John 15:27 “You also will testify; because you have been with me from the beginning.”

How many courtroom dramas haven’t you seen in which the outcome of the case hangs upon the testimony of an expert witness? His testimony about some little-known fact of medical science, or ballistics, or physics will convince a skeptical jury of innocence or guilt.

How many times don’t Christians face people harder than a skeptical jury to convince? Jesus warned his disciples that the world would be more than skeptical of their message. It would hate them for it, because it hated him first.

Somehow, people still hear his message and believe. We can be thankful that Jesus doesn’t send us out to face that world alone. We have his Spirit and his tools to make a convincing case.

It is a little hard to imagine what preaching must have been like for the Twelve Disciples. They had no written New Testament from which to work. I never get into a pulpit without a Bible text from which to preach. Admittedly, sometimes I preach on an Old Testament text. But at Christmas I preach on the Christmas story from Luke. At Good Friday or Easter I preach on one of the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ death and resurrection. The first twelve men Jesus sent didn’t have anything like that.

They had something better. “You have been with me from the beginning.” They had their eye-witness experience of Jesus’ life and ministry. They told others the things that they themselves had seen and heard. As Peter later wrote, “We did not follow cleverly invented stories when we told you about the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty.” They were expert witnesses because they had seen it themselves.

Today their written testimony and the Spirit’s ongoing work make us witnesses as well. So long as we are believers, that is more than a possibility. Jesus’ words to the Twelve, “you also will testify,” aren’t so much a command. They are a promise. This is an honor. “You ARE witnesses,” he tells them.     

We have received his grace. We have faith. We have his Spirit. We know his word. We bear the title Christian. We are Jesus’ force to bring his message of forgiveness, love and new life to the skeptical and hateful world in which we live. Armed with the Apostles’ words and the Spirit’s power, we have all that it takes to be Jesus’ witnesses today. Be who you are, and tell them what you know.

John 15:26 “When the Counselor comes, the one I will send to you from the Father–the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father–he will testify about me.”

A number of years ago I was in one of those “just-getting-to-know-you” conversations with someone I had just met. “What’s your name?” “Where are you from?” “What do you do?” The person jokingly said of his little hometown that it was “a good place to be from.” You know the implications of that, right? There wasn’t much to his hometown. He didn’t have a lot of good things to say about it. He was glad he didn’t live there anymore.

Jesus sends us the Spirit from “a good place to be from,” from the Father’s side, but that has only good things to say about it! From the Father’s side the Spirit has seen and knows all that God the Father in heaven sees and knows. We couldn’t have a more knowledgeable Counselor to help us!

From the Father’s side he comes with the power of God himself. That is no pea shooter you are picking up and wielding when you take the sword of the Spirit, the word of God, on your lips and start sharing it with others. It’s more like a big bazooka. Even in your mouth, or my mouth, God’s words are explosive. Other words might have the power of persuasion. But God’s word has the supernatural power of his Spirit working in it, who comes from the Father’s side, able to work miracle changes in the hearts and heads of those who hear.

Jesus calls this One he sends from the Father the “Spirit of truth.” There is such a thing as absolute truth. You have it from the Spirit. You believe it through the Spirit. And you speak it with the Spirit’s power accompanying every word.

That flies in the face of majority opinion today. Less than half of American adults believe absolute truths exist regardless of cultural realities or personal preferences. Do you know one of the major reasons why?  Common sense ought to tell us that something is either true, or it’s false. It is either fact or fiction. Most people understand that. But people fear the concept of absolute truth because they are afraid of what it produces. They think it makes people mean, even encourages violence.

After the terrorist attacks on New York in 2001 the number of people who believe in absolute truth in this country dropped nearly in half. Apparently, they were bothered that the terrorists rationalized their actions based on their ideas of truth. People were willing to throw out the general concept of truth rather than judging the individual truth claims themselves.

The Spirit of truth teaches us the absolute truth. But he doesn’t make people mean. He makes them humble. He reveals the depth of sin’s hold on our own hearts that we could never know without him. We are sinful from conception. Every inclination of man’s heart is only evil from childhood. Those are the Spirit’s own words. He convicts us of the truth that we are no better than anyone else. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Like Paul, he teaches me to regard myself as the chief of sinners. There is no room for a self-righteous rampage against others in a heart convinced of truths like that.

