JESUS: His Promises: “I will send the Holy Spirit”

1-22-06    

John 14:15-18, 25-27; 16:5-15 (16:7)

One of the most wonderful of all the promises that Jesus makes to us is the promise of the Holy Spirit.  There are a number of key chapters in the Bible that deal with the Holy Spirit – Who He is and what He does.  Acts 1 & 2, 1 Corinthians 12-14, Romans 8 & 12, and John 14, 15, & 16.  And it is those chapters in John that I want us to look at today.

Jesus is nearing the end of His earthly life and ministry.  He has already eaten His Last Supper with His Disciples, the Passover meal.  He has served them the bread and the wine, symbolic of His body and blood He is about to sacrifice on the cross for the sins of the world.  They are only an hour or two away from the Garden of Gethsemane, His night of prayer, His betrayal by Judas, and His trial.

He reminds them how important obedience is, and ties their obedience to Him to their love for Him.  I don’t know if v.15 is so much a command as it is a statement of fact: If you love Me, you will obey what I command.  “Your love for Me”, He says, “is demonstrated by your obedience to My commandments.”  It was true then; it’s still true today.

Don’t try to tell Jesus you love Him if you are living in disobedience to Him. Your disobedience demonstrates you really don’t love Him. You love yourself; you love your own plans; you love your own desires more than you love Him.  That’s what He is saying to us here.  If you love Him, you will obey Him.  The extent of your obedience to Him shows the extent of your love for Him.

It is to those who love and obey Him that Jesus promises the Holy Spirit.  Acts 5:32 says it also: We are witnesses of these things, and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey him.”

Then v.16 here in John 14: And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Counselor (Comforter –KJV, Helper – NASB) to be with you forever – the Spirit of Truth.

The Greek word that is used there is “parakletos”.  Here is what that word means:

summoned, called to one’s side, especially called to one’s aid

1a)  one who pleads another’s cause before a judge, a pleader, counsel for defense, legal assistant, an advocate

1b)  one who pleads another’s cause with one, an intercessor

1c)   in the widest sense, a helper, succourer, aider, assistant

Four times in these three chapters that we are looking at today this word is used for the Holy Spirit.  He is the One called alongside us to help us.  The only other time this Greek word is used in the Bible is in   1 John 2:1 My little children, these things I write to you, so that you may not sin.  And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.

It’s the same Greek word, but here it’s translated “Advocate”.  When we sin, Jesus, as our Advocate, pleads our case with the Father.  And it could well be that as Jesus pleads our case with the Father, the Holy Spirit pleads the Father’s case with us.

Think about that for a minute, as you think about what the Holy Spirit does.  We will be examining some more of those things as we go along today.  As He reveals Jesus to us, as He teaches us, as He reveals our sin to us, as He reveals God’s heart through the gifts and the fruit of the Spirit, is He not advocating on the Father’s behalf rather than on our behalf?

As I have thought about that this week, it has put the Holy Spirit in a different light for me.  He is not about helping me get my way with the Father, He is about helping the Father get His way with me.  I am not the center and the focus, the Father is.  It is His will, His desires, His plan, and the Holy Spirit represents the interests of the Father as He works in my life.

He is called in v.17 here in John 14 “The Spirit of Truth.”

Pilate asked Jesus: “What is truth?”  Earlier Jesus had said “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.”  Jesus is truth embodied in human flesh, and more than once in these chapters we will see the Holy Spirit as a revealer of Jesus, the Truth.

To these first Disciples Jesus says: “This Comforter, this Counselor, this One Who pleads on the Father’s behalf is now with you, but He shall be in you.”  When did that change of location take place?  When did the Holy Spirit move from being with them to dwelling within them?

Some feel it happened in John 20:21 Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” & with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.  But we can’t tell from that passage whether or not they did receive the Holy Spirit at that moment. 

They could have, but later, in Acts 1:4 it says: On one occasion, while he was eating with them he gave them this command: “Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about.  For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.”  The gift the Father had promised had not yet been given and they were to wait.  So it may well be that the experience they had on the Day of Pentecost was when the Holy Spirit moved from living with them to living in them.

