Jesus’ Teaching on the Holy Spirit

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Transcript:

Good morning. We’re going to be in John chapter 14 this morning. John chapter 14.

Many of you are somewhat familiar with my daughter Madeline. I say somewhat familiar because she is the less outgoing of my two children. You may have noticed her little fearful behavior.

When she comes, you may try to say hi to her and she will hide behind my pen. She has a lot of those irrational fears. fear of new people.

Monday night we went to Chick-fil-A as we always do and they had the Chick-fil-A cow there. The cow came walking in the door and she started screaming irrational fear of the cow. She’s never been in a cow pasture cow food, that’s not what you call it.

She’s never been in a cow pasture, you can tell I’m from the city. She’s never been in a cow pasture and been scared by one, so there’s no reason for her to be afraid of this cow that came walking in, but she was. I or my dad can put on a hat, and she runs screaming.

Even with family members, it’s not just strangers she meets or people she’s not real familiar with, with family members. There are some that she has only, you know, she’s going to be, she’ll be two and a half next month. I had to stop and think about that for a minute.

It moves so fast. She’ll be two and a half next month. There are some family members that have been around since she’s been born that she’s only just gotten used to. And it took her six months before she’d have anything to do with my dad.

But grandparents, aunts and uncles, there are some people that she sees, and they’re part of the family. She sees them on a regular basis, and she will run screaming and hide behind me, just kind of cling to me and try to climb up me. She has this irrational fear.

They’re not going to hurt her. They’re part of the family. She’s familiar with them, and yet there’s this irrational fear, I can’t get too close to them because it’s not safe.

When in reality, there’s nothing unsafe about the people she’s afraid of. Why are you telling me about this? Well, first of all, because you tell stories about what you know to try to illustrate a point.

And most of my time outside of work is spent with my kids. So that’s where a lot of my illustrations come from. But this morning, I want to talk about the Holy Spirit and the attitude that we as Baptists have oftentimes toward the Holy Spirit.

Maybe you see where I’m going with this. The Holy Spirit is a part of the Trinity. Just like these people are part of the family, the Holy Spirit is part of the Trinity.

And yet we as Baptists all too often back away from the Holy Spirit. We have almost an irrational fear of the Holy Spirit because we don’t want to get too close. A lot of times I think it’s because we don’t want to be associated with things that have become associated with the Holy Spirit over time that probably don’t have much to do with the Holy Spirit anyway.

I think back to, I want to say it’s our doctrinal statement from 1950, not the one we have now, but the one before they updated it and put it in longer form, that talks about how we reject the ecstatic speaking in tongues and several other things, and all kindred evils are rising from this. And I have no problem with that statement. What passes for speaking in tongues today is not consistent with what passed for speaking in tongues in biblical tongues.

Two totally different things, which we may talk about at some future time. But because we see things like the ecstatic speaking in tongues, made-up language, which is nothing consistent with what happened in the book of Acts, without interpretation, which is not what’s taught in the New Testament. Because we see that, because we see things like being slain in the Spirit, Because we see Benny Hinn swinging his coat over his head and hitting people and saying they’re cured of cancer.

By the way, if you’ve never seen, I think it’s Benny Hinn. There’s a video on YouTube, if you want to go on there, where they’ve got him swinging his coat to some, and I don’t know the song, but there’s some rock song about let the bodies hit the ground. And it’s kind of funny to watch and sad in a way.

But him swinging his coat and telling people they’re healed, I just don’t understand it. And we see things like that, and rightly so, we retreat from it and say, that is not what we believe, that is not what we teach, that’s not what the Bible teaches. And we rightly back away from things like that.

But we’ve gone, I think, too far the other direction to where we almost totally ignore the Holy Spirit as Baptists. I told the church in Fayetteville once that I had gone to one of our state BMA meetings, And we had a worship service there. And it might have been the national meeting.

I said we had a worship service there. I said it was a good time of praise and worship and a good message and a good time of praise and worship afterwards. I said I raised my hand while we were singing.

