If you would, open your Bibles this morning to John chapter 14. Again, we're going to read a few verses out of John 14. As you find that, I... If you noticed me kind of chuckling to myself up here, I was wondering if Brother Larry planned on singing a little as much when God is in it right before we take up the offering. It doesn't have to be that way. John chapter 14, and we left off at verse 24, so this morning, Lord willing, we'll look at verses 25 through 27. John 14, starting at verse 25, Jesus says, These things have I spoken unto you, being yet present with you. But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things and bring all things to your remembrance whatsoever I have said unto you. Peace I leave with you. My peace I give unto you, not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. Again, our loving Heavenly Father, we thank You for this passage of Scripture. We ask, Lord, that You would use Your Holy Spirit to teach us the meaning, the purpose of these words, Lord, and to apply it to ourselves in a way that's going to change us, that's going to draw us closer to You, draw us closer to Your Son, and cause us to fulfill our purpose of serving Him. We also thank you, Lord, for the message of peace in this passage. We ask that you would help us to abide in that peace, Lord, and that you would forgive us of our failures. For we ask in the name of your Son, Jesus Christ, amen. As you know, as we're going through John chapter 13 through 17, that upper room discourse, Jesus has gathered his disciples into this private upstairs room somewhere within the city limits of Jerusalem. Jesus knows perfectly well that Judas has left that room in order to betray him. About halfway through chapter 13, Jesus starts focusing His attention on preparing the disciples for the events of the coming days. The events are going to include, just the next day, His arrest and His trials, His crucifixion, death, and ultimately, a few days later, his resurrection. So he's told them he's going away, and he's commanded them to not have troubled hearts, and he's guaranteed that he is going to prepare a place for them in the Father's house. He's assured them that obedience, not grief, is going to be a sign of how much they love him. And He promises them another Comforter, the Spirit of Truth, who's going to give them perfect unity with the Father and the Son and the Spirit. In the final verses here in chapter 14, The conversation is going to shift dramatically. Lord willing, next week we're going to see how, in verse 28, he begins a new dialogue. And Jesus is going to be pretty blunt with them in saying, look, you're not the only ones who have some emotions about this. Would you just, you know, take a breath for a minute and think about how I feel about it. Because they're looking at this whole night, this whole message with this egocentric, selfish depression, and Jesus is gonna say to them in verse 28, if you loved me, you would rejoice. But before giving them that sort of ever so gentle scolding, he uses these verses of our text to assure them that They are going to receive two special gifts. There are two gifts given to all believers. And those two gifts in our passage are the illuminating presence of God the Spirit and the eternal peace of God the Son. So let's look at this illuminating presence of God the Spirit, mainly in verse 26. One of the major themes of John's gospel is that we have a desperate need for truth. All truth comes from God, of whom the apostle Paul writes in Titus 1.2, God cannot lie. But in a fallen world, that's broken by sin, we are alienated from God, we're estranged from His truth, we are entirely enthralled with lies. We desperately need truth, but we live in a world of lies that's filled with liars, and it's being guided by Satan, whom Jesus calls the father of lies. Back in John chapter 8, many of the Pharisees and Sadducees were struggling with Jesus' message, Jesus' teaching. They could not and would not accept his message of truth, and therefore, they determined to murder him. And Jesus says back there in John 8, that they're both unwilling and unable to believe his message. He says, you cannot hear my word. Now what's that mean? Assuredly, their ears picked up the sound, their brain interpreted the language, they heard the words, but what Jesus is saying is not that they are incapable of hearing it, but they're incapable of believing it, they cannot accept it. There is no apparatus by which depraved sinners can accept truth. So here's what Jesus says to them back in John 8 verses 43 through 45. He says, why do you not understand my speech? It's because you cannot hear my word. You are of your father the devil and the lusts of your father you will do. He was a murderer from the beginning and abode not in the truth because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks of his own, for he is a liar and the father of it. And because I tell you the truth, you believe me not." So, even in the same context there in John 8, the very same chapter in which Jesus says, you shall