We're going to begin by reading our text, John 14, Gospel of John. Please open in your Bibles there, and we'll be reading verses 18 through 24. We got started with it last week. We'll finish that message this week. John 14, 18 to 24, Jesus speaking. I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you. After a little while, the world will no longer see me, but you will see me. Because I live, you will live also. In that day, you will know that I am in the Father, and you in me, and I in you. He who has my commandments and keeps them is the one who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him. and will disclose myself to him." Judas, not Ascariot, said to him, Lord, what then has happened that you are going to disclose yourself to us and not to the world? Jesus answered and said to him, if anyone loves me, he will keep my word and my father will love him. and we will come to him and make our abode with him. He who does not love me does not keep my words, and the word which you hear is not mine, but the Father's who sent me." Last time we began learning seven disclosure truths that Jesus gave to his disciples, seven disclosure truths. that he gave to his disciples. Why? This was to deepen their relationship with him. He was going to disclose himself to them. These are truths that go along with that disclosure. And as he revealed himself, disclosed himself to his disciples, they came into a greater relationship with him. They deepened in their relationship with him. Disclosure truth number one we did last time, and that was in verse 18, we are not abandoned. We are not abandoned. He said, I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you. That comforts every believer in the present life. It reminds us Jesus personally cares for each one of us. Disclosure truth number two, also we covered last time, only disciples get to see Christ, at least in this era. That's in verse 19 at the beginning. He said, after a little while, the world will no longer see me, but you will see me. What was that referring to? Him coming to them after the resurrection and appearing to them, He actually gave them full sight of Himself, the resurrection appearances, right after His death for over 40 days in many different settings, touched Him, ate with Him, the whole bit to know for sure He was raised from the dead, and that proved He had not abandoned them. The world was never privileged to have that sight of Jesus, nor the fellowship that they enjoyed with Jesus because of that. Disclosure truth number three, also from last time. Believing in the resurrected one brings eternal life to us. If you believe in the one who's resurrected, you will be resurrected. Because I live, he says in the second part there of verse 19, you will live also. No one could say that except Jesus. Nobody else could say, follow me and I'll raise you from the dead. Jesus said that. So there's no greater reassurance than knowing that your greatest enemy, which is death, in case you didn't know, has already been taken care of. You are going to face death, but death itself is defeated. You'll be bodily raised from the dead for everlasting life because of your simple faith in Jesus Christ. No other philosopher, world leader, or spiritual man could ever promise his disciples that. He is the giver of eternal resurrection life. Now, today we continue with four more disclosure truths. Disclosure truth number four, you can write this down, we have unity with God. We have unity with God. This is very interesting. Look at verse 20. In that day, you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. Obviously all about unity. In that day, a day in Greek, hemera, usually meant a 24-hour day, but it didn't always mean one literal day. For example, in this very gospel, John uses it differently in John 8, 56, in a more general meaning, which could be translated time, where he says, your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day. He saw it and was glad, rejoiced to see the days in which I would live, in other words. So this day here also in chapter 14 is likely referring to the time, the general time, of Jesus's resurrection appearances, which occurred not in one 24-hour day, but as I said, over 40 days. Probably also includes the remaining 10 days as they waited for the descent of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, a total of 50 days. And that's probably the period with lingering effects into this age that he is referring to. The disciples, these blessed 11 men, remember Judas Iscariot has already left the room and he's gone to betray Christ. These blessed 11 disciples understood a lot more after the Resurrection what Jesus was trying to teach them. It was hard for them. In fact, even before the Spirit of God came, there were some light bulbs that went off in their mind as Jesus was teaching them the Scriptures following His Resurrection. You can look up John 2.22. It indicates that that began to happen right after the Resurrection, this new knowledge. But really the realization of all this oneness that's being talked about in verse 20 came more with the arrival of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost. Let's face it, these disciples were in a tough position on this Thursday night. They're listening. They have a set of expectations. They only have so much capacity to understand. Even later in this discourse, Jesus is going to say, I have many more things to tell you, but you cannot bear them right now. And he knew that. He knew he'd already overloaded them. He'd poured on their sponge, and the sponge was already filled, and it was dripping. They couldn't handle anymore. And so he's telling them things, but they don't really get it this night, but they're going to get it. He's telling them of the day they're going to understand it. Now we're all past that day, so we are able to look back and understand, but you have to understand the predicament they were in. So Jesus is just letting them know, there's going to be a day and you're going