Glory, Love, Trust, and Obedience

Lesson Transcript

Greetings in Jesus' name. It's good to be with you here this morning. I invite you to turn your Bibles to the Gospel of John, chapter 13. This morning I want to cover chapter 13, starting at verse 31, going to chapter 14, verse 15. And I have four words that I think outline this particular passage: glory, trust—no, excuse me—glory, love, trust, and obedience. I guess that might be a title. Glory, love, trust, and obedience. So I want to read the passage, John chapter 13, verse 31.

"So when he had gone out, Jesus said, 'Now the Son of Man is glorified, and God is glorified in him.' If God is glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and glorify him immediately. Little children, I shall be with you a little while longer. You will seek me. And as I said to the Jews, 'Where I am going, you cannot come,' so now I say to you, a new commandment I give to you: that you love one another as I have loved you, that you also love one another.

By this all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another." "Simon Peter said to him, 'Lord, where are you going?' Jesus answered him, saying, 'Where I am going, you cannot follow. But now—'" But now you—"but you follow me now, but you shall follow me afterward." "And Peter said to him, 'Lord, why can I not follow you now? I will lay down my life for your sake.' Jesus answered him, 'Will you lay down your life for my sake?

Most assuredly I say to you, the rooster shall not crow till you have denied me three times. Let not your heart be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my father's house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself, that where I am, there you may be also.

And where I go, you know, and the way you know." "Then—" And Thomas said to him, "Lord, we do not know where you are going, and how can we know the way?" Jesus said to him, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man cometh unto the Father but by me. If you had known me, you would have known my Father also.

And from now on you know him and have seen him." "Phillip said to him, 'Lord, show us the Father, and it is sufficient for us.' Jesus said to them, 'Have I been with you so long, and yet you have not known me, Philip?'" He who has seen me has seen the Father. So how can you say, "Show us the Father"? Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father is in me? The words that I speak to you, I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does the works.

Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me; or else, believe me for the sake of the works themselves. Most assuredly I say to you, he who believes in me, the works that I do, he will do also. And greater works than these will he do, because I go to my Father. And whatever you ask in my name, that I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask anything in my name, I will do it.

If you love me, keep my commandments." Jesus starts out this discourse, and this is just part of a discourse that goes on through chapter 16. And so to kind of chop it up into sections and so on is a little problematic, because one theme, one idea kind of moves into the next one and sort of comes back to what was said earlier and so on. So I can't spend enough time here this evening, this morning, to go through all three chapters.

So you're just going to have to live with the fact that this might be just a little bit chopped up. But we'll see what we can do here. This morning we sang a song at the beginning. "Praise God, from whom all blessings flow." Praise God—how's the rest of it? Praise God from— All creatures here below. Praise— Holy Ghost. Host. Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Okay. When I was a child and was going to the Methodist Church, we sang that song every Sunday.

Now, we didn't sing it to the tune we sang it to this morning. We sang a much more simpler tune. And it was one of those things that we didn't have to open our hymn books to, because we did it every Sunday, just like we said the Lord's Prayer every Sunday, just like we said the Apostles' Creed every Sunday. And so I learned all those things without ever having to try to, because they were just repeated over and over again.

And in the program, or in the bulletin for the service, when we came to that part, it was called a doxology. A doxology. And that term comes from the Greek word doxa, which is the term that is used here in this passage in verse 31, and then later on in verse 13 of chapter 14, when it talks about glory, when it talks about glorifying, when it talks about the Father glorifying the Son. And so I've often wondered, what's it mean? What's it mean? You know, we sometimes talk about glorifying God. Glorifying God.

What do we mean when we say glorifying God? Okay. Now, if you kind of take this idea of a doxology, or this hymn of praise, it ascribes to God, or it talks about God in a certain way. Okay. "Praise God, from whom all blessings flow. Praise him, all creatures here below. Praise him above, ye heavenly host. Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost." All right. So we're praising God for who he is. We're acknowledging who he is. We're proclaiming it. We're showing it forth. We're reinforcing in our own minds who God is.

And whenever we do that, okay, whenever we reinforce in our own minds, whenever we proclaim in our own minds, in our own hearts, and with our words, and with the lives that we live, because one of the other ways in which we glorify God is by living a life that is in accordance with his will. Okay. So we give God what he deserves. Are we acknowledge? Are we proclaim? Are we give testimony? We show forth what God is and what he deserves. And that's kind of the idea about glory. Okay.

