The Heart of the Savior

we're speaking today with dr sinclair ferguson from his home in scotland dr ferguson welcome it's good to have you with us thank you chris glad to see you again well the occasion for our conversation is a new book that you have published with ligonier and it takes a look at jesus's upper room discourse with his disciples and so thankful for your work and your partnership with us here at ligonier to produce this book and if you are watching this video by youtube take a moment to like our channel or share this video many others i hope will be encouraged by our conversation today dr ferguson you have made a lifetime of study of john's gospel briefly for those people who may not be familiar with the shape and structure of what the apostle wrote for us why did john write this gospel and perhaps how is this gospel different from matthew mark and luke well the interesting thing about john is that he tells us quite specifically why he wrote the gospel um he wrote it in order that those who read it or who probably in the first instance heard it might come to believe in the lord jesus and and people watching will probably remember that when he wrote his first letter he also mentioned why he was writing that and that was to assure bring assurance to people who had come to faith in christ that they really did belong to him so his purpose is i suppose partly evangelistic to introduce us to jesus um but it's also written for christian believers who would first of all have heard it and some of them would have had copies of their own made and been able to read it to help them to understand what trusting in the lord jesus really means and i think probably most people know that john's gospel is different from the other three gospels that we usually call the synoptic gospels they by and large take a similar point of view when they describe jesus ministry although there are quite significant differences among them and john's gospel seems to be different altogether um and i think one of the best ways to think about john's gospel is to remember that in the upper room uh when jesus was with the disciples on the evening of his crucifixion um as they traditionally did they kind of people tended to lie against each other on couches at these males and john was lying towards jesus and actually he uses in the gospel the same phraseology he uses in the very first verse in the beginning was the word and the word was with god and the word was god and i think in some ways a great way to look at john's gospel is here is the man who was leaning back on jesus and he spent the rest of his life uh in a sense gazing into the truth about jesus and reflecting on it and so as a result he gives us this gospel that that is full of jesus heart not just of his actions um but of his words and his disposition and i think that comes to a climax in the farewell discourse the gospel itself um i think to describe it simply is it's a book with a prologue with which most of us are familiar and also in chapter 21 has an epilogue describing uh events after jesus resurrection and in between the prologue and the epilogue there seem to be two sections the first section roughly from the end of chapter 1 verse 18 through to the end of chapter 12 it's sometimes called the book of the signs because it's full of the miracles jesus did which in john's gospel are always signposts pointing to who he is and the significance of his life and then the second half of the book uh from chapter 13 through the lord's passion and crucifixion and into his resurrection is sometimes described as the book of glory so a prologue and then the book of signs and then the book of glory and then an epilogue and one of the interesting um further features of john's gospel is that the book of signs begins essentially with a a week in the ministry of jesus and the the book of glory begins with a single day in the ministry of jesus and you get this sense with john that he is he's focusing your attention on these last chapters the whole half of the book um is given over to um the last week of jesus life the last day of jesus ministry and then a couple of chapters on the events of the resurrection so um it's very full of john's spirit-given understanding of who jesus was and in fact in the farewell discourse he actually tells us how jesus had promised him and the other disciples that when he sent the spirit to them they would be able to understand the truth about him in ways they had never done before his death and resurrection the subtitle of the book is the heart of the savior what about what jesus says during that upper room tender moment with the disciples helps us to really see jesus's heart yeah so that's a great question and also a massive question and um it might sound almost impudent to say in response well everything in it shows us the heart of the savior and i think john makes this clear at the beginning of the section in chapter 13 in verse 1 he tells us that jesus knew what was going to happen to him and he knew that the father had given everything into his hands that he had come from god and that he was going to god and i think if you read that knowing nothing about jesus the next thing you would expect would be some amazing description of his divine identity maybe something profound like the words of the prologue this is the one who was in the beginning with god and who was god who made all things without whom nothing was made that was made but instead what john tells us is that this savior into whose hands his father had committed everything got up from the table and went to the side of the room and put on a slave's towel picked up a basin of water and went round the other 12 people who were in the room and one by one washed their feet and i think one of the things that has