The divine perspective on death for a Christian

Let's look together in John chapter 13. John chapter 13. Now when I look at this passage, the early verses of John chapter 13, I think of it as the divine perspective on death for a Christian.

The divine perspective on death for a Christian. I think it's very important for us to meditate in these experiences of the Lord himself. And one of the things that I have come to appreciate more is that not only is he my Lord and that I'm supposed to follow him because he's my Lord, but he's also my leader of faith.

And I'm not going to have to walk any season of life, any pathway, that he has not gone ahead of me. And given to us the example of his own faith in relationship with the Father. So in John chapter 13, verse 1 says now before the feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour was come, that he should depart out of this world, unto the Father.

Having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end. And supper being ended, the devil having now put into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, to betray him, Jesus knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands and that he was come from God and he went to God. He riseth from supper and laid aside his garments and took a towel and girded himself.

And then as we are familiar with, he began to wash his disciples feet. When he knew, when Jesus knew that his hour was come, that he should depart out of this world, unto the Father. One thing that this reveals is that there is another realm.

We're so familiar with the physical, visible world that sometimes this seems like the real world and the spiritual realm just seems a little bit fuzzy at times. And yet it's really the spiritual realm that is the ultimate. And as the Lord Jesus, now again as we look at this, this moment in his life, we might say, yes, it's easy for him because he was there already.

He came from that realm. He came from that eternal presence and he came into our world and now he's returning. So he's going home.

Has it ever dawned on you that the Father gave you a life and you are born of God? That you also have a heavenly origin? That you also by virtue of that relationship belong to God? You belong to that realm? Now we're so used to just thinking of ourselves as the creatures of the dust and we can only instinctively measure things and value things and think from the perspective of where we are here. We haven't known anything else. And that's why it's so important for us to be able to relate ourselves with him because he not only came to reveal the Father to us, but he also came to bring us into the consciousness of what it means to belong to the Father.

And so we can think of his time. His time has come. I don't know what you think about your life and what it means for you at this particular stage of life that you are at.

But we are moving and it just, I don't know if everybody feels the same way, it just seems like we're moving faster and faster and faster through time. And this present life is is slipping away. It's, it's disappearing faster and faster.

I hope we're building towards the true future that we have. The real life that is ours and not simply trying to cling, trying to grasp, trying to make valuable what is now. And so as the Lord says when Jesus knew that his hour was come, that he should depart out of this world unto the Father, what a difference it makes to know him, to know God.

And one of the things that I enjoyed in looking through this section of John in the last two or three years, maybe it's longer than that now, was to see how many times the Lord Jesus refers to his death, his going to the cross and everything that would be beyond it, in this perspective, going unto the Father. Going unto the Father. Now, we may not like the process.

We may not like the pathway there to the Father. But that's where we're going. That's where he's taking us.

And I remember back when my own mother was sick, and she had pancreatic cancer, and she lived about a year with pancreatic cancer until finally she passed away. And if there's anything that is beneficial in these drawn-out kinds of illnesses, it's that it gives us time to contemplate and to prepare for our future. And to adjust, and I'm thinking now of not only ourselves as going through it, but those who are around us.

Because here's how the Lord Jesus consciously places himself in this perspective. His time has come. His time to depart.

But his, his attention is on his disciples. Even though he's facing this crisis of all that Calvary is going to mean for him, he's thinking about his own. And he's seeking to prepare them as much as is possible to prepare them for his absence.

And I remember in that year, as I would visit, the mom and dad lived about four hours away from where I was living at the time. So I'd often stop by there, spend a day or two with them, and mom was kind of a deliberate kind of person. And she would, she was always, she was thinking ahead for dad.

Trying to make it as easy as it could be for him when she was gone. Trying to help him know how to cope and, and manage things in the house and so on. But I also remember one day when it was getting close to the end, and, and sometimes she would say, I woke up this morning and wondered why I'm still here.

But she also made this comment that life is precious. And so we're caught in this, in this tension of what we have now, what we are now, what we, we have together now in relationship. And what this experience tears from us and changes irrevocably.

And so as the Lord is in this, in this perspective, it says, having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end. Now one of the things that strikes me very forcibly in this is, this is not something you can do on your deathbed. This is from the deathbed, if you want to use that expression, from the perspective of the gate into eternity, looking back, having loved his own, which were in the world, he loved them unto the end.

If there is one epitaph that I would be honored to be able to have on a gravestone, would be this, he loved. He loved his own. He loved those that he had responsibility for.

Every one of us here today are in relationship. There are those that we matter to. And there should be those that matter to us.

And there's nothing more important in life than to be one who loves, who gives, as we have been hearing. This is the very essence of the life of God, the one who gives and gives and keeps on giving. Having loved his own, he loved them unto the end.

As I contemplate the tragedy of how life is breaking down for so many families, so many people today, by the time they come to this stage of life, when they're going to pass from this world into eternity, is there anybody left to hold their hand? Is there anybody near them that's going to be there for them? I think it's a very precious, precious thing to see family gathered around, spending time with the one who's in that illness. It's something that cannot be measured. There's nothing that can measure the value, the preciousness of this, of a love that does not turn away in the face of death.

