Listening No.13 The Masters Legacy

The Bible opened at the passage, the first passage to which Brother Len turned and read to us. That's the 16th chapter of John's Gospel. I have told you these things, verse 33, so that in me you may have peace.

In this world you will have trouble, but take heart, I have overcome the world. If you are taking your leave of a friend, there are three or four things that you might do, depending presumably on the closeness of your relationship. You might just say goodbye, which word actually is a shorthand for God be with you.

I wonder if you knew that. You might clasp the hand as you say goodbye, and the handshake would be sacramental of your fellowship, your friendship to the person whose leave you're taking. You might hug them to yourself, and once again you would be indicating in that act your fidelity to your friend.

You might even kiss them, and again the kiss would symbolize the affection that you feel, and an indication that though they're away from your company, they will be in your thoughts, and the bond of love would run its course until next you were together. Martin Luther says that in this particular passage, at the end of the longest sermon that our beloved Lord ever preached, he gives a handshake to the disciples. He extends his arms and takes them at least symbolically and hugs them.

He, if you like, implants the kiss of affection upon them, for within these words is intimacy in the highest degree. I have told you these things so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble, but take heart, I have overcome the world.

You see how our Lord locks himself into the statement that he's just been making. Now our Lord never commenced a sermon without rounding it off. He didn't preach as many preachers today preach with three points and alliterated headings and so forth.

I'm not criticizing that, but it just was the modern practice, but it wasn't the style of our Lord. It's not the style of the New Testament preachers, incidentally. But our Lord will always come back to his starting point, no matter how far he ranges in the material that he brings to the attention of the people who he is addressing, whether you take, for example, the Sermon on the Mount or this even lengthier address, this paschal discourse.

Now it's some time since Tim and I opened this passage to you under the series heading of Listening to Jesus, so you might have forgotten what the opening line was of our Lord's sermon. So go back to the 14th chapter and the first verse. It's there for you.

Do not let your heart be troubled. Trust in God, trust also in me, in my Father's house are many mansions. Now back to the last verse of the address, the 33rd of the 16th chapter.

In this world you will have trouble, but take heart, or as you good friends who love the authorized version and bring it with you on the Sunday mornings, have the rendering in front of you. Be of good cheer. You see, our Lord has achieved the objective of his address, which was what? To stabilize the hearts of his disciples.

Now in one sense you could say that the whole of the ministry of our Lord, at least when directed to those who are following him and with whom he is utterly sympathetic, is always a ministry of trying to stabilize them. He speaks about the heart, doesn't he? I mean, you take, for example, we could have taken several, but I'll give you a couple. In Matthew's gospel in the ninth chapter, here is a man who's paralyzed, and as a result he can't earn his living.

Some men bring this poor, unfortunate fellow to the Lord, and when Jesus, verse 2 of Matthew 9, sees them and notices the faith of his companions, he speaks to the paralytic and says, take heart, son, your sins are forgiven. Be of good cheer. Stay with the chapter, drop down to the 22nd verse.

Here's a woman who's spent an awful amount of money trying to get a cure from the medical knowledge that's available in those days. Unfortunately, though her income has dropped, as a result her health has not recovered at all, and as a last resort she comes to Jesus. Verse 22, Jesus turned and saw her.

Take heart, daughter, your faith has healed you. From that moment the hemorrhaging stopped, and the lady is well. You see the point our Lord is stabilizing these people.

The paralytic, the lady with this issue of blood, and now the disciples, they need to be stabilized. You and I need to be stabilized. I mean by that we need the earthing that comes from knowing that God has spoken to us through our Lord, and so to speak he's on our side.

All the varieties of change that come in life, all the circumstances through which we pass from being a child to being a boy or a girl, to moving into teenage, those tempestuous years, into our 20s, the 30s, and then through into the 60s, and the 70s, and the 80s, and indeed for one or two of you the 90s. He speaks his word, and he says to you this morning, as he speaks to his disciples, take heart. It's a handshake of the Lord.

