The Helper, the Spirit of Truth, John 14:16-26

In today’s passage we are continuing our study of what is called the Upper Room Discourse.  It spans several chapters, and yet it all occurs in just one evening; Christ’s last evening with His disciples before He is crucified.  In this talk that Jesus gives, He tells His disciples that He will be leaving them very soon, and that where He is going they cannot now come. Of course, they are very troubled by this revelation.  And Jesus knows that they are upset over this. So He says to them not to be troubled, but that He will return for them one day, that they may be with Him forever.

But in the meantime, He says that He will send the Comforter, the Helper, who will take His place and come alongside of them.  That is found in vs.16. He says He will send “allos Parakletos” another Helper to come alongside them who is just like Him.  That is the translation of the Greek. 

Then in vs.17, Jesus reveals the name of the Helper; the Spirit of Truth.  He is sending the Holy Spirit to help them.  Now this is very important for the disciples, because they are not going to make it if they don’t have some divine help.  That much has been proven in the last 3 years of Jesus’s ministry.  And even before this night is over, they are all going to fall away when Jesus is taken from them by force.  They are going to be scattered.  So they need to realize that they are not being forsaken.

But it is also important for the church today as well.  Because we live in a time that we cannot touch and see and experience Jesus as they did.  We live by faith in what He taught, but we cannot experience what the disciples experienced. And so it is even more important for us, because in some respects, the Christian life is harder for us than it was for them.  

You may remember after His resurrection, Thomas did not believe the other disciples who said that they had seen the risen Lord.  He said I’m not going to believe unless I put my finger in His nail prints and His wounded side.  And Jesus shows up a few days later and says “Reach here with your finger, and see My hands; and reach here your hand and put it into My side; and do not be unbelieving, but believing.” Thomas answered and said to Him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus *said to him, “Because you have seen Me, have you believed? Blessed are they who did not see, and yet believed.”

So it is important for us as it was for the disciples, to understand what Jesus is telling them here.  Because Jesus is describing for them the ministry of the Holy Spirit.  They needed to know what that was going to look like.  And in the same way we need to know what the ministry of the Holy Spirit is supposed to look like, and what He is supposed to accomplish.  Because we are living in the in betweens, the time between Jesus’s first appearing and His second appearing.  And for those of us who are saved, we have this same promise of the Holy Spirit, the Helper, and without His help we cannot really know Christ and we are powerless to live the Christian life.  

Furthermore, I think this is important for the modern church because no other doctrine is so misunderstood and twisted today than that of the ministry of the Holy Spirit.  The devil is a deceiver, and he spreads confusion and chaos in order to try to derail naive Christians, and to keep the Church from the victory which is possible and promised in Christ.  So let’s try to unpack these verses and see if we can’t demystify some of the misunderstandings and mischaracterizations that surround this important doctrine of the Holy Spirit.

First note in vs.16  that Jesus identifies the primary work of the Holy Spirit in the very title that He uses for Him. As I mentioned earlier Jesus says He is the “Allos Paracletos.”  Paraclete means one who is called alongside to help.  And then “allos” means another of the same kind.  So that Jesus is saying, I am going to send you another Helper to come alongside of you of the same kind as I am.  

Now that is important.  Because many people think that the Holy Spirit is something completely different than Jesus.  But as He recorded in vs.10, Jesus said He didn’t do anything on His own initiative, but He spoke the words of God and He did the works of God.  And He said that is how you could know that He was of God.  He told Philip in vs.9, “If you have seen Me you have seen the Father.”  So if you wanted to know what God was like, you simply had to watch and listen to Jesus.  The same principle is true of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit does not glorify Himself, but glorifies Jesus. Jesus said in chapter 15:26, “When the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, that is the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify about Me.”  And in chapter 16:13 He says, “But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come. He will glorify Me, for He will take of Mine and will disclose it to you.”  

In Romans 8:9, Paul identifies the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of God and then again as the Spirit of Christ. So there you see the unity of the trinity.  The Holy Spirit glorifies Jesus, and Jesus glorifies the Father.  The Holy Spirit doesn’t speak on His initiative, but He speaks the words of Christ.  And Christ doesn’t speak on His initiative, but He speaks the words of the Father. So they are in agreement.  They are three in One. The ministry of the Holy Spirit then is to glorify Jesus, and Jesus glorifies the Father.

So Jesus is saying that the Holy Spirit is going to take over where He leaves off, and He is going to continue the ministry that Jesus was doing.  He is going to be with the disciples every minute of every day, just like Jesus was. Vs.17,  “that is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him or know Him, but you know Him because He abides with you and will be in you.”

Let’s break that down a little bit.  There are two elements in this verse that I want to focus on.  First, Jesus  calls Him the Spirit of Truth.  The second element is that He abides with you and will be in you.  Two vital components of the ministry of the Holy Spirit.  

First, the Spirit of Truth.  Jesus has just announced in vs.6, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.”  So Jesus is the Truth.  In John 1, it says Jesus is the Word. So the Word and the Truth are one and the same.  As Jesus concludes this Upper Room Discourse, He prays for His disciples, and in that prayer in chapter 17, Jesus says in vs.17 “Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth.”

