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On Sunday nights we have been working our way through the farewell speech of Christ, and that’s John 13 to John 17. And this is the longest, continuous section of Jesus’ words in the Bible. The second longest, just by a little bit, is the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5 to 7. And the central theme of the farewell speeches is Jesus saying farewell. He’s saying farewell to the disciples. John tells us at the beginning, “The hour had come for him, Jesus, to depart out of the world.” And every time in John’s gospel that it refers to “the hour,” that’s referring to the hour of Jesus being crucified, of Jesus going to the cross. And so Jesus says to these disciples as He’s saying farewell, “Where I am going, you cannot come. I am leaving you, and where I am going you cannot come.” And just like all the other scenes in John’s gospel, the disciples misunderstand. And Peter is outraged by that and he says, “You will not go!” And what we see is that the disciples, in this moment, are experiencing the weight of what feels like a real loss. They are being told that they are losing the presence of God Himself before them when Jesus says, “Where I am going, you cannot come. It’s My hour. I am leaving you.”

And so tonight in John 14:15 to 26, we’re going to see exactly what He says to them in order to comfort them. So let’s pray and then we’ll read it together.

Our God, we ask now, Holy Spirit we ask that You would come along side of us and open Your Scriptures so that we would hear and that we would understand. And we ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen.

John 14, verses 15 to 26:

“‘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 in me, and I in 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 have 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.’”

Every time Jesus leaves in the gospels – Matthew 28, Acts chapter 1, right here – He always leaves and gives a commission as He’s going. He gives the commission multiple times in the farewell speeches, and it’s right there in verse 15. He says, “If you love Me, if you’re one of Mine and you love Me, you will keep My commandments.” In other words, He’s saying to them, “When I leave, your job is to love God, love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself.” And He’s told them in John 13 to love your neighbor, “as I have shown you how to love; as I have loved you.” And immediately they have to say, they must say, they say, “If You’re leaving, how am I supposed to love God and love my neighbor like You love me – and You’re going? And how am I supposed to do that?” And John’s answer was to take us all the way back to John 3 when Jesus says if you want to love God and you want to love your neighbor, you’ve got to be born again. And the question, “How do I get born again? How do I love God? How do I love my neighbor?” – Jesus comes in this passage, John 14:15-26, and He gives the answer that John gives throughout the whole of John’s gospel – “You need the wind. You need the wind of God. You need the breath of God. You need the Holy Spirit.” Jesus, in this passage, calls him – the ESV that we read from – translates, “You need the Helper,” the Spirit, Jesus says.

And so we’ll ask three questions, and they are simple questions but important questions. We’ll ask, “Who is the Spirit?” and “What does the Spirit do?” and then “How do we know that we have the Spirit?”

Who is the Spirit?

So first, “Who is the Spirit?” Just three brief things that Jesus teaches us here from the passage. The first, did you notice, that Jesus refers to the Spirit with the personal pronoun, “He.” He says the Spirit is a “He” not an “it.” And John Calvin, in the 1500s in his very famous Institutes, said that when you are talking about the Spirit you have to say “Who is the Spirit?” not “What is the Spirit?” because the Spirit is personal. The Spirit is a person, not an “it.” And it’s really significant in the first century, Greco-Roman context, that Jesus is saying this because in the Greco-Roman mindset and in the modern 20th and 21st century mindset it’s the same. That often today, to be spiritual is to know something of an impersonal force or a fate that’s at work in your life. And Jesus immediately comes in that context where that’s believed in the Greco-Roman world and says the Spirit is not a force. He is not a fate. He is not a principle. He is a conscious personality. He is personal. He is a He.

When you scroll through the New Testament and you look for all the places that it talks about the Holy Spirit, here are the verbs that the New Testament gives us. The Spirit “searches, judges, hears, speaks, wills, teaches, intercedes, witnesses, comforts;” He “comes,” in verse 16. Jesus says, “The Spirit will come to dwell with you forever.” That’s personal. That’s a personality. That’s a He. And tonight, just a question on this first little point. If you believe in Jesus, if you’re a Christian tonight, are you conscious, do you know that the personal Spirit dwells alongside you in your daily life? That the personal Spirit, He, is with you, Monday through Saturday and Sundays too?

