Jesus Lives in You!
John 14:20
Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill
John 14:20 — it’s remarkable. These have to be the deepest chapters in literature. I’ve begun to talk with Greg and Joanne about a website called, What is the Maker Like? It will look at: What does Mohammad say? What does Jesus say? What does Buddha say? It leaves Mohammad and Buddha standing. It’s such an insight into the world of eternity and the world of time – as is not equaled anywhere else. So these verses are remarkable!
And one can only say that the Holy Spirit has given them – unless one of the guys was behind Jesus, listening to him or overhearing! It was given by the Holy Spirit to John, what Jesus was praying here. But John 14:20 is just part of it here. “’In that day, you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. He who has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me: and he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.’ Judas (not Iscariot) said to him, ‘Lord, how is it that you will manifest yourself to us, and not to the world?’ Jesus answered him, ‘If a man loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him, and make our home with him. He who does not love me does not keep my words; and the word which you hear is not mine but the Father’s who sent me.’”
It begins therefore with, “I will not leave you desolate,” in verse 18. “’I will not leave you desolate; I will come to you.’” That’s his sure word to us. “’I will come to you. Yet a little while, and the world will see me no more, but you will see me; because I live, you will live also.’“
Mohammad, Buddha, and Zoroaster – none of them dares to take those words on their lips. “Yet a little while, and the world will see me no more.” Must have been a great privilege for them, but of course it’s our great privilege too to hear he said these great words. “I will come to you. Yet a little while, and the world will see me no more.”
How plain could that be? How simple and straightforward? “But you will see me; because I live, you will live also. In that day, you will know that I am in my Father.”
Remarkable! “In that day” – here he is in time, speaking, and he says, “In that day, you will know that I am in my Father.” As baffling as that sentence, you remember, “Before Abraham was, I AM.” Just – throws the world upside down.
I emphasize it to you because we’ve got used to it. We’ve treated it as just cliché. But of course they’re remarkable words. No other human being has ever said those words. And no other human being would be believed to be anything but insane or a lunatic! So only Jesus can say those words, and the world takes that seriously.
That’s what we have to get over in our websites. There’s a whole life there! See – it isn’t Jesus versus Mohammad, or Jesus versus Buddha. It’s what the guy said: “Put out the candles, the sun is up!” E. Stanley Jones said that – very good!
I think I first heard him in Belfast. Then I took him around to some of his meetings when I was at Park Avenue Church. But to me he had a little bit of the cleverness of the American – but he was
dead right — because he wasn’t a cliché kid.
We have to get that over to others. Somehow on the internet we have to get that over. Jesus is a different kind of animal. He’s different from all the prophets. He is not a prophet. So I suggest starting the website as I do, because people understand that: What is our Maker Like? “Yah – what is he like? I have no idea.”
Then – what does Mohammad say? What does Jesus say? But there’s no comparison between them actually. In a way the website is wrong suggesting that they are kind of equals. “Oh, Mohammad says this. Oh well, Buddha says this. Well, Jesus says this.” No – they’re absolutely different. They’re different people.
This person left the earth, went to God, came back, and showed himself – and ate fish with them. Not a ghost, but came back and ate fish with them, so that they saw it. This is the same Thomas, as he put his fingers into his hands. This is him! Same place. Same body. There’s nothing that is like that that exists. That’s what we have to get over on the website. Somehow or another we have to get that over – that this is entirely different.
“Because I live, you will live also. In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.” That’s it. “You will know that I am in my Father. I am in my Father. And YOU are in ME, and I and in YOU.”
Same thing in John 17:20: “’I do not pray for these only, but also for those who believe in me through their word, that they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me.’” Speaking to God, “’That they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us.’”
So there it is. “’I in thee,’” praying that they may be in us, “’so that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. The glory which thou hast given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one. I in them and thou in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that thou hast sent me and hast loved them even as thou hast loved me.’”
So it’s Jesus going to immense lengths to get it through our kind of thick heads that he is just not playing around with metaphors. He’s not playing around with picturesque language. He’s not just trying to say to us, “Look. Think of me as being with you. Imagine that I’m in you.” He’s not saying that. I think that’s the serious truth we have to face, because I submit to you — that’s what we’re doing.
If I say to you, “Jesus is in you, and you are in him,” I submit to you that your dear mind goes, “Yeah, yeah, that’s right. I think the same thoughts as Jesus thinks at times. Sometimes I even kind of feel he’s close to me in prayer. Yeah, I know that kind of in a sense he’s in me. Yeah. Yes, that’s a nice way to put it, and it is poetic, and it does bring it home to you if you keep thinking about it.”
