Let us turn to God's Word. And
turning again to the portion we were considering earlier this
morning, in the 14th chapter here in the Gospel according
to St. John, I read then again from verse 21 through 23. In
John 14, reading from verse 21 through 23. He that hath my commandments,
and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me. And he that loveth
me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will
manifest myself to him. Judas saith unto him, not Iscariot,
Lord, how is it that thou wilt manifest thyself unto us, and
not unto the world? Jesus answered and said unto
him, If a man love me, he will keep my words. and my Father
will love him and we will come unto him and make our abode with
him. We were thinking more particularly
this morning of what Christ says here concerning the manner in
which he will manifest himself to his people. There at the end
of verse 21, I will manifest myself to him
is the gracious promise of the Lord Jesus, and we thought of
some of the various aspects of that manifestation, now that
it is very much a personal revealing of the Lord Jesus Christ, it's
two individuals, it's the singular pronoun, I will manifest myself
to him, says the Lord Jesus, In a sense we observe that with
regards to the disciples of course he did manifest himself physically
to them after the resurrection. During the course of his own
life he was seen of multitudes. There in Palestine he lived his
life amongst the people, amongst the unbelieving Jews. He was
seen of the multitudes, but when he comes to his resurrection,
there were those who were chosen witnesses, his disciples, as
we saw therein in Acts chapter 10. They were chosen to be witnesses,
to bear testimony to the reality of His resurrection. So there
was a physical manifestation, but I said that the manifestation
that the Lord is speaking of here is really a spiritual manifestation,
because it's in the whole context of what He is saying with regards
to the coming of the Holy Spirit, this 14th chapter, then through
15 and 16, we see how the Lord is saying a great deal with regards
to the coming of the Holy Spirit. And the way in which the Lord
now does reveal himself, of course, is by the ministry of God the
Holy Ghost. But we also thought of the manifestation
in terms of scripture. It's scriptural. It has to do,
it's related to the commandment, as we see here. He that hath
my commandments, it says. And then, besides my commandments,
in verse 23, the Lord speaks of my words. If a man love me,
he will keep my words. And then he goes on in verse
24 to speak of my saying. So we're to understand commandments
in a very wide sense. He's speaking really of the Word
of God and how the Spirit comes to us here in Holy Scripture. The manifestation of God is not
that we're expecting some vision. No, we are to find the Lord Jesus
here in the Scriptures. It's where the Lord finds us
and it's where He reveals Himself to us. So we were thinking of
that manifestation of the Saviour by the gracious ministry of the
Holy Spirit. And as I said, the Lord is saying
much really with regards to the ministry of the Spirit. and there
are some six benefits that have been spoken of that are the consequence
of that coming of the Spirit. In verse 18 we see how Christ
comes to his own disciples by the Spirit. He says, I will not
leave you comfortless. The margin says orphans. They're
not going to be left bereft in any sense. I will not leave you
comfortless. I will come to you. There does
the Lord come. There He comes, as I say, by
His Spirit. But by the Spirit they are also
assured here that they will still see something of the Lord Jesus
Christ. In verse 19, Yet a little while
the world seeth me no more, but ye see me. And because I live,
ye shall live also. Oh yes, they will see Him. They
will see Him risen again from the dead. They'll bear testimony
to the truth of His resurrection life. But they'll also see Him
continually with the eye of faith. They will live by Him. Because
I live, ye shall live also. As we have it back in Isaiah,
thy dead men shall live. together with my dead body shall
they arise." They have an interest in His resurrection. That resurrection
life will be communicated to them, to their souls, by the
ministry of the Spirit. They will live in Christ. And
then again, by the Spirit there will be that union with Christ,
and that communion with Christ. As he says in verse 20, at that
day, ye shall know that I am in the Father, and ye in me,
and I in you." The Lord Himself of course, united to the Father,
there is one God, one God in three persons, God the Father,
God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, but the unity of the Godhead.
God is not three persons, but there are three persons in the
Godhead. One God subsisting in three distinct
persons. And there's union. And there's
union also between the Lord Jesus Christ and those who are in Him. Isn't that what the Lord is saying
there at the end of verse 20? You in me and I in you. And so, as we saw this morning,
the Lord will also continually manifest Himself to His people.
