John 14 No.5 The Lord Moves On!

Lord Jesus speaking, this Passover address from verse 15, words which have become quite familiar to us now. If you love me, you will obey what I command. And I will ask the Father and he will give you another counselor to be with you forever, the Spirit of truth.

The world cannot accept him because it neither sees him nor knows him, but you know him for he lives with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans, I will come to you. Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me because I live, you also will live.

On that day, you will realize that I am in my Father and you are in me and I am in you. Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me. He who loves me will be loved by my Father and I too will love him and show myself to him.

Then Judas, not Judas Iscariot said, but Lord, why do you intend to show yourself to us and not to the world? Jesus replied, if anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him and we will come to him and make our home with him. He who does not love me will not obey my teaching.

These words you hear are not my own, they belong to the Father who sent me. All this I have spoken while still with you, but the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you. Peace I leave with you, my peace I give you.

I do not gift you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid. You heard me say I am going away and I am coming back to you.

If you loved me, you would be glad that I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I. I have told you now before it happens so that when it does happen, you will believe. I will not speak with you much longer for the Prince of this world is coming. He has no hold on me, but the world must learn that I love the Father and that I do exactly what my Father has commanded me.

Come now, let us leave. Let's sing a Pentecost hymn, shall we? 241, hymn which commemorates the coming of the Holy Spirit. Come down, O love divine, seek thou this soul of mine and visit it with thine own ardor glowing.

A hymn plucked from the 15th century, but sing it as a prayer because it's relevant for you, for me today. 241. O love divine, seek thou this soul of mine and visit it with thine own ardor glowing.

O love divine, seek thou this soul of mine and visit it with thine own ardor glowing. A hymn plucked from the 15th century, because it's relevant for you, for me today. A hymn plucked from the 15th century, because it's relevant for you, for me today.

O love divine, seek thou this soul of mine and visit it with thine own ardor glowing. A hymn plucked from the 15th century, because it's relevant for you, for me today. A hymn plucked from the 15th century, In fact, we're right towards the end of the 14th chapter, and we're looking at our Lord Jesus as I indicated as we were singing that song a few moments ago, ready to take his leave of his disciples, always sad to say goodbye, to say goodbye to people that you love.

And yet for them, the sadness was going to be ameliorated, it was going to be compensated by the fact, although it sounds like a conundrum when you read it in scripture, that when Jesus went away, he went away so that he could return. That's what verse 28 says, isn't it? You heard me say, I'm going away and I am coming back to you. He's going away physically, but he's going to be present with them spiritually.

They'll not see him with the human eye, but they will know him with the eye of faith. And my dear friends, it's not a cop-out to say that you and I this morning are in exactly the same condition. We can see our Lord Jesus with the eye of faith and feel his presence.

If I didn't believe that, I'd pack the ministry up at this very moment in time. So I concentrate your attention on our Lord Jesus again, and how good it is to be able to do that. Remember that hymn that has the stanza, here may I stay and sing, no story so divine.

As I look into this 14th chapter of John's gospel and consider the life and the ministry of our Savior, I tell you I'm more fascinated now than what I was with him 20 years ago. We're in the upper room, that's the context. The disciples and the Savior went there with the express intention of the Passover feast commemorating the great salvation that God granted the Israelites centuries ago.

Now Lord Jesus changed the significance of the meal, you remember, when he broke bread and he gave wine to the disciples. And before then, he'd made a tremendous impact on them as he'd washed and wiped their feet and shown that the pathway of service is also the path of humility. And now our Lord is teaching them.

He's got a spellbound congregation as they listen to what he has to say in regard to his departure and how they are to cope with it. Now Lord Jesus will teach them as he will teach you that his life is not lived by chance but by choice. He follows not the will of the wisp but the will of the Father.

All that our Lord Jesus engages in is with the objective of achieving what Father wants. My dear friend, take this for starters as a lesson by way of application. What obtained for our Lord should obtain for you.

Your life lived not by chance but by the choice of God. Not by your will but by his will. Our Lord Jesus is returning to the Father and he has certain things yet to achieve and promises which are still to be applied as far as the experience of his disciples are concerned.

So he's shared some of his teaching and he comes to a sort of watershed right in the last verse. Not that he doesn't have anything more to say but they're going to change their location. They're going to move out from the upper room to the night air to the darkness of the streets of Jerusalem and ultimately they'll go out through the city gate down the valley of Kidron and into the garden of Gethsemane.

