The Holy Spirit’s relationship with Jesus Christ is foundational to understanding the outworking of Christian salvation. Rather than being a separate blessing or secondary experience, the Holy Spirit comes specifically in Jesus’ Name as the promised Comforter (Paraclete). He does not bring a different salvation but rather makes real the presence of Christ in believers’ lives. This understanding corrects common misconceptions about receiving the Holy Spirit as a separate experience from receiving Christ, while highlighting the Spirit’s essential role in Christian life.

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[00:00:00] In coming to understand what Christianity is, there are a number of aspects that you have to take on board. The very most straightforward and simple understanding, I think the biggest thing is to simply know that the Bible is the Word of God. To take on board that there is the fact of revelation from God and that he has spoken and he’s given us the scriptures. It is our task sometimes to come up to understand that, to take on board an exercise if you’re not sure what to make of the Bible, if you’ve had people informing you or relatives who’ve said to you don’t believe all those ideas. In my generation as a young person there used to be in the popular culture a singer who says it ain’t necessarily so. The things of the Bible are not so reliable, it ain’t necessarily so. And we do get pressure from folk outside of Christianity, they haven’t necessarily had a background, anybody teaching them. It could be that they’ve just

[00:01:16] followed suit with what was the times and the ideas that people had. But to be established the scriptures are the Word of God. It’s maybe one of the biggest deciders as to whether you last as a Christian. It’s a very important thing, and you’re not doing the wrong thing to test it. And that testing of whether the Bible is the Word of God is what many a person who’s ended up with the lifelong ministry of being a preacher of that Word, being a teacher of the scriptures, has had to settle in their own mind that they’re dealing with the Word of God. I’ve run across in recent times people who I wouldn’t necessarily say that they are Christians, but they do accept the Scriptures as the Word of God. And to that extent they do find things that are helpful from them, particularly in the Old Testament. There’s many a statement that you’re a wise person who takes it on board and builds your life around it.

[00:02:22] Perhaps what then is a question of what’s the next going a little bit deeper, going a little bit more important I suppose, I’m not going down in level of importance, but going a bit more important. What is the next thing that you need to discover? If you’re on the way in to investigate Christianity and to come to the place of accepting it, it has to do with the person of Christ. And you are confronted with the fact that you have an Old Testament and a New Testament in the Scriptures and there seems to be some difference, that many people, different groups interpret varyingly, as to what is the difference between that required of the Old Testament and that which is put forward in the New. and the Bible itself speaks in terms of covenants,

[00:03:11] and in the Old Testament, they were given fore warning that there would come a day of a New Covenant. Which New Covenant is what the basis of the New Testament is? And so to understand the covenant system that the Jewish people had in the Old Testament, and how within even what was revealed to them, there was a reference to this new covenant that was going to come, and it would advance the revelation steps further. And so we have in the New Covenant a number of things. And now when you introduce the major one of the New Covenant, it is the person of Jesus.

[00:03:51] And you have his teaching as he got around amongst the people in Israel. He even went into non-Israeli territory. And he had things to say, but they included that as far as life back then when he was getting around, there was only one way to be right with God and it was by following the Jewish religion. It was so narrow to say that you couldn’t come to God another way. The woman at the well was told that salvation is from the Jews. But Jesus went on to say, but the time is coming when those who worship the Father shall worship him in spirit and in truth, indicating that there was coming some change. And that change is that the New Testament, which is based on the New Covenant, teaches that all persons who come to Christ, who take him as Lord and Savior,

[00:04:44] who put their trust in him for the forgiveness of sins, who believe in his name, another way it’s worded, that they are those who are given salvation. And one of the introductions to this ongoing progressive revelation that’s found in the New Testament is a tightening, a more specific ex, spelling out what the word salvation means. It’s a very general word and you could use the word salvation to mean any rescuing from some danger. And salvation could be associated with God’s forgiveness, yes, but it was in the Old Testament a broader word and understanding than in the New. But in the New Testament, salvation is linked entirely to the person of Jesus Christ. And so he had a number of exclusive statements, I am the way, the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father but by me, or you couldn’t get a more straightforward exclusive statement

[00:05:44] that there’s only one way to salvation, it is by coming to Jesus. And in the Gospel of John, the beginning chapters, the first three chapters illustrate with the facts that even though people may have believed in God, there is a new challenge in the coming of Jesus to believe in him. And having salvation is narrowed to whether or not you have believed in his name, whether you have taken him. And so Jesus said a lot of things about him being the door of the sheepfold and only by coming by him, you get into the fold. and such statements of his, what the teachings of Jesus are full of. Now as we come to this we have a further deeper thing to understand from the New Testament.

