On Jesus' last night with his disciples, the night he is arrested, the night before he is crucified, which he knows is coming, he has some very poignant things he wants to convey to his little band of disciples, his little Followers his friends that have been with him for three and a half years really poignant insightful things that he wants to get across but one of the most startling things is he says You will do the same things. I have been doing as a matter of fact, you'll do even greater things than I have been doing How can that possibly be? that they we We do the same things, he's doing even greater things. We're gonna jump into that tonight as we dig out a little bit into this John 14 tonight, but first let me just ask you to hit that subscribe button, then you'll get all these videos as soon as they're published. do that right now. I'm Sam Hunter. This is 721 Live, the video arm of 721 Ministries. Thank you for joining us. I'm glad that you're with us. We are looking at what people call the Upper Room Discourse. It's Jesus' last words in the Gospel of John from John 13, 14, 15, 16, and 17. And tonight, we're going to start by looking into that statement that Jesus made. But before we do that, I want to share something with you that really informs everything that we'll talk about here, anything we'll ever talk about when it comes to following Jesus. And that is, this is not a self-help program. This is a Holy Spirit-inspired self-help program. We need the Holy Spirit in us to even understand what Jesus is telling us, much less to actually live it out. So I want to share with you a passage in Colossians, a groundbreaking, astounding passage in Colossians 3. Let's move there and look at it now. Colossians 1 excuse me the mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations this mystery But is now disclosed to the Lord's people to them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery You see, Paul is getting ready, the Holy Spirit through Paul is getting ready to give us the mystery that no one has understood since the beginning of time. Since the beginning of the biblical story, man's interaction with God, God reaching down to man, creating man, the whole story, there's been a mystery there that no one has understood and no one saw it coming. This is huge. You've read it possibly many times, but maybe you didn't catch how important this next statement is. The glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope, and remember the hope, hope in the biblical language is confident expectation. Christ in you, the confident expectation of glory. Christ in you. Messiah in you see the Jews of course understood that a Messiah was coming They understood this Messiah to be a conquering King They did they were aware of Isaiah talking about this suffering servant, but they couldn't get these two together They never imagined it'd be the same person. But one thing they certainly never imagined was that the Messiah would be in them This conquering King would be in them Because they didn't understand the Holy Spirit So I have a slide for you that I think will help frame this in your mind. So let's take a look at this slide. You see, we have the Trinity here, Father, Son, Holy Spirit. At the outset, God the Father left the Trinity to be in the tabernacle first when they were wandering in the wilderness. And then later, years later, the temple built by Solomon, which was just the building version of the tabernacle, God leaves to be in the temple so that man could be with God. Man would offer a sacrifice, a cleansing sacrifice, and then he could go to the temple to be with God. That was the first step. Then Jesus, the Son, He leads the Trinity, and He comes down and comes out of the temple, God to be with man. First man to be with God, now God to be with man. The sacrifice, just like in the original, the sacrifice now is Jesus. God to be with man through his sacrifice. Now the last slide, the last slide, the Holy Spirit leads the Trinity and comes down, not to be with man, but to be in man. And you can see that on this slide. The Holy Spirit is now in man, the temple is in man, but what is the sacrifice? that had to be made first to be with God, then for God to be with man, Jesus himself to sacrifice. What is the sacrifice now? Because we do not sacrifice animals, and we don't put ourselves up on the cross literally, but the sacrifice is self. The sacrifice is dying to self. The sacrifice is surrendering your kingdom to Jesus, to becoming his servant, following him. That is the sacrifice that it takes for the Holy Spirit to be in you, to be born again. And without the Holy Spirit in you, and we're gonna see that phrase in you several times as we go through John 14, without that, There's no moving forward. There's no going any deeper. There's no growing. It's just surface change, no transformation. Okay, we got that. Let's go to this statement that Jesus makes in John 14. Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. Now, can we stop the presses here for a minute? What is he saying? How could this be true? Now, the first question I have is, can we cop out and say, well, he's only talking to the disciples? He's really just talking to his followers. It doesn't pertain to us. He's not speaking to us. Can we just cop out and say, yeah, it doesn't apply to us? And I asked that question to the men's groups around the states, and I did not get one man to say, yeah, I think we can cop out. I think that was just to the disciples. We all know that he really is still speaking to us. So what could you do that would be the same thing Jesus did, even greater things than Jesus did? What could you, what could I do? Well, let's think about that for a moment. Jesus only had a public ministry for three and a half years. He reached a certain number of people, but it was a finite number of people. we have our whole lives to help work expanding the kingdom and each person we meet and influence so that they can find jesus and jesus can move into their hearts then that just that like that ripple effect so we can be a part of what kingdom building jesus was doing himself and perhaps because we'll live longer and we'll be exposed to more people And we can be in a lot of different places because of technology and all those things. Perhaps Jesus meant that. You know, perhaps he also meant, for instance, when I was reading the scriptures over the last few months, I kept seeing this persevere, persevere, persevere, to him who overcomes, to him who overcomes, to him who overcomes. If you read Revelation, the letters to the first seven churches, to him who overcomes, to him who overcomes. And the thought popped into my head, what is this emphasis on persevering? What is this emphasis on overcoming? And then, I think the Holy Spirit said, well, it's because we know how hard it is to persevere. So perhaps Jesus, when he's with the Father, and they're watching us live our human lives, we're not fully God, fully man as Jesus was. So Jesus may say, and this is just Sam's, just kind of giving a kind of a color commentary on this. Jesus may say to God the Father, now I understand, I felt what they're dealing with right now. I dealt with that temptation. Father, with all due respect, you weren't a human. I know what it feels like, and watch him, watch her. They're overcoming that temptation. They're overcoming that weakness, the way they were raised, the way they've been living all their lives, a physical weakness, an ailment, a temptation. They are overcoming it. They're fighting it, Father. That's more things than I did. I mean, there are a lot of ways that we can ask and answer this question, but I have a way to sort of land the plane on it. And my question is, are you doing anything even remotely similar to what Jesus was doing? That's the real question. Are you even in the ballgame? A friend of mine, Cubby, used to do these roundtables years ago before we started 721 Ministries, which was 20 years ago. And he would gather men together once a month, 15 to 18 to 20 men, and the ticket to admission was bring a question, any question about the Bible, faith, not news, weather, and sports, not politics, but the Bible and faith and Jesus. And the way Cubby would start each one of these meetings was he would say, now, we're going to go around the room. Tell us where you are in your spiritual journey using football as an analogy. Tell us where you are on your spiritual journey using football as an analogy. Now, think about what your answer would be, because we had some really interesting answers. We would have men say, Well, I'm on the field, I'm playing, I'm starting, but I'm getting a lot of penalties. We'd have men say, I'm on the bench, and I don't even know the playbook. We'd have men say, well, I've crossed over and I'm getting close to the goal line, but I cannot get in. One man said, who clearly didn't know much about football, he said, I'm on the 60-yard line. Well, there are no 60-yard lines in football, as we know, so he didn't have a clue. One man said, I'm at the stadium, I cannot find the door to get in. But the answer that stuck with me over all these years, that really stuck with me, one man was transparent enough to say, I'm at home sitting on the sofa with potato chips on my chest. Now that man did find Jesus as a result of that conviction that he realized with him being transparent. And he's been a wonderful follower of Jesus ever since. But that would be the real question. Are you even in the game? Or are you sitting at home eating potato chips on your sofa? We can do things that Jesus did. We just want people to see Jesus in us. We want to talk about our best friend. We want to talk about the best thing that ever happened to us. So when Jesus says that, yes, we can. The real question is, are you even in the game? Okay, so now, the next thing Jesus says is interesting as well, and I have to be transparent and say, I got a little trouble with this promise that he makes here. He says that anything we ask in his name, he'll do. Let's just take a look at it. And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified. Now, when you see glorified, I want you to think accurately revealed. So let's read it again. And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be accurately revealed in the Son. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it. Do you believe that? I mean, Jesus gives us a promise. What are we to do with it? I have to admit, to be transparent myself, I don't know, because what it seems like is, you ask it in my name, that seems like a catch to me, that seems like the fine print. What does that mean? That the Father may be glorified, accurately revealed in the Son. It seems like this is a promise, but that there's some catches in this promise. So the first thing we know is it does not and never did and never will mean ending your prayers in Jesus's name We pray that is not a formula that you can throw in To think that Jesus is going to answer your prayer because you ended it with in Jesus's name. We pray certainly with that I hope that's obvious but what does it mean and Is he telling us is he accurate and what he's telling us? I? Whatever you ask in my name so that the father may be glorified. So right off the bat, we can see that a selfish prayer is not what he's talking about. Something that's just for me, just me, just help me, fix me, fix them, make my life better. No promises he's gonna respond to that. Of course, there is the Garth Brooks song from years ago, Thank God for Unanswered Prayers. Thank God for Unanswered Prayers. There have been plenty of times I've pleaded with him to do something that he refused to do, and now looking back, I'm so glad he didn't answer that prayer the way I asked it. He always responds to prayers, but not always in the way we ask it. But if we asked in Jesus' name, Now, I have a thought on this that I think may help us a little bit. My father, who passed away about 12 years ago or so, he was a lifelong engineer. He loved engineering. Now, I graduated from Clemson with a degree in engineering, but that was only because I was good at math. I didn't really. I'm not an engineer. I don't have that Mind that liked that mechanical mind, but my father did and he loved and he was an engineer He started working as a surveyor when he was 12 years old And he told me as he was getting older and getting close to death son. I want you to put on my grave marker engineer just put engineer you can put my date of my birth and my death, but just put engineer and Now, if you knew my father just from being around him in Sumter, my hometown, my dad played tennis every day of his life from, say, 50 on. He loved tennis. So if you were gonna put something on his grave marker that was about what he loved to do, you'd put tennis player. I mean, you might put father and husband and all those, but if it were just about things he loved to do, What was in his nature, you probably would say tennis player, but my dad, because he was my dad, and I knew him, and he told me engineer. We had another man, name was Pap Probst, dear friend of my parents. I know all three of his children, they're dear friends. He was special to so many people. He was a pediatrician. Pap lived to be into his 90s. He swam almost every day of his life at the YMCA in Sumter. When Pap died, there was a group of men who had formed a fund to do things to improve Sumter. And they wanted to do something to honor Pap. So did they go to the YMCA and say, we want to build a horse farm for underprivileged children? That would have been a wonderful thing. Did they do that to honor Pap? That wasn't Pap's essence. That was as wonderful as it is. That's not in Pap's name. They built an addition to the swimming pool, and it's called Pap's Place, and it's for the children. Pediatrician swimming in his name. But you have to know Pap to know that that was what his heart was set on, that that was what was so special to him. So the more we know Jesus, The deeper we go in our friendship, in our relationship, the more we're going to ask things in His name just naturally. We'll know when something is not in His name. We'll know when it's not in His nature. Now, let me say this about prayer. There's so many things we could say, but let me just say this. We are encouraged, perhaps commanded, to put everything out on the table. Don't hold anything back. If you feel like you want to express it to your Heavenly Father, express it. but more often than not, when I hear the words I'm saying, I realize how finite my own mind is, and my own foresight, and I will end my prayer by saying, Heavenly Father, just ignore everything I just said, if it's not best, and do it your way. Just forget what I, I'm glad I got it off my chest, you're my Heavenly Father, I wanted to talk to you about it, but just ignore it, because I wanna do it your way. We pray in his name in his spirit The more we know him the more our prayers would be naturally that Okay, let's keep going jesus now gives us a statement in john 