often struck me and moved me deeply is that john makes it very clear that there were 12 others in the room and one of them was judas and the lord jesus must have washed his feet as well and that really gives you i think a sense of the amazing love that the lord jesus had for these men how he knew that judas was going to betray him but we mustn't ever think that that he that left him uh with a kind of metallic feeling it must have broken his heart um as david says in the sam it's someone who broke bread with him who lifted up his heel against him so there's there's there's the love of sadness for one man who has been with him for three years and there's this outpouring of his humble love for these other 11 disciples and then from that point onwards um it's as though jesus pours out his heart to them and tells them things that in a sense he had never told them before in some ways in the upper room he he tells them wonderful truths about himself and about god that it's actually hard to find anywhere else in the new testament so the heart of jesus is is set before us in these chapters and then of course um all kinds of ways in which this happens but then right at the end in chapter 17 we hear him pray the longest recorded prayer in the new testament and he ends that prayer praying for those who will come to faith in him through the witness of the apostles and this includes us of course because it's through their testimony in the gospel that we've come to trust in jesus and we get this amazing sense at the end if we read it through that he's he he who washed the disciples feet actually ends the experience that they share in the upper room by praying praying for us praying for me and i've i've found that you know ever since i was a teenager i've simply found thinking about this overwhelming have you gone back to this passage sounds like in many of your studies as you've grown as a christian and how has that study helped you uh in your growth as a christian and even as a minister of the gospel yeah i have gone back to it again and again and um you know the the book is dedicated to my my wife and my daughter um and i know my wife has gone back to it again and again and and when our daughter got it she said to dorothy my wife this was a passage she went back to again and again so it's it's it's deeply in the genes and i think for me the story probably begins in my in my later teens um when i think martin luther gave me a a key i was reading when i was a teenager something he wrote um about paul's letter to the romans being a key to the whole of the bible and i don't think i'd you know i believe the bible was god's word but i don't think it ever really struck me before that there were some books that unlocked the whole story and i realized reading luther that obviously romans was one and somehow or another i knew that of some of the others john's gospel was another and a very important one and i think that was the first time i went out and bought a big commentary and decided i've got to study john's gospel so one of the things the early fathers used to say about john was something like a lamb can play in it and an elephant can swim in it um and so all my life really since my teenage years i've i've been a lamb paddling in it and and sometimes an elephant tried to swim in it um and and i feel very much that i'm still in the shallow waters of it it's such a great book and so um i think if if i were to sum up the impact it's made on me i would say it's shown me jesus christ um and i've you know i've long said to people when they've asked me what sanctification is that at the end of the day it's being like jesus that's what it ultimately is but if if i think about that the next question i've got to ask is well what is jesus himself like and and i think looking over my own christian life uh john yes under the under the influence of the holy spirit has john's gospel has been used to show me what jesus is like what he was like but yes that he is still like this and then in terms of the impact it's had on on my ministry i hope the impact it's had in my ministry is to make it more christ-like to make me more christ-like to help others to be more christ-like and i think it's really made me want to be very christ-centered uh you know i i mean as i go on chris one of the questions i often ask when i i listen to preachers is i wonder if jesus was anything like this because you know i've often thought that as preachers it's almost as though we say to people you know we want to encourage you to be like jesus but it never crosses our minds that perhaps that also impacts our preaching and the manner in which we preach that the manner in which we preach should exude something that reminds people of the lord jesus so um you know i think if i were to analyze myself i've um and i think this is probably true of a lot of us we we tend to be influenced by particular passages perhaps particular authors of scripture um and i think i would have to say i've you know i've i'm johannine in that sense i would like to be johannine um and um while not not detracting from any of the other authors um clearly god gifted john and shaped him to show us things about jesus that if you think about it no one else in all history has shown us and you know that that makes his gospel so so much of a treat for us to be able to read in that upper room discourse jesus is often describing his relationship with other members of the trinity why does he do this why is the doctrine of the trinity so important for us as christians yeah um well there are several questions there why does he do this is a it's a profound question isn't it um he has mentioned the father and he's also mentioned the holy spirit in in the book of the signs but then when you come to the farewell discourse it's