Northside Church - Sydney
The Other Guy … Is a Person
I don't know if you've ever had this experience as a kid but I was absolutely dead set on a brand new Voltron from Target and I'd been eyeing this Voltron off for ages if you don't want to know what a Voltron was, it was this mechanical space age beast of a machine that had all these different parts that came together in order to defend the universe, do as if you didn't know that. I was so absolutely bent on this Voltron, I just couldn't wait to get in and I had it there and I went and eventually my parents succumbed, I don't know why it was probably a birthday or done something good and they let me have it and I took it home and I was all excited and ripped it out of the box expecting that it was just going to come to life like the cartoon and yet it was dull and totally lifeless and the main reason being is those terrible words that every young child just hated to see on the edge of the box, batteries not included and I had to wait the whole time to go back to the store and get the Duracil double D batteries, the church sometimes could be the same right, that let's be honest we could duplicate a lot of what we do in church, if you just got like you know a funky enough worship pastor like Mikey, get a savvy enough young preacher, I'll say that hand thank you and get a funky space, we just keep rolling that out, we could duplicate what we see and look don't get me wrong I'm not trying to criticize what we got here, I love what we got here, we are so blessed with what we've got here but guys we've got to understand this is not, the subwoofers is not what makes us grow, the lights are not what makes us grow, the programs are not what makes us grow, you know there is something underneath all that, you see because we're going to ask ourselves what really is the secret to life changing ministry and where does this other guy that we're going to talk about tonight, where's the guy behind the guy behind Christianity fit into that and we're in the church calling the Holy Spirit, where does the Holy Spirit fit into all of this, you see because I'm just trying to reconcile it with a model of church when I go back and read through this book that was full of dynamism and craziness and messiness and it just exploded throughout the countryside and the funny thing was is that the message that they had is the same message that we've got tonight and that same message was just as crazy and just as stupid to people back then as it is to the modern day person, that some guy died and rose from the dead, that's a stupid message and yet how did that explode throughout the countryside? It's because, I don't know, did they have subwoofers, did they have lights, did they have a savvy young preacher, maybe, there was power, there was power, the batteries were included, the batteries were included guys and I don't know about you but when we come to a topic on the Holy Spirit, part of me, I just want to be more of that in my life, I don't think you can ever get enough of that power in your life and I think your family members and your friends and the people that are around you can't get enough of that in their life because when that power starts to flow in and through you the church begins to explode, when that power is flowing through you then people say there's something really going on and so I'm not poo pooing all the great stuff that happens in the modern day church but this is just a healthy reminder for us tonight that all the cool stuff is not what makes us grow, it's the other guy, it's the Holy Spirit and the reason that the early church grew is because there was power and the great risk for us is that we can forget the other guy, half of that's because that's in the other guy's nature, he's a backseat kind of guy as we'll discover over the next six weeks, he's a sort of guy that likes to hang in the background, he's the sort of guy that if you took him to a party would sit in the corner and drink a green cordial, it's just the sort of party guy that is, he's just to relax dude, he's happy to do his own thing and make sure that this other guy, the guy behind Christianity, Jesus Christ gets all the limelight and so often in the church we can talk about God and we can talk about Jesus and we forget to talk about the other guy and that's why we're going to talk about the Holy Spirit for the next six weeks and so one thing is for certain, I've got to ask you tonight, do you want a life that has got the batteries included or do you just want to be a lifeless vultran flopping around on the floor, I don't know, I just want to go deeper into that and hopefully through reading of his word and understanding who this other guy is, you and I are going to experience a little bit more of that and so let's see what Jesus himself says about the other guy, it's in John chapter 14, it says Jesus promises the other guy, it says Jesus promises the Holy Spirit but I just worked that in verse 15, he says if you love me you will obey what I command and I will ask the Father and he will give you another counsellor to be with you forever, 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 he will be in you. How we see God affects whether or not we will be like God and here we have an interesting account, Jesus is hanging out with his disciples in an upper room, it's hours before he's about to go to the cross, it's not long now and so he's actually preparing these guys for the absence of his physical presence