And all the time that the 15th chapter and the 16th chapter, the contents thereof are spoken out, our Lord is on the move and he's still in the company of his disciples. So a point has come in this address when the preacher gets up and has a walk and he says to his disciples, come now, let us leave, arise, let us be going. The Lord moves on but why? Why does he change location at this particular point? Why does he change emphasis in his teaching? Well several reasons which I want to share with you.

First of all, because consolation had been applied. You see, the disciples needed the consolation. I suggested to you in earlier weeks that this was strange because you would have thought, you knowing what our Lord was going through, that he is the one who needs to be comforted but not so.

The disciples need consolation, their Lord is going. The apple of their eye, that's the reason why we sang that song a few moments ago because I think the disciples would have loved to have sung it as well. He was going from them and they were afraid and so he addresses their fears, let not your heart be troubled fellows.

Just in case I missed it on the first saying, he repeats it halfway through or rather two thirds of the way through this particular chapter, don't let your hearts be troubled and don't be afraid. And having addressed their fears and attended to the questions that they put up, you remember one or two of them said, Lord, show us the Father and we'll be satisfied and Jesus says, haven't been so long time with you, you didn't know me. And another one says, Lord, why are you revealing yourself to us and not to the world, what's so special about us? All these fears and questions that were in the minds of the disciples, our Lord Jesus listened to what they had to say and he responded to the questions and he set them at right.

He gave them peace of heart. And so he comes to this, as I say, this watershed in this sermon and he says, come now, let us leave. If I might suggest this, it's almost the come that sometimes you use when you're addressing someone who's been unnecessarily alarmed.

You know, you sensitive teachers, do you have kids in your class who sometimes put questions your way time and time again and sometimes they're valid questions. Sometimes the little boy, the little girl or the old one for that matter, is really worried and the worries are really unnecessary. So you as a kindly teacher might use the phraseology, come, come.

What is meant by that is, well, you've attended to their worries. There's no reason for them to be as anxious as they are, come, come. And it seems to me that the intonation in our Lord's voice would have indicated this to the disciples.

It's not so much now the come of comfort that, however, he has to go on and direct towards them, but it's the come of command. You see, the come of comfort has already ensued. He's set to right some of their fears.

Come, come now. No need to be worried about that anymore. Here is a consolation.

I'm going away, but I'm coming back. I'm going from you physically, but I'm going to come back to you spiritually. The come of comfort is now replaced by the gentle come of command.

Come. Come out of this upper room, because my main point is not only to address you in words of consolation. Another reason, then, why I suggest that our Lord leaves at this point is because confident conservation is not his goal.

Conservation. You say, what do you mean? Well, look, if you would have the choice of staying in the upper room with the disciples, going out into the cool air of that Palestinian night, what would you have opted for? Now, the answer is easy. You'd have wanted to stay in the upper room.

Particularly as you have, because you've got prior intelligence, at least you've got intelligence that the disciples didn't have, you have a knowledge of what's going to happen. When they leave the comfort of the upper room, there's going to be great problems. And you see, the thing sometimes is, if we can apply this lesson to ourselves, we are much more disposed for the upper room experience than what we are to live in the world outside, where is the difficulty and the challenge.

And yet a lot of what our Savior had been teaching the disciples and promising them within the comfort and the warmth and the security of that upper room could only be fleshed out in terms of leaving the upper room and going into the darkness of the night and moving in from that night to the tomorrow, to the next week, to the next month. Because as I say, the bulk of what our Savior taught in the upper room could only be worked out in the years of experience that the disciples would have in the service of Jesus when he had left them. Now, I can imagine Peter, here's just a little bit of fantasizing, I can imagine Peter saying, Lord, it's good for us to be here.

And it was good for them to be here. Peter had said those words before on a different occasion, you remember? It's good for us to be here. But the Lord Jesus is in effect saying, yes, but it's even better for you to be there.

Now this is where the rub comes, because at the human level, we'd rather be here in the upper room with the Savior amongst his children than out there in the unknown with the hostility and the coolness of the night. That's natural. But the reason why our Lord has to move from the upper room is because consolation was not the only objective he wanted to secure in the lives of the disciples, nor was conservation, the retaining of the circumstances at that point, that would be impossible.

Our Lord is a man of action. He's always moving forward. You find that in the address from the 14th chapter in the first verse onwards.

He's always doing something. I'm going away. I will pray for you.

I will ask. I will do this. I will do the other.

The momentum of the Savior's life is also to be encapsulated in the lives of the disciples. My brothers and sisters, we're marching people. We're not set in a run.

