The sermon 'Knowing and Being Loved by the Father' by Jason Dohm is based on John 16:25-33, where Jesus speaks about revealing God the Father to His disciples. The sermon emphasizes two main themes: the revelation of a loving Heavenly Father and the tendency of disciples to overestimate their faith. Jesus reveals God as approachable and loving, not distant, and highlights that through believing in Him, believers are reconciled to the Father. The sermon also underscores the disciples' misunderstanding due to Jesus' figurative language, which will be clarified after His resurrection and the coming of the Holy Spirit. Faith in one's faith is warned against, advocating instead for faith in Jesus, who grants peace amidst tribulation. The sermon concludes with the assurance of ultimate victory through Jesus' overcoming of the world, encouraging believers to glory in the privileges bought by the gospel, such as the Father's love and peace in tribulation.

John chapter 16 25 through 33 these things I have spoken to you in figurative language but the time is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figurative language but I will tell you plainly about the Father. And that day you will ask in my name, and I do not say to you that I shall pray the Father for you, for the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me, and have believed that I came forth from God. I came forth from the Father and have come into the world. Again, I leave the world and go to the Father. His disciples said to him, See now you are speaking plainly and using no figure of speech.

Now we are sure that you know all things and have no need that anyone should question you. By this we believe that you came forth from God. Jesus answered them, Do you not believe? Indeed the hour is coming, yes has now come, that you will be scattered each to his own and will leave me alone and yet I am not alone because the Father is with me. These things I have spoken to you, that in me you may have peace.

In the world you will have tribulation. But be of good cheer, I have overcome the world." The title of the sermon this morning is Knowing and Being Loved by the Father. Jesus speaks in our text of His revelation of the Father. This is about being able to know God because He has been revealed to us by His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. And Jesus reveals Him to be a loving Father, not a distant God who cannot be approached but by a loving Father to those who come to Him through His Son.

So this is about the revelation of God and then who God is revealed to be by Jesus, a loving Father. I continue to be so thankful for how helpful the preaching is when others are preaching. Enjoyed listening to last week's sermon. I wasn't here in person, but I got the audio. And Listening to Michael preach last time, I was actually able to be here in person for that.

Listening to James' sermon just drives home the point that we are all expendable. Praise God for that. I'm glad to be in a church when every one of us is expendable. May it continue to be so through many years and decades. Today we finish chapter 16 and it's at the end of a long teaching discourse, a single discourse where Jesus is teaching His disciples in an uninterrupted fashion through the latter portions of chapter 13, all of chapter 14, all of chapter 15, all of chapter 16 now.

And this is the end of the discourse. Next week Jesus will pray a prayer. It's known as the high priestly prayer. Jesus offers a prayer as our high priest. We'll actually be studying that for eight weeks.

We're going to slice it thin and have just a few verses at a time through that. So we'll spend eight weeks there. I'm really looking forward to that. And we'll almost treat that as a continued teaching text. There's so much to learn.

He's praying, but we learn from his praying as if it was a continuation of the teaching text. This text, the one we are in today, is about two overriding things. The revelation of a heavenly Father who loves His children, and the tendency of disciples to overestimate the strength of their faith. So we will be talking about these two overriding themes in detail, but that is where they are. Jesus is revealing a Heavenly Father who loves His children.

Praise God for the revelation to us that God is that, to those who too trust in His Son. He is a father who loves his children. And, we're going to be learning all about the tendency of those disciples and of these disciples to overestimate the strength of their faith or of our faith. So as we go to the text, let's ask the Lord to help us. Our God, I thank you that you can be known.

You have been pleased to reveal yourself throughout human history, but especially and most clearly through the sending of your son to Show and teach about who you are. Thank you that you have revealed yourself to be a father who is tender-hearted towards those who are joined to your Son by faith. You have brought them into your household, adopted us as sons and daughters. Praise you for this glorious truth. I pray that it would make us so happy today to hear it on the lips of your son.

May it be so in Jesus' name. Amen. We'll be subdividing the text this morning. We'll begin by rereading verses 25 through 28. So hopefully your finger is still in.

