The Gospels/The Life of Christ

Transcription

1 The Gospels/The Life of Christ NT504 LESSON 20 of 24 Terry C. Hulbert, Th.D. Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Columbia Biblical Seminary in Columbia, South Carolina We ll pray. Our Father, as we now move into this upper room with the Lord Jesus and His disciples, we realize that we are on a sacred kind of ground. There is so much truth being revealed here. There are so many new concepts and yet they are concepts, Lord, that we have seen developed in the New Testament. So I pray that as we have seen the outworking of some of these seize ideas, that You will nevertheless help us to feel our way back into that upper room with those disciples in such a way that we will hear them fresh for the first time and be awed by the implications of them. That Jesus has called on us to love one another, that the Holy Spirit is coming to be in us and not just with us, that there will come persecutions, that in the midst of all of this that You want us to bear fruit. Lord, make these truths very real to us as we study through these passages today, for we pray in Jesus name. Amen. In our last session we saw that Judas had now contracted with the authorities to deliver Jesus over to them not just to identify him, but to make the formal charge. I can imagine that the Sanhedrin had some debate over whether or not they should go ahead with this, but apparently the people who said, Yes! Let s take a chance on it. Let s go for it! they won out. As a matter of fact, there was still a little bit of doubt, because after Jesus is arrested in the garden, He is brought back first to Annas residence. And Annas, who is the most powerful person in all of Israel among the Jews, is asked to give a final go ahead to the proceedings. So it s still a little bit tenuous. But the proceedings do go ahead. I d like to follow up on Judas for a moment now because as we see the preparations for the Last Supper, we see that they reflect the events that we have just been studying. Notice in Section 211, in Mark s account: And on the first day of the unleavened bread, when the Passover lamb was being sacrificed, His disciples said to Him, Where do You want us to go and prepare for You to eat the Passover? And He sent two of His disciples and 1 of 15

2 said to them, Go into the city, and a man will meet you carrying a pitcher of water; follow him; and wherever he enters, say to the owner of the house, The teachers says, Where is my guestroom in which I may eat the Passover with my disciples? And He himself will show you a large upper room, furnished and ready; and prepared for us there. And the disciples went out and came to the city, and found that just as He had told them; and they prepared the Passover (Mark 14:12-16). Notice that only two of the disciples are commissioned to do this. Why were the others not brought into it? Where were the others? I suggest that Jesus and the other 10 probably went back out to Bethany, or at least they absented themselves somewhere. Now you are Judas [and] you have made an agreement that you are going to lay the charge to deliver Jesus over to the authorities (Luke 22). You are looking for opportunity to do so. You have to get Jesus together with certain officials and there has to be an arrest. You don t know quite how to handle this. And so you re working on this. And Jesus knew that He wanted to have this last evening with His disciples. And He does not want it interrupted by an arrest. So He arranges for the room to be identified in a very indirect way only Peter and John knew where the room was. Judas would liked to have known; but because of this method of doing so, Judas did not know where the room was. We ll see the implications of that in just a minute. As I said at the beginning, I want to follow through on the Judas sequence here, because it does come in and out of this whole sequence. Judas and the 10 now are off somewhere. Judas wants to know where the room is. He doesn t know, but Peter and John follow through this unusual procedure. It s often been pointed out that men didn t usually carry pitchers of water. This would be a way of identifying Him. Apparently it was a way, because if there are 15 men carrying water, this wouldn t be much of an identification. But for some reason, this man is carrying the water jug. And they follow him home. And Jesus has, in some way, prepared for this whole scene. He s made the man s heart willing to allow Him this privilege of using this upper room. They come to the house Judas all the time watching what street, what place, Where is He going to be? and they come in and probably climb the stairway to this upper room, which would be somewhat of a covered patio, in all likelihood, on the second floor. 2 of 15

