In this sermon Pastor Tim explores the promise of Jesus to not leave us as orphans in the world, but to send the Spirit of Truth. Tim looks at how Jesus was in the Father, the Father was in him, and now Jesus promises to be in his followers. This is what enables us to do the works of Jesus, keep the commands of Jesus and to become like Jesus!
Little recap on this series in John’s gospel… last week of Jesus life…
- Entered Jerusalem and explained he is going to die in order that life may emerge… like a seed that falls to the ground and then sprouts and grows and reproduces…
- It’s a foreshadowing of what is to come in the following days with his death and resurrection… and the birth of the church.
- Talked about being the light… and wasn’t that a doozey of a week!
- Washed his disciples feet and explained that this is the way of life he is calling his disciples into…
He then gives the only command recorded by Jesus in all of the gospels… “love one another as I have loved you.”
- And apparently it is by our love for one another that the world will know Jesus is at work in us! Who would’ve thought.
- If people are going to see Jesus in us… they need to see the love of Jesus demonstrated by the team…
- And then finally we talked about Jesus comforting his disciples by promising them a room in his Fathers house and how he is the way, the truth and the life…
- So today… knowing he is going away and not wanting to leave them as orphans in the world, he promises to send the Holy Spirit…
- Lets have a look…
John 14:12-21
Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. 13 And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son.14 You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.
15 “If you love me, keep my commands. 16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever— 17 the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. 18 I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. 19 Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. 20 On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you. 21 Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me. The one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love them and show myself to them.”
I was reading this week that something like 50% of people growing up today in Australia are growing up with no religion…
- Not Christianity, not other religions. Just nothing…
- Maybe they have some vague spiritual ideas… pick up a few things along the way on tiktok or through Justin Beiber…
- Maybe when faced with a death in the family they will say something like “heaven needed another angel.” Or “they are now shining down on me.”
- I guess that is comforting but it is not really based on anything…
- But for 50% of this next generation, they don’t belong to a church, or believe in anything spiritual.
And I think sometimes when you come to follow Jesus you just want to share that with everyone… and sometimes we try and make it seem palatable or not too weird.
- But actually I think weird is good.
- Because if you have no background in Christianity it must sound pretty weird.
- And I have kind of come to the conclusion that the weirder the better.
- How’s this for a claim from Jesus… verse 20; “I am in my Father” right…
- And he wants to be in us. Verse 20; “you are in me, and I am in you”
- Right, so he is saying God the Father is in Jesus. And Jesus is in God.
- And Jesus Spirit will come to live… in us.
- That’s pretty weird… but pretty amazing!
So what Jesus is claiming in John 14 is this…
- The God who created the heavens and the earth… the one he calls Father…
- He is in… and the Father is in him…
- And then (verse 17) the Spirit lives with you and in you.
- Right? God, the supernatural force that created the world has come to dwell in Jesus…
- And the promise is he will come to now dwell in you and me!
So God being in Jesus is what allowed him to do signs and wonders… enabled him to preach the truth and show us what the Father is like…
- And then get this… pretty weird… but also amazing…
- He claims that God in him… that Spirit of truth that was at work in Jesus will now live in his followers.
- Not everyone…
- But those who believe and trust in Jesus… who become the children of God….
- They will be empowered with the same Spirit that illuminated and empowered and animated Jesus. (say again)
Right? That is why in Acts, Paul will ask believers “have you received the Holy Spirit?”
- We kind of use terms like impartation and being filled?
- The idea being that you are a fleshy vessel that gets filled with things…
- With ideas, with a conscience, with feelings…
- But, and this is pretty weird… but also amazing…
- If you come to follow Jesus… your fleshy vessel will get filled with God!
- And that is what will give you the power to be transformed into His likeness…
You get this amazing scene in John’s gospel in chapter 20. Jesus has been crucified and laid down his life… just like he claimed he would to take away the sins of the world.
- Then he appears to the disciples, afraid as they were, in the upper room.
- And it says he breathed the Holy Spirit on them and filled them with his peace and presence.