Immediately following the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in Acts 2, Peter preaches about Jesus, and he says in v.32 & 33 God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of the fact.  Exalted to the right hand of God, he has received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit and has poured out what you now see and hear.

Jesus was crucified, and buried, and the third day He rose from the dead.  For 40 days He stayed around and met with His followers a few more times, and then He ascended back into heaven.  Once He got there, He sent the Holy Spirit as an indwelling presence, to be with us and in us forever.  And that includes us in the 21^st century in the Spokane Valley.

Let’s go back to John 14.  V.18 says: I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you.  In Jesus’ day, Rabbis had groups of disciples whom the Rabbi would call his children, and they would call him “father”.  And when the Rabbi died, those disciples were said to now be orphans – their “father” had died.

So Jesus wraps His thoughts in culturally significant words and says to His men: “When I am gone, you will not be orphans.  I will come to you.  This Spirit of Truth will so represent Me and so reveal Me to you that it will be like I am here with you all the time.”

Let’s drop down now to v.25 of John 14.  (read 25-27).

The Counselor, the Comforter is the Holy Spirit.  Jesus makes it clear so there will be no mistaking about Whom He is speaking.  And He says two things about the Holy Spirit:  “He will teach you all things”, and “He will remind you of everything I have said to you.”

These original Disciples would be the ones who would carry the good news of Jesus to the then-known world.  They would be the ones who would write the Gospels and the book of Acts, and some of the letters that we call “epistles”.  So were these promises just for them, so that they would accurately preserve Jesus words for the generations to follow?  Or are these promises for us as well?

Look at John 15:26-27(read). 

We are told in Acts 1:8 that when the Holy Spirit comes on us, we all are to be witness of Jesus.  We are all to testify of Jesus.  Some of you have been a witness in a trial.  You must promise to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God, and then you are asked questions about what you have seen and heard. If you haven't seen or heard anything, if you have no first-hand knowledge of the case, you have nothing to testify about.  You can’t be a witness.

So if we are going to be witnesses of Jesus, we need Someone to reveal Him to us so we have something to witness about.  That’s why I believe the promises in John 14:26, while they are primarily for the first Disciples, are for us as well.  We too need the Holy Spirit to teach us and to remind us of what Jesus said.

I think in John 16 that’s confirmed as well.  Look at verse 12 (thru 15).

The Holy Spirit is a Teacher.  That’s why we need to seek to be living lives full of the Holy Spirit every day.  He is the One Who reveals Jesus to us.  He is the One Who takes this book and makes it more than just a book of history and religious philosophy.  He makes it the living Word of God to us.  We read it and God speaks to us from it.  That’s the work of the Holy Spirit.

Ephesians 5:18 says: Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit.

Now comes the English lesson. Verbs have voice, tense, and mood.  Be filled with the Spirit.  The mood here is the imperative mood – it is a command.  “The imperative is not at all an ‘invitation,’ but an absolute command requiring full obedience on the part of all hearers.”

The voice is the passive voice: it is something that someone else does to us rather than something we do ourselves.  We don’t fill ourselves with the Spirit.  Jesus is the One Who does that. 

The tense is the present tense.  And if we would translate this literally here it says: Be being filled with the Spirit, or Keep on being filled with the Spirit, or Be ever filled with the Spirit.  It is not talking about a one-time event that you look back to for the rest of your days.  It is talking about an ongoing daily thing of experiencing the fullness of the Holy Spirit in your life.

Are you being filled with the Holy Spirit today?  How long has it been since you have sensed that you were full of the Spirit?  I’m concerned about that as we move forward as a Church.  Are we a people full of the Spirit or are we a people who only talk about being filled with the Spirit?  Are we being filled with the Spirit day by day, or do we look back on the good old days and long for those days gone by? 

God has not changed.  His Holy Spirit has not changed.  Our need of the Holy Spirit has not changed.  God’s desire that we be continually being filled with the Spirit has not changed.  The only thing that has changed is us.

