Within the Echoes of Divine Comfort (Matthew 5:4, The Beatitudes)

Pastor Josh: go ahead and turn in your Bibles to Matthew

chapter five and John chapter 14.

John 14 · chapter mention

So I'm gonna read, the Beatitudes and Matthew.

Then I'm gonna read a little passage we're gonna look at in

John Fourteen . blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs

is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

John 14.

We're gonna pick up in 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 receive because it

neither sees him 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

in the world will see me no more, but you will see me because I live.

You will also live in that day.

You will know that I am in my Father and 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 the Father, and I will love

him and manifest myself to him.

these things, I have spoken to you while I am still with you, but the

helper, the Holy Spirit with 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.

This is the word of the Lord.

I wanna open with the story in Luke 19 to kind of set the tone this evening.

Jericho at the season's height was a city fevered with commerce

, corruption, and the queasy unrest of a people under occupation, spices

and honey and dates in the air.

The market street swarm, the folk pressed tight his olives in a jar into this,

while the sun was a white hot coin.

Above the palms, Jesus entered, followed by those who trailed him

everywhere, peasants, merchants, the sick and the curious.

by the time he set foot beneath the first archway.

The city's main avenue bowed with bodies craning for a glimpse.

And the Alis echoed with shouts and the crowd was a man named Zacchaeus.

He was the chief excise man, the tax farmer, the velvet gloved hand

that siphoned their labor into the coffers of their imperial overlords

and by all accounts into his own.

And the bathhouse meant spat at dimension of his name at night He dined behind

locked gates, attended by servants whose loyalty he could purchase.

He was, not a man accustomed to being denied what he wanted.

And yet, here in the mob, he found himself diminished first by stature

and then more cruelly by the way the bodies close ranks against him, leaving

him tiptoeing and elbowing aside the familiar contempt made literal.

But Zacchaeus was clever as the wealthy have to be and prided had

not yet calcified into paralysis.

He calculated, he withdrew from the knot of townsfolk and hurried

on ahead, trailing the path.

Jesus route must take.

Children pointed and giggled old men muttered, but he did not break his stride.

He came to the broad avenue where merchant stands clustered beneath

a canopy of ancient sycamores.

Here the trees were nearly as thick as columns.

Their roots buckling the paving stones and their limbs low and inviting without

a moment's notice that he has hitched up his robes and climbed, and he did

not choose the most prominent branch.

But he found a spot within an unobstructed view, and they're hidden by the leaves

and the dappled patterns of sunlight.

He waited below him as the dust rose with the approaching company.

He had advantage more God-like than he had ever enjoyed From behind his counting

table, he watched the slow dulin ripple of the crowd partying before Jesus.

Jesus was not what Zacchaeus expected.

He was plainly dressed, sun browned, all the weariness and heartbreak and

compassion of a man who spent too long among the needy and the lost.

The remarkable thing about him from Zacchaeus angle was the way he did

not so much move through the people as allow them to move through him.

It was as though their hopes battered against him, like water against the stone,

and it was the water that was changed.

When Jesus reached the foot of the sycamore, he paused beneath

its broad, dusty leaves, and as if plucking from another world raised

his gaze and called up Zacchaeus.

Come down this moment for today, I must stay at your house.

The word struck, the little tax man like a throne stone, knocking the air from him,

but also filling his chest with a bloom.

That was part embarrassment, part incredulous, glee, and

part something like hope.

All eyes turned to the tree, even the breeze seemed to hush.

The crowd accustomed to ignoring or despising.

Zacchaeus now saw him holy.

His nobby knees clutching the branch.

His expensive robes smeared with bark.

His face gone pale and then flushing with unfamiliar delight for his parts Z.

He has nearly tumbled from his perch and his haste snagging his tunic and

scraping his shins, but he hurly felt it.

He hurried to the ground, tripping into the clearing that it opened around

Jesus as if some centrifugal force now spun the world around him alone.

Me, he heard himself say, voice cracked in thin my house, but

Jesus smile wide and easy.

Brook no misunderstanding.

The short walk to Zia's house, one of the finest in the city with a portico

and mosaic floors was a gauntlet.

The righteous murmured.

What business does he have getting cozy with this crook?

They said, why is he elevating this traitor, this blood sucker?

There are a thousand more deserving homes in Jericho than this house.

Mothers schooled their children from their path vendors made the

sign against evil, almost hissing.

Yet Jesus seemed immune as though these arrows of scorn simply failed

to find their mark at the threshold, Zacchaeus turned to face the crowd,

but his tongue trained for commerce and bargaining failed him inside.

In the cool atrium, Zacchaeus was suddenly overwhelmed.

The presence of Jesus in his house, seated at his table, waiting to eat a

meal was a dislocation, almost physical.

He felt in his chest, a squeeze, a trembling, and then clarity as

if for the first time he saw the precise dimensions of his own soul.

All the wealth, all the clever stratagems and accounts, the lattice work of

extortion and plausible deniability.

These in the company of Jesus seem not merely empty, but actively poisonous.

He stood mouth open and could barely form the words master.

He managed his voice.

Course.

I give away half my income to the poor, and if here he faltered,

feeling in the eyes of Jesus who knew already if I'm caught cheating,

I'll pay back four times the damages.

That's law.

But I, he swallowed, but I have not been just, I will pay it fourfold

even more to whom I have wronged.

It was not a confession rehearsed.

It was the only thing left to say in Jesus's presence and Jesus

gazing and said to him in full voice so that all the sneering and

skeptical neighbors could hear today.

Not tomorrow or some far off day, but this very day salvation has come and

set its table in this house, not as a reward for virtue, not as a trophy

for the strong, but as a miracle for the meek, for the broken, for the ones

who long counted themselves outside.

Blessing Zach, he is Jesus continued.

You are not only son of Abraham by blood and birthright, but by the

faith that now stirs your heart.

A faith that risks mockery and makes costly restitution.

A faith that admits the wound and dares to hope for restoration for

the son of man has not come to judge to tally debts, nor as a scholar to

debate the merits of the righteous.

But as a shepherd who haunts the wilderness for the one sheep that

none of the shepherds would bother to count, the son of man came precisely

scandalously to seek and save the lost.

Today, all of Jericho will bear witness to what that means.

The lost are found, the scorned are called guests.

the long humiliated are restored to honor and glory.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

Why open with this story?

The story doesn't say, Zach Kieu wept.

maybe he didn't.

I don't know if he was overwhelmed at the grace of his entire house,

meeting the grace of God that day, breaking bread with Jesus.

uh, someone who went out of his way to find this one man hiding in a tree and to

say, salvation is coming to your house.