So the Word and the Truth are two sides to the same coin.  God’s word is the truth.  Jesus’s whole ministry had been about teaching God’s word, teaching the truth about God.  Teaching the truth about the Kingdom of God and what it is like and how we must enter into it.  Jesus said in chapter 8vs31, ““If you continue in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”

So the ministry of the Holy Spirit is to teach the disciples the truth of God’s word.  To help them to discern the truth of Christ’s gospel. He is the minister of the Word.  This is how we can know the truth.  And this is how we can know the Spirit of Truth.  He will speak the word of God, He will minister the word of God.  He will not speak new revelation, but He will disclose the revelation of Christ. We can verify the ministry of the Spirit by whether or not He ministers through the word. He doesn’t come to give us an emotional experience, but He comes to give us the word of God.

Secondly, the Spirit is given to help them do God’s word. Vs. 12, “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do, he will do also; and greater works than these he will do; because I go to the Father.”  Jesus adds in chapter 16:7 “But I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you.”  So the power of the Holy Spirit is given to help us do the works of God.  

In Acts 1:8 Jesus told His disciples, “but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth.”  That was the “greater works than these” which Jesus promised them in chapter 14.  They would take the gospel to the whole world through the power of the Holy Spirit.  And that is the same power that is available to us as we witness to the world.  And that power of the Holy Spirit finds it’s root in the word of God, the gospel.  Romans 1:16, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.”

So they have the same power through the Holy Spirit as they had with Christ, that they might do the works of God as Christ did.  Then as indicated in chapter 14 vs 12, what are the works of God? First, it’s the will of God. Vs.14“If you ask Me anything in My name, I will do it.” Jesus is going to help us to do what He wants us to do.  He is not going to ask us to do anything contrary to God’s will, and He will provide all our needs to do His will.  In 1John 5:14 it says, “This is the confidence which we have before Him, that, if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests which we have asked from Him.”  The disciples could continue Christ’s ministry because the power of the Holy Spirit would provide what was necessary to do the works of God.

Secondly, the works of God are found in the word of God.  It’s the commandments of God. vs.15, “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.”  Notice how many times Jesus speaks of this principle, equating love and obedience, keeping His word with His communion with us. Vs.21, “He who has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me; and he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and will disclose Myself to him.”  Vs.23, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our abode with him.” And vs.24, “He who does not love Me does not keep My words; and the word which you hear is not Mine, but the Father’s who sent Me.”

So how does the Holy Spirit help us to do God’s word, to keep His commandments? Jesus says that He does that by reminding us of His words. vs. 25,  “These things I have spoken to you while abiding 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 said to you.”  Now that was fulfilled in two ways.  One was when the disciples preached the gospel or had to give a defense of the gospel, the Holy Spirit brought to their mind the word of God.  These were unlearned men.  They weren’t Rabbis trained in the scriptures.  And yet when you hear Peter preach on the day of Pentecost, he preaches from the word of God, quoting from Old Testament prophesies like that of Joel.  And he does so with discernment, with the discernment which is given to him by the Spirit of Truth.

And in the life of a modern day believer, we have the same promise.  We are told to hide the word of God in our hearts that we might not sin against Him. The Spirit of God brings to our mind the words of God in order to teach us how we are to act.  He uses the preaching of God’s word to admonish us and correct us when we get out of line.  Hebrews 4:12, “For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”  So Paul tells young pastor Timothy in  2Timothy 4:2 to “preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction.” The Holy Spirit uses the word of God to train us so that we might keep His word. He works through the spoken word of God.

But the other purpose of the Spirit bringing the words of Christ to their remembrance was to author through them the scriptures.  They would go on to write the gospels and the epistles under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.  2Timothy 3:16, “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.”  And Peter adds in  2Peter 1:20, “But know this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.”  

The scriptures are the great legacy left to us by the apostles under the direction of the Holy Spirit.  That today we might know God and know the way to God because we have the word of God made more sure.  It is written down for us by eyewitnesses, who had every word brought to their mind by the Spirit of Truth who brought it to their remembrance.  

This is how we might know God and to be known by God. We cannot come to know God and be known by God apart from the word of God. I said a couple of weeks ago that there is no greater comfort than to know God, and to be known by God.  There is no greater treasure.  There is no greater blessing.  Jesus said in  vs 21 of our text, “He who has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me; and he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and will disclose Myself to him.”  As we keep His word, He discloses more of Himself to us, that we might know Him more and more.

The second element of the ministry of the Holy Spirit as stated in vs.17 is that He abides with you and will be in you.  And again, this is a principle that Jesus makes over and over again.  He wants to drive this home because He knows that in a few hours He will be crucified and laid in a tomb.  And so He wants to offer to His disciples the comfort of the Paracletos, the One like Him who will come alongside of them to help them and teach them and lead them in His absence. 

So because the Spirit reveals truth through the word, because He is able to help us to know the word and obey the word, we come to know the love of God, which produces intimacy through the indwelling of His Spirit.  That we might be one with Him, and live with Him, and be with Him forever.

Note in vs.18 Jesus anticipates that sense of abandonment and bewilderment that they will surely feel in just a few hours.  He says, “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.”  I think that is key to having the comfort of the Holy Spirit.  That this is not something we work for, or have to apply for, or even ask for.  It is the initiative of Jesus Christ that sends the Holy Spirit to us, because He will not leave us comfortless.  He will not expect us to go on without Him.  He doesn’t expect us to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and get our life straightened out first.  No, but He sends His Spirit to us in our hour of need to help us.  When we were helpless, He came to us and offered Himself as our substitute.  And when He went away, He came again in the Spirit of Christ and took up residence in each of us so that He might be with us always.  Matt.28:20, “I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

The word in the Greek there is “orphanos,” it means fatherless. Or one bereft of a teacher, guide or guardian.  Christ will never leave us fatherless, helpless.  He will come to us in the Spirit of God, to be with us forever.  Look how often He reiterates this promise. Vs.16, “I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever.” Vs.17, “you know Him because He abides with you and will be in you.”  vs. 20, “In that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you.”  And vs.23, If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our abode with him.”