It's a hug of the Lord. It's the kiss of the Lord. Do you go to Oxford Street? You say well not more than I need to, and I can appreciate your wisdom in so doing.

It's quite a crush isn't it? And if you bump into any English people on Oxford Street it's quite an exception rather than the rule these days. It's become such a center of tourist trade. Do you know if you think away the years Oxford Street became a very blood-stained street, or was a very blood-stained street in the history of the British people? It's down there that men and women on their way to the gallows were frog-marched, and the language, and the despair, and the horror on their faces or on their lips.

It was awful. Those were the crude and cruel days when hangings were a public spectacle, and when the crowds in their hundreds and sometimes in their thousands would gather. Never a man, never a woman went down Oxford Street without a thought primarily for himself, herself, and sometimes the oaths and the curses were horrible.

Here is our beloved Lord. It's not Oxford Street, it's Jerusalem, and in just a moment for he's through this address, he's going to be on the cobbled flagstones that lead him to the gate that drops down to the Brook Kedron and on into the Garden of Gethsemane, and he goes as a condemned man. And not once in the whole of this paschal discourse have any words from his lips emerged that speak about his own circumstances and what is in store for him.

He thinks only in terms of his own, and he wants them to be stabilized. He wants them to be in a state of good heart, and so he spends all these hours just doing that. And you know, my dear friend, that's exactly the same with our beloved Lord today.

How many times do I say that this word is contemporaneous? If he were present physically, he would be doing just the same thing. You and I, in our feeble way, sometimes with the same faults and the same contradictions of the disciples, we try to follow him. We let him down.

Sometimes it's our fault. Sometimes it's circumstances that press in on us, and we don't quite make the grade. And here is the Lord, and he steps into our situation, and he speaks to us with all our contradictions.

And he says, take heart. I'm in control. And obviously, this is the basic underlying current of teaching that is throughout the whole of this paschal discourse.

Here is our Lord on his way to the gallows, and yet, although it seems paradoxical, although it seems almost impossible to believe, he is in control of the situation. So, he tells the disciples earlier on in the beginning of the sermon, at least just a third of the way through, the 25th verse of the 14th chapter, all this I have spoken while still with you. He's reminding the disciples what he is predicting about what is just going to happen around the corner.

Look at the 16th chapter in the first verse, all this I have told you, so you will not go astray. Look at the fourth verse, still with the same chapter, I have told you this, so that when the time comes, you will remember that I warned you. And here again in the 33rd verse, I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace.

You see what our Lord is saying? In this paschal discourse, there is not only teaching in terms of propositions, the gift of the Holy Spirit, the way that the Father relates to the Son, and the Son to the Father, and the Son and the Father to the Spirit, and the Spirit to the Son and the Father, that's theology. But it's not just a bundle of propositions, it's predictions. Our Lord is peering into the future, and He's intertwining His doctrinal studies, His doctrinal teaching to the disciple, with the disciples, He is intertwining with it.

What is going to happen in the future, indeed in the immediate future, look at verse 31, you believe at last, says our Lord to His disciples, Jesus answered, but a time is coming and has come when you will be scattered. In other words, our Lord here is pointing to the clock, He's saying that what I have been predicting actually is not just referring to what will happen a week later, or a month later, or a year later, it's actually beginning to happen. Judas has already gone on his journey to betray me.

Peter, just round the corner, I've already predicted it. There will come the time when you will deny me. All of you men, I have indicated that you will be scattered.

You will leave me like frightened sheep. The time is coming. Indeed, the time is now ripe.

When these things happen, remember I told you, and the conclusion of the fact that I intimated this to you is for you to realize that I am in control, and He was. The most controlled person about the debacle that follows is our Lord. In the garden of Gethsemane, His dignity is remarkable.

All right, He has those bloody beads of perspiration going down His forehead as He's interceded with the Father, but He still retains His dignity. And when they arrest Him, and they take Him in front of Pilate and Herod, and then Caiaphas and Annas, it's the high priests, so to speak, who lose their cool. It's the high priests who disgrace themselves.

