Message Description

Teaching Pastor Dr. Terry Thomas unpacks John 14:25-31 in effort to reveal the role of the Holy Spirit in the lives of the early church disciples and in our lives today.

Message Transcription

Well, hi everybody. It's good to see you all here. I would have to say, I think you'll agree with me, the choir is a great addition to the service here today. Really spectacular. Nicely done. Very, very good work. Fantastic. Love to sing along with it. Hey, I want to tell you too, I am very happy to be here and be able to be standing in front of you because I did a thing on my hamstring, pulled my hamstring really badly about a couple of weeks ago. Played football with some college students, okay? That was a mistake. That was mistake. I kind of knew I was, I was sort of strained into put my socks on in the morning we were going to play and I thought to myself while I was doing it, I wonder. I wonder how many more years I'll be able to play football with these college students. Obviously, the answer was none.

That was it right there. They had to carry me off the field. I couldn't walk for couple days. It was terrible. But that's the way it is when you get old. You start to fall apart, you know? Matter of fact, after that, I don't know, maybe a week afterwards, I was getting some change out of my pocket and I dropped a dime on the floor and I was standing next to somebody. When I dropped the dime on the floor, I took a quarter and I threw it on the floor. The guy said, "What are you doing?" I said, "For a dime, no, but for 35 cents I'll get this." That's when you know you're getting old right there. I went to an antique auction last night and two people bid on me halfway through. I told that joke last night and nobody laughed. Made me feel bad, I got to tell you that right now.

No. You know you're getting old. You know you're getting old when like, when you're 25 you think to yourself, hey, I'm going to buy a Lamborghini someday, you know? It's going to be great, you know? Then when you're 45 you think, no, I'm going to buy a Ferrari, you know? It's going to be fantastic. When you're 65 you think I hope somebody in a Mercedes hits me when I'm walking through the crosswalk somewhere. It is tough getting old, but hey, no bad news here this morning. All good news, all good news. We're in a series Following Jesus. There's some terrific stuff for us to consider here today from the book of John. We've been studying the book of John. We're going to continue to do so for a few more weeks and we have a small portion this morning, not too many verses and so it shouldn't take us more than an hour, hour and a half or something like that.

No, I'm kidding. We'll look at it and I got three things, three things that I think will be important for us to be able to see, okay? Hey, by the way, this passage is about Jesus talking to his disciples. They're in the upper room, remember? They're in the upper room. This is the Thursday Passover dinner that they have just celebrated. Jesus is going to the cross tomorrow, the next day, so he's got some important things that he wants to make sure that the disciples hear. By the way, He's told them enough times He's going away. He's going away. They're like, "Hey, hey, hey." They said, "We don't like to hear this." So they need a little comfort here. They need to have the comforter talk and Jesus has been talking. I hope you had a chance last week to hear Kurt's message.

If you didn't, check it out online. It's really, really good where he talks about the different aspects of the Holy Spirit as the comforter and the advocate and the counselor and these kinds of things. The Holy Spirit has many kinds of roles in the Bible and we're going to look at a couple of them here today as well. But it's really important to realize that there are all kinds of things that take place under the work of the Holy Spirit. Right from the very creation itself we read that the Spirit was the wisdom of God that gave order to the various aspects of the creation so that they could be exactly what God planned them and be, filled with potential, but also having certain limitations built into them. We realize that the Holy Spirit is that spirit that works with our own hearts in order to soften our hearts to be able to hear the good news of the gospel about how God loves us in Christ.

That's the work of the Holy spirit. Then the Spirit you can't see, but as you know that the Spirit's there because the Spirit empowers us too, empowers us to be witnesses for the kingdom in the life that we live. I was talking a little bit a couple of weeks ago in a place about hospitality, and the next week I went back and I talked to a guy. He told me about how he tried to be hospitable. I asked how it went. He goes, "Yeah, I guess it went okay. All right." He goes, "But after I did it, I was so excited about the chance that I got to do it." I said, "Yeah, you know what that is. It's the flip side of you being obedient." It's not that you take care of other people, but in doing it what happens is God changes you. By the way, that's the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is God working inside you to change you. You know what? Maybe a prayer we all ought to pray on a regular basis is simply this. God, make me into the kind of person you want me to be. Make me into that kind of person that you want me to be because let's face it, a lot of times we're not even quite sure what kind of person God wants us to be. But He's got an idea and it's that thing inside. It's the Holy Spirit working with us that's trying to shape us into that. In the book of Romans, in chapter eight, Paul talked a little bit about this work of the Holy Spirit inside Christians and he says one of these things. He goes, "Hey, you know" he said, "Sometimes we get to a point where we don't even know what to pray."

