More Promises
The Gospel According to John • Sermon • Submitted
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Introduction
Introduction
As we read through scripture we are confronted with a comparison of religion and the gospel. Any system that teaches we have the ability to save ourselves is religion. The gospel would tell us that the only hope for salvation is outside ourselves. You can see the way religion fails in the OT. Israel fell into the trap of religion assuming they could earn salvation by keeping the law.
In we see Isaiah, the prophet condemn the Israelites for assuming they could earn their salvation by keeping the law.
>13 The Lord said:
These people approach me with their speeches†
to honor me with lip-service† —
yet their hearts are far from me,
and human rules direct their worship of me.†<
They were living as if their works would somehow justify them before God. They treid to draw near to God with their mouths and honor him with their lips but their hearts, we find out, were far from Him.
They were trying to be good enough to earn God’s favor. Like if they could keep the ten commandments He would have some kind of favor on them.
But then, in the NT, Jesus interacts with the religious elite of the day. He contrasts religion and the gospel in these interactions.
These religious leaders did a lot of very religious things. They gave a portion of everythig they owned down to the herbs and spices from their gardens, they fasted Xs of times during the week, and they memorized bunches of Scripture. In all of this, their goal was to earn God’s favor.
Jesus told them and would have us understand as well that earning this favor is impossible. So in place of empty religion that was centered on man, He offered them the Gospel.
Through the gospel, Jesus’s followers are promised reconciliation with God through faith in Him and not through their work or effort.
We couldn’t do it so Jesus did it in our place. Jesus spends time in chapter 14 reminding his followers that He is doing for them what they can not do for themselves. Verse 6.
If you remember from the last few weeks, these disciples have been on quite the ride so far.
- Jesus, their Master, washed their feet like a servant
Jesus warned them that there was a traitor among them.
Peter got shot down as he proclaims his loyalty to Jesus
and they just found out that Jesus is leaving and they can not go with him.
At the beginning of this chapter, as we heard last week, he gives them some good news. He promises that the will come back to get them so they can be with him for eternity. He explained that He is the way by which they can get to the Father.
That is where we left off last week. This week we are going to pick up where Jesus is continuing.
If you know me, you will also know my Father. From now on you do know him and have seen him.”
“Lord,” said Philip, “show us the Father, and that’s enough for us.”
Jesus said to him, “Have I been among you all this time and you do not know me, Philip? The one who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Don’t you believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words I speak to you I do not speak on my own. The Father who lives in me does his works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me. Otherwise, believe because of the works themselves.
“Truly I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do. And he will do even greater works than these, because I am going to the Father. Whatever you ask in my name, I will do it so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it.
I. Know Jesus, Know God
I. Know Jesus, Know God
Once again, we hear Jesus equating himself with God. He links the Father and the Son. If they know Jesus, he says that they will also know His Father.
Jesus wants them to know that they don’t have to wait till heaven to know the father. We can know Him right now. The way to the Father is Jesus. Knowledge of Jesus is the entree to true knowledge of the Father.
The word know is used 141 times in John.
-does not always carry the same meaning.
Four Levels of Knowing
Lowest level is knowing a fact.
To understand the truth behind the fact.
introduces relationship - to know means to believe ina person and become related to him or her.
To have a deeper relationship with a person, a deeper communion. This is the level Paul referred to in . Jesus is going to describe this deeper level later in chapter 14.
It was actually a benefit for Jesus to go away in that his disciples would experience a greater intimacy of relationship with Him.
A. See Jesus, See the Father
A. See Jesus, See the Father
The Pillar New Testament Commentary: The Gospel according to John 3. Jesus as the Way to the Father (14:5–14)
14:8. At one level Philip (cf. notes on 1:44; 11:21, 22) and the others truly do know Jesus, and therefore in the Son they have seen the Father. But they do not recognize this yet. As highly as they think of Jesus, they do not yet grasp that in Jesus God has made himself known. To the extent that this is still beyond them, they do not know Jesus himself very well.
