Today we pick up in John 13, verse 31, and we'll read through the end of the chapter. It would be a great help to you and also to me if you do turn in God's word and keep it open the entire time, because we're going to look back at the passage right before this. So you can do that if you take from the Bibles that are in the pew right in front of you. But before we read, I would invite you to join with me as we pray and ask for the Lord's help for the hearing of the Word of God. Father in heaven, we thank you. We thank you for being who you are. We thank you that you are the holy, holy, holy God, full of power and might. And yet we also thank you, Heavenly Father, that you are the God who is love, and that you are the God of grace. So Father, we thank you that you have made yourself known to us sinners, that we might know you. And we thank you for the way that you have sent your Son to show us of the depths of your love that you have for us and to save us. So Father, we ask now for your help. I ask for your help as I seek to read and preach your word. I ask that you would give me strength, Lord, and that you would keep all of my words faithful to your authoritative truth. And pray and ask for all of us to receive the help of your Holy Spirit that he would give us ears to hear, that he would take the word and would work it deep within the depths of our hearts, and would give us new hearts, hearts that are not hard like stone, but hearts that are soft to the workings of the Holy Spirit, that we might be changed by this text and by it made more like unto the Savior who we love. Father, we pray all of these things in the matchless name of Christ, your Son, our Lord and Savior. Amen. Now the word of God from John 13, verse 31. Speaking of Judas, when he had gone out, Jesus said, Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him. If God is glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and glorify him at once. Children, yet a Little while, and I am with you. You will seek me, and just as I said to the Jews, so now I say also to you, where I am going, you cannot come. A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, just as I have loved you. You also are to love one another. By this, all people will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another." Simon Peter said to him, Lord, where are you going? Jesus answered him, Where I am going, you cannot follow me now, but you will follow me afterward. Peter said to him, Lord, why can I not follow you now? I will lay down my life for you. Jesus answered, will you lay down your life for me? Truly, truly, I say to you, the rooster will not crow until you have denied me three times. So far the hearing of God's word. If I were to give you a short pop quiz, I were to pass out three by five cards and ask you to take the pins that are in the pew rack in front of you and jot down the answer to this question, it would be this. When is Jesus glorified most? When is Jesus glorified most? I wonder what you would say. Perhaps your mind would go to that time before all time, as it were. That time when the Son of God dwelt just with Father and Spirit, and the triune Godhead was there in that place before matter was made. And we think of the glory that the Son of God enjoyed as the Father, Son, Spirit each reflected and refracted in each other the glory that they share in their divine being. Or perhaps your mind goes to that moment of time when the Son of God, who existed before all worlds, took to himself human flesh, and was born a man. And we think of the awesome power of that moment in which the Son of God had, for the very first time, flesh and bone. Or does your mind go to that time that we've not yet gotten to in the Gospel of John, that time when the Son of God will ascend and will be raised up from the earth to go to return to that place where He was prior and the glory that met him as he was raised up in the air to ascend to sit at the right hand of the Father. That, of course, was a time of glory. But where does your mind go? Because as we've said, if the book of John can be divided into two parts, and the first part was what we said time and time again referred to as the book of signs, and the second half is called the book of glory that began in John 13 verse 1, then this is a very strange way for it to start. If you were going to write a book or half a book about the glory of the Son of God, would you have started it out in this bizarre way by describing the way that the Son of God descended to the floor and took a towel and basin and began to wash the filthy feet of the disciples? Or would your book begin in this way, by speaking about the betrayal that the Son of God received from his closest friends? Some book of glory this is. Well, what does the word itself mean? Glory, of course, means weight, It means heavy. It means the presence of God. And sometimes we have seen this described in God's Word as the presence of God that is revealed to the eyesight of men like you and me in a way that we can perceive by signs that God is present amongst men. There were signs that displayed the awesome presence of God. You think of the text that was read just this past week, Isaiah 6. And as the prophet raised his eyes in prayer, he saw the Lord seated upon his throne, and he said, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory. And if the whole earth is full of the glory of God, then we see