Yet that is the lesser half of the Spirit’s truth. The truth Jesus mentions here is this: “He will testify about me.” The Spirit teaches us facts about Jesus’ life, to be sure. But more than that, he tells us what they mean. The cross wasn’t an accident, a horrible mistake, a miscarriage of justice. It is the atoning sacrifice for our sins. It is the source of forgiveness and every other blessing. It is the supreme demonstration of God’s love for you and me. It makes you a treasured and dear child of God. Jesus’ resurrection isn’t a hoax, a pious legend, or a freak of nature. It is God’s happy promise that death is not the end, that our bodies and souls will live forever and ever.

Truths like that won’t make you mean. They will make you free. No one knows better than the Spirit that this is true. No one is better able than the Spirit to convince us that this is true. This is the perfect Counselor Jesus sends.

John 15:26 “When the Counselor comes, the one I will send to you from the Father–the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father–he will testify about me.”

Jesus refers to the Spirit as the “Counselor.” If you know the King James Version of the Bible well, maybe you remember that there this is translated “Comforter.” Or perhaps you are familiar with the Greek word behind these terms, “Paraclete,” from hymns or Bible studies that deal with the work of the Holy Spirit.

Most literally, this word refers to someone who is called to stand alongside of you. That could be your lawyer at a trial, standing beside you, giving you legal counsel, and arguing your case for you. That could be a friend who throws an arm around your shoulder and gives you a little comfort and support when things are tough. That could be anyone who rolls up his sleeves, stands beside you, and helps you through the task in front of you. One Central African translation of the Bible even translates using a term that describes a person who kneels down next to someone who has been seriously hurt to care for his needs and carry him to safety– something like the picture we have of the Good Samaritan.

Here is the point of all this: we are not alone in the work that God has given us to do. Sometimes we may fear that the task of spreading the gospel sits entirely on our shoulders. It is up to us to come up with a compelling argument to defend Jesus’ teaching. It is up to us to present the message so well and so precisely that people will have to believe what we say. The success of our preaching, teaching and witnessing begins and ends with me, me alone. No one is more tempted to think this way than Christian pastors, but all of us can be guilty of it, especially when there is someone or other we really want to come to faith.

If we think this way, we have intruded on God’s territory. What did the Apostle Paul tell the Corinthians? “I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but the Lord made it grow.” That’s not saying we shouldn’t work hard, and make our best presentation. But if we cut God out of this, and put it all on us, we are setting ourselves up for a number sins.

One, we fall into worry and all kinds of false guilt when we don’t see the kinds of results we think we should.

Two, we are tempted to tinker and “adjust” God’s message to make it work better. But if people are believing something that God didn’t actually say, then it isn’t God that they are actually trusting, is it.

Three, when we do see success, false pride fills us. We take credit for God’s work, and we miss the fact that we didn’t make the person believe. God worked a miracle.

This is why Jesus sends the Holy Spirit. He calls him Paraclete, Counselor, Comforter, because he has something to say to us. He comes along side of us and throws the warm, comforting arm of the Gospel around our own shoulders. He assures us our God not only stands alongside of us. He stood in our place. Jesus stood with the weight of our sins on his shoulders instead of ours. He stood under the judgment our sins deserved, and died the death for them that we should have died. He stands alive today to promise that every sin is forgiven, our full debt is paid, all God demanded has been paid in full.

But his work with us hasn’t stopped there. He not only stands alongside us. He lives inside of us reaffirming our faith, giving us the tools for the task God has given us, even accompanying our words so that they hit home in human hearts. What did Jesus’ say about the word? “The words I have spoken to you ARE Spirit and they ARE life.”

You see, we are not alone (and that’s not just a statement about space aliens). We are working with the Counselor, who is beside us, even in us. As believers in Jesus, that is true at all times. The Spirit is living in us even when we don’t “feel” him. He hasn’t left us when we are sleeping. He hasn’t left us when we are concentrating on work or play or something that seems completely secular in nature. In fact, we should be careful not to confuse him with our own emotions or a rush of adrenalin. The Spirit may be capable of producing such things, but they are not the Spirit himself. So long as we still sincerely believe that Jesus is our Lord and Savior, the Counselor is with us, for “no one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ except by the Holy Spirit.”

Revelation 7:15-17 “Therefore, ‘they are before the throne of God and serve him day and night in his temple; and he who sits on the throne will spread his tent over them. Never again will they hunger; never again will they thirst. The sun will not beat upon them nor any scorching heat. For the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd; he will lead them to springs of living water. And God will wipe every tear from their eyes”

            So much of heaven consists of acquired tastes. When I was a little boy, I didn’t much care for olives, or coffee, or other things that tasted bitter. About olives my mom once said, “You have to eat seven of them in a row before you will like them.” I don’t know if I ever did that, but as an adult I like olives. I also have a cup of coffee every day, and the bitter taste is something I have grown to appreciate. These were acquired tastes.