know the truth and the truth will set you free, He also tells us that mankind by ourselves are both unwilling and unable to hear truth. As a matter of fact, the Apostle Paul picks up the same idea later in 2 Timothy 3.7 and describes the false teachers of this world as always learning but never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. So what can fix that? What can cure mankind's dreadful disorder of loving lies and rejecting truth? When on the inside our own sinful nature abhors the message of God, on the outside you've got Satan, our adversary, who is working to blind us. What can overcome that? Well, the only thing that can overcome that is the illuminating presence of the Spirit of God to bring us to truth. That's what God's Spirit does. If you want to walk with me for a moment through this upper room discourse, you'll note back in chapter 14, verse 6, Jesus says, I am the way, the truth, and the life. So he says, I am the truth. In verse 17, he says the Holy Spirit is going to come, and the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth. In chapter 15, verse 26, he again calls the Holy Spirit the Spirit of truth. In chapter 16, verse 7, he says, I tell you the truth. And how many times have you heard Jesus say, verily, verily, or truly, truly, of a truth? He was constantly affirming the truthfulness of what he says. In John 16 verse 13, he says that spirit of truth is going to come and guide you into all truth. And then at the very end of this section, when Jesus in chapter 17, all of chapter 17 is this prayer where Jesus is praying to the Father. In verse 17 of chapter 17, he prays, sanctify them with the truth. Your word is truth. This issue of truth, specifically the truth of seeing ourselves as lost sinners and Jesus Christ as the savior of sinners, it is a determining factor of discipleship. If you grasp this truth, you can be his disciple. If you do not grasp this truth, you cannot be his disciple. And that's why Jesus has come. is he's in the upper room this night. He's about to be arrested. And the very next day, he's going to be put on trial in several different ways. He's going to stand before Pontius Pilate, having been dragged, beaten, and bloodied to the Roman governor. And as he stands before Pontius Pilate, he's expected to defend himself. He refuses to defend himself. All he says is in chapter 18, verse 37, To this end was I born. For this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth, and everyone that is of the truth hears my voice. In other words, why would I defend myself to you? All I could say is things that are true, and you can accept nothing that's true. But the people who are of the truth, who I've come for, they'll hear. Now if you understand that as the background, this absolute necessity for the truth, then we can come back to John 14 and we can sit down there at the table with those disciples in the upper room and listen intently as Jesus explains, just because He is leaving the world does not mean that truth is leaving the world. The Holy Spirit of truth is going to come and illuminate the work of Jesus. Look at what he says there in our text in verse 26. But the Comforter, who is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things and bring all things to your remembrance whatsoever I have said unto you. Now, we saw last week that Jesus has already introduced the Holy Spirit. He's given the promise of the Spirit's work in the life of believers. But now, in this verse, Jesus says the Holy Spirit is a gift, and he gives two descriptions of the Spirit's illuminating presence in the life of a believer. The first description is the Holy Spirit teaches. Jesus says, he shall teach you all things. Now this gives some clarity as to why Jesus, back in verse 16, talked about the Holy Spirit as another comforter. If you remember that word another, another of the same kind of comforter. The Holy Spirit is the same kind of comforter as Jesus because they're both teachers. For three years, Jesus has had this teaching ministry with his disciples along the roadsides and in villages and synagogues, even in the temple itself. And several times people have come to Jesus and referred to him as rabbi. That's the word for respected teacher. But just how much can one individual learn in three years? We'd like to think that just because we say something once, everybody gets it, and then we can move on to deeper and more interesting subjects, but that hardly happens. Frequently, the disciples showed that to be the case, sometimes by misunderstanding, sometimes by contradicting, many times just outright ignoring what their rabbi Jesus had taught them. But I want you to just put yourself in the disciple's sandals for a minute. Most of them were fishermen. Now Matthew was a tax collector. There's another disciple named Simon who, he's a zealot. The zealot is a, essentially a political group of the time, of terrorists dedicated to overthrowing the Roman authorities. That's the background of these men. Jesus, in all his wisdom, had gone along the edges of the sea or