to come to know. That little verb, know, I think is instructive as well. It's the Greek verb gnosko. You've heard me reference that before. It's not just like a mathematical knowledge where you learn facts. It's more of an experienced knowledge. It includes facts. It includes understanding, but it's an understanding that you have close to you. It's intimate. It's experienced knowledge. And so he says, you're going to not only just get it in your minds, you're going to begin to perceive it in your soul as to what all that I'm telling you really means. And so I think that's important. So yeah, the disciples had been with Jesus three and a half years in seminary, walking around with him, a traveling seminary, learning all about the church and the kingdom of God and everything like that, and they still didn't get it. Their understanding was progressive, but there'd be a real outpouring of knowledge and understanding following all these events that were just about to happen to them, that they were on the brink of that night. And what the disciples came to understand was unity, relationship. Oh, here we go again. We were talking about this last week and here it is again. How important to the Lord Jesus Christ was his relationship with his disciples. Please don't see Christianity as just a cold, detached ethic that one tries to live up to. It is about relationship with one who very much wants to be close to you and have you close to him. Look at verse 20, you see three unities being spoken of there. The first unity is that the Son is in the Father. Jesus said, you will know then that I, the Son of God, am in my Father. Preposition in Greek is en, and there refers to location. I'm inside, located in, my father. In other words, by trying to picture the relationship spatially, you can't get any closer when one is inside the other. And you realize, wow, they really are one. That's what Jesus said in John 10 30. I and the father are one. And so he's trying to get them to understand that here too. But the resurrection and the coming of the Spirit of God would convince the disciples of this truth, that Jesus was truly divine, was in God in the sense that he was God. That resurrection really nailed it in their minds. In fact, in Romans 1, 4, Paul was also an apostle, said that Jesus was declared the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead. How do we know Jesus is the Son of God? Because he was declared to be the Son of God by his resurrection. When he defeated death, now we know he's the Son of God. Nobody else did that. No one else is his equal. That very resurrection itself is a statement. It's a declaration. He is the Son of God. The disciples got that. He's God. This man we were with is God. And so they really fully understood that, I think, following the resurrection. They had understanding of that to some degree before the resurrection. Of course, this does not mean the disciples understood the Trinity in all of its fullness. None of us do today. The greatest theologians that have walked on our ground, they've never understood the Trinity. That doesn't mean that it's not true. It just means it's beyond our limited understanding. God's the creator. He's infinite. How are we who are created and are finite going to understand the infinite? We weren't even created to have that capacity. It should not surprise us. In fact, we should expect that to try to understand God in His fullness is beyond our ability. That may hurt. the pride of the intellect of man, but nevertheless, it is true. In fact, in Job 11, 7, it asks this question, can you discover the depths of God? Now, we try to discover the depths of everything. I mean, science is trying to discover everything, and that's great. That's the curiosity, inquisitiveness that are in us being made in the image of God. But he asked the question, can you discover the depths of God? No one can. And then he asks a follow-up question, can you discover the limits of the Almighty? These are rhetorical questions. The answer is no. But it does show that insofar as they can, they perceive the unity of the Father with the Son. By the way, it was not some church council centuries later that sat down and invented the doctrine of the Trinity. It was being understood that very night, a tiny little bit by the disciples, following the resurrection, the coming of the Spirit of God, they began to get that unity. Two in one, the Spirit of God is in the same context. They began to understand this is three in one. So that's not a human-invented doctrine. That was there. Jesus wanted them to understand that doctrine from the beginning. And so they are promised they're going to understand it. Now that's the first unity, and that's the basic unity. There's another unity that follows, a second one. They would also come to understand that the disciples were in the Son. S-O-N. Up till then, the disciples had been a band of followers. If you saw this rabbi, he'd have a bunch of guys following him. And then if you had this Jewish rabbi, there'd be another bunch of guys following him. And you were in that rabbi or in that teacher only in the sense that you were in the group that was following him. That's probably the sense that they had at this point in time. It might not have gone much deeper than that. All of that would change at Pentecost when the Spirit would inhabit them. Then they would begin to understand a more spiritual and basic union, what has been called the mystical union between the believers and Christ, the mystical union that the Spirit of God brought to them. They were all baptized into Christ. That is, they were immersed into Christ. They were clothed with Christ. And so they were put inside of Christ. When the Spirit came down, It was like He was flooded upon them and it overwhelmed them. And now their location was that they were in Christ because the Spirit that came was the Spirit of Christ and it enveloped them. And now, as they went about doing their church work, it was in that environment. They were in Christ. 