saying that the Father and the Son would come and take up residence with the believer because ‘if anyone loves Me, he will keep My word’, makes salvation by works and not by faith alone.
Perhaps a look at the contrasting statement in verse 24 will help us. “He who does not love Me does not keep My words”.
So what is Jesus teaching? It is that the difference between the one who loves Him and the one who does not is that one will keep His words and the other won’t. One will live in the obedience of belief and the other will not. One will know Him and the other will not.
Therefore the beginning of the answer to the question of Judas is that Jesus will not reveal Himself to an unbelieving world. The world had its chance and it rejected Him. He made the world and though the world was made through Him the world did not know Him. He came to His own and His own did not receive Him.
But to those who receive Him, who because of their love for Him keep His word, He will not only be revealed but His presence will be with them. This will be a supernatural presence in that it will be through the Holy Spirit living in the believer, and it will be much more than just a ‘being with’.
Look back for a moment at verses 16-17 of this chapter.
“I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever; 17 that is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him or know Him, but you know Him because He abides with you and will be in you.”
There, Jesus promises the gift of the indwelling Holy Spirit who will come from the Father at the Son’s bidding; right? And we talked about this in a previous sermon, and that word ‘another’ when He said ‘another’ Helper, meaning one exactly like Me (Christ), which is why the Holy Spirit is also called the Spirit of Christ.
Now we get the picture of the Trinity here; listen again to verse 23.
“If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word, and My Father will love him, and We will come to him, and make Our abode with him.”
So what assurance has Jesus given those who love Him? That the entire Trinity of God will live with him! Believer, if you are one who loves Jesus – and your evidence that you love Him is that you desire to and do keep His commandments and believe His word – here is the assurance from the very lips of Jesus that you have now and forevermore the supernatural presence of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Now here is my justification for the use of the word ‘supernatural’. Remember that I said the meaning of Jesus could not be that He and His Father would live with the believer if or because he keeps his word because that would mean salvation is by works.
But the evidence of the supernatural presence of the Godhead with the believer is two-fold in that the believer desires to keep His words, and can keep His words. In fact, it is only because of the Holy Spirit that the believer can love God at all!
So what is the first part of Jesus’ answer to Judas? It is that the world cannot love or know or behold Jesus because the world does not have the Holy Spirit. Those of the world cannot have the abiding presence of the Father or the Son, and therefore cannot love, cannot keep His words, cannot see Him at all, and in fact do not even desire to.
But the believer can and does love God and the Son by the presence and the power of the Holy Spirit, the Helper, who is both with him and even in him.
Before we move on from here I want to bring a point home to you that springs up out of the truth of these few verses.
If you ever have doubts about your acceptance with God and your own sincerity of heart; that is, if you ever wonder if you have been deceiving yourself about your own spiritual life, just think about this.
Unless you had the Holy Spirit in you, and by His presence the supernatural presence of the Trinity, you would not understand any of this.
These men had been with Jesus for over three years. They had seen it all, heard it all, been right there to witness the sinless Son of God in their very presence. But they didn’t understand any of this until the day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit came and enlightened their minds and hearts. That’s what we’re going to talk about next.
But I want you to understand that people who are of the world, even though some of them are attached to the church, don’t get this at all. If you were not saved you wouldn’t get it at all.
And I know that we have had occasions to discuss the sad fact that there are many in the organization we call ‘church’ who are not true believers. I want to add here today that the presence of unbelievers and the comfort of unbelievers in the body is largely the fault of those who are in the position of preachers and teachers who do not preach the truth. Because it is my conviction that when the Word of God is truly taught, the unsaved will either get saved or eventually get out because they aren’t understanding most of what’s being said and what they do understand makes them uncomfortable.
So do you ever have those little niggling moments of doubt? Well, if you are understanding this and if you really want to see Jesus because you love Him, be at rest; you could not if His life was not already in you.
