And welcome back.
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We are in Chapter 14
of the Gospel of John.
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And Jesus is now
giving His farewell speech.
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He is telling His
disciples, He is going somewhere
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and His desires to
take the disciples with Him
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when He returns.
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Dr. Paulien, so what
else can we learn from this?
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Well, it says
right at the beginning,
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He says, don't let
your hearts be troubled.
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So it's clear that
the disciples are troubled
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by what He said in
Chapter 13 that He is going away
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and where He is
going they can't follow.
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So these first three
verses are His first attempt
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to ease their
trouble and he says,
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"Look, I am going away
for a purpose, I need to go."
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And He says this
frequently through the section.
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I need to go
because I am going to go
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prepare a place for you where
I am not going away forever
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but I am going to
prepare a place for you
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and then I am
going to come back,
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I am going to
receive you to myself
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so that where I am,
that place that I am going,
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you can be with me there.
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Now a lot of people
wonder in the Book of Revelation
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you have a
millennium that I believe
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comes after the
second coming of Jesus
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and the question is
no where in Revelation 20
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does it say
where God's people are
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during the millennium,
it talks about Satan,
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it talks about
couple of resurrections,
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at the end of the millennium
there's wicked people there.
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Where is the people of
God through all that time?
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Revelation 20
doesn't discuss it.
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The only place in the
Bible where that becomes clear
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is here in this passage.
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So I thought we just
stop there for a moment.
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Jesus doesn't say,
"I am gonna go away
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and when I go
away I will come back
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so that where you
are, I can be also."
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If He was coming to
earth, to reign on the earth
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with His disciples
as some people believe,
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then He would
have said it that way.
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Instead He says, "I am
going to prepare a place
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and I will come again so
that where I am," heaven,
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"you," here on
earth, "may be also."
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So when He
comes the second time,
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He doesn't come
to be with us here,
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He comes to take
us with Him there.
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And that's where John
14:1-3 makes that clear.
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Now moving on
through Chapter 14,
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it would be wonderful we could
spend time on every verse here
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but I want to pick
out three or four verses
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that I think are most crucial
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and the first of
those is verse 6.
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"Jesus said to him,
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'I am the way, the
truth, and the life.
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No one comes to the
Father except through Me."
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The way, the
truths and the life.
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This is one of
those "I am" statements.
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I am, I go, in me, I am the
way, the truth, and the life.
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He is the way to the Father.
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If you want to
come to the Father,
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you come through Jesus
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because the Father has given
Jesus be for us, to be here
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and we can know God through
Him because He is like God.
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And as a human being
He bares within Himself
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the Shekinah Glory of God.
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So Jesus is the
way to the Father.
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He is also the truth,
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He is the truth
about the Father.
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We understand what
the Father is like.
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You know there were many
people throughout history.
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There's a fellow name
Marcian in the second century
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who believes that the
God of the Old Testament
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was a cruel taskmaster
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and that he wasn't
anything like Jesus.
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Jesus is a
totally different picture.
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They are two
completely different entities.
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And the only way to
get a true picture of God
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is to discard the Old Testament.
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Marcian even discarded
most of the New Testament.
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He created a cannon of
his Bible you could say.
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Basically it was
ten of Paul's letters
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and the Gospel of Luke.
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And that was his whole Bible.
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He threw out the Old
Testament and most of the--
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rest of the books that we
know of this New Testament.
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So he saw this
extreme distinction between
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the God of the Old Testament
and the God of the New.
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John does not
see that distinction.
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The truths about the Father,
the God of the Old Testament
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is Jesus, what Jesus is like.
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When you see Jesus washing
feet, that's what God is like.
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When you see Jesus saying, love
one another as I have loved you,
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that's what God is like.
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When you see Jesus
hanging on the cross,
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being abused and disrespected,
that's what God is like.
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God care so much about us
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that He is willing to
come down to this earth,
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take the worst that
human beings could throw at Him
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and say, "look, I
will never give you up.
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I will never let you go."
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You need to know that
there is a love out there
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that is so deep and so permanent
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that you can only
walk away with it, from it
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with the greatest of effort.
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When you see the
love of God on the cross,
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to turn away from
that is very, very hard,
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when you really grasp it.
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Those who don't grasp would feel
like it's easy to turn away.
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When you truly see
the truth about God,
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it's hard to walk away.
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And then He
says, "I am the Life."
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The whole mission of this
gospel according to Chapter 20
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is that you will
believe that Jesus is Messiah
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and believing you
will have life in His name.
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So the life is what everybody
receives when they believe.
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Back in the prologue, He says,
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as many as came to Him
became children of God,
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they received life in His name.
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So in a way John
14:6 is a summary
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of everything that Jesus brings.
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A lot of people had
been offended by the passage.
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They say, you
know, Jesus is the only--
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the way, the
truths and the life.
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That cuts out everybody
else. I don't think so.
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I think that what
we see in the gospel
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is a love of God for
the whole human race.
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It's not just for Jews.
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It's not just for people who
will call themselves Christians.
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What Jesus did on the
cross is for everybody.
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In fact in Colossians,
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it says that the cross
is for the entire universe.
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And so there is
enough there at the cross
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for everybody on this earth.
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And I believe that
when we get to eternity
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there may be some
people there we didn't expect
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because God's love is
big enough for all of that.
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Now once again, Jesus
saying all that in person
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doesn't connect
with the disciples.
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Read verses 7 to 9.
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"If you had known me, you
would have known my Father also,
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and from now on you
know him and have seen him.
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Philip said to Him,
"Lord, show us the Father,
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and it is sufficient for us.