1 Corinthians 12, 13 is a great verse to understand the work of the Spirit in our age. It just says, by one Spirit, we were all baptized into one body. That stresses the unity, but also that we're inside Christ. 1 John 4, 13 also echoes this. By this we know that we abide in Him and He in us. because He has given us His Spirit. You see again the Holy Spirit's role in that. Colossians 3.3 also expresses this. For you, talking to believers, you have died. That's a good thing, by the way. Don't look around and say, what happened to me? No, in Christ, you died. Your old you is gone. Thank God for that. You have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. And then he goes on to talk about when Christ appears, we will appear to be who we are because our life is really in Him. We're connected to Him. So it's a mystical union, but it's a true union, and in time we'll see the visible aspects of that union. Now we just perceive it. And so this is also why Paul developed the whole doctrine calling the church the body of Christ, because we are in Him and He is our head, you see. Now, the unity that we have in Christ is a true unity, but it doesn't make us equal with Christ. Christ's unity with the Father shows an equality there. Our unity with the Son does not mean we're equal with the Son. That's where some of the cults get into. They take verses like this, ignoring other clear passages, and they start making something more of the verse than it means. This means that we are united with Christ. It does not mean we're equal with Christ. John MacArthur succinctly distinguishes, believers do not become part of the Godhead. And I think that's a good way of putting it. Nevertheless, it is a close unity, and that is what is being expressed, our relationship with Christ. Notice the third unity also. The Son is in the disciples, not just one way, but the other way. Also, this mystical union. Christ actually dwells and lives inside of us. Collectively as a church, that's 1 Corinthians 3. Individually in our bodies as believers, that's 1 Corinthians chapter 6. Christ, of course, in His humanity, has a body. It's not saying that His body, a little piece of His body, is in our DNA. That's not the point. It doesn't mean that. It means that His presence in the Spirit of Christ also is in us, and so we house Christ. What did Paul say in Galatians 2.20? I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but what? Christ lives in me. Life that I have is His life, you see. 2 Corinthians 13, 5. People want to know, am I saved? Am I really truly a Christian? This is a great verse to look at, 2 Corinthians 13, 5. It says this, test yourselves. Give yourself a test. Test yourselves to see if you are in the faith. Examine yourselves, or do you not recognize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you? Unless, indeed, you fail the test. If you're truly saved, Christ is in you. Examine yourselves to see if that is true. So all of this expresses, again, the wonderful close relationship we have with Christ. Christ in God, believers in Christ, Christ in believers. And there's more. Look at verse 21. Disclosure truth number five. Disclosure truth number five. Keeping the commands brings love and disclosure from God. Keeping the commands, that is Christ's commands, brings love and disclosure from God. Verse 21, he who has my commandments and keeps them. is the one who loves me. We could spend weeks on that alone. And he who loves me will be loved by my father. Does that seem strange? Talking about God's love in a different sense there. And I will love him. I thought Christ loved everybody. What's he talking about? And will disclose myself to him. See, not to the others, but to him. There's a disclosure that's for believers. As in verse 15, Jesus returns to a very important theme, love for Jesus Christ, true love for Jesus produces obedience to His commandments. That is a bottom line truth. Anyone who doesn't teach that doesn't understand Christ, doesn't understand Christianity. Where someone is not keeping the Word of God, there's no love for Christ there. And he'll say the opposite of that, you'll see in a few verses. Those who have the commands and keep them, they are the ones who love Christ. People today can say, I love Jesus, sing about loving Jesus, go to church and express that they love Jesus. The only ones who love Jesus, and this is what Jesus said, this isn't what we invented, are the ones who have and hold those commandments and then keep them, period. The word and verb have, it's actually a participle, a present participle. It's a normal verb for have. Ekon, it means that you are continually the ones who have the commands. That doesn't mean you just heard them. That means you've grasped them, you've held on to them, you have them, and now you're going to do what they say. You're going to keep them. The verb keep, which is also a participle, a present participle, means teron. It means you continuously obey. In other words, now your life has changed and now you walk in the Word of God. You keep the command. If you're not following the Word of God, you don't love Christ. Just that simple. Love is the verb agapao. We get agape from it. It just refers to that divine love, that committed, loyal love husbands are to have for their wives, an agape-like love. It's a love of sacrifice. It's the love that Jesus demonstrated to us back in chapter 13, verse 34. He said, a new commandment I give to you, that you love one another even as I love you. So there it is. That's how you love. We are to have that love for Christ, and we show that by keeping his commands. Do you remember the lesson that the prophet Samuel taught King Saul in the Old Testament? Saul was given words of instruction about what he was supposed to do in killing the animals when he, I think it was the Amalekites, he was supposed to slaughter and all of that, and Samuel comes walking into the camp after the battle, and Saul is so pleased with himself, I've obeyed the Lord, and