I'll be reading from the Gospel of John beginning at verse 15
through verse 31. As I read, listen for the
statements made about the Holy Spirit, and listen to the
statements made about obeying Christ's commands, that the ones
who obey Him are the ones who love Him.
Listen now as I read. If you love me, you will keep my
commandments, and I will ask the Father, and He will give you
another helper to be with you forever.
Even the Spirit of Truth, whom the world cannot receive because
it neither sees Him nor knows Him.
You know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you.
I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you yet a little
while, and the world will see me no more.
But you will see me because I live.
You also will live in that day. You will know that I am in my
Father, and you and me and I and you.
Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, He it is who loves
me, and he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will
love him and manifest myself to Him.
Judas, not Iscariot, said to him.
Lord, how is it that you will manifest yourself to us and not
to the world? Jesus answered him, If anyone
loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him and
we will come to him and make our home with him.
Whoever does not love me does not keep my words, and the word
that you hear is not mine, but the Father's who sent me these
things. I've spoken to you while I am
still with you, but the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father
will send in my name. He will teach you all things,
and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.
Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you.
Not as the world gives do I give to you.
Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.
You heard me say to you, I'm going away, and I will come to
you. If you love me, you would have
rejoiced, because I'm going to the Father, for the Father is
greater than I. And now I have told you before
it takes place, so that when it does take place, you may believe
I will no longer talk much with you.
For the ruler of this world is coming.
He has no claim on me, but I do as the Father has commanded me,
so that the world may know that I love the Father.
Rise, let us go from here. This is the word of the Lord.
Be to God. Please be seated.
Jesus, in this farewell discourse, teaches his disciples
so much about the Holy Spirit. Up to this point in John's
Gospel, the Holy Spirit has really been much like he was in
the synoptic Gospels, primarily focusing on Jesus's earthly
ministry. But now the 11 sit around this
table, very troubled. Remember, they don't know the
end of the story. They're struggling to believe
all that's taking place. The one perfect man, the man who
has never sinned, the one who has walked with them for three
years, who called them to take up their cross and follow him,
the one who has done everything to show them the way, has spoken
of betrayal. He's spoken of denial.
He has spoken of departure again.
I am leaving soon. These men are shattered.
They have no idea what really is taking place.
We know the story because we know the end.
But they didn't. And now Jesus gives them these
words and He comes here with this profound promise of the
Holy Spirit. You're going to need your Bible
today, not just what's in the bulletin.
So grab the Blue Pew Bible if you did not bring your own.
But let me encourage you bring your own Bible because we're
going to look at a couple of other passages in the federal
discourse, even though we'll be preaching on those in a few
weeks. In chapter 16, verse 7, Jesus
says to the disciples, nevertheless, I tell you the
truth, it is to your advantage that I go away.
For if I do not go away, the helper, notice it's capitalized.
That means Holy Spirit, the helper will not come to you, but
if I go, I will send him to you, and when he comes, he will
convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment.
Jesus tells them it's better than I go, and you know that had
to be so hard to believe. The only thing that could help
them have some solace is that it's coming from a man who has
never lied. He is the truth.
He doesn't just tell the truth. But how could it be better for
you to leave? Imagine what it feels like when
someone you love is departing. There's pain, there's anguish,
but Christ knows what is about to happen.
And he said it's better for you to leave.
I have walked next to you. I have walked with you
physically. I have been side by side with
you. But when I leave, when I ascend,
when I return to the Father, the Spirit will come and live in
you. And it's my Spirit, it's the
Helper. The Holy Spirit for many of us
remains a mystery. Even the Scriptures quite clear
about the role of the Spirit. Sinclair Ferguson says the
Spirit himself remains to many Christians an anonymous,
faceless aspect of the divine being.
John Calvin says the Holy Spirit is the bond by which we come to
enjoy Christ and all his benefits, by which Christ
effectually unites us to himself.
You see the language what I preached on last week of our
union with Jesus. This idea of union with Christ
is not an idea to just be intellectually understood, but a
new reality to be lived. Christ, through his Spirit is
living in US. Jesus Christ, Ferguson says, and
I'm going to repeat what I read last week.
