John: The Paraclete

Pastor Fletcher preaches from John 14:15-31, where Jesus talks about sending the Holy Spirit to the disciples. Discussion points: The Holy Spirit is the tangible presence of the Lord with us, all Christians have the Holy Spirit with them but we may sometimes leave him on the front step instead of inviting him in, the Holy Spirit can speak to us in many ways and will never leave us alone.

• See Transcript

  Scripture reader: [John 14:15-31] 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 hears, 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 and 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, in 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 Iscariot, 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 fathers 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 because before it took 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 us go from here.

  This is the word of the Lord.

  Preacher: A couple of years ago, my family went on a camping trip with the Konz family actually, Jeremy is an elder here. And so we were all camping and adjacent campsites and the Konz kept on saying this thing, we didn't understand what they were talking about. They kept on going, hey Bear. And I was like, what are they talking about here? And they were copying this this TV show and they were telling us about it. And it's something that people would do to scare away the bears. Basically, you just shout very loudly like, hey bear. So we all start doing it and we still do it. today sometimes when we want to say hello to one another. but, they were telling us about this TV show and it's like a reality TV show. I haven't watched a reality TV show since the first season of Survivor. So it's been like a long time and, and I can still tell you about that first season of Survivor Richard was a scoundrel. He should not have won. He cheated everybody and thus started the reality TV movement.

  But they were telling us about this reality TV show called Alone. And it comes on the history channel and I'm like, who's making time for like, a reality TV show on the History channel. It's not me. but I went home, they were like, telling me so much about it. Have you seen it? I mean, this thing is captivating. It is a, I went home and watched multiple seasons of alone. Like it captivated me basically, the entire premise of the show is that they find 10 survivalists, like people that are trained in, surviving in the elements just on the land by themselves. Like these people, most of them, their full time job is to be like a survival training person. So these are the best people that you can find to do this type of thing. And they're a little crazy all of them. Ok? Because that's just what it is.

  And, they take 10 of them and they drop them via helicopter, you know, lightly, they, they bring the helicopter down. but they drop them via helicopter into many different locations in the same region. Ok. So they're all, each survivalist is completely alone and they drop them off, maybe, you know, 10 miles from the next person and they tell them, you know, don't walk to them. I don't know. and you get to bring 10 items with you of your own choosing. So it, it, most people bring like a rope, a tarp, an ax. sometimes I saw if you're really smart, you're gonna bring like some fishing line and maybe, a hook of some sort or a net. So they, they bring different items that they might want to use in their, in their alone, adventure.

  And the whole goal of the reality show is who can last the longest. Now, what's interesting is these people who have trained most of them for like, their entire lives is that they don't make it very long. They're out there and after 20 days they're like, I'm hungry, I'm using this satellite phone to call and tell them to come pick me up. So most people do not make, I think, like, half the crowd is whittled down after, like, 20 days and, and of the seasons that I've watched, only one person has made it 100 days. Only one dude, it is hard to live all on your own. The most fascinating part about how these people are so alone. They're setting up their cameras so you can watch them and they understand how to do that is just the psychological breaks that many people have. I mean, people start going nuts, they start losing it and they're out there.

  And one guy, he was one of the guys that was lucky enough and smart enough to figure out how to catch fish. He caught so many fish and he had built this little shack and he had the, the fish all smoked and, they were like, he had just like fish jerky hanging from the ceilings everywhere, but he wouldn't eat it because he was a, he was, he was hoarding it and then they send doctors every like month or so to come and check on the people and they got to him and they said, dude, you're medically technically starving and you have all this fish around and he's just psychologically, he wasn't there to think that he could eat the fish. He, he was just psychologically gone.

  It's really crazy what being alone will do to people. We were not made to be alone. There's an epidemic in the world and before the pandemic, the surgeon general at that time, who's now the surgeon general again, Biden just brought back Obama's surgeon general. He said, hey, there's an epidemic of loneliness and the health risks of loneliness are huge, huge. The things that loneliness does to us, the correlating factors that go there. My wife is an epidemiologist and so she would be correcting my causation and correlation charts here a little bit, but you get the point. Loneliness does not correlate well with good health outcomes.