That's kind of the idea behind it. I'm going to read you a definition of glory, which is taken from the Dictionary of New Testament Theology, which is a dictionary that deals with the meaning of Greek words.

And I have found it very, very useful in my study, if I ever want to look up what a word means, because it will go on for pages about a particular word and tell you everything that means in the Old Testament, and then a Septuagint in Greek secular language, and then, of course, zeros down into the New Testament, how the word's used. It's a very handy book. If you ever have—actually, a three-volume set. If you ever have an opportunity to find a set of them, I would recommend them.

I bought mine used at a book sale for like 4 or 5 dollars. I was amazed, because they cost a little bit more than that. But I have used that, I would say, every time I have prepared a sermon from a New Testament passage and found it a very useful tool. But this is what the Dictionary of New Testament Theology says. Glory, based on the Greek, is the Greek word doxa, which I've already mentioned. And in the Septuagint is the translation of the Hebrew word kabbah, kabbeh.

And regarding God, it is the luminous manifestation of God's person, his splendor or radiance, and his revelation of himself. Glory manifests itself in the operation of God's power and salvation. It is linked with God's action and is part of his being. The presence of the personal glory of God in Christ means the presence of salvation. That's pretty neat, isn't it? And then alongside that goes the idea of honor. Okay.

And I didn't look up—I maybe it'd have been good if I would have looked up the term that Jared shared with us when he read from Peter about giving honor and so on. I'm not sure if it's the same word. It might be. I'm not sure, though, because there are other words that can—there is actually another word that can be used and sometimes translated that way. But when we talk about glorifying something, okay, we're talking about giving it the honor and the reverence and the desserts that it has.

We're giving it not something that—particularly when we're talking about God—something that he has, and it's our acknowledgment of that being and of what he has and who he is. You know, I'm reminded of the case in the Old Testament where Moses comes down from Mount Sinai, and his face was radiant. It glowed. Okay. And the idea of light and of glowing and brightness and so on, because he had encountered the glory of the Lord, and it was physically manifested.

There was kind of this thing where it kind of rubbed off on him for a period of time, and his face actually glowed. All right. And they couldn't look at him. He had to cover his face because they couldn't stand—they physically couldn't stand looking on who Moses was. That gives us kind of a picture of what we're talking about when we talk about glory. Now, later on, okay, Jesus is—we talk about the fact that when Jesus rose from the dead, he refers to that as his glorification.

And we are also told that we will be given glorified bodies in the resurrection. Okay. And that will—those will be bodies which we will see completely manifest the work of God and the completion of his salvation for us. I think that's a marvelous kind of thing to think about here. All right. So Jesus, just coming off of talking about the betrayal of Judas and so on, says, "The Son of Man is glorified, and God is glorified in him." The Son of Man is the term that Jesus seems to like to use about himself the most.

That's how it's his way of self-referencing himself. He's talking here in the third person. Okay. "The Son of Man is glorified, and God is glorified in him." And so Jesus has made manifest the splendor, the radiance, and the purpose of God in bringing salvation to us. He's done that. And on the other hand, the Father is going to glorify. He's going to honor his Son. God's glory and presence and salvation is going to be made manifest in Jesus.

In a sense, we have here the idea of victory, the idea of something that's going—a victory that's going to be accomplished through what Jesus is doing for his Father. And it's going to be—it's going to be evident. It's going to be clear. All right. And it says here that if God is glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and glorify him immediately. Okay. So this is not something down the future. Okay. It's something that's going to happen right away, very quickly here.

And that very evening we are going to see, as we get through this passage and we get into the arrests and, of course, to the trial and the crucifixion and death of Christ. Okay. This is happening within a very short period of time, less than a day. All right. And so this glorification—this is all part of the glorification.

Because you remember Jesus said, "If I be lifted up," referring to his crucifixion, "I will draw all men unto myself." And so there's a paradox here in the fact that Christ's crucifixion was considered to be a—a crucifixion was considered to be a very debasing action in which you literally made the person being crucified a spectacle, an object of derision. If you remember reading the accounts of Jesus's crucifixion, he's made fun of, he's spat upon, he is joked about, and so on.

This is a shameful—this is normally a shameful experience. But one of the paradoxes of Christianity is that this very shameful experience was also the moment of Christ's glorification, in which he came to do the work that God had given him to do, which was to die on that cross, pay the price of our sins, redeem us from the power of sin and death, and from the control of Satan, and by thus defeating Satan's power and all the forces of evil. And that is a moment of glorification.

