John F. MacArthur - How to Survive in a World of Unbelievers: Jesus Words of Encouragement on the Night Before His Death

W ITHOUT QUESTION, SOME OF THE MOST POIGNANT, POWERFUL teaching in Jesus entire earthly ministry took place on the last evening He spent with His disciples before He was crucified. The occasion was the Passover meal, commonly known as the Last Supper. Jesus earthly ministry to the masses had just ended and He had turned the focus of His teaching time uniquely on the apostles (John 1316). That ministry occurred in a brief period of hours, just before He was arrested and led away for trial, and in one place, the upper room.

During those hours, Jesus gave His disciplesand, consequently, all believers throughout historyHis last will and testament. It is the inheritance of every believer in Christ. It will be our privilege to look into those words of encouragement and challenge in How to Survive in a World of Unbelievers. But we will only scratch the surface of a portion of the rich promise contained in just three chapters of our Lords final discourse. You will easily see that a lifetime of study still might not plumb the depths of all that He taught us about living for Him in an unbelieving world. Here is a preview of the rich truths well study in John 1316:

Christ gave proof of His love. Jesus... rose from supper and laid aside His garments, took a towel and girded Himself. After that, He poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples feet, and to wipe them with the towel with which He was girded (John 13:35). Later, Peter and the rest of the disciples would know Christs love through His atoning death. But in the upper room they saw a glimpse of it through Jesus washing of their feet.

Jesus gave the hope of heaven. Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Fathers 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 to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also (14:13). In those days in Israel, when a son married, a new apartment was added onto the fathers house. Generation after generation of the extended family lived together in one home. That is how heaven is. We are all to be in the Fathers house. Jesus is preparing our rooms.

Our Lord gave us the guarantee of power. 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 he will do, because I go to My Father (14:12). Jesus did not mean the disciples would do works that were greater than His in quality or type, but that they would do works that were greater in extent. During Christs ministry on earth He faced mostly rejection, and He never left the tiny land of Palestine. But on the day of Pentecost, the Spirit of God came, and the apostles started preaching and revolutionized Jerusalem. Later, when persecution came to the Christians in Jerusalem, they scattered throughout Samaria and Judea, preaching the gospel as they went. Then the Apostle Paul and his associates spread the gospel to many more lands. That process is still going on today.

Jesus gave the assurance of supply. And whatever you ask in My name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask anything in My name, I will do it (14:1314). To pray in His name is to bring requests before God that are consistent with who He is. Prayer is not merely for us to satisfy our selfish desires, and it is not to dissuade God from doing what He is going to do anyway. Prayer is to give God the opportunity to show Himself so that we can praise Him for what He is doing.

Our Savior gave the gift of the Spirit. And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you foreverthe Spirit of truth (14:1617a). Jesus promised a supernatural Helper, or Comforter, of the exact same kind as He. This Comforter is the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Christ. He lives within Christs disciples, not just near them. He empowers them and convicts those to whom they preach. His ministry is to convict the world of sin... because they do not believe in Me; of righteousness, because I go to my Father and you see Me no more; of judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged (16:811).

The Master gave every genuine follower the possession of divine truth, the Word of God. But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you (14:26). This promise had a primary application to the writers of the New Testament, the apostolic preachers in the early era of the church. It was a promise of verbal inspiration. The Holy Spirit would bring to their remembrance all that Jesus had taught them, and He would give them further teaching through the years as they served Him. The Bible is accurate, for the Holy Spirit never lies. There is no lie in Him; He is the Spirit of truth (14:17; 15:26; 16:13).

Furthermore, He promised the gift of peace. Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid (14:27). One kind of peace in Scripture is peace with God. That is the objective peace of relationship with Him. But there is also the subjective peace of tranquillity of mind, the peace of God. The Lord is at hand, Paul writes in Philippians 4:5. But that is not a reference to the second coming. It is a reference to the presence of the Lord in our lives today. Because He is at hand, we should be anxious for nothing (v. 6).

He promised the blessing of spiritual fruit. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing (John 15:5). Fruit is the product of a life that has continuing vitality. It lives beyond us; it is something we reproduce. Christians are part of a product that will go throughout eternity like ripples in an everlasting pond. We have lives that will reverberate through all the corridors of heaven forever and ever.