Summary
Pastor Safrit walks through John 16:4-15, emphasizing the importance of abiding in Christ and the necessity of the Holy Spirit in the believer's life. He explains that the mission of following Jesus is more challenging than many expect, requiring reliance on the Spirit for guidance and strength. The sermon highlights that while trials may come, the Holy Spirit convicts the world of sin and empowers believers to fulfill their mission, reminding them that they are not alone in their journey.
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If you have a child who wants to be dismissed to Children's Church first through first grade and under, that's available for you. What a great time it has been this last week. If you have your Bible, it will be in John chapter 16. John chapter 16.
Thank you, church, for allowing our family to go on a vacation this past week. We never take it for granted when we get to get away. We don't do it too often, but it is a time of refreshing and relaxation for us.
Our family went down to Stone Mountain, Georgia, and had a wonderful time down there. We never stayed in a yurt, or a tent, you could say, a glorified tent.
And it had heat and AC, but we tried roughing it to the best of our ability. And we had a great time climbing up the mountain and going to the laser show and all that. So I thank you for letting us go. Sometimes I feel the older I get,
when I get back from vacation, I need a vacation from that vacation.
The bed we were on wasn't the best bed. And so it's like trying to get that rest again, trying to wake Brody up this morning. He was just not getting up, right?
It's like you're ready to get back and then you're ready to sleep for a couple of days. So if I'm a little not as excited as I normally am, I probably won't be. But that's why that is.
But we're continuing our series in Abide. We're looking at this teaching that Jesus has given his disciples.
It started in the upper room with his disciples. He gave them this command that this is what's going to happen. He washed their feet.
We looked a couple of weeks ago at the branch connected to the vine and how Jesus is the life giver. And then last week on Easter Sunday, we looked at the cost of what it meant to abide in Christ.
Today, we're going to look at what that means when we live out that cost. When we live into this mission that God has given us and how we can go further for him. And so if you have your place there, John chapter 16, we're going to read verses 4 through 15.
Let's stand, stretch your legs for just a moment as we read God's word today.
Words will be on the screen for you as well. The Bible says, But I have told you these things so that when their time comes, you will remember what I have told you.
The Departure of Jesus
I did not tell you these things from the beginning because I was with you. We read that verse last week. We talked about it briefly. We're going to pick up there today. But now I am going away.
To him who sent me, and not one of you has asked me, where are you going? Yet, because I have spoken these things to you, sorrow has filled your heart.
Nevertheless, I tell you the truth, for it is for your benefit that I go away. Because if I do not go away, the counselor will not come to you. If I go, I will send him to you. But when he comes, he will convict the world about sin, righteousness, and judgment.
About sin because they do not believe in me. About righteousness because I'm going to the Father, and you will no longer see me. And about judgment because the ruler of this world has been judged.
I still have many things to tell you, but I cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you in all truth. For he will not speak on his own, but he will speak whatever he hears. And he will declare to you what is to come.
He will glorify me because he will take from me what is mine and declare it to you. Everything the Father has is mine.
This is why I told you that he takes from what is mine and will declare it to you. Let's pray. Father, we love you.
We thank you for what you've done. Thank you for the blessings that you've given us. Thank you for these young people, their willingness to stand up here and sing, say some things, and read scripture, and pray in front of you.
What a great thing that is for our young people to grow up into this idea of loving you, and loving scripture, and loving your word, and wanting to pray.
Wanting to lead music and sing, Lord. I pray that you would help us to glorify you today as why we meet is to glorify you and to preach the word. We thank you for what you've done. Thank you for the reading of your word. In your name we pray. Amen.
You may be seated. A few years ago, I was reading a story about a man, a middle-aged man who had signed up.
He was out on vacation, and he was looking for some things to do. And he signed up for an adventure, a tour, an area where he was going to go climbing.
And he thought it was going to be more of a mountain trails and just a scenic view. And as the day went on, and the beginning of the trip felt exactly like that. It was very easy. It was low-key. They stopped for rest.
They were talking. But as this journey began to go further and further, he began to realize the trail narrowed.
The incline got a little steeper. And all that he was going through was turning from a casual walk to a very demanding climb.
And he began to question all of his life choices in this moment. At one point, they reached a section where the guide stopped and looked at each and every one of them and said, from here on, it's about to get real serious. The path is going to be harder.
