His Glory, Our Love

Have you ever experienced a moment in your own life that was an unexpected life change?

All of a sudden you witness something, an accident, something right in front of your eyes, it catches you off guard, or you receive news that you weren't expecting to receive.

A loved one is diagnosed with cancer or the loss of a loved one, or you yourself received the news that you were not expecting.

A few weeks ago I was at the doctor for an issue, and the doctor said, Well, here's what it is.

There's six potential causes that this could be taking place.

The first four, not too big a deal.

The last two, very serious.

Wasn't expecting to hear that.

And in that moment, he went through the first four, but I was just already ready to hear five and six.

I wasn't even focusing on the first four because I was like, What's he about to say?

Like that could be so serious in this situation.

And sometimes when we experience moments like this, the shock of that moment can be so abrupt that everything around you seems to stop.

I was on the way home and I was talking to Chelsea and she said, What'd they say?

I said, Well, I kind of don't remember.

Once he made a couple comments, I just kind of, everything else just kind of tuned out, and I just paused for a moment.

I never thought that would be me, but that's the case for a lot of us sometimes when we come across something that is just abrupt and we're not prepared to hear.

And I imagine when we come to John 13, 31 through 38, the disciples had a similar situation in their own lives.

You see, after they finished the Last Supper, which we heard about last week, right before these verses, Jesus tells the men who have followed him for three years that they will no longer follow him anymore.

Now remember, these men gave up everything, their careers, their families.

They walked away from it all to follow him.

But Jesus doesn't just walk out the door and disappear.

He's like, all right, see you guys, good luck.

Jesus prepares his followers for what is next.

And starting in John 13, 31, going all the way through the end of John 17, what we get to do is we get to listen in on this conversation that Jesus has for his final instructions to his followers.

Where he helps his disciples and even us today understand why he's leaving and what they will do after he leaves.

So what we find in John 13, 31 is the introduction of this section of the Gospel of John, ultimately leading to the cross now at this point.

So as we examine our passage today, what we're going to understand and look at is how the cross leads to his glory and our love, and how that impacts us even today.

So let's jump into verses 31 through 32, where we see the cross and his glory.

Now, in order to understand what's taking place here in verses 31 and 32, we need to understand how Jesus is fulfilling a prophecy from the Old Testament.

Now remember, the gospel writer, John here, when he's writing, his original audience were Jews and Gentiles.

They were both.

And so this helps us understand that this audience, the people that are reading this and hearing this, they would have understood the illusions that are happening from the Old Testament.

Sometimes, if we're not as knowledgeable about the Old Testament, we don't pick up on these little cues.

We don't pick up on little things that the New Testament writers are writing and alluding to, fulfillment from the Old Testament and some of the prophets and how they were talking.

But this helps us understand that they would have understood this, that throughout the Gospel of John, we continue to see how Jesus is the Jewish Messiah and the fulfillment of many of these Old Testament themes.

Ultimately seeing that God the Son, Jesus, was sent by God the Father to reveal the only true God and provide redemption for humanity.

What I love about the Word of God as a whole is how God has this beautiful tapestry of the Bible.

He's woven it together in such a way that if we don't examine it closely and zoom in, we miss the beauty of what God has given us as we back away to look at the big picture of what God has created.

We need to understand at times we can lose sight when we dig into one passage of the Bible or one book of the Bible that we don't understand or don't remember, just kind of tune out that this is one overarching story that is woven together.

It all fits perfectly.

And from our passage today, we need to first go back to Isaiah, who was a prophet that God had sent.

He had used him.

His ministry began in 740 BC, 740 years before Jesus was born.

And what we find in the book of Isaiah are some songs that were written.

More specifically, they were called the servant songs, and there were four of them.

Where we find our passage of John today pointing back to is the second servant song in Isaiah 49.

But before we jump right into Isaiah 49, I want us to understand just briefly how who the servant is that Isaiah is talking about in the first servant song in Isaiah 42, where he reveals this.

Look at Isaiah 42, 1 through 4.

Behold, my servant whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights, you can follow along.

I've put my spirit upon him, he will bring forth justice to the nations.

He will not cry aloud or lift up his voice or make it heard in the street.

