If you are asking for spiritual maturity, for endurance in a trial, for provision of your basic needs so you can continue to serve and minister and evangelize, and if you are asking for mercy, for forgiveness, for wisdom and compassion from our Father in heaven… then there is no spending limit! What a glorious promise this is for all who are in Christ. But this is an exclusive ability reserved for Christ’s followers. God hears us because of the righteousness of Christ. Without that, we have no claim of our own.

The American Express Centurion card, aka Amex Black Card is the most exclusive charge card on the market. Last week we learned that the Black Card is by invitation only, costs $10,000 to initiate and $5,000 per year, but comes with exclusive benefits like no spending limit, ten times the loyalty points which secure airline miles that never expire, and elite status at certain hotels. But I did not tell you about the main benefit. With the Amex Black card comes exclusive 24/7 access to a deluxe concierge service.
You get a number to call and instantly a friendly concierge picks up, ready to do your bidding, day or night. Usually this service is used to book flights, hotels, rental cars, ask about local attractions, secure tickets to sought-after events etc. But the power of the deluxe concierge extends beyond just administrative help.
You want tickets to a sold-out U2 concert? No problem. You’d like Tiffany’s jewelry store to let you shop privately after hours? Easy. You can ask your concierge to call you in the morning with a friendly reminder to go to work. And you can ask your concierge to remind you every year that it’s your wedding anniversary, and you can have them send flowers.
This is all pretty helpful stuff, but one curious user decided to see how far he could stretch the concierge’s abilities. He called with this request: “I’m traveling to Austin, and I want a big tub of nacho cheese. Make that a HUGE tub, enough to fill a punch bowl.”
The reply was simply: “Does it need to be in a tub?”
“Can, jar, tub, I don’t care, I just want liquid cheese, and a lot of it.” The concierge called back with the address of a store in Austin, that sells giant cans of liquid cheese.
So he persisted with odd requests … in his quest to find the limits, he got the concierge to… 1) solve a crossword puzzle, 2) help get daily calls affirming that he is a good person, 3) help book a trip to space (he didn’t end up going because it would cost too much).
But eventually he found the limit. They would not help him book the services of an assassin. In fact, they have a list of requests they have denied… including…
1. We cannot do your school paper or your job for you.
2. We do not have access to confidential government reports.
3. We can’t plan your wedding, but we can find you a planner.
4. We won’t facilitate unethical behavior like hiring contract killers.
Well, you might not have 24/7 access to a deluxe concierge, but you do have 24/7 full access to a Father who loves you and can help with anything you need. And the best part of this exclusive offer is that it is absolutely free.
Jesus is talking to his disciples the night before he goes to the cross. He has told them that he will be betrayed and that he is going back to the Father. We saw that Jesus offers them comfort that they will be with him again. Then Jesus taught them about 3 EXCLUSIVE PRIVILEGES ONLY AVAILABLE TO BELIEVERS
Last week we saw that Jesus gives exclusive access to the Father and exclusive acquaintance with the Father, and today
2 Exclusive Abilities that are a Privilege Christ Secures for His Followers

Extent of Our Reach

John 14:12 “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father.
This verse is a notoriously misunderstood and misapplied verse. It is the mantra for the name-it-and-claim-it health, wealth, prosperity movement.
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There are two primary forms of special revelation: Jesus and the Bible. With these two external sources of truth and morality, we can have a quite accurate understanding of where we are at and where we are going. Jesus shows us what real humanity is meant to look like, and the Bible offers us all the insight, instruction and guidance we need to live a life that is pleasing to God, helpful to others, and good for ourselves. It is these sources that we need to look to, not our fallen hearts and fallible minds.

