Somebody went live. All right, John 16, 16. A little while, and ye shall not see me. And again, a little while, and ye shall see me, because I go to the Father. Then said some of his disciples among themselves, what is this that he said to us? A little while, and ye shall not see me. And again, a little while, and ye shall see me, because I go to the Father. They said, therefore, what is this that he saith? A little while, we cannot tell what he saith. Now Jesus knew that desire is to ask him and said unto them, do ye inquire among yourselves of that I said a little while and ye shall see me again a little while and ye shall see me? Verily, verily, I say unto you that ye shall weep and lament, but the world shall rejoice. and ye shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy. A woman when, hey, for some reason that was on my mind, I forgot. A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow, because her hour is come. But as soon as she is delivered of the child, she remembereth no more the anguish for the joy that a man is born into the world. I knew there was a reason I picked that song tonight. I just, I forgot what correlation and all, anyways. And ye now, and ye now therefore have sorrow, but I will see you again and your heart shall rejoice and your joy no man taketh from you. And in that day ye shall ask me nothing. Verily, verily, I say unto you, whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will give it you. Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name. Ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full. These things have I spoken unto you in Proverbs, but the time cometh when I shall no more speak unto you in Proverbs, but I shall show you plainly of the Father. At that day, ye shall ask in my name, and I say not unto you that I will pray the Father for you, for the Father himself loveth you, because ye have loved me and have believed that I am come, or rather that I came out from God. I came forth from the Father and am come into the world, Again, I leave the world and go to the Father. His disciples said unto him, Lo, now speakest thou plainly, and speakest no proverb. Now we are sure, or now are we sure, that thou knowest all things, and needest not that any man should ask thee. By this we believe that thou camest forth from God. Jesus answered them, Do ye now believe? Behold, The hour cometh, yea, is now come, that ye shall be scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave me alone. And yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me. These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world you shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer. I have overcome the world. Amen. All right, let's pray. Lord, we thank you for your word. We thank you, Lord, for the opportunity to open it here today. And Lord, we just pray that you'd guide the message this evening, and we pray, Father, that you'd have your way with each of our hearts. And Lord, may we be more about prayer as a result of the message tonight, in Jesus' name, amen. All right, so John chapter 16, you remember, we're coming to the end here. He's still with his disciples. They're together. We've been here for a long time. The Last Supper's taking place. Judas is gone. They haven't quite gone out in the garden yet. He's gonna pray and then, they're gonna head over to the place that they're gonna go, right? We're gonna spend some time talking about his prayer over the coming week or weeks. But today, we're looking here, we've spoken of what the ministry of the Spirit of God is for our age, we spoke of that last time, and what is going to happen here. Remember, he says, I'm going away, I'm going to send the comforter. Right. And so as he says this, we, uh, he, he then continues to tell them, Hey, I'm going away. You're not going to see me. Then you're going to see me. Right. And, uh, and then they, they wonder about it and then he explains it. And then in, uh, in, in verse 21, as he says here, um, and when she is in travail, hath sorrow because her hour has come. But as soon as she is delivered of the child, she remembereth no more the anguish. for the joy that a man is born into the world. Now, there are four things that this should remind us of, besides my four children being born, as we spoke of here a little while ago. But there are four things that this should remind us of. First, and by the way, it could be actually more than four things. We could go back a lot further. and we could see many different things that this reminds us of. But one of the things that it reminds us of, in fact, I am gonna go back further than just the four. When we consider what God did when the world was in the midst of confusion and rebellion, right? We have The flood takes place, and then Noah comes along. God's seeking for him a seed, seeking for him a... Actually, there's an interesting thought, but I'm gonna take it from the perspective that he's given us here. This matter of travail, this matter of birthing something, working to have something born, when God brought together the nation of Israel, not just talking about Jacob and his wives and the children and all that, but he brought them out of bondage. This was a laborsome thing, and then how many weeks a woman is with child. It depends. Roughly 40 weeks is the target date from conception to birth. Give or take, you know, usually you can have a healthy child at 36 weeks, or you can also have a healthy child with maybe a little bit more pain at 42 weeks. It just depends on the period of time that it takes, right? Some ladies carry to 40 weeks, some carry to a little earlier, some carry to a little longer, right? And I don't remember my wife could tell you, all four of our kids, how long she carried them. But interestingly enough, the Lord carried Israel through the wilderness for 40 