John 16:16-33

“Let not your heart be troubled…” these had been the words that Jesus started the conversation with on this dark, disconcerting night. He then explained that while He would go away for a while, it was necessary, because He had to prepare a place for His disciples. Losing Jesus was an understandably disheartening reality for the disciples, so Jesus addressed their concern by letting them know that He would not leave them comfortless. He would send the Holy Spirit to dwell with them and to dwell in them. He would give them strength, and He would guide them into the truth.
As Jesus finished addressing His disciples, He explained one last comforting truth to them, God the Father loves you. In essence Jesus said, “Your faith in me, ties you in an inseparable relationship with God the Father.” He further encouraged them that from now on, they should come to the Father in prayer and ask Him to provide for them, and protect them, and to accomplish His will in them. This was one of the greatest realities that Jesus could teach His disciples. After Jesus completed His work on the cross, believers could have unfettered access to God the Father.
In a couple hours, Jesus would be arrested and taken to His fake trial. Knowing that this would be devastating to the confidence of the disciples, Jesus forewarned them that they would all be scattered into the night. His comfort for them in light of this scattering was to tell them to not worry about Him. How selfless! “You are going to be scattered, but don’t worry about me.” He was telling them that while He was captured and being beaten, they didn’t need to worry for Him. In this selfless, loving moment with His disciples, Jesus taught what faith in God the Father looks like.
“Everyone will leave me, yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me.” During His final hours, as Jesus marched to the cross, God would be with Him. He would not be alone on this road, God the Father was with Him until the end. This confidence and assurance was what Jesus wanted His disciples to hear before they were forced to flee into the night. “These things have I spoken to you, that in me ye might have peace.” Because of Jesus, there would be no tribulation too great, no trial to disturbing, no long night too overwhelming that His love and grace could not offer peace to His followers.
So, how would the disciples respond on this night, after hearing the message of peace and access to God? By the time the night was over, Jesus would be bound, and on trial. The disciples would forget the teaching of Jesus, and would flee. The two that didn’t flee, Peter and John, would find an entirely different set of concerns as they followed Jesus from one hostile environment to the next. It would eventually be Peter, the bold one, that denied Jesus. The disciples would not learn it yet, but eventually they would. Eventually the Comforter would come, and would equip them with strength for moments like this.

Food For Thought: In His final teaching before going to the garden to pray and be arrested, what truth did Jesus reveal for His disciples?

John 16:12-15

All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: that the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works. 
– 2 Timothy 3:16-17
Hours before His capture and execution, Jesus reiterated a promise to His disciples. “The Spirit will come.” In John 14:16, He had already explained that upon His departure, He would send “another,’ a “Comforter.” Jesus referred to this Comforter as “the Spirit of Truth.” Now, again, Jesus reiterated this promise, but continued with a further explanation of the purpose for which He was sending the Spirit of truth.
According to Jesus, the Spirit (the Holy Spirit as He is commonly called) would come to guide the followers of Jesus in the truth. But what truth does He guide the followers of Jesus into? We can understand that the truth that Jesus is speaking of in this context is the truth about Himself. It would be the ministry of the Spirit of truth to guide the disciples in their understanding, assimilation and presentation of the Jesus.
Worded in a different way, it would be the job of the Holy Spirit to lead people to understand and believe the gospel of Jesus Christ. It would further be the ministry of the Spirit to guide people in the truths of obedience to God, revealing at every turn what it means to be genuinely Christ-like. The Spirit would have the ministry of guiding people into the truth of the gospel and the truth of Christ-like sanctification.
When we see this ministry of the Spirit, we must further understand for us what that means. We are not to sit around waiting for the Holy Spirit to reveal to us new things from strange sources. We don’t need extra revelation, like the Book of Mormon, or publications from the Watchtower Society. We don’t need new revelation, we need illumination. We need the help of the Spirit of truth to teach us the truth that has already been revealed in ages past. So we must be actively pursuing that truth by reading the pages of Scripture, so that the Spirit of truth will teach us the truth of Jesus.
It is the ministry of the Spirit to teach us the truth that is found in the Scriptures. When we further realize that the Holy Spirit of God was at work in the writing of Scripture, we can understand that there is none more qualified to help us understand the true meaning of each text. Like Paul, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, wrote in 2 Timothy 3, it is through the Spirit-illumination of the Scriptures that followers of Jesus can live rightly and be equipped to do what God has called us to do.
It is by the Spirit that we understand the gospel, and it is by the Spirit that we obey the Word of God. The Spirit of truth truly is given as a gift from God for us. If we are followers of Jesus, He labored to draw us into the family of faith, and now, He labors to guide us in the truth.

