We Are Not of This World
Tom Shrader works through John 15:18–16:4, where Jesus warns His disciples that because they are no longer of the world, the world will hate them just as it hated Him. Shrader unpacks why the world's hostility is unavoidable — believers carry a different value system that convicts those around them — and illustrates this with personal stories and cultural examples. He closes by encouraging believers that God has not left them alone, pointing ahead to the Holy Spirit as the One who empowers faithful witness in a hostile world.
“When I came into the world, and all of a sudden I'm here, now there's a whole new standard that's displayed. People see themselves differently because of my presence.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: John: The Essence of Life (2007)
Recorded: 2007 at East Valley Bible Church
Duration: 44 min
Themes: persecution, suffering, hatred, witness, holy spirit, courage, worldliness, identity, feeling rejected, struggling with belonging, facing opposition at work, new believer, elder, pastor, navigating cultural pressure, young adult
Scripture: John 14:1, John 14:16, John 14:17, John 14:18, John 15:12, John 15:13, John 15:16, John 15:17, John 15:18-25, John 15:26, John 16:1-7, John 16:13, 1 John 2:15, 1 John 4:7, 1 John 4:11, 1 John 4:12, 1 Peter 4:3-4, Matthew 10:24, Matthew 10:28, Acts 7, Acts 8:1, Acts 8:3, Acts 17:6, Philippians 3:4, Psalm 69:4
Theological Themes: pneumatology, holy spirit, sanctification, set apart, biblical witness, world system, discipleship, union with christ
Full Transcript
Preparing the Church for Change
Be praying for the leaders of the church. I assume you do, but I want to keep that in front of you. It's a difficult job, and honestly it gets more difficult as the church grows numerically. It gets a little more complex in terms of operations, and now you add the commons and a new worship center. As we enfold area ministry, that takes on another development.
I think next year you're going to hear us talking a lot about church expansion — meaning church planting — and those are significant things. We are also examining and evaluating elders, lifetime eldership, and all sorts of other related issues. We have been somewhat static — and I use that word positively — in terms of elder and leadership personnel for almost fifteen years, with very little change. But I think over the next year to year and a half you are going to see a lot of change: men leaving the board and men being added to the board.
We will probably examine the question of lifetime eldership, and that is just in response to what we are seeing — practical from one end, but also a matter of bringing fresh eyes to the board and evaluating how we are operating. So be praying for us as we work through all of that.
Opening Prayer
Father, we pray for this lesson today. We thank You for all of the announcements we just made, because they represent so much that You are doing — especially for Jim and Lorraine and their contribution here on campus. Thank You that they continue to work and to serve You, as do so many. Last Sunday you could see those green t-shirts all over campus, and it becomes a picture of how many people You are using in a significant way every single week. You can walk out into the lobby and see the M25 project. God, You have blessed us in so many ways, and we pray that we continue to serve You. I pray for this lesson today, that You would use it and apply it to our hearts. In Christ's name, amen.
The Upper Room Discourse
We are studying what is identified as the upper room discourse — John chapters 14, 15, 16, and 17. One of the things I find challenging when working through a passage verse by verse is when the ideas are so similar and there is repetition in presenting them, and that is a little bit of what we have in front of us today.
Jesus is preparing the disciples for His departure. He is saying, in essence, goodbye to them. He will be crucified shortly and rise from the dead, and those are troubling circumstances — thus the first comment in chapter 14, verse 1: "Don't let your heart be troubled." These are scary, potentially discouraging times. But He says, "I am not going to leave you alone" — that is verse 18 of chapter 14: "I won't leave you as orphans."
Jesus does not in any way minimize the fact that you and I are going to have difficulty in life — that circumstances do not always end with "and they lived happily ever after." There is difficulty associated with this life. You will at times have relationships that don't work, and when we say relationships, we don't just mean family. We mean business relationships that don't work, or neighborhoods that don't work. There will be a testing in your life.
Jesus does not say that all the deals you put in escrow will close. He does not say that every application you submit will be accepted, or that every promotion you apply for you will get. He does not say that every person you choose to marry will make you happy each and every day, or that your children will be perfect intellectually or physically. But He says, in the midst of all of this, "Don't let your heart be troubled." He is the one there to give you hope. He will not leave you alone.
The Spirit of Truth
In verse 16 of chapter 14, He says, "I will give you another. I will give you the Helper." He calls Him in chapter 14, verse 17, "the Spirit of Truth." That same phrase appears again in chapter 15, verse 26, "the Spirit of Truth," and again in chapter 16, verse 13, "the Spirit of Truth." He will send this Other — a Helper for this life.
