Vivi Diaz: This is the Sandals Church Podcast, a place for real people with real struggles learning to follow Jesus. Wherever you are right now, driving, working, or trying to make it through the day, we are really glad you're here. Let's get into today's message.
Pastor Fredo Ramos: What would be different about your life if you were fully dependent on the Holy Spirit? Because we have learned as Christians to live with a decent amount of self sufficiency. We know how to act Christian. We know how to talk Christian. We know how to survive the week on coffee and Jesus kind of sprinkled across the top.
So much so that we can be so independent as Christians that if the Holy Spirit were to walk out of our lives, would we even know the difference that He was gone? So much so that we need an outpouring of the Spirit in our lives. I don't know about you and what you're walking through right now, but for me in my life, I need a fresh outpouring of God's Spirit. I need an outpouring of His spirit over the life of my family, over our church, over our state, over our nation. We need an outpouring of Holy Spirit right now.
Which of course though creates some level of both curiosity and I think confusion because we generally get the Father in heaven, parenting the children. We know the Son who came to live, came to die for us and, be risen from the dead to save us. But the Holy Spirit is kind of like, when you get to the birthday party too early and now you got to talk to that one person who's also a friend of your friend, but y'all don't get down like that. So it's just a little awkward. So much so that a recent survey of Western Christians included this question.
Check this out. True or false? The Holy Spirit is a force, not a person. Now some of you already hate, you hate true or false questions. Right, right.
True or false? The Holy Spirit is a force, not a person. 51% said true. 7% said I don't know. 42% said false.
That means that half of Western Christians on the globe today believe the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity is a power to be wielded, not a person to know or be known by. Now add to that, all of us come into church today with very different experiences of the Holy Spirit. One of the most beautiful things about being at Sandals Church is that we are a very wide, diverse, eclectic bunch of people. Like when the Bible says there's grace for all of us, like it's serious. There's grace for all of us here, which means some of you came out of experiences where maybe the Holy Spirit was forced onto you and you had leaders that were kind of manipulating or manufacturing spiritual experiences.
For others of you, maybe you're a bit frightened by the Spirit because you saw things done in excess or just strange things done in the name of the Spirit. For others of you, maybe like me, we have just forgotten the Holy Spirit. Meaning I know how to explain and believe in Him doctrinally, but I rarely experience Him relationally. But what if there was another way? What if there was a posture we can take around friendship with the Holy Spirit?
That you and I could be so relationally intimate and known by the spirit of God, that it actually changed something beautiful in our lives. That's what I'm praying for in our series that our church would, would experience a deep loving communion with the Holy Spirit and that we would be open to how He moves in our lives. In order to experience that we need though to be reintroduced to Holy Spirit. It's time for us to be reintroduced and there is no one better to do that for us than Jesus Himself. And so I'm going ask that if you are willing and able that you would stand with me for the reading of God's word today.
We'll be in a little bit of John fifteen and sixteen and then I will pray for us. John writes these words, When the advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the spirit of truth who goes out from the Father, he will testify about me. And you also must testify for you have been with me from the beginning. All this I have told you so that you will not fall away. They will put you out of the synagogue.
In fact, the time is coming when anyone who kills you will think they are offering a service to God. They will do such things because they have not known the father or me. I have told you this so that when their time comes, you will remember that I warned you about them. I did not tell you this from the beginning because I was with you, but now I am going to Him who sent me. None of you asked me, where are you going?
Rather you are filled with grief because I have said these things. But very truly I tell you, it is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the advocate will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you. This is God's word.
Let's pray together. Heavenly father, we come before you now as we have gathered here today and we pause in prayer to recognize that you have gathered with us too. And so would you speak to us? And as Jesus said, would you give us ears to hear and eyes to see so that we might become all that you desire us to be in him? We pray these things in Jesus name.
Amen. Amen. Thank you so much. You may be seated. You know, really fun question to ask, adults, but especially children is this, where does God dwell?
Like where does God live? Naturally, our heads kind of go up, don't they? And we point up. Well, God's up there. All of us were, you know, right down here.
The devil, he's down there. And that kind of spiritual geography is what many of us have grown up with. But here's the thing, it's theologically inaccurate. The Bible actually teaches that God is right here, friends. He is right in our midst.