3 And as they come into it, they find Peter and John having prepared the Passover. Now you re Judas, [and] you have a problem: I know where He is! I know where He s going to be the night before the Passover. Now what do I do about it? Remember we re into Thursday afternoon now and he has to move quickly. But he doesn t know how to do it. So they recline around the table, they begin the Passover meal (Mark 14:18). Jesus washes their feet (John 13), during which time He points out Judas at least He says, That one of you will betray Me (Mark 14:18). Then as Jesus is asked, Who is it, Lord? (John 13:25) by John who has got a message from Peter on the subject, asking him to find out (John 13:24). Jesus says to John, The one to whom I give a sop to (John 13:26). He gives him this meat, or whatever, dipped in sort of the gravy, and places it on his tongue, in his mouth which is a mark of respect. And at that moment, Judas makes his final decision. Satan enters into him in a final, full way and takes control of him (John 13:27). And now, Judas has a tremendous problem: How is he going to get out of that room to go and get the authorities to bring them back to make the arrest? And Jesus solves the whole thing for him because He says, Go! What you do, do quickly (John 13:27). Why did Jesus say that? Jesus said that because if He had kept Judas there, there would have been no contact between Judas and the authorities to tell them where to come. There would have been no arrest. And the thing would have dragged on. And Jesus would not have been crucified on the Passover. In other words, the thing was on perfect timing, and Jesus kept it on schedule actually by saying, What you do, do quickly. And he went out and it was night (John 13:30). Where does Judas go? He goes to where he knows the Sanhedrin is. And they ve been waiting for him. Perhaps they ve been looking at their hourglasses to determine, Why hasn t he come? He comes, he bursts in and they said, Where is he? He said, I know where He is. They re having a Passover meal. Let s go! So they take the soldiers and they go (John 18). And I m presuming that if you are Judas and you knew where Jesus was that if you re going to bring a group to arrest Him, you d come back to the same room. You wouldn t go out to the Mount of Olives. So they would come back to the same house. They come back there. But in the meantime, Jesus has left with His disciples. And Judas knew that it was His habit to go to the Garden of Gethsemane (John 18:2). So now Jesus, with His disciples, is 3 of 15

4 one step ahead of Judas, because He has several things to do. He wants to give the Upper Room Discourse (John 13). He wants to pray for them (John 17). He wants to have that time in the garden (John 18) and eventually they catch up with Him over at the garden (John 18:3). Just one little footnote on that If we are right in assuming that the home was the same home that they kept coming back to, the same upper room, then it possibly was the home of John Mark. [This is] where Peter came to after being in prison in Acts 12. If that were so, and John mark lived there, John Mark would have been intrigued by what happened on that night. And if you were John Mark, a teenager, and saw the soldiers come to your house and go on and leave, you might do what He possibly did, follow them. And as you followed them to the Garden of Gethsemane, you would draw in close to see what was going on. And in Mark s account, and only in Mark s account, do we read that in the midst of the scene, there, that they reach out and they grab a young man who was standing there. And he is dressed only in a sheet. And they grasp the sheet. And he runs out and runs away naked (Mark 14:51-52). Who else would that be? Why would it be recorded? So perhaps what I have just suggested is the scenario. The main point I m making, obviously, is that Judas was bringing the people to arrest Christ. He would come to the upper room, not find Him and then finally find Him in the Garden of Gethsemane. So we ve kind of traced through what Judas did up to that point. We ll see what the arrest actually involved in just a few minutes. Now they come into the Passover Meal, which could be eaten anytime between sundown on Thursday night and sundown on Friday. There has been great discussion as to whether or not the passage in John took place at the Passover Meal or not. And I am assuming that it did. The Sanhedrin did not eat the Passover until Friday. They did not want to go into Pilate s Hall during the early hours of that Friday morning, because they would defile themselves and not be able to eat the Passover. But that was fine. They were going to eat it sometime before sundown. But Jesus now is with His disciples in the room. In [Matthew] 22, there is a description of how they came into the room. They were jostling. They were apparently still trying to decide, Who was the greatest in the kingdom? And it seems to me that the foot washing scene grows out of what Jesus knows to be their attitude. 4 of 15

