Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] In John, chapter 14, as Jesus is getting ready to leave the earth through his death. And then after his resurrection, his ascension up to heaven, he's comforting his disciples ahead of time, telling them not to be discouraged.
[00:00:27] And here he gives his greatest promise.
[00:00:30] Now, that might make you wonder.
[00:00:36] What promise could we say is the greatest promise that God ever made. That Jesus ever gave to his people?
[00:00:46] Well, let's read it, and you'll find out what I think.
[00:00:53] John 14, verses 16 through 31. Would you please stand for the reading of God's word?
[00:01:04] I will ask the Father. And he will give you another helper. That he may be with you forever.
[00:01:12] That is the spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive because it does not see him or know him.
[00:01:20] But you know him. Because he abides with you and will be in you.
[00:01:26] I will not leave you as orphans.
[00:01:29] I will come to you.
[00:01:31] After a little while, the world will no longer see me. But you will see me. Because I live.
[00:01:36] You will live also.
[00:01:39] In that day you will know that I am in my Father and you in Me, and I in you.
[00:01:46] 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.
[00:01:54] And I will love him. And will disclose myself to Him.
[00:01:59] Judas, not Iscariot, said to him, lord, what then has happened that you are going to disclose yourself to us and not to the world?
[00:02:09] Jesus answered and said to 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 abode with Him.
[00:02:21] He who does not love me does not keep my words.
[00:02:26] And the word which you hear is not mine, but the Father's who sent me.
[00:02:31] These things I have spoken to you while abiding with you.
[00:02:35] 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 only all that I said to you.
[00:02:47] Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you.
[00:02:53] Not as the world gives do I give to you. Do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be fearful.
[00:03:01] You heard that I said to you. I go away, and I will come to you.
[00:03:07] If you loved me, you would have rejoiced because I go to the Father. For the Father is greater than I.
[00:03:15] Now I have told you before it happens, so that when it happens, you may believe.
[00:03:21] I will not speak much more with you. For the ruler of the world is coming. And he has nothing in me. But so that the world may know that I Love the Father.
[00:03:30] I do exactly as the Father commanded me. Get up.
[00:03:35] Let us go from here.
[00:03:37] This is the word of the Lord.
[00:03:40] Please be seated.
[00:03:49] So many places in this passage, the emphasis is on obedience, the necessity of our obedience, but also the obedience of Jesus Christ himself.
[00:04:04] That's what he closes with.
[00:04:07] He speaks of how he does exactly as the Father commanded him, even as he's been telling us and his apostles and disciples ahead of time, that they must also obey him.
[00:04:25] Now, I said before, this is the greatest promise, and I think I can defend it. Because when Jesus makes this promise that he's going to send the Holy Spirit, he actually says that we should rejoice that he's going away because it's better for us that he go and that we receive the Holy spirit.
[00:05:00] As Pastor McNeilly said earlier, this is Pentecost Sunday.
[00:05:06] But I'm not preaching on the passage of Pentecost. I'm preaching on another passage that has to do with the Holy Spirit.
[00:05:13] But Pentecost, as you remember, is when after Jesus died and rose and then ascended into heaven, and the disciples were all left going, ah, what in the world is going to happen to us?
[00:05:29] Right?
[00:05:33] He told them to wait for the Holy Spirit.
[00:05:38] And so they waited.
[00:05:40] They waited.
[00:05:43] And on the day of Pentecost, suddenly, tongues of fire, a whirlwind, and the church was born.
[00:05:58] That was, in some sense, the beginning of the church, because without the Holy Spirit, there really wasn't any hope.
[00:06:11] Now you might say, well, of course there was hope. Jesus had died and rose again. And isn't that what our hope is in our hope for forgiveness of sins is Jesus Christ and the work that he did? And I say, yes, but without the Holy Spirit, you are still hopeless without hope.
[00:06:34] Now, When I first preached this passage several years ago, I had just read of a family couple and their two kids, and the parents were both pilots for Spirit Airlines.
[00:07:05] And the mother and the father overdosed and both died the same night.
[00:07:13] And the kids woke up orphans.
[00:07:18] It's a tragedy when we think of the suddenness, the drop from success to dead gone, right?
[00:07:34] It's a tragedy when we think of the children being left motherless, fatherless.
[00:07:44] It's a tragedy when you think of the waste, the pointlessness of that loss, of all of that pain. For what reason?
