Summary
Pastor Safrit walks through John 14:15-31, emphasizing the comfort and peace that comes from abiding in Christ. He explains that Jesus assures His disciples they will not be abandoned, as He will send the Holy Spirit to guide and support them. The main point is that true love for Christ is demonstrated through obedience to His commands, which leads to a life of peace, even amidst fear and uncertainty. The sermon encourages believers to rely on the Holy Spirit for strength and to embrace the promises of Christ's presence and victory.
Welcome and Church Information
Thank you for listening to Pleasant Grove Baptist Church Sermon Audio. For more information, please visit our website, pgbcronda.com, or visit on all social media platforms. Thank you, choir, for that.
Most of our children have been dismissed. What a blessing it is to have our children's church and that opportunity. If you see my son today, my youngest, it is his birthday. He is turning five years old today.
May mention him a little bit in the service today as a way of illustration, but tell him happy birthday. It'll make his day.
He is on cloud nine. He's turning five, going to kindergarten. It's always a fun time of age.
And if you have your Bibles, we're going to be in John chapter 14. John chapter 14. We're going to finish out this portion of John 14 before, should be by the day's end. And I'm really just encouraged by this passage.
And what it's meant to me this week. I'm entitled to the comfort of knowing Christ.
Oftentimes people will say, why do you do what you do? Why do you, why are you a believer? Why do you give to the church? Why are you a pastor? And this passage in and of itself is some of the key promises that Christ gives us in scripture.
He lays out some things that can comfort us, can help us understand. As Logan was talking, I'm jotting more things down. So I don't know how long I'm going to go this morning, but buckle in. It's going to be a great time. John 14, verses 15 through 31.
Let's stand out of reading of God's word and we'll jump right into the message today. Bible says, Judas, not Iscariot, the one that betrayed him. Say it to Jesus, Lord, everyone, Lord, how is it you're going to reveal yourself to us and not the world?
Jesus answered him, if anyone loves me, he will keep my word.
My father will also love him and I will come to him and make our home with him. The one who doesn't love me will not keep my words. The word you hear is not mine, but the father who has sent me.
I have spoken these things that you will, that while I remain with you, but the counselor, the Holy Spirit from the father will send in my name, will teach you all things and remind you of everything I have told you.
Peace I leave with you. My peace I give you. I do not to, I'm sorry.
I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your heart be troubled or fearful.
You have heard me to tell you I'm going away and I'm coming to you again. If you love me, you will rejoice that I am going to the father because the father is greater than I.
Jesus' Assurance to His Disciples
I have told you now before it happens so that when it does happen, you may believe. I will not talk with you much longer because the ruler of the world is coming. He has no power over me. On the contrary,
so the world may know that I love the father. I do as the father commanded me. Get up. Let us leave this place. Father, we love you. We thank you for what you've done.
Thank you for the reading of your word. I pray God that you would help it to penetrate our hearts this morning. Lord, help us to know that you are the one that gives peace. You are the one that comforts us when all other things doesn't comfort us and doesn't fulfill that satisfaction.
But Lord, we know that you are there and you are with us and you are for us. We love you in your name we pray.
Amen. You may be seated. I went ahead and took my coat off because I am already getting warm. I sat down while Logan was speaking and Bertie said, Dad, you're already sweating. I said, yes, I am. So the air is on a little bit and it's just that weird. It's 70 degrees outside. It's weird.
So there's fans in front of you. You can fan a little bit. You're not going to, it may actually look like you're like praising the Lord and it's not going to aggravate me at all. It's going to be great.
But as we think through this passage, as we walk through this, as I said earlier, my youngest son is five and he's about to go to kindergarten. And if you remember when your children were young or maybe you've got young children,
one of the hardest moments for a parent, especially a first time parent, but even as you get older and now it's our last little one and he's growing up,
one of the hardest things for you to do is to leave your child. Some of your parents are like, I wish I could leave my kids. Like if anyone here wants to take my kids, I will let them have them.
But maybe it's that first day of school, right? You go to drop your child off for the first day of school and mom's over here boohooing and crying. My baby's growing up.
All right. Dad's like, get him out of here. I'm ready for him to get to school. All right.