I'm coming to your house.

But what I want you to focus on this week, and what I want you

to see is how Jesus pursued him.

How he walked alongside him, how he broke bread with him.

And despite all the grumbling accusations from the crowd, Jesus saved and

transformed him and his whole house.

Jesus did not let those insults reach him.

That accusation penetrate him, but transformed him.

The word comfort, which is what we're gonna focus on today.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted is peral.

And it literally means to come alongside.

It is the verb form of peral, the noun.

And this noun is used for someone in particular, John 1416.

We read it and I'll pray to the father and he shall give you another

comforter, literally the noun.

It's who he is.

And what does he do?

He Perot Ks, he comes alongside.

He is our helper, our friend.

And as we'll see, he actually is, it's a legal term, of, advocate, but a comforter

that he may abide with you forever.

The coming alongside of one, the coming alongside John 1426.

Who is this comforter?

The but the comforter.

Which is the Holy Ghost.

I'm reading from the Old King James.

Some of you have it, whom the father will send in my name, shall

teach you all things and bring all things to your remembrance

whatsoever I have said unto you.

So let's look at that tonight, because right there I'll give you the comforter.

And then in verse 26, he says, who the comforter is is the

Holy Ghost or the Holy Spirit.

Um, if you read newer versions, I want to see tonight who he is, what

he does, and how to receive it.

Who he is.

Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted.

We've been studying the Beatitudes and the Beatitudes are the opening gospel

salvo on the Sermon on the Mount.

Those who come into the kingdom of heaven must come through the narrow.

But merciful gates, there's no climbing over the fence, there's no shortcuts.

It is humble and it is low , but it is generously wide open to all, to any.

those who hop the fence to climb this ethical mountain, the Sermon

on the Mount will find themselves dashed to pieces even by its shadow.

You must come by way of the gospel.

You must come by way of the narrow gate, so the gospel again,

blessed are the poor in spirit.

Nothing in my hands.

I bring congratulations.

Your poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are those who mourn.

Congratulations.

You mourn your, you're, uh, weeping.

Not that you've been busted, but that you realize that you are

busted for they will be comforted.

Blessed are the meek, a bit bridled horse.

I've given the reins of my life over into the hand of another.

My life is not my own listener.

Those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be

filled a new heart with new desires that is filled from the start.

It amazing.

I don't have to get this new heart, and then I go seek it,

But man, ye shall be filled.

Blessed are the merciful.

It's standing in light of the mercy that we've been shown.

We begin to extend that mercy out to one another and our community,

and out to our neighbors, and out to our city, and out to the world.

B, blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God, an identity statement

about the gospel and who you are because of what he's done and the righteousness

that has been laid to your account.

You have no hope without faith, it's impossible to please the Lord.

What is the faith that he is looking for that Christ did for you?

What you can never do for yourself, that Christ alone was pleasing in your place.

That's what's pleasing.

That's the faith that he's after putting all my weight, all my freight, all

my trust in Jesus and what he's done.

Blessed are the peacemakers for even as God made a way where there

was no way and destroyed that enmity that was against us and him.

So now he commissions us to go and to make peace, to bring the message

of reconciliation out and everywhere we go, blessed are those who are

persecuted because of righteousness for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

The reality of mission is that not everybody will like the message of

the good gospel because it exposes.

Our desire deep down to make a religion of our own so that we can achieve and

that we can get to heaven so that we can go back and the original sin, Adam and

Eve saying, questioning God's goodness and saying, I'm not really sure if you

should decide God, what good and evil is.

Maybe we'll decide what good and evil is and, uh, we're gonna set it

up this way, which is just another, attempt at controlling our own lives.

And we're addicted to controlling our own lives.

The masters of our own fate, the captains of our own ship, as it were.

So we looked at good mourning.

The tax collector in the temple, the prostitute washing

Jesus' feet with their tears.

Zacchaeus pursued by Jesus.

You will be comforted.

What happened to these people?

What was the result of someone coming alongside them?

Of someone taking them up of.

Advocating on their behalf.

In the midst of, remember the pressure from, the Pharisee, Simon who is

looking at this woman and thinking Jesus isn't even a real prophet and

he's advocates for her and he defends her, or the man in the temple who's

praying in the Pharisees like, thank God that I'm not like that fool.

You know, I'm awesome.

Thank you God.

You made me awesome.

And, you watched the Lego movie too many times.

and, and Jesus is saying, no, this man goes home justified rather than that man.

And Zacchaeus, his Jesus walks with him through the streets, amidst the grumbling

of the mob, amidst the grumbling of the crowd, he breaks bread with him

in that house in salvation is there

Sin is forgiven they're declared justified, they're declared save.

And we see no language in the Old Testament.

Take up this imagery of this transformation.

Ezekiel 36, 25 to 27.

I will sprinkle clean water on you and you will be clean.

I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols.

I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you.

I'll remove from your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.

And I will put my spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees

and to be careful to keep my laws.

And then in Ezekiel 7 37, the very next chapter, he gives them this,

Ezekiel, this valley of the dry bones.

And what a poetic picture as there's this army that's been slain and time.

Does what it does.

And there's just rot and there's dissipation, and there it's

just all gone to nothing until there's just bones and fragments.

And he asked Ezekiel, can these bones live again?

He is like, well, you know, I doesn't look possible to me.

And he says, prophesied to the wind and tell 'em to come together.

And there's this rattling and the bones and the joints start coming

together, and the teeth fly back into the jaws and there's togetherness,

but yet there's no movement.

And so he says, prophesied to the wind, prophesied the breath.

And all of a sudden the breath of God, the rah is breathed in.

And then this thing that was a corpse comes back to the life with the breath

of God , a picture of what the Holy Spirit does in a life as he not only

brings things back together, but that he himself comes and gives you his very

breath, his very life inside of you.

Being a Christian is crazy . Yo uses terms like born again and

altogether different than if we were getting self-help from somewhere.

This is a whole different radical thing that he's talking about here.

Who number one is the Holy Spirit, John 14, 16, and 17.

I 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 knows him.

You know him free.

He dwells with you and will be in you if you'll allow me.

I've already tipped my hand a bit with my pronoun selection.

The Holy Spirit is not merely an aspect, an energy or an ambient power, but

rather the personal divine resident within the heart of every Christian.

The subtle distinction in the pronoun he.

Not, it carries more weight than you might expect.

At first glance, shaping not only our understanding, but our

entire relationship to the spirit and by extension to God himself.

Number one, he's personal.