[00:07:56] For a quick high that lasts a short time.
[00:08:04] But my point this morning is not, don't do drugs.
[00:08:11] My point is, sin kills you. And without the work of the Holy Spirit in your life, you are dead still.
[00:08:26] We must have the Holy Spirit, or we are without hope, without the Spirit, we are orphans.
[00:08:39] But Jesus promised that he would not leave us as orphans, that he will be with us by and through His Holy Spirit.
[00:08:52] It's amazing the things that the Spirit accomplishes that we cannot.
[00:09:05] There are many people who have turned away from a variety of sins by their own strength of will, by their own power.
[00:09:20] There are many people who have turned away from drugs, from addiction to quitting cold turkey.
[00:09:31] There are others that have turned away from their temper.
[00:09:38] There are people that have turned away from every sin under the sun that you can imagine. People have quit cold turkey.
[00:09:50] And yet what the scripture tells us is that if by the Spirit we are putting to death the sin that remains in us, we will live.
[00:10:12] All those who improve their life through quitting whatever sin cold turkey by their own strength, are still in the exact same condition as they were before, dead in their trespasses and sins.
[00:10:31] But if the Holy Spirit gives you the power to put to death the sin that remains in you, the remains of that wicked man, the first Adam, your original sin.
[00:10:47] If by the Holy Spirit you are putting to death that sin, then you have life from the outside.
[00:10:59] It is often difficult to notice any difference between two random people.
[00:11:06] You know, you can't just look at a picture of two people and say, oh, yeah, he's got the Holy Spirit.
[00:11:16] He does not.
[00:11:18] I mean, you could make a random guess, right? Oh, well, I mean, he's got tattoos on his face. Clearly he can't have the Holy Spirit. And this guy looks pretty respectable and upstanding and so forth. So, you know, there's a pretty good chance.
[00:11:34] But of course, these things are meaningless.
[00:11:39] The Holy Spirit is given to us by Jesus Christ as a gift, sent by the Father in the name of Jesus Christ for our benefit so that we may live, So that we will not be left orphans.
[00:12:05] Now, some of you in this room have been orphans, and you were not left orphans.
[00:12:18] My point is not to pick on you who were orphans, but to remind all of us that this reality describes every last one of us.
[00:12:33] Until Christ sends his Holy Spirit and adopts us into his own family, we are orphans.
[00:12:45] We need a new father.
[00:12:54] It's by the work of God, through the Holy Spirit, that we are transferred from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of his light.
[00:13:07] That is the joy of Jesus Christ leaving so that we can receive the Holy Spirit, so that we can be changed.
[00:13:24] But, you know, it gets even better.
[00:13:27] He's not just going to be with us.
[00:13:31] He's going to be in us, the Holy Spirit does not just come around every now and then.
[00:13:44] The Holy Spirit dwells in God's people.
[00:13:52] This is a change that took place when Jesus Christ left on the day of Pentecost.
[00:13:59] It's not like the Holy Spirit came into existence at that time.
[00:14:04] The Holy Spirit, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, right, has always been.
[00:14:13] And yet what a change took place in this new, personal way. We have the Holy Spirit.
[00:14:21] We have the Holy Spirit dwelling in us.
[00:14:26] So what does having the Holy Spirit with you and in you actually accomplish?
[00:14:35] First, I always love this verse, guiding us into all truth.
[00:14:47] All truth.
[00:14:53] Now, that doesn't mean that you'll never be wrong, right?
[00:15:03] But it does mean that we have the Word of God today and therefore we can rely on it 100% completely.
[00:15:24] Now he's called the Spirit of truth in verse 17, but also guiding us into all truth.
[00:15:40] Truth is at the center of the work of the Holy Spirit.
[00:15:51] Teaching us all things, bringing to our remembrance all that Jesus said.
[00:15:59] This is the truth of the Holy Spirit at work in us and at work on our behalf.
[00:16:13] I'm convinced that when Jesus is speaking here, this is. Remember, prior even to his death and resurrection.
[00:16:26] I'm convinced that part of what is being described here by him is the fact that we would have the New Testament written.
[00:16:41] When he says that he's going to bring to remembrance all that I said to you, well, we weren't there.
[00:16:52] But we have this.
[00:16:54] We have this because he accomplished it in the apostles who then wrote the Book of John. For instance, the Gospels are written as a response to the completion of this promise, the pouring out of the Holy Spirit. And so when we say that, you know, John wrote John, we also say that John was writing God's word, that John was inspired by the Holy Spirit as he wrote.