A bruised reed he will not break, and a faintly burning wick he will not quench.

He will faithfully bring forth justice.

He will not grow faint or be discouraged till he has established justice in the earth, and the coastlands wait for his law.

And when we jump over to the Gospel of Matthew, we see in Matthew twelve, five through seventeen, Jesus, aware of this, withdrew from there, and many followed him, and he healed them all, and ordered them not to make him known.

This was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah.

Then Matthew goes on to quote Isaiah 42, 1 through 3, and Matthew 12, 18 through 21, showing us that Jesus is the servant whom God the Father had chosen all the way back when we read about the servant in Isaiah 42.

So in the first servant song in Isaiah 42, we now understand that Jesus is the servant that's being addressed in the servant's songs, all four of them throughout Isaiah.

Now, bringing us to Isaiah 49, where John, what he does in verse 32, alludes back to this chapter, the second servant song.

And what's fascinating from Isaiah 42 to Isaiah 49 is that you have God the Father describing his coming servant, but then in Isaiah 49, it changes to first person pronouns, I, my, and me.

Now, at first you might be wondering, well, how do we not know that Isaiah is not just talking about himself?

He's the prophet.

He was sent to suffer.

It was going to be a difficult situation.

He was going to call people to the Lord.

Because we use scripture to interpret scripture.

One of the most dangerous things any Christian, any follower of Christ can do is pull out one verse, isolate it, and build a whole theology around that one verse.

Because you don't have context.

You have to look at all of the context here.

So when we read in John 13 that Jesus is going to be glorified, and John the Gospel writer alludes back to Isaiah 49, 3.

John the Gospel writer is doing something incredible here.

I love how Ray Ortland, who was a pastor in Nashville years ago, and if you've read Gentle and Lowly, that's the guy who wrote that book.

This is his grandfather.

So you had Ray Ortland, Ray Ortland Jr., and then you have Dane and Gavin Ortland, a long line of faithful men.

Ray Ortland says this, helps us understand Isaiah 49, 3, is about Jesus.

He says, So the Israel of verse 3 is the Messiah, the servant who embodies all that historic Israel should have been.

He is the Israel in whom God will be glorified.

The incompleteness of the Old Testament demands resolution, a breakthrough.

On every page it cries out for Christ.

So we shouldn't be surprised when the Old Testament uses the name Israel for the Messiah.

We should, in fact, expect it because the entire Bible is all about Christ.

So why is this important?

Because it shows us that Jesus would actually fulfill what Israel could not.

Where Israel failed, Jesus succeeded.

And ultimately leads to Jesus going to the cross.

In John 13, 31, we read, when he had gone out, this is referring to Judas, who has now left the dinner, he's left the supper, he's gone out to now go and betray Jesus.

Throughout the Gospel of John, we read over and over again where Jesus makes a statement, My hour has not yet come.

Well, now we're here.

It's time.

His hour has arrived.

The time where Jesus is now head down and heading to the cross, where God the Son will glorify God the Father through his perfect obedience all the way to the cross.

Now let's pause for a moment, just briefly.

We like to use the phrase glorifying God.

God's glory are good.

And just in case you're confused or maybe wonder a little bit more, what does it mean to glorify God?

I love how John Piper defines what it means to glorify God.

He says this, you can follow along on the screen.

Glorifying means feeling and thinking and acting in ways that reflect his greatness, that make much of God, that give evidence of the supreme greatness of all his attributes and the all-satisfying beauty of his manifold perfections.

Jesus said in John 17, 4, I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do.

You see, Jesus was perfectly obedient in everything he did, and Jesus perfectly glorified the Father in everything he did.

Where Israel failed in their obedience to God, Jesus succeeded.

But it goes back even further than Israel's failure.

It goes all the way back to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden in Genesis 3, where they failed to be obedient.

Where Israel failed, where instead of submitting to God, Adam and Eve, they wanted to be like God.

The Apostle Paul, who wrote 13 of the letters we have in the New Testament out of 27 in the book of Romans, he says this in Romans 5, 18 through 21.

Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men.

For as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience, the many will be made righteous.