5 Even though in our Harmony, that Luke 22 passage is put a little bit later in the scene in the upper room, certainly, this would reflect their attitude at the time. Let s look at the Upper Room Discourse as a whole. In the first place, the discourse doesn t actually begin until Chapter 13:31. There s a preparation for it in the foot washing scene and in the removal of the traitor. The discourse ends really at the end of chapter 16, because chapter 17 is a prayer. But for practical purposes, we refer to all of these chapters as the Upper Room Discourse. It s found only in John and that s understandable. John was very close to Jesus. He was the one leaning on His bosom during this time as they reclined to eat. And John gave Him the privilege of writing what was actually taking place in this discourse. Interestingly enough, in the Synoptics, we have the institution of, what we call, The Lord s Supper or the communion the Eucharist during this period possibly at the end of chapter 13. John does not give this. So once again, we put the Synoptics together with the gospel of John, and we get the entire picture. First of all, let s look at the theme of the Upper Room Discourse. I suggest that it s this: The believer s new relationships, responsibilities, and resources when Christ returns to the Father. The most dominant background factor of the Upper Room Discourse is the fact that Jesus is leaving. If Jesus were not leaving them, for one reason or another, this discourse would have no meaning. But it s all based on the premise and on the background factor, the controlling concept that I am going away. It is because He is saying, I am going away! Christ is leaving them. This is His last time with them. He s going to the cross. Now everything He says is in the light of the cross and the resurrection. Another thing we should notice here is that this might be called a seed plot, in a sense. [It is] a theological seed plot, because you can trace almost every concept from the Upper Room Discourse through the epistles. And I see the epistles of Paul and of Peter especially and, of course, [see] John himself as enlarging on the concepts given here. I have myself studied through I John and I ve asked students to study through I John and to try to identify, in I John, those five chapters, parallel concepts. And you know, we usually come up with anywhere from 30 to 40 exact parallel concepts of what John wrote in I John 60 years later and in this Upper Room Discourse. It is an interesting exercise. Let s notice some of the background here in terms of the reason for the discourse. Jesus is going away, but to go on from that, it 5 of 15

6 envisages a transition from Christ to the apostles. This is a very important concept. That if you look at the Gospels, you see the ministry of Jesus, almost exclusively the disciples are doing hardly anything in the Gospels. When you go to the book of Acts, you find that Jesus is not present, of course, and it is called the Acts of the Apostles. This is where they re active. So I see the Upper Room Discourse as a bridge, as a transition, from one paradigm to the other. For instance, in the Gospels the kingdom is emphasized, The kingdom is at hand. We have read much about the kingdom, The kingdom heaven is likened unto... How many times does the word kingdom appear in the Gospels? And yet you find it hardly ever mentioned in Acts. In the Gospels, you did not find the church mentioned but once and, of course, in the book of Acts it s all about the church. So I see a transition here from an emphasis on the kingdom to an emphasis on the church. Incidentally, I realize that many people would identify the church as the kingdom. And this is a very well understood interpretation, but I m using kingdom here in the sense of the messianic kingdom as predicted by the prophets, which we discussed in connection with John the Baptist s ministry. What he meant when he said, The kingdom is at hand (Matthew 3:2), not redefining the kind of literal, physical description given to it in the Old Testament prophets. So we move from an emphasis on the kingdom to an emphasis on the church. A second thing we notice, and along with that, is that in the Gospels you have the king presented, in the book of Acts you have a savior preached. We re moving from an emphasis on, The king is here, to savior. As a matter of fact, in the trial that became very prominent, Are you a king then? (John 18:37), Pilate said. And Jesus said, Yes, you ve said correctly (John 18:37). But in the book of Acts, we do not find Jesus presented as a king, but rather as a savior. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shall be saved (Acts 16:31). A third transition point is the focus of ministry. In the Gospels you have a localized ministry. As we ve seen, Jesus ministered mostly in Galilee, a fair amount in Judea, some in Perea, occasionally up into the northern parts of Phoenicia, once going through Lebanon and across to Caesarea Philippi, and that was it. Whereas in the book of Acts, you go all the way from Jerusalem to Rome wide ministry. A fourth contrast here is in the Gospels you find Christ revealing 6 of 15