How does He manifest Himself to you but not to the world? It is by the supernatural presence of God with and in you, promised beforehand and now fulfilled forevermore because Jesus has gone to the Father and asked Him to send the Holy Spirit, and your own evidence to go by is that you love Him and desire to do His will and keep His Word.
THEY WOULD HAVE A SUPERNATURAL REMEMBRANCE (Vs 26)
Verse 26
“But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you.”
I shouldn’t skip over verse 25. “These things I have spoken to you, while abiding with you”. Let’s be clear about Jesus’ use of terms such as ‘these things’ and ‘all things’ (vs 26). To what ‘things’ is He referring?
Well, He is certainly not telling them that they will know everything there is to know because of the Holy Spirit in them. He is revealing Himself to them, remember? This is a response to Judas’ question; right?
Q. How are You going to disclose Yourself to us? A. The things I have spoken to you about Myself, and all things you need to have disclosed to you about Myself, will be brought to you by the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in My name.
Notice also that Jesus used the phrase ‘in My name’. This readdresses another point we addressed earlier. It means ‘per My request’, ‘according to My will’, and we pray that all the time, don’t we. “In Jesus’ name, amen”
Be reminded here, when we pray if we are not asking what Jesus would ask then our prayer is not valid. Jesus always seeks the Father’s glory and always asks for the Glory of God and according to His will. Anything we ask that does not glorify God cannot be asked in Jesus’ name.
Now here is the supernatural part of this. “He will teach you all things,” all what things? All things concerning Christ and the Father. “…and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you”.
Think about this. As we have already noted several times, they weren’t getting any of this, but later, on the day of Pentecost, they got it all, didn’t they?
Peter had this night declared that he would lay down his life for Jesus, in the same breath as professing his ignorance as to where Jesus was even going, and in a few hours he would in abject terror deny 6 times even knowing Him. Then after the crucifixion he would go back to fishing, and even after seeing the resurrected Jesus he would go back to hiding. They all did.
But on the day of Pentecost Peter would step out of the Upper Room full of the Holy Spirit and immediately preach one of the most eloquent sermons of all time out of the storehouse Jesus had built up in Peter’s mind over the past several years, because the Holy Spirit was bringing to his remembrance, and I might add, to his understanding, ‘all that (Jesus) said to (him)’.
That was just the beginning. Think about this. You have the Word of God; the Bible. As you read it, do you realize that all of these New Testament books were written years after the death and resurrection and ascension of Jesus?
The earliest book of the New Testament, most agree, was either 1 Thessalonians or Galatians, and I think most lean toward the Thessalonian letter and agree that it was written around AD 50. The synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke were all probably written in the 60’s. So the earliest of the Gospels would have been written at least 25 years after the ascension of Christ into glory. It is believed that John wrote his letters and his Gospel even later than that; possibly very near the end of the first century.
Now think about this. John and the other Gospel writers, decades after events that we’ve already established they were confused and clueless about while those events were happening, finally recorded them, chronologically, accurately, and quoted their Lord word for word, in everything from the Sermon on the Mount to the various and numerous confrontations with the Pharisees, to this very lengthy discourse we are now studying.
This would be an impossible accomplishment for the most brilliant person who ever lived! What human being could ever hope to accurately record all of that, even if they were attempting to write it all as it happened?
Can you imagine Matthew sitting there with his quill and papyrus, scratching wildly and finally huffing in frustration and blurting out, “Jesus, please slow down a little!”
No, the Bible, all of the Bible, including every book, every letter of the New Testament canon, is God’s Word, written exactly as He inspired it, exactly as the Holy Spirit brought to the writers’ remembrance all that Jesus said to them. It doesn’t matter if it was two years later or twenty or thirty or fifty years later. They had heard and seen it all, and when it came time to write it down, by the supernatural power of the Holy Spirit they remembered and documented it all.
If you believe that any of it is inaccurate because the accuracy of it was dependant solely upon the recollection of a handful of fallible men, then you don’t believe the Bible, and you cannot claim to be a Christian and yet disbelieve the inspired Word of God.