Now the law came into increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness, leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Because of Adam, humankind has been impacted by sin since the beginning of time.

And when I say impacted, I'm not talking about, oh man, you got a flat tire, or oh man, you don't know what you're gonna eat for dinner tonight.

I'm talking about so impacted mankind that there is nothing in us that can correct it on our own.

The impact of sin has so impacted all mankind that we are considered sinners and are born in sin.

There's nothing that you and I can do on our own to change this fact.

But there is something interesting that Paul says in Romans 5.20.

He says, Now the law came in to increase the trespass.

See, when Paul was writing the book of Romans, this letter to the Romans, the typical Jewish view at this time was that the law was given to stop sinful human impulse.

That was the idea that when the readers were reading this, this is what they would have thought.

And we can understand this a little bit better from a book that was pinned called the Mishnah.

And it was a foundational document of rabbinic Judaism.

They believed in this book, they loved it.

And at one point in the Mishnah, it says, the more Torah, meaning law, the more life.

If you look up the Mishnah, it's even described as a document that describes a life of sanctification.

But Paul counters this when he says in verse 20, now the law came in to increase the trespass.

He's getting at something deeper here.

Paul was going against the common Jewish belief of the day and helping people as they read this letter that no, the law does not bring freedom.

What actually happened is that once the law was introduced, there was willful disobedience against God.

Just like Adam willfully went against God's command in the garden to not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

He willfully did that.

Which then, if you read through the Old Testament, you see over and over again how Israel fails to be obedient to what God says.

But it's not just about Israel's failure to be obedient to God, it's also a reminder that we are just like Adam and Israel in the Old Testament.

Where Israel fails to glorify God, so do we.

Where Israel believed that being committed to the law brought sanctification, meaning becoming more and more perfect, we do the same.

We believe at times that if we are good enough, we will earn God's favor.

We begin treating God as if it's a quid pro quo transaction.

Meaning, if I believe, if I do something good for God, then He will bless me.

Folks, that is the prosperity gospel.

Quite often we believe, because we hear the prosperity gospel, right?

We believe it's the health, wealth, and prosperity gospel, and it's all about that.

But we do the exact same thing when it comes to righteousness and spirituality in our own lives.

If I pray enough, if I read my Bible enough, then God will answer my prayers and give me exactly what I want.

If I parent just right and put the right rules in place, then my kids will grow up and follow Jesus.

Why do we believe this?

Because at the end of the day, it comes down to us being glorified.

We want to be glorified.

Take the definition of glorifying God from Pipergan, but instead of God, replace it with yourself.

Glorifying means feeling and thinking and acting in ways that reflect my greatness, that makes much of me, that gives evidence of the supreme greatness of all my attributes and the all-satisfying beauty of my manifold perfections.

You might be thinking, no, no, no, no.

I am not interested in glorifying myself.

I want to glorify God.

But when we treat God with a quid pro quo mentality, that is exactly what we are doing.

Why?

Because God's favor is twisted to be about what we can do.

If I can earn God's favor, then I should be glorified.

And everything inside of us at our core wants to be glorified, which drives a lot of the decisions we make in our own lives.

Maybe it's how we parent so our kids will be successful.

Why?

Because we are glorified when our kids are successful.

Think about it.

Wow, your kids are incredibly behaved.

And what does that do to our hearts?

It's me.

I did that.

I'm not saying none of us in this room want our kids to be successful.

We all want our kids to be successful and live good lives.

But why?

Maybe it's how we work and strive for that next promotion at work.

Why?

Because the moment you get that promotion, you get that next title, what happens?

People praise you.

Wow, that's incredible.

Look how well you're doing at your job.

You must be so smart.

You must work so hard.

Or how we interact on LinkedIn or social media where we want people to be impressed by us.

And so if we put up just the right images where we're at the right spots, or we're with the right people, or our kids are eating the right foods, then we will be praised, we will be glorified, but it's not about our glory, and it never will be.

In fact, the apostle Paul goes on in Romans 3.23, and he says, For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of me?

No, God.

Fall short of the glory of God.

It is God who deserves all the glory, not you or I.

Remember what I said earlier about what it means to glorify God.

Glorifying means feeling and thinking and acting in ways that reflect his greatness, that make much of God, that give evidence of the supreme greatness of all his attributes and the all-satisfying beauty of his manifold perfections.

You know how you can glorify God?

You can look out at creation and be amazed by what God has created.

That's glorifying God.

You can read the Word of God and just be overcome by one word in the Gospel of John, and you're glorifying God.

Glorifying God is not, doesn't have to be some extravagant measure and action in your life.

It can literally be in your mind glorifying God because how great He truly is.

How good Jesus is, how incredible He is, that He would go to the cross.

Now come back to John 13.

Five times John mentions Jesus using the word glory in verses 31 and 32, and he's leading us to the cross.

The Father will be glorified and the Son will be glorified.

But why?

I love what D.A.

Carson, who's a New Testament scholar, says regarding the cross and the glory of God.

He says this the supreme moment of divine disclosure, the greatest moment of displayed glory was in the shame of the cross.

How can D.A.

Carson say that?

Because when we look to the cross, there is no better place that clearly recognizes that God is worthy of all honor and glory than the cross.

As one commentator said, in the death of Jesus, we see God's holiness and love, righteousness and mercy, justice and grace, sovereignty and humility, wisdom and patience.

If we want to understand God, then we should look to the cross.

This is why the Apostle Paul, writing to the church in Corinth, says in 1 Corinthians 2, 2, For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.

Why did Paul say this?

In context here in 1 Corinthians 2, Paul was helping the church understand that he didn't come to them in his own power.

It wasn't about him.

He wasn't there to glorify himself.

Paul's focus was all about Jesus and the cross.

Why?

Because everything in the Old Testament was leading to this moment, was leading to the moment of the cross, and then everything from that point flows forward.

For us today, we look back to the cross to understand how to move forward.

Think about any destination you're about to head to.

I don't know how 20 years ago we got anywhere without smartphones.

Because like, I don't always need my app for how to get somewhere, but I do because I always try to beat the time it tells me.

But at times you do need to know where you're going.

So what do you do?

You put in your destination of where you're headed.

But then it asks you, what's your starting location?

Current location, or do you want to put something else in?

And for us as followers of Christ, our starting location is always the cross.

Because as followers of Christ, everything we do flows from the cross.

Which leads us to verses 33 through 38 this morning, where we see the cross and our love.

The cross and our love.

So as Jesus continues his dialogue with his disciples here, he makes this statement about going away and how they will be seeking him, but they won't be able to come.

Listen to verse 33.

Little children, yet a little while I am with you, you will seek me, and just as I said to the Jews, so now I also say to you, where I am going, you cannot come.

Now this is not the first time Jesus has made a statement like this.

Two times previous to this point, he has said this, but he has said it to the Jews.

Listen to first John or listen to John 7, 32 through 36.

The Pharisees heard the crowd muttering these things about him, and the chief priests and Pharisees sent officers to arrest him.

Jesus then said, I will be with you a little longer, and then I am going to him who sent me.

You will seek me and you will not find me.

Where I am, you cannot come.

The Jews said to one another, Where does this man intend to go that we will not find him?

Does he intend to go to the dispersion among the Greeks and teach the Greeks?

What does he mean by saying, You will seek me and you will not find me?

And where I am going and where I am, you cannot come?

Then again in John 8 21.

So he said to them again, I am going away and you will seek me and you will die in your sin.

Where I am going, you cannot come.

Now in these two situations, John 7 and John 8, Jesus is talking to the Pharisees and other Jews.

These would have been his opponents.

These were individuals who were opposed to him, who were looking to attack him.

They were against him, those who did not like what Jesus was doing.

But then when we come back to John 13, 33, how does Jesus start his statement here that's different than the two previous times?

Little children.

His tone has changed here.

He's no longer at this point addressing those who opposed him and those who wanted to stop him and prevent him from doing what he was doing.

No.

Listen to what he said in John 8 21.

I'm going away and you will seek me and you will die in your sin.

Where I'm going, you cannot come.

But here in John 13, he's talking to his followers.

This is why he addresses them differently than he did the previous two times.

If we were to jump to the next chapter, he elaborates a little bit more on what's going on, where he is going.