7 the Father. He that has seen me has seen the Father (John 14:9). I speak always the words of the Father who sent me. I do always the deeds of the Father who sent me. Great specific emphasis on Christ revealing the Father. And while that is true in the book of Acts of the believers, more particularly, believers are seen as revealing Christ. As a matter of fact, in Acts 11 they were called Christians as a term of reproach, because they were teaching like Christ and acting like Christ. A fifth contrast is that in the Gospels the apostles were being prepared. They weren t doing much, but they were being prepared. They were being discipled, if you please, as we ve seen in the latter part of Jesus ministry especially. But in the book of Acts, the apostles are producing. They are actually active. Perhaps the most significant contrast of all is the last one, that in the Gospels you have Jesus among believers. He was always on the path, on the shore, in the boat, on the water, in the temple, in the synagogue, in a home. Jesus was among believers. In the book of Acts, Jesus has gone, but the Holy Spirit is in believers. Notice the change of prepositions, Jesus in a human body is among people. He was only in one place at one time. In the book of Acts, the Holy Spirit is in believers. God, the Holy Spirit, within each believer wherever he or she went. This is one of the major transactions. And, of course, there s a good reason for this. Because Jesus ministry was to reveal the Father, to bring redemption, to rule in His kingdom (which, of course, as we ve seen, did not happen at that time), but in the book of Acts, the ministry is to go and bear fruit Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, the outermost part of the world. So in order to have God revealed throughout the whole world, we had to have God, not the son in a human body [in] one place. We had to have the Holy Spirit in bodies. What? Know ye not that your bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit? (I Corinthians 6:19). So that God, if we may put it in these terms, became mobile, personally inhabiting every believer as they spread out. Now as we ve seen, the issue was that Christ in whom God lived on earth was about to return to the Father. So the solution is that the Spirit is promised to come to earth to live in believers. And in the Upper Room Discourse, in John 14:17, we have the first reference to the Holy Spirit coming to live in believers. Jesus specifically says, The Spirit has been with you, but he will be in you, speaking of that transition. This gives an entirely new emphasis, especially in terms of relationship. There are several dimensions of this new relationship. 7 of 15

8 For instance, there was a new relationship of believers to Christ. These disciples had always seen Him as a person among them, now He was to be absent. It s difficult for us, we might say: to worship Christ, to say we walk with Christ, that we talk with Christ, that we fellowship with Christ, that Christ is our friend, when we have never seen Him. But in those days, it was even more difficult, in a way, because they had seen Him. They had been with Him. And now He was taken from them. So there is to be now a new kind of relationship with Christ a relationship in which He was not in the boat with them, but He was at the right hand of the Father and He was absent from them. Then there was to be a new relationship to the Father. He said, in John 16:24, Hither to, you ask nothing in My name; ask and you shall receive, that your joy may be full. So when Jesus has gone from the earth, He has paved the way for a new access to the Father (which theologically and chronologically they had not had before). They were to have direct access to the Father. We pick this up again in Hebrews 10: We have access to Him through a new and living way, even through His flesh.. There was to be a new relationship to the Holy Spirit, as already mentioned. The Spirit now was not just to be with them in the same way that he was with believers, but rather He was to be in them in a very special sense. And this was inaugurated, of course, on the day of Pentecost. Then there was to be a new relationship with believers. He said, A new commandment I give unto you, that you love one another (John 13:34). This is an entirely new concept, a new kind of commandment. For instance, we ve heard the first two commandments several times in Jesus ministry What is the great commandment? That you will love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind (Matthew 22:36-37) that s vertical. That you will love your neighbor as yourself that s horizontal. But it is not reciprocal, because loving your neighbor means to love any person, believer or unbeliever. It means treating them like God would treat them. But this says, love one another, which is a reciprocal relationship, and I see this as a new kind of dimension of love which is particularly related to the body of Christ. So every member of the body of Christ, which is to begin on the day of Pentecost, is to love every other member. That s why He says, It s a new kind of commandment I give unto you (John 13:34). And He repeats this several times, and John the Apostle picks this up in his epistle as well (1 John 2:7). 8 of 15

9 So there are these new relationships. There are also some new responsibilities that He mentions here. Perhaps the most basic responsibilities, in John 15:16, You have not chosen Me but I have chosen you, and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit. This was a new responsibility. They were not just to listen to Christ, they were not just to learn something, but they were to go and bear fruit. Now fruit bearing in Scripture has a number of connotations. There are four different ways that fruit is used, and sometimes this is related only to the fruit of the Spirit. I think this does involve the Fruit of the Spirit, giving evidence of what Christ is like. As a matter of fact, in the parable of the vine, the vine is no longer visible and so if men are to know what the vine is like, they re going to have to look for the fruit in the branches. By their fruit ye shall know them (Matthew 7:16). So we know Christ by His fruit and that fruit is born in the branches and that fruit can be seen in terms of character, as the fruit of the Spirit is referred to in Galatians 5: But I think it means more than that. I think that Christ means that you are to bear fruit in the sense that you are to accomplish something. You re to have an impact on believers. And I relate this to Paul s words in Ephesians 3 and 4, to edify one another. It s our responsibility to build up one another. As a matter of fact, in Ephesians 4:11-12: He [gifted] some as pastors, and teachers for the equipping of the saints, for the building up of the body. So that we are to bear fruit in terms of an impact on other believers make disciples, if you please. Then, I think, we are to bear fruit in the terms of penetrating the world. That we are to have an impact on the world, so that as a result of our being here on earth, there will be at least three dimensions of what we might call fruit bearing. There will be the revelation the reflection of what the vine is like Jesus Christ, in terms of love, joy, peace, long suffering, gentleness, goodness, meekness, faith. There will be also an impact on other believers. That we will have made a contribution of their lives when you go make disciples and build them up. And there will be also, the result, the impact, that we have had in penetrating the world. Speaking of our relationships to the world and going back to those relationships for a moment, we should notice that there is to be a completely new relationship between believers and the world. In the Old Testament, the emphasis was on, what we almost might call, the fortress mentality. That Israel as a nation was defending itself geographically, politically, militarily against the enemies coming in, the Philistines and the Ammonites and others. And in 9 of 15

