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John 14:15-26 The Holy Spirit
"If you love Me, keep My commandments. And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever—the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you. I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you. A little while longer and the world will see Me no more, but you will see Me. Because I live, you will live also. At that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me and I in you. He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he 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 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 home with him. 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. These things I have spoken to you while being present 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 things that I said to you. (John 14:15-26)
One Command and Two Promises.
Before Easter I taught three things about our church from
the first part of chapter 14. Three things that Jesus taught His disciples
before leaving them to go to the cross. We are a church that strives
to love as Jesus loves. His commandment to us is to love our neighbors
as ourselves. To love one another, serve one another, sacrifice for
each other. We are a church that seeks to know God. Though there are
many spiritual sounding things that try to distract us from Him we are
not looking for any secret path to enlightenment or fool-proof steps
to sainthood. Instead we know Jesus who is the way, the truth and the
life. Finally, we are a church that expects Jesus to do even greater
works through us than even He did on this earth. We expect Jesus to
heal broken lives and set people free through us. This is exciting and
at the same time a little frightening. Are we able to do all this? Can
we really do greater works than Jesus? The answer is yes, but not on
our own.
Actually of those three things, loving as Jesus loves, seeking to know
God, and doing greater works, the most important for us is the first.
This is the one that Jesus commands us to do. Notice that He doesn’t
command us to "know the Father", instead Jesus promises that
if we know Him we will know the Father. Likewise He does not command
us to do "greater works", He promises us that if we believe,
we will do greater works. The second two are promises that stem from
the first which is a command. The command is to love one another. In
verse 16, Jesus explains to us how the two promises will come about
as we love one another. He says that if we keep His commandments that
He will pray the Father, and He will give us another Helper, that He
may abide with us forever. This Helper is the Holy Spirit. It is through
the Holy Spirit that we can truly know God and receive the power to
do great things for God. As we love one another the Holy Spirit is released
into our lives.
I Will Not Leave You Orphans
The Helper that Jesus described is translated in other
versions as the Comforter or the Counselor and in Greek the word can
mean all of these things. Literally the word means someone who comes
alongside to help. I cannot think of a better word to describe what
love is. It puts two things together that must happen if people are
to understand that we love them. First, we cannot love them from afar.
We have to be with them. Long distance love is really just a nice feeling,
or a remembrance of something that once was. Unless we make an effort
to bridge the gap love is not given or received. In our world it is
possible for me to show my family on the other side of the world that
I love them by picking up the telephone, writing a letter or sending
off electronic mail. Simply by reaching across the distance love is
given and received. Of course you can reach out and touch someone in
a nasty way as well. It is just as easy to send hate mail as fan mail.
The other half of showing love is then the element of help. Wanting
the best for the other person. This help could be words of comfort or
a listening ear, it could be wise counsel or an extra pair of hands
to carry a load. When we put our good intentions into action, we are
truly loving. And as we love, our hearts become a perfect home for the
Holy Spirit to live in.
The Holy Spirit cannot come into just any heart. Jesus said that the
world cannot receive the Holy Spirit because they neither see Him or
know Him. The world looks at love and pronounces it foolish. They are
happy enough with lust and sex, they enjoy romance, or the feeling of
"being in love". They talk about brotherhood and peace and
charity but rarely do they get close enough to anybody to actually love,
to come alongside and help. It is when we come alongside to help that
the Holy Spirit feels at home in our hearts. Because that is who He
is. It is when we love that we recognize Him. Jesus said that the Spirit
both dwells with us and will be in us. The Spirit has been with us for
much longer than we ever knew. Before we knew Jesus or even thought
about spiritual things, the Spirit has been calling out to us, drawing
us into a relationship with Jesus. At times in your life you have seen
real love and know that this is something greater than this world. At
times you have felt that God was somehow real and that He wants you
to know Him. These glimpses of the spiritual world are the work of the
Holy Spirit in your life. But when you believe in Jesus as Lord and
Savior something much more wonderful happens. The Holy Spirit comes
to dwell in you. He makes His home inside your heart so that you will
always know that God loves you. You will always know real love. The
disciples were worried what they were going to do without Jesus after
He died on the cross. But Jesus said, "I will not leave you orphans."