almost as though there's an explosion of references to the father and to the holy spirit but also references to their mutual relationships and i think one of the things i've thought about that is that here they are facing their their their greatest crisis and he is sharing with them that he is facing his greatest crisis and so for that crisis all of them need to know the deep things of god which is of course paul's expression to the corinthians and that what what will secure jesus in his humanity through through the next 24 hours is that he knows the father trusts him and even in the darkness of calvary continues to express his faith and trust in him even as he feels in some profound sense deserted and also that he is in communion with the holy spirit and that therefore the the apostles need to know this as well because at the end of the day as he as he prays in chapter 17 eternal life is to know him and i think this means that for the lord jesus what he's doing in the upper room discourse is saying i've been teaching you about him but now i'm bringing you to what i guess people today would call the next level i'm i'm taking you i'm taking you deeper into the heart of god to show you things that you i know you're not able to understand um and he says i've so many things to teach you that you're still not able to understand but you do need to begin to understand this um that god is father son and holy spirit um and i think you know speaking for myself one of the one of the things that that has done for me and here i think i i would need to pay tribute to another book i bought when i was a teenager by john owen on communion with god the trinity i think what this does for us as christians especially if we're brought up to think that the doctrine of the trinity is a speculative and be impractical is that what this means is that we have communion with the father as our father with the son as our savior and with the spirit as our indweller and the way i've tried to help people understand that is you know you're sitting in church and there's a there's a young new associate minister who's very nervous and he prays and he begins his prayer addressing the father and a minute later he's thanking him for coming to die on the cross for us and you realize well either he's committed a great heresy or he's just been nervous because the father didn't die on the cross for us and therefore we can't thank him for dying on the cross for us he sent his son to die in the cross morris and we can thank him and praise him and admire him for this but we can't thank praise and admire him for dying for us on the cross but we can do that with the son and i think what this began to open up for me was that in in our communion with god it isn't just that we're having communion with with god the block but that we're having personal communion with the one god in terms of his three personhood and that opens up a whole world of worship and devotion as we respond to him and also anchors us in a god who is in particular our heavenly father and in particular our savior and in particular the one who indwells as jesus says in in chapter 14 when the spirit comes he's going to make your life a home for the father and the son to indwell and so you know i think that there's no way there's no way under the sun that the the apostles could have understood all this that night that you know their minds must have been in a state of near panic right and yet john remembered it and um you know i'm so grateful that he did remember it in john 17 23 jesus says that god has loved us even as he has loved his own son what does that mean i'm trying to find out um you know i think we can explain in terms of you know literary analysis that he means there's an analogy between the love that his father has for him and the love that he has for us and also that because jesus has taught us that we are united to him that we are in him um that the love he has for his son in our humanity is actually one and the same as the love that he has for us so that he doesn't love us as it were outside of jesus separated from jesus but he loves us in jesus and that what the holy spirit does which again is something jesus is teaching us here is that he unites us to the lord jesus so that so that we may actually experience participate in that love that the father has for his son um but you know i think i think the truth is it will take us we'll be admiring this and be astonished by it for all eternity um and and you know i'm somewhere i'm somewhere dipping my big toe into the edges of the waters but i think the thing the thing that it really underlines for us um and jesus actually explicitly says this in the farewell discourse and i think this is almost the greatest statement a christian could ever take on board when jesus says the father himself loves you um you know i want to wake up every day with those words kind of floating down from the ceiling you know no matter what happens no matter how you feel no matter how difficult things may be the father himself loves you and i again i think one of the wonderful things that underlines for us is that the father loves us with the love he loves his son and therefore we can be in no doubt um that the reason jesus died for us was not to try and persuade his father to love us but because he does love us god so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him shouldn't perish but have everlasting life and i think i have found in pastoral ministry um sometimes because people have had very bad experiences of fathers that often christians struggle and and fear and doubt and live with a sense of anxiety until it dawns on them through the teaching jesus gives here no the father himself loves you um you need not doubt that but what you do need to do is is take it in