Embracing Christ's Love: Insights from the Upper Room

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It begins when I am 18 years old and it dawns on me; as a young teenager I was in my second year at university. I can see myself sitting in my study bedroom in the university, the day it dawned on me that although all Scripture is God-breathed, there are some books in Scripture that are more central to the message of Scripture than other books of Scripture. [00:05:09]

And, the day that dawned on me I determined that there for the first thing I needed to do if I was going to grow in my understanding of Scripture was to focus on what seemed to me to be the key books. And John’s gospel – I’d been reading the Bible for actually nine years, very consistently. I kind of knew my way around, and I decided I needed to give special attention to – among a number of other books – the Gospel according to John. [00:06:06]

And the place where John does that most of all is in John 13-17. It’s a hugely important section of the Gospel of John. If you think about it this way, 22 chapters in John’s gospel. In the upper room, 13-17, there is a description of an event, a Passover meal probably the whole thing might have lasted five hours. So, 25 percent of the gospel of John focuses on five hours of the Savior’s life and ministry. [00:07:15]

And I think the reason for that was because it was through the teaching that was a given there that John himself discovered two things. The first was – and essentially this is just what I’ve said – it was here that Jesus showed His disciples His soul. You remember how He says in the upper room, “I’m not going to call you disciples any longer. From now on you’re going to be friends.” [00:08:17]

And yet, fascinatingly, I think you could go anywhere in the whole of the New Testament and conclude there is no deeper theology, no deeper doctrine to be found in the pages of the New Testament than you’ll find from John chapter 13 through John chapter 17. And as a youngster trying to make my way in the Christian life and to grow in my understanding of the Lord and His gospel, that was a huge thing to me. [00:09:22]

But the principle was this: the deeper down you go in your knowledge of God, the stronger you’re going to be when the crisis comes and the storm breaks. And so, when I saw that, kind of naturally, the section of Jesus teaching in the Farewell Discourse – His foot washing of the disciples at the beginning, His prayer for them at the end became, I guess I would’ve said, just one of my favorite sections of Scripture. [00:10:14]

And you know how really special, spiritual experiences in your life, you don’t prepare for them, they come sovereignly into your life? Often they’ve got nothing to do with your age or where you are, and sometimes very little to do with the amount of progress you have made. They simply – God comes and that weekend is one of the great memories I have of what it means to live in the atmosphere of the presence of the Holy Spirit with the people of God. [00:15:10]

And what’s so wonderful about that whole Upper Room discourse is the way in which, in some ways John 13-17 is in John’s gospel what Matthew 28:18-20 is in Matthew’s gospel. Now, we associate Matthew 28:18-20 with two things. Usually baptismal services, and commissioning of missionaries. Baptize them, go into the world, and baptize them. [00:20:11]

When you get to Matthew 28:18-20 for the first time in all history, the Lord Jesus says, ‘I want to tell you what God’s name is. I want to tell you who He is. He is Father, Son and Holy Spirit.’ And when you think about Matthew 13 through John 13-17, and read it, you realize it’s almost as though Jesus is taking that statement at the end of Matthew and saying to the Apostles in the Upper Room, now I’m going to tell you how to pronounce the name of God. [00:21:16]

And He will be to you in His ministry everything that my presence has meant to you during our life together. And so, that’s the backstory to the DVD series on the Farewell Discourse at the Upper Room. I have a dream in connection with it. It’s really a very simple dream. But it’s a dream that if it came true would be a dream come true. [00:22:02]

And I have this dream, this vision of an elderly couple somewhere who have bought the DVD, and there’s nobody with them for thanksgiving dinner. And so they say to one another, “Why don’t we spend the morning preparing the dinner?” And then as it gets towards evening when we’ve got all the courses prepared, and just ready to be heated up or to be eaten, ‘Why don’t we get that DVD out and we’ll put it in our large-screen television.’ [00:23:08]

And then at the end when the thing finishes they look at each other and they say, ‘We are the disciples Jesus loved, and we love Him all the more because we’ve been with Him in the Upper Room.’ I don’t suppose it will ever happen. But it’s a great dream to have. And that’s the Upper Room. And thanks for coming and for listening. [00:24:17]

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