John 14, 2, Jesus tells his followers that he must go and prepare a place for them.

John 14, 3, Jesus says, He will return and they will be with him.

John 14, 19, Jesus says, Yet a little while and the world will see me no more, but you will see me.

Because I live, you also will live.

What did he tell his opponents?

Those who opposed him and rejected him.

But to his followers, because I live, you also will live.

Jump back into John 13.

Since we know Jesus is preparing to leave, what does he do next in verses 34 through 35?

He's laying out some expectation for his followers when he's gone.

This is what I expect of you.

This is what I employ.

Planning for you.

Recently, our family hit a pretty big milestone.

We have four kids, and our oldest turned 13, which means she can babysit for us.

And it's really nice.

So, what does that mean?

Well, in the past, we'd have to hire a babysitter to come in, we'd have to pay them, we didn't like they were older, and you know, we had to work around finding someone and all that.

And now we have someone who in our home can watch our other three kids while Chelsea and I can maybe go out to dinner.

But we had to approach this carefully.

We had to approach this carefully because on the one hand, you have one child who has never been in charge of the other siblings, and we don't want that to go to their head.

And on the other side, you have three siblings who have never had a sibling in charge of them.

And so, what does that mean for them?

So we had to sit them down all together before we left, and we had to lay out some expectations because guess what?

You're not allowed to come with us.

But we will return.

You will live.

The first time we did it, Chelsea even made sure they ate before we left because she was like, I don't want them to like choke or something.

We want them to live when we return.

We want to be back with them.

This is what we expect of you while we are gone.

This is what you need to do.

And when we come to verses 34 through 35, this is a similar situation.

Listen again to verses 34 through 35.

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another just as I have loved you.

You also are to love one another.

By this all people will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another.

Now we need to pause and ask ourselves a question.

What does he call out?

Why does he call out that this is a new commandment?

Because we have love called out in the Old Testament quite a bit.

All the way back in Leviticus, the third book of the Bible, in chapter 19, we read, But you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

The command to love is not new when Jesus says, A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another.

So apparently Jesus is clarifying something a little different here in John 13.

It's not that the command itself is new or different, it's what the command now is rooted in that is new.

Verse 34, that you love one another just as I have loved you.

Jesus helping his followers understand his disciples how love has a different foundation.

The foundation is Jesus and how he loved.

Shortly before Jesus began telling his disciples all of this, in the upper room, do you remember what Jesus did earlier in chapter 13?

He stooped down in one of the most gentle and lowly ways and washed his disciples' feet.

If you understand in context what that means, that was for the servants to do, the lowest of the low, because their feet were terrible.

They stunk, they were dirty.

This was set up for a servant to do, not Jesus.

And in less than 24 hours from this conversation, Jesus is going to have been beaten, mocked, tortured, and hung on a cross to suffocate and die.

So as Jesus is saying, just as I have loved you, they would think back to all the ways they have witnessed, Jesus loving them.

But then as Jesus was crucified and they witnessed all that Jesus went through, do you not think that they would remember Jesus saying this?

We are blessed to live at the time in history that we live in, because when we hear Jesus say, Just as I have loved you, we immediately go to the cross because we know how the story ends.

But his disciples sitting here in this moment, that would not have been their first thought because they haven't been there yet.

But after, they would be reminded of everything he went through.

This is the foundation for how we love one another.

Jesus' love for us is the starting point for how we love one another.

Do you really believe that Jesus loves you?

I mean, deep down, if you pause and ask yourself the question, does Jesus love me?

Could you emphatically say, yeah, I know he loves me?

Or is it more like, I don't know.

Deep down, I don't really know if Jesus truly loves me.

I'm trying to earn his love.

Why would he love me?

I'm not worth anything.

Because until we grasp how much Jesus loves us, we won't really understand how to truly love one another.

How did Jesus love his followers and his disciples?

Back in John 13, 1, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of the world to the Father, having loved his own, who were in the world, he loved them to the end.

Jesus' love for you and me took him all the way to the cross to his death.

The love of Jesus Christ is the foundation.

It's the driving force for everything we do as followers of Christ.

Church, hear me say this in the morning: we work from the love of God, not for the love of God.