the side of the road and called his disciples a bunch of rag-tag, uneducated nobodies. And now they're sitting in this upper room after three years, essentially having finished a doctoral program in theology in three years. How much of it could they actually absorb? Trying to learn everything about righteousness from Jesus in three years has to be like trying to drink water from a fire hose. But Jesus is the master teacher and he knows his students. There is a sense in which Jesus is revealing all their mortal minds can handle at this moment. And it goes a long way to explain why he says in verse 25, these things have I spoken to you being yet with you. Right, these things, not all things. There are some things while I'm here with you that I've not told you just because you can't handle it all. If he had told them everything, it would be too much. As a matter of fact, you can see that in chapter 16, verse 12. Here's what he says. He says, I have yet many things to say unto you, but you cannot bear them now. I have experienced the same thing at times in the college. There is a point at which the instructor needs to recognize their students have had enough. You know, you got to give them a break and give them some time for the information to drain down. But here, there's no more time. This is the night before the crucifixion. He has not told them everything, and he also knows of the things that he has told them, they have not understood everything. And so the promise here is not just about a comforter Holy Spirit who's going to come and make them feel better. He's going to come and complete their teaching. So he says the work of the Spirit is he shall teach you all things. But there's another promise about the illuminating presence of God's Spirit. Not only does he teach, he also reminds. Jesus says there in verse 26, he will bring all things to your remembrance whatsoever I have said unto you. The Spirit is not only going to teach them lessons that Jesus has not yet given them, but he's also going to remind them of things that Jesus said that they had forgotten. There is this awesome example of this. If you would, look back at John chapter 2. John chapter two, if you turn there, John gives us kind of a flash forward in John chapter two. So what's happened in John two is Jesus has entered the temple. He's run out the money changers and those selling lambs and doves. And the Jews gather around him in verse 18 of John chapter two and essentially say, well, you'd better give us some sign of what kind of authority you have to do these things. And Jesus' answer in verse 19 is, here's the sign, destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up. Now the Jews heard that and thought he was crazy. I mean, they even say, look, they've just finished a temple remodeling project that's been going on for 46 years. What do you mean you destroy this temple and I'll raise it up in three days? They didn't understand. And Jesus' own disciples did not understand what Jesus was saying there. I know verse 21 explains it and says he was speaking of the temple of his body, but you have to remember, John is writing that 60 years in the future because he understands now. He is very clear about he did not understand that day and long forgot about it. But look at verse, Look at verse 22. When therefore he was risen from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this unto them, and they believed the scripture and the word Jesus had said. What do you have to do in order to remember something? You gotta forget it. So if you go back to the upper room, here they are, they're three years after that incident. They had forgotten it, it was not on their radar anymore. As Jesus is talking about dying and at some point coming back to them, none of them are sitting in the upper room with enough clarity to raise their hand and ask, hey Jesus, does this have something to do with what you said three years ago about raising up the destroyed temple? They don't remember he even said that. But here's Jesus just before his arrest. promising them in our text that the Holy Spirit is going to come, and He's going to teach you all things, and He's going to bring to your remembrance the things that I've said to you. And it's the only way that they come to understand what Jesus said back there in John 2. And that's what He's saying. The disciples remembered and they believed the words which Jesus had said. That's how the illuminating presence of God's Spirit works. He recalls things to our memory. He gives clarity. He reveals meaning. He is illuminating. When I say that, that word illuminating literally means just to shed light on. He's shedding light on the truths which Jesus taught. Now I don't want us to go too far with this in our modern application, because this is primarily a promise to the apostles first, and then to us by extension. Now I'm not saying that the Spirit doesn't do the same thing for us, but he doesn't do it exactly the same way. So let me give you an example. Where were you when Jesus said, destroy this temple and in