Now the second thing that Jesus says about it is that He is “even the Spirit of truth” in verse 17. And that title too is important for the same reason in Jesus’ context and in our context as well. It does not say He is the Spirit of fate or feeling or emotion. It says He is the Spirit, “even the Spirit of truth.” And one contemporary world renowned religious studies scholar talks about, actually, the connection between 1st century or the mysticism, the spirituality in general, of antiquity, of the Greco-Roman context and how it’s almost the exact same as the modern Western spirituality in general. And this is how he describes it. He says, “People talk about being spiritual as feeling a mystical connection with everything, feeling an undefined connection even to a higher power, the experience of a force or a fate that controls and guides them throughout their life, and the principle practice,” he says, “is meditation where you meditate in order to leave your mind and escape rationality.” And Jesus comes and says, according to the Bible, what it means to be spiritual is not an escape from rationality at all but to experience the Spirit of truth, of rational truth, of cognitive truth, of historical truth, of propositional truth, of all sorts of truth. That the personal one, the Spirit, who comes to be with you, speaks truth into your life the Bible says.

And we know – what does that mean? Well at least it has to mean this – 2 Peter 1:21 – the Holy Spirit is the author, the one who carried along every single one of the writers of the whole Bible. It’s because of the Spirit of truth that we have the historical truth and the propositional truths that we received from Scripture and believe. And that has an objective and a subjective aspect to it. Objectively, it is the Spirit of truth who delivered to us the historical truths that we are reading about right here, and it is the Spirit of truth that receives those truths in your own heart if you have the Spirit. He is the Spirit of truth both objectively and subjectively and propositionally.

But, but, this title, “the Spirit of truth,” means something much more than the deliverer, the giver of historical and propositional fact and truth because the word “truth” in the book of John is significant. The word “truth” plays the biggest role in John than anywhere else in the Bible. And the two most famous places that the word “truth” pops up in the whole Bible besides right here are in John. One is in – you remember – it’s John 19 when Pontius Pilate is there with Jesus. Jesus is standing before him and Pilate says, “What is truth?” And Jesus hangs His head and He’s silent before Pilate. And John expects the reader to say, John is urging the reader, the reader knows – he wants the reader to say, “Tell him, Jesus. Tell him.” Because in John 14, ten verses before this, Jesus had said – the other most famous place where the word “truth” is mentioned in the whole Bible – He says, “I am the truth.” And if we were to daringly speculate what it must have been like to be there with Pilate and Christ, perhaps, perhaps Jesus hung His head and He was silent but He put His hands on His chest when Pilate asked, “What is truth?”

And the reader of John knows, He, He is the truth. And you see, when he says, “Even the Spirit of truth will come to be with you,” you see what he’s saying? It’s the Spirit of capital “T” Truth. In other words, He is saying, “My very Spirit. The Spirit of Christ Himself is the one that’s coming.” The personal Spirit of Jesus Christ Himself, the Spirit of capital “T” Truth is coming to be with you.

And that leads us, thirdly, that helps us especially when we think about the third thing here He tells us. In verse 16, He says something that’s odd. He says, “I am going to send you the Spirit who will be “another helper.” And we’ll come back to the word “helper” in just a second, but when He says “another,” you say, “Well who was the first? I’ve always been taught that the Spirit is the Helper. Who is the first helper? And You said this is another helper but we’ve just learned -” He’s saying He is the Spirit of Truth, capital “T.” He is the Spirit of Jesus Christ. He is Christ’s Spirit. And so Jesus is saying, “I am the first helper and I am sending you the second helper who is My very Spirit.”

And that throws us into the final truth here. In verse 20, if you look at it, He says, “In that day you will know” – “In that day” – what day? “In that day you will know that I am in My Father and you in Me and I in you.” Or verse 23, “My Father and I, we both together will come on that day and make our home with you.” What is the day that He is talking about when He says, “The Father and I are going to come and be with you and in you and you in us and make our home with you and all of us together”? He’s talking about the day of Pentecost. And He’s saying that, “In the day My Spirit, the Spirit of Truth comes to be with you, I will be in the Father and the Spirit will be with you who is My Spirit so I will be with You so you will be with the Father and in the Father!”

And look, it’s important to say that John 14 pushes us into the dizzying and deep doctrine of the Trinity. It’s old hat, maybe, in our minds that God is triune. But in the New Testament, this is one of the first great places that all three persons are talked about, dwelling together and with you. And the Bible will go on and has already said it’s attributed these words to the Spirit – He is “eternal,” Hebrews 9, “omnipresent,” Psalm 109, “omniscient,” 1 Corinthians 2, “omnipotent, all powerful,” 1 Corinthians 12. It’s important to say tonight, it’s important to say tonight that we don’t just believe in a monotheistic God. We believe, Christians believe in the triune God – Father, Son and Spirit. Do you believe? And is your God the triune God – Father, Son and Spirit? And if He is, if you believe that today, know that what Jesus is saying here is this. The conscious, personal, life-giving, renewing Spirit who is God Himself who proceeds from the Father and the Son has come to you, sent by Jesus Christ, to dwell with you forever. And if that’s true, then you have the Spirit with you making you a child of the Father and a brother or sister of Jesus Christ and at home with God – Father, Son and Spirit. Is that reality present to your mind, present to your heart as you step into Monday tomorrow?

