Sermon
Series: God is Closer
Than You Think
The Presence
John 7:37-39
Dr. Larry D. Thorson
“On the last and greatest day of the Feast, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, ‘If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.’ By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive.”
Today we’re continuing our sermon
series God is Closer Than You Think. Two weeks ago I talked about God’s promise
and desire to be with us.
From cover to cover the Bible talks about God’s steps to have that relationship
with you and me. Last week, we looked at our choice
to be with him—that it isn’t pushed on
us, but that we make the decision on whether or not to be with him.
Now we get to the nitty gritty of how an
invisible God makes his presence known to us in a visible world. We begin with a story from the seemingly
barren rolling hills of west
The late Dr. Bill Bright founder of
Campus Crusade for Christ told this story of a famous oil field called Yates
Pool: “During the Depression this field was a sheep ranch owned by a man named
Yates. Mr. Yates wasn’t able to make enough on his ranching operation to pay
the principal and interest on the mortgage, so he was in danger of losing his
ranch. With little money for clothes or food, his family (like many others) had
to live on government subsidy.
Then a seismographic crew from an oil company
came into the area and told him there might be oil on his land. They asked
permission to drill a wildcat well, and he signed a lease contract. “At 1,115 feet they struck a huge oil
reserve. The first well came in at 80,000 barrels a day. Many subsequent wells
were more than twice as large. In fact, thirty years after the discovery, a
government test of one of the wells showed it still had the potential flow of
125,000 barrels of oil a day. “And Mr.
Yates owned it all. The day he purchased the land he had received the oil and mineral
rights. Yet he’d been living on relief. He was a multi-millionaire living in
poverty but he didn’t know the oil was there even though he owned it.”*
In a way that illustrates my Christian
experience. Since October of 1972 I have
known without a doubt that I would live in heaven because Jesus Christ had died
for me. I was like Mr. Yates herding my
sheep on my own land. Then in October of
1996 some people from
God
is closer than you think but without the filling of God’s Holy Spirit he seems
very far away. Some of you remember when
television first came out. You could see
moving pictures from far away in your very living room…if you had the right
equipment. I heard recently that the
city of
God
makes available to anyone who repents of their evil ways and turns to Jesus the
right equipment to tune into him. That
equipment involves the filling of God’s own Holy Spirit. It’s as if God is saying I’ll give you a
brand new internet ready computer or a satellite connected television so we can
stay connected to him. It’s up to you to
receive it.
Let’s take a look at our Scripture
passage again in John 7:37–39: “On the last and greatest day of
the Feast, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, ‘If anyone is thirsty, let him
come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said,
streams of living water will flow from within him.’ By this he meant the
Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive.”
The King James version reads: “Out of
his belly will flow rivers of living water.”
The word that’s used for “belly” is koilios—which means
the center of your being; the deepest part of who you are. The belly is that
place that gets tied up in knots when you’re anxious, where squadrons of
butterflies fly in formation when you’re afraid, where you’re angry, or
unsatisfied, or unhappy.
You may be able to manage your face.
You may be able to make it look confident when you’re dying inside. You may
fool people by forcing your body language to appear relaxed when you’re under
stress. But your belly is not fooled. It’s your inner core. It’s where every major
emotion gets registered. It’s where you carry the real truth about strength and
weakness with which you face life.
Jesus is basically saying, “If you
follow me right down in your guts, your belly—you will be flowing with energy,
hope, love, and power.” Did you notice
in verse 39 what this picture of flowing waters stands for? The Holy Spirit.
This new kind of life is tied to the presence and work of the Holy Spirit. He’s
in you.
The audience to whom Jesus was speaking
didn’t see many rivers because for the most part,
If a river flows unobstructed, all
kinds of good things will happen. It will nourish trees. It will provide a home
for fish and plants. It will give drinking water to human beings. But if a river gets dammed up; if it gets
blocked, obstructed, polluted, cut off—there’s death:
The way this applies to our lives is to
understand that it is not primarily a statement about our level of desire. It’s
not primarily talking about how much we want to come to church and sing songs
of worship. It’s a simple observation of
fact. It is the predicament of the human race, even if we’re not aware of it.
If the water, which is the availability of the Spirit, is blocked off, we will
experience loss, unsatisfied desire, and spiritual death.
This is what I have observed in
churches of all sizes over the years. People
hear about the good news of Jesus Christ. They are sometimes overwhelmed and
say, “Yes! I want Jesus in my life!” And
so, for a time, there’s a kind of honeymoon period. They are drawn toward
Scripture in a new way. They get excited and want to tell other people about
Jesus. They love to worship. And some
things change in their life. Coarse language gets cleaned up. Certain
addictions may be overcome. They get involved in serving in the church. But
over time this process of change seems to stall. And instead of my life looking
like this amazing picture painted in the New Testament, it looks like this:
—I yell at my children.