three days I'll raise it up? You weren't born. You weren't there. You didn't hear it. So this promise that Jesus is making in our text is that the Holy Spirit will remind you of whatever I have said unto you, but that can't apply directly to us in this case because we were not there to hear those words. Jesus did not say those words to us. You never heard them, so the Spirit is not going to one day make you remember, oh, I remember that day in the temple where I heard Jesus say, that's not how it's gonna work. It's different for us. This promise is primarily for those men who heard the words of Jesus firsthand and then to us by extension because the Holy Spirit is going to bring to their memory the words of Jesus so that they can record and write down the words of Jesus. So the apostles and their companions are going to be led by the Spirit to record the New Testament. So that even though you did not hear the words of Jesus yourself firsthand, you can read them, you have them. That's what we're reading today. That's our text. It's the words of Jesus. And that's the way the Holy Spirit works today. He's still illuminating, he's still teaching, he still reminds, but he does it through the record of Scripture. The Holy Spirit is a teacher that lives inside believers, but that is not some promise that you're gonna get direct revelation from God. The Holy Spirit is a teacher who's teaching through a textbook. Back in my Pre-Bible college days, I had to take a science elective. I was not thrilled about it. So I signed up for meteorology class because that sounded fun. And I had a professor named Fred Lutyens. After a few weeks of class, one of the students was struggling with the material and kept asking questions. And in class one day, one of the students looked at Professor Lutyens and apologized for asking so many questions and said, look, you do a great job of explaining it, but the textbook is horrible. Professor Lutyens kind of rolled his eyes, and a lot of people in the class snickered. Guy sitting beside the student pointed at the textbook cover is like Fred Lutyens. The instructor wrote the textbook. When the Holy Spirit teaches you, remember the Holy Spirit wrote the textbook. Right? He's got all the material in here that you need to learn. So don't ask for direct revelation from God. Ask for an understanding of the revelation that God's given you. The Bible is the revelation of God's Spirit to you, and the Spirit who brought the truth to the mind of the apostles has written it in His Word, so He uses that Word to enlighten you. He teaches by this divine textbook. That does mean that you have to read it. It is the height of ignorance to ask the Spirit to remind you of Scripture that you've never read. When you get into the Word, you ask the Spirit for aid in understanding the Word. When you go about living your everyday life, you ask the Spirit for aid in remembering what it is you've learned. Have you ever had some difficult experience or some trial in life and in the middle of it, a passage of scripture came to mind? Don't take credit for that, it's not you. You have the Holy Spirit inside you who can bring to remembrance those things that you need. The Holy Spirit takes the holy word and uses it to make holy people. But follow me here. If the job of the Spirit is to teach and he's bringing to your memory the things that you've heard or the things that you've read, then you need to be hearing and you need to be reading. How many Christians have mistakenly prayed, oh God, would you please speak to me, and done it with their Bible on the coffee table in pristine condition because they never open it? This book is God speaking to us. It is the Spirit speaking to it. It is the words of Jesus and the Spirit will use it to reveal it to us as we engage in reading it and studying it. Later on in his letters, the same apostle John is going to expand on this promise and explain it in 1 John 2 verse 20. He says, but you have an unction from the Holy One and you know all things. I love that word unction. It means anointing. Like being anointed with oil. You are anointed with the Holy Spirit. You have this unction, like oil being poured out on you and streaming down and seeping into every part of your life and bringing to recollection the Word of God. That's the promise that Jesus is giving there in verse 26 about the illuminating presence of God the Spirit. In verse 27, the second gift given to all believers is the everlasting peace of God the Son. Peace is peace I leave with you. My peace I give unto you, not as the world gives give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. Now I want to point out those words, I leave with you, Those words, that is the language of a last will and testament. When you die and you're going to leave things to someone, he could as easily have said, I bequeath to you the peace of Jesus Christ that he's promising here is an inheritance granted to all believers through faith. And so he adds in verse 27, this is my peace, this is not the world's peace. You cannot accept any