John 14:27 “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.”

It’s an interesting word Jesus chooses to tell us we have his peace: “Peace I leave with you.” It communicates not only the transfer of peace to us from Jesus, but also says that he is going away. This is peace he is leaving behind for us because he himself is leaving this world, at least in a way that we can see him anymore.

You know that path of his departure. Just hours after he said these words he let himself be betrayed even though he knew about the plot against him. He let himself be arrested though he was guilty of no crime. He did not defend himself against false accusations, or unprovoked beatings and mocking. He did not object to his death sentence or his crucifixion. And after he suffered the full penalty for the sins of the world, not a single one of which was his own, he commended his spirit to his Father and gave up his life. Three days later he rose again, and over the next forty days he made visits to those who believed in him, but this world was no longer the place where he lived. He had left, and on the fortieth day he demonstrated that by his Ascension into heaven.

Thus, Jesus has not only left us peace. His leaving, his way home through all he suffered for us, is our peace. It’s the reason we know that God isn’t some cold, celestial banker about to foreclose on our bodies and souls, taking away our spiritual life and freedom for all that we have failed to pay or do. Jesus has already paid off all we owed. We are forgiven. It’s the way we know that God loves us, really loves us, so much that there is no sacrifice too big for him to make if it will rescue us. No sin is left on our record, no strain is left in our relationship with God. All that’s left is peace, the peace that Jesus gives.

Perhaps it goes without saying that Jesus doesn’t give peace “as the world gives.” It’s not a peace where everyone gets a long because they have hammered out a compromise and a truce, or because people are forced to get along by the iron fist of heartless government, or because grandma’s here and everyone is on their best behavior. It’s not the peace that ends war, crime, or family squabbles.

It’s the peace we have in Jesus in spite of all that stuff. When the people we love die, we still mourn, but not like those who have no hope. When our relationships come apart, we may have plenty of heartburn and indigestion over it. But we still have a solid relationship with Jesus, and that makes it possible for us to keep going forward. When we mess up because of our own selfishness, or mean streak, or immaturity, we may feel genuine shame and guilt. But we can confess our sin and know that it is all forgiven. Jesus has left us his peace.

So do not let your hearts be troubled. Until Jesus returns he leaves us his peace to settle our hearts.

John 14:25-26 “All this I have spoken while still with you. But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.”

Sometimes I’m a little dense, and my head is a little too thick to get what God is trying to say to me in his word. I understand all the words in a passage, but not what the whole group of them taken together consecutively is trying to say. I could tell you the details of a Bible story, but at the end of it I’m not sure what the point is supposed to be.

Didn’t the Twelve Disciples often need that kind of help? Jesus teaches them, “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat…” And later on his disciples have to come to him and say, “Explain to us the parable of the weeds in the field.” They heard the story. They just didn’t get it. Now, Jesus promises, they will have the Holy Spirit to teach them what things mean and what they need to know.

Sometimes we may understand what the words say. We just don’t want to accept it. Here, too, the Holy Spirit is our teacher. Remember the disciples on the Road to Emmaus, or in the upper room the night of Jesus’ resurrection? They have all the evidence that Jesus has risen. But in the upper room, even with Jesus standing there in front of them, they are struggling to believe it. So Luke tells us, “Then he opened up their minds so they could understand the Scriptures.” There are things I believe from the Scriptures, not because they seem so right to me, or I like them, or my experience confirms them, but because that’s what the Bible says. Jesus gives us his Spirit, not just to break through hard heads, but hard hearts as well. The Counselor, the Holy Spirit, “will teach you all things.”

Then Jesus promises, “… and will remind you of everything I have said to you.” How do we know Jesus? How do we know what he did and what he teaches thousands of years later? Isn’t it because these men in the room with him that night wrote it down and taught it to others? But how could they remember the details of three years of Jesus’ ministry, and keep it all straight, so that today we have four gospels, four separate biographies of Jesus’ life in our Bibles, that fit together like this? It wasn’t plagiarism. It wasn’t the exceptionally gifted memories of the writers. It was the Holy Spirit, the Counselor, who reminded them of everything Jesus said to them.

You and I won’t be writing new books for the Bible anytime soon. But the Spirit has planted the words of Jesus in our hearts and minds. Maybe some passage has come spilling out of your mouth at an opportune time, something you didn’t even know you knew by heart, and you wondered, “Where did that come from?” You are comforting someone who just lost a loved one, and you find yourself reciting the words of Psalm 23, “The Lord is my Shepherd,” not just a verse but the whole thing, or Jesus words to Martha before he raised Lazarus from the dead, “I am the resurrection and the life.”

Maybe you are beating yourself up, struggling with your own guilt, finding it hard to believe that God can forgive you this time. Suddenly you find yourself thinking about Luke 15, and Jesus’ parables of the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son. You remember Jesus saying that there is more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent. You think of that anxious Father looking down that road, waiting for his wayward son to come home, and then wrapping his son up in huge, forgiving embrace even before he can get out his words of apology. You recall Jesus’ invitation, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” You are comforted and convinced that you are forgiven.

So do not let your hearts be troubled if you and I can’t see Jesus and go to him visibly now. He has sent you his Holy Spirit, the Counselor, who teaches you and reminds you of everything that Jesus said.

Acts 5:31 “God exalted him to his own right hand as Prince and Savior, so that he might give repentance and forgiveness of sins to Israel.”