The conditions are going to be tougher. And if you're going to make it, you must trust me and stay close.
And all of a sudden, in this moment, it hit him. I didn't sign up for the right trip. I signed up for the wrong trip. And it was no longer just a casual hike.
And it required endurance and guidance. He quoted, he said, some people in the group turned back and others pressed on. But the ones that pressed on had to stay close to the guide. This is the story of what we see here in John chapter 16. The disciples are with him.
They're walking with Jesus. Things are going really good. They're seeing Jesus through miracles.
They're seeing people being healed. If you remember right before this upper room experience that they just had, Jesus had just spit on the ground and healed a blind man and told him to go and wash the mud off of his eyes and he would see again.
Jesus was healing and doing miracles. And he was walking through Jerusalem. And he was teaching. And he was doing lots of things. And they were watching him. And they were excited about what's going on.
And now he's saying, listen, guys, the mission that I'm about to send you on is about to get real heavy. It's about to get extremely difficult.
And Jesus is basically saying this. From here on, you're going to need more than just what you've had. You're going to need help. And for me, this is difficult, right?
When I was packing just a couple of days ago last week when we were packing to go, and then yesterday as we're packing the truck and getting everything ready to come home, I could handle it all myself. I didn't need help.
But if you notice, I have a five-year-old boy that likes to think that he can help. And Hudson, he means well, but oftentimes he gets in the way, right?
That I can handle this bag. Like, I'm strong. I can do this. And so he's up in there.
And I'd give him something. And he'd pick it up. And I mean, he's about to fall down. I'm like, I could take this. And I could pack this truck up in 10 seconds.
But because you're here, it's taking me 10 minutes. And oftentimes, this is how life seems. I don't need help. I can do this on my own. I can take care of these things. I can do these things without any help.
And Jesus is telling them in this passage, listen, you are going to need help.
There are things in life that are going to require you to understand that life is not always going to be this casual walk, but it's going to be a difficult journey at times. I heard one man say it like this.
Because oftentimes, we think we're on a cruise ship for Christianity when really Christianity is a battleship.
The Mission's Challenges
We are in a battleship. We are fighting for our lives and for the souls of other people. And we are inviting them, hey, come on this ship. It's going to be difficult, but we're fighting for a good cause.
It's not a cruise ship. We don't get on and get all these amenities and everything's taken care of, but we are on this journey that's going to be tough as Jesus lays out for his disciples. And if we're all honest, I think we would say, I want the journey to be easy.
I want to go through an easy, carefree, not necessarily difficult life.
But when we discover what it looks like to go through a trial and come out on the other side and say, I'm so thankful that I went through that.
I'm not thankful for what happened, but I'm thankful for how it has shaped me and molded me and developed me into a person or a believer or a person who God has designed for me as a father, as
a husband, as a son or a daughter. All of a sudden, you begin to thank the Lord for what God has allowed you to go through. And this is what Jesus is telling his disciples as we walk through. He's saying, listen, you're going to go through some difficult things.
And Jesus lays out a statement in this passage that I'm going to get to that I still cannot reconcile in my mind because it's the most crazy statement ever. But he lays out a couple of things, two simple points and then a couple of sub points. The first one is this.
The mission is bigger than we realize. This mission that we're on, this mission that God has called us to go and do is much bigger than we ever even could imagine in our mind than when we began or when we gave our life to Jesus.
When I was five years old as a little boy coming to know Christ, I did not realize the mission that God has for the church.
I did not realize the vastness that God was going to do in and of the church and the life of the church and how the gospel was going to spread. I just understood that I was wrong.
I was a sinner. I had done wrong. I'm going to give my life to Jesus. And as we grow through this, we realize this mission is so much bigger. Jesus, he's preparing them.
He's telling these things not necessarily to protect them, but to tell them, hey, these are things that are going to happen. These are things that you're going to go through. Look at what he says. He says, I did not tell you these things from the beginning because really you weren't ready.
Right? You're not going to sit down to a five-year-old, a seven-year-old and say, hey, these are all the difficulties that you're going to go through in life. Okay?
You're going to give them little bits upon little bits. You're going to tell them these are some things you've got to do to prepare yourself for the world. And Jesus lays out, he said, the mission that you're going to go through, there's going to be opposition. There's going to be sorrow.