As things become discouraging and difficult, you are not exempt from that. And not only are you not exempt from it, you will experience a whole different area of difficulty that the world will not experience, because you will experience persecution on top of everything else. That is essentially where we left off last week.
The Command to Love
Chapter 15, verse 12 brings us to this: "This is my commandment, that you love one another" — and how? "Just as I have loved you." It is a striking idea that you are being commanded to love. We tend to identify love as a feeling or some kind of emotion. But Jesus says, "No — I am telling you this. I command you to do this." And it is a love illustrated in verse 13 by a willingness to lay down your life for another person, which means you are willing —
Loving One Another
John the gospel writer really gets this. In 1 John chapter 4, verse 7, he says, "Let us love one another." Chapter 4, verse 11, "Let us love one another." Chapter 4, verse 12, "Let us love one another." Here is the command. John gets it. Sitting here in this upper room discourse, he understands that we are to love and care for one another, that it is a command, that God has called us to that.
He says it is a selfless love, and then he gives us this incredible truth: "You are my friend." That is the intimate relationship we have with God. You are not a slave. He said, "I have shared with you what the Father has told me." And then He tells us how we got into this relationship. Verse 16 of chapter 15: "You did not choose me, I chose you." We came into this relationship in that specific way.
He chose us for a purpose. Verse 16 says that purpose is to bear fruit — fruit that remains. God said, "I chose you, I brought you into this relationship for a reason, and that is that you would bear fruit." It would be evident, not temporary, but permanent fruit. He then bookends this section in verse 17: "Therefore I command you, love one another." Verse 12, love one another. Verse 17, love one another.
Here is what He is saying across verses 12 through 17: love one another because God loves you. God loves you, therefore you love one another.
The World's Hatred
Everything shifts at verse 18. Verses 18 through 25 carry this message: God may love you, but the world hates you. He has been talking about love, and when we reach verse 18, the word "hate," "hated," or "hates" appears three times. Verse 19 says, "If the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you." Then: "If you were of the world, the world would love its own. But because you are not of the world, because I chose you out of the world, because of this, the world hates you." In that verse alone, the word "world" appears five times. Across those two verses, we have the words "hate," "hated," or "hates" four times, and the word "world" five times.
What is He communicating to us? There is this thing called the world. He is not talking about the globe. He is talking about the value systems of the world — the world's dreams, desires, pleasures, ethics, values, thoughts, priorities, and preferences. The world has its own set of values, preferences, and priorities. Here is what the world defines as important. Here is what the world says you need.
That comes at every level. If you are a junior hire, there is a whole world system telling you what a cool junior hire looks like. There is a system telling you what it means to be a cool high school kid, a cool single college student, a cool adult, a cool couple, a cool family — where they live, what they wear, what they do, how they think, where they find enjoyment. There is a profound contrast between all of that and the way God calls us to think.
John warns us again in 1 John 2:15: "Do not love the world, nor the things of the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him." These things are in direct competition. "For all that is in the world — the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the boastful pride of life — is not of the Father, but is from the world, and the world is passing away, and also its lust."
Juxtaposed to the World
Jesus is preparing us here. He is saying, "Listen, the world hates you — because the world hated Me." If you are a disciple, a follower, a believer today, you need to understand that you are in competition with the world. You stand juxtaposed to the world, operating from a whole different value system, a whole different way of thinking. And the world hates anything that is different.
William Barclay, in his commentary on this section, points out three examples. He mentions a man named Jonas Hanway, who had the first umbrella in London. When he walked down the street with it, people pelted him with rocks and dirt and mocked him. Why? Because it was different. That is Barclay's point. Socrates called on people to examine themselves, and the world hated him for it and ultimately killed him. Aristides was called Aristides the Just, and he was banished from the city. When someone was asked why, the reply was simply, "Because I got sick of him always being called the Just." Anything that is different, we naturally hate and despise.
In Acts chapter 17, verse 6, Paul and his companions have come to Thessalonica, and when the people there gather together, their assessment is this: "These men have turned the world upside down, and now they are here." In reality, when Paul and his companions came into Thessalonica or any other town, they did not turn the world upside down — they turned it right side up. They were saying, "Here is what is really important. Here is what is really significant. Here is where you are going to find real meaning, purpose, and direction. Here is how you are going to understand life." They came with a whole new way of thinking, and the people did not like it.