That's what that means.

Have you ever noticed, perhaps in a quiet moment when you're reading the words

of Jesus, that he never refers to the Spirit as it not once does He suggest

the Spirit is a faceless force, not a mere outflow or a vague cosmic momentum.

Instead again and again, the spirit is referenced.

This he note carefully, even in our text in verse 17, the world cannot accept him.

There is personhood here, a subjectivity, a consciousness behind

the actions and presence of the spirit.

He can be known.

He acts and he feels, and in the language of the gospels,

dwells and speaks and guides.

Consider the implications in Ephesians four 30.

Paul writes, do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom you were

sealed for the day of redemption.

To grieve someone is not to damage a machine or even neglect a rule.

It is a word reserved for personal relationship.

For love that is spurned or misunderstood, only a person can be grieved.

The same holds in Hebrews 10 29.

How much worse punishment do you think will be deserved by the one

who has spurned the son of God and has profane the blood of the covenant

by which he was sanctified and has outraged the spirit of grace?

That is an amazing tattoo or a bumper sticker.

Outrage, the spirit of grace that is so weighty.

Note the word outrage.

One.

Outrage is a self, a consciousness.

You can't outrage a law or a physical object.

You can break a law.

You can shatter a vase, you can misuse a system, but outrage is

a reaction of will and emotion.

The relational attributes of the Holy Spirit are not mere rhetorical

flourishes In Romans 1530, Paul writes, I appeal to you brothers by our Lord

Jesus Christ and by the love of the Spirit to strive together with me in

your prayers and to God on my behalf.

Did you catch it?

The love of the Spirit here.

Love is not something the spirit inspires in us, nor is it a

generalized force for unity.

It is a property of the spirit himself.

He loves, he desires, he appeals.

Let's go deeper still.

And the book acts, the Spirit speaks and Acts 16, six.

He forbids.

Nope, you're not going there, Paul.

in Acts 13, two, he appoints missionaries.

This is who I'm picking in Acts five, three to four.

He has lied to.

Mm-hmm.

Anon nice and safari.

In each case, the verbs assigned to the spirit are those of

conversation and deliberation.

The spirit is not just a doctrine, but a dialogue.

The spirit is not a static presence in our lives, but an active participant

in the narrative of redemption.

But all this raises a question, if the Holy Spirit is a person, how

is it that we so often talk about the Spirit in such impersonal ways?

Why don't we speak of God the Father or God the Son?

Do we find ourselves so readily putting, and picturing a face, a voice of

personality, while with the spirit we default to abstraction, to electricity,

to wind, or fire or invisible breath?

The answer, I think, says much about both our imagination or our reluctance

to accept intimacy with the divine.

What does it mean for the Holy Spirit to be personally wounded,

to be grieved, to be delighted?

What does it mean for the spirit to be the one who prompts, who remembers, who

waits, and patience for hearts to churn?

Well, one, it means that a Christian's journey is not a solo adventure, nor

is it a one-sided command performance before a distant divine audience.

It is an exchange, a relationship, a partnership forged in the language of

scripture, the witness of the saints and the quiet persistent whisper.

Of the spirit himself, and if the spirit is personal, he can

be known, loved, trusted, and tragically grieved and resisted.

He is not an impersonal battery pack for our spiritual lives.

He is not the wind beneath our wings as the song says, the

wind is one of his metaphors.

He is the friend and the counselor, the advocate, the comforter who

is constant but not coercive.

He may press upon us, but never possesses us against our will.

He brings truth but never caught him.

Nation.

He is the one who gently draws us back again and again and

again to the love of Christ.

He is a person that he comes and lives inside of you.

The temple of the Holy Spirit.

The spirit of God.

Jesus says, it's better that I go away because then the helper will come.

Why?

Jesus is like, man, I put myself in this incarnate physical body and I

can be at one place and one time.

You need God himself to be with you.

Everywhere you go at all moments of life while you're sleeping, you need

the spirit of, you need God himself to take a residence in you every bit

and moment, every second of every day.

The promise in why Jesus says it's better, it's 'cause God moves in for with you.

Number two, he's a person, but what's really great is that he's God, John

14, sixteen , and I'll ask the father and he will give you another helper.

He's not only a person, he's God.

The text is careful, precise, unyielding on this point.

Our English translation is, frankly, a little impoverished

when it comes to the word another.

In Greek, there are two distinct options for another.

The first one is Heteros, which may sound familiar, which

is where we get the prefix.

Hetero meaning different or other of a different kind.

If you order a drink at a cafe, a black coffee with no creamer.

And you say, give me another drink, and you want something different, a green

tea after that plain black, coffee that you had, you would use heteros.

It's another, but it's not the same as the first, not even in essence,

it's d it's in a different category.

It's on the right side of the Starbucks board.

they hide the teas.

You can't even find them anymore.

It's not even in its essence.

And it's a different category, a different flavor.

The other Greek word for another is aos.

AOS does not mean another of a different kind.

It means another of exactly the same kind.

Another that is so like the first that for all intents and purposes,

it's a continuation, but with its own personal distinction.

If you go to the counter and say, give me another, and you want exactly

the same coffee identically prepared, the same taste, same strength,

same temperature you're asking for.

A, this is the word Jesus chooses.

It's not an accident.

It's not a slip of the tongue or the quirk of the translation.

When Jesus speaks to his disciples, the circle of men, remember the context.

Who spent years with him, who had grown to love him, who

would be devastated to lose him.

As he is laying out everything that he is going to the cross, he looks

at them in the eyes and says, I will send you another alos counselor.

I will send you one just like ME . Not a stand-in, not a substitute, not an echo or

an aftershock, but another just like me.

Have you ever thought about that in that way?

so often I'm like, if I had a time machine, I just would glimpse if

I could for five minutes, just see Jesus and catch him and goes, I know

you're bending the laws of time.

Get back into that machine before you create a multiverse or whatever.

Do you know what Jesus is saying right here?

He's saying It's me, everything.

The tenderness, the tone, the authority, the command, the wisdom,

the power, the omnipotence, the know that's who I'm sending you.

It's not a small claim.

In fact, it's a thunderbolt, a theological earthquake.

Jesus is equating himself in the Holy Spirit in a way that goes so far beyond

simple kinship or shared mission.

He's saying in effect, the Spirit whom I will sin is the same as I am, as

I am the same as the Father, right?

Me and the father are one.

We just got done reading that the father's in me.

I'm in the Father, you're in me.

We're in the what is happening here.

No one in the upper room could have missed the implication.

They might not have words for it yet, Trinity.