John chapter 16, follow along as I reread 25 through 28. Jesus says, These things I have spoken to you in figurative language. But the time is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figurative language, but I will speak, but I will tell you plainly about the Father. In that day you will ask in my name, And I do not say to you that I shall pray the Father for you, for the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have believed that I came forth from God. I came forth from the Father and have come into the world.

Again, I leave the world and go to the Father. In these verses we have the promise of a plain revelation of the loving Father. So if you're taking notes on the handout and filling in blanks, plain and loving, fill in your blanks. The promise of a plain revelation of the loving Father. Look there again at the beginning of verse 25, Jesus says, These things I have spoken to you in figurative language.

That's an adequate translation. There's nothing particularly wrong with it. But the sense of it is of veiled communication. So it's not even just that he was using figurative terms like the vine in chapter 15, but the overall sense of that Greek word is of a dark saying, of veiled communication. Of course you can see through a veil, but what you are seeing is fuzzy.

What you are seeing is indistinct. And as we have observed through the Gospel of John and through any Gospel, pick a Gospel, what you observe is that the disciples are hearing the teaching of Jesus. Even the privileged disciples are hearing the teaching of Jesus and you can tell they are seeing through a veil. It's fuzzy. It's there.

Truth is there. But they have very indistinct, imprecise views of what Jesus is teaching. Jesus is saying, now That's coming to an end. Let me give you some examples just from this one discourse. Just things that I plucked from chapter 13 up to this point.

I'll give you seven very quickly. One, in chapter 13 Jesus washes their feet. He actually does a figurative action and then he explains what he did. And even with the explanation, Peter still didn't understand. Jesus has communicated this in a veiled way.

Two, at the end of chapter 13, Jesus says, where I am going, you cannot follow me now. Peter can't imagine Where in the world Jesus could go that he couldn't follow him because Peter thought he would be willing to lay down his life so there would be nowhere in the world Jesus could go. Jesus wasn't going in the world. He was using veiled, he was speaking of these things in a veiled way. Three, in chapter 14 Jesus says, In my father's house are many dwellings.

Thomas ends up saying to him, We don't know where you're going. How can we know the way? Four, in chapter 14, Jesus said, A little while longer, and the world will see me no more, but you will see me. Judas, not Judas Iscariot, But the other disciple named Judas said, Lord, how will you manifest yourself to us and not to the world? They didn't understand.

It was as if they were seeing what Jesus said through a veil. In chapter 15, Jesus uses figurative language of a true vine, and a vinedresser. His father is a vinedresser. There are two kinds of branches that are treated in very different ways by his father. The vinedresser.

Think about even our treatment of that text. We took several weeks to work through what Jesus said in the course of a few minutes. Why? Well, because there are some things that are plain, that are right on the surface, that you can get immediately with the hearing of it. And there are some things that you really need to work through in time.

So we took a couple of hours to work through things that Jesus said in just a couple of minutes to his disciples. He is using veiled communication with them. 6. In chapters 14, 15, and 16, Jesus speaks of the Helper, or the Spirit of Truth, or the Holy Spirit. He is speaking of the same Divine Person of the Trinity.

And we take this teaching from these three chapters now looking back through the lens of Pentecost and It is clear to us in many ways that they weren't looking back through the lens of Pentecost yet. And so these things were veiled to them. They could see truth through the veil, but it was fuzzy to them at that time. It was indistinct to them at that time. Seven, in chapter 16, Jesus has just said, a little while and you will not see me, and again a little while, and you will see me because I go to the Father.

Of course this was the cause of a lot of questions among his disciples that Jesus unraveled for them in the text that James was preaching on last week. These things are clear now, looking through the lens of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ with the help of the Holy Spirit who was poured out on the day of Pentecost. And even then we have things that we have to slow down and look at, don't we? And so the disciples were without the benefit of being beyond the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, without the benefit of the Spirit being poured out to lead us into all truth. However, at the same time, with all that being true, we should never lose sight of Matthew 13, 11.