We don't just have one sort of spiritual fixed abode. We make advance in the kingdom of God. And sometimes our advances come through going into the unknown.

And at the human level, we would not want to penetrate, but it's in the unknown that Jesus says, you will find the fullness of my promises because I have told you I will never leave you. I will never forsake you. Some of you are frightened of old age.

I say that with sincerity and with feeling. How will you cope in the more senior years when some of your props in terms of those who are close to you are no longer around? Does that cause you to be afraid? I don't rebuke your fear in terms of criticizing it, but what I do is I mollify your fear by saying it's out there in the unknown that you will experience in a way that you've never known heretofore his promises because he says arise and let's go forward. Come now, let us leave.

Our Savior's objectives, I repeat, are not purely consolation nor conservation. But coming back more particularly to the scenery of this incident, what do we find our Lord doing? Well, he's been with his disciples like Mother Hen, hasn't he? That's not an inappropriate analogy. He used it himself.

How often would I have gathered you under my wings as a hen gathers her chicks? Now Jerusalem citizens, they were the ones who were directly involved in that particular wishful thinking of our Lord. But here, don't you see, in the upper room, that's what's happened. Mother Hen has had the chicks under her wings and the consolation has ensued.

But Mother Hen doesn't always stay like that. The time comes and it's rather funny to see it in the literal sense, isn't it? Mother Hen walks along. Have you watched it? She lumbers one side and then the other.

They can't walk straight, those hens. It's quite extraordinary. And then the brood follows along.

Now that's just how I see our Lord Jesus Christ. He's leaving the upper room and from under his wings the chicks have had to move. And so they start to follow him into the unknown future.

Now why does our Savior, why does our Savior have to leave at this point? Well the reasons that I've given are just piecemeal, they're part of it. But there's something that's perhaps even more dominant that I bring to your attention. There's a consummation that beckons him.

A consummation that beckons him. Will you cast your eyes on the 28th verse? If you loved me, halfway through, if you loved me you would be glad that I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I. I've told you before it happens so that when it does happen you will believe. Then right to the end of the 31st verse.

But the world must learn that I love the Father and that I do exactly what my Father has commanded me. Now this was the basic reason why Jesus Christ came into the world. To do what God the Father wanted.

The whole of the scenery is moving to the last particular point in the earthly life of our Lord Jesus Christ. He's come from the Father and his objective is to perform what the Father wants and then ultimately he will return to the Father. You see, I don't know whether you'll understand this but let me risk it having got myself that far down the road.

The main reason why Jesus came into the world was not to save sinners. That if you like is an immediate consequence but it's a by-consequence. The reason why Jesus came into the world was to glorify the Father.

The reason why we preach the gospel. Although we would like our loved ones to come to a knowledge of Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior but that is not the only reason. The main reason is we want our God to be glorified in this world.

That's why Jesus came. He comes for God to be glorified and the Father is glorified as men and women are recovered from the scrap heap of humanity, know the fullness of the Holy Spirit, and are brought back into the family circle as Father. You see, never a son was more faithful to Father than the Lord Jesus was.

Over forty times in this chapter the Lord uses the word Father in addressing the first person of the Trinity. Four times in these last five verses you get the same thing. You see, He's dominated by, He's motivated by the wish of Father and everything's coming to its consummation as Father has declared.

Why did Father send the Son? For God so loved the world He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. So our Lord tells us that everything is moving to its conclusion. I'm going away.

But before I go away to Father there's just one more thing that He wants me to do and it's out there that the whole of the final part of my life will come to its grand consummation. And then when that's happened I will return to Father. Father's greater than I am.

Now don't let that stumble you. Father is greater than the Son, not in the sense that the sects say so, for Jesus is as the same essence of the Father. Jesus is of the same quality of the Father.

But when the Lord Jesus Christ became man He set aside some of those glories that He had known with the Father in an age gone by. He became low in the esteem of the satanic hosts. Philippians 2 spells it all out for us.

He humbled Himself. He emptied Himself. He's one with the Father as far as deity is concerned.

But as touching His manhood, as touching His humanity, during the period of His earthly life He becomes less than the Father. But He'll return to the Father and restored to Him will be all the glories that He set on one side. All this is yet to be.

But there's something to be achieved ere the repatriation between Father and Son occurs. And it is this consummation, the reason for which our Lord Jesus died. I am going away and I'm coming back.