There's going to be sacrifice for some of you. And he says that as the rich young ruler comes to him and says, I want to be a follower of you. Jesus looks at him and says, sell all that you have. Go and leave those things and come follow me.
He looks at the young man that wants to follow him and says, hey, I want to come follow you.
But my father recently passed away. What this simply meant was in the Jewish culture was after someone were to die, one year later, you would then go and collect the bones.
So what Jesus was telling his, this man that said, hey, let me come and follow you. He said, but I've got to go bury my father.
He said, I need one year to go and take care of this funeral preparation before I can come and follow you. And Jesus looked at him and says, let the dead bury the dead.
He said, you're going to have to sacrifice to follow me. There are going to be some difficult things that you're going to have to go through. And all of a sudden we begin to realize that there are things that we focus on losing.
And we focus that this is some things that I've got to give up.
And it hinders us from going forward in the mission.
Jesus lays it out like this. There is a preparation. I'm warning you of some things to come. As our Wednesday night study is looking at, we're looking through Mark as the teenagers.
But as our young, as our adults, we can call them young adults, are going through Daniel and a little bit of revelation. And even this morning in Sunday school, in our Sunday school, we're looking at the end times and how this affects our lives. It's preparing us for what's going to happen.
And Jesus is warning them. He's saying this is what's going to happen. And then he tells them this simple thing. There's going to be persecution. People are going to come after you. Trouble is coming. And he lays the perspective out of there is sorrow in sight. And not to get caught up.
But the sorrow is going to come. And it's going to be overwhelming at times. But he tells them there is a comforter that's coming. And this is the beauty of what Jesus is laying out for them. I've never served in the military. My grandpa did.
And some people in here have served. And your family members have served. And Mickey here worked around many military people. And I'm told. I don't have a first time account of this.
But I'm told that when you sign up for the military, they don't look at you and say, This is going to be the easiest thing that you're ever going to do in your life. They look at you and they say, We're going to try to kill you before we send you into battle.
Because we want to prepare you for every situation that's going to happen. We're going to try to drown you.
We're going to make you go through mud. We're going to dehydrate you.
We're going to make you run miles upon miles with people on your back. As Jackson is in the military and he dislocated his shoulder because he's running with someone on his back. These are the things the military is doing to prepare their soldiers for the battle that's about to happen.
Jesus is the same way. He's saying, Listen, you are soldiers for me. I'm doing the same thing. I'm not saying these things to discourage you.
I'm not saying that you're going to go through hard times and difficult times. And you're going to have to sacrifice all these things to discourage you from following Jesus. I'm telling you these things so that you are prepared for what's going to happen so that you're not caught off guard, basically.
Some people walk away from the mission.
Some people hear that there's going to be difficulty. There's going to be heartaches.
As we looked at this morning in 2 Thessalonians, there are going to be some that fall away and turn away from religion and turn away from Jesus and say, This isn't what I signed up for. And they turn around and walk away.
We were on Stone Mountain this week and we were walking up. It's about a mile hike up the side of the mountain. It's pretty steady, straight up.
And as you get to one point, you think, Okay, we're almost there. And then it goes like immediately like a 90 degree vertical, like you're climbing up. And as a kid, they didn't even have rails on some portions of it. But my sister-in-law was there with us.
And when she went, she said, Yeah, I stayed at the bottom. I wasn't going up to the top.
But we and the kids and Brody did it in like 18 minutes. It took me like 47 minutes.
So he just like ran and took off. There's a little energy gap there. But as some people got there and you saw this, they would get to this point. And they're like, Okay, I'm not going any further. It's not worth me going up that climb. I'm going to stay right here.
And oftentimes, this is what happens in our lives. We get to the point where it can be too much for what we think. And we decide, You know what? This is exactly where I'm going to go. The mission is harder than I expected.
I'm just going to decide to stop here. The question I want to ask you this morning is, when hardship comes, when difficult times come, do we retreat? And do we say, God, I didn't sign up for this.
I'm going to run away. Or do we refocus our mind, as Hebrews tells us, to fix our eyes on Jesus and say, God, I don't understand why this is happening. I don't understand how this is going to help me. But I'm going to trust in You in this moment.
I'm going to trust that You know what's best for me.
Because when Jesus was here on this earth, and as Jesus was teaching His disciples, He never hid the cost of what was going to happen.