That's a moment in which God's purpose in salvation was actually accomplished. And then we have the resurrection, which is a further glorification. All right. There's a further glorification because Jesus is given a body that is glorified, a body that cannot be corrupted, a body that is the kind of body that we all will have on that day in which we see our glorification. So Jesus is proclaiming very loudly who God is, both by what he is taught and by what he is doing and will be doing here very shortly.

And then he tells them—he gives them a hint. "I'm going to be with you for a very little while longer, just a very little while longer, less than a day here yet." Hours away, he's talking about that he's going to be here. "And I'm going to go someplace that you can't follow me yet. You can't follow me now. I'm going somewhere." He's going to his death. Okay.

We're told in Peter that during this period of time, that he actually went into the realm of the dead and released the souls that were in captivity there this period of time, and they certainly couldn't go with him there. Okay. So they can't go with him right now. But he said, "You will come afterwards. You will come afterwards." Now, I think specifically he's talking about the fact that many of his disciples would experience something similar to what he's experienced.

That is, a death brought about because they preached the gospel, they were bringing good news, and there was opposition to it, and they were persecuted, and they were martyred. Okay. But I think that in a more general sense, we can also think about the fact that we will all, each individually, follow after. We will follow after. Okay. Each of us will meet our end. Everyone is going to die. Everyone is facing that. The only person who chose to do that was Jesus when he didn't have to.

We have no choice in the matter. We are all going to die. And whether or not we follow afterward, and whether we follow Jesus afterward, has to do with what we do right now, with what he has done for us, and what we do with that determines whether or not we will follow after him. We will all certainly die, but not everyone who dies follows after him.

Now, Peter, this impetuous sort of person, this reckless sort of person, this morning in Sunday school with the young people, we talked about Japheth and his recklessness and so on. And I don't know if Japheth and Peter were sort of the same kind of personality, but Peter is reckless. He's impetuous. He makes bold statements. And sometimes people who make bold statements have a little difficulty carrying through with them. But I think Peter very much wanted to do, wanted to go after Jesus. Okay.

He wanted to go after him, but he couldn't. Jesus says to his disciples that, "I give you a new commandment. And that new commandment I give to you is to love one another as I have loved you, that you also love one another." Now, if we look in what Jesus has said before and what is in the Old Testament teachings and the law, it says, "We are to love the Lord our God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength, and to love our neighbor as ourselves." Jesus repeats that in his various teachings and so on.

So what's new about this commandment that he's now giving to his disciples? Well, what's new about it is that he's telling us not to love each other as we love ourselves, but to love each other as Jesus has loved us. And Jesus tells us elsewhere that he has come into the world to give his life as a ransom for many. He has come to die to rescue us from the captivity that we are in. And so I think by implication he is saying here, "I have been willing to give up my life for you.

I am willing to give up my life for you. I will give up my life for you. Greater love has no man than that." And so he's saying to his disciples, "I want you to love one another with that kind of love, that sacrificial, emptying kind of love." So Jesus's disciples are characterized by the kind of love they have for each other.

He wants people to be able to say about us, "See how they love one another." So when we think about fellow believers, when we think about those who love each other, I think about Colin right now, the situation he's in, and Cedric's going to give him a transplant. That is not going to be a picnic for Cedric. So it isn't. I spoke to him and said, "I really am blessed by your willingness to do that." And he said, "There's no question in my mind. I wanted to do it. I'm glad to do it.

I feel privileged to be able to do it." Cedric loves his brother. He loves his brother. And that's just a blessing. That's just a blessing. That just blessed me. Okay. Jesus wants us to love each other like that. He loves us like that. He cares for us like that. And so he says, "This is how you're supposed to love." And Peter is saying, "Yes, Lord, I love you like that. I'm willing to die for you. I will follow you wherever you go. Okay.

I want to go with you right now, not afterwards, but right now, wherever you're going, even if you're going to your death, I want to go with you." And I think Peter meant it. I think he meant it. All right. I think he was sincere. He said, "I will lay down my life for your sake." Jesus knew he wasn't going to do it now. Okay. He knew that Peter was going to deny him three times before the cock crows, before the end of the before the beginning of the next day, before it then came. Jesus knew that.

And I think about our Lord knowing these things, knowing that Judas was going to betray him, know that Peter was going to deny him, know that his disciples were going to flee from his presence, and so on. And he still was willing to go through this. Paul tells us that while we were yet God's enemies, Jesus died for us, scarcely for a good man, would any of us die, Paul says. Maybe, maybe we would be willing to lay down our lives for a good man.

