The Holy Spirit (HC 53)

John 14 “The Holy Spirit” March 2, 2008

John 14 opens “let not your hearts be troubled”

The disciples have heard that Jesus is about to be betrayed.

They have heard that Peter will deny Jesus.

But Jesus says, “Let not your hearts be troubled.”

All of this is part of God’s plan.

Jesus has come for this purpose.

In chapters 13-17 Jesus tells his disciples the things that they most need to hear.

And because you are Jesus’ disciples,

these are the things that you most need to hear!

John 17 will make it clear that Jesus is not just speaking to the eleven,

but to you who have believed through their preaching.

Do you often think of yourselves as those who have believed through the apostles’ preaching?

That is how Jesus thinks of you.

And one of the first things that Jesus says you need to know

is the relationship between the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

The Heidelberg Catechism asks:

53. Q. What do you believe concerning the Holy Spirit?
A. First, He is, together with the Father and the Son, true and eternal God.

The Holy Spirit has often been overlooked in the history of theology.

In the early church the big debate was over the relationship of the Father and Son.

The church spent sixty years

wrangling over the question of whether the Son was truly God.

And then once they confessed that indeed the Son was true God,

they immediately confessed – and so is the Spirit!

After all, once you’ve acknowledged

that the unity of God is not destroyed by acknowledging the Son,

what can be the harm of accepting the Spirit too!

And one of the clinching arguments in the Trinitarian controversy

was that Jesus told us to baptize in the name (singular)

of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

God does not share his glory with others,

so if God was willing to reveal his name

as Father, Son and Holy Spirit,

then the Son and the Spirit must be equal with the Father.

And you can see this laid out in John 14.

John 14 is built around the basic statement that we will always be with Jesus.

“If I go, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.”

This prompts three questions from the disciples:

1) Thomas asks “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?”

Jesus replies, “I am the way, the truth and the life.

No one comes to the Father except through me.”

The way that you know the Father is through the Son.

2) And so Philip asks, Lord, show us the Father!

So Jesus promises to “ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper,

to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth.”

This “Helper” is in Greek called the paracletos.

It is a legal term for an advocate or counselor.

The Father will send an advocate to help us to do that which is right.

And the Helper is named the Spirit of truth.

The Spirit will open our eyes to the truth,

so that we might rightly see the Father,

and also rightly see ourselves–our sin and misery.

This is a Spirit that the world cannot receive.

The world is blind to its sin.

It refuses to acknowledge the Father,

and rebels against the commands of Christ.

But this is a Spirit that the church knows,

for he dwells with you and will be in you.

And Jesus says that the coming of the Spirit is the coming of himself.

“I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.”

The work of Jesus and the work of the Spirit are so interwoven,

that the coming of the Spirit and the coming of Jesus is seen as the same event.

Jesus explains this by saying in verses 19-20:

“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 in me, and I in you.”

How do we see Jesus?

By faith.

How do we know that Jesus is in the Father, and in us?

By the Holy Spirit.

Jesus refers to “that day.”

It will be “in that day” that they will know.

What day is that?

It is the day when they receive the Holy Spirit.

In that day, Jesus will manifest himself to the church.

3) And in response to this, Judas (not Iscariot) asks the third question,

Lord how is it that you will manifest yourself to us and not to the world?

Plainly Judas has not yet understood what is happening.

He still thinks in terms of an earthly kingdom

in which Jesus’ actions will be outward and obvious to everyone.

Jesus replies, 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.”

How is it that Jesus will come to us and make his home with us?

In verse 25 Jesus says,

“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.”

The Spirit is the presence of the risen Christ,

as the Lord Jesus comes to his church through the Spirit.

Jesus says that while he was with his disciples, he taught them these things,

but that once he is gone, the Spirit will remind them of all that he said.

The Father will send the Spirit in the name of the Son to teach them all things.

Just as we are to ask the Father in the name of the Son,

so also the Father gives the Spirit in the name of the Son.

The kingdom of God, after all, revolves around the name of Jesus.

His name, his authority, his power, are at the heart of the gospel.

It is in his name that we speak to God,

It is in his name that God speaks to us by his Spirit.

And in the gift of the Holy Spirit, we receive the peace of God.

“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.” (v27)

The presence of the Holy Spirit brings a peace that is not like the world’s peace.

The peace of Christ is not always a peace of external harmony,

but of internal harmony even when the world around you is a braying din.

In showing how the Spirit of God is the presence of the Father and the Son with the church,

John shows us that truly the Holy Spirit is equal with the Father.