He never said, Come follow me, and then you're going to figure out what's going to happen. He said, Follow me, and take up your cross daily and follow me. There's going to be persecution.
There's going to be heartache. And some of you are going to die for the mission. But I'm going to tell you clearly exactly what's going to happen.
He clarified the mission. And all of a sudden, when heartache comes for us, and hard times come for us, and I've been there, church. I've been there where I want to give up the towel. And I want to say, You know what? I'm done with ministry.
I'm done with life. And this was many years ago. Don't think it's right now.
But this is times where we come into our life, and we say, God, is this truly what You have caused me to do? And caused me to live? And called me to live out? And it's a difficult journey. But Christ says it's bigger than we realize.
And when we step back, just the other year, I was talking to a guy on the phone, and he said, Can you think about how many lives truly have been changed because of your ministry?
And I began to really, I had never done this thought before, but I began to sit down and think of all the people that have come to Christ because of my preaching, and because of my influence on their
lives, and because I've been in the schools, and been around people. And before I realized, it was like 20, 30, 40 people that I had influenced that I hadn't even thought about. And all of a sudden, that energized me.
It began to say, You know, the heartaches that I went through, and the difficulties that we went through here, and the trials that we went through over here, and the loss, and the difficult things that would scare some
of us if we knew, all of a sudden began to bring us into a refocus of why we're on mission for the Lord.
The second thing he lays out is not only the mission is bigger than we realize, but the mission needs supernatural help. The mission that we're on needs the help that we don't even realize.
And as I said at the beginning, if you're like me, you can begin to think that you can do things on your own.
You can begin to think, I can handle this. I'm a strong, independent woman, or a strong man.
I can handle this without any help. And all of a sudden, Jesus says, Listen, there are some things that you must understand that you have to go through, and that we need help sometimes to get through this.
As much as it's difficult as it is for us to ask for help, he said it's in those moments where you begin to realize your weakness that I step in.
And in our weakness, the Bible says that Christ's strength is made perfect. But it's only when we realize our weaknesses, it's only when we realize, I need help in this area. I can't do this on my own. A beautiful picture of this is a marriage and raising kids, right?
The best marriage that you can find, the best kids that you can find raised are in a two-parent home with a husband and a wife, a mother and a father, raising these children in the nurture and admonition
of the Lord. And because they're helping each other, the mom is the caring one, where the dad comes in and can sometimes be aggressive and abrasive and says, Listen, suck it up. I don't know why you're hurt, right? This happened this past week.
We were roasting marshmallows, and Jade was roasting her marshmallow, and she had her metal stick out. And we're all excited. We're like 10 marshmallows in. We're all on a marshmallow high. It's really great.
And all of a sudden, she reached the end of the stick and missed the marshmallow and touched the metal stick and blistered her first finger and her thumb. And I'm like,
Okay, get over it. Like, you burned yourself. And she walks over there, and Hallie's like nudges me. James, go take care of her. She burned herself. What am I going to do? So I get up. I walk over.
I'm trying to be sympathetic. Like, you burned yourself. It's just going to happen. And so I'm trying to, like, I don't have that sympathetic in my mind where mom can come in and say, Hey, let me help you. Let's put ice on it. Let's put the vinegar on it. Let's put the mustard on it.
Let's do all the caring things that moms do. Dad, we're just like, throw some dirt on it and keep going. This is the beautiful balance of marriage and raising kids is we need this help as we go through life.
And all of a sudden, we begin to understand in our spiritual life, the Lord has given us this help as well. And he's given us this help through the Holy Spirit.
And the Holy Spirit works in ways that we don't fully understand, that we'll never fully understand. So we're going to briefly talk about the Holy Spirit today.
The Holy Spirit's Conviction
The Holy Spirit convicts the world, verses 8 through 11.
This is the verse that I was talking about that I have meditated on this week and continue to think on this week. Because I want you to put yourselves into the disciples picture. The disciples have sought to follow Jesus. Jesus, the disciples have given up everything they've ever imagined.
They were a school teacher and they said, you know what, Jesus, we're no longer going to take a check from the school, from the North Wilkes or East Wilkes Middle School. We're going to give up all that and we're going to come follow you. We're a fisherman.
Lord, we're going to come out and we're going to stop fishing. We're going to stop all of our income and we're going to come and follow you. We were a tax collector. We were all these things. We're going to give up everything and we're going to come follow you.