I would suspect that many of you have experienced this same thing — that you became a follower of Christ, and all of a sudden you discovered
The World's Reaction to Christ in You
Maybe not the world at large, but your world and the people in it began to hate you. They didn't like you. The reality is they used to like you — they always hung around with you, they found you pleasurable. But now the reality is they don't like the Christ they see in you. That's the problem. You represent something to them that they don't want any part of.
So you walk onto the Mesquite campus tomorrow as a follower of Christ — not in some arrogant way, not spouting off Bible verses in Greek, but you simply walk onto that campus and you live differently. Every kid is going to pick up on that. Teachers tell me all the time, "I can tell the Christian kids I've got in my class." The same thing happens when you walk into the office, or when you begin to negotiate a deal with somebody. All of a sudden people are saying there is something different about you, something unique about you. And oftentimes the world hates that. The world can't stand it.
I had a buddy I used to hang around with in my darkest partying days. Then God saved me, and I still communicate with him, but on a whole different level. He said, "Shreds, in the old days it was pretty cool because you were like Baskin-Robbins with sin. We could bring you any sin and you could take your own 31 flavors and add a variety to it that was pretty special. You were really good at that, but now you're vanilla." I said to him, "You know what's interesting? When you get in trouble, you don't call the guys you snort coke with. You don't call the guys you go to the strip clubs with. Why do you call me when you get in trouble?" Because he knows there's something different. He knows there's a different value system.
Peter writes this — let me read to you from a paraphrase. 1 Peter 4:3: "You've already put in your time in that God-ignorant way of life, partying night after night, a drunken life, but now it's time to be done with it for good." 1 Peter 4:4: "Of course your old friends don't understand why you don't join them and the old gang anymore, but you don't have to give an account to them." That is what Peter is saying, and it is what Jesus is saying. The world will hate you — hate you just for being there. It can't stand it.
Persecuted Because We Are Identified with Christ
Jesus says in verse 20, "A slave is not greater than his master. If they persecuted me, they'll persecute you." He said they are going to hate you because you are so closely identified with Him. They hated Him. You are not of the world anymore, and this is absolutely unavoidable. In Matthew 10:24, Jesus said, "A master is not above his teacher, a slave not above his master," and He goes on to state this obvious truth: they are going to persecute you.
But He gives an interesting insight in Matthew 10:28. He said, "Do not fear those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul, but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both the soul and the body." That is God's answer. God's answer in the midst of all of this is not to be afraid — not to be afraid of man or the world system.
Peer Pressure Never Goes Away
Peer pressure — that is what we talk about all the time. What will people think? There is even a very helpful book with that title: *When People Are Big and God Is Small.* You live under enormous peer pressure, and probably the darkest moment of my teaching life occurred, maybe twelve or fifteen years ago. I was invited to come into one of the Christian schools to do a chapel for junior high students, and I had said yes before I knew exactly what I would say. One of the parents called me the night before and said, "I heard you're going to do this. Will you talk about peer pressure?" I said, "Sure — finally, I've got a subject."
So I went in the next day and said to the students, "I got a call from one of your parents last night. He wanted me to talk about peer pressure, and I want to do that — but I want to tell you how much peer pressure your parents are under." Your peer pressure is about having the right shoes, the right hat, the right tattoo, the right belt, the right whatever. Those are cheap peer pressures. Your parents are under pressure to have the right car, the right house in the right neighborhood. They are under pressure to go along, to get the deal done, to say, "The bottom line is all that matters — take your ethics and sacrifice them, because we are going to do this. I don't care whether you think it's right or not. If you don't like it, get out." And now you are jeopardizing your job, your family, and everything that goes with it. That is peer pressure. And here is the deal: it does not go away when you get out of junior high school. It only intensifies.
That is what Jesus is saying. The world hates you. It can't stand you. You represent everything that intimidates it, simply by being there. I was talking to a guy one day and all of a sudden he said, "I hate Debbie Boone." Debbie Boone? How can you hate Debbie? You don't like her song, she doesn't light up your life — what is the deal? He said, "I can't stand her." I said, "Did you date her? Do you know her?" He said, "No, I don't know her at all." I said, "How can you hate her?" And here is what he said: "She's such a goody-goody." What an interesting comment — but it is exactly the point Jesus is making. She never said anything. She is simply there, representing something good, and he said he couldn't stand it. That is the way the world is.
That is why, as you begin to live a life that manifests Christ to the people around you, you get pushback — even without saying a word.