[00:06:31] I’ve sort of progressed not in terms of things that are less important, but in terms of things that are very deeper and harder to grasp. We started by talking about just Old Testament, New Testament, and just believing the Word of God. But first we started and we’ve moved ahead compared to the Old Testament, and the New Covenant that the New Testament is based upon. But I’ve also made it more specific that it’s based on the person of Jesus Christ, and who he is and what he’s done, and the cry of the Gospel, which is time to not just believe in God and be a theist, not just to believe in the religion revealed through Moses and the prophets of the Old Testament.

[00:07:15] But to come and put your faith in the person that he is, I am the way, the truth and the life, as I’ve already quoted, no one comes to the Father but by me. And so this progressive revelation through the scriptures is tightening it, but the next step, and here’s one that a lot of Christians, even people who have come to Christ, and I’m sure we’ll see them in heaven when we get there, because they’ve got salvation by coming to Christ, but there’s still something that really hasn’t landed home. And you may be here tonight and one of those people for whom what I’m about to say hasn’t fully landed home with you, and if you listen hard there might be a blessing tonight when you can get this understanding home and settled. And it has to do with the relationship of Jesus the Saviour and the Holy Spirit.

[00:08:11] Now the whole question of what role is played by the Holy Spirit has not been something that has been prosecuted back in Christian history for very long, you might be surprised my dad, when he did his doctoral studies, was a study of the development of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit across the whole of the Christian era. And a part of the understanding that’s there and it’s agreed to by everybody that’s the understanding of the Holy Spirit is something that came later not earlier. And although the Bible in the Old Testament mentions the Holy Spirit how to interpret it as something that people have always had the same idea about. But when it comes to the Holy Spirit it is particularly important to see if you can get clear in your mind the role that he, the Holy Spirit, plays in the salvation that is centered

[00:09:01] on Christ. Those verses just previously I’ve quoted about Jesus being the way, Jesus being the door, he’s the one, if you believe in him you have eternal life etc. Where does the Holy Spirit fit into that? There are some groups who do make mistakes just at this point in not getting it correct in terms of the connection between Jesus as the Saviour and the Holy Spirit who is offered to us in that salvation. By the way, how do I know that you get the Holy Spirit when you come to Jesus because right at the beginning of the New Covenant, which was the day of Pentecost when Peter preached that wonderful sermon, and thousands of people, some of whom no doubt would have

[00:09:41] gone to heaven had they died just before Peter preached – they would have gone to heaven because they were trusting in God the way the Old Testament revealed you get in the door – but the moment Peter preached that call and finished it with a call for them to save themselves from that wicked generation, and to come and respond he called for repentance we get the forgiveness of sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit and the twin blessings of that Pentecostal call of Peter to the audience and what amounts to the request of the New Testament if you really want to get right with God is that you repent of your sins and then you receive not only forgiveness but the gift of the Holy Spirit, the incoming into your personality of the Holy Spirit.

[00:10:32] And so the first way to answer how is the relationship with Jesus and the Holy Spirit to be understood from the New Testament revelation, it is that as you do business with Jesus, so you get or don’t get the Holy Spirit, and if you disregard Jesus, you’ve got no way to do business with the Holy Spirit because he comes, as I’ve just explained now, as a consequence of the blessing that Jesus is and has come to be, and I’m using language there of there being some change which I better now explain. Jesus came as the Savior of the world because he was born the Son of God, the eternal Son of God, and we’ve in previous Sunday mornings been getting into this, that he was the embodiment of all that God is, bodily the Scriptures teaches is, and just that one third of God took on humanity and was Jesus Christ, but it is