Maybe it's that first sleepover where you drop that kid off and maybe there's a little tear like, I don't know if I'm going to stay the night without mom or dad here.
Maybe it's your mom or dad had to leave for a work trip and you're like, am I going to be able to handle mom and dad not being here?
Oftentimes this happens and kids have what's called separation anxiety where they'll, they'll be separated from mom and dad and they'll get fearful.
And, and mom and dad, in order to comfort the child, will look at them and say, I'm coming back for you. The child in their mind feels like they're being abandoned. They're being left behind, right?
Mom and dad's out partying it up and I'm over here and I'm doing this and parents will make the statement, I'll be back. Or it won't be long. You're not going to be alone. They may even make this statement.
I'm going to send someone to help take care of you. You're going to be with grandma and grandpa. You're going to be with aunt and uncle. You're going to be with these people. And when that promise is made, it begins to change in the mind of the child,
right? Mom and dad does care about me. They're putting me in the hands of someone else. They're putting this authority over to someone else. And this is what is going on in the disciples' mind. John chapter 14,
Jesus in this moment, the disciples have stepped away from their livelihood. They've stepped away from collecting taxes. They've stepped away from being fishermen. They've stepped away from being zealots. They've stepped away from all that they were doing, all livelihood, all financial income,
everything they were planning to do with their life. They have now stepped away from. They have given everything to Jesus. And Jesus now three years later goes, hey, I'm leaving guys.
Wait, Jesus, what? You're leaving? We've only been with you three years. What are you talking about? You're leaving. This is their teacher. This is their leader. This is their protector. This is their hope.
This is everything that they have been given their life to. They've seen dead people come back to life. They've seen people who were healed, who had leprosy that were healed. People had a broken arm like Ella. Jesus touched them. Boom, they're healed.
They have seen things that they never even thought possible. And yet Jesus is saying to them something they can't even comprehend. You're leaving? Jesus, you're going away? What am I going to do? Their hearts were troubled.
That's why he says twice this passage and before, let not your hearts be troubled because he knows there's anxiety. He knows that their world is feeling like it's falling apart.
It's feeling like everything that they had put their hope and trust in is now being destroyed and he knows what's about to happen. John 14 lays out these things in really different, three different areas. He tells them they're not going to be abandoned.
God's Peace and Comfort
He tells them they're not going to be alone. And he tells them that they're going to have peace. And this is something that we can rest our hearts in knowing that God is a God of peace. God is a God of comfort and comforter.
His presence is there with us. And he is a provider in our lives. And all of this flows from one simple reality. There's one simple verse in here.
It's the only time that I can tell that Jesus actually says that he loves his disciples. Now, I'm sure he said it. I'm not doubting and saying that Jesus didn't say this often. But in verse 21, it says this, I also will love them and reveal myself to them.
It all flows out of this one little four-letter word called love. Jesus loves them. They love him. And everything he's doing is flowing from this attribute of love.
This simple reality that love can drive us to do some crazy things. Right? A guy falls in love with a girl.
And everyone's like, are you sure that's the one you're going to marry? And all of a sudden, he like abandons all sense of behavior and belonging in his mind.
And he goes out and he buys a ring. He gets down on one knee and he proposes this lady that's going to be the love of his life. And he's going to spend forever with her. Love causes us to do some crazy things that we never thought possible.
Jesus in this moment is saying love is going to motivate them to do some things that they never even thought possible. So we're going to look at two motives of love.
The first one, and I didn't put this word love in your notes. But it's in between thee and for the love for their master.
Jesus in verse 15, he says, if you love me, you will keep my commands.
Notice there's something that Jesus does not say in this passage. He does not say, if you love me, you're going to feel something. Love is not a feeling.
Love can be a feeling, but love in this idea and love in this passage is not a feeling that you have. And if I just get closer to Jesus, I'm going to feel this weird sense of aura from Jesus.
No, he's saying, if you love me, it's connected to the obedience of following Jesus. Connected to his commands.
He says, if you love me, you're going to obey what I have told you to do in your life. This is something that's so fascinating for us because we like feelings. I like to feel things. I like to feel appreciated. I like to feel love for my children.