Food For Thought: In what two areas does the “Spirit of truth” guide the followers of Jesus?

John 16:1-11

The angry crowd screamed murderous words as they moved down the dusty Jerusalem trail. It had been just over ten years since Jesus was led down the same streets to be executed by the Romans. Now, one of His closest followers, James the brother of John, was being physically and verbally tormented. King Herod of Judea had issued the order for his execution, and James refused to put up a fight. Church historian Clemens Alexandrinus writes that one of the executioners was so moved by the courage of James that after apologizing to James, he was forced to join him in execution. Moments later, James knelt, prayed, and felt the swift cold sword blade blow against the back of his neck.
Ten years later, as church history tells, Philip witnessed to the wife of the Roman Proconsul, and she was converted. Enraged by this, the Proconsul ordered that Philip not only be scourged and crucified, but that to increase the agony, Philip should be crucified upside-down. The apostle Philip was then savagely beaten, and dragged to the edge of a town called Hierapolis, in what is now modern-day Turkey. There in classic Roman fashion, the bloodied Philip was nailed to a cross to be crucified. As Philip died on the cross, he continued to preach the gospel to all those gathered around.
Around the same time, Nathaniel the brother of Philip, and by then a missionary along the Caspian Sea, was captured. Church history explains that the first stage of his torture was a practice known as "flaying," or being skinned alive. While still struggling in pain, he was then beheaded near the modern day capital city of Baku, Azerbaijan.
The Apostle Peter was eventually captured, tortured, and ordered to be crucified during the reign of Nero. When it became clear that he was going to be crucified, church historians tell us that Peter requested to be executed in the excruciating inverted position like Philip. His reason for the added torture- he did not count himself worthy to die in the same fashion as Jesus.
The Apostle Thomas labored in the region that is now modern day Iran and Iraq before travelling to southern India as a missionary. While ministering in India, he was run through by angry natives with multiple spears. Unrelenting in his preaching while he was assaulted, Thomas was eventually thrown into the flames of a burning oven where he finally died an agonizing death.
The night that Jesus was captured to be executed, He had explained to His disciples, "And these things will they do to you, because they have not known the Father...but these things have I told you, that when the time shall come, ye may remember that I told you of them...Nevertheless...it is expedient for you that I go away."
Jesus knew that momentarily He would be taken from His disciples and they would be scattered. He knew also that eventually they would be strengthened and encouraged by His resurrection. However, the ultimate strength that they would receive would come in the form of the indwelling, empowering Holy Spirit. They could not receive this comforting Strengthener unless Jesus departed.
Having foretold of their coming persecution, Jesus then encouraged them with the promise of the coming Spirit. He would come to work in their hearts. He would give strength where there was weakness. He would reveal truth where there was darkness. And He would bring the words of Jesus to remembrance as each of the disciples were executed. This night and these words would never be forgotten. Rather, as each disciple met death at the hands of wicked men, their minds must have rushed back to this moment with Jesus as He explained the harrowing yet honoring future events for each of them.

Food For Thought: Why would Jesus tell His disciples that they would eventually be killed? Besides just telling them of their impending death, what did Jesus promise to do for them?

