Good morning church. Lord Jesus Christ in our lives He is the reason That we can declare that that no matter what we're going through in life. We can say it as well with my soul Because we have Christ We return this morning to John 13 to the upper room of We return to the scene where Jesus is sharing in the final Passover meal with his disciples before he will be crucified. And we see the disciples here continuing their quarrel over who among them is going to be greatest. We see Jesus humbly wash these disciples' feet, modeling for them a complete contrast to that, showing them how they ought to be relating to one another. They are not to push each other down while trying to raise themselves up. Instead, they should be humbling themselves to serve one another. That's true greatness. That's Christ-likeness. Jesus then reveals the shocking news to them that there is a betrayer among them. There's an Ahithophel among them. There's a traitor among them. And no one saw this coming. No one had Judas pegged as the one, but they're all wondering, Lord, is it me? Judas continued to harden his heart against the expressions of Christ's love for him, even down to the giving of that morsel to him, the showing of honor to him. He hardens his heart yet again against Christ, so much so that Satan enters him. And then Judas is dismissed off into the darkness of night to fulfill the darkness in his heart against Christ. And the darkness of Satan goes with him, heading straight toward this end to deal a crushing blow toward Christ. That is Satan's end in this. This is Judas' heart in this. And that's where we pick up this morning. John 13, we're looking at verses 31 to 35. Little children, I am with you a little while longer. You will seek me. And as I said to the Jews, now I also say to you, where I am going, you cannot come. A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this, all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we come before you in praise to you as our glorious God. You are perfect in every way, and we marvel at you, and we come eager to hear from you through your word. I pray, Lord, that you would open our eyes that we might behold wonderful things in your law. We pray that we would behold the glory of Christ. We ask this in Jesus' name, amen. This text highlights for us the glorious love of God. If there's ever a time that we need to be reminded of the glorious love of God, it is now. As we see the depths to which human depravity can descend in expressing sheer tormenting and murderous hatred toward people made in God's image, we are blessed this morning to be able to enter into the upper room, to enter in where we can be warmed by the glorious aroma of the humble, self-sacrificing, serving love of Jesus. It's a love that gives us hope in a world full of hate. The tender heart of Christ for his own. As I've mentioned before, the Puritan Thomas Goodwin called these next few chapters in John a window into Jesus' heart. As we look into the heart of Christ, we see the glory of pure heavenly love. a love that exists in God, a love that is from out of this world, a love that has come into the world in the incarnation of Christ. And so now that the traitor has been dismissed, Jesus begins to focus in his teaching on what is meant especially for his true disciples. He will prepare them for his coming death and his subsequent departure back to his Father. And he begins this by highlighting for them the glory of God's love. He's going to emphasize two ways that the glory of God's love is expressed in the world. The first expression of God's glory, of God's love that Jesus describes here is the glory of God's love in Christ's death. the glory of God's love in Christ's death. That's in verses 31 and 32. So picking up in verse 31. Therefore, when he had gone out, Jesus said, now is the Son of Man glorified. In the New Testament, the Greek word here for glory, it conveys a sense of honor and dignity. And the concept of glory was conveyed in the Old Testament by the Hebrew word kavod, which gives the sense of a weightiness. And so this is speaking of Christ's honor, His weightiness, the weightiness of His greatness is going to be on display. Jesus refers to himself here as the Son of Man. Now the Son of Man is glorified. Jesus uses this title for himself, Son of Man, 11 times in the Gospel of John, and this is the last time that he's going to use it in John's Gospel. Daniel mentions, one, like a son of man. In Daniel 7, we can look there and see what Daniel says about the son of man. Daniel chapter 7, and it's verses 13 and 14. I kept looking in the night visions and behold with the clouds of heaven one like a son of man was coming and he came up to the ancient of days and was presented before him. And to him was given dominion, glory, and a kingdom that all the peoples, nations, and men of every language might serve him. His dominion is an everlasting Dominion, which will not pass away in his kingdom, is one which will not be destroyed. Jesus is that King whose dominion will be everlasting and will extend to all peoples, nations, and men of every language, a whole earth dominion. We long for that rain to come, do we not? We are thankful that it is certain that this King is coming. Now, keeping what Daniel has revealed about the Son of Man in mind, in view, listen to what John says in chapter 3, in verse 13. He says, So Jesus is describing himself as the Son of Man there, and he is saying no one has ascended into heaven but he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. The Son of Man has descended from heaven. This Son of Man that Daniel was talking about, this Son of Man is not a mere or ordinary king. This is a king who is not only human, he is also divine. This is a king who has come down from heaven. And then in John chapter 12, we see the purpose for which the Son of Man came down out of heaven. John chapter 12, verses 23 through 27. And Jesus answered them saying, Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone. But if it dies, it bears much fruit. He who loves his life loses it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it