Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript
## Reformation Covenant Church | Pastor Dennis Tuuri

**Text: John 14:18-24**

Please stand for the reading of God’s word. John chapter 14 beginning at verse 18.

“I will not leave you orphans. I will come to you. A little while longer and the world will see me no more. But you will see me. Because I live, you will live also. At that day you will know that I am in my Father and you in me and I in you. He who has my commandments and keeps them.

“It is he who loves me and he who loves me will be loved by my Father and I will love him and manifest myself to him. Judas, not Iscariot, said to him, ‘Lord, how is it that you will manifest 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 home 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.’”

Let’s pray. Oh Father, we thank you for this season of Advent, the celebration of the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ two thousand years ago. We thank you for each Lord’s day, the day of the Lord when he comes to be with us by his advent. Also, we thank you that this coming is described in our text as a coming of the strengthener, a coming of the Lord Jesus Christ to us, and a coming of the Father. We pray that your Spirit would indeed help us to understand what we read here.

And not for intellectual curiosity’s sake, but for the sake that we might regard you as our only joy, our only life, our only hope, our only purpose for living. Help us to find our life in you through the revelation of your word. Make Jesus manifest himself to us today in a transforming way. In his name we ask it. Amen. Please be seated.

Well, this is the season of Advent and today we’ll be talking about the advent of life and love. And as the text moves us that way, we’ll also talk about the advent of the Father. We’ll have basically four fairly simple points here.

First, our Savior will make a statement again of comfort to us at the beginning of this text today in verse 18. Much as he talked about to Peter and the disciples to not be troubled, that he would comfort them. Here he begins with the statement of comfort.

Then he assures us that his advent to us is an advent of life. Because he lives, we will live.

Then he assures us that the advent is an advent of love, again related to obedience and the commandments as we saw last Lord’s day.

And then finally he will talk—marvel upon marvel—the advent of the Father to us as well.

So this season of Advent, when we normally consider the advent of Christ, we consider in the context of this movement of John of John chapter 14: the advent of the Spirit, the strengthener; the advent of Christ bringing life and love; the advent of the strengthening instructor next Lord’s day; the advent finally at the end of chapter 14 of peace. And in the context of this, we see the advent of the Father as well.

And so today’s text begins with the statement of comfort. It begins with an assurance that he will not leave us fatherless. I wanted to again put a little bit of context to this. We remember that after Jesus’s statement that Peter would deny him, he then gives him an assurance. Then: “Let not your heart be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me.”

And if I go, I’ll go and prepare a place for you, a home, a mansion in the sky, so to speak, a dwelling place for each and every one of us. Our eternal homes is the subject of that first assurance of comfort by our Savior. And then he talked about how it wouldn’t just be, you know, happiness in the sweet by and by, but would have an effect now. We would do greater works this side of that final comfort than he did. We would bring the church would bring untold millions and billions to the faith in the context of history.

And he then said that we should ask him. He gave us the assurance of answered prayers as well. In verse 13, he said, “Whatever you ask in my name, that I’ll do that the Father may be glorified in the son. And if you ask anything in my name, I will do it.” So ask and I’ll perform it. This is for the purpose of the glorification of the Father.

Ask and you will receive. And so the asking is stitched together by an asking that has as its context, as its center, a desire to glorify the Father in heaven. I had a very specific answer to prayer this past week. And it would be remiss of me not to glorify God by sharing just a bit of it with you.

Last Thursday, I asked specifically God for something specific, which I won’t tell you what it was, but some specific encouragement to come by way of the mail. And that encouragement arrived. I asked for it on Friday. The encouragement did come. It came on Saturday, but the encouragement was dated Thursday, the day I made the request of our Father in heaven that he would encourage me in this particular area of my life and I got a very specific and really very unexpected answer to that on Saturday.

And this is, you know, this shows the context of our prayers. When God answers our prayers, we should share those answers one with the other. We should glorify our Father in heaven.

What we’ll see in our text today is that the miraculous thing that’s really going on with the work of the Savior is his departure and then his advent to his disciples on Easter, on Resurrection Sunday. The remarkable thing going on is ultimately not the advent of Jesus to us, our elder brother, ultimately not the strengthening Spirit who enables us to walk in obedience and perform the task and do the great work. But I think that this kind of movement of the text we’ve been involved with will sort of climax at the last couple of verses of our text today when our Savior assures us that the Father will come and have an advent with us, that he will dwell in us.

Not just the Son by the Spirit but the Father. I think ultimately, really, life is pretty simple. Life is: we are those who are alienated from our Father in heaven and it is an impossible task for us to believe that the Father in heaven loves us. But in the Spirit he strengthens us to obedience and love of Jesus and Jesus manifests himself to us. And these manifestations are put in the context of the Father assuring us of his love.

And so our answered prayers are to have as their purpose the glorification of the Father by acknowledging the Father’s love to us, his creatures, his bringing us out of a fatherless state, becoming a Father with great tenderness and love to us. And I think that’s what’s going on as this text builds to its conclusion. It comes off of these repeated statements of prayer, pray and glorification of God and then the strengthener coming to give us strength for the task that God has called us to do.

