I. THE RELATION OF THE CHURCH TO THE WORLD IS THE SAME AS CHRIST'S — one of moral contrast as to character, principle, motive, inward life, whether it be the Jewish world, or the Greek, or the Roman. And it is the same now. Conceive the character of Christ, and place by the side of it that of a thoroughly worldly man, you will have the most striking contrast. "They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world." And marks there are, plain and palpable, between the Church and the world. There are two kinds of changes possible with respect to these.

1. They may be shifted.(1) The Church may push them out so as to take in more and more of the world, bringing in more and more converted spirits.(2) The world may push it in upon the Church, making inroads upon it, persecuting it. Moral ravages, too, may be made, and those who have been in the Church may backslide, and the number of the faithful may be thus diminished.

2. They may be obliterated —(1) By practical compromise. The peculiarities of Christian character are by degrees diminished, and the Church becomes more and more like the world, so that one shades itself off, and gradually fades away into the other.(2) By theoretical dogmas. The puritan doctrine was most unmistakeable. But there is in these days a doctrine which is just the opposite, that instead of dwelling upon the distinction between the Church and the world, dwells upon what belongs to Christians and men of the world in common. Now, we must protest against this obliteration of landmarks. Christ has drawn them most distinctly, and it is at our peril that we destroy them. We believe as firmly as any in the fatherhood of God over all His creatures; but in the case of worldly men, they have broken the hands of spiritual relationship, and adopted themselves into another family. We believe also in the universality of the atonement; but still there is to be a distinction made between those who accept that gospel and those who reject it.

II. THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH IS THE SAME AS THE MISSION OF CHRIST. "As Thou hast sent Me into the world," &c. "I am the Light of the world," "Ye are the light of the world." Christ is represented —

1. In the Church's testimony of truth. The Church is to hold forth the truth, to make a stand for it, to illustrate and enforce it.

2. In the Church's missionary operations. Christ was the great Missionary, and His work is now to be carried on instrumentally by His Church. "Go ye into all the world." There are different kinds of missions. There is the lip mission; the pen mission; the hand mission; the foot mission; but chief of all, there is the life mission, and that must be connected with all the rest. Some men have done great things for the cause of Christ by their intellectual power, by pecuniary power, by business power, but I believe there is still more to be done by moral and social power. That connected with the rest makes the rest most effective.

III. THE DESTINY OF CHRIST IN THE WORLD, AND THE DESTINY OF CHRIST'S CHURCH IN THE WORLD IS THE SAME. "If ye were of the world, the world would love his own," &c., and so the text. A great change has been wrought in society by the influence of Christianity; so that the world is not what it was when the prediction was first spoken. And persecution does not exist now in the world as it once did. It is one part of the nominal church persecuting another. But the world is still opposed to what is most truly the spirit of Christianity. The world does not like to hear about the mediation of the Lord Jesus or the work of the Holy Spirit. And then, again, the world is not opposed to some aspects of Christian consistency. When a Christian carries out that in the way of generosity the world will praise him, but when he refuses to connive at deceit and falsehood, the spirit of the world will come out and persecute. Nor is the world so much opposed to moral consistency as to spiritual consistency. Those who oppose forms of amusement which are instinct with evil, such men the world hates. The world, too, may admire specimens of Christianity which are remote, but it does not like specimens of Christianity which are near. Bunyan dead is applauded, but Bunyan alive would not be so. Had Havelock come to England and exemplified his principles in connection with some civil callings at home, there are numbers who would have been ready to persecute the very man whom they applauded to the skies when he was far away. In many cases also the world would be found to admire Christians in spite of their Christianity, but not because of their Christianity. They are praised for their kindness, their generosity, their humility; but their fondness for prayer, their religious strictness, and so on, how often all this is regarded as an abatement!

(J. Stoughton, D. D.)

I. THE BEST OF MEN MAY BE EXCLUDED FROM THE COMMUNION OF THOSE WHO MAY ASSUME TO BE THE TRUE AND ONLY TRUE CHURCH, and that under the notion of very bad and criminal persons. What the Jews did to the apostles hath been too frequently practised since by some of the professors of Christianity towards one another. Witness the case of and others, in the reign and prevalency of , and the ill treatment that whole churches have met with from that haughty and uncharitable church which makes nothing of thundering out excommunication against persons and churches more Christian than herself. But it is our comfort, that the apostles were thus used by a church that made the same pretences that they do, and upon grounds every whit as plausible.

