Jesus said God is Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in Spirit and in truth. I quote that verse here almost every week. But I can’t help but believe that we need to elaborate on this doctrine that God is Spirit. The Greek word for spirit is pneuma. Pneuma is the root word from which we get our word pneumatic. It means air, or a breath of air. So a spirit is like the air. A spirit is unseen. It isn’t composed of matter that you can touch or see or feel. The best way we can describe it is a spirit is like the air or the wind. We can see the effects of the wind, but we can’t see the wind. Jesus said, no man has seen the Father at any time. He is invisible to human eyes because He is Spirit. But like when we see the effects of the wind, Romans 1 says in creation we see the invisible attributes of God and His eternal nature. We do not see God in nature. But we see the effect of God in nature and it testifies to us that God is.

John’s gospel tells us that Jesus is God who took on human form. John 1:14, “And the Word (that is Jesus) became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.” For 33 years, God appeared on the earth in a physical body of a man. Luke tells us that He was born of the Spirit of God through a young woman named Mary. But the John 1 tells us that Jesus existed from the beginning. He was with God in the beginning. So in some incredible way that is impossible for us to comprehend, God was in three persons in eternity past, and the second person of the trinity, who John calls the Word, in His Spirit subjects Himself to be born as a baby even while in Mary’s womb, and is born in flesh as the Son of God. He lives fully as a baby, then a toddler, then a teenager, then a young man, before declaring Himself to be the Son of God at 30 years old. At this point He begins His public ministry to the world as Jew, living in Israel, subjecting Himself to all that mankind was subjected to. He did so sinlessly, and after preaching His gospel to all of Israel, He offered Himself as not only a human sacrifice, but a divine sacrifice for the sins of the world, to provide salvation for those that will believe in Him.

After His crucifixion, God raised Jesus bodily from the grave, and 40 days later He ascended into heaven in the sight of 500 witnesses. Then on the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit came to the disciples and indwelled the church. Today we worship God in Spirit. The body of Christ is no longer with us, we don’t have a physical God that we can see or touch. But we worship Him in Spirit and in the truth of God’s word. His Word is the physical effect or evidence of the Spirit of God given to the world.

Now this passage before us today happens about 12 hours before He is offered as a sacrifice for sin on the cross. Jesus knows full well what is to come, and why He is doing what He is doing. But He also knows that the disciples do not understand. And so in these last hours before His death, He is speaking to them in the Upper Room, giving them His last will and testament, so to speak, revealing certain truths to them and making promises to them which are designed to sustain them when He is no longer with them.

Though His upcoming ordeal on the cross should have been uppermost in His mind, He wants to comfort His disciples, because He knows that they don’t really understand what must happen. They are going to be disillusioned and discouraged when Jesus is crucified. And so in spite of the ordeal ahead of Him, He is concerned about His disciples. He offers them principles and truths that are designed to sustain them and strengthen their faith for the days ahead, especially those days when He will be taken back up into heaven.

To comfort them then, He said in the first few verses of the chapter that He was going away, but He was going to prepare a place for them, and He would return one day to take them to be with Him. But Thomas speaking perhaps for all of them, said, “Lord we don’t know where you are going. How can we know the way?”

Jesus’s answer is one of the greatest theological statements in the Bible. Jesus says in vs. 6, “I am the Way, the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father except by Me.” Now I spent some time expounding that text last time so we don’t need to go review all that again. But suffice it to say that Jesus is declaring that He is the only way to the Father. He is the entrance into the Kingdom of God.

Now we come today to vs.7, which is a continuation of that thought. Jesus said, ““If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; from now on you know Him, and have seen Him.” The greatest comfort in life we can possibly have is that we know God and are known by God. There is nothing on earth that can compare with that knowledge. Because I can assure you that in this life you are eventually going to come to a point when you realize that no one can help you through your particular trial.

I’ve been through many desperate times when I wanted so badly to pick up the phone and call someone. And yet there was really no one to call that could help me. Our friends might commiserate with us, or sympathize with us in our trials, but there are many trials where there is no one that can help us. The doctor says that there is nothing that they can do. Or the good will of family and friends has been tapped once too many times. Or the problem is just to big, too complex for anyone to be able to help. I’ve been there a few times, and I suspect that you have too. And if you haven’t yet, then it’s going to happen eventually. And in those darkest hours, there is no hope except to hope in God. And there is no comfort, but to know God, and to know that God knows you and loves you.

So Jesus focuses their attention on that principle. Because they think that they know Jesus. But what Jesus says, is that if you know Me, you would know God. But the disciples knew that Jesus was the Son of God. They knew Jesus was the Messiah. They knew He was the Son of David. But their knowledge was incomplete. They though had some of the right doctrine, they did not have full comprehension, and therefore they were missing the full comfort that comes from knowing who He is. They did not know that Jesus was the manifestation of the Godhead in bodily form.