Listen to what Jesus says in Matthew 13, 11 to His disciples, to these same disciples. "'It has been given to you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven. But to them it has not been given." Somebody had just asked Jesus, why are you teaching in parables? It's because He wanted to reveal things to His disciples that he didn't want unbelievers to understand. The point being this, these eleven men that we say, wow, their views of the truths that Jesus has been teaching has been very fuzzy and indistinct, as if they were looking through a veil at these truths.

Well, yes, but these men knew more than anyone on planet earth at that time. They had sat at Jesus' feet for three and a half years listening to his teachings. So we shouldn't despise what they did know in favor of understanding that they were seeing things like looking through a veil. They had much more to know, But they knew more than anyone at the day in which Jesus is addressing them. Now Jesus tells his faithful eleven disciples, remember Judas left a couple of chapters ago, that a time is coming when He will dispense with the veiled language in order to speak plainly.

Jesus says, a time is coming, the hour is coming, and I will dispense with this veiled language. And These things won't be fuzzy to you anymore. They won't be indistinct anymore, but you'll understand very plainly. When is that time? Well, two weeks ago I referenced Acts Chapter 1, which says that after the resurrection that Jesus spent 40 days appearing to his disciples and speaking to them of the things of the Kingdom of Heaven.

So I think he is referencing this time just around the corner where he will speak to them again during this 40 day period. I think he's saying here, during those 40 days I'll be speaking very plainly to you. After those 40 days, And after Pentecost, where they have the benefit of the Holy Spirit, these are clearly transformed men in their understanding. They can write epistles that form our doctrinal understanding 2, 000 years later. So whatever you think Jesus is referring to when he says the time is coming, where I'll dispense with the veiled language, at least let's agree with this.

After that 40 days when he appeared to them after the resurrection and after the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, these are transformed men. You can tell it's fuzzy and indistinct to them at this point, but after the pouring out of the Spirit on Pentecost and after their 40 days with Him post-resurrection. They are transformed men who have such a firm grasp of the truths of the Gospel. And what is it that would finally be plainly revealed? He doesn't speak in generalities.

All these truths that I've been speaking about, I'm going to speak plainly and you'll understand them all, that may well have been true. But that's not what Jesus says here. He says specifically what will be plainly revealed. The Father will be plainly revealed. Jesus is the apex of God's revelation to man.

He's the tallest mountain in the mountain range. That's what the apex is, the highest point. Jesus, of all the revelation that we have, it's wonderful revelation, but of all the revelation that we have, the highest mountain peak of this mountain range is the Lord Jesus and the things that He showed us and the things that He said. And the apex of Jesus' revelation is to reveal God to man. All of Jesus' revelation isn't specifically about God, but the highest point of it is about God.

In John chapter 1, John is framing his Gospel. In other words, there are no words of Jesus yet in the early verses of John chapter 1. John is setting the stage for our understanding of the chapters that are coming. Here's what he says in John chapter 1 verses 16 through 18. And of His fullness, of Jesus' fullness, We have all received and grace for grace.

For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him. John in framing his Gospel is saying this, There has been other revelation from God. The Law came through Moses.

God is the source of what came through Moses. But grace and truth, the ultimate revelation of God, by God, is in Christ. This unseen Father, who you cannot see because he dwells in inapproachable light, has determined to reveal himself to his creatures. And so he sent his son, Jesus Christ, to take on flesh, to show us about Himself, and to tell us about Himself. So Jesus is the revelation of God, both being the express image of the Father in His person, in His thoughts, in His words, in the things that you can observe in His life, and in His teachings that we have in the Gospel.

Jesus, the Son of God, reveals his father. He came so that we might know his father and we might be reconciled to his father. And you can never separate these two things. They are always meant to be together. To know God is to have been reconciled to God.

If you have not been reconciled to God, you might know many facts. You can fill your mind with a thousand facts from scripture. Wonderful facts. And you can have complete command of them. If you have not been reconciled to the Father through His Son Jesus Christ, you don't know the Father.

You cannot know the Father. Jesus came that we might know God the Father by being reconciled to God the Father. In fact, there is no other way to know the Father. Listen to Matthew 11, 27. Matthew 11, 27.