  As we continue our series in the book of John, we find ourselves today in the middle of what we call the upper room discourse. And this is a farewell speech that Jesus delivers to his disciples on the night before he's betrayed and crucified and he's just told his disciples that he's going to leave them and they're all afraid of being alone after he leaves them, they're afraid of what might happen to them. And they're just so confused. They've spent the past three years of their lives following after Jesus. And now he's saying that they're gonna leave him that, that he's going to leave them and they're like, well, why can't we go with you? Why, why can't we go? And he's like, you don't know the way or you do know the way but you can't come with me. I'm going to come back.

  And so last week, we talked about all of this and it's really amazing that Jesus in his moment of personal anguish on the night before he's to be betrayed and crucified is spending his final moments comforting his disciples when he should be the one being comforted for, for certain. But he's spending all of his time caring for those that he loves. That is who Jesus is. Last week, we learned that when Jesus sees troubled hearts, he gives them a promise of a heavenly home.

  And this week we're going to build on that idea because he doesn't just promise them of a heavenly home. But when Jesus sees troubled hearts, he promises to make his home in them. He promises to make his home in them. Jesus not only has secured our heavenly home, but he's given us a gift known as the Holy Spirit who lives each and every day with each and every Christian. And this is the main emphasis of what we're looking at today. Jesus promises them the Holy Spirit. That's what the English standard version calls a helper. Now, more on that in just a minute, we'll talk about what that, what that means.

  This is the most extended teaching in the entire by Jesus on the Holy Spirit. And so we're just going to take some time to focus on the Holy Spirit. Who is he? And what is his, his goal? What is he doing? And how does he work in the world today? And how did he work then? And how is it different? And there's probably gonna be a lot of questions once I'm done and I'm happy to field those. But we're just really in this place where we need to hear who the Holy Spirit is as a church. And I'm going to take this as an opportunity.

  There's what we call, there's five of these Holy Spirit passages throughout the upper room discourse. And we're just gonna kinda cover them today because Jesus kind of weaves the Holy Spirit in and out of his entire teaching here. It covers like four or five chapters and it kinda comes in and, and, and goes away and he just kind of weaves the whole thing through it. It's one of the central themes and we're just going to be covering the verses that talk about the Holy Spirit today. The Holy Spirit is one of them is easily the most confused aspect of the Trinity. We believe in Trinity here, God, the Father God, the Son God, the Holy Spirit or Holy Ghost, if you speak the old King James English. And when I think about God, the Father, I have an image of what a father looks like. I am a father. I can understand what a father is.

  And when I think about God, the son, I have an idea of how a son might relate to a father. And I have an idea of what a son is. But when I think about God, the Holy Spirit, well, that just feels abstract. I've never met a spirit. So as such, it feels fuzzy, it feels like a oblong blur. I don't know, I don't know how to describe the Holy Spirit. It's easily one of the most confused aspects of all of Christianity and certainly the most confused aspect of the Trinity. Who is this Holy Spirit or even worse, even if you're just you can be confused with the Holy Spirit.

  But then there's a whole another step where you can be skeptical of the Holy Spirit. And there's many in our church and in our, in our Christian community who have been skeptical or even maybe even creeped out by the idea of the Holy Spirit. Maybe even as I talk about the Holy Spirit, you're bracing yourself and saying, oh, here we go into the weird stuff. I knew I should have slept in this morning, but here we are and the Lord has something to tell us about the Holy Spirit this morning.

  So here's my prayer for you and it's what I've been praying for the past several days. May our church enjoy a tangible presence of the Lord. May you enjoy the tangible presence of the Lord? That is who the Holy Spirit is. He is the tangible presence of the Lord with us today dwelling in each Christian. May you enjoy the tangible presence of the Lord? Verse 16, Jesus says, I will ask the Father and he will give you another helper to be with you forever. The Holy Spirit is a gift directly from Jesus. He is God with us. We're meant to enjoy his presence, not to approach him with skepticism and trepidation. Yeah, that is how many of us approach the Holy Spirit.