II. THEY WHO ARE THUS EXCOMMUNICATED MAY NEVERTHELESS BE TRUE MEMBERS OF THE CHURCH OF CHRIST. Men may be put out of the synagogue, and yet received into heaven; for the judgment of God is not according to the uncharitable censures of men, but according to truth and right.

III. FROM UNCHARITABLE CENSURES MEN NATURALLY PROCEED TO CRUEL ACTIONS. This has been the source of the most barbarous cruelties; witness the severity of the heathens persecution, which justified itself by the uncharitable opinion that the Christians were despisers of the gods, and consequently atheists; but they were pertinacious and obstinate in their opinions; i.e., in the modern style, heretics. And the like uncharitable conceit has been thought a sufficient ground (even in the judgment of the infallible chair) for the justification of several bloody massacres; for after men are once sentenced to eternal damnation, it seems a small thing to torment their bodies.

IV. MEN MAY DO THE VILEST AND MOST WICKED THINGS OUT OF A REAL PERSUASION THAT THEY DO RELIGIOUSLY. The great duties and virtues of religion are easy to be understood; and so are the contrary sins and vices: but then they are only plain to a teachable and honest mind; to those who receive the Word with meekness and love. But if men will give up themselves to be governed by any corrupt interest, to be blinded by prejudice, intoxicated by pride, and transported by passion, no wonder if they mistake the nature, and confound the differences of things, in the plainest and most palpable cases; no wonder if God give up persons of such corrupt minds to strong delusions to believe lies. In these cases men may take the wrong way, and yet believe themselves to be in the right and be verily persuaded that they are serving God, and sacrificing to Him. Of this we have a plain and full instance in the Scribes and Pharisees, and in St. Paul. And if God had not checked him in his course, he would have spent his whole life in persecution, and would (with Pope Paul IV. upon his death-bed) have recommended the Inquisition to the chief priests and rulers of the Jewish Church.

V. SUCH ACTIONS ARE NEVERTHELESS HORRIBLY WICKED. To make an action good and acceptable to God, we must do it with a good mind, and to a good end, and it must be good and lawful in itself.

VI. THE CORRUPTION OF THE BEST THINGS IS THE WORST. Religion is certainly the highest perfection of human nature; and zeal for God highly acceptable: and yet nothing is more barbarous, and spurs men on to more horrid impieties, than a blind zeal for God, and false and mistaken principles in the matter of religion (Acts 26:9-11).

(Abp. Tillotson.)

Matthew 5:23; Matthew 8:4). The word "service" means the service of worship (Romans 9:4; Romans 12:1; Hebrews 9:1-6). A rabbinic comment on Numbers 25:13 is, "Whosoever sheddeth the blood of the wicked is as he who offereth sacrifice." The martyrdom of St. Stephen, or St. Paul's account of himself as a persecutor (Acts 26:9; Galatians 1:13, 14), shows how these words were fulfilled in the first years of the Church's history, and such accounts are not absent from that history's latest page.

(Archdeacon Watkins.)

Abuse of conscience: — What a rattle and noise hath this word conscience made! How many battles has it fought? how many churches has it robbed, ruined, and reformed to ashes? how many laws has it trampled upon, dispensed with, and addressed against? and in a word, how many governments has it overturned? Such is the mischievous force of a plausible word applied to a detestable thing (Acts 26:9).

(R. South, D. D.)

was much more than simply to exclude from the place of public worship. It cut a man off from the privileges of his people, from the society of his former associates. It was a sort of moral outlawry, and the physical disabilities followed the sufferer even after death. To be under this ban was almost more than flesh and blood could bear. All men shunned him on whom such a mark was set. He was literally an outcast; in lasting disgrace and perpetual danger. Those familiar with the history of the dark ages, or who are acquainted with the effects of losing caste among the Hindoos, will be able to realize the terrors of such a system. Sometimes this punishment and degradation was a prelude even to death. At all events, the Jews, who since their subjugation by the Romans had lost the legal prerogative of life and death, yet thought it meritorious even by irregular and clandestine measures to compass the destruction of those who were obnoxious. And the men who, in however underhand a manner, carried out the secret sentence of their displeasure were regarded by the rulers with approbation. So that there grew up a desperate and fanatical sect among them, which went by a name which in our adopted term of "zealot" has a very mitigated meaning.

(G. J. Brown, M. A.)