I will manifest Myself to Him, He says. It's a promise. It's
one of those promises which are yay and amen in the Lord Jesus. Or there will be those fresh
discoveries of the Lord. He will reveal Himself to His
people. And then also, He is the one
who will teach them. and teach them by and through
that gracious ministry of the Spirit. Verse 26, The Comforter,
which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in My name,
He shall teach you all things and bring all things to your
remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you. Or the Spirit
will bring to mind all the words of the Lord Jesus, all the gracious
words that fell from His lip. Now as the Lord is speaking here
in the text of that manifestation, we saw how Judas puts a question
there in verse 22. It's not Judas Iscariot. It's the other Judas. In fact,
he's also given the name of Labaius back in Matthew 10 and verse
3. We read of Labaius, whose surname was Thaddeus. It's not Iscariot. There were two Judases amongst
the twelve disciples. And the Judas that we read of
him in verse 22, of course, is the one who is the human author
of that little book of Jude, or Judas, that we have at the
end, just before the book of the Revelation. He puts this
question then to Christ in verse 22, Lord how is it that thou
wilt manifest thyself unto us and not unto the world? And then
the Lord answers, if a man love me he will keep my words and
my Father will love him and we will come unto him and make our
abode with him. It's interesting with regards
to the question that's put there in verse 22, the comment of Dr. Gill. He says of Jude, or Judas,
he says the question is put with admiration and astonishment. How is it, Lord, that thou wilt
manifest thyself unto us and not unto the world? Why should
we have this privilege, this blessing? That's how Gill understands
it. Why should we enjoy this special
favor, that thou wilt show thyself, reveal thyself to us, and not
unto the world? We can think of the language
of Isaac Watts in the hymn, Why? Why was I made to hear his voice,
and enter whilst there's room, when thousands make a wretched
choice, and rather starve than come? Why me? Why us? Why is it that we're gathered
here this evening under the sound of God's word when the multitudes
are without and have no thought of God, no desire to hear the
word of God, no interest in the things of God. They live their
lives as if there were no God at all and no solemn day of accountability
to the One who is their Creator and the God in whom they live
and move, the One that they are continually dependent upon. Why
is it that we are here and they are where they are. Oh, the wonder
of the ways of God and the words of God. And the Lord answers
the question. And what does the Lord say there in verse 23? Well, we have another greater
promise in many respects. Jesus answered and said unto
him, If a man love me, he will keep my words, that my Father
will love him and we will come unto him and make our abode with
him. Not just a matter of the Lord
manifesting himself, but now the promise of the abiding presence. The abiding presence of Christ. And that's really what I want
to try to say something with regards to tonight. We thought
of the manifestation of Christ. And there we have the abiding
presence of Christ. And just two simple things with
regards to this presence. It is a living presence and it
is also a loving presence. Just to consider those two headings
for a while. It is a living presence. It is, of course, a spiritual
presence. We're not to lose sight of the
fact that what the Lord is speaking of as that day, verse 20, at
that day, He says. What day is He speaking of? He
is speaking of the glorious day of Pentecost. And when the day
of Pentecost was fully come, we're told, aren't we, in Acts
2, what the Lord, the exalted Savior did. being by the right
hand of God exalted Peter says he has shed forth this which
ye now see and hear that glorious donation of the Spirit of God
and the whole context of these verses set in these chapters
is one in which Christ is speaking so much of the promise of the
coming of the Spirit. What a glorious and a blessed
coming that was. He goes on to say, doesn't he,
in chapter 16, Nevertheless, I tell you the truth, it is expedient
for you that I go away. For if I go not away, the Comforter
will not come unto you. but if I depart, I will send
him unto you." All that is the promise. When the Lord Jesus
was glorified, He would send the Spirit. And this is a spiritual
presence that is being spoken of here in this 23rd verse. Is it not the life of God that
comes into the soul of the believer. And that life, you see, is a
life in which he enjoys real communion with God. And the wonder
is that the Christian is one who is able to have communion
with each of the persons in the Godhead, a distinct communion.