I thought of the strengthening aspect of the Spirit’s work. There was an article in the Oregonian I don’t know a week or so ago. Botswana declares the world’s most intense war on AIDS. Botswana declares the world’s most intense war on AIDS. Interesting story. We’ve got, you know, Bill Gates and his untold millions and millions and millions of dollars involved in this war on AIDS. And we’ve got Bono with his untold, you know, sway or he has over people’s lives through his music and through his popularity in this.

We have the entire world aid organization, AIDS organization focused on Botswana, this region in Africa. And so they’re waging this intense war against AIDS and yet they’re not having a whole lot of success. Spend all the money you want, bring in all the personalities you want and you will not have strength for the wars that the Lord Jesus Christ calls us to do. We should war on promiscuous sexuality, against homosexuality, against any sexual activity not mediated through the Lord Jesus Christ in the Spirit and the Father’s love.

We should war against the diseases that come from such things. But we are warring unsuccessfully and without strength when we war apart from the work of the Holy Spirit, doing what’s right in our eyes as opposed to what’s right and glorifying to the Father, waging war by means of his commandments, not by the means of our worldly wisdom. So God calls us to these things.

Now the text today then, first point: he says “I will not leave you comfortless. I will not leave you an orphan. I will come to you.” And you know, Jesus describes us here as orphans. You know, this promise, this restatement of comfort, right? He’s comforting the disciples upon his impending departure. This comfort is only for those who understand their orphan state, their fatherless state apart from a correct relationship with the heavenly Father.

You know, Lamentations chapter 5, verse 2 says this: “Our inheritance has been turned over to aliens, our house to foreigners. We have become orphans and fatherless. Our mothers are like widows.”

You know in the Bible, the three groups of people that are supposed to be the specific target of the benevolences of the church—these boxes represent to us each Lord’s day—are the fatherless, widows, and the stranger in the land. And the reason for that is that in the Bible, people who have right relationship to God, the basic, the proper foundation for benevolences—we understand that we were widowed. We were wedded to Adam covenantally, so to speak. We are now wedded to Christ and he died. Naaman or excuse me, Elijah goes to a widow, right? One widow the Bible talks about in Luke’s gospel that’s a picture of the gospel going to the church, to the Gentiles. We were widowed. We were the fatherless, no relationship to the Father in heaven, and we were strangers. As all the text about the deliverance from Egypt declares, the only comfort that comes in the text today—I would not give you false comfort today if you do not have a sense of your isolation apart from the empowering work of the Holy Spirit and the Lord Jesus Christ.

If you do not have a sense of your alienation from your Father, if you do not understand your fatherlessness apart from the work of the Savior, I will bring you no comfort today. If you think you have a fine life just as it is apart from relationship to God the Father, if you don’t understand the barrenness of any possibility you have of life and love apart from the Father in heaven, there is no comfort for you today.

This is a passage of tremendous comfort—the advent of the Father to us. But it’s a passage of tremendous comfort only to those who recognize their sinfulness, their isolation, their alienation from the source of parental approval and love that the Father in heaven will shower upon his children. Only if we understand that the physician only comes to heal the sick.

Now, it’s not that not every body of course is sick by way of the metaphor being used. We’re all fallen in sin. But only to those who have been brought to a recognition of their bereftness does the comfort of the Lord Jesus Christ come and speak to them. And it comes in great comfort here. If we recognize that we’re defenseless—you know, what are orphans? What are the fatherless?

They don’t have father. They don’t have dad to take care of them when bullies pick on them. They don’t have dad to provide for them the things they need from daily existence. Worse than anything else, they don’t have the love of the father showered upon them. And they become cold and isolated and alienated in relationships. This is our condition apart from the work of the Lord Jesus Christ and the comfort that he promises us here.

But if we recognize these things, then indeed the tremendous picture here is that we’re brought back to relationship to the Father. Now, the particular Greek word here used here—it’s kind of not, they’re not exactly sure of its origins. The word is used twice. It’s used here and then it’s used later in James where it says pure and undefiled religion is to visit the fatherless and the widows in their distress. And that specifically goes back to the Old Testament citation—it’s really quoting from the Old Testament.

In the Old Testament, the word for orphan is more specifically “fatherless”—without a father—that’s what the meaning is. So, you know, it’s true that it describes any desolation of state—the afflicted, the mourning can all be said to be orphaned in that sense. If you don’t have a mother and a father, you can be seen as orphan. But really, the primary focus of the Old Testament and as this word is brought over into the New Testament then seems to be a lack of relationship to Father.

Okay. And so this is what’s being described here. And to those who recognize this lack of relationship, then God promises to be in the context of them. We read in Hosea 14:3, “Assyria shall not save us. We will not ride on horses, nor will we say anymore to the work of our hands, ‘You are our gods.’ For in you, Yahweh—in other words, the fatherless finds mercy.” Only in relationship to God does the fatherless find the mercy promised here.

And so God promises to come to us as our Father. And Jesus begins this section that will end with the advent of the Father to us by assuring us that he will not leave us orphaned. He will not leave us fatherless.

Now this, the text goes on to say that “I will not leave you orphans. I will come to you a little while longer and the world will not see me anymore but you will see me.” So Jesus says here that there is this distinction—again, not just to those who understand their fatherlessness, their orphanness apart from the work of God. But he makes a distinction here between the disciples and the world.

Now, most commentators think, and I think this is true, that what he’s talking about here is his post-resurrection appearances. In other words, he’s saying, “I’m going to leave you for a couple of days here. I’m going to go to the cross. I’m going to die. You’ll be bereft of relationship to me, but then I will come to you and I will appear to you and I won’t appear to the world.”

