Jesus Promises the Holy Spirit | John 14:15-31

Transcript is automatically produced. Errors may be present.

Brilliant. Thank you. Friends. Luxembourg, the heart of Europe. I guess that makes Britain the armpit of Europe. Don’t care for that.

Welcome friends. My name’s Alex. I get the privilege of being one of the pastors here at South. If you’re visiting looking forward to meeting you if you’re watching online. Great to have you with us in 2018. My wife and I grabbed a small tribe of people and we moved across the country to a place that we have no connections to pastoring a church there.

And we moved to upstate New York, threw everything we had in a U-Haul, put a trailer on the back with a car on it and made our way. Across to a place that we’ve often described as a bit of a wilderness. We talked to the church there and we’d had some bad news. The salary they could afford to pay us was particularly small, but there was some good news that came with it.

They had a parsonage. For us to live in. Now, if you’ve not been around the church world the term parsonage may be unfamiliar to you across history. It was a house that was given by the church to a pastor to live in that enabled him to live right in the heart of the community. And so across history, especially in England, often the parsonage was the second nicest house in the community.

It looked something like. Ah, there we go. Like that. Or like this or this beautiful buildings that enabled a pastor to live at such a level as he could invite people into the community and his house could be a hub. And so once we were told that we would have this personage to live in, we started scouting around on Google Maps to try and figure out which house around this church would be the house we would get to call home as long as.

And we were there and as we looked at the map, we noticed that there was one house that was literally on the church land. It was really closely connected and we looked at it closer on street view and found it was a beautiful two story house, nearly 3000 square feet, far bigger than any house we’d lived in before it even had a swimming pool in the backyard.

And so we were obviously rather excited. We got to New York to meet people and then asked about the parsonage, and then they told us the bad news. That was the old parsonage that sold that to the previous pastor who’d sold it again. And now we would get to live in the new parsonage, which looked like this, a particularly small house.

At least the back was mostly glass. So people from the church when they arrived could look into our back windows and contemplate what we were doing. But it was somewhat of a disappointment. In fact, it was smaller than the small apartment that we’d left in Michigan. Fortunately, it had an unfinished base.

And so I grabbed some YouTube videos, borrowed some tools, and got to work trying to create something out of this basement that had rust stains all over it from the many floods that the house had experienced. I made many trips to Home Depot and tried to just create something kids could run around in the long New York winters.

Finally, I got to this point where everything was done. It borrowed some or took some carpet padding from a friend who was redoing his basement and then went to a carpet warehouse and said, give me the cheapest carpet that you have. Rolled it out, and we were finished. It was great. Something to dwell in.

And then a while later, my wife came into the bedroom one morning and said, I got some bad news. I just went down into the basement and it’s flooded. There’s about eight inches of water there. We were later told 10 thousands of gallons of water pour in into the basement. I walked down to sea and the carpet I just put down just a couple of weeks before was just resting on the surface of the water.

Modern day miracle began to panic and called as many people as it could just to find out what our insurance company might do to replace it. And they told me it’s unlikely they’ll be able to replace it into what it was. But then we got some good news. We were told that because the building was attached to the church, it was.

Owned under a corporate policy, so they would come in and do everything that was needed to be done. Suddenly the house was a hive of workmen. They came and cleaned everything else out for us. They really rebuilt my shady building work and they put in the nicest carpet I’ve experienced to this day. It was a work, it seemed to us of grace of surprise.

It came free of charge on the house. I tell you this story ’cause I want us to contemplate a question today. I think a question that is half answered in the chapter we just heard. How does transformation happen? How does change happen? This is my premise here. We are for the most part, a group of people that are trying to live in the way of Jesus with the heart of Jesus.

It’s what we have on our wall over there. Yeah, but I’m gonna guess that in this room there are all sorts of us that might say. I don’t feel like I’m particularly good at that. I’ve been following Jesus for this many years, and the percentage of that journey, if that could be measured in percentage that I have completed to look like Jesus, feels like it might be in single digits.

It feels like me living like Jesus is watching a tree grow. It just doesn’t happen as quick as you expected to happen. But before we get too far down that journey, a reminder of the season we’re in. We’re in the season known as Lent. It’s a season of renewal. Of change. It actually comes from an old English word, LinkedIn, which means springtime or in Colorado, more springtime.