Samuel's like, then why am I hearing all these sheep bleeding, you know? What are they doing, you know, going bad, bad? They should all be dead. You didn't obey the word of the Lord. And then he said those very important truths. Has the Lord as much delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed than the fat of lambs. You know, some people want to go and worship God and express their spirituality and ignore the Bible. God doesn't receive that as worship. He rejects it. He covers his ears. He don't want any of it. They feel so close to God that God feels not so close to them. It is only by our unswerving commitment to the Word of God, without compromise, that we prove our love to Christ. I hope that's why you're at Hope Bible Church. And I hope that's why you're going to be part of Baltimore Bible Church, those of you that are. Because you want to be part of a group of people that have an unswerving commitment to the Word of God. Doesn't James 2.14 say that anyone who says he has faith but he doesn't have works, can that faith save him? The answer is no, it can't. Did Abraham prove that he had faith by sitting around saying, I have faith. Listen to me sing a song. See how spiritual my face looks. Look at the clothes that I'm wearing. None of that mattered. It mattered that he took his son, Isaac, to Mount Moriah and put a knife up above him and was about ready to carry out exactly what God told him to do, right? That's obedience. That's obedience. No obedience, no love, and no faith, and no salvation. Let me expand on this teaching a bit, make a few points. First, believing in Jesus is no mere mental assent to truths about Christ. Agreeing Jesus died on the cross for my sins and he was raised from the dead is only the beginning point of saving faith. You have to move beyond that to embrace Christ and trust him and result in love and obedience. There are those who think that they can be free from hell and have Jesus as savior and never choose to follow Christ as Lord. That is a deception. Anyone who doesn't follow Christ as Lord doesn't have Jesus as Savior. Faith in Christ always follows Christ. Yes, we do it imperfectly. We stumble and we sin as we follow. We learn and we grow. It's not about how perfect we are following. It's about the fact that we are following. Second, by emphasizing obedience, Jesus is not teaching legalism. He's not saying, I got a list of 16 commandments or 25 commandments here in my pocket. I want to leave this with you guys, fellows, on my last night. Make sure you keep all of them and then I'll know you love me. It was more about all of the teaching that he had. It was about paying attention to his instruction. We talked about that, that his commands were his teachings, his word. In fact, he talks about his word there. This is not, I keep the 10 commandments and so I love God. That's not what it's about. This is a way of life. These are not restrictive rules handed down. Third, love for Christ is closely connected to what we do with the scriptures. I guess we said this, but I want to emphasize it. Love for Christ is closely connected with what we do with our Bibles. There's a necessary and vital connection between how we treat the words of the Bible in our lives and our actual love for Jesus Christ. In love, we treasure His words. We try to put them into action. When we don't, we confess and we get right back in line. Churches who try to act like they represent Christ, but don't fully adhere to the Word of God, don't fully preach all of it, selective about what they think is true or is relevant for their people to listen to, are all showing a lack of love for Jesus, even while they affirm their love for Jesus. How do I know that? Because Jesus said it. Is there anything unclear about what he said? That's not hard, is it? It's pretty plain. The hard part is in believing it and following it. Fidelity to the word of the Bible is fidelity to Christ. Fourth, Jesus is not teaching some deeper or higher life theology for only a select group of highly spiritual disciples. Verse 21 is truth for all believers, you, me. All believers love Christ. All believers keep his commandments. There's not love for God if they don't keep the commandments, as we said. In fact, 1 Corinthians 16.22, it's an astonishing verse. 1 Corinthians 16.22, it says, if anyone does not love the Lord, he is to be accursed. Pretty strong. So if you don't love the Lord, you're under a curse from Scripture. Romans 8.28 equates those who love God with those who are called to salvation according to His purpose. They're put in a positional grammatical position. They're equated in that verse, Romans 8, 28. Fifth, this does not mean that we earn Christ's love for us by obedience. In other words, this verse is not teaching a work salvation. We don't initiate love with God. He initiates love with us. In fact, that's exactly what 1 John 4, 19 says. It says, and this is the whole verse, we love because He first loved us. Where's the initiation in the relationship? With us? No, with God. God first loves us, then we learn to love Him. 1 John 3, 16, we know or we've realized love by this, that Jesus laid down His life for us. How do we know how to love? I don't know how to love. What should I do? Oh, Jesus is my example. He laid down His life for me, and now I got it. I got to go do that for others. And that's how we perceive it. It starts with Him. So this is not a work salvation. The initiative is always with Christ. With all those expansions in mind about verse 21, and we could spend so long on this verse, it's a fantastic verse. I'd encourage you to memorize it and meditate on it more because we can't cover all of its thoughts here deeply. But with those in mind, Jesus now adds thought after thought here. The one who loves me, he adds this, will be loved by my father. Why is that? Because the Father loves the Son. John 3.35, the Father loves the Son and has given all things into His hand. Look how God treats the Son of God. John 5.20, for the Father