You ever been there? I know I have them. I'm not quite sure exactly what- My life's confusing. I'm thinking, well, I don't know. What am I? What do you want here, God, you know? You know what the text says? It says this. It says that at that moment the Holy Spirit intercedes for us with God, with the Father. Here's the way it says it, "in groans too deep for words," meaning we couldn't even understand them if we heard them. You know? Part of that's because oftentimes our life's a mystery to us, but it's not a mystery to God. He has in mind that we be somebody, that we be as specific, that we get to do certain kinds. He's prepared these works for us ahead of time that we can live in them. It's the Holy Spirit helping to make us into that kind of person that He wants us to be so that we can do that.

Anyway, this is [inaudible 00:06:28]. If you get a chance, take a look. Take a listen to that sermon that Kurt did last week. It's a really, really good one. We start today and we're talking again about the Holy Spirit here. Here's what it says. This is John 14. It says, "'All this I have spoken while still with you.' Jesus said, 'but the counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, He will teach you all things and will remind you of everything that I have said to you.'" So the first thing is we realize that the Holy Spirit is sent. He's sent to people and here's what He's for the purpose of. To teach us things and to remind us of the things that Jesus said. Now, you've got to remember, this is being spoken to the disciples. This is being spoken to the disciples.

They had just got done spending three years with Jesus. You would thinking if anybody knew what Jesus was talking about, it would have been them. By the way, I think they heard several of the things that Jesus said over and over again. I always say it like this. You don't think Jesus- In the Sermon on the Mount or the parable of the prodigal son, you think he only told that once? No. When you've got a good story, you tell it in every town you go to. I'll bet Jesus told that 20, 30 times. And you know what? They heard it that many times. But you know what? There's something though they didn't quite get. So the Holy Spirit comes even to the disciples to be able to teach them what the meaning of the things that were going on right in front of them.

They were front seat to what was going on, but they didn't always get it. I remember one time Jesus was talking about how He was going to be crucified and die and Peter said to Him, "No, no, no. That can't happen." Jesus says, "Get behind me, Satan. You don't understand what's going on." Seriously, how could you be a disciple, hear what Jesus is saying, talking about [inaudible 00:08:29] and you didn't understand? Later on, a couple of disciples are with Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration. Moses and Elijah show up. There's a foretaste of the glory to come and all this kind of wild stuff, and Jesus then says to them before they go down, He goes, "Listen." He says to the guys, "Here's what going to happen. We're going down to Jerusalem. I'm going to be handed over to the chief priests and Pharisees and they're going to take me and try me and then they'll crucify me, and then three days later I'm going to raise from the dead." His disciples were kind of like this, "Okay."

Then it says on the way down from the mountain, one of the disciples said to the other one, "What do you think He means raised from the dead? By the way, you know what He meant? Raised from the dead is what He meant, but they didn't get it. They needed to be taught what that meant. It's just sort of information at one point, unless you understand what it means, the meaning of it, you know? Then of course, here's the other thing. What Jesus was trying to say that He was going to bring to them at least one of the benefits was they were going to be able to see what God wanted. They were going to remember the things that Jesus said. Not only teach them so they had an understanding of what it was about, but He was going to remind them of the things that He said so that they could tell other people.

In other words, basically what this was was saying, "Hey, look, part of what the Holy Spirit's work in your life as you disciples is that you're going to remember this stuff that I said. God's going to help you to do it via the Holy Spirit so that you can put it down on paper and it'll become the New Testament of the Bible." So the people, us, so people like you and me, we can read it and we can hear these things that Jesus said. These important ways in which God reveals Himself to us and says, this is what I'm about. Hey, by the way, this Holy Spirit that Jesus is talking about coming, He's not going to come until 50 days after this when we call Pentecost, okay? They were in the upper room. Pentecost was a celebration that happened 50 days after Passover. They just had the Passover dinner on Thursday.

