Great beyond to you and Keith from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ, amen. Let us hear the word of God as we find it in John Scott, though the 19th chapter of the 26th verse. When Jesus therefore saw his mother and the disciples standing by whom he loved, he sat unto his mother, woman, behold my son, and then set thee to the disciples of the whole guy, and not sure. Lord Jesus Christ opened all my lips, and that my mouth may show forth I craze, amen.
Good evening, dear friends in Christ Jesus. It is nice of you to come to God's house tonight. I hope for the time being you can lay aside any worry that you may have about the weather and about getting home. You have had a big day and so have I.
There was another funeral this afternoon, or the service to get ready for my day started before five o'clock this morning, perhaps yours did too. But I think it's nice at the end of the day, especially in the Lenten season, that we can come into God's house, tired physically, and perhaps also mentally, when we can hear again the story of the sufferings and death of our Lord, and also of those contemporaries who play the part in. On each Wednesday night we are dealing with some of the characters who again lived in that generation when Jesus was here on earth and who had a part in that crucifixion, and on the basis of God's word we are asking them to tell us their story. Two weeks ago tonight we had Judas tell his story of tragedy, last Wednesday night we call it was a teacher who spoke about his denial of the Lord.
Tonight we are going to ask the disciple John to tell his story. I'm sure that when we think of John, we think of very pleasant things, do we not? I believe if John were standing here in this focus where I am standing tonight, and on the basis of the word of God that his story would be something like this to us. He would say I am John the beloved disciple.
Perhaps you wonder why five times in the sacred record it says that I am the disciple whom Jesus loves. I cannot explain it to you, but I will only say this in all humility, that I was the closest personal friend on earth that our Lord hands. He liked me somehow or other more than help me that filled his heart. He loved all of us equally, but among his intimate friends it was in the providence of God, my good fortune, to be the closest human being to our Lord.
When I was born up in Bethsaida in Galilee, that's a small town just east of the place where the mighty Jordan rose into the sea of Galilee that my Lord made so famous in his ministry. My father's name was Debity, and my mother's name was Solomene. You may not know it, but that name Solomene is the feminine form of Solomon. That was her name.
I had an older brother and his name was James. You called him James the Beater. As I say I was born in Bethsaida in Galilee, and my parents gave me the beautiful name of John. It means God is gracious, God is loved.
I grew up as a fisherman's son because my father was in the fishing business, and James and I, we worked with him just as Andrew and Simon Peter worked also in the fishing business. I grew very strong, and at times I know that you picture me as rather weak and perhaps even as effeminate, but I would tell you that I was every inch a man, being a fisherman, learning how to catch fish, learning how to be in a boat on the sea. It so happened that I was one with my brother James who heard about again the strange preaching going on down in Judea. It was my good fortune to have lived at a time in history when I knew John the Baptist intimately, when I knew our Lord intimately, and when I knew Paul a Tarsus intimately.
If God had given me a time in history when I could have been born, I would like to tell you tonight that there would be no other time that I would have chosen to come into the world than when I came. I was the closest human friend of our Lord when he was here on Earth. My brother and I went on down into Judea and we heard the Baptist preach, and I went to tell you he was mighty in his calls to repentance. There was something about the Baptist when again he was clothed with camel's hair and he lived on wiggles and wild honey, and when he preached with pence, oh it seemed like he could look right through you, and he could see your sin.
I loved the Baptist and so did my brother James, and then one day as I was standing there listening to the Baptist, I do not mention my name in humility in my gospel when I tell you this story, it seemed to the Baptist that perhaps it was the greatest moment in his life. A young man was there, and as he walked along by the river Jordan the Baptist pointed to him, and I heard him say, behold, the Lamb of God, the take of the way, the sin of the word. I heard that and so did Andrew. So Andrew and I, we were so taken by that word of the Baptist that as this stranger walked along, Andrew and I followed him and he turned around and with a smile he said, then we turned and we said, where do you dwell, Master?
And he said in a friendly voice, come and see. So Andrew and I that day we followed him and we went to the place where he stayed and we spent all day, in fact it was about four o'clock in the afternoon before we left him. You have no idea what that meant to me. I was a little younger than he, and I look at him and I saw that he was the Messiah, that he was the Savior, that had been promised to my people, and I loved him in cancer.
And I could feel that day that he loved me too. There was something he saw in me, human beings like life, that seemed to strike up something precious in his own heart. I came back and as Andrew got his brother Simon as you heard, I got to my brother James and we became then followers of this Jesus. We took that trip with him up to Galilee, to Kina, and I was there with him and I saw that the first miracle that he performed when he turned water into wine.