with the Father and with the Son and with the Holy Ghost. The great Puritan divine Dr. John Owen has a book entitled
of Communion with God and the main thrust of that book really
is to establish the fact that the Christian is a Trinitarian
And he doesn't just have fellowship with the Lord Jesus Christ, the
Son of God, he has fellowship with the Father, and he has fellowship
with the Holy Spirit. And each of the fellowships that
he is having, they are distinctive. He can commune with the Father. and he can commune with the Son,
and he can commune with the Holy Ghost. And what do we have here
in verse 23? We have the abiding presence
of the Father and of the Son, and each of them distinct. If
a man love me, Christ says, he will keep my words, and my Father
will love him, and we, that is the Father and the Son, we will
come unto him and make our abode with him. It reminds us, does it not, that
if any deny the Son, they have not the Father. And remember
how there were those who were denying the truth of the person
of the Lord Jesus when we come to the end of the apostolic age. There were some who denied the
reality of His human nature. There were others who denied
the blessed truth of His eternal divine Sonship. And what does
John say? The short epistles at the end
of the New Testament, in 2nd John for example, that 9th verse,
whosoever transgresseth and abideth not in the doctrine of Christ
hath not God, he that abideth in the doctrine of Christ, he
hath both the Father and the Son. If we abide in the doctrine
of Christ we have father and son. What does that mean? Well,
if Christ be not the eternal son of God there is no eternal
father. An eternal father must have an
eternal son. And we can have fellowship with
the father. And we can have fellowship with the son also. But then there
is also a distinctive indwelling by the Holy Spirit. Look at how
the Lord speaks of the Spirit in verse 17. The Spirit of truth
whom the world cannot receive because it seeth him not neither
knoweth him but ye know him for he dwelleth with you and shall
be in you. Can we have fellowship with the
Father and with the Son? Yes we can. Our fellowship is
with the Father and with the Son. But we also have fellowship
with the Holy Spirit. and He comes and He dwells within
us and as we said many times of course it's when we come to
pray that we discover this glorious truth of the doctrine of God
in prayer we know the ministry of each
of those three persons through Christ we're told we have access
by one Spirit unto the Father, which through Christ He is the
Mediator. But though we need the Spirit to help us in all
our infirmities, for we know not what to pray for as we ought,
or we look to the Mediator, God the Son, manifest in the fullness
of the time, the Saviour of sinners, the Man Christ Jesus, there's
our Mediator. But though we need that blessed
ministry of the Spirit to help us to be to us that spirit of
prayer and then we come and we address God and we speak to God
as that one who is truly our Father in Heaven and we know
each of them even as we pray to God and we can of course address
our prayers not only to the Father but also to the Son and to the
Holy Ghost. We see evidence in Scripture
that that's what believers have ever done. Each of the persons,
the divine persons, they are distinct. But how we need that blessed
ministry of the Spirit. How our understanding of God
must be a spiritual understanding. The believer, of course, is the
temple of the Holy Ghost. And the Lord speaks of him so
clearly in these passages. He speaks of that one who proceeds
from the Father and from the Son We read those words at the
end of chapter 15, when the Comforter is come, says Christ, whom I
will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth which
proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me. And then,
later, in chapter 20 and verse 22, Christ, we're told, breathed
on them, that is, on the disciples, and said unto them, Receive ye
the Holy Ghost. He breathes on them, and He says,
Receive ye, He's very breathing, you see, is the Holy Spirit proceeding
from Him. Just as here in chapter 15 and
verse 26 he speaks of the Spirit which proceedeth from the Father,
we can see something then of the relationship between the
persons. God the Father is the one who
begets, God the Son is the one who is begotten, God the Holy
Ghost is the one who proceeds. from the Father and from the
Son, Christ in breathing upon them is communicating the Spirit
to them there in that 20th chapter. Now we need to know that gracious
ministry, the blessed ministry of the Spirit when he comes to
dwell within us. What is the believer? He is a
temple. A temple says the Apostle of the Holy Ghost. The Spirit
of God dwelleth in you, says Paul. What? He asked the question,
know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost
which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? Who are we aware of what this
gracious ministry of the Spirit is when He comes to dwell within
us? Ye know Do we really know the
Spirit? For He dwelleth with you and
shall be in you. And what does the Spirit do when
He thus comes to us? He makes us so very much aware
of what we are and we see and feel something of our innate
sinfulness. That's such an important and
significant part of His ministry. It's a living presence, you see.
The Spirit's presence in the soul of the believer. How Christ speaks of Him. There's
a similar word in chapter 16 when He is come. He will reprove. Or the Margin says He will convince. the world of sin and of righteousness
and of judgment, of sin, because they believe not on me. Oh, he
comes to convince of unbelief. The accursed sin that was there
in the garden of Eden, the root of every sin, unbelief, the sin
which doth so easily beset us. He makes us feel what we are.
The impossibility of faith when the Spirit works within us then
we see that we cannot of ourselves produce faith. How can faith
be a duty in any sense? We're unable, we're not spiritual.
We need the Spirit of God. We need that faith that comes
by the operation of God. He convinces us of the sin of
unbelief. He convinces of righteousness,
says Christ, because I go to my Father and you see me no more. Well, isn't that the vindication
of Christ? The one who has finished the
transgression and made an end of sin and made reconciliation
for iniquity and brought in everlasting righteousness and sealed the
vision and the prophecy. His work is done. And there is
a righteousness. He convinces us that our righteousness
is in heaven. We have no innate righteousness
of our own. Our righteousness is in another.