  I want you to just imagine with me for a moment that you're living overseas, that work or something has taken you overseas, the schools taking overseas and it's Christmas morning and you did not have the financial resources to be able to fly home to visit your family. And instead you're stuck in this overseas nation with a Christmas tree that would make Charlie Brown's Christmas tree look glamorous. OK? And you're just sitting there alone when you hear a ring at the doorbell and you walk to the door and you open the door and it is all of your loved ones standing there saying a rich benefactor has sent us to be with you today on Christmas morning.

  How would you respond? Would you leave them on the porch and say, hold on, I need to go research this a little bit more. I need to see. Can I see your identification? I need to match that with the identification of my family that I have written down in here. Would you leave them on the porch or would you just immediately invite them in and say, come in and enjoy their presence friends too often. We leave the Holy Spirit on the porch. He has been sent as a gift to us to enjoy the tangible presence of God. Yet we have said, we're glad you're here. I'm glad you're in the vicinity. Why don't you stay on the porch? I'm gonna do my thing on the inside here. Jesus wants us to enjoy the presence of God.

  Let's look at our text today. Verse 15. This is this the first verse chapter 14 verse 15. Jesus says, if you love me, you will keep my commandments. Again. The upper room discourse is this long teaching. that Jesus gives is the longest extended teaching in the book of John. It covers several chapters and what he's doing is he's giving a farewell speech to his children in the faith. And one of the main emphasis that we have here is this new commandment that He has given us to love one another as he has loved us. And with this new commandment, he's reminding us again, if you love me, you will love one another. If you love me, you will follow my commandments. And what is the commandment that you love one another?

  And so that's just what Jesus is doing. He's saying if you love me, you will love one another. Verse 16. And I will ask the father and he will give you another helper to be with you forever. Now, the ESV, the, the translation that we use in this church is, is the ESV. And you can use other translations. You're certainly not gonna be cast out unless you're using one of those bad ones. I don't, no, I'm just kidding. Not really. We're happy to have the Bible here. OK. We use the ESV generally when we're reading, it's what I use. And there's a lot of different reasons but all, all the Bible versions have pluses and minuses with them. But the one that we read ESV, it translates this word into Helper with a capital H and it's the idea of the Holy Spirit.

  Now, that's not what it says in Greek. And there's actually not an English word that well translates the word in Greek. The word in Greek is Periclete. Everybody say Periclete, it's periclete. And the word for Periclete has had many different translations over the years. We've seen many different things here. We've seen the word helper. Counselor advocate Comforter. It depends on your Bible translation. There's a lot of different words that can go here and they each have their pluses and minuses.

  Comforter was actually a fantastic translation for Periclete back when it was originally translated in that, in the King James version because when we think, it just doesn't work anymore. When we think comforter, there's a lot of terms for comforter. You could be thinking about a blanket on your, on your bed or you could be thinking about a shoulder to cry on. And that's usually what you think about. When you think about a comforter, it's either a blanket or a shoulder, it's something comfortable, right? We've put those two together. But in the original English, that's not what it meant. When you look at the Latin breakdown of the word come meaning with and then forte the forte think music, that's the strong part. So it's with strength, that's what you have. You have someone with strength with you that is the periclete and that term of comforter makes sense.

  Now, the word counselor is actually perfect. But again, we have different definitions of counselor with counselor. We can, we usually think about with counselor as someone who gives advice or someone who listens to us complain. It's one of those two or they're, they're helping us work through our issues. Sorry, I don't mean to make light of counseling counselors in here there, but there's someone that helps us make, make sense of our life and we can think about the Holy Spirit like that and he certainly does help us to make sense of our life.

  But that's not what Periclete means because the word counselor is perfect. But only when it's understood as a legal counselor, you see, when the Bible was written, originally written, the word Periclete was in the normal usage and the way that it was used was as your defense attorney and it was almost someone that you would keep on retainer at all times. So if your family got in trouble or if you got in trouble and you were called to court, you would call your legal counsel, your Paraclete to come and stand beside you to, to advocate for you with strength. Someone who knows the law and someone who is your advocate, that is the periclete. When you look at the, the breakdown of the word, this gets you in trouble all the time in Greek, but we're going to do it right now just to look at it. The breakdown of the word pera which is with cleat, which comes from Kaleo is called. So it's someone Pera is like alongside. So someone that's called alongside that is the periclete.