[00:17:30] How.
[00:17:32] How can we see that and not think of this passage where Jesus says he, he will bring to remembrance all the things that I said to you.
[00:17:44] John had to write the story.
[00:17:52] And so the fact that we have Scripture is evidence of this.
[00:17:57] It's also a great encouragement to us to trust Scripture, to trust that the selection of the books of Scripture was something that the Holy Spirit accomplished the work of God in.
[00:18:14] He will guide us into all truth. There is a reason that some books are in the Scriptures and some books are not in the Scriptures. And the reason is the work of the Holy Spirit accomplishing this very work that we read in this passage, guiding us into all truth.
[00:18:39] Because he is the Spirit of truth, because he teaches us all things.
[00:18:47] But what does this truth look like beyond just the fact that we have Scripture?
[00:18:55] Well, it's this miracle of knowing right from wrong in a way that is good and healthy and beautiful, as opposed to the way that it was sought by Adam and Eve in eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
[00:19:20] It's God accomplishing the truth of his beautiful goodness in us, Right, precisely. Undoing the destruction that came from seeking that in our own power.
[00:19:44] You might think, well, I'm not Adam and Eve, right? I'm not quite connecting with this. But I want you to see the continuing temptation that we face to do the exact same thing that Adam and Eve did, to continue in our own power.
[00:20:05] Sometimes continuing in our own power, in our own strength is the furthest thing from our mind because we know we are powerless. We know we have no strength to face what we are trying to face.
[00:20:24] And yet even then, we can refuse to seek the help of the Holy Spirit.
[00:20:34] You can be hopeless and not turn to God.
[00:20:40] You can be without hope. You can know you're without hope, and you can have a stiff neck that refuses to turn to God.
[00:20:54] This is how the people of Israel are described over and over again, stiff necked.
[00:21:01] Now, of course, that's a reference to animals, not to us. We generally don't have people literally trying to turn our heads. Right. But sometimes I do that with my kids. I'll grab their head and I'll turn it one way or another.
[00:21:17] Gently, of course.
[00:21:19] Right, right. Can I get a witness? Okay.
[00:21:26] No, it's over. It's just. No, no, look over there. The bird is over there. That's.
[00:21:31] But with animals, the goal of turning the head is that that's the direction that they would go.
[00:21:40] You got oxen, mules, horses, donkeys, and you put a bridle, you put reins on the animal so that you can direct the animal to the place where it should go.
[00:21:55] And yet we've still got a saying that takes it even further. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. Exactly.
[00:22:09] So you can be so stiff necked as a person that you can be like a horse, that even when you are forced straight to the watering hole, you still go.
[00:22:28] Not interested.
[00:22:31] And so sometimes people are dragged to church, whether that's by a husband or wife or parents.
[00:22:41] I don't want to go. Well, you're coming.
[00:22:43] All right, dear, I'm coming.
[00:22:48] Yes, Mom.
[00:22:52] And so you've been dragged to water.
[00:22:59] Now will you drink?
[00:23:04] Will you drink?
[00:23:08] This is the gift of God to you. To be brought to where you need to be, that the Holy Spirit's very words to us are being read, explained, proclaimed, commanded, taught.
[00:23:31] And when God says that his word will never go out and return empty, will not return, void, without accomplishing what he intended for it to accomplish. What you've got to ask yourself is, what did he intend for it to accomplish in me?
[00:23:57] Was it to convert me from death to life, from hopelessness to hopefulness, from sin to righteousness, from relying in my own strength and power to relying on the Holy Spirit?
[00:24:23] But this is not simply a warning and an exhortation for those who have never repented of their sins and put their faith in Christ Jesus. But it's also a reminder to all of you who have hope, right, that you find truth in God's word, not in your own wisdom, not in your own knowledge, not in your own brilliance.
[00:24:52] You can rely on your own strength in a lot of other ways.
[00:25:00] Rely on God through the power of His Spirit, teaching you truth, bringing you into all truth.
[00:25:13] Do you not know what you should do today? Are you struggling with a question?
[00:25:18] Are you facing decisions?
[00:25:20] Are you wondering if there's any way out of your sticky situation, whatever it is, good.
[00:25:38] Then you're ready to turn in remembrance to the Holy Spirit for strength, for help, for hope, for encouragement.