It's in the Lord Jesus Christ. And where is Christ? He's in
heaven. He's risen. He's ascended on
high. That was the abundance experience, wasn't it, when he
was tormented? He felt his sin, he felt his
lack of any righteousness. You can read it there in Grace
Abounding, as he goes into the field, looks into the heavens
and he realizes where his righteousness is, it's before God. Christ is
his righteousness. This is what the Spirit does,
how we need this gracious indwelling then of the Spirit of God of
judgment. Because the Prince of this world is judged. All
we convince is that Satan is a defeated foe. He's done with. Christ has delivered us from
all that fraudulent of the devil. This is the blessed work then
of the Spirit when He comes, when He descends. Oh yes, He
makes us feel something of what we are. And that's awful really. Think of the language of the
hymn writer. 316, Lord, when thy spirit descends
to show the badness of our hearts, astonished at the amazing view,
the soul with horror starts. Shocked at the sight, we straight
cry out, can ever God dwell here? Is it really possible that God
could come and dwell in my heart? If I know anything of myself,
and I know a little of myself, and the little that I know, it
seems an impossibility, really, that God could dwell in such
a heart as mine, shocked at the sight. We straight cry out, can
ever God dwell here? What does the Spirit do then?
He causes us to feel our constant need of another, even the Lord
Jesus Christ. What are we? What can we do apart
from the Lord Jesus? All but when He comes to dwell
in us, to abide in us, and when we abide in Him. Remember how
it goes on. We were reading in chapter 15
just now. I am the true vine, my Father
is the husband man, he says. Now ye are clean through the
word which I have spoken unto you. Abide in me and I in you,
as the branch cannot bear fruit of itself except it abide in
the vine, no more can ye except ye abide in me. I am the vine,
ye are the branches. He that abideth in me and I in
him, the same bringeth forth much fruit. For without me ye
can do nothing. How true it is! What are we severed
from the vine? If a man abide not in me he is
cast forth as a branch and is withered, and men gather them
up and cast them into the fire and they are burned. How we need
to be those in who are in the Lord Jesus Christ. And
how can we be in Christ? How can Christ abide in us? It's the work of the Spirit.
It's a living, it's a living union, this spiritual union.
If a man have not the Spirit of Christ, Paul says he is none
of His. Lord Jesus answers and says,
If a man love me, he will keep my words. And my Father will
love him, and we will come unto him and make our abode with Him
and He will do it and He does do it by that gracious working
of the Spirit ye know Him for He dwelleth with you and shall
be in you but also here what do we see it's a loving it's
a loving presence it's the language of love isn't it all of it all
the verses really that we've try to consider in some small
measure today. It's love, it's love, and it's
love again. He that hath my commandments and
keepeth them, he it is that loveth me. And he that loveth me shall
be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself
to him. And then when the Lord answers
Judas, How is it that thou wilt manifest thyself unto us and
not unto the world? Jesus answered, If a man love
me he will keep my words and my Father will love him and we
will come unto him and make our abode with him. It's a loving
presence that we have here. Now what of this presence? Well, love in a sense is so natural
and so necessary in the Godhead, when we think of who God is.
Twice there in that fourth chapter of John's first general epistle,
1 John 4, 8, and again at verse 16, we have those three words,
God is love. God is love. And sometimes we
speak of the attributes of God. You can think of various attributes
in God. He's omnipotent. He's all-powerful.
He's omnipresent. He's in all places. He's omniscient. He knows all things. But there are other attributes.
He's just. He's a just God. That's an attribute
of God. He's a holy God. He's a righteous
God. we can think also of the attributes
of mercy he's a merciful God, he's a gracious God he's a loving
God also in the sense love is an attribute but love is more
than an attribute John says God is love and God is love in all the glory of his divine
being without reference to anything
outside of himself. God is love. How the father loves
the son. How the son loves the father.
How the father and the son love the Holy Spirit. How the Holy
Spirit loves the father and the son. God is love you see. There's
an inter-trinitarian relationship of love. Back in chapter 3 and verse 35
we're told the father loveth the son. The Father loveth the
Son, and giveth not the Spirit by measure unto Him. There we
have the three persons. The Father so loves the Son that
He gives Him the Spirit. A glorious outpouring, a wonderful
effusion of the Spirit upon the Lord Jesus as He accomplishes
His great work. And remember how the Lord speaks
really back in Proverbs chapter 8 where we see Him who is the
Word of God as the Wisdom of God and He says, Then I was by
Him, as one brought up with Him I was daily His delight, rejoicing
always before Him. Oh, the wonder of the love of
God! And we see it in the relationship between the three Divine Persons,
Father, Son and Holy Ghost. it's so necessary in the Godhead
but what we see in scripture also is that there is a covenant
love in the Godhead there's a covenant love in the Godhead we have it
in the in the covenant of redemption the covenant of grace we remember
how The son, of course, is equal to the father. Being in the form
of God, he thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but made
himself of no reputation, took upon him the form of a servant.