I like to feel the sense of last night, yesterday, we were at the house and we had our birthday party for Hudson. And after they left, they had some little foam swords.
And the boys got the foam swords and they started trying to beat me up. I like the feeling of me being stronger than my kids and being able to body slam them in the middle of the floor. Right?
I like the feeling of me being able to, because Brody, sidebar here, Brody decided to walk in with the ugliest color blue I've ever seen in my life, Duke blue. He came in with a Duke blue t-shirt on.
I'm a Carolina fan. I'm like, dude, what are you doing? And so we had this whole process where I am trying to rip this shirt off of him. And I told him, I'm going to burn this shirt.
Like, it's going in the burn pile. It's not going to be in my house anymore. And so the fun of this of, I like that feeling. Right? We would all say, I like the feeling. I love the feeling of things in our life. But Jesus says when we love the master,
it's not necessarily about a feeling. The disciples in this moment were going to be abandoned from Jesus in this moment for a simple period of time. They were going to feel like Jesus was no longer with them.
Jesus was going to leave 40 days later and they were eventually going to give their lives and die for Jesus. The feeling was not there of this is just an awesome thing.
It was Jesus told me to listen and I'm going to listen because I love him. So the first thing we look at in this is love is declared.
Demonstrating Love for Jesus
Love that is declared must be love that is demonstrated. Love that is declared must be love that is demonstrated.
Anyone can say they love Jesus. Anyone can stand up here and say, Jesus is my savior. He's wonderful. He's the best thing that's ever happened to me. But does that love tie into an obedience of I'm going to listen,
I'm going to live out in obedience, and I'm going to live out the commands that Jesus has told me to live out? The other day we were riding down the road and Brody looked at me and he said, Dad, would it be okay if someone,
you know, we lived in a third world country. He's studying in history and geography. And he said, would it be okay if someone asked you that you were a believer and you sort of lied and you told him that you weren't a believer but you were saving your life?
And, you know, he's processing. What is this martyrism? What does it look like? And I said,
Brody, I said, if someone were to come to me and say, tell me you love Jesus or die, if you tell me this or forsake your thought of loving Jesus, I said, I would have to tell them I'm a Christian.
I said, I would sacrifice my life for Jesus because it's not just declared. It's not just standing up and saying, yes, I love Jesus. It's when the hard times come, when the difficult time comes, I'm going to step out. I'm going to live for Jesus. I don't care who asks.
I don't care what happens to me. I've got to live for Jesus. It's a love that is demonstrated.
Now, often people will say, and if you ever listen, I have a podcast. I have a book. If you ever listen or hear the word legalism, legalism is adding to salvation.
Legalism is saying, because I'm a Christian, I'm going to wear a suit and tie. I'm not wearing a suit today because it's too hot. Because I'm a Christian, I'm going to read out of a specific book.
Because I'm a Christian, I'm going to dress a certain way or do a certain thing. Okay, this is not describing that.
It is saying that you love Jesus so much in a relationship that we live in a way not to earn the love of Jesus, but we live in a way to express the love of Jesus. God, I'm not following this command because I think I have to or because you're telling me to.
I'm doing it because I want to show the world that I love you more than anything in this life that ever gives me. And so as we begin to go through this thought process, as we begin to ask ourselves, how is our love for the master?
I love what one commentator said, D.A. Carson. He said, obedience is the inevitable fruit of the genuine love for Christ.
We produce something, right? We produce kids. We produce things in our life. We have to ask ourselves, what are we producing in this Christian life? Love always produces loyalty to Jesus.
Love for him will produce this loyalty that no matter what happens, no matter the difficulty that comes in my life, no matter the hardships that come in my life, I'm going to follow Jesus because I'm going to demonstrate that I love him. Love also is that it's real.
Love that is real keeps all of his commands. Jesus says here, if you love me, keep my commands.
Now, this is a fascinating statement because he uses the plural form of command. He says, commands,
all the commands that I have given. Now, if you're like me, if you were a child at one point, you had certain rules and regulations that your mom and dad laid out in the home that you were like, okay, I like those.
I'll follow those, mom and dad. And then there were some that you're like, I really don't like those commands, mom. Do I have to go to bed at eight o'clock, mom? Come on.