It amazed me and I learned to love him more and more, realizing that he budged the Son of God. I journeyed with him and we came back into Judea. I was with him when he cleansed the temple. I heard all about his visit with Nicodemus.
You know some 50 years after Matthew, Mark, and Luke had written their gospel, I wrote nine. And even though it was 50 years later, oh I wrote my memoirs, really his memoirs, and I remembered so many precious things about my Lord that I wanted to write again they gushed. You know that it's in my gospel. That incident when Nicodemus came by night.
I could never forget it and I thought you would want to have a record of that and I wrote that in my gospel where Jesus said Nicodemus that night and I know he passes with all of you know for God so loved the world that he gave his own to the God and Son, that whosoever the leaders in him should not perish but have everlasting life. I was with Jesus when we left Judea and went up to American country and became to Jacob's well where your minister had been and I was there and I saw that woman of Chitar and listened to that conversation and it's in my gospel that I had told you of that story that you know about it. Would it not for the gospel that God moved me to write? You wouldn't know that story.
I went back to my fishing business for a while and it was not very long before Jesus came up to the Sea of Galilee and one day while I was my brother James we were sitting there mending our nets. There was Simon, Peter, and there was also Andrew. He came and he looked at us and he said, Ptolemy, and I was one of the group band, and that followed him. My Lord as I remember him was an excellent preacher.
You know in your day when you come in the church usually you always take the back, speak first and those of you that come forward come forward because it's the only place you can rule. That wasn't the key when my master preached. All the crowds came and they heard him and they forced up to him that one day they were so close to him and he was standing on the shore lest he be forced into the water. He got into a boat and he had them put the boat out into the sea because of the crest of the multitude.
Oh when he preached there was enough clarity about him that the Pharisees and the scribes didn't have. I loved to hear him preach. I was with him the beloved disciple. He wanted me close to him with Peter and James.
I was along up in the room where Jairus's daughter had died and I saw him raise her from the dead when he fed young lady. I stayed under the ice and I was with him up on Mount Tabor. He was a picture of that mountain which is the mount of transfiguration. Peter and James were along too.
We were the inner circle. I was the one who by the grace of God that he loved and liked most of all. Interestingly I must have understood him more than the rest. And I saw the glory come forth from the mountains and from the raimans and in my gospel I have told you that the word became flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld his glory.
I saw it with my own eyes. The glory is of the only big cotton of the Father full of grace and truth. Oh I was with him so often because he wanted me there. I said my fault.
Oh I was quick in my zeal because I loved him so dearly. We one time were traveling from Galilean. We were going to Jerusalem and we were coming down to Samaritan country. And they told my brother and me to go into a little village and find a place where he might stay overnight.
And James and I went into that village and we asked those Americans if they wouldn't let our Lord Jesus stay there that night. And they called and they knew we were going to Jerusalem and were not going to stop if not get as him they refused my Lord a place to stay. And all night zeal was so great for him that I couldn't stand to have anybody hurt him. And I again my temper played up and I came back when I said Lord come in but I can call down fire and we'll destroy that village.
You know he looked at me in my youthful enthusiasm when he had a smile on his face and he said to my brother James and me he called us nickname sons of thunder old bow and air days in other words he told me John just quiet down. Don't let a damn your enthusiasm and your temper run away. I had to learn to. Then there was another time when I met a man who was driving out devils in the name of Jesus and they called he was in one of us one of our followers.
I told him he shouldn't do that and I came back to Jesus and I told him I thought I'd done something real nice. Holding to stop driving out devils in your name because he was not one of our followers and then again my Lord loved me so dearly and I loved him. He gently reduced me and he said John remember if he isn't against us he's four years old. He brought us so I had to be corrected at times.
Oh there was many crimes and those things happen and there was one time when my mother saw me a little she was. He says one day we knew what she was going to ask she said to him. Lord when you come into your kingdom will you let my sons one sit on the throne on the right hand and one on the left but John can be on one side and James on the other. That was selfish and Jesus understood it.
I meant well my mother meant well but Jesus said that that was not for him to give but that was again the right of his heavenly father. But in my zeal because I loved him so we can't leave again I became selfish at times and he corrected me and then came the upper room. You're wondering what happened there. In pictures that you see of me usually I am pictured as looking at something like my master and I suppose your artist do that because my master spoke of me as a disciple whom he loved.