  The Periclete is the person who comes alongside you with strength. It's not just the person that's there to comfort you, although he is there to comfort you. It's not just the person there to guide you, although he is there to guide you. He is the person that you call on in your day of trouble when you need a defense attorney. He is there with you when you need a defense attorney against the power of sin and death. He is there with you. That is who the Holy Spirit is and that is who Jesus is telling us. He is. So Jesus is, is sending the Holy Spirit to serve as an advocate, a defense attorney. So his disciples would not feel alone.

  Jesus knows difficult times await for these disciples. They will be persecuted, but they will not be alone. They have a Periclete. That sounds a lot better than a helper, doesn't it? And Jesus says, verse 17, next verse actually might just be the same. No. Yes. The next one. So verse 16, 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 see because it does not see him nor knows him. You know him for he dwells with you and will be and you this word for dwells this word, he dwells in you. This is the same word that we saw last week when Jesus was promising that we'll have a room in the Father's house, that dwelling place, that room, that's the verbal form of that word is being used right here as minnow.

  So it's a remaining place. The spirit will remain with us. He will abide with us. We see it used in that way. And so not only do we have a heavenly home that Jesus has prepared, but he has prepared a dwelling place in each of us. Isn't that good news church that God has not left us alone, even though Jesus is not here. He is present with us through the person of the Holy Spirit, the spirit of Christ dwelling with us.

  This is the primary thing about the Holy Spirit. The main thing you gotta know is that the Holy Spirit is God with us, God with us. That is who He is. Primarily. When you think Holy Spirit, you might be thinking about the gifts of the Holy Spirit, you might be thinking about amazing things that God has done in the world and he does those things. And the scripture says that we should seek the gifts of the Holy Spirit. But primarily the Holy Spirit is God with us sent to us as a Periclete, as a helper, as a comforter, as a counselor, as an advocate. Jesus is really careful not to describe the Holy Spirit as an it, the Holy Spirit is not the force, ok. The Holy Spirit is not surrounding us and something that we can all tap into to do magical things.

  That is not the Holy Spirit, Jesus when he talks about the spirit and Greek it, Puma, sorry. I'm really showing my Greek today. I apologize. There's like no other way to preach this passage. I had a seminary professor that told me that your Greek should be like your underwear. Like your congregation should know you have it but you shouldn't talk about it very much. But like today, sorry, I'm, I'm talking about my Greek. So Puma, you could use a, a neuter prog a neuter pronoun OK. In Greek they have like he, she and it right, you could use it there, but Jesus doesn't use it when he describes the Holy Spirit. He uses the male masculine pronoun and he says, he, he, it the Holy Spirit is not an, it an impersonal force. The Holy Spirit is a person to know and to live with us. It's mysterious, but that's how God describes him. Third member of the Trinity.

  And this really gets down to the point of Christianity. If you're not a Christian here and you're not sure what the point of Christianity is. Maybe if you ask 10 different people, you might get 10 different responses to what is the point of Christianity. And maybe even 10 different people in here, you ask 10 different people on the street. You certainly will get 10 different answers. Some people say, what is the point of Christianity? Some people might say it gives my family and I a good moral foundation. Other people might say, which is not the point of Christianity. There are some morals, but that is not the point. The other people might say that it, the point of Christianity is the forgiveness of sins also a good part of Christianity, but not the overall point. There's a point behind that point, some people might say that the point of Christianity is to get out of hell also beneficial. Don't want to go to hell. But that's not the point of Christianity.

  The point of Christianity is this is the point behind all those points, fellowship with God. You were created to have fellowship with the one who made you in his own image. You were created to have fellowship with God, the forgiveness of sins, the getting out of hell, the moral foundation, all of that is to support fellowship with God. And that is the primary consequence of sin that we lose access to our fellowship with God. I love the way that Leanne Payne puts this. She says, separation from the presence of God is quite literally what the fall is as a result of the fall. Mankind slipped from God consciousness into the hell of self and self consciousness. So this is why Jesus tells us that if we love Him, we'll follow His commandments because sin is actually something that separates us from God. And unless and if you sin, that means that you're being separated from Him, which means that you don't get to enjoy this fellowship with Him. So if you want to enjoy His love, you'll follow His commandments and love one another and delight in who He is.