and so he tells him this crazy thing that he's going to send this guy called the Holy Spirit, this spirit of truth or as the Greek calls it the Alarron paracletos, he says I'm sending you another paraclete which is not a funny blue and red coloured bird that flies around, he says thank you you can keep laughing at my jokes, obviously they're new, I'm sending you another paraclete, when you know that something's going on when the English word is not just enough, when there's five different translations of this, it's translated as ad forget, as counsellor and it's derived from these two words, Alarron paracletos, Alarron meaning something of the same kind, the opposite to Alarron was heteron which is another of a different kind but Alarron means another of the same kind, so if it's saying there's another one of me coming in of the same kind and what is Jesus saying here, what are you saying is I'm sending you a different version of me, this is amazing because up until this point like all of Christianity has been constricted by geography, that Jesus could only ever be in one place at one time and now he's going to bust this open by sending this spirit and what it means for us and let's just get practical with this tonight, what it means to us if we have to be conscious that what we see in this spirit is that the spirit is a person, not just a power, I mean the spirit has power but in essence he's saying I'm sending another me of the same kind, I'm sending another person into your life and so that is incredibly important to us because as I said how we see God affects whether or not we'll be like God and the truth of this passage that we learned tonight is that God's a person, God's a person, why is that really really important for us tonight, first reason is if God's a person, what do people do, here's the first thing, a person relates to you, right, people talk to each other, I mean you can't have a conversation with your pet dog, you can't relate to your pet dog, I know some of you like to think that you can relate to your pet dog, I know that Pookie or Snooki or whatever you call your pet dog, it's very dear to you and there is feelings and there's even emotion and get up and lick your face all over and there's this all sorts of wonderful connection that you have with your dog but you can't relate to your dog because there's no exchanging of ideas, you don't ask your dog, it's opinion on Australia's border protection policy, right, you don't ask him those questions, there's no relationship, there's no way to relate and so are you starting to see the problem here, how the heck do we relate to an almighty, all powerful, all knowing, almost non-understandable God of the universe that we can't even see, how do we relate to that because God's life to ours is like the difference between, well, I don't know, a human being and a pet dog and you might sense the feelings of God and you might sense his presence and you might even have enjoyment in his presence but that doesn't mean tonight that you're necessarily relating to him, you need to relate and in verse 16 he says in here Jesus says, "I will ask the Father and he will give you another advocate, a helper, a counselor to help you and be with you forever the spirit of truth." See the mind-numbing truth here is that the spirit is the means by which we relate to God, there would be no other way that we could relate to God if it weren't for the Holy Spirit, if God is personal then he has to think and he has to interact and we're made in his image and so therefore God is not some vague force that Luke Skywalker deals with in every movie, God is not some vague spirituality that if you just wish it or you've created a little dream board for yourself that somehow you're going to interact with him, now God is personal, God is a person and as a result he communicates you this personal dealing and we'll get into that over the coming weeks but what I want to say here is that you can relate to him in only one way and that is through the other guy and unless you've got that spirit because it's far more deeper than that, remember Nicodemus in John chapter 3, well he just later goes to the outskirts of Jerusalem in the dark because he doesn't want to get caught with Jesus and he's talking to Jesus and Jesus says Nicodemus, you need to be born again and Nicodemus is thinking how do I do that, that's crazy, have you seen how old my mum is? She's not going to survive the ordeal and Jesus is not how you don't get it, you need to be born a nathan, you need to be born from above, you need to be born of not perishable but imperishable seed, Jesus is getting out, you need a life force, you need something outside yourself, you need a power to come into your life, in fact you need the very life blood of God himself to come into your life and to inject himself into your life and that is the only way that you can move into the kingdom of God, you know what I mean, I always call it the sleeping beauty principle, right, sleeping beauty she was alive, she was technically alive but she was also practically dead and she couldn't relate, she couldn't interact, she couldn't do anything until what, until Prince Charming came in and kissed her and awoke her from a slumber and moved her into a whole new stage of life and can you see that's exactly what the spirit does at the deeper level, that's what the other guy does at the deeper level is that you can't relate to God, you can't become a Christian unless