John Chapter 14:12-17

Let's say you drive a nice car. Some of you probably drive a nice car. And I see you driving by in that nice car and I go, wow, that's a nice car. I'd like to have that car. Lord, give me that man's car in Jesus' name. You laugh.

There's teachers that swear about that. Do you think God is going to honor that prayer? Have you changed that name to nature? Lord, give me that man's car in the nature of Jesus?

It doesn't work anymore, does it? In the nature of the one who left heaven? Welcome to Cross the Bridge with David McGee. David is the senior pastor of The Bridge in Kernersville, North Carolina. Today we're blessed to have one of David McGee's associate pastors here with us. Pastor DA, is there some kind of magic about praying in Jesus' name? Bob, Jesus is the Son of God. And we can pray and ask for things in any other name we want to, but Jesus is the only Son of God.

And He is the only one who died on the cross for our sins. So Bob, yes, it's very important that we pray in the name of Jesus. Today Pastor David explains what it means to pray in the name of Jesus as he continues in the Gospel of John chapter 14. Now here's David McGee with his teaching in Jesus' name.

John chapter 14, we finished with verse 11 last week, so we'll pick it up with verse 12. Some awesome verses. Now first thing let's talk about here, it says greater works. Now you hear that and you hear the words of Jesus and you go greater works.

Greater works. How can that be that the disciples and us will be able to do greater works? Well, let me first tell you what Jesus is not talking about, I don't believe. See, because we begin to think in terms of healing or manifestations and I'm not sure that's what He was speaking of because Jesus prayed for somebody that was dead and they got up.

I'm not sure how you would beat that except to realize that every Sunday morning that happens here. Not in a physical sense, but Jesus is saying in a greater sense, in a spiritual sense, the dead will come to life. That you will proclaim the Gospel to somebody and those who were dead in their sins, and that's a good term, isn't it?

It's a very descriptive term, will become alive. See, we think in terms of healing and the supernatural. Let me clarify, God still does supernatural things. God still heals people. It frustrates me when people say, well, God doesn't heal anymore. God doesn't do the supernatural anymore. Especially when somebody says, I'm sitting there thinking, do you realize you're talking to somebody that was born a deaf mute and you're telling me that God doesn't heal anymore? God still heals people, amen. It's either amen or on me. Is it amen? Okay. You know, because I don't understand.

Here's the thing. If you're in a fellowship, if you're in a denomination, if you're in a movement that says God doesn't heal anymore, how do you pray for the sick? What do you pray for the sick? God, we know you don't heal anymore.

You just take them on home. Jesus' name, amen. I mean, you can't. No, it's an option to pray that God would heal them. But now understand that a more supernatural work is wrought when somebody is healed of their soul. It's a much more powerful thing.

That's not what we think. We think in terms of the supernatural, but isn't it very, very supernatural when somebody has forgiven of their sins? Oh, I've seen it. I've seen people's faces. I've seen people come in here so burdened and they leave walking like this. And that's a glorious, glorious thing. If you remember in Mark chapter 2 verse 9, Jesus says, which is easier, to say to the paralytic, your sins are forgiven you? Or to say, arise, take up your bed and walk?

But that you may know that the Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sins. He said to the paralytic, I say to you, arise, take up your bed and go to your house. So here, Jesus is saying, which is the greater work?

The greater work is not actually getting a man to get up and walk when he's lame. Now, that's what we would think, isn't it? But Jesus said, no, no, no, no. The greater thing is that he would be forgiven of his sins. Now, verse 14, if you ask anything in my name, I will do it. This is probably one of the most misunderstood verses in the Bible, and I'll tell you why. Because we think, and I've heard it talked, that you can pray whatever you want.

As long as you end it with in Jesus' name, then he's got to do it. How many of you ever heard that before? A lot of us were taught that.

But let me back up a little bit. Let's talk about the Jewishness of the faith and the Jewishness of Jesus, because it comes into play here. You see, in Judaism, the name was synonymous with the nature.

As a matter of fact, a lot of times what they would do is they would actually rename somebody after they had gotten older so that it went more with their nature, their name and their nature. This is important. Because, see, what we can do is we can start to believe, and some of us from bad teaching that we've received, that you can just pray anything, even against the nature of Jesus. And as long as you close it with Jesus' name, that he is coerced into obeying that prayer. That can't work.

It can't work. And here's the reason why. Let's say, well, let's say you drive a nice car. Some of you probably drive a nice car. And I see you driving by in that nice car, and I go, wow, that's a nice car. I'd like to have that car. Lord, give me that man's car in Jesus' name. Now, you laugh.

There's teachers that swear about that. Do you think God is going to honor that prayer? No way.

Why? Well, first of all, it's his car. It's not my car.