  You see, sin is not just a moral list of do's and don't, but it's actually living your life the way that God has intended you to live your life so that you might flourish so that you might enjoy fellowship with God. Sometimes we get really upset that God has given us these commandments. God has given these commandments to us for our good, that we might enjoy fellowship with Him. They're not here to be oppressive against us. The Holy Spirit helps us to keep his commandments by doing two things simultaneously. The Holy Spirit helps us to keep his commandments by doing two things simultaneously.

  First, he helps us to keep his commandments by convicting us of our sin. So that we know when we are welcoming, separation from God in our own lives, the Holy Spirit is helping us to keep the commandments of God by convicting of s of sin. John 16 verse seven, a couple chapters from now. Jesus says, nevertheless, I tell you the truth. It is to your advantage that I go away for. If I do not go away, the helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you. And when he comes, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment. So Jesus has sent the Holy Spirit so that he might convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment. And second, the Holy Spirit helps us to keep the commandments of God by reordering our desires to want the things that, that God wants.

  So obedience is not, is about living in fellowship with God, not about obeying the rules more so that He'll love you more as we get to delight in being with Him, which will make us want to follow His commandments. Because we recognize that that's the way of flourishing. William Tel the, the Great British He translated the Bible. He said, where the, where the spirit is? There's always summer and doesn't summer feel good. When you live in New England, you're like summer. Let's let's go. I love that week. It's my favorite week of the year. Where the spirit is, there's always summer. There are always good fruits. That is to say good works.

  The spirit of God is what allows us to enjoy fellowship with God. Jesus forgives us of our sins so that we might enjoy God today. And throughout eternity, a couple of quotes from one of my favorite books, Delighting In Eternity by Michael Reeves. He says this, the spirit gives us his very self that we might know and enjoy him and so enjoy his fellowship with the father and the son. Hear that again and just, just meditate on this. This is a huge reality. This is huge. I mean, what, what better thing can you spend 10 more seconds thinking about than this idea? Hear it one more time.

  The spirit gives us his very self that we might know and enjoy him and so enjoy his fellowship. The Spirit's fellowship with the father and the son. He continues hear this. The spirit is about drawing us into divine life. The father has eternally delighted in the son through the spirit and the son and the father and the spirit's work in giving us new life then is nothing less than bringing us into their mutual delight. The point of Christianity is enjoying fellowship with God. That is what we have. That's what we get. That's why Jesus came now. It's true that the Holy Spirit dwells with every believer. That's what Jesus said. He'll dwell with you forever. But you can be more or less filled with the Holy Spirit at different times.

  Have you experienced this? I hope you have, but you can be more or less filled with the Holy Spirit at different times. Ephesians five verse 18, just to give you some, I'm gonna give you some scripture and then I'm gonna give you some explanation. OK? Because there's some people that don't that want to hear the, the Bible verse to prove what I just said. And then there's some of you who are like, yeah, just explain what it means a little bit more. Let me give you the Bible verse first. OK. Two of them first. Ephesians chapter five and do not get drunk with wine for that's debauchery. He's writing two Christians here, but be filled with the Holy Spirit and if he can write to Christians and tell them to be filled with the Holy Spirit that insinuates that there's a way that they can live as a Christian that's not filled with the Holy Spirit where the Holy Spirit is just barely hanging on. Maybe he's hanging out on the porch, he's with them, but he's not filling them.

  Acts chapter three verse 19 and 20 Peter's preaching a sermon and he says, repent and turn back that your son, that your sins may be blotted out. That times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord and that he might send the Christ appointed for you Jesus. So these times of refreshing, this is equivalent with being filled with the spirit, being filled with the spirit though every Christian has the Holy Spirit dwelling in them and with them, not every Christian is filled with the Holy Spirit all the time. As Christians, we are invited to be filled with the Holy Spirit. We're invited to be filled with the Holy Spirit. It's a joyful reality that God's manifest presence is available to each and every one of us and that we are invited to enjoy that fellowship.

