It’s been since July that I’ve preached here on a Sunday. That wouldn’t have been my choice; but I think, as Grace just sung, sometimes our trials are blessings in disguise, and God has purposes that we would never have been able to fulfill if we weren’t put into some kind of stress. I can tell you, I’ve had three heart surgeries and surgery on my lungs in those last few months, and I’m still here, so I’m thankful to the Lord for that. And I have so much to be thankful for. In fact, when people ask me how I feel, I say I’m thankful. I’m just thankful I see the good and gracious and kind and providential hand of God in every vicissitude in my life. Every hard experience, every challenge, whatever that challenge may be, I see the good hand of divine providence operating in ways that would never have been possible were it not for the trials.

So I genuinely and truly am grateful, and I can be grateful because I know the outcome of everything. The outcome of everything is to the glory of God and the benefit of His children, right? So I want to make sure that I allow my own heart to rejoice in the fact that God will perfect me and will bring glory to Himself through my trials, probably more than any other way. And one thing that I have found is that my thanksgiving has increased, because it’s in the trials when you’re face-to-face with things that could easily overpower you, and you have no particular control over them at all, that you find your faith is tested. And out of that testing has come an immense amount of gratitude to the Lord. He has revealed Himself in all these issues, all these trials, in so many ways that I can’t even begin to count. And I think when you’re in a situation like this, for a true believer, thankfulness should be the first reaction, because the Lord is doing His work on the one hand; and on the second hand, you’re getting close to heaven, and we rejoice in that reality.

In Colossians 3, if you want to look at it for a moment, Colossians 3:15, just a reminder: “Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body.” And here’s a very brief command: “Be thankful.” “Be thankful.” Down in verse 17 it says, “Whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through Him to God the Father.” That’s a New Testament counterpart to, say, Psalm 103:2, which says, “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget none of His benefits.”

So as I was thinking about how we might be thankful together tonight, I wanted to find a location in the Scripture where we could pull together some amazing realities for which we must be thankful, and that drew me to John 13, the gospel of John in chapter 13. And I want to do kind of a flyover of John 13 through 16 with some landings along the way.

Now, when you come to John 13, just a little bit of background. This is the upper room. This is the night of the Last Supper. This is Jesus with the twelve. This is the unmasking of Judas. This is the bewilderment, the chaos, the confusion, the discouragement, the fear, the doubts, the brokenhearted response of the apostles to things going in a direction they never, ever expected. Rather than Jesus setting up a kingdom, He keeps talking about dying. In fact, He even is explicit about the fact that He will be killed.

In the twelfth chapter of John, in verse 23, Jesus said, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” Well, that sounds good. Maybe this is the coming of the kingdom. But then immediately He says in verse 24, “Truly, truly I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”

In that same chapter in verse 30, “Jesus answered and said, ‘This voice has not come from My sake, but for your sakes’”—that’s an angelic voice. Verse 31, “‘Now judgment is upon this world; now the ruler of this world will be cast out. And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to Myself.’ But He was saying this to indicate the kind of death by which He was to die.” They all knew what that was, crucifixion—someone being lifted up.

“The crowd then answered Him, ‘We have heard out of the Law that Christ is to remain forever; and how can You say, “The Son of Man must be lifted up [or crucified]”? Who is this Son of Man?’” This was not only the crowds that were shocked about Him claiming to be Messiah and claiming to be crucified in the purposes of God. Rather than establish the kingdom, He was going to die, and this was critical.

Not only did this startle and shock the crowds, whatever level of indifference or meager faith they had expressed, but it literally jolted the disciples to the bone, and their attitude is described, as we come into chapters 13 to 16. It’s described, for example, in chapter 14, verse 1, “Stop letting your heart be troubled.” Strong language. They were troubled in heart. Down in verse 5, “What do You expect?” Thomas said to Him. “Lord, we do not know where You are going, how do we know the way?” Verse 27 at the end of the verse, “Do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be [afraid].”