meditate on it bask in it remind yourself of it constantly um and that statement in a sense is a is a kind of marvelous summary of what we find in the in the farewell discourse i came across a a statement by john dunn the the famous metaphysical poet although i don't think if i remember rightly it's not in one of his poems i think it may be in one of his sermons where he says that reflecting actually on the words of john 13 god loves us to the end and not to our end he plays on the word end meaning finish or goal god loves us to the end but not to our end but to his end and his end is that he might love us more and that's such a wonderful summary of i think what we've got in the farewell discourse that's beautiful a question for you about the work of the holy spirit something that has struck me over the years has been jesus's promise in john 16 13 that the spirit would guide the apostles into all truth i've taken that as reassurance for all christians but is he speaking only to the apostles or is it really a promise to all christians everywhere for all time well it's a bit of yes and no um you know i've sometimes tried to shock students by referring to that verse and saying you weren't there stupid he's not speaking to you um because i think often because we love these verses and sometimes take them out of context we can also quote them and say well he's promised to lead you into all truth but that promise was given in the first instance only to the 11 men left in the room so if it's going to apply to us like every other passage like go and sell everything you have and give it to the poor and come and follow me we've got to work our way from how does what jesus said to specific individuals apply to all of us so the first part of this is when jesus says that the spirit will lead you into all truth that's part of i think a series of statements that he weaves into the farewell discourse because he also promises that the spirit will remind them of everything he's told them that he will lead them into all truth and that he will show them things to come he also says uh uh folks will remember in chapter the end of chapter 15 he says now the spirit will come as a witness to me but you also are going to be witnesses to me so if i put those statements together um and and perhaps it takes a minute or two to take all this on board it looks to me as though what jesus is actually promising the apostles in the spirit will remind you of everything i've said he'll lead you into all the truth he'll show you things to come and in those three areas he and you will be witnesses together that sounds to me suspiciously like a promise that at the time they wouldn't have understood but a promise that they were going to write the new testament the gospels he would remind them of everything jesus had said he would lead them into the truth which is described how he does this and the acts of the apostles and we have as it were the substance of it in the letters and he would show them things to come which we find sometimes in the gospels sometimes in the letters and sometimes in the book of revelation um and that there would be this joint witness which is exactly what we've got in the new testament the spirit of god speaking through the words of men so that's why i say there's a yes and no to it we weren't there and these words give specific promises to the apostles he leads them into all the truth but there is an obvious application of that to us because of the way he did that and the application of that to us is so if we're going to be led into all the truth to know what jesus said to have some understanding of the things that are to come and to be used by the spirit to be witnesses to jesus if i can put it simply we need to get to know the new testament well and i think it's that element that has tended to be missed out sometimes by people um you know the spirit will lead me into all truth by a kind of direct access route when i think if you if you take jesus words in the whole context it means yes he will lead you into all the truth but you'd better get your head down into your bible because that's the instrument that he was going to prepare for us through the apostles so that we could share in their experience of him that's an important reminder to be anchored in our understanding of the truth as being bible centered bible derived there's so much today where people are talking about this is my truth or you need to speak your truth what we're actually talking about is the truth and what is the truth it's in the bible and is what the the scriptures teach us about who jesus is that's that's a very helpful point it's a bit like what he says in john 14 6 you know in the discussion of where he's going where he says i am the way the truth i am the truth um so that ultimately all truth if you think about what john has said in chapter one that without him nothing was made that was made then what jesus says in 14 6 takes on enormous significance if he is the one through whom all things were made he is in fact the ultimate truth about all things and our only access to him by the spirit is through the way in which he has brought the apostles into the knowledge of that truth and so we've got to we've got to go down the train tracks that they have built for us in the pages of the new testament question for you about john 15 and some warnings there about branches that are to be cut off uh from the vine cut off from jesus does this mean that we can lose our salvation uh and if not how are we to understand this teaching yeah um let me let me try and come into the answer to that um through does this mean we can lose our salvation if we read through john's gospel from the beginning it's highly unlikely that we would draw that conclusion from what he says in chapter 15 