It wasn't going to be till 50 days later when they celebrated Pentecost that the Holy Spirit was going to come down in power. You remember the whole Acts 2 story about the people hear people speaking in their own languages. Peter gives this eloquent sermon that shows he understands finally what it's all about. Then it's written down by Luke and it becomes part of the New Testament, as part of the thing that speaks to us in terms of- And not only transforms the lives of people who are right there, it's transformed the lives of millions of people for hundreds of years. Well, Pentecost, at Pentecost ceremony was a regular thing that the Jews were supposed to celebrate. It was a celebration that was given to them in the law back in the Old Testament. The original Pentecost ceremony given by the Spirit to Moses was 50 days after the original Passover in Egypt.

So after the Passover in Egypt, when the Jews got to get free miraculously and they went up, 50 days later, they found themselves at Mount Sinai. You know what happened at Mount Sinai? The Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit came down on Moses and spoke authoritatively through him so that he could explain to people the law. The law was the thing that described this is the kind of people God wants you to be. You see what's happening here? The Spirit teaches you the meaning of the revelation of God so that you can become the kind of person that God wants you to be. It happened with Moses and the law at Pentecost the first 50 days after and it's going to happen again 50 days after the ceremony of the Passover with Jesus there and when it happens, then it happens for us.

The Holy Spirit coming to be able to help us to understand the things that God has revealed and to remember and to be able to have available to us all the things that Jesus said were important about who it is, who we are, who He wants us to be. As a matter of fact, if you read in the New Testament, if you read Paul, for instance, in the book of Philippians, there's a passage like this, similar to this in almost every writing of Paul. He says this. He says, "Once I heard you guys were Christians, I started to pray for you." Here's what he prays. "My prayer is that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight so that you might be able to discern what is the best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God."

So here's what Paul says. You know what I think Christians need? As soon as they become a Christian, here's what they need. They need to get depth of insight. They need to get more knowledge. They need to be able to become discerning. You know another way he says that elsewhere? In the book of Romans he says they need to have their minds transformed so that they can know what the will of God is, the good and pleasing and perfect will of God. That's what you need because it's by that word. It's by that revelation from God. It's about those things that Jesus said, that the Spirit not only gives you an understanding of them so you know what they're about, but He reminds you of them when you need to be reminded of them so that you can live properly.

Here's another one from Paul. I think this one even says it way more clearly. I don't think there's any question whatsoever when you hear this. It says this. "We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or the rulers of this age who are coming to nothing. No. We speak of God's secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. None of the rulers of this world understood it for if they had, they wouldn't have crucified the Lord of glory. However, as it's written, no eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind conceived what God has prepared for those who love Him." In other words, for us, okay?

You can't imagine what God prepared. What has He prepared? We can't figure it out, but God has revealed it to us by His Spirit. The Spirit of God reveals the not only understanding, but the things that God has said so that you can be the person that God wants you to be. Got it? All right. Goes on and says this. "The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God, for who among men knows the thoughts of a man except this man's Spirit within him?

In the same way, nobody knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God, and we haven't received the spirit of this world, but the Spirit of God, the spirit who is from God, that we might understand what God has freely given to us. This is what we speak, not in words taught to us by human wisdom, but words taught by the Spirit expressing spiritual truths and the spiritual words. The man without the Spirit, he doesn't accept the things that come from the Spirit of God. They're foolishness to him and he can't understand them. But the one who is spiritual, he spiritually discerns things. The spiritual man makes judgments about all things, but he himself is not subject to any man's judgment. For who knows the mind of the Lord that he might instruct him, but we have the mind of Christ." Now, there's an amazing statement right there, that by the Holy Spirit who's in the Trinity of the Godhead, who knows the very deep things of God, chooses to freely reveal them to us, okay?

Not only in the Old Testament, but also in the New Testament is God by His Spirit reminds the disciples who are going to write it down the things that Jesus said. It helps them to understand them so they can write the other books, which are the explanation of the things Jesus said. Okay? Not only that, but when He does this, He provides it for the opportunity for us to be shaped into the kind of people that He wants us to be. Here's what it says. So that we end up having the mind of Christ. The God man, we have the mind of Christ. We can see the things. We understand life the way that He understood. Now, let me ask you this. Have you ever been in an argument with somebody and you're talking about something and so forth, and finally you say to them, "Hey, wait a minute.