It’s that feeling that you have when you start to see life emerge out of nowhere. After sitting through winter, there’s the tiny CHS of green that start to emerge. Trees start to change. I always notice the tree out in our courtyard. Perhaps you’ve caught a glimpse of it. It’s dead right now, but it quickly expands into this glorious spreading tree, and then in, in autumn, turns an incredible shade of red lent.

Is springtime a reemergence here? Here’s a couple of ideas attached to that. This is Alexander Sheerman, Greek Orthodox Pastor, the liturgical traditions of the church. All its cycles and services exist, first of all, in order to help us recover the vision and the taste of that new life, which we so easily lose and betray so that we may repent and return to it.

Esau McCauley, the church presumes. That life is long, that zeal fades, not just for some of us, but for all of us. So it is included within its life, a season in which all of us recapture our love for God and his kingdom, and cast off those things that so easily entangle us. That’s what we do during Lent.

It’s also what we do when we come to this table. Here where we gather around Eucharist or Mass or the Lord’s Supper, we come back, we return, we gaze upon Jesus again, and we long again for change, for transformation. The passage we heard started with this idea, right? If you love me, keep my commandments. If you love me the word for love there is agape.

The same love that God has for us, that in dying for us, we might have the same love, not only for him, but for others as well. If you love me, keep my commandments. Which commandments is he talking about here? It’s not completely clear, but there’s some options may, maybe it’s the one that we read just a couple of weeks ago that Aaron taught us.

John 13. A new commandment I give you love one another. A thing that we’re, for honest Christians seem more wired not to do. Than to do. If you’re connected to the wider Christian world as I am, you might see that Christians have a habit of the moment. Anyone expresses a thought or an opinion that’s remotely different to the expected opinion.

Everyone seems to get rather angry. Love for Christians seems like there’s been a particularly difficult thing to do for one another, but this is the command love one another as I have loved you. With the same love that Jesus had when he gave his life. We’re supposed to love each other. The example might be that somewhere I might doubt that I would give my life for any of you, but I’m supposed to.

I’m supposed to. Or maybe it’s Matthew 22, Jesus famous commandments, the two greatest commandments. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and with all your mind. And then the second, like it, love your neighbor as yourself. All the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments, two incredible statements that Jesus makes that suggest just how high his commandments might be, how hard it might be to live in his way with his heart.

God’s great purpose for us it seems is transformation. That you and I, whatever we look like now, might one day look like Jesus. As hard as that might be to believe. Now notice there’s a couple of questions that we’re not asking here. The question we’re asking is, how might we come to look like Jesus?

The question isn’t, do I want to be formed at all in any way? It seems like by nature you will be something in life will give you the example that you will follow. In actual fact, this seems to be the reason that poor one of Jesus followers says in Romans 12, do not conform to the pattern of this world.

Think how easy that is to do. For just a second. Maybe we’ll just begin with where we live. We live in Denver. This is Denver in case you are unsure. Mile High City, a city that began as a gold rush. People came to Denver because they could make their fortunes, they could change their whole lives by moving here and perhaps.

Nothing has changed. Now you move to the tech center instead of to the mountains to make your fortune. Look, Colorado had more Olympic athletes than any other nation. Perhaps you come here to make your fame and fortune, but something perhaps about this city tells you that you can make it, you can become something special.

You. Can do it. Maybe it’s connected to this idea of the West and what it was to leave the old places and come to new places. This is a great little quote from Wallace Stenger, the West is associated in our minds with escape from history and oppression and law and irks and obligations and absolute freedom, and the road has always led West.

Maybe there’s something about Colorado that instinctively tells us we are individuals and we get to do what we want, and yet that isn’t the way of Jesus. I’m not asking you do you want to be formed in a particular way. I’m just telling you that maybe you have to choose. We don’t choose if we are formed, maybe let’s say it that way.

We simply choose how we are formed. Who is the thing, who’s the example? That we get to chase after. I’m also not asking you how can you and I become nice or any extension from that question. How can we be better parents? Although that might be important. How can we be better Americans? Although that might be important or any extension of those questions.

Nice. It turns out, is pretty subjective. The comedian John Mullaney. Talks about his relationship with the Rolling Stones singer, Mick Jagger. He talks about his encounters with this incredibly famous person and records that many times people have asked him this question. Is Mick Jagger nice? And he says that depends, right?

