'Judas saith unto Him, not Iscariot, Lord, how is it that Thou wilt
manifest Thyself unto us, and not unto the world? Jesus answered and
said unto him, If a man love Me he will keep My words: and My Father
will love him, and We will come unto him, and make Our abode with him.
He that loveth Me not, keepeth not My sayings: and the word which ye
hear is not Mine, but the Father's which sent Me.'—JOHN xiv. 22-24.
This Judas held but a low place amongst the Apostles. In all the lists
he is one of the last of the groups of fours, into which they are
divided, and which were evidently arranged according to their spiritual
nearness to the Master. His question is exactly that which a listener,
with some dim, confused glimmer of Christ's meaning, might be expected
to ask. He grasps at His last words about manifesting Himself to
certain persons; he rightly feels that he and his brethren possess the
qualification of love. He rightly understands that our Lord
contemplates no public showing of Himself, and that disappoints him. It
was only a day or two ago that Jesus seemed to them to have begun to do
what they had always wanted Him to do, manifest Himself to the world.
And now, as he thinks, something unknown to them must have happened in
order to make Him change His course, and go back to the old plan of a
secret communication. And so he says, 'Lord! what has come to pass to
induce you to abandon and falter upon the course on which we entered,
when you rode into Jerusalem with the shouting crowd?'
His question is no better in intelligence, though it is a great deal
better in spirit, than the taunt of Christ's brethren, 'If Thou do
these things, show Thyself to the world.' Judas, too, thought of the
simple flashing of His Messianic glory, in some visible, vulgar form,
before else blind eyes.
How sad and chilling such a question must have been to Jesus! Slow
scholars we all are; and with what wonderful patience, without a word
of pain, or of rebuke, He reiterates His lesson, here a little and
there a little, and once more unfolds the conditions of His
self-revelation, and the fullness of the blessings that He brings. He
moulds His words so as to meet both the clauses of Judas's foolish
question—'To us, not to the world'; and quietly tells them the positive
conditions and the negative disqualifications for His self-revelation.
So my text deals with two things, the crown of loving obedience in the
possession of a fuller Christ, and the impassable barrier to His
manifestation which unloving disobedience makes. Or to put it into
briefer words, we have in one of the verses—first, what brings Christ
and what Christ brings; and, in the other, second, what keeps away
Christ and all His gifts. Now let us look at these two things.