As St. Augustine once said, God is closer to me than I am to my own self. And that is good news for all of us today. For those of you who walked in maybe feeling lonely, for those of you who may be carrying some relational problems that you're not sure where to find, where you belong, those of you maybe even feel distant from God, listen, the good news for us today that we need to hear is that God the Holy Spirit is closer to you than you think. He is so much closer to you than you can possibly imagine.
And this is what Jesus is after in our passage today from John 16, what we just read. Now, what you've got to keep in mind is that John, wrote this gospel, this biography of Jesus, spends a fourth of his time on this final night that Jesus had with his disciples. These are her last moments. Like, what's He going to say to him? Well, He spends four different conversations talking about the Helper, the Advocate.
Parakletos in the Greek. That is to say that the Holy Spirit is the helper, the one who comes alongside you. Now for our time today, what I want us to focus on is particularly what Jesus said there in verse seven when he said, Very truly I tell you, it is for your good that I am going away. Now just think about that for a second. Jesus is saying, It's for your good that I'm leaving.
So the helper would come. That's insane. Just think about this for a second. The disciples have been with Jesus for three years of their life and everything has changed. They have eaten with Him.
They've prayed with Him. They've partied with Him. They've gone to service with Him. They've seen Jesus do the miraculous, right? Their lives have fundamentally changed because of their time with Jesus.
And now He's arguing with them and saying, listen, it's better for you that I go. That's an incredible thing to think about. He's saying the best thing that can possibly happen for you is for me to leave. Now here's the problem. His disciples then, and I think many of us today, we're just not buying it.
We don't buy it. And it's difficult to convince them because what can be better than hugging Jesus, Than spending time with Him. It's a lot like me a number of years ago, I started a tradition with my kids where I would take them or pick them up from school, and then because it was Friday, we would celebrate the end of the school week and usher in the weekend with Dairy Queen ice cream. They loved this. They would get so excited, but then here's the problem.
The rare treat became the expectation. So that when I would pick them up on a Friday and say, Hey, I got the queen of dairy at the house. We don't need to go. They would lose their ever loving minds. They would, there would be chaos in my back seat.
Here's the thing, we just don't buy it. Why? Because the rare treat had become the expectation. The disciples had the rare treat of being with Jesus for three years and now that had become the expectation. But let's just be honest.
How many of us right now, like how many of you right now in this moment would trade a face to face conversation with Jesus for your current experience of the Holy Spirit in your life? I don't think many of us are taking that trade, But Jesus clearly knows something about the life of the Holy Spirit that I don't think we have fully understood. And it begins with that truth that he is much closer to us than we can possibly imagine. And if he is that close, then what does his presence begin to do? Well, you're like the disciples who are hearing this for the first time, chaos is starting to simmer.
Their their lives are starting to unravel as they know it. And when that happens to me, my unhealthy spiritual gifts start to kick in where I either try to fix something or flee from that thing. And depending on if I had lunch that day will determine what I do. But generally speaking, when something goes wrong, I try to just grab it all and hold it all together. Because underneath of that is an assumption that says once I get everything settled around me, then I will finally feel settled within me.
Like once situations change, I'll feel better. Once I finally clean the dishes, I'll feel good. Once my kids finally go to sleep in the name of Jesus, I'll feel good. Right? And this happens at work.
Somebody calls the office, their life is falling apart. I start to talk to them. Well, do I get them out of this? How do I fix this? How do I get you back to a peaceful relationship with God?
But I am learning that sometimes the most pastoral thing that I can do isn't help someone find their way out of chaos, it's to help them find God right in the middle of it. Because God is so much closer to us than we could possibly imagine that even the Holy Spirit's presence meets me in my chaos friends. That's where he longs to meet you. When we are first introduced to the spirits on the very first page of the Bible, Genesis chapter one, look what we read there. It says, the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
Now the earth was formless and empty. Darkness was over the surface of the deep and the spirit of God, take note of this, Now when you imagine this hovering over the waters, think less like a a calm moment in the morning as you stare out into a lake and think like El Nino times 10, right? Chaotic, stormy waters. And in the ancient days, the waters were a sign of divine judgment. They were a sign of chaos, destruction, uncertainty.
You could not control it. And I say this because I would imagine for some of you today at church, you've walked in and your life feels a lot like Genesis one:two. There is chaos. And so just think for a second. Where is that happening to you?
Where is there maybe something in your life that is just out of your control despite your best efforts. You can't resolve it. You can't see your way through it. And then begin to imagine that the Holy Spirit isn't waiting on the other side of that chaos. He is present right in the middle of it.