I will not leave you "comfortless" it says in another translation.
In fact through the Holy Spirit, Jesus does not have to leave His disciples
at all. "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."
It is through the Holy Spirit that Jesus comes to live in our hearts.
With the Spirit in our hearts we are never alone, never without a friend,
never comfortless. We are not orphans, left to fend for ourselves until
Jesus returns. Instead, we are the body of Christ, continuing His work
here on earth with Jesus as our head.
How the Holy Spirit Works
Å@How exactly does the Spirit keep Jesus’ promise that we will know God and do greater works? First, the Spirit teaches us the things of God. Because God is spirit there is no way to know God except spiritually. Many people make the mistake of waiting until they "know" all about God and the Bible and Christianity before making their choice to believe in Jesus. What they don’t realize is that all of that time is wasted! The real lessons in knowing God only begin when we start to see through the eyes of the Spirit. Everything you learn from a book before then only makes it more difficult to see who God really is. Believe in Jesus and then you will know God! When I first came to Japan I thought the best way to learn the language was to study Kanji (the complicated Chinese characters) I succeeded in learning about 300 but was increasingly frustrated because for each new Kanji, not only did I have to learn a difficult pattern of strokes, but also a number of readings and then finally the meaning of the word. After learning the easiest ones I was lost. Nowadays when I learn a new Kanji I usually already know the word and use it often, I just didn’t know how to write it. It is much easier and more natural than the torturous drills of my early attempts. Without the Spirit, trying to know God is a lot of work that get you nowhere. With the Spirit it is natural, the more time you spend with Him, the more you will know Him.
Å@The Spirit also brings to our remembrance all the things in God’s word. In fact Jesus told the disciples (Galilean fishermen) that when they were brought before the kings and rulers of this world, they should not worry about what they would say because the Spirit would give them the words to speak. We cannot carry our Bibles everywhere or look up answers in the midst of our work, but when we read the Word and study it, the Holy Spirit is faithful to give us exactly the right word at the right time. This is the key to greater works. To know what God says about the situation that is before us. If we come alongside our brothers and sisters to help them as the Spirit would have us do, and we know God and His Word as the Spirit helps us to do, then we will know how to pray God’s will and the power for greater works will be released. Without the Spirit it is impossible. But with the Spirit we can know and do things that we could not have done by ourselves.
Å@The Spirit constantly guides us into situations where we can love others. The Spirit opens our eyes to see opportunities where we can come alongside our brother and sisters to help them. What I have found is that there is always a reason why I cannot do it. I am either too busy, or I don’t know the person well enough, or the timing is not right, or they will think I am strange (they might be right) or I wonder if I could really do anything to help anyway, but either way there are plenty of reasons to ignore the Spirit and just continue on with my life. This is why Jesus calls love, His "new commandment". Each of these opportunities is new commandment from Jesus that we must choose to obey or disobey. If we obey and jump in to help, then the Spirit teaches us something about God. We find out through loving, more about God’s love. The Spirit also reminds us of God’s word, what God wants to do in this situation. As we pray in the Spirit and ask God to do according to His word, God is happy to do it for us. Jesus, Himself, is the perfect example for us. It is true that Jesus was the only man that never sinned. He perfectly obeyed God. But more than just avoiding evil, Jesus was the only man to do every good thing commanded Him by God. We have many excuses for disobeying each of God’s new commands to love. We wonder where it will end. I don’t have enough money to feed all of the hungry. I don’t have enough time or patience to solve everyone’s problems. But God does not ask you to feed all of the hungry people, or solve all of the problems. He does not ask you to help everyone. Instead God gives a new commandment to you, specifically, to help this one, or that one. If you keep His commandments, then you will know God and He will do greater works through you.
Copyright ý 2000 Jonathan Wilson
All Rights Reserved
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