Why can't I stay up and play video games till midnight? This would be wonderful, mom.
Why do I have to go to bed at that time? And there are some commands. There are some rules. There are some things in school that we like to say, I don't really like that. I'm going to do my own thing. Jesus says to follow all of my commands.
Here's just a couple of his commands. You ready? Love your enemies.
As Scotty likes to say, we are commanded to, when someone hits us on the cheek, Jesus says to turn the other cheek, not turn their cheek, right? So we have to love our enemies. And Jesus says this, and we're like, I don't really like to love my enemies, Jesus.
Obedience in Love
Jesus says, forgive quickly. There's going to be people that hurt you.
There's going to be people that come to, as we're going to look at in a couple of weeks, as Jesus is praying in the garden, they're going to come and they're going to lock you up. And Peter pulls out the sword and lops off the guy's ear.
And Jesus, to the guy that's going to arrest him, to the guy that's about to beat him and crucify him, lovingly picks it up and says, I'm going to make you whole. Jesus forgives quickly. Jesus remains humble.
And he tells us a command is to be humble. Jesus tells us to speak truth. Jesus tells us to serve others. And Jesus tells us to live holy. These are just a couple of his commands. And we like to pick out, I like holiness. I like truth. I don't really like forgiveness.
I don't really want to do that. Love doesn't pick and choose.
Love stands back and says, I'm going to obey even when it costs something. I was watching a documentary the other day. And it was about the Murdoch family, the murder that happened.
And one of the ladies in the Murdoch family, the housekeeper, they called her in. They brought her to trial. And she made this statement.
She said, I was told to tell the truth, even if it hurts me. Why would I lie about that?
And it was about a witness that was given. And he was trying to change her testimony. And she said, why would I lie?
Why would I say something that's going to go against even when it hurts me? I'm going to get fired. I'm not going to get this paycheck anymore. But I have to tell the truth. Jesus says that even when it costs you something,
you must obey what's going on. Think of a husband. A husband in a marriage, in a relationship says, I love my wife. But every time she asks me to do something, I'm just going to ignore her. Baby, I love you. You're the apple of my eye. Take out the trash. Nope.
I thought you loved me. Take the trash out. Eh, I love you just a little bit. I don't love you enough to take the trash out. Hey, honey, I'm not feeling well. Can you make dinner tonight? Nah, I'm good. I'm just going to sit on the couch, watch TV, hang out.
Yeah, but I asked you, don't you love me? All right.
Love sacrifices. Love listens. Love honors. Love obeys. And the same is true with Christ. He says, if you love me, there's these commands that I'm wanting you to live by, that I'm asking you to live by, that I'm pleading with you to live by.
And if you love me, you're going to live that way. Do I love Jesus just in the name of Jesus to say that I love Jesus? Or do I love him as a benefit of following him? There are benefits of following Jesus.
We're going to look at some of these promises in a minute, some of these guarantees that we're going to look at. Do I love him for the guarantees?
Or do I truly love Jesus for what he's done? Because he's changed my life, because he's made me a new creature, because I've believed in him, and I can't imagine living another moment of another second of my life without Jesus in it. Is that the idea of the drive that we have?
The question I want to ask you as well is, if someone were to watch you, I do this often because I want us to truly evaluate in our mind how this works out in our life.
If someone were to step into your life for a week, at the end of that week, would they step back and say, after I've watched James for a week, I can conclude that he's a Christian. Or would they say,
I don't even know where Jesus is at in his life. When you begin to evaluate, and you begin to walk through your life, and you begin to ask yourself, how are you demonstrating Jesus? Are we keeping his commands in all that we do? Number two, the love of their master.
Not only the love for their master, but the love of their master. Verses 16 to 31, the portion,
the biggest portion of this we're going to look at, right? We'll just look at one verse in the first 10, 15 minutes of the message. We're going to take the whole last bit for verses 16 to 31.
Jesus, it turns from their love for him into his love for them.
He says, I know you love me. You love your master, right? You gave up everything.
You gave up all of your well-being. You gave up everything that you've done to come and follow me. Now let me tell you a little bit of how much I love you. And Jesus begins to walk through this section of promises.