What does the Spirit do?

So the second thing then is this – more specifically and briefly – “What did the Spirit come to do?” What did the Spirit come to do? And the passage is also really clear about that. The passage, if you look at verse 17, it says that the Spirit has come to “dwell with you and be in you.” Or verse 26, that the Spirit has come to “teach you and remind you all that Jesus taught.” And then there are at least three things here that it says you can do if the Spirit is with you. It says, verse 19, by the Spirit you can see Jesus. Verse 19, by the Spirit you will live. Verse 20, you will know that you are in the Father and the Son. You are at home with them.

And all these words – to dwell with God by the Spirit, that He is going to be in you and you in Him – what does all of that mean? And I think the best way of getting at that is actually just to think for a second about what is really the central claim of this whole section. And that’s when He calls the Spirit here, twice, “the helper.” He calls Him “the helper.” And that’s a word that is describing what the Spirit came to do. And if you – I looked this week at six or seven different English Bible translations. And if you look at six or seven different English Bible translations you’ll find about five different words that are all right here. The word, “Helper.” – Helper, Comforter, Counselor, Paraclete, which is the literal Greek word here; some use that.

And it’s important, it’s important to say what the Greek word is here because some English Bibles even just use it, “the Paraclete.” It’s the word, “paraclete” and the word “paraclete” has two parts to it. It comes from a verb, “parakaleo.” And that’s got two parts – “para” – and we use the word “para” in paramedic and paralegal and parachute. That’s anything that comes alongside you to help you, specifically to help you live, like a parachute or paramedic. And “kaleo,” that second word, means “to call and to urge and to come alongside,” and even “to argue” with you. Even to come by your side and to argue with you. And for that reason, the best understanding of what Jesus is saying here about the other helper is really the word, “the Advocate.” The Advocate. The one who comes alongside to talk to you and even to argue with you, like a counselor in the sense of a lawyer. This is a legal connotation here. And when it says then that the Spirit, “para,” when it says that the Spirit is going to be in you and you in Him, that is not a spatial reference. You say, “I am in the Spirit and the Spirit is in me.” Where is the Spirit? The Spirit is not contained within your skeletal system. God cannot be confined. In other words, “para” – it means you are in Him, meaning the Spirit comes alongside you and speaks to you and speaks truth to you.

But look, if you think for just a second about what an advocate does, an advocate has two roles, right. A lawyer, a lawyer has two basic roles. One, when you are in the courtroom the lawyer talks to the judge for you. And when you’ve got a good lawyer and the lawyer speaks good words, you look good. And then the lawyer turns, the advocate turns and he talks to you and he says to you, “Say this. Don’t say this. Be careful about this.” See, the advocate turns toward the judge and then he turns back to you and he’s got two roles. And you remember what Jesus said? “I’m going to send you another paraclete because there already is one paraclete and the Spirit is going to be the second paraclete.” And we learn in 1 John 2:1 this. He says, “My little children, I am writing this so that you will not sin. But if you do sin” – and we do sin, so we need this – “we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.” That word “advocate” in 1 John is the word “paraclete,” the same word right here that’s being talked about for the Spirit. In other words, you have two advocates. You, if you believe in Jesus Christ, you have an advocate tonight that stands before the Judge in heaven, before God Himself, and advocates for you and speaks to God for you.

And one theologian that I was reading, He talks about doing a thought experiment and imagining for a second what it must be like to see Jesus Christ the Advocate, advocating for you before God the Father. And this is what he says. “Jesus stands in the courtroom of God in heaven, the divine counsel, and He says, ‘My Father, You are totally just, and the rebellion of this man and the rebellion of this woman,’ He names us, ‘demands judgment and demands punishment. And My body was broken for her. And My body was broken for him. And My blood was spilled for her. My blood was spilled for him. And today, Lord, they are moral failures but I went to hell for them. And because I died and I live and I’m acquitted for them, they stand acquitted today before You, God.’” And that is what Jesus Christ, your Advocate, does for you right now, today, if you believe this.

And then He says, and at the same time, on earth there is the Spirit coming alongside you and saying, “Do you remember that you have an Advocate in heaven with the Father who is saying to you that you are teknia?” That the Spirit, Romans 8, is testifying to our spirit right now that we are children of God? The Spirit comes alongside, parakaleo, and reminds us and argues with us and talks to us. Or 1 John 3, John says when your heart condemns you, the Spirit, God the Spirit is greater than your heart and comes alongside you to argue with you and to talk to you. And so we could change the preposition to summarize the whole thing like this – Christ advocates for you. He is the first Helper. And the Spirit advocates to you. He is the second Helper.