counterfeits for this. There are false sources and fictitious ideas of peace that are decidedly not part of what Jesus is promising here. This is not the peace of the world. Jesus said he is giving peace not as the world gives, because the world cannot give peace. It has no peace to offer. John MacArthur commented on this idea when he asked the question, how many peace treaties that have been signed have been broken throughout human history? His answer, all of them. We seldom try to make peace. We never really keep any peace. The apostle Paul goes about when he describes mankind as being enemies of God and at war with one another. Here's what Paul says in Romans. He says, their feet are swift to shed blood. Destruction and misery are in their ways. The way of peace they have not known. The world is full of anger and hatred and angst and bitterness and anxiety and malice. This is not a peaceful place. In the time of this upper room discourse, in the first century, the known world was thought to be at peace. The emperor Augustus, the same emperor who issued that decree for a census at the time of Jesus' birth, there is in his reign another decree he made, and it was called the Pax Romana, Roman peace. Roman peace, doesn't that sound nice? You know what Roman peace is? It's the sound of soldiers marching in the distance. It's the sight of an armed legion coming down your road. It is the rattling of a thousand shields and the gleam of a thousand spear tips. It is the slightest insult toward Rome being answered with your street lined with the crucified bodies of your neighbors. Roman peace was not peace, Roman peace was gained by a sword. And the Jewish expectation of their Messiah is he was gonna come and bring a bigger sword. But Jesus said, I am not giving you peace like the world gives. This is not the peace of the world. And it is not peace with the world. We really have to reconcile this promise of peace with Jesus' statement in Matthew 10, 34. In that passage, as Jesus is preparing his disciples for the relationship they're gonna have with the world as they preach the gospel, he says, do not think that I am come to send peace on earth. I have not come to send peace, but a sword. And so what he's saying there is in the context of our relationship with the world as we go out and we proclaim the gospel and we live Christian lives, Jesus says our relationship with the world is going to be one of violence and abuse. The world will so hate the gospel of Jesus it will turn fathers against sons and mothers against daughters. So when Jesus promises this inheritance of peace, it is not the peace of the world, and it is not peace with the world. He's going to make that very clear before he's done with this upper room discourse, the very last verse of the message before he starts his prayer at the beginning of John 17. The last verse of John 16 is, These things that I have spoken unto you, that you might have peace in the world, you shall have tribulation. But be of good cheer, I have overcome the world. You can have peace and not be at peace with the world. You'll have tribulation in the world. So what Jesus is promising here is not peace of the world, and it's not peace with the world, and it is not simply peace of mind. When we think about peace, we tend to think of relaxation and calm and serenity. And in some ways, that is peace, but we embrace a kind of peace that is nothing more than an imitation of peace because we find peace in some calm, quiet moment where we can catch our breath. in looking at a starry sky at night and the gentle rocking of the waves while you're sitting at a beach and we go, oh, this is peaceful. That's not true peace because it's temporary. At some point, there's going to be some screeching siren that's going to stop the calm and clouds are going to roll in and your beach vacation is going to end and then what happens to your peace? That is definitely not the kind of peace that Jesus is promising here. He's not talking about tranquility during serene circumstances. He's speaking of the confidence, confident assurance of believers even in the middle of dire circumstances. All too often the world gets this false sense of security by the words, well, everything's going to be okay. Everything's fine. It's going to be all right. It's all going to work out. In reality, the world should never be comforted by such words because they're simply not true. When you are a lost sinner, you have declared yourself to be the enemy of God. Everything is not fine. It is not going to be all right. It is not going to work out. In the Old Testament, God was angry with Israel for their sin and he sent other nations against them to execute judgment on them. And all along in the process as he was doing that, there were these false prophets who kept saying, everything's fine. God said they were dressing a wound badly. In other words, it's like putting a bandaid on a gushing artery. He condemns the prophets who came with the message, peace, peace, when there is no peace. Without Jesus Christ, you are an enemy of