Jesus gives His disciples further instructions John 14: 7-14
It was Friday in the grade one class and the teacher said, “I want you all to think of something that happens this week-end and be prepared to share it with the class on Monday.” All the kids were thinking about what they could tell the class about on Monday when all of a sudden the bell rang and they were off for two whole days.
On Monday morning little Timmy was the first to raise his hand and the teacher said, “O.K. Timmy, tell us what you did this week-end.” And little Timmy said, “My father and I went fishing down by the wharf and we caught seventy-five fish and they all weighed seventy-five pounds. And one of the fisherman said, “It was the biggest catch of fish that were ever caught there.”
Well, the teacher said, “Timmy that was a pretty good story and it had plenty of detail but I doubt that anyone really believes you caught seventy-five fish and they all weighed seventy-five pounds. I mean, what if I told you, “I was walking to school this morning and a fifty foot gorilla came at me and looked like it was about to attack but it was scared off by a little yellow dog that only weighed about fifteen pounds. Would you believe that story?” “Yes, I would” says Timmy, “because that little yellow dog is mine and he’s not scared of anything.”
Some people are known as story tellers and they can make up a story about anything anytime and I believe that’s a natural gift but I also believe that God is the ultimate story teller and yet all of His stories are absolutely true. And He tells us not everything that is but everything we need to know in the Bible.
The word Bible simply means the book of books and it consists of sixty-six different books. Some of them are just one chapter while others consist of fifty chapters or more and even though they’re all different both in size and style they are all consistent in their message. And in the Bible we find God’s message is told in narrative form, historical content, poetry, proverbs, genealogical records, laws, exhortations, parables, prophetic messages, love stories, warnings and many other styles of writing. And although these are all inspired by God, they are also authored on a human level by different people and from different levels of society. And we have a whole range of writers that go all the way from the extremely intelligent mind of King Solomon who was known as the wisest man who ever lived all the way down the line to a man like Amos who claimed to be nothing more than a shepherd who says he was called by God to deliver a message.
I was thinking the other day about two of the human authors of several of the books of the Bible, Moses and Paul. And I was astonished as I thought about these two by the similarities of their backgrounds. Think about them, Moses is credited with writing the first five books of the Old Testament while Paul wrote somewhere around nineteen books of the New Testament.
Moses was the adopted son of Pharaoh who we’re told had killed one of the Egyptian guards in an attempt to identify with his Jewish brethren and then he ran for his life but after about twenty years God introduced Himself to Moses out in the desert and called him to lead the Jewish nation.
On the other hand, we have Paul who was a self-righteous Pharisee and as he tells the story he had been the one who held the coats of those who killed faithful believers like Stephen and no doubt others as well. He wanted these people dead just as much as the others Jews did but he was the type who wouldn’t get his own hands dirty to get the job done. And then we are told by Paul himself in the book of Acts that God introduced Himself to him when he was traveling in the desert and then used him to reach all kinds of people both Jews and gentiles.
Both Moses and Paul had been doing their own thing and both of them had been the source of the death of others and yet both of them were called and used of God not only to direct His people but also to be the authors of portions of the eternal word of God. Listen, God shows us time and time again that He can use anyone, anywhere, if they are willing to be used. And get this, even murderers!
Just the other day I was thinking about how God often introduced Himself in the Old Testament by saying, “I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.” Whenever I heard this portion of scripture I thought God was using it to establish who He was in the sense of giving Himself historical credibility by using the names of three great Jewish leaders but the more I thought about it the more I realized how wrong I was.
Listen, we often think of Abraham as the great father of the Jews but we forget that he had lied a few times about his wife in order to save his own skin. And then he developed a carnal plan to have children when God’s plan didn’t work out when he thought it should. And then a few chapters later we find that Isaac did the same thing with his wife to save his neck as well. And when we come to the account of Jacob the first thing we read is how he deceived his father to get his brother’s birthright. And then he leaves home to escape his brother’s wrath and takes care of the sheep for his future father in law and basically figures out a way that he can steal most of the flock before he leaves. And when he does leave we are told that his wife steals her father’s household gods.
As we read all this we have to come to the conclusion that God is saying, I’m the God of these three men and that demonstrates that I’m not looking for the best of men but I’m looking for those who are willing to follow Me. And by the type of people I use anyone can see that it’s Me doing the work and not them.