The hit 1952 country song by Hank Williams – Your Cheatin’ Heart – may have been a love song about what went wrong, but it is relevant for my purposes. We all have cheatin’ hearts. That is, we all have deceptive, lying and twisted hearts. We have a busted internal moral compass in other words, and we need outside help if we want true and unerring guidance and direction.
Consider life just a few decades ago. If you were in a strange place – say a city you had never been in before, or out in the countryside on strange roads, you would likely have needed help from others, or risk being hopelessly lost. Like many of you, I would have pulled into a service station and asked a local for directions.
Or we might have depended on a street directory. In Melbourne for many years we relied on having a Melways in the car. If you do not know where you are going, you need outside help in getting there. And it is not just geographical locations.
We all need moral direction as well. Little kids do not need to be taught how to be selfish. One of their first words is “mine!”. They will readily grab a toy out of the hands of someone else. So they need to be taught about things like sharing and care for others. Usually, it is the parents who bring about such moral counsel and guidance.
All this is quite familiar territory of course. Both Scripture and human experience tell us that we do NOT have some perfect internal guidance system that will never let us down, never go astray, and never mess things up. The truth is, sin is universal, and the human heart is quite unreliable when it comes to knowing right from wrong, truth from error.
Scripture calls this Original Sin. We live in a fallen world, and we all are born with a predisposition away from God and others, and toward sin and self. This is one of the most easily noticeable truths about the human species. As G. K. Chesterton once quipped, “Certain new theologians dispute original sin, which is the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved.”
The Bible throughout makes this case about the universality of human sin and the unreliability of the human heart and mind to properly direct us. Just a few of many passages can be offered here. They make it clear that we are ALL led astray by sin and deception, and we are NOT to trust our own failed and corrupted internal guidance system:
Romans 3:10-12 “None is righteous, no, not one;     no one understands;no one seeks for God.All have turned aside; together they have become worthless;no one does good,not even one.”
Ecclesiastes 7:20 Surely there is not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins.
Jeremiah 17:9 The heart is deceitful above all thingsand beyond cure.Who can understand it?
Isaiah 64:6 We have all become like one who is unclean,and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment.We all fade like a leaf,and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.
Romans 3:10-12 (quoting from Psalm 14:1-3 and 53:1-3)“None is righteous, no, not one;     no one understands;no one seeks for God.All have turned aside; together they have become worthless;no one does good,not even one.”
But the world around us tells us the complete opposite. We are told to follow our hearts, to fully love and believe in ourselves, to only think the best of ourselves, to just go with the flow, to trust our feelings, to listen to self, and to make self the source of truth and goodness.
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We tend to focus a lot on what we are saying and relatively little about how we are saying it. Preachers can focus so much on their content that they fail to consider their communication. As others have said, we worry so much about getting the text right but think comparatively little about getting it across. 

Recently, the priority and practice of expository preaching have been recovered. I praise God for this development.
At the same time, I’m concerned that our expositional reformation hasn’t gone far enough.
We tend to focus a lot on what we are saying and relatively little about how we are saying it. Preachers can focus so much on their content that they fail to consider their communication. As others have said, we worry so much about getting the text right but think comparatively little about getting it across.
As a result, we can unwittingly end up neglecting a crucial element of our preaching: communication.
I don’t think this is a helpful pattern. Instead, since communication is an essential part of preaching and most of us are not naturally gifted communicators, we need to work hard—not only at what we say—but how we say it. Again, this is a way to love and serve our congregation.
We don’t have to decide between the two. We can strive to serve our audience well by being faithful in what we say and how we say it. We can work on our content and our communication.
As I think about my own preaching, there are a few categories I try to evaluate regularly. Perhaps these will be helpful to you when reflecting on ways to improve getting the text across.
These are descriptions I try to avoid.
The Museum Guide Preacher  
This preacher sounds like he is giving a tour through a museum. He’s so wrapped up in providing all the details of the historical, cultural, and textual nuances that he comes off like a disconnected professional. He’s aiming at the head and neglecting the heart. He’s informing but not transforming. As a result, people can walk away from the sermon, asking, “What does this have to do with me?”
When it comes to preaching, important facts without implications are not usually helpful. We could go a long way in serving our people by asking and answering the question, “In light of this passage, what should my audience believe, think, feel, or do?”
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