Immanuel Sermon Audio
Immanuel - You
Amen. There's an outline in the bulletin. The outlines the last couple of weeks have been pretty bare bones. We're going through a series during the month of September. We've taken a break from the Gospel of Luke, which we will pick back up next Sunday, talking about a line from that song, Luke 19, 10, the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost. We'll pick back up with that next week. But this morning, one more Sunday, thinking about our church mission statement. And here's the mission statement. God is with us for His glory, for the world, for this city, and for you. And we've spent three weeks so far working through this statement, looking at Bible passages that teach us by example and by story what this statement means for us as a church family. And so we talked week one about God's glory and God's passion for His glory. We looked at Isaiah 6 and the angel singing holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty. The entire earth is filled with His glory. So we've talked about glory. The second week we looked at Matthew 28, the great commission. We talked about God's heart for the world. And it's important that we talk about the world before we talk about our city. Even though Acts 1 8 sort of gives you a progression from Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria to the ends of the earth. You've got to have a global vision. And if you start at home and say we're not going anywhere until we get done at home, you're never going to get done at home and you're never going to do anything for the world. And so you've got to begin with a global vision. We talked about that from Matthew 28. Last week, as we celebrated 75 years as a church family and God's faithfulness to our church family, we talked about what does it mean that God is with us for the city, for the good of Odessa. And we looked at a story from the book of Jeremiah where Jeremiah and the people were getting ready to go into exile. And God told the folks, you need to seek the good of the city to which I'm sending you. And you need to pray to the Lord on behalf of the city that you find yourself in. And this morning, after all of that, we finally come to you. So you do matter, but you come after God's glory. You come after the world. You come after the good of your city. And finally, we talk about ourselves as individuals. What does it mean that God is with us for our good and for your good. And we're going to look at a story in John chapter 14. Many of these verses are going to be familiar verses to you this morning, but we're going to begin by reading the entire chapter of John 14. So you follow along in your Bible or on the screen as I read. This is the word of God. John 14 beginning in verse 1. Jesus speaking and he says, "Let not your hearts be troubled. Even God, believe also in me. And my father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go to prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself that where I am, you may be also. And you know the way to where I'm going." Thomas said to him, "Lord, we do not know where you're going. How can we know the way?" Jesus said to him, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you had known me, you would have known my Father also from now on, you do know Him and have seen Him." Philip said to him, "Lord, show us the Father. It is enough for us." And Jesus said to him, "Have I been with you so long and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, 'Show us the Father? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you, I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does His works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me or else believe on account of the works themselves. Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do and greater works than these will He do because I am going to the Father. Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it. If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father and He will give you another helper to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him. You know Him for He dwells with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you. Yet a little while in the world will see me no more, but you will see me because I live, you also will live. In that day you will know that I am in my Father and you and me and I in you. Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, He it is who loves me. And He who loves me will be loved by my Father and I will love Him and manifest myself to Him. Judas, not a scariest, said to Him, "Lord, how is it that you will manifest yourself to us and not to the world?" Jesus answered Him. If anyone loves me, He will keep my word. And my Father will love Him and we will come to Him and make our home with Him. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words. And the word that you hear is not mine but the Father who sent me. These things I have spoken to you while I am still with you but the helper, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in my name, He will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you. Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you, not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled. Neither let them be afraid. You heard me say to you, "I am going away and I will come to you. If you loved me you would have rejoiced because I am going to the Father for the Father is greater than I. And now I have told you before it takes place so that when it does take place you may believe. I will no longer talk much with you. For the ruler of this world is coming. He has no claim on me. But I do as the Father has commanded me so that the world may know that I love the Father. Rise, let's go from here. Bow and let's pray. But again we are grateful for your word and we are grateful that we have copies of your word, we have it in a language that we understand. Father we are grateful that your word is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword. And Father as we think about our church and our mission as a church family and as we think about you being with us for your glory and for the world and for this city and even for us as individuals. Father as we think about the Holy Spirit as we listen to this Trinitarian passage where the Son talks about the Father and the Spirit and all that the triune God has done for sinners. We are humbled and we are amazed and we pray that you would give us understanding, give us hearts to receive what you have for us this morning. Father help us to apply it to our lives as individuals and as a church family. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. There's a lot of things about the gospel of John I wanted to share with you. In fact when I started working on my sermon this week I had about a whole page of just neat things about John, things that make John unique and I scratched all of that for the sake of time. I wish I had time to share it with you. But there's one thing about John that I do want you to know that sets John apart a little bit from the other three Gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke. And it's the idea that John is a gospel of suffering. It's a gospel of suffering. And by suffering I don't mean our suffering or John's suffering, I mean Jesus' suffering. And you can see that it's a gospel of suffering when you look at the outline for the book of John. I'll put it on the screen. It's a very simple outline. Two parts to the book. The first part, chapters one to twelve covers three years of Jesus' life. Twelve chapters for three years. And he's just sort of moving along, hitting the high points, sharing things that he thinks are important. And then you come to John 13 and he just slams the breaks on. And it just, the action just almost comes to a complete standstill. And the last few chapters of the Gospel of John only cover one week, the last week, in Jesus' life. And when you look at that outline, you understand what John thought was the most important part of the story of Jesus. Christmas story is important. John didn't even include it. The miracles are important. John included some of them. The things that Jesus had to say about himself are important. John has some of that. But the most important thing that John wants you to take away from this book as a whole is the last week of Jesus' life. Passion week. The week of his sufferings. And so our passage, John 14, fits neatly in this last week of Jesus' life. In fact, this is the night before Jesus dies on the cross for sinners. And he's sitting down and he's talking to his closest friends. And these are sort of his last instructions, his last chance to look him in the face before he goes to the cross and to share truth with him. And the first thing he says in John 14, one is look at this. He says, "Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God. Believe also in me. And my father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, what I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you. If I go prepare a place, I will come again and take you to myself that where I am, you may be also." Those are some of the most comforting words in the entire Bible. Those are words that if you've been to very many Christian funerals, you have heard read in that context because when people are grieving and people are scared and people are hurt, we read those words and they're amazingly comforting. Jesus says, "Don't be afraid. I'm leaving but I'm going to come back for you and you and me are going to be together." Amazing comfort comes from those words. But when Jesus first spoke them, they were not at all comforting. When He said it to the disciples in the upper room and He looked at them in the eyeballs and He said, "Let not your hearts be troubled. I'm going away and then I'm going to come back for you." They just shut off and all they heard was, "I'm going away." And we read those verses today and we're so comforted. They heard those words and they were terrified. Jesus says, "Look, I'm leaving but you know the way." In Thomas, we know Thomas struggled to believe at times, struggled to have faith at times. Thomas says what? Verse 5, "Jesus, Lord, we don't know where you're going. How can we know the way? How are we going to come behind if we don't know where you're going?" And Jesus says these famous words in verse 6, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." We talked about that verse in our new member class this morning. I can't tell you how many times I have read or listened to somebody try to qualify that statement, John 14-6. Try to soften it a little bit. Try to make it less exclusive. Try to make it less hard, less narrow minded. Jesus said, "Thomas, I am the way to where you need to go. I am the truth. I am the life." And Thomas, "No one, no one, no one will come to the Father unless they come through me. I am the way and the truth and the life." And no one comes unless they come through me. So Thomas has asked a question. Now, Philip asked a question. Now, we give Thomas a bad rep because we think about Jesus in the resurrection and Thomas wasn't there and he said, "Ah, I'm not going to believe it unless I see." So we call him what? Doubting Thomas. Listen, Philip was every bit the pessimist that Thomas was. You can go back and you can read in John 6. You remember the time all these folks were crowded around Jesus and they were hungry and they wanted something to eat. And the disciples, they're out in the middle of nowhere. They don't have enough money to buy lunch. They don't have a place to buy lunch if they had the money to buy lunch. And so they're sort of scratching their heads thinking, "What are we going to do? We're about to have a riot on our hands." And you can go back and John 6, Jesus, looks specifically at Philip and he says, "Philip, what are we going to do? Not Peter, what are we going to do, the leader, not Judas, the treasurer, what are we going to do? Philip, what