years. And then after that, he took them into the promised land, right? Now, he could have taken them into the promised land, you know, right when he wanted to, but they decided to rebel. And so they had to incubate for 40 years. Many of them had to die, and then the next generation would be taken into the promised land. After this, we have God bringing forth, just over the history, we have the timeline all the way from the beginning. We have Adam, and then Seth, and Enos, and so on, all down the line, beginning of the Gospels, and you can see these genealogies, and so God working in this, the devil also working against it. You've got that going on before the flood. You have it going on after the flood. You have all this, so in the midst of confusion, God brings Abraham out of Ur of the Chaldees, so he's working there. Then Isaac, Jacob, the children of Israel, he's bringing them out of Egypt into the promised land, They're there, they are awaiting the promise that was given, the promised seed that was given to the woman, right? And in Genesis chapter number three, when the Lord said to Eve, he says, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception, right? And anyways, he says to the woman, serpent, he says that there would be enmity between him and the woman. And it says that, and that the woman's seed, let's turn there real quick. Genesis chapter three and verse number 15, we'll just read it real quick and then move on. So I don't misquote it. Genesis chapter three, verse number 15, He says, and I will put enmity between thee and the woman and between thy seed and her seed, it shall bruise thy head and thou shalt bruise his heel. This is speaking of the one who would come. And by the way, this is speaking of those four things that I was going to bring up. At the fullness of time, if you remember in the book of Revelation, you have the picture of the Messiah coming, right? In the book of Revelation, we have, I believe it's in, I'm trying to remember exactly where we had that. Yeah, chapter 12. It says, and there appeared a great wonder in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun and the moon under her feet. upon her head a crown of twelve stars, and she being with child cried travailing in birth and pained to be delivered. And there appeared another wonder in heaven, and behold a great red dragon having seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns upon his heads, and his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven and did cast them to the earth and the dragon stood before the woman which was ready to be delivered for to devour her son or her child as soon as it was born and she brought forth a man child who was to rule all the nations with a rod of iron and her child was caught up unto God and to his throne and the woman fled into the wilderness and where she hath a place prepared of God, and she, that she should, or rather that they should feed her there 1,203 score days. And there was war in heaven, Michael, and so on. We have all of this stuff going on, but this woman here pictures Israel, is pictured as Israel having, birthing the Messiah. This isn't Mary, this is Israel. Okay, and Israel birthing the Messiah, we have, I would say first, the realization of the manifestation of the Messiah, right? So that's our first thing. We have this birth where we know, as Isaiah chapter seven says, behold, a virgin shall conceive and shall bring forth a son, right? And he'll call his name Emmanuel. This is God with us. And we have Mary who travails in birth and bears Jesus. This is the realization of the birth of the Messiah. This is his manifestation, his incarnation when he comes in the flesh. this being not necessarily directly referred to, but indirectly referred to. The second one then is going to be his resurrection. As he's referring here to the disciples, he's saying that you're going to be like a woman with child. She's excited about something that is to come, but then she's gotta go through some sorrow, but then once that's over, she's happy about it, right? So the sorrow that we had to go through, the disciples had to go through, was the cross. They didn't have to go through the cross, but they lost Jesus, right? He was arrested shortly after this discussion, and he was taken from them, he was beaten, and then he was crucified, and they were in They wept and they lamented. They were in sorrow. And the world rejoiced. And so he was buried. And three days later, he rose again. And it was as though the baby was born, right? They were excited. They got to see him again. He was seen and he went all over, right, and showed himself to many people. And so they were able to see him again. But this statement that he makes is fulfilled over and over again. It's not only fulfilled in the realization, it's fulfilled in the resurrection, and then it will again be fulfilled for us as we spoke this morning in Sunday school about the coming of Christ. It will be fulfilled for us who are believers of this age in the rapture. We will once again see our Lord in the rapture. And it will be as though the anguish, the trouble, the trials, the difficulty that we went through in life is but a blink of an eye, and then we're with Him. And then all of that difficulty, the sorrow, the struggle, the anguish, it's all gone. It's behind us. And we forget about it because we're with the man-child, right? the Lord, with Him. And so we're no longer weeping, but we're rejoicing. And it's joy that no man can take away. Now, by the way, when we apply the fact that He came and He died for our sins and He rose again, when we apply that, we ought to have that rejoicing now, right? We have that rejoicing now because of His resurrection. Sometimes we're going to go through trials. And then what do we do? We look forward to the rapture. We look forward