Over in chapter 16 in verse 6, “Because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your heart.” Verse 24, “Until now you have asked for nothing in My name; ask and you will receive, so that your joy may be made full.” They had no joy; they were devastated. And how did Jesus meet that devastation? They had long expected Christ to set up His throne, fulfill the Mosaic and Davidic covenant and all the New Covenant promises that had come to the prophets, establish His kingdom, destroy His enemies, reign over the earth in righteousness and truth. But instead of that, He announces He’s going to die. This shatters their hopes.

So how does our Lord respond? Our Lord confronts their troubled hearts by giving them promises, promises that extend to all believers. Each one of these promises is a spiritual treasure to comfort and encourage all who follow Christ. I just want to point these promises out to you because they’re yours as well as they were the apostles’ that night.

Go back to chapter 13, and I’m going to give you ten promises that our Lord gives here to His own. Chapter 13, verse 1, “Before the Feast of Passover, Jesus knowing that His hour had come”—that’s His hour of death—“[and] that He would depart out of [the] world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end.” A departure like this could lead to the question, “Do You love me? If You leave me, do You love me?” That would be true in any relationship, wouldn’t it: “If you’re leaving me, do you love me?”

The first thing we know here is that He loves them, and He loves them to the end. It’s an agapaō [ag-ap-ah'-o] verb, which is the strongest kind of relational love; and “to the end” is eis telos [ice tel'-os], it means “to the end of everything,” “to whatever end you want to take it,” “to the end of time,” “to the end of history.” It also can mean “to the maximum capacity of God to love.” He loves them completely. He loves them totally. This is no indication that He lacks love.

Over in verse 34 of chapter 13, it says, “A new commandment I give you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another.” How had He loved them? Well, they were going to find out how He loved them. Look at chapter 15, verses 12 and 13: “This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.”

He loved them. He loved them to the end of time. He loved them to the max of His capacity, and He loved them to death. And they were, at this particular time, not particularly deserving of that love, were they? They had been arguing a lot about which of them would be the greatest in the kingdom. When Jesus wanted them to pray for Him in the garden before His temptation, they had fallen asleep on several occasions and were useless to Him in participating in prayer. Debating about who of them was the most important, brokenhearted over the shattering of their own plans, they were about as ugly as disciples could get. But that had no effect on the fact that Jesus loved them to the max, to the end, to death.

This is the first promise that the Lord gives to all who follow Him: “I love you to death, and then I love you to life, to the end, to the end of everything, to the max of My capacity.” And it can’t be a greater love than to be innocent and give your life for the guilty. So the first promise that the Lord gives these brokenhearted disciples is—and it extends to all who will belong to Him—the promise that He loves them with a sacrificial love that will never end.

The second promise He gives them is in chapter 14 and verse 1. This is the goal of that love: “Do not let your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in Me.” This is a claim to equality with God, obviously. “You believe in God as God, believe in Me also as God.” And then this amazing promise: “In My Father’s house are many dwelling places”—literally, rooms—“if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you. If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also.”

He loves His own all the way into heaven. “Stop”—literally, “stop letting your heart be troubled. I love you, and I’ll love you all the way to heaven. You trust God; trust Me equally.” “In My Father’s house”—What’s that? That’s heaven. Sometimes I think we think of heaven as a palace in a neighborhood. No, it’s just a massive palace. We’re all in the Father’s house.

When the Scripture talks about heaven, it calls it a “country” because of its vastness. It calls it a “city” because of its massive population. It calls it a “kingdom” because of its order and dominion. It calls it a “paradise” because of its beauty. This is the heaven the Lord has built for us.

A glimpse of that heaven—I can’t resist—turn to Revelation 21. I have to be careful because I’m a little short of preaching experience over the last four months, so I might get carried away. Revelation 21:16. In case you think heaven is a state of mind, this will help you.

Verse 10, Revelation 21, a vision to John: “He carried me away in the Spirit to a great and high mountain, showed me the holy city, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God”—this is heaven’s capital city—“having the glory of God [in her]. Her brilliance was like a very costly stone, as a stone of crystal-clear jasper”—like a diamond. “It had a great and high wall, with twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels; and names were written on them, which are the names of the twelve tribes of the sons of Israel. There were three gates on the east, three gates on the north, three gates on the south, three gates on the west. And the wall of the city had twelve foundation stones, and on them were the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.