Having the Spirit is the equivalent, indeed the very mode
of having the Incarnate, obedient, crucified, resurrected
and exalted Christ and dwelling us so that we are united to him
as he is united to the Father. On Wednesday night, I had the
privilege of sitting around a table with about 15 what we
would call young adults in our church.
It was Q&A time. And one of the first questions
was what do you think is missing most in the discipleship,
particularly in the West and in a city like Dallas?
And I immediately said this, this Christianity is so often
just a set of beliefs or a worldview, and it is a
worldview, but it is a worldview that's not just centered on
checking boxes. It's a worldview that says
because of what Christ said, what he said here in John 14,
His Spirit lives in US. It's not just a code of conduct.
Jesus is not just one who came to bring rules and statements of
truth. He is the truth.
He is the way. He is the life.
So here's what I want to do this morning using this text.
I want to unpack who is the person of the Holy Spirit?
What did Jesus say? What is the presence of the Holy
Spirit and why does that matter? What is the role of the Holy
Spirit? Or if you want to keep it all
peace, what is the purpose of the Holy Spirit?
And lastly, look at the peace that Christ promises us.
So first the person of the Holy Spirit.
Go to John 14 verse 16, Jesus says, and I will ask the Father,
and he will give you another helper to be with you forever,
even the Spirit of truth. So for some of you, you're very
familiar with this. Maybe what would be most helpful
is to think about how would you explain the Holy Spirit to
someone? Listen carefully.
This is how you explain the Holy Spirit.
Who is he? He's a person, the person of the
Holy Spirit. What is he called?
Jesus's own mouth says, I will give you another helper.
This is a very difficult word to translate in the Greek.
That's why so many different translations use different
words, words like comforter, even in the choir's piece that
was so beautiful this morning, words like counselor, words like
advocate. The reason it's hard is because
we don't have an English word that really incorporates all of
that. There is a legal dynamic to
this. And so if we're not careful, we
tend to think just one aspect of the Holy Spirit, like comforter.
He's just there to bring comfort and peace so much more.
This statement, though another helper reveals the connection to
Jesus Christ. The helper is the one who is
going to assist us in believing everything we need to believe.
We'll see that in a moment. But he then gives him another
title in verse 17. Even the spirit of truth.
This same statement is used in 14.
I'm sorry, 1613 and 1526 as well.
And this is important because Jesus has just said, I am the
way and I am the truth and I am the life.
The Spirit here is called the Spirit of truth.
Now let's talk about the presence of the Holy Spirit.
Look with me at verse 17. Jesus says even the Spirit of
truth, whom the world cannot receive because it neither sees
Him nor knows Him. You know Him, for He dwells with
you and will be in you. Here's what I want you to see.
If you have trusted Christ, you know Christ, you're one with
Christ. His Spirit lives in you and has
from the moment in which you professed faith.
He's not going to be in you someday.
He's in you now that's remarkable.
Praise God for the grace that he opened your eyes to see because
Jesus has clearly said here the world does not see.
He says you know him, He dwells in you, He lives in you.
Leon Morris says this. What is present here is a
continuous reality. What is present here is a
continuous reality. The Holy Spirit is in you and
does not leave you. It's a continuous reality, but
it's also a future certainty. You heard Jesus say He will be
with you forever. This continuous reality, this
future certainty, is what should be the thrust of everything we
celebrate in Christ. But we tend to think wrongly
about the Holy Spirit. Some of you have grown up only
in an age where most things are cordless.
But for many of us in this sanctuary, we remember things
that had cords, like a phone and a phone in a cord.
And if you were lucky, your parents would buy one that would
go from the kitchen all the way to your bedroom.
That cord could stretch so far one day.
The cordless phone was invented Over Memorial Day weekend when I
was teaching on the Florida trip.
Our home, just our garage, was broken into.
They broke into our car first. They hit the button to open the
garage door, the garage door opened, and they stole all sorts
of things, mostly cordless power tools and a couple of bikes that
I really loved. So I'm in the process now of
replacing them. And as I'm looking for certain
things that are cordless, what am I paying most attention to?