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Jesus said to him,
'Have I been with so long,
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and yet you have not believed,
you have not known me, Philip?
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He who has seen Me
has seen the Father,
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so how can you say,
show us the Father?'"
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So here Jesus elaborates
on what I was just saying,
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if you have seen Me,
you have seen the Father.
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He makes no distinction,
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this Marcianite
thing just isn't real,
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it's not where God is
going with all of this.
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There are many
places in the New Testament
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where Jesus is described
in the language of Yahweh
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where texts of the Old
Testament talk about Yahweh,
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the God of the Old Testament,
applies them to Jesus.
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In a real sense
for the New Testament,
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Jesus is the God
of the Old Testament,
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rather than seeing
a gap between the two.
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They say Jesus is actually
the one that was on Mount Sinai.
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Jesus is the one
that spoke to Isaiah.
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Jesus is the one
that was with Moses
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and Adam in the garden, you see.
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But here in John, Jesus
turns that into reverse.
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He is saying the Father is
the God of the New Testament.
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If Jesus is the God
of the Old Testament
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and the Father is the
God of the New Testament,
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you cannot separate them.
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The two of them are truly one
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and that means everything
that John implies by that.
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If you know Jesus,
you know what God is like.
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This is the deepest revelation
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and when we see the
sufferings, self-sacrificing
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character of God
it draws us to that.
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Something deep inside of us
says I want to be like that.
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I want to be self-sacrificing.
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I want to live for others
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and we are motivated to be
that which by nature we are not.
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So to know God,
perhaps the misunderstanding,
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misconceptions that many
people have about this evil god
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or this other god that man
in the first or second century.
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Listen to a few atheists today
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and you can see their picture
of God is very, very cruel.
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But according to
what Jesus is saying
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that to know God for truly
who He is, is to know Jesus.
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And see Jesus as we see
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and learn from
Jesus, and His sacrifice,
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His love for His disciples
then that's who God is.
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I can understand why
atheists turn away from God.
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If the god that they know
is the god of cruel father
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or the god of the cruel church,
the god of the inquisition,
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the god of the crusades,
the god of the holocaust.
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If that is the god
that Christians portray,
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then we are probably better
off not to believe in Him.
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It's not the God that
Jesus has come to portray.
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And so the cure to
atheism is Gospel of John
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to come to
realize who God really is.
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Now there's one more
thing we got to touch base with
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before we are done with this
chapter and that's verse 12.
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This is a stunning verse
that blows everybody's mind.
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"Most assuredly, I say to
you, he who believes in Me,
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the works that I
do he will do also
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and greater works
than these he will do,
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because I go to My Father."
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Wow. That's amazing.
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He says, we can do greater works
than Jesus and you say, what?
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Raise the dead? Heal the sick?
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Give sight to the blind?
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How could anybody do
greater works than that?
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And the answer I think you see
here in this farewell discourse
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is that Jesus has limitations.
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As a human being He can only
be in one place at one time.
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When He goes away and
sends the Holy Spirit,
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the Holy Spirit can
be everywhere at once.
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And when we have the
Holy Spirit as disciples,
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we can do the works that Jesus
has done all around the world.
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So Jesus work is multiplied
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through the work
of the Holy Spirit
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and therefore it becomes
truly greater works than these.
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They will do maybe
not greater in quality
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because the work of God
is the work of God either way
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but definitely
greater in quantity.
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The quantity of
great works is multiplied
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when Jesus ascends to heaven
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through the work
of the Holy Spirit.
00:11:36.42\00:11:38.58
So that to me is the best
explanation of this verse.
00:11:38.61\00:11:41.02
And mention in one
or two of those works
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that I can do
greater than Jesus.
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Well, the greatest work of
all probably is forgiveness.
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You know, we tend to
focus on the spectaculars.
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You know, we want
to see grand miracles.
00:11:52.99\00:11:55.43
And John has been trying
to tell us all the way along
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that is not the
way to genuine faith.
00:11:57.93\00:12:00.61
The greatest
miracles are the things
00:12:00.64\00:12:02.37
that God does in the heart.
00:12:02.40\00:12:04.06
The greatest miracles
is when a life changes.
00:12:04.09\00:12:07.22
That's the amazing thing.
00:12:07.25\00:12:08.55
Now forgiving, by the why
forgiving is not always easy.
00:12:08.58\00:12:12.67
That's right. It sounds easy.
00:12:12.70\00:12:14.00
Okay, you forgive others
00:12:14.03\00:12:16.08
but how can I
genuinely forgive others,
00:12:16.11\00:12:20.46
especially when they have
caused so much hurt in my life?
00:12:20.49\00:12:25.03
Perhaps someone is watching
and asking that question,
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well, it sounds very
easy, you had a very good life.
00:12:27.11\00:12:30.00
My life has been miserable.
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How can someone
take courage to say
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that they can have the
strength to forgive others?
00:12:34.75\00:12:38.64
Well, it helps first of
all to see it in other people.
00:12:38.67\00:12:42.48
When you see somebody that
you can see, hear and touch
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forgiving people
that helps a great deal.
00:12:45.11\00:12:47.57
But ultimately
it's a miracle of God.
00:12:47.60\00:12:49.95
We can choose to forgive
but the heart forgiveness
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comes through the
Holy Spirit, It's a gift.
00:12:53.60\00:12:56.40
Well, Dr. Paulien, I thank
you again for being with us.
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And friends, you too can
have that miracle of forgiveness
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and only Christ can give you,
00:13:02.35\00:13:03.97
give me that miracle
if you accept Him today.
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God bless.
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