something of the glory or the weight of the presence of the being of God in all of the works that he has made. But then we also think of that way as God revealed his presence to his church of old by saying that he was amongst them in a pillar of fire and a cloud, and this was the glory of God that led them through the wanderings. of those days, and this was referred to as the glory of God. And then Moses described the way that the presence of God came to rest on that temporary tent where the presence of God was. It descended in that place, and when the people saw that the glory of God had descended like a cloud, they would begin to pray as Moses went to meet with God in the tent of meeting. Moses said, God, who is going to go with us as we go into the land that you have sworn to us, the place where you have called us to go? Who is going to go with us? Because if I have to go by myself and to lead all of this church with me, then I will not go. And do you remember the way that God said, Moses, I will go with you? Moses' response was, then Lord, show me your glory. What he was saying was, show me your presence. Show me that you are here. How will I know that you are here in my midst? And how will all of the church know that you are in our midst so that we will not be afraid and you will lead us to the place where you have called us to go? And you remember what God said to him, Moses, you cannot see my glory. I will put my hand upon your eyes, as it were. I will hide you in the cleft of the rock, and I will just allow my backside to pass by you so that you will know that I am in your midst. Sometimes we ourselves might think, wouldn't it be great to know that God is here with me? Oh yes, I have his word and I know that he is always with me wherever I go, but I just wish that I could perceive him. If I could just see that He is here with me now, if I could just feel Him, and if my heart could just know that the Lord is here right by my side, then I too would not be afraid. If I could know something of the glory of God here in my midst, then I would be at comfort. You see, I think that is something of John's design as he begins this book, because Jesus reveals the glory of God in a most unusual place. If you'll just look with me at the text and allow your eyes to go up to the verse that we ended on last week, verse 30. The passage concluded with these very strange four words. John wrote, And it was night. Judas had dipped his bread, taken it, And then he went out to go and report where the Lord was and where he was going to go, what their plans were, so that he could make the plan for the arrest of the Lord, and therefore for his death. And John concludes the record of that scene by saying, and it was night. Certainly, he wrote those words to tell us what time of day it was. It was nighttime, and the sun was going down, if not down. So we know that there is darkness upon the land. But John, of course, also records these words in a very symbolic way. to show us that there was not just darkness upon the land, but there was darkness on this scene that matched the darkness of the heart of the one who betrayed the Lord. For the Son of God to be betrayed by one of his twelve closest friends, as the psalm said, betrayed and received stripes on my back from one of my friends as I ate in the house of my friends. We see a very dark scene. And this is the place where the Holy Spirit, by John, writes to us and says, now the Son of Man is glorified. Right now. You see, right in this place, this very deep, dark place, Judas has gone to do what was appointed for him to do. Satan himself at work within his heart. The wheels have begun to turn. The stopwatch is set. The time is ticking down towards the moment of the cross. All of the events are in play. Now is the time, and right now is the time when the Son of Man is glorified in this very dark place. Jesus refers to himself with this name, the Son of Man. This is the name that He likes to call Himself best. Jesus will use this phrase, the Son of Man, to refer to Himself more than He will any other name. And it has appeared 13 times in the book of John up until this point. But we should take note that this is the last time that Jesus will refer to himself as the Son of Man. And so we just want to pause and to think about that. Why in the world did he call himself the Son of Man right here, as he is speaking about how dark it is, and the fact that he has been betrayed, and as he prepares us for the work that he's about to do on the cross? Wouldn't it have made more sense if he referred to himself as the Son of God? Now the Son of God is betrayed. Wouldn't those words have leapt from the page more in our mind's eye? Perhaps the intent is for you and me. Perhaps the intent with this last use of the name Son of Man is to remind you and to remind me the entire purpose for which Jesus became man. It was to save sinners and to remind us of those for whom Jesus will suffer and die. It is fallen men. As he refers to himself by this name, we recall in our mind's eye the book of Daniel, chapter 7, and there in verses 13 and 14, the prophet is prophesying, and as he is led by the Spirit of God to see what he beholds with his soul, he says, I looked and I saw one who is like a son of man. See, he says that he was like a son of man. He looked like a man. But He came on the clouds. He came riding on the glory of heaven. And He came, and He was presented before someone else. The prophet refers to that someone else as the Ancient of Days. So just think about this. There is one who looks like a son of man, and he is coming on the clouds, and he is presented before the ancient of days, and then gifts come to this one who is like a son of man. The prophet says, to him were given a people and a kingdom. You see, This is so clearly a depiction of Jesus Christ, who, yes, appeared in the form of a man because he became man, and yet the whole time was not a mere man but was fully God. And that time before all time in which the son appeared before his father and the father gave to the son a certain set of people who is the church. And he said, now you will go and obey and suffer and die for these. And Daniel says, that's why as I looked at this one who appeared as a son of man, I saw glory all about him. There was something that was high. He was divine. And yet there was some part of it that at the same time was low because he appeared in the form of a servant. He would take to himself human flesh to become mediator of the covenant of grace. And all of this is wrapped up in this use of the phrase, Son of Man. There is something so high about it. There is something so low about it. And it pictures the role of the Son of God and the work that he has come to fulfill. And you see, as the Lord Jesus refers to himself by this name in this place, we take further steps downwards all the way to the cross. If John 13 began as a series of steps that would go downward first from the Lord as he descends to wash the feet of the twelve, then he is betrayed by his friends. Now we take yet one more step downward in this very dark scene. which shows us that it will be but one long downward slope all the way to the lowest point, the nadir, which is the cross. And church, today, what we want to do is, led by the Spirit of God, through these words of John, we want to pause, we want to gaze, we want to wonder about the glories of the gospel. Here is the Son of God who, as the Westminster Confession of Faith describes, the Son of God is holy. He is harmless. He is undefiled. He is full of grace and truth. And yet here, in this role that he plays, he is brought so low in this dark place, and yet that In the mixing of the two, the Son of Man is glorified because Jesus has come to reveal the splendor of His grace for sinners like you. Jesus has come not just to reveal His power, not just to reveal who He is as the divine Son of God, but He has come to reveal God full of grace and truth, and to do that against the backdrop of the darkness of the need, the darkness of my heart and your heart in sin. That is why in the first two verses of our text here, in verses 31 and 32, the word glory appears no less than five times. And here is where we come with our pop quiz. What does the glory of Christ look like? Where is he glorified the most? John leads us that God is glorified in him. Paul wrote to the church in Colossae, saying, it pleased the Father that in the Son the fullness of the Godhead should dwell. And we see that in the Son, just by Him being the Son, the splendor of God is revealed so that for Jesus just to be all that He is as God in flesh is glorifying to God. just by Jesus appearing on the scene for all of us to see and to know Him is a glory to God because we see the Godhead revealed in Christ. And John goes on and says that He will also be glorified in Him. That is what He's saying about in all that the Son of God has come to do by obeying all that the Father sent him to do. He has come to obey the law of God on behalf of you and me. And he has come to obey God by suffering in his death in the stead of his church. So the son glorifies the father by obeying him, and the father receives glory in the obeying son who has come to fulfill the work of redemption for his people. And John says, therefore, he will also be glorified at once. That is, speaking of the time when Jesus will be raised from the dead to fulfill all of the Word of God that was spoken beforehand about Him, that the Father will not allow His Holy One to see corruption. He will be raised from the dead and will be glorified, and then will reenter into the holy place where He was before the world. came into being. Church, do you take time to think about the glory of Christ? Is he glorious to you? Is he glorious in his saving work? Is He glorious in the fact that the holy and perfect Son of God has come to redeem you? Do you glory in God in that gospel truth, and do you allow your mind and heart to just rock back on its heels and try to take in the glory of Christ in the gospel as he reveals his loving heart to you. You see, Peter can't. Peter can't take it in. It's almost like he didn't hear all of these words that Jesus was saying to him. He becomes so focused on this fact that Jesus is going to go to a place where the rest of them can't go to quite yet, and he's going to be removed from them in a little while Peter is stunned by this, is concerned, and he misses all that the Lord Jesus has said about the glory of Christ. Peter can't get it. He can't get the fact that he can't go to that place now, and so he just blurts out and he says, Jesus, I will lay down my life for you. Jesus, whatever would come against you, I will stop them. And he certainly will, won't he? We'll see in a few weeks' time how he took out his sword and sliced the ear of the soldier