loves the Son and shows Him all things that He Himself is doing. God the Father hides nothing from God the Son. So God's love for the world, we might say, the lost and sinful world that's not in relationship with him, that initial love that he has for the world in sending Christ helps them to come to faith in Christ. And then as we come to faith in Christ, we learn to love Christ. And as we love Christ, then God heaps on even more love of a relational nature onto us because we now love Christ. You following that? There's an initial love of God that leads us to have faith in Christ when we're wretched and poor and miserable sinners, but there's also a love that follows our faith in Christ where God is pleased with our response to Christ and he loves us in a relational way. I think Dr. Hendrickson has a very interesting quote here. I'd like to give it to you that explains this. But does not the Father's love precede ours? Is it not true that the whole of our love is but the answer to His love? True, not only, but that is also exactly what the Apostle John remembered of the teaching of Jesus in 1 John 4, 19. But why cannot God's love both precede and follow ours? That is exactly what it does, and that is the beauty of it. First, by preceding our love, it creates in us the eager desire to keep Christ's precepts. Then, by following our love, it rewards us for keeping them. Isn't that amazing? Here we have a love for the Lord Jesus Christ that we've learned because He's loved us, and because we love the Son, now the Father also loves us in a relational sense. That's what the verse is saying. We come naked, we come blind, we come lost. And this is Romans 5, 8. You know, even when we were sinners, Christ died for us, right? And we say, what a great love. And yet here we see a relational love, that now that we're in His beloved Son, that love that God the Father has for His Son, which is a love of full approval, a love of close relationship, now He has that love only for believers and for nobody else, because it's pleasing to Him now. You are now pleasing to God because of your location in the beloved one, Jesus Christ. And so, too, we have the assurance that the Son loves us. Look at the next clause. And I will love him, and I will disclose myself to him. Remember, the Father loves the Son, and so because the Father loves the Son, He shows the Son everything. Now, He doesn't show everybody everything. There's a special love that He has for the Son of God. So because He has a special love for the Son of God that He doesn't have for others, He shows the Son everything that He's doing. That's the proof of it. He doesn't do that to the world. He doesn't disclose Himself that way to the world. He shows Himself to His Son. Now we are in the Son, and Christ says, I will disclose Myself to you. The privilege of a relationship, the privilege of a love relationship with God, that's for believers only, beloved. It's for believers only. You are loved by the Father and you are loved by Me, He says. He wanted to add that, and the Son will love you. It's devastating to think that nobody loves you. It's devastating for people to go through the holidays, through a time in life where, well, we just heard of this guy in Kansas City Chiefs that shot his girlfriend and then killed himself. I don't know what was going through his mind was people lose relationships. They sometimes don't even want to live anymore. And the holidays come, and people wonder, who cares about me? Who knows this is a special day for me? Who cares about the sorrows that I go through? Who really wants to be close to me? And everyone has a degree of selfishness, and that's why our relationships aren't better. We're thinking all about, who's loving me? Instead of, who can I go and love? And we somehow lose our loneliness and our love for other people, you see. But even with that loneliness that does settle on all of us from time to time, there is the statement Christ. is there for you. He loves you. He loves you. He knows you. He's disclosing himself to you. This should be personal to you. This is not some vague way in which he loves the institution of the church, okay? He loves you. He loves us, but He loves you, and He knows you, and He wants you to have a closer relationship with Him. And you need to know that. You need to develop in that relationship. You need to believe that. You need to draw closer to Him, just like you'd find out that someone else... You know, somebody in the church really cares about you. Really, they do. I need to get to know them a little better. I think I'll go have a conversation with them. God wants to know you better. Of course, He knows all about you, but in that relational sense. He wants that connection, you see. He's drawing you in through His love. That's what He's doing. If you're not yet a believer, God loves you. He bids you to follow Him. You're not yet in a relationship with Him, but because of His mercy and His pity and His patience towards you, no matter what sins you've committed, He loves you. If you're already a believer and you're in Christ, you need to understand the favor you have because God looks upon you the way he looks upon his only begotten son, his beloved one. You're special to him. You should let the love of Christ overwhelm your mind. You should let it permeate your thinking. You should grow to understand that. Don't be stagnant in your understanding of salvation. I'm safe, I'm going to heaven. Give me something to do in church, I'm fine. Grow deep in your love of God the Father and God the Son. Christ is one with God. You are one with Christ. Christ is in you. There's no way you are not loved immediately and personally by Christ. There's no way. So whatever you're thinking in your mind when it doesn't happen, whatever I think in my mind when I'm thinking, oh no, nobody cares, nobody's there, boo-hoo, And that cannot be funny. Sometimes that can be deep and that can be very hurtful. Well, you're wrong. Satan's gotten into your thinking. Correct