Power matters some, but what matters most is how long will
the battery last? How many extra batteries do I
need? Friends, most of you treat the
Holy Spirit that way, like he is a battery that you get charged
by and then you go for a while until the juice runs out.
No, the Holy Spirit is a continuous reality.
The Holy Spirit is a future certainty.
He is in you. You are not an electric car that
plugs in and then unplugs and hope you make it to the next
station. The Holy Spirit is in you, won't
leave you, and will give you everything you need.
That's His presence. His presence is continuous.
His presence is a future certainty, and His presence is
forever. So what does He do?
What is His purpose? Why does He matter?
Jesus could not be more clear. Look with me, the Spirit of
truth. Look with me now at verse 26 and
John 14. Jesus says, But the Helper, the
Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, He will
teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I
have said to you. So let's focus for a minute on
the word illumination. Often you will hear in our
prayers, whether it's at the prayer of adoration or the
prayer before the sermon, we'll pray for the Holy Spirit to
illuminate. If the Holy Spirit doesn't
illuminate the word in our lives, we can't see it.
If the Holy Spirit doesn't illuminate your mind, your
heart, you can't feel and think rightly.
So Jesus is promising the illuminator.
He is promising the one true Teacher, the Spirit of truth,
who is going to teach us again. Jesus said the Helper, the Holy
Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name.
He will teach you all things. Now think about these men for a
minute. For three years they've listened
to Jesus teach. They have hung on every word,
been confused by many of his words, have such an intimate
relationship with Jesus that they're not afraid to ask
questions. Even Judas did not Iscariot in
verse 22. Lord, how is it that you will
manifest yourself to us and not to the world?
Jesus is leaving, but His teaching isn't.
The Holy Spirit will continue to illuminate the Word of God and
continues to do it to this day. The same Spirit, the same
Spirit, the same one Jesus promised is living in us now.
He's illuminating the Word of God for you right now.
Then He says He will bring to you remembrance of all that I
have said to you, all that Jesus has said.
The Holy Spirit is going to be the one to bring remembrance.
We see this in 1426, then in 1613.
So turn over and this will be preached on in a couple of
weeks. Jesus says when the spirit of
truth comes again, 1613, just one page over.
When the spirit of truth comes, He will guide you into all
truth, the Holy Spirit with the word of God.
We have everything we need to follow the Lord.
Why is He giving this to us? Well, this can't be missed.
How many times in this section of Scripture did Jesus speak
about love for Him as it relates to obedience to His commands?
I asked you to listen for that. Did you see it?
1415 Look there with me. If you love me, you will keep my
commandments. Then he goes on to teach about
the Holy Spirit. 1421 Whoever has my commandments and keeps
them, He is who loves me. Now look at verse 24.
It's in the negative. Whoever does not love me does
not keep my words. It's in 1431 when Jesus speaks
of his own obedience to the Father and says I do as the
Father has commanded me, so that the world may know that I love
the Father. They won't know I love the
Father just because I say I love him.
They will know I love him because I've obeyed everything
that He commands. We sang my Jesus, I love thee.
Do you love him? One of my favorite times of the
year. So when I get to visit with a
man that's not that here that often.
And the first question he asked me every time is do you still
love Jesus? How do I know if I love Him, if
I obey his commands, If I want to obey everything Christ has
commanded? That's the sign of love.
And I fall short, and I fail. And I hate that I fall short,
and I hate that I fail. And there the Lord meets me, and
his mercy is greater than my sin, and that love from Him
motivates me to want to obey Him even more.
That's what Jesus is talking about.
He is not talking about a perfection that we could never
earn. He's not talking about earning
God's love by being perfectly obedient.
But he is saying that those who love me obey my commands.
You're going to hear more of that as we move into John 15,
when he says it is to my Father's glory that you bear
much fruit, so proving to be my disciples.
So when the Holy Spirit teaches us, when the Holy Spirit reminds
us, when the Holy Spirit guides us, when the Holy Spirit
convicts us, it's all towards that union with Christ.
We're from our union with Jesus. As the Holy Spirit is in us, we
want to obey his commands. But there's more. 16 Let's go to
1526. Jesus continuing to teach about
the Holy Spirit, says at the end of chapter 15.
