Three Keys to Enduring Peace #1

Jesus is now left with the eleven, and he knows them perfectly, and he knows that his departure, his imminent crucifixion, would send severe shockwaves through their system. What were they going to do? Welcome back to the Truth Pulpit with Don Green, founding pastor of Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio, where Don teaches God's people God's Word.

Hi, I'm Bill Wright. You know, everyone hopes for peace on earth. It's the subject of Christmas carols, beauty pageants, politics, and much more. But it remains elusive, at least based on our secular understanding of the Word. But Don, when you take a biblical view of peace, you come to a powerful realization about your relationship to God, don't you?

You really do, Bill. My Christian friend, the Bible says that Christ himself is our peace. In Ephesians 2 14, he has reconciled you to God, if you're a Christian, reconciled you through the blood that he shed on the cross. And so peace isn't a distant thought. We have peace now in Christ.

The best that you could do this holiday season would be to share Christ with someone who doesn't know him, so that the peace that Christ has given to you could be shared through you to someone else. Make known to others the peace that Christ has given to you. Well Don is beginning a message in the book of John titled, Three Keys to Enduring Peace. Let's join him right now as he continues teaching God's people God's Word from the Truth Pulpit. One of the striking things as we look at John 16, beginning in verse 25, is to see that even with the cross right in front of him, even with the weight of the sins of the world about to be placed on his shoulder, even knowing that the wrath of God was about to be poured on to him so that you and I might have our sins forgiven when we believe in Christ, even under the stress of those circumstances that go beyond anything any man has ever known before or since, you see Jesus loving and concerned for his disciples and making way and making preparation for them after his departure.

From the depths of his loving heart, he was thinking about them, not his own suffering that was soon to come. And there's so much that's rich in this passage for us. Beginning at John 16, verse 25, Jesus said, these things I have spoken to you in figurative language. An hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figurative language, but will tell you plainly of the Father. In that day, you will ask in my name, and I do not say to you that I will request of the Father on your behalf, for the Father himself loves you because you have loved Me and have believed that I came forth from the Father. I came forth from the Father and have come into the world.

I am leaving the world again and going to the Father. His disciples said, lo, now you are speaking plainly and are not using a figure of speech. Now we know that you know all things and have no need for anyone to question you. By this we believe that you came from God.

Jesus answered them, do you now believe? Behold, an hour is coming and has already come for you to be scattered, each to his own home, and to leave Me alone. And yet I am not alone because the Father is with Me. These things I have spoken to you, so that in Me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation, but take courage.

I have overcome the world. Now as we come to this passage of Jesus speaking to his disciples, he is preparing them for his imminent departure. They had grown used to being with Jesus over the prior three years of his public ministry, walking with him day in, day out, night after night, being with him and spending time with him, hearing the blessed words of a divine mind falling from his lips, seeing him perform miracles that were the product of the hand of God, improved the authenticity of who he claimed to be, being God in human flesh. He was their champion. He was their master.

He was their teacher. And yet in a way that they didn't quite fully understand, he was about to leave them. And Jesus is going to prepare them for his departure in this passage before us. As we come to this passage, Judas has already left. He's already gone off to betray the one who loved him, the one who handed him the bread at the first communion meal or the last Passover meal, depending on how you want to look at that. And so Jesus is now left with the eleven, the eleven who were true disciples, the ones who truly loved him. And he knows them perfectly, and he knows that his departure, his imminent crucifixion, and his subsequent ascension into heaven would send severe shockwaves through their system.

What were they going to do as they huddled together without him? Ever the great shepherd of their souls, Jesus now is preparing them for the trials that lay just ahead, even in the coming hour. And so as he's been talking with them on this evening, he's been talking to them about troubled hearts and helping them to have the grace that they need to overcome a troubled heart. Look at John chapter 14, verse 1, with me.

You see this theme running throughout what he says here in this upper room discourse. In John 14, verse 1, he says to them, Do not let your heart be troubled. You believe in God, believe also in me. In verse 27 of that same chapter, he says, Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you.

Not as the world gives do I give to you. Do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be fearful. And then one more in chapter 16, verse 1, he said, These things I have spoken to you so that you may be kept from stumbling. Jesus was in full command of the situation, and he's extending this comfort to his disciples. With the cruel cross hanging over his head, Jesus is strengthening his disciples for what was about to come. And as we look at what he said to his disciples at that time, we find principles that apply to us as well as you and I seek peace and to seek to live in spiritual confidence in the midst of a fallen world. That's why we're looking at this passage.

Look at verse 25 with me again. Jesus says, These things I have spoken to you in figurative language. An hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figurative language, but will tell you plainly of the Father. What's he saying here, and why is he saying it at this point in time? Jesus is recognizing that he had been talking to them and speaking to them things that were difficult to understand. He used figurative language. He spoke of heavenly things that their earthly minds just could not quite get their arms all the way around. But he tells them and he promises them, he says, The time is coming when things will become clearer to you.