are we going to do here, bud?" And Philip immediately pops off with how much money it's going to cost to feed everybody. In other words, Philip's been sizing this thing up. 5, 10, 15, 20 times 5 bucks at McDonald's. It's not adding up. We do not have the funds to feed these folks. This is big trouble. He's running all this through his head and all of a sudden Jesus says, "Hey, Philip, what are we going to do?" And Philip says, "Well, here's how much it would cost to buy lunch somewhere." The Bible says that Jesus asked him that question because he knew what he was thinking. He was a warrior and he was a bean counter. And Philip, after Thomas says, "We don't know the way," and Jesus gives this profound answer, look what Philip says. It's the same question. Lord, show us the Father. It's enough for us. You said, "No one comes to the Father, but through you, will we just want to see the Father?" And you can almost see Jesus put his hand up on his forehead. Oh, Philip. Philip, Philip, Philip, Philip, Philip. Philip the bean counter. And he says to Philip, "Look, Philip, have I been with you so long? You still don't get it." Philip, if you have seen me, you've seen the Father. If you know me, you know the Father. If you have a relationship with me, you have a relationship with the Father. Jump down to verse 15. Look what Jesus says here. I know that we have to skip some of the things in this chapter for the sake of time, but look what Jesus says in John 15. He says, "If you love me, you will keep my commandments." He is defining the relationship between him and his followers, or him and his friends, or him and his disciples. And he says to them, "If you love me, you'll keep my commandments. Love for me results in obedience." That makes some people uncomfortable. And that makes us so uncomfortable that we decide on our own to sort of change it. Not officially, we're not going to pull Jamie aside at the end and say, "Hey, look, next edition of the Gideon's Bible, let's rewrite this verse. No one's going to do that." But here's how we do it. We change it, and some of us who are prone to be more legalistic and Pharisaical, change it to say, "Well, God will love you if you keep his commandments." First, you keep the commandments, then God will love you. But that's the mistake of the Pharisees, and that's not what Jesus says in John 14. He doesn't say, "Keep the commandments, and then I love you." He says, "If you really love me, and we have a genuine relationship, you will keep my commandments." That makes other people uncomfortable in a different way, and we say things like, "Well, Jesus, he hates the sin, but loves the sinner. Jesus really doesn't care what you do. I mean, he loves you no matter what. Jesus' love is free, it's perfect, it's complete, and there's a little bit of truth in all of those statements, but that's not what Jesus says either. Jesus says, "If you love me, you will keep my commandments." I hope that you don't have friends like this, because elsewhere, Jesus said it a little bit differently. He said, "If you are my friends, you'll do what I tell you to do." I hope Jesus is the only friend you have that gets to say that. If you have other friends who say, "I will be your friend as long as you do exactly what I tell you to do," you need new friends. Jesus gets to say that, though. He's not like your other friends. No one else has the right to say that to you, but Jesus says, "Look, if we're friends, you're going to do what I say, and if you really love me and you really have a relationship with me, you will obey my commandments." He not only says it in verse 15, but he says it again in verse 21, and again in verse 23, and again in verse 24. Don't miss the promises he makes to those who love him and keep his commandments. Here are the promises, verse 18. Look at it. "I will not leave you as orphans. I will not leave you alone." That's good news. Jesus is not going to leave me to fend for myself. Look at verse 19. I'm going to give you life. You draw a line from verse 19 back to John 14, 6, where Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. I'm going to give you life." Verse 21, he says, "I'm going to manifest myself to you. I'm going to reveal myself to you, not to the entire world, but to you." And at that point, there's another question. This time it is Judas. Not Judas is scary yet, but one of the other disciples named Judas. The only time his words are recorded in Scripture, and here's his question, verse 22, Lord Jesus, how will you manifest, reveal, how will you show yourself to us and not to the world? And the short answer is through the Holy Spirit. Jesus says, "I will send my Spirit. The Father will send the Spirit to be with you. You won't be left as orphans. You will receive life. You will receive all of the comfort and the help that you need, and you'll receive it through the Holy Spirit." Look at verse 26. He says, "The Spirit will teach you. He will help you to remember the things that I've shared with you." Verse 27, "He will bring you peace." You draw a line from verse 27 back up to verse 1, where Jesus said, "Let not your hearts be troubled." And obviously, Thomas was troubled. And Philip was troubled. And Judas, not as scary it, was troubled. Everyone in the room is troubled. And Jesus says, "Look, there's a solution to your fear, to your worry, to your trouble. And the solution is my Spirit that I will give to you." You can keep reading. In John 14, you can go through 15. You get to John 16. Jesus says some other things about the Holy Spirit. He says, "That the Spirit will convict the world of sin and righteousness and judgment." He says, "That the Spirit will point people to Himself." You can keep reading on that yourself. But our passage is John 14. And we've worked through most of it. And so I want to give you a few thoughts of application. What does it mean that God is with us through His Spirit for our good based on what we've seen in this chapter? First idea