The Spirit hovers over the chaos. And we're told that as God speaks, the Spirit acts and what? You get light from darkness. The waters above, the waters below, the dry land and the sea, Right? It's out of that chaos that the Spirit of God is able to bring life and order.
Oh, friends, that's good news for us today. The Spirit brings life and order out of the chaos that you are experiencing. So before Fredo tries to run and try to fix anything, what if we imagined a moment where we sat down and we just learned to pray, Holy Spirit, you are here in this mess. And because there is chaos inside of me that I can't seem to order or bring life out of, I know the one who can. And so I'm coming to you.
I wonder if this is a lot like what Paul was after when he said in Romans chapter eight, the mind, listen now, the mind that is governed by the spirit is life and peace. Life and peace. Now here's what I've discovered a little bit when it comes to chaos. Chaos has a way of exposing the parts of our lives where we are too weak to deal with it. Case in point, the disciples, their lives have been changed by being with Jesus and now they're hearing that He's going to leave them.
And what's leaving them a bit unraveled, uncertain in grief as verse six said, Jesus is, this is gonna be great for you, but they're thinking, no, it's not. We're not ready for you to leave Jesus. I'm not strong enough to follow you without you with me. But remember, here's the good news about the Holy Spirit. According to Jesus, the Holy Spirit takes what is Jesus's and He makes it mine.
That's what He comes to do. The Spirit takes all of what Jesus has in His and He makes that available to us. Both His presence and guess what? His power. So much so that God is much closer to you and I than we can possibly imagine that even the Holy Spirit's power meets me in my weaknesses, friends.
You see what makes you an excellent candidate today for the spirit of God is not because you're strong, but because you're weak. What makes you the perfect person to have the spirit of God residing in you is not because you are good, but because God is good. And the scandal of the spirit, the crazy thing about God's presence available to all of us all the time, every day of our lives is not just that He is powerful. We would come to believe in a God who is powerful. The crazy thing about the Spirit is that His power would reside in weak people like us.
That's what's so just mind blowing. That this glory, this power, this life and order would reside in sheer brokenness, friends. His presence meets us in our weakness. And we begin to see this there in that Genesis story. We're told there in Genesis two that as the creation story continues, that out of that chaos came this beautiful flowing river.
The garden was this river flowing. Pay attention, it was flowing east. East. Now, do I say that? Well, because throughout the rest of the Old Testament, when the spirit of God is mentioned, oftentimes it's likened to the imagery of water.
This happens in Psalms, Proverbs, Isaiah, and particularly in Ezekiel. Now, those of you who are new to reading the Bible, Ezekiel is a crazy book y'all. Like if you have not read it, read it this week and then hit me up and tell me what you think. But in Ezekiel 47, he gets a vision that is very similar to this idea of the garden and the river flowing through it. Ezekiel has this vision there in chapter 47 where he's brought into the temple of God and he begins to see water flow out of it.
And guess what direction it's going? East to the rest of the world. And it first begins as this trickle and then it turns into like, you know, a little heavier stream and he's invited to step into the waters. And he gets in and he's ankle deep. He's told to go further than he's knee deep.
He's told to go a little bit further. He sees the water growing. Now he's waist deep and he's like, Oh man, I don't know about how to swim. Right? And so I would imagine Ezekiel at this moment is a lot like my daughter Ella when we take her to the beach.
Me and Eli, we're water bugs, man. We go as far as we can until we're close to meeting Jesus, then we swim back. My daughter Ella though, like you have to convince this one, Mama girl, please just go ankle deep, knee deep. Right? She takes her time.
And when Ezekiel is doing this, we pick up there in Ezekiel 47 verses eight and nine. Read along with me. It says, He said to me, this is Ezekiel referring to the Son of Man speaking to him, this water flows toward the eastern region and goes down into the Arabah where it enters the Dead Sea. Pay attention to that. When it enters the Dead Sea, excuse me, when it empties into the sea, the salty water there becomes fresh.
Swarms of living creatures will live wherever the river flows. There will be large numbers of fish because this water flows there and makes the salt water fresh. So where the river flows, everything will live. Ezekiel sees this growing powerful river that pours east toward one of the most lifeless places imaginable, the Dead Sea y'all. It's 25% mineral.