I receive a bi-monthly magazine called “Ministries Today” that often has some good articles in it.  This week I read one about what God is doing in Nigeria, and through Nigerian pastors who are planting churches not only in their own country but around the world – even in the United States.  Let me read two paragraphs from the article “Out of Africa”.

“It will be surprising to some that more of our Nigerian authors do not tell stories of miracles, healings and deliverances.  The reason is that such occurrences are commonplace in their country.  I think they’re reporting what has happened very accurately.  Healings are common, casting out demons and raising the dead like Jesus commanded His disciples to do.  I haven’t seen it much in America. That’s because Americans don’t have the power of the Holy Spirit flowing through them in the degree that Nigerians do.”

Has God moved out of America and moved on to use 3^rd world countries to do what we have gotten too involved in trivial pursuits to do?  We idle away our time in worthless activities and then wonder where the power of God has gone.

God wants to fill you with His Spirit, but He’s not going to do it as you sit in front of your TV watching Desperate Housewives or My Name is Earl, or even the Book of Daniel.  Jesus fills you with His Spirit as you get serious with Him, as you spend time feeding your spirit through Bible reading, as you spend time in prayer, even as you come to church on a Sunday night instead of staying home because once a day coming to church is about all you can handle.

I believe with all my heart that if we will get serious about God, He will get serious about us.  But until we do, He has others around our world who are not as prosperous as we are, but who are desperate for God.  And that’s why we are seeing revival throughout third-world countries, especially in Africa and Latin America, but not much in North America.

I want us to look for just a bit at John 16, verses 7-11 (read).

The Holy Spirit, Jesus said, would be the One Who would bring conviction.  Here is what the Greek word means:

1)   to convict, refute, confute

1a)  generally with a suggestion of shame of the person convicted

1b)  by conviction to bring to the light, to expose

2)   to find fault with, correct

2a)  by word

2a1)  to reprehend severely, chide, admonish, reprove

2a2)  to call to account, show one his fault, demand an explanation

2b)  by deed

2b1)     to chasten, to punish

The Holy Spirit will convict us of sin.  Yes, there is such a thing as sin.  And sin is not what I believe it to be, and if you believe something to not be sin, then for you it is not sin.  That’s not the way it is.

If you rape a woman, and you think you’re just having a little fun, you are guilty of rape no matter what you think you were having.  If you commit adultery thinking that the way your spouse is treating gives you the right to do so, you are still guilty of adultery. Guilt does not come just when we feel guilty.  Guilt comes when we break the law.  And guilt before God comes when we break His law.  It may even be legal in earthly courts, but if God says it’s sin, then it’s sin.

You can start with the 10 commandments.  You can move on to the things Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, and in the rest of the Gospels.  If Jesus said we are to love our neighbor as ourselves, then to not love our neighbor is a sin. If Jesus said we are to love God with all our heart, then to not love Him with all our heart is sin.  To disobey God’s commands, either to do the things He forbids, or to not do the things He commands – it’s sin.

And the Holy Spirit came to convict us of sin.  That’s why Jesus said the unpardonable sin has to do with the Holy Spirit.  As long as we reject His conviction, that sin remains unpardoned and unpardonable.  Only when we respond to His conviction and in repentance seek God’s forgiveness of our sin can we be made right with God.

There is sin. There is righteousness. There is judgment to come.  One day you will stand before God, and so will I.  Each of us will have to give account for how we have lived our lives, and every one of us will fall short.  That’s why we need Jesus.  Without Him we will be cast into an eternity of separation from God in a place of never-ending suffering.

But Jesus came to save us from that awful place.  Jesus died to save us from that awful place.  The Holy Spirit came to convict us of our sin so that we would turn to Jesus and be forgiven and be saved.

Today we are going to have our prayer time at the end of our time together.  Some of you need to come and kneel here and repent of your sins before God and ask His forgiveness.  Some of you need to come and ask God to again fill you with His Spirit.  Some of you have other needs in your life and you would like for someone to pray with you about them.

Maybe you just want to come and thank the Lord for what He is doing in your life, and thank Him for the working of His Holy Spirit in you.  Look at this final verse: