Jesus, the first Helper, promised His disciples that He would not leave them as orphans but would send ‘another Helper’, the Holy Spirit, who is exactly the same as Him. This Spirit of Truth continues Jesus’s ministry on earth, bringing an unshakeable assurance that the Gospel is true, a reality that the world cannot receive. This culminates in the most marvellous Christian experience: the Father and the Son coming through the Spirit to make “Their home” in the believer’s heart, bringing the very presence of God into one’s life.

Automatically Generated Transcript

[00:00:00] This morning and tonight, I’m hoping to tackle a topic that’s too big for one service, and so if you are interested in what we get onto today, this morning, then come along tonight and you’ll hear a further episode of it. The other thing to say is that what I’m doing this morning is from John 14, and what I’m doing tonight is also from John 14, but I’m doing the later verses this morning and the earlier verses tonight, which is why I think Jared was about to mention the wrong verse, but it was my fault for doing this morning from verses 15 to 23. John 14 verses 15 to 23. Now what this passage begins, and what is really big in John 14, is bringing out some very deep truths, and the deep truths have to be to do with the relationship, the connection

[00:01:08] between that which Jesus brought and that which the Holy Spirit has promised to continue. And if you love me, you’ll keep my commandments, and I will ask the Father and he will give you another helper who’s going to go on to talk about the Holy Spirit. Now the interesting little word, another, means another one just the same as the one you’ve already got. It’s not talking about you’ve had a terrible teacher, but don’t worry, they’ll get sacked and you’ll get a better one. That’s school teacher I mean, not me. But when it says another, it means another just the same as if it makes no difference which you have.

[00:01:54] The second word, helper, is actually a word, it’s a very famous Greek word and parakletos. And p covered means alongside, and the word kletos comes from to call. So if someone has called alongside, I don’t know if you’ve ever had trouble with being a difficult task, and you don’t know what to do about it, but you know someone who is an expert, I’m very lucky because when it comes to computers, everybody in my house is better than me and some of them are quite experts. So if I get mixed up as to what to do, there’s always someone I can call on. And the idea of someone called alongside to help is what that word helper is. It’s got a shade of meaning that we, our English word helper isn’t quiet, it’s not just someone that comes along and holds the tools or gives you a little bit of help. It’s the idea of someone who will really be what you need it.

[00:02:54] And that need may be different in different circumstances. It’s actually a famous painting about Oliver Cromwell and it’s got Oliver Cromwell comforts his troops. But they’re there in a trench-like business and he’s got a big pitchfork and the comforting of troops is he’s getting him on the backside so that they’ll go over the line into the fight. What was needed there, was a little bit of courage. And sometimes in our lives, we need a little bit of, not a little bit, we need a lot of courage and the Holy Spirit, this other helper, this other comforter is another way it’s translated, is someone who comes comes to give you what you didn’t find in yourself. He’s just as Jesus was. And so this is who this person is being talked of.

[00:03:48] He’s another helper. There’s actually an interesting thing in the passage where it goes on to talk about what this helper will do. And one of the things that he’s going to do is because he’s called the spirit of truth. And you’ll see it there in verse 17. Even the spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive because it neither sees him nor knows him. Now, in the first instance, Jesus, when he came, had the power of the spirit upon him.

[00:04:19] And he came to bring a spiritual kingdom. But the world was so totally not understanding, not getting, not having the sensitivities or the spiritual dimension with which to cope with who Jesus was. They didn’t even recognize the spirituality of his ministry. They just recognize he was taking over the popularity from the leaders. They just recognize that he was saying things they didn’t understand.