to not because we want to get out of here, but because we know we're going to see him again. We know he's going to be with us again. And then for Israel, for the nation of Israel, and for the whole world, that is the creature itself in anguish and groaning for the birth to take place for the deliverance, to take place for the Messiah to come and to set up his kingdom and to rule and reign and to take the curse away, he's going to come back and he's gonna step foot on the Mount of Olives. And that will be his return. I tried to do all four R's, right? The realization, right? Where he came into place, into this world, right? The resurrection, the rapture and the return. But I say those things because these are things, and I hope to give you these things as a matter of comfort, a matter of rejoicing, a matter of hope. But then he continues on and he tells us that while he's not here, we still have contact. We still have communication. We still have the ability to speak with the father. He says now, basically, as we talked about this earlier on, Uh, in, uh, in, in another chapter, speaking of praying here, he goes on to say that we're going to pray to the father and whatsoever we ask in his name, we will receive. Right. And, uh, remember when I brought that up before, what he's saying here is when he goes away, it's because he's paid the price and he's given us the blank check. The blank check is for us to now, by the way, it's a blank check with limitations. It's in his name, right? So we can't write something that he wouldn't, we can't say, you know, a million dollars for my own lusts and in Jesus name, we can't do that. By the way, when he says in my name, he's not saying that whatever you ask, as long as you tag my name at the end of it, you're going to get it. It's not what he's saying. Just because we say in Jesus name, amen, doesn't mean our prayers are going to be answered. It's not a magical incantation. Now I'm not against saying that we pray in Jesus name. We do. We, we say in Jesus name when we pray, but That should be a reminder to us that the prayer we just prayed, we prayed according to his will. And that's why we're able to say it in his name and pray it in his name, request it in his name. So as we pray, and this is something that we have to really consider, that we can rejoice in the fact that we're going to see him again. But in the meantime, first of all, we need to be praying. we need to be praying. Secondly, we need to be praying according to his will. How do we pray according to his will? According to his word. We pray and we ask him for things that are according to what his word says, right? So what can we pray for? We can pray that he would help us to be holier, that he would help us to overcome sin, that he would help us to reach the lost, that he would help us to encourage other brothers and sisters in Christ. We can pray specifically that he would help us to do those things in specific areas and for specific people. Because I believe, I think we can say, according to the word of God, those things are God's will. We can absolutely say that when we pray according to his word, that we're going to get the answer according to his will. Right? Now, just because we pray fervently, just because we pray honestly, just because we pray in whatever, we can try to check all the boxes. I prayed this way and this way, and this is what I did, and this is what I did, and this is what I did, and this is what I did. If it's our will instead of His will, if the prayer seems to be answered, it doesn't necessarily mean He answered the prayer. If the prayer is not answered, by the way, it doesn't necessarily mean He didn't answer it. if it doesn't seem to have been answered, it doesn't mean that he gave us no answer. Sometimes the answer is no, right? And so sometimes we don't get to know that the answer is no, except by the fact that we don't get what we asked for. And the reason that happens is often because we pray based on our own desires instead of based on what he wants. Right. And so, As we consider this concept of prayer, first and foremost, salvation, as we come to the Lord for salvation. How do we get saved? Do we come to him demanding that he give us what we want? Did he give us heaven and not give us hell all because we want it and because Jesus, Jesus paid for it, so I deserve it, I'm getting it. Is that how we come to him for salvation? Certainly not, no. We come to him for salvation the way that he said so, right? draw an eye unto God, humble yourself before him, repent and believe the gospel. We come to him humiliated. We come to him undone. We come to him completely recognizing that we don't deserve salvation, but that if he'll give it to us, we'll accept it. And he does. And by the way, that's the way prayer goes after we're saved. We don't go to God demanding that he gives us what we want. We go to God praying that he might help us to understand what he wants, and then to understand how to ask for it as he would have us to ask. And then how to, here's an interesting thing you may not have considered. Have you ever considered praying that God would help you to receive the answer to your prayer, help you to receive it the way he would have you to receive it? Because again, sometimes the answer to the prayers that we ask is not exactly what we thought the answer would be, right? Sometimes we ask for things that we shouldn't be asking for. And because of that, the answer comes in a different way. Something else comes along. Something else happens. And we say, well, why did that happen that way? Sometimes it's a matter of chance. Sometimes it's a matter of someone else. Sometimes it's a matter of our own choices, right? And things, you know, they're... I want to help you understand that life has a whole lot of causes and effects. And by the way, prayer