The fact that He called them and bragged about being their God shows us that He’s willing to use anyone who is willing to be used. But, before He can use us He has to teach us and before He can teach us we have to know the word of God.
As I said last week I’m always amazed whenever someone says to me that they believe that the Bible is the word of God but they’ve never bothered reading the whole thing. This tells me that either they don’t really believe it or they’re extremely lazy and in either case I believe that God that will hold them accountable for what they’ve missed in life.
Last week we saw how Jesus laid the foundation for His disciples by the things He said in the first six verses and then we saw how everything was about to change, as far as they were concerned. I mean, one minute they were discussing who was going to be the greatest in the kingdom and the next Jesus told them that they had it all wrong because His kingdom was not of this world. And it almost seems like His message was a shock to them, which I find strange because this was something He had said time and time again and yet it never seemed to sink in.
Back in chapter 10 He said that He was the good shepherd who gives His life for the sheep and right after that He says I lay down My life that I might take it back again. In chapter 12 He tells the disciples to leave Mary alone when she had anointed Him because she had done this for the day of His burial. And later on in this chapter He says, “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies it remains alone but if it dies, it produces much grain.” And then He points out that He was referring to His own death. And of course the other gospels have plenty of examples as well.
It almost seems difficult for us to understand why the disciples didn’t know what was about to happen but then again we have to consider that these men had spent the last three and a half years listening to Jesus teach and they didn’t seem to get most of what He was saying. I mean, they had all heard the Sermon on the Mount which is recorded in Matthew chapters 5,6 and 7 and it covers the teaching about the entire Christian life and yet it almost seems by the way they were acting at this supper as though they all just dropped in.
And as much as I hate to admit it, there are many believers today who live and act the same way. They’ve been exposed to the word since they’ve been knee high to a grass hopper but they completely miss the point of the gospel. They talk as though the rewards Jesus offers believers are simply for the here and now and they say things like, if you’re faithful to God He’ll bless you and that way the unsaved can see the value of having faith. Or, if you’re faithful in your giving God will bless you and that way the unsaved can see that you’re really a believer and that God prospers all those who give. It makes me wonder where people get these crazy ideas.
Now listen, I don’t doubt that God prospers some people and not others but I don’t think it always has an awful lot to do with their faith. Do you realize that there are times when having a lot of money can actually be a curse while having nothing can be a blessing? There are people like in our world like Hugh Hefner who owns Playboy magazine and he has more money then he could ever spend while at the same time there are missionaries on the foreign fields of this world who don’t have half the things that we do. But, none of us would ever claim that either of them are to be evaluated spiritually on the basis of what they own. So, we would never look at someone’s riches or their poverty and assume that this is a measurement of their spirituality.
Now, before we look at verses 7-14 I want to go back and look at verse 6 again because I feel that I went over this a little too fast and I missed a few good points. Verse 6 says, “Jesus said, I am the way, the truth and the life and no man cometh unto to the Father but by Me.”
Now, it says Jesus is the way and I believe we can assume that He’s talking about the way to the Father and this means that He not only is He the way but He is the only way. He’s the only one who can span the distance between heaven and earth. Man has always tried to find his own way to get to heaven by good works, prayers, tears and a thousand other ways but as Proverbs 14:12 says, “There is a way which seemeth right unto man but the end thereof are the ways of death.” In other words, Jesus is the only way. And if anyone is going any other way, they’re going the wrong way.
And then He says that He is the truth and this means that He is the absolute truth or the full and final revelation of God. And whenever someone claims to know anything of a spiritual nature but they don’t acknowledge the Lordship of Jesus Christ then you can be sure he is a liar.
And then it says He is the life and we know that His life is eternal life and that tells us that He is everything for us that anyone could ever need. And what I mean by this is that everything we ever lost in Adam we got back when we came to Jesus.
He is the way and if we’re not going his way, we’re going the wrong way and He is the truth and everyone who claims to have truth but doesn’t know Him is a liar and He is the life and apart from Him there’s nothing but death.
And then He says that no man comes to the Father except through Me. And that means no one, not the pope, not the queen of England and no religious leader that isn’t trusting Jesus Christ’s bodily death, burial and resurrection. It’s like the old hymn says,
“I must needs go home by the way of the cross,
There’s no other way but this.
