Sermon Discussion Questions:

1. The opening contrasts Marx’s pursuit of power with Jesus’ kind of power. What are the two kinds of power described in this message, and where do you see each of them at work in the world today—or even in your own heart?
2. Jesus says, “I will not leave you as orphans.” In what kinds of life situations are we most tempted to feel abandoned by God? What does Jesus’ promise mean in those moments practically?
3. Consider what the disciples experienced from triumph to crucifixion. If you had been one of the disciples watching Jesus die, how do you think you would have responded to His earlier promises?
4. Jesus connects His resurrection directly to our lives. Which aspect of resurrection life stands out most to you right now—justification, sanctification, or glorification? Why?

Gustav Techow, a Prussian police agent, once managed to get Karl Marx very drunk and to pour out his soul to him. Techow was working to foment revolution back in Berlin, but was sent to London to consult with the ideological father of the revolution, Marx. Marx drew people like Techow in because his ideas were about the overthrowing of those who possessed power: the bourgeoisie, the rich, aristocrats, factory owners, etc. Afterwards, Techow wrote a lengthy portrait of Marx to his fellow insurrectionists back in Berlin, and admitted that Marx was ‘a man of outstanding personality’ with ‘a rare intellectual superiority.’ Yet, he explains: “The dominating trait of his character is an unlimited ambition and love of power.” Marx dominated everyone he knew, and in the interview with Techow, found that Marx openly mocked not only his enemies, but his friends and followers who repeated his own proletariat catechisms as patently stupid.

Techow writes: “I am convinced that a most dangerous personal ambition has eaten away all the good in him…the acquisition of personal power [is] the aim of all his endeavours.”

There are two kinds of power in the world. There is power that comes from asserting your will, and power that comes from conforming your will; one is the power of ambition, the other is the power of integrity; one is the power of making yourself god, the other is in faith in God. Marx held to the view that true power was found when you asserted your will over others. And of the two approaches to power, it is the one most commonly chosen by the men who shape the world. Alexander, Caesar, Khan, Napoleon, Nietzsche—these men have shaped the world because they were not bashful, nor were they limited by morality which checked their ambitions. Mikhail Bakunin, a former colleague of Marx, wrote: ‘Marx does not believe in God but he believes much in himself and makes everyone serve himself.” (Paul Johnson, Intellectuals)

Just outside of the garden tomb in Jerusalem, the location traditionally known to be the tomb in which Jesus was buried, there is a large plaque with the words of the apostle Paul from Romans 1:4 that reads: “Jesus Christ declared with power to be the Son of God by the resurrection.”

There is no power that you and I come face to face with than death. It does not matter how powerful you are—in any way one can measure power: wealth, strength, status, influence, intellect, politics—no matter what, death will overpower you. You cannot outrun it, you cannot outsmart it. Death has a 100% success rate. So, if anyone can beat that, that is a remarkable kind of power. But, wonder of wonders, Jesus does beat that…but not through the ordinary, worldly means of power. He doesn’t crush His enemies…He is crushed. With meekness, He submits to death…and then, destroys death. And this power—this mysterious, baffling, resurrection power—is a power He wants to extend to you today.

“I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. 19 Yet a little while and the world will see me no more, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. 20 In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. - John 14:18-20

These verses are like diamonds placed on black velvet, like stars in the night sky. They shine their beauty all the brighter because of the dark backdrop. Jesus is in the middle of the some of the last words He will speak to His disciples before He is betrayed, arrested, and brutally, shamefully killed. That is what He is alluding to when He mentions that in a short while He will leave them, the world will no longer see Him. Yes, He promises He will not leave them as orphans, but He will leave; and what that leaving will look like will be far worse than any of the disciples can imagine. But like pearls of light thrown in inky darkness, Jesus scatters hope with His promises.

Promise One: I Will Not Leave You as Orphans

• I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. - John 14:18

Jesus will leave, but He promises that he will come back.

In Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar, when the main character must leave his daughter to try to save the world, he kisses her head and promises her, “I’m coming back, I’m coming back.” But he doesn’t know that. He hopes that it is true. But he doesn’t know. And in one of the most tragic scenes of the movie, the character, who has been floating out in space for years, finally receives a transmission from earth with a series of recordings of his daughter who, year after year, sends videos that slowly lose hope that her father will keep his promise. She is left like an orphan.

Jesus is going away, but He isn’t speaking empty words of hope to His disciples to placate them in a painful goodbye. With the same confidence a dad can tell his kids that he will be home that evening, Jesus tells his disciples, don’t worry…I’m coming back.

But Jesus isn’t just going to work. He isn’t travelling to a different town and will be back in a few days. He says he will not leave them like orphans, which means that they are going to be tempted to feel like orphans—why use the term “orphans” here? How is someone made an orphan?

A parent dies. In this block of teaching, Jesus calls his disciples “little children” (John 13:33).

Jesus is going to die.

None of the disciples had any category for Jesus being crucified. It would be traumatizing for the disciples in ways that are hard for us to fully grasp. Imagine you had a close friend who was the most incredible person you had ever met. And then imagine that you had come to believe that he had the answers to the most pressing problems of the day. The way that people sometimes coalesce around a particular politician with the hope that they will bring about the change you have been hoping for, you have come to believe that about your friend. But it is more than that—you feel like this person has been chosen by God to bring that kind of change to society. So convinced are you, that you have left your job, your family, your friends, and you have joined this friend to travel around to spread his teachings and increase his influence. And the very week that his future prospects for being ushered into office reach their zenith—the crowds are chanting his name, begging him to be their leader…instead, he is betrayed, arrested, publicly humiliated. Even more bizarre, he rebukes you when you try to fight off those who seize him. He seems uninterested in trying to defend himself or spare his life. Quietly and meekly, he stands by while he is treated like a villain, and is tragically sentenced to a public execution. From the highest of highs, to the lowest of lows. How would you feel?