it. Here's the verse. Meditate. Ask God to help you believe it. It's here for you. How tragic it would be to know someone feels terribly lonely in our congregation. Invite them over. How terrible it would be to hear one day someone gave up on life because they didn't think anyone cared about them and they killed themselves here at Hope Bible Church. How terrible it is in any church. And we can't control things that happen in other churches, but we ought to really work to care for one another here. Christ will show himself to you. Show himself. Emphonizo, to manifest. Actually, the term is used in a variety of ways. I won't give you the full explanation here, but sometimes the resurrection appearances could use that word. Sometimes in the Old Testament, the Greek Old Testament, the Septuagint, it would use that term for theophanies when God would appear. Jesus's entire first coming to earth, born in Bethlehem, was a manifestation, according to 2 Timothy 1.10. His second coming will also be a manifestation, a showing, according to 2 Thessalonians 2.8 and many other verses. But here, this self-disclosure is that that comes to the heart and soul of a believer through the ministry of the Holy Spirit. In chapter 16, verse 15, it says, all things that the father has are mine. Therefore, I said that the spirit of God takes of mine and will disclose it to you. God has shown me everything. I'm showing the spirit of God and the spirit of God is now bringing that to you and disclosing Christ and the father to you. What a privilege. He not only loves us, He wants to share His being with us. Isn't that what lovers do? When lovers love, what do they do? They get together, and sometimes to the rest of us it's kind of sick, you know, kind of looking at it, they're just oohing and aahing over each other, and they're just sharing everything with one another. It's like, go back to the other room and do that somewhere, you know? But what are they doing there? They're saying, I want you to know me to the fullest. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I want that also. And they're sharing life, they're sharing their fears, they're sharing their life's aspiration. Well, I'm not saying that God is discovering. I'm just saying there is that relationship we are to have where God has said, I love you and I am revealing my heart and my person to you. The world won't get it. The world can't get it. But you can. You can know me and you can grow in me. So deepen. You should want to because he loves you and he has revealed himself to you. John 5, 20, for the father loves the son and shows him all things that he himself is doing. When Jesus was praying to the father in John 17, he says, Father, I desire that they also whom you have given me, that's your election, you see, be with me where I am. I want to be with the ones I love, you see. so that they may see my glory." Now they'll know who I really am. They're just seeing this outward 33-year-old looking Jewish guy. They haven't seen my glory yet. They don't really know in the fullest who I am. Peter, James, and John got a little glimpse on the Mount of Transfiguration, right? But that was just a little glimpse. He wants us to be there in the heavenly kingdom to see my glory. For you loved me before the foundation of the world, he prayed to the Father. So Jesus wants you to know Him, so He has come to you to disclose Himself to you so that you will feel, perceive, understand, know the light in Him. Let Him be the very apple of your eye, people. Disclosure truth number six. God's disclosure works according to God's plans. God's disclosure works according to God's plans. Look at verse 22. Judas, not Iscariot, said to him, Lord, and he's trying to process all of this. You could tell, poor guy, these guys just didn't get it this evening. What then has happened that you are going to disclose yourself to us and not to the world? I thought there was a Messianic kingdom coming. What happened? He's actually not all that thrilled with the teaching that's going on. He might have been looking around, looking across like, Wait a minute, this wasn't what we signed up for. What happened to the plan? Now this Judas is noticed not Iscariot, very emphatic. He's another Judas. He is probably equated with the son of James, mentioned in Luke 6.16 and Acts 1.13. Remember, many of these men in ancient times had more than one name. Simon, Peter, Cephas were all Peter's names. Son of James could also be equated with Thaddeus in Matthew 10.3 and Mark 13.18. Thaddeus may have been his nickname. It's a name that shows he was an endearing man. But he interrupts the Lord. Not really an interruption. They're having more like a conversation here at the table. And by the way, that indicates how closely they felt with Christ, that here he is, the Son of God, the magnificent rabbi, the teacher, and there are interruptions, and they're talking back and forth, and as a loving teacher, he receives their questions and he answers them. He was approachable. So this Judas's main concern is a private disclosure to disciples and not the public shebang that they were waiting for. The Scriptures made it very clear that when the Messiah came to Israel, he was a Very public figure. Daniel 7, all peoples, nations, and men of every language might serve the Messiah. His dominion is an everlasting dominion which will not pass away. Judas is processing that, so what happened there that you're not disclosing yourself to the world? Zechariah 14, another prophecy, in that day the Messiah's feet will stand on the Mount of Olives, which is in front of Jerusalem on the east side, and then it goes to describe all the things that would happen. Yeah, everybody's going to see Him. And there are going to be these massive things that happen. In fact, Jesus Himself prophesied this. Earlier this very week, this is Thursday night, earlier in the week, probably Monday or Tuesday, He prophesied and He gave the the Olivet Discourse, and in Matthew 24, 30, he