Last Words | Week 4 · Rewind

Pastor Bill Bush · Mar 31, 2019 · 67 min watch · 3 min read

Last Words | Week 4

Big Idea

When you feel overwhelmed, remember that Jesus has already overcome — the battle is won, even when the fighting isn't done.

Drawing from John 16:25–33, Pastor Bill shows that Jesus' final words to His disciples before the crucifixion were not empty encouragement but a genuine offer of peace and joy grounded in three irreducible human longings: love, faith, and hope. Because Jesus has already overcome the world — past tense, permanently — believers are not fighting for victory but from it. The cross is the flag on the hill, the symbol that declares the war is won, and communion is the recurring invitation to lift our eyes to that hill and take heart.

Key points

1
1Jesus commands us to 'take heart' — a word only He can say, because He alone has the power to back it up.
2
2Every human being is wired for three things — love, faith, and hope — and only God can fully satisfy these longings.
3
3Because of Jesus, believers have direct access to God the Father — not as a distant formal figure, but as Abba, daddy.
4
4God the Father loves believers with phileo — family love — meaning He not only loves you, He actually likes you.
5
5We fail to feel God's love not because He stopped loving us, but because we run from Him — and the way back is returning to trust and obedience.
6
6Jesus' statement 'I have overcome' is in the past tense — the victory is already accomplished, and believers fight from that victory, not toward it.
7
7Communion is a tangible moment to lift our eyes from the fight in front of us to the finished victory of Christ on the cross.

Application

Pastor Bill's call is direct and personal: whatever is crushing you right now, you are not fighting alone and you are not fighting for a victory that is in doubt. Jesus has already overcome — past tense, permanently — and that changes everything. If you have been running from God, doubting His love, or white-knuckling life on your own terms, the invitation is simply to come home. Look up past the fight to the cross on Calvary, the flag already raised on the hill, and let that be enough to take heart. For those who have never placed their faith in Jesus, the door into the family — into the love, faith, and hope every human soul craves — is open right now. And for those already in the family, communion is the regular, tangible practice of lifting your eyes from the muck and remembering: it is finished.

Take it into your week

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Scripture in this message

From the transcript
“we're gonna continue on. And today, we're gonna be in chapter 16 of John. And what's interesting is is to to really wrap our arms around what he's talking about”
From the transcript
“So so I'm gonna start with the end in mind here. So verse 33 says this. Jesus is trying to bring them comfort. He says, I have told you all of this so that you may have peace in me”
From the transcript
“It's talked about clearly in in first Corinthians 13, Paul writes all about it. And the three things are love, faith, and hope”
From the transcript
“So with that context, I'll show you how it comes out in this. Let's read. Starting verse 25. I've spoken of these matters and figures of speech, but soon I'll stop speaking figuratively”
From the transcript
“four verse 27, the father himself loves you dearly. He just said the father himself you know, I've loved you and you're worried about me leaving”
From the transcript
“In John three sixteen, the most famous verse in the Bible always held up at football games, for God so loved the world, the word there is agape”
From the transcript
“Well, chapter 15, what did Jesus say is loving him? Remaining in him. And he says, does it mean to remain in me? Obey me”
From the transcript
“Yes. Verse 28. I came from the father into the world, and now I will leave the world and return to the father”
From the transcript
“So then look what happens next. So he says it's the love through the faith. And then in verse 29, they say, then his disciples said, at last, you're speaking plainly not figuratively”
From the transcript
“s it worded? It says that he who began a good work in me will see it to the end. He's saying that if you know me, I will see it out. When you are faithless, I am faithful”

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7-day devotional

A personal reading plan from this message — scripture, reflection, and prayer for each day.

Sign in to track your progress through this devotional.

There is something striking about the moment Pastor Bill opened in John 16. Jesus is hours away from the cross, and instead of rallying His disciples with strategy or courage, He speaks plainly — no more figures of speech. He tells them the Father Himself loves them. He is not softening the difficulty ahead. He is grounding them in something that cannot be shaken by what is coming. That is worth sitting with. Jesus does not promise His followers a smooth road. He promises something better: clear-eyed access to a Father who actually knows them and loves them anyway. Before the arrest, before the trial, before the silence of Holy Saturday — He speaks directly. There is an intimacy in that. The disciples had been following Jesus for three years, and here He is widening their view: the relationship you have with Me opens a direct line to the Father. Not through ceremony. Not through a priest or a performance. Directly. If life has felt distant from God lately — if prayer has felt like sending a letter to an empty house — this passage is an invitation to reconsider. The door Jesus opened on that Thursday night before the crucifixion is still open. You are not talking to a ceiling. You are talking to a Father who is already leaning in.

For reflection

When you pray, do you approach God as a distant authority or as a Father who is genuinely glad you came? What shapes that sense?

Pray

Pray for a renewed sense of direct, personal access to God as Father — not just as a theological idea, but as a felt reality today.

Made by Rewind AI from the sermon transcript. Always trust the sermon itself over anything here. How Rewind uses AI

Small-group discussion guide

For leading a group conversation about this message.

Open

Jesus' last words to His disciples before the crucifixion weren't a pep talk — they were a promise backed by power. This message looks at what it actually means to 'take heart' when life is pressing in hard.

Discussion questions

1
In John 16:33, Jesus says, 'I have overcome the world' — past tense, already done. What difference does it make that He frames the victory that way, rather than saying 'I will overcome' or 'we can overcome together'?
2
Pastor Bill pointed to 1 Corinthians 13 and said every human being is wired for love, faith, and hope — and that only God can fully satisfy those longings. What does that suggest about why people search so hard for those things in other places?
3
In John 16:27, Jesus describes the Father loving His followers with phileo — a family love, the kind that not only loves you but actually likes you. How might that specific word change the way people picture their relationship with God?
4
Pastor Bill observed that we often fail to feel God's love not because He stopped loving us, but because we run from Him — and he pointed to John 15:10 as a picture of what returning looks like. What does that 'way back' look like in practice, and what makes it hard to take?
5
Pastor Bill described communion as a regular, tangible moment to lift our eyes from the fight in front of us to the finished victory of Christ on the cross. What does it look like for a community — not just an individual — to practice that kind of perspective shift together?
6
Jesus says in John 16:33 that in this world we will have trouble, and then immediately says to take heart. How might the way we support one another through hard seasons look different if we really believed we were fighting from a victory already won, rather than toward one still in doubt?

Pray together

Thankfulness that the victory is already finished — and courage to live and love from that place

Made by Rewind AI from the sermon transcript. Always trust the sermon itself over anything here. How Rewind uses AI

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Last Words

Week 4 · 3 messages

Where these passages are preached

John 16 1 Corinthians 13 John 3 John 15

Explore related topics

Communion God's Love Jesus' Victory Peace in Christ Taking Heart

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