Take Heart
John 16:25-33
Remsen Bible Fellowship, 03/15/2020
Introduction
- We live in a world utterly gripped by fear. Fear of Coronavirus. Fear of economic uncertainty. Fear of the other team winning the election. Fear of climate change.
- On an individual level we face fear of relationships breaking down. Fear of change. Fear of death. Fear that our complete lack of control might be made manifest. We’re afraid of this fact: we aren’t God.
- Jesus' disciples faced fear in the upper room. 14:1, 27; 16:6, 20, 22
- What we saw last week was that this sorrow was to be short-lived. Now, as Jesus comes to the culmination of this discourse, this last long conversation before the cross, in v33 he tells them to take heart.
- But he doesn’t just say take heart, or make that statement devoid of context. In verses 25-33 I think what we find are 6 reasons that believers in Jesus can have peace, 6 reasons not to fear-6 reasons to take heart.
1. Take Heart, because the Truth Will be Clearer. V25
- Jesus has been speaking to his disciples in figurative language. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s all been symbolic. Much of what he’s saying is literally true (though there are numerous metaphors, a woman in labor, vine/branches, etc.)
- The point Jesus is making is that the truth he’s communicating to the disciples in this upper room has largely been missed by them. Cf. 16:12
- But there is coming an hour, Jesus tells them, when it will not be so. When is this hour? Two options:
- After the resurrection, when Jesus teaches the OT in light of himself, Luke 24:25-27, 44-49; Acts 1:3b
- After Pentecost, when the Spirit of Truth comes, 14:16-17; 15:26; 16:13
- I think the answer is that Jesus is speaking of both-this promise begins to be fulfilled when he himself opens up the Scriptures and their minds to those Scriptures. But that work is brought to true fruition for the original disciples and even now for us as the Spirit illumines our minds and hearts as we look to the Book. It’s a discipline taught by Jesus: read in light of him (Luke 24), that is enabled by the Spirit (15:26). This is central, because Jesus is the clearest revelation of the Father (1:18). Take heart, Jesus has made the Father known.
2. Take Heart, because You Have Direct Access to God. v26
- Last week we went over the passages in ch 14-16 which discuss answered prayer. We won’t rehash those this week. But note to whom we pray: The Father.
- How can we, as sinners, have direct access to God? Don’t we need Jesus’ intercession for us (cf Hebrews 7:25, Romans 8:34)?
- The answer is that it is only through Jesus that we can have this access. He is the way, the truth, and the life. No access to the Father but by him. But those who believe in his name aren’t given temporary hall passes, they aren’t given Jesus’ mailing address so that they can pass requests along up the food chain. They are given full rights of Sonship.
- If you have trusted in Jesus as your Savior, the Father is willing-more than willing, glad!-to hear you, to have you bring your requests before him.
- Is that not comforting news in troubled times? That the Sovereign Ruler of the universe welcomes you before his Throne of Grace-into his lap, as it were-where you can come and cast all of your anxieties before him. Take heart, he hears you.
3. Take Heart, because the Father Loves You. v27
- This is obviously connected to our previous point, in fact Jesus states it as the reason we can have confidence in point two. The Father hears us directly because he loves us.
- We know that the Father has loved the world in such lavish fashion as to give his Son (3:16). Yet love in v27 seems directed at one group: believers.
- Why does the Father love the disciples in v27? They loved and obeyed Jesus. So this is “love” in a different sense than his love sending the Son, or even of his love drawing them to salvation (6:65, no one can come unless it is granted him by my Father). That initiating love of God to purchase, to redeem, to give the eyes of faith has actually produced in the disciples that which God finds lovely: love for and belief in Jesus.
- Does that bother you, that God might find something in you to love? Consider two things:
- Luke 2:52. Jesus grew in wisdom, stature, and favor with God and man.
- Remember how much emphasis Jesus lays on abiding. 15:9-10. There is no merit in us which earns salvation, and even to stay saved is ultimately the keeping work of God in us. But that work of God in us is not accomplished apart from our real growth in love, trust, and obedience.