  The Anglican priest, Nicky Gumball, who is uh a English pastor and he started the Alpha courses if you've ever heard of Alpha course, really amazing ministry that like over 20 million people worldwide have gone through an Alpha course and many of them have met Jesus through the alpha course. Nicky Gumball describes it this way. He says inside my home, there's a furnace and in that furnace there's a pilot light and the pilot light is always on in the furnace. But then when the heat comes on the way, he describes it is it is the furnace goes from a pilot life to from a pilot light to the heat comes on, the furnace turns on and it is filled with heat. And he says that all Christians have this pilot light of the Holy Spirit. But to be filled with the Holy Spirit is when your spirit goes with the Holy Spirit, when the heat, when the heat fills you.

  Martin Lloyd Jones, another one of my heroes, I wish more people would read Martin Lloyd Jones. If you just wanna read a book that would make me happy, not that, you know, you should not that that should be your primary, like factor in choosing your books. But I love Martin Lloyd Jones. He says this to be filled with the spirit is to get a deeper sense and experience and filling of the father's love like a child walking with their dad and then the father scoops him up and holds him and says, I love you. And that's what it means to be filled with the spirit, to enjoy the Father's love in that kind of way. Jesus has sent us the Periclete, the helper, the advocate the strong counselor so that we might enjoy the tangible presence of God.

  Now, there's lots of ways that you can enjoy the tangible presence of God. I love the story of, of Brother Lawrence. Do you guys know Brother Lawrence? He wrote he wrote, pursuing the presence of the Lord or, or practicing the presence of God, practicing the presence of God. He was a French monk in like the 1600s, 1500s, something like that who without formal training, spent his days cooking in the monastery and just endeavored to live every day practicing the presence of God is really amazing book that has been collected from his teachings over the years. And he thought that by continual recollection of God's immediate presence with us, he can actually live in that presence simply through being mindful of God, through the Holy Spirit because of Jesus, we can live with God is what he taught.

  So we can enjoy God's presence at all times. But I will say that God's presence is primarily and most clearly revealed in his work. That's where God is most clearly revealed. And now this is described differently. But have you ever been reading your bible? And then all of a sudden it's like, wow, I never saw that before. It clicks. I, I listened to a sermon not too long ago by a pastor in New York named John Tyson. And he describes it like this. He's he says, have you ever been reading the scripture? And all of a sudden you're like, I've never seen that before and it's challenging you and it's convicting you and helping you and motivating you.

  Well, different people are gonna describe that differently. If you're a Presbyterian, you might say I had a moment of illumination. That's why I was reading the scripture. If you're a Baptist, this is called, it stood out to me. If you're nondenominational, you might say that verse jumped off the page at me. If you're a Pentecostal, you would say God spoke to me. And they're all describing the same reality of the Holy Spirit, using his word to bring fellowship and joy into our lives. And depending on your tradition, you almost certainly are describing the same thing differently.

  Let me give you a couple of examples of when this has happened in my life. I'm gonna pull one way back. OK. 2007, I know some of you were in diapers. OK? So 2007, I was in college and was working at throughout college and seminary. I worked at Christian camps through the summer. And this summer, I had the, the miserable opportunity to be assigned to work at a Christian camp on the beach in Panama City Beach, Florida, the Redneck Riviera of the South. And it was, it was actually great, you know, they, they had a beach house for the staff to stay in and there were 11 dudes in a three bedroom beach house and it was the best. We all loved it, you know, college students. So that's where it's at. And I can remember distinctively one morning in Panama City Beach, I'm, I'm reading my Bible reading Colossians chapter one. And I get to this verse and I, I read it and it just becomes alive.