I’m sure in his world he’s nice, but he lives in a world where for 60 years or however long he’s been around, he simply said, I want this or I want that, and he gets his way every single time. That doesn’t really make you nice by most of our standards. Nice is subjective and nice is fine, but we’re not talking about being nice, are we?

We’re talking about living like Jesus. So the standard isn’t nice. It’s Jesus of Nazareth and how he lived and how he operated in the world. The question isn’t, do I want to be formed at all? The question isn’t, do I want to be nice? The question is, how do I become like Jesus? How do I grow into a life where I actually look like Jesus looked?

In this world, we might imagine. What it might look like for every single one of us to resemble Jesus in his character and imagine the world that we might help create. The great writer, CS Lewis once said, I’ve only met 10 people in my life that I feel have truly begun to do that, and we realize how high the bar actually is.

But Paul, this writer says, be transformed by the renewing of your mind, and then you’ll be able to test and approve what God’s will is his good, pleasing and perfect will. I want you to grasp with me just how spectacular this change is that he’s talking about, and the change Jesus implies we might go under when we obey His commandments.

The word he uses is this Greek word metamorpho. That’s where we get our word metamorphosis from. It’s the same change that a caterpillar undergoes when it wraps itself in a cocoon and slowly emerges. As a butterfly, I used to think that change was pretty simple. I actually used to think that the caterpillar just grew wings, but it turns out that isn’t the case.

When the Caterpillar wraps itself in this cocoon, its whole body disintegrates. And it comes out as a completely new creation, as spectacular as if a mouse were to wrap itself in a ball and come out as a hummingbird. This is the kind of change that we’re talking about that God has in mind for you and me, and I’m sure that by now you’ve determined that there’s a problem with that.

We could talk about this on all sorts of philosophical levels around all sorts of desires that we might have, but I’m gonna talk about it in terms of food. This is the Skirted Heifer a restaurant that my family and I were introduced to recently by some friends. It is a wander of a restaurant, particularly the one item menu.

They have the Snap Dragon burger. I would eat this burger every day for the rest of my life. In fact, the day after eating there in Colorado Springs, I nearly went back the next day to get exactly the same thing. But there’s a problem there, right? On one hand, I desire to constantly eat this particular burger and I’m hoping many of you go and take the opportunity to visit ’cause it’s worth it.

On one hand, I want to keep eating this burger. On the other hand, I know that if I keep doing that, I won’t live very long. It will hog my arteries as this burger is full of calories. And so then there’s a third piece. Am I willing to go with the desire that I have to eat the burger or am I willing to go with the desire that I have to live a long and healthy life?

Living with the way of Jesus is no different. Thus part of me that longs to live with the way of Jesus. And there’s another part of me that longs to do whatever I want and sometimes. The third piece isn’t as strong as I want it to be. I’m not particularly good at it. Sometimes I more resemble the prayer of Theresa Avila, oh God, I don’t love you.

I don’t even want to love you, but I want to love you. Do you have that core there somewhere, even as someone who struggles deeply with faith, perhaps. Do you have that core that says, actually, God, a long, somewhere deep inside me to live in the way of Jesus. But there’s times, at least in my life where that seems far from the very center in my being, we are a community living in the way of Jesus with the heart of Jesus, or at least trying to do that for this world.

So here’s the question that I’d love us to focus on for the rest of the time. How does that change happen? What can I enter into and what is outside of me that leads me deeper into the way of Jesus? So I over time look more and more like him as his dream for me seem to be in the beginning. How do I, how do you become more like Jesus?

As we’d expect from the passage Jesus has. Ideas and the first one seems to be here. I will ask the father and he will give you another advocate to help you and be we with you forever. I will ask the father and he will give the, and at the beginning of the sentence suggests that the last sentence is important.

The last sentence was the one where he said, if you love me, obey your commandments. We might take from that. This implication. The only people who are great at obeying his commandments get this gift that he’s about to unpack, but that’s actually not what he’s saying. He’s saying that this gift he’s talking about is particularly for people that have put their hands up and said, I want to follow Jesus for myself.

I want to take his commandments as the central thing. I want to trust in him as the centerpiece of my life. The gift described is one given to those who will follow Jesus. So what is it? And he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever. The term advocate is this term, parly. It means helper, perhaps comforter, perhaps one that stands alongside you, one that is with you constantly, whose presence is with you constantly to help you.