He looks at him and he says, I'm here with you physically, and I love you physically.
I'm going to be here, but I'm about to leave, and I want to assure you that I'm going to continue to care for you.
Right as a parent who says, hey, I'm going on a work trip. You're going to stay with grandma and grandpa for a couple of days, and I'm going to come back. They're assuring that he is coming back.
Guarantees of Jesus' Love
They're assuring his love, and he begins to lay out what I've laid out three guarantees in scripture. Three simple ways that Jesus says that this is a guarantee of his love for them. The first is this, the guarantee of his resurrection presence.
He says, I will not leave you as orphans. I am coming again. Think about this promise. An orphan, someone who has been neglected,
someone who isn't cared about. In the Old Testament, in the time of this writing, in the ancient world, orphans were the most vulnerable people in society.
And Jesus is saying, I'm not leaving you to be left to the wolves, to be left to the ones that are going to come and steal, kill, and destroy, but I am going to leave you as someone that I care about, and I'm coming back for you.
Jesus tells them that you are not going to become an abandoned child.
It's not like you've got a father who steps out of the scene, or a mother who steps out of the scene that I'm going to be there for you, and I'm going to show you how I'm going to be there for you.
And he tells them that as the cross is coming, and as we're looking to Easter, as we're looking to Resurrection Sunday, as we're looking to what's happening there, resurrection's also coming.
The cross is coming. The saddest day in all of human history is coming, but yet the resurrection is right around the corner. His resurrection, it guarantees this peace of presence that's going to happen. He says this,
the disciples, look, you're going to see me again. You're going to see me spiritually. You're going to see me physically, but the resurrection proves that Christ is alive.
It proves that he is not dead, and he is not in a tomb, but he is living, and he is victorious over the one that came to kill him, and to steal, and destroy.
He said, they think they've won for a little bit, and they think that you're going to be in a lost, abandoned little children, but I am going to rise again. I am going to be victorious, and I am going to shepherd the ones that are around me. The resurrection also guarantees life.
The resurrection not only shows us this continued presence, but it says, because I live in verse 19, you will live too.
This is one of these promises. This is one of the most hope-filled promises that we can assure, and we can say, because I believe in Jesus, I will one day resurrect again. I will one day live forever.
I will one day have this eternal life, and the life and the hope that we have as believers is directly tied to the resurrection of Jesus.
No other religion, no other belief system out there can say that the person they follow has been rose from the dead, and yet Jesus said, I'm going to be buried in a tomb, and three days later, I'm going
to rise again. And we have that same resurrection in our lives, that because Christ lives, we live as well. And that there's nothing in this world that can destroy us.
There's nothing in this world that can take us out, because as Paul says, to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.
Oh, to be present with him, the one that we get to stand as we sing that song, you are my all in all, and we get to look at him, and we see him face to face and say, Lord, you are my all in all.
You are the reason of life itself, and I want to thank you for that. I want you to listen to what one commentator said, Leon Morris. He said, a believer's life is inseparable to being connected to the living Christ. We are connected in a way that cannot be separated.
We are so connected to Christ when we believe in him that it gets to the point where we have to ask ourselves, why am I looking for anything outside of Christ? Why is there anything else in this world that's more appealing than Christ?
The one who came and died for our sins, the one who came and lives forever with us and for us so that we can have eternal life. Jesus says this resurrection presence that we have is all because of him rising from the dead. In verses 16 through 17 and 25 through 26,
Jesus guarantees something else. I'm going to spend a little bit of time here, more time here than probably anywhere else, is the guarantee of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is not something mystical. It's not something that we should shy away from. It's the most wonderful gift that we can ever receive as being a believer.
The Role of the Holy Spirit
Jesus promises what he says, another counselor. Now the word counselor here is the same word as helper in the Greek, paralikas, and it carries this idea.
This is what I want you to understand. I don't care about the Greek. I don't want you to understand that. This is what I want you to understand when it comes to the Holy Spirit. Counselor, helper. It's the advocate.
It's the comforter. It's the helper. Listen to this. It's the one who comes alongside of.