I said I decided I’d come back and repent afterwards. We are afraid, ladies and gentlemen, of any sort of display of the power of the Holy Spirit. We are so afraid of anything that could be mistaken for charismatic.

And rightfully so. We should distance ourselves from the unbiblical practices of other churches. But we have almost developed an irrational fear of the Holy Spirit, I would say.

That if the Holy Spirit moves in a Baptist church, our first instinct is to retreat, is to shut it down and say, we’re not charismatic. Caught my son one time jumping over a pew. It was after services, but jumping over a pew, and I said, you’re not in the right church for that.

But folks, Jesus taught a lot about the Holy Spirit. And if we believe what we say we believe, then we can’t ignore the Holy Spirit. We believe in a triune Godhead, do we not?

We believe in a trinity of God. And when I said the Holy Spirit is part of the trinity, just like those people are part of the family, don’t misunderstand where I’m saying the Godhead, the trinity, is a family. Now, there’s one God who’s expressed in three eternally distinct persons.

So it’s not that God is sometimes Jesus and God is sometimes the Father and He’s sometimes the Holy Spirit. No, He’s always all three. Now, I’ve mentioned this to you before.

I’ve taught on this. I cannot completely wrap my mind around how that works. And yet it’s taught in Scripture that there is one God and that He manifests Himself in three eternally distinct persons who share a nature, who share an essence, and yet we see three different people at one.

We see stories like the baptism of Jesus, and I think this might have been what I talked about when I preached on the Trinity last. The baptism of Jesus, where Jesus is the one going into the water in the Jordan River. And then when he comes up out of the water, as the Bible says, the Holy Spirit, God as the Holy Spirit shows up like a dove and lights upon him. And then we hear the voice of God the Father saying, This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.

We see all three of them at work. There’s a unity, and yet there’s a uniqueness to each person. And if we believe what we say we believe, then we can’t ignore the Holy Spirit because He’s God just as much as God the Father is God, and God the Son, Jesus Christ, is God.

They are all three part of the Godhead, and we can’t ignore them. We can’t ignore any of them. or we don’t really believe what we say we believe.

And Jesus taught about the Holy Spirit. Guys, when I bring you this message this morning, I’m not trying to, and I think you get this, but I just want to make sure, I’m not trying to get you to speak in tongues. I’m not trying to get us to jump over the pews and swing our coats at each other and all that sort of stuff.

But I want us to remember the role the Holy Spirit is to play in our daily lives, in our understanding of God’s Word, and in the worship that we do outside of this building and when we come together. The Holy Spirit has to play a role, and we neglect that role. We neglect that influence.

We ignore him to our own role. So if you’re not already there, turn with me to John chapter 14. And we’re going to start in verse 14.

If ye shall ask anything in my name, I will do it. This is Jesus speaking to the disciples. If ye will ask anything in my name, I will do it.

If ye love me, keep my commandments. Well, that’s a hard one. If ye love me, act like it.

Do what I tell you to do. And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another comforter, that he may abide with you forever. Even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him.

But ye know him, for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you. And here again, ladies and gentlemen, we have the unity of the Godhead working together. We see all three of them in concert with one another.

Because Jesus, God the Son, is saying here, I will pray to God the Father, and I will ask Him to send you God the Holy Spirit in order to do all these things that He’s going to talk about as we go through the passage. God the Father sends God the Holy Spirit at the request of God the Son. So many times we see throughout Scripture the three of them as separate persons and yet working in concert with one another.

There’s unity within the Godhead, even among these three separate persons. He says, I pray the Father, and He shall give you another comforter that He may abide with you forever. He said the Holy Spirit was to be with us forever.

The Holy Spirit would not leave us. Now, we say all the time that Jesus is always with us. And He is in a spiritual sense.