you have received this other guy into your life, the Holy Spirit, you can't become a Christian until you've been kissed by the other guy, I know that could sound weird but the point I'm trying to make here is that to become a Christian, being a Christian's not right words or right actions but it's to receive the very life of blood of God into your soul, to become a Christian's not to say right words but it's to ask this other guy the Holy Spirit to come into your life and to change you from the inside out and so therefore the role of the Spirit's not just to help you relate to God but it's actually to move you to this higher level of life that you could not achieve on your own otherwise up until this point that's the difference between being a Christian and a non-Christian, Christian and a non-Christian, non-Christian is still the pet dog, his feelings, his presence, his emotion, sit on his lap, enjoy it all but you can't relate and so you got to relate to a person and the other guy helps you with that without the work of the Spirit you can't relate to God because you're sleeping beauty, here's the second thing though a person not only relates to you but a person reveals themselves over time and people are always revealing themselves, speed dating, speed dating right, that's what speed dating is all about, I've never speed dated but I can imagine what speed dating is all about and we have to go around the room right and if you're a guy you're thinking of your snaziest lines that you could put out there, look really smooth, what are you trying to do, you're revealing yourself, you're trying to find the best possible 30-second revelation of who you are and the story of the Bible is that God is a chronic speed data, God is always speed dating his creation, God is always trying to find a 30-second snippet to reveal the absolute best bit of who he is to you, God is always wanting you to fall in love with him, God is always wanting to call you into relationship with him and so that's why in chapter 14 here it says "But the Council of the Holy Spirit will send, I'll send him in my name and he will teach you all things and remind you of everything that I have said to you." See how Jesus God has been revealing speed dating here on earth with his disciples and so what it's saying is that Christianity has always taught that our God is a God of revelation, he's always wanting us to know more and more about him and so how do I put it like, well what are my favorite YouTube clips is of this little girl and she's staring up at the camera and she's telling a mum that she's been very afraid of monsters and so as a result she's going to kick this monster's assk and the mum says "Why are you going to kick this monster's assk?" and she says "Well if I don't kick his assk he's going to kick my assk so I'm going to kick his assk" and the mum says "Oh darling you mean you're going to kick his butt, assk is a rude word" and she goes "Oh" now what's happening in her revelation, she didn't get so much information, she got one of those, have you ever had one of those aha moments, you might have been trying to kick a monster's assk but have you ever had one of those moments where you've just, ah, you know that feeling deep down within you, that something just clicks, that's revelation and now the work of the other guy, the Holy Spirit is not so much to give you new information which is really good by the way as a side note because the amount of people I talked to as a pastor particularly non-Christians who say "I don't know if I can believe in God because I just don't know enough" maybe if I go and study a little bit more, you know I'll think about it a bit more, I've got a bit more processing to do, I don't know all the facts, I haven't read the Bible up against the Quran and the rest of it and this and that and look all of that's important but I'm not too sure and I've got to go and do another class here about this, it's not about information, to become a Christian is to have, ah, one of those moments, to have it sink in, to have that revelation and that's the job of the other guy because the apostles hear the disciples, the very guys that Jesus is talking to in this passage, and they're fearful, they're afraid, they're upset, they're beside themselves because Jesus is going to go and even Philip a little bit earlier on says "Look can't you just show me the Father, can't you just show me God?" Haven't we asked that question once or twice? Oh yeah, this is how it goes, oh look Jesus if you just appear in a pillar of smoke in the middle of the auditorium tonight then we'll all believe but even the disciples didn't have a pillar of smoke, they had God in the flesh and they still had not had an ah moment. So can you see what the spirit does, can you see the work of the Holy Spirit, you see Jesus says your problem tonight is not your circumstances or your problem tonight in some ways is not getting enough information but your problem tonight is that you don't have a revelation about spiritual reality. The information you have, the truth you have is not real to you and Jesus is saying to his boys and he says to us, I'm telling you all of these things but only through the spirit you're going to know what that really means and so Jesus says the work of the spirit is to take what is known by me and make it known to you and to make it true for you that's a very problem in our lives. You see what's the difference between someone who's a Christian and