J.I. Packer, in his little book, Concise Theology, describes the Spirit as the great floodlight. And he says when you are walking, when you are walking in the dark and you have lost the path and you cannot see, you need a floodlight. And when a floodlight shines behind you, of course you don’t turn and you don’t look at the floodlight. If you look at the floodlight, you can’t see anything. But when the floodlight shines you see everything else by it. And the Spirit is the great floodlight, that when you are walking in the dark turns on and says, “Look again at the Advocate you have in heaven. Don’t you remember that you are a child of God?” He is the great floodlight.

How do we know that we have the Spirit?

Now thirdly and finally – we’ll close very briefly and ask, “Do you have the Spirit? How do you know if you have the Spirit?” And again, the passage answers that question for us. Four things – I’m just going to list them. Verse 15, 20, 21 – Jesus says here you know that you have the Spirit if you love Jesus, if you have love in your heart for King Jesus. And He says, verse 21 and 23, you know you have the Spirit then if you have desire in your life to obey His commands; if you have desire to do good to many and to walk in a path of obedience. If you see, in your life at all, slow growth in loving to do the things that Jesus loved to do.

And the third thing, it says on the flipside – verse 21 – we can flip it over. He says you know you have the Spirit in your life if you, when you are not walking down the road of life, the path of righteousness, you feel the weight of conviction; you hear the Spirit of truth coming and saying, “You’re being dumb. You’re being dumb right now and you’re running away and you’re living outside the path of life.” And you feel conviction over your sin; you know that you have the Spirit in your life. Or lastly, verse 26, if you, if the Spirit is bringing to your mind Jesus Christ in your daily life and helping you to remember the things that Jesus taught you know you have the Spirit. If you are remembering Jesus, if you love the Bible at all, if you want the words of the Bible and you want to know more about them, that’s evidence that you have the Spirit.

Look, maybe tonight you have the Spirit or maybe you need the Spirit and you might say, listening to that list, “I don’t really have consciousness of the Spirit actually being present and speaking to me in my life. I don’t know that I can say that I love Jesus Christ. And I don’t know that I can say that Jesus Christ is my Advocate right now before the Father in heaven. And I don’t feel conviction often over the patterns of sin that I’m stuck in. And I don’t see any growth in my life.” And maybe you don’t have the Holy Spirit, you don’t have the life of the Holy Spirit with you. And how do you receive the Spirit? Verse 23, He says, “If you love the Son then you have the Holy Spirit.” And so how do you receive the Spirit? It says love the Son and you will have the Holy Spirit with you. If you say, “The Son is my God and my Lord to the exclusion of all other masters in my life,” then you will have the Holy Spirit.

And just to close with this. That means that your sin, tonight, has to become personal to you. It has to be more than, “Sometimes I break the rules and sometimes I make mistakes.” It has to be, it’s not just, “I break the rules sometimes.” It’s that, “Because of me, I broke Him.” It has to be that, “My sin broke and crushed His body on the cursed tree.” That’s repentance. When we know how personal our sin is and how deep our sin is and we say, “I love the Son because He gave His body to be broken by me, by my sin. I crucified -” You crucified Him, Peter says – Acts 2. “I broke Him.” That’s when sin becomes personal. That’s when we turn and we say, “I love the Son and I love what He has done for me and He is my Master.” And that means, look, you can’t be your own advocate. You cannot stand before God’s holiness. You have to turn to Christ as the only infallible Advocate before the Father and then you will know that the Holy Spirit is also your Advocate living with you.

And so some diagnostic questions as we leave. Do you have communion in your life with the Holy Spirit? And do you know the presence of the Spirit in your daily walk? And do you pray for help daily from the Holy Spirit as you walk through your days? And do you listen to the words of conviction when the Spirit is trying to turn you back from patterns of sin to the path of life? And does the Spirit testify to your Spirit that you are a child of God? Does the Spirit point you to the Bible and give you a love for Scripture and a love for the things that Jesus loved? And no matter where you are tonight and how you answered those questions, you, whether you’re an eighty year Christian or this is day one and you want the Holy Spirit in your life, you can say, you can pray, “Lord, send me the Holy Spirit,” and He will.

Let’s pray together.

Lord, we ask now that You would send us the Holy Spirit and that You would send us the Holy Spirit because we’ve been changed. We love the Son, Lord. We pray for anybody who is wondering now, “Do I know the Spirit of God? Is the Spirit of God present in my life?” We ask that You, Spirit, would work and come and meet with us. And we pray for many of us who are Christians that You would break our hard hearts and that we would live spiritual lives, lives that are driven along by You, the Spirit; that we would hear, that we would be awake, that we would be conscious when You speak to our hearts and testify to our hearts. And so we ask for that. We ask for Your work. And we ask it in Jesus’ name, amen.

© 2024 First Presbyterian Church.

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