10 Isaiah 2:2-5, we read that when the kingdom is established they will flow in from all parts of the world to Jerusalem. And if you want to learn about God, it says, You come to Jerusalem! And the Gentiles will come from all over into Jerusalem to learn of God. And, of course, that will still hold true, that will still be the case, when the kingdom is established. But we have a complete reversal of that in Acts 1:8. Because Jesus says, When the Holy Spirit has come upon you (that is, when the Holy Spirit has come to indwell you so that God will be present in each one of you); then you are to go to the uttermost part of the world. And whereas the arrows had pointed into Jerusalem before this, now the arrows are pointing out. And this is a new relationship to the world. A key passage on this in the Upper Room Discourse, preparing them for this (which must have been quite a shock to them), is in Jesus prayer, John 17: In John 17:14-18, Jesus makes very fine use of a particularly specific use of prepositions. He says, I am not of this world, you are not of this world. I am going out of this world, [and] I do not ask that the Father take you out of this world. I am leaving you in this world, and I am sending you into this world. You follow through those prepositions and you see that there s a difference between Christ and the world, a difference between the believer and the world, a similarity between Christ and the believers. And that as Christ is going out of the world physically, He is sending the believers into the world, both physically and spiritually. And He is saying, in effect, I m not just leaving you in the world to live here; I am sending you into the world to penetrate it. So I tie this new relationship to the world (namely, witnessing to it by penetrating it) with the Gospel to the new responsibilities they have. Then, of course, they have new resources. The three new resources referred to, I think, directly or indirectly are the Holy Spirit, the Word and prayer. The Holy Spirit is, of course, their great new resource. They have never had a ministry of the Holy Spirit, the power of the Holy Spirit, before this like they have now after Pentecost. Then the Word. He says that When the Holy Spirit comes, He will remind you of all the things that I have taught (John 14:26). And this is usually seen as a preauthentication of the inspiration of the New Testament. In other words, He s going to give them the epistles, He s going to give them the book of Acts, He s going to give them all of this New Testament, He s going to give them a body of literature, a content there. And that Word is to be a resource. And, of course, you and I study the Bible. This is our 10 of 15

11 great resource. Without the Holy Spirit, without the Word, what would we have? But He left them with something permanent when He went away. He left them with the Holy Spirit, and He left them with the Word. And He left them with something else: He left them with prayer. And there s much said about prayer. Ask and you shall receive (John 16:24). And four times in the Upper Room Discourse, He turns them to this great resource of prayer. So I see, then, new relationships to the Father, to Christ, to the Holy Spirit, to believers, and to the world. [I see] new responsibilities, to bear fruit, penetrating the world to witness to Christ; and new resources, the Holy Spirit, the Word, and prayer. Now I ve tried to survey here just some of the basic concepts of the Upper Room Discourse and where it fits in. Let s take just a moment and sort of walk through it. The chapters obviously don t divide it precisely in terms of its content, so I think we need to sort of look at it in big blocks. If we can see it in sort of major subjects dealt with or major events. The first section is really [John] 13, the first 30 verses. In the first 30 verses of chapter 13, you have a preparation for the discourse. There are several things that have to happen. First of all, there has to be that teaching on interpersonal relationships, and that s a passage that describes the foot washing scene. He could not teach them as long as they were asking, Who is the greatest in the kingdom? He showed them that the greatest in the kingdom is the one that serves. And He not only washed their feet as an example of humility, but I think He did something more than that. He washed their feet as an instruction to them that they had a responsibility when somebody else had dirty feet. You say, Dirty feet? Yes, and I believe that He raised the level here from the physical to the spiritual. You say, You re spiritualizing? No, because when He came to Judas, He said that You are all clean except for one (John 13:10). And He wasn t talking about Judas feet and their feet. He was talking about the heart condition. And when He was saying, You ve all been washed except one (13:10), He was singling out Judas as being on a different spiritual plane that they were. And I take His moving, then, from the physical to the spiritual as an indication that He s doing more than just giving an illustration of humility. But rather He s saying, in effect, that When your brother has dirty feet physically, you have a responsibility to wash his feet. Be humble to do it. But more than that, when your brother has a dirty heart, you also have a 11 of 15