[00:04:49] And when Jesus came, he came actually as the first episode of doing something that Jesus was coming for. Because Jesus is the first comforter. And the Holy Spirit is the second one come as a comforter. How did Jesus come? He came to do something that humanity had no capacity of doing and understanding. He came to bring God into visibility. He came to show us the one that we had lost in the fall when Adam and Eve first sinned and the human race lost closeness with God. We were kicked out, we the human race of the garden. We lost opportunity to be one with God and God was in the business of demonstrating what we’d lost by Jesus coming

[00:05:43] and the incarnation of Christ is a most marvellous miracle of eternity, stepping into time and showing us the God that we had lost. So Jesus was the first helper and Jesus came and he, of course, says of the second helper that he’ll be with you forever. It’s talking about the contrast between the fact of Jesus’ mission would bring him for a time. He’d go to the cross, be crucified, go to Hades, the better place of hell if you like. He’d be risen from the dead and then eventually after talking with the disciples a bit across the 40 days, he’d ascend back to heaven where he was crowned King of Kings and Lord of Lords. So the coming of Jesus as a helper had a time limit because of his mission and all that he needed to do, he was going to go back to heaven and take the result of his crucifixion before the Father. It was all a part of the plan that we could be forgiven. But the Holy Spirit, in contrast, when he comes, he will not leave again

[00:06:53] in the sense that he’s going to be with us forever. Even when we go to heaven, he’ll be there too. And that’s why down in verse 18 in the passage, Jesus speaks and says, I will not leave you as orphans. Actually, the little Greek word that we get sounds like the word orphan in English, maybe your English word comes from there. Jesus is saying, when I go away to heaven because the fact of Jesus returning to heaven and the fact that he’s coming back to collect us, which is called the second coming, that’s real, that’s literal. But Jesus is aware that when he does go away, these poor disciples who’ve had something so special, they didn’t fully twig, understand what made it special, that in this one Jesus who was with them was the very God of gods in human form. Remember a previous sermon, we’re looking at the verse that said that in Christ, the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily. So it wasn’t just that Jesus is one member of the

[00:08:01] Trinity and the other two thirds are missing in his being with us. No, all that God is, was in Christ, including the spirituality of the Holy Spirit. Jesus was what he was because of the Holy Spirit having him born, because of the Holy Spirit having him anointed, because of the Holy Spirit leading him in all that he did, but not only Jesus, the father so that the Lord could say, what you’ve seen me do you’ve seen the father the father works and I work if you want to study to do at home about Jesus just study about the works of Jesus and the works of the father and you’ll get hopelessly confused if you don’t understand that Jesus didn’t do anything on his own but all a god was with him and so the works that he did with the works of the father they were the works of the Holy Spirit anointing him our Savior he was the first

[00:08:57] one coming like the Holy Spirit is later promised to come that he might be alongside us and to help us and those disciples they got absolutely thrilled with who was Jesus and when he began to announce that he was going away they were in despair because the presence of Jesus as a comforter they’d gotten so much to love do you know our Christian lives are just the same that when a person comes to Christ when at last you understand that he’s achieved by his death a forgiveness for you a free pardon and you come to receive him as your personal Savior when you let him be that for you you begin a journey which gradually gets more and more wonderful walking is a Christian what makes it so terrific to be a Christian is the sense of who is with you Jesus there is no

[00:09:56] one greater to have with you Jesus he’s the first comforter but he told his disciples he had a journey to do because his return to heaven was not just a figurative one his journey to heaven was a real one and his journey back again in the Second Coming is a real one when he comes at the end of the age. But God has arranged that that which they had, those disciples, by Jesus being with them, they are going to have a continuity of the same by the Holy Spirit coming, and so that’s why he was called another comforter, the one exactly the same. Well it’s fascinating who the Holy Spirit is and what is his ministry. It’s to continue the ministry of Jesus, but not with any finish to it, but something that’s continuous. It’s a marvellous thing. Well here we have Jesus saying this, and in the passage he says, I

[00:10:59] won’t leave you as orphans, and he’s using that word as someone who’s been abandoned. You know most of us go through times to one degree or another where we have a build up of something going good, but then something happens and we feel let down, left alone, all the wind taken out of our sails. Sometimes there’s circumstances that change and you got your favourite job and the company went broke. I’m just imagining possibilities and you had to find another task or another job. Well sometimes it is because of those crises of human existence coming upon you, whether it’s sickness or a loved one who dies. In this period of time on earth at the moment, we are not immune from the things that come as tragedies, and one sort of tragedy or another can happen to different people in different ways. But we’re told that the comforter is never going to leave us, and through him

