JOHN 15:26-16:4 BUT THESE THINGS I HAVE TOLD YOU, BEFORE THEY HAPPEN

26 ¶ "But when the Helper comes, whom I shall send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify of Me.

Number one, we witness as individual members of the body, number two we are to witness as a total body.

No individual member is excused from being a witness, did you know that? I had people say, "Well I don't think the Lord has called me to be a witness." No, that isn't so. Every one of us is a witness. Every individual member of the body is a member for witness. Acts 1:8: "You shall receive power", said Jesus, "after the holy power has come upon you, and you shall be my witnesses." There's no option there, none at all. The Apostle Paul so carefully points this out in 2 Corinthians 5:17, "Therefore if any man be in Christ he's a new creation. Old things are passed away, behold all things are become new. And all things are of God who hath reconciled us to himself, and hath given us the ministry of reconciliation". There's nobody excused from that - anybody who has been reconciled has the ministry of communicating reconciliation to others. To wit, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself.

2Corinthians 5:20: "Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ as though God did beseech you by us, we beg you in Christ's stead, be reconciled of God". Every believer whose been born again, everyone who has been reconciled has been given the ministry of reconciliation. No believer is excused from being a witness. Every Christian is a witness of Christ, to bring others to Christ. Nobody is off the hook on that. We are a body for edifying that we might be a body for witness. We are individual members to be edified that we might be individual members for effective witness. See, the ultimate goal of the body folks is witness. Witness. Witness. Why do we want to be one? That the world might know that God sent Christ, that's why, not so that we can say "we're one, ".

The word witness is a very interesting word. It's used there in verse 27. Witness is a legal term. It takes us into a law court. We see a judge on the bench, and we see a prisoner on trial. We hear the case argued by lawyers, first the prosecution and then the defense, and both of them call witnesses to substantiate their case. And we as individual members of the body are individual witnesses in a trial. You say who's on trial? Jesus Christ is on trial. Who's the judge? The world is the judge. Who's the defense attorney? The Holy Spirit. Who's the prosecution? Satan with his lies and accusations

Notice it says in verse 26 when the comforter is come; the word comforter is paraclete. It came to mean "the counsel for the defense". It's one called alongside to help. It refers to the Holy Spirit who is the counsel for defense - he is defending Christ and calling you and I as individual members of the body to witness and confirm the testimony of Christ. Sad to say, much of our witnessing does not confirm the testimony of Christ. Some Christian witnesses do greater harm than if they weren't Christians, you know that. Others have effective witness all over the world defending him and commending Christ, and substantiating his claims by their lies.

 

Proceeds from the Father and the Son, shows that Jesus is God and is equal with the Father

 

 27 "And you also will bear witness, because you have been with Me from the beginning.(NKJV)

The Spirit is sent from the Father (cf. 14:26), just as the Son was sent from the Father. Yet this mysterious work of the Spirit is not done in isolation from the church. The apostles were to bear witness to the facts that they came to know: You also must testify. As the apostles witnessed, the Holy Spirit persuaded, and people were saved. The same combination of human obedience to the divine command (Acts 1:8) coupled with the witness of the Spirit is needed in every generation.

 

 

John 16:1 "These things I have spoken to you, that you should not be made to stumble.

Jesus did not want His disciples to stumble (Gr. skandalethron, be caught unaware) in their discipleship after His departure because the events that would follow took them completely by surprise (cf. Matt. 5:10-12). Even though they did not understand everything Jesus told them immediately, they would remember them and understand them more fully later (cf. 14:20, 25-26).

"The greatest danger the disciples will confront from the opposition of the world is not death but apostasy.  Jesus gave this present teaching so His believing disciples would not depart from Him and what He had taught them when persecution assailed them following His departure from them (cf. Matt. 10:33; Mark 8:38; 2 Tim. 2:12; Rev. 3:8).

 2 "They will put you out of the synagogues; yes, the time is coming that whoever kills you will think that he offers God service.

16:1-2. The disciples may have wondered why Jesus was telling them about the world’s hatred and persecution. Jesus, anticipating this question, indicated that expecting trouble beforehand would help them remain in the path of God’s will. (He gave a second reason in v. 4.) The disciples would face excommunication and even death.

Persecution unto death occurred in the case of Stephen (Acts 7:59), James (Acts 12:2), and others (Acts 9:1-4). Some people throughout church history have been motivated to persecute believers because of a misguided zeal for God. They think they are offering a service to God

Romans 10:2 ² For I bear them witness that ^bthey have a zeal for God, ^cbut not according to knowledge.

Jesus was always very open and direct about the cost of discipleship with those who wished to follow Him:

Luke 9:23-26 Then he said to them all, “If anyone wants to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. 24 For whoever wants to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. 25 For what does it benefit a person if he gains the whole world but loses or forfeits himself? 26 For whoever is ashamed of me and my words, the Son of Man be will ashamed of this one when he comes in his glory and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels (see also verses 57-62).

Jesus does not want His disciples to be taken by surprise, and so He tells them about the difficulties which lie ahead for them as His disciples. These men will be rejected by their fellow-Jews, put out of the synagogue, and even put to death. And the irony of all this is that when their opponents do such things, they will actually suppose that they are serving God by their opposition to Christ and His disciples.^[1]

Whether in the first century or in the twentieth, Christians have often discovered that the most dangerous oppression comes not from careless pagans but from zealous adherents to religious faith, and from other beliefs. A sermon was preached when Cranmer was burned at the stake. Christians have faced severe persecution performed in the name of Yahweh, in the name of Allah, in the name of Marx—and in the name of Jesus.”

Who better illustrates this than Saul, before his conversion?

Acts 22:4 “I persecuted this Way even to the point of death, tying up both men and women and putting them in prison”.

Acts 26:9-11 “Of course, I myself was convinced that it was necessary to do many things hostile to the name of Jesus of Nazareth. 10 And that is what I did in Jerusalem: not only did I lock up many of the saints in prisons by the authority I received from the chief priests, but I also cast my vote against them when they were sentenced to death. 11 I punished them often in all the synagogues and tried to force them to blaspheme. Because I was so furiously enraged at them, I went to persecute them even in foreign cities” (see also 1Timothy 1:12-16).

 3 "And these things they will do to you because they have not known the Father nor Me.

The opponents of the disciples would do these things because they had not come to know the Father or the Son. Theirs would be a sin of responsible ignorance.

 4 "But these things I have told you, that when the time comes, you may remember that I told you of them. And these things I did not say to you at the beginning, because I was with you.

The disciples appear to be in a state of emotional shock. They are overwhelmed with sadness. There seems to be nothing to say. Think of it. Jesus is going to leave them, and when He does, they are not only going to be forsaken by their own people, they are going to hunted down by them as though they were criminals.

 

     Mark 8:36 "For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?

             John 14:6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. Have you trusted Him as your Savior? He can Save you if You ask Him based on His death, burial, and resurrection for your sins. Believe in Him for forgiveness of your sins today.

              “And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”  -John 8:32

 

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