You May Believe

You have heard Me say to you, “I am going away and coming back to you.” If you loved Me, you would rejoice because I said, “I am going to the Father,” for My Father is greater than I. And now I have told you before it comes, that when it does come to pass, you may believe (John 14:28-29).

All that Jesus had said and will say to the disciples has been given that they would believe He is the promised, divinely appointed, qualified, and authoritative Messiah of God. The statement harkens back to the betrayal of Jesus by Judas Iscariot (John 13:19), Now I tell you before it comes, that when it does come to pass, you may believe that I am He.

The disciples believed that Jesus was the Messiah, but as their love for Him was immature and incomplete (John 14:28), their faith in Him was also immature and incomplete - it needed confirmation. As fallen people we follow the old adage, “Trust, but verify,” because it is difficult for us to trust anything that is beyond us, and much of what Jesus has been talking about is beyond us. But faith in Jesus and His words are required in a disciple because of the trials and temptations they face in a sinful, godless world. How do we know He is the Christ? Because the things He revealed, the things He spoke, were verified by the events that took place afterward.

The declarations that Jesus made of the events that would soon take place were vital for their faith to be crystallized, for when those events did take place, their faith in Jesus was confirmed, giving them the needed spiritual support necessary to carry on the work in His absence.

Today, we look back on the life of Christ and see that His words came to pass. But in looking back, our vision is 20/20 - Jesus spoke, and it came to pass. It’s all recorded in the Scriptures. That wasn’t the case for the disciples. They had to have faith that what Jesus was telling them was true, and when the events took place as Jesus said, their faith was confirmed. Yet there is a problem here. There are multitudes of people who read the Bible, but still do not believe. Some say Jesus never really spoke these words, but the events took place and some editor in the Christian church rewrote the text making it sound like Jesus predicted what would happen, then it happened. They did the same thing concerning the prophecies of the Old Testament. The prophets of old never predicted or described the coming Messiah, but someone much later, after Jesus Christ had come, died, was resurrected, and ascended, manipulated the Old Testament in such a way that such ‘prophecies’ concerning Christ were written into the texts.

How do we know Jesus is the Christ of God, the true Lord and Savior of the human soul? The Bible tells us so, and we choose to believe what the Bible says about Him. How do we know the biblical record is true? We choose to believe it is true. Is this a blind faith? No. The words of Scripture are confirmed and verified by the witness of the Holy Spirit in the mind and spirit of the believer. When we apply the truth of Scripture in our lives, those truths produce spiritual fruit in our lives; they are confirmed, and our faith is validated. It is the one who does not believe that is the skeptic and the truth of God’s Word has no effect. Amen.

Pastor