someone who just says that they're a Christian, Jonathan Edwards one of the great Bible teachers once said if you believed in heaven then you would be generous, if you believed in heaven then you would live fearless lives, if you believed in heaven then you would live joyful lives. Can you see what he's saying, like it's possible that some Christians can know the truth of heaven but it's not spiritually real to him, he's saying that they can have a concept of heaven and of God and of Jesus and of another reality there but they don't get the sense of the glory and the wonder and the reality and the realness and the weight of it. In other words he's saying like the disciples you tonight can know of the truth but it's not real to you, you haven't had an ah moment and what can happen for us is that we go generally one of two ways, we either get fearful or we get troubled and as a result we think that the solution is either what's the first solution the first solution is I've got to get new circumstances, I've got to get a new job, I've got to get a new boss, I've got to get a new house, I've got to get a new car, I've got to get a new partner, this is just not working for me and other people it's like well I've got to get new information, obviously I don't have enough information here so I'm going to sign up for this course and I'll do this course and I'll do a better yoga lates and I'll do something else and I'll swatch all this in and I'll sign up and I'll just get more information and I'll, but it's it's neither your circumstances nor is it more information because when the spirit comes into your life the spirit says your problem's not the information but it's revelation. The Christianity is not about having more information but the fact that the information's not real to you, you know think about if heaven's real, if the love of God is real, if access to all wisdom is real and why would you be fearful and troubled? I mean that's that's my problem, I'll declare that tonight straight up and I'm a minister that we are always as Christians reconciling the fact that it's it's just got to be real to us, why aren't I more fearless, why aren't we running out there doing more of this sort of stuff, why is this still fear in my life, I don't know, is that true of you? Because that's the problem, in other words what I'm saying to you tonight that if what if what's missing in your spiritual life is not something but someone, the other guy, the Holy Spirit, the spiritual teacher, the one that makes spiritual realities go ah, revelation, a person reveals themselves to you and I guess the final one that we have tonight is that a person requires something from you, if a person, people, they relate to you, they reveal to you God's iconic speed data but most importantly a person requires something from you, it says in here let's have a look in the very last parts of John 14, he says if you love me you'll obey what I command, that's Jesus talking here and then it says the world cannot accept this spirit of truth because it neither sees him nor knows him, saying the world can't accept him because they don't they don't relate, they haven't got the revelation but Jesus's words are tough, the words that the spirit carries on are tough because it says if you love me you will obey what I command, now when we hear that first up we go well that's a bit restrictive, that's exactly why I don't want to become a Christian because you look at all the stuff that you're telling me to do God it's your restrictive you're just getting in the way of my funk, I want to, but a person, if God is personal a person requires something from you and so look if you are saying, if you approach Christianity just at the intellectual level you know what about the virgin birth and what about the resurrection, I can't make sense of that and what about suffering and what about doubts and all that, if you approach it from that way then you're approaching Christianity like a philosophy not a relationship but when you come in to Christianity and you see it for what it really is you'll first see that Christianity is first and foremost about accepting a person not principles, it's about everything, everything up until the other guy, everything in the New Testament was about Jesus saying who do you say that I am, everything in the Bible points to him and then the job of the Holy Spirit the other guy is to work that into you to say to you when you're not a believer or if you are a believer who do you say that he is, in other words Christianity is first and foremost about accepting a person and if God is a person then anyone here knows that the minute you move into a relationship something is required of you, I learnt that the hard way when I got married, I decided to hang around here a little bit longer and I got chatting to the cleaners and a 10 minute chat turned into a 15 minute chat turned into a half an hour of chat and I was three months into marriage and I came home and walked through the door and Christen says where were you? I've had my father out looking for you, I thought you were dead in the park, I thought you'd had a car accident, I didn't know what was happening to you, you wouldn't answer your phone and I had a classic pastor excuse, I said yeah but I was talking to the cleaners about Jesus, that made any difference, we all know the minute you move into a relationship something is required of you, I've discovered pretty close down relationship, I can't go out whenever