[00:25:49] Because remember, the Holy Spirit is also the comforter.
[00:25:54] The deeper you are in your hopelessness and in your fears, the greater the gift of the Holy Spirit to you, because it's simply the deeper your need. And yet your need has never really changed. It's only your own understanding that has grown deeper.
[00:26:13] Your need has always been absolute, 100% complete.
[00:26:21] There's never been a time in your life where you didn't need the help of the Holy Spirit every minute of every day. And yet there come times where you recognize it, particularly what a gift that is, what a gift that is. And you say, well, but it hurts, it's painful, it's miserable, it's suffering. That leaves me recognizing my need for God. And I say precisely, but isn't that why this passage is such a joy? He will not leave you an orphan.
[00:27:04] Some of you feel alone for a variety of reasons.
[00:27:12] Maybe because you don't have family that you want. Maybe because you have family you don't want.
[00:27:18] The variety of reasons can be all over the map. To be clear, there's people who can feel alone in a big crowd. And you know there's people who listen. If you feel alone, turn to God.
[00:27:36] There is a friend who sticks closer than A brother, he will never leave you or forsake you.
[00:27:47] This is the promise of Jesus Christ in this passage.
[00:27:53] What a gift.
[00:27:55] A gift to all of us.
[00:28:03] In Galatians, we read about the fruit of the Spirit.
[00:28:09] It's not just truth.
[00:28:13] Probably all you kids have songs memorized about the fruit of the Spirit, right?
[00:28:20] You can list them all. Love, joy, peace, patience. And the list goes on, right?
[00:28:26] Did you know there's another list?
[00:28:30] There's another list. We don't memorize that in song very often.
[00:28:37] It's the fruits of unrighteousness and dissension and wrath and anger and bitterness and jealousy and. Ooh, it's not a fun song, is it?
[00:28:55] Now think about the fact that there's two ways of living. There's two lists.
[00:28:59] They're completely opposite from one another, right?
[00:29:03] Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control.
[00:29:11] That's like perfect.
[00:29:15] If you could live that way, you'd be perfect, right?
[00:29:20] This is the fruit of the Holy Spirit in your life.
[00:29:23] This is what God is giving you, is growing in that fruit because you have the Holy Spirit in you.
[00:29:31] But on the other hand, if you don't have the Holy Spirit in you, what happens?
[00:29:34] Your life is tending towards all of these other things.
[00:29:40] Bitterness, wrath, anger, jealousies, idolatries.
[00:29:51] I don't even have that list memorized.
[00:29:54] Let's be clear, right?
[00:30:01] The fruit of the Spirit is a gift from God because he has given us the Holy Spirit.
[00:30:15] What else comes from the Holy Spirit?
[00:30:20] Peace.
[00:30:22] Peace comes from the Holy Spirit.
[00:30:28] The Holy Spirit also has empowered God's people to do something amazing, and that is to establish God's kingdom here on earth.
[00:30:46] Very strange, beautiful thing.
[00:30:52] The spreading of the Gospel and of believers from one city, on the other side of the world, from us, out into the whole world. Actually, you know what? I just saw a video of that this week. It was a beautiful thing.
[00:31:12] The map starts, zoomed in and you see year by year, you can watch it. It's just year by year, the date is going up.
[00:31:25] Starts at 30 A.D. 31, 32, 33. Just year by year. And you see arrows jump immediately, right? And suddenly you've got Italy and Galatia.
[00:31:37] And then you start seeing just first, just cities, and then spreading out from those cities the influence of the gospel to areas that have bowed the knee to Jesus Christ and therefore have received this same gift, the gift of the Holy Spirit.
[00:31:56] And that gift of the Holy Spirit leads to the same thing again, which is the spreading of the good news.
[00:32:03] The gospel has gone forth in power to the whole world because of the Holy Spirit.
[00:32:11] Without the Holy Spirit's work, we would not know the good news here today.
[00:32:22] He's not only given us God's word by breathing out God's word in Scripture, but he is also.
[00:32:30] He is also giving us the words to speak to others, to call them to faith.
[00:32:39] And it is his power which changes hearts when we do that work.
[00:32:47] When people hear the good news, there is forgiveness in Christ Jesus so that God may be feared. Right. If they hear that and they fall to their knees in repentance and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and are saved, a miracle has happened.
