Well, turn with me to John chapter 16 verses five through thirty three You may notice my voice is cracking a little bit this morning I'm just trying to get in touch with my inner thirteen-year-old for you So hope you enjoy that as we go along that might make this sermon a little bit shorter We'll just see what the spirit does But we're gonna be in John chapter 16 this morning and this passage that we're going to explore is the end of Quite an extensive conversation that Jesus has had with the disciples in the upper room on the night before he was going to be betrayed Jesus is engaging with these people and he begins his conversation with him back in chapter 14 verse one and the first thing He says to them is take is to let their hearts not be troubled let your heart not be troubled believe in God Believe also in me and so Jesus is trying to bring solace to them And he's going to conclude his conversation with them on the last chapter of Last verse of chapter 16 when he says take heart. I have overcome the world So he wants them to take heart. He's trying to bring them Solace and comfort and they're most distressing hour when it seems like everything in life is about to crumble apart So that's where we're at this morning and let's take a moment now to read this passage from John 16 beginning in verse five Jesus says this to the disciples But now I am going to him who sent me and none of you asked me where are you going? But because I've said these things to you sorrow has filled my heart Nevertheless, I tell you the truth It is to your advantage that I go away for if I do not go away the helper will not come to you But if I go I will send him to you and when he comes he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment Concerning sin because they do not believe in me Concerning righteousness because I go to the Father and you will see me no longer Concerning judgment because the ruler of this world is judged I still have many things to say to you But you cannot bear them now When the spirit of truth comes he will guide you into all the truth But he will not speak on his own authority But whatever he hears he will speak and he will declare to you the things that are to come He will glorify me for he will take what is mine and declare it to you all That the Father has his mind Therefore I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you A little while and you will see me no longer and again in a little while you will see me Some of this disciples send to one another What is this he says to us a little while and you will not see me and again in a little while and you will see me and because I'm going to the Father So they were saying what does he mean by a little while we did not know what he's talking about Jesus knew that they wanted to ask him so he said to them Is this what you are asking yourself what I meant by saying a little while and you will not see me and again in a little while and you will see me Truly truly I say to you you will weep and lament but the world will rejoice You will be sorrowful that your sorrow will turn into joy When a woman is giving birth She has sorrow because her hour has come but when she has delivered the baby She no longer remembers the anguish For the for joy that a human being has been born into the world So also you have sorrow now But I will see you again and your hearts will rejoice and no one will take your joy from you In that day you will ask nothing of me Truly truly I say to you whatever you ask of the Father in my name he will give it to you Until now you have asked nothing in my name Ask and you will receive that your joy may be full I have said these things to you in figures of speech The hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figures of speech, but we'll tell you plainly about the Father In that day you will ask in my name and I do not say to you that I will ask the Father on your behalf For the Father himself loves you because you have loved me and have believed that I have come from God I came from the Father and I have come into the world and now I am leaving the world and going to the Father As Decytles said Ah now you are speaking plainly and not using figurative speech Now we know that you know all things and do not need anyone to question you This is why we believe that you came from God Jesus answered them Do you now believe Behold the hour is coming Indeed it has come when you will be scattered each to his own home and will leave me alone Yet I am not alone for the Father is with me I have said these things to you that in me you may have peace In the world you have tribulation But take heart I have overcome the world Amen. This is God's word to us this morning I think I mentioned to many of you in the past that Rebecca and I met and got married while we were seminary students up in Jackson And so because we made that brilliant decision to get married while we were both in graduate school We needed to find some way to make ends meet and so Rebecca took a job at Bell Haven College as a resident director And so we spent the first year and a half of our marriage living in a dorm full of 150 college girls It was the biggest estrogen experience of my life and I'm still working through getting over that One of the rules that they had in the residence halls that you you couldn't have open flames You couldn't have candles or anything like that But one day we smelled some smoke coming from down the hall So we went down the hall to figure out what was going on and we found the culprit We found the the room from which this was coming so we knocked on the door And the resident the girl opens up the door and she looked despondent and kind of teary-eyed and we just asked You know what was