Jesus says, no one knows the Son except the Father. Nor does anyone know the Father except the Son and the one to whom the Son wills to reveal him. No one knows the Father except Jesus and the one that Jesus wills to reveal the Father to. My only hope of knowing God the Father is that Jesus, God the Son, wills to reveal Him to me. Well take heart friends, Jesus delights to reveal His Father.

Jesus delights to reveal His Father. He came to reveal His Father. Don't suspect a reluctance on the part of Jesus Christ to reveal His Father to you. If you're here, you have every hope that God actually brought you here because Jesus wants to reveal His Father to you. Jesus speaks of this new day, this new era, after His death and resurrection and ascension when the disciples will ask the Father in His name.

But Jesus offers an important clarification. They will not be asking Jesus to ask the Father on their behalf. Asking in Jesus' name is not asking Jesus to ask his Father for you. This is the clarification that Jesus makes and he thinks it's important to make. When I tell you a new era is coming, a new day is coming when you will ask in my name, I'm not saying you'll ask me so I can ask my Father for you." That is unnecessary.

Jesus' work makes that unnecessary. Yes, there is one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus. That's 1st Timothy 2, verse 5. But His mediation does not shield us from the Father. It reconciles us with the Father.

God the Father doesn't use Jesus to keep us at arm's length. Jesus' mediation isn't an instrument of God the Father to keep us at arm's length so that we must ask Him so He'll ask us. He uses Jesus as an instrument to draw us near. The whole point of the incarnation is to draw us near, to not keep us at arm's length any longer, but to bring us near by His cleansing blood, giving us the right and the privilege of direct access. Being reconciled with the Father, He is not just Jesus' Father, but becomes our Father.

And being His children, He loves us directly, not just through His Son. Yes, just in His Son, but not just through His Son, as if we are only a third party to the Father's love. No, no, no. Jesus dispels that thought here. The Father Himself loves you.

Yes, because you are in union with His Son, but not secondhand love from the Father. No, The Father Himself loves you. So you have access and the privilege to pray directly, not to ask Jesus so that He would ask the Father. How does that happen? Well the Father loves Jesus' disciples because Jesus' disciples love Him and believe in Him.

It is tempting to limit that truth to the sentiment of a human father. So stay with me here. It is tempting to take that truth that God loves Jesus' disciples because they love Jesus and believe in Jesus and to make that just human, the sentiment of a human father. Look at that guy. He is well disposed towards my son.

He loves my son and is loyal to my son. I love that guy. Fathers, human fathers, have probably all felt that towards people who are kindly disposed towards their children. It just makes you like them. There may be an element of that, but it is the least of it with God.

Least of it with God. The point being taught by Jesus here, the overriding point, is that loving and believing in Jesus removes the offense. It is the reconciling mechanism that takes you from an enemy of God into one who is loved by God. Something has to happen there. He cannot love you sinner, until you love and believe in His Son.

When our sin is clinging to us, this Holy God must be our enemy. Loving and believing in His Son parts you from your sins that make him your enemy. It is Jesus' reconciling work that draws the Father's love. He cannot fix His love upon you in that way when you're with all of your defilements. Your defilements must be dealt with before you can be the object of love to this Holy Father.

Is not a father to unbelievers. He is a father to believers through adoption through his son. Finally in this section, Jesus summarizes his entire incarnation. Look again at verse 28. Jesus says, I came forth from the Father.

The pre-existing God, the Son, the Word, who was in the beginning with God, in the beginning was God, He came forth from the Father. He entered time and human history in the form of human flesh, having taken on human flesh as a baby. I came forth from the Father and have come into the world. He lived his life in this world. Again, I leave the world and go to the Father.

He laid down his life for sinners and was raised from the dead and ascended to his rightful place in heaven. You have not womb to tomb, You have eternity before womb to eternity after tomb for Jesus. All of his incarnation including what preceded it and what came after it here in verse 28. These are the truths that his disciples are being called to believe in and believe in. The next section beginning in verse 29, follow along as I reread 29 through 32.