Therefore the catechism is exactly right to say that the Holy Spirit

is, together with the Father and the Son, true and eternal God.

But the catechism goes on to say:

Second, He is also given to me, to make me by true faith share in Christ and all His benefits, to comfort me, and to remain with me forever.

We have already begun to see these things from John 14.

But John 15-16 continues in this vein.

Jesus says that will go to the Father, and send the Holy Spirit,

and in the coming of the Holy Spirit, the Son will be present with his church.

Therefore the church is the means that Christ uses to do his greatest work,

by the power of the Holy Spirit.

As Jesus says at the end of John 15:

“When the Helper comes, 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 you also will bear witness, because you have been with me from the beginning.”

The kingdom of God will come through the preaching of the eleven.

They will bear witness about Jesus, together with the Holy Spirit,

and through that preaching the kingdom of God will be established.

It is through the apostles’ preaching that you are gathered here this night.

Yes, it has taken 1,975 years to get here,

but this is the fulfillment of what Jesus promised.

The Spirit has come to make you a partaker in all of the benefits of Christ.

Now, if we follow Jesus’ teaching through chapters 15-16,

then the first benefit we get is that we get to be persecuted!

In John 15 Jesus told his disciples that their hour is also coming.

A servant is not greater than his master.

If the world persecuted Jesus, then the world will persecute you.

Wait a second, pastor, I thought you said that the Spirit was with us to comfort us!

This doesn’t sound very comforting.

You are going to suffer!

The world will hate you!

“The hour is coming when whoever kills you

will think he is offering service to God.”

Does that sound comforting?

By itself?

No,

that does not sound very comforting.

But if you understand what suffering is,

it is a source of great comfort!

Throughout John’s gospel Jesus has spoken of how his hour will come.

And his hour is the hour of suffering –

the hour when he will endure the wrath and curse of God against sin.

And even so, your hour is the hour of suffering.

But even as your hour will come,

so also the Holy Spirit will come.

Your hour of trial and temptation is also the Spirit’s hour

to help and assist you in speaking the word of Christ.

Jesus has said certain things–but he has more to say.

But once Jesus goes to the Father,

how will he communicate with his church?

And remember that the primary focus here is how will Jesus communicate with the eleven.

After all, it is the eleven who have been with Jesus “from the beginning” (15:27).

They have been with him from the beginning,

and as they will be the source of all Christian teaching,

it is crucial that they bear witness to the truth.

Because if the apostles get it wrong,

then the whole church will get it wrong!

Therefore, in these last hours before his death,

Jesus speaks to the eleven of their foundational role in bearing witness to him.

Jesus is saying that the coming of the Holy Spirit has a special meaning for the apostles–

those who had been with Jesus since the beginning.

This is how the kingdom can come even though the King is in heaven–

because the Spirit of truth will bear witness through the apostles.

We often think of this in the writing of Scripture,

and that is certainly important.

But only a handful of the apostles actually wrote the New Testament,

and even those who wrote spent relatively little time writing.

The central purpose of the coming of the Helper– the Spirit of truth–

was to bear witness to Christ,

through the apostolic preaching.

The first generation of Christians didn’t have the NT.

How could they know what to believe?

They knew from Jesus that they could rely upon the teaching of the apostles.

That’s why they started collecting the books of the NT.

They knew that the apostolic teaching had a unique status,

and so they looked for those writings

that contained what they had heard from the apostles.

That’s why a book like Hebrews was included,

even though they weren’t sure who wrote it.

It so obviously contained the apostolic teaching, that they had to include it.

In John 13-17 Jesus is speaking primarily to the eleven.

But that doesn’t mean that it is irrelevant for us.

The way that it is important for us is primarily to show us

that we can trust the apostles’ teaching.

Jesus himself promised that he would send the Holy Spirit to teach them all things.

And because Jesus has taught his apostles by his Spirit,

therefore he also teaches us through them.

In the hour of persecution–

in the hour when the eleven are thrown out of the synagogue and attacked–

in that hour, they will remember what Jesus said.

When you look at the book of Acts,

you can see how this came true.

In Acts 4:5-12, when Peter and John were arrested for preaching the resurrection,

the chief priests and scribes inquired of them by what authority they were teaching.

“Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them...” (Acts 4:8)

When the hour came for Peter to be put on trial like Jesus had been,

the Holy Spirit bore witness to Christ through him.