that came to arrest Jesus. Peter says here something that perhaps you and I might think about from time to time. Jesus, I will do something for you. Let me do something for you. Jesus, will you show me something great that I can go and do for you that will make an impact on the world in which we live? I will do something great if you just give me the chance. And all the time we have fingers in our ears not hearing the words Jesus is saying to us while our mouths are very loud and telling him about all of the glorious things that we will do for him. Jesus says, no, Peter. Actually, you won't at first. But I will lay down my life for you. And church, that is what the gospel is. And if the Holy Spirit would give you grace today just to hear those words afresh in your own ears, Jesus saying, it's not about what you could do for me, because I know that you can't. But I've come to lay down my life for you, and this is the precise place in which the Son of God is glorified. You see, church, the splendor of Christ in the gospel is not in what we do for Christ. It's not in who we are. It's not in what our church does. It's not in all of the power, all of the show, all of the pomp and circumstance. The glory of Christ is in the gospel and what Jesus comes to do for you. and the way that his spirit applies it to you, day by day by day by day afresh. He works it in your heart. Well, the second thing then appears in verse 34. Jesus says, I have a new commandment to give you, a new commandment to give you, which is a strange thing for him to say. Because if we hear what he's saying, perhaps we want to just say, excuse me Jesus, excuse me, question, front row, question. I think I heard that part to what you were saying, but you must not have slept well because what you just told us is, in fact, not new. We've heard this before. In fact, you told us just a few weeks ago that all of the law of God could be summarized into these words. It is the great commandment. You told us that. Jesus, not trying to be rude, but just want to remind you that you told us that all of the law of God boiled down to this, that we should love our neighbor as ourself. In fact, that is a very old law, Jesus, and so I don't really know what you mean by the fact that it's new. In fact, John himself as he will write in 1 John 2, says, and there is no new commandment at all but the same commandment that you have had from of old. So if that is true, if the commandment is indeed old and not something new in the sense that it did not exist before, then what in the world is new about this commandment that Jesus brings to his church, and there are at least two things. The first is this, that there is a new standard in this command. He says, as I have loved you, It makes us go back to John 13 verse 1, which told us that Jesus loved them to the end, and now he is recalling to them again the love that he has for them, that he has had for them, and the love that he will show to them on the cross. In fact, there is so much love referred to in this small context here that the word love appears four times in 34 and 35 to show us that this is the heart of Christ that is on full display here. As the Lord speaks this new commandment here and refers to it with a new standard, that standard is the love that Christ has shown to the disciples and to the church. And, O church, don't we need to know the love of Christ? Don't we need to bask ourselves in the love of Christ all the more day by day? As we wake up each day and we take God's Word in our hands to read and to say our prayers, for the day, don't we pray and say, Lord, as I read your word now, would you show me the heart of Christ in this text so that my heart might be warmed to know how he loves me today? Don't we want our church, as Jeff prayed so well, to be known by the love of Christ, for that to be who we are and what we are all about? Perhaps as you pray for our church, you pray Paul's words that he wrote to the church in Ephesians 3, 19 and following, that we would all know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, and that we would therefore be filled with the fullness of God. Church, we could spend our entire life long thinking, dwelling upon the love of God and Christ, and we could never reach to the end of that thought as we are led by God's Word. we might dive deep down in that well and swim and explore the love of God that is revealed to us in Christ. And if we swam in that well our entire life, we would never reach the bottom, because the love of Christ has no bottom. We could explore it and allow that theme to be the theme of our entire life and buy it, as Paul prays, to be filled with the knowledge of God. You see, the knowledge of God comes by exploring the love of God in Christ. And so we want to spend our lives searching what is the length and the height and the length and the breadth of the love of God in Christ. And that's what he's saying here. What is new about this command is on account of how I have loved you, that is the standard now for how you are to love others. In the second place, then, there is not just a new standard, there is a new source. A new source! And the very helpful clue here is the tense of the verb. Jesus does not command the disciples. to go out and to work up a love within them that they do not have. He doesn't tell them to go out and work for a love that they've not tasted yet. He says, no, no, no. Let