  It says this, the mystery hidden for ages and generations, but now revealed to his saints to them. God chose to make known how great among the gentiles are the riches of the glory of this majesty, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. Now, I don't know if that's hitting you, but it's hitting me again. I lived off of that verse for the rest of the summer. Every week the kids would come in be like, hey, forget the Bible today. I'm just gonna tell you about this verse today. It lives and the reason why it lives so much is because throughout the Old Testament, it seems like God's saying, go away. It seems like God's saying I'm too busy for you or like, hey, I'm too holy for you. You can't come near. And now the riches of His manifest glory have been revealed to us. Just gent tiles, just regular people. It's been revealed to us. We get to know Him in full. That's what it's saying that the same God that was so holy and magnificent throughout the Old Testament. We get to know Him fully. He's revealed the mystery to us. Ah, it jumped off the page to me.

  Here's another example. Ok. I'm gonna give you one example when, God didn't use his word, when I just felt the presence of God in a, in a weird, and the voice of God in a weird kind of way. This was just a couple of years ago. Ok. We're gonna move more toward present time. A couple of years ago. I'm walking down the street in Somerville. I'm walking down Wallace street. Ok. I'll tell you exactly where I was. I, I remember the tree I was underneath. Ok. That's, there's a reason why the Bible talks about like, and he was under this tree. It's like, well, yeah, you kinda remember exactly where you are whenever, whenever God speaks to you like this. And I've never heard a voice from God, but I remember walking down the street and I just felt deeply, like, like a, like a, just a deep conviction and just a heaviness, a weight that said delete the game. Now, I had had this game, I'll just tell you what it was. Ok? Don't go download it. It was Clash of Clans. Ok. It's a very, it's like a, a very innocent game. A lot of us have played this. I had this game on my phone for years. Like, I don't want to tell you how many hours I'd probably poured into this game. Like my, my hut was like level 10 or something. It was, it was amazing. I had taken this game on vacation. I had hidden from my family at times to play this game.

  I just felt I and my wife had gently, kindly never told me that I needed to lead it, but it had kind of gently poked and prodded and she could tell that I was like gollum with his precious, ok? You are not gonna touch my game. I just felt it. I, I had not even considered it and I was like, I got to delete this game and I just pulled out my, I didn't even say bye to the people in my clan. I just I just deleted it. I just said goodbye and never downloaded it again. And that opened a place in my heart for the presence of God to dwell. There was something there that, that he had to deal with before I could before I could give him that type of attention.

  Let me just give you one from last week. Ok. This happened, this can happen at different times in different ways. Last week, we're sitting in our prayer meeting. I go in, I'm kinda in a bad mood. Femi and I one of the leaders of the church, Femi, we get there every, every morning we get there 30 minutes early to pray over the service to pray over the prayer meeting. We wanna anoint that thing, we wanna consecrate it to the Lord. And really God is moving in that room and, and we know that he is and we talk about what the Lord's doing, what he's doing in our lives before we meet and we, before we meet, it's my turn to lead it. We take turns leading it and we get to like two minutes before the prayer meeting is supposed to start. So he's like, hey, you got a scripture for us today.

  I'm like, no, I don't I don't know what we should be praying. He's like, I think it's Ephesians three this morning mate. And isn't it? And and I, I was like, all right, well, we'll, we'll see what happens. And so we, we in the prayer meeting, one of the things that we do is we use God's word to pray because we wanna pray from the riches of God's word, not the poverty of our own hearts. And so we open the word and we have a different passage and what we spend some time meditating on it, personally worshiping the Lord meditating on it personally. And then we come back and we pray it together for like the last 15 minutes. OK. So the whole time I didn't really feel like the Lord was saying anything to me with this verse.

  This is a verse like, look, if Ephesians three is like a, a chicken bone. Ok. I have eaten every piece of meat off of that chicken bone. I have licked it clean. I've broken it in half. I've sucked the marrow out of it. Ok. It is. It is. It has nothing else in it. Ok. I've used that verse a lot in my life. we start praying together and I just kind of feel this weightiness And I recognize that I need to like pray in front of people, some deep hurt from my own life. And I offer it up to the Lord. And I just say God, I don't know what to do with this. And I just start weeping and I don't know. And afterwards, it was really awkward, you know, everybody was like, but I felt the presence of the Lord comforting me because what I needed most was to be filled with the fullness of God, which is what that scripture talked about. I needed to have the fullness of God. And he needed to bring me to that point to where I can confess these things. And as I confess these hurts and these hesitations in my own heart. He used that to fill me with a kind of fellowship and joy that I hadn't enjoyed in a long time.