So four times the Lord tells the disciples that the Holy Spirit will be in them and abide in them forever.  And that promise stands for us today as well.  Romans 8:9 says, “But you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His.”  

But how do we know this to be true?  How do we know that we have the Spirit of Truth dwelling in us?  Is it through some experience?  Is it by some emotional response on our part?  Is it by some supernatural occurrence that we have this confidence and comfort?  I don’t believe so.  There may be feelings or emotions one way or another, or no emotions at all.  No supernatural occurrence whatsoever.  Jesus doesn’t say anything about how you would feel.  He says you will know it. Look at vs.17 again: “that is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him or know Him, but you know Him because He abides with you and will be in you.” 

Notice He says that the world cannot know Him.  Why?  Because the world is not saved.  The world has not received salvation through faith in Christ.  They try to judge spiritual things by what they can touch or feel or sense with their senses.  But the Bible says that the just shall live by faith.  And that which is seen is not faith.  Hebrews 11:1, “Now faith is the]assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. For by it the men of old gained approval.”  So Jesus says you cannot try to know what is unseen by the senses.

Instead He uses the Greek word “ginosko” which means to know intimately.  It was often used to imply the intimacy between a man and his wife.  It is the knowledge which comes of an intimate relationship.  He says that you will know that the Holy Spirit is in you, because you will have the intimacy of relationship with Me.  That is the evidence that the Holy Spirit is in you and will abide in you forever.  Because you know Him with an intimate relationship based on love.  

And how do we have that intimacy? We have intimacy with Christ when we keep His word.  Vs.23, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our abode with him.”   Love is the basis for intimacy.  And intimacy is the basis for the knowledge and assurance that He will never leave us or forsake us.  He proves Himself to us as we study His word and obey His word.  That is how we show our love for Him.  And when we love Him, He will love us in return in a special way that supersedes our senses.  So that whether we live or die, we know we are the Lord’s.  Whether we are in comfort or in danger, we know we are the Lord’s.  Whether we are in poverty or in plenty, we know we are the Lord’s.  

Nothing can separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.  He has sent His Spirit to dwell in our hearts by faith. He has given us His word which will abide forever. That we might be comforted with the word.  So that we might know God, and know that God knows us, that we are His, and He is mine, and He will be with us, forever.  Amen.

Obedience, the link to fulfillment, John 14:14-17

In many of my past sermons, I have established the principle that the Christian’s relationship with Christ is like that of a husband and wife in marriage.  In our Wednesday evening Bible study, we are looking at that principle right now.  Paul says in  Ephesians 5:31, “FOR THIS REASON A MAN SHALL LEAVE HIS FATHER AND MOTHER AND SHALL BE JOINED TO HIS WIFE, AND THE TWO SHALL BECOME ONE FLESH. This mystery is great; but I am speaking with reference to Christ and the church.”  So then marriage, as defined by God, is an illustration of our relationship with Christ.

In any marriage relationship, the foundation is love. But everyone here surely realizes that for a marriage to work, both members must love one another.  It doesn’t work to have just one person loving their mate, but the mate not to respond in love.  So it is with our relationship with Christ.  There must be love from both parties if it is to be a healthy marriage.

There are two problems in the church today though that threaten the sanctity of this marriage with Christ.  The first problem is that for the most part, the emphasis on the responsibility to love is one sided. The church is continually talking about and singing about Christ’s love for us, but hardly anything is said about our love for the Lord.  In the church’s relationship with Christ, love is disproportionate. He does all the loving, and we do all the taking.  And that kind of one sided love produces a lopsided marriage relationship.  In that kind of relationship, the one being loved too often ends up abusing that love, and taking advantage of that person, becoming something of a narcissist, selfishly using the other for their own ends. They end up with a distorted view of their own importance.  They end up seeking their own selfish priorities, often at the expense of the one doing the loving.  

That isn’t the Biblical view of love, however.  1 Cor.13:5, which is part of the famous text on love, says that love “does not seek it’s own.”  In other words, true love seeks to benefit the other partner, not itself. It doesn’t seek it’s own benefit at the expense of others.  But unfortunately, this is far too often the church’s perspective on love. It’s one sided.  It’s focused on God’s love for us, but hardly ever focused on our love for God.  

And yet Jesus said in  Mark 12:30 that the foremost commandment was “YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND, AND WITH ALL YOUR STRENGTH.”  I would suggest to you that for the most part, most of us fail in that commandment.  We love ourselves first and then we probably love a whole list of earthly things, and maybe somewhere down on the bottom of the totem pole we love God.  That hierarchy is made evident by our day planners.  It’s evident by our checkbook register.  It’s evident by our to do lists.  Our lips may say we love God, perhaps even our Facebook page says we love God, but our daily priorities and activities say otherwise.

There is a second problem that hinders the church’s marriage with Christ.  And that is that we have misunderstood the definition of love.  We’ve misunderstood both Christ’s love for us, and our love for Christ.  We have misinterpreted what constitutes love.  The modern church in particular has adapted the world’s definition of love to the word, and as a result we have essentially “dumbed down” the Bible’s definition of love.  

