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John 14:21 THE MANIFESTATION PROMISED TO THE LORDS PEOPLE

Introduction:
	
	In verse 15 Jesus said, "If ye love me keep my
commandments."   In verses 16-18 Jesus promised to pray to
the Father and that He would send another Comforter to take
His place with the disciples after He returns back to
heaven.  In verses 19-20 Jesus promised that before He
returns back to heaven He would show Himself to His
disciples after He had risen from the grave.  In this text
Jesus promised to manifest Himself to the person who loves
Him and who keeps His commandments.

I.  A statement which preceded the promise

	Before Jesus is asked the question, He first made a
statement.  V. 21, "He that hath my commandments, and
keepeth them, he it is that loveth me..."  The Amplified
version of the Bible translates it, "...(really) loves
Me..."  You will remember that back in verse 15 He said, "If
ye love me keep my commandments."  Now He says that if
anyone really loves Him, he will keep His commandments.  A
genuine love for Jesus will not allow an individual to
ignore the will of God for his life.  If he really loves
Jesus he will, at least, seek to please Jesus in the way he
lives.  He will seek to obey the commandments of Jesus.
	This does not mean that he will live a sinless life.
Far from it.  But he will make a sincere effort to live his
life to please Jesus.  He cannot just shut the will of the
Lord out of His mind.  It bothers him when he knows that he
has displeased the Lord and he makes a conscious effort to
do better.
	This is a change in his heart that has come about
because of the new birth.  It is because he has trusted
Jesus as his Savior and his inward spirit has been born
again.  The unsaved person does not have this kind of love
for Jesus because he has not been born again.  He loves
himself, he loves the world and  he loves the pleasures of
the world.  But he does not love Jesus.  It takes the new
birth for one to have a genuine love for Jesus and a
willingness to make sacrifices in his life just in order to
please Jesus.

II.  A promise of the love of God the Father

	(V. 22), "...and he that loveth me shall be loved of my
Father..."  God the Father loves His Son, Jesus Christ.
Therefore, God the Father is very well pleased when an
individual loves His Son Jesus Christ and seeks to obey
Jesus Christ.
	I think that you who are parents can identify with this.
You find it easy to like people who like your child.  But if
they dislike your child you find it hard to like them.  When
God the Father sees that someone really loves Jesus and
wants to please Jesus in all he does then God loves that
person with a special love.  God loves everybody, but He
loves the person who loves Jesus with a special love.

III.  The promise of Jesus manifesting Himself to them

	(V. 22), "...and I will love him, and will manifest
myself to him."  Not only does God the Father have a special
love for the person who loves Jesus, but Jesus, Himself, has
a special love for the person who loves Him and seeks to
obey His commandments just because he loves Him.  Jesus said
that He loves that individual and that He will manifest
Himself to that individual.  That is what this text focuses
upon.  It is about the promise of Jesus to manifest Himself
to the individual who loves Him and seeks to obey Him.

IV.  This promise not fulfilled in the post resurrection
	appearances of Jesus

	Jesus had already told His disciples that He would
manifest Himself to them after His resurrection.  That is,
He would appear  visibly to them in the flesh after His
resurrection.  He would appear to them before He would make
His return to heaven.  He would manifest Himself to them
visibly so that they would see Him in His resurrected body.
	Yet apparently Jesus meant more in this text than that
He would appear to them after His resurrection.  He meant
more than that He would manifest Himself visibly to His
disciples before returning back to heaven.  If this
manifestation was all He meant then the great majority of
His disciples would have no manifestation at all.  The
majority of the Lord's disciples were not even born at that
time and they had no chance to see Jesus in the flesh at
all.  They most certainly have not seen Jesus in His
resurrected body.  Yet in our text Jesus promised to
manifest Himself to all who love Him and obey His
commandments.
	Jesus had also already told His disciples that He would
pray and ask the Father to send another Comforter like unto
Himself to be with them.  That is, He had promised that the
Holy Spirit would come upon the church after His departure.
Through the presence of the Comforter, the Holy Spirit,
Jesus Himself would be with them.  He would be with them to
lead them and guide them and to oversee their work. In other
words, after He is gone and would no longer be seen by them
physically, but He would manifest Himself to them
spiritually through the presence of the Holy Spirit upon His
church.
	In this manifestation, Jesus would not be with them
physically nor would He be visible to physically.  They
would not see His body.  They would not even see a vision
which would display an image of His body.  He did not
promise that they would see an image of Him in the clouds
nor an image of Him on the door of a building.  He did not
even promise them that they would see an image of Him on a
burial cloth.  But He did promise them that the living
powerful Holy Spirit would be with them.
	
V.  The coming of the Holy Spirit on the church at Pentecost
	not the fulfillment of this promise

	Jesus also promised that through the presence of the
Holy Spirit with His church, in some mysterious way, the
very living presence of the Almighty Son of God would be
with them.
	This promise was to be fulfilled on the day of Pentecost
following the resurrection and ascension of Jesus.  As we
look back on it now, it has already been fulfilled.  The
second chapter of the Book of Acts gives a record of this
event.  There was a visible manifestation of the Holy Spirit
in the cloven tongues of fire that lit upon each of the
disciples in that room.  There was an audible manifestation
of the Holy Spirit in the sound as of a rushing mighty wind
that filled the room where they were.  But the Holy Spirit
Himself remained invisible to them and, likewise, the body
of Jesus remained unseen to them.  The body of Jesus was not
present with them.  The body of Jesus was on the throne of
God in heaven.
	It was the unseen Holy Spirit of God who was present
with them in power enabling them to do the work which Jesus
had assigned.  He gave the church special miraculous gifts
which would not abide with them forever, but which served a
very useful purpose in that time before the Bible was
completed.  He gave them three special gifts which would
abide or remain with them after the Bible would be
completed.  He would be with the church to be to them all
that Jesus had been when was present with them physically.
He would lead them, guide them, strengthen them and enable
them to do the work that Jesus had assigned the church to
do.
	In some mysterious way, Jesus Himself would continue to
be with His church leading them, guiding them comforting
them and empowering them, enabling them to live holy lives
in a sinful world.  This was a special manifestation of
Jesus to His Church.
	Even so, the presence of the Holy Spirit of God has
remained with each New Testament church down through all the
years.  The same Holy Spirit of God that was upon the church
which Jesus left at Jerusalem is upon the Pleasant Hill
Missionary Baptist Church in this community today.  He does
not give out miraculous gifts today, but He could and He
would if that were God's plan for this age, but it is not.