That word would come later.

And wrestling through the creeds and the centuries of debate.

But the shape of it was there glowing in the dark.

Jesus was God.

The Spirit was God, the Father was God.

And there were not three gods, but one and yet three persons.

A communion so perfect that it could only be described as love.

The divine dance from the beginning of time, the Father giving to

the son doting on him, the son glorifying the father, just marveling

at his goodness and his grace.

The spirit being like, you guys are crazy and marveling over them.

Both this divine rhythm of self-giving love existing from eternity past and out

of that because God doesn't need anything.

He's like, let's bring other people into this dance.

And only full well that before the foundation of the world, the

lamb was slain to bring you in.

It would cost everything.

Before we move on, it's worth remembering that this was not the

first time Jesus made such claims.

There's a movement right now that Jesus never claimed that he was God.

I listen to the stuff all the time.

I'm plugged into the apologetics and, and the debates, and there's

just, people are just like, no, Jesus never claimed to be God.

He never claimed it in the gospels, especially the Gospel of John.

but Jesus is always speaking this way, always laying out, hints and paradoxes

to the frustration of his opponents and to the confusion of his disciples.

He'd say things like I and the Father are one.

Or if you've seen me, you've seen the Father.

He would forgive sins by his own name, which only God can do.

He would refer to himself by the divine name.

The I am and not apologize for it.

The accusations of blasphemy were not misunderstandings.

They were the only logical response to what he was saying

unless you believed him.

The claimed divinity was as clear as daylight and it got him

killed, and it's on every page.

So when he says in John 14, I'll ask the father and he'll

give you another counselor.

He is doing the same thing again, but now he's drawing the circle wider.

He's saying, as I am to the Father.

So the spirit is to me, the spirit is not a junior partner, a

lesser being, not a mere helper.

The spirit is God himself, as close to me as my own breath, as

close to you as your own heartbeat.

This is why the New Testament will say with.

Out embarrassment that to lie to the spirit is to lie to God.

Acts five, that the spirit searches even the depths of God.

One Corinthians two, that the spirit is the very presence of God living in you.

One Corinthians six.

This then is the logic of the Trinity.

Not a mathematical puzzle, but a living relationship.

A fellowship at the heart of the universe, a love so overflowing that it spills out

and creates and redeems and indwells.

The spirit is no mere abstraction, no ghostly afterthought, but the

God who raised Jesus from the dead, pulsing with power, alive and

at work in the world and in you.

This is what I want us to see and why it's so important.

Why does it matter that the Holy Spirit is not just an idea or a force, but a

person, a divine person at that it matters because the whole project of Christianity

is not about learning to manipulate spiritual energies or optimize your inner

life or maximizing happiness or success.

It is about being drawn into a relationship with the living God

through Jesus Christ, by the power and presence of the Holy Spirit.

There's some trinity right there for you.

The Bible talks about this often in terms of being filled with the Spirit.

It's one of the ways that I think we get wacky, and where I, when I was

growing up, I was taught like they would take a picture of water and

it's like you pour it in a cup and this is what it's like to be filled.

And then, you know, you're walking around and somebody cuts you off in traffic.

Some Holy Spirit pops out, and then you, and then your wife, you know, she,

she's, she argues, boom, some more water pops out, and then at the end of the

day you're like, Lord, I'm so empty.

Please juice me again.

and then he fills you up again, and, and, and then you're setting out in

the day and the, the Holy Spirit.

He's just really, really, really making a mess, just pouring out everywhere.

My gosh.

When it talks about being filled with the spirit, it's one of the Bible's

most repeated and mysterious, ideas.

The, the apostles were filled, remember?

And in fact, Jesus said, don't do anything until that happens.

And they're like, well, we're gonna cast lots and pick Matthias.

why, where is Matthias in the earth?

Anyways, the early church was filled.

Paul prayed constantly for Christians to be filled.

What is he talking about?

It's not some kind of force that we're filling up our batteries or we're

recharging like a spiritual Tesla.

What is happening being filled with the Holy Spirit is to experience

incredible divine joy and power.

A kind of scene that is brighter than the new day sun.

A kind of knowing that burns away all the fog from your mind.

A kind of loving that is stronger than death.

Yes, the way you seek to be filled with the spirit depends entirely

how you think of the spirit himself.

If you imagine the spirit is an impersonal force, you are going to pursue

him in a mechanical, formulaic way.

You'll look for techniques, steps, rituals, and formulas

that guarantee the right outcome.

You'll treat spiritual life like a machine and put the correct prayers,

the right emotions, the approved disciplines at Presto, God's power

flows into you ready to be consumed.

This is not so different.

From how the rest of the world in every era has thought about the divine.

If you look at nearly every major religious tradition

outside of Christianity, you'll notice a key similarity.

The divine is not fundamentally personal, but rather an

abstract principle or energy.

In ancient Greek and Roman thought that Gods themselves were essentially

personifications of forces of nature.

Or fate.

And even the gods were subject to impersonal laws and eastern religions.

This is even more explicit eastern thought, Buddhism, uh, Hinduism, Taoism,

conceives of God as the ultimate reality.

As an impersonable force, a kind of spiritual electricity pervading the

cosmos, holding it all together.

The highest goal is to merge with the one to lose yourself in the ocean

of being, to dissolve the boundaries of the individual personal hood and

become absorbed into the all soul.

The, the source, the path to divine then is fundamentally about detachment,

detaching yourself from your own desires, your own thoughts, your

own will, your own sense of self.

And in fact, it me, Easter meditation is empty.

Your mind, like don't think about anything.

Empty it, right?

Biblical meditation has fill your mind.

With truth and in this scheme, this, this other force scheme, spiritual

growth is a subtractive process.

Less you, more universe, less thinking, more silence, less wanting, more being.

If God is a force, you emerge with him by letting go.

But what if the divine is not less than personal, but more, what if

the ultimate reality is not blank?

Infinity.

An infinite, radiant person as the Bible insists.

What if the Holy Spirit is not an it, but a he who has a mind and a

will and a heart, who cares, who chooses, who grieves, who loves what?

If you were made to enter into living relationship with him, to know him and

to be known, then being filled with the spirit is not about emptying yourself into

a blank void, but about opening yourself up for passionate mutual relationship.

What a dialogue and embrace a union that does not dissolve your personhood,

but fulfills it for its original intent to be more who you really are.

What in Christianity, the fullness of the spirit is not less personality, less

consciousness, less desire, but more c.

S Lewis said, it's not that your desires are too strong.

They're too freaking weak.

He didn't say freaking.