The World's Hatred Explained
Jesus said in verse 22, "If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have sinned. But now they have no excuse for their sin. He who hates me hates the Father." Jesus is not saying that if He had never come into the world, there would be no sin. What He is saying is this: when He came into the world, and they saw Him, and they heard His teaching, and they saw His life, there was conviction there. Before His coming, people compared themselves either to one another or to some sort of false religious standard. But now they compare themselves to Him.
Jesus reveals God's standard, God's mind, God's way of thinking. Jesus turns the world right side up. Before, sin went largely unrecognized because the standard was too low. Once He arrived, everything changed.
The Mirror Illustration
Dr. Harry Ironside tells a story about a missionary in Africa who is with a local tribe. One day, outside his tent, he is shaving, and a mirror is nearby. The wife of the tribal chief comes in, and she has never seen a mirror before. She looks into it and does not like what she sees. Frightened, she begins asking: What am I looking at? Who is this? Who is this horrible-looking person?
He explains that it is a mirror, and she struggles to understand how she ended up reflected in it. She then begins to barter and negotiate with him to buy the mirror. He does not want to sell it, but finally it becomes clear that if he is going to have any ministry with the tribe, he has to let it go. She takes the mirror, smashes it on the ground, and says, "Now I'll never have to look at that face again."
That is what we do when the Word of God comes to us. We take it, and we do not want to look at it. The Word of God is a mirror — you hold it up, and you see yourself as you really are. And so people run. They do not want to see that. They do not want to be around that. They do not want to hear it.
A Higher Standard
Jesus said that when He came into the world, a whole new standard was displayed. People saw themselves differently because of His presence. He called them to a higher standard — that is exactly what we looked at when we studied the Sermon on the Mount. This is what you have heard said, but He calls people to a whole different way of life. Love God with all your heart. Love your neighbor as yourself. Those older rules about what not to do are far easier. But God calls us to a completely different way of living.
They did not grasp sin until He came along and the standard became visible. Look at verse 24: "If I had not done among them the works which no one else had done, they would not have sinned. But now they have both seen and hated Me as well as the Father. But this has been done to fulfill the Word that was written in the law." He then quotes from Psalm 69:4: "They hated Me without cause."
The Miracles Confirm His Claims
What Jesus is pointing to in verse 24 are the miracles. He did miracles that no one else had done. There had been other teachers, and people marveled that He taught with His own authority — but beyond that, He did miracles. Nobody else had done these things before. The deaf could hear, the lame could walk, the blind could see, the dead would rise. Jesus did all of these things.
The point was never to produce miracle hunters addicted to signs and wonders. The miracles confirmed His claims. And what was His claim? He said, "I am God. I am God come in the flesh." There is a moment when they bring a paralytic to Him and He says, "Your sins are forgiven." The Jews immediately object: only God can forgive sin. So Jesus asks, what is easier to say — "Your sins are forgiven," or "Get up and walk"? They acknowledge it is easier to claim forgiveness, since no one can verify it. So He says, "Get up and walk" — and the man does. The entire point is that Jesus is exactly who He said He was.
The world hates Him because they have seen the standard. They have seen perfection. They have seen miracles that are indisputable, confirming His claim to be God. And then Jesus predicts not just His death but His resurrection — and He rises, confirming everything once more.
You Are Not Alone in This
Jesus says the world hated Him, and it hates you. That is your reality going into the world. That world is opposed to you. Our responsibility is not to add to that opposition through arrogance or obnoxious living. But as you live your life, you need to understand that people are not going to say, "God bless you, this is incredible, we are so glad you are here." When you bring the Word, there will be sacrifice and persecution, just as there was for Jesus.
That is why it is so important to understand that He did not leave you alone. If you had to go this alone, you would get discouraged very quickly. That is why He began this whole discussion by saying, "Do not let your heart be troubled" — because the circumstances are going to be hard.
God's Sovereign Placement
God sovereignly placed you in the neighborhood you're in. God sovereignly gave you the family that you have. God gave you the friends that you have. He put you in the school you're in. He gave you the job that you have. He sovereignly placed you there. This goes back to an eleven-week study — so that you would let your light shine in such a way that people would see it. People in the neighborhood ought to see there is something different about you.
It is so easy to have an impact. All you have to do is live this. You do not have to pass out tracts. You do not have to carry around a big Bible. All you have to do is live it.
You hear it all the time: "I want ministry, I just want to be in ministry." You are in ministry. You may be no good at it — I do not know that, that is your assessment — but you are in it now. All you have to do is live it.