14 And i'm putting this under the heading of passover in pentecost in verse 19 Jesus says before long the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me because I live you also will live on that day And of course, we know in retrospect, he was talking about Pentecost. The Hebrew word was Shavuot. It is one of the festivals. It is the celebration of the wheat harvest, but it also was a celebration of the giving of the law on Mount Sinai. Shavuot is the Hebrew name. The Greek name was Pentecost. So on that day, you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you. There's that in you again. Now Eugene Peterson in The Message put it this way, which I just love the way he worded this. In just a little while the world will no longer see me, but you're going to see me because I am alive and you're about to come alive at that moment. And I would interject, when you are born again, you will know absolutely that I'm in my father and you're in me and I'm in you. First off, I want you to see that he says, you will know absolutely. You'll know when the Holy Spirit moves into your heart, you know it. There's no guessing about it. There's a plate tectonics type of shift inside of you that you know something's changed. Whether you realize you've been born again, you can now look back at that moment and say, yeah, that was it. Now, it took me maybe perhaps a long time to start growing to be more Christ-like, but that was the moment. In that moment, you will know, because you're about to come alive, and you'll know absolutely at that time that I'm in my Father, and you're in me, and I'm in you. Now, Passover and Pentecost. For the born-again Christian, Passover and Pentecost are now the same day. You see, for the Jews, Passover was the celebration of being freed from slavery from Egypt. Pentecost was celebrating the giving of the law. Now, for Christians, it's the celebration of the giving of the Spirit. But for a born-again Christian, they're the same day. Now, what do I mean by that? For the born-again Christian, our Passover and Pentecost are the same day. Pentecost, giving of the Spirit, Passover, delivery from slavery. What was it that the Israelites were delivered from when they were freed from slavery? What was their slavery? What was it they had to do every day? They had to make bricks. They had to produce bricks. They had a quota. And Pharaoh was a taskmaster. And he said, don't let them slack up. Make those bricks, make those bricks, make those bricks. So they were delivered literally from the slavery of making bricks. And we could just use the term performance. What are you a slave to? What is your slavery? Now just think about that for a moment. Because we could all start off, especially every man listening to this today, watching this, certainly plenty of women, we are slaves to performance. Just like the Israelites were against their will, we are slaves to performance. We're slaves to getting it done. We're slaves to producing. The winner is the one who has the most toys. The winner is the one who's made the most money, who's done the best in business, who's done the best in sports. Whatever it is, it's about performance. And that is a slavery, my friend, Jesus frees us from that. We are freed from that slavery. And that's one of the greatest gifts He can give you. You don't have to perform for Him anymore. He's done it for you. He performed for you. He became the sacrifice. You don't have to do that anymore. But he did so much more, and it's the most freeing experience that you can possibly ever have. Just, I don't have to perform. And then, as he moves more and more into your heart, and deeper and deeper into your heart, you realize, I don't have to perform for anybody. I just want to perform for Jesus. I just want, not in a can-do-or-have-to-do kind of way, but I want to do things to show him how much I love him. He's my only one that I care about and who's watching me. I have an audience of one. What else might you be a slave to? Self, we're all slaves to self. Self just runs the show until we defeat self, until we die to self. Perhaps you have low self-esteem, or perhaps you have too high a self-esteem. Perhaps you have past hurts, family dysfunctions, or idols, things that have a mastery over you. The real question is for you to ask yourself, What has a mastery over me? What am I still a slave to? Because you don't have to be a slave to anything. In Galatians 5, very first verse, we read in Galatians 5, it is for freedom that Christ sets you free. Stand firm then and do not allow yourself to be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. It is for freedom that Christ sets you free. Don't allow yourselves to be burdened by any yoke of slavery. It's freedom. So Pentecost, the day we receive the spirit, is our Passover, the day we are freed from slavery. It's a beautiful thing. Let's keep going and we'll finish up with this. Get to, not got to, the love of the game clause. Michael Jordan had in his contract that he could play