said, then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky with power and great glory. It's gonna be loud, it's gonna be powerful, it's gonna be bright, it's gonna be beautiful. So the Messiah is supposed to have all of that apoctic-like display of power with earth-shattering events, and Judas can't figure it out. What is this private revealing to the disciples? How does that fit in? What's changed? Did something go wrong? We know nothing went wrong. Christ's disclosures must work according to God's sovereign plan. And the other prophecies which spoke of the suffering of the Messiah had to be fulfilled as well. We now know what Judas did not know, that there are two comings of the Jewish Messiah, one in suffering with rejection from his people, yet with a glorious resurrection, and in between a church age, followed by the coming of the Messiah in full glory. Now they were to get ready for the church age. They would get ready for the time of the Spirit, where the gospel would go out to all the nations, and the fullness of the Gentiles would come in, all part of God's plan and His prophecies. At His second coming, yes, there will be a full public disclosure to the world, not of love and relationship as this is describing, but of power and judgment. Now it was to be very different." Notice again his recycling to some of the same themes in our last Point, disclosure truth number seven in verses 23 and 24. Disclosure truth number seven, God dwells, God lives or dwells in those who keep his word. God lives and dwells in those, with those who keep his word. Verse 23, Jesus answered and said to him, this is the answer now, by the way, some people think he ignored the question. Clearly it's an answer. Jesus answered and said to him, if anyone loves me, he will keep my word. And my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our abode with him. He who does not love me does not keep my words, and the word which you hear is not mine, but the Father's who sent me." Is that an answer? Doesn't sound like it. It was an answer. It's similar to the answer in Acts 5 when they came even after the resurrection and said, Lord, is it at this time that you're going to restore the kingdom to Israel? And he agreed with them that there was going to be a restoration and the kind of kingdom they were looking for, but he told them the timing is not for you to know. He said, it's not for you to know the times and the epochs which the Father has fixed by his own authority, but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you and you will be my witnesses. And he goes on to describe the plan. In other words, this is truth now for this age. Get this into your mind. This is what you need to know for now. For now, what you need to know is I'm disclosing myself to those who love me and keep my words. That's what's happening in this dispensation, this economic arrangement of my dealing with the world, what's going to happen between now and then, that's the way it's going to be. You don't know how long that period is going to be. You don't know when the rest is going to come. Just focus on this." And as he answers Judas, I'm sure he answers the others that have the similar question. These are new covenant principles for the new age, with the witness of the Messiah coming from those filled with the Spirit of God, the Spirit living inside of them, where the Spirit has disclosed the Father and the Son, and now are in special relationship with him, and now have the special love of the Father upon them, the love of pleasure, the love of personal relationship, the love of full acceptance. What's the application for us again? rather than going through all this since it's really a summary of what was said before. The application again is to bathe ourselves in an understanding of the love that God has for us. Don't let your mind switch off of this. Think deeply on this. Carry the words of Christ with you. Ask God, disclose yourself more fully to me. I know you, I'm in personal relationship with you. I don't know you as well as I ought to, and that's why my sins at times seem so attractive to me, because I've lost sight of the beauty of your holiness. And I'm tickled and fancied by the things that are in the world around me, and they become much more important to me than they should. And there's still something in front of me that makes my view of you hazy, and I want to grow and understand and know you better. Yearn to have a deeper relationship with Christ. That's the application. We will come and make our abode with Him. How relational and personal is God? That word abode, by the way, is the same one that was used back in chapter, back in verse 2 of the same chapter, to dwell, a dwelling place in heaven, which people wrongly call a mansion. The mone, the dwelling place. God's dwelling place will be in us. Christ is preparing a dwelling place for us up there, and in the meantime, His, God's dwelling place is with us. Isn't that beautiful? Notice the we. We will come. So there's the Father and the Son. There's a we. There's persons. There's not one person, there's more than one person in the Trinity. The word we is used. By the way, this is the only place in all of the New Testament where it explicitly says the Father and the Son will take up residence in the believer. A very intimate and beautiful statement. And of course, tying in Pentecost with all of this, because it's through the Spirit of God that the presence of the Father and Son is communicated to us. We have Spirit, Son, and Father all living inside of us. The triune God taking up residence in us, we being the very temple of God. Amazing. The unity here really is overwhelming. not only three in one as the Godhead, but the Godhead living in us, we one with them, not as part of the Godhead again, but as united in relationship eternally, accepting Him and His love and His purposes for our lives. This has nothing to do with the inferior belief system of pantheism. And it's amazing how people take a beautiful... And this is how