I have talked about this misinterpretation of love so often that I feel redundant speaking of it again.  But it is germane to this passage, and it is essential to our relationship with Christ.  Let me reiterate briefly; love is not simply a feeling, love is not just an emotion, love is not an experience.  Love, in the best sense, is a commitment. It’s an act of the will.  There were four words in the Greek that were used for love.  Christ and the apostles consistently used the highest form of it; agape love.  So in the Bible love is presented as a sacrificial commitment, even to the point of laying down your life for another.  Jesus said, “Greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.”  That’s agape love.  Being willing to lay down, or better yet, lay aside your life, for the sake of another.  

That is true love, by the way. It’s being willing to lay down your life for the sake of the one you love. Love is not what you say, but what you do. That love was modeled by Christ when He laid down His life on the cross for us.  That sacrificial love is modeled by Christian marriage in Ephesians 5.  That is the love of a Christian, who puts the other’s needs above his own.  That is the mark of a sanctified believer, one who truly loves God, who has perfected love, because they were willing to lay down their prerogatives for the sake of honoring Christ.

Now it’s interesting to note that Jesus speaks quite often of love in this Upper Room discourse.  But notice that the emphasis is on our love for Him.  He certainly speaks of His love for the church, but He is emphasizing our responsibility to love the Lord.  Four times in this chapter alone Christ talks about our responsibility to love Him. In chapter 14, our Lord reminds us that it is those who love Him who obey His commandments; once in verse 15, a second time in verse 21, and again in verse 23, and then reverses it in verse 24.  Really four times makes reference to this idea of our love for God being that we obey His commands or word.

And I would also point out the placement of these statements about our love for God bracket certain promises of God.  For instance, look at how these three verses are laid out. Vs.14, “If you ask Me anything in My name, I will do it.”  Vs. 15, “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.” Vs. 16, “I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever.”  

Now at first glance, you might think that these are unrelated bullet points.  Almost as if John is just giving us highlights of the conversation here rather than a word for word rendition.  And that may be true to a certain degree.  But I would suggest that there is a purpose in the way that he has arranged it.  Because I believe that love for God is the condition upon which these various promises are made.

For instance, look again at vs.14, “If you ask Me anything in My name, I will do it.” We talked about last time what it meant to ask in Jesus’s name.  That His will being a condition for Christ doing what we ask of Him.  We ask according to His will.  His purpose.  His ministry.  But I believe after studying this passage that there is another condition, and that is that you love Him, and to love Him He said is to keep His commandments.  

If someone is not living according to Christ’s commands, then I don’t believe that God is under any compulsion whatsoever to grant our requests.  In fact disobedience is a hindrance to your prayers.  Psalm 66:18 says, “If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me.”  You are either living in disobedience as a child of God and as such will receive the discipline of God the Father, or your disobedience is evidence that you are not a child of God at all. But either way, your disobedience nullifies the promise of God to answer your prayers.  Because that disobedience illustrates that you do not love God.  And if you do not love God, then that is evidence that you are not God’s marriage partner or you are in rebellion to Him.

I’ve said before that I have studied the latter part of James 5 for years, trying to find the secret to answered prayer as illustrated by James’s example of Elijah. The key verse being vs.16, “The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much.”  I looked at it from the perspective of perseverance, from the perspective of faith, and just about every which way possible.  And then finally one day it hit me.  The key to effective prayer, the key to answered prayer, is the word righteous. 

In fact, when you look at the complete verse, that becomes clearer.  “Therefore, confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another so that you may be healed. The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much.”  The emphasis is on confession of sins so that your prayers are not hindered.

So back in our text, I believe that Jesus deliberately juxtaposes vs.15 about love and obedience between the promise of answered prayer, and that of the promise of the Holy Spirit.  Because I believe that love of God demonstrated by obedience is the key to the fulfillment of both of those promises.  

Jesus makes the connection between obedience and love over and over again. He obviously is not teaching that Christianity is composed of an easy believism, of lip service without obedience.  He is not teaching that God’s love for us is some sort of sentimentalism that winks at sin.  He is speaking of love as a commitment, even as a sacrifice of our priorities for the Lord’s.  There is a sense in which our God loves everyone in his benevolence and in the fact that He does them good. But His special love for His children is reserved,  our Lord says, for those who believe in Him, love Him, and manifest their love in the keeping of His commandments. Vs.23, “If anyone loves Me he will keep My words and My Father will love him and We will come unto him and make our abode with him.”  There is a special intimacy that God gives to those who love Him.

Our love for God is the key to the Christian life.  And obedience and love are inseparably intertwined in this chapter. You cannot have one without the other.  Let’s look at these statements. Vs.15, “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.”  Vs.21, “He who has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me; and he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and will disclose Myself to him.”  Vs.23, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our abode with him.”  And then in vs.24 He says it negatively, “He who does not love Me does not keep My words; and the word which you hear is not Mine, but the Father’s who sent Me.” Again and again, love and obedience are correlated by Christ, resulting in communion with God.

I often have people tell me that they are having problems in their Christian walk. And the problem they say they feel like God is far away.  They pray and they don’t feel like God hears them.  They don’t feel like God cares about their problems.  Notice how many times the word “feel” was used there.  But God’s presence or God’s response to our prayers is not dependent upon feelings.  It’s dependent upon obedience.  So when someone tells me that he doesn’t feel like God is close to them, I tell them that feelings follow obedience.  They rarely precede it.  James 4:8 says, “Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded.”  As we get into conformity with God, then He will be near to us, and reveal Himself to us.  Feelings follow obedience.

