Show Notes
What was He Thinking?
John 13-16 spans just a few hours. These are our Lord’s last words spoken to His disciples in the Gospel of John. He uses the imperative tense just three or four times — “Don’t stress; abide; have courage.” Yet, there are many conditional statements, like, “If you ask in my name, I’ll do it; if you love me, you will keep my commandments.” P.S. — “The Devil is coming; I’m leaving; apart from me, you can do nothing.” It’s a bit terrifying, and the disciples appear to have very little control over the conditions. What was Jesus thinking?
John 16:32, “’Behold, the hour is coming, indeed it has come, when you will be scattered, each to his own [idios: pertaining to self, private], and will leave me alone.’” In the garden, they ate the fruit, hid their “privates” from each other, and hid their souls from the Voice of God walking in the garden. Why did God plant that tree in the middle of the garden? What was He Thinking?
John 16:33, “’But have courage; I have conquered the world.’” What a strange thing to say right before you’re crucified. And even more bizarre are these “last words” spoken to these “disciples.” Why did Jesus pick these guys and not fire these guys? Why didn’t He leave behind an organizational system? Why didn’t He lay out the “Plan of Salvation”? Why did he leave it to Bill Bright to write the “Four Spiritual Laws” and to Billy Graham to author “The Sinners Prayer”? What was He thinking?
These are the last words of Jesus spoken to His disciples as a group before His crucifixion in the Gospel of John. Last words — and yet, He doesn’t stop talking; He just stops talking to them. Next verse: John 17:1, “When Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, ‘Father...’”
In The Revelation given to John, we get to overhear God the Son speaking to God the Spirit, in the seven churches, about what it means to conquer. In John 17, we get to overhear God the Son speaking to God the Father about us. This is what they are thinking. And they want us to “know.”
John 17:1-18:2 (greatly abbreviated), “’Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him.’” [He just told us in 16:15, “All that the Father has is mine.”] “’And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent... Consecrate them in the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world [kosmos], so I have sent them into the world [kosmos]. And for their sake, I consecrate myself, that they also may be consecrated in truth. I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word... The glory that you have given me, I have given to them that they may be one even as we are one — I in them, you in me — in order that they might be having been perfected into one, so that the world [kosmos (Flatland)] may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me... I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.’ When Jesus had spoken these words, he went out with his disciples across the brook Kidron, where there was a garden, which he and his disciples entered. Now Judas, who betrayed him, also knew the place, for Jesus often met there with his disciples.”
This is such an ominous scene. John will keep mentioning “gardens.” The Passover lambs (over 250,00 according to Josephus) were slaughtered at the temple at 3 p.m., and Passover began at sundown. The Blood would flow out of the temple, down the Kidron, through its junction with Gehenna, and then on to the Dead Sea — the lowest spot on the surface of the earth. John’s readers would have known that as Jesus prayed these words, crossed the Kidron, and entered the garden just east of Eden where He would be betrayed by the Chosen, He would’ve crossed a literal river of lam
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