As Logan was talking this morning, he said, Satan, the definition for Satan is ready? The accuser of the brethren. You ready? What is the definition of the Holy Spirit? The advocate.
Not the one that comes and says, look at how bad you are. Look at how dare you? How do you even think Jesus is going to love you? Look at how you've been living your life.
No, the Holy Spirit comes alongside and says, Jesus died for you.
He knew you were going to make that mistake. He knew you were going to lie. He knew you were going to cheat. He knew these things were going to happen, and yet he still went to the cross and he still died for your sins. Jesus loves you. He cares about you.
He gave his life for you. Satan, on the other hand, he's over here. How dare you think that way? How dare? He begins to accuse us and tear us down. Jesus says he's not giving us this. He's given us the comforter.
He's given us the advocate. He's given us the helper. He's given us the one that allows us as believers to continue. When all life seems falling apart,
the Holy Spirit comes alongside of us and wraps his arms around us and says, Father,
he loves you. He cares about you. He believes in you. He gives you life that you never even thought possible. Now is the time to step up and now is the time to walk forward. This is what the Holy Spirit does. It's not something mystical.
It's not something that's just out there in this weird ghost thing. This is something that someone that comes and indwells with us. The Holy Spirit is the permanent presence of Jesus.
If you look through all the Old Testament, the Holy Spirit comes in moments in Samson's life. He comes and he indwells Samson for a period and then leaves. And then comes back and then leaves. Jesus is saying here, you are going to get a permanent resurrection.
You are going to get a permanent spirit that dwells with you and for you. And Jesus says later, I'm going to get to it.
I'm getting ahead of my notes. I'm getting ahead of, as I've been studying through, Jesus says that it's better for him to leave. When I get this verse in chapter 15, I just can never wrap my mind around it.
He said, it's better for me to leave because the Holy Spirit is going to come and be with you forever.
When Jesus was here on earth, he spent three years with 12 people and did miracles with hundreds and thousands of people that were around him. But then he left and he says, I am going to leave and send someone that gets to dwell inside of me. That gets to dwell inside of Pat.
That gets to dwell inside of Logan and Terry and dwell in all of us all at the same time where Jesus couldn't do that. He said, I'm going to send the Spirit to be this amazing promise.
He said, the Spirit's going to be a personal God. Verse 26, he says that I will teach you all things and remind you everything that I've told you. Now, this is specific to the disciples as they're writing scripture,
but it's a way where we can say that it is reliable of scripture because Jesus is saying that this personal God is going to tell them these things. And you ready? The Spirit makes Christ real to us. The Holy Spirit begins to dwell inside of us. And as we read scripture,
the Bible says the world doesn't see him and the world doesn't know him, but you're going to know him because of the Spirit that lives inside of you.
Because this Holy Spirit who dwells inside of us, it simply means this, that the Christian life is meant to be lived in the Spirit strength, not our own strength.
I don't know if you're like me. I get tired pretty easily. I'm 37.
I'm not as young as I used to be. Some of you are thinking, 37? I wish I had that energy, right? But I get tired. I get exhausted.
And the Holy Spirit works in our life. And he gives us the strength. And he gives us the power to continue to live, not in our own strength that is feeble and weak and insufficient, but in the power of the Holy Spirit. I want you to think,
how many, besides me, she's probably the only one that remembers this. How many of you remember life before electricity? Does anyone in here remember? Terry's the only one. Terry, we got, man, we got someone that's aging up there with you, right? Life before electricity,
right? I was watching this documentary the other day. And Edison, Thomas Edison had began to work on electricity and light bulbs that we have today.
And J.P. Morgan had heard about it. And J.P. Morgan said, Thomas, I want you to come and I want you to wire my house. I want you to have a, he put a substation in behind his house. And all of a sudden he said, I want to show how electricity works.
I want to light up my house at nighttime. And he invited all of his friends and they're waiting and the sun goes down and they're like, how is this going to work? There's no gas. There's no oil.
That's all we've ever known as kerosene in a house. And all of a sudden he said, this is how we're going to get light. And he walks over and he flips a switch. And everyone in the room was amazed when the lights began to light up.
No one in that room could see the electricity running through the walls.