to life eternal. If anyone serves me, he must follow me, and where I am, there my servant will be also. If anyone serves me, the Father will honor him. Now my soul has become troubled, and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour? But for this purpose, I came to this hour. In verse 23, he describes the hour as an hour in which the Son of Man will be glorified. In verse 24, we see this mention of death. And in verse 27, he says, it's for this purpose that I came. He came into the world to die. Now, let's come back to John 13, keeping in mind this hour of glorification and its association with death. Again, thinking about the betrayer, Judas. He's now on route to carry out his plan of betrayal. Satan had a willing party ready to help facilitate his assault on Jesus, a willing party that was from within Jesus's inner circle. And now the fuse has been lit that is going to end in Christ's death. It's only a matter of hours before Jesus would be lifted up on the cross to die. And so now the hour for the son of man to be glorified has come. It is here. And that hour is the hour of his glory. It is the hour of his death. He took the horror of the cross and caused it to be a glory for him. His death would initially seem like a defeat to his followers. but the resurrection would show them that Christ was victorious in his death. Jesus was glorified on the cross because in that he was displaying a love for his own to the end, a love for his own to the full. He had descended low to humbly wash His disciples' feet, but He was going to plunge deeper still, all the way down to the deepest of depths to save His people by bearing the wrath of God against their sins on the cross. What a glorious Savior He is. It is to His glory that He perfectly fulfilled the will of His Father at every point, even to the point of death on the cross. And by that death, he accomplished the redemption of all that the Father had given to him to redeem. And so in that gloomy hour of descent into death, he at the same time is lifted up on the cross as a display of glory. The depths that he was willing to plunge to in death Show the height of the glory of His love. So it was now time for the Son of Man to be glorified in His death on the cross. And as we continue in verse 31, we see that God is also glorified in Him. Jesus said, now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in Him. God is glorified in Him. God is glorified in His Son. We think about children and their parents. There's certain aspects of the character of the parents that gets displayed in the children. And that image helps us to see that the Son of Man displays the character of God. In fact, in the words of Hebrews 1, verse 3, it says that Jesus is the exact representation of God's nature. And we learn in John 1, 18 that no one has seen God at any time. The only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him. We come to know the Father through the Son. He has explained Him in His words and in His life. When God caused his glory to pass before Moses, he declared, the Lord, the Lord God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in loving kindness and truth, who keeps the loving kindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin, yet he will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations. We see these various aspects that God is declaring of his character as he passes before Moses. His character is being announced. And these various aspects of God's character we see on display in Jesus Christ. It is in this way that God is glorified in him. Jesus displays the glory of God. And particularly in this context that we've been seeing in John 13, it is especially the glory of God's love that is on display in Jesus's death. Romans 5, 8 says, but God demonstrates his own love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. How does God show his love? How has he demonstrated it? By Christ dying for our sins. The glory of God's love has been chiefly displayed in the world by means of Jesus' death for sinful people like us. The glory of God's love is on display through the death of the Son of Man. God willingly gave His only begotten Son, and the Son willingly laid His life down in obedience to His Father, to redeem all that the Father had given to Him. The Son of Man is glorified in His death, and God is glorified in Him. John continues in verse 32 with more on this glory of God's love being displayed in the death of the Son of Man. says if God is glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself, and will glorify him immediately. You could also translate that if as since. It's a progression in the logic. God would be glorified in the son of man's death, and on that basis, if indeed he is glorified in his son's death, God will also glorify him, that is the Son of Man, in himself, that is in God. This is referring to a subsequent glorification of the Son of Man that will follow the hour of his glorification in his death. Jesus later prays in John 17 verse 5, Now Father, glorify me together with yourself, with the glory which I had with you before the world was. that together with yourself in John 17 5 is synonymous there with what is being said in himself, that he's going to glorify the Son of Man in himself. To glorify him, to bring him to where he is. This prayer refers to Jesus returning to be seated at the right hand of his Father in heaven. Because God would be glorified in the Son of Man in his death, God would therefore honor the son by raising him from the dead and exalting him to be seated at his right hand in heaven. And John finishes up verse 32 by saying that this subsequent glorification would happen immediately or soon after his death. Jesus would die in less than 24 hours. He would be raised in three days. Then he would continue to appear to his disciples and to teach them about the kingdom over the course of 40 days. And then he would ascend to the right hand of his father. We see here the perfect, harmonious love that exists within the Trinity as the persons of the Godhead glorify each other. And we see the