His disciples said to him, See now you are speaking plainly and using no figure of speech. Now we are sure that you know all things and have no need that anyone should question you. By this we believe that you came forth from God." Jesus answered them, Do you now believe? Indeed, the hour is coming. Yes, has now come that you will be scattered, each to his own, and will leave me alone.

And yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me." Here in these verses we have two assessments of the disciples' faith. Faith fills in the blank, if you're filling in blanks on the handout. Two assessments of the disciples' faith. The disciples' own assessment of their faith and then Jesus' corrective assessment of their faith. The disciples can already detect that Jesus is speaking plainly.

Jesus had spoken of a future time. Jesus just said, the time is coming, but they assume it is now. In their defense, what Jesus has just said is very plain spoken. He just used the Father and God synonymously, interchangeably. I came forth from God and then immediately, the next words out of his mouth, I came forth from the Father.

That's helpful. That's plain speaking. And he just said that he is leaving the world. That's what many of the questions of the last couple of chapters have been about. Where are you going?

I'm leaving the world." That's helpful. That's plain spoken. The disciples claim that now they can see, or now they can perceive. New King James here says, we are sure, but a more literal rendering would be, now we see or now we perceive that Jesus knows all things. And that Jesus is speaking so plainly that no questions about his meaning are even necessary.

I think that's what that next phrase means. You have no need for anyone to ask you any questions. Who needs to ask a clarifying question about the things that you've just been saying, they're so clear. Now you are speaking plainly, we don't have to ask questions to understand what you mean. They probably did have a sense of relief.

Jesus just said something very profound and they didn't even need to ask him clarifying questions. They're probably thinking, praise God. He said something we And it wasn't just about breakfast. Jesus responds, now you believe? Now you know that I know all things?

See the focus of what they just said is, we see, we believe. Jesus says, let me tell you about an upcoming hour. Literally, it's a couple of hours or a few hours. It's possibly within the hour. It is possible that what Jesus says here, he is referencing Zechariah 13.7, strike the shepherd and the sheep will be scattered, it's possible that the fulfillment of that prophecy, that the shepherd will be struck and the sheep, his disciples will be scattered, will happen within the hour.

We don't know exactly the timing. It could be in the same hour. You have a new certainty in your belief that I came forth from God and know all things. Now we are sure. Now we see and perceive.

You're just about to flee to save your own skins and leave me alone. And yet, when you've all fled, My Father will still be with me. I will not be alone." There were two very different assessments. The disciples had a sense that there had just been A real breakthrough in their belief. Ascending to the truth.

Consenting to the person. We keep saying that throughout John. The belief here is there are two things wrapped into it. One, I believe what you said, but I believe it because I trust you because you are the sayer of the truths. I accept them as truth because you said it.

I entrust myself to you as a source of truth. They are thinking, a breakthrough! Jesus, who just minutes before was speaking to them about the hatred of the world for Himself and therefore themselves reveals what the pressure will have them doing in an hour. Here's what Jesus is showing them. You think you have a breakthrough.

Your troubles are over. Remember what I just said, the world hates me and so the world hates you? Guess what you'll be doing in an hour, Mr. Breakthrough. Or as Paul says it in 1 Corinthians 10 verse 12, Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall.

That's Paul. 1 Corinthians 10 verse 12. You think you stand? Watch out! Watch out!

Because you think you stand, you have just put yourself on risky ground. We all assume, now I've been in the faith a while, now I know my heart. False! Now I've been under Jesus' discipleship for a little while. I know my heart.

Wrong. You're set for a fall. You say that in your head. No one is foolish enough to say it out loud. We just think that way and act that way.

Here's what J.C. Ryle says, the best Christians know but little of their own hearts. Brave words these! And yet the very men that spoke them in a very short time were scattered like timid sheep and left their master alone. They did not know what they were capable of doing under the pressure of the fear of men and of strong temptation.

They had not rightly estimated the weakness of the flesh, the power of the devil, the feebleness of their own resolutions, the shallowness of their own faith. All this they had yet to learn by painful experience. Now listen to this. This is the punch line. Like young recruits, they had yet to learn that it is one thing to know the soldier's drill and wear the uniform, and quite another thing to be steadfast in the day of battle.