But when the Helper comes, the advocate, the counselor, the
comforter, when the helper comes, the Holy Spirit, whom I
will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who
proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me.
And then in 1614, He will glorify me, for he will take
what is his and mine and declare it to you.
The Holy Spirit has the role not only of illuminating our hearts
and minds in the Word of God, but illuminating the Word of
God. In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
That's Jesus. The Holy Spirit is not just
illuminating ideas about Jesus. He's not illuminating just
knowledge about Jesus. The Holy Spirit is illuminating
the One who is the way, the truth, and the life, the all
glorious. If you hold a flashlight and
it's bright and awesome, the goal isn't to admire the
flashlight, but to see what it's shining on.
Ji Packer speaks of this when he says the Holy Spirit's primary
work is to shine light on Jesus and glorify the Father.
He uses the illustration of a floodlight in front of a home.
You don't look at the floodlight and praise the floodlight, you
praise the thing that it is shining on.
The Spirit of Christ lives in us, The person of the Holy
Spirit, the Helper, the Spirit of truth, the presence of the
Holy Spirit, a continuous reality, a future certainty,
forever. The role of the Holy Spirit, His
purpose, illumination, teach us, remind us, guide us, convict us,
reveal to us and glorify the sun.
And what does it lead to? What we desperately need now and
what we will know for all eternity, and that is the peace
of Christ. 1427 Jesus says peace, I leave with you.
Let's just pause for a moment. When Jesus told them, one of you
will betray me. When Jesus looked at Peter and
said before the rooster crows, three times you will deny that
you even know me three times. When Peter heard that I'm going
to not deny him three times before the rooster crows, he
couldn't have believed it, but he was silent.
After that, Jesus says I'm leaving the perfect man, the one
who had called them to lay down everything and follow him.
They're troubled. Jesus tells them not to be
troubled. And it's not a warm fuzzy
wishful thought. It's the reality of what's about
to come inside them as he goes to the cross and dies.
And so when he says, peace I leave with you, my peace.
I give to you, Not as the world gives do I give.
Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.
Where they're going to be afraid, they're going to be very
afraid. And it's these words that the
Holy Spirit is going to bring back to them to remind them, to
illuminate them so that they can then stand before Christ and
say, I, I love you because I fill with your spirit, am
seeking to obey you. And they all would fall short
and everyone who came after them, but they would teach us as
the Holy Spirit illuminates what it means to live in forgiveness,
to live in that love, to live in that union.
So is there a practical application?
Yes, and it's a simple word and the word is with shorthand for
with is AW with a slash. I love that image with whenever
you read your Bible, are you doing it for the Lord or with
the Lord? Whenever you go to your place of
work, knowing that it's the light of Christ, the science,
are you doing it for Him or you doing it with Him?
Whenever you go on a mission trip or pray for missionaries,
are you doing that for the Lord? Are you doing that with Him?
When we do it for Him, we're operating out of our own flesh.
But when we understand that He is in US and we do it with Him,
everything we do changes. Many of you don't experience the
intimate joy of reading His word, the intimate joy of
wanting to obey everything He commands because you're not
reading with him. With him is the Word, a short
word for abide. He's in you.
So this week, here's some encouragement.
Take this section of John's Gospel.
John 13, 14151617 began to read parts of it over and over and
over again with the confidence that if you're in Christ, the
Illuminator, the Holy Spirit isn't just shining the light on
truth. He lives in you and is speaking
to you through His Word. He's guiding you, convicting
you, and that's for certain and that's for forever.
That's the essence of Christianity, union with Christ,
His Spirit in you. It really was better that He
left, that the Helper might come.
And if you're in Christ, he has, and he will never leave you.
Father in heaven, thank you for your Word, given to us through
the Word Jesus, illuminated for us even today by the power of
your Spirit transforming us. Even now, oh Lord, we struggle
with sin, but we have you to convict and guide.
Oh Lord, if we're distant from you, and the desire for those
things that don't please you is not strong, make it strong.
Help us to desire, to desire You, to live out of the love you
have for us. And thank you Christ, that you
showed the world that you love the Father, not by just saying
it, but by obeying Him all the way to the cross.
We pray this in Jesus name, Amen, You stand.