[00:11:33] that in the indwelling of Jesus by God himself and the Holy Spirit’s included in that because he was born of the Spirit, as the Spirit overshadowed the womb of Mary and caused his virgin birth and caused his birth. So there is in Jesus all the Bible tells us all that God is, the fullness of the Godhead bodily in Jesus. And here’s the fullness of the revelation of God, the exact image of who God is. There’s a mystery in this that involves the trinity of God, the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit, but you don’t get with the incarnation of Jesus one-third of the Godhead coming and occupying him, but you get all that God is. And then when Jesus is set forth as the Savior and you’re invited to take him as your Saviour, the consequence of your taking Jesus as your

[00:12:29] Saviour is you have the access to God in totality. There isn’t anything that’s left out by coming to Jesus. And so what has happened across the years, there have been different little Christian groups or people trying to work it all out, this relationship of Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Some have sort of thought of it that Jesus did one thing and his becoming a Saviour by dying for us on the cross and rising again, but the Holy Spirit does another one and so then in their minds they imagine that there’s a benefit to be gained by receiving Jesus as your Saviour, but another benefit you get by receiving the Holy Spirit of whatever he does. That is absolutely wrong because it’s divorcing the presence of the Holy Spirit in us now from the work of Jesus. Now, to examine that more carefully so you know what I am saying is right, those other people – I remember down in Adelaide where I used to

[00:13:27] live – there was a certain spot where the people from a church who believed those ideas that there was a second blessing that you got that did not come through Jesus’ Calvary work but it came through the Holy Spirit. Those people used to do a lot and admired them from what they did – they would run out on the streets and talk to people – especially in the evenings they’d catch you, knew whether it was light and if you went walking and it was going to walk across the line you would get talked to by these people. They would say, oh yes, they get out of you that you receive Jesus, but then they’d tell you you need to receive the Holy Spirit, and it was a separate work of God’s grace. Now there’s a semi-truth in what they were trying to do that is actually good for us to recognize the ministry of the Holy Spirit and for there to come a moment in your life

[00:14:15] when someone challenges you to wake up to the presence of the Holy Spirit and to look to see what he can do for you. And there’s many a great Christian worker who’s had just such an experience, one of whom was Dior Moody. Let’s see if I’ve got it right. Anyway, there was an occasion when Moody had been preaching and he finished up with a big meeting and gotten his carriage and a little old man came along afterwards and looked in through the carriage window and waved his finger, I hope I’ve got the right person, I think it’s Dior Moody, and he waved his finger and says, honour the Holy Spirit. The man took it up as a challenge and did a lot more asking for the Spirit’s power and his ministry took off. A lot more people were being moved by his sermons because he learned to honour the Holy Spirit. But that’s not the same thing as teaching people that there’s one blessing

[00:15:13] you get that Jesus engineered by his death and the cross. But there’s another one that is the Holy Spirit, but it might be quite different and mystical, if you’ve got this you might as well get that. And that’s just not what the scriptures teach. And there are some passages that give us an insight into this in the Gospel of John where it particularly uses a term to apply both to Jesus, but also at a later moment to apply to the Holy Spirit. And it is the term paraclete. Now I don’t bring up Greek terms very often, but paracletos, the Greek word sometimes are shortened, depending on the little endings you might or might not put on, to paraclete or paracletos. The word para means alongside. You’re probably used to in our language, something as a para-helper, or a para-listener, and that people come alongside. And the rest of the word is someone who is called alongside. So it gets translated in

[00:16:18] our English, a paraclete, as a comforter, someone who is called alongside, and helps you do what you’re already set to do or what you need to do, relieves the pain you’ve already God or whatever, a paraclete is someone who comes alongside. But even our English word comforter, our English word someone who’s called alongside, has different meanings. Some people don’t realise there’s actually a picture that was a painting done, I don’t know, I’ve forgotten the name of the bloke, but someone painted a picture of Oliver Cromwell and it had a subscription at the bottom, Oliver Cromwell, he comforts his troops. And then it’s got a picture of him holding a pitchfork, one of those ones with multiple prongs, and there’s the soldiers not wanting to get up over the wall and go into the fire, and they’re going like this and they’re back sides. And it says Oliver Cromwell comforts

[00:17:22] his troops. Now there that’s picking up the meaning of comfort of someone who’s called alongside to help you get on with the job. And in the case of our spirituality sometimes we are like that, but we tend to linger from doing what God is asking us to do, or we sometimes get scared and retreat. And the Holy Spirit, a part of his work, as was understood by the person who painted that picture, and probably Oliver Cromwell, that there’s a need sometimes for Jesus to do drastic things to you. If there’s someone sitting here and in the last six months you’ve had a shocking, drastic time and you just can’t understand why God would let that happen to you, every now and then I meet somebody who’s got a bit of an annoyance at God because of something has happened. And there are some events of life when a loved one dies when somehow the right thing doesn’t work out. One youth group in

[00:18:28] West Australia was a girl who was a strong Christian girl in the youth group, and she had a boyfriend who she hoped to marry, and then discovered that she was a good girlfriend but he had another bad girlfriend that he was sleeping with. And it really hurt her. But it didn’t only hurt her in the romantic sense of him not working out, but it hurt her because she’d been trusting God and if she did the right thing he’d look after and she couldn’t explain. There are some mysteries in what in the sovereignty of God he allows him. He has his methods to get us to where we’ll ultimately be blessed, but on the travel through you sometimes can’t see it. And she dropped out of Christian things herself. I don’t know whether she continued to so drop out, but she got hurt and stopped trusting God. And I want to tell you of the people I’ve met around Australia when doing ministry

[00:19:30] in different places. There are a number of Christian people who’ve stumbled because something happened they couldn’t understand and the consequence for them was that they stopped trusting God. And the comforter sometimes has reasons for letting the bad things happen. You just have to leave it in his hands like Job did, the Lord gives and the Lord takes away blessed be the name of the Lord. And he just had to trust God. And our book of Job I think is in there for the purpose of illustrating for us that he’s sovereign, but it’s not that the things that are bad that seem to happen, that is the last statement about them. God has his purposes and you just trusted him. And one of my favourite verses, I’ll keep repeating this, is in the book of Psalms which says, trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not to your own understanding and all your ways acknowledge him and he shall

[00:20:35] direct your paths. And you can go on trusting God even when it’s difficult. And in the long run God will prove himself, if at least in eternity when it’s all unraveled, but sometimes even in this life, you can look back and see the benefit of what he allowed to happen. And so we’re looking here at the fact that the Holy Spirit is one who’s called alongside and the power is alongside and the Ka’la’o is the word to call. It’s when you have someone that you can’t make it without. And just this week last Shona had a little second baby and she was very glad that she had Michelle to come to the birthplace and for there to be someone who was called alongside and mothers often do that many different ways. And the baby’s fine. Anyway, let me say to you that the Holy Spirit is a paraclete, but the calling alongside is not just someone who’s going to make Patu and say, nicely, nicely, but

[00:21:46] he’s someone who’s going to help you to do that which is needed. And sometimes you find that you haven’t been obedient and you really rather down on yourself because you’ve been sinfully disobedient. But if you call on the Comforter and say, I didn’t have it all for strength, please help me, you’d be surprised at the power of God that can come flowing in. That’s who the Comforter is. Now the night, I’m not going to go on all night too long, but I do have four or five verses that are from the Gospel of John. I’ll bring out a point or two from each one. And the first one here is in John 14, 16 to 17. And I’ll ask the Father and he will give you another helper. Now the word another is the word another, another one just like the one they’ve got. But the word helper is the word paracletos, to be with you forever. So the first thing that we find in this particular passage is the identity of who the helper is. He is actually, verse 17, even the

[00:22:54] Spirit of truth, it’s the Holy Spirit, but in the New Testament you’ll find it’s the Spirit of truth, the Spirit of grace, the Spirit of this or that. There’s actually seven descriptors of the Holy Spirit by saying Spirit of truth or Spirit of joy or Spirit of different things. And I’ve actually It’s actually meant someone who believed there were seven spirits in Heaven, because they counted up seven blocks, they were missing the point altogether, it’s seven characteristics of the Holy Spirit, and seven roles he has in helping us, Spirit of Truth, is one of them, and one of the ways that the Holy Spirit helps is when you’ve had a confusion, need some light to shine in to understand what’s actually going on, and to what is required of you. Our spirit of truth is because of the Holy Spirit as a ministry of doing that.

[00:23:52] Sometimes it’s truth that makes you realise that you’ve been the one and the wrong one, and because he’s the Spirit of the truth. Sometimes it is that you haven’t understood what the scriptures are saying, but the Holy Spirit will teach you the meaning of the scriptures. And if you read the Bible with a prayer, Lord I don’t always get it right, there’s an awful lot of complexity that I don’t understand, would you please lead me to your truth? If you make it a way to read the Bible by reading it prayerfully, asking for the ministry of the Spirit of Truth, you’ll be staggered at what happens. Now this Spirit of Truth is something available to Christians only. All the Holy Spirit does minister to non-Christians so you could find a few passages in the Bible where a non-Christian has the spirit come and tell him things.

[00:24:44] What is being said to us is that He is available as a helper to you if you’re a Christian to be someone who’ll come alongside you and help you understand it or help you understand that yours is just a trust and leave it to him. 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 he will be in you.” Now what’s that about? This is Jesus speaking to his disciples before his death and resurrection, before his ascension to heaven, before the day of Pentecost where the Gospel is first announced as a part of the New Covenant.

[00:25:28] But here Jesus is talking about the fact that they have the ministry of a comforter. When he says he dwells with you he’s talking about himself. He’s talking about the ministry of the Holy Spirit working on them and why was it that those 12 disciples just stuck around Jesus that even though there were lots of dissuaders who tried to lever them loose, you’ll be surprised at how when you become a Christian you find dissuaders come your way too or people who want to give you reasons why you may be taking the wrong step, just drop that silly stuff. But there is someone who is the spirit of truth and if you pray to him he will show you and give you a settlement that you haven’t made the wrong step, just rest in him. And this person was Jesus to the 12 disciples, they had a very hard time when Jesus got killed

[00:26:24] and buried because they had had a person with them. Peter explained it when Jesus said, well you lot will also go away when some other son left and Peter said, but who will we go to? You have the words of eternal life. He has the spirit of truth was through Jesus. They had him physically, what a wonderful thing to be with Jesus for three years, hey. But he says the world cannot receive the spirit of truth, the Holy Spirit’s ministry because it neither sees him nor knows him, but you know him for he dwells with you, that’s when Jesus was it for them, and he will be in you. Rather interesting language because they have the comforter with them in the presence of

[00:27:11] Jesus but it’s going to come about a change when instead of having someone to walk around with, they’re going to have someone who will be inside them. The indwelling of the Holy Spirit is going to be the comforter to those disciples when in the opening of this new period of time. Let’s go to the next verse that we’re looking at and that is in verse 26 of the same chapter. For the help of the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in my name. Where you see the Holy Spirit comes and ministers not as some different part of salvation. Jesus had his bit to offer and the Holy Spirit is going to bring another, something different. But now the Holy Spirit is going to be sent by the Father, we actually learned that they are going to be sent by the Father and Son when Jesus had already sent it.

[00:28:03] The Father and Son sent the Holy Spirit back to the believing disciples. But he came in Jesus’ name. What that means is that there’s not a separate thing you have to do to be a Christian. Receive Jesus a Saviour and then you get to some moment when you receive the Holy Spirit. As though that is something separate to do. The Holy Spirit, when He comes, He will come in Jesus’ name. That works by being the Spirit of God who brings Jesus to live in you and when you pray to receive Christ sometimes we read John’s gospel and it says, as many as received him to them he gave the power to become the children of God. Sometimes we, in our minds, especially when we tell it to children,

[00:28:45] we have this picture of Jesus coming and hopping inside you. And one little girl was reported to have scissors going away to her bedroom, and the mother learned that she was going to let Jesus into her heart. I don’t know how real that story is, I just said. It’s the picture, though, of someone taking too physically of Jesus coming into your heart. No, they way that Jesus comes into your heart is the moment when having believed on His name, and you receive Him as your saviour, which means you trust Him to save you from your sins. God gives you the Holy Spirit, but He comes in Jesus’ Name,

