Participants: Deyvy Rodriguez & Jon Paulien
Series Code: JBOTB
Program Code: JBOTB00019B
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00:01 And welcome back.
00:02 We are in Chapter 14 of the Gospel of John. 00:04 And Jesus is now giving His farewell speech. 00:09 He is telling His disciples, He is going somewhere 00:12 and His desires to take the disciples with Him 00:16 when He returns. 00:17 Dr. Paulien, so what else can we learn from this? 00:21 Well, it says right at the beginning, 00:22 He says, don't let your hearts be troubled. 00:25 So it's clear that the disciples are troubled 00:27 by what He said in Chapter 13 that He is going away 00:31 and where He is going they can't follow. 00:33 So these first three verses are His first attempt 00:37 to ease their trouble and he says, 00:40 "Look, I am going away for a purpose, I need to go." 00:44 And He says this frequently through the section. 00:46 I need to go because I am going to go 00:48 prepare a place for you where I am not going away forever 00:52 but I am going to prepare a place for you 00:54 and then I am going to come back, 00:56 I am going to receive you to myself 00:59 so that where I am, that place that I am going, 01:03 you can be with me there. 01:05 Now a lot of people wonder in the Book of Revelation 01:09 you have a millennium that I believe 01:11 comes after the second coming of Jesus 01:14 and the question is no where in Revelation 20 01:17 does it say where God's people are 01:20 during the millennium, it talks about Satan, 01:22 it talks about couple of resurrections, 01:26 at the end of the millennium there's wicked people there. 01:28 Where is the people of God through all that time? 01:31 Revelation 20 doesn't discuss it. 01:33 The only place in the Bible where that becomes clear 01:37 is here in this passage. 01:38 So I thought we just stop there for a moment. 01:41 Jesus doesn't say, "I am gonna go away 01:44 and when I go away I will come back 01:46 so that where you are, I can be also." 01:50 If He was coming to earth, to reign on the earth 01:52 with His disciples as some people believe, 01:54 then He would have said it that way. 01:57 Instead He says, "I am going to prepare a place 01:59 and I will come again so that where I am," heaven, 02:03 "you," here on earth, "may be also." 02:07 So when He comes the second time, 02:09 He doesn't come to be with us here, 02:11 He comes to take us with Him there. 02:15 And that's where John 14:1-3 makes that clear. 02:20 Now moving on through Chapter 14, 02:24 it would be wonderful we could spend time on every verse here 02:27 but I want to pick out three or four verses 02:30 that I think are most crucial 02:32 and the first of those is verse 6. 02:35 "Jesus said to him, 02:37 'I am the way, the truth, and the life. 02:39 No one comes to the Father except through Me." 02:44 The way, the truths and the life. 02:46 This is one of those "I am" statements. 02:48 I am, I go, in me, I am the way, the truth, and the life. 02:53 He is the way to the Father. 02:56 If you want to come to the Father, 02:57 you come through Jesus 02:58 because the Father has given Jesus be for us, to be here 03:04 and we can know God through Him because He is like God. 03:08 And as a human being He bares within Himself 03:11 the Shekinah Glory of God. 03:13 So Jesus is the way to the Father. 03:18 He is also the truth, 03:20 He is the truth about the Father. 03:23 We understand what the Father is like. 03:26 You know there were many people throughout history. 03:28 There's a fellow name Marcian in the second century 03:32 who believes that the God of the Old Testament 03:35 was a cruel taskmaster 03:38 and that he wasn't anything like Jesus. 03:41 Jesus is a totally different picture. 03:43 They are two completely different entities. 03:46 And the only way to get a true picture of God 03:50 is to discard the Old Testament. 03:52 Marcian even discarded most of the New Testament. 03:56 He created a cannon of his Bible you could say. 04:01 Basically it was ten of Paul's letters 04:04 and the Gospel of Luke. 04:06 And that was his whole Bible. 04:08 He threw out the Old Testament and most of the-- 04:09 rest of the books that we know of this New Testament. 