John 15:18-27

“They will hate you.” These are not the words that the disciples wanted to hear from Jesus, but this was the truth. When the Holy Spirit came upon those whom Jesus had chosen, they would become proclaimers of the truth. They would be witnesses of the events and the power that they had experienced. But this witnessing would not be without a cost. For Jesus and any who would follow Him, this truth-proclamation had a certain end: persecution and death.
Jesus explained that a natural, sin-caused enmity exists between God and man. The world and those in it are naturally filled with animosity toward the three-fold message of the gospel. Because of rugged individuality, the first point of contention for the world is that they are owned by someone else, God. In self-justifying self-righteousness, they are further offended when they are accused of being sinners. Finally, their self-sufficiency is insulted when it is explained that they need to rely on someone else, Jesus, because they are not good enough on their own. To an unregenerate person, the entire gospel message is demeaning and defaming. Because of this, in hatred, nonbelievers hate gospel messengers.
Sadly, this hatred is compounded by some Christians who hear Jesus say, “they will hate you” and misunderstand Him to be saying, “and you should hate them.” Instead of living a life that is open and engaging and based on the love of God towards sinners, some who claim to be Christians live lives of hatred, constantly looking to tell people that God hates them, and that they hate them. In their minds, they erroneously imagine that Jesus taught that Christians should hate everyone who isn’t a Christian. They would go on to misquote passages like 1 John 2:15, “love not the world, nor things in the world.”
Failing to see what Jesus actually taught and even what Jesus demonstrated, they dismiss any who are non-Christians. Instead of building friendships with nonbelievers they isolate themselves with passages like James 4:4, “friendship with the world is enmity with God.” Instead of studying scripture, some ministers preach generic messages of heretical, hate-filled doctrine denying the gospel that saved them.
In Romans 5:8 Paul writes, “But God commendeth His love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” Furthermore, Paul explained in Romans 9:2-3, “I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart. For I could wish myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh.” Believers will be hated and abused but this does not give license for believers to be hateful and abusive. Rather, Jesus explained further in Luke 6:28, that when we are hated and abused we should “bless them that curse you, and pray for them which despitefully use you.” Any reaction less than love is anti-Christ. In attempting to attack the world, some have inadvertently demonstrated the character of the sinful hating world.
The mark of a true believer is their love for others. It is not beneath a Christian to offer forgiveness and love to those around them. The example of Christ on the cross was not that of a spitting, cursing, angry Jesus, rather, 1 Peter 2:23 tells us that “when He was reviled, he reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not; but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously.” The basis for the silence of Jesus in the face of such hatred was His trust in the goodness and justice of God. As followers of Jesus we can respond with Paul in Romans 8:31, “What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?” Declaring the truth will bring animosity, it always has. But let us love like Jesus, and let us trust in the God who will always judge rightly.

Food For Thought: What will be the reaction of the world to the declaration of the truth? Why do you think that some people never feel any persecution in their lives?

John 15:12-17

After explaining that He was the vine from which His followers gained strength enough to obey His commands, Jesus further explained that the evidence of a true disciple was that he was a fruit-bearing disciple. But what about those who came to every gathering in Jerusalem? What about those who watched the miracles of Jesus in Bethany and beyond? What about those who were the family members of Jesus? Jesus explained that all of these things could be true, but fruitless followers were not true disciples. The true disciples were the ones that obeyed the commandments of Jesus. (John 14:15)
The teaching of the delineation between true disciples and false disciples came on the night that one of the closest disciples to Jesus, Judas, would betray Him. Jesus was not oblivious to this, but instead, had been planning for the betrayal by Judas all along. Now, before the other disciples would learn of the treachery of Judas, Jesus explained that there was a distinction between true and false disciples.
What is the difference? Jesus explained that primarily, true disciples evidence their discipleship by bearing fruit. Jesus further explained that another major evidence of true discipleship is the relationship that the disciples have between each other. A true disciple loves the other disciples. There is no ill-will or defrauding, no, there is only love. A true follower of Jesus loves all other followers of Jesus.
I am certain that in a room with twelve people, there were strong personalities. I think of Peter and the boldness with which he often spoke. I recall the words of John and James, the sons of Thunder; Thomas with His impetuous questioning; and what about the disciples who never said anything? There were certainly differing personalities in the group, but difference was not reason enough, according to Jesus, for any of them to not love the others. Rather in spite of their diversity, they should love one another. According to Jesus, this is the mark of a true disciple, an unbridled compassion for all other disciples.
But why should we love all other believers this way? Didn’t Jesus know that there were going to be some difficult people who would become believers? Jesus gives two major reasons why we should unhinderingly love other followers of Jesus.
First, He chose them. If they had come to faith on their own, we could resent them sinfully wishing they had never become followers of Jesus. But according to Jesus, the only reason that they became followers of Jesus was the grace of God alone. How then can we pass judgment on those God has chosen to extend grace to? Second, not only did He choose them, but Jesus further explained that we should love others because He too loves them. If we are truly followers of Jesus, then we would seek to do everything that He does. We would speak as He speaks, work as He works, and love as He loves. He is our great example, and there is not one believer whom He does not love. Therefore, it is our pattern to extend love to everyone whom Jesus loves, regardless of our sinful disposition or past experience. The pattern of life for a true disciple is an unwavering love for all other disciples.

Food For Thought: What two reasons does Jesus give for why we should love the other followers of Jesus?