One of the reasons using the original languages is so helpful in sermon preparation is that it forces the preacher to slow down and read the text carefully. It requires patient plodding, which is far from glamorous but it is rewarding.
I found this to be true yet again this week as I was studying to preach John 14:27-31. As I was working my way through the Greek text, I suddenly realized something that I hadn't realized while reading the English. It's not that what I found wasn't also evident in the English translation (though that is often the case); it was the fact that I had read through the English too quickly and with too much familiarity. Patiently laboring with the Greek text forced my mind to be more alert and more watchful. As a result, I picked up on a significant statement Jesus made at the end of the passage - the meaning of which I may have missed had I not taken the time to do some plodding through the Greek text.
Several different times in the previous passage, Jesus called his disciples to demonstrate their love for him by obedience to his commands: "If you love me, you will keep my commandments" (John 14:15), "Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me..." (John 14:21), "If anyone loves me, he will keep my word..." (John 14:23), and "Whoever does not love me does not keep my words" (John 14:24). The connection between love and obedience is crystal clear.
But when you come to the end of John 14, you hear Jesus making this same connection between love and obedience, but in a different context. He makes the connection in the context of his relationship to the Father. He says that he will endure the cross out of loving obedience to the Father: "but I do as the Father has commanded me, so that the world may know that I love the Father" (John 14:31). In other words, Jesus is not asking us to do something that he himself will not do. What he has just called his disciples to do in verses 15, 21, 23, and 24, he himself offers an example of in verse 31. He models loving obedience for us in going to the cross.
Admittedly, that's not all that verse 31 means. There is much truth to be communicated in what Jesus says there. But it is something worth noticing...and pointing out. And had I not taken the time to patiently plod through the Greek text of John 14, I might have missed that connection. And worse, my people might have missed it come Sunday.