- So for the Father to love the disciples because of their love for Jesus doesn’t mean that he didn’t love them before. But it does mean his love has changed, and it’s the kind of changed love we can experience and enjoy if we are trusting in Jesus. As we grow in likeness to Jesus, the Father delights in our growth. Take heart, because the Father loves you.
4. Take heart, because Jesus accomplished His Work. v28
- It’s easy to believe that the world is out of control, isn’t it? One of our greatest comforts is that in this unstable world there is a God in Heaven who reigns, who accomplishes his purposes inexorably. He’s unstoppable.
- What is God’s primary means of accomplishing that work? Isaiah 55:11-12
- What is Jesus called in the beginning of John’s gospel? 1:1
- Do you see the pattern in v28, and its connection to Isaiah 55? Jesus has come down from the Father, he’s come into the world, and now in the upper room he is announcing his return. What is implied in this statement? That his work is finished. That he left nothing undone. He, by the time the disciples see him again on Sunday, will have accomplished what the Father sent him to do. In Jesus’ own words from 19:30, It is finished.
- Brothers and sisters, take heart-Jesus has purchased your salvation. He has accomplished his work.
5. Take heart, because you can’t mess up God’s plan. V29-32
- This might seem a little less obvious, but let’s see how the disciples are responding to Jesus.
- Back in v25 Jesus had predicted a time when he would speak to them plainly, when the veil would come off their eyes, as it were. But our dear friends think that moment has already come.
- D.A. Carson puts it in succinct-if somewhat cutting-fashion when he says, “Misunderstanding is even more pathetic when people think it no longer exists.”
- Have you ever been that person? Thinking you understand but you just don’t. I’m not sure if it’s worse to be that person or to watch it happen to someone else. Cringe-worthy.
- The disciples are definitely cringe-worthy here: now we know; this is why we believe
- We don’t have to doubt their sincerity at all for us to still echo Jesus’ sarcastic question in v31, Now you believe? Really, guys?
- Their confidence is all the more sad when we see what Jesus tells them in v32: they’re going to scatter and desert Jesus. His moment of greatest need for friendship, companionship, fellowship in prayer-this was the time of their greatest failure. First through drowsiness, and then through cowardice. They’re dense in the upper room, they doze in the garden, and they desert when the going gets tough.
- But does any of this gum up God’s plan? Yet I am not alone, for the Father is with me. Brothers and sisters, we are often our own worst enemy, aren’t we? And if our understanding of salvation, or of God’s work in the world, is centered upon how great we are doing in following him, we could well find ourselves in a shipwreck of anxiety, because we fail just like these men. But the center of our hope is not our own obedience. It is the power and the goodness of God to accomplish his purposes. That doesn’t free us from responsibility to act, to be obedient, to pray. But it does remove from our shoulders a weight which we cannot bear: the control of outcomes. God will accomplish his purposes.
- So when (not if, when) you mess up, you're overconfident, or you fail, take heart: God still sits on his throne.
6. Take heart, because Jesus has overcome the world. V33
- Jesus has said these things, stretching back into ch 13, with the express purpose of building peace into his disciples. He’s giving the Spirit, he’s giving them each other, the Father and the Son will dwell with Spirit-indwelt believers, he’s coming back, he’s chosen them to abide and bear fruit until then. All of these things he has said to give them a center. A place to stand when life gets stormy.
- And he promises that life will get stormy. There’s no maybe in, In the world you will have tribulation. Beginning with these guys, who mostly get killed for proclaiming Jesus, down to the present day. Friendship with God is enmity with the world. Yet this should not cause us to fear in any way.
- Why? Because Jesus has overcome the world.
- When Jesus says I have overcome he uses the perfect tense in Greek, which speaks of a one time action that has continuing effects. He overcame the world in the hour of which he speaks so frequently in this Gospel. On the cross, in rising from the dead, in ascending to the right hand of the Majesty on High. He has done this. It is finished. But its consequences are far from finished, they continue on into the present day and stretch into the infinite future. We will never be past receiving the benefits which Jesus purchased for us by overcoming the world on the cross.
- Brothers and sisters, do you have fears this morning? Oh soul, are you weary and troubled, no light in the darkness you see? There’s light for a look at the Savior: because he died for thee.
- In this world we will have trouble. But take heart: Jesus has overcome the world.