It's not always going to be that you're wrestling with it. The lights are going to go on and you will understand. He's referring here to the time shortly after his resurrection when the Spirit of God would come and indwell the disciples and give them the ability to understand the words and the teaching of Christ in a new way, a fresh way, that apart from the Spirit they didn't quite always get. Look at verses 26 and 27 as Jesus looks forward to that day.

He says, In that day you will ask in my name, and I do not say to you that I will request of the Father on your behalf, for the Father himself loves you because you have loved me and have believed that I came forth from the Father. Now remember, Jesus is getting ready to leave. Where is that going to leave the disciples? Are they going to be left as orphans?

It might seem that way for a short period of time when he's in the tomb and it looks so dark. Jesus here wants the disciples to understand that God the Father himself loves them. It's not just that Jesus loves them and gave his life during the course of his ministry for them, but the Father himself loves them so much, in fact, that he would freely give to them whatever they asked in Jesus' name. He said, Listen, I'm leaving but that's not going to mean that you're abandoned. You have the same kind of love flowing from God the Father that you have seen in my life.

Be assured that you're not being left as an orphan. And so Jesus, in this course of preparing them for his departure, shows them that they could still have confidence in the all-embracing love of a caring father. The same kind of love that belongs to you and me as children of the King, as those who are sons of the Father through faith in Jesus Christ. The Father loves us in the same way that Jesus himself loves us. And to reinforce that point, Jesus speaks to them in verse 28.

We're going through these initial verses rather quickly. Verse 28, Jesus says, I came forth from the Father and have come into the world. I am leaving the world again and going to the Father. What he's saying here is, he says, understand, when I talk to you about the Father's love and I know you've appreciated my ministry and we've loved each other during my time here on earth, understand that I came forth from the Father. The Father was part and parcel of this whole mission. The Father himself had the design to send me into the world.

I came forth from him. And so when I commend you to his love and care as I am about to depart, no one's going to miss a beat here. There's not going to be anything lost in the translation. The Father was involved with it from the very beginning and I am simply going back to him. It's going to come full circle. The Father's plan is what brought me here.

The Father's plan will continue after I'm gone. And so that summary that Jesus spoke gave the disciples a flash of understanding. They started to get some understanding that they had lacked before. Look at verse 29. His disciples said to him, lo, now you are speaking plainly and are not using a figure of speech. We get it now.

This is great. Now we know, verse 30, that you know all things and have no need for anyone to question you. By this we believe that you came from God. Look at their confidence as they speak. We know these things.

We believe that you came from God. You're speaking plainly. They think they really understand it well. They think that their difficulty has been cleared up. And the things that they were saying were good. They had confidence in Christ.

They were assured of His divine origin. And based on that, they thought that they were making progress. They thought they were doing well.

Well, beloved, listen, and this will become personal fairly quickly in your own life. Their confession was fine as far as it went, but they were overconfident. They thought they knew more than they really knew. They thought that they had achieved a greater level of spiritual maturity at that point than they had really accomplished. Look at how Jesus responds to them in verses 31 and 32, where Jesus answered them, said, Do you now believe? He throws the question back at them. He says, Are you sure about this?

Do you really think that you have arrived? You see, their faith was sincere, but their faith was about to be exposed to a more severe test than they could have possibly imagined. It would only be a matter of a few moments, and they would see the Roman army descend upon Jesus. They would see Him, take Him captive.

They would get scared and run. Just moments later, after they had expressed this great confidence about how much they knew and how much they understood, life was going to play out before them, and they were going to see that their faith was not as strong as they thought. And so Jesus corrects them, because over confident disciples are not prepared for difficult trials.

Let me say that again. When you are spiritually overconfident, you are not prepared for difficult trials. And people overestimate their condition all the time, their spiritual strength.

You know, the Bible says, Let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall. Whenever I think about that point, my mind always goes back in my own life to November 19, 1988. I was a young Christian, and I was newly married, and life was going good, all of that. I think we had just found out that we were pregnant with our first child. When I say we, you understand.

I mean Nancy when I say that. And circumstances were good, and I had been doing some reading and doing some meditating, and I was invigorated spiritually, and I remember just like it happened yesterday, I slapped my hand down and said, I mean, I'm ready to be a man of God. I thought I was ready to go to that next spiritual level. I had no idea what that meant, and I don't, even now, I don't know what I was thinking at the time. But I'm saying to myself, and I'm kind of half praying to God as much as I am congratulating myself, saying, I'm ready to move on.

I'm ready to do and become a better and bigger Christian. Five days later was when my dad and brother were killed in that plane crash that I've mentioned from time to time. Unsaved, not what I was expecting, contrary to all of the prayers that I had prayed for them. And very quickly, the spiritual confidence that I was boasting in on November 19th dissolved into an extremely long period of time of doubt and discouragement and borderline despair.

Let's drop the adjective. Despair that lasted for years. I had been confident, but I was confident in my own untested faith, and I soon learned how shallow that faith I thought I had really was. It was extremely painful, and looking back on it, extremely humbling to see the way that played out. I say, I'm ready to be the man.

Five days later, I'm reduced to rubble. That's the way it was with the disciples of Christ at this particular point in time. They affirmed their confidence in Christ. Their faith was fine as far as it went, but they were not as far along as they thought they were. They were too self-confident. They didn't understand the depth of the test that awaited them, and their weakness was going to be exposed during their despair at the time of Christ's death.