You put on the uniform and you go out and you drill, and you drill, and you drill until it's second nature. Wait till the bomb hits. We're ready! You'll know if you're ready or not when the bomb hits. So did the disciples have real faith?

Did they have saving faith? Jesus just said they did. Look again at verse 27. For the Father Himself loves you, because you have loved me and have believed that I came forth from God. They have assented to the truths taught by Jesus, and they have consented and trusted themselves to the person of Jesus.

They do have real faith. They do have saving faith. Did they have unshakable faith? Jesus and the events that were upon them said, not yet. Not yet.

But Again, Church history says that 10 out of 11 of these men who heard this, with John the Gospel writer being the exception, went to their deaths, to their martyrdoms, holding to their testimony of Jesus. You shouldn't be overly discouraged by the state of these disciples because Jesus is not done yet. You might be discouraged by the weakness of your own faith. If it's the size of a mustard seed, that's the smallest of all the seeds, it's like a grain of sand. If you have that much faith, if it's real faith, it will save you, and God will lay hold of you because of the work of His Son and He'll do the work of seeing you to the end.

So don't be too discouraged about your weak faith. As we can see with the disciples, they had weak faith. They did scatter when the shepherd was struck. Jesus was not done with them and they held their testimony to the end. All of them held their testimony to the end.

Verse 33, final verse. Verse 33, the final verse. Jesus says, these things I have spoken to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world." In this verse, we see Peace in Jesus through tribulation. I was looking at that afterwards.

It's unclear. Obviously tribulation isn't the source of the peace. Jesus is the source of the peace. Peace in Jesus through, that carries you through, tribulation. Jesus is speaking to men who are on the cusp of failing a test.

He knows it. He just said it. They're about to get a big fat F on an exam. But it isn't the last test. It isn't the final test.

He knows they will be granted many rematches. So Jesus fixes their eyes on ultimate victory. It's so helpful to be able to see all the way to the end. In the middle of tribulations to be able to see past today's turbulence pressures, afflictions hardships, see beyond them to ultimate victory. It carries you through today's afflictions, tribulations, trials, hardships.

This is His ultimate victory, which all of his disciples share in the song, Why Should I Gain from His Reward? I cannot give an answer. He has overcome the world and we enter into his ultimate victory. Get to share in it, participate in it, enjoy it, claim it. What is he saying?

It isn't peace time. For them or for us, No, there are many battles, many tests now and on the horizon. Some of them are losses. Some of them are big fat F's. Paul told his converts this in Acts 14 22, we must through many tribulations, exact same Greek word as Jesus uses, we must through Many tribulations enter the kingdom of God.

You cannot get from here to there without going through many tribulations. In Acts 14, 22, the beginning of the verse, talks about him going back through the areas he had evangelized and encouraging the converts there. So this was Paul's practice among his converts, not in one place but in every place, to tell them we must through many tribulations enter the kingdom of heaven, kingdom of God. But Paul also said this Romans 8 verse 7 Romans 8 verse 7 yet in all these things We are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. One of the most mishandled verses in the Bible.

It means I can win the gold medal! More than conquerors! No, it means you can pass through the martyrdoms, privations of being a follower of Jesus, that's what it means in context. If you win a gold medal in the Olympics, it won't be because of this verse. If you die bravely for the testimony of Jesus, it will be because of this verse.

In all these things, In hardships, hunger, even martyrdom, we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. Why? Ultimate victory! Jesus has overcome the world. And this, 2 Corinthians 2, 14.

While we are on wonderful verses. 2 Corinthians 2, 14. Now thanks be to God who always leads us in triumph in Christ. It doesn't feel like triumph, it feels like hardships. Yeah, that too.

Triumph through hardships. Yet in all these things, we are more than conquerors. Now thanks be to God who always leads us in triumph in Christ. The whole point of what Jesus says and what Paul is saying is these are rooted, these are anchored in Christ. You don't have these apart from Christ, you have them in Christ through union with Christ.