A helper maybe is another way of saying that Jesus envisions a gift, a person that will be that person for us, and then he gives us the term, the spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him because it neither sees him nor knows him, but you know him for he lives with you and will be in you. Jesus says, you have seen this person at work.

You’ve seen him in my life, and now this person will be in deepest relationship with you. Jesus to his followers is revealing revolutionary theology. For the first time in history, he is unpacking the idea that God isn’t just one but three persons in one. Imagine hearing this for the first time and trying to understand what on earth he’s talking about.

Imagine growing up in a Jewish community where all your life you’ve recited. This poem, this saying, the Lord I God, the Lord is one. And now Jesus is saying, no. It’s more than just that. He’s talking about this character, this person, the Holy Spirit. This is Pope Francis. To put it simply, the Holy Spirit bothers us because he moves us, he makes us walk.

He pushes the church to go forward, and we are like Peter at the Transfiguration. Ah, how wonderful it is to be here like this altogether, but don’t bother us. As I was planning the sermon, I wondered about this. For a community like South that tends to be a little bit reserved. If you’d have asked 18-year-old Alex about life in the way of Jesus, he would’ve given you one answer.

The Holy Spirit does the work, wait for change. A church would operate with many a prayer time down the front where you would come out perhaps a hundred, 200 times waiting for God to change something in your life. Interestingly, I often saw that change past experiences or heal past experiences, heal physical sicknesses even, but I never saw it change character in people.

Then on the other hand, if you were to ask 30-year-old Alex who came across writers like Dallas, Willard and Frederick Ner, that Alex would’ve said change happens because we work at it. We enter into spiritual practices like prayer, like fasting, like silence and solitude, and that does the work. But if you ask me today, I’d suggest it has to be both, right?

That somewhere change happens when those two. Things combine. The Holy Spirit, though to many people is a nerve wracking conversation subject. The writer Gordon Fee said this, that for many Christians, if they’re honest, the term Holy Spirit refers to a gray oblong that is not really understandable. It seems like an obscure definition, and yet.

It’s one that I’ve talked to many people about and many people have said yes. When I picture the Holy Spirit, that is exactly what I have in mind. A gray oblong for much of the church, if we’re honest, the Holy Spirit is like a distant relative that we don’t want to invite to the weddings because he usually does something unusual that catches everybody’s attention.

But to Jesus, it seems that this character is central to everything. Jesus lays out this idea of what in theological terms, I don’t want you to get lost. Here is the economic trinity. Yes, you can spend all your time trying to understand how God can be three and yet one at the same time, but this term simply relies on what they do to help us understand who God is.

Quite simply, it looks like this. The father Wills. Wills for what he wills for the world for this plan of creation. The son works. He does the physical work of death and resurrection, and then he talks about this Holy Spirit character who comes and applies it to us. It’s here in picture form, in a picture called Rublev Trinity.

You have three figures, the father, the son, and the Holy Spirit. The father is distant from the table, which is the Earth. The son has two fingers on it because he’s deeply connected with the work that happens here, and the Holy Spirit is completely on the table present still here today, according to Jesus when it comes to transformation.

There is a part that God plays, that God does for us. It’s here. In the words of John 14, I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you. Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me because I live. You will live On that day. You will realize I’m in the Father, and you are in me, and I’m in you.

Trinity language, right connected. Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me. The one who loves me will be loved by my father, and I too will love them. Show them to myself. All this I have spoken while still with you, but the advocate, the Holy Spirit. Whom the father will send in my name, Trinity.

Connected again, right will do what? Teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you. In essence, Jesus says to his first followers, all of the things I’ve taught over this time. Not only will you forget regularly, but you also have been unable completely to apply it, and yet this person, the Holy Spirit, will make that possible for you.

Brother Yan, leader in the Chinese underground Church, a man who attended a seminary where instead of teaching some of the courses they teach here, they teach you how to jump out of a second story building while handcuffed and all sorts of wonderful things said. I encourage you to ask God to reveal those areas of your life where you have placed limits on him.

There is a part God plays in us becoming like Jesus. But also there is a part we play to that seems essential, unavoidable. This is the part that this writer Paul talks about in Second Corinthians three, and we all who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory. He’s just talked about a time back in history before Jesus’ death and resurrection where it was impossible to really look on God.

He says, now we don’t live in that place. You and I get to contemplate to see him even something he says has changed his term, contemplate lands us in that space of practice. What do you and I do? So we can see God more clearly. How do we stare at him? How do we enter into practices like prayer and fasting and reading, and silence, and solitude, all of which are designed to help us capture a piece of the mystery that is God?