basketball in a pickup game anywhere, anytime he wanted. Now you see, pro athletes are not allowed to go play pickup games. They cannot be paying someone one, two, three, five, 20, $50 million a year and have them go strain an ankle out playing pickups for us. So they're prohibited by contract to do that. Michael Jordan would not allow that. He said, I want a love of the game clause that I can play any time I want. Now I want to finish today. asking you to think about shifting your perspective from I got to to I get to. I want to do things for Jesus because he loves me and I'm learning to love him more and more. I want to do things. I want to listen to what he says. I want to follow his teachings. Not because I got to, to either stay out of trouble or get some brownie points, but I get to. You know, I used to catch myself when my mother was still alive, and I might say, I got to drive down to something to spend a couple of nights with my mom. Not I got to, I get to. What do you do that you do for the love of it? Because you love the other person, or you're just compelled by love? The love of the game. Paul makes this statement in 2 Corinthians 5, for Christ's love compels us because we are all, we are convinced that one died for all and therefore all died. Christ's love compelled Paul. In 1 Thessalonians, I love this passage. I've used this in our two daughters' recent weddings. We remember before God and Father, our God and Father, your work produced by faith your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by confident expectation in our Lord Jesus Christ, your labor prompted by love, your faith Your work produced by faith, but your labor prompted by love. You see, labor sounds harder than work. Work produced by faith, labor prompted by love. Sometimes it is a labor of love, but we do it because we love the other person or we love what it is we're doing. When I was younger, basketball was all I cared about. And I would wear a weighted vest everywhere I went. I would run with a weighted vest. I would shoot jump shots with a weighted vest because I wanted to increase my overall body strength. I had these goggles that you could put on that would block your eyes from seeing down so that you couldn't see yourself dribbling the basketball. And I would wear them everywhere I went so that I would learn not to be able to dribble without looking at the basketball. I did all kind of things. I quit biting my nails. because I was told that I'd have a better finger sensitivity with the basketball. I didn't do those things because I had to. I did them because I wanted to do it. I loved the game. I followed everything Pete Maravich, every drill he ever taught. I tried to learn those drills. I did it because I loved him. I mean, I loved the game. I owned horses at one time, and I'd muck those stalls, and I'd clean out my horse's feet. I'd brush them down. I'd wash them down. I mean, I'd do so many things that someone else would say, well, I'm not doing that. That's just chores. But I loved it. Perhaps some of you have hobbies. You fish. You hunt. They're things that you do that I would consider to be laborious. I wouldn't want to go clean up animals, the dead animals. I wouldn't want to wash the boat and I wouldn't want to do all the fishing tackle and all that. I don't want to do any of that. That's not, I have no interest in that. That would be a labor, but you love it. You do it because you love it. What we do for our children, what we do for our grandchildren, what we do for other people, we do it because we love them, because we get to do it. If we're living with the right heart, we get to. So my last question. Where in your life, what do you do compelled by love? You see, imagine if you could shift your perspective, your heart, to whenever you read something in the scriptures, your mind would say, I get to do that, I get to try to do that, or I get to try not to do that. Not because I got to, but because Jesus loves me. and I'm learning to love Him. Think about the paradigm shift that would be in your, you talk about Holy Spirit energy, the get to versus got to, so think about that, and we'll pick this up next week. What do you do now, just as a natural course of events each day or frequently, because you love it or you love the other person? What if we could shift that to our relationship with Jesus and the words we see and the teachings we see in the scriptures? Would not that be a game changer? Now, let me finish. Going back to our slide. The father came down, there was a sacrifice so that man could go to the temple to be with God. Jesus came down, he became the sacrifice so that God could be with man, but now we become the sacrifice so that the Holy Spirit can live and reside in us. We sacrifice self, we die to self. The Holy Spirit enters us and now we have a chance to live the life that is truly life, the life to the full that Jesus said he came to give us. Because there is so much more, and you know there's so much more. Come, follow Jesus, and find it.