Nothing lives in it. But according to this vision, the promise that God is making is that God will pour out his spirit and it will be this unstoppable current of water that even weak and dead things will have life again. The Spirit brings out of you and I what we cannot produce in ourselves. So right in the middle of your chaos today, right in the very places where you feel most weak, imagine for a second that God is inviting you. He's inviting us as a church to stand in the waters, to enter the waters of his spirit.
I say that because Jesus makes this same invitation. In John chapter seven, He also, as He begins to introduce the concept of the Holy Spirit to His audience, uses and draws on very similar imagery. John chapter seven, look at this. It says, On the last and greatest day of the festival. Now let's pause there for a second.
For context, what festival is this? Well, I'm so glad you all asked. This is the festival of Tabernacles. The festival of booths or tents, right? Where for one week out of the year, all of Israel would travel to Jerusalem and they would live in tents for an entire week.
Imagine the REI and Bass Pro Shop sales that would be happening if more of us celebrated this. And for each day of this week, people would come out of their tents, they would go to the temple for church service and they would pray. They would sing. And there would be a procession where the priest would carry massive cisterns to a local stream and then they would scoop out water, carry it back to the temple. They did this every day and on the seventh day, the last and greatest day of the festival, they did this thing seven different times.
They then would carry all these massive cisterns, place them in the temple and then guess what? They would begin to pour out these cisterns down the steps of the temple heading what direction friends? East. Recreating the vision of Ezekiel. Praying that the presence of God would fall on the world in such a way that dead things would come back to life again.
And that our weakness would be met by God's power. And in this very holy, reverent, sacred moment of people praying that His vision would come to fruition. I mean, you think about your first time in church, everything's reverent, quiet. You want to laugh so bad, right? It's just dead quiet in there.
And John says this, Jesus stood up and said in a loud voice, Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them. Think about that. Jesus rudely interrupted their church service and say, Hey, y'all, what y'all are praying for? What we're demonstrating with this temple ritual?
That's me. If you come to me, anyone who is thirsty, come to me and you could drink today and rivers of living water will flow out of you. Pay attention to verse 39. By this, what does it say? He meant the spirit.
The river in Eden, Ezekiel's vision, John seven, Jesus saying, Man, the Spirit is here through me. Come to me. You're thirsty today? Any one of you is thirsty? Come to me and rivers of living water will flow through you.
He took this entire biblical image of outpouring water, the river, and he connected it to himself and said, this is what's going to happen to you. This is it. This is what the spirit is going to do in you. And notice he says, anyone, not just strong people, not just gifted Christians, anyone, anyone who is thirsty today, anyone thirsty today, you need living water, come to me. Not just because you're strong or because you got it together, come to me.
If you are thirsty today, you could come to Jesus today, You could come to Him. And this is good news for every single one of us. Why? Because oftentimes, particularly in my own life, I confuse the gifts of the Spirit for actually being dependent upon the spirit. Meaning as a pastor, I know how to preach, kind of.
I know how to lead meetings. I know how to help equip people to follow Jesus. And I have oftentimes confused giftedness for dependence and they are not the same thing friends, Which is why Paul says in Romans eight, the Spirit helps us in our what? Weaknesses. Not our self sufficiency.
Your weakness today was never an obstacle to God's Spirit, but maybe your self sufficiency is. Some of us in here at Sandals, we're just too put together for the spirit of God. But when you think about the life of Peter, in the very presence of Jesus, what can be better than being with Jesus? Well, in the presence of Jesus, Peter, when he was pressed by a teenage girl, denied him and ran away. But then weeks later, filled with the Holy Spirit of God, speaks courageously the gospel and thousands are saved.
He goes from coward to courageous. How does that happen? The Spirit of God met him in the very place of his greatest weakness and shame, and he flowed through him. You see friends, what I'm trying to get you to see is that Jesus, the Spirit of God is so close to you and he longs to meet you with his power in your greatest place of weaknesses. Find him in the parts of your life that you are scared to look at right now and watch him do a profound work.
So much so that because of the holy spirit, angry people learn how to live with patience. Because of the Holy Spirit, addicted people learn how to live with freedom and self control. Because of the Holy Spirit of God, liars learn how to walk in the truth. Because of the Spirit of God, independent self made people know how to live in community and know how to serve children, know how to greet at the door, know how to worship with their hands abandoned because the spirit of God has done a great work in your life. Now, because the spirit is so much closer than you and I think, there remains one final invitation.