So Philip asks for direct access, as it were, an immediate display of God himself. He thus joins the queue of human beings through the ages who have rightly understood that there can be no higher experience, no greater good, than seeing God as he is, in unimaginable splendour and transcendent glory
The Pillar New Testament Commentary: The Gospel according to John 3. Jesus as the Way to the Father (14:5–14)
The Evangelist has already made it clear in his Prologue that however mitigated God’s gracious self-disclosure was in former times, in Jesus he has made himself known, definitively, gloriously, visibly (cf. notes on 1:14, 18; cf. 12:45)
The Pillar New Testament Commentary: The Gospel according to John 3. Jesus as the Way to the Father (14:5–14)
14:9. Jesus’ question (v. 9) is tinged with sadness. If his opponents do not recognize who he is, it is because they have not been taught by God, they have not listened to the Father (6:45). If those closest to him still display similar ignorance of who he is, despite loyalty to him, they attest their profound spiritual blindness. Even being with Jesus such a long time—the reference is to the duration of Jesus’ ministry—does not guarantee the deepest insight, insight into the truth that all of Jesus’ actions and words have supported and which he now articulates: Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.
III. Do the works Jesus does.
III. Do the works Jesus does.
- what are the greater works than these?
What makes these works great?
Power. Jesus calms and comfort’s His disciples’s fears by assuring them that he is not withdrawing from them.
Carter and Wredburg: He’s going on ahead of them but will continue to actively work in them. He is going to heaven, and from there he will supply them with infitine resources. The power he will supply tjem will be seen through greater works and through answered prayer.
Greater works
Here Jesus is not just saying that the 12 disciples will do greater works. He says, in verse 12, “the one who believes in me”.
Greater can not mean “more spectacular”, as some have suggested. If so more spectacular than water to wine, healing lame and sick, or maybe raising someone who had been dead four days.
So it can not mean more spectacular.
Look at the promise in the larger context of God’s plan of redemption… because that is its setting after all...
Not more spectacular works but greater in extent.
Greater geographically
Greater ethnically - Jews and Gentiles
Greater numerically
Greater spiritually. Here is where it gets even more awesome. William Barclay writes, “The triumphs of the message of the Cross were even greater than the triumphs of Jesus in the days of his flesh.” Jesus raised physically from the dead but the disciples were able to see people who were spiritually dead come to life.
A great mistake here is made by people when we try to contrast the works of Jesus with the works of His disciples or His followers. The contrast is between the works that Jesus did while here on earth and the works that He is currently accomplishing from heaven through his followers here on earth.
The Pillar New Testament Commentary: The Gospel according to John 3. Jesus as the Way to the Father (14:5–14)
This demonstrates that the contrast in v. 12 is not finally between Jesus’ works and his disciples’ works but between the works of Jesus that he himself performed during the days of his flesh, and the works that he performs through his disciples after his death and exaltation.
IV. Prayingin faith, in Jesus’s name
IV. Prayingin faith, in Jesus’s name
The Spirit’s power seen in greater works but will be evident through answered prayer.
To pray in Jesus’s name:
Not a magic formula
Not some kind of incantation
to pray in line with his will
submitted obedience (v.15?)
C and W write that it’s “to pray with the understanding the request you bring is one Jesus would sign His name to. It’s a request that if answered, would show the world who God is and what He cares about.”
Hudson Taylor was a well known missionary to China. He once said, “I used to ask God to help me. Then, I asked Him if I might help Him. Finally, I ended up asking Him to do his work in me and through me, if He would be so pleased.”
Pray expecting Him to answer. Prayers like this.
John Piper in Desiring God writes:
“Prayer is the open admission that without Christ we can do nothing. And prayer is the turning away from ourselves to God in the confidence that He will provide the help we need. Prayer humbles us as needy and exalts God as wealthy.”
Conclusion
Conclusion
These last two passages contain some amazing promises but they have one stipulation… they come after a single command… “Believe in me”. The promises of heaven, of greater works, of answered prayer, and all of the rest of Jesus’s promises are only for people who have placed their faith in Jesus Christ alone.
You don’t need to rely on yourself for the way because He is the WAY.
You don’t need to live in uncertainty and fear because He is the TRUTH
You need not fear death because He is the life.
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