Obedience is kind of like trying to get in shape.  We hear all the time of the great benefits of exercise.  We hear that you will feel so much better if you get into shape.  So we join a gym.  And we start to work out on an exercise program.  But let me ask you, does feeling good precede getting in shape or follow after you have gotten into shape?  I would suggest that getting into shape is often painful.  It’s arduous.  That’s why they call it working out.  And that’s why Paul said in Philippians that we are to work out our salvation through obeying.   Phil. 2:12

“So then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling.”  

When you are obedient, then you will begin to experience the joy and peace of intimate fellowship with God.  John Calvin, the great Reformer said, “True knowledge of God is born out of obedience.”  As we obey Him, we come to know Him.   And out of that obedience comes a closer walk with God, out of obedience comes our sanctification, out of obedience comes our comfort, our fellowship, our assurance of His love for us.  As we love Him and keep His commandments, He comes to us and abides with us and makes His home with us as promised in vs.21 and 23.

So the key to Christ granting our requests is our love manifested by our obedience. And that obedience is tied to the next promise as well, that of the Holy Spirit. He is our Helper so that we might do those things which God has commanded us to do.  Vs.16, “I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever.”

This highlights the major difference between the old covenant and the new covenant.  A lot of people think that the difference is that in the old covenant they were under the law, but in the new covenant we are under grace.  That’s not completely true.  It is true that we that are saved by faith are not under the penalty of the law, but under grace, that is the gift of righteousness procured by Jesus’s death on the cross.  But the commandments of God still stand.  Jesus said I did not come to annul the law but to fulfill it.  The difference is that in the old covenant we did not have the power to keep the law, but in the new covenant we have the power of the Spirit dwelling within us to help us keep His commandments.  That is why I think Jesus juxtaposes these three otherwise unrelated statements together.  He is showing the link which is obedience.

This new covenant promise is prophesied in Ezekiel 11:19, “And I will give them one heart, and put a new spirit within them. And I will take the heart of stone out of their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in My statutes and keep My ordinances and do them. Then they will be My people, and I shall be their God.”  He repeats that promise word for word again in Ez.36.  

The same promise is made again in Jeremiah 31:33, “But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the LORD, “I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.”

That’s the purpose of sending the Holy Spirit folks.  He is not some sort of experience.  He is not a feeling.  He is not an emotion.  He is the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit of Truth.  And He is given to us that we might know the truth, and that we might be obedient to the truth.  He is given to lead us in the truth.  He is given to write the law of God upon our hearts, so that our desire is to be obedient, because we love the Lord with all our hearts and want to please Him. He gives us a new heart that is able to love Him, and is able to obey Him because our desires are changed.

Vs. 26, “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 said to you.”  So He is our teacher, our helper, that we might know the truth of Christ.  He will bring it to our remembrance so that we might keep His word.  That is why in vs.17 Jesus calls Him the Spirit of truth.

In chapter 15, you are going to see in the next couple of weeks that Jesus goes to great lengths to reiterate His commandments.  It’s important to realize that in the New Testament, every one of the 10 commandments is reiterated except one.  And that one that isn’t is the law of the Sabbath, because it is a ceremonial law.  And when the ceremonial laws were fulfilled in Christ, they were no longer necessary.  They were a picture of something to come, but once He had come, the ceremonial laws were no longer in effect.  But the point that Jesus makes is that the law of God is fulfilled in two positive commandments, as opposed to negative ones.  The negative commands say don’t do this, don’t do that.  But the positive commandments of Christ are to do something, first,  love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul, and the second is to love your neighbor as yourself.  And He said all the commandments are fulfilled in those two.  

It’s also interesting to draw a correlation to the passage on love I referenced earlier, that of 1 Corinthians 13. In that chapter and the one preceding it, we see that love is a gift of the Spirit. Of all the gifts of the Spirit, love is the one that remains when the others cease.  Love is the greatest gift.   1Cor. 13:8, “Love never fails; but if there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge, it will be done away.”  But the gift of love is going to endure, it will not cease, it will not fade away.  As it says in vs.13, “But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love.”

Well, Jesus is showing that the way to accomplish His command to love Him and obey Him is through the Holy Spirit. The Helper is given that we might do the works of God.  And He does that by leading us us in the truth.  John 16:13, “But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come.”  

So then the Holy Spirit helps us love God, because we come to know Him through the word of God, of which the Holy Spirit is the author.  And He brings the word to our minds, that He might lead us in the truth.  So that we might know what to do, what His will is, what His commands are.  And then when we don’t do what we should, He convicts us so that we might repent and be conformed to Christ’s will.   John 16:8, “And He, when He comes, will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment.”

When we sin, we grieve the Holy Spirit.  And we limit the Holy Spirit.  That is why it is necessary to have a daily filling of the Spirit.  To confess your sins, and commit to love the Lord and be obedient to His will, so that the Holy Spirit may fill us with His power to do God’s will.

Next time we are going to continue in this chapter and really focus more on the ministry of the Holy Spirit.  But for now let me just say that the Helper (or Comforter in some versions) comes from the Greek word Paraclete.  That’s the transliteration in English.  Greek it’s Paraklētos.  Klētos is a verb form of a verb kaleō which means to call, pará  means alongside like parallel – so to call somebody alongside.  That’s what the word means, somebody called alongside. 

