When his crucifixion was looming. Jesus was concerned to comfort his disciples and prepare them for his departure. He promised them that in his absence he would send a helper, that The Holy Spirit.
Some people envision a ghostly entity sent to do God's bidding, but today on Truth for Life, Alastair Begg investigates what the Bible teaches about the promised helper. I invite you to turn in your Bibles to John. The Gospel of John. And to chapter sixteen. And I want to read from the fifth verse.
John chapter 16 and verse 5. Jesus is in the upper room with his disciples. It's the final evening. that he spends with the twelve. And in the course of what we refer to as the upper room discourse, He says this.
uh to his disciples.
Now I am going to him who sent me. Yet none of you asks me where are you going. Because I've said these things, you're filled with grief, but I tell you the truth. It is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the counselor or the helper will not come to you.
But if I go, I will send him to you. When he comes, he will convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment. In regard to sin, because men do not believe in me. in regard to righteousness. Because I'm going to the Father where you can see me no longer.
And in regard to judgment, because the Prince of this world now stands condemned. I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. But when He, the Spirit of Truth, comes, He will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own. He will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come.
He will bring glory to me. By taking from what is mine and making it known to you. All that belongs to the Father is mine. That is why I said the Spirit will take from what is mine and make it known to you. In a little while, You will see me no more.
And then, after a little while, You will see me. Amen. Father, please help us now as we think about these things. We are So distracted by so much. And we desperately need the work of the Spirit whose very ministry we want to consider.
So, grant that even in this moment we may be made forcibly aware. of the truth that we now set out to find. And we promise that we will I praise you and thank you. for honouring your word and meeting, with us now. And we pray in Jesus' name.
Amen. Well, we can only say so much in the time that is before us this evening. Concerning the ministry of the Holy Spirit, it may well be that we will come back to this. I'm not making any promises, but it it strikes me that it may be a timely topical study, if not now, then sooner rather than later. It is vitally important when we come to the Biblical teaching on the third person of the Trinity, namely God the Holy Spirit.
Now we recognize that for many people It is an area of confusion. And indeed It holds the potential, if one is not careful, for all kinds of flights of fancy. And indeed, probably there is more nonsense spoken in relationship to the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. than to any other area that we find in the pages of Scripture. It is for that reason that we must always, and this is true in every area of Biblical teaching, but we must always make sure that we come to our considerations firmly within the framework and the controls of the Bible itself.
The challenge that is represented in this generation is not unique to it. And indeed, when you read back through church history, you discover that the servants of God have time and again had to say to the people of God, now make sure that when you think these things out, you do so, as it were, with your Bibles open before you. And Calvin speaks to the people of his day and does so as follows. Those who rejecting Scripture, he says, Imagine that they have some peculiar way of penetrating to God. are to be deemed not so much under the influence of error as madness.
For certain giddy men have lately appeared, Who, while they make a great display of the superiority of the Spirit, reject all reading of the scriptures themselves. and deride the simplicity of those who only delight in what they call the dead and deadly letter. But I wish they would tell me what spirit it is whose inspiration raises them to such a sublime height that they dare to despise the doctrine of Scripture as mean, and childish.
Now as I say Jesus is with the twelve. And it is the prospect of the departure of Jesus which gives them cause for disappointment, consternation and grief. If you want, you can go all the way back in your own study to chapter 13, where Jesus speaks to them and he says, My children, I will be with you only a little longer. And that sort of paternal dimension is so Potently, there, even in the terminology, the tenderness of Christ's love for these fellows. Although they are his friends, he calls them his friends, nevertheless, they are to him children, as it were, in the faith.
And as he bids farewell to his children, he does what most fathers will do in relationship to their children. He will give them words of guidance and words of counsel and words of encouragement. I'm going away and you need to know this. And you can follow this up on your own. It is not part of the study.
But he says, for example, immediately to them, on the news of his departure, I want you to love each other. I want you to love each other. Isn't that what parents say when they leave their children behind? When they go away the first time and the grandparents' babysit, and they sit the children down, however many they are at the kitchen table, and they say, Now, look, we're going away. Don't, whatever you do, be a nuisance to your grandparents.
And whatever you do, make sure that you don't fight with one another. Will you just love one another while we're gone? Will you promise me that you will love one another while we're gone? That's what Jesus says. Then he says, And I want you to make sure that you keep my commandments, do what I say when I'm gone.
I want you to know also that the world hates you. Don't go on with any strange notions about everybody thinking you're fantastic because they hated me and they'll hate you as well. And you need to know that the time will very quickly come when the familiar areas that you love to visit will be off-limits to you. They will put you out of the synagogue. And as Jesus speaks to them in this intimate fashion, it clearly becomes apparent to them that from a human perspective, from their perspective, if there ever was a time when they needed the presence of Jesus, surely it was now.
And so it is in the context of his departure that Jesus explains. why it is necessary for him to go. And that's why here in verse 5 he begins: I'm going to him who sent me, and none of you is asking me, where are you going? There has been some mention of it, but it usually has had to do with other questions besides. And in terms of the very essence of it, Jesus recognizes that they're not really asking the right question, or if they're asking the question, they're not asking it correctly.