This is the assurance Jesus was giving to them that night in the Upper Room, and it came to pass well within a period of 70 years as one by one they sat down to write. The Holy Spirit taught them all things concerning Christ and He brought to their remembrance all that He had said to them, as promised.
How does this further answer Judas’ question? The Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth, reveals Christ to and for believers only. Unbelievers can never accept or understand.
And by the way, when you hear someone refer to any other book as ‘holy’, you must know that they are speaking in error. There is no other book that is holy, there is no other writing anywhere that is inerrant, infallible, God-breathed and eternal, but the verbally inspired and supernaturally preserved Word of God, the Bible.
Any other writing that makes a claim to ‘holiness’ is nothing but demonic, deceiving and passing away.
THEY WOULD HAVE A SUPERNATURAL PEACE (vs 27-29)
The third assurance Jesus gave them in this passage is that they would have a supernatural peace, that it would be a peace given to them from outside of this world and the world’s system.
“Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be fearful. 28 “You heard that I said to you, ‘I go away, and I will come to you.’ If you loved Me, you would have rejoiced because I go to the Father, for the Father is greater than I. 29 “Now I have told you before it happens, so that when it happens, you may believe.”
They didn’t understand and they could not at that moment take His words to heart. If they had that capacity they would not have slept in the Garden, they would not have run away and deserted Jesus, they would not have cowered in a secret room and they would have been waiting in Galilee Sunday morning as He had instructed, to meet Him there.
But they understood later, didn’t they? With the promised Holy Spirit came a peace that was entirely of a different world. Not as this world thinks of peace.
Mankind has never really known peace. Peace is not the absence of war, like darkness is the absence of light.
Peace is not refraining from shooting your neighbor when his dog digs a hole in your new lawn.
Peace is not avoiding a fight with your spouse by avoiding the hot topic.
Peace is not found in the stillness of a mountain meadow, or the steam of a Calgon bath, or the disjointed tinkling of New Age music with your tea.
Our municipalities have laws against disturbing the peace.
Nations that have long been at odds with one another, have also long talked about peace. When can they have peace? How can they have peace? But still they don’t find peace.
No peace treaty that man has ever devised has been kept. In man there is no peace; and here is why.
It is because man has never been at peace with God, and if there is not peace with God, then there can be no peace in the soul. Man was made to worship his Creator, and when he rejects his Creator and goes his way, then he also rejects peace, and his path is one of turmoil from within that affects everything without.
Epictetus, a philosopher of the first century, wrote in reference to the Pax Romania - the Roman peace that existed in the civilized world at the time and about which the Caesar boasted –
“While the emperor may give peace from war on land and sea, he is unable to give peace from passion, grief and envy. He cannot give peace of heart, for which man yearns more than even for outward peace”.
Judas, you will find in yourself from now on a supernatural peace that will fortify you and see you through all that the world has to throw at you. When everyone around you is despairing, worrying, falling utterly to pieces with anxiety you will know in Whose hands you are kept and preserved everlastingly and by His presence in and with you, you will know peace that the world cannot have or give. In this way also I disclose Myself to you but not to the world.
That’s the response of Jesus to His disciple’s sincere question.
According to oral tradition, Judas who was also called Thaddeus and also the Apostle Jude, was martyred in AD 65 in Beirut, Lebanon along with Simon the Zealot.
As far as any traceable information can tell, the only Apostle who did not die a martyr’s death was the author of this Gospel, the Apostle John.
What we do know for certain, because it is recorded for us from the lips of Jesus to the inerrant written Word of God, is that they all enjoyed a peace that the world could never give, and in that peace of mind and soul they went forward in the supernatural power of the indwelling Holy Spirit and turned the world upside down with the Good News of Jesus Christ.
He told them before it happened, and when it happened they believed.
CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
“I will not speak much more with you, for the ruler of the world is coming, and he has nothing in Me; 31 but so that the world may know that I love the Father, I do exactly as the Father commanded Me. Get up, let us go from here.”