I think I talked last week in talking about the ointment, and Jesus said, the poor you’ll have with you always, but you will not always have Me with you. In the form He was in at that point, he’s not with us anymore he’s no longer present with us in bodily form and yet he has sent a comforter on his behalf to be with us so it’s not as though he’s abandoned us he meant what he said I am with you even unto the end of the world is he physically present here on earth? no but he’s with us spiritually and he sent his Holy Spirit to dwell in us and abide with us he says even the spirit of truth the spirit of truth Folks, not the spirit of error, not the spirit of lies, not the spirit of confusion or deception, but the spirit of truth.

Truth is sort of a dirty word in our society. Because maybe you have your truth, I have my truth. What happens if our truths are contradictory to one another?

It doesn’t matter. You have your truth, I have my truth. No, there is a spirit of truth, and there is absolute truth that is conveyed by God, revealed by God to us through His Holy Spirit.

whom the world cannot receive because it seeth him not. The world does not perceive spiritual things. In our natural state, we’re not even looking for godly things.

It’s what the Bible means when it says there is none who seeks after God, no, not one. God is not even on our radar until he sort of invades us, invades our world, I should say, through the conviction of the Holy Spirit when we hear his word. Because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him.

But ye know him, he tells his disciples, ye know him, for he dwelleth with you and shall be in you. So he says here, the Holy Spirit dwells among you and he will be in you. Now, I have a lot of questions about this, to be honest with you.

Some of the other teachers at school and I have discussed this at length, and I don’t know that we’re any closer to coming to a conclusion. But we’ve discussed it some. Where was the Holy Spirit before Pentecost?

Now, we see that they were filled, they were indwelled with the Holy Spirit at the day of Pentecost. I believe that’s what all of the speaking in tongues and the miracles and the fire that came down, I believe that’s what all of that was about. They were indwelled by the Holy Spirit. I also believe that’s why Jesus told them to wait at Jerusalem before they went and fulfilled the Great Commission, because we can’t do it on our own.

Go to every nation and preach the gospel apart from the power of the Holy Spirit. So they had to wait, and yet we see the Holy Spirit showing up from time to time in the biblical texts before that. We see that sometimes David talks about being led by the Spirit.

We see Jesus saying here that the Holy Spirit was among them. And this is where my question is. And I don’t think it makes me heretical for asking this question.

I’m just trying to understand how this works. In the Old Testament days and even in the New Testament days before Pentecost, did the Holy Spirit indwell some believers all the time? Did the Holy Spirit indwell some believers some of the time?

We know at least some of the time some believers had the Holy Spirit. Did everybody get the Holy Spirit at some point or another? Did some people never?

I don’t know. And maybe if you have an answer for that, you can share it with me later. But that’s been a question of mine for some time, and now I’m around other people who are asking the same question, and so we sort of understand what we’re all asking because it’s a hard thing to convey just what I’m trying to wrap my mind around here.

But we know that even if they were not all indwelled with the Holy Spirit before Pentecost, he says the Holy Spirit is among you. He dwelleth with you. He will dwell in you, but he dwelleth with you.

But ye know him, for he dwelleth with you and shall be in you. I will not leave you comfortless. I will not leave you comfortless.

That word for comforter, if I’m remembering my Greek correctly, I believe it’s paraclete, which means a comforter, it means a counselor, it means a helper. He said, basically, I’m not going to leave you to your own devices in this world. To them, in the 30s AD, he was not going to leave them helpless and alone.

To you today, in 2015, he does not leave you helpless and alone. To figure all of this out on your own. He says, I will not leave you comfortless.

I will come to you. Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more. but ye see me, because I live, ye shall live also.

So he tells them that there’s a time coming very shortly when he was going to go away. That they were going to see him no more in his current form. But that eventually he would come back.

The second coming is mentioned in here as I understand it as well. I will come to you, he says in verse 18. And he says, because I live, ye shall live also.

That was not a promise that they were going to live forever because he had risen from the dead in their current form. Now we still live in a fallen world where death is still a very real, I want to say challenge, but it’s more than a challenge. It’s a very real circumstance that we all face.