“The one who spoke with me had a gold measuring rod to measure the city, and its gates and its wall. The city is laid out as a square, and its length is as great as its width; and he measured the city with a rod, fifteen hundred miles; length and width and height.” That’s a cube. Fifteen hundred miles cubed would be 2,250,000 square miles. London, by comparison, is 140 square miles. This is just the capital city of heaven. It’s not a state of mind; it’s a place. And the New Testament says our Savior is there, our name is there, our life is there, our affections are to be there, our treasure is there, our hearts should be there, our citizenship is there, our inheritance is there waiting for us. And the key to heaven, verse 3, heaven is “where I am, there you may be also.”

So what is the Lord saying? He is giving to His disciples the promise of eternal fellowship with Him in the heaven of heavens. That would do something for your disappointment, wouldn’t it? It should. If you’re a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, you are loved with an eternal love, and you’re going to be loved all the way into heaven, where you will be loved forever in the Father’s house.

The third promise that Jesus gives is the promise of spiritual influence, spiritual influence. For that, we look at chapter 14, verse 11. This whole section, 13 to 16, is all in the upper room, and Jesus is making these promises; we’re just hitting the highlights. Verse 11 of chapter 14, “Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me; otherwise believe because of the works themselves. Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do, he will do also; and greater works than these he will do because I go to the Father.”

This has been confusing to some people, who ask, “How could anybody do greater works than our Lord did? When He banished illness from the land of Israel—how could anybody do that?” Well, they couldn’t do miracles that were more powerful. They couldn’t do miracles that were more supernatural. It’s not talking about the character or nature of the miracles; it’s talking about the volume. “Because I go to the Father, greater amounts of spiritual works you will do.”

That might seem strange, but think about it this way. Jesus, at His ascension, met in the upper room with 120 disciples, 120. One chapter later, after the preaching of Peter, one sermon, there were 3,000 people added to the church and baptized. Immediately, this prophecy was fulfilled.

If you look in Acts chapter 4, you begin to see the pattern in this marvelous book, the Acts of the apostles. “They were speaking to the people,” verse 1, “priests and captain of the temple guard and Sadducees came [upon] them”—these are the apostles—“being greatly disturbed because they were teaching the people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection from the dead. They laid hands on them, put them in jail until the next day, for it was already evening. But many of those who had heard the message believed; and the number of the men came to be about five thousand”—in addition to the three thousand. That’s a whole lot more than 120 in the upper room. What happened? He said, “Because I go to My Father, the works, the supernatural works, will be even greater.”

And over in chapter 5, verse 12, “At the hands of the apostles many signs and wonders were taking place among the people.” Now all of them were doing it, multiplying the work of Jesus by the dozen. “They were all in one accord in Solomon’s portico. None of the rest dared to associate with them; however, the people held them in high esteem. And all the more believers in the Lord, multitudes of men and women, were constantly added to their number, to such an extent that they even carried the sick out into the streets, laid them on cots and pallets, so that when Peter came by at least his shadow might fall on any one of them. And the people from the cities in the vicinity of Jerusalem were coming together, bringing people who were sick or afflicted with unclean spirits; they were all being healed.” Greater works in extent.

This even extends to us, Ephesians 3:20, “Now unto Him who is able to do exceeding abundantly above all you can ask or think, according to the power that works in us.” We have amazing influence in the world. I think the best little verse that conveys that, at least in my mind, is in 2 Corinthians chapter 2. You’ll recognize it. “Thanks be to God,” verse 14, “who always leads us in triumph in Christ”—we live triumphant lives in Christ—“and manifest through us the sweet aroma of the knowledge of Him in every place. For we are a fragrance of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing; to the one an aroma of death to death, to the other in aroma of life to life. Who is adequate for these things?” Whose life can matter so much that wherever you go, you are a fragrance of Christ?

“Don’t be discouraged because I’m going. Because I go to My Father, the powerful influence of heaven will extend through the apostles and through believers to follow, even down to this day.” We are the force that the Lord uses to bring about the greatest miracle, regeneration, and it requires the gospel. “How will they believe if they haven’t heard? How will they hear without a preacher?”