[00:33:08] Because on their own they would not do that. It requires the Holy Spirit at work in them a supernatural act. When I say miracle, I'm not being hyperbolic.
[00:33:19] I'm being very literal. A miracle has happened in that moment.
[00:33:28] That's a supernatural change that cannot happen in this world apart from God acting.
[00:33:42] Without that action of the Spirit, we remain in our sin, we die.
[00:33:52] Romans 8:13 says, for if you are living according to the flesh, you must die.
[00:34:01] But that's where I've been quoting. But if by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live for all who are being led by the Spirit of God. These are sons of God, see, not orphans.
[00:34:17] But how do you know whether you are being led by the Spirit of God?
[00:34:21] Because you obey him.
[00:34:26] That's what the passage returns to over and over. And that's what John returns to in his later letters as well.
[00:34:39] Now remember, there are many things that you can run after in this world.
[00:34:49] But what Jesus says is, what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and to forfeit his soul.
[00:35:01] Now, there are people that have been brought up in the church who have had their eyes turned by the pleasures of the world, by the offerings, the world.
[00:35:16] Sometimes those are simply sins that they think I want to do.
[00:35:21] That sounds pleasant.
[00:35:24] I will enjoy that.
[00:35:27] And in those, I want you to just. I want you to simply equate it with drugs.
[00:35:36] Yeah, it feels good. I mean, I'm taking it on testimony from others.
[00:35:47] But guess what?
[00:35:49] It kills you in the end if you're running after sin.
[00:35:58] Yeah, there are pleasures in that, but it kills you in the end. But there are also people that have simply grown discouraged in their own fight against sin and have begun to be tempted to give up hope.
[00:36:19] And there are others that have begun running after good things and then turned them into idols seeking after success or money.
[00:36:40] There are many ways that we can turn away from God.
[00:36:46] And what I want you to remember is that you have the Spirit.
[00:36:56] He gives you the truth of knowledge of what you should be doing, what you should be running after.
[00:37:02] He also gives you the power to accomplish the fruits of the Spirit and to turn away from the fruits of idolatry and sin.
[00:37:22] He also gives us comfort when we're without hope.
[00:37:30] He brings to remembrance all the things that Jesus said, Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.
[00:37:44] Ever had a song pop into your head? Ever had a Christian song pop into your head that had the very words that you needed to hear in that moment?
[00:37:54] You think that was an accident?
[00:37:58] You ever had a Bible verse pop into your mind that you didn't know you knew?
[00:38:06] Now, if you've never had those particular things happen to you, don't hear me wrong.
[00:38:14] That's not the only way the Holy Spirit works and speaks, right?
[00:38:19] But it's a common enough occurrence that I want you to recognize it when it happens. The Holy Spirit is at work in us, renewing our minds, regenerating our hearts.
[00:38:37] It's a beautiful thing.
[00:38:42] If you have the Holy Spirit, you have hope.
[00:38:50] Now maybe you're asking yourself, how do I know whether I have the Holy Spirit?
[00:39:00] And I say, okay, look for the fruit of the Spirit in your life.
[00:39:06] The fruit of the Spirit.
[00:39:09] And if you see the fruit of the Spirit, then you have evidence, evidence that God has given you.
[00:39:20] But if you see, If you think you see the fruit of the Spirit obedience and in your self righteousness you think, yes, I have done well, then all you have is your own strength, right? If you see the fruit of the Holy Spirit and you say, praise God, Jesus Christ is at work in me through his Spirit, I put my hope in him and he's accomplishing his work.
[00:39:57] He's saving me.
[00:40:00] That is the Holy Spirit.
[00:40:06] Maybe you don't have the Spirit because you have never confessed your sin and actually put your hope in Him. You've been led to water many times perhaps. You have certainly been led to water. Today you're here, you're hearing this.
[00:40:28] Verse 17 says, the world cannot receive the Spirit.
[00:40:35] And so what you need to do is you need to say, I don't want the world, I don't want to be the world. I don't want what the world has to offer.
[00:40:50] I want to be God's.
[00:41:00] James 1:5 gives us this. If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God who gives to all generously and without reproach. And it will be given to him.
[00:41:16] Do you want a greater portion of the Spirit?
[00:41:21] Pray to God, who gives to all generously, without reproach, and it will be given to you.
[00:41:30] Do you want the Spirit in the first place?
[00:41:35] Ask.
[00:41:37] Ask from God.
[00:41:39] He will give you the Holy Spirit.