Don't mix these two up.

You don't earn God's love.

We have a terrible problem in the church today that we're striving to earn God's love.

Nothing you have done or could ever do would be good enough to earn God's love.

You're not special.

Like it's not like you're like, well, I know for them, but me, like God loves me.

I can do all these things.

Carl Bart was a Swiss theologian born in the late 1800s.

He was a prolific writer and a professor in Europe.

And at one point, he's being interviewed by a reporter.

And this is after he's already pinned church dogmatics, multiple volumes over 9,000 pages long.

Brilliant man, very smart, smarter than me or a lot of people.

And he could have given a very deep intellectual summary of how every chapter was intricately designed and written in such a way that leads to the overall theme of the whole thing, of every volume, and on and on and on.

But his response to the reporter was so simple that every single person in this room, including every child upstairs, could understand.

He responded with a brief summary of church dogmatics over 9,000 pages.

What Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.

And how did Jesus love his followers and us today?

John 13, 1.

He loved them to the end.

So our foundation of how we love one another is how Jesus loved us.

But how do we translate this today in our own lives?

What does this mean for you and me?

It starts by just initially talking to our brothers and sisters in Christ.

Quite often, I think, when we hear this idea of we need to love one another, love your brothers and sisters in Christ, we go to these extravagant measures.

Well, I gotta, I gotta like do something big for them.

I gotta like help them in this extravagant, I gotta give them a car, I gotta give them money, whatever it might be, take them lots of meals, whatever it might be.

We go to these extreme measures of ways that we have to love one another.

But what happens when we stop and listen to each other?

We actually learn what's going on in that brother or sister's life.

We understand how that person needs to be loved.

Maybe they need some words of encouragement from gospel truth.

Maybe they need some words of rebuke from gospel truth.

This is one of the reasons mission groups are so important at SMC, why we drive and try to get people into, like everyone, into a mission group, is because we believe that mission groups are a life together in a messy pursuit of Jesus.

We are real people going through real problems, and we need to show the love of Christ to each other.

Do you know why I know this?

Because every Wednesday night at the end of our mission group, we stop and pray for one another.

People go around, they share what's going on in their own life, they share what's going on in their families' lives, they share what's going on in their friends or co-workers' lives, and then we pray individually for them.

We love one another.

And my mission group's not unique.

Every mission group does that.

Why does Jesus say we should love one another?

Look again at John 13, 35.

By this, all people will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another.

So our foundation for our love is Christ, which then shows us how to love one another as brothers and sisters in Christ, all while the world is watching.

Francis Schaefer, who was an author and pastor in the 1900s, had some great insight in a book called The Final Apologetic.

He says this without true Christians loving one another, the world cannot be expected to listen.

Even when we give proper answers, let us be careful indeed to spend a lifetime studying to give honest answers.

But after we have done our best to communicate to a lost world, still we must never forget that the final apologetic which Jesus gives is the observable love of true Christians for true Christians.

He didn't say for the world.

He said the final apologetic is the love that Christians have for one another.

Why is this the case?

Because there is nothing out in the world that compare to the love the body of Christ has for each other.

There's many places and many groups outside the church where you can have shared interests, you can have common things to talk about.

There's an app that was popular a few years ago and maybe it's still around called Meetup.

And what you would do is you'd hop on this app and you would put in some type of interest you have and it would track your location and it would show you groups that have that common interest: hiking, uh, softball, jogging, running, painting.

I mean, literally it was any type of interest.

I used it at one point for a meetup group where it was just like the conversation was like about God.

And I had some unique people show up, had some really interesting views.

Um, but they would come because they had an interest in God, they had an interest in a sport, they had whatever it might be, and you would come and you would meet up at a certain time in a certain place, and you'd hang out with these people on one common interest.

It's because people are looking for people who truly care about each other and deep down love each other.

But the only place you will ever find any true love like this is the church.

When a non-believer steps through the doors of this building on Sunday morning, one thing they should notice is the love that the church has for one another.

And why is that incredible?

Because by and large, guess what?

The majority of us don't have a lot in common.

Different stages of life, our kids are at different ages, maybe we don't have kids yet, like we are single or we're married or whatever it might be.