Political candidates campaign on promises they make to the voters. Once elected, many of them seem to lose interest in keeping their promises to the people who voted them in. Jesus is installed at God’s right hand in heaven as rightful ruler of the universe. Does our Prince and Savior have anything to offer us today?

Peter’s words answer that question. Today Jesus is at God’s right hand so that he can give us his gifts. The first of those gifts is “repentance.” Jesus doesn’t spread the Christian faith by adhering to the old marketing principle, “The customer is always right.” I have been a part of paid market research focus groups in the past. Companies interviewed me and others to learn our opinions. Then they tried to tailor their products to our tastes. They assumed the customer must be right, and they changed to suit us.

No, Jesus does something that seems counter-intuitive if you want to develop a following. He starts by telling you your ideas are all wrong. You and I have developed tastes and preferences that need to change. Our behavior and treatment of others is inappropriate. Our ideas about right, and wrong, and often God himself are backwards. He calls us to repent. He calls me to recognize that I am selfish, prideful, bossy, manipulative, dishonest, two-faced, ungrateful, lazy, lustful, greedy, impatient, and discontented. He calls me to stop defending it and rationalizing it, to feel genuine sorrow and regret for it.

But he does more than call us to repent. He gives repentance as a gift from God’s right hand in heaven. He exposes our sinfully wrong-minded notions in his word. He accompanies his word with his Spirit to convict us. He directs the events of our lives so that we are forced to come face to face with our true nature, to know ourselves in ways we never, ever wanted to know ourselves. He gives repentance to his people as a gift.

“Some gift,” we might think. But it is a gift, a gift of inestimable value. We will pay a doctor a great deal of money to uncover the physical deficiencies that are causing us pain and threatening our lives. Only then can we get the medicine right that puts us on the path to health again. How much more valuable is the diagnosis that uncovers the spiritual deficiencies that have condemned our souls!

Then we are ready to receive the other gift he gives from God’s right hand, “the forgiveness of sins.” However we have offended God, however we have hurt each other, however we have twisted God’s good gifts like sex or money and made them sick and grotesque, he does not hold against us. He does not say that it was okay. It wasn’t. But he does not hold them against us. He does not let our past determine how he will treat us in the future. Every day, every moment, we start off with a clean slate–as though we were as pure and as holy as an angel in heaven.

This, too, is more than an offer. It is a gift he gives–the gift he thought so valuable that he suffered death by crucifixion to make it happen. It’s more than a neat idea, a happy concept. Jesus’ sacrifice forms the real historical basis for God to forgive our sins.

Now from his Father’s right hand he distributes it to us. He sends it around the world as he spreads his word through preachers and laymen alike. He washes us in it at our baptisms. He feeds it to us in his supper. His Spirit fans the flames of this good news so that it grows in our hearts and catches on in the hearts of more and more people. All this he does with the power and authority he enjoys from God’s right hand in heaven. Truly it is a gift to us that Jesus occupies such a place!

Acts 5:31 “God exalted him to his own right hand as Prince and Savior.”

After a team wins the Superbowl, where does the Most Valuable Player from the winning team get to go? Cue the music for When You Wish Upon a Star.  “I’m going to Disney World,” right? When a college or professional sports team wins a championship, there is usually a trip to the White House involved, too. Some place where you can enjoy a little R and R, a place of honor in the spotlight–those are the right places for the victors.

If you have worked your way to the top of your field, if you have proven yourself the best person to lead in your area of expertise, what do you get? A corner office? A chair in the boardroom? Again, those are the right places for those who have distinguished themselves in their careers.

If you have redeemed the entire world from their sin, if you have drained all the fear and all the power out of death, if you sacrificed your life to do so but then took it back again, where is the right place for you? Of course, only one person has ever been able to pull off a feat like that. And there is only one appropriate place for him to be– at God’s right hand in heaven.

That’s where we find the one we call our “Savior.” That title–Savior–isn’t just a badge of honor. It is a term of endearment. It says such wonderful things about him. Before I need to know anything else about him, I need to know that his unfathomable love for me led him to rescue me from hell and save me for all eternity.

The Apostle Peter, the man who said this about Jesus, often referred to him as “Rabbi, teacher,” while he was on earth. And Jesus was that. He still is. He has much to teach us about life and love, and God and our future. But we do not follow him primarily as the wise sage or guru who shows us some superior philosophical system of living. He is our Savior.

The crowds of Jesus’ day sought him out as a Compassionate Healer, a miracle-working troubleshooter who could make sickness go away, settle the weather, and feed their empty stomachs. And Jesus still has the power to make our earthly existence a little less painful. We still pray for his merciful intrusion into our physical needs. We pray for health. We pray for rain. We pray for enough money to cover the bills and put food on the table, and rightly so.

But for us, Jesus is not mainly the distribution manager of heaven’s warehouses. He is our Savior. When you come to understand how utterly helpless you are to make amends for all your sins; when you come to realize how spiritually poor and penniless you are to pay for their guilt; when you come to see how relentlessly death is pursuing you, is there anything else you want him to be but your Savior– the one who rescues you from the eternal doom from which you cannot rescue yourself?

There is no higher pedestal on which our Savior could be placed than God’s right hand in heaven. There is no one who deserves it more. There is no one we could possibly prefer to rule our world.