Hebrews 1:3 tells us that Jesus “is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power.” And that is what Jesus is saying in vs.7, you now know the Father, and you have seen Him. They had seen the invisible, unseen Father through the physical manifestation of Jesus Christ.

But Philip still didn’t understand. And most likely, neither did the other apostles. He said in vs.8, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.” We can look with 20/20 hindsight and kind of look down on those poor ignorant disciples, can’t we? It’s so evident to us, and they were so blind to what was right in front of them. But I would suggest that Philips comment is not so far off from our own thoughts about God today. Philip’s request is the same request the world makes today. Show us the Father and it will be enough. Hey, why doesn’t God show Himself to the world? Prove your existence to us. Manifest yourself to us.

In the words of modern day skeptics, we don’t accept you as you as invisible, as unseen. We don’t accept you as a Spirit. We don’t accept you as you have manifested yourself in the flesh as the historical Jesus 2000 years ago. We want you to do something that we think is fitting, according to how we think God should be. We want you to prove yourself to us today. Jesus had come with all kinds of signs, proving that He was deity, and yet they still asked for greater signs. Raising the dead did not satisfy them. And I suppose that what people really want to see today is something on the scale of the movie Independence Day. They want to see some sort of immense presence in the sky in flaming fire, or blinding light, overwhelming the senses. They want to see some sort of incredible power in a physical, tangible way. But that is putting our demands upon God to meet our standards. God has chosen to reveal Himself in a more humble way, so that we might know Him in a more personal, intimate way.

So Jesus said, “Have I been so long with you, and yet you have not come to know Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; how can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?

The fact of the historicity of Jesus is widely accepted even by most non Christian scholars of antiquity. Extra biblical evidence can be found in 1st century writings like that from the Jewish historian Josephus, or Pliny the Younger, who was a Roman governor, or Tacitus, a Roman historian, or from the Talmud, which was a Jewish Rabbinical text, or from a Greek satirist by the name of Lucian. Archeology backs up the claims of the gospels as well, such as the important find a few years ago, an ossuary, which was a type of wooden coffin, engraved with the name of James, the son of Joseph, the brother of Jesus. So there is ample contemporary evidence outside of Biblical sources which show conclusively that Jesus was a real historical figure.

But the greatest evidence is simply the word of God. The internal evidence of the reliability of the word of God is overwhelming. It is truth. It is true historically and it’s truth experientially and it’s truth practically. And Jesus uses that evidence to support His own claims of divinity. His claim to divinity is that He speaks the words of God, and His words are validated by His works, which are the works of God.

Verse 10:  “Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me?  The words that I say to you, I do not speak on My own initiative, but the Father abiding in Me does His works.  Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me; otherwise believe because of the works themselves.”

And the truth of God’s word is it’s own witness to those who believe it and obey. It is self validating. In John 7:17 Jesus said, “If anyone is willing to do His will, he will know of the teaching, whether it is of God or whether I speak from Myself. He who speaks from himself seeks his own glory; but He who is seeking the glory of the One who sent Him, He is true, and there is no unrighteousness in Him.”

So because HIs word is true, and does not glorify Himself but glorifies the Father, we know that Jesus is one with God. We believe in Him. We don’t have Jesus in person here on earth that we might know Him and examine Him. But we do have Him in scripture. And the word of Christ, the truth of Christ validates our belief.

Romans 1:17 says that the just shall live by faith. Not by sight. We receive life by faith in Christ, righteousness by faith in Christ, forgiveness by faith in Christ. We live by faith in God as given to us in the scriptures. We don’t have faith in just anything, but in what the scriptures tell us. We believe in the promises of the Bible, God’s word. That is what it means to believe in God, to have faith in Christ.

Our faith does not rest on personal experiences. Our faith doesn’t rest on supernatural occurrences, or on personal revelation through special messages we think we have received from God. Our faith rests in His written word. Our faith increases proportionately to our understanding of Scripture.  Scripture reveals God; and the more you see God revealed in Scripture, the greater your faith becomes, the stronger it becomes. As we saw in a moment ago in John 7:17, when we act in faith to what the scriptures teach, then the truth becomes clear and we learn that we can depend upon His word. And so our faith grows in response to our obedience.

Listen, we dare not believe in God because we feel something. We cannot trust our feelings as a basis for our faith. Our feelings fluctuate. And oftentimes, our feelings lie. Our feelings may tell us that God doesn’t care, that God must not even exist. So we cannot trust our feelings. We trust in the word of God, in spite of our feelings. We believe His word no matter what is going on around us.

Feelings follow obedience. You choose faith and obedience irregardless of feelings, and eventually feelings will follow. That’s why in vs.15 which we will look at next week, Jesus says “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.” Obedience brings intimacy with God, which brings assurance of our relationship with Him, which in turn produces feelings of joy and peace and comfort.