And yet because he lives, there is the promise of eternal life with God. So yes, we don’t live in this current form forever. But because he lives, we live also.

We will live eternally. At that day, verse 20, at that day, ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you. That’s a great promise.

That he’s with the Father, he’s in the Father, and we’re in him, and he’s in us. Now this is not, this is not some kind of Eastern New Age nonsense that he’s teaching me. A couple years ago I was reading a book that was way beyond my comprehension level.

I had to read each chapter a couple times. And it was for a class I was taking on Christian apologetics. That was the name of the book, by the way, it was Christian Apologetics.

Just a brilliant writer, but I wish he could have come down to the comprehension of a real person. But he was writing about all these religious beliefs that are found in our world today. And there are entire religions that are built on the premise that when we die, we want to be sort of absorbed into God and be part of this universal spirit.

we want to be part of God that’s the idea of Hinduism they’ve got their supreme god Brahman and when we die if you’ve had enough good karma that you can be released from the cycle of reincarnation then you can be absorbed in the spirit of Brahman and be part of the root of it that is bizarre to me and yet we see more and more westerners buying into these kinds of ideas and I could see where somebody could read this and on the surface go that’s what that’s talking about He’s in the Father, and we’re in Him, and He’s in us, and we’re all part of this universal spirit. Ladies and gentlemen, that’s not what it’s talking about. The Bible never says anywhere.

The Bible never gives any indication that we can be God or be part of God, or that we are, or that it would ever be possible. As a matter of fact, the Bible gives the exact opposite impression. You read through the Bible, and all we see is how we are so vastly different from God.

That our very sin nature, the very essence of who we are, is offensive to the essence of who God is. He is so holy and we are so sinful. He is infinite.

We are finite. He is perfect. We are deeply flawed.

He knows everything. And our brains explode trying to just figure out some of the most basic questions of the world. Folks, it’s true what it says in Isaiah that His ways are higher than our ways and His thoughts are higher than our thoughts.

We do not ever become God or part of God or become absorbed into him. What this is talking about, I think back to the passage where he talks about no man can pluck them out of my hand. He’s with the Father.

He’s in the Father. We’re in him and he’s in us and we’re all secure. Doesn’t mean we’re all the same being, but we’re all together and we’re sheltered in God’s hands and in God’s arms. At that day you shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you.

He that hath my commandments and keepeth them, he that hath my commandments and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me, and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him and will manifest myself to him. Now, is this a promise that if we just do enough good things that we’ll be loved by God and he’ll accept us? No, I could see where you would think that, but no. Sort of like where he says in another place, that the ones God loves are those who do his will.

And that’s a paraphrase there. Well, when we talk about the will of God, the law that was given to us to follow was never given to us with the idea that we could follow it. And that if you’ll just do these, I’ve heard rabbis say there are 613 laws in the Old Testament.

It seems to me like there are a lot more than that. but if you could just, so when I pull out the number 613, that’s where I get it from. But if you could just do these 613 things on this checklist, then you’re all right and God will love you.

If you can just do enough good things, if you can just follow Jesus’ teaching enough, God will love you. That’s not what it’s talking about when it says to do His will. Because the whole purpose of the law was that we could not follow it.

We were already sinners. I heard something, I heard a very excellent point this week that as soon as I heard it, I thought that’s going to stick with me for the rest of my life unless I lose my mind. Speaking to a group of kids, the administrator of our school told them, he was talking about stealing.

The whole message was not about stealing, but it was an example. And he said, if I stole this off your desk, would that be a sin? And of course, everybody in the room said yes.

He said, no, that’s not, stealing is not sin. He said, it is a byproduct. of sin.

Sin is not what we do. Sin comes from who we are and it manifests itself in what we do. That is an awesome point.

I thought I’ve tried to make that point before, but I’ve never said it so eloquently, never thought of it so eloquently or so simply as to say these things are a byproduct of sin. Theft, lying, adultery, murder. Folks, those are not the sins in and of themselves.