04:12 So he saw this extreme distinction between 04:15 the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New. 04:17 John does not see that distinction. 04:21 The truths about the Father, the God of the Old Testament 04:25 is Jesus, what Jesus is like. 04:28 When you see Jesus washing feet, that's what God is like. 04:32 When you see Jesus saying, love one another as I have loved you, 04:37 that's what God is like. 04:39 When you see Jesus hanging on the cross, 04:42 being abused and disrespected, that's what God is like. 04:47 God care so much about us 04:51 that He is willing to come down to this earth, 04:53 take the worst that human beings could throw at Him 04:57 and say, "look, I will never give you up. 05:00 I will never let you go." 05:03 You need to know that there is a love out there 05:05 that is so deep and so permanent 05:09 that you can only walk away with it, from it 05:12 with the greatest of effort. 05:14 When you see the love of God on the cross, 05:17 to turn away from that is very, very hard, 05:20 when you really grasp it. 05:22 Those who don't grasp would feel like it's easy to turn away. 05:25 When you truly see the truth about God, 05:28 it's hard to walk away. 05:30 And then He says, "I am the Life." 05:33 The whole mission of this gospel according to Chapter 20 05:36 is that you will believe that Jesus is Messiah 05:39 and believing you will have life in His name. 05:43 So the life is what everybody receives when they believe. 05:48 Back in the prologue, He says, 05:49 as many as came to Him became children of God, 05:53 they received life in His name. 05:56 So in a way John 14:6 is a summary 05:59 of everything that Jesus brings. 06:02 A lot of people had been offended by the passage. 06:04 They say, you know, Jesus is the only-- 06:07 the way, the truths and the life. 06:08 That cuts out everybody else. I don't think so. 06:12 I think that what we see in the gospel 06:14 is a love of God for the whole human race. 06:16 It's not just for Jews. 06:19 It's not just for people who will call themselves Christians. 06:22 What Jesus did on the cross is for everybody. 06:25 In fact in Colossians, 06:27 it says that the cross is for the entire universe. 06:30 And so there is enough there at the cross 06:34 for everybody on this earth. 06:36 And I believe that when we get to eternity 06:38 there may be some people there we didn't expect 06:41 because God's love is big enough for all of that. 06:45 Now once again, Jesus saying all that in person 06:50 doesn't connect with the disciples. 06:52 Read verses 7 to 9. 06:54 "If you had known me, you would have known my Father also, 06:58 and from now on you know him and have seen him. 07:02 Philip said to Him, "Lord, show us the Father, 07:05 and it is sufficient for us. 07:07 Jesus said to him, 'Have I been with so long, 07:11 and yet you have not believed, you have not known me, Philip? 07:14 He who has seen Me has seen the Father, 07:17 so how can you say, show us the Father?'" 07:21 So here Jesus elaborates on what I was just saying, 07:25 if you have seen Me, you have seen the Father. 07:29 He makes no distinction, 07:30 this Marcianite thing just isn't real, 07:34 it's not where God is going with all of this. 07:38 There are many places in the New Testament 07:41 where Jesus is described in the language of Yahweh 07:47 where texts of the Old Testament talk about Yahweh, 07:51 the God of the Old Testament, applies them to Jesus. 07:54 In a real sense for the New Testament, 07:56 Jesus is the God of the Old Testament, 08:00 rather than seeing a gap between the two. 08:02 They say Jesus is actually the one that was on Mount Sinai. 08:05 Jesus is the one that spoke to Isaiah. 08:08 Jesus is the one that was with Moses 08:10 and Adam in the garden, you see. 08:14 But here in John, Jesus turns that into reverse. 08:18 He is saying the Father is the God of the New Testament. 08:23 If Jesus is the God of the Old Testament 08:26 and the Father is the God of the New Testament, 08:28 you cannot separate them. 08:31 The two of them are truly one 08:33 and that means everything that John implies by that. 08:37 If you know Jesus, you know what God is like. 08:40 This is the deepest revelation 08:42 and when we see the sufferings, self-sacrificing 08:46 character of God it draws us to that. 08:50 Something deep inside of us says I want to be like that. 08:54 I want to be self-sacrificing. 