The second comfort that Christ gives is the promise of His power. Now that the disciples know who He is, that He is the eternal God who is going back into heaven to prepare a place for us, then the promise is that they will continue to have His power. Vs. 12, Jesus says, “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do, he will do also; and greater works than these he will do; because I go to the Father.”

A lot of people love to go off the tracks with this verse. They read it and it’s off to the races. Everyone wants to walk on water, or raise the dead, or heal people. And to some extent the apostles were granted that power at the beginning of the church, in what we call the apostolic age. They had similar power to what Christ had to authenticate their message. But I would suggest to you that this was limited to the apostles and a few of their proteges. And that was only for a short time, until the New Testament scriptures were written. By the end of the apostolic age, the miraculous works of the apostles had begun to die out with them. By the end of Paul’s ministry, his miracles had ceased. He told Timothy for instance to drink a little wine for his stomach’s sake. He talked about leaving one of his entourage sick. The miracles had a limited purpose, to corroborate the words of God which the apostles were preaching.

In Acts 2, you read how it flows through the Apostolic Age.  This is the power given to the apostles.  It’s defined for us clearly in 2 Corinthians 12:12, the signs and wonders, and miracles of an apostle.  And it’s in Hebrews 2:4 where it says that the message the apostles preached was confirmed by signs and wonders and mighty deeds done by the apostles. It was to confirm the word of God, that the words they spoke were the words of Christ. The same principle that was true in Him (he spoke the words, he did the works) was true in His apostles.

How then does Jesus say that you will do greater works than these? It’s because He would send the Holy Spirit to indwell each believer. When Jesus was on earth He was limited to being in one place at one time. But the Holy Spirit is not limited by place or time. He is able to be in individuals everywhere at once, doing the works of God through many sons of God at once.

So when the Apostolic Era ended there’s still a sense in which greater works are being done. Jesus works were limited to Israel. And though Jesus did more miracles than anyone had ever done or will do, there were not that many people that believed in Him and were saved. Five hundred people witnessed His ascension into heaven. But the disciples ministry was much more far reaching. It spread throughout the Roman Empire. It took over the civilized world. The greatest miracle of all is that a sinner is saved and transformed to be a saint. And in one message on the day of Pentecost, 3000 souls were saved. And in our day, greater works than these have been done, in that the gospel has encircled the entire globe, and it’s doing so more and more all the time.  The gospel is being sent all over the world right now in the air, on the Internet, and through radio and media constantly.

The third way the Lord gives the disciples comfort is that He reveals to them His provision.
There’s a third point  Our Lord reveals to them His provision.  Vs. 13 and 14: “Whatever you ask in My name, that will I do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask Me anything in My name, I will do it.”

Two times Jesus gives the condition, “ask in My name.” That phrase is the key. What does in My name mean? How are we to correctly understand that? To ask in His name, means to ask according to His identity, consistent with who He is, and what His purpose is. If someone came to you in the name of the King of a particular country, then you would expect that person to represent the purpose or mission of the King. They would be acting on behalf of the King’s will.

Notice that Jesus Himself is subjecting Himself to glorifying the Father in this verse. “So that the Father may be gloried in the Son.” The Son is working to bring about the provision that you need, in order to glorify the Father. So the Son is not working in that prayer to glorify Himself. But so that the Father may be glorified. He is not seeking HIs own glory.

So in like manner, when we pray in Jesus’s name, we are not seeking our own glory, but seeking to glorify Christ, and then Christ will answer it, so that the Father may be glorified through Him. But the request must be consistent with the Father’s will, with the Son’s purpose, so that they are glorified.

So to simplify it, ‘If you ask anything in My name, means asking consistent with Christ’s will.” And that is borne out by 1 John 5:14, “This is the confidence which we have before Him, that, if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us.”

This is the comfort that Jesus offered the apostles. He gave them the assurance and knowledge that they needed concerning the person of His deity, that He was God, and was returning back to the Father, to make intercession for them, to prepare a place for them, to send them His Spirit to be His presence in each of them. So that they might know Him, and know that He is God, and that He knows those who are His.

Secondly, that they might be comforted by His power. Though He was going away, He would give them power to continue His ministry, and even to a greater extent than He had done. They would know the power of God to transform men’s and women’s lives all over the known world. And we see the power of the gospel continuing to work today in even greater ways, as the word of God has reached every corner of the globe.

And the third comfort is that He will provide all the resources that we need to be able to fulfill His ministry. Everything we ask for according to His will He will do it. Some of us may think that limits us in our prayers. But I think that it gives us great confidence in our prayers, and great hope in our ministry. We can pray confidently about things that we know God cares about, because God has stated it in His word. That is a great comfort to me, and I hope it is to you as well. If God said it, and God promised it, then He will do it. And if we are doing His will, then there is nothing that will be impossible for us. God will provide all of our needs according to His riches in glory.