            I don’t know that most people sit around dreaming of standing in God’s presence, seeing him face to face, and living under the same shelter with him. Just what do we get out of that? I don’t know that even now, after I have acquired the taste, I can answer that for you too well. But the Scriptures consistently hold out this vision of God, this time in his presence, as heaven’s greatest joy. Think of Job’s great confession that his Redeemer lives, “And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God; I myself will see him with my own eyes–I and not another. How my heart yearns within me!”

            My heart yearns within me, too. Maybe I can understand it this way: On earth there has been one person who has come to mean more to me than anyone else. When we are apart, I don’t sleep well. When she is gone and I am home, the house doesn’t feel right. We share common interests, and I love listening to her tell me about her day. Even if we are at home quietly going about our separate business, her mere presence just makes life comfortable and right.

            As we pass our years in faith, Jesus continues to capture our heart’s affection more and more. He created us for himself, and no one has ever loved us more than he has. With time I share more of his interests, and I love listening to what he has to say in his world. Maybe standing in his presence before his throne, serving him in his temple, and living under his tent will be finally realizing that we are home, truly home, and his mere presence makes life comfortable and right.

            This part of our Shepherd’s reward is, perhaps, less difficult to understand: “Never again will they hunger; never again will they thirst. The sun will not beat upon them nor any scorching heat. For the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd; he will lead them to springs of living water. And God will wipe every tear from their eyes.”

            It’s not a complete list, as though hunger, thirst, and scorching heat will be removed from our experience, but other unpleasant or painful things will remain. Big or small, you can take your least favorite irritations, your deepest sorrows, and freely add them to the list. For several years now my ears have been ringing constantly. The high pitch never stops. If I wake up in the middle of the night, it is there. My doctor says there is little that can be done for it. I have learned to tune it out for the most part. But I know that when I am standing before the throne, all I will hear is beautiful singing, or at times a perfect, peaceful quiet. Part of the Lamb’s reward is the absence of all that hurts or annoys.

            And in its place will be nothing but life. “He will lead them to springs of living water. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.” The idea of “living water” is water that gives us life. Fiji brand bottled water claims that it is “Earth’s Finest Water.” Perhaps. But it can do no more than any water does: hydrate the body and support life.

            The Lamb who is our Shepherd will lead us to water with the power of life in it, water that actually makes us alive. And home with him, truly living will be all we know.

Revelation 7:13-14 Then one of the elders asked me, ‘These in white robes–who are they, and where do they come from?’ I answered, ‘Sir, you know.’ And he said, ‘These are they who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.’”

The great tribulation–it’s a fitting metaphor for life, isn’t it? No one denies that we have some good days. We enjoy happy moments along the way. But we are never far from some struggle. School and work, family and relationships, health and finances, church and government–these all become battlefields at some time or another. We might think some people have life easier, but I know of no exceptions.

I could illustrate with examples, but you know well enough what I am talking about. George Banks’s observation in Mary Poppins might feel a little pessimistic, but it’s hard to argue it’s not realistic, and Mary Poppins herself never does:

“The children must be molded, shaped and taught
That life’s a looming battle to be faced and fought.”

A great tribulation, in other words, just like the heavenly elder tells John.

In light of the tribulation, we might expect the clothing of these people to be a little soiled. Actually, we wouldn’t be surprised if it were filthy and tattered, especially considering the root cause of our tribulation–the sin with which we and every human on the face of the earth and across the span of history must contend. Some of that is the sin outside of us, the lovelessness or persecution we have to endure. We tend to focus on that.

But the real battle is the one inside, our own inner struggle to believe and behave. We’ve been knocked down far too many times in that fight. Sometimes it has been more of a wrestling match, rolling around in the mud. We hardly get up off the ground. Our lives, our reputations, get soaked through and deeply stained.

But that’s not what John sees, is it. “They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” I wear white shirts a lot. Every Sunday it’s a white shirt under my suit coat or robe. If I nick myself shaving Sunday morning, I try like mad to stop the bleeding before I get dressed, to keep my shirt clean. If I get some on my collar, then I change shirts right away, and the one with the blood-stain gets pretreated and soaked in water immediately. Those things aren’t easy to get out.