  This is how the Lord does it. This is how the Holy Spirit works church. We go to him in his word. He endeavors to fill us with a tangible presence of God. A sacred moment. I hope that you've had some sacred moments in your life. Can you think of any to moments when you can say the Holy Spirit? He was my Periclete. He was with me friends. If you're trusting in Christ this morning, the Holy Spirit is dwelling in you. But I want to give you an opportunity to invite him off the porch and into your heart. A lot of us have kept that door locked and closed. And we said, I think I'm gonna do it myself in here when you have a helper waiting eagerly anticipating to come and be with you.

  I'm gonna give you an opportunity to be filled with the Holy Spirit to, to ask the Holy Spirit to fill you and let me just give you a couple of steps. OK? Couple of steps this morning. First, you have to look at what Jesus has done for you, for everyone. Look inside, you have to take 10, looks up at Christ. Jesus lived a holy life, always submitted completely to the God, the Father and he paid the penalty for your sin. That is why you get the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit wants to fill a clean vessel. He is holy after all. And so when we look to Christ, we are made clean and then as we look to Christ, we confess our sins.

  If you want to be filled with the Holy Spirit. It almost always comes with confessing with repentance. Look at how Peter said it right? Peter. Back at the beginning of the sermon, I, I was talking about Peter and he said, repent therefore, and turn back that your sins might be blotted out. That times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord. We have to, as we look to Christ, then with the confidence that Christ gives us because we are made right with God. There's nothing our sin doesn't drive us away from God. We're made right with God. So we can confidently confess our sin to God knowing that He will never abandon us or leave us. We can go to him and confess these things. And then if you want to be ho if you want to be filled with the Holy Spirit, you just submit yourself completely to God confessing and renouncing sin in your life. And you ask the spirit to fill you and you're going to have an opportunity to do this.

  I encourage you in the next few moments. We'll pray in just a moment and you're going to have an opportunity and I'm going to encourage you to hold out your hands and ask the Lord to fill you with the spirit. And if you don't feel, feel anything, ok. This happens a lot of times where we go through this and it's like you're supposed to have these feelings and not all of all of us are emotional, feely, feely. OK? Some of you will, others of you will be like, man, I didn't feel anything but I trust the Lord and I will give him my trust or you might read the scripture. We had a, a member of our church a couple of years ago. He actually preached once Jonathan, I'll just tell you it was Jonathan McLatchie and he was like, when you talk about being filled with the spirit, it's not the way that I receive it. But sometimes when I'm reading the word, I get kind of excited about what God is saying in there. I'm like, that's it. That's it. Jonathan. You get, yes, we're talking about the same thing. OK?

  You can experience this in different ways, you can experience it in different ways. So don't, don't be upset or beat yourself up. The thing is you just wanna keep seeking his presence, you just wanna keep seeking his presence, church. And so as we prepare our hearts to take this communion meal, I want to invite you to stand as we pray. And if you would like to hold out your hands like this, asking the Holy Spirit to move in your heart and life, I would invite you to.

  Father, we know that there's no better place to be than in your home. And we know Jesus that you've promised a heavenly home for each of us that you've prepared a place for us. But God, we pray that your divine presence would come and fill us today, that you would fill this church, that we might be people that enjoy the tangible presence of God. God, I pray for those who have weighty things that they need to confess to you today, that they see those things and that they will not run from them. They will not just lock the, they will not push them into the closet and then invite you in. There's no pushing in the closet guys. You gotta get rid of it.

  And I pray that repentance would fill our church and that the spirit of Christ would fill our hearts and that we would enjoy your presence and your presence in full and that we would do it again each and every day confessing our sins boldly because of what Christ has done. And so spirit, we invite you, we invite you to move in each of us. We invite you to transform our hearts in our lives and to help us in spirit. We invite you as our legal prosecution here as our defense attorney, God. We, we thank you for your help and we pray that you would help us through life's troubles as we, we are not alone, we have you. And so we hold on to those promises today. In Christ's name we pray, Amen.