They and in our nature. God knew when he formulated the law, when he told us these things to do, he knew that we could not do them. And Galatians says that the law is a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ. Because apart from the law in God’s word, and realizing I can’t do that, I’ve already broken that one.

Yeah, I break that one every day. I break that one 15 times a day. I’m okay there, but not perfect.

Apart from having that law and having that standard, I don’t realize how sinful I really am. I think I’ve given the illustration before. It’s kind of like these rides or these play areas that kids go into.

And it says you must be this tall to ride this ride or you must be under this height to play in the ball area, something like that. Well, if there’s no standard there for me to measure myself against, how do I realize whether I fall short or not? I may think, yeah, I feel plenty tall enough to ride that ride.

But it’s not the measure. It’s not the little cartoon character with the arm out going, You must be this tall who makes you too short to ride the ride. It’s not the cartoon character that makes you fall short.

It’s not the standard that makes you fall short. The standard just points out what is already the case. The law, the commandments that we’re given, are not what make us fall short.

Our inability to do those things is not what makes us fall short. They merely point out what is already true, that we by our very nature fall short of God’s holiness. We are already sinners just by our nature.

We have this attitude. We have this heart within us that desires to rebel against God. So the whole point of the law was that we could not obey it.

So the Bible is talking about something else when it says doing the will of God in these instances. It’s not telling us if you could just follow the law, if you could do the commandments, if you could do the right thing, then God will love you and accept you. That’s not what it means to do God’s will in this instance, because we can’t do it.

But God makes his will very clear in other places. The Bible says that God is merciful and not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. What’s the will of God?

What’s the will of God because Jesus has come? What is the will of God that if we are to do it, it will bring God’s favor and God’s acceptance? It is repentance from our sins and trusting in the work of Jesus Christ. It is coming to the realization that I’ve sinned.

Even the realization that brings us to confession, I think, is repentance. Repentance is not getting your life cleaned up and coming to God because we can’t get our lives cleaned up enough to come to God in the first place. Repentance is where we change our mind, the whole way our mind operates.

Where before we say, I sin against God, I rebel against Him, and that’s the way I like it. And we come to the point of realizing I have broken God’s law. I have sinned against him.

And I’m deserving of hell. I need forgiveness. That’s what repentance is.

Say you have a history of moving violations, of speeding. And you’re having to go to court for traffic all the time. And every time you go before the judge, you say that speed limit is stupid.

I don’t care if it does say 40 through there. I’m going 55 and I don’t care what you say. I’ll just keep paying the tickets.

Repentance is not next time coming before the judge and saying, well, I’ll do better next time. I’ll just stop doing it. Repentance is the moment where you realize I’ve broken the law and I’m wrong.

It changes your whole perspective. So the will of God here where he tells us, he that hath my commandments and keepeth him, he it is that loveth me, and he that loveth me shall be loved of my father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him. Where he talks about the commandment of God.

When he talks about the will of God, ladies and gentlemen, the most important thing that God has told us to do that we must do, the only thing that can change our standing with God and make us acceptable to God is repenting of our sin and accepting the forgiveness that God offers in Jesus Christ. Can I just say I’m sorry? Can I just try to do better and suddenly God loves me? No, it doesn’t work that well.

But our sin can be forgiven through Jesus Christ. And we need to come to a point of being willing to repent and accept the forgiveness that He offers. He says, I will love Him and will manifest myself to Him. We say that God doesn’t love us.

God the Father doesn’t love us if we’re not Christians. Doesn’t God love everybody? Well, folks, God does love everybody.

God loves everybody equally. God is also, I don’t care what all the preachers on TV say, I know what the Bible says, and God is also angry about our sin. But God loves everybody.

Well, here it says, folks, God’s love was demonstrated to us in this way, that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. The book of Romans says that. God commendeth his love toward us, and that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

God’s love, any expression of God’s love to us as sinners begins with the message of the cross. Yes, God is angry about sin, but God also loves us enough that he sent his son to take the punishment that reminds us of. Judas, verse 22, saith unto him, not Iscariot, Lord, how is it that thou wilt manifest thyself unto us and not unto the world?