And it is going to feel like the disciples—who have banked everything on Jesus being the Messiah—are now hopeless and lost, like little children without a parent in a big scary world.

How would Jesus’ words of promise felt to the disciples as they stared in horror at Jesus upon the cross? The disciples didn’t know that he was leaving them in this way. Life is bleeding out of him. He is gasping to breath. Eventually, he gasps no more. And a guard (just for good measure) rams a spear through his chest. The corpse is lowered from the cross, wrapped in burial cloths, and placed in a tomb. He is dead. How could he come back from this?

But He does. The disciples must endure the sleepless night of Jesus’ arrest in the dark of Thursday. The agony of Good Friday. The blank despair of Holy Saturday. So that they can see the beauty of Easter Sunday. Shocked in stupid wonder, the disciples see their Lord walk towards them. The body that just a day ago was rigor-mortis-cold, is now warm and breathing, smiling and saying their names.

And the disciples remember His promise: I will not leave you…I will come to you. What wonder and confidence would they then have? What power does their friend, Jesus Christ, possess? See, the disciples had too small of a vision of what Jesus had come to do. He did not come to establish himself as the king of Jerusalem, as the king of Israel, or even the king of the earth. He came to be installed as the King of all Creation and to establish his throne over every power and principality in heaven and on earth, over the world we can see and over the spiritual world we cannot. He came to conquer sin, hell, and death itself. That is the power that Jesus exerts.

If you believe that today, what should this do for you? It should give you hope.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, - 1 Pet 1:3

Sometimes, God leads His children into dark valleys that will leave them feeling like orphans lost in a scary world without a mom or dad. I wonder if you maybe feel like that today? Like the thing you had been banking on has fallen through. But He has made you a promise: if you follow Him, you are not alone. You have a “living hope.” Jesus has not left you, and just like He came back to His disciples, He will come again to us, and everything sad will come untrue—but that brings us to the next promise

Promise Two: Because I live, you also will live

• Yet a little while and the world will see me no more, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. - John 14:19

After Jesus resurrects from the dead, He does not go on a publicity tour. He does appear publicly and repeatedly—Paul says he appears to more than 500 people at once (1 Cor 15:6)—but His aim after the resurrection is not to stay on the earth and enter into a series of debates with His enemies. If you remember in the parable of Lazarus and the rich man in Luke, Jesus explains that even if someone were to come back from the dead, it would not help convince the hard-hearted. Instead, Jesus intends to have His Church—the body of Christ—be His representatives to go forth and proclaim His resurrection. So, He appears to His disciples. But then he makes this promise: “Because I live, you also will live.”

What does that mean?

Obviously, Jesus sees a connection between what happens to Him and what happens to us, so that what happens to him, in some sense, affects us. That is not immediately obvious. Jesus’ resurrection could be understood in a way that has nothing to do with us, right? His resurrection could simply be proof that He was who said He was: the son of God. It could be proof that He could not be bested by death and hell, but was stronger. It could be understood as the historical foundation needed to ground the claims of Christianity upon. But what does it have to do with us? Jesus assumes that the life He experiences on the other side of the resurrection flows down to us as well.

Later, Jesus will use the analogy of a vine and branch to describe His relationship with us (John 15). What happens to the vine, affects the branch. It is Spring time, so you are likely starting to see (as I am) little green leaves, sprouts, flowers beginning to bloom. The branches on our tree are all speckled with green because the trunk, the root of the tree is receiving life. If the root is nourished, the branch is nourished. So it is with us and Christ. But resurrection life presumes…death. Jesus is raised because He is first killed. And the effect of His resurrection on our lives will only make sense when we understand His death. Why did Jesus die?

Our sins created a debt that stood against us: death. Jesus’ crucifixion in our place isn’t necessarily saying that all of our sins should lead to us being physically crucified. The reason that God had ordained that particular death was because of what it communicated to everyone who saw it. Moses taught that anyone who was hung on a tree was cursed by God, and understood being nailed to a cross to fall under that categorization. The Romans knew that anyone who was crucified was the lowest of the lows, the most shameful crimes were punished by crucifixion. The cross was a sign of shame, abandonment, pain, as well as death.

Our sins humiliate us. Our sins separate us from God and put us under the curse. Our sins isolate us. Our sins hurt us and others. And our sins bring death…not only physical death, but eternal death, permanent separation from God, forever. The crucifixion was a perfect representation of all of that. Jesus’ physical death is only a part of His work of salvation. The spiritual forsaking, the pain of soul, the literal agony of hell that is poured upon Jesus in a way that we cannot see with our eyes—that is the true cost that Jesus pays.

But if it was our sins that sunk Jesus down into the grave…but then He emerges from it! What does that mean about our sins? They are dealt with. They have been removed from us as far as the east is from the west. Three ways that resurrection affects us:

1. We have been reconciled with God (justified)
   1. Jesus our Lord, 25 who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification. - Rom 4:25
   2. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. - Rom 8:34
2. We have been made new in God (sanctified)
   1. We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. - Rom 6:4
   2. and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might 20 that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead - Eph 1:19-20
3. We will be brought back to God (glorified)
   1. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. - Rom 6:5

Promise Three: You will know

In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. - John 14:20

In that day…(referring to the day of His resurrection).

How will they know?

• They will know that Jesus is who He says He is—because His resurrection will demonstrate with power that He is the Son of God (Rom 1:4)
• But also, they will know that they are in Christ, and He in them

How?

The Holy Spirit will be poured out

I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. - Gal 2:20