Yeah.

But more life and life to the full.

I came to give you life in that more abundantly.

I like who you are.

God says, I designed you, I gave you your personality.

That's not to be lost in heaven.

It's just you more perfected.

Beautiful.

What is that gonna be like?

Oh, but let's be honest.

'cause some of us, at least this is how I used to be.

We want spiritual power, but we want it on our own terms

because we want to have control.

And that's why the idea of an impersonal spirit is so attractive

because it means I can use the spirit rather than be transformed by him.

It means I can bring my list and my schedule

instead of having him contradict me.

And maybe point out some idols that I'm still clinging to or have gone back to.

But if the spirit is a personal, if he's a living presence of God himself,

then the relationship is not about control, but about love and surrender.

It's an invitation to intimacy, not instructions for manipulation.

When the spirit comes, it's like being set on fire from within.

The apostles at Pentecost.

Begin to speak with tongues of flame, not to retreat into silence when the spirit

fills from when they become bold, alive, creative, loving, fearless spirituality

and the biblical sense is an explosion of personality, not the loss of it.

The spirit's goal is not to submerge you into the cosmic ocean, but to fill every

cell of your being with his radiant life, making you a living icon of God himself.

When the Bible says to be filled with the spirit, it does not mean an

occasional top-up or a seasonal revival.

It means to be so pervaded by the presence of this person that your priority shift,

your relationship shifts your dreams, and your dreads begin to reorganize

themselves around the gravitational pull of a love that will not let you go.

When I was dating my Andrea, who's now my Andrea

people were impacted by my love for this person, I would bring 'em, bring him up

in conversa, bring her up, thank you.

In conversation, I'd be like, oh, did you know I was dating somebody?

Yeah, she's a redhead.

Yeah, she's very beautiful.

you wanna see a picture and I'd show a picture.

Not only was I in my world changed as I was filled with this person.

I had something from her that had her perfume on it and at night I'd, sniff it.

It sounds creepy, but anyways, because I was so filled, that's

what it means to be filled.

It means you're so filled and what is the spirit's ministry

is to make much of Jesus.

He says, I'm gonna tell you everything about Jesus and make what Jesus has done

for you real, that he's your savior.

He's like a floodlight.

Uh, one preacher pointed out he is JR r Packer.

It was, he said, you know, at night, uh, there's this beautiful

church and it had this floodlight.

You don't even see the floodlight, but you see the beauty of the church that

it's illuminating and the Holy Spirit.

He said, oh, that's like the Holy Spirit illuminates the

work of Christ in our hearts.

And so to be filled with the spirit means to be filled with

what the spirit's full of.

What was I full of?

I was full of with my wife and everything.

it controlled everything from my finances to, my hygiene, to,

everything in my life was changed because I was filled with this person.

And so who is the Holy Spirit filled with?

He's full with the person and the work of Jesus, and as he is in you to be filled

with him as to fill you with Jesus.

Yeah.

To be so overwhelmed by who he is, his beauty, his magnitude,

his grace, his love, his tone, his tenor, his movement toward you is

to come alongside you and to preach to your heart the beauty of the one.

think of people who have left the deepest impressions on you.

A teacher whose voice you still hear in your mind on certain days.

A parent whose gestures or idioms have become part of your own.

A friend whose presence recalibrated the axis of your own decision making.

We are, for better or for worse, the sum of those who influence us, whose

words and affections have burrowed into the fabric of our very choices.

To be filled with the person is to be filled with the memory, the conviction,

the anticipation of their presence.

It is to find their perspective gradually displacing your own.

Isn't that what marriage is?

When you are in love, the beloved's words do not remain external commentary.

You metabolize them, they become inseparable from your own inner monologue.

You hear their voice.

I hear my wife's voice.

Literally it was, I think it was this morning, I was walking and

there was some trash, and I just heard her say, can you pick that up?

She's gone.

She wasn't there.

She was at, at church.

And I'm like, oh yeah, I should do that.

I'm literally hearing her.

Anyways.

to be filled with the spirit is in this sense, to have your eternal

landscape rearranged by the personality of God, the voice, the tone, and the

motivations that are uniquely his.

It is to be in the deepest sense.

Re-author.

Okay, so what does he do?

Okay, that's who the spirit is.

He's a person.

He's God, what does he do?

Spirit of truth, might he set truth ablaze.

John 1417, even the spirit of truth is what he's called.

What does this mean?

At one level, we know the Holy Spirit essentially authored the Bible.

For example, two, Peter once says, no prophecy of scripture

came about by the pro's.

Own interpretation for prophecy never had its origin in the will of man.

But men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

The phrase carried along is not mechanical, not a matter of dictation,

but we're like a hand upon a, a brush of a painter where the very personalities

and peculiarities of the writer's remain.

Yet what is written is the word intended.

The Holy Spirit in this is not merely the penman.

He is the breath behind the pen, the mind within the language, the

secret music that makes the plain words of men capable of resurrection.

And so when Jesus in John 6 63 declares the words I have spoken to

you are spirit and they are life.

He's not offering a metaphor, nor is he describing a mere poetic gloss

on the sayings of a dead rabbi.

Instead, Jesus means the Holy Spirit is present not only in the memory of

his words, but in their very utterance, in the way they are heard and received

and metabolized into the Soul.

The spirit is at work.

That's why he can say like Revelation.

If you just read this, you're blessed.

The spirit takes the syllables and the syntax of the teacher, and wherever

the words are welcome makes them a well of living water, John 1426, 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've said to you.

There's a moment sometimes so swift and unremarkable as it is almost

missed when a phrase, you guys know, this leaps from the page or the

pulpit and it divides joint tomorrow.

Laying open.

The secret intentions of the heart, you're undone.

It is the spirit of truth, not merely correcting air, but enabling

the here to know what he could never have found by his own power.

I can't tell you how many times people come up to me and they say,

I really loved when you said this.

It just, it got me and you know, it, I, it showed, guess what?

I didn't even say that.

I've looked over my notes.

I might even come close.

So I am confident that whenever I preach, if God would so have me, that there's a

greater preacher at work all the time.

And that's what I bank on, man.

He is communicating and expounding and bringing to life what

is alive and making it real.

This is the spirit of truth, not merely correcting air, but enabling

the hero to know what he could never have found by his own power.

It is the difference between reading a travel brochure and walking the

stony streets of a distant city.

At dawn, at one moment, he may bring comfort and assurance, a balm

where the heart is raw the next.

He may bring offense , a stumbling block thrown into the path of one

who thought himself mature and maybe full of himself a little.

Proud.

