Holy Spirit 101 Series

How many of you have ever taken any form of an accounting class or a bookkeeping class? Raise your hands. How many of you really didn’t enjoy the class? Most people, unless they are a little quirky, don’t really enjoy an accounting class. A little bit about my past, some of you know that I spent 20 years in the business world prior to becoming a pastor and I actually was a corporate controller. A corporate vice-president for a major restaurant chain back in Oregon. In addition to a corporate controller, a corporate accountant, I also taught an accounting class part-time at the local community college. It wasn’t really an advanced class. It was basically an accounting 101 class. As many of you know when you teach a 101 class you often find quite a wide variety of people in the class. There are people that really do not want to be there. They are just there because it is a requirement. They have to take the class. They have some other major and it is just a required class. Then you have the people that really enjoy it and they are thinking about making a career out of accounting. The thing that is common is you have to figure out how to teach this sort of class. My approach was to basically reduce accounting to the lowest common denominator and keep it in very simple terms; as simple as you can make accounting, which is very difficult. What I would do is say let’s pretend we are going to open a hot dog stand. When you open a hot dog stand you have to buy the stand. You pay $5,000 for the stand and you would have to make an accounting entry in the books and we call that a double-entry accounting entry. There has to be a debit and a credit. You buy the equipment and you debit equipment $5,000 and you credit cash unless you take out a loan and then you would credit accounts payable. Then you have to buy hot dogs. You would buy them with cash and debit hot dog inventory and credit cash and on and on and on. Even when I tried to present it in a very simplified format, there were just people that just couldn’t get it. They were just totally confused by it. Kind of like some of you are looking a little confused now and want nothing to do with accounting. The reality is when you are taking an elementary class you have to start with the basics. You have to get down to the lowest common denominator.

Today, as we look in the book of John 14, we see Jesus not teaching an accounting 101 class. We see Jesus teaching a Holy Spirit 101 class. If you have your Bibles, please open up to the book of John 14:15. A little bit of history here. We have been going through the book of John. Hopefully, we will be done around late spring/early summer. We have been in it about a year. I am trying to go through it as fast as I can, but I need to slow down and spend some time on some of these parts. Basically, where we have been the last few weeks you may recall that we are in the final week of Jesus’ life on earth. He is in a supper setting. The Last Supper. It started out in chapter 13 fairly positive. Jesus was in this dinner setting and about halfway through the meal, he decides to get up and do something very kind; very servant oriented. He decides to take a towel and wash the disciples’ feet and that is what he did. It was a very nice thing to do. It was an example of humility and servant hood and it really was an example of what he was about to do on the cross. He was going to be crucified for the sins of the world and wash the sins of the world clean. Then things took kind of a sour note. During the meal, Jesus told everybody that somebody is going to betray him. John asked who is it. Jesus said the one who takes the bread from my hand is the one that is going to betray me. He reached out and gave it to Judas. Judas took the bread and immediately Satan entered his heart and then Judas was out the door. The last words of that section were “And it was night.” An indication that things were getting a little bit darker. Things got even more troubling because his close disciple Peter said very impulsively I am loyal to you. No matter if Judas betrays you, I would never betray you. In fact, I am going to lay my life down for you. That is when Jesus says oh really Peter? Would you do that? He predicted that before the rooster would crow, Peter would not deny him once or twice, but three times.