And we know specifically from the book of Acts that this is what Jesus does in his resurrection. Acts says that in his resurrection appearances he did not appear to the world anymore. The last the world apart from the saving grace of Christ would see of Jesus was on the cross or then I guess maybe as they bury him in the tomb. But after that they will not see him with their eyes, but the disciples will.

So as Jesus gives them this assurance of his comforting to them, it is an assurance of them beholding him in his post-resurrection appearance. So in its first application, these couple of verses here are very directly given, I think, to the immediate disciples that he was speaking to. He is assuring them that his advent to them will come on his Resurrection appearances to them, beginning on Resurrection Sunday, which we refer to as Easter.

You know, this song we sang, “Come thou long expected Jesus.” There’s another set of words that we sing to that same tune. “Alleluia, sing to Jesus his the victor, his the throne.” And I kept thinking of that song this week as I thought about the text today. The second verse is: “Alleluia, not as orphans are we left in sorrow now. Alleluia, he is near us. Faith believes nor questions how. Though the cloud from sight received him when the forty days were over, shall our hearts forget his promise, ‘I am with you ever more.’”

Jesus promises to be with us as well as to his immediate disciples. He goes on in this text to tell us that he will be with us as well.

Zephaniah 3:17 says this: “The Lord your God is in your midst. The mighty one will save. He will rejoice over you with gladness. He will quiet you with his love. He will rejoice over you with singing.”

We have this tremendous picture of the Father’s love mediated to us through the leaving and then the advent of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now, when I prayed that the Father might manifest his love for me by bringing something specific to me in the context of mail, and when God answered that prayer very specifically, sending the answer the same day that I had requested it of him, the end result of this was that God used another Christian person to do this to me, to minister the love of the Father to me. In other words, what we know from the scriptures is that while there is a direct relationship we have with the Father in heaven, the assurance that we’re not left orphanless, stranded, abandoned, and desolate is through our coming to one another in the power of the Holy Spirit.

He’s speaking to a community who dwell in the context of the Holy Spirit. So I guess what I’m saying is that if we understand that really the comfort that begins in this passage is given to the fatherless, those needful of benevolence, and we understand that this is our great inheritance from the work of the Savior, then our hearts want to flow out and be this demonstration of the Father’s love in heaven to others.

And so the Advent season is traditionally, of course, in Christendom, a time of the advent of his people one to the other, giving of gifts to families and friends, giving of benevolences to those who have need. Actually thinking about the literal fatherless—those who are going to be aborted, those who have been abandoned by their parents, the literal fathers, the literal widows in the context of our midst, the literal strangers who are in our country but don’t know the languages and are, you know, are coming into the context of the church.

And that, but need particular protection. This is the time of the year to think about those things. It’s proper, good, and fitting that the Salvation Army has these little buckets out. Maybe next year we could man a few of those buckets in our region here in Oregon City. I know they look for local churches to take up this activity. But I would just pray that if we understand this Advent season correctly, that we would teach our children that this is the advent of the Father to the fatherless and we can be that advent one to the other to assure each other of the love of our Father in heaven.

This is an immediate and clear application of the text before us.

Now, this advent of Jesus Christ and not leaving us comfortless in verse 18 and 19 goes on to tell us very specifically: “A little while longer and the world will see me no more but you will see me because I live you will live because I live you will live.” As I said, this is specifically designated to the resurrection appearance of the Lord Jesus Christ for that forty days before his ascension.

He’s telling them that the world won’t see him during that time, but they will see him. He will come to be with them visibly and he will assure them of the Father’s love for them by those appearances. And in the context of this, what he’s drawing our attention to then here is the Resurrection itself. The advent that Jesus is promising here, that he will come to be with them, is an advent of life because he shall live.

He lives. He comes back from the dead. He comes forth in Resurrection life and power and because of his Resurrection we are in that Resurrection and we receive the life-giving power of the Lord Jesus Christ. This text is a text of union and communion with the risen Savior and his promise that as he was raised up on the third day he would come to his disciples and would in that advent impart life to them.

Now, again here, this great promise that he will bring life to us, eternal life. “I am the Resurrection and the life,” you told them earlier. “He that believeth on me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never, never die.” This eternal life that the Savior brings to us is his advent to us. It is a life-giving life. But it only comes to those again who understand that apart from the Lord Jesus Christ there is no life.

We have these mistaken ideas. We think that there is life apart from Christ. There really isn’t. Paul said that “to live is Christ. To die is gain. I’ll go to be with him. But to live—every aspect and moment of my being is to be absorbed with the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Every motivational factor for what we do in the day, the reason we go to work, the reason we talk to our parents the way we do, the reason we talk to our children the way we do, the reason we decide whether what time we should get up in the morning or what time we should go to bed—all of this is to be seen. Life is to be seen in relationship only to the one who is the Resurrection and the life, apart from who there is no life.

The world walks around in death, right? That’s what Ephesians describes, the fallen world as walking dead men. And we understand that and we apply it to a Calvinistic view of you know the sovereignty of God. But do we apply it in our everyday life? Do we understand that when we speak words of disobedience to the Savior, words of harm to one another, words of slander of each other, words of disrespect to our parents, attitudes of disobedience to the authorities that God has lovingly placed over us, when we speak words that are harsh—I don’t—I’m not equating harshness and firmness. We must be firm with those under our covenantal oversight, but we must never be harsh in that sense—when we do these things, do we understand that we are issuing black words, death words, one to the other?