Now imagine that in your mindset. And then Jesus here, three years later, looks at them and says this, it is for your benefit that I go away.
It is for your benefit that I leave you and you no longer see me. Hold on, Jesus. Jesus, you just told us to give up everything, forsake all that I had, sell all of my possessions,
give up my house and come follow you. And now you're telling me that you're leaving and that it's better for me that you leave. I don't understand this, Jesus.
He says, this is, this is a backward statement. This is mind blowing for us. For Jesus to say in this verse, it is better for me. Verse seven, if I go away, it is better for me to go away. It is for your benefit that I go away. How does this make sense?
How does this reconcile in our mind that this would make sense for Jesus to go away and it would benefit us?
The easiest definition that I can give you is Jesus in his human earthly form could only be at one place at one time.
And he knew this and the disciples didn't know this. And he said, if I go away, I'm going to send you a comforter. I'm going to send you a spirit that can be with each and every person in this room at any given time. It's going to end well with you 24 seven.
And you're going to have access to the father through the spirit. You won't have that if I'm still here.
But once I go away, you're going to have a comforter that's here with you. That's here for you.
That convicts, that works through things that helps you when you don't know how life is going to go through when you're sitting there in the middle of your house all by yourself and
things just aren't acting up in your head. And you're like, God, I don't know what's going on. And all of a sudden this overwhelming comfort of the spirit comes over you. This is the Holy Spirit working. And Jesus is saying, listen, if I'm still here, you're not getting that.
Only a couple of people are going to benefit from me.
But if I go away, the spirit's going to come and endow this earth and every person in this earth is going to get the spirit. And then he lays out a couple of things that the spirit does. And I want you to understand this threefold conviction that the spirit does.
The first thing the spirit does that convicts those that don't believe in him.
There's a conviction of the spirit that happens as the spirit comes into this world. I don't have to worry about convicting other people.
I don't have to worry about exposing someone's heart because the spirit comes in and the spirit exposes their heart and he shows them the root of their sin of rejecting Christ. And so all of a sudden the spirit is doing the convicting for me.
And he says that he's going to convict them of their sin. The second thing we see there is the confirmation of righteousness.
He says that because I am going to the father. Listen, there is this righteousness that we get to experience because Jesus'
death, as we looked at last week, as we looked at on the resurrection Sunday, because he died, death was defeated.
And he is vindicated. And his life is now meaningful. And now the cross was not defeat, but it was proof that Jesus is the one that has conquered everything in this world. And now we get to look at Christ and we get to be exalted the same way that Christ is exalted.
Living in Christ's Victory
And we get to glorify God the same way Christ looked on the cross and said to Telestai, it is finished. Final payment has been happened and I am paying the full debt of their sin.
And he says, Now the confirmation of this righteousness has been put onto you through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. And then he goes into this third way, the certainty of judgment. And he says, Because the ruler of this world has been judged.
Oftentimes when bad things happen in our life, we like to fess that up to say, you know, Satan's working in my life. The beautiful picture here is Satan has been defeated and Satan's final judgment has happened. And he's warning the lost.
Now is the time. Judgment is going to happen. And you must turn from your ways and come to the Lord. But he's telling us as this confirmation of judgment is that if you believe in Christ, if your salvation is settled in Christ, you don't have to worry about that judgment.
The judgment has been paid for on the cross. And now you get to live in the victory of Christ. The beautiful picture as we look at all this is, it's not our job to convince other people to come to Christ. Our job is to simply go and to communicate.
As we looked at last week as the women who came to the tomb, the first people who came to see Jesus, Jesus told them, Go and tell my brethren that I have raised from the dead and I am living. Our job is to go and communicate.
Jesus did not tell them, Go and convince the brothers that I have been sown. Go and convince the disciples that I have risen from the dead.
All he told them to do was to go and to tell them, to communicate the gospel. Our job here on earth is to communicate what God has done with us and allow the spirit to convict.
I was raised in a church that manipulation was the key. The pastor would get up and he would say,
Listen, if you walk out these doors, you're going to split hell wide open. And he was trying to be the Holy Spirit.
And I learned in my time of ministry, it is not my job to manipulate people, but to allow the spirit to move in their life. Because if I can manipulate someone to come to Christ, Satan can manipulate them to leave Christ.