Not our beloved Lord, He is in control. What is happening is what He anticipated would come about. I have told you these things so that when they happen, you may have peace.

Now, don't you see, this applies not just to the disciples, it applies to you and to me. In all what the old-fashioned English language refers to as the vicissitudes of life, in all its changes, He is in control. He tells you this in His Word.

Unlocked into your own experience is sufficient evidence for you to cope with the present and with the future because of what has happened in the past, not so? You see, the Christian faith is not just an emotional faith, it is that, but it's also a reasoned faith. And I like to reason with people from this pulpit because our beloved Lord reasons with the disciples. When these things happen, remember, I told you that they would happen.

Now, if I told you that they would happen, then it's obvious that my insights are such that they bespeak a power and a sovereignty. I am the Lord in control of every circumstance, of every situation. I've told you these things.

And He tells the disciples these things, knowing also something of the frailty of these disciples. Look at verse 29. As I reminded you last week, and I really have enjoyed preaching these addresses from this wonderful, wonderful sermon, the disciples of our Lord, very much like us today, are a dull congregation.

You don't always understand the preacher, do you? Not everything he has to say. And he wants to say, this is perfectly reasonable. You see, here we are as a disparate group of people.

Some have been on the Christian journey for 20 years. Some of you know this Bible better than I know the Bible. Some of you are just at the beginning, just at the periphery.

You can't expect the person who's in the kindergarten, so to speak, to cross everything that is being said on every occasion. What happens is they grow in grace. They grow in the knowledge of the Lord.

So here are the disciples of our Savior, and they've been listening to what he has to say for some while. And then they say to the Lord, verse 30, now we can see that you know all things, that you do not even need to have anyone ask you questions. This makes us believe that you come from God.

It seems as though the disciples are reassuring the Lord that actually there's no need to be worried about them. They've now reached a position of maturity. But you see, our Lord is concerned about his disciples because he questions the degree of maturity that they have risen to.

And so he says, and there's a bit of irony in his voice in verse 31, you believe at last, see the exclamation indicating that the translator has grasped the intonation of our Lord's language, you believe at last, you're really fully-fledged disciples of mine. I can utterly have confidence in you. Ah, says our Lord, not so.

A time is coming, and a soon come. You're going to be scattered. You see the point? Our Lord is not just in control, he also knows the sort of people who are with him.

He knows about their frailty. He knew that Peter would deny him. He knew that in his hour of great need, he would be utterly on his own.

And yet, and yet he still loved his disciples. His last thought was for his own men. Now again, bring that to the 20th century, bring it through to yourself.

He does know about you. Sometimes you don't like yourself, do you? I find it hard sometimes to like myself. Our Lord knows us more than we know ourselves.

And yet he still loves us, and he still bequeaths his peace to us. I've told you those things so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble.

Take heart, I've overcome the world. Look, he says this to his disciples after smuggling in another little bit of autobiography in prophetic prediction of himself. You will leave me alone.

You will be scattered. And it came true, didn't it? The Psalmist, or rather the Book of Lamentations, the writer seems to get some idea as to what the final conflict of our beloved Lord will be when he says, he looked for someone to have pity on him, and there was no man. He was utterly on his own, bankrupt of acquaintances.

There he is, hounded like some criminal, taken off from the garden of Gethsemane. He who's known the heaped up insults of humanity, now humanity crowns it by making him as a common crooked criminal. And he looks for his own, and they're not there.

And when he's in the high priestly palace, with the exception of Peter, and the help there is very questionable, he's on his own. And when they bloody his hands, and his ankles, and when they shove the socket of the cross into the hole at Calvary, and when his body knows the exquisite pain that comes from such cruel treatment, he's on his own. His disciples are not there, with a possible fleeting exception of John, and indeed a handful of women folk.

And yet, I'm not on my own. Why? Well, Father is there. You see how our Lord now is locking back into the teaching that he's already given the disciples.