I got the mind to Christ here. Let me straighten it out for you." Anybody ever used that tactic, that debating tactic? "I got to mind to Christ." Shuts them up pretty quick I tell you, if you say it. No. You're not that egotistic. You're not that arrogant. But you know what it says. You've got the mind of Christ. Now, you know how you get the mind of Christ? You read the Bible. That's how you get the mind of Christ because not only does God by the Holy Spirit make it so that those things that are the deep things of God are revealed in the Bible, but He helps you to understand them. He teaches them to you so you can know what they're about. It's like Psalm 1 says, okay? "Blessed is the man who meditates on God's word day and night.

He's like a tree that gets planted by water." That's a good thing for a tree to get planted near the water and every season it bears fruit. This leaf never withers. Then listen to what it says. In everything he does, he prospers. That's sweet. You want to know how to prosper? Figure out the way God wants you to be, who He wants you to be. How He wants you live. You know how you figure out how God wants you to live? You read the Bible. Okay. In case you missed the point, here it is. Ready? Read the Bible.

They take surveys of this kind of stuff. In the United States, this is true, listen to this. The vast majority of people in United States believe that the Bible is revelation from God and yet a very small percentage of them ever read the Bible. Now think about that for a second. If I were to say to you, "You know what? While you were away from home here this morning, there's a revelation from God waiting in your kitchen." You think you'd go and say, "I'm going to have a burger first and maybe I'll watch some football and then later on I'll get around to the revelation from God." Yet that's the way we treat it, isn't it? Oh by the way, and this is the way people do it too. Because I know a lot of students who they'll say, "Oh, I read the Bible."

You know how they read the Bible? They go to a book like Philippians, one of those letters of Paul that has four chapters. They turn to chapter three and they read a paragraph has maybe four sentences and then they, "Oh, okay." They think about it for a little bit. They pray. Ten minutes they're done. Let me ask you this question here. Do you ever get a letter from your friend with some important information in like revelation from God and when you got it and you opened it up, you went to the third page and read one paragraph and then you put it back in the envelope and put it up on a shelf? Nobody reads a letter like that. But we do because apparently here's what we think. We're smart enough that we don't need revelation, the deep things of God to figure out who we really need to be. Meanwhile, the Holy Spirit says, "I can help you with this. I can help you."

Matter of fact, I've been sent. I've been sent and my goal is to help people understand what God has revealed. Even the deep things and the things that Jesus says, I worked to help those guys remember it. So to take it, put it down so that you can have it available to you. You could almost hear the Holy Spirit saying, "Read the Bible." I don't know. Develop a personal discipline of your own where you are on a regular basis you get the Bible on you read it. Join a small group Bible study. Join one of the life groups here in the church. Get involved on a regular basis reading the Bible with other people. Buy a book that's a Christian book that tries to unpack the biblical story for you in ways, in subjects that you need help with and work it out. Meet with a friend on a regular basis and have a Bible study together and talk about it.

There's a bunch of ways you can do it. I think the point is simply, unless I'm mistaken, it's this. Read the Bible. Make it a habit to read the Bible, okay? So that's the first thing. I think that's the first thing is apparent in this passage. Jesus is hinting to him, the Spirit's coming and when He comes, He's about in the same way He was about revealing to the people of Israel on Mount Sinai, this is who I want you to be. This is the special people I've set you out for. This is my will about how you want to live. You want me to make you into the people that I want you to be? Look at this and be faithful to it. Jesus is saying, "Yeah, and I came and the Holy Spirit comes out from me and helps to remind the things that I said, because this is a new way in a certain sense to understand that stuff. It was a foreshadowing of what I'm going to do and then now that I've done it, you've got to figure that out and figure out how to work that into your own life.