because for example he speaks in chapter 10 about the fact that he never loses his sheep his sheep come to him and he never loses them so there's quite a strong emphasis already in the first 14 chapters of john's gospel that jesus never loses anyone who comes to trust in him he holds on to them he holds us fast so that in a sense suggests to us that he probably means something different here by saying that if a branch doesn't bear fruit it's cut off and i think perhaps the i mean there's a lot to say about this but i think the simplest thing to say is that the branch that doesn't bear fruit in terms of the picture of the vine and the branches jesus is using the branch that doesn't bear fruit is the branch that isn't vitally united to the vine the the the life of the vine is not flowing through it and the evidence of that is that it's not bearing fruit and that's the reason jesus says it's cut off because it's not vitally united to me and of course the picture he's using is drawn from that series of sayings in john's the i am sayings in john's gospel which reflect the way in which jesus fulfills uh the the fulfills israel in many ways um and i think he's really saying there um you know do not think that just as people belong to israel in the old covenant uh that they were vitally united to the lord and don't think that just because people belong to this new community i'm farming um that they are necessarily vitally united to me um but it is a it's a sobering warning like the sobering mornings i think in hebrews and i think also it needs to be it needs to be handled in the context of the fact that in the same section of john in john 15 1 to 11 jesus speaks about the father using the pruning knife um and i think sometimes at least i find sometimes if christians don't don't understand that he will never let go of those he's called to himself that whenever anything goes wrong or hurts they immediately think oh i'm being cut off um and they need to learn to see if there are the fruit of the spirit in their lives to reassure themselves that the the sore bits of the christian life are actually the father's pruning and not confuse the two um and i think i think john 15 actually is a uh a passage that really helps us to do that so sum it up for us what are we in danger of missing if we don't understand or pay attention to jesus's words in the upper room discourse well um i mean i hope it doesn't sound like a kickback to say you know we're missing jesus because this is where in a sense he reveals his his heart to us as as you asked at the beginning um thomas goodwin wrote a little book um about the the the heart of christ manifest in heaven the heart of christ in heaven manifested to us and if i remember rightly he has a little a little section on on the farewell discourse where he says what you read here is a transcript of the heart of jesus in heaven this is what he is like um i think if you if you think about what hebrews says in hebrews 13 8 jesus christ the same yesterday today and forever well this is jesus christ yesterday this is jesus christ and in the few hours before his crucifixion this is exactly what he was like and he's opening his heart to you but hebrews says he's the same today and he'll be the same tomorrow and i think one of the things that does for us chris is it helps us when we read the gospels to read them as books about jesus um because you know just listening sometimes to the way we read the gospels you would almost think the gospels were about us and i've sometimes only half humorously said you know it's like it's like find waldo you know where are you in the gospel story are you like zacchaeus up the tree or blind bartimaeus at the roadside and you know that has its place but the gospels are not about you and me they're about him and i think when you see as you ferry it's so evident in these closing sections in john's gospel it is all about jesus and so when i see who he is i see who he is for me and that's where i fit into the story if i'm just looking for me then jesus is going to fit into my story and i'm only going to i'm only going to find a partial jesus but when i look for jesus in john's gospel then you know i'll find my place in the story as well and to me it's just this is a stunningly wonderful thing to think that everything i see about him here he is exactly the same for me today as he was yesterday and and will be forever and ever amen amen thank you dr ferguson for being our tour guide and taking us into the upper room in this conversation also in this new book and your companion teaching series we have at ligonier that goes right along with this book as well and study guide so if you're watching this and you want to learn more i would encourage you to visit ligonier.org and to study these matters for yourself using dr ferguson's material we have many resources there available for you to grow as a disciple of the lord jesus christ and we do long to see the church reformed according to the word of god of course the word of god is taking us to jesus christ and his person and his work may you continue to grow in the grace and knowledge of our lord jesus christ thank you you

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Keywords: Ligonier, Ligonier Ministries, Reformed Theology, Reformation Theology, Theology, Educational, heart, the heart of the savior, the heart of the saviour, savior, saviour, chris larson, sinclair ferguson, christian, christianity, the shadow of the cross, the upper room discourse, john 14, john 16, john 17, love, sacrificial love, dr. sinclair, dr. sinclair ferguson, the cross, the meaning of the cross, the gospel of john, the teaching of jesus, christ's teaching

Id: GV3t4DMtsq8

Length: 40min 3sec (2403 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 09 2021