He's a master teacher. Our Lord has set up the doctrine of the Trinity. He's shown how Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are of the same essence.

He has to go from this world so that corporeally he's no longer imprisoned, so to speak, in his body. But when he goes back, then he will send the Spirit, and the Spirit will minister the power of the Father. Now, as he knows the presence of the Father up to that final moment when he's made sin for us, and the Father turns his back on him, so you and I can know Father's presence.

Don't you understand? You see, this is why although I preach towards the mind, I must also preach towards the emotions. The peace which our beloved Lord promises the disciples is not just an objective peace. You say, what do you mean? Well, I mentioned this, I think, either in my prayer or in some preamble earlier.

You see, it is a wonderful thing that God has lifted the problem of our sin through his Son on the cross. But you see, if you came to me and counseled me as a Christian, as a potential convert and said, you know, you turn me to Romans chapter 10 or John chapter 3, for if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. Now, you could do that in a very logical fashion and get my understanding.

You could show me objectively what God has done for me in Christ. You could take me to John 3.16, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that Tony Sargent, who believes on him, should not perish but have everlasting life. And I could understand that at my mental level.

But that's not just the peace that God gives. It's not just an objective peace. It's a subjective peace.

It's an ability to have peace in all the circumstances through which I might pass in my life. I have told you these things so that in me you may have peace. And when the days have gone by and been devoured into weeks and the weeks have been subsumed into months, here are those selfsame disciples but not in the corporeal presence of Christ.

They've been hounded from pillar to post. They've been pushed in jail. And yet, they have peace.

Read the latter verses of Acts chapter 5. Go to the last chapter of that historic book. Don't go just to Acts 28. Go to Acts 29.

You say it's not been written. It has. Acts 29 is the history of the church.

And think through the martyrs as they went to the gallows, as they were butchered in London, and contrast their experience, those Christian martyrs, with those of the hopelessness of the words that left the lips of some of the people to whom I've made reference. Our Lord says, I've told you these things so that you may have peace as I have the peace of my Father with me now. And Father will be with me right to the end so in the days to come you fellows are to know my peace.

And here's the beloved Apostle Paul. And everyone's left him. You remember he's in Rome and he dashes off a note to his friend Timothy and he says, everyone's deserted me, Timothy.

I'm on my own. Yet, the Father has stood by me and strengthened me. I would wish cancer and nothing like that on anyone here or on anyone I've ever met.

But I want to tell you that if cancer was eroding your body, Father would still be there. If your marriage is in a hellish condition, Father is still there. If sometimes you feel so alone, Father is still there.

The peace that kept our Savior sane, He offers you because you're one with Him as He was one with Father. You see, going to my text just a little more deeply, we have a few more moments. Our Lord is setting up a contrast, isn't He? The contrast is between this world and Himself.

Look again at verse 33. This is a shaft down which you can continue to dig and dig and dig because the deeper you go, the more meaning there is, the more blessing there is. I have told you these things so that in me you may have peace, all right? Now run along with the logic.

In this world you will have trouble. You see the contrast? It's in me, in the world. It's peace or trouble.

Now the disciples are beginning to grasp, as I trust you are, as to what our Lord means by being in Him. I am the vine, you are the branches. You become a Christian.

You're not just locked into some sort of doctrinal statement to which you agree. You are partaking the very life of God Himself. Thus C.S. Lewis's daring little phrase that Christians are little Christs is quite right.

You and I are. We are in Christ as opposed to being in the world. Now what does the Lord mean by the world? We've got to be very clear here because the world is His.

He came into the world and the world should have recognized Him. Look how John puts it in John chapter 1 and verse 10. He was in the world and though the world was made through Him, the world did not recognize Him.

But it is still His world. But in the present situation, as when our Lord was teaching, there is an order that has developed in our world which is alien to Him. And when our Lord uses the world in this context, He's referring to that present world order.

In this world you will have trouble. So He prays for the disciples in that context, in the prayer that is to follow. Look at verse 6 of chapter 17.

