Pentecost Sunday Sermon

This morning I'll be reading John chapter 14 verses 8 through 17 and verses 25 through 27.

And I'll be reading the Holman Christian Standard Bible.

(25-27)

And I'll be reading the Holman Christian Standard Bible.

These verses that I'll read this morning,,, actually occur before the scripture that I read last week even though it's during the same night before Jesus is arrested. There are many things that Jesus talks about during this night and they cover chapters 13 through 17 here in John.

(25-27)

The Holman Christian Standard Bible Chapter 14

8 “Lord,” said Philip, “show us the Father, and that’s enough for us.”

9 Jesus said to him, “Have I been among you all this time without your knowing Me, Philip? The one who has seen Me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? 10 Don’t you believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me? The words I speak to you I do not speak on My own. The Father who lives in Me does His works. 11 Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me. Otherwise, believe because of the works themselves.

Praying in Jesus’ Name

12 “I assure you: The one who believes in Me will also do the works that I do. And he will do even greater works than these, because I am going to the Father. 13 Whatever you ask in My name, I will do it so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14 If you ask Me anything in My name, I will do it. t

Another Counselor Promised

15 “If you love Me, you will keep My commands. 16 And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Counselor to be with you forever. 17 He is the Spirit of truth. The world is unable to receive Him because it doesn’t see Him or know Him. But you do know Him, because He remains with you and will be in you.

The Holman Christian Standard Bible Chapter 14

25 “I have spoken these things to you while I remain with you. 26 But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit —the Father will send Him in My name—will teach you all things and remind you of everything I have told you.

Jesus’ Gift of Peace

27 “Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Your heart must not be troubled or fearful.

God bless the reading and the hearing of your word this morning.

Let us pray:

Dear Lord, as we begin this morning, we ask that you open our ears to hear and our hearts and minds to receive the message that you have for us today,,, In Jesus' name I pray,,, Amen.

As I told you at the beginning,,, these verses occur before the verses that I read last week but they have some information that helps us understand Pentecost Sunday.

But to fully understand these verses we will have to go back a few verses and catch up on a little more of Jesus’conversation with the disciples.

In chapter 13 verses 36 - 38,,, this is where Jesus tells Peter that he will deny Him 3 times.

Then in chapter 14 beginning in verse 1,,, Jesus is explaining more about where He will be going and what He will be doing while He is there.

He tells them that they must not be troubled while He is gone and they know the way to where He is going and that’s found in verses 1 - 4.

But verses 5 - 7 tells us that the disciples really didn’t understand because it reads:

John 14:5 HCSB

“Lord,” Thomas said, “we don’t know where You’re going. How can we know the way?”

John 14:6 HCSB

Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.

John 14:7 HCSB

“If you know Me, you will also know My Father. From now on you do know Him and have seen Him.”

So you can see from this information that the disciples are still confused and don’t understand what Jesus is talking about.

This brings us to the beginning of our scripture this morning.

In these verses,,, Jesus is trying to help the disciples understand that even though He is going away,,, He will send the Holy Spirit to help them and that is what happens on Pentecost Sunday.

Jesus spent so much of His time just before His death on the cross helping the disciples by trying to make them understand what was going to happen to Him.

He takes up time for others when if the roles were reversed,,, we would not take the time to be worried about anyone but our-selves!

Any time that I study these talks that Jesus had with the disciples during this time,,, I’m always amazed that Jesus thought so much of those that were with Him.

If you will remember in a little while,,, He finally takes the time to prepare and pray for Himself and all that He will go through!

And again if you remember,,, it was a lot!

But He doesn’t put Himself first,,, even though,,, we know now,,, what pain He was in Spiritually!

Also remember that He took the time to pray for each one of us before He took the time for Himself!

His perfect life on earth shines through during this time as an example for us to follow.

(4:22)

But beginning in verse 8 where Philip tells Jesus,,, “show us the Father and that’s enough for us”,,, several of the commentaries that I’ve read on this verse say that Philip might have been hoping for a glimpse of God’s glory like Moses asked to see in where it says:

Exodus 33:18 HCSB

Then Moses said, “Please, let me see Your glory.”

If you remember this verse was after Moses had come back down off the mountain with the Ten Commandments and found the Israelites worshipping the golden calf that they had made and God refused to lead them anymore until Moses interceded for them.

Then Moses wanted to see God’s glory and God made him stand in the crevice of rock as He passed by so that Moses could see His back.

That’s found in Exodus chapters 32 and 33.

But we see in the next verse after Philip speaks,,, that this view of God is seen in Jesus because of what He says in answer to Philip.

Verse 9 Jesus says: “If you have seen me, you have seen the Father”

This verse leaves no doubt,,, that the Father is in Jesus,,, and,,, Jesus perfectly reveals Him!

In this verse Jesus is telling Philip that there is no need for another sign.

In the same way,,, we are seen by the world as Jesus living in us when we live our life the way that we are supposed to live.

Through the Holy Spirit living in each of us that are Christians,,, God is seen and known to be here today.

That’s if we dare to live up to our true identity once we leave this church every Sunday.

You need to challenge yourself to lead a different life Monday thru Saturday if you notice that your attitude changes once the service is over!

Jesus Christ is verified by others through the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives and they are watching to see it whether they realize it or not.

In verses 10 and 11 ,,, Jesus continues to answer Philip and explains why we should believe that God is seen in Him.