To get that car would be like stealing, because then that can lead you to all kinds of stuff. See, if I followed him to the store and he actually accidentally left the keys in the car, oh, praise the Lord. This is God doing the work. This is God letting me have his car. Praise God. It's not by coincidence he left them keys in there.

Meanwhile, some of you are going, I got my keys, don't I? If you change that name to nature, Lord, give me that man's car in the nature of Jesus. It doesn't work anymore, does it, in the nature of the one who left heaven to come here to die for our sins? See, you can't pray prayers like that and put in the name of Jesus and expect him to honor that prayer, because it's not consistent with his nature.

Yeah, that's kind of the bad news. The good news is if you pray according to his will, then he'll do it. So what you have to figure out is what is God's will? See, some people think, well, I'm praying to change God's will.

Oh, you don't want to do that. You ask what the Lord wants to do. And there's also certain things that you know you can pray that are in God's will. You know one of my prayers that I pray often is I ask God for wisdom. Lord, give me wisdom. Give me wisdom to lead the church. Give me wisdom to teach the Bible. Give me wisdom in my family. Give me wisdom in all the things that are going on in the church. And I pray for it often. And when people ask me, how can I pray for you, that's usually what I say. Pray that God will give me wisdom. I know, and you can know from James chapter one, verse five, it says, If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him.

It will be given to him. Now, notice in verse 13 it says that the Father may be glorified in the Son. See, that's the next part of this. Understand something. That when you pray, you want to pray that God is glorified through whatever you're asking him to do. And again, there's certain things that you can pray that you know are according to God's will. Pray for lost people to get saved. Pray for lost people to come to the Lord. You know that that's in the will of God.

Now, I don't want you to misunderstand. We have been given an incredible amount of power in our prayer life, in what we pray for. But I would encourage you to use that power for God's glory. Jesus himself was given all power of heaven and earth, and look at how he used it. Hanging on the cross, the most powerful man, he was fully God, fully man, hung on that cross. Didn't call a legion of angels to attack his enemies, but looked at him and said, Father, forgive them.

I don't know what they're doing. That is power under control. The life lesson here is pray in the name or nature of Jesus to the glory of the Father. Pray in the name or nature of Jesus to the glory of the Father. One of the most beautiful prayers, I think, in all the scriptures occurs in a very interesting place. It occurs on Mount Carmel and the prophet Elijah, and you may remember the story. He's got a contest going on between him and the prophets of Baal, and so there's this contest going on of, if you want to read it, it's in 1 Kings 18, but here's the prayer in 1 Kings 18, verse 36 and 37.

It says, and it came to pass at the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice that Elijah the prophet came near and said, Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, let it be known this day that you are God in Israel and I am your servant, and that I have done all these things at your word. Hear me, O Lord. Hear me that this people may know that you are the Lord God and that you have turned their hearts back to you again. What an awesome, beautiful prayer, and that you have turned their hearts back to you again. You know, because we're kind of caught up in the contest, I imagine many of us have read that passage and not seen the beauty of that prayer. I've prayed that prayer, just opened the book and asked the Lord to do that through me, to let people know that the things that I have done, I have done at his word, and that he turned the hearts of the people back towards him.

See, here's the thing. We're told not to be anxious, but in everything to pray. It sounds to me like it's A or B, like either you're anxious or you're praying. See, some of us look at it like, why pray when we can worry? That's got to change to why worry when we can pray.

Let me tell you what's going to happen now. You're going to have a chance sometime this week to apply this to your life. At some point, you're going to get freaked out about something, you're going to get anxious about something, and probably somebody, might be your spouse if you're married, is going to remind you of this moment right now. And they're going to look at you and say, you're anxious and you're worried. Why don't you pray?

And it's going to be a beautiful moment for you to hear that and for you to do that. And that's something, I tell you what, with my wife and myself, when one of us kind of gets excited about something, we say, why don't you take a prayer walk? That's a great thing to ask your spouse, your kids, your parents, hey, why don't you take a prayer walk?

Now, do you notice the way I said that? Why don't you take very, you know, okay, so don't, why don't you take a prayer walk? Don't be doing that and say, well, Pastor David told me to tell you, go take a prayer walk. Trust me, it's going to be hard enough for the other person to receive it at that moment anyway, even if you say it sweetly.

So say it, don't offend them in your tone, okay? We'll be right back with more from David McGee on Cross the Bridge. Right now, here's a word from Associate Pastor D.A.