Matthew 26 talks about how when the soldiers took them, they all fled. Where's your confidence now, men? Why are you running if you understand so much? And the disparity between what they said and the reality of their spiritual condition was, that gap was pretty quickly exposed. Perhaps, as we contemplate this issue of spiritual overconfidence, perhaps there's a word of encouragement in that for one of you here today. You thought that you were a giant for Christ. You thought that you were further along in your spiritual maturity, but subsequent events have given the lie to that. Now a trial has come and shaken you to the core, and you're groping and looking for something to grab hold of, and you find that the depth that you thought you had isn't there to draw on.

The well is almost empty. If you're like me when you were in that time, you're torn between the struggles in your heart that would threaten to overwhelm you in trying to maintain a pretense of spiritual stability to those that are around you. I understand that. Listen, here is a word of comfort. Jesus understands that you were never as strong as you thought you were. He knew that before He saved you.

He knew that from the beginning of time and even before. He knew what your weakness was, and in His loving grace and mercy, He saved you anyway. He patiently carried you along up to this point where you're in the midst of this trial that in the present tense seems to threaten to undo you. Listen, take heart. Jesus knew what His disciples were like when He was speaking these words of comfort to them in the upper room. He knew that they were about to fail Him, and yet He was there speaking words of peace and comfort and strengthening them for what lay just ahead.

Beloved, here's what I want to say to you. Here's what the Word of God would say to you in the midst of that discouraging trial, that ongoing, wearing trial. Understand that the discipline of that trial is not designed to crush you in the end. Understand that God is working out purposes, and He has prepared the way for you to come through that trial on the other side long before you ever knew it was going to hit you. His perfect wisdom, His perfect knowledge of what is good for you has been operative through all of that.

His hand was involved in every aspect of that trial that has come upon you. And if you find yourself seemingly unequal to the task, beloved, take heart and do this one thing. Simply humble yourself before God under the trial. Humble yourself to the point of saying, Lord, I am not where I thought I was.

This trial has brought out the reality of it, and it's not as great as I thought it was. Beloved, that kind of humble confession before your Lord is very healthy. It's part of what He's trying to do in the midst of that trial, because among other things, God is teaching you to abandon your self-trust and put your confidence in Christ alone. Give up the thought that you're something special spiritually. You are nothing apart from Christ. Only through the strength that He supplies are you able to do anything on your own, in your flesh. You are nothing. You are zero. And so don't boast in what you think you are. Go back to Christ.

Go back to your confidence in Him and say, it is by your grace alone that I will ever stand. And orient your thoughts in that direction in the midst of your discouragement, as you look for a way out, as you look for where the light to get you out of the tunnel is. It starts right there. It starts with you. It's not about getting your circumstances changed.

It's not about a sudden influx of cash or new job or whatever it is that you think you need. What is designed in the midst of that discouragement is for you to come to the end of yourself and cast yourself wholly on the mercy of Christ, even as a believer. Jesus hints at what His disciples were going to do in verse 32.

Let's look at it again. He hints at their coming defection in verse 32 when He says, Behold, an hour is coming and has already come for you to be scattered each to His own home and to leave Me alone, and yet I am not alone because the Father is with Me. This had to have been unthinkable to the disciples. Here they were with Him. They were enjoying that that fellowship around the table, and He says, The hour is here for you to be scattered. No way.

Way. As you continue to read in the Gospels, the disciples' shallow faith was exposed. Jesus was arrested, and it's Matthew 26 verse 56 that I alluded to earlier that says the disciples left Him and fled in spiritual defeat. Here's what I want you to see about this passage, beloved, and as you think through how this applies in your own life, here in John 16 32, remember that what Jesus is doing, the tenor of this, the tone of this is encouragement. The tone of this is to give them strength. The tone of what He is doing here is to keep their hearts from being troubled, even in light of their imminent defection. In verse 33, He says this to them. Look at verse 33 with me. These things I have spoken to you, so that in Me you may have peace. He's not coming down hard on them.

He's not cracking the whip on them. He's intending to give them peace through what He says here. In the world you have tribulation, but take courage. I have overcome the world. Peace.

One source defines it as, quote, a state of being that lacks nothing and has no fear of being troubled in its tranquility. You're listening to The Truth Pulpit with Don Green. Don has really just primed the pump for what's to come next. The three keys to enduring peace examined one by one, and all three come from one verse, John 16 33. And Don, who knew that 14 simple words could contain so much eternal truth? Bill, who could have thought that Christ would be so concerned for our souls that the eternal Son of God would care about what goes on in our hearts? Friend, Jesus spoke these words because He wanted it to be well with your soul. And John 16 33 is a road map to peace.

Think about what it means and let it soak deep into your mind. Visit us at thetruthpulpit.com, and while you're there you can also find the link to Don Green's Facebook page and much more, all at thetruthpulpit.com. I'm Bill Wright. May God richly bless you, my friends, and join us next time as Don continues teaching God's people God's Word from The Truth Pulpit.