[00:12:12] Jesus won’t be leaving us, because he’ll be the one who’s bringing Jesus. You know when a person becomes a Christian it’s because they hear of his forgiveness and his death and the cross, that’s what Easter starts on. But when a person becomes a Christian you get tremendous promises of God being with you, the promise of eternal life that will be never taken away from you, the promise that you have God with you. Jesus’ very name God with us. The baby was given a name. And I mean God with us. What a fantastic thought to have that God is never going to leave you. Well sometimes in this life, in this stage, when we’ve come to Christ, we can have things go wrong and we can think God has left us. We can think somehow that we’ve come under a permanent shadow. But hang on, hang on because Jesus promised another comforter who would never go.

[00:13:17] Now it’s interesting how he talks. I will ask the Father and he’ll give you another help, another comforter, to be with you forever. That’s the point I’m making. Even the spirit of truth. Now when Jesus came, he was the truth. One of his famous statements I want to get into tonight is where he says, I am the way, the truth and the life. There’s so much in those statements of Jesus as to who he was that we need to make visible and to bring to understanding. And that’s tonight. But Jesus here says, you know him for he dwells, speaking to his disciples, you know him for he dwells with you and he will be in you. Now I think for a moment, how do the disciples, Peter, James and John, what’s Jesus meaning when he says, you know him for he dwells with you? The dwelling with you is because Jesus is there and all the fullness of the Godhead dwells in Jesus’

[00:14:29] bottle, including the Holy Spirit. And he had special anointing on him that happened in his baptism. So Jesus’ benefit with the disciples that they got used to was this special presence. And that’s how come they became spiritually discerning. Jesus differentiates between them and the rest of the world. He dwells with you and will be in you. But the world cannot receive because it neither sees him nor knows him. And Jesus is speaking here about the fact that his disciples came aware of Jesus because of Jesus being the one who had the Holy Spirit. And he says, I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you. And he’s going to come back in order to be able to help those disciples or how’s he going to come back? By the Holy Spirit coming as another comforter. And so that’s why they won’t be orphans. Yet a little while and the world will see me no more. That’s when he dies. And he’s away. The world thinks

[00:15:42] wonderful thing. Got rid of that fellow was disturbing everybody. I will come to you in this sense. I think he’s speaking of his resurrection. I will come to you. So the absence of Jesus is going to be short. And yet a little while the world will see me no more. But you will see me. And because I live you shall live also is what the passage goes on to say. Because I live you will live also. So Jesus resurrection has a very special part to play. Well that’s John 14 and down the bottom it says that you will see me because I live you shall live also. If we turn the words up another step please. In that day you’ll know that I am in the Father and you in me. Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved of my father. And I will love him. Now look at this. I will love him and manifest myself to him. Now this is Jesus speaking to us as Christians. Because he loves us. He calls for our obedience.

[00:17:01] And as we allow that to happen then he’s going to be wanting to come and manifest myself to him. I get something one of my daughters, Heidi, gets me to do is to type up story lines. I think she’s thinking one day when I’ve passed away, they’ll have something record of my thinking through life. But it’s called something story teller or whatever. And I have to answer a question. And one of the questions it puts there is, what’s the most precious thing that you’ve ever experienced. There’s probably a lot of things I could say there of events that have happened, but what’s the most precious thing to me? You see what this verse is talking about? I will love him and manifest myself to him. The Apostle Paul knew moments when he was in some desperate time where he was put in jail or he was threatened and things were going wrong. One of those times in jail the record says, but the Lord came and stood

[00:18:22] by me. That sense of the presence of Jesus when you’re going through some desperate thing, I don’t think I’ve ever had any ones as desperate as the Apostle Paul. It might have been much smaller, but one of them was overseas, having finished my master’s thesis, I had to disprove the writing of one of the other professors to prove my point. Then he got wind of it and put pressure behind the scenes for my thesis to be cancelled. My supervising man went chicken and agreed that he’d tell me I had to have my thesis cancelled and start again. And he also said, do it in another area, not theology. That wouldn’t mean New Testament or something else. That was a terrible moment. I had a habit at that time of going into the nearby Baptist Church, the first Baptist Church of Dallas, it was a very big church, but it was close, and praying. And so that Saturday night I used to pray through the