The battles are always raging, the war is not in doubt. Burn that on your brain. Jesus says that, Paul says that, in different ways. The battles are always raging. Through many tribulations we must enter the Kingdom of God.

The war is not in doubt. Our Savior has overcome the world. The world is vanquished. The prince of the world is vanquished. Jesus is the victor.

Friends, biblical peace is not the absence of conflict. It is confidence in Jesus in the midst of conflict. If you don't get that, you say, why don't I have the peace of the Bible? Because you thought it was something it was never intended or promised to be. You have the wrong definition.

I have peace when there is no conflict. No, you have peace when you have confidence, bedrock in Jesus Christ in the middle of conflict. When you can flourish in the middle of conflict, when you are the flower in the desert. How's that flower growing there? We're in a desert and you have this lush plant in the middle of nowhere.

This is the peace of God bedrock confidence in Christ in the midst of conflict. In me you may have peace. Be of good cheer or be of good courage. Either one of those would be a good translation of that. Be of good cheer or be of good courage.

What is Jesus teaching? We can have peace in wartime. Inner peace, outer war. Peace in wartime. Or maybe inner peace in inner, with inner war.

Sometimes the wars are inner too. You can have peace in the middle. Applications two. Number one, glory in the privileges that the gospel buys you. Glory in them.

Soak them in. Think about them. Keep them top of mind. We say the privileges that the gospel buys you, I'm really saying the privileges that Jesus buys you by dying, by bleeding and dying for sinners. What did He buy with that blood?

Well, we're given two things here. The Father loves you. If you love and believe in His Son. By the way, there's no conflict with salvation by grace alone through faith alone. Love isn't being added to faith here, but it's just always inseparable from saving faith.

People who have saving faith have a love for Christ. They travel together. They must travel together. They do travel together. People who have been brought to see what they are are desperate without no hope and then they entrust themselves to Christ.

They love the Savior. Always. So glory in that privilege that Jesus has bought you through the shedding of His blood. The Father loves you. He used to be duty bound by His character to be your enemy.

You defiled creature. You defiled creature! Now he can adopt you. Make you a son or a daughter. What else is a privilege that the gospel buys you?

Peace and tribulation. Bedrock confidence in Jesus Christ and his ultimate victory in the middle of wartime. You know how it's going to end. You know you are a victor in Christ, sharing in His victory. Number two.

Actually, we've got time. Back to number one. It helps us to glory in our privileges. It helps us. We need to glory in our privileges.

When you say glory in your privilege, I'm just worried it sounds like a nice to have. I think it's a have to have in this life. It sounds like the icing on the cake. I think glorying our privileges is pretty close to being cake. You need to know what Jesus has bought for you, what you have a right to through the shedding of His blood.

The hardships of life are going to make you need it. Don't think of it as a nice to have, just a little icing on the cake. Things are coming into your life, or may be in your life right now, that's going to make this needful to you. Not a luxury. Glorifying in our privileges is not a luxury.

Make a habit of glorifying in them now while the sun is shining. The disciples found out, you might be with Jesus, everything seems fine now, you think you've had a breakthrough. They're going to need to be able to glory in their privileges in an hour. Number two. Faith in your faith will betray you.

You know that. It's helpful to be reminded of that from time to time. We're not called to faith in faith. We're called to faith in Jesus. Faith in Jesus will not betray you.

Faith in your faith will betray you. I'm strong enough now, I doubt it. God could bring circumstances in your life that would break that down so fast, and the snap of a finger. If God just left us in our own strength we would be nothing. Faith in your faith will betray you.

Be careful about sunny day sentiments. You know what I'm talking about. Things are going well and you think it will only be that from now on because you figured it out. Now you know the secret. The secret is to cling to Christ with all your might and not hope in anything else.

Faith in your faith is a lousy faith. And it collapses. You don't think it will collapse that fast? It gets swept away like it was nothing. Because it was nothing.

God, thank you for your word. I do pray that you would help us through the course of the afternoon. This would be a sweet time of fellowship, reflecting on your goodness to us, continuing to think through these things. I pray that you would help the men now to continue saying helpful things to round out the teaching in Jesus name, Amen.