I shall ne’er get sight of the gates of light,
If the way of the cross I miss.”
He’s the way, the truth and the life and if we don’t have Him, we don’t know the way because we’re lost in sin and we don’t know the truth because we’re ignorant about the ways of God and we have no life because we’re spiritually dead.
Now, so far, we’ve been looking at Jesus as He’s speaking to the eleven disciples and the reason I say there are eleven is that the other gospel writers tell us that Judas was dismissed by Jesus when he was told to go and do what he intended to do which of course was to betray Jesus to the Jewish leaders. And it was during this time that Jesus was preparing them for the traumatic shock of His death by giving them the promise of all the glories of heaven as well as that of His resurrection and subsequent return.
Now let’s go on to verses 7-11 where we’ll see Jesus comforting His disciples by revealing more about Himself then they had known before as He stresses the quality of the relationship He has with His Father in heaven. And in verse 7 He begins by saying, “If ye had known Me, ye should have known My Father also: and henceforth ye know Him and have seen Him.” And when He said this Philip responded by saying, “Show us the Father and we will be satisfied.” And Jesus said, “I’ve been with you for the last three and a half years and you still don’t know who I am? I came to reveal the Father and when you’ve seen Me you’ve seen Him.”
Now, this seems like an unusual way to answer a question but here we see that Jesus is revealing something of the mystery of the trinity or the three member’s of the Godhead. And it’s a mystery not in the sense of a ‘who done it’ type mystery but the kind of mystery where even though we can’t fully understand it that doesn’t mean that it can’t be understood but our inability to understand it is because we are at a point in time where it’s so far above us that we really can’t comprehend it.
As I pointed out before there are several things in scripture that we can’t understand and it’s not because we’re dumb but it’s simply because we’re human. For instance, there’s the issue of the humanity of Jesus all the way from His virgin birth to his death on the cross. We all agree that He was 100% human and yet the scripture tells us and His miracles also prove that He was also 100% divine or that He was God come in the flesh. Now, logic tells us that you can’t be more than 100% of anything and yet we don’t have a problem with this because the scripture says that’s what He was.
Then there’s the issue of, who does the work when a sinner gets saved? Is it the preacher who gives the message or is it the conviction of the Holy Spirit? Well, of course we’d say it’s not the preacher because if it was the preacher, then we’d have to assume that the person was somehow coerced into becoming a Christian and we know that God isn’t going to honor that kind of commitment. On the other hand, if we said it was simply the work of the Holy Spirit then we would have to wonder why does God need anybody to preach at all? So, the question we’re left with is, who is responsible? Is it the one who is evangelizing or the Holy Spirit or is it half and half? No, it’s both. And the question we’re left with is how does it work? And my answer is simple, ask the Pastor. The truth is, we don’t know how He does it but we are told to preach the word and people will respond.
Then there’s the issue of the trinity and there are several ways that people have tried to compare the trinity to what we know and yet every example falls short of an adequate explanation because the trinity is always beyond our understanding.
For instance, there’s the illustration of water. We all know that water can appear as a liquid, as steam or as ice. It’s the same essence, meaning that in whatever form it’s in, it always consists of two parts hydrogen and one part carbon. And the problem with using water as an illustration of the trinity is when it’s water it can’t be ice and when it’s ice it can’t be steam because all three forms are what they are because they’re all subject to temperature. But, Jesus says that when He’s present the Father is there and elsewhere we are told that when someone blasphemes the Holy Spirit they end up in hell because it’s the same as cursing the name of Jesus and then hoping that somehow He’s going to save them.
Then there’s the illustration of the family which can be a father, mother and a child. Each one has the same last name and each one can answer for the other two as members of the family. And the problem with this illustration is that one can always be present without the other two. Or you can have a relationship with one without the other two even knowing about it. And yet, when Jesus was present all three members of the godhead were there.
You see, the members of the trinity have what’s known as a oneness of being. It’s like they are somehow connected at the core of who they are while at the same time they remain individuals. I think we need to realize that our inability to understand the trinity is found in our lack of ability to understand how the members function within the concept of the trinity. And what I mean by this is that each of them, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit all have a unique personality and each of them function as individuals and yet when one is present all three are said to be there. And when we speak to one member of the trinity we are actually addressing the other two as well. And when one rejects one member of the trinity they are said to have rejected the other two as well.