I think many of us would be willing to lay down our lives for our children, for those who are in our family. That's natural. That's good. It's a very natural and good thing. All right. But the beauty of the love that Jesus has for us, that God has for us, is that while we were yet his enemies, he was willing he loved us so much that he was willing to die for us, to take care of this estrangement that we have, the fact that we are not we do not have a relationship with God because of our sin.

God was the only one that could take care of that problem, and Jesus was the only one that could pay the price that needed to be paid. Jesus knowing all this, knowing that they would abandon him, knowing that he would go to the cross alone, and no one would share that pain and that suffering with him, but he would do it on his own, nonetheless was willing to do it. All right.

And then having said all this, can you imagine the disciples listening to this discourse and them hearing Jesus tell Peter, "For the cock crows three times, you're going to deny me. Something bad is about to happen. Something disastrous is going to happen here." They should have some sense of impending doom. Then what does Jesus say to them? "Let not your heart be troubled. You believe in God, believe also in me." This passage was one of the first passages I ever learned after I became a Christian.

I still kind of quote it in the King James Version. I was stumbling a little bit reading this in the New King James because the King James wanted to interrupt me. "Don't let your heart be troubled." They are in a situation in which their hearts, what you would think, should be troubled. There's this sense of approaching gloom. But Jesus is telling them, "Don't be troubled in your heart." Why? "Believe in God, believe also in me." That takes us to the idea of trust, of trust.

And I want you to notice here that this term trust is also closely connected to another idea, and that is of knowing, knowing. He says here in verse 4, "And where I go, you know, and the way you know." Now, Jesus tells us a little bit about what the purpose of his going is. He says, "In my Father's house are many mansions." That's just simply an old word for rooms and so on. We think of mansions as being these big elaborate houses and so on.

When I was a boy, there was this song that went around about a mansion on the hilltop. You remember hearing that song? That's a little bit whatever. Music's not that great, and the theology is maybe less than that. But the important thing is that what Jesus is preparing for us, or what he's going to prepare, what he's going away here to prepare for us, is a place where we can dwell with him. Okay. It's a place where we can dwell with him. That's what he's talking about, a dwelling place.

And I think it was Brother Lynn who, when he was teaching from this passage, said that this dwelling place is not something in the future. It's something right now. Now, it is something in the future. Okay. Don't get me wrong. But this is not something in the future. It's something right now. Jesus is going to go and prepare a place for us in which we can dwell with him right now. Okay. He's making the way. He's talking here about a relationship. He's talking here about being in the presence, being in his presence.

And he's talking about his Father's house. And the idea there of a house is, I think, the idea of a household. And in this household, there are enough rooms, there are enough places for every person who wants to be part of it. There's enough room there. There is not going to be the there's not going to be the case, or there is not the case where we will say we want to be in this house, and God would say, "Oh, sorry, no vacancy. There's no room." There is going to be room.

There is room for everyone who wants to be part of this household. Okay. When the psalmist talks about dwelling in the house of the Lord forever, I think oftentimes we think about that in the sense of being in the temple there in Jerusalem, dwelling there, worshiping, and so on, and this continue kind of thing. And I think that there's reason to think that. That's probably not wrong. But there's also the sense in which he's talking about the fact that we will dwell in God's household.

We will be part of God's family forever, and there's going to be room for us. But who gets to have this room? Who is Jesus preparing this for? It says in verse 4, "Where I go, you know, and the way you know." And Thomas says to him, "Lord, we do not know where you're going, and how can we know the way?" So the question I ask is, how did the disciples know without knowing they knew? Because Jesus says very clearly, "You know." How did they know without knowing that they knew?

Well, I think the hint is in verse 6 where Jesus says, "I am the way, the truth, and the life." These people, these disciples did know Jesus. And so the way, where Jesus is going, what he's going to be accomplishing, what he is preparing for, okay, they may not know the particulars, and they sometimes act really clueless about things. They're puzzled by what Jesus says. They don't always get it. And it doesn't seem that they really get it until after the resurrection.

When you think about everything Jesus has been saying to them, being talked about him, we'll talk about that later on, where Jesus says that the Holy Spirit will bring to your mind everything that I've taught you, and you will be able to see actually what I was talking about and what I meant. He is the great rememberancer. All right. But because they know Jesus, they know where he is going, even though they may not know the particulars of it. Okay. They know the way, and they know that they're going to be with him.