A love that will care as long as we can care, as much as we can care for the one that we love. It's very precious to the Lord because this is his character. Having loved his own, he loved them unto the end.

But I just want you to think soberly today. Are you loving those that God has granted you influence with? Is this your life today? May we not be just self-focused, self-interested. We're being destroyed as a culture by self-focused, self-fulfillment.

Everything spiraling around and collapsing in on ourselves. Whereas he calls us to this life that is from him and this is the true expression of his life. Having loved his own, he loved them unto the end.

Verse 2 gives this, this thorn in the side or this knife, you might say the knife in the back, the tragedy of someone that he has nurtured, someone he has taught, someone who was a disciple, someone who was going to be treacherous to him, someone who was going to betray him and knowing that he still loved Judas. I believe that the portion of the sop that he presented to Judas was given in perfect sincerity. Even though he knew Judas had made up his mind, that it was sealed, in all sincerity he offers his friendship to the man that was going to turn away from him and betray him into death.

Now your circumstances, my circumstances may seem totally removed from that kind of crisis. And yet whether it is a treachery in our life or whether it is simply the tragedy of disease, this is not normal. It is not right.

It is not what God is like. It's an enemy who has done this. It is an enemy that has brought in this destruction, this loss, and yet knowing this, it says, verse 3, Jesus knowing that the Father had given all things into his hand and that he was come from God and he went to God.

There's some beautiful things in this verse. Again, we might instinctively think of ourselves very distinctly from the Lord in this context. He knew that the Father had given all things into his hand.

What a confidence, what an absolute trust he had in the Father. He knew that the Father was going to entrust to him and give to him for his glory everything. He knew it's his, unshakably his.

And so if we want to just put this in another way, if you know where you've come from and if you know where you're going, if you know what you have from God, you can afford to lose everything here and it's perfectly safe. It's not lost because God will give it to you. And so as the Lord Jesus contemplates and thinks of this, the elements of what he was going to lose, all that he was going to experience, he was willing to go through it in this simplicity of confidence in the Father.

Now if there's one thing that the Lord has intended and yearns to do for us, is to bring us into this sublime total trust in God as our Father. And so he has gone as the leader of our faith. He has gone through these experiences and into death itself and then through death into the realm of the Father's presence.

And one thing that became very precious to me in the time of my own mother's death was is it Psalm 48 where there's a little verse that says Thou art our God even unto death. I like the margin of the Newberry Bible where it says Thou art our God. Thou shalt be our guide even over death.

Not just unto death, but over death into eternity. And the one thing I would like to just encourage each one that is here today to appreciate this fact, the Lord made a promise. He made a commitment to us.

I will never leave you. I will never leave you. Nor forsake you.

The only one who experienced as a trusting servant of God, the only one to experience that total loss, the loss of forsakenness by God himself. He makes a promise. I will not do this to you.

I will not. And so when we go through these seasons of life, whether as a family member, whether as a fellow Christian, may God help us to strengthen our confidence so that we can speak, I know, we know. We are confident in the God who has given us this revelation in and through his Son.

Knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands and that he was come from God and that he went to God. And it says he rises from supper laid aside his garments and took a towel and girded himself. Now the time is pretty well gone.

I just wanted to draw attention to John 14. In verse 1 he says, let not your heart be troubled. You believe in God.

Believe also in me. Now he has just revealed to them in chapter 13 that I'm going away. I am leaving and you can't come with me.

There's this this separation that they have this sense of foreboding and loss as he has just spoken to them. And now he says, let not your heart be troubled. Don't let your heart become agitated, disturbed by this.

You believe in God, believe also in me. Now there's a tremendous amount in this passage, but I just want to leave you with this with this impression of what he is saying. He's really saying to them, I can't explain it to you now.

You're not going to be able to understand it now. You're going to have to just trust me. You're going to have to just trust me.

And I have come to this conviction myself that there are experiences that are not meant to be explained. They're only meant to be endured. He may give us insight, understanding of certain aspects, but the challenge is to trust him and to endure in our confidence and he will prove himself worthy of that trust.

Even as he did with his own son in raising him out from the dead, giving him glory at his right hand. But I'm sure that we understand that God is still not satisfied that it's all over. He is going to bring his son back into this world and glorify him here.

He is going to vindicate him here and give him everything. Let's just close in prayer. Our Father, we bow in thy presence.

We pray that thou might help us to deeply trust what we cannot understand, that we might continue to trust and that we might appreciate that the Lord Jesus has entered into our human experience and he has led the way for us through death into eternal life, glorified resurrection life. He has opened the pathway by his death for us. He has taken away the power of death to claim us, to destroy us utterly, that we would perish.

Our Father, we are so grateful for thy eternal love to us and our Father, we thank thee for the son that you gave for us. Our Father, we would just draw near and commit ourselves to thee for the remainder of this day and for the remainder of our experience here in this world until we also are given the privilege of coming to thee. To be in thy presence forever.

Our Father, we would give thanks for this day and we give thanks now for the food that has been so kindly provided. We accept it as a token of thy love and we pray for thy blessing upon the remainder of the conference in our Savior's name. Amen.