God. You have no peace, and certainly you should have no peace of mind. So if Jesus isn't giving peace, the peace of the world, he's not giving peace with the world, and he's not giving peace of mind, what is it he's promising here? When he says, my peace I give unto you, what kind of peace is he talking about? Well first, it's peace with God. You know the story of Christ's birth. Most of you could quote, along with Luke chapter two, when the angel appeared to the shepherds that were in the field by night, and this is what it said, the angel said unto them, fear not, For behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be unto all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you. You shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and laying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, glory to God in the highest. and on earth peace, goodwill toward men. Imagine. It is hard to know just how tremendous that word peace sounds when you're being facedown by an army of angels. It says those shepherds were fearful. They were quaking at one angel. And then Luke says there was in the sky this heavenly host. That word host is the word army. There's an army of angels up there. But this is not an angel army that has come to wage war. It has come to proclaim peace on earth because Jesus was born. The salvation of God has been made flesh. That's the peace Jesus has come to bring. That was the promise of the Old Testament. Also about His birth. You know, Isaiah 9-6, For unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given, and the government shall be upon His shoulders, and He shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. Jesus can promise peace because peace is the purpose for his coming. Those sinners like you and me who are enemies of God, who are committing open mutiny against the sovereign king of the universe, Jesus has come to reconcile us and bring us to peace. Without him, we are nothing more than dirty rebels facing God's wrath. But Jesus took that offense of sin which made us rebels under God's wrath and he took it onto himself and he went to the cross absorbing that wrath of God and God poured out his judgment on Jesus so that whoever believes in him doesn't have to perish but can have everlasting life. He's made peace through the blood of his cross so that you who are alienated and enemies by wicked works have been reconciled to God. He offers peace with God and he also offers the peace of God. When you have the everlasting peace of God the Son, you've got the peace of God abiding in your heart. It's not the peace that the world gives because this peace is supernatural. It transcends humanity. This is the peace of a spirit-filled believer. When you understand that this promise in verse 26 of the Holy Spirit and the promise in verse 27 of the peace of Jesus, they're connected. They're not apart from each other. The illuminating presence of God the Spirit and the eternal peace of God the Son are connected. In fact, everything in this chapter from verse 1, look at chapter 14 verse 1, all the way down through verse 27 in our text, all of it's connected because it is sandwiched between these similar statements. Let not your heart be troubled. Why? Because of all these reasons. So let not your heart be troubled. And so when you believe in Jesus, you get the whole package here. There's comfort for troubled hearts. There's a place for you in the Father's house. There's the promise that you know God the Father because you know Jesus. There's unity with the Father, Son, and the Spirit. There's the illuminating presence of the Spirit in your life. There's the eternal peace of the Son in your life. because he's reconciled to you to God, and the very spirit of truth starts bringing these promises of peace back to the forefront of your mind, reminding you of the words of scripture, reminding you of the words of Jesus, just like he promised, so that you will remember these statements like, peace I leave with you, not peace like the world gives my giving to you, my peace I'm giving to you. Or Colossians 3.15, the peace of God rules in your hearts. Or Philippians 4.7, the peace of God which passes all understanding shall keep your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ. Or Isaiah 26 verse 3, you will keep him in perfect peace whose mind has stayed on you because he trusts in you. But do you trust in Jesus? Because God has provided sinful mankind one pathway for peace. That is Jesus Christ the Son. Without Him, you are a rebel against God. You are facing His wrath. You will stand before the Father and you will be judged for your sins. But through faith in Jesus Christ, the day's gonna come when you will stand before the Father, and He will look at you like a beloved child because of His beloved child. You'll be forgiven of sins through the work of Jesus. So confess your sins, repent, and run in faith to Jesus, and you'll receive the forgiveness of sins, and you will have the peace of Christ in your heart. Brother Larry, if you would come, if you would all stand.