I want, I can't do whatever I want and that's not because my, it sounds like I'm painting my wife in a really bad picture here but all wives are like that. The principle, the principle is in any relationship you lose the right to act accordingly, you know another way to put it is that you know athlete falls in love with a woman who loves literature, he's a superstar, he's one of those American athletes from the NFL, just superstar, girls are after him everywhere, she loves literature, she loves poetry, he's falling in love with her and he says I'm love with you, you know what my sport means everything to me and I know that sports mean nothing to you and she says you're right, I love literature, I love poetry, read me literature and he says no, we're going to talk sports, you know what does he do if he wants to get her in love with him, does he say we're going to go down to the field, we're going to practice, no he says forget all the sports stuff, I want to read to you, I want to learn poetry for the first time, I want to get into that funny sort of stuff, because he knows he's saying look do you think seriously you know the way to your heart is through my athletic prowess, no because she's a person it requires something from him, it requires him to change and to shift in accordance with who that person is, you know God works no different, if you think that you can move and control your own way and say you know God I'm an athlete, deal with it, fall in love with me but this is how it's going to be on my terms, no way, relationships are opened up from the inside, right, they require something from you and just as that young woman would have nothing to do with sports and athletics and all of his interests, if it was about her, you know if she's saying look you know this is what I'm like, here's what's important to me, here's what I'm like I'm not a mathematical theory, I'm not a mystical force, I'm a woman we realize that in relationship if that's true and the human realm God as a person can't be treated any other way, it requires something of you and so I have to ask you tonight maybe, is your problem with Christianity really information, is it really intellectual or is it because it's too personal? Seeing as you know that to enter into any relationship means an aspect of commitment that leads to a loss or even a total loss of your independence and control then surely to move into a personal relationship with God, the ultimate person in the universe is going to mean that you're going to have to give over a bit of your independence and a bit of your control, it has to, it's the only way that relationship works and so friends what I love about the other guy, what we will discover over these coming six weeks is that he's not a pushy guy and he's not a nagging guy, he's a gentle sort of guy, he's a counsellor, he's a helper, he's an advocate, I love that word, like a social worker that wants to come alongside you and so how we see God affects whether or not we will be like God, I don't know where you stand tonight on the Holy Spirit and some people think if we're going to talk Holy Spirit that we're going to go all crazy and wacky and all sorts of weird sorts of things are going to be happening, other people think if we're going to talk Holy Spirit for the next six weeks that somehow Sam's going to pull this back into balance and we're going to be one of those conservative churches that just gets a healthy dose of God, you know when I read this book no one, no one ever got a healthy dose of God, the other guy is gentle but he's also unpredictable and friends do we want to be a Voltron church tonight, do we want people to look into your life, do we want people to look into our community life and see that crazy label that is annoyed kids right throughout the world, say that label that says batteries not included, a church or a life that looks good and it looks fancy on the outside and you take it home and it's limp and it's lifeless, I don't know about you, I don't want to be like that, I want more of God in my life and so how we get more of God in our life it's really those questions, how do you relate to him, are you a Christian tonight, have you been awoken sleeping beauty out of the life that you live, you can be awoken tonight, you can when God moves in and changes you and shapes you and he's very life blood through the other guy will come into your life tonight, you just got to ask him in, most importantly are you, are you, if you're a Christian is God revealing himself to you, are you having those, ah type moments, it's not about finding more information, it's about the spirit working that into you, most importantly it's going to require something of you, no human relationship you can get out of it without the other person requiring something of you but the great wonder of all of this is that the requirements of this God through the other guy will be a life of wonder and excitement and perseverance and we just have to look at the witness of Jen tonight right to see that, and so this is a guy that never wants to take you to even deeper depths and wonder of who you can possibly be in him, let's be open, let's be full of energy, let's be active, let's use the next six weeks for the first time maybe for some people, for the first time in a while for others even if you like me and I'm a minister, to stop and think, we talk about God, we talk about Jesus but it's time that we talked about the Holy Spirit, the other guy.