The three degrees of excommunication among the Jews were —

1. Niddui, putting out of the synagogue (Luke 6:22). And the effect of this excommunication was to exclude men from the communion of the Church and people of God and from His service, which was a great disgrace, because after this sentence none of the Jews were to converse with them, but to look upon them as heathens and publicans.

2. Cherem, which extended farther, to the confiscation of goods into the sacred treasury, and devoting them to God, after which there was no redemption of them (Ezra 10:7-9).

3. Shammatha, when the rebellious and contumacious person was anathematized and devoted, and, as some conceive, according to the law (Leviticus 27:29), was to be put to death; though other very knowing men in the Jewish learning think it amounted to no more than a final sentence, whereby they were left to the judgment of God, by some remarkable judgment of His to be cut off from the congregation of Israel. Of the first and last of these degrees of excommunication our Saviour seems here to speak.

(Archbishop Tillotson.)

One of the most horrid circumstances attend. ing the dreadful massacre of the Protestants under Charles IX. of Prance was that, when the news of this event reached Rome, Pope Gregory XIII. instituted the most solemn rejoicing, giving thanks to Almighty God for this glorious victory over the heretics!!

In the Huguenot persecution in Belgium and France in 1562, the inhabitants of the town of Orange fell into the hands of the Catholics. They were hacked to pieces, burnt at slow fires, or left, infamously mutilated, to bleed to death. Noble ladies, first sacrificed to the lust of the soldiers, were exposed in the streets to die — either naked, or pasted over in devilish mockery with the torn leaves of their Geneva Bibles. Old men and children, women and sick, all perished under cruelties unexampled even in the infernal annals of religious fanaticism.

(J. A. Froude.)

In one of the Jews' books it is stated that when Abraham sat at his tent door, according to his custom, waiting to entertain strangers, he espied an old man stooping and leaning on his staff, weary with age and travel, coming towards him, who was a hundred years of age. He received him kindly, washed his feet, provided supper, and caused him to sit down. But observing that the old man eat and prayed not, nor begged for a blessing on his meat, he asked him why he did not worship the God of heaven. The old man told him that he worshipped the fire only, and acknowledged no other God. At which answer Abraham grew so zealously angry, that he thrust the old man out of his tent, and exposed him to all the evils of the night and an unguarded condition. When the old man was gone, God called to Abraham and asked him where the stranger was. He replied, "I thrust him away because he did not worship Thee." God answered him, "I have suffered him these hundred years, although he dishonoured Me; and couldest thou not endure him one night, when he gave thee no trouble?" Upon this, salts the story, Abraham fetched him back again, and gave him hospitable entertainment and wise instruction. "Go thou, and do likewise," and thy charity will be rewarded by the God of Abraham.

(Jeremy Taylor.)

Matthew suffered martyrdom by the sword in Ethiopia. Mark died at Alexandria, after being dragged through the city. Luke was hanged on an olive tree in Greece. Peter was crucified at Rome with his head downward. James was beheaded at Jerusalem. James the less was thrown from a pinnacle of the Temple and beaten to death below. Philip was hanged against a pillar in Phrygia. Bartholomew was flayed alive. Andrew was bound to a cross, whence he preached to his persecutors till he died. Thomas was run through the body at Coromandel, in India. Jude was shot to death with arrows. Matthias was first stoned, and then beheaded. Barnabas was stoned to death by Jews at Salonica. Paul, "in deaths oft," was beheaded at Rome by Nero.

(J. Angus, D. D.)

I. TRACED TO ITS CAUSE — ignorance. It is strange how differently Christ and man may view the same action. The Jews imagined they above all men were acquainted with the Father, and knew better than all the world beside what kind of service to present upon His altar. This was not the judgement of Christ.

II. CONDEMNED IN ITS CHARACTER. Though Christ ascribed their behaviour to ignorance, He does not say that for this they were not responsible, if they did not know the Father or Him they might have known (John 15:22).

III. COMMISERATED IN ITS ACTORS. One cannot help thinking Christ designed His words to awaken pity in the breasts of His persecuted followers, like that afterwards found in His own, when, hanging on the cross, He prayed for His murderers (Luke 23:34).

(T. Whitelaw,D. D.)