is the same. When we ask of God something according to his will, he does answer it. And he changes things if it's his will, right? As Abraham asked, right? If there be 50 righteous, would you spare the city? Yeah, I'll spare it for 50. So what about 45? I don't remember how you go down five or 10. What's that? Went down to 10. So how about 40? How about 30? You know what? What about 10? How many ended up leaving the city? Four. Lot, his wife, and his two daughters, four. Think about it. Think about it. He got them all the way down to ten. Imagine if he could just get them down six more. What if there was, what if it lacked six? You think God would have maybe continued with him if he would have kept going? Maybe he would have. I don't know. Maybe Sodom and Gomorrah would still be around. But there's also another lesson there, and that was that Lot had at least four daughters. Y'all know that, right? Because he had two that were unmarried that went with him, and then there were sons-in-law. So that means he had at least other two other daughters. So if the four that were there plus the two other daughters and their husbands would have gotten things right, all they would have had to have done is repeat more. would have saved the whole city. But we do see, though, that that God let Abraham influence him. But it was according to his word. God didn't just. Say, well, you know, Abraham asked me, so I'm just I'm just going to lower the bar. Now, it was it was according to his will. What does God say about the death of the wicked? He has no pleasure in the death of the wicked. So if one will intercede on their behalf, he'll listen to that, right? It doesn't mean that he will completely just overlook sin completely forever, but he'll be long suffering. He'll give them a space to repent, right? Might've given Sodom and Gomorrah Just one more generation. Think of maybe who could have been born that wasn't born. Think of maybe who could have been saved and what might have happened if that would have taken place. But again, recognize that God desires that we pray in Jesus' name, meaning that it's according to his plan, right? Jesus doesn't just give us his name to throw around like we want to, right? He doesn't just give us his name to say, oh, you know, I deserve this, give it to me in Jesus' name. That's not the way we pray, right? The way we pray, we pray understanding that I don't really deserve anything. Yeah. However, Yeah, sometimes sometimes you get ready to pray, or sometimes you're in the middle of praying and God's like, that what you want, or is that what I want? What? Tell me why I should do this. As you said, what question I you know, you're asking me to, I'm just I'm looking down from the throne right down there. You're asking me to do this. Give me one good reason. That's right. If you're asking forgiveness, right? If you're asking for something, it's more a matter of his grace. I don't deserve it, but you, God desires to, to bless his people. He does. He absolutely does. God wants to bless us, but he doesn't want to bless us. Um, let me, let me back up here before I say that. Understand that blessings sometimes are not blessings because we can't handle them. You know that? You realize that sometimes when we're blessed with something, God answered our prayer to let us be tested with that sometimes. Sometimes we, we pray and God answers it and says, well, I know you can't handle this, but here it is. So I can show you, you can't handle it. Right? Happens a lot of times when people ask for God to give them things, right? Oh, I'd like to have this thing or that thing. And it's not necessarily against God's will, but it's the question is now, are you going to use what he's given you as an answer to prayer? Are you going to use that now for your own? purposes? Or are you going to use it for him? Is it going to be something that's going to bring glory to him? Or is it going to be something that you just, ah, that's, that's mine. I like it. It's mine. It's my thing. You know, my, whatever you prayed for belongs to me and you're selfish with it. Or do you use it for him? I'll tell you one thing, children, children. We pray for children. I prayed for children, prayed that I'd have children. That's a really long, like, you know, when that prayer is answered, you got a long time to find out whether or not you use that prayer request, or that that answer to that prayer, according to his will or not. Right? God's given me four children. They're tuckered out today like a lot of you. But I know Emma spent was I think the girls are back there helping. But anyways, my desire to have children isn't just so that I can have somebody I can hug and love and, and enjoy being around and stuff. Although I thank God for the love of my children. and for the affection and just being able to look at my kids and say, that's my kid, you know, and praise the Lord for that. But I want to raise them, recognizing that they really don't belong to me. They belong to him. He answered my prayer, like Hannah, right? He answered Hannah's prayer so that she could lend him, lend Samuel to the Lord, so that she could give back what he gave to her. And that's the way that we ought to be, right? And that's something that God's got to remind me of all the time. He's like, I gave you this blessing. I gave this to you. What are you doing with it? Are you using it for me? Or are you hoarding it to yourself? Right? Does anybody ever, God ever do that with anybody, with anything that you've asked for? Yeah? Sometimes God's done that. God did that with my house, my first house. I prayed that God would help me to have a place to live. We wanted to buy a house. That was back when like anybody could get a mortgage. I had an $8 an hour job and I bought a $100,000 house with it. Yeah, $8.50 an hour. I bought $100,000 