The spirit as author is not a dead hand on a completed text, but an

active living will that interprets and illuminates and sometimes sets fire

to the inci, certainties of the pious.

For, as Jesus says, in another place, the wind blows where it will.

So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.

Paul writes in Ephesians to be filled with the spirit in a parallel passage

in Colossians three, let the word of God dwell in you richly Paul's point

in these twin passages, it's this.

He's saying the same thing is that you are saturated not by the force

of truth, but by the person of truth.

The Spirit is not an interior decorator, rearranging the furniture according to

the latest ecclesiastical fashion, but a permanent resident, an unremitting house

guest who cannot be evicted, who gradually infuses every room with his aroma, who

leaves a mug in the sink and a book on the table and a coat on the chair until

your space is indistinguishable from his.

John 1421.

Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me.

He who loves me will be loved by my father, and I too will

love him and show myself to him.

Notice that at in verse 21.

What does it mean for Jesus to show himself to someone who

already claims to follow him?

What does that mean?

I already know you, Jesus, and he's saying, no, guess what?

The spirit's gonna show me to you.

Hallelujah.

It sounds circular, even redundant, but we know that there is a chasm

between knowing something is fact and encountering it as reality.

There's a difference between running your fingers over the braille of a

story and waking up inside the story.

Jesus isn't content that you merely acknowledge him or content

that you merely acknowledge him.

He wants to be experienced to become an undeniable presence.

The Holy Spirit is the agent of this experience.

He takes what is written, what is memorized, what is recited,

and he makes it an event.

Yes, the word becomes alive.

That's the difference.

The Holy Spirit takes the written and turns it into the spoken, the

abstract and makes it personal.

But let's be honest, most of us live and the difference between the two.

We say we believe, but we're not sure.

We feel we claim Christ, but we're not sure he's ever

actually come into the room.

I think this is why Paul repeats himself.

It's easy to claim the presence of Christ as doctrine, but difficult to

sense it as a living, singing thing.

We don't just need the spirit, some abstract sense.

We need the spirit to come and smash through the wall of self-consciousness,

self-protection, self obsession, and to open us up to the possibility

of being loved by God himself, not just as fact, but as a pulse.

As a drumbeat, as the only thing we can't live without.

This is what Jesus is saying in John 14.

He's not just promising the disciples a new textbook.

He's not promising them more rules, more obligation, more strategies for living.

He's promising that when the spirit comes, it will be if as if he himself

walked through the door and sat down besides you, I will show myself to him.

He says, it's not an abstraction, that's not a metaphor.

That is the promise that through the presence of the Holy Spirit,

the person of Jesus will become personally unmistakably real to you.

Figure the spirit is a master chef.

I like cooking.

And the words of Christ are, the ingredients.

You can have the most perfect recipe, the finest ingredients, but it is the

chef who brings the meal to the table, who turns those components into something

nourishing, fragrant, and unforgettable.

Michelin star quality.

I can have the same ingredients and it goes in the trash without the chef.

All you have are instructions and raw material.

The spirit is the one who animates, who transforms, who puts the meal

before you and says, eat, drink, and be satisfied and never thirst again.

You can study recipes your whole life, but you will never be fed unless the meal

is actually prepared and given to you.

Consider this, and this is where my wife says I have way too many illustrations.

You can know with reasoned, clinical certainty of a

chemist that sugar is sweet.

You could read about its crystalline structure.

Measure the angle at which its grains.

Refract the kitchen light, memorize its caloric content.

Understand the biological cascade.

It triggers.

Once it touches the tongue, you can ace the exam and you can teach the class.

But all of this is is different from the sensation of sugar

dissolving on your tongue.

As the architectural plans for a cathedral are from When the sunlight

streams through a hundred stained glass saints and the instance curls into the

ribbed vault of your skull, This is the difference the Holy Spirit makes.

Is a difference between fact and feast, between reading about fire

and sitting close enough to feel the hot living draft of it on your face.

the spirit does not merely float above the Texas scripture.

annotating footnoting, compiling facts for your intellectual satisfaction.

No, the spirit cracks open the honeycomb of truth and pours it

out until it runs sticky down your arms and stains your lips.

The spirit is not satisfied with you being able to recite doctrine.

The spirit wants to electrify your whole being with it.

The spirit wants the sweetness to linger so long on your tongue

that it changes the way you taste.

Everything else, which Paul would say is renewing the mind in Romans 12.

The Spirit is the difference between hearing an overture played by a high

school marching band and being pinned to your seat as the full symphony

peels through the concert hall and shakes the dust from the chandeliers.

He means to make the truth, pulse and crackle inside your nerves.

He means to make every word of Christ feel as though it leaps from the

page or the pulpit and seizes you by the caller refusing to let you go.

Until you have tasted and seen that he's good, it is the

spirit who takes the command.

Love your enemies, which you've heard a thousand times, but never

really believed, and one day in the middle of an unremarkable morning

turns it like a key inside your heart and floods you with compassion

you didn't know was yours to have.

It's the spirit, ew, in the split second between your anger and your action makes

the words of Christ shimmer and your mind until suddenly you want to bless instead

of curse to forgive instead of wound.

Finally, he's a counselor.

I will ask the father and he will give you another counselor.

It's tempting to let the word slip by as, as if we already know what it means.

We're educated people.

We have counselors for every realm of life, psychological,

vocational, marital, financial.

We live in a culture so saturated with specialists that the very word

counselor has almost lost its gravity.

If you take a stack of Bibles, king James, new International English Standard

Revised, standard New American, new World translation, just kidding, and

open them all to this passage, you will see an entire spectrum of words.

The translators are not disagreeing because they're careless.

They simply recognize that the word is too broad, simultaneously

gentle and fierce, domestic and judicial, intimate and cosmic.

The Greek word that Jesus uses in John 14 is paratas, which in its

simplest rendering means one called alongside, but it's also a legal word.

And it's also an intimate word.

It's an advocate, a helper, a comforter, a kind of defined defense attorney

who pleads the case of the accused.

That's what I really wanted to what drew me?

'cause you just hear, you know, oh cool.

Blessed are those who mourn and they will be comforted.

We have the Holy Spirit.

He's gonna come give us a hug.

There's something so much more profound and life changing just

right here on the pages of scripture.

To have the spirit as a Paraclete is therefore not to have a distant advisor,

but a companion who is as close as one's own breath, and who even in the thick

of confusion or despair, is able to whisper a truth that saves the one who

translates the historical Christ into the present tense reality of every believer.

That's what the spirit does, where the Son achieved the spirit applies where the

Son accomplished the spirit communicates.