And then there is another word, Állos which is used here.  It means another of the exact same kind; and Jesus uses that:  “I will give you állos Paraklētos.  “I will give you another exactly like I am, which is to say that I’m going to send you a Helper exactly like the Helper that I have been,” and that defines for you the ministry of the Holy Spirit.  We have the power of Christ in us, the words of Christ written down for us, and the mind of Christ ministering to us through the Spirit of Truth.  That we might be able to be obedient to the truth.  That we might know the truth, and the truth make us free.  Free from the penalty of sin, and free from the power of sin.  

Listen, we know that the devil is a deciever.  He loves to confuse.  He loves to twist doctrines.  And so there is an effort on his part to confuse two vital doctrines of scripture,  that of love and the Holy Spirit.  We see both of those doctrines perverted and confused in the church today to the church’s detriment. We need to know that love is evidenced by obedience to God’s will.  And we need to know that God has sent His Spirit that we might know His will and have the indwelling power of God to help us to do His will.  And in both of those doctrines, the flow is outward, not inward.  It’s not just about God’s love for me, but my love for God, manifested by my obedience.  And it’s not about how the Spirit of God makes me feel, or what manifestation of God I experience, but He helps me to manifest Christ to the world.  That is what discipleship is all about.  Loving God and loving one another.  We love because He first loved us.  And then we love one another because that is His command to us, and how we show that we love God.  And in both of them, the Spirit is the originator, and the supplier of our needs in all that we do.  As we yield to Him on a daily basis, then we will love God by obedience to God’s commands.  And then we will experience the blessings of God upon our lives.  

Three Comforts of Christ, John 14:7-14

Jesus said God is Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in Spirit and in truth. I quote that verse here almost every week.  But I can’t help but believe that we need to elaborate on this doctrine that God is Spirit.  The Greek word for spirit is pneuma. Pneuma is the root word from which we get our word pneumatic. It means air, or a breath of air.  So a spirit is like the air.  A spirit is unseen.  It isn’t composed of matter that you can touch or see or feel.  The best way we can describe it is a spirit is like the air or the  wind.  We can see the effects of the wind, but we can’t see the wind.  Jesus said, no man has seen the Father at any time. He is invisible to human eyes because He is Spirit.  But like when we see the effects of the wind, Romans 1 says in creation we see the invisible attributes of God and His eternal nature.  We do not see God in nature. But we see the effect of God in nature and it testifies to us that God is.

John’s gospel tells us that Jesus is God who took on human form. John 1:14, “And the Word (that is Jesus) became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.” For 33 years, God appeared on the earth in a physical body of a man.  Luke tells us that He was born of the Spirit of God through a young woman named Mary.  But the John 1 tells us that Jesus existed from the beginning.  He was with God in the beginning.  So in some incredible way that is impossible for us to comprehend, God was in three persons in eternity past, and the second person of the trinity, who John calls the Word, in His Spirit subjects Himself to be born as a baby even while in Mary’s womb, and is born in flesh as the Son of God.  He lives fully as a baby, then a toddler, then a teenager, then a young man, before declaring Himself to be the Son of God at 30 years old.  At this point He begins His public ministry to the world as  Jew, living in Israel, subjecting Himself to all that mankind was subjected to.  He did so sinlessly, and after preaching His gospel to all of Israel, He offered Himself as not only a human sacrifice, but a divine sacrifice for the sins of the world, to provide salvation for those that will believe in Him.

After His crucifixion, God raised Jesus bodily from the grave, and 40 days later He ascended into heaven in the sight of 500 witnesses.  Then on the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit came to  the disciples and indwelled the church.  Today we worship God in Spirit.  The body of Christ is no longer with us, we don't have a physical God that we can see or touch.  But we worship Him in Spirit and in the truth of God’s word.  His Word is the physical effect or evidence of the Spirit of God given to the world.

Now this passage before us today happens about 12 hours before He is offered as a sacrifice for sin on the cross.  Jesus knows full well what is to come, and why He is doing what He is doing.  But He also knows that the disciples do not understand.  And so in these last hours before His death, He is speaking to them in the Upper Room, giving them His last will and testament, so to speak, revealing certain truths to them and making promises to them which are designed to sustain them when He is no longer with them.

Though His upcoming ordeal on the cross should have been uppermost in His mind, He wants to comfort His disciples, because He knows that they don’t really understand what must happen.  They are going to be disillusioned and discouraged when Jesus is crucified.  And so in spite of the ordeal ahead of Him,  He is concerned about His disciples.  He offers them principles and truths that are designed to sustain them and strengthen their faith for the days ahead, especially those days when He will be taken back up into heaven.

To comfort them then, He said in the first few verses of the chapter that He was going away, but He was going to prepare a place for them, and He would return one day to take them to be with Him.  But Thomas speaking perhaps for all of them, said, “Lord we don’t know where you are going.  How can we know the way?”  

Jesus’s answer is one of the greatest theological statements in the Bible.  Jesus says in vs. 6, “I am the Way, the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father except by Me.”  Now I spent some time expounding that text last time so we don’t need to go review all that again.  But suffice it to say that Jesus is declaring that He is the only way to the Father.  He is the entrance into the Kingdom of God.

Now we come today to vs.7, which is a continuation of that thought.  Jesus said, ““If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; from now on you know Him, and have seen Him.”  The greatest comfort in life we can possibly have is that we know God and are known by God.  There is nothing on earth that can compare with that knowledge.  Because I can assure you that in this life you are eventually going to come to a point when you realize that no one can help you through your particular trial.  