—I worry too much about money and my
job.
—I get jealous of people more
successful or attractive than me.
—I use deception to get out of trouble.
—I pass judgment on people all the
time.
When I read the New Testament about
putting off the old nature and being a new creature in Christ, I’m not jumping
with joy at the change. Instead of feeling inspired by them, these words make
me feel discouraged or guilty or confused or just tired. I get overwhelmed with all the stuff I’m
supposed to do. And so I’m stuck with this gap of what I’m supposed to be as a
Christian and what I’m actually experiencing.
A lot of people try harder.
They think, “The problem with this gap in my life is I’m just not being
heroic enough in my effort.” “I’ll close
the gap by sheer spiritual elbow grease—I’ll get up earlier, pray longer, read
another book, listen to more tapes, learn new disciplines, serve more, work
hard to be nicer to my family.”
Other people who aren’t closing the gap
between who they should be in Christ and who they are simply pretend.
They know they’re supposed to be different, so they decide to “fake it
till they make it.” They’re good at
impression management. One woman John Ortberg knows had a son who was going
through severe depression. But his depression violated the family image of
everything they were trying to portray as “Christian.” And do you know what her
counsel was to her son? She told him to smile because “fake happiness is better
than genuine depression.” For the
pretenders, inside … when everything’s quiet … and they’re alone—the gap’s still
there.
Turn to John 14:16–18 and let’s look at
it together. Jesus is talking with his disciples and he says: “And I will ask the Father, and he will
give you another Counselor to be with you forever—the Spirit of truth. The
world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you
know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as
orphans; I will come to you.”
Jesus is saying that the Holy Spirit of
almighty God is inside you. He takes up residence in your life! When Jesus was teaching he referred to the
coming of the Holy Spirit and the Spirit’s role of guidance by saying: “But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will
guide you into all truth.”
To illustrate, let me tell you about a
young man named Craig. Craig had asked Christ into his life when he was young,
but through the years he just drifted away from God and desired to simply
control his own destiny—call the shots—live his life however he wanted
regardless of the consequences. By the time
he was in his mid-thirties everything he held onto for security was slipping through
his fingers. As a result of back surgery he could no longer work. His closest
friend had died. He was losing his home … if there was a bottom to be hit in
his life he was there and excavating to go deeper.
Full of despair, Craig was driving
around town asking God to show him what to do. He saw a road sign that said
“Dead End” and that was how he felt. For some reason, he decided to see what
was at the end of the road. When he reached it, he found a church. It wasn’t Sunday, but Craig pulled into the
parking lot to cry and pray. He had tried other churches through the years and
never felt accepted. But because of his prayer for guidance he decided to give
this one a try the next Sunday. He
showed up and continued to come, week after week, and found the healing and
hope through Jesus and that community of Christians which he had longed for all
his life. What was prompting Craig to
turn down that road but the Holy Spirit? The
Spirit gives us insight into truth.
God is closer than you think. His greatest desire is to be with you. It’s your choice to be with him. Once you make that choice by acknowledging
your sin and asking Jesus Christ to come into your life and save you God’s Holy
Spirit comes upon you.
You then have the equipment to tune
into God. But the reception may not be
very good and you wonder why. Let me
give you an example. A man addicted to
pornography has a God encounter and decides that he’s a sinner and in need of
Christ to save him. When he accepts
Christ he starts to give up the pornography and he tries to do it alone. It has a grip on him. If he came to see me and confessed to having
a pornography problem I would ask him if he wanted to change and if I could
pray with him. When I prayed I would
pray in the name of Jesus that the spirits of pornography would be cast out of
him and cast out of the building. I
would then pray for a fresh filling of God’s Holy Spirit upon the man.
I am talking to you from real life
experiences of praying with people. I
would expect after that time of prayer with the man something would
happen. His life would start to change
because God’s Holy Spirit was stronger than the spirits of pornography. But eventually he’d let up his guard and open
the door to pornography again. At that
point he would need to pray in the name of Jesus, “Pornography be cast out of
me.”
Everyone battles something,
discouragement, negative thoughts, contentiousness…something. But you can pray in the name of Jesus and
those things can be overcome by God’s presence in your life.
This is what I recommend if you know
that Jesus is your savior. First, stop.
Be still—even at work; just take a moment to quiet your heart. Ask the Holy Spirit to give you wisdom and
insight. And listen. The Spirit will bring Scripture to mind. You
will have insights—sometimes a nudge to make the right choices. He’ll guide!
If you can’t hear or see anything of
God, even that can be fixed. You may
need to be prayed over like I was in 1996.
Let me know. Don’t settle for
your present experience because God is closer than you think right now and
wants to grow your relationship. The
presence of God is here for us right now.
*SOURCE: Untapped
Spiritual Resources, by Greg Asimakoupoulos,
Adapted from John Ortberg’s God is Closer Than You Think