The commentators struggle with the last line of this chapter, ‘Get up, let us go from here’. One actually concluded that Jesus was actually saying, ‘Let’s change the subject now’.
Personally I have no problem taking that line to mean that knowing Judas Iscariot would be on his way back with a mob, and having more that He wanted to say to His friends, Jesus said, ‘Let’s go’, and continued to talk to them as they went out. Maybe they even relocated to some quiet place where He finished His discourse before going out across the Kidron to Gethsemane. It doesn’t really matter, does it? For me it just lends credibility to the historical account and the Holy Spirit’s inspiration, that John would include this statement that seemingly has no significance except for the fact that Jesus said it and the Apostle was faithful to record every word.
Having left that behind then, let’s just look at the prior content of verses 30 and 31.
Jesus indicated that the time was short and He would not be saying much more.
Before He was finished, in chapter 16 verse 12, He would tell them that there were many things He wanted to say but that they could not bear them now. That is an interesting thing for Jesus to say at the particular time He said it, and Lord willing we will talk more about that later. But here His time was shortened by the fact that the ruler of this world was coming.
When Satan attempted unsuccessfully to tempt Jesus in the wilderness at the beginning of His public ministry, after his failure he left Jesus ‘for a time’. That’s what we’re told by the Gospel writer. Now he is coming back, this time using the person of Judas Iscariot, and he will fail once more because there is no sin in Jesus and Satan cannot get a claw hold where there is no sin nature to appeal to.
Here is something worthy of note. When Satan temps with the lust of the eye, the lust of the flesh and the boastful pride of life, he uses the sinner and uses him up, then deserts him and leaves him in a worse state than he was.
This is in absolute opposing contrast to the precious Holy Spirit of Christ, Who comes gently and indwells the believer and from that moment begins to make him better and better until finally He will make Him just like Jesus.
1 Jn 3:2
Now the sentence doesn’t end there so pay attention. Just ignore the verse #31 there and read. “…and he has nothing in Me; but so that…”
See it? What is Jesus telling them? He is saying that Satan cannot win. Satan has no claim whatsoever on Jesus Christ! The devil was as much a tool at this moment being used of God to carry out His plan of redemption as anyone else in the story.
All the way back at the beginning God told Satan in the presence of two witnesses, the first man and woman, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise him on the heel”. Genesis 3:15
And now the hour had come. Satan would be allowed to wound the Seed of the woman and in the process his own head would be crushed.
Jesus went deliberately to the place He knew Judas would find Him because it was the world’s hour and the power of darkness, and He went there out of His love for the Father and as the obedient Son who always does what the Father commands. Because when this hour of darkness was over Satan’s power would be crushed forever, the plan of redemption complete, and your salvation and mine secured in the Father’s love forevermore through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Just one more glance. Look again at this sentence. “…and he has nothing in Me; but so that the world may know that I love the Father, I do exactly as the Father commanded Me.”
The world may not see or know Jesus, but the world is left without excuse. On the cross of Calvary, lifted up for all to see, Jesus demonstrated His love for God the Father and obedience to His will; and though they deny Him and reject Him and hate Him, yet they will stand before the throne of the glorified Christ in judgment because they saw the truth and chose the lie.
Well, that’s the comfort chapter.
The disciples needn’t have, and no true believer need ever let their heart be troubled over God’s acceptance or their future or even their present circumstances. Jesus assured them and therefore everyone appointed to life, of His supernatural presence with us always, a supernatural remembrance of His Word and His promises at the very moment we need their truth and their strength in our walk through this world, and His supernatural peace that surpasses all human understanding, but fortifies and makes confident the true Christian that Jesus has gone away so that He can come to us.
He came in the Person of the Helper to come along side and also to live in us and He will come back in glory just as He said, because that is in the Father’s plan, and He always does what the Father commands.
Let us go on from here.