glorious love that is among them break forth into the world through the incarnation of Christ. And the breaking forth of that love into the world would culminate in Christ's death on the cross to save his own whom his father had given to him as a love gift. We see the love within the Godhead and then it breaking forth into the world. Thus, the glory of God's love is displayed in the world in Christ's death. So, how are we to respond to this display of the glory of God's love? We could say that our theology needs to lead to doxology. And what that means is that what we profess to believe about God in truth, what we profess to believe of what we see here in this passage about God and about his love, it should move us to praise him. Don't ever just let the theology sit in your head. Our contemplation of these grand things that we see with God, with the Son of Man, with His love coming into the world, that should cause our hearts to burst forth with praise to God's glory as we behold His glory, to praise the weightiness of this glory that we see in this display of love from God. The disciples needed to get their minds off of trying to pursue their own greatness. And we have to fight this same temptation. We were created for the glory of God, to magnify his greatness. And for those who are in Christ, we have been given the privilege of having the saving love of God lavished on us. God sent his son to die for us. We have been washed. We who were dead in trespasses and sins have been given life from his hand. Being a grumpy Christian should be a walking contradiction in our minds. How could we be grumpy in life when we've been so loved by Christ? An entirely undeserved love. In fact, what we deserved was wrath. And Jesus bore that wrath in our place. And so he is worthy of his people having our hearts filled with overflowing praise to his glory. We ought to adore him and we ought to praise him. We ought to love the one who first loved us. And we ought to magnify his name as we reflect on the glory of God's love we see in Christ's death. We've seen how the glory of God's love was displayed in the world supremely in Christ's death, loving his disciples to the end. It's a love that is from out of this world and it had come into the world in Christ. But soon, he will go back out from this world to his father. Jesus has just described in verse 32 how God is going to glorify the Son of Man in himself. That is, God will raise him and exalt him to be seated at his right hand. And that will necessitate Christ's departure from the world. And so that brings us to the second expression of the glory of God's love in the world that we see in this passage. We've looked at the glory of God's love in Christ's death. Now we'll see the glory of God's love among Christ's disciples. verses 33 through 35. Little children, I am with you a little while longer. You will seek me, and as I said to the Jews, now I also say to you, where I am going, you cannot come. A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another. Jesus reveals in verse 33 that he's going away soon and they will not be able to follow him where he is going, at least not immediately. He's going to leave them in the world as his witnesses when he departs from the world. And Jesus calls them little children. You see the tenderness of the Savior for these disciples. This reference of endearment that he communicates to them. He's broken the tough news of the betrayal. to them that someone from among them was going to betray him. Now he's breaking more tough news to them that he's going away and they won't be able to go where he's going. And he's sensitive to the difficulty that they will have in processing these things. And so he conveys his heart of tenderness to them. I'm departing from you. But little children, that doesn't change anything with respect to my love for you. Jesus mentions that he's already said something like this about his departure when he was speaking to the Jews. In John's Gospel, the references to the Jews, in many cases, tends to be a reference to the, particularly the hostile religious establishment of the Jews, Jews who are rejecting Jesus. In John 7, in verses 33 through 36, John tells us, therefore Jesus said, for a little while longer I am with you, He is not intending to go to the dispersion among the Greeks and teach the Greeks, is he? What is this statement that he said? You will seek me and will not find me. And where I am, you cannot come. And then in chapter 8, he says something similar. Verses 21 to 24, then he said again to them, I go away and you will seek me and will die in your sin. Where I am going, you cannot come. So the Jews were saying, surely he will not kill himself, will he? Since he says, where I am going, you cannot come. And he was saying to them, you are from below. I am from above. You are of this world. I am not of this world. Therefore, I said to you that you will die in your sins. For unless you believe that I am he, you will die in your sins. So Jesus says something similar at least when he talks about the fact that he's going to depart, that he's going away and he's going somewhere where they can't come. He had mentioned something like this before to the Jews. But there is a clear difference in his tone here with the disciples. He doesn't say anything about the disciples dying in their sins or that the disciples are of this world. He's just conveying to his disciples that even though he had chosen them out of the world, nevertheless, they must remain in the world as his witnesses to the world. And so, Jesus issues a command to these witnesses. He issues a command to these disciples. Verse 34, A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another. When Jesus came into the world, he brought a love that is from out of this world. But in a matter of hours, he was going to die. In a matter of days, he was going to rise from the dead. And in a matter of weeks, he was going to return to his father. Jesus had come into the world as the exact representation of the glory of God's love in the world. And so Jesus is now going to leave his