Sermons – Grace Evangelical Free Church // Wyoming, MN Sermons – Grace Evangelical Free Church // Wyoming, MN

John 16:16-24 “A little while, and you will see me no longer; and again a little while, and you will see me.” 17 So some of his disciples said to one another, “What is this that he says to us, ‘A little while, and you will not see me, and again a little while, and you will see me’; and, ‘because I am going to the Father’?” 18 So they were saying, “What does he mean by ‘a little while’? We do not know what he is talking about.” 19 Jesus knew that they wanted to ask him, so he said to them, “Is this what you are asking yourselves, what I meant by saying, ‘A little while and you will not see me, and again a little while and you will see me’? 20 Truly, truly, I say to you, you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice. You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy. 21 When a woman is giving birth, she has sorrow because her hour has come, but when she has delivered the baby, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a human being has been born into the world. 22 So also you have sorrow now, but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you. 23 In that day you will ask nothing of me. Truly, truly, I say to you, whatever you ask of the Father in my name, he will give it to you. 24 Until now you have asked nothing in my name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full.







INTRODUCTION







In our passage, as Jesus’ neared the end of His final message to His disciples (Thursday night before His crucifixion), He continued to focus on their grief over His departure, the growing hardship that would surely follow, and how they were to live in light of those things.







They loved Him, they trusted Him, and they’d come to depend on Him. They’d followed Him away from nearly every known and comfortable aspect of their lives, into a life of uncertainty, difficulty, and persecution. All of that was a significant challenge while Jesus was with them. As they contemplated trying to continue on after Jesus left, though, it took on a whole new level of confusion and overwhelmedness.







Rather than seek to dispel them of this notion, Jesus promised it. His message to them wasn’t, “Don’t worry, it won’t be as bad as you imagine.” His message to them was, “It’s going to get far worse in some ways before it gets better. While I was with you, I took on most of the hardship for you. Now that I’m leaving, much more of it will fall on you.”







Grace, one of the things this sermon is meant to help us see is that we must settle on this if we are to continue to become the kind of church God made us to be. Parents, you must settle on this if you are going to raise the kind of kids God commands you to raise. Non-Christian, you must settle on this as you contemplate trusting in Jesus. To become a Christian is not a call to comfort and ease or merely a ticket to heaven. It is a call to lay our lives down and take up our cross. It is a call to make war against everything that sets itself up against God within us and proclaim the good news of Jesus to everything outside of us. It is a call to live by faith in the promises of God, while knowing full well that we will look foolish to the watching world.







Jesus was not subtle or unclear about these things. He didn’t try to hide or minimize them. There was absolutely no bait and switch in His approach.







The perpetual question that this put before everyone who first heard His message, as well as everyone who has heard it since, is, “Is it worth it? Does the benefit of following Jesus truly outweigh this steep cost”? And the thing for us to see is that as clearly and consistently as Jesus described the cost, He described the reward. You will weep and lament. You will be hated and you might be killed. But all of your suffering will be turned into joy; full,

John 16:4b-15 “I did not say these things to you from the beginning, because I was with you. 5 But now I am going to him who sent me, and none of you asks me, ‘Where are you going?’ 6 But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your heart. 7 Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you. 8 And when he comes, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment: 9 concerning sin, because they do not believe in me; 10 concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father, and you will see me no longer; 11 concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged.12 “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. 13 When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. 14 He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you. 15 All that the Father has is mine; therefore I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.







INTRODUCTION







What comes to mind when you think of an advantage? What does it mean when something is to your advantage? Have you ever felt like you had a significant advantage in life?







I recently came across a family video of my brother-in-law and I playing basketball against our boys. It was from 2011 so Jeremiah, the oldest, would have been 10. TJ and I were blocking everything, dunking on the boys (the rim was lowered), and flexing on them repeatedly. We were older, stronger, taller, and had considerably more understanding of the game at the time. We had every possible advantage over them and it showed.