And so he says, I want you to know, verse 7, and I'm telling you the truth: that it is for your good that I am going away. And the reason it is for your good is because if I do not go away, the counselor or the helper it may be in your version of the Bible, the counselor will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to Cheer you. And he has already promised them in verse 18 of chapter 14 that in his departure from them he will not leave them as orphans. He will not leave them as orphans.
Now we could work this out on multiple fronts. For example, we could pause and consider all of the cost that was involved in Jesus' necessary departure. Because he had lived his life, you will remember, in union and in communion with God the Father. It is impossible to explain the life of Christ apart from his communion with the other members of the Trinity. He lived in communion with the Father and the Spirit in eternity as a result of the covenant of redemption.
What the Father plans, the Son comes to procure and to provide by way of salvation. And what the Son provides by way of salvation, the Holy Spirit then comes to apply to the lives of those who believe. And so for Jesus, who had said, for example, to Mary and Joseph when they found him when he was 12 years of age in the temple precincts, he said, Did you not realize that I had to be in my father's house? Or don't you know that I have to be about my father's business? Again and again, he makes it clear that he has come to do the will of the Father.
He is here in intimate terminology addressing the Father. In John 17, we go behind the scenes and we have the amazing gift of hearing Jesus pray in a prolonged way. And presumably, this is not all of it. But I wonder if you ever read John 17 on your knees. Have you ever just taken it?
and knelt down and read it out loud. And sense something of the burden of it and the power of it as Jesus looks towards heaven and says, Father, the time has come, glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you, recognizing all that Christ was saying in that request. for he was about to walk down the Via della Rosa and into the arms of those who only had his worst at heart. And as his prayer unfolds, you realize just what the Father means to him and what their communion means. And in light of John 17, when you hear his piercing cry from the cross, you get an inkling of what has happened.
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And in that moment... Christ is deserted of the Father. in order that those who are In Christ. may themselves never be deserted.
He is deserted in order that we might never be left as orphans.
So it is not simply the pragmatic benefit that accrues to the followers of Jesus in the gift of the Spirit that is wrapped up in this divine necessity. It is even more than that that in the drama of redemption, Jesus is accomplishing. God's eternal purpose. And so it is that as the story unfolds, he as Paul tells the Ephesians, he ascends on high and he leads captives in his train and he gives gifts to man.
So it is. That the giving of the Spirit, the pouring out of the Spirit in the unique and unrepeatable event of Pentecost, Is the very promise that is alluded to here in these verses in John 16.
So that is just a word concerning the necessity of his departure. Let us move directly to the identity of the one who comes as helper. He is referred to here as the counselor or as the helper. In verse 13, he is referred to as the spirit of truth, the one who will guide into all truth. And indeed, if you want a fuller treatment of this, then you need to read from John 14 all the way through.
But I'm not going to do that, and I will leave it to you. Let me just identify for us not an exhaustive list in relationship to the identity of the Holy Spirit. but a selective list and one that I think will be adequate for our purposes. If you're taking notes, scribble now. The Holy Spirit First of all, is a unique person not simply a power.
or an influence. The Holy Spirit is a unique person and not simply a power or an influence. You don't have to listen too long to Christians speak. To find one another referencing God the Holy Spirit in the new term. referring to the Spirit of God as an entity or referring to him As it The Spirit did this, it did that, and so on.
And so, one of the fundamental and vital things for us to realize is that each Person within the Trinity is actually personhood. It is only because the Holy Spirit is Himself a person that the Scriptures can warn us about grieving Him. It is because of his personality, because of his interest in us, because of his love for us, because of his work in us and for us, that he may be grieved. that His will may be resisted. That his work may be quenched.
And that, I think, for some of us is an essential reminder and in some cases is an introduction to an area that we have never really considered. The problem throughout history And up into contemporary terms, is what is referred to as modalism. Modalism. And it is a heresy. that there is one God who appears in three modes.
Sometimes you find him appearing as the father, and then sometimes you find him appearing in another mode as the son, and sometimes you find him appearing in a third mode as the spirit. But no, the Bible says that is not the case, and we saw it in the baptism this morning, did we not? This is not modalism. These are three distinct persons within one eternal being. It's mysterious, there's no question of that.
There's nothing like it in the other world religions. Secondly, The Holy Spirit is one with the Father and the Son. One with the Father and the Son. That's why when you read these verses, you discover that the Holy Spirit is referred to as being sent by the Father, and also the Holy Spirit is referred to as being sent by the Son. And the Holy Spirit acts for them both.
Thirdly, The Holy Spirit was the agent of creation. Was the agent of creation. One of the great Old Testament discussions is whether it is possible from the Old Testament alone. To say directly and conclusively. That we can see the distinct personality of God the Holy Spirit.
Or do we have to wait until in the New Testament things become clarified and we can then read our Bibles backwards and say, oh, yes, I see that that must be this. It's not our purpose this evening to delve into Old Testament theology, but I want to suggest to you that we see the Spirit of God immediately in our Bibles in Genesis chapter 1 and in verse 2.
Now the earth was formless and empty. Darkness was over the surface of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And if you have an NIV, you will notice that spirit there