Need a New Love of Your Life?

Let Not Your Hearts Be Troubled – 3 Sermons

Part 2: “The Gift of a New Love”

(John 14:11-21, Preaching: Pastor Stephen Magee, October 18, 2009)

¹¹ Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else believe on account of the works themselves. ¹² Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father. ¹³ Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. ¹⁴ If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it. ¹⁵ If you love me, you will keep my commandments. ¹⁶ And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, ¹⁷ even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you. ¹⁸ I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. ¹⁹ Yet a little while and the world will see me no more, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. ²⁰ In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. ²¹ Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him."

In My Name (11-14)
It is very difficult for a person to feel as if he has been left alone in life. We know that when God created Adam, He said, “It is not good for the man to be alone.” That is also true of women. That is not to say that there are not some good things about being alone, but we were made to be with other people who are not strangers, people who know us, and who we know.

It was not good for Adam to be alone, but it is a different kind of “not good” to love deeply and then to lose someone. One of the reasons this can be such a debilitating challenge is that our minds were created to make connections with people. We rightly connect major portions of our current experiences and our past memories with the reality of people who were with us in earlier days. When those people are gone in some way, it feels as if damage has been done to our souls. We lose people, but in the process we seem to lose something of ourselves, as if a new jagged brokenness has entered into so many experiences and so many memories, so that too large a percentage of our hearts has been pained by the new loss.

There is a sense in which this is the way it is supposed to be, and it confirms that we were created for relationships. Mortality and broken ties of civility and love have brought us much pain. When you feel this, it is actually a sign that you have a heart that can still hurt. This is better than deciding to not feel in order to avoid the feeling of pain.

Jesus is about to leave His disciples. If there were ever a man that we thought might have been able to fix this problem of brokenness and loss, here He is. Now He is leaving, and this looks like nothing other than the biggest loss of all. To lose Jesus is to lose every lesser hope. How will He encourage His disciples? The One who is in the Father, the One who has the Father in Him, the One who has done these great works of the Father fixing all kinds of brokenness, this One and only Son of God is going back to heaven, back to the Father. What are His disciples to do? What can they do without Jesus?

This is not just a first century problem. In our lives we expect God to fix our brokenness. Many of the things that we have wanted the most in the past are not even possible right now. We want our hearts to be whole again, and they are torn by this loss of relationship that we have been describing. But now Jesus is speaking here of Himself as still being Himself, still being alive, even after He has gone away. Not only that, He tells His disciples that they will do greater works that what He has done, and the reason is that He will still be Jesus when He has returned to the Father. From the Father’s throne in heaven He will do more, and not less. He encourages us to ask the Father, and He says that He, Jesus, will do what we ask. He claims that this answering of our prayers will be one of the ways that His Father will be shown to be the great God that He is, because of way that His Son will work through His church. He tells us that when we ask for anything in His Name, He will do it.

We have at least three problems with this: 1) We are pretty sure that we have asked God for things that He has not done. Back to the brokenness of loss: My sister died about fifty years ago when I was under two years old. My grandparents died, one before I was born. All of my aunts and uncles are gone. My parents are both deceased. More recently I have experienced other losses that you know very well. There are many disappointments that you and I have faced, things about which we earnestly prayed, and we have not yet seen how these things have been given to us. 2) We are quite sure that the works that Jesus did were spectacular, including raising people from the dead, and we do not seem to be able to do these things, certainly not on command. He says that His disciples will do greater works than Him, and we cannot imagine how that could ever be, even if He is just speaking of the apostles. 3) We hear that we are supposed to ask for things “in Jesus’ Name,” and we are certain that our Lord is not introducing a new magical incantation. We do not know what these words could possibly mean.”

In short, these three problems can be summarized in this way: We have a hard time believing these words, because we have not yet seen them remove from us all our misery. Still we are told to believe, and here is perhaps the biggest surprise: Somehow we do believe, but we are puzzled and pained.

I Will Come to You (15-18)
Somehow, the more we stay with Jesus, despite our questions, we find Him to be the answer to our deepest longings. The more we stay with Jesus we find that we have Him, and that He will never leave us. The more we stay with Jesus and read His Word we find that there is much more to life than what we can see with our eyes. He is definitely here with us. We are not keeping Him here with us; He is keeping us here with Him. If we love Him, it is because He first loved us. If we are desirous within our hearts for His worship and for a new obedience to Him, it is something that He has given to us as a down payment on the life to come, where we will see His promises made to be promises kept. We do not see it entirely right now, but we believe in the One who was made a little lower than the angels for us, so that He might suffer a death we deserved. He has gone to the Father, but somehow we have not lost Him.

In addition, He tells us that He has come to us in the person of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth. This great Helper is with us, and assures our doubting souls that the Lord’s promises are true and reliable, that God will be with us forever, that we know God, that He lives with us, even that He lives in us. Though our mothers and fathers may be beyond the Jordan on the other side of the river, though people who should be near us have gone far away, Jesus Himself, the most important Lover we could ever have says, “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.”

In Romania, the word for orphanage is “house of children.” When I first visited a “house of children” I was perfectly composed and having a very enjoyable time. Until it was time to leave. To leave new young friends behind as orphans was wrenching. It must be difficult for a parent to face a terminal illness knowing that he will soon have to leave. It must be a very sad day for a parent when a breach in marriage means that he will not be able to see his children again. It must be extremely difficult when a child does not want to talk to a parent, or to come home again to see a parent. These things are not supposed to be easy, and it can be so deadening to the soul for someone when he prays that these sum of all parental fears would never happen, and then they do happen. I know you want answered prayers. I assure you, so do I. But I have learned that the only place to start on a journey that will lead to answered prayers is with the best answer to every prayer. You have a new gift from God. There is a new Love of your life, and this is what He says to you, “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.”

Jesus comes to us and stays with us through everything. To have Him is more than anything else that can be taken away from us. Any of our requests truly in Jesus’ Name, truly in the eternal purpose and plan of God, has surely been granted. If you cannot see it now, it is answered for you many times over in Christ, and is reserved for you in the life to come. Christ has come to you. In your sadness, do not turn Him away. It is very probably the case that the things that you have asked Him for in the past are best found in Him, and He has them now in safe-keeping with Him above, where no one can take them away from you ever again.

I in You (19-21)
This is not just wishful thinking. He showed this to His disciples when He rose from the dead. He told them, “Yet a little while and the world will see me no more, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live.” This living that He was talking about was heavenly living, resurrection living. How do you know that you will see the answers to your prayers that are in accord with the Name of Jesus, the will of the eternal Father? You know because He lived again after He died, and He showed His disciples clearly that He was alive. Yet some still doubted.

Do not doubt that Jesus died for you. Do not doubt that He rose from the dead so that you would know what was ahead of you. Do not doubt that He will hear your prayers, and that He will work all things together for your good. But do not be deceived into thinking that your name is better than His, that your will is better than His eternal plan. Take His Name, and wait patiently. He has your answered prayers at His house. Do not doubt His love for you.

He is not ashamed to speak of His love for you. “You in me, and I in you,” He says at the end of verse 20. He is perfecting your new desires, the desire to worship and to obey the new love of your life. He is perfecting your love for Him. His love for you needs nothing new. It is already perfect. The one that His Father loves, Jesus says He also will love. Let your soul be remade first with this new special relationship that will never be taken away from you by death or by any other loss. He has made Himself known to you in His Word, and He will manifest Himself to you more and more, until you see Him where He is now, with all your broken-hearted and answered prayers.

1. How could the works of the disciples be greater than the works of Jesus?
2. What is the relationship between the love of God and our obedience to God?
3. In what sense does God lovingly live in us?
4. How does God lovingly show Himself to us?