house with that job. I still own that house. It's a rental property now. We had it built, had the house built. But the third year, I almost lost it. didn't miss payment or anything. It was just like I had the taxes hit and the insurance hit and everything hit all at the same time. And it was like, it was built, you know, when you build a house, you're paying for the taxes of the year before when there was no house there, it was just dirt. Now there's a house. So eventually that catches up with you in that. And then your escrow payment, boom explodes, right? So my payment went from, I want to say it was like, five, $600 a month to like $1,400 a month. Oh yeah. So they said either you pay this amount to knock that escrow down or $1,400 a month. Now this was back in 2007, eight, somewhere around there. So or nine, something like that. Anyways. Not that, you know, I mean, today, that much of a payment. I mean, housing's insane now. You know, what people pay for rent is crazy. That house out there is the going rate for rent for that house on Zillow is $1,200 a month. Crazy. it's out and you know, acting, but, um, and actually, um, I've got a friend who's about to rent a four bedroom for $1,500 a month. $1,500 a month. My goodness. Was that for rent? Yes. Um, you know, it's crazy. My mortgage payment on that house is only six something, six 60 something. That's actually $666 and a penny. I guess they wanted to throw the penny on there. So it wasn't even, Anyways, so, yeah, I mean, it should tell you something if that's your mortgage payment. Something's not right about that, you know. Anyways, but God was like, well, I gave it to you, I can take it away. And I put it up for sale. I said, all right, Lord, you want my house? You can have it. It's up for sale. Give it to somebody else. It was on the market for six months. We had open houses, several open houses, we had zero inquiries, we had zero offers, and we really had pretty much zero showings other than a couple people coming in to see the house when it was on open house. And I said, Lord, did you want me to sell the house? There was some preaching going on at the time. And I remember a preacher said, sometimes God asks you to give things up that he doesn't actually want you to give up. He just wants you to be willing to give them up. And then I realized I could take my house off the market, knowing that he just wanted me to be willing to let it go. Because it was so important to me. And it was important for no good reason. So he wanted me to be willing to let it go. By the way, God does that with all kinds of things in our lives, right? Sometimes we have to give things up because they've become too important to us. Other times we can keep those things as long as we give them to God, right? And so when we recognize that all that we have, that every good gift and every perfect gift is, it comes down from the father of lights. And it's, we've got those gifts from God to use for God. And so we recognize that it all belongs to him, right? And by the way, that makes us treat things better too. If you consider that your vehicle belongs to God, you don't drive it like you stole it, right? If you realize that your body belongs to God, you're gonna consider taking care of it. you realize that all of your things belong to God, you're not going to be haphazard with them. You're going to try to recognize that or try to try to get as much out of them for the glory of God as you can, right? This thought of prayer, this concept of prayer, ought to drive us to recognize that what we ask for needs to be asked for His glory. Needs to be, and when we get it, it's not for us, it's for Him. And if we put that test to all the things that we desire, it may cause us to not pray for some things. because we recognize that we want it so bad. I pray about our meeting place, right? I pray about it all the time, our meeting place. And I recognize, and I've told the Lord in prayer, I've said, Lord, this is your church. If you want us to meet in a field somewhere or in a parking lot, I'm fine with that. Wherever you want us to meet is fine with me. If you want us to stay where we're at forever, that's fine with me. If you want us to buy a place, that's fine. If you want us to rent a place again, that's fine. Whatever you want, God. Now, according to his word, I'm not going to find anywhere thou shalt buy a church building. We're not going to find that. But whatever he gives us, whatever he entrusts us with, We've got to utilize it for his glory alone. God's a jealous God. He doesn't want us worshiping other gods. He doesn't want us having idols in our lives. He doesn't want us to even utilize the things he's given us as an idol. And guess what happens when we do? We lose him. We lose our blessings. We lose what we prayed for. So all of these things, I'm just kind of hammering down on this, in his name, doesn't just mean that we, I know I preached two messages. One was four points and one was one point. All right. It doesn't just mean that we tack his name on the end. It means that we are sincerely and genuinely praying for things that will benefit him. And I hope that we're doing that. By the way, don't just let it keep you from praying for something. If you're not praying, if you're just praying for it for yourself, let it fix you. Let it make you consider what you're praying for and then consider Am I praying for it for me? And if you are, maybe you should not pray for it, or maybe you should consider whether or not that thing you were gonna pray for should be prayed for for him and for his glory. We're gonna go ahead and have a moment of prayer. We'll have the altar open if anybody wants to use it. But I spoke a little earlier on about salvation. I want everybody here to leave here knowing without a doubt in their mind that they're born again.