going on and what was the matter and she said that her boyfriend had just broken up with her And so she was taking all of the pictures of him and she was setting them on fire I mean what an extreme thing to do and maybe there's something therapeutic and some kind of solace That she must have derived from that But I think that all of us to some extent know what that's like We know what it's like to be so deeply wounded and disappointed To have our hopestash to have our future called into question To experience injustice from people To suffer the consequences of our own bad decisions our own sin And there's an anger and a grief that that comes into our lives where we feel like we want to set something on fire It burns at the level of our souls it brings pain to us So we can dismiss what this 19 year old girl was doing as just young heartbreak But there's a sense that in one manifestation or another that is the reality of our lives I mean that's what we experience and her reaction is symbolic of what we do or what we would like to do when the wheels fall off It's where the disciples are the wheels are falling off their lives in 24 hours The person that they had baked their whole life upon that they had devoted their whole life to following Was going to be nailed to across He was going to be taken off that cross he was going to be wrapped in burial clothes and put in a tomb and his body was going to be cold and he was going to be dead And the world was going to rejoice at that That they put this heretic to death And they were going to rejoice but the disciples were going to suffer the disciples were going to mourn In fact Jesus knows this he knows this is coming And he tries to get into the life of the disciples to bring them some solace He's going to be in the tomb and he uses a fascinating metaphor To describe the experience that the disciples are going to have here In verses 21 through 22 he says that there is a sense In which their lives are going to experience the pains of childbirth That's how painful this experience is going to be for them now For obvious reasons I've never gone through childbirth But I've been there when it happened And let me tell you That is quite an experience Everybody who has seen that and been there for that knows the experience of what that's like If Rebecca wouldn't have gotten the epidural I would have gotten one for myself because it was just that out of the body Bill Cosby says that childbirth is like taking your bottom lip and pulling it over your head That's what it feels like The world is about to rejoice at this and this is the pain that the disciples were about to undergo They were going to mourn to such a degree that it was going to feel like childbirth to them And friends there are days and there are seasons and there are even years of your own life They're going to feel like that So the question we have to face is how are we going to navigate life when that is our reality When that's our experience when our life is full of pain to one degree or another Seems like what Jesus is trying to do here is he's trying to impress upon us That on this side of the resurrection on this side of Pentecost where we see an axe too where the Holy Spirit comes And just this beautiful unique special way upon the people of God That the people and that we are going to people who have received the helper We have a helper to get us through these periods of anguish that feel like childbirth Jesus actually wants us to see here that we are better off You and I in 2010 are better off now than than the disciples were when Jesus was physically present with them It's hard to believe there's so much in my life where I just want to have Jesus Present with me so I can ask him questions and get a direct answer like that and not have to Work through all of those issues there. I just want his physical presence with me But Jesus is saying it were actually more advantageous in a better position now because of the The deep presence of the Holy Spirit that we have on this side of the cross and on this side A Pentecost because the Holy Spirit has come to dwell within us where the temples of the Holy Spirit And he actually makes his home inside of us within us It's wildly personal That he would come and dwell amongst us and dwell in us I think about that and I think about just how profoundly I have depersonalized my Christianity I wonder if you've done the same thing putting our Our ducks into the life of Christianity where we see our faith where we see our identity in Christ as being Nothing more than really a bunch of propositions a bunch of facts that we're supposed to know And what we end up having is a faith that ends up being cold and distant and anti-relational See the reality is that Christianity is in fact full of propositions It's full of doctrines it's full of facts it's full of all that But they the thing isn't they come to us in personal fashion They're personal they're relational they're practical and they get internalized by us to the degree that we see Our relationship with Christ is really a relationship with Christ That's not something just to be learned an abstract academic concept or feel to study but actually a person to be known There's a world of difference in the way in which you read scripture when you understand your faith like that That you're desiring to get to know this person Who has made you who's created you's created all things and who has your best interest in mind I think the reason why say that is because there's something in this passage about the nature of who God is And about the nature of who we are that is just fundamentally relation Jesus is teasing this out for us. He's he's bringing Into our lives and the midst of pain