The blood of the Lamb stains our robes white. It cleanses our lives and reputations before God. We didn’t start that way. We didn’t get that way on our own. Our robes have to be washed from what they were. But when we pass through Jesus’ blood, everything washes away. He is, after all, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. He isn’t one part of a bigger process, the pre-soak cycle, the rinse cycle, or the spin cycle that gets our robes ready to dry and wear. The blood that poured from his wounds on the cross, carrying his life away with it, undiluted and unassisted, makes us clean and pure and presents us spotless to God. That’s where the Lamb’s shepherding begins: He lays down his life for his sheep. He rescues them by washing them clean with his own blood.

That’s why the people John sees in this part of his vision have been rescued in another way. “These are they who have come out of the great tribulation.” That’s a much happier way of describing what we commonly refer to as “death.” These are they who have died. Because Jesus washed them clean, death was not a great punishment. It was a rescue. It was an escape. The struggle with sin, the fire of persecution, the labor and toil that rob our joy and make life hard–that was behind them now. They have come out.

And so will we, because the Lamb rescues his people from sin and death.

Hebrew 12:2-3 “Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.”

            Jesus is the author of our faith. My faith isn’t a do-it-yourself project. It was a gift: truths, beliefs, new understandings and dear convictions written in Jesus’ hand on my heart when his word and sacrament called me to faith. Keeping my faith isn’t a do-it-yourself project, either. Jesus is the perfecter, the finisher, like a gardener who never stops tending and improving his garden; like an artist or craftsman who constantly maintains and upgrades his work. Perhaps it makes sense to give him our attention.

            This is what we will see: “…who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” In the Believers Hall of Fame, no one overcame more than Jesus did. Others died to remain faithful to God. But none of them died so innocently as Jesus did. None of them, so far as I know died so miserably as Jesus did. Most of their deaths came rather quickly compared to his day of beatings, insults, and then the slow, torturous death on the cross.

            But Jesus is more than the supreme example of faithfulness to the end. Along with everything else, no one ever died with greater purpose. He endured the cross “for the joy set before him.” That joy was more than his own escape to heaven. It was the joy of souls redeemed and forgiven by the price he paid in their place. It was the joy of a world reconciled to God, peace and love reestablished between heaven and earth. It was the joy of having you as part of his family, knowing you would now belong to him, and that nothing in all eternity could ever separate you again.

His love and sacrifice are more than an example to follow. They are the reason we know that, no matter how bad things get in our world, God still loves us and our stories will end in the greatest “happily ever after” there ever was. That is why we want to “consider him who endured such opposition from evil men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.”

Hebrews 12:1 “Let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.”

What are the faith-killers you carry around with you? You know that athletes compete with as little clothing as possible for their sport, and they want it as light as possible. I remember picking up a pair of racing shoes for track and field for the first time. I mean shoes for competition, not for training. I was amazed at how thin and light they were. You can run a mile in a pair of army boots, too. Soldiers do it. But do you think you would win in the Olympics that way?

At the Winter Olympics, teams where special aerodynamic uniforms for various sledding events. A 3-D laser scan is taken of the athletes’ bodies to ensure a perfect fit. Special polyurethane fibers are used in the suit to eliminate as much wind-resistance as possible.

Two thousand years ago, athletes performed virtually naked. Our word “gym” comes from the Greek word for naked. Street clothes for both men and women consisted of robes that stretched to the feet, not unlike the one many ministers wear at worship. Can you imagine trying to run a race that way? So the robes had to come off if the athletes wanted to be able to move and not trip and fall over their own clothing.

What are we carrying around with us that is going to trip up our faith? Jesus refers to several obstacles in his parable of the Sower and the Seed. Remember the seed that fell among the thorns? “The seed that fell among the thorns stands for those who hear, but as they go on their way they are choked by life’s worries, riches, and pleasures, and they do not mature,” he says. Money and possessions are tools we all need to conduct our lives. Sometimes God may bless us with large amounts. It becomes a problem for faith when we obsess about them, worry about them, and fall in love with them.

In my neighborhood, a car was recently stolen from a driveway and later used in an armed robbery. Some of my neighbors are in a panic. “Raise the homeowners dues and make it a gated community,” some are saying. “Hire armed guards to patrol our streets at night.”

Don’t get me wrong. I think crime is bad, and we should take reasonable measures to prevent it. But sooner or later, we are going to part ways with our things. They may wear out and we throw them away. Someone may take them from us. In either case, the Lord still promises to provide. Too much concern about them, or love for them, gets in the way of our faith.