An advantage is a benefit. It is something that works in your favor. It is something that makes things easier for those who have it than for those who don’t.







Our passage for this morning describes two great advantages that God has given to His people as they seek to be faithful to Him in a hostile world. One is implicit and the other explicit. The implicit advantage of this text is the gradual revelation of Jesus’ nature, will, and plans. The explicit advantage is (a familiar one,) the sending of the Holy Spirit.







Again, remember, we’re now in the final ¼ of John’s Gospel. It recounts the final days/hours of Jesus life on earth. And in our passage, we find Jesus giving some of His final words of instruction to His closest followers, His disciples. His main message to them was that although He was leaving (dying, rising, and ascending to heaven), they needed to continue His ministry of telling people how to be reconciled to God and brought into His kingdom. More specifically still, Jesus spoke to them about the help He would give them to navigate the hardships that would certainly befall them as they obeyed.







The big idea of his passage is that truly following Jesus in a world that rejects Jesus will often be marked by significant hardships, but Jesus has left us with every advantage we need to persevere through them; namely, His Word and His Spirit. And the main takeaways for us are to glorify God, by reading Jesus’ Word and doing what it says, in the power of the Spirit, no matter the resistance. Let’s pray that it would be so among us in increasing measure (and with the child dedications fresh on our minds, let’s pray that God would be pleased to work these things out in our children as well).







GRADUAL REVELATION (4-6)







Have you ever noticed or wondered about the fact that God only gradually revealed His nature and will to His people? He could have simply dropped a completed Bible in Adam’s hands from t...

John 15:26 – 16:4 “But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me. 27 And you also will bear witness, because you have been with me from the beginning.







16:1 “I have said all these things to you to keep you from falling away. 2 They will put you out of the synagogues. Indeed, the hour is coming when whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God. 3 And they will do these things because they have not known the Father, nor me. 4 But I have said these things to you, that when their hour comes you may remember that I told them to you.







INTRODUCTION







We had a modified staycation last week. Thanks for sending us away and thanks for welcoming us back.







I was able to listen to John’s sermon on Tuesday morning. Well done, John. There is much we can all learn from John’s grasp of biblical theology. I especially appreciated John’s description of God’s nature and its implications for our lives.







To quickly bring you up to speed, we’ve made our way, passage by passage, through the fifteenth chapter of John’s Gospel. In his Gospel, John recounts much of the life and ministry of Jesus, and all for the primary purpose of convincing his readers (original and continually) that Jesus is the Christ/Messiah that God promised to send. And that, in order that his readers might believe in Jesus and be saved from our sins and reconciled to God and His creation. May that be the effect among us today and until Jesus returns!







To zoom in a bit, the words Jesus spoke in chapters thirteen through seventeen were all said on the night before His crucifixion. They were spoken to His disciples (minus Judas).







To zoom in one more time, in my last sermon (on 15:18-25) we read of Jesus’ promise that His followers would be hated by the world around them to the degree that the world around them hates Jesus and they lived as Jesus commanded and modeled.







That’s rough news and Jesus knew it. That’s why our passage begins with the word “but.” Jesus told His followers that while He alone is the way, the truth, and the life, living in light of that in this fallen world would be hard…BUT when the Helper comes, more help will come.







Two sermons ago in John, Jesus described one means of God’s grace to defend against and heal from the sting of the world’s hatred: The love and friendship of other Christians. In our passage for this morning, we find a second significant means of God’s grace to protect and heal His people from the world’s persecution: The Helper whom Jesus promised to send.







Do you live among a people who hate the idea of Jesus being the Son of God? If so, life will be hard for you if you truly follow Jesus. At the same time, however, it will be much more bearable if you are surrounded by other Christians who love you well and if you have the Spirit dwelling in you.







The big idea of this passage is that the Helper, the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Holy Trinity, will help us when honoring God is costly. And the main takeaway is to courageously live godly lives in complete confidence that the Spirit makes every righteous risk right.







Let’s pray.