is this. God's concern for you has resulted in another helper, capital H helper. And this is quoting Jesus where He calls the Holy Spirit the helper. God's concern for you has resulted in the Holy Spirit, God Himself being with you. This is so obvious you can't miss it. Helper is capitalized because the helper is the Spirit. I'm not the helper. Your Sunday school teacher is not the helper. Our elders are not the helpers. Our deacons, not the helpers. The people sitting next to you, not the helper. The manual Baptist church is not the helper. Sometimes I talk with folks who communicate an idea to me that goes something like this. Church let me down. Church did not come through for me. Church failed me. The church failed my family. I think about a friend of mine at a previous church who looked me in the eye and he said, "Look, this church failed me. And this ministry in particular, this youth ministry, failed my son. And he's speaking to me because his son is living a life of flagrant and unrepentant rebellion. And his response to me is, "The church has failed me." And sometimes people have that idea because they're expecting the church to do what only the helper can do. I can't change hearts. Your Sunday school teacher cannot change hearts. Our elders cannot change hearts. The Spirit of God can change hearts. And sometimes people misplace their frustration and they get angry or they get frustrated with the church or a ministry or a program or a pastor or whoever when really what they need to be thinking about is, "Did I expect an organization, the church to do what only the Spirit can do?" Having your name on our role and being involved in our activities is not a magical formula for spiritual blessing in your life or your kids' lives. I wish it were in a sense, but it's not. It's not magic. The church hasn't failed you. It's not the church's job to change hearts. It's the Spirit's job to change hearts. It's the Spirit's job to convict of sin and righteousness and judgment. It's the Spirit's job to give life. It's not ours. Now you hear that and you begin to think. The wheels begin to turn and you say to yourself, "Well, what do we need the church for? The church can't do any of those things. Why am I here on a Sunday morning? I could have slept in. I could have gone to play golf. I could be in the deer stand. I could be doing 100 different things. Why am I here listening to a lecture on a Sunday morning? What do I need the church for if it's all the Spirit? I'm just going to chase the Spirit and forget the church. It's impossible. It cannot be done. What does Paul say to the Corinthians, 1 Corinthians 3? You're the temple of the Holy Spirit. And we take that and we say, "Oh, me, land and Coleman, the individual, temple of the Holy Spirit." That's not what Paul says. What Paul says to them is y'all, you guys, you are the temple of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit dwells in you. And so if you want the Spirit to work, church is important because the Spirit dwells in his people and his people are the church. But the first idea is this. God's concern for you is resulted in another helper. Number two, God's concern for you has made holiness possible. It's made holiness possible. That's true for you as an individual and it's true for our church corporately. No one hears under any illusion that we will arrive as holy people this side of heaven. That will not happen. But just because that won't happen, I don't want to water down what Jesus says and what the Bible says and that you and I are called to strive for holiness. Will we arrive there on our own power? Will we arrive there this side of glory? No, the Scripture calls us to strive after it. And Jesus says plainly, there's no way to really change it or water it down or explain it away. He says, if you love me, you will keep my commandments. My Spirit is going to live inside of you. And when Jesus starts talking about the Spirit coming, all of the men in the room and everyone in this room should go back to Jeremiah 31 that we talked about last week. When Jeremiah said, look, the days are coming when I will write God's law not on tablets of stone but on your heart. And you go back to Ezekiel 36 where Ezekiel says, look, the Spirit of God is going to come and take out your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh and move you to keep God's commandments. When Jesus says, if you love me, you're going to keep my commandments in the back of his mind and out of his own mouth, he's thinking, my Spirit's going to do this in you. I'm going to work it in you. I'm going to change your life. I'm going to change your heart. Holiness is possible. Listen, Paul said the exact same thing to the Corinthians, 1 Corinthians 6. He's talked about immorality in the church. He's talked about fighting in the church. He's talked about lawsuits in the church. He's talked about drunkenness in the church. He's talked about all this chaos in the church. And here's what he says to the Corinthians in chapter 6, verse 19 and 20. He says, do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you whom you have from God? You're not your own. You were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body. Paul says, into this mess of a situation exactly what Jesus says, holiness is possible for you. Cut the sin out of your life and follow hard after Jesus Christ. Holiness is possible because His Holy Spirit lives in you. The last idea is this, God's concern for you has provided you with truth. And that's truth with a capital T. God's concern for you has provided you with truth. There's some dangerous ideas about the Holy Spirit in truth. One of those ideas when you're on the mission field goes something like this. We go to a village. We meet a bunch of lost folks. We share a simple gospel message with them. We ask them to pray a prayer that is somehow magical and changing everything in their life. We give them a Bible and we move on to the next village and we