It’s hard to finish the race in bulky clothing and carrying heavy dumb bells in each hand. Take it off and set them down. It’s hard to keep our faith with our hands so full of stuff that we can’t think about anything else. Better to let it go, set it aside, “throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles.” Some obstacles we can’t control. These we can. Avoid them, and then run the race God sets before you.

Hebrews 12:1 “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.”

Do you know who this “great cloud of witnesses” is? Many of them are named in the previous chapter of Hebrews. They are the great heroes of faith. Abel, Noah, Abraham, Joseph, Moses, Rahab, Samson, and David are just some of the famous figures from the Bible on the list. Like us, they had to live their lives by faith in God and his promises. They faced threats and dangers for which they could see no solutions. They couldn’t see how the future was going to work out for them, how things could possibly come out all right in the end.

If anything, their challenges were even greater. My brother-in-law jokes about what he calls “first-world problems.” The Wi-Fi stops working at our house and we can’t send an email. We order something on Amazon and they send us the wrong color. We go out to eat and they are out of our favorite item on the menu. How will we ever survive?

It’s not as if we live in the third-world where today’s challenge might be, “Where can I find safe drinking water?” “How can I avoid being killed by the uncontrolled soldiers of my corrupt government?” I haven’t wasted one second worrying about those things my entire life.

The lives of the heroes of faith sounded more like the third-world challenges, even worse. After going on about individual details from their lives, the writer of Hebrews sums it up this way: They “were tortured and refused to be released, so that they might gain a better resurrection. Some faced jeers and flogging, while still others were chained and put in prison. They were stoned; they were sawed in two; they were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted, and mistreated…They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground.”

The point is not to make us feel better because our problems have not been so bad. Your life may have stories that were every bit as hard to survive as theirs. The point is that the Lord took them all the way through life with their faith intact. It can be done.

And now we are surrounded by this “great cloud of witnesses.” Together with the Bible heroes of faith, you may be able to throw in a few that you have known yourself–Christian family members, parents or grandparents, who bravely fought disease, struggled with poverty, were victims of violence or abuse. A friend of mine tells of sitting in church with his grandmother, who sometimes had blackened eyes because of his violent and unbelieving grandfather. But there she was on Sunday morning, with a heart full of faith, singing Christian hymns at the top of her lungs.

These heroes may not be able to see the details of our lives from heaven. But they are still part of the One Holy Christian Church, and they are pulling for us as brothers and sisters in faith. Their example supports us and inspires us. These are the role models we have always longed for, the positive influences we have always needed. We can do it with God’s help. They did. Now they are behind you. So keep running. Don’t give up in this race.

John 13:34-35 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

Is “love one another” really such a new command? “Love your neighbor as yourself” wasn’t a new idea Jesus first spoke during his earthly ministry. Moses had been teaching it since Israel camped at Mount Sinai 1400 years earlier. In his first letter, John, who wrote this gospel, calls this an old command, “which you have had from the beginning.”

The word used for “new” does not have to emphasize that something is new in time, though it can mean that, too. It can refer to the quality of “new,” something that is superior. We might think of how Paul elevates love above all, even faith and hope, in 1 Corinthians 13: “The greatest of these is love.”

But if there is something new-in-time about Jesus’ command this night, it is this: “as I have loved you, so you must love one another.” We have this outstanding life of love and sacrifice to look at. Is that intimidating? We see Jesus love people we would find irritating or obnoxious, like the self-absorbed rich man who came to Jesus and asked him what he needed to do to inherit eternal life. “Jesus looked at him and loved him,” Mark’s gospel tells us.

We see Jesus love people we might find disgusting and repulsive, the prostitutes, the five-times-married Samaritan woman who was shacking up with her boyfriend. We see Jesus embracing people with dangerous, communicable diseases like the leper he reaches out to touch before he heals him. We compare how we treat people, and perhaps our faces flush with shame.

Listen closer: “as I have loved you.” “I have loved you.” This isn’t a confrontation. It’s certainly not a contest. It’s his claim, on you. We, you and I, are the self-absorbed, the repulsive, the dangerous-to-be-near people he has loved, and still does. He loved the others for us, and he suffered to save us, because he loves and embraces us.

So we love one another. We are his. “My children” he called these men a moment before. It wasn’t a criticism, an accusation of immaturity. It was a term of endearment: “My dear children, my precious ones.” Children imitate their parents, don’t they? So much of play is doing what mom and dad do.

Except it isn’t play when we love as Jesus loved us. We are living as his children, who know what it is to be loved. Love like that, and others will know we are his.