All we with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory. Our being. That word again transformed into his image with ever increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who he is, the Spirit. This is Henry Nower on this idea. Spiritual formation prepares us for a life where we move away from our fears, compulsions, resentments, and sorrows to serve with joy and courage in the world, even when this leads us to places we would rather not go.

Spiritual formation helps us see the face of God. In the midst of a hardened world and in our own hearts, I think this is the general message of the New Testament on transformation. The Holy Spirit, Jesus pictures as the agent of change that he loves to partner with You. He loves to find longing for transformation in all of us.

He loves it when we show the slightest bit interest in becoming like him. He loves it. I would suggest even when we put our hand up and say, I, if I’m honest and not very interested at all, but I want to be interested. This picture, this icon has been a mystery to people for years because there’s a part of it low down where it looks like something has broken off, where it looks like something has been lost.

And as people investigated, asked questions about it, looked at it throughout history, they discovered this idea that what was there at the bottom, where it’s grainy and dirty was a mirror. It was a mirror. The picture was designed for you to look at it and see your own face reflected back, not as absent from this regarding relationship with himself, but present in relationship too.

You are invited into relationship with God and that it seems is where the transformation happens, but this is my concern. For churches like South who tend to not like some of those more supernatural elements, who if we’re honest at times, void questions about who the Holy Spirit is and how he might operate.

My fear is this has the gift Jesus was most excited about, become the gift we are least excited about. Have our fears perhaps about what this person may do caused us to withdraw, have our concerns about the type of church we want to be seen to be led us to avoid relationship with the Holy Spirit has the very thing Jesus said, this is central, gotten lost because it’s easier to focus on what we do.

Jesus ends with these words. Peace I leave with you. My peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid. Jesus, words about fear are centered around the idea that you won’t be alone. That this relationship with the Holy Spirit continues, becomes central.

You might argue theologically that Jesus sees the Holy Spirit as his replacement here with us. It’s the reason he can say, outlandishly, it seems it’s better that I go away ’cause you’ll enter into a new relationship. One more quote for you, Ruth Haley Barton. You might think that your woundedness, sinfulness.

And giftedness personality type, job title, identity as husband, wife, and mother, or father defines you. But in reality, it is your desire for God and your capacity to reach for more of God than you have right now. That is the deepest essence of who you are. Have you perhaps been a person? Who would say, I’ve just waited around believing that God will change me whenever he’s ready, just waited, saying, I hope one day I wake up and look more like Jesus waited for the tree to grow.

On the other hand, perhaps you’ve been a person that might say, I have tried so hard. I’ve done every practice you might imagine. Yeah, everything I can think of. Prayed every prayer, gotten up early, done all of the things, and still years later, if I’m honest, I don’t look like very much like Jesus at all.

Where are you waiting for transformation? Maybe the answers here. Maybe on one hand there’s something to do, something to pick up. Something to try. Maybe there’s times of prayer, fasting, silence, solitude, all of the different ways that people have cast out these ideas of spiritual disciplines that might lead to transformation.

Maybe you’ve done all those things and the person you’re missing is the Holy Spirit. Jesus, as we gather at this table. This place of remembering, it’s also a place of your presence. If you’re new to south, we believe we don’t. Sorry if you’re new, we don’t believe that This is a place where the body and the blood become the bread and the wine become the literal body and blood of Jesus.

But we also don’t believe it’s just symbolic and doesn’t matter. We believe this is a place where God is distinctly present. In this time, and so perhaps that’s the invite to come here and receive, to come here and say, holy Spirit, I would long for a relationship with you, Jesus. I would long to be transformed in your image.

Father, thank you for your grand story. That invites me in

on the night that he was betrayed. Jesus gathered with his earliest followers. Taking the bread. He handed it to each of them, said, this is my body broken for you. In the same way he took the cup and handing it to them, said, this is my blood shed for the sins of the world. As long as you gather together.

Do this in remembrance of me. Jesus, thank you for the work you’ve done for us. May it lead to deep transformation. May people say of us, you look like Jesus. Amen. Would you stand friends as Aaron and the team lead us? Whenever you’re ready, come and take the elements. I’m gonna invite you to take the bread personally as a contemplative moment, and we’ll take the cup together.