WHEN THE HELPER COMES, MORE HELP COMES







Our passage records the third time (of four) that Jesus has mentioned “The Helper” in John’s Gospel. All four occur during His final, upper room discourse.







In the first, John 14:16, Jesus said, “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever…” in that context, Jesus promised the Spirit to help His followers keep His commandmen...

Exodus 3 Now Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro, the priest of Midian, and he led his flock to the west side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. 2 And the angel of the LORD appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. He looked, and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed. 3 And Moses said, “I will turn aside to see this great sight, why the bush is not burned.” 4 When the LORD saw that he turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.” 5 Then he said, “Do not come near; take your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” 6 And he said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.







8 Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who did not know Joseph. 9 And he said to his people, “Behold, the people of Israel are too many and too mighty for us. 10 Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, lest they multiply, and, if war breaks out, they join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land.” 11 Therefore they set taskmasters over them to afflict them with heavy burdens. They built for Pharaoh store cities, Pithom and Raamses. 12 But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and the more they spread abroad. And the Egyptians were in dread of the people of Israel. 13 So they ruthlessly made the people of Israel work as slaves 14 and made their lives bitter with hard service, in mortar and brick, and in all kinds of work in the field. In all their work they ruthlessly made them work as slaves.







15 Then the king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other Puah, 16 “When you serve as midwife to the Hebrew women and see them on the birthstool, if it is a son, you shall kill him, but if it is a daughter, she shall live.” 17 But the midwives feared God and did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but let the male children live. 18 So the king of Egypt called the midwives and said to them, “Why have you done this, and let the male children live?” 19 The midwives said to Pharaoh, “Because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women, for they are vigorous and give birth before the midwife comes to them.” 20 So God dealt well with the midwives. And the people multiplied and grew very strong. 21 And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families. 22 Then Pharaoh commanded all his people, “Every son that is born to the Hebrews you shall cast into the Nile, but you shall let every daughter live.”















We return to the book of Exodus this morning and find that Moses is still in the wilderness, shepherding the flock of his father-in-law. Moses had been born at a time of crisis in the history of Israel. Pharaoh enslaved the Hebrews and cruelly oppressed them. Upon reaching the age of forty years, Moses, who had been miraculously saved and adopted by the daughter of Pharaoh, went out to visit his people and struck and killed an Egyptian who had been beating a fellow Hebrew. Moses had “supposed that his brothers would understand that God was giving them salvation by his hand, but they did not understand.” They rejected their God-appointed savior, and as his forefather Jacob had done, he fled to distant relatives in the east, met a woman at a well, married her, became a shepherd of his father-in-law’s flock, and had children in exile.







Chapter three has five sections. In verses 1-3 is the Shepherd and the Burning Bush. In verses 4-6 Moses is introduced to Yahweh. In the center of the passage from verses 7-12 we learn that God is ready to save ...

17 These things I command you, so that you will love one another. 18 “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. 19 If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. 20 Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours. 21 But all these things they will do to you on account of my name, because they do not know him who sent me. 22 If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have been guilty of sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin. 23 Whoever hates me hates my Father also. 24 If I had not done among them the works that no one else did, they would not be guilty of sin, but now they have seen and hated both me and my Father. 25 But the word that is written in their Law must be fulfilled: ‘They hated me without a cause.’







INTRODUCTION







I recently got the following text from a pastor friend.









My day yesterday: 8:45: Baptized [my son]. A great joy. 10:15: Here a testimony of someone who came to faith through my preaching when I told the story of Spurgeon’s conversion. A great encouragement. 12:00 – A couple pulls me [aside] and asks to meet immediately. Wife is in [an] unrepentant affair. Her second. A member. I’m at a loss for words. I can’t convince her to stop. Though today she broke it off (we’ll see…) and agreed to meet. 2:00 – I’m flabbergasted by the dear influential family in our church that I love. 3:45 – With [baptized son] eating Buffalo Wilds Wings to celebrate. A great joy. 5:00 – With a young family. Dad most likely has pancreatic cancer. 7:30 – [Baby of a family friend] has a heart attack and has to [be] resuscitated.