12 responsibility to minister to that person. And I believer, frankly, that this is where church discipline begins, not when the whole church comes into it in a business meeting, but rather one person to another person. This may relate very well back to our Matthew 18 passage, where they were also asking, Who was the greatest in the kingdom, and where Jesus said, If someone sins against you, you go to him alone (Matthew 18:15). Then during that time, Jesus informs them for the first time that somebody is going to betray Him, turn Him over. And in John 13:18-20, He explains that the reason He is doing this is so that when it happens they will not be shaken, that they will not be surprised. You see, if He had not warned them and it happened as we re going to see in just a little bit how shocked they were when Judas appeared in the garden. They had no idea that he would be in the garden. The last they saw of him was when he went out the door. And they supposed, they guessed, that maybe he was going to give some money to the poor or was going to buy some more food for the feast, and the next they see him is in the garden. So He [Jesus] is preparing them for that. And then as they go on with the Last Supper, Peter asks who it is (John 13:24). John asks Jesus (John 13:25) and the sop is given (John 13:26) and Judas goes out. Then immediately after that, Jesus, in a completely new atmosphere, in John 13:31, says, Now is the Son of Man glorified. And there s a completely different atmosphere, and He now begins to teach them. And the first thing He gives them is a new commandment, in John 13:34-35, A new commandment I give to you. Just before that he said, I m going away, and where I m going, you cannot come (John 13:33). And this peaks Peter s interest and interestingly enough, Peter doesn t seem to hear anything about the new commandment, because the next verse after the new commandment statement is, Peter says, Where are you going that I can t come? (John 13:36). And as a part of a response to that, we have what we often think of as a very comforting passage, in John 14:1: Stop letting your hearts be stirred up and agitated like the waves of a sea. You believe in God; believe also in me. If I go away, I will come back. You don t start in 14:1. You start it back in chapter 13, because it s part of the answer given to Peter and the disciples as they have said, Why can t we follow You now? So in chapter 14, you have two major concepts. One, I m going away; and two, I m coming back. In fact, we might combine 12 of 15

13 them and say, I m going away, but I m coming back. Then in the meantime, I m sending you the Holy Spirit, and I m giving you the Word. So in chapter 14, then, we have a series actually of several promises to them. He promises that He will go away and come back. He promises that He will continue to work through them while absent. He says, You will do greater works than these He prays for the helper, and at the end of the chapter He promises His peace. He says, My peace I give unto you, My peace I leave with you (John 14:26-27). That brings us to chapter 15, and I suggest that the parable of the vine and branches in Chapter 15 is not given in isolation, but rather that this parable is an explanation and an illustration of what he s been talking about in chapter 14. So the abiding in Christ involves several things: (1) It involves believing Him; (2) It involves prayer; (3) And it involves also an obedience to the Word. Because in John 14:15, He says, If you love Me, you ll keep My commandments. How do we abide in Christ? We believe Him. We obey His Word. And we pray. What s the result? Fruit is born. What s the dynamic? What s the force of the fruit? The Holy Spirit. And so the Holy Spirit is liberated, freed, to bear the fruit of the spirit and to enable us to penetrate the world and be a witness when we obey His Word, when we believe in Him, and when we pray. So that this fruit bearing and the abiding in Him, I think, we need to interpret in terms of what He s been teaching them in chapter 14. Now there is a sudden break at the end of [John] 15:17, because from there on He starts to talk about the persecution and the troubles they ll have in this world. And from 15:18 right through to the end of the discourse proper, 16:33, the whole subject matter centers around the persecution that they will experience. And, more particularly, what He s saying, in effect is, You re going to bear fruit, but you ll bear it not in a hothouse but out in the hard world. Then in [John] 17, we have a prayer (just divide up the chapter). In verses 1-5, He s praying concerning Himself. In verses 6-19, He s praying concerning the disciples. And in verses 20 to the end, He s praying for us, because in verse 20 He says, I pray not for these alone, but for those who will hear, those who will believe, through their word. That is the word which these disciples have preached. 13 of 15