disciples in the world to serve as an ongoing visible testimony of the glory of God's love. He is going to leave them in the world as a monument to his sacrificial serving love. He is going to give to them the privileged stewardship of reflecting the love of their Savior through their love for one another in his name. The glorious love of God had been most vividly revealed in the world by the incarnation of Christ and his death on the cross. And after Christ's ascension, the disciples were to serve as a continual reflection of their Savior's love in the world. As the moon does not produce its own light, but reflects the light of the sun, so the glory of the disciples would be to reflect the glory of their Savior, to reflect the glory of God's love in their love for one another. They were to love one another to the glory of God. Verse 34, again, a new commandment I give to you that you love one another. The new commandment aspect here, we think of the Old Testament law where it said in Leviticus 19.18, love your neighbor as yourself. So there's some sense of this loving others there, but Jesus is giving a more focused command here. They're still to love their neighbor in general, they are to still love enemies, but there is a priority that is to be given, to love the family of God in Christ. The disciples of Jesus are to love one another. And also there's a newness here in this standard of that love. Even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. The disciples of Jesus are to love one another as Jesus had loved them. And Jesus loved his disciples to the end. Jesus loved his disciples to the full. He had sacrificed himself for their good. He humbly served them and he died for them. And there is a sense in which his disciples are to die daily to loving themselves so that they can humbly love one another as Christ had loved them. Verse 35, by this all men will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another. Jesus makes this a chief marker of who his true disciples are. All men will know them as Christ's disciples by a particular distinguishing mark. They will be known as a people who truly love each other with a love that is from out of this world. There's nothing like it here. But what Christ has brought in and what he has put into his disciples. The glory of God's love will be displayed in them as they love one another like Christ has loved them. Jesus is going to take these disciples we've seen that are quarreling with each other and scrambling over each other to try to get above each other, and he will shape and mold them into a people that are continually growing in humble love toward one another. It's a miraculous work, the grace of God. And the love of their Savior is gonna be their standard. And so they will be continually striving to grow in their love for each other because their Savior set an infinitely high bar. There's always more room to grow. He had perfect love for his disciples. Now within the next few chapters of John, we're going to see Jesus teaches disciples about the Holy Spirit. A little preview foretaste of that. The Spirit that's going to indwell them after he departs. And in Galatians 5, the first on the list of the fruit of the Spirit is love. This love that is to be among the disciples will ultimately come from the Holy Spirit. And so the glory of God's love is seen as well in the working of the Spirit to produce a love among the disciples. All the glory goes to God for this great love. His fingerprints are all over it. And if you don't have a love like this for the brethren that we see described in this passage, if you don't have a desire to serve God's people in love, that is a sign that you don't have the Spirit of God in you that produces that fruit, that strengthens the disciples to follow the command Christ has given. We have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God And without Christ, we are enslaved to our sin. We are enslaved to living according to our own pleasures rather than doing that which pleases God. And the consequence of living in sin against a holy God is that we spend eternity under the righteous wrath of God against sin. But Jesus came to set people free from their enslavement to sin and to spare them from the wrath to come by bearing that wrath himself. Consider the glorious display of love by Christ, bearing the wrath that you deserve for your sins. And scripture teaches that by faith in Jesus, his perfect life can be credited to you. So that you, though a sinner, can be declared righteous, treated as a righteous one. Jesus says if you repent of your sin and trust in him alone to save you, he will deliver you from sin and death and give you life. So if you recognize this morning that you have not trusted in Jesus Christ to save you, if you don't have the fruit of the Spirit in your life, I plea with you to repent of your sin and to trust in Jesus Christ to save you and to put this kind of love in you that is from out of this world. Be reconciled to God today through faith in Him. That is the way. There's nothing we can do to commend ourselves to God. It is only what Christ has done that is acceptable and pleasing to God. And it is only by faith that that gets appropriated to us. So trust in the Savior today. Be saved from sin and death. This stewardship that Jesus gave to his disciples to love one another is a stewardship passed on from generation to generation among Christ's disciples. And so, our church today is to carry on this stewardship of reflecting Christ's love in this world by how we love one another. I wanna encourage you saints, by God's grace, you do serve one another in love. It's a joy to see people here loving each other, serving each other. And I wanna encourage you in regard to how the glory of God's love is visible among you. And it is a blessing to watch. And I want to encourage you at the same time to excel still more in loving one another for the glory of our King who has so loved us. The command to love one another, it's really a summary command that is then expressed as we see in the New Testament. There's lots of one another spread