[00:29:26] and that’s how He is also the helper. The helper, the Holy Spirit whom the father will send in My Name, name. He will teach you all things. Bring to your remembrance. This is to the disciples in particular who follow Jesus around. Bring to your remembrance all that I’ve said you. So the work of the Holy Spirit is to come in Jesus’ name. Let’s go to the next verse that we have. I’m glad for Latisha up there, being able to put them up so well. But when the Helper comes, notice this time the translators have chose Paracletus or Paraclete. They’ve chosen to use the word Helper. And you’ll find that in the various spots where the word is used in the Greek, that people choose, the English translators, different words. Comforter, Helper, advocate is another. And they all concentrated

[00:30:21] in the Gospel of John in these four or five spots. But here when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father. Now if ever there was evidence that you needed, that this experience of the Holy Spirit being sent from the Father is very important because there’s another passage in John’s Gospel where the Lord is speaking about the Holy Spirit. And it’s when after his resurrection he reappears to the disciples and is on the Lord’s Day so they’re meeting all together and he turns up. And in one passage in John it says about the fact he told them to receive the Holy Spirit. And some people make a doctrine out of it that you trust Jesus to be your Saviour and then you get a receiving of the Holy Spirit as something separate which is what was happening then in the upper room. The only problem with that is the little word send. But when the Helper comes, whom I will send, Jesus speaking,

[00:31:23] whom I will send you from the Father. He’s actually telling here of not a moment after he’s gone back to heaven and crowned King of Kings and is still in heaven, but it’s a moment, that is what he is talking about. He’s talking about the fact it’s not some separate blessing that happened when he was in the room with the disciples. He was telling him of the fact that they were to await the coming of the Spirit. Whom I will send to you from the Father. He had to ascend and go back to the Father. He and the Father together sent the Holy Spirit. As he came to fulfil all of this, of being the paraclete. Church history has a moment when some of the people got it all mixed up and they tried to make of Jesus only sent the Spirit, but when you read it carefully, it’s something Jesus did from heaven when he was with the Father and the Father and he together sent the Spirit.

[00:32:24] And there’s quite a write-up about how they gradually worked that out right in church history and all the big councils. Who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me. So he doesn’t come making a clamour about himself or somehow bringing something separate from the blessing of Jesus, he comes to bring the blessing of Jesus. And there’s a sense in which, in terms of receiving, you may receive Christ as Saviour by putting a trust in Him and that be followed by your giving the Holy Spirit, but you don’t receive Jesus into your person and then the Holy Spirit coming as a second blessing. No, he comes in Jesus’ name and he proceeds from the Father when Jesus and the Father sent him. And he will be a witness about me.

[00:33:16] And there’s something very special about the ministry of the Holy Spirit that he’s always self-effacing and he loves to build up the role of Jesus and he comes to work the role of Jesus. So there’s only one work of God through you, through Jesus as done in you by the Holy Spirit when he comes. There’s other verses I could bring to bear, but the truth is there in the Scriptures that there is not a separate moment for you to get the Holy Spirit aside from you coming to Christ. It’s on the basis of your coming to Christ that the Holy Spirit is given to you.

[00:33:56] Hence, at the Day of Pentecost, a lot of those people who were there, the 3,000 people who get baptised eventually, many of them would have gone to heaven had they died just before Peter preached because of the Old Testament religion they would use in good standing. There probably were a lot of sinners too, but nonetheless Peter preaches that they need to repent in a deeper sense. They need to let Jesus be their saviour. They need to be baptised in their confession as it were, and they will receive the forgiveness of sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit. And that is the coming of the Spirit of Truth who comes to represent Jesus in a person. So don’t let anybody talk you into there being some second experience that is a second work

