The Work Of The Spirit Series

February 12, 2017

Morning Worship

Text: John 14

Subject; The Holy Spirit

Title: The Work of the Spirit Part 1

I want to begin a new series this morning – we kind of got started into last week – but this series will be on the work of the Holy Spirit. We will begin in John 14 and go through John 16 and when we are done I’m believing that your life will be changed and the life of this church. Not by the words that I speak, but by the Spirit of the living God living in you.

Are you ready?

Have you ever been dry? Do you ever get tired? Do you think that the life you are living isn’t making a difference and that you just want to run and hide sometimes? I think we can all say we have experienced that spiritual dryness or that sense of ineffectiveness.

There are times when I just get tired and I feel the need to just get away for a while and get my batteries recharged. So we take off to go somewhere, looking for something – we don’t know what – that will fill up the space in us that we don’t even know how it got emptied.

This is personal – it is very difficult for us as pastors to go away and just empty ourselves of who we are and just relax. Because we are always wondering if everyone is OK and are there any problems – well, if you have never been a pastor you probably don’t get this. And we go to places where we think we can find the peace and rest we are looking for but at the end of the week away the only thought on our minds is, “Can’t wait to get home…”

And then I think, “Isn’t that the whole problem in the first place? Isn’t that the source of our weariness and our doubt and our anxiety? We are just working, ministering, living in a place that is temporary, and whether we know it or not, in our spirits, we are longing to be in the place where there won’t be any weariness any longer.” We just long to be with Jesus.

In just a few months school will be out and vacation mode will kick in and many of us will be doing just that same thing. Looking for spiritual rest by doing physical things.

And he more I think about it, the more I realize that we as the church of Jesus Christ sometimes miss out on what He wants to do in us – the pure and simple relationship He wants to have in us – by not taking advantage of all the things that we have available to us.

John 14:1-4 (NKJV)

1 "Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me.

2 In My Father's house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.

3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also.

4 And where I go you know, and the way you know."

I believe this is God’s word…

I believe it is for me…

I accept it as mine…

And I will appropriate it to my life today…

There is so much in John 14-16 for us that I want to take a few weeks just to look at it all in some depth and try to connect the dots for you so you can receive everything the Lord wants you to have. Are you with me?

Jesus has just told His disciples that He is going to die and they were becoming frantic. What are we going to do? How can we go on if you aren’t here?

Can you just imagine the comfort that they must have had knowing that Jesus was right there with them? Everywhere they went people coming to hear the good news and to be touched and healed and have demons cast out… and as long as Jesus was right there the disciples could just bring people to Him and everything was good!

And now He says that He is going to leave us?

Let’s go back to verses 2 and 3, I go to prepare a place for you. 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also.

In the Jewish culture of that time when a man and women were betrothed the husband to be would leave her for a period of time and would go to build a house. In reality most times it was an addition to His fathers house. In the ancient culture, a father's house was where the extended family lived. Rooms were often added on as the family grew through birth and marriage. What Jesus was doing was using the present day illustration of a loving, tight, family community. So, Christ is saying that He is preparing a place for us in heaven where we will dwell with God in close communion with Him, and that there is room in heaven for all whom God calls to salvation.