the world handles the promises of God. They don't get it. Well, this sounds like this is some kind of pantheism here. We're in God and God is in us. All is God. The trees are God. The birds are God. Is that what he said? Pantheism is so inferior, it loses the whole relational, personal aspect to it. You hear pantheists brag about how intelligent their doctrine is. They've just lost it all here. These words are set in the context of a Jewish meal, a strict monotheistic worldview where God is the creator of everything and is independent of everything else that's created and spoke everything into existence. He is allowing a portion of that creation to dwell with Him in great relationship, and they are those who are not part of His creation, but part of His Son. They're not in the world, they're in Christ, and now they are in Him and loved by Him. This is not pantheism. This is theism in a relationship with God. And this is not deism, where God designed a beautiful world and expressed his power and wound it up like a clock and got bored of it all and decided to go off somewhere else and ignore the rest of us while bad things happen to us. So is the explanation of the deists. No, this is a love relationship with God. Well, in case you think that there still can be people who love Jesus and don't keep his word, Jesus reverses what he said twice before in the positive sense. If you don't keep the word, you don't love me. When you take away the Bible and take away the teachings of Christ and don't follow them, you take away Christ. You don't have a Christ left over. It's amazing we have to say that, but it's amazing how many so-called Christian churches think they don't have to pay attention to the teachings of Christ. They don't have to go through it and carefully look at it and see what it says. When you take away His words, you take Him away. When you ignore the words, you ignore Him. When you despise the words, you despise Him. He has tied Himself to the words. That is not our worshiping the Bible. That is worshiping Christ through the Bible. Jesus here expresses the logic of true religion. You can't believe all things are true. It's impossible. All beliefs, all religions, they can't all be true. To obey is not the same thing as disobeying. How illogical is that? To keep the word is not the same thing as not keeping the word. Religious pluralism, the belief that everyone believes the same thing and all ends up in the same place, is so deficient, it's so misleading, it's so wrong, It's illogical, it's irrational, and it's unscriptural. If Christ's words are true, then all those who don't keep his words are promoting error and living in error, and they're wrong. It doesn't take someone smart to figure that out. The concluding reason is that Jesus's words are not just another expression that First century Jews came up with, oh, Jesus had a nice understanding of religion in the first century. We'll take a few ideas from him and we'll mix it in with a few other ideas of this other guy who came along in another century and we'll kind of put them all together and we'll have a modern belief system. People act like they're so smart. Jesus said, by the way, my teaching is not mine. It came from God. If you reject my teaching and act like you're really keeping it when you're not keeping it, you're rejecting God. And he knows, and he'll hold you accountable for it. Even in John 7, 16, he said, my teaching is not mine, but him who sent me. Well, we're out of time. All of this just is a whole new depth of the relationship he was going to have with the disciples following Pentecost. It really was not to their disadvantage that he was leaving them, you see. We are not less privileged now than they were to get to walk with Jesus by the shores of Galilee and along the roads throughout Samaria and Judea. We have a special privileged relationship, a love, relationship. We are beloved in Christ and drawn to him. To some of you, that's going to seem too subjective. You have your theological minds rolling, and you're like, you know, I relate to God just through cognitive things. Well, it's time for you to change, brother. You say, wait a minute, are you saying there's a subjective side to the Christian faith, pastor? Yep. There is a subjective side. There's a relational experience side to a walk with God, and you need to know it. You need to feel it. You need to perceive it. Always, and where people run in the air is they express their experience with God apart from the truth of Scripture or in contradiction to Scripture. Don't make another error and say, well, I know God just because I think on Bible truths and I don't experience them personally. The objective is to explain the subjective. I go to the Bible to understand what I'm supposed to experience and what it's supposed to be like. Remember, the peace of God will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. That's subjective, and I learn about that from objective scripture. I go to objective scripture, and it teaches me about this wonderful close relationship, a growing relationship I am to have with Christ and God. And so if I am really listening to the objective scriptures, I'm going to open up my heart to the subjective experience guided by the objective scripture. So you need to grow and you need to learn to relate to God more and more like that. Well, there's more that could be said. We have to prepare our hearts for a time of communion as it's called with God, the father, God, the son and God, the Holy spirit. Let me pray and then we'll have a song deep in our walk with you father. Help us commune with you deeper. Forgive us for the foolishness of our sin, that we, having the truth, act often like we're blind and don't have it. Deepen our walk with you. Thank you for your patience in drawing us closer and closer to you. Help us not be stubborn. Help us not be self-sufficient and proud, not be like the mule, but confess and walk closely with you. for your son's sake, in him, the beloved one. Amen.