I have revealed you to those whom you gave me out of the world. Look at verse 13. I am coming to you now but I say these things while I am still in the world.

Verse 14 and right down to the end of that little paragraph in the high priestly prayer, our Lord refers to the world, the present world order, controlled by, influenced by the devil himself. Ah, says our Lord, but although you live physically in this world, actually spiritually you live in me. And I was able to cope with the world and the present world order and so will you.

Why? Because I've overcome the world. Now look, I must just think back 25 years and assume that you're in one of my classes in London taking English. Take heart.

I have overcome the world. That's a perfect tense. It's not a future tense.

You see, this is very significant. I'm not just being technical. Here is our Lord.

He's got Calvary in front of him and yet he's been speaking about the gift of the Spirit. He's been speaking about the sovereignty of the Father and his relationship to the Father and so on. He's been speaking about the jobs that the disciples will do for him when he's back in heaven.

In other words, he predicts a situation after Calvary as though he will be victorious at Calvary. You see the point? Take heart. I have overcome the world, but Herod's not got you yet.

Caiaphas, you're not in his grasp. The hammer blows have not yet been heard echoing at Calvary. Ah, no, says our beloved Lord, but I am so at one with the purposes of the Father.

I know what I'm going to do and I bank on the benefits of my finished work at the cross. I have overcome the world. The world has nothing on me.

They do their damnedest. Three days later, I shall rise from the grave. I have overcome the world and because I have overcome the world and you are in me, therefore you shall be overcomers.

Don't you see the logic? The reason why Len had to, well he had to because I told him to, but the reason why he would have done, I'm sure if he'd had a choice, gone to Romans chapter 8 and brought you these last three verses? Knowing all these things, we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor demons, neither the present, nor the future, nor any powers, neither height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. I'm not very good with heights.

I mean the highest pulpit I am comfortable with is this, if this was another foot up then I would be in trouble. My vertigo is developed to incredibly stupid proportions. However, I had to be engaged in some repair of the house that we've just moved into the other day and I scaled the ladder and I was about 30 feet or maybe 40 feet up and I got my mobile phone and I got a paintbrush and I got a tin of paint balanced precariously at the top and I was trying not to look down and a man phoned me who I'd not heard from in years, a very good brother who used to be a member of our church, Phil Golledge.

He's very concerned to organize a day of prayer and he told me he'd been in touch, typical Phil with Downing Street and the palace and Ian Paisley and he said, I thought I'd call you, I appreciated the order. And he said, don't you think that our country is in a precarious position? I said, fill it from my vantage, I couldn't be more convinced. He said, I think it's about to collapse.

I said, well, I hope not for five minutes. And seriously, he went on to spell the problems that there are in modern society and he's quite right, if ever a country needed a day of prayer, we do, but we pray from victory. I have overcome the world.

We should be as Christian people, those who've anchored ourselves into the peace which our beloved Lord has come to establish objectively, we ought to enter into it also subjectively. Here is our Savior again. I repeat the words of Martin Luther, offering the handshake to the disciples.

I increase the intensity of Luther's illustration. Here is our Lord offering the bear hug to Peter and to Thomas and to all the Peters and to all the Thomases. Here is our Lord embracing you and me with a holy kiss and saying, I've told you that in this world, you will know chopping and changing, you will know difficulty, some of you will know persecution, but when these things happen, remember I'm in control.

I have made peace, peace with my Father on your behalf. Therefore, take heart and be an overcomer alongside the one who has overcome the world. This is the legacy of Jesus to his church.

This is the divine handshake. Grasp it, cling to it, go with it, and God bless you. The hymn I want is When Peace Like a River.

757. Attendeth my way when sorrows like sea billows roll. It is well, it is well with my soul.

You have my permission to blow every fuse that you've got emotionally on verse three. My sin, O the bliss of this glorious thought, my sin not in part but the whole is nailed to his cross and I bear it no more. Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul.

Let's enjoy singing this hymn and Howard's going to blow his trumpet straight when we get to the crescendo. 757.