your love for everyone else in your life spring from the source of the love of Christ for his church. You see, this is what we sometimes call the third use of the law, not the first use of the law. It is to live in light of what Jesus has done for us. It is to live out of the resource that we have in the gospel of Christ. And it is to love in a way that is empowered by the Spirit of God. Do you sometimes feel very weak in your attempts at love? I do. Lots of times I pray and I say, Father, would you help me to love this one? Because I find myself to be lacking. Lord, will you help me? And sometimes we can feel as if that well within us has run dry, and so we pray and cry out to the Lord and ask for his help, but The blessed help in this text is to direct our eyes to the well of love that is in the heart of Christ. You see, church, you have all of the love of God in Jesus Christ right now, if you believe in him, if you are born again. And as we heard this past week, The first test to see if I am born again is, do I have a love for Christ? Now, Jesus says, because you know the love of Christ within you, I want your heart to turn and face outward, and I want you to love others. He says that two times. He says, love one another. look at who he's speaking to. He's speaking to his disciples, and he's saying, I want you to love each other who are right here in this room right now. It's as if he was saying two times, look around you, and the way that I have loved you the way that I will show my love to you in the glory of the suffering of the Son of God on the cross. Now that's the way that I want you, disciples, to love each other." Jesus is speaking to the church. He's saying, we should be marked by this love for each other, a suffering love, a love that costs. A love that asks something of all that we are. A Jesus-shaped love, if you will. Friends, this is a church that has begun on that note so well. But we would deceive ourselves if we thought that we were experts at loving each other in the church. And so don't we have ways to excel in this even more? I won't ask you right now to turn to your right and left because that would be a strange thing pastors sometimes do. But just think about the people that are in this room, people that don't look the same way that you do, that don't dress the same way as you do, that don't even live in the same city that you do. Scarcely would they have the same views as you do about all sorts of topics. And yet, this is the one another that the Lord Jesus has given to you to love. Do you love the church of Christ? No, really, do you love the church of Christ? When you think about the church, do you think about something that you do for one hour, or depending on how long this sermon goes, one hour and 20 minutes? Or 30 minutes? Do you think about the church as being the building that we come to. Let me tell you, it is not. This place is called a church building because it houses the church who is you. You are the church of Jesus Christ. You are New City Presbyterian Church. And as you get up to sing the final song at the end of church today, and as you begin to leave, Perhaps the Spirit of God would just give you new eyes to look at each other, and perhaps you might even think this thought, I never realized that I loved them that much. That makes me want to spend more time with them. That makes me want to get to know them more. That makes me want to hear the things in their heart that hurt. That makes me want to ask them why they think the way that they think. And that makes me want to sit down and to read and pray the Bible besides them because I love them. If someone were to ask me, why do I love the church? Perhaps I couldn't explain it at all. Just to say, I don't know, Jesus did this to me because of the love that he's shown to me in the gospel. Now he has compelled me, empowered me to love my local church. And Jesus says, this is how the world will know, this The love that the church members have for each other, this durable love, this love that says, I will not let you go type of love. That's how the world will know that they are my disciples. I want to close with a quote. I try not to do this because I'm always afraid that you tune out when I try to read a quote. But I'm going to risk it for this because I thought that these words by Brooke Foss Westcott, who was a pastor in the 19th century, are so apropos of this text. He said, By the manifestation of love within the church, not by works of power, the Master will be seen to be still present with his disciples. Jesus says, I'm going away from you for a time, and you can't follow me now. But this is how they're all going to know that my presence, that my glory is in your midst in the way that we love each other. Will you help me love you? Will you? We need God's help and we pray that the spirit of God will transform us. to live in light of this passage. Let's pray. Well, Father, we thank you so much for your Word. We thank you so much for the way that you have ordained for your Spirit to work in your church with the Word of God. So, Father, would you write all of these words upon our hearts, we pray, Work them deep down into the soil of our life. Change the way that we think. Change the way that we live. Change the words that we speak. Oh Lord, will you transform our life. Will you help our life to manifest the life of Jesus Christ. In all of his glory we pray. Amen.