If you love me you'll be glad that I'm going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I. I've told you now before it happens so that when it does happen you will believe. What's he referring to? When it does happen. When the reason my Father sent me into this world is achieved, then you'll believe.

And you will understand. And you will realize, verse 31, and so will the whole world, that I love the Father and I do exactly what my Father has commanded me to do. It was an evidence of His love for man that Jesus died for our salvation.

It was an evidence of His love for the Father that He died for His glory. So you see, that's another reason why our Lord is to leave the upper room. Because the final events of His life are shortly to take place.

And He knows that when He leaves that private, warm spot where He's been with the disciples and goes out into the evening air and makes His way down Kedron Valley into the Garden of Gethsemane, He's going to be arrested. He's going to be violently abused. And He knows even before He's arrested, He has to go through the horror of anticipating what moments will be like when Father is no longer around, so to speak.

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Now here's what fascinates me, I say again, about our Lord Jesus. This consummation is in view. And He has to leave the upper room.

And at the human level, I would have thought that He needed stimulating to achieve that final objective. But no, He stimulates the disciples. Because you see, He's a man whose heart is so impassioned by fulfilling what Father wants.

So that's another reason why our Lord at this point says, come now, let us leave. The consolation which He applied was not His chief goal. Conservation, the retention of the status quo, that wasn't His goal for the disciples nor for Himself.

But rather, there was a consummation that was beckoning Him that He had to attend to. And what is more, if you stay with me and with this passage, for that throws up the evidence of the outline that I'm suggesting to you. There's a confrontation that threatens, isn't there? I've read the passage two or three times, but we can never read Scripture sufficiently enough.

So let's have another go. Verse 30, I will not speak with you much longer, for the Prince of this world is coming. He has no hold on me.

Out there, confrontation, the Prince of this world. Our Lord has already spoken about the Prince of this world, hasn't He? You remember in the twelfth chapter of John's Gospel, certain Greeks come to see the Lord Jesus, and He takes their advent as the time indicating that the final things are about to be brought into motion. And there's a tremendous sign from heaven that the Lord Jesus is on the right course.

Verse 27, John 12, Now my heart is troubled, and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour. Father, glorify Your name. Then a voice came from heaven, I have glorified it, and will glorify it again.

The crowd that were there heard it, and said it thundered. Others said an angel had spoken to him. Jesus said, This voice was for your benefit, not mine.

Now is the time for judgment on this world. Now the Prince of this world will be driven out, but I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself. You see, the hour has approached, it's that much more close, as our Savior gets His disciples to take leave with Him of the upper room.

The Prince of this world is coming, Satan, the one who at the beginning of the ministry of Jesus endeavored to beguile Him. You remember the story of the temptations? You say you're the Son? The Son of God, if you're the Son of God, take these stones and turn them into bread. If you're the Son of God, cast yourself down from this high pinnacle of the temple, and all people will come and see this remarkable feat, and they will worship you.

If you're the Son of God, then bow down, and all the kingdoms of the world, I will give you. Jesus recognized at the outset of His ministry that He had a battle on against the forces that were arranged over against the purposes of His Father. And now the whole thing has come to its peak, come to its climax.

Out there, beyond the door that seals off the upper room, there's the hiss of the serpent. He's waiting for the Savior. With the same venom in His fangs as He waited for Adam in the Garden of Eden, He's coming to the second Adam.

There's going to be a tremendous fight. It will be a fight to the death. Either one or the other shall lose all its credibility throughout the universe for all ages.

Jesus knows what is in front of Him, and when He sizes it all up, He finds that the challenge of the confrontation makes Him move forward, move out into the darkness, for there the final struggle over against the devil shall take place. But why, Lord, why not stay in the security of the upper room? You see, it would be much easier, wouldn't it? But then Father's desire would never be achieved. Satan's hollow threats would seem to have some substance.

So our Savior gets up, and He leaves the upper room, and He moves towards the scene of conflict. He sees the cross, and He cheerfully leaves the room and makes His way towards it, because He's assured that this is the way Father wants Him to go. And by that awful death on the cross, He will bruise the head of the serpent and fatally, therefore, inflict injury.

Come, let us leave the majesty of the man, the remarkable courage. Do you ask me why it is I spend my life studying Him, endeavoring to come to grips with what He's teaching? There is no other person like Him. He fascinates me.

He mesmerizes me. This man who can be so cool, this man who can be so tender, this man who can instill courage into the lives of His disciples, come, fellows, you must come out with me. Why? Because, you see, the final objective of our Savior here, consolidation is necessary on the part of the disciples.