But when the spirit convicts their life and the spirit convicts their heart and says, You have done wrong and you need to come to the Christ. You need to come and offer this forgiveness that I have given you. Nothing is going to take that away from them.
You see, without the spirit, this is what we cannot do. We cannot love difficult people.
If you have a difficult person in your life, I'm sure if I had asked you to raise your hand, every single person in here would raise your hand and say, There is someone difficult in my life. Without the spirit, it's hard to, you cannot love them. Without the spirit, you cannot serve sacrificially.
Part of our mission statement is to serve others, is to go and to serve, and to go and to be the light of the world. Without the spirit, without this indwelling of the comforter, we cannot serve other people. We cannot stay consistent without the spirit. We're going to fail.
Why do we see that when COVID happened, there was a great falling away of our church? Because all of a sudden, people were not filled with the spirit. They were not living in the spirit. They were not fully committed to Christ. And all of a sudden, they now are no longer consistent.
Empowerment Through the Spirit
Without the spirit, you can't give generously. Without the spirit, you can't speak boldly.
And without the spirit, you cannot go globally into this world and into this mission and say, I have to tell you about this man who changed my life forever. My mind constantly goes back to Mark chapter 5, where the maniac of Gadara came to Jesus.
And the maniac of Gadara was out of his mind, had a thousand demons inside of him, and Jesus came and healed him and threw the demons into the swine.
And the people that were raising the pigs were upset, not because the maniac of Gadara was healed, but because their flock, their pigs, who Jewish people can't even eat, were thrown into the ocean. And now they're mad that Jesus ruined their lifestyle.
They were not happy that this person was healed. And all of a sudden, the maniac of Gadara came to Jesus and said, Jesus, I want to follow you.
Can I get on the boat? Can I be one of your disciples? And I love it. Jesus looked at the maniac of Gadara and said, go into the Decapolis. Go into the region that you're from and tell them what I've done for you.
And the maniac of Gadara goes into the Decapolis and goes into these regions of these massive 10 cities and proclaims the gospel because the spirit is inside of him and he has to go and he has to tell someone.
This is how I want to illustrate this for you. The spirit works in our life.
And if you have ever tried to start a fire outside, it can be difficult sometimes, but it's extremely difficult if your wood is wet. If you've got wet firewood and you try to start this wood, it's nearly next to impossible to start it. So I want you to think of it like this.
The spirit, the Holy Spirit is the fire that works in our life. It's illustrated like this multiple times throughout scripture, clothed in tongues of fire. The spirit comes as the fire. We are the wood.
And if our wood is wet, if we are not ready to be ignited for the Holy Spirit, the flame comes and nothing happens. It just goes out.
And all of a sudden we are trying to argue with people and we're trying to argue them into the kingdom because we're using wet wood. And all of a sudden this argument is happening and there's no spirit that is even around what is going on.
When I was in fifth grade, I had this wonderful conversation. I've shared it with you before.
But in fifth grade, I thought I was going to be the best theologian ever. I was a little cocky. Some people maybe say that I still am.
But I was sitting there at the lunch table and I had a friend of mine who was a church of God who believed in baptism is the way of salvation. And so we began to get into this theological discussion. We'll call it a discussion the first day.
And so I went to church the next day and I went to one of our deacons and I said, hey, help me understand. How can I begin to debate this other guy?
To tell him that the Baptist way is the right way and he's wrong and I'm going to prove that he's right. And so he gave me some talking points.
So the next day I came in, guns loaded, had my three by five card with all my points that I was ready to go. And I sat down at the lunch table and I mean, I laid into him.
He's arguing with me. I'm arguing with him. Next thing you know, we're both yelling and screaming because we're proving that our point is right. And the teacher grabbed both of us and pulled us out in the hallway. And she said, what are you guys arguing about? And I told her, I'm right.
I'm a Baptist. We believe baptism is this way and he believes it's this way. And we're going on.
And finally she looked at me and she said, how are you trying to win anyone to the Lord? This is the public school. How are you trying to win anyone to the Lord with arguing and debating and yelling at a lunch table? All you're doing is turning people away.
And I realized, yes, there's a time to argue. Yes, there's a time to debate. But there is a proper way to pray for others and say, Lord, I can't do this on my own.