He says, not that He is going the way of all the earth, because He was not going as all flesh must go, from the necessity of man's nature, but of His own will. All things which He suffered on earth were a going to His Father, a fulfilment of His mission, and the way by which He was to return to Him that sent Him. By His cross and passion, by His sufferings and death, was His kingdom to be set up and His throne established. And by reminding His disciples of this truth He seeks to assuage their grief, and to prevent their being offended in Him, since, however greatly He should be humiliated, and however many His sufferings might be, they were all but a going to His Father, all but the means by which His glory was to be made known unto men. This thought was the consolation of the Man Christ Jesus, and with the same thought He consoles us. The oil from the head of our Great High Priest flowed down to all His members, even the oil of gladness to comfort them in all their troubles. The whole of this present life of man is one continual going either to God or from Him. All thoughts and deeds of our daily life are either separating us from our heavenly Father or drawing us towards Him in whose presence we are at all times. It is our vocation to pass through life into the glory of our Father; and our duty to remember that whilst all is shifting around us, the Christian's career is in itself a going the way to Him that sent him.

(W. Denton, M. A.)

Curiosity is often reprehensible. It is the fault of many to wish to pry into matters which they had much better never know. But there is one direction in which inquiry is never out of place. We can never be too anxious to know about Christ, the reasons of His movements, and the explanations of His doings (1 Peter 1:10-12). Here anxious interest and casting about for light are not only legitimate, but necessary to our proper instruction, comfort, and salvation (James 1:5). But just here it is that the human heart is most sluggish. People spend their lives searching into questions of political and domestic economy, finance, commerce, agriculture, education. They toil and experiment touching the character, relations, and classifications of rocks, metals, soils, plants, insects, reptiles, animals, birds, and flowers. They explore and labour, at every expense and inconvenience, to make and test theories about the world. They rummage the darkest histories of the past, and exhaust their powers speculating upon the phenomena of human life, and perplex themselves about a thousand things in reference to which the best wisdom is as useless as it is scanty. But when it comes to the great and mighty movements of the Lord of all, the incarnation of Jehovah for the redemption of a world labouring under the curse of sin, and those moral and spiritual administrations, without which all the universe must be as nothing to us, they have no inquiries of living interest to propound. And to many an energetic sage and earnest searcher in departments not a thousandth part the account of this, the wronged and burdened Saviour is compelled to say, "I go My way to Him that sent Me; and none of you asketh Me, Whither goest Thou?" And especially in times of affliction, when the good Lord seems to withdraw Himself, and leave us to ourselves and our weaknesses, does the Saviour find occasion to complain of the deadness of men, paralyzed with their griefs, when they ought to be inquiring of Him about the reasons and objects of them. He has His explanations for all our days of darkness, and an antidote for every pain or privation we suffer, if only we had the faith and interest to ask after it. But the human heart is such an inveterate doubter, and so ready to give way before what is afflictive and dark, that we often miss the very consolations which are at hand, just because we are too dull and despondent to make the requisite inquiry.

(J. A. Seiss, M. A.)

Jesus, DisciplesJerusalemCaused, Clear, Doubt, Falling, Kept, Offended, Order, Path, Spoken, Stumble, Stumbled, Stumbling, Stumbling-blocks, Wouldn't1. Jesus comforts his disciples by the promise of the Holy Spirit, and his ascension;
23. assures their prayers made in his name to be acceptable.
33. Peace in Jesus, and in the world affliction.

John 16:1-4

     8670   remembering
     8787   opposition, to God

Presence in Absence
Eversley, third Sunday after Easter. 1862. St John xvi. 16. "A little while, and ye shall not see me: and again, a little while, and ye shall see me, because I go to the Father." Divines differ, and, perhaps, have always differed, about the meaning of these words. Some think that our Lord speaks in them of His death and resurrection. Others that He speaks of His ascension and coming again in glory. I cannot decide which is right. I dare not decide. It is a very solemn thing--too solemn …
Charles Kingsley—All Saints' Day and Other Sermons

November 6 Evening
Lead me in thy truth, and teach me--PSA. 25:5. When . . . the Spirit of truth is come, he will guide you into all truth.--Ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things. To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.--All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness; That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto …
Anonymous—Daily Light on the Daily Path

November 29 Evening
Do ye now believe?--JOHN 16:31. What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? can faith save him? Faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone. By faith Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac: and he that had received the promises offered up his only begotten son. Accounting that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead.--Was not Abraham our father justified by works, when he had offered Isaac his son upon the altar? Ye see then how that …
Anonymous—Daily Light on the Daily Path