throughout. And this love one another is a summary of that and all these others are specific ways of expressing a love for one another. And so I want to encourage you to take some time to look through the one another's in Scripture afresh. And what I want you to do in the upcoming week is to rejoice where you've experienced God's grace, areas where you've grown in the practice of one another's. And then I also want to encourage you to identify some that you're not engaging in so much, ones that are harder for you, ones that you're weaker in. And I want to encourage you just to make that a matter of prayer to the Lord, that he would help you to grow in your love for your fellow believers in general, and then specifically in those areas where you find yourself to be weakest. And then make it a point, after praying that before the Lord, to step out in faith and to practice those one another's, especially those ones that come hard for you, to the glory of God. Do it to magnify the glory of God's love. It's a joy to get to be an instrument of God's love to his people as we love one another. It is a great privilege. I appreciate how John succinctly summarizes later on what Jesus had first taught to him here in the upper room. If we look into 1 John, his first epistle, we see John's reflection on this time and he really sums up what's being said in those verses in John 13. It's 1 John 3 and verse 16. He says, we know love by this, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. Doesn't that not just sum up what we've seen in John 13? How do we know God's love? How do we see the glory of God's love displayed? It was in Jesus dying for us. And then what is the effect of that to be in our lives? We're to imitate the love that he has shown to us and the glory of his love is on display in us laying down our lives for one another. It's amazing how that thought is just tied up right there in John's later reflection on what he learned in that upper room. Jesus had shown us the glory of God's love by laying his life down for us, and then he left us here in the world to lay our lives down for one another as a continued reflection of the glory of the love that he has shown us. Jesus had brought a love that is from out of this world into this world. He put the glory of God's love on display through the death for his own. And how would the fragrance of that glory of God's love continue to have a presence in the world? It's through Jesus' disciples following him. They couldn't go where he was going, but they could follow him in this way. They could continue to do what he's told them to do. And they could imitate the example that he had set for them. they were to follow Him by being imitators of Him by the strength of the Spirit that He was going to send to indwell them. To strengthen them to do what He'd said to do. Those who were loved by Christ to the end were to love one another as Jesus had loved them. To love each other to the full. Those who have been saved by Christ have been lavished with such a magnificent love. It is hard to describe the glory of this love that we see here. It is fine to find words to express how magnificent the glory of this love is. And I appreciate the words from the hymn, The Love of God. They really communicate this difficulty in a wonderful way. It says, could we with ink the ocean fill? And were the skies of parchment made? Were every stock on earth a quill? And everyone a scribe by trade? To write the love of God above would drain the ocean dry, nor could the scroll contain the whole, though stretched from sky to sky. Incredible. If the whole ocean was full of ink, he would completely dry it out and not be done expressing the glory of the love of God. If he had a parchment that could stretch all across the sky, it wouldn't be big enough to contain it. If every stalk on earth was a quill, something to write with, it wouldn't be enough. And if every person in the world was a scribe, specialized in writing these things out, it wouldn't be enough. That is the magnificence of the glory of God's love. You can't contain it. It's infinite, infinitely glorious. It is a love that should move our hearts to adore and to praise Christ. It is a love that should move us out of that love for Christ to love one another in obedience to Christ's command and appreciation for the privilege that we have to reflect the glory of the great love with which we have been loved by God. that all men would know that we are his disciples by our love for one another. We've seen how the glory of God's love was displayed in the world most vividly and fully in Christ's death, and that the glory of God's love would be reflected in an ongoing imitation of that love amongst Christ's disciples toward one another. the glory of God's love in Christ's death, and the glory of God's love among Christ's disciples. As we see all that is going on in the world around us, let it stir in us a longing for Christ's return, where he will set all things right. Let us double down and focus in on the stewardship that Christ has given to us to reflect the glory of his love in the world by loving one another in joyful obedience to him. And as his witnesses in this world, let us be faithful to call those outside the faith. to respond to the gospel of Christ in faith that they might enter into this community of love that we share among one another in Christ's name and for his glory. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we marvel at you. We marvel at the glory of your great love that Christ would descend to such depths to bear the wrath of God for our sin. We thank you that he has risen, that he is exalted. He is our hope of life. We thank you for the display of the glory of your love in Christ's death. We thank you for the privilege that we get to be instruments, reflections of that love in this world, witnesses to that love in this world. Help us, Lord, to love one another as Christ has loved us. Help us to grow in this. Help us to live for your glory as we marvel at your love for us and extend that love toward one another. We ask this in Jesus' name, amen.