I’ve been through many desperate times when I wanted so badly to pick up the phone and call someone.  And yet there was really no one to call that could help me.  Our friends might commiserate with us, or sympathize with us in our trials, but there are many trials where there is no one that can help us.  The doctor says that there is nothing that they can do.  Or the good will of family and friends has been tapped once too many times.  Or the problem is just to big, too complex for anyone to be able to help.  I’ve been there a few times, and I suspect that you have too.  And if you haven’t yet, then it’s going to happen eventually.  And in those darkest hours, there is no hope except to hope in God.  And there is no comfort, but to know God, and to know that God knows you and loves you.  

So Jesus focuses their attention on that principle.  Because they think that they know Jesus.  But what Jesus says, is that if you know Me, you would know God.  But the disciples knew that Jesus was the Son of God.  They knew Jesus was the Messiah.  They knew He was the Son of David.  But their knowledge was incomplete.  They though had some of the right doctrine, they did not have full comprehension, and therefore they were missing the full comfort that comes from knowing who He is.  They did not know that Jesus was the manifestation of the Godhead in bodily form.  

Hebrews 1:3 tells us that Jesus “is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power.”  And that is what Jesus is saying in vs.7, you now know the Father, and you have seen Him.  They had seen the invisible, unseen Father through the physical manifestation of Jesus Christ. 

But Philip still didn’t understand.  And most likely, neither did the other apostles.  He said in vs.8, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.”  We can look with 20/20 hindsight and kind of look down on those poor ignorant disciples, can’t we?  It’s so evident to us, and they were so blind to what was right in front of them.  But I would suggest that Philips comment is not so far off from our own thoughts about God today.  Philip’s request is the same request the world makes today.  Show us the Father and it will be enough.  Hey, why doesn’t God show Himself to the world?  Prove your existence to us.  Manifest yourself to us.

In the words of modern day skeptics, we don’t accept you as you as invisible, as unseen.  We don’t accept you as a Spirit.  We don’t accept you as you have manifested yourself in the flesh as the historical Jesus 2000 years ago.  We want you to do something that we think is fitting, according to how we think God should be. We want you to prove yourself to us today.   Jesus had come with all kinds of signs, proving that He was deity, and yet they still asked for greater signs.  Raising the dead did not satisfy them.  And I suppose that what people  really want to see today is something on the scale of the movie Independence Day.  They want to see some sort of immense presence in the sky in flaming fire, or blinding light, overwhelming the senses.  They want to see some sort of incredible power in a physical, tangible way.  But that is putting our demands upon God to meet our standards.  God has chosen to reveal Himself in a more humble way, so that we might know Him in a more personal, intimate way.  

So Jesus said, “Have I been so long with you, and yet you have not come to know Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; how can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?  

The fact of the historicity of Jesus is widely accepted even by most non Christian scholars of antiquity. Extra biblical evidence can be found in 1st century writings like that from the Jewish historian Josephus, or Pliny the Younger, who was a Roman governor, or Tacitus, a Roman historian, or from the Talmud, which was a Jewish Rabbinical text, or from a Greek satirist by the name of Lucian.  Archeology backs up the claims of the gospels as well, such as the important find a few years ago,  an ossuary, which was a type of wooden coffin, engraved with the name of James, the son of Joseph, the brother of Jesus.  So there is ample contemporary evidence outside of Biblical sources which show conclusively that Jesus was a real historical figure.

But the greatest evidence is simply the word of God.  The internal evidence of the reliability of the word of God is overwhelming. It is truth.  It is true historically and it’s truth experientially and it’s truth practically.  And Jesus uses that evidence to support His own claims of divinity.  His claim to divinity is that He speaks the words of God, and His words are validated by His works, which are the works of God.

Verse 10:  “Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me?  The words that I say to you, I do not speak on My own initiative, but the Father abiding in Me does His works.  Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me; otherwise believe because of the works themselves.”

And the truth of God’s word is it’s own witness to those who believe it and obey.  It is self validating. In John 7:17 Jesus said, “If anyone is willing to do His will, he will know of the teaching, whether it is of God or whether I speak from Myself. He who speaks from himself seeks his own glory; but He who is seeking the glory of the One who sent Him, He is true, and there is no unrighteousness in Him.”

So because HIs word is true, and does not glorify Himself but glorifies the Father, we know that Jesus is one with God.  We believe in Him.  We don’t have Jesus in person here on earth that we might know Him and examine Him.  But we do have Him in scripture.  And the word of Christ, the truth of Christ validates our belief.  

Romans 1:17 says that the just shall live by faith. Not by sight.   We receive life by faith in Christ, righteousness by faith in Christ, forgiveness by faith in Christ.  We live by faith in God as given to us in the scriptures.  We don’t have faith in just anything, but in what the scriptures tell us. We believe in the promises of the Bible, God’s word.  That is what it means to believe in God, to have faith in Christ.  

Our faith does not rest on personal experiences.  Our faith doesn’t rest on supernatural occurrences, or on personal revelation through special messages we think we have received from God.  Our faith rests in His written word.  Our faith increases proportionately to our understanding of Scripture.  Scripture reveals God; and the more you see God revealed in Scripture, the greater your faith becomes, the stronger it becomes.  As we saw in a moment ago in  John 7:17, when we act in faith to what the scriptures teach, then the truth becomes clear and we learn that we can depend upon His word.  And so our faith grows in response to our obedience.