say, "Congratulations, now you have a Bible in the Holy Spirit. Figure the rest of it out." It's been disastrous around the world on the mission field. Missionaries come to a village and they say, "Yeah, well some guy came and talked to us about Jesus and we said some sort of little ritual thing and he gave us this book and then he said, "We're good to go. Figure the rest of it out." We don't know what to do. That's not the Great Commission. We talked about the Great Commission. Make disciples of all nations baptizing them and teaching them to obey everything I commanded you. And as you do that, I'm with you to the end of the age. It looks different here. That's the mission field. But you see the same thing applied here and that a bunch of people get together. They crack their Bibles open. They read John 14, 6 and then they sit around and they talk about their feelings about that verse. Well, I feel like, well, what I feel like, well, I don't know, I was having my quiet time and then this thing happened and I think it was a sign and then this happened and I got this idea and then an email came through from a friend and I started and I feel like it doesn't matter what you feel. Forget the idea that the Holy Spirit is going to just mystically guide you into some kind of truth and understand that God has provided you with truth in his word. And the Spirit's job is not just to come to you when you're sitting at home and you feel warm and fuzzy and you're having your quiet time and he just zaps your brain with some sort of spiritual thought. The Spirit's job is to help you understand this book that he inspired and the Spirit's job is to help you remember the things that you have learned from this book and the Spirit's job is to point you towards Jesus. When Jesus says that my Spirit will come and teach you truth, remind you of truth, guide you into the truth, he is talking about truth in the right or wrong sense but he's also talking about him, John 14, 6, I am the way and the truth in the life and the Spirit's job is to point people to me. And my hope and my prayer that in this series is we've thought about what does it mean that God is with us for His glory, for the world, for the city and for you is that we appointed you towards Jesus. My prayer for our church is that whatever we're doing, working with Gonzalez Elementary, celebrating 75-year anniversary, preaching sermons, singing songs, whatever we're doing that we are pointing you and directing you as the Spirit does towards Jesus. And so as we finish this morning, very simply and very basically let me just end by pointing you towards Jesus. And let me remind you the context, not just in the gospel of John but in the Bible that this story fits in. The Bible says that God is holy, holy, holy. And there's a big problem because the Bible says that you and I are not. We're sinners and our sin causes us to fall far short of God's holy standard. There is nothing you can do and nothing I can do, nothing a church can do to fix that problem. But God has done for us what we could never do for ourselves and as we sang earlier the Son of Man has come to seek and to save the lost. Jesus came to live a life of obedience for you and He came to die to take your punishment. And as He speaks this word in John 14, He is hours away from dying your death. He died on the cross in your place. He rose from the grave three days later and His demand, His command, His imperative on your life is very, very simple. Repent and believe. Turn away from your sin and turn to Jesus in faith. Stop trusting in your own ability to be right before God and start trusting in what Jesus has done for you. And His promise to you is mind-blowing. There is no way I can put it into words or say it with enough emotion to convey the magnitude of this promise that Jesus says, "Not only am I forgiving your sins, not only am I clothing you in my righteousness, but even though I am now gone away, I will be with you to the end of the age. I will not leave you to fend for yourself. When I call you to repentance in faith, I am not expecting you to even do that on your own. I am sending my spirit to give you life and to bring conviction and to point you towards me. You will not be alone because I will be with you. The Father will send my spirit to be with you forever. My prayer for you is that that is real in your life. That there has been a moment in time or there has been a gradual build-up over time where you say, "You know what? As I sit here today, I believe what you have said about God. I believe what you have said about me. I believe what you have said about Jesus and I am rejoicing in the promise of His spirit in my life." If that time has never come and you say, "I have no idea what you are talking about, but I want to understand it and I want it to be part of my life, then I want to visit with you." Corey wants to visit with you. One of our elders wants to visit with you before you leave today. Let's pray together. Father, we love you. Your Word is true. Your Word is good. Father, we are thankful for the clarity of Scripture. We are thankful for the comforting words that Jesus spoke in John 14. Thank you for your spirit. Father, we pray for those of us here who know you, that your spirit would continue to work in us, to work through us, that you would bring to completion the work that you have started in us. Father, that as we work out our salvation with fear and trembling, we would acknowledge that you are the one through your spirit working in us to will and to work for your good pleasure. Father, for those who are here who have never put their faith in Jesus, we want them to do it today. We pray for your spirit to remove their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh. Father, give them the courage to visit or just speak with somebody who can explain what it means to trust in Jesus before they leave this place today. Father, we love you. Be honored as we sing. We pray it in Jesus' name. Amen.