We don't have a lot of things in common, by and large.

A few things, but not everything.

We enjoy different things, and guess what?

That's okay.

We don't have to look like each other.

But at the end of the day, it's not about what we don't have in common, it's about the one thing we do have in common that we share a Savior who loved us and expressed that love by going to his death on the cross all the way to the end.

It's the cross that drives our love for one another, and it is the love for one another that shows the world we are followers of Christ.

Now look back at verses 36 through 38.

Because Peter now, just like Peter, jumps into the conversation here.

And just like us at times, Peter completely misses the last two verses of what Jesus has said.

He's like gone from like, Wait, where are you?

What you're leaving?

Hold on.

And like Jesus, like, I've already blown through this.

Like, we're on to something else here.

And like we're just like this.

Peter, point blank, just ask Jesus, Lord, where are you going?

I love Jesus' response.

He doesn't clearly answer, just gives them just enough information.

Reminds me of a lot of a parent-child relationship.

You don't give them the full picture, you just give them just enough information where they think they have the full picture, but you don't need to share with them everything.

And we see that with Peter here, after Jesus answers him, Lord, why can I not follow you now?

But that's not enough for Peter.

He takes it one step further.

I will lay down my life for you.

Which is an interesting response for Peter here because that is exactly what Jesus is getting ready to do.

Jesus is getting ready to lay down his life.

He is the only one who can lay his life down as the perfect sacrifice for sin.

This is why in Jesus' response to Peter's initial ask, he clearly states, You cannot follow me now, but you will in the future.

Because right after Peter responds with, I will lay my life down for you, Jesus corrects Peter's claim here.

Will you, Peter?

Will you lay your life down for me?

No, in fact, you're going to deny me three times.

Why?

Because only Jesus could die the death we all need.

Only Jesus could pay the penalty for sin.

And it is the cross that drives our response, the cross and our love.

The reason the church can love each other is because of the cross and what Jesus did through his death and resurrection.

Peter denies, goes on later on, and we'll talk about this in the next upcoming couple months.

Peter goes ahead and he does deny Jesus three times before the cross.

What's interesting is years later, do you know what happened to Peter after the cross?

Some three decades later, we know from church history, Peter does lay down his life.

It is believed that he died in Rome under the Emperor Nero, who hated Christians.

Nero would burn Christians to light up his gardens.

He loved to destroy Christianity, what he thought.

But this time for Peter, he would not deny Christ.

See, the cross changed Peter, and the cross changes us.

The cross transforms our lives.

Because of what time in history we are today, we look back to the cross to understand how to move forward.

As we've looked at 31 through 38 this morning in chapter 13, we've seen how everything leads to the cross and how everything flows from it.

Jesus' glorification through the cross reveals the profound depth of his love for us.

It is this love that forms the foundation of how we are to love one another.

We see that Jesus fulfills what Israel could not, and where Adam failed, Jesus succeeded.

The fulfillment is not just for theological reflection, it's for action that we're called to for each and every one of us.

The love Jesus called us to is not based on mutual interest or superficial connections, but is rooted in the sacrificial love of Christ displayed on the cross.

See, when we love each other this way, it becomes a powerful testimony to the world of the transformational power of the gospel.

So what does that mean for you and me?

It means putting others before ourselves.

It means serving one another.

It means showing grace and forgiveness as Christ has shown us.

It means that in our homes, our workplaces, in our community, we seek to reflect the love of Jesus in tangible ways.

Imagine the impact if we as the church truly lived this out.

When people walk through these doors on Sunday morning, they wouldn't just see a group of individuals gathered together.

They would see a community united by the love of Christ.

They would witness a love that transcends differences and speaks to the heart of our faith that we are disciples of Jesus marked by his love.

As we prepare to leave this morning, let us take to heart the call to glorify God by loving one another as He has loved us.

We have to remember our journey always begins at the cross and that everything we do flows from the cross.

Our love for one another should be so evident and so profound that it draws others to the beauty and the truth of the gospel.

In the words of Jesus in John 13, 35.

By this all people will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another.

Let us live out this love for one another to the glory of God.

Let's pray.