And Acts 4:31 says that after they had prayed,

asking God to “grant to your servants to continue to speak your word with boldness,”

“The place in which they were gathered together was shaken,

and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit

and continued to speak the word of God with boldness.”

Likewise, Stephen was said to be “full of the Holy Spirit” as he bore witness to Christ,

just before his martyrdom (Acts 7:55),

The work of the Holy Spirit in the Book of Acts is overwhelmingly connected

to the central task of the church in bearing witness to Christ–

just as Jesus said in John 15:26:

“But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father,

the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father,

he will bear witness about me.”

In John 16:7-15 Jesus says three things about the Spirit’s coming:

1) when the Spirit will come

2) what the Spirit will do for the world

3) what the Spirit will do for the church

The Spirit will come when Jesus goes to the Father.

The disciples are sorrowful, because they finally understand that Jesus is going away.

But Jesus says that it is “for your advantage that I go away,

for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you.”

In the Old Testament,

the Holy Spirit dwelt in the midst of the people of God.

The glory-cloud descended upon the tabernacle–and later the temple–

and so the Spirit dwelt in the midst of the people,

but not yet in the people.

The Holy Spirit still worked salvation in the hearts of the people of God,

but he could dwell in them as the presence of the living God,

because sin had not yet been fully dealt with.

As Jesus puts it, the Helper could not come because Jesus had not yet gone to the Father.

Hebrews 7-10 explains that there had to be a perfect sacrifice offered to the Father,

so that we could enter his presence.

So until Jesus brings the sacrifice of himself to the Father,

the Spirit of God could not be poured out upon all flesh.

The coming of the Holy Spirit is intimately connected, then, with the exaltation of Jesus.

But what happens when the Spirit comes?

What happens to the world?

Remember that Jesus has been speaking of the world

in terms of that realm that is under the power of the devil.

When the Spirit comes “he will convict the world

concerning sin and righteousness and judgment.”

Jesus goes on to spell out each of these:

1) “concerning sin, because they do not believe in me.”

This conviction is not just “saving conviction,” leading to repentance.

This is a legal verdict–

they are convicted sinners who do not believe in Jesus.

The Spirit’s task is not only to bring people to faith,

but also to convict those who do not believe.

2) “concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father,

and you will see me no longer”

The Spirit will convict the world of righteousness,

because Jesus will be ruling in righteousness

at the right hand of God.

Jesus will no longer go around preaching the kingdom of God.

Now the Spirit will continue Jesus’ work in the world,

because Jesus will be with the Father.

3) “concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged.”

You can see a progression in this sequence:

the sin of the world,

the righteousness of the judge,

and the judgment of the devil and all that belong to him.

The world will hate you,

but the Holy Spirit will convict the world of sin, righteousness and judgment.

This will then either result in the conversion or the destruction of the wicked.

The world will be saved,

and all who refuse the convicting call of the Holy Spirit will be condemned,

because they do not believe in the name of Jesus.

But the Spirit is not only going to speak to the world,

the Spirit will especially speak to the church–and even more particularly, to the apostles.

Because Jesus still has many things to say to them.

They do not yet understand fully all that God is doing in Jesus.

He cannot explain everything to them

The Holy Spirit must come and guide them into the truth.

Earlier, in John 5, Jesus said that he did all that he heard from his Father.

Now he says that the Spirit will do the same.

“Whatever he hears he will speak,

and he will declare to you the things that are to come.

He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you.”

The Spirit will bring to completion the work of the Son.

All through the central chapters of John’s gospel,

Jesus was explaining the relationship between the Father and the Son.

The Father has given the Son to have life in himself (5:26)

The Son speaks with the authority of the Father (8:28)

I and the Father are one (10:30)

The Father is in me and I am in the Father (10:38)

Now Jesus explains how the Holy Spirit is related to the Son and the Father.

The Spirit takes all that belongs to the Son and declares it to the church.

“All that the Father has is mine;

therefore I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.”

All that is Christ’s is ours.

But how is it ours?

How do we partake of the benefits of Christ?

Through the Holy Spirit.

And while Jesus is speaking first to the eleven here,

he speaks through them to us.

After all, it is John–the beloved disciple–who wrote these words to us.

Why did the Holy Spirit declare the things of Christ to the apostles?

Was it not for our sakes?

So that we might know the truth?

We have a tendency to want to be the center of the universe.

It’s easy to see in our children.

All that matters is what I want!!!

But you are just as selfish.

You may know theoretically that the world does not revolve around you,

but you still act like it.