He somehow or rather found comfort in my presence and in the upper room he had me seated right next to him. I had my head on his bosom on his chest you remember when the rest were asking Lord who is at the point of the trail and I just looked up at him and I said Lord who is it I whispered that because Peter had asked me to do that and Jesus whispered to me he it is to whom I shall give the stop and I get gifted and I knew then that it was Judas when he handed it because Jesus had whispered that to me. I was in the upper room and I heard some beautiful words up there over fifty years later in my gospel I wrote them down because I thought maybe you would like them and I have wondered how often you have been comforted by those words which I by the grace of God have reserved in my gospel. The words you remember in a waggard Jesus speak them let not your heart be troubled even God believe also in me in my father's house are many mansions if it were not so I would have fooled you I go to be very placed for you and if I go and be very placed for you I will come again and receive you once in myself that where I am there you may be also those words are found in the gospel of the by the grace of the Holy Spirit I was able to write how many times when death seems to your house have those words comforted you thought and he would meet with me to remember them and to write them down for your comfort.
That in the upper room and then we left the upper room and I walked with my lord and we crossed the roof head and we came up with a load of the amount of auditors and we came into the garden of the economy and then it was you know that Jesus asked Peter and James and he asked me to go into the garden just a little farther and I am sorry to have to tell you again that I fell asleep for grief that I didn't say awake and neither did neither did Peter and James and oh it almost broke my lord's heart when he came back and he saw again the three of us sleeping but we slept for grief then of course came the tragedy when Judas came and he betrayed my lord. All of us forsook him for a while but I came back. I followed at a distance and I was with Peter and I followed the soldiers as they took him to the palace at Kefos. It so happened that I knew Kefos personally I had no trouble therefore getting into the courtyard Peter didn't know Kefos and therefore he was not permitted to come.
I was the one who arranged it so that Peter could come in. It hurts me later when I heard Peter denying his lord that perhaps I was partly guilty because I had gotten into that courtyard had it not been for me he would not have been able to have gotten in there to have warmed his hands and to have denied his lord and cursed into that sworn like he did that he even convinced all of them but he couldn't have been one of Jesus followers. But I followed along and I stayed as close as I could and I followed him then to the cross. I stood there and his mother Mary was alongside me.
I didn't say anything to him. I knew that he had found this in life. There are times when you don't have to talk and I'm sure your minister has found this experience too that you can stand at a death bed and you just need to hold somebody's hand and you don't have to talk. I stood at the cross and I didn't say anything but he looked down and he saw that I was John.
I wonder he loved so dearly and I loved he. He spoke to me once. He spoke first so gently to his mother. He said, woman behold I son and then he looked at me and he said to me behold I'm nothing.
I knew what he meant. Perhaps you wonder why it is that when he had brothers and sisters he asked me when he was on the cross to take care of his mother. May I remind you that it was not until after his resurrection that his brothers believe that he was the Messiah, the Son of God. So in his own way he wanted me to take care of his mother.
There at the cross I nodded and he understood. I didn't have to say anything. I let him know that I would take care of Mary and I did. I took her to my home and she stayed with me and held her dying day.
Oh it broke my heart when I saw her the Savior my Lord died. I was beginning to understand what Calvary meant but it broke my heart because I loved him so dearly and I knew that he loved me but I stayed there so again. His eyes were closed and deaf and I watched Nicodemus and Joseph of Eremecia take his body from the cross. I yawned for the love of the Son.
I stayed in Jerusalem after his ascension. I stayed there and I worked with the Apostle Peter and we preached about the love of this Jesus. Then after the destruction of Jerusalem in about the year 70 I left Jerusalem and I went over and made my home in Ephesus over and in days your mind. If you remember of the Apostle Paul whom I learned to know and whom I learned to love on his third missionary journey had spent three years in the city of Ephesus of Asia Minor which is now modern Turkey as you remember and there he established a large Christian church and there I spent the remainder of my days.
God allowed me there at Ephesus to write the gospel that you know as the gospel according to St. John. Fifty years after my Lord's death and resurrection I was enabled by the Holy Spirit of guidance to write the men wars of my Lord and to give you and the Church of this 20th century as well as the other centuries some of the intimate wonderful things that I recall about my Lord that you would not know that the Holy Spirit not allowed me to have written that gospel. But then you also find in your New Testament that there are three letters that bear my name first and second and third John written by me and then the last book in the New Testament the book that you know of as the book of Revelation or Paul the Apocalypse.
I was banished on the island of Katmus because of my feet and on the island of Katmus in the Mediterranean of the Aegean Sea Jesus King and the vision of Revelation was mine and God enabled me to write that book that you find so difficult to understand but a book of victory a book of encouragement for the Christian Church to let you know that the kingdom of God is going to come out victorious. There are five books in the New Testament that by the power of the Holy Spirit I John the disciples in Jesus love was enabled to write. The Holy Spirit said that when I became old and I would be able to have the carry me to the Church at Ephesus and that I always peace one sermon and it was very brief and it was this little children love one another. The little children love one another.
