No Longer Orphans

“If you love Me, you will keep My commandments. 16 “I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever; 17 that is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him or know Him, but you know Him because He abides with you and will be in you. 18 “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. 19 “After a little while the world will no longer see Me, but you will see Me; because I live, you will live also. 20 “In that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you. 21 “He who has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me; and he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and will disclose Myself to him.”

We are coming today to a portion of the much longer discourse of Jesus to His faithful followers on the night before His arrest. We could literally go through chapters 14 – 16 one verse at a time and take a very long time to do so; there is so much here to be learned. We aren’t going to attempt to do that of course. I am aware of my own limitations. As we go through however, stopping to study these chapters in small portions and passages, it is important that we continue to keep them in context and thus follow the progression of this final address of Jesus to the Apostles and also to us.

Remember that chapter 14 has been dubbed ‘the comfort chapter’ and in our last session we talked a little bit about why it is called that. This chapter begins with the admonition from our Lord to stop letting our hearts be troubled. Now of course He was talking directly to Peter and to the group of His friends to whom He has been revealing information about His impending departure from them.

They are therefore saddened and confused and unfortunately worried more about their immediate future than His, so He is graciously comforting them at the very moment when they should have been doing their best to comfort Jesus.

Backing up just a step from verse 1 of chapter 14, Jesus has told them He is leaving and they cannot follow, but He is quick to assure them that they will follow later. He actually has better news for them which we are going to be talking about today, because whereas they would, in their future lives, come to a place where they would also depart this world and be with Jesus again, which was good news, what He has to tell them in today’s text verses is of a more immediate nature and it also has to do with Jesus being present with them and they with Him. We’ll get to that in a few moments.

Then He tells them to stop letting their heart be troubled by the revelation of His imminent departure and the reason He gives is that He is only going to prepare a place for them. Well, that’s good and comforting news also, isn’t it? If a loved one assures you that they are going to another place where you will eventually follow, and they say that they are going to have a place all ready for you when you get there, that tells you at least two things, doesn’t it? It tells you that they are very confident you are going to be joining them – otherwise why go to all that preparation trouble, and it tells you that they really want you there because they’re going to do all of that for you in anticipation of your arrival.

And that’s really in essence what Jesus is conveying to them when He says what He does in verse 3.

Then as we move down the early verses of this chapter we see that Jesus says some things that most certainly aren’t true at the moment He says them, but He knows they will be true very soon so He puts them in the present tense. I’m speaking of His assertion that they know where He is going and they know the road to get there. They didn’t, but they would.

Then He says they know the Father as they know Him. They didn’t truly know either in the sense in which He was saying it, but He knew they would soon, and again, that’s what we’ll be discussing today.

Then Jesus gives them some promises that must have sounded very strange to them at that moment. They were going to do greater works than they had seen Him do, and they were going to do those works because He was going to the Father. He also promised them that what they asked in His name – that is, according to Divine will and character – He would accomplish for them and do through them.