No one in that room could see the electricity flowing in that light. But everyone in that room saw the lights come on. And everyone in that room was amazed. They couldn't explain how it worked. But they said, it's undeniable that something is turning those lights on.
This is the correlation of the Holy Spirit, right? I can't really sit up here in 20, 30 minutes and explain how the Holy Spirit works. But I know he works. I know he works in my life.
I know he works through my life. I know that when he says, you need to send that person a test message or you need to call that person. It's because the Holy Spirit is leading me and guiding me to do that.
He's invisible, but I cannot deny that he is working in my life. I want to ask you, where are you depending of your strength?
Our life can be hard and difficult and we go through loss and we go through difficult times in our life. And are we depending on our own strength to get through? Are we saying, God, I can't live without your spirit. I can't walk another step without you.
Not only does he guarantee the Holy Spirit, I've got to continue to hurry, but he guarantees his peace. He guarantees his peace.
He's something that I think it's safe for me to say the greatest struggle that the disciples had is probably the greatest struggle that we have and it's fear.
We fear the loss of a loved one. We fear the loss of the unknown. We fear things in life that we don't have control of. Maybe it's just me.
Maybe it's you as well. But fear can be a crippling thing in our life. That's why I believe Jesus so often begins to address them through this idea of fear.
And he says, do not let this fear tremble your hearts. He said, you're about to watch me.
The person that you followed for three years, you're about to watch me be arrested in the garden.
Peter, you're going to stand a ways off and you're going to look and you're going to see that they're beating me within an inch of my life. You're going to deny me when that happens because you're fearful.
You're fearful they're going to come to you. Peter, you're going to see me be crucified.
You're going to see me on the cross and you're going to see me take my last breath. And John, you're going to be there with me when I do that. And you're going to see all the difficult things and fear in these disciples looks like this. Everything in their world has fallen apart.
Jesus, how is this happening?
Jesus' Promise of Peace
And all of a sudden, he guarantees this wonderful thing. He says, peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you. We're walking up into this time of the crucifixion.
Jesus goes through some of the most difficult days of his life. And yet he turns to his disciples and he said, the peace that I have, I'm giving to you.
It should be an encouragement to each and every one of us to say, I want that peace. This peace is different from the world's peace. The world's peace says this.
As long as the circumstances are okay, you're going to have peace. As long as we're not at war with Iran, you're going to have peace, right? As long as the gas prices are right, you're going to have peace. The world's peace is completely different. If things go well, we're peaceful. We're good.
All things are great.
But as soon as something falls apart, the peace that we once had disappears.
Jesus said it does not matter what is around us, but it matters where we're anchored at. And as long as we're anchored in Jesus,
the peace of Jesus is in every situation of our life. When you don't understand what's going on, when you don't know how to go through life and how to go through tomorrow, the peace of Jesus is there for us. As I was thinking even just a moment ago about this,
my mind went back to going into my junior year of high school. I got the phone call from my brother that my mom was leaving my dad. She had left a note on his dresser. My world in that moment was falling apart.
I got home. My brother said, I did some things I probably shouldn't have done, but you can go read the note.
It's on dad's dresser. And I read the note. Broke my heart.
I mean, when I say it broke my heart, I'm a pretty strong guy. My wife, I've been married to her for 15 years in May. She's seen me cry like three times in our entire marriage. Not because I don't cry.
It's just not part of who I am. We all have a different DNA.
But I remember that day so vividly. I remember walking into my room, collapsing on my bed,
bawling my eyes out that my world was falling apart to the point where I couldn't even hold myself up on my bed. And I began to slip down onto the floor.
And when I got up an hour later after crying, there was a ring of tears around my body on the floor from me crying so much because my life was falling apart.
I called my best friend. He didn't pick up. Now I'm really like, the entire world's against me.
No one's picking up. No one's there for me. I called another friend. He said, get out of your house. Come to my house. Let's just pray through some things.
I got in my car to the best of my ability. I don't even remember going from my house 15 minutes to his house. But I spent the night there. And we prayed.
And we walked through the scripture together. And he began to encourage me. And it was all because in this moment where my life was falling apart and I didn't know how I was going to get through it, I had someone that had enough knowledge and enough sense to let's go to Jesus.