Ministry Where You Are
I spoke to a group of seniors not long ago, and I said, "I hear this all the time — we are old, we would like to be connected with young people, we want to have ministry." I will give you a way. Move to a neighborhood filled with starter homes. Just go buy a house there. Get a chair — you and your wife, or you and your husband — and sit in your driveway. That is all. You are done.
Move to an area filled with starter homes, put your chair in the driveway, and I am telling you, you will be so busy with ministry you will not be able to keep up. The young moms from those neighborhoods are going to beat a path to your door. You are the only older person around. They are going to come and say, "How do you do this? How do you bake a pie? What do you do when he cries?"
When we had Sarah home a week from the hospital, she was acting really funny one night. We went next door to a little old godly lady. I said to Susan, "Let's not take her to the hospital — I'll feel like a doofus going in there, she's fine." But that little old lady said we ought to take her in. That was when the doctor said, "If you would not have come in tonight, she would not have made it through the night." There was a little old lady next door. What did she do? She was there. That is the same kind of ministry you are going to have.
Ministry is so easy to have. Just live differently where God has placed you — school, work, neighborhood. If you are an older man, guys love to talk about World War II and such. Then all of a sudden you tell them you were in it. They would rather talk to you than read about it. Now you have a whole relationship. Then they are going to say, "How long have you been married to her?" And you say, "Fifty-eight years." And they say, "Wow." And now you have something.
When I am with really older people, I cannot get over looking at the pictures — seeing my dad at eighty and missing the whole fact that here he was in Iowa, and they put him on a boat and sent him over to Europe to fight. You miss him at the bank going through all the struggles you and I go through, and you do not think of him as a young man trying to figure it all out. He has got all of that in him. Ministry is really easy to have. You have got to want to have it.
If you are an older person and you are going to live among other older people, you are going to have ministry — but it will be a different kind of ministry. If you say, "I would love to connect with some younger people," understand that they are not having lunch or dinner at three-fifteen. They are not hanging out there. Life, ministry, life — they are all the same.
The Spirit's Testimony and Yours
Jesus says this: "When the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, that is the Spirit of truth who will proceed from the Father, He will testify about Me, and you will also testify because you have been with Me from the beginning." He said you will then become a witness.
Ray Stedman writes this: How do you witness? You tell someone about what happened to you — that is all. You review what God has done for you, what He means to you, what He has been to you from the beginning of your Christian life. That is what an effective witness does.
I was in a meeting the other day and we were talking about having some classes on evangelism. I know we have to do this, but my fear is that you will all say, "Well, I cannot be an evangelist until I take the class." There is a way in which a class could actually get in the way of your evangelism. Think of yourself not as an evangelist, perhaps, but as a witness who simply relays what God has done, who He is, and what you know Him to be. That is all a witness does. That is why we say to you: if you know enough to believe —
Sharing the Gospel Naturally
You know enough to share the gospel because all you have to do is tell what God has done. Obviously, the longer you walk with Him the more that story might become elaborate, but even then, it can become so elaborate that the person on the other end doesn't even get it. Here is what the lost world is looking for: hope, meaning, and direction — and you found all of it through Christ. The Holy Spirit is there, the Helper is there, in verse 26, to help you communicate that.
Your job is not to win somebody or convince somebody. Your job is simply to declare the truth. That is all He is asking you to do. He is not asking you to win a soul, convince anybody, or out-debate them. He is simply saying: this is what God has done.
I was talking to a man the other day about a couple he and a group of people have been trying to share the gospel with, and the husband had a heart attack. One of them showed up at the hospital and was only there about ten minutes, then put together a series of meals for the family just to reach out to them. This man read to me the most incredible email from the wife, describing how faithful they had been, how their love had been evident, how the source of it was clearly God, and how God was beginning to use that time in their lives.
All that evangelism training, all those classes — those are fine, take them, I am not against it. But I am saying you are better off taking a cooking class and bringing someone a meal, and then telling them that Jesus is the reason you did it. There is a little rethinking that needs to take place. We do not need a class for everything to tell us what we already know.
You know what Christ did in your life. You know what difference He has made. I can sit down with somebody and say, "Listen, here is who I was, and here is who I am, and it is not the result of my rethinking or re-evaluating — certainly not a matter of discipline. It is what God did." To be honest, I cannot fully explain it other than to say God invaded my heart through the Holy Spirit and transformed the way I think. People are intimidated by that, but they are also intrigued by it, especially in a world that says there is no hope.