The advocate does not simply remind us of what Jesus said.

He eternalize it so that the words of Christ become over time.

The instinct, the expectation, the hope of the person.

In dwell.

There are some who have lived so long in this relationship that the

boundaries between self and spirit blur.

Sometimes we get to know these people.

What emerges something new?

A life marked by unassuming wisdom, uncanny courage or inexplicable patience.

These are the fruits of the counselor at work, or the fruits of the spirit.

In the Roman world to be charged with a crime was the stand, utterly alone.

No due process, no assumption of innocence, no Miranda rights, no sympathy,

no sympathetic jury of your peers to be accused was to be already condemned.

It's where you started.

And yet in that bleak, merciless context, the Paratas was more

than a defense, attorney.

He was a character witness, a family member, a friend who marshaled all

credibility, and rhetorical fire to argue not only that you were innocent,

but that even if you were not innocent, you were still beloved and wanted and

worth more than the charges against you.

Let's stay with that translation for a moment because it is here

that the real meaning takes root.

The Paratas is another advocate, Jesus says, which means there was

already an advocate before the Word.

Another in Greek is Alice, not Heteros.

In other words, Jesus Christ himself was the original

advocate, the original paratas.

He stood in the place of his friends before God and man, he protected them.

He argued for them.

He covered their shame with his own honor, and he laid his body on the line.

When the mob sharpened its stones now, he says, I will send you another

who is just like me, who will do for you what I have done for you.

The Spirit will be your advocate.

In my absence, read the passage again.

I will ask the Father and he'll give you another counselor to be with you forever.

The spirit of truth, the phrase with you forever is so critical.

Oh.

There is no statute of limitations, no expiration date, no moment at which

the spirit files your folder away and moves on to a more promising client.

The spirit is with you in you, alongside you for as long as you exist.

The spirit cannot be fired, cannot be scared away, cannot be bribed

or blackmailed into silence.

He's in fact, more loyal to you than you are to yourself.

Your own self-advocacy is feeble in comparison.

We think of legal ad advocates as professionals hired on the

basis of expertise or necessity.

But in the ancient world, especially within families, the Paratas was

an act of love and solidarity.

It was to say, I'm so bound to you that your case is my case.

That your fate is my fate.

That your shame is my shame.

And this is what Jesus promises, that the hour of our greatest vulnerability,

whether it is the accusation of the conscience, the condemnation of

others, or the cold, rational tally.

Of our own failures.

You are not alone.

You have an advocate who will never rest, never quit, never

abandon you to the mercies of your accusers, but it goes even further.

There is a mysterious, even circular dimension to the work

of the Spirit as advocate.

One John two, one the apostle writes, but if anyone does sin, we

have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous.

So Jesus is the advocate in heaven and the Holy Spirit is the advocate on earth.

One pleads your case before the throne.

The other pleads in the inner courtroom of your own heart, the seed of your soul.

One is your defense in the celestial court.

The other is your defense in your existential court.

This is the double-sided advocacy of the Christian life, Christ before God, and the

spirit before your own self in the world.

You are covered from both directions.

What is the spirit's advocacy?

It's not a whitewash of your story.

This spirit does not paper over your sins or rewrite your biography

to make you more presentable.

He does not edit the record.

He owns it.

He knows your story in detail, including all those chapters you keep hidden

from others and even from yourself.

But the spirit loves you still, and more than that represents

you as you are, not as you wish.

You.

And in that representation is healing.

Courage in the strange, but real possibility of transformation.

Let's get practical for a moment.

In what way does the Holy Spirit act as advocate First in the face of

external accusation, you know this experience, you fail, and the voices

of condemnation gather like buzzards.

Maybe it's a family member, maybe it's a colleague.

Maybe it's your own internal script.

My own internal script.

You are a fraud.

You are unlovable.

You'll never change.

What's the use?

The advocate enters at that moment and speaks another word, a word of truth

that is not flattery, but is truer than the sum of all your failures.

The advocate says, this one belongs to me.

This one is my beloved.

There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, and it is the spirit

who brings that word to your heart in a way that cuts through all the arguments.

Second, the spirit is your advocate before yourself.

We are our own worst prosecutors.

We rehearse our failures with clinical precision.

I do dig up evidence against ourselves and sentence ourselves to perpetual disfavor.

Man, that was my testimony.

The spirit is the one who interrupts the trial, submits a motion,

and introduces new evidence.

That you are a child of God, that you're standing is secure, that there is a deeper

reality than your own inner judge can see.

The spirit argues that you are beloved the Holy Spirit's task 'cause daily,

our relentless concern is to stand between you and the courtroom of your

own mind and the prosecution that rises up against you, both from without

and even more fiercely from within.

You are never without an accuser.

We know that the accuser of the breth night and day, but the world.

Is filled with voices that would have you believe you're not

enough, that you fail beyond hope.

Sometimes in the church, they tell you that, that your shortcomings

are the truest thing about you.

More insidious are the voices that awaken when you're alone.

The internal prosecutors who are versed in your entire history, every thought, every

mistake, every intention, every secret.

These skilled litigators.

They know exactly where to find the evidence to discredit

you, belittle you, condemn you.

It is here in this eternal tribunal that the Holy Spirit operates as your

advocate, not as a mere bystander or comforter brought in after the verdict

to wipe your tears, but as one who takes the floor, interrupts the case

and presents a defense so compelling if forever alters the outcome of the trial.

You see this in Romans eight 15 where the apostle Paul writes, God has not

given us the spirit of fear, but he has given us the spirit of his son

who comes to do our hearts crying.

Abba, father Paul is not being poetic.

He's being literal in the face of your fears, in the thick of your trembley.

The Holy Spirit arrives not as a distant legal consultant, but as the very

voice of the beloved son alive in you shouting above the clamor of accusation.

You are not condemned.

You are a son, a daughter, and you belong.

This is what it means that the Holy Spirit bears witness with our

spirit, that we are children of God.

That is a legal word.

The phrase bear witness is not just a figure of speech, this a technical

term, a Greek jurisprudence the star witness, the one whose testimony is

so decisive that the case is closed.

What the Holy Spirit is not only your advocate but your chief witness, he

does not appeal to your feelings which wax and wane, nor to your performance,

which is inconsistent at best, he appeals to the finished work of Christ and the

irrevocable adoption that you've received.

When your heart is in turmoil with self-doubt and spiritual insecurity

mounts their evedince , the spirit's testimony overrides them.

You are his.

You are beloved.

Nothing could separate you from the love of God.

Amen.