Let's go to the one where our faith is at. And even when life has fallen apart and even when life does fall apart,
he's still there for us. He still cares for us. And he still troubles. He still steadies these troubled hearts. He repeats this verse. Do not let your hearts be troubled or fearful. Fear is natural.
We're going to go through fear. And he says when fear comes in, don't live in that fear, but live in the Holy Spirit. It's natural to have fear, but it's not natural to have it rule us.
And he tells us that we must be strong and courageous and have a steady heart that's for him. And this peace that he gives us is rested in this one last thing I'm going to say. It's rested in Christ's victory.
Jesus closes this idea of pointing straight to the cross. He says, let's get up from this place and let's go. What he's saying is, boys, we're leaving this place and we're about to go to what I've just been telling you.
I'm going to the cross. We're going to have a couple pit stops, but the cross is here and that's where I'm going. And he says, the ruler of this world is coming. You think that it's bad now? Wait till I'm crucified. Boys, you're fearful right now? Wait till Satan comes, the accuser comes.
And he says this, Satan thinks that he's going to win, but he's not winning. He says, listen, Satan thinks that he has power, but the cross is going to defeat his power.
And he says that I am going to give the victory, the death, the hell, the grave. I'm going to overcome all of that and I'm going to put Satan in its place. And yes, it may look like it's a dark day, but trust me, that resurrection day is coming.
And he says, you can have this peace because you are living in the victory of Christ.
Oftentimes in our life, as Terry comes, I want us to really ask ourselves, what robs us of this peace? Christ has guaranteed this peace. He says, you will have peace. It's a guaranteed promise. But oftentimes we allow our hearts to live in fear, to live in trouble, to live in circumstances.
And it begins to rob us of this peace. It takes that peace away and it allows Satan to come to our life and control our mind and our hearts. Christ is telling us that if we live in his promises, we live in his commands. It doesn't matter the circumstances.
It doesn't matter the difficulties that we go through. We're guaranteed those things.
We're guaranteed to go through problems. We're guaranteed to go through hardships. But yet we can have the peace that Christ gives us in that moment.
Jesus is on the cross. We did a whole study of those seven last words that he gave.
All of them were life-giving statements. Not one of those statements that he said was a negative statement. Father, forgive them.
John, take care of my mother. Everything he went through was a life-giving promise of a statement. Because he's telling us that even when the world does everything to us, we have this peace that we can live in. As we abide in Christ,
as we listen to his commands, are we loving the idea of obeying him?
Or when we read a passage that says love our enemies, we resent that because we like to hate our enemies. And Jesus is saying, no, no, love those that hurt you. His presence lives in our life and empowers us to do the impossible. And his peace comes in and steadies us.
The Christian life is not sustained by your own willpower.
You can try your hardest. As I had a guy that I used to work with, he was a Yankee from New York.
One of my dear friends, Rob, he would come in every day and he'd say, well, mom told me to pull myself up by my bootstraps. That was his statement every morning. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps. And I just kept thinking,
yeah, you're going to do that until you can't do it anymore. Why are we not living in the power of Jesus? Why are we not living in the sustaining power of who he is? Christ and his power sustains the church and sustains us if we continue to love and obey him.
And in this promise, he gives us the Holy Spirit. He says, I'm not leaving you as orphans. I'm going to give you power that you never even thought possible. Church, because he lives, we have the opportunity to live as well.
We have the opportunity to put our faith in him and say, I'm going to live for you forever so that one day when you come back and you split the clouds wide open, I get to say, I'm going
Closing Prayer and Invitation
there. I'm going to be with my Savior if we believe in what he's called us to believe in. Would that be you today? Father, we love you. Lord, we thank you as we pray, as we go into our time of invitation. Lord, that you would help us to begin to evaluate our heart.
Who is it that we know? Who are we trusting in? It's easy to trust in ourself. We know ourself. Yet, it's difficult to put our faith and trust in you.
Lord, help us to be a people who are following you, a people who trust in you, and a people who say, I'm going to know Christ and know him more so that I can believe in him.
Lord, if there's someone here that doesn't know you, help it to be today, the day they serve you and follow you. It's in your name we pray. Amen.
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