Brown. We want to take just a minute to pray for seven cities in our listening audience. South Portsmouth, Westport, Kentucky, Baton Rouge, Denham Springs, Erwinville, Heflin, and Jennings, Louisiana. Lord, thank you for these cities. Thank you for those mayors, the police chiefs, the government officials, the town councils. Lord, we pray that you would give them wisdom and discernment. We pray that they would look to your word for advice on how to lead. Lord, help us to be praying for them consistently and be a place of encouragement, not division in their lives. Father, anyone in these cities who hasn't yet put their trust in you, we pray that you would convince them and encourage them to recognize how much you love them so much that you died on the cross for them. And Lord, we pray for revival in each one of these cities. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen. Thank you, brother. And now, let's get back to David McGee as he continues teaching verse by verse.

Verse 15, if you love me, keep my commandments. Now, your attention, please. We're in the upper room.

Let me remind you of that. Jesus is in a closed session, if you will, with His disciples, and He's going over some things. And you know what? Notice what He's doing in this moment. He's not doing any miracles, is He? What is Jesus doing with the disciples?

He's teaching them. You know how often we don't think of the ministry of Jesus as a teaching ministry? We think of the miracles. We think of Him laying on the hands of the sick and them recovering.

We think of Him calling forth somebody from a tomb that was dead. His primary ministry was teaching. It was teaching. And when He has these few hours with His disciples, at the last minute here, what's He doing? He's teaching them. He's sitting them down going, look, this is the deal, guys. Now, notice He says, keep My commandments.

Well, there's a clue of what He's referring to. Well, Jesus said, My commandments. He's talking about the Ten Commandments?

No. What I think He's talking about is John 13, 34, and 35. He says, a new commandment I give to you that you love one another, as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another. Again, I think one of the reasons He's emphasizing this at this moment is He understands what the disciples are getting ready to go through.

It's going to be a tough time. They're going to watch one of the 12 betray Jesus and turn Him in. They're going to watch a man who was a spiritual leader of the 12 deny Him three times. They're going to watch Jesus, their leader, their Rabboni, suffer a horrible death and die. And Jesus in this moment is encouraging them to love Him, keep the commandments, love one another.

Why? Because love is a strong spiritual force. And it can help you get through some tough times. It can help others around you get through tough times by loving them through. And as Jesus is saying these things, Jesus is laying it out, and in the midst of this He says, if you love Me, keep My commandments, do what I'm telling you to do.

The life lesson here is straightforward. We should be doing the things that Jesus told us to do. Jesus told us to love one another.

Now that's just not a warm, fuzzy, love you kind of thing. It can be that, but I think it's much more, especially in the concept of the fellowship, the body of Christ. See, there's a lot of things going on here that speak of the love of the Lord. We have clothes here. We've got food here. Somebody comes in and needs those things, we give them those things.

Now let me clarify, we don't just give them those things and smile and say, God bless you. As they come in, we go, hey, heard about Jesus? What do you think about Jesus?

What do you know about Jesus? Because we're going to talk about Jesus since you're here and we're trying to love you, we want to just, we want to love you more than just meeting a material need. We want to love you and see your spiritual need met because we don't believe you just happen to be here and some churches have gotten so caught up in trying to feed the hungry and trying to clothe those who are poor, they forget the most important thing and that's Jesus.

So we want to be sure to use those opportunities to communicate the love of the Lord and the truth of the good news in whatever way we can. Now verse 16, and I will pray the Father and He will give you another Helper that He may abide with you forever. Now the word comforter here or helper, comforter in the King James, helper in the New King James, is the Greek word parakletis. Now comforter is an interesting word too because comfort, it comes from two words, calm meaning alongside, fortis or fort means strength, means with strength. See when comfort, we think warm, fuzzy, pat on the back, yeah, it's that but it's a whole lot more. It's coming along somebody else with strength in their moment of weakness and that's what we're called to do and this is what it's saying the Holy Spirit will do.

Remember that next time you're called upon to comfort somebody and be careful that you're coming alongside them with strength and that you're not necessarily, well let me speak frankly, don't just enter into the pity party but really love them and show them the strength of the Lord in that moment of need. And verse 17, the Spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive because it neither sees Him nor knows Him but you know Him for He dwells with you and will be in you. Now we're gonna take a few minutes with these verses and I'll tell you why. Because the ministry of the Holy Spirit is probably one of the least understood ministries of the Godhead. What we wanna do is for the moment, if you can, I know that you've probably had different experiences and different teachings about the Holy Spirit but this morning, please, kind of put that all behind you and let's see what the word of God has to say about the Holy Spirit.

Can we do that? Amen. I mean this is the book. If you're gonna be following after man, you're already, you're off track so you need to get back on track and let's see what the word of God has to say about this. Now one of the reasons error comes in is that the whole counsel of Scripture is not taught concerning the ministry of the Holy Spirit.

In other words, you take one little verse and go oh yeah, see this, let's apply this to everything instead of saying let's see what the Bible has to say about these things. I'm gonna introduce you to three Greek phrases. I don't stress a lot of original language stuff but this is gonna be important. And these three words are para and if you're a student of the Bible, you may want to jot these down. Para, which means alongside of, and en, en, which means in you, and epi, which means to be upon you or to be filled to overflowing.

