When Dr. Gardner Taylor was a young man, he was preaching one Sunday in Louisiana during the Depression. Electricity was just coming into that part of the country, and he was out in a rural, black church that had just one little light bulb hanging down from the ceiling to light up the whole sanctuary. He was preaching away, and in the middle of his sermon, all of a sudden, the electricity went out. The building went pitch black and Dr. Taylor didn’t know what to say, being a young preacher. He stumbled around until one of the elderly deacons sitting in the back of the church cried out, “Preach on, preacher! We can still see Jesus in the dark!”
Sometimes that’s the only time we can see Jesus… in the dark. And the good news of the gospel is that whether we can see Jesus in the dark or not, he sees us.[1]
As we delve into John 14 today, Jesus and his disciples are facing a very dark time. But in the midst of that darkness, Jesus offers to his first century disciples, and to us, four brilliant promises. Listen for God’s word to you from John 14:23-29…
Jesus answered him, “Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words; and the word that you hear is not mine but is from the Father who sent me.
“I have said these things to you while I am still with you. But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid. You heard me say to you, ‘I am going away, and I am coming to you.’ If you loved me, you would rejoice that I am going to the Father, because the Father is greater than I. And now I have told you this before it occurs, so that when it does occur, you may believe.
In this passage Jesus makes four great promises. These promises are made in response to a question from one of Jesus’ disciples. The question is: “Lord, how is it that you will reveal yourself to us, and not to the world?”
Jesus answers this question by pointing out that his invitation isopen to the entire world. He begins by saying, “If anyone…” That’s a very open invitation. “If anyone loves me, they will obey my teaching.” Any person who responds to Jesus in love will naturally want to try to obey Jesus’ teaching. And to anyone who is trying to love Jesus and obey his teaching, Jesus promises four things.
The first promise we see here is the promise of his presence. Jesus says, “Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.” It is hard to imagine a more dramatic, hopeful, encouraging promise than this one.
How far does God come to make his home with us? Gregory Boyle tells the story of a 15-year-old gang member named Rigo.
Rigo was getting ready for a special worship service for youth in prison when Boyle casually asked if Rigo’s father would be coming.
“No,” said Rigo, “My father is a heroin addict and never been in my life. Used to always beat me.”
Then Rigo recalled one particular day…
“I think I was in fourth grade,” he began, “I came home. Sent home in the middle of the day… my dad says, ‘Why did they send you home?’ And cuz my dad always beat me, I said, ‘If I tell you, promise you won’t hit me?’ He just said, ‘I’m your father. Course I’m not gonna hit you.’ So I told him.”
Then Rigo began to cry; he started wailing and rocking back and forth. Boyle put his arm around him until he slowly calmed down. When Rigo could finally speak again, he spoke quietly, still in a state of shock: “He beat me with a pipe…with… a pipe.”
After Rigo composed himself, Boyle asked about his mom. Rigo pointed to a small woman and said, “That’s her over there…there’s no one like her.” Then Rigo paused and said, “I’ve been locked up for a year and a half. She comes to see me every Sunday. You know how many buses she takes every Sunday?”
Rigo started sobbing with the same ferocity as before. After catching his breath, he gasped through the sobs, “Seven buses. She takes…seven…buses.”
I believe God, as revealed in the person of Jesus, loves us like Rigo’s mother loved her son—with commitment, steadfastness, and sacrifice. We have a God who takes more than seven buses just to arrive where we are. All throughout Jesus’ life—through his birth, his meals with “sinners”, his healing of the sick, his death on the cross—through all of it he showed us the heart of God, a God who takes a long journey of love to find us.[2]
So that’s the first promise Jesus makes here to his first disciples and to us—the promise of his presence.
The second promise Jesus makes is the promise of the Spirit’s teaching. Jesus says, “But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you.”
This promise was made especially to Jesus’ first disciples and would become very important to the Early Church. Jesus was promising to give his Spirit to his disciples so that they would be reminded of what he had taught them. The fruit of this ministry of the Spirit is the New Testament.
At the same time, there is a secondary sense in which these words apply to us today. We too need to be taught by the Holy Spirit; we need to be reminded of what Jesus said and did. The Holy Spirit continues to work in our hearts and minds today to illuminate the Scripture for us and apply it to our lives.
In June of 1992, Jim Davidson and Mike Price climbed Mt. Rainier. On the way down from the summit, the two climbers fell 80 feet through a snow bridge into a glacial crevasse, a pitch-black, ice-walled crack in the massive glaciers that cover Mt. Rainier. Mike Price died.