- That’s pretty weird… but pretty amazing…
- And they are told to go and forgive people sins… to proclaim this message of salvation and rescue that is found in Jesus…
- This Jesus who was in the Father… and who the Father was in… is now Lord of all mankind.
Now (and this is pretty weird and amazing) he gets in you.
- Our passage today, Jesus had said (John 14:12)
- “whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these.”
- And here is the crazy thing… they do…
- Who do? They do. We do…
- Post being breathed on by the Holy Spirit… read the Book of Acts… they start doing the works of Jesus.
- When Jesus ministered… because God was in him and he was in God… he could do God enabled things…
And then with the Holy Spirit living in the disciples… as promised by Jesus in John 14 and given in John 20… They begin to do the works of Jesus.
- Read about it in Acts 3, Peter and John heal a lame beggar in the name of Jesus.
- Right? It’s just like what Jesus had been doing…
- When Jesus ministered he proclaimed the coming of the kingdom of God, the forgiveness of sins and salvation for the lost.
- Then in Acts2, you can read how filled with the Holy Spirit, the disciples shared the good news of salvation in Jesus… and it says thousands are saved.
Right? When Jesus ministered he showed incredible love and mercy and generosity to the broken and outcasts…
- Then guess what? Filled with the Holy Spirit, the disciples start to practice great acts of mercy and generosity… they love each other deeply…
- A community that loves one another like Jesus had loved them begins to form.
- The Father… who was in Jesus… is now… in them…
- Hectic this… but it’s just like he said would happen…
- Where? Today’s passage…. John 14.
And of course this is not just about the early church…
- Through history it is recorded that when the gospel gets a hold of people, and the Holy Spirit is at work in people’s lives…
- The things that Jesus said his followers would do… begin to happen!
- Salvation preached.
- Signs and wonders occur
- Great acts of mercy, generosity and love.
- People get treated with dignity…
I’ll give you one example… and I am reading from a Christian History Institute article…
- In the 1730’s historians write of a religious revival that happened in the UK and especially in the USA called The Great Awakening…
- Well known Christian preachers of the time included the Wesleys, Whitfield and Jonathan Edwards….
- And during the Great Awakening, Ministers urged people to repent of their sins and devote their lives to righteous living and pious activities.
- Revivalists described this process as conversion, the “new birth” that Jesus proclaimed in John 3, and preaching this gospel became the basis for this movement.
And during this awakening, miracles were reported to have happened as people came to Jesus and were touched by the Holy Spirit.
- One such instance was the story of Mercy Wheeler who was confined to her bed from the age of eight to twenty-five after a childhood malarial fever (we have an article about what I am about to explain from Yale University Library on the screen).
- So Mercy’s body wasted away and she lost her voice entirely. Amazingly she proclaimed through her writing that though life is fragile and short, God is faithful even through illness.
- In early 1743, when Wheeler was 25, her condition slowly began to improve. She could sit up in bed and move a bit with crutches, but was still too weak to walk unassisted.
In May of that year, she asked a local Congregationalist minister, Hezekiah Lord to preach at her family’s house.
- Wheeler became confident God would do something incredible, repeating the words of John 11:40—“If thou wouldst believe, thou shouldst see the glory of God”—as she waited for Lord to arrive.
- When he came he preached on Isaiah 57:15—“to revive the spirit of the humble.”
- As she listened Wheeler believed God meant these words especially for her. Affected by this conviction, she began to shake involuntarily. Attendees carried her back to her bed, convinced that she needed rest.
- After a brief moment of doubt, Wheeler became even more confident that God was healing her.
- She stood up. Her disconnected tendons and atrophied muscles filled with new strength, and she walked around the room several times. As astonished witnesses watched, Wheeler yelled, “Bless the Lord Jesus, who has healed me!”
- She lived to the age of 100.
God the Father was in Jesus… And now his Spirit comes to live in us. In Jesus name we will do great works.