But it’s dreadful. I know the lady my wife doesn’t like me weeping at this time, but it’s dreadful! It’s like saying, “You know Trish? Well, let me tell you about her.” And she’s sitting there! She feels like dirt — like a nothing. I think it’s as serious as that. You don’t need me to tell you, it’s our way of creating a lie that enables us to do what we bloomin’ well want to do ourselves.
It’s our way of saying, “Well, what do I feel like doing now?” It’s not being real with him who is within us. Of course, you don’t need me to tell you, when you do that, you miss all the wonder, because he can’t get through to you. He can do whatever he wants, but you don’t recognize him. You don’t listen to it. You don’t feel it. You don’t provide for it. So you don’t receive anything of him inside you.
I think that’s what this is about. I got it a little this morning. God is so good, isn’t he, in the twilight hours, when he can really get us to listen. But I sensed again the sudden realization that God has sorted the whole thing out. He has reconciled this whole thing – whatever house we’ll have in Raleigh; whatever will happen to our sales; how each of us will die; where we’ll go the moment after we’ve died. He has solved all of that.
He has sorted all of that out. He has reconciled the world to himself. He has worked all things according to the counsel of his will, including our little lives. And it’s all settled, and there’s a great peace that comes into you when you sense that. There’s a great rest for us.
I saw that the normal life of Jesus in us is one of rest, where he’s just at rest all the time, and there’s a peace in my life, and an absolute freedom from worry or anxiety or apprehension, and that whenever you’ve sensed that – and I don’t know if you’ve ever sensed it – but I’ve often sensed it – but that is Jesus having his own way in our lives. That is Jesus exercising his mind inside us, and us momentarily just reading that mind, and not our own. In that moment we’re living in reality.
That is Jesus’ norm for us. That freedom and liberty, that relaxation that everything is sorted out, that God has it all planned — and now all I have to do is walk this in lightness and joy, just as I had when I was five or six years old. I’m as free as that. That comes when Jesus is able to get through to you what is always true – that he is in you.
You and I are either strangling him to death, crucifying him, or as the poem goes, “Christ crouched against the wall, and cried for Calvary,” in the poem by GA Studdert Kennedy. It’s the poem called “Indifference.”
It seems to me, we ought to face it, and stop infuriating – it must be infuriating. Obviously he is so kind that to him it is not infuriating. But it must be infuriating to us if a person said, “I am in you,” and you replied, “Oh, yeah, yeah, I know what you mean. You don’t really mean you’re in me. You mean some of your thoughts…” I often feel in a way the Savior is still bearing our sins. It must be part of the sin that he is still bearing when he experiences that in us.
It seems to me, we need to just face it. Either this dear Son of God is in me, and I am in him – or he’s not, and I’m not. It’s either one or the other. I think that’s what we’re talking about here. It would make all the difference to us. That’s why I’ve tried to get at that hymn – “be gracious, and let your graciousness come into me.” That would mean we’d be constantly filled with Christ’s graciousness.
Of course, apart from anything else, it would make life a lot easier for us. It would certainly deal with your “frazzlement”, which is really you just picking words to your being anxious — because I’m sure we all have experience of the same thing, where we allow things to get us down. We allow things to press in upon us.
The truth is, you make nothing of it, if you try to keep trying to lift it yourself, and try to make
yourself feel better. It’s just an excuse for walking over the top of HIM. Really! That’s all we’re doing. We’re just walking over the top of him. We’re just ignoring him – ignoring the fact that he’s in us, and that, whether we like it or not, he’s still bearing the sins. Otherwise we’d die in a flash. Because sin brings death, and sin would bring immediate death to us, if we actually had to bear it and bear the consequences of it.
But he’s always bearing that for us. So it’s very much, “Waken up!” It’s very much, “Stop now!” Stop what? “Stop thrusting your dagger into this dear man’s heart. Stop that, and turn round and speak to him, and listen to what he has to say.”
So I don’t know how to bring it home to you, because you realize yourself as I’m speaking about it – we’re almost into things that human beings can’t explain – can’t express properly. But I think that’s the import of these words. Otherwise he would not keep on with that business. “I in you, Father, and you in me, and them in us, and I in them.” He wouldn’t keep on with that. That’s not sensible, unless he is taking truth as it stands.
So, of course, it’s totally a privilege beyond what you can describe. You can see — that’s the problem. I believe that’s part of the tear business {Rev. O’Neill crying as he speaks}. How can you say this clearly enough? It’s a holy, deep, profound reality. How can a human being express that? You can’t!
YOU can’t actually express it. All you can do is respond to it, in honesty and truth. And if you see me not doing that – pray for me, and I will pray for you. Let us pray.