I was the only one of the twelve that died a natural death. God preserved me to the end and God used me. I preached the little children love one another. I want to tell you about that.
Oh we love one another in that early Christian Church. Some of you feel that you find a greater fellowship outside of the Church. Some of you come into the Church and you feel alone. You feel lonely.
You feel like you don't belong. But in that first century when I lived when the enemies of Jesus, those who persecuted Christians, those who threw them to the lions in the coliseum and Rome, when they saw us they said this, see how they love one another. Oh I wish that you could be that love that we had for one another in that Church at Ephesus. I would like to just see if you can't feel it just a little bit.
Would you please stand by? Would you please? I wonder if you will cross your arms and join hands with a person alongside of you. If you are in the few alone will you move over so someone will join hands with you.
Children will you join hands. I hope that in Immanuel tonight as I John preached that there is no one now in Church who is standing alone. I hope that all of you have joined hands with somebody else. Do you feel a oneness in Christ?
Do you feel as we felt in the first century? This is the grandest fellowship on the Church. We believe that because we were one in Jesus Christ. How many are here tonight if you are alone?
You've got to have your hum. Nobody cares. I wanted you to join hands. That every one of you tonight can say, yes Christians do care.
This is the greatest, the mightiest, the most marvelous fellowship under. Can you feel the presence of Jesus Christ? And I John would say this. If you are joined hands with somebody you don't know, will you in the name of Jesus Christ at the close of the service?
Say hello. That we could go out of this Church tonight feeling something of the love, of the meerness, of the presence of Jesus Christ. That's the tie that binds you to our hearts in Christian love. The fellowship of the mind is life.
So that of us, that my story, the disciples whom Jesus loved, the most intimate personal friends that my Lord had under. I thank God for that. But he loves you just as much as he loves me. The grace of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you.
Father, we give thee but thine own, but ere the gift may be. All that we have is thine alone. A trust, O Lord, from thee. Amen.
O, my King God, our life and our salvation, we adore and praise thee for the inanable works of mercy and love, to all the children of men, but especially for the gift of thine only to God's and sons. To whom thou gave us triumph for the sentient into heaven, to set upon thy right hand, far above all principalities and powers, and a name that is above every name, not only in this world but in that which is to come. We thank thee that thou hast thus crown him with glory for his perfect life, his loving obedience, his innocence, suffering, and his redeeming death. That thou hast wazed in this King over all the earth and head over all the church.
May we also confess that he is the true Lord of our heart and the only Savior of men for this pure and holy and pincinal God, and may thy holy Spirit give us understanding and knowledge, concerning the things of the pain of thy eternal kingdom, comfort, and thanks in us by the light of heaven we truth as the spirit aluminous our minds. Do thy spirit teach us of thy mountable grace in Jesus, and lay thus into the paths of brotherly love, fervent, charity, and willing generosity. Let him inspire us to give thee to this hour of history, and to this time in our lives and to watch and pray that we fall not into temptation. In any testing of our faith grant us thy thy spirit to be steadfast, unlovable, always abounding in the work of our Lord.
All who serve in thy church and thou in full measure with the mind of thy spirit, the Christ may be confess of all faithfulness, get crossed, uplifted, and gift up, will declare as the only power unto salvation. Grant thy ministers in missionary grace and power, and thy people zeal to thy house. Give thy blessing to all parents, but they may be wholesome examples to encourage their children in love for thee in the practice of virtue and the desire to pursue learning to which foundation any in usefulness to thy church and to all men. For out thy spirit to fund our nation, that our people made well in peaceful homes and serve thee in all godliness and honor, to this end be filled by the addiction of all the labor with mind or hand, that they may work with diligence and honesty and repeat the death reward of their toil.
Give us thank the fight intelligence to all in government, that they may perform their duties in such manner as to receive thy favor. Hear the affairs of all who are affected by any adversity, and apply ours of the night when there is no one to life in the way to pain, loneliness, and anxiety. Grant unto them strength and hope in the assurance of thy love, of thy power and thy nearness. We ask that him thy blessed me.
We are Father who warts in heaven. Hello, these aye names, thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our best betas as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
For dine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever in them. Receive the benediction of the Lord. The Lord bless thee and keep thee. The Lord make his face shine upon thee and be gracious unto thee.
The Lord look up his countenance upon thee and give thee peace in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.