In his book, The Ledge, Jim Davidson tells the story of his miraculous survival and courageous climb out of that crevasse. Throughout the book, Jim reflects back to his childhood and young adult years, describing his relationship with his father.
As early as Jim could remember, his father showed what some considered an almost reckless confidence in his son. Jim worked for his father painting high, steep-pitched roofs and electrical towers as early as age 12. The work terrified his mother, but Jim’s father kept communicating his belief that Jim could accomplish great things if he pressed through adversity and kept going.
As Jim stood, bloodied and bruised, on the two-foot wide snow ledge next to the body of his climbing partner, he heard the voice of his father. The years of inspiration that Jim’s father had invested in him flooded back into his mind and washed over him with encouragement.
With minimal gear and no experience in ice climbing at that level, Jim spent five hours climbing out, battling fatigue and the crumbling ice and snow that threatened to bury him. Throughout his ordeal, Jim kept recalling the words of his father. Thanks to those words, Jim climbed out of that crevasse to safety.[3]
Just as the words of Jim’s father came into his mind at the point he needed them, Jesus promises that the indwelling Holy Spirit will bring back our Lord’s teaching to our memories when we most need it, in the most difficult circumstances of life, when we are caught “between a rock and a hard place”.
The third promise that Jesus gives to his disciples and to us is the promise of his peace. Jesus says, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”
Jesus’ disciples were well aware of the Pax Romana, the peace that the Roman Empire promised to bring to every place it conquered. However, that was a peace “won and maintained by the brutal force of the sword”.[4]
Jesus offers a different sort of peace, one that works from the inside out, by the gentle influence of the Spirit. However, though the peace Jesus offers is gentle, it is also something strong. His peace calms the troubled heart not just in the absence of difficulty, but also in the midst of tough times.
The story is told of a contest in which artists were invited to submit paintings depicting their idea of peace. Some painted beautiful sunsets or other pastoral scenes. However, first prize went to the artist who painted a bird in its nest, a nest attached to a branch protruding from a thundering waterfall.
That is a great picture of the kind of peace Jesus provides: the peace that passes understanding.
The final promise Jesus makes in this passage is the promise of his triumph.
Jesus says, “You heard me say to you, ‘I am going away, and I am coming to you.’ If you loved me, you would rejoice that I am going to the Father, because the Father is greater than I. And now I have told you this before it occurs, so that when it does occur, you may believe.”
Jesus is going away. He knows he is going to his death. Darkness is falling. Nonetheless, Jesus speaks with hope, for he is not simply going to his death—he is also going to his Father, and he knows he will return to his disciples. Jesus speaks with hope because he trusts in the loving sovereignty of his heavenly Father. The Father has told him what to do and he is carrying it out. All of this is nothing less than the promise of ultimate triumph.
Pastor Lee Eclov writes,
On February 27, 2009, Linda Page, the wife of my dear friend and colleague, Bob, died of cancer. She was only 60. Bob called me just after her death, and as we talked, I mentioned the message of 2 Corinthians 1 and the comfort of God. Bob, a very perceptive pastor, said, “With God it is not just comfort; it is comfort with strength in it, with teeth in it.” He told me, “Last fall, when [we learned the extent of Linda’s illness and] I realized what was ahead, I knew I’d need to learn how to be a servant to my wife in ways I had never done. I wasn’t sure I could do that. Now I look back on all that I have done for her, and I think, Wow! God gave me grace to do all that.[5]
That’s what Jesus gives us: comfort with strength in it, comfort with teeth in it, because he has taken the worst that the world can throw at any of us and he has triumphed through it. In him, we have hope of the same triumph.
I love the way John 14 ends. Jesus says to his disciples in the Upper Room, “Rise, let us be on our way.” Thus, John, who is writing this Gospel, urges us to picture the rest of Jesus’ words of farewell to his disciples being uttered to them as they walk through the dark streets of Jerusalem on the way to the Garden of Gethsemane where Jesus will be arrested. The darkness is falling, but we have hope in the midst of the darkness because of Jesus. We can still see Jesus in the dark, and even more important… he sees us.
[1]Timothy George, “Unseen Footprints,” Preaching Today, Audio (Issue 290)
[2]Gregory Boyle, Tattoos on the Heart (Free Press, 2010), pp. 26-27.
[3]Jim Davidson, The Ledge: An Adventure Story of Friendship and Survival on Mount Rainier (Random House Publishing, 2011); submitted by Dave Bolin, Gadsden, Alabama to PreachingToday.com.
[4]Bruce Milne, The Message of John, p. 217.
[5]Lee Eclov, Vernon Hills, Illinois, PreachingToday.com.
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