I'm going to trust in you. And I just want to rely on the spirit for the things that I can't do. I may not be able to win the lost person.
I may not be able to win my neighbor or my brother or my sister, but I can pray for them and I can pray for their salvation. And I can pray that God comes and works in and through their life.
Verses eight through 11 says that the Holy Spirit convicts the world. It's not our job to convict the world. It's the Holy Spirit's job. It's our job to communicate what Christ has done. But then number two,
the Holy Spirit gives us this wonderful, wonderful picture of the Holy Spirit as our guide. The Holy Spirit comes in and begins to be the guide for us as we're going through this journey. He says this, I have many things to tell you, but you're not ready.
Spiritual Growth and Maturity
And I've got to go. My time here is done. But the Spirit is coming and he will lead you in all those things. This is what it tells us that growth is progressive. Right?
With everyone who has been a child in here, and that would be every single one of us, and with everyone who has a parent, who has a children, you understand that you don't give your five-year-old the same responsibilities that you give your 13-year-old. Right?
You're not going to give your 14 or 15-year-old the keys to your car. Some of you will. I'm saying you're going to give them the keys to your car. You're not going to give your five-year-old that same responsibility. And growth comes in incremental times.
And the spiritual growth is the same way. God reveals truth to us as we can handle it. Oftentimes people come and say, Pastor James, I've got this theological question or this verse that I don't understand.
Why don't I understand it? Oftentimes it's because we're not spiritually mature enough for the Scripture to reveal itself to us.
It's not a new truth, but it's a truth that the Spirit is saying, listen, you're not ready to handle.
If you hear that, it's going to blow your mind and you're not going to be able to handle it. Let me grow you in Scripture and allow you to grow to this point where I can give you more truth. It is this progressive sanctification that we call.
And the Spirit comes in and He guides us into truth. The Spirit is not a spirit of confusion. He leads us in a way that gives us greater understanding for who Christ is.
He then leads us in this way of glorification where He glorifies Christ, not Himself. And the Spirit gives us things that the Father deems us to have.
This is a beautiful picture because God is a giver. He's not a taker.
As Job was, we've looked at this morning and we've looked at the last couple of weeks in Sunday school, as Job was, these things were taken away from him at the end of the book. The Bible says that God gave him back double
of what he had before because God says, I'm not going to take things. I'm going to give you things.
I'm going to be a blessing. I'm going to be a Father who loves you. And as we go through life, this is the thing that I want us to really understand as a church. The Spirit and the Scripture will never be contrary to one another.
If someone comes to you and says, I believe the Spirit is telling me to have an affair on my husband. And Scripture clearly tells us that this is not a good thing and it is not right, then it's not the right Spirit telling you that.
Right? It's the wrong Spirit telling you this. The Spirit will never go contrary to his word.
That is why it's so vital for us as a church to know the Scripture, to understand the Scripture, to have the full context of Scripture. So when the Spirit convicts us and the Spirit works in us, we know what is right and what is wrong. And the Spirit will always spotlight Jesus.
He's always going to grow us and draw us closer to him so that ourselves begin to get smaller and smaller. It's not about us. It's about Jesus.
As we begin to go through our life, as we begin to have an idea of what this looks like, if you've ever been on a plane and you've ever been up in the air, they have this new technology where you can actually see what the pilot sees.
They've got cameras and you can see.
And every once in a while, I don't do this often when I fly, but every once in a while, I'll click that button because I want to see what he's seeing, especially as we're coming in for a landing. And it's scary.
I'm like, I never want to be a pilot ever. Eddie's son is a pilot and I'm sure he does a great job. But the pilot, they come in and on these cloudy days, they don't try to figure out where to land. They find the lights. They find the runway for the lights.
And the pilot begins to direct that plane into the middle of the lights and begins to come in and take that landing, the perfect landing. And all of a sudden, he's following the lights.
He's following the direction for what the guy in the ear is telling him to do. Turn left a little bit.
Turn right. Now you're going to come and set it down. This is the spirit in our life. The spirit has already laid the path out for us. The lights are lit up.
It's are we listening and are we looking for what God has laid out for us? He wants us to clearly stay close to Christ.
He says the closer you stay to Christ, the more guidance you're going to have, the more fruit you're going to have, the closer you are to that vine that you are the branch and you're connected to, the more fruit you're going to have.