My Bible Knowledge Commentary says that the proof of the union of Jesus and His Father is threefold.

I

They should believe Jesus,,,

(1) because of His character,,, where He says: (I am in the Father,,,and the Father is in Me. and He says it again in verse 20 when He is telling them about the Holy Spirit coming.

(2) because His word’s are the Father’s,,, for example,,, (The words I say to you are not just My own,,, and this is verified by some other verses like ,,, ,,, and .

(3) because the miracles reveal God’s working through Him,,, for example where He says:,,, (the Father, living in Me… is doing His work… believe on the evidence of the miracles themselves,,, testify to this and it’s also verified by .

You see one of the key elements in John’s gospel is the fact that he makes a point of showing the signs as gracious pointers to faith,,, with examples shown in ,,, & 38,,, ,,, and .

Verses 12 - 14 explains that the one who believes in Him will do the works that Jesus did and he will do even greater works than these because Jesus is going to the Father.

My Bible Knowledge Commentary says that the disciples wouldn’t necessarily do more stupendous miracles than Jesus did but their outreach would be greater.

This was possible because with the Holy Spirit living inside us,,, worldwide we have been able to reach many more people this way.

Verses 13 & 14,,, in My name,,, is not a magical formula for getting anything that we want,,, as you’ve been told before.

But it is the assurance that the prayers of Christians doing God’s work,,, will be answered.

The goal of answered prayers is to bring glory to God the Father!

The last verses,,, actually 15 through 31,,, are about Jesus leaving so the Holy Spirit can come in His place,,, which is what Pentecost Sunday is all about.

(9:00)

The disciples love for Jesus and our own love for Jesus are shown by our obeying His commands.

Jesus has set the pattern of love and obedience and we are expected to follow.

And it’s through the Holy Spirit that we can obey Jesus’ command to love others as our self!

Up to this point in John’s Gospel,,, there has been little said about the Holy Spirit.

The words to Nicodemus found in were private and the verse in pointed ahead to Pentecost.

As we all know,,, Pentecost was the day that the Holy Spirit came to all the disciples and truly gave them everything that they needed to carry out God’s plan which Jesus had explained to them after His resurrection before He ascended back into Heaven.

This is also what gives us the strength and power that we need to do our job here on earth.

Without the Holy Spirits help,,, this would be impossible.

(9:54)

This week while we’ve been at our annual conference,,, the focus for this conference was the POWER of One.

Maybe you have noticed some of the advertisements on the internet or Facebook.

Bishop Swanson pointed out yesterday morning that the word POWER was capitalized because it symbolized the Holy Spirit.

And we had to have the help of the Holy Spirit to help us to truly be the church that lives out the vision of the POWER of One!

Each morning during Bible study,,, while at conference,,, Dr. Herbert Marbury led us in a sermon that used three different themes.

Thursday morning it was the Power that makes us One - In Our Love.

Friday morning it was the Power that makes us One - In our ministry.

Saturday morning it was the Power that makes us One - In our vision.

These were all used as messages to challenge us,,, clergy and laity alike,,, to live out the vision that Jesus had for us!

(10:54)

In the closing sermon that Bishop Swanson preached,,, he focused on using the Holy Spirits help to truly make us One so that we can bring the church back as an important tool in our community again.

He used the example of a scene in the movie Shawshank Redemption in 1994 that starred Morgan Freeman and Tim Robbins.

In this scene Andy,,, played by Tim Robbins and Red,,, played by Morgan Freeman are sitting along the wall of the prison and Andy is dreaming of what he would do if he got out of prison and Red keeps trying to stop him because he is afraid that those kind of thoughts will depress Andy.

Andy tries to convince Red that he must hope for something or else he will be depressed without it.

Bishop Swanson said that Red has become so conditioned to being inside prison that he can’t even think of doing anything different in his life.

And he challenged us that we are like that to a point because we have become so used to doing things exactly the same way as we’ve always done that we have lost our vision.

It's like we have lost our hope and we have forgotten how to live and we are just surviving to die.

He warned us that churches are dying because they aren't focused on the community the way that we should be.

Our focus seems to be on the inside of the church every Sunday instead of the community where we live.

If we don't get busy living in our church by being a help in our community we will get busy dying by keeping the doors closed to our community.

We must use the help of the Holy Spirit as we go through our week to show the love that Jesus commanded us to do.

We must use the love of others as a guiding light in our ministry to others and keep our eyes on the vision that we should have of transforming disciples for the transformation of the world.

It's the people outside this church that hold the key to making this church grow.

And it's important that we fulfill the command of Jesus by helping others in our community.

So as we go through this next week,,, I ask each of you to be alert for things that need to be done or people that need help or ideas that will help to bring us out into the community where we can be seen as the church that God intends for us to be.

And that can only be done by relying on the help of the Holy Spirit as we work each day.

And we can depend on the Holy Spirits help if we have accepted Jesus Christ as our Savior and if you haven't,,, then just know that He's always available just by asking Him to come into your heart.

So as we sing our final hymn,,, let me remind you that the alter is always open,,,

If you feel God speaking to you,,, don't hesitate to come,,, maybe you just have questions,,, God will answer,,, you just have to ask Him,,, whatever the need may be,,,

As we sing the final hymn,,, come if needed!

Oakdale - Hymn Page -

Seminary - Hymn Page - 467