The fourth promise our Lord makes—love, heaven, and spiritual influence—the fourth promise is provision, provision. In chapter—there’s really two places. Chapter 14, “You call Me”—I’m sorry, that’s chapter 13. Chapter 14, I’m jumping around here. Chapter 14, verse 13, “Whatever you ask in My name, that will I do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask Me anything in My name, I will do it.” That’s a blank check, right? With one provision: that you ask in His name whatever you ask.

And He repeats it over in chapter 16, toward the end of His teaching that night in the upper room. Verse 23 of chapter 16, “In that day you will not question Me about anything. Truly, truly, I say to you, if you ask the Father for anything in My name, He will give it to you. Until now you have asked for nothing in My name; ask and you will receive, so that your joy may be made full.” This is an incredible promise.

“Anything, anything in My name.” What does “in My name” mean? Well, sometimes we pray our own requests, obviously, and then say, “For Jesus’ sake, amen.” We throw that in, as if that necessarily applies. To pray in His name is to pray consistent with kingdom purposes, to pray on the basis of understanding His divine nature. In other words, something that would be consistent with His purpose, consistent with His nature, and thirdly, contribute to His glory.

In other words, your prayer is, “This is to fulfill the purpose for which Christ ordained ministry. This is consistent with His divine nature and perfections, and it is for His glory.” If those three things are true, you have heaven’s response: You will receive what you ask. Philippians 4:19 says, “And my God will supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.” And that means He doesn’t give a skimpy amount, but a lavish amount. You have everything you need that is consistent with the purpose, the nature, and the will of Christ. So if you’re praying in His will, the floodgates of heaven open to you.

Number five—this is really the most important thing, in one sense—is the promise of the Holy Spirit. Go over to chapter 14 and verse 16: “I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever; that is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him or know Him, but you know Him because He abides with you and will be in you.” Literally, “I will send the Holy Spirit to dwell with in you, the supernatural, divine Comforter.” That’s the word paraklētos [par-ak'-lay-tos] in Greek, “to come alongside to help.”

And notice, He says, “another comforter, another paraklētos.” That’s very important because the word “another” is—there are two words in Greek. One is heteros [het'-er-os], “another of a different kind.” This is allos [al'-los], “another of the same kind.” That’s why the Holy Spirit is called the Spirit of Christ—because He is a member of the Trinity.

So what do you get? “Because I’m going to My Father, I’m going to send the Holy Spirit. He will abide with you forever, and He will be in you.” Acts 1:8 says, “After you’ve received the Holy Spirit, His power will come upon you, and you’ll be My witnesses across the earth.” This is the gift that makes all other promises possible, all other promises possible.

In verse 17, “The Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive.” We have a supernatural, indwelling member of the Trinity. The world knows nothing about that. He is with us. He is in us. And verse 18 even ties it to Christ Himself: “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.” He comes in the form of the Holy Spirit, who is the Spirit of Christ Himself.

In chapter 16, look at verse 8: “When He comes,” the Helper is mentioned in verse 7, the Holy Spirit. “If I go,” He says, “I’ll send Him to you.” He thought, “When I go, I’m going to send Him.” “When He comes, [He] will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment; concerning sin, because they do not believe in Me; and concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father and you no longer see Me; and concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world has been judged.”

This is an amazing promise. “Not only am I going to send the Holy Spirit to dwell in you”—we have the record of that in Acts chapter 2; and every subsequent believer is the temple of the Holy Spirit—but the Holy Spirit comes to work on the very people that we are commissioned to reach. He comes to convict the world concerning the sin of not believing in Christ, concerning a faulty view of righteousness, and concerning judgment. So the power of this sending of the Holy Spirit is on both sides of the divine commission. He lives in us, and He convicts the world. He promises to love us forever, to take us to heaven, to make our lives high impact. He promises to supply everything we ask Him for that’s consistent with His will, and to give us the Holy Spirit and send the Holy Spirit to work on the hearts of nonbelievers that we endeavor to reach.

There’s a sixth promise in this upper room discourse, and it is also in chapters 14 and 16. Chapter 14, verse 17, speaking of the Helper, the Holy Spirit, in verse 16—I just read this—He is called “the Spirit of truth,” “the Spirit of truth.” The sixth promise is the promise of truth.