There are times where we've got to prune these branches that are way off because it's so hard for the vine to be able to get nutrients over to it. And you've got to get closer to the vine. You've got to get closer to what God has called us to do.
And if we want direction in our life, begin to submit our life to the spirit. Maybe it's direction for trusting in the Lord.
Maybe it's direction in saying, God, I don't know what the next step is going to be.
God, I don't know how I am to live my life when I finish school or when I finish work or when I finish college or as I begin to go into my retirement years. God, what am I going to do? Begin to say, God, I want to submit to the spirit.
My closing question, and as Terry comes and begins to play, are you growing in truth? Or oftentimes, this is where it can be in our life, are you collecting information?
I'm a collector of books. I love all kinds of books. Caleb just gave me one of his books that he wrote. And I love reading.
I love historical books. I love truth books. I love theological books.
And oftentimes, I can read just to collect knowledge instead of growing in my intention of saying, I want to grow in the truth of what God is telling me.
Took a couple of books with me this past week on our vacation, and I got to read through a couple of them. And I want to be intentional. I always take two things with me. I take a highlighter, and I take a pen.
Because I want to write things down so I can flip back in that book and say, what is it here? And then I want to highlight some things that I can go back and say, this really was important in my life. This really spoke to me.
This is something that is impactful as I read through that. And so I want to be intentional on growing in these things, not just saying, hey, look at how many books I have.
Look at how great my knowledge of my library is.
And all of a sudden, we need to ask ourselves, are we in that same way growing in the truth of the gospel so that we can help other people when situations come in our life? A couple of closing statements I want to give us. You cannot abide in Christ and ignore his mission.
His mission is to go and to tell others about Christ, to go and to tell others what Christ did for us. You cannot grow as a Christian. You cannot abide in Christ and not be telling other people.
We must be telling other people and you cannot live on mission without the Holy Spirit's power. If you try to do this in your own strength, you're going to be like me on like Friday when we woke up on vacation and Bernie's like, Dad, can we climb the mountain again?
My knee's hurting. My back's hurting. I don't know if I can do that again, son.
Like when you try to do it in your own strength, you will burn out and you will fail.
But Christ says if you've got the Spirit with you, you will never fail because he is there and he is the one giving you life and giving you mission. The mission is too big for yourself.
And it was never to be done alone and it was never to be done by one person. Jesus had a disciples of 12 people and then Judas left and they replaced him with Matthias
and as he replaced them, they began to go out two by two. And Jesus sent them out and they began planting churches and they began growing up churches and these churches began to work the mission of the gospel in their community because this is never to be done by one solo
single person. If you try to live the mission without the Spirit, you will burn out. I've been there.
My very first ministry as I was in Idaho, I was going from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m., 11 p.m.
and I was just this young guy who could handle the world and I'm going to go and I'm going to take the devil with a squirt gun and I'm going to be able to take care of all these things.
And I realized at the end of those four years, I did not realize until I left that ministry how exhausted I truly was because I was doing it in and of my own spirit and I was trying to say, Holy Spirit, you're just getting in the way. You're not moving fast enough.
Let me just get ahead of you. The Spirit says, I'm giving you these things because I'm trying to guide you and I'm trying to help you walk in the Spirit, not run in your own flesh and begin to burn out.
The Importance of Abiding in Christ
And abiding people are not idle people. If we're going to abide in Christ's church, we must be a church that is a church that is sent, that are telling people, that are reaching people that are around us, that are saying, come and see what God has done in my life.
Let me tell you about this excitement that God has given me in my life because it can't just stay inside of me. I've got to tell you and I've got to begin to live and work in the Spirit so that others will know who Christ is. Father, we love you this morning.
We thank you for what you've done. Lord, as we try to live in the Spirit, as we try to live on mission for you, help us to truly understand that your Spirit gives us power. Your Spirit gives us guidance. Your Spirit helps us in so many ways.
But help us also to understand that as much as we would love to see you, you were telling your disciples in this moment, it's better for me not to be here because the Spirit's going to come and indwell every single one of you.
And you're going to have the same Spirit in me as I have in myself, and you're going to be able to work in and of the Spirit. Lord, help us to live on mission.
Help us to be a people who are abiding in you and telling others about you. Lord, we thank you for what you've done. We thank you for the service this morning. Help us to respond appropriately this morning. In your name we pray. Amen.
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