Listen, we dare not believe in God because we feel something.  We cannot trust our feelings as a basis for our faith.  Our feelings fluctuate.  And oftentimes, our feelings lie.  Our feelings may tell us that God doesn’t care, that God must not even exist.  So we cannot trust our feelings.  We trust in the word of God, in spite of our feelings. We believe His word no matter what is going on around us.  

Feelings follow obedience.  You choose faith and obedience irregardless of feelings, and eventually feelings will follow.  That’s why in vs.15 which we will look at next week, Jesus says “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.”  Obedience brings intimacy with God, which brings assurance of our relationship with Him, which in turn produces feelings of joy and peace and comfort.

The second comfort that Christ gives is the promise of His power.  Now that the disciples know who He is, that He is the eternal God who is going back into heaven to prepare a place for us, then the promise is that they will continue to have His power.  Vs. 12, Jesus says, “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do, he will do also; and greater works than these he will do; because I go to the Father.”

A lot of people love to go off the tracks with this verse.  They read it and it’s off to the races.  Everyone wants to walk on water, or raise the dead, or heal people.  And to some extent the apostles were granted that power at the beginning of the church, in what we call the apostolic age.  They had similar power to what Christ had to authenticate their message.  But I would suggest to you that this was limited to the apostles and a few of their proteges.  And that was only for a short time, until the New Testament scriptures were written.  By the end of the apostolic age, the miraculous works of the apostles had begun to die out with them. By the end of Paul’s ministry, his miracles had ceased.  He told Timothy for instance to drink a little wine for his stomach’s sake.  He talked about leaving one of his entourage sick.  The miracles had a limited purpose, to corroborate the words of God which the apostles were preaching.  

In Acts 2, you read how it flows through the Apostolic Age.  This is the power given to the apostles.  It’s defined for us clearly in 2 Corinthians 12:12, the signs and wonders, and miracles of an apostle.  And it’s in Hebrews 2:4 where it says that the message the apostles preached was confirmed by signs and wonders and mighty deeds done by the apostles.  It was to confirm the word of God, that the words they spoke were the words of Christ.  The same principle that was true in Him (he spoke the words, he did the works) was true in His apostles.  

How then does Jesus say that you will do greater works than these? It’s because He would send the Holy Spirit to indwell each believer.  When Jesus was on earth He was limited to being in one place at one time.  But the Holy Spirit is not limited by place or time.  He is able to be in individuals everywhere at once, doing the works of God through many sons of God at once.

So when the Apostolic Era ended there’s still a sense in which greater works are being done. Jesus works were limited to Israel.  And though Jesus did more miracles than anyone had ever done or will do, there were not that many people that believed in Him and were saved.  Five hundred people witnessed His ascension into heaven.  But the disciples ministry was much more far reaching.  It spread throughout the Roman Empire.  It took over the civilized world. The greatest miracle of all is that a sinner is saved and transformed to be a saint.  And in one message on the day of Pentecost, 3000 souls were saved.  And in our day, greater works than these have been done, in that the gospel has encircled the entire globe, and it’s doing so more and more all the time.  The gospel is being sent all over the world right now in the air, on the Internet, and through radio and media constantly.

The third way the Lord gives the disciples comfort is that He reveals to them His provision.

There’s a third point  Our Lord reveals to them His provision.  Vs. 13 and 14: “Whatever you ask in My name, that will I do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask Me anything in My name, I will do it.”

Two times Jesus gives the condition, “ask in My name.”  That phrase is the key.  What does in My name mean?  How are we to correctly understand that? To ask in His name, means to ask according to His identity, consistent with who He is, and what His purpose is.  If someone came to you in the name of the King of a particular country, then you would expect that person to represent the purpose or mission of the King.  They would be acting on behalf of the King’s will.  

Notice that Jesus Himself is subjecting Himself to glorifying the Father in this verse.  “So that the Father may be gloried in the Son.”  The Son is working to bring about the provision that you need, in order to glorify the Father.  So the Son is not working in that prayer to glorify Himself.  But so that the Father may be glorified.  He is not seeking HIs own glory.  

So in like manner, when we pray in Jesus’s name, we are not seeking our own glory, but seeking to glorify Christ, and then Christ will answer it, so that the Father may be glorified through Him.  But the request must be consistent with the Father’s will, with the Son’s purpose, so that they are glorified.

So to simplify it, ‘If you ask anything in My name, means asking consistent with Christ’s will.” And that is borne out by 1 John 5:14, “This is the confidence which we have before Him, that, if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us.”

This is the comfort that Jesus offered the apostles.  He gave them the assurance and knowledge that they needed concerning the person of His deity, that He was God, and was returning back to the Father, to make intercession for them, to prepare a place for them, to send them His Spirit to be His presence in each of them.  So that they might know Him, and know that He is God, and that He knows those who are His.  

Secondly, that they might be comforted by His power.  Though He was going away, He would give them power to continue His ministry, and even to a greater extent than He had done.  They would know the power of God to transform men’s and women’s lives all over the known world.  And we see the power of the gospel continuing to work today in even greater ways, as the word of God has reached every corner of the globe.  

And the third comfort is that He will provide all the resources that we need to be able to fulfill His ministry.  Everything we ask for according to His will He will do it.  Some of us may think that limits us in our prayers.  But I think that it gives us great confidence in our prayers, and great hope in our ministry.  We can pray confidently about things that we know God cares about, because God has stated it in His word.  That is a great comfort to me, and I hope it is to you as well.  If God said it, and God promised it, then He will do it.  And if we are doing His will, then there is nothing that will be impossible for us.  God will provide all of our needs according to His riches in glory.