[00:19:36] Saturday night. I had a burden and I guess I bled my heart to Christ about having spent the whole time almost finished. No money left, I actually had no money to buy food, it was a pretty desperate time. And I cried out to Christ. And that happened to me. A sense of his presence, it wasn’t a big dramatic vision or anything to boast about, it was just a sense of Christ. Jesus had promised to us all I will never leave you nor forsake you, but sometimes he sees our need for him to rub it in. That’s the wrong word. See our need to manifest himself to us. And I was praying in that first Baptist Church and I was walking around praying, and there was a hymn book, it was just on one of the seats. I picked it up, they have a different hymn book. I opened it to hymn number one, Martin Luther’s hymn, a mighty fortress is our God, a bull wire, never failing, and it went on to speak about Jesus being with you. And he was.

[00:21:03] And I got encouraged. I went back to the seminary, I decided I better check up that I haven’t brought the trouble onto myself by being too cheeky or maybe there’s some American understanding of what students could do that I didn’t fulfil. I went to see the chaplain and I told him the story and says I just want to check up, I’m not just being one of these obstructionist Australians, we tend to be more argumentative and Americans are very obedient when they’re students. And I said, would you read my thesis? But I want to know what the Lord wants me to do. He read it. And he called me in three days later, he read the whole thing. And he said, Jim, he says, I agree with you. And then he said, you’ve come too many thousand miles to change the pitch in your propellers now. And he also said, truth once stated you can’t back down from him. So I had the answer. And I went and told the advisor fellow who had, you know, given in to the other pressure,

[00:22:16] that I’ll have to take it to another university, but I’m not dropping the topic because I believe I knew he did too, that it was truth. And truth once stated you can’t back down from. And he just about, he reversed his decision. He says, well, I’ll go back and stand up for it. I may get sacked and we’ll have to leave together, sort of thing you get. Well, he did go back and the other man whose article I had disproven back down and I graduated. But you know the sequel to the story is that that chaplain used to sit on a dialysis machine because he had kidney problems. But he’d come from Chicago and he’d been on the board of the Billy Graham Association. And I think he took my thesis or the idea of it up there and the people of that board that he’s that next to, he told them. A little later on, just by the miracles of God, I didn’t have the money, but I ended up in Chicago. I had no money left, you know, used up my last bit of petrol

[00:23:27] money, gas money. And so I went to Wheaton College and booked myself in as a student because you get the bill later. And the dean called me in and then he says, well, we’ve heard about you and we’re going to send you home to Australia with the Billy Graham team. And we’ll pay for the airfares. You’ll have to arrange for where you board or whatever. But when that happened, it was Christ. And that whole episode that began in the First Baptist Church when Jesus manifested himself to me. I don’t mean I had a vision or anything you could write up and put in the back of your Bible. I just mean his presence. And the most precious thing in all of life as a Christian is the sense of Jesus with you. And how he does that is through the Holy Spirit. Do you know this? Use of the phrase, the Holy Spirit is called the Spirit of Truth. In Jesus as the Spirit of Truth, that will be something I’ll be talking about tonight,

[00:24:47] it’s the truth of the reality of Christianity is correct and of his mission to die for our sins. A lot of times, you know, I have an apologetics and I like to go to about people. I want to tell you the truth. I don’t need apologetics. Because the Spirit of Jesus as the Spirit of Truth tells me the Gospel is true. His witness is the witness that’s so strong. It doesn’t necessarily evidence itself all the time, but you don’t need to have a whole lot of arguments to be a Christian, the Holy Spirit brings to you the truth. That was what Jesus’ mission was. And when Jesus is going away, the second time that little phrase, the Spirit of Truth is used, is the one where we sink and look at tonight, he’s the one who brings the truth after Jesus is left. And that’s why you don’t actually personally need apologetics. You know who does need the apologetics?