That's in the Covenant, isn't it? He's the son of God, when we think simply in terms
of the doctrine of the Trinity, the Godhead, but when we think
of the Covenant, we see him now as that one who will willingly
become the servant of God. But there's love still in that
Covenantal relationship. The father still loves the son,
and the son still loves the father and the spirit is also there
we refer to those words in chapter 3 where the father loveth the
son and has granted such an infusion of the spirit upon him as a mark
of his love and the son loves the father and the son will be
about all the work that the father has given him to do, he wants
to please the father look at what the Lord says here after
this 23rd verse, he says, he that loveth me not keepeth not
my sayings and the word which ye hear is not mine but the father's
which sent me He speaks of the Father which
sent me. Time and again here in John's
Gospel we're reminded of that. My doctrine, he says, is not
mine, but is that sent me. All the time he is wanting to
manifest something of his love to the Father by his own obedience
to all the commandments that the Father has given to him in
that eternal covenant. in chapter 12, he says at verse 49, I have not
spoken of myself but the Father which sent me, He gave me a commandment,
what I should say and what I should speak. Again, here in chapter 15, the end of verse 10 he says, even as I have kept My Father's
commandments and abide in His love." What a statement is that! He says in the first part of
that 10th verse, If ye keep My commandments, ye shall abide
in My love. Well, we thought of that this
morning. The one who loves the Lord Jesus.
If a man loves Me, he will keep My words, He says. He that hath
My commandments and keepeth them, he it is that loveth Me. And
what the Lord is saying of others is true in Himself and His relationship
to the Father. And we see it so clearly here
in this 10th verse in chapter 15, If ye keep My commandments
ye shall abide in My love, even as I have kept My Father's commandments
and abide in His love. Oh, there is such a loving relationship
then in the outworking of the whole scheme of salvation. Why
is it that the Son is obedient to the death of the cross? Because
He loves the Father and He will accomplish all the goodwill and
pleasure of the Father. But He not only loves the Father,
the amazing thing is of course that He loves His own. who He
loves His own and He loves them unto the end. He loves them even
to that terrible end, the bitter ends of the cross. There we see that love and that's
the love that He shed abroad in the heart of the sinner. Romans
5 and verse 5, the love of God shed abroad in our hearts. What is His presence here? It's
such a loving presence. It's a loving presence, because
God is love. And God is love not only in the
sense of His own nature in the Godhead, but He is love in the
outworking of the great covenant of redemption and the covenant
of grace. And John says, we love Him because
he first loved us. But it's a sovereign love. Oh,
it's a sovereign love. As it is written, Jacob have
I loved, and Esau have I hated. What is it that lies behind that
choice that he has made of his people? Why he has set his eternal
love upon them. That's what his foreknowledge
is, whom he did foreknow It's the intimacy of love. It's the
love that a man has to his wife and a wife has to her husband
and they know one another. There's an intimacy in the relationship.
Of course there is. And that's the relationship between
God in Christ Jesus and His people. He loves them, they love Him.
We love Him because He first loved us. The believer's love,
as we said this morning, is a practical love. And it's an abiding love. And so what do we do as we live
our lives? We desire to live to the honor,
the glory of His name. Or we delight in His commandments,
because they're His commandments. That's what makes them so precious.
He that hath My commandments, He says, and keepeth them, he it is that
loveth Me. That's how we demonstrate our
love. We love His Word and we don't just, as we said this morning,
delight in the promises of His Word. We're not partial. No,
we delight in His precepts. It's all the Word of God. And
it's all the gracious revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ. All
for the Lord then to come and make his dwelling in our hearts
and to abide with us. If a man loves me, says Christ,
he will keep my words and my Father will love him and we will
come unto him and make our abode with him. How can this be? How can God
come and abide in us? It's by that blessed ministry
and work of the Spirit of whom the Lord Jesus says so much,
the Spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive, because
it seeth him not, neither knoweth him, but ye know him. For he
dwelleth with you, and shall be in you. Oh, the Lord then
bless his word to us by his Spirit, for his name's sake. Amen.