Filled to overflowing. So those are the three Greek words that describe our relationship with the Holy Spirit. Para, which means alongside of, en, which means in you, epi, which means to be upon you or filled to overflowing. Before conversion, the Holy Spirit is alongside of you. Okay, when you're an unbeliever, the Holy Spirit is not dwelling in you and I'll tell you why, because God cannot reside where there is sin. So if you're an unbeliever, somebody that's never asked for the forgiveness of your sins, then the Holy Spirit can't reside in you.

Now I know that this flies, some people go, well, everybody's got a little bit of spirit of God in them. I don't see that in the Bible. That's like the saying, well, everybody's God's children. Again, I don't see that in the Bible. Jesus told some people, he said, you're your father of the devil.

So apparently there's two fatherhoods going on anyway. But alongside, this is the relationship that you also see in the Hebrew scriptures, come alongside, the para. That, again, is the relationship somebody that doesn't know Jesus, that's never asked for the forgiveness of their sins, has with the Holy Spirit. And here is one of the primary ministries of the Holy Spirit to convict of sin.

Perhaps you can remember when you sat in the service, perhaps it was here, perhaps it wasn't that long ago, when you sat in the service and you thought, you know what, I need what he's talking about. I'm sitting here and I've got my sins and I don't know what to do and I don't know how to deal with this. That was the ministry of the Holy Spirit convicting you or convincing you of your sin. Then when you ask for the forgiveness of your sins, the Holy Spirit, the relationship changes from that para to the en, to the en, and then you have the Holy Spirit in you. John chapter 20, verse 21. So Jesus said to them, peace to you, as the father has sent me, I also send you. Verse 22, and when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, receive the Holy Spirit. Before this point, this is after the resurrection, before this point in time, the men could not receive the forgiveness of their sins so the Holy Spirit could not be in them. But once they received the forgiveness of their sins, then the Holy Spirit could be in them. And certainly when Jesus said, receive the Holy Spirit, what do you think happened? They received the Holy Spirit. They got the Holy Spirit. Now, many of us stop there and go, okay, well, okay, so I got it when I was forgiven.

Now, wait a minute. After this verse, John chapter 20, right after the resurrection, is before the book of Acts. It's not only before the book of Acts in the sequence of events in the Bible, it's before time-wise. So after Jesus told them to receive the Holy Spirit, Jesus says to them in Acts chapter one, verse eight, but you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you. There we have the epi word. And you shall be witnesses to me in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth.

The word there, it means filled to overflowing. And again, this verse comes after the verse in John. There is a power that's needed for us to be witnesses. There is a power for us to live our everyday life as Christians that we so desperately need. Friend, do you know for sure that your sins have been forgiven?

You can know right now. I want to lead you in a short, simple prayer, simply telling God you're sorry and asking Him to help you to live for Him. Now, God wants you to pray this prayer so much that He died to give you the opportunity and the ability to ask Him to forgive you.

Please pray this prayer with me out loud right now. Dear Jesus, I believe you died for me, that I could be forgiven. And I believe you were raised from the dead, that I could have a new life. And I've done wrong things. I have sinned, and I'm sorry. Please forgive me of all those things. Please give me the power to live for you all of my days. In Jesus' name.

Amen. Friend, if you prayed that prayer, according to the Bible, you've been forgiven. You've been born again.

Jesus said He would not turn anybody away who comes to Him, and He came for those people who knew they needed forgiveness, those who were sick, not the righteous. So congratulations, friend. You just made the greatest decision that you will ever make. God bless you. If you prayed that prayer with David for the first time, we'd love to hear from you. You can visit crossthebridge.com to receive our First Steps package with helpful resources to help you begin your walk with Christ.

Or you can write to Cross the Bridge at P.O. Box 12515, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, 27117, and share how God is working in your life. You know, the Bible tells us that the free gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord. But it does cost for us to come and bring that message to you and to others in your neighborhood, through radio, through the internet, and through the mobile technologies that God has gifted us to be able to use. So if you'd like to support this ministry, please go to crossthebridge.com, click on the donate button, and ask God how much He would have you give either on a one-time basis or a continuing basis each month to help ensure that the teaching of God's word continues to go out through Cross the Bridge.

Thank you so much. Well, D.A., before we go, what are some ways that we can bless our listeners? Each day you can wake up with encouragement from Pastor David through the Word of God with his email devotional, life lessons to consider, a daily reading plan, and a thought to meditate on throughout your day from the heart of David McGee. Thanks again for listening, and join us next time as David McGee continues teaching verse by verse in the Gospel of John.