Do we understand that we have moved away from life, that we’re dwelling in the stench of the grave?

May God give us a sense in this Advent season of his great holiness. It’s why I selected the song “Let all mortal flesh keep silence.” Do we understand that this is the God? There’s this great benefit to the Father dwelling in the midst of us. But there’s a tremendous obligation, a joyful obligation that comes with it.

May we be frightened properly—fearful of displeasing this holy God. And may we recognize that when every turn in the road comes to us and we choose the left path instead of the right path, we are on the path of curse. You see, we’re on the path of death and destruction and death will flow out from us. You know, in Romans, it says that in the Old Testament, death came from Adam and it spread everywhere.

And in the uncleanness laws of the Old Testament, you know, if I happen to accidentally touch a dead body, boom, I was the dead man. I was unclean. I didn’t sin, but I manifested the fallen world. You see, death flowed. And wherever death was, if you got near too near to it, too close, boom, you were, it flowed out to you. Well, Jesus now says that everything has changed with his coming. What we celebrate every year at this time of year is the turning point of all history.

And he says that he comes and because he lives, post-Resurrection, we shall live. And now what he, the wondrous delight that he gives to us is to be life-giving forces in the context of our world. So when I come up to a dead person now and I touch him, I don’t got to worry about becoming unclean because Jesus has taken care of death. He’s eliminated it and he’s brought life into the world. We’re to be dispensers of life.

We’re to go to dead people, to one another, and with our words, with our kindnesses, with our actions, our deeds, and our words, we’re to be dispensers of the advent of the Father, the advent of the Lord Jesus Christ, the advent of the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life. As we sing frequently these days in the Nicene Creed, we’re to be the Holy Spirit moving into people’s lives with words of blessing and life.

We have this capability to speak these words that causes the creation to flourish, that causes one another to be assured of the love of the Father and the holiness of the Father and that I need to worship and obey him correctly. What were you? What were you this morning, you and your children? Did you dwell in death in some stinky grave someplace by not being respectful to your parents, by not being honoring toward your siblings, cooperating with them, fighting with them?

I know that it’s hard to do the right thing. Jesus knows that too. And he promises us that he give us that spirit. That the Advent season we celebrate—the advent of Christ come to be with us—to change the flow of history so that we wouldn’t be dispensers of death like the old creation was. But we live now in the eschaton of the new creation and the new world. And the Lord Jesus Christ calls us to celebrate in that, to understand that is the case.

That now he has come to make his appearance to us. Life flows from him to us and from us one to the other.

Isaiah 26:19 says, “Your dead shall live together with my dead body. They shall arise.” That’s what Jesus is promising to his disciples here as he makes his departure, his exodus. When he comes back in his post-Resurrection appearances, they also now—really for the first time in history, I mean, in a dramatic, in a very factual, true way—the whole world dwelled in death. I mean, there was life. God’s Spirit was still in the world, but it wasn’t the sort of life that would happen when this historical event took place when Jesus came and made redemption for the world and when he brought into effect this new creation. And now everything has changed. Now us who were dead have risen by his Resurrection.

Romans 6 says: “Therefore we were buried with him through baptism into death that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father even so we also should walk in newness of life.”

See, now the whole world—this isn’t just—this isn’t talking about conversion—it’s talking about the fact that the world has changed with the advent of Jesus. John’s gospel says “In the beginning” and now “in the new beginning is the Lord Jesus Christ.” He talks about it in verse 20. He makes reference to this: “Because I live you will live also. At that day you will know that I am in my Father and you in me and I in you.”

“At that day”—you see, this is pregnant eschatological language. “At the day,” the day of the Resurrection, is the day of the Lord. “At that day, at the moment that all of history looked forward to, all the Old Testament prophets spoke of the coming of the day, the new world, in other words, the death of the old world and the beginning of the new world. And Jesus says, “In that day of my Resurrection, you will know these things and you will walk in newness of life such as man has never walked before. You will walk now as life-giving people, no longer as conveyors of death. Death isn’t flowing anymore. As far as the curse is found, the Lord Jesus Christ has come to roll it all back.

And a definitive rolling back—the beginning of the progressive rolling back—comes on that day, the day of the Resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Second Adam. 1 Corinthians 15 says, has become a life-giving spirit to live as Christ.

What’s your life today? I kept thinking of that Bill Gaither song this last week. Some of you, I’ve never heard of Bill Gaither. “God sent his son. They called him Jesus. He came to love, heal, and forgive. He lived and died to buy my pardon. An empty grave is there to prove my Savior lives.” And then the chorus: “Because he lives, I can face tomorrow. Because he lives, all fear is gone because I know he holds the future. And life is worth the living just because he lives.”

Oh, one of those old evangelical songs we used to sing, you know, and we don’t sing anymore, but it’s a wonderful song, isn’t it? “Because he lives, we can face tomorrow. Because he lives, all fear is gone.” He has dealt with death definitively. And as I’ve said so many times in this pulpit, the fear of death is frequently the source of our sin. We want to provide life for ourselves somehow. We want to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps. We want to work it out ourselves somehow.