14 That brings us, then, to the end of the discourse and to the events that immediately follow it. Jesus moves on out after this, across the Kidron into the Garden of Gethsemane (which is on the Mount of Olives, on the Jerusalem side of the Mount of Olives). And in section 226, we find the three agonizing prayers in the Garden of Gethsemane. I have not taken time to go though the predictions of Peter s denial. There are several of them there, we will pick that up a little bit when we get into Peter s denials actually. Before we leave that passage though, I would like us to look, just for a moment, at section 225. Keep in mind we ll pick it up later. In Matthew 26:30, Matthew says, They went out to the Mount of Olives In verse 31, [Jesus] said to them, I strike down the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered. Remember that now the shepherd is stricken (that is, the crucifixion), the flock is going to be scattered. Then in 26:32, an important verse, After I have been raised (and, of course, they didn t understand that yet), I will go before you to Galilee. And then Peter says, Even though all fall away because of you, I will never fall away. Three things: first, that the flock is going to be scattered in need of shepherd; second, I m going to go and meet you in Galilee; and third, Peter makes his claim that he is superior to the others. Keep that in mind. We re going to pick it up later. In section 226, they come to Gethsemane, and He says to His disciples, Sit here while I go over there and pray (Matthew 26:36). And He takes with Him Peter and James and John (these three that have been with Him on the Mount of Transfiguration and elsewhere), and He says (verse 38), My soul is deeply grieved (this is an opening up of the heart of Christ in a way that we have seldom, if ever, seen), to the point of death; remain here and keep watch with Me. In other words, Pray with Me, support Me, encourage Me in this very, very difficult scene. And He goes on a little ways and He falls on His face and He prays and He says, My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; yet not as I will, but as thou will (Matthew 26:39). This cup has been given several meanings. Perhaps it refers to physical death. But, of course, as the lamb of God He came to die. I doubt very much if He was shirking that physical death. He said that No man will take My life from Me. I give it up (John 10:18). [Was this] premature physical death? Not likely. He controlled the situation. [Was there] contact with sin? Possibly. [Would their be] eternal separation from God? I would lean to this: That death is not just a 14 of 15

15 matter of dying; it s a matter, in this case, of being separated from God. Because the death that Jesus was to die was to be the second death and the second death is total eternal separation from God. If He s to take our place and take our penalty, then He has to take the penalty of the second death, that separation from God. But you see, when a person who is not a Christian, at the great white throne judgment (John 20), is sent to the second death, he or she remains in that second death forever and forever. In other words: never paying for sin, because the person himself has a sin nature and is a sinner. But when Jesus took our place, He was a perfect person. How long did Jesus have to suffer for our sins? It wasn t a question of two weeks or two months or 20 years or 1,000 years, because He was a perfect person. Simply His death was it. In other words, He s an infinite person with infinite righteousness, and so the separation period was not a matter of time. It was a matter of the event itself. So I believe here He is referring to the fact that He would be separated from the Father in the second death. In a sense, this might be seen as a prayer for resurrection. I think it is speaking of emphasizing Jesus very close relationship to the Father and His desire to have that relationship restored. In any case, He says, Not my will (Matthew 26:39). He prays the same thing in verse 39, verse 42, verse 44. And again He comes out and he finds that these disciples are not awake. They re not praying with Him, and He says, Could you not have prayed with Me for just this one hour? (Matthew 26:40). In section 226, verse 45, He comes to His disciples, and He says, Are you still sleeping and taking your rest? Behold, the hour is at hand and the Son of Man is being betrayed into the hands of sinners. Arise, let us be going; behold, the one who betrays Me is at hand. And they look up from this prayer meeting, and as they look up they see lanterns coming toward them, many soldiers, the glint of the reflection of the light on the swords and on the spears (Matthew 26:47). They realize that they re in a very threatening, traumatic situation, and of all people, Judas appears with them. And this brings us into our next session in which we will be discussing, in section 227, the actual arrest of Jesus, the betrayal which leads into the various trials. Christ-Centered Learning Anytime, Anywhere 15 of 15