So right after that, here's what Jesus says next then. He says, "Peace I leave with you. My peace I give you. I don't give you as the world gives, so don't let your hearts be troubled and don't be afraid." So the next thing he goes from, He says this Holy spirit that comes to live within us, this is the gift, the promise is going to come. It's going to encourage you. When I go this Spirit's going to come. I want to tell you this. When it comes, it gives you the peace that I have for you. Now, you read a passage like that and immediately I think you have to ask yourself what's that peace look like? What's that peace all about? What's this supposed to be for? What kind of peace is it? There are a lot of ideas about what the peace is, what people think the peace is.

Let me give you a couple of them. One, some people think the peace is about a quiet conscious. That's peace, a quiet conscious. By the way, in Christ, knowing the things that He's done, His life and death and resurrection, His atoning sacrifice for our sin, you can have a quiet conscience. You can know that these things that you've done in the past, these ways in which you've ignored God and the ways in which you selfishly have thought that you were a big deal, when in fact you weren't, that they can be forgiven and put in the past and you can become a new person. That's a good thing. That's a great thing to be forgiven. It is a great, great thing to be forgiven and to have clear conscious, Hey, by the way, not only with God but with the people that we live with and work with on a regular basis.

I notice people sitting right here who you know what? You need to forgive the people you live with or maybe they need to forgive you or maybe both. If you had that quieted conscience, it would make a world of difference. You'd be living in peace, not in the situation you feel right now. Here's another possibility. Another possibility is what some people call our peace of restful mind, a restful mind. You know what a restful mind is? That's when you're not always running through things that you haven't done or stuff that you still have to do that you can't quite figure out what you want to do or how it ought to go, or you're reworking things you already did and wishing you did it in a different way over in the past or something like that.

A restful mine is when you're able to simply to say, "I'm in the moment now I'm in the present. I'm free from the guilt of the past, free from the fear of the future. I'm in my moment right now. I'm here, I'm fully present and I'm able to-" Hey, you ever go to bed and wish you had a restful mind? You look over to clock and you see what time it is. Then you go back. You look, "Oh my gosh, it's 25 minutes later. It's been an hour I've been laying here." Hey, that's piece, isn't it? A good night's sleep for a restful mind not worrying about all the things that are still unresolved in your life. Maybe say, how about this one here though? How about peace that comes as a result of surrendering your will?

This has a small meaning and a big meaning to it I think in a certain way. The small meaning is basically this. Have you ever been in a situation where you've got to make a decision about something and you're not quite sure which way to go on it? Seems that both ways to decide this have good things about it, but also it has bad things about it at the same time but you've still going to make a decision. Then you come to that point where you decide I'm going to do this. You know what? It feels good to make the decision.

It may not feel that great later on to see when you made the wrong decision, but at the time when you make the decision, when you surrender your will, I think it does allow you to have a certain amount of peace about this situation. But you know what? I think this sort of surrendering the will has a bigger side to it too. If you can surrender your will to say, I believe in the sovereignty of God over all of life. I believe that God, the loving God, the God who loves me, the one who cares about me, the one who wants the best for me, the one that's working inside of me to make me into the person He wants me to be even when I can't figure out how to do it or what are you to say or pray to be able to get, the God who has worked in history to make sure that I get the information that I need about the deep things of God in order that I can be transformed into a person that not only He loves, but I love.

The God that loves me as much when I'm at my worst, as He loves me when I'm my best, I want to surrender my will to him. That is some peace right there, to know that He, the God of the who is in control of creation and redemption has you in his hand, that's peace, okay? Or maybe it's a hopeful heart. Maybe peace has to do with a hopeful heart. That is to be not worrying about the future. Maybe like that song we sang today, you know? It was about Psalm 23. Even when I find myself in the valley, you still comfort me because then I know who you are. I know what you're about. I know my relationship with you. Even when I find myself at the dead end, I know it's not going to end up being dead.

We sang it again today. Somehow you're going to make a way. Even if I don't know how you made the way, you're still going to make the way. A hopeful heart sees potential and possibility about the future, you know? But these guys who were the disciples, they were confused. They needed the Holy Spirit. They needed some peace in their life. They needed a hopeful heart about the future because Jesus, all Jesus had been telling them about how He's going to die and then leave and they just dedicated the last three years their life to Him and they couldn't figure out what it meant or why. Seriously, they were up in the air on this. They said stuff. I think one of my favorite examples of this is a story that happens in the end of the book of Luke. It's a story about some disciples who after the whole weekend experience of this and Jesus' crucifixion and so forth. On the resurrection Sunday are walking from Jerusalem back home to a place called Emmaus that they lived in.