And God says, “No, because Jesus lives, we live. And because he lives, we can face tomorrow with great joy recognizing that our life now is hid in Christ and that for us to live is for us life itself is Christ.”

Amos 9:11 says: “On that day I will raise up the tabernacle of David which has fallen down, repair its damages, raise up its ruins, rebuild it as in the days of old.”

On that day—one of the many Old Testament prophetic references to the day that would come and would provide the turning point for all the earth. And on that day happened two thousand years ago. And our Savior is assuring these disciples that he will not leave them fatherless. He will come back from the dead. He will make his Resurrection appearances to them. And in his Resurrection life, they will have life and they will be dispensers of life as well.

All the world will be changed.

Now Jesus is tells them here that the world won’t see them. But remember when we get down at the end of all of this big long passage in John 14-17, in John 17 he’s going to talk about the world in a different way. He’s making a distinction between his disciples and the world. But it’s not as if we are a group pulled away from that world. He will tell, he prays in John 17, that we would go and impact that world for him.

The new creation begins and it grows to fill all that world. And that’s only possible because the Resurrection life of the Lord Jesus Christ is now ours. That day has arrived. That day is the day of life. Jesus says that he’s going to come to us not as orphans will he leave us. He says that coming is the definition of life. That coming is the definition of life for us now.

And I would call you once more as you go through this week: What will be your purpose? What will be the factors that influence your decisions? Will it be love for the Savior and life, or will it be death?

Now Jesus goes on to extend this. I said that this is originally given to his immediate disciples. But in verse 21 now he talks—I think about his advent not just to the eleven. But now he talks about we are included in this as well. He’ll do the same thing in his priestly prayer. He’ll pray for them. Then he’ll say, “But not only for them.” And now in verse 21, he says, “He who has my commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father and I will love him and manifest myself to him.”

To him. Okay. So now it’s not just the post-Resurrection appearances. Now we are assured that Jesus will manifest himself to us. But again, there’s a definition to who we are.

We are the ones who understand our fatherless state apart from Jesus, who don’t ultimately pine and mourn about our fathers here on this earth. We recognize that really our problem is not them. Our problem ultimately is the Father in heaven. You know, it’s interesting. Many good movies are all about the reconciliation of the son and the father. And that’s because that’s our deep problem in life. That’s at the most basic level. We’re fatherless. And Jesus says when we recognize that, he will come to us and comfort us in that recognition. He’ll be with us. But it’s conditioned on that. He says he won’t come to the world to give life, but he’ll come to his people and he’ll be an advent of life to them.

And now he says that he will manifest himself to us as well, not just the disciples. He made a distinction right between his disciples and the world, and his post-Resurrection appearances Acts tells us very explicitly he did not appear to the world, but only to his disciples. So he makes a distinction. And here as well he makes a distinction: Who is it that has this tremendous comfort of knowing that God loves us, that Jesus loves us, that the Father loves us, and Jesus will show himself to us in his advent?

Who is it? It’s those who keep his commandments. “He who hears my commandments and keeps them. It is he who loves me.”

Do not tell me you love the Lord Jesus Christ if his commandments are not evident in your life throughout the week. Now, you may not know what those commandments are. Most Christians today do not understand the command to worship him. And it’s a different thing. And some come and some don’t. I mean, there’s differences. There’s ignorance of plenty in the Christian world. We understand that. But if you know what the commands of Jesus Christ are—to whatever degree you do know what those commands are—and if you’ve been at this church, you know a lot more of them than most people. If your life isn’t characterized by a general obedience to those commands, don’t tell me you love Jesus. It’s a lie.

That’s what Jesus says. It’s the one who keeps his commandments. That is a demonstration that he has been loved by Jesus and he loves Jesus.

I think I said that, you know, our great tendency, our continual problem is we slide over into this—I don’t remember what the words were used—emotional kind of, you know, antinomian concept of love. “I loved you very much. I faced death for you,” the man says on a park bench next to the girl. The dog comes up, starts barking. He jumps up frightened. “I thought you’d face death for me.” “Well, that dog’s not dead,” he says. Well, that’s the way a lot of husbands are. “Oh, I’d do anything for you, dear.” “Well, will you pray with me occasionally? Will you demonstrate your love in actions? Will you discipline the children in the home? Will you lead and oversee the home?” “Well, I you know, I really love you a lot and I feel very emotionally attached to you, but those things are a little difficult for me.”

That’s not love. It is not love if we do not provide for, if we do not use all of our energy and strength to provide, to protect, to take care of the ones we love, or obey God’s law relative to them. Well, the same thing is true of our relationship to Christ. You are a liar if you say you love Jesus and don’t obey his commandments. It’s so clear and it’s, we saw this earlier in the text, it’s repeated over and over.

The condition here: we got to know we’re fatherless. We got to know that the only life that is, to be living is in Christ. And we got to know that we should keep his commandments. That “Jesus is Lord” is the declaration of the Holy Spirit working through his community. But what’s a Lord without a law? Nothing. If he’s Lord of your life, then he has a law for your life. And no matter what your conception of it, you had best be about obeying your Lord.

Otherwise, you don’t have love for him. But he says, we know, he says, “If I brought you life, you will keep my commandments. And as a result, he says, I will love him. So he doesn’t give this to us primarily to exhort us to commandment-keeping. He gives this to us primarily to connect commandment-keeping with his advent. You see that in the text here?