I responded by coining the term (probably not), “Pastoral whiplash.”







That’s somewhat akin to what we have in our passage for this morning. It is clear that v.18-25 are meant to be seen in contrast to the previous section (vs.1-17, and especially 12-17). That’s why I included v.17 in the Scripture reading. Jesus moved abruptly from talking about the love and friendship between Him and His followers to the hatred of the world for Him and His followers. In other words, in a sense, Jesus was preparing His followers for the kind of perpetual whiplash inherent to the Christian life in a hostile world.







The big idea of the passage is that wherever Jesus is hated in the world, all who truly follow Him will be hated as well. And the big takeaways from the passage are to (1) follow Jesus in such a way that those who hate Him will also hate us and (2) to love one another in such a way that will protect and heal us from the world’s attacks. Let’s all decide once-and-for-all that suffering for obeying Jesus in the love of the saints is a far better life (not to mention eternal life) than every temporary comfort in disobedience.







IF AND WHEN THE WORLD HATES YOU (18-19)







The logic of this passage is easy to see (I love it when that happens). To make it as clear as possible, I’m going to preach it somewhat out of order. What I mean is, the four main arguments of Jesus are plain, but spread out throughout the passage. I’m going to bring them together so we don’t miss what’s there.







The first main argument is found in vs.18-19 (I’ll come back to v.17 at the end). It is a warning from Jesus to His followers that where He is hated by the world, we will be too. The second is Jesus’ explanation for why that is—because the world ...

John 15:12-17 “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command you. 15 No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. 16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. 17 These things I command you, so that you will love one another.







INTRODUCTION







One thing common to all people is the need to make sense of the big questions in life.







Who am I? Why am I here? Is there any ultimate meaning? Why is life hard? What is good and evil? What happens after I die?







We’re not always conscious that we’re trying to find consistent answers to these kinds of questions, but it is a phenomenon universal to all mankind. It is a track that is perpetually running inside of us. That’s part of what it means to be made in the image of God. Not having answers is part of the restlessness that is common to all apart from Christ, even as having answers is a part of the peace of the Spirit for all who are in Christ.







Another of the big questions in life relates to our wills. Am I free? Why do I desire the things I desire? Is there anything outside of me that has influence on me or authority over me?







The heart of this passage is part of the answer to this last set of questions. To be clear, this passage does not give the final word on free will or answer every question we might have on the relationship between God’s sovereignty and our freedom. What it does do, however, is give us a clear statement on the lordship of Jesus and the fact that it shapes our choices in significant ways. Jesus has and uses authority to choose a people to follow Him as well as to determine the purpose of our following. Let’s make sure we don’t read more into this passage than what’s in it, but let’s be equally sure not to miss what’s there.







In other words, the big idea of this passage is that Jesus chose His followers (they didn’t choose Him) and He did so in order that they might bear lasting fruit among all mankind. Throughout the six verses, Jesus named five specific kinds of abiding fruit: love, obedience, friendship, teaching, and prayer. Consequently, the main takeaways are to abide in Jesus and out of that, give ourselves to love, obey, befriend, teach, and pray.







Before I pray, I’d like to quickly remind you that we are in the last quarter of John’s Gospel. His overall purpose for recording the things he did concerning Jesus’ life and ministry is to convince his readers that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, the Savior of the world, so that his readers would believe in Jesus and be saved (20:31).







To that end, John spent eleven chapters recalling the first three+ years of Jesus earthly ministry and then the final nine chapters recalling the events of the final week of Jesus life on earth. We’re in chapter fifteen, the events of which (along with all of chapters 13-17) took place on Thursday evening, the night of the Passover meal, the night of His betrayal and arrest, and the night before His crucifixion. Our passage consists of Jesus’ words to His eleven disciples (Judas had already left to betray Him), His closest followers.







The main thing for us to get our heads around in the way of background is that our passage records some of Jesus’ final words on earth.