That we need to be zeroing in on of all things the Trinity The fact that God is in and of himself this beautiful relational being That's part of the characteristic of who God is as part of his very nature where the father and the son and the Holy Spirit Are just dancing around one another in relationship in total joy of one another And he's created us in his image and we are created that way as well We we have a nature within us to not only be in relationship with one another But to be in relationship with the God who has created us That's what he desires for our life So part of what that means part of what it means to be living in a vital vigorous vibrant relationship with Christ as it we're actually letting him influence us at the level of our souls We're letting Jesus Christ influence us We're listening to him We're getting into his mind and his heart We're discovering what he loves and what he hates and what brings him to light See if we're created by God And we're created for God and his glory Then the only way in which we're going to be truly content The only way in which we're going to be Authentic to who he's created us to be As if we are relationally connected to him and a beautiful way Part of what it means to be a Christian To be in relationship with him is to tune into that internal presence of the Holy Spirit within our lives But the Holy Spirit is actually dwelling within us and tuning into that and what it means for you And what it means for me at least in part as it we begin to see him as our helper That he comes alongside us and he helps us in the midst of trouble See all of us need help There's not one person who is not in need of tremendous help all the time Because we're going through pains we're going through through struggles and there's all kinds of confusion that we're facing all the time And for his people God provides that for us His Holy Spirit comes to us. He is our ever present help in trouble You don't need even need to be a Christian to believe that you need help Because all of us are messed up the world's messed up we engage in a messed up world all the time with our messed up souls We need help at every manifestation and the Holy Spirit is coming to us and being our helper in our time of need One of the ways in which it seems like Jesus is saying the Holy Spirit helps us Is by guiding us in the truth Holy Spirit guides us in the truth and means that after Jesus raises again from the cross and he ascends into heaven and the Holy Spirit Comes upon his people in a dynamic way in that presence way He's going to come to his people and he is going to guide them in truth He's going to bring the truth of God to bear upon his people. He's going to speak God's language to us He's going to give us God's vocabulary And where else is that language in vocabulary to be found in any place other than in his word In any place other than in scripture See This is something I think that we take for granted in a world of all of the distractions that we have in a world Where Facebook and Twitter and the internet and television And all of the things that vie for our attention that come to us in such tremendously dynamic form We we build so much of our lives upon that and we miss the fact that What we really deeply need is to be relationally connected to a God who's speaking to us by his Holy Spirit in his word That's what we really need that's what we really need to grow and to mature And to take great delight in him in this world greater delight than all those other things tell us that they can provide for us See the Holy Spirit comes to us and he brings that word to bear upon our lives. He helps us to make sense out of it And the midst of all the mystery that God is And the mystery that we are and the mystery that the world is he takes his word And he takes his truth and he helps us to know God He helps us to discover something about ourselves that we deeply need to know and to know and and live out his truth in the ordinary context of our lives But see if you and I don't have the spirit guiding us in the truth If we don't have him guiding us in the scriptures then where else are we going to get this truth from Where are we going to get our bearings in life Are we going to get it from the the winds of the culture around us Are we going to get it just from our our feelings our hormones our our desires What other people people tell us should be most important to us in life See as helpful as maybe some of those things are they're not constant. They're they're wildly out of control But what Jesus is telling us is the only constant we have is the Holy Spirit Guiding you and me in the constant truth of God. It's the truth of scripture I want you to ask this question Are you really seeking out the help of the Holy Spirit and by that I mean Are you digging into the scriptures in such a way that his spirit dependent? You're asking him to bring this to bear upon your life to to show you something of himself So show you something of yourself that you deeply need to know and personally understand so that you will personally delight in him and live for him and enjoy Is that characteristic of your life in any way Do you have any slot in your day-to-day life Where you can commit yourself to listening to God To listening to him speak to you through his word The Bible was written as Peter says the Bible was written By holy men who were carried along by the Holy Spirit It's the way that God tells you his story It's the way that God reveals his heart to you It's the way in which you puts his desires and his truth on display I think the satireality and I accused myself in saying this as well The satireality for so many Christians for so many of us even in this room Is that we rarely have ever read the Bible We rarely have ever read it with a view to personally getting to know this God who loves us and gave himself for us and created us So we would enjoy I don't say that to Make you feel guilty to condemn you in any way. I don't say that because I'm saying it to myself as well But I think that if we're personally going to get to know this God We've got to tune into what he has to say to us We've got to ask this Holy Spirit to come and make his word an integral part of our life To chisel it into our hearts so that it just becomes what we breathe and what we live How we deal with life that is that every corner seeking to subvert our identity in Christ We need that so we can get God's vocabulary So we can get his language so we can understand his heart So don't settle for a Christianity That is distant and impersonal that's just about going through the motions It's just about learning how to get your moral ducks in a row and to raise your kids right See that's not what Christianity is all about Christianity is about knowing someone It's about having a helper come and help us to know that someone To illuminate his word and his truth upon our lives The Holy Spirit is our helper But he's not just our helper Holy Spirit is also our convictor I don't even know if that's a word but that's what he does he convicts us We see this in verse 8 Jesus says that the Holy Spirit will come and he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment Remarkably enough what Jesus seems to be saying here is that even in the midst of our struggles in life One of the things that he's trying to do is to bring us back down to earth The Holy Spirit comes to bring us back down to earth to see us As we really are and see Jesus Christ as he truly is so we'll truly understand ourselves The Holy Spirit comes to us in order to draw us to love and to treasure Jesus Christ More than anyone or anything else in the world And to become satisfied with him even in the midst of the deepest possible pain a pain that feels like Going through childbirth To be satisfied with him above all of the other joys and pleasures that we have in life And he seems to be saying here that the only way in which we're going to delight ourselves in him Is if we take our gaze away from our navels away from ourselves away from what we've told ourselves What we need and must have in order to have a life that's of of any value in any worth and in each enjoyment To turn our eyes away from that and set our gaze upon Jesus Christ to see him as he truly is If you've ever been to a place like New York And you've been there at night in downtown Manhattan And you've seen the majestic empire state building lit up You're starting to get a picture of what the Holy Spirit does See That building is lit up you can see it at night. You can see its beauty In the in the evening when the sun has gone down because of these floodlights that are hidden You can't find them unless you're pretty much standing right over the top of them And they're pointing up They're looking upward so you can see the detail and see the intricacies of this beautiful building That you would not otherwise be able to see as well without it And Jesus is saying the Holy Spirit is somewhat like that The the ministry the Holy Spirit to you Is that he functions in such a way to turn the light upon Jesus To get us to see him who as he is To see our need and to see Jesus is the one fulfilling that need all of our needs And it helps us to see ourselves for who we really are As people who've fallen short of his glory and who are only going to be delighted as we delight ourselves in him Who who lay our lives bare before him So what we need him to do is to bring us back down to earth to convict us of How we tried to make a life for ourselves try to justify our existence on the basis of doing whatever it is that we please To get all the pleasures that we can get out of this world to milk it for all its worth And validating our existence on that basis or validating our existence on how good we are How will we match up to other people how will we're doing morally compared to other people Both are ways to avoid Jesus our unrighteousness in our righteousness both are way to the void Jesus and the Holy Spirit comes And he convicts us of how we've done that of how we do that The Holy Spirit convicts us that our goodness isn't good enough And only the righteousness of Jesus Christ credited to us as we receive him in the gospel That's the only righteousness that is good enough. That's our only hope in life and death and when we see that our arrogance gets killed Our pride gets killed The way we interact with our spouses and marriage where it becomes a power play us trying to get what we told ourselves that we deserve Out of that that sort of thing gets killed We start to do what we discovered in Sunday school this morning when we're reading Philippians 2 We see Jesus the one who humbled himself And he made himself nothing In order that we might have life And so we humble ourselves because we realize that we in fact are nothing are nothing And then we need him that he is our only hope That he is the one that transforms our souls and that kind of humility that will transform your relationships It will change your marriages it'll change the way in which you interact with your parents It'll change the way that parents engage with their children it'll change the way we work When we see Jesus like that and we've been convicted at such a deep level that we are greater sinners than we will ever begin to imagine But we've been given greater grace than we could ever dream about That's ours in the gospel He convicts us he convicts us of those areas of