So here they are confused. He’s talked a lot about some very important weighty issues, and yet they tend to focus on this little point of it. You go, oh, goodness, how is that what you focus on?

See, the disciples are like children. The disciples are like children. I was teaching Bible class on Tuesday, and a question was asked about the Holocaust and how it happened.

Then somebody said, what’s the Holocaust? And I had to explain. That threw me when the kids didn’t know.

Some of the kids didn’t know what the Holocaust was. I said, you know, we’ve heard the stories of Hitler. You know, what did Hitler do?

Somebody said, well, he killed Jewish people. I said, well, it was more than that. I said he killed six million Jewish people.

There were also Russians, Poles, Czechs, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses. And I went through a long list of people, and I was talking about that. Some kid raised their hand and said, what’s a homosexual?

I went, ask your mom. Why is that? Out of everything I said, that was not the point.

Why is that what you seize on? Kids do that. Like, out of everything I just said, that is not the important point here.

You’re missing this. Well, they did the same thing. He’s talking about the commandment of God, and he’s talking about forgiveness, and he’s talking about being loved and accepted by God.

And they said, well, how are you going to manifest yourself to us? And that was a relatively, okay, it’s not a minor point, but it’s a relatively minor point in everything that he was just discussing. And Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words, and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him and make our abode with him.

Again, already hit this point pretty hard, not going to do it again. We don’t earn God’s love and forgiveness and acceptance by doing good things. It’s by trusting the good that Christ already did on the cross.

So anything we read about that, we have to interpret through that prism of Bible truth. He that loveth me keepeth not my sayings, and the word which ye hear is not mine, but the Father’s which sent me. okay here we go again we’re talking about the Trinity and he says the words that you heard me say do not come from me they come from the Father now does that mean that Jesus you know Jesus wasn’t saying it Jesus was just a puppet and God the Father had had his hand working the puppet and was throwing his voice no that’s not what he’s saying to those who would look at Jesus and say after all this time well you’re just a man he’s referring them back and saying the words that I’ve spoken are not the words of any mere man.

They are the words of God the Father, the one who sent me. He said at other times, he did what God the Father sent him to do. Now, does that mean Jesus is less God than God the Father?

No. I think I’ve talked about this before, that there was this emptying. I can’t remember the Greek word, but Philippians chapter 2 talks about him finding it not robbery to be made equal with God, but rather he emptied himself.

And what that means is that he for a time limited the independent exercise of his divine attributes. He didn’t stop being God, but for a time during his time on earth, he said, I’m not going to exercise those divine attributes independently of God the Father. I’m going to do exactly what he tells me to do for a purpose.

And so he’s reminding them that the things that he has said, the things that he has spoken, the truth that he has expressed into their lives was not merely the teaching of some normal man, some good teacher, but just a man, but they are words that were given to him by God the Father. Verse 25 said, these things have I spoken unto you, being yet present with you. But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things.

He said, the things you’ve heard so far, I’ve been able to teach you a little bit while I’ve been present with you because God the Father has given me these words to say and I’ve had a short time to teach these things to you. But he says in verse 26, the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name. Again, God the Father sends God the Holy Spirit in the name of God the Son.

He will teach you all things and bring all things to your remembrance whatsoever I’ve said unto you. He said he’s going to remind you of the things that I’ve already taught you and said, but he’s also going to teach you new things. Not new novel things that contradict God’s word as previously expressed, but he’s going to expound on the things that you’ve already learned.

He says in verse 27, peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you, not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. You have heard how I said unto you, I go away and come again unto you.

If you loved me, you would rejoice because I said, I go unto the Father, for my Father is greater than I. Again, this does not mean that Jesus, God the Son, is in a position of being less God than God the Father. But it means there’s a hierarchy here.

And that’s probably not the best way to express it, but I don’t know any other way to express it. So please don’t think I’m teaching anything here