Come now, let us leave, not just me, but you leave with me. Identify yourself with my ministry, realizing that the path that I have selected for you to travel on is the one where I have been always first down the track. And in the years to come, don't you think, my brothers and sisters, when the disciples were threatened for their own lives' security, when they were on their own, when they were in Asia Minor, or whether they got to India, as the story seems to suggest that one of them did, don't you feel that there were times when, yes, they wanted to go back to the upper room, they wanted the security of a lifestyle which was far, far different from the one in which they'd found themselves to be involved.

And then they remembered Him, and what He did, and how He said at this watershed of His ministry, as He's halfway in this Paschal discourse, come now, fellows, let's go, let's go out, let's meet it, let's take the bit between our teeth, and in the name of God, let's do some work that will stand in time and on and on to eternity. Now, of course, only our Saviour was successful. Ultimately, the disciples fled and left it.

But they had the example, the example which would never be shifted from their memories. And when the day came, when Pentecost came, when they were filled with the Holy Spirit, when they participated of that which our Lord Jesus had without measure, then they copied His lifestyle, and they too went out from the security of their own environments and waged war against the devil and all those who would frustrate the purposes of God. And through, there's a lot to be said in that little verse, isn't there? Come now, let us, let us leave.

What did I suggest? Our Saviour got to this point because the consolation He'd wanted to give the disciples had been applied. He'd ministered to their troubled hearts. He said, come, let us leave, because conservation was not His goal, not for them, nor for you.

He said, come, let us leave, because consummation beckoned. What the Father brought Him into the world to do was now coming to its climax. Come, let us leave, because there was a confrontation in front which He knew that He couldn't bypass, and He didn't want to because He's the man of Flint, and He sets His will towards that of the Father, and no one will deflect Him from it.

He said, come, let us leave. Consolidation is necessary. The disciples who've been with Him for these three years must now move in to spectate upon His final agony and His final suffering for humanity, and then ultimately they shall see Him in the beginnings of His glory, when He's raised from the dead, when He ascends on high, and one day for us and for them already, see Him in His glorification, seated at the right hand of the Father, with all the dignity, with all the blessings, with all the glory of His deity, placed back upon Him eternally, King of kings, Lord of lords, your Saviour, my Saviour, the one who says, friends, sometimes, come, let's leave and move on further, deeper into the purposes of God.

Let's pray. Just a moment of quiet reflection, and then we're going to ask the Lord that we might live as the disciples lived, ultimately after Pentecost, for they lived under the shadow of the wings of the Son of God. Living under the shadow of His wing, we find security.

331 in Songs of Fellowship, but hold it just for a moment, listen to it being played, and you bring your own prayer to the Lord. That was a lovely song, wasn't it? And yet we sing it not just because it's lovely, but because it's accurate. This is what we want, isn't it, my brother and sister? we want to rest in the shadow of the wings of our God, we want to know his direction in our lives whether we're 70 or 17, 80 or 18.

So let's bring our service to a conclusion by singing a more traditional hymn which speaks of the way that we want God to lead us as he led his disciples our Lord Jesus did by his Spirit in days of yore. 416 all the way my Savior leads me what have I to ask beside. If you're perplexed or worried or anxious at this moment let this hymn be a therapy to your soul as you express it before the Lord and know the response of his Spirit ministering to you the area of your great need.

416 I will not seek, for through life has been my guide. Heav'nly peace, divinest comfort, Here I lay, in Him to dwell. For I know, on every morning, Jesus to evoke his love.

For I know, on every morning, Jesus to evoke his love. My Savior leads me, He is entwined in God my friend, Gives me grace for every trial, Leads me with a living friend. Though my weary steps may falter, And my soul a thirst may be, Watching from the rock before me, The spring of joy I see.

Watching from the rock before me, The spring of joy I see. All the way my Savior leads me, A perfect friend to be his promise be. Jesus, make me whole.

Father, we hear through the voice of the Spirit our Savior saying, Come, let us leave. We thank you that he identifies himself with the instruction that he gives. So as we move on into the purposes of God in our lives, whether you are taking us into young age, middle age, or old age, we just ask that we might know increasingly the company of the Savior.

May he who has gone away come again into our hearts, day by day in the power of his Spirit. May every fear be banished as a result, and grant to each of us the stimulus spiritually to take each day as it comes, and to live it in your presence for your honor and for your glory. Lord, generously cause your blessing to come upon these dear folk, and this we ask for the Savior's sake.

Amen. Good morning and God bless you.