[00:34:46] of God’s power of grace. It is a gracious thing. I’m going to be cautious how I say this. It is a gracious thing when the Holy Spirit answers your prayer and I often help people to pray for the Holy Spirit to come and do this and that and in their lives are what is needed. But it isn’t something apart from Jesus, it’s something because of Jesus. The role of Paraclete is here very obviously the Holy Spirit and he bears witness about Jesus. So you can see that you can’t just run the Holy Spirit as Jesus and nor can you run the

[00:35:24] Holy Spirit giving something apart from Jesus blessing. And these are elements of doctrine very important to understand. We’ll go to John 16, verse 7, and here’s where Jesus is about to go to the cross and he knows the end is coming for him and it’s a terrible end of his death and resurrection and the agony in the garden where he doesn’t really want to get separated from the Father because of our sins but he’s willing to, to save us and not my will but yours be done. So there’s Jesus and the Father and Jesus says not just what I think to do but what you say I’m willing. Nevertheless I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away the helper will not come to you, that’s the Paraclete again and he will not

[00:36:19] come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you. And so the coming of the Holy Spirit didn’t happen in that John chapter where Jesus is breathing on them and he’s present with them. The Holy Spirit comes when he’s gone to heaven and Jesus and the Father sends the Holy Spirit in the beginning of the New Covenant, I will send him to you. And that’s a very beautiful verse about Jesus sending the Holy Spirit to his believing disciples. And if that moment has never come to you that you’ve been a receptor of the Holy Spirit, you’re actually not a Christian yet. You may be someone who’s believing the Bible, you may be on the journey in, you may be getting

[00:37:06] ready, but you need to confess Jesus as your Savior and trust him to fulfill his promise. And as he comes to you as Savior he will send the Holy Spirit to you. And it is by the Holy Spirit, and we learn from the book of Ephesians, that the presence of Christ is created in your life. It’s the Holy Spirit happening of you having Christ caught in your heart, represented in your life. And this is the Helper who comes to you from Jesus. As we were looking there, that’s John 16, and somehow or other, I need to find my right verse here. Let’s go to the next one please.

[00:37:57] That is the last one, is it? Okay, that’ll do. I actually had a string of verses for the morning and I had a string of verses for the evening and I got rather clever, I thought, and I had them marked in my Bible, ones for the next, but all the morning ones were looking up at me and I’ve got to untangle them. Alright, so we’ve had from the Gospel of John all these spots that talk about the paracledos or the one who is the comforter. I’m hoping what you’ll remember tonight is that word paraclete or paracledos, para alongside paracledos is called, it’s when you need someone to come. And there is no better comfort when the person you can get alongside you is either the disciples

[00:38:44] knew when it was Jesus in person, and when we know the same almost blessing of being the Holy Spirit representing Jesus, he is the Helper. And if you get into some difficult place in next week, this week coming, if you find yourself with a sorrow that is overwhelming you, call for the comforter, go to a place where you can pray on your own and say, Lord Jesus, I need your help, please send your Holy Spirit. Lord, I’ve got something going wrong in my life, would you let the Holy Spirit iron it out? It is amazing when we try to guard for the Holy Spirit to take over what happens. There’s many a story when you read Christian testimonies and read books about how to make Christianity work.

[00:39:41] The biggest thing to learn is you can’t do it without the Holy Spirit. And when you learn that he is so quick to want to help you, he wants to be the one that you call alongside. Just think for a moment, have you had moments when you tried out for the Holy Spirit to come and help you? See what happens. He is a powerful, mysterious force for helping you do the will of Jesus. Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, I thank you for these verses in the scriptures, and thank you for John’s Gospel.

[00:40:16] It has this group of them all about the Holy Spirit. I thank you, Father, for the fact that you don’t leave us in the world comfortless. I know, Jesus, that you thought about your poor disciples as having felt so comfortable having you there all the time, and then you were going away and you started telling them you were going away and they started sorrowing even before it happened. But you said to them, it’s expedient for me to go away because if I don’t go away, I won’t get to send the Holy Spirit to you or the comforter. Thank you, Father, the Christian life, one of the biggest truths about it, maybe that’s all wrapped up in Jesus, but the one alongside it is that you get Jesus’ help by the Holy Spirit who comes as the Comforter for you. Thank you for these things, we pray now in His name. Amen.