It's like seven, eight miles away from Jerusalem. Here's what the story says. It says as they're walking along, all of a sudden Jesus appears in their midst. He's walking with them and Jesus says to them, He's kind of playing with them a little bit. He says to them, "What you're talking about?" The guys say, "Well, we're talking about all the stuff that went down in Jerusalem this weekend, you know? Arrest, crucifixion, so forth, we're talking about that." And Jesus again, playing stupid, He says to them, "What things?" Can you believe this? This is Resurrection Sunday. "What things?" Here's what these two disciples say to Jesus, "Are you the only one who doesn't know what's going on here in the last weekend?" You can almost hear Jesus saying out loud, I believe I'm the only one who actually knows what's going on.

You guys are in the dark altogether, you know? Then Jesus says, "About what?" They said, "About Jesus of Nazareth. We thought He was the Messiah. We thought He came to redeem Israel and then He was crucified. Then our women went to the tomb this morning. Somebody reported that the tomb was empty. He wasn't even there. We don't know what to think." You know what Jesus says? He says to them, "Well, how slow you are to believe." And then He says, "Didn't the Son of Man have to suffer all these things in order to enter into His glory?" Then it says this. Jesus opened up the Scriptures to them and explained to them, showed them how God had revealed by his Spirit in the Old Testament, the Scriptures that were already written, that the Son of Man had to suffer all these things and what the meaning of it was.

He was doing the very thing that the Holy Spirit was coming for to be able to do for us and to do the disciples. So He explains it to them. This is the best part. The story ends like this. He says, they get down to their house in Emmaus and this is actually what the phrase says. Jesus acted as if He was going to continue on. Actually He want to get invited in for dinner, but He didn't get an invitation, so He was a little- He was playing again. He was like, "Well, I'll just keep on walking I guess, you know? I'll be going down a road here a little bit. I'll probably find someplace, a little diner or something where I can have dinner later on."

"Oh, hey, why don't you eat dinner with us?" Jesus is like, "Well okay." You know? So Jesus gets invited into dinner and they go in and they're having dinner. And here's what it says. Somehow during the dinner in the breaking of the bread, Jesus broke the bread. When He broke the bread, all of a sudden these disciples realized who He was, that he was the risen Jesus. I don't know, maybe it was the way He broke the bread, or maybe He had a little prayer that He said whenever he broke bread and they'd seen him do it before or something. I don't know why it was in the breaking bread. Maybe it was because this is a way of talking about the Last Supper and the breaking of bread in the community.

We were told to remember and may be all of a sudden it was bringing a remembrance to them about the meaning of what it was about, but in the breaking of the bread, they realized who He was. Then it says, then Jesus disappeared and then the disciples says to the other one, the man says to his wife, "Didn't our hearts burn within us when He opened up the Scriptures to us on the road?" You get the point? That was what? That's what the Holy Spirit is about. To help you understand what these things are about. It opened up the Scriptures. Once you open it up, it gave you peace. It gave you hope that this- I thought the end of the story was this weekend. It's not the end of the story. There's more to it. Oh my gosh. Great things are going to happen, still to come.

I don't know if you've ever seen this picture. This is a picture Rembrandt painted of dinner, dinner at Emmaus. You ever seen this before? He see, first off, this was different times. Apparently the wife was in the kitchen baking stuff and this is Jesus here on the [inaudible 00:31:55], on the right. You can see He's still in the shadows a little bit. Still that sort of not quite yet totally revealed, but enough so that you can see this other guy, the other disciple. All of a sudden the light is on him and he could see that kind of startled wonder look in his face. The lights came on for him. Hey, you know what? When the lights come on for you, it gives you peace because you realize who God is and how much He loves you. Well, the passage ends like this.

It says, it's over here. It says this. "You heard me say I'm going away and I'm coming back to you. If you love me, you would be glad that I'm going to the Father for the Father is greater than I, and I've told you this will happen. I've told you now before that it will happen so that when it does you will believe." He's talking about His resurrection. He's saying, the resurrection is going to take place. I'm telling you this right now. I'm going to come back so when you see me, it will be easy. If I tell you beforehand it's going to happen it'll be easier for you believe, all this stuff and make sense to you and such. He says, "I will not speak to you much long ago for the Prince of this world is coming. Now, he has no hold on me, but the world must learn that I love the Father and I'll do exactly what my Father has commanded me."