“He who has my commandments.” So, you got to have them first. You got to study the Bible. You got to come to Sunday school. You got to come to the sermons. You got to try to make activities where you’re getting together with other Christians knowing what they say. You got to read your Bible. You got to have them. But you got to keep them, he says, as this demonstration that you love me. And I’ll love you, and I will manifest myself to him.

And Calvin says over and over again: what’s going on here is that he’s talking about sanctification. This is what we talk about during Advent season: that Jesus came at his advent once historically. He’s coming back at the end of time. But there are many advents—perusias, returns—of the Savior throughout created history. Those advents happen on the Lord’s day. Jesus comes to be with us. We go to be with him. He stands at the door and knocks. We open the door. He comes in. He’s here. It’s an advent.

We pray that in our world of sin that Jesus might come in an advent power and his parousia might come forward and change, changed the world. I prayed for an advent of the Father’s love to me last Thursday and the very—I don’t know it’d be interesting to find out the time—but the very day I prayed for it, that a man sent the answer to that prayer to me.

We pray: “Lord, I’m I need strength. I’m not sure you love me. I you know, I tremble to say it. Please give me a demonstration of your love. I believe; help me in my unbelief.” God will answer that prayer. He will come to you. But again, the contingent here is that we’re keeping his commandments. As we keep the commandments of God—what we know to be his commandments, as we keep the ones we know—what life is defined as—he will continually manifest himself to us and cause us to grow in a knowledge of the scriptures.

Very important truth. Knowledge is contingent upon ethics. Our problem is not knowledge-based. We have a knowledge problem. There’s no doubt about that. But the intellectual knowledge problem is because we’re not obeying what we do know. You understand? He says, “Keep my commandments. You’ll know I love you and I will manifest myself to you. I’ll continue to reveal to you who I am, what life is, what love is.” And all of this is seen in the context of love and obedience being linked together.

So tremendous truth here: we obey what we know and we are assured, because we obey, of Christ’s love.

Now, we know he loves us before we obey him, right? We know that. We know that we couldn’t love him first. “It was not that I did love the Lord. That could never be. God puts his love upon us. John tells us that in his epistle, First John. Here, in his love—not that we loved him, but that he loved us.” So, we know that. But here, Jesus is putting it the other way around and says, “If you have this demonstration of the love of God on you, if you keep my commandments, then you’re going to know even greater my love and the Father’s love for you, and I will manifest myself to you, and you will grow in grace.

My advents will come to you. My advents are advents of life—life-giving power and love—defined by obedience and connected to obedience. And so our Savior promises us here that his great comfort is he’s going to bring us into relationship to the Father. And the Father has given the Son to have life in himself. And as we have union and communion with Christ, the life-giving Spirit of Christ gives us life.

And that life is defined by way of the commandments—what the scriptures tell us to do. And those commandments are related to our love to Christ. Our love to Christ results in obedience. Obedience furthers love. And the whole thing moves ahead and Jesus manifests himself to us more and more. There’s a continual sanctification that happens in the life of the believer.

And then finally then the most amazing part of this happens in the following verses.

Verse 22. “Judas, not Iscariot, said to him, ‘Lord, how is it that you will manifest yourself to us and not to the world?’”

Now, this is taken a lot of different ways and I’m not sure how to take it. You know, you could say, well, he’s got that old, you know, disciple thing where he wants the kingdom to be manifest visibly with power and strength, and so he doesn’t understand the nature of the advent of the kingdom of Christ. You could, oh, maybe that’s what’s going on here. Maybe he’s just doesn’t understand the division between the disciples and the world. But I think there’s another way we can take this.

Matthew Henry took it this way, and I think at least by way of application—when we understand what Jesus has said so far: that he’s not going to leave us bereft, he’s going to come to us, and in his coming he will manifest and bring us to life, and he will manifest love and bring us to love, not just from him and the strengthener but the love of the Father—if we fully understand what this life we have is, then I think we would ask with Judas: “How is it that you will manifest yourself to us and not the world? Because we know that we’re like the world.”

You know, the wonder of it is that what Jesus is saying here—that’s the wonder of it. And we could, I assume that what Judas is saying here is: “Lord God, I believe all of this and it is an astonishing truth to me. How can it be that the Lord Jesus Christ will come and indwell me by his Spirit and not just him, but he will minister the Father’s love to me? And he will empower me and strengthen me to keep his commandments. He will give me life-giving force. And he will give me love for him and for the brothers. How can this be? Because we know of our own sinfulness.”

Now, I think one reason why we might take it that way is because the text carefully distinguishes this Judas from the other Judas. “Judas, not Iscariot,” says this stuff. And whether we don’t know what meaning Judas had behind it, but we can think of this as an illustration of what the Christian life again is all about.

There are two Judases placed in front of us in John 13-14. There’s the betrayer who does not love the Lord Jesus Christ, who moves in terms of death, who kills himself in a gross sort of a way, and who doesn’t love Jesus at all. There’s that Judas. And then there’s another Judas, not Iscariot, and he is the one who is loved eternally by the Father and responds with appreciation for what Christ has done for them.