our lives that we've been trying to quarantine from God That we've been trying to hide from him the Puritans called these things our darling sins These are the sins that we repudiate publicly and tell people are so awful but that we our cells indulge That we take great delight in He convicts us of those things of the things that we love more than we love God He convicts us of that and shows us that it's a counterfeit That's a cheap substitute for the real thing for really delighting in him He convicts us of that but he draws us he draws our gaze to Jesus Christ How is this good news? I mean in the midst of a troubled life how in the world is that good news See the Holy Spirit has not come to you to make you feel like a schmuck He hasn't come to you to make you feel like that He's come to you to show you and to show me how we have settled for far too little joy and far too little satisfaction in this life All of the stuff that promises us so much we get a little joy out of we should enjoy it But we built our identity upon that we built our whole lives upon getting that stuff and being that person and and enjoying that stuff and he's saying you're settling for far too little This God has given you an inheritance that can never perish or spoil or fade He's giving you more than what you think that you have We focus so much on what we lack, but he is made up for more than that in the gospel As you see him as he truly is As you see Jesus Christ is who he truly is he points you to the Father He points you to a Father Who loves his people so much That he would rather give up his only begot his son Than spend eternity without you
Have you understood the love of God for you like that at all lately That's when he's trying to get you to see how deeply loved you are don't settle for other things other lovers of your soul settle for who Jesus is settle for the love of the Father for you That's what this is all about the reality is though Does it what we want is more stuff more money more fulfilling experiences less stress the famous oil magnate John D Rockefeller He was asked how much money does it take for someone to be happy And he replied just a little bit more just a little bit more that's true for anything. That's not just money a little bit more experience a little bit more fulfillment a little bit more satisfaction in life But the reality is is that we have that in Jesus Christ Jesus never wants ever ever anywhere in all the Bible points us to those things As being the deepest source of our satisfaction He always points to himself He always points to him John Piper says that God is most glorified in us When we are most satisfied in him When we take the greatest delight in him friends How can you and I have joy in a bad economy When our house is worth nothing When our portfolio takes When the well is just run dry in our life How can we have joy in the midst of that How can we have joy when your husband or your wife walks out on you Or just stone walls you treat you like you're nothing no longer expresses love for you How can you be content When you have one health problem after the other You just can't seem to get any relief you're in chronic pain You can feel yourself almost dying take one step forward and two steps back in this life My friends, there's there's nowhere else to turn for delight Other than in Christ Other than in Jesus other than in his promises to you other than in the hope that you have hope make you fight for something People who don't have hope don't fight anymore the hope makes you fight for something makes you fight for joy In the midst of a life that's crumbling apart And that's what he wants the disciples to see here their life is gonna appear like it is absolutely falling apart in every way And yet there's a joy before them An eternal joy a presence of God with them even in the midst of the deepest possible pain And he's trying to get them to see that the world can take my resources, but it cannot take Jesus's love for me The Lord can take away my health, but it cannot take away Jesus's love for me It can take away my friends my family my job my money my relationships But nothing in the world can take away Jesus's love for me. You have that promise That has to bring you joy in a life That's a flat out crumbling pieces Jesus wants the disciples to know that He wants you to know that He wants me to know that It's it's a promise that you have Christian That's a promise that you have in the gospel If Jesus is your only hope in life and death The hope that you have is that he has adopted you as your child That he quiets you with his love That he literally rejoices over you with singing That makes you fight because you have hope That's the promise that you have it's a promise for all who believe in him If you don't believe in him it's not a promise But it is an invitation Come to him Find yourself satisfied in him this way Let's think about that as we come before him now in prayer Father, we thank you for this word that's So hard for us to hear in so many ways because it Exposes our dark and hearts are idolatries the way in which we have left you for another lover Oh how we need you Jesus Christ to come and we this off of those things We need the help of your Holy Spirit to come and fill us with yourself fill us with your truth For all that we need for faith and for life We need you to come and make your presence known So that we would enjoy you above all the other things that we enjoy We need you to nourish our souls We anticipate that now as we prepare to take your supper To eat your bread and eat your body and to drink your blood and supper We need you to enliven our souls Do that in us for your sake for your glory It's in Jesus name that we pray