[00:26:00] It’s the people who haven’t yet come to Christ. We have a role to use apologetics, but it’s not to become assured. That’s the Holy Spirit’s job. And he’s called the Spirit of Truth just as Jesus was the one who showed the truth by his coming. This is a very big deal I’m talking about. The Spirit of Truth is how you know and you’ll know because of his ministry in your life. And this is what these passages are about. The final bit of our passage this morning in John 14, I was going to finish a few verses earlier, but I suddenly saw this extra verse. And it is, let’s read verse 23, Jesus answered him, if anyone loves me, he will keep my word and my Father will love him and we will come to him. Now this is not the second coming, this is the Father and Jesus. via the Holy Spirit being the Spirit of Truth. We will come to him and make our home with

[00:27:18] him. Make our home with him. Now the word home is God coming to bring his residence and it’s the word that means a resting place. Andrew was talking about this, Andrew Ollie, when he was here. Make our home with him. There is an experience of Christianity produced by the Holy Spirit whereby the very residence of God comes to be in you. When you receive Christ, it isn’t just Jesus, it’s Jesus the Father and the Holy Spirit. We will come to him. Make our residence with him. It is the word resting place and when you’ve come to Christ what happens in that follow-up time after you’ve come to Jesus. You’re gradually learning. You’re becoming more and more aware of what’s happened to you. There comes some assurance that just grows in you. What it is is that God comes to your heart and makes his home in you. You cannot deny Christianity to yourself because it’s happened. I had the joy of that happening. I got converted at the age of nine and my dad

[00:28:37] and mum used to take me to these conventions. Generally, when you were a kid you didn’t like everything that went on there because you had to be constrained a fair bit. Anyway, but in the conventions that were there, they taught us this song and you’ve heard me before, it’s one of my favourite ones, about things are different now. Some things happened to me. Since I came my life to Christ, I can remember running along the footpath outside and it was low in my legs, with three feet up in the air, I don’t know why I was running. I think that’s my imagination and I probably did hit the ground, but while I was running, just the joy of knowing that I was sure that Jesus was mine and I was His because He made His home. God the Father had made His home in me. That assurance is never gone. One of the greatest secrets of being a Christian is this happening of God the Father, Christ

[00:29:46] the Son and the Holy Spirit, all that God had, as in Jesus, came into my heart when I received Him. I got forgiven because of His work on the cross and I got assured when the Spirit of Truth told me or showed me or brought to me the reality that things had changed. Things are different now. Some things happened to me. Since I gave my life to Christ, things I loved far more. Things I loved before I passed away. Things I loved far more have come to stay. That’s why that song is one of my most favourite songs because I witnessed the change of all the little trivial things I used to want to be and something far more precious has come to be the permanence of my life. It’s the presence of Christ, the fellowship with Him, the fact that He and the Father and the Spirit have made their home in my heart of all things. You have to really feel humbled when you realise the truth

[00:31:13] of that verse. The Father will love Him and we will come to Him and make our home with Him. If you have never received Christ, can I urge you to stop missing out? Hurry up and receive Him as your saviour. It starts when you recognise how He paid the price for you to be forgiven on the cross. That’s the atonement. It continues that as you respond and ask for that forgiveness, He comes, the Spirit comes, the Father comes and makes His home in you. That’s what it is to be a Christian and it’s the greatest thing in all the world. Let’s have a prayer. Father, thank you for the truth of what we here consider. The Spirit of truth, first of all in Jesus to His disciples, that’s why the rest of the world couldn’t understand but the disciples surely could, because they’d had the Spirit with them and then Jesus said the Spirit was going to be in them, which is what happened after His resurrection, ascension

[00:32:30] and the giving of the Holy Spirit. Father, thank you that this, though 1920 centuries ago put into effect, can be ours today. Lord, I pray if one, as anybody here who’s never really found what it is to have the things of the past gone and the things of the future arrive because of the Spirit of truth in Jesus, affecting them as they receive Him, may that happen today, somehow, we pray. And Lord, may the rest of us be aware of the treasure that we have in the indwelling of God that comes as a consequence of finding Jesus as the Saviour. Lord, help us to grow in our appreciation of that and help us to practise what it is to let the Spirit of truth minister to us and bring us that deep assurance I ask in Jesus’ name, Amen.