You know, I mentioned before, when I talked about Judas and Peter, that nobody names their kids Judas. Well, maybe we should. Maybe it’s a name that needs redemption. Maybe it’s a name that people will once more use to bring back this other Judas, whom history, sort of, you know, in the history of the church has kind of glossed over at times. Judas, not Iscariot.

This should be our position as we move into this last element of the advent of Christ and its relationship to us—the advent of the Father. It begins by this statement: “Lord God, how can this possibly be? These wonderful truths that you’re giving to us?”

And Jesus answered and says, “If any…” This is Jesus’s answer. It doesn’t seem to say, “Well, you don’t understand the nature of the kingdom.” He just sort of picks it right back up like it’s, he’s not answering the question. He’s assuming that it is just sort of a marvel on the part of Jude, to what he’s declared, and he continues to declare it.

In other words, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word and my Father will love him and we will come to him. This is this is the climax I talked about at the beginning of the sermon. Now he says not just I will come to you. He doesn’t just say that I will send the Spirit to strengthen you. He doesn’t just say that I will come and assure you of the Father’s love. But what he says here is that my Father will love you.

And not only that—not only are we reconciled to this Father in heaven. That is the tremendous driving insecurity of our lives—our failure of relationship to our Father in heaven. Not only are we reconciled to our Father in heaven, not only does he love us—we, clearly meaning the Son and the Father, will come to him. You are indwelt. The advent of the Lord Jesus Christ, the advent of the strengthening Spirit, is also the advent of the Father to you.

You see, I mean, in other words, Jesus has talked about his Resurrection appearances. He’s moved then to make it a more general application of his manifestation to all those that will keep his commandments—us today, for thousands of years, not just that first day. That day, the day of the Resurrection, has initiated an entire age of history. Now, you know, we’re now in a new age of history. We’re in the new creation.

And what Jesus is telling the disciples is also true of all those who will keep his commandments because we have life and love through the work of the advent of the Lord Jesus Christ. He’s telling us that all that stuff happens and that the end result of this, as he builds this message up, he gives us the final tremendous blessing that we should not read over quickly and miss. And that blessing is the advent of the Father himself coming to us.

As I said, this is our great problem. This is why movies are made over and over that talk about reconciliation of father and son. This is why father-son relationships on earth are so difficult. You know, I thought it was interesting watching some stuff on Lord of the Rings. You know, the two human guys there, they have this difficult relationship with their fathers for different reasons. And you know, there’s problems going on. I mean, they love their fathers and all that, but you know, it’s tricky. The father-son relationship is tricky. You don’t know that early in your life, but the older you get, the more you’re realizing it’s tricky because bound up in that whole thing is our relationship to our Father in heaven and our failure, you know, in our father-son relationships on earth.

Are frequently just pictures of really the inability to affect proper father-son relationships without having at its base this reconciliation of the Father in heaven. And Jesus in this tremendous Christmas Advent message that he gives to us tells us that the great blessing of his advent is the Father himself coming to us. “We will come to him. And look at what he says next. Not only will we come to him, we will make our home, our home with him. You remember how all this started? The first comfort I mentioned earlier, the first comfort was the eternal home in heaven.

This is the only other place in the New Testament that this word “home” is used. It’s used first of the great comfort of eternity. And now it’s used to give us the great comfort of today. Jesus comes today. He gives his advent to us today in a special sense. And he tells you today that the Father of heaven, your Father in heaven, is here now with you. And your Father is making his home with you.

Now, you see, it’s the day of the Lord. That realized eschatological hope of heaven has now come into our current reality. The home prepared eternally for us has now come to earth. That they will make our abode, their abode with us here. Yes, we go to heaven and yes, they come to earth. And now the Father dwelling in the context of a home again. You see, it’s back what I said before Thanksgiving. Oh, what we want, what we want out of Christmas, what we want out of Thanksgiving, we want homes bright with light and love and beautiful decorations reminding us of light and love.

And we want families that, you know, will not bicker with one another and families that won’t be disappointed in one another. And fathers who will always speak just the right words to their kids. And we want kids that’ll be assured of the Father’s love and will recognize that without right relationship to him they move toward being orphans—dead, stinking things—whenever they disrespect parents. That’s what we want.

And Jesus says that’s what he is in the process of doing. But that eternal home is coming to us now. “We, including the Father, will come to you. We will make our home with him.”

And then he tells us again, “He who does not love me does not keep my words. And the word which you heard is not mine but the Father’s who sent me.”

Calvin said, and I think he’s right, that this last verse is an assurance. It’s like he’s given us these tremendous promises of not being fatherless, of his advent bringing life to us, his advent bringing love and obedience of the commandments. And then the tremendous, you know, the cherry on top, so to speak, is the Father coming to be with us and dwelling with us, making his house with us. Jesus says, “I know that before he even got done, believers, good Judases, are saying, ‘How can this be? How can it be that we would have such love? Not just the indwelling Spirit, but the Son and the Father making their house with us, or even before this, the Son and the Father manifesting their love to us. How can this be?’”

“Not only that, Jesus says, ‘But also the Father himself comes and dwells with you.’” And I know it’s remarkable. I know you’re going to say, “How can it be?” But I put my stamp on these words now. The words that I speak are the Father’s words who sent me. He puts the stamp of authenticity, that our hearts do not doubt this kind of love, this kind of fellowship, this kind of union.