Then he said, "Come on, let's leave." Hey, this passage, this section ends with this. He tells them, I've told you this stuff. You know, and I'm going to go away for a while, but I'm going to come back. By the way, I think this is a double comeback the same way it's a double learn, teach and learn. The teach and learn wasn't just for the disciples. The teacher learns for us to buy the power of Spirit. The peace wasn't just for them. The peace was for us. This is a double one too. I'm going away. He was going away from the disciples simply for the weekend. He was going to be gone for three days. Then He was coming back in his resurrection. But I think it was also for us to say, hey, I'm going away too to be with the Father. I'm going to go and I'm going to be your advocate with God so that I can say to Him, hey look, Terry is, he is screwed up.

He needs some help. Intercede, I'm going to intercede on his behalf so that he can figure out who I want him to be. You know what I'm going to do? With groans too deep for words I'm going to work in his heart so he reads the Bible more and he gets it this time, so that he acts like it, and when he does, you know what? He's going to be so great because he's going to get peace. He's finally going to have the peace. That way he's going to be that prayer when he prayed, "God make me into the kind of person you want me to be," I'm going to give it to him. He's going to be so happy about that. It's going to be fantastic. So I think it's about that other coming though, the coming that Jesus comes when He comes a second time.

But in the meanwhile, to disciples at that time, he says to them, "Listen, the prince of this world, the devil, he's already on his way." Because you know when they left the upper room where they'd celebrated the Passover, they were walking up to the Garden of Gethsemane. It was the Garden of Gethsemane where Judas and the other worldly leaders, religious leaders, were coming with the Romans to arrest Jesus, to take Him, to try Him, to find him guilty in spite of the fact that there was no guilt to be found in Him and to crucify Him and bury Him. And Jesus, He says, "Hey, they're on their way." The devil, the darkness of life is on its way, but you know what? Jesus is going to go to that Garden of Gethsemane and when He's there He's going to wonder God, is there any other way maybe?

I'm dying tomorrow? Isn't there any other way I can get around this? And then He says this though. "No, not my will be done, but your will be done." He's going to demonstrate that He does whatever the Father asks Him to do. You know what the Father asked Him to do? He asked Him to tell us that that Spirit's coming, that through the Bible will be able to give us what we need to know. Not only that, but we'll be able to have a peace. We'll be able to have a peace that allows us to flourish because we'll become what we were meant to be and not to worry about the brokenness and the and that evil that might come your way. Look, because you know the end of the story. God is in crisis already intervening for us, to work inside us to be able to bear these things that are coming, but He's going to come back and He's going to make all things right.

Peace completely, perfect peace for all those who believe and the restoration of the creation in the way that it was meant to be from the very beginning. At the end of this story, Jesus says to the disciples, "Come on, let's leave." He's going to say it again. Well, he's going to be in heaven at that point and He's going to say to all who believe who are with Him when he decides to return a second time and restore all things, "Come on, let's leave. We're going home." Let's pray together. Lord, we thank you for this day. We thank you for the disciples who in faithfulness to you were willing to offer up their hearts and their minds to be taught by your Spirit so that they could understand the things that you had revealed, the deep things about who you are and your love for us.

We thank you that they were able to remember your spirit. Help them to remember the things that Jesus said and we thank you that they took the time to make sure to write it down and get it right so not only they can be transformed by it, but the world, including us, could be transformed by it as well. We're thankful for that. We notice story. We know the truth about who you are and about your love in Christ. And Lord, we pray that we can learn more and more how to live in your peace, to figure out who you want us to be and to understand that peace every day more and more. Then finally Lord, we're so thankful that the promise is this, even when we screw it up, you are not going to give up on us.

Even when things get really, really hard and darkness and brokenness and evil comes after us, we know the true end of the story. We wait for that day, Lord, when you in Heaven say, "Come on, let's leave this place," and you come here and make all things perfect. We pray this in Jesus' name and for His kingdom's sake. Amen.