Down to verse 26, “The Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you.” This is the promise given to the apostles: that when they went to writing the Scripture, they would be guided by the Holy Spirit; and because that was true for them, we have received an inerrant Bible. We have the truth.

In chapter 16 and verse 13, again, “When He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come. He will glorify Me, for He will take of Mine and disclose it to you.” The Holy Spirit is the agent that reveals Scripture, and reveals in revealing Scripture the true God, and Christ as well. The fruit of that is an inerrant Scripture. Men were moved by the Spirit of God to write the Word of God. This is biblical revelation. So these promises are massively significant, but maybe none more so than right at the middle of this: the Holy Spirit and the Word.

But there’s more: the promise of peace, promise of peace, 14:27, just to touch that verse. “Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you; not as the world gives”—not based on circumstances—“not as the world gives do I give to you. Do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be fearful.” And then in the final statement, chapter 16, verse 33: “These things I have spoken to you”—all of them, really, in this upper room discourse—“so that in Me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I’ve overcome the world.” This is not only objective peace with God because we’re no longer at war with Him; we are now His children. But this is subjective peace, the peace that passes understanding, the peace that tranquilizes your heart in the midst of the severest trial.

Number eight, the promise of fruit, chapter 15. The Lord is talking about fruit in verse 5: “I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in Him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.” Just to remind you, biblical fruit is attitude. Fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, self-control, and action or behavior, the fruit of giving, the fruit of righteousness, many kinds of behavioral fruit. So He says, “I promise, in giving you the Word and the Spirit, that you will produce fruit.” Verse 8, “My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be My disciples.”

There’s a little shift in number nine, going back to that same chapter, verse 18, chapter 15. This is a promise: “If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it hated you.” Let’s say this is the promise of refining, refining.

“If you were of the world, the world [will] love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, because of this the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you, ‘A slave is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you; if they kept My word, they will keep yours also. But all these things they [shall] do to you for My name’s sake, because they do not know the One who sent Me.”

This is refining. Count it all joy when you fall into various trials, because they have a perfecting work. You’re not greater than your Master. He was persecuted; you will be persecuted. He was hated, you will be hated. Some of you will even die. Verse 25, Jesus says, “They hated Me without a cause.” This is part of your spiritual development and something to be thankful for, because it yields the fruit of righteousness.

And then a final promise that sums it up, back in chapter 15, verse 10, “If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love; just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love. These things I have spoken to you so that My joy may be in you, and your joy may be made full.” Number ten, the promise of joy, the promise of joy.

That even takes us into chapter 16. This is kind of the last one we’ll look at here. Chapter 16, verse 20, “Truly, truly, I say unto you, you will weep and lament”—you’ll suffer—“and the world will rejoice; you will grieve, but your grief will be turned into joy. Whenever a woman is in labor she has pain, because her hour has come; but when she gives birth to the child, she no longer remembers the anguish because of the joy that a child has been born into the world. Therefore you too have grief now; but I will see you again, and your heart will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you.” Everlasting joy.

When you think about what to be thankful for, think about the promises of Christ—astonishing promises. All of them are the property, the privilege, and the promise of true believers. This is why no matter how challenging life is, we must be thankful.

Summing it up—back to Colossians 2—listen to this: “That their hearts”—verse 2—“may be encouraged, having been knit together in love, and attaining to all the wealth that comes from a full assurance of understanding, resulting in a true knowledge of God’s mystery, that is, Christ Himself, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” These things are ours because Christ is ours. “In Him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” Everything comes to us in Him. Having Christ is having all these promises to encourage us. Let’s bow in prayer.

Father, You know that we could dig deeply into each of these, but sometimes just the sweeping elements of divine grace granted to unworthy sinners is more powerful than any one single grace. For all these gifts, all these promises, we thank You. And they’re not something that we will receive other than heaven; they are something we have received. It’s all ours already. The only thing awaiting us is that final heaven of heavens. But life for us in Christ and with Christ in us is certainly a heaven on earth. We thank You for the love that granted us such great and precious promises. We offer You our thanks in Christ’s name. Amen.