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A Helper In A Difficult
Time John 14:15-31
I
came across a web site last week that had this phrase across the top,
“The emotional rollercoaster has hit bottom.” That’s a pretty good
description of where the disciples were in our text. Jesus has told them
in John 13 that he is going away and they cannot come with him. They
knew he was talking about his death. Judas is betraying Jesus. Peter
will deny the Lord. They will all flee. Their world is about to be
turned upside down. Their emotional rollercoaster has hit bottom.
In John 14 Jesus comforting them with two essential promises: The first
we talked about last week—the promise that he is going to prepare a
place for them and will return and take them with him to that place so
they could be with him forever.
And we saw last week how that promise applies to us. Heaven is our home
and we will be there forever with the Lord. That is our eternal destiny.
What a powerful source of encouragement for the disciples and for us.
This morning we come to his second great word of consolation:
The Promise of the Holy Spirit. Verses 15-18
If you love Me, keep My commandments. 16And I will pray the Father, and
He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you
forever—17the 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. 18I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you.
Jesus has taken care of these disciples. He has taught them and nurtured
them. And they are wondering how they are going to make it without him.
Jesus knows they could not make it on their own. But he is not going to
abandon them like a bunch of orphans. He is going to send to them
another Comforter.
Comforter, that word in the Greek is “parakleetos” which is difficult to
translate into English. It is a combination of para meaning beside and
kaleoo meaning I call. It means someone who is called along side to
help. It was sometimes used as a legal term for a defense attorney.
Therefore it is sometimes translated Advocate. John uses this term to
help us understand our relationship to the Holy Spirit.
What Jesus is saying is that I am going to send you someone who will do
for you all the things I have been doing for you, another comforter,
someone just like Jesus. “I will ask the Father and He will give you
another Comforter...”
Why is this important to you and me?
Now if Gus Nichols and Guy N. Woods could not agree on the roll of the
Holy Spirit I don’t really want to try to tackle it in this class. But
since it was promised to the Disciples and to us we need to touch on the
subject, so briefly I want to look at the promise and what that does for
us.
The Holy Spirit Sanctifies us 1 Peter 1:2
according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, by the sanctifying
work of the Spirit, that you may obey Jesus Christ and be sprinkled with
His blood: May grace and peace be yours in fullest measure.
What does it mean to be sanctified? It means to be set apart to become
Holy. Practically to become like Jesus.
The Holy Spirit Strengthens us Ephesians 3:16
that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be
strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man;
There is a power that you can have through the Holy Spirit that you
cannot have on your own. We cannot do the Lord’s work with out the
Lord’s power. It is fleshly, it’s human, it’s vain, it’s egotistical if
we think we can.
The Holy Spirit Empowers Us To Overcome Sin Romans 8:13
for if you are living according to the flesh, you must die; but if by
the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will
live.
You become a Christian and say I repented, I want to obey Jesus I want
to live a pure life. Great Idea! But on your own? You say where do I get
some help? The Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit Helps Us In Our Prayers. Romans 8:26
And in the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not
know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us
with groanings too deep for words;
What a great deal! Have you ever been upset and didn’t know what to pray
for? Have the prayers just not come out or when you finished you were
scared you left something out? Are you just hurt so bad and you don’t
know what to say?
The Bible says that the Holy Spirit speaks up for you, He intercedes for
you. Since He is in you he knows intimately what the struggles are in
your life and helps you make those struggles knows to God the Father.
The Holy Spirit Produces Fruit Galatians 5:22-23
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness,
goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things
there is no law.
This is the Fruit, the result of the Holy Spirit living in you. You are
going to be more loving, more at peace, kinder, more self-controlled.
It’s not by human effort but by the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit Guarantees us Heaven Ephesians 1: 14
The Spirit is God's guarantee that he will give us everything he
promised and that he has purchased us to be his own people. This is just
one more reason for us to praise our glorious God.
The Holy Spirit is our deposit, our pledge guaranteeing our inheritance.
In our terms he is our engagement ring. When God is looking down here to
find His bride, Who’s he looking for? The folks with the Holy Spirit.
When God’s looking for who’s going to heaven? It is the people that God
lives in.
Well that’s what the Holy Spirit does for us according to scripture. But
as we see in our text for today when we talk about the Promise of the
Holy Spirit we need to also talk about
The Call to Obedience. "If you love me, you will obey what I command.”
Verses 23-31
There is nothing, absolutely nothing that will keep me obedient to God
except love.
The fear of hell, or the fear of consequences, may get my attention, but
it will not keep me close to God for the long run. Fear can awaken my
conscience and get my attention, but for sustained obedience something
more must happen.
Obedience begins with a revelation of God’s love toward us.
John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten
son, that whoever believes in him would not perish but have everlasting
life.”
Then we see His nature.
1 John 4:8 “God is love.”
He is always motivated by love because it is His nature to love. His
gift of love should awaken something in us that goes beyond fear. Maybe
to begin with it is only amazement and wonder. Have you ever stood
amazed that God loves you—that He loved you long before you ever loved
Him?
In 1 John 4:19 John wrote, “We love him because he first loved us.”
That is the New Testament motive for obedience. It begins when you begin
to realize how much God loves you—not because you deserve it, but
because He just loves you.
If you have come to serve God out of fear, fear of hell, fear of
disappointing your parents, or spouse, or children it will not last.
But when you catch a glimpse of the Lord’s love for you, you will never
be the same. You can never ignore His commandments. You can never ignore
His will for your live because a revelation of His love toward you
awakens a love in you toward Him.
How can we not love Him when we learn how He loves us? God has an agenda
for your life. Nothing is more fundamental in that agenda than His
desire to win your love as you realize His love toward you.
When you really love someone it is your desire to please that person.
Love will cause you to simply want to delight the heart of God. Love
will cause you to long to please the one who loved you and gave himself
for you.
When your heart is filled with love toward God, you don’t have to look
into some religious rulebook to decide what to do. No one has to look
over your shoulder and make sure you do the right thing. You do it for
one reason alone. You do it because you love Jesus and you want to
please him in anyway you can. The church would not survive if it were
not for people like that. The work of the Lord happens on earth because
He has captured our hearts with His love.
Without that love it is impossible to live godly lives. When we try to
do the commandments for any other reason than love, we find ourselves
trapped in legalism.
The Pharisee’s hearts had not been captured by the love of God. They
were intellectually convinced that God is and that He is the rewarder of
those who diligently seek Him.
They were intellectually committed to a set of religious doctrines and
rituals.
But what was the result of all that?
Matthew 23:27-28 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you
are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within
are full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness. So you also
outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of
hypocrisy and lawlessness.
Legalism produces a kind of outward show of obedience and righteousness.
But in reality the obedience is incomplete. It is not in the heart. It
is for appearances sake. And incomplete obedience is disobedience.
In John 14:24 Jesus deals with the other side of his statement about
obedience. “He who does not love me will not obey my teaching.”
A lot of people are confused in their understanding of what love is.
Love is not a felling you feel when you get a feeling you never felt
before.
The biblical test is not what I think I feel. Jesus gives a very simple
way I can know whether I really love God. Am I obeying his commandments?
If I’m not obeying Him then that is clear evidence that I don’t love
Him. If I am obeying, then even if I don’t feel a lot of emotion I am
demonstrating clear evidence that I love Him.
Biblical love is something far greater than sentiment and emotion.
Biblical love causes me to do those things that God has commanded
because I want to please Him. I don’t do it grudgingly. I may struggle
some in my efforts to do it. But I want to do it.
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