But that invitation begins first with a confession and it's this, particularly in my own life, I am much better at explaining the spirit than I am at experiencing the spirit. But in Ezekiel's vision, he was never told to observe the river. He was told to get into it. Jesus never said, you know, watch other people who are thirsty. He never said the advocate, the helper's coming For other people, he said, no, no, no.
The helper is someone who's beside you, walk with him, become his friend, right? He said to them, you have to experience it. You have to allow your life to become one in which it's guided and directed by the advocate. The helper is here today. And I realized that I can spend so much of my life observing the Christian life when Jesus has called Fredo to participate in the Christian life.
The Holy Spirit's presence invites, listen now, my participation. But the truth is many modern disciples like you and I, we read the Bible as a record of what God used to do in the lives of other people, not as a living invitation to what God wants to do in our lives right now through the Holy Spirit. Think for example, the one of the most famous prayers in the Psalms, as I say it, say it with me, be still and know that I am God. That's how the Psalm ends. And we put it on coffee mugs and put it on Christian merch and sell it for $80 Do you know how the Psalm begins?
God is our refuge and strength and ever present help in trouble. Therefore, we will not fear though the earth give way. The mountains fall into the heart of the sea though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging. Chaos is how the song begins. And then verse four comes, There is a river.
There is a river whose strings make glad the city of God, the holy place where the most high dwells. You see so much of my time and our time has been spent trying to get our lives out of the chaos to help people get out of the chaos where Psalm 46 says, No, the river runs right through the chaos, Participate with God in the middle of your messy life. Surrender the spirit in the middle of all of it. It's not about escaping everything in our life so that we might find a peaceful, quiet moment with God, but it's that right in the middle of the mess you would see God's spirit reordering chaos into life. The advocate is here.
Jesus was good on His promise. It is far better that He leave so that His spirit can come. Now some of you though, you find that hard to believe because you've been swimming in chaotic waters, you've been in the Dead Sea too long, and like the disciples, you wouldn't trade a face to face encounter with Jesus for the work of the spirit because you don't know how to experience it. You're not sure where to begin. And what most of us have been handed is simply a theory on the Holy Spirit.
And a theory is wonderful. A theory on God's presence being with you your whole life is great until it's not. Like a theory doesn't necessarily have the power to help carry you through a season of grief. A theory can't heal a wound that infertility continues to take at you and your family. A theory can't help you raise your children.
A theory can't help you when the diagnosis comes. A theory of God's presence will not be enough when jobs disappear or when you actually chase what you've been after and you gain it only to realize you've lost something about yourself along the way. A theory is great until it's not. We need participation, which is why Paul says in first Corinthians six, Do you not know that your bodies are what? Temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, who you have received from God.
The invitation is to participate with God in your life. How do we do that? As the temple of God, His river flows in and through you and now you become the river for the rest of the world. And it simply begins not with you and I trying to produce the life of Christianity, but first becoming available to it. And so as we close, I'm gonna just create space for us to be quiet and still before God and just pray a very ancient prayer which goes like this, come Holy Spirit.
To help us do it, I'm gonna open my hands and you invite you to do the same thing. We do this just as a way to say, Man, God, I am available to You today and I want to receive all that You would give me. And when we pray, come Holy Spirit, please don't misunderstand me. I am not saying that we're asking God to come in a way that he's not already present. We're simply saying, as the Psalmist say, awake my soul, oh God, to your love and your presence.
So come Holy Spirit. Come Holy Spirit. A word that's starting to surface for me is just the word more. And so I wanna invite any of you or maybe in this moment of prayer with us, wherever you are watching, whatever campus you're at, if you feel like you want more of the Holy Spirit of God, would you stand up right now? Would you just stand to your feet?
The other word that's been coming to me that I've been thinking about all week is just, is just chaos. So much of our life, of our relationships, of our church life, of our work is marked by chaos. And if that's some of you and you would rather see the peace of God at work in your life, would you also stand? Just as a way of saying with your body and your attention, God, would your spirit come in a way that I would receive more of your peace in the chaos I have. God, we are open to how you wanna move in us as a church.
We pray that over the next several weeks that we would become a spirit filled church here at Sandals, who know how to hear your voice, who know how to experience both your presence and your power and to walk in the life that you have given us. God set us free from independence and self sufficiency and make us people who are dependent on the spirit of God. Holy Spirit come, we pray in Jesus name. Amen.