Now, it's interesting here in verse 4 and 5, the term know in the Greek is oida. And it just simply has this kind of thing like I could say, "I know Adrian. I know what Adrian's name is. I know who his daddy and mother are. I know a little bit of things about it. I'm not sure if I know Adrian as well as Gavin does, though. Gavin knows Adrian better than I do." All right. And there are people that we know in a limited way. Other people we know more about them. We have a closer connection with them and so on.

And so the term know can be used kind of in that sort of generic kind of sense. And depending on the nature of the relationship, the nature of the knowing can be of different degrees. And Jesus says, "You do know." All right. Now, you may not know what you know, but you know. All right. Thomas is perplexed. The disciples are often perplexed. I think Jesus at times is being purposely perplexing. Okay. But Jesus tells them, "I am the way, the truth, and the life." Okay.

There is no other name that we can call on to be saved but the Lord Jesus. There's no other way. I remember years ago when I was in college and I was taking a course in world religions, a very interesting course, ably taught by the professor. And of course, a bunch of college students, particularly if they're sophomores, they think they know everything. And I think I was a freshman or something, so I knew I didn't know anything yet. Next year, I thought I knew everything. Now I know hardly anything.

But one bright, young, fresh fellow, I asked the professor, "Well, we're studying all these different religions, and they're all talking about ways to get to God or the supernatural and so on. How can we really say that Christianity is the only way?" Well, the professor looked at him and he said, "Well, if there are other ways to God, then Jesus didn't need to come and do what he did." And I blessed that professor. He had been a missionary in Ethiopia for many years.

He peppered his teaching with stories about Ethiopia. He was actually a very delightful, devout sort of person and so on. Not everybody who I had there was, but he was. And I thought, he hit the nail on the head. If there was another way to God, then Jesus would not have had to come and do what he did. Okay. He didn't have to do it. He says, "I am the life." That means life, that eternal life is possible through him.

Hebrews talks about the fact that through the Son, the Father has created and has sustained life, even natural physical life. Okay. But Jesus is also the source of eternal life. And then he talks about the truth. Jesus says, "I am the truth." There's a phrase from the scripture that says, "Thy word is truth." And we know that Jesus is that living word. The reason why we can trust this book is because it is given to us by God and through the living word, Jesus Christ.

We know it's true because Jesus is true, and it testifies of who Jesus is. And he says, "No one can come to the Father but by me." Then Jesus goes on and talks about knowing. Here he uses a different word, a different Greek word, and it's gnosko. It's where we get the word gnosis and so on. And while oidia might simply kind of mean a general kind of knowing, it can be an occasional thing. It can have variation of meanings. It can have a deeper meaning than just a casual knowing. Okay.

This knowing is different in kind. It's a deep knowing. It's the kind of word that's actually used to talk about a husband's relationship with his wife. There's an intimacy to this knowing. There's a relationship. There's a deeper knowing than the other kind of knowing. And I think what he's pointing to them here is, "Yes, yes, you know me. You know me. And that knowing is enough to know that I am the way, the truth, and the life. You can put your confidence in that.

But what I want you to experience is a deeper knowing and intimacy with God and with me, where you know my heartbeat. Okay. Where you know my heartbeat. And you want to hear me. You want to listen to me. You want to get to know me better. Just as the Father knows me, I have this intimacy with the Father, and he has it with me. And I want you to have something similar to that with me." All right. And Philip, again, here we have Philip coming onto the scene.

He says, "Lord, show us the Father, and it's sufficient for us." Okay. Lord, I'm game. I want to know. I want to know. Okay. You're talking about this. Well, show us the Father. And Jesus says, "I have been with you for these last three years, and you don't know the Father? Have you been clueless? I've been telling you about God. I've been teaching you and so on, and you're still saying to me, 'Show us the Father, and it'll be enough for us.'" Okay. And he goes on to say, "He who has seen me has seen the Father.

Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father in me? The words I speak to you, I do not speak on my own, but the Father who dwells in me does the works." Hebrews 1:3 says about Jesus that he is his being the brightness of God's glory and the image of God's person, of the Father's glory and the Father's person. When we see Jesus, we see the Father.

And I think that's why it is so very important to us when we read the New Testament and we see how Jesus is portrayed, we see what the disciples and the apostles have told us about Jesus, that we pay very close attention to it because this is the revelation of Jesus Christ through a written word. We don't have the apostles here anymore. Before this New Testament was written, the apostles were the living witnesses of who Jesus was. He spent this time with them. He taught them.