08:56 I want to live for others 08:58 and we are motivated to be that which by nature we are not. 09:02 So to know God, perhaps the misunderstanding, 09:06 misconceptions that many people have about this evil god 09:12 or this other god that man in the first or second century. 09:15 Listen to a few atheists today 09:17 and you can see their picture of God is very, very cruel. 09:20 But according to what Jesus is saying 09:23 that to know God for truly who He is, is to know Jesus. 09:30 And see Jesus as we see 09:32 and learn from Jesus, and His sacrifice, 09:34 His love for His disciples then that's who God is. 09:38 I can understand why atheists turn away from God. 09:41 If the god that they know is the god of cruel father 09:44 or the god of the cruel church, the god of the inquisition, 09:48 the god of the crusades, the god of the holocaust. 09:52 If that is the god that Christians portray, 09:57 then we are probably better off not to believe in Him. 10:00 It's not the God that Jesus has come to portray. 10:05 And so the cure to atheism is Gospel of John 10:09 to come to realize who God really is. 10:12 Now there's one more thing we got to touch base with 10:15 before we are done with this chapter and that's verse 12. 10:17 This is a stunning verse that blows everybody's mind. 10:21 "Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, 10:25 the works that I do he will do also 10:27 and greater works than these he will do, 10:30 because I go to My Father." 10:33 Wow. That's amazing. 10:35 He says, we can do greater works than Jesus and you say, what? 10:39 Raise the dead? Heal the sick? 10:42 Give sight to the blind? 10:43 How could anybody do greater works than that? 10:46 And the answer I think you see here in this farewell discourse 10:51 is that Jesus has limitations. 10:54 As a human being He can only be in one place at one time. 10:58 When He goes away and sends the Holy Spirit, 11:02 the Holy Spirit can be everywhere at once. 11:05 And when we have the Holy Spirit as disciples, 11:08 we can do the works that Jesus has done all around the world. 11:13 So Jesus work is multiplied 11:16 through the work of the Holy Spirit 11:18 and therefore it becomes truly greater works than these. 11:23 They will do maybe not greater in quality 11:25 because the work of God is the work of God either way 11:28 but definitely greater in quantity. 11:30 The quantity of great works is multiplied 11:34 when Jesus ascends to heaven 11:36 through the work of the Holy Spirit. 11:38 So that to me is the best explanation of this verse. 11:41 And mention in one or two of those works 11:43 that I can do greater than Jesus. 11:47 Well, the greatest work of all probably is forgiveness. 11:50 You know, we tend to focus on the spectaculars. 11:52 You know, we want to see grand miracles. 11:55 And John has been trying to tell us all the way along 11:57 that is not the way to genuine faith. 12:00 The greatest miracles are the things 12:02 that God does in the heart. 12:04 The greatest miracles is when a life changes. 12:07 That's the amazing thing. 12:08 Now forgiving, by the why forgiving is not always easy. 12:12 That's right. It sounds easy. 12:14 Okay, you forgive others 12:16 but how can I genuinely forgive others, 12:20 especially when they have caused so much hurt in my life? 12:25 Perhaps someone is watching and asking that question, 12:27 well, it sounds very easy, you had a very good life. 12:30 My life has been miserable. 12:32 How can someone take courage to say 12:34 that they can have the strength to forgive others? 12:38 Well, it helps first of all to see it in other people. 12:42 When you see somebody that you can see, hear and touch 12:45 forgiving people that helps a great deal. 12:47 But ultimately it's a miracle of God. 12:49 We can choose to forgive but the heart forgiveness 12:53 comes through the Holy Spirit, It's a gift. 12:56 Well, Dr. Paulien, I thank you again for being with us. 12:59 And friends, you too can have that miracle of forgiveness 13:02 and only Christ can give you, 13:04 give me that miracle if you accept Him today. 13:07 God bless. |
Revised 2014-12-17