May 14 Morning
The fellowship of His sufferings.--PHI. 3:10. It is enough for the disciple that he be as his master, and the servant as his lord. He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.--In the world ye shall have tribulation.--Because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you. I looked for some to take pity, but there was none.--At my …
Anonymous—Daily Light on the Daily Path

December 21 Morning
The days of thy mourning shall be ended.--ISA. 60:20. In the world ye shall have tribulation.--The whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.--We that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened: not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of …
Anonymous—Daily Light on the Daily Path

June 15 Evening
The Spirit . . . maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God.--ROM. 8:27. Verily, verily I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will give it you. Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name: ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full.--Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit. This is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us; and if we know that he hear us, whatsoever …
Anonymous—Daily Light on the Daily Path

August 15. "He Will Guide You into all Truth" (John xvi. 13).
"He will guide you into all truth" (John xvi. 13). The Holy Ghost does not come to give us extraordinary manifestations, but to give its life and light, and the nearer we come to Him, the more simple will His illumination and leading be. He comes to "guide us into all truth." He comes to shed light upon our own hearts, and to show us ourselves. He comes to reveal Christ, to give, and then to illumine, the Holy Scriptures, and to make Divine realities vivid and clear to our spiritual apprehension. …
Rev. A. B. Simpson—Days of Heaven Upon Earth

October 29. "Whatsoever Ye Shall Ask the Father in My Name, He Will Give it You" (John xvi. 23).
"Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, He will give it you" (John xvi. 23). Two men go to the bank cashier, both holding in their hands a piece of paper. One is dressed in expensive style, and presents a gloved and jeweled hand; the other is a rough, unwashed workman. The first is rejected with a polite sentence, and the second receives a thousand dollars over the counter. What is the difference? The one presented a worthless name; the other handed in a note endorsed by the president of …
Rev. A. B. Simpson—Days of Heaven Upon Earth

March 5. "I have Overcome the World" (John xvi. 33).
"I have overcome the world" (John xvi. 33). Christ has overcome for us every one of our four terrible foes--Sin, Sickness, Sorrow, Satan. He has borne our Sin, and we may lay all, even down to our sinfulness itself, on Him. "I have overcome for thee." He has borne our sickness, and we may detach ourselves from our old infirmities and rise into His glorious life and strength. He has borne our sorrows, and we must not even carry a care, but rejoice evermore, and even glory in tribulations also. And …
Rev. A. B. Simpson—Days of Heaven Upon Earth

Self-Help
ST. JOHN xvi. 7. It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you. This is a deep and strange saying. How can it be expedient, useful, or profitable, for any human being that Christ should go away from them? To be in Christ's presence; to see his face; to hear his voice;--would not this be the most expedient and profitable, yea, the most blessed and blissful of things which could befall us? Is it not …
Charles Kingsley—Discipline and Other Sermons

From' and 'to'
'I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world: again, I leave the world, and go to the Father.'--JOHN xvi. 28. These majestic and strange words are the proper close of our Lord's discourse, what follows being rather a reply to the disciples' exclamation. There is nothing absolutely new in them, but what is new is the completeness and the brevity with which they cover the whole ground of His being, work, and glory. They fall into two halves, each consisting of two clauses; the former half …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI

Peace and victory
'These things I have spoken unto you, that in Me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation; but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.'--JOHN xvi. 33. So end these wonderful discourses, and so ends our Lord's teaching before His passion. He gathers up in one mighty word the total intention of these sweet and deep sayings which we have so long been pondering together. He sketches in broad outline the continual characteristics of the disciples' life, and closes all with the …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI

Why Christ Speaks
'These things have I spoken unto you, that ye should not be offended. They shall put you out of the synagogues: yea, the time cometh, that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service. And these things will they do unto you, because they have not known the Father, nor Me. But these things have I told you, that, when the time shall come, ye may remember that I told you of them. And these things I said not unto you at the beginning, because I was with you. But now I go My way to Him that …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI

The Guide into all Truth
'I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit when He, the Spirit of truth, is come, He will guide you into all truth: for He shall not speak of Himself; but whatsoever He shall hear, that shall He speak: and He will show you things to come. He shall glorify Me: for He shall receive of Mine, and shall show it unto you. All things that the Father hath are Mine: therefore said I, that He shall take of Mine, and shall show it unto you.'--JOHN xvi. 12-15. This is our Lord's …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI

Christ's 'little Whiles'
'A little while, and ye shall not see Me: and again, a little while, and ye shall see Me, because I go to the Father. Then said some of His disciples among themselves, What is this that He saith unto us, A little while, and ye shall not see Me: and again, a little while, and ye shall see Me: and, Because I go to the Father? They said therefore, What is this that He saith, A little while? we cannot tell what He saith. Now Jesus knew that they were desirous to ask Him, and said unto them, Do ye inquire …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI

'In that Day'
'And in that day ye shall ask Me nothing. Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in My name, He will give it you. Hitherto have ye asked nothing in My name: ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full.'--JOHN xvi. 23, 24. Our Lord here sums up the prerogatives and privileges of His servants in the day that was about to dawn and to last till He came again. There is nothing absolutely new in the words; substantially the promises contained in them have appeared in …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI

The Joys of 'that Day'
'These things have I spoken unto you in proverbs: but the time cometh, when I shall no more speak unto you in proverbs, but I shall show you plainly of the Father. At that day ye shall ask in My Name: and I say not unto you, that I will pray the Father for you: For the Father Himself loveth you, because ye have loved Me, and have believed that I came out from God.'--JOHN xvi. 25-27. The stream which we have been tracking for so long in these discourses has now nearly reached its close. Our Lord, …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI

Glad Confession and Sad Warning
'His disciples said unto Jesus, Lo! now speakest Thou plainly, and speakest no proverb. Now are we sure that Thou knowest all things, and needest not that any man should ask Thee: by this we believe that Thou earnest forth from God. Jesus answered them, Do ye now believe? Behold, the hour cometh, yea, is now come, that ye shall be scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave Me alone: and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with Me.' --JOHN xvi. 29-32. The first words of these wonderful …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI

The Departing Christ and the Coming Spirit
Nevertheless I tell you the truth; It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send Him unto you. And when He is come, He will convince the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment.'--JOHN xvi. 7, 8. We read these words in the light of all that has gone after, and to us they are familiar and almost thread-bare. But if we would appreciate their sublimity, we must think away nineteen centuries, and all Christendom, …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI

The Convicting Facts
'Of sin, because they believe not on Me; Of righteousness, because I go to My Father, and ye see Me no more; Of judgment, because the prince of this world is judged.'--JOHN xvi. 9-11. Our Lord has just been telling His disciples how He will equip them, as His champions, for their conflict with the world. A divine Spirit is coming to them who will work in them and through them; and by their simple and unlettered testimony will 'convict,' or convince, the mass of ungodly men of error and crime in regard …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI

Nevertheless I Tell You the Truth; it is Expedient for You that I Go Away; for if I Go not Away
Nevertheless I tell you the truth; it is expedient for you that I go away; for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you. And when he is come, he will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment; of sin, because they believe not on me; of righteousness, because I go to my Father, and ye see me no more; of judgment, because the prince of this world is judged. I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them …
Charles G. Finney—Lectures to Professing Christians

June the Second Our Spiritual Guide
"When He, the Spirit of truth, is come, He will guide you into all truth." --JOHN xvi. 7-14. How great is the difference between a guide-post and a guide! And what a difference between a guide-book and a companion! Mere instructions may be very uninspiring, and bare commandments may be very cold. Our Guide is an inseparable Friend. And how will He guide us? He will give us insight. "He will guide you into all truth." He will refine our spirits so that we may be able to distinguish "things that …
John Henry Jowett—My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year

Loved in the Beloved.
(Third Sunday in Advent, 1831.) TEXT: JOHN xvi. 27. "For the Father Himself loveth you, be cause ye have loved Me, and have believed that I came forth from the Father." THAT was a great word of the Saviour about Himself on which we lately spoke together, in which He represented Himself as from of old the one object of desire and longing to all the best part of mankind, to those who were nearest to God and had received most teaching from Him: but this is a still greater saying, in which He sets Himself …
Friedrich Schleiermacher—Selected Sermons of Schleiermacher

The Spirit not Striving Always.
"And the Lord said, My Spirit shall not always strive with man."-Gen. vi. 3. IN speaking from this text I shall pursue the following outline of thought, and attempt to show: I. What is implied in the assertion, My Spirit shall not always strive with man; II. What is not intended by the Spirit's striving; III. What is intended by it; IV. How it maybe known when the Spirit strives with an individual; V. What is intended by His not striving always; VI. Why He will not always strive; and, VII. Some consequences …
Charles G. Finney—Sermons on Gospel Themes

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