But the amazing thing is that after his resurrection, when they were empowered by the Holy Spirit, everything that Jesus said that didn't make sense to them before suddenly makes sense. And it's the same way with us. Okay. Many of the things that Jesus says make no sense if we're only looking at them on a natural plane. But they only make sense when we surrender to him and we receive the power of the Holy Spirit, and all things kind of come into focus. That's what we see. And that's what Jesus is saying.

If you have seen me, you have seen the Father. The Father and I are one. I am not saying one thing, and the Father is saying another. We are saying and doing the same things. All right. And you can put your hope and confidence and trust in Jesus, knowing that he is the way, the truth, and the life, and no one has access to the Father but through him. There's no other way to go to God. There's this discussion in the larger world. They talk about the Abrahamic faiths, the faiths that have their roots in Abraham.

And those are monotheistic faiths. There's only one God. Okay. And of course, you have Judaism, you have Christianity, and you have Islam. And so the question is, well, are these people all talking about the same God? Well, in a generic sense, when you talk about there being only one God, perhaps maybe so. But if Jesus is the express image of the Father, what we know about God is better, more accurate, more complete than either of those options.

I mean, Islam is basically a reworking of Judaism with some strange things added to it and so on. There's a Muslim cleric who likes to bait Christians. And one of the things he will say to them is, "Show me somewhere in the Bible where it says Jesus says, 'I am God.' Unconvertible where he says, 'I am God.'" And so on. And different people have tried to answer him on that. He is pretty derisive of anything. He makes fun and stuff like that. But when Jesus says, "I am the way, the truth, and the life.

No man cometh to the Father but by me." That means that Muhammad is not God's last prophet. And Islam does not claim that Muhammad is the way to the Father. He doesn't say that Muhammad is not the way, the truth, and the life. And Islam claims that they believe what the gospels say, which is a really curiosity too. So maybe there's a common understanding of there being one God. But the God who is revealed to us in the person of Jesus is a different God.

He's the true God, the everlasting God, the one who says, "I am who I am." Now, Jesus says to them, "Believe me for the sake of the works themselves. Most surely I say to you, 'He believes in me.' The works that I do, he will do also in greater works than these he will do because I go to my Father. And whatever you ask in my name, that I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask anything in my name, I will do it.

If you love me, keep my commandments." Now, if you go through the Gospel of John, this term works is used many different times. It has to do actually with it's often combined or it's often connected with the various signs that Jesus performs. And at the end of his gospel, John tells us that these things, these signs that Jesus did, these works that Jesus did, what is the purpose of them? That you might believe that Jesus is the Christ and that by believing in him, you might have eternal life.

That's the purpose of these works that Jesus is doing. That's the purpose of the signs he's doing. And Jesus is saying to his disciples, "Believe me for the signs that point to me." Okay. Believe me for if you can't believe me, just remember the signs that I did that confirm the mission that God has sent me on, the task I have to do here. And then he says, "And you will do greater works than these." Now, we could get caught up on the idea of performing signs, of performing miracles.

And in the Acts of the Apostles, we do see miracles happening. We do see signs happening. So they're rather amazing. Okay. But what is the work of God that we must do? The Jews asked Jesus. And Jesus said, "The work of God that you must do is to believe in the one whom the Father has sent." Okay.

Jesus's disciples, when they believe in the one whom the Father has sent, when they proclaim the one whom the Father has sent and help other people to come to believing in Jesus also, those are the works of God, I think that Jesus is saying. And you know that when his disciples went out and when the church went out and the gospel was proclaimed, more people came to faith in Jesus than did during Jesus' own earthly ministry. There were greater works yet. There were multiplied works.

Now, that does not mean that does not mean that there are not also signs. There are also not miracles that proclaimed those things and that they could continue to do so today. We don't want to deny that. All right. But we also don't want to manufacture them. And then Jesus says, coming back to the fact where he says, "I've given you this new commandment that you are to love one another. I want you to glorify me. Okay. I want you to put your trust in me.

I'm inviting you to have an intimate relationship with me where you know me and I know you. A deep heart knowing and so on." This thing ends with obedience. "If you love me, keep my commandments." One of the things that's very interesting with John, and I think is something that should inform us when we read Paul, is that you see there is no how should we say? Dichotomy between faith and works. There's none. There's the assumption that if you love Jesus, you will do what he tells us to do. That's the assumption.

That's a sure foundation. Is there any response to the message?