Because he lives, he comes to be with us. Because the Lord Jesus Christ loves us, he causes us to grow in our love for him and for one another and bring us into fuller and fuller obedience to the Father’s word. And the end result of this entire process—the advent of the Lord Jesus Christ and every advent related to that as we’re now in the eternal day of the Lord—is a manifestation of the Father’s love to us and the Father making his abode with us.

These are tremendous blessings. These are blessings that are, you know, in a sense unspeakable. They drive us, or should drive us, of course to tremendous gratitude.

We have a picture, really, every Lord’s day. Now we’ve added the missions box in the center of our boxes up here. It’s not labeled yet but that’s missions. And then we’ve got a tithe receipt box and we’ve got a Beth-el fund box. And we have a picture here from to some degree of the Trinity coming to be with us in Lord’s Day worship.

The Father calls us on mission. As these young people and adults go to India this week, may they be an advent of Jesus’s life and his love, his commandments, his word and instruction. And with what they do, may they go forth in the power of the strengthener to obedience, in the power as they go of a love, a knowledge of the love of the Father that will see them through the difficult trials and tribulations, the difficult cultural situations they’ll find themselves in.

Some of these young men and women have never been on a plane before and the first plane trip’s going to be going that far, that long. May God strengthen them by the Holy Spirit as he sends them forth in mission. And then as they’re there, may they help in the discipleship of the nations with Christ’s mission.

The tithe box supports the Levites here in this church—the ones who bring the discipling of the nations and disciple you through the word and through the sacrament, through the order of the church and the instruction of the church. And God says that his Spirit knits us together in a community driven by mission, discipled as Jesus continues to manifest his revelation of his commandments to us and brings us into obedience to them.

We’re knit together as a community in the Holy Spirit in this place on this day, this timeless day, as a picture of what he, how he sends us forth united. Jesus says, “As you go in mission, the Father’s mission to manifest himself to the world, make Disciples of all the nations, support Levitical ministers to instruct people in the commands of Jesus Christ. And I am with you always,” primarily of course meaning the Spirit-empowered community. We’re brought together in this building together to do the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, to be knit together in a community of the Spirit.

May God empower the team going to India this Friday. Friday the 13th. I love that too. There’s no enchantment against Israel. There’s no divination against Jacob. We are not those who are superstitious. The new world is here and none of those black words work against the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. They’ll go forward in the power of the Holy Spirit in mission bringing discipleship and helping the churches in India bring discipleship and knitting together our community here with that community at Christ Mission Ashram.

May the Lord God speed them as they go about doing that task.

I thought too that we have this—we’ve got mission here. We’ve got discipleship over there with sola scriptura, right? And we got the community knit together around the cross in the center. This is who we are. Jesus says that the Father comes to make his abode. The Son of God is with us. The Spirit who strengthens us to obedience. They all dwell in the context of who we are now as his people. He gives us mission. He gives us obedience and a further instruction and revelation of his command word. And he knits us together in the power of the Holy Spirit.

All these things is to be ours as well. As we leave this place today and go into our work week tomorrow, we go as sources of life flowing out into the world, sources of love. We have a mission to manifest life and love, recognizing that we don’t need to be anxious or insecure and as a result resort to our own abilities, our own strengths. No, we can rest assured in the Father making his abode with us.

Let’s pray. Oh, Father in heaven, these things are just marvelous to our hearts. It’s impossible for us to comprehend these things. Yet we believe them. We thank you, Lord God, for the power of the Spirit who writes this word upon our hearts, changes us. Help us during this season to seek out those who may be fatherless, not aware of the love of the Father, needing a manifestation of fatherly love through other members of the body of Christ.

Empower us to do that task. Strengthen us by your Spirit to do this in obedience to your laws that we know how to help, how to minister Jesus and the Father to others. Empower us by your Spirit, Lord God. Strengthen us by your word and assure us of the love of the Father that we may be dispensers of that love throughout this new world that you have called us to live in. In Christ’s name we ask you. Amen.

—

**Question from Congregation Member:**

You mentioned about asking God for blessing and expecting a blessing, but I’m thinking of Gideon—how he was like challenging God and wanted to see all kinds of signs. Well, I guess that’s the question: What was the difference between Gideon’s attitude and the attitude we ought to have? Between Gideon’s and our attitude—what attitude we should have expecting blessings, asking for blessings, to have God’s love manifest towards us without copying an attitude like Gideon saying, “Hey, prove it.” See what I mean?

**Pastor Tuuri responds:**

Yeah. Where’s Doug H.? Why? He gets an F for this. He was asking about Gideon. Have you gone through Gideon in the Sunday school class at all? Two years ago.

Yeah. Do you have a simple answer to Dan’s question about how can we differentiate our attitude from Gideon’s? Gideon asking for a demonstration, you know, kind of “prove it.” Give me some signs.

Well, I, yeah, you know, it’s been a while. You want to say? Ask Chris. Has Chris been teaching it? I withdraw the question.

Well, you know, it’s kind of like I can answer Jacob because him I’ve worked on this last year. I haven’t worked on Gideon for a while. But, you know, when Jacob says, you know, “if you provide for me and if you do this and that at Bethel, then I’ll give you a tenth,” I think that what the, what the what’s really going on there is Jacob’s saying, “Since you’ll provide these things, I’ll give you the tenth.” There’s no doubt of God’s provision for blessing.