It's right here, right here.

The Holy Spirit performs his work.

He interrupts your self-incrimination to remind you in the depth of your

being that you're not on trial anymore.

The case has been dismissed.

The verdict, the beloved child stands not by your merit, but by Christ and the

Spirit's entire project is to make that verdict the loudest truth in your soul.

That's good.

And it's not a one time event.

The advocate's work is continual.

Every morning, the world resets its case against you.

Every evening, your own memory reopens old files.

The spirit's advocacy is there relentless.

Day after day, he calls you to remember the promises of God superimposing them

over the clamor of the accusation.

When you fear people and the judgment of others and you start performing

for them, when you feel alien among your own people, when your past

seems unshakeable and you're future unsure, the spirit stands beside you.

Bearing witness publicly as well as privately that you belong.

You are not a servant.

You are not a guest.

You are not on probation in God's household.

you are family and nothing can un make that.

What is more, the spirit does not make these arguments in the abstract.

He embodies them in your experience.

He gives you moments of inexplicable assurance, flashes of joy amid the

anxiety, the subtle, but undeniable sense that you are no longer an orphan.

These are not psychological tricks.

They're the spirit's own testimony woven into your awareness, even when

you doubt him, even when the prosecution in your mind seems to win the day, the

spirit's defense stands from waiting for you to recover your senses and

hear his closing argument once again.

You may wonder if this is true.

Why do I still feel afraid?

Why do doubt still come?

The answer is the case is settled, but the old accuser is stubborn.

The prosecution has been disbarred, but he still lurks in the hallways, shouting,

accusation, hoping to be let back in court, hoping you'll open the door.

The spirit's advocacy is not to prevent every accusation.

But to ensure that none of them ever stick.

'cause none of them ever can, 'cause you're covered in the blood of a lamb.

The more you listen to 'em, the more you will find your heart change Not

because you've worked up the right feelings, but because you have begun to

see yourself as he does a beloved child, perpetually and perfectly accepted.

So when your heart is filled with doubt, when you're most certain that you have

failed, and that your relationship with God is hanging by a thread, the

Holy Spirit is already in the room.

Argue in your case, not with new evidence, not with empty platitudes, but with the

unassailable truth that you are already acquitted, already embraced already home.

All that remains is for you to believe it, to let that verdict

become the foundation of your life.

He persists, he returns.

He repeats the defense until bit by bit.

It sinks into your bones until the courtroom grows quiet.

And the voice of the advocate is the only voice.

You here.

This is the ministry of the Holy Spirit.

This is how he counsels you, how he comforts you, how he changes you.

Not by making you perfect, but by persuading you that you

are perfectly loved already.

This is what it means to have a counselor

how to receive it, and I just melted by the gospel.

This changed my life.

I don't wanna talk to you about the advocate, the first advocate.

Jesus, my salvation story.

I kind of pictured growing up

that

God kind of was getting worn out with me

in the same way I'd get worn out with someone who.

Keeps doing the same thing, although I oddly impatient with my kids.

Interesting.

Failing over and over and over

and growing up you kind of hear, you know, the courtroom and we,

we worked through the theology,

but there is an accuser.

A prosecutor against us.

He's got good evidence.

Well, may the accuser roar of sins that I have done, I know

them all, and thousand more.

My savior know if none,

but what changed my life and why I am like where John writes in first John,

these things I write to you that you may know that you have eternal life.

He's not like, leveraging that to get more altar calls.

He's like, no, I, I I want you to be sure.

Is where it says that Jesus is faithful and just to forgive, and

it goes right into his advocacy.

So Bar of Heaven accusation evidence.

Crazy.

This changed my life and I, I like, can't stop thinking about it.

It's, it is the melting, the heat in my heart so often.

Because I always pictured Jesus being like, okay, father, I know he's a mess.

we were making a lot of people, but like.

He doesn't get it.

Kay doesn't get it.

This Kayla doesn't get it.

Oh, he is trying so hard.

He wants you so bad.

He's so desperate.

He cries, he recommits a prior commitment of a previous rededication.

So often

you just, you give him mercy.

You please show him mercy.

He's my child.

I know.

You know, I started a good work.

I'm gonna be faithful to complete it.

My name's on him.

I'll take care of.

just show him some mercy.

Been your, it's not what happened.

We miss the weight of the gospel when we think that's what happened.

What happened is that in the high bar of heaven, holy

justice does not get diminished.

No, no.

We would be undone by the sheer scrutiny of every bit and every molecule of it.

The justice is so weighty and divine that the worst offender in all of

humanity as he glimpses the heavenly throne is gonna fall on his knees

and confess Jesus Christ his Lord.

Instantly.

No arguments.

No.

Oh, what happens here?

No.

Down on the knees confessing Jesus Christ is Lord.

The bar is so high and God is holy.

He cannot just let sin go by the wayside.

But what's beautiful is that Jesus stands as the advocate, the

advocate before the bar of heaven.

And here I am with all the things.

And I, he knows everything because he bore it and what he does is he shows

his hands and the scars and the wound in his side and the nails in his footprints

that he was dead, but now alive as he represent me before the throne.

He does not ask for grace for me.

He does not ask for mercy for me.

He doesn't ask for love for me.

What he does is he demands justice for me because he paid for me.

And the father received the payment.

The resurrection was the verification of that.

The Holy Spirit given is the seal.

So if God received payment, then he cannot go back on that.

He can't, he, it's justice that God forgave me because Christ made the

payment and I put my faith in Christ.

That changed my life.

I thought I was like, because is he gonna run out?

No, he can't receive double payment.

The universe would unravel it.

Self, every Adam would fly apart if that were the case.

And so as I stand, as I fail, as I walk, as I stumble my way to

heaven, I am utterly secure in the payment past, present, and

future that Jesus made for me.

I know that I have eternal life because of that beautiful advocate

that did what I couldn't and paid my debt and demanded justice.

It satisfied every bit of that justice, every bit of that justice

that I deserve has been swallowed up.

That there is, therefore now no condemnation.

That's why Paul can even say, who can bring a charge against God's elect?

It's God who justified me.

It's done.

It's done.

I.

That melts me on such a deep level and it frees me from so much performance.

I can take the mask off, I can be flawed.

I don't have to pretend I can actually be real 'cause we're not

healed until we're actually real.

And it brings such a depth of humility into my life that I named

as the cosmic Christ came and humbled himself in such a way I.

I'm undone by this story.

I'm undone that God would give us himself yes and the full force of it.

And that one day he's gonna peel that veil all the way back and

we'll behold every bit of it.