Jesus teaches his disciples that there will be a cost to following Him. He says the world will hate you, persecute you and even kill you because it first hated me. This is a sobering reality for many in the world today. What does it mean for us to be ready for persecution and the hatred of the world here in the west? Whatever may come, Jesus teaches that the Holy Spirit is the power to endure and testify in the midst of hardship and persecution.

In John 15, Jesus begins to unpack what it means to live out of our union with Him by giving us the rich metaphor of a vineyard. In this, we see that God’s purposes for us are to produce God’s fruit by God’s power. The key to our walk with Christ and bearing fruit for Him is to abide in Him. In this sermon, we look at what it means to abide in Jesus and to bear fruit for Him.

Jesus concludes John 14 by teaching about the peace that He gives us. The peace of Jesus is not the absence of conflict, but rather a deep sense of wholeness, harmony, welfare, and well-being. We have peace with God through the atoning work of Jesus and we have ongoing peace with God through our reconciled relationship with Him. When we live out of this peace we can follow Jesus’ call to “not let our hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid” (John 14:27).

Jesus teaches the disciples in John 14:18-26 that if they believe in Him then God Himself will live inside of them. It is one of the most profound and life changing truths in the Bible. How can we experience this union with Christ in a greater degree? Jesus’s answer to this is to simply love Him and follow Him. In this teaching we look at what that means.

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