I’ve shared here at Manly Life before a bit about my journey with the Holy Spirit
- Growing up never hearing it mentioned much…
- But then reading the bible and seeing that the scriptures are drenched in the language of the Holy Spirit. It got me interested…
- Praying in tongues in South Africa
- Having quite an emotional experience of the Holy Spirit in London on the Alpha Course
- Being committed to leading churches that get the balance between Word and Spirit better.
- Old Wimber saying; “All word dry up, all spirit blow up… spirit and word grow up!
One of the reasons that we are a part of a healthy, growing, alive church is because we make room for the Holy Spirit…
- We are going to do that today at the end of the service.
- I am sure we don’t always get the balance right…
- And you will always find people who want things to be more charismatic or less charismatic…
- But good things happen when we create room for God to move…
- Testimonies from the worship night…
- So important if we are going to do ministry and live the Christian life…
- Breathe in and breathe out…
Live in interesting times: Bit on the Asbury revival. Explain it… “Revive us by your love.”
- Some stayed around…. More joined… no one left… 50,000 came for a 2 weeks worship and prayer revival.
- Lots of repentance, peace and sense of God’s presence.
Some leaders identified 4 markers… generational thing…
- Peace in anxiety
- Community in loneliness
- Gen led in distrust of authority
- Low tech in a high tech bombarded world…
But God seems to be on the move… the ministry of Jesus is continuing…
- Almost like what Jesus said in John 14… is true! And it happens because of the gift of the Holy Spirit who comes to live in us!
- I think it is in every generation…
- The Great Awakening…
- The birth of the Pentecostal church in the Asuza Street revival that spread around the world.
- The Jesus movement in the 1970’s
- The works of Jesus are continuing… just this last week we have had several people become Christians…
- The Holy Spirit is moving in his church
Well what is it that Jesus promises in John 14?
- We want to be thoroughly biblical when it comes to who the Holy Spirit is and Jesus promises will be the impact of the Holy Spirit being in us.
- John 14 is not the whole story….
- In other places we learn other things about the Holy Spirit…
- Fruit (changes our character), Gifts (useful in church community to serve and bless each other), Assurance, Power, love…
But from todays passage…
- If you want to do the works of Jesus, be filled with the Spirit
- If you want a helper… because… well you need help… be filled with the Spirit.
- If you want to keep the commands of Jesus to love one another, be filled with the Spirit
- If you don’t want to be left as an orphan in the world, be filled with the Spirit.
- If you want to know Jesus and have his life alive in you… any guesses?
- Be filled with the Spirit.
OK, let me just finish with this from todays passage…
So, the Spirit of Truth that Jesus promises will be an advocate who helps them
- So Jesus says to his disciples… and remember the context is he is leaving them
- And he is comforting them and giving them hope for the future.
- Verse 16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever, the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you.
- So the Spirit will be advocate who helps them. He will live with you and be in you…
The word that we translate here advocate is the Greek word Paraclete.
- Just to clarify… it is not parakete… Jesus is not promising to send them a bird
- A very helpful bird…
- He is sending the paraclete.
- Verse 18 “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.”
- The word paraclete literally means a person summoned to one’s aid. It can refer to an advisor, a counselor, a legal advocate.
Here is the point… the Holy Spirit will be to represent God to us, just as Jesus did when he walked amongst us.
- We will not left alone…
- As Jesus is in the Father, now Jesus is coming to be in you!
- And I don’t know about you… but I need help. I need God to come to my aid and be present with me.
I remember being on a school camp and a pretty bad accident happening to one of the kids…
- And we were all pretty panicked because we were a long way from medical help
- And we were just a bunch of kids.
- But our leader had a radio… and he was able to connect to help through the radio wave signal thingies..
- You can’t see radio waves, a bit like Jesus said in verse 17 about the world; “it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you.”
- God has given us this gift… bit weird to the world… but pretty amazing,
- And to us who know him, it is the power of God, ready to aid!
Ministry time
- How do you receive the Holy Spirit… often by an impartation (think John 20)
- Jesus breathes on them the Holy Spirit and they are filled with God… and they are changed.
- Elsewhere by the laying on of hands…
- Comes with a deep assurance of the love and peace of God…
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