There are a lot of things we can’t know now and we have to accept them in faith and trust that God who knows all about them will reveal them in His time. It’s like when someone came to Albert Einstein’s wife and asked her if she understood the theory of relativity, she said, “No, I don’t, but Albert knows all about it and I just leave all that to him.” Well, there are some things that we can’t understand as well but we can trust the Lord to help us to appreciate what His word says about them until the time comes when He wants us to know.
So basically, we are seeing that Jesus had to reaffirm to His disciples who He was because He was about to die and let’s face it, they would have a real problem believing in Him when they saw His dead body hanging on a cross. And so He revealed very clearly that He was God come in the flesh.
And then in response to Philip’s request to see the Father Jesus demonstrates what Philip should have realized by saying you should have known who I am in terms of My relationship with the Father by two things, in verse 10 He speaks about His words and then in verse 11 He refers to His works. And what He was saying was His words should have penetrated their hearts while His works should have enlightened their minds. In other words, He had given them everything they needed to know who He was by what He said and what He did.
And then we have the promise of spiritual power that’s given in verse 12 where He says, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on Me, the works that I do, he shall do also; and greater works than these shall he do, because I go unto My Father.” And the reason they wouldn’t be able to do these works until He went unto the Father was because it wasn’t until He went to the Father that the Holy Spirit was given and then His disciples were enabled or empowered to do all kinds of miracles. And what began with physical miracles of healing and speaking languages they never learned became works of spiritual power as the gospel was spread throughout the known world. I’m not saying that God doesn’t or can’t do miracles anymore but His primary goal for us is to spread the gospel.
Jesus told them elsewhere that they would do greater things when He was gone away and when you think about it He couldn’t have been referring to the healings, deliverances or even the resurrections that He had performed but He was referring to the preaching of the word. And when you think about it, about twenty or thirty years after Jesus died on the cross there was very little evidence of the miraculous power He used but since then He has enabled individuals to reach millions and to take the gospel to the ends of the earth. In other words, we are doing what He wanted us to do. And when you think about it, everyone who is ever healed eventually dies but everyone who is ever saved lives forever.
And then in verse 14 we have a phenomenal promise when Jesus says, “If you ask anything in My name I will do it.” And when we hear this we have to ask ourselves, is this a promise of a blank check? Is Jesus saying that anything I want I can have simply by adding ‘in Jesus name’ to my prayer?
I’ve heard many misinterpretations or should I say perversions of this verse. And they all say the same thing. They tell us that we can ask God for anything and God has to give it to us or He’s a liar. And they go on to say that if you want to prove that God is who He claims to be then you have to put Him to the test. And of course they add, all you need is faith. Listen, Jesus had performed miracles for people who had no faith. Not only did He heal people who I’m sure walked away and forgot all about Him but He raised people from the dead and I’m sure they had no faith.
The qualifying comment in this verse is where Jesus says ‘in My name’. And when we pray in His name that’s doesn’t mean that we just add ‘in Jesus name’ to our prayers but it means that we’re actually praying the way Jesus would pray.
And listen, if we were actually praying the way Jesus would pray then we have to ask ourselves, would God the Father refuse Jesus anything? And the answer is no! Then He wouldn’t refuse us if we’re asking in his name because that’s the same as Him asking it.
Now, this is a phenomenal lesson on praying because He promised to provide all of our needs. No matter how large or how small they are. In Philippians 4:19 it says, “My God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus.” But keep in mind that He promised to provide all of our needs and not all of our wants.
So, when we pray in Jesus name we are asking the way that He would ask and by doing this we are fully identifying with Him and by doing this we are certainly eliminating any selfish requests. And when we pray in His name we are also bringing the merits of God’s Son into our prayers. It’s like we are asking the Father to give us what we want or need and it’s not because of who we are but because of what Jesus has done. And then we know that our prayers are meant to bring glory to Jesus. And when we pray that way He says He will answer them.
Listen, in this passage we see how Jesus comforts His disciples in the light of the cross. And He does this by revealing more about His relationship with the Father than He had done in the past. He’s promising them spiritual power that they have never known before and He’s promising them that their prayers would be answered.