These kids are being absolutely marinated in the idea that they came from nothing and are going to nothing — so why would they live with any sort of hope? You come along and say, no, there is a purpose, there is a reason, there is something to live for. There is nothing wrong with trying to preserve the environment, but there is something more important than a whale.
Prepared for Persecution
Let us get back to the text. Verse 1 of chapter 16: "These things I have spoken to you so that you may be kept from stumbling. They will make you outcasts from the synagogue, and an hour is coming for everyone who kills you to think that he is offering sacrifice to God. These things they will do because they have not known the Father or Me. But these things I have spoken to you so that when their hour comes, you may remember that I told you of them. These things I did not say to you at the beginning because I was with you."
He is coming right off of talking about the hostility of the world. He says, "I am preparing you for all of this so that you will not stumble." How would they stumble? They might think the plan had gone awry, or that God was not sovereign and in control. But He is saying, "No — I want you to be fully prepared. I want you to understand that this is coming."
Now He puts some legs on what that looks like. They are going to be cast out of the synagogue — excommunication — and in some cases they are going to be killed. This is serious, frightening stuff. Here, if you get bounced out of one church, you can simply go to another. But in that environment, excommunication meant the loss of your entire life.
If you were excommunicated from the synagogue, there was no spiritual life at all, because the synagogue was the only place with the Scripture, the only place for worship, the only place for sacrifice. On top of that, there was no social life, because for these Jews their entire lives were intertwined with that community. There was no economic hope either — if they held a job, they would lose it; if they were self-employed, they would have no customers. This was their whole existence.
Try to apply that to your own life. In our world, there is no financial penalty associated with moving from church to church. I got an email this week about two people leaving this church for another one, and last week I got an email about two people from that church coming here — it just goes back and forth. But in their environment, being cast out was the loss of everything. And on top of all of that, the very people who were killing them thought they were doing it for God.
Facing Persecution with Eyes Open
In Philippians 3:4, Paul writes, "I myself might have confidence even in the flesh. If anyone else had a mind to put confidence in the flesh, I far more: circumcised on the eighth day, from the nation of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the Law, a Pharisee." Then he says, "as to zeal, a persecutor of the church."
In Acts chapter 7, Stephen is killed — the first martyr. We are told in Acts 8:1 that "Saul was in hearty agreement with putting him to death," and that "there arose a great persecution." Verse 3 continues: "Paul began ravaging the church, entering house after house, dragging off men and women and putting them in prison." Paul thought he was working for God. That is exactly what Jesus is saying — there are people who will be zealous in their opposition to believers because they are convinced they are serving God. They are not.
And here is His punch line: be ready. This is coming. "I have spoken these things to you so that when they come, you will remember that I told you."
A Word to the Weary
Maybe you are here today a little beat up, a little discouraged. Maybe life has simply become too much. Maybe it is even a matter of faith — you have been living in a way that clearly reflects how God would have you live, and the only thing that seems to be happening around you is persecution as a result of it. Maybe you are at the phase where you are losing friends and family members, or you are just in a dry, difficult season.
Here is what He says: "I am not going to leave you as an orphan."
The Promise of the Helper
Look at chapter 16, verse 7: "But I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you." He is speaking of the Holy Spirit. That is a phenomenal statement. It seemed to me that it could not get any better than Jesus being present in the flesh — and yet Jesus is saying it is better for you that He is gone, because you are going to receive something even more important. You are going to receive the Holy Spirit, who will empower you to live the life God has called you to live.
We will unpack that next week. We will look at the Holy Spirit as He comes and convicts us about sin, righteousness, and judgment. Jesus also speaks about the resurrection and returns again to the subject of prayer, and we will look at all of that next week.
Closing Prayer
Father, thank You for the pain, the suffering, the hurt in our lives — for persecution and difficulty. Thank You, because it is most often in the midst of those things that we see You work most clearly. We thank You also for not leaving us alone, for not leaving us as orphans. Thank You for the Helper, the One who comes to convict, to impress upon us what whole and righteous living really is, and to alert us to judgment.
Father, thank You for Jesus. Thank You for these clear warnings. We sit here with the luxury of two thousand years of hindsight, and this all becomes so clear. I think of those men listening on that evening, that afternoon, wondering what was happening — and then watching it all unfold around them. God, what a powerful testimony it is to Your faithfulness that those eleven persevered and gave beautiful testimony to You.
God, make us witnesses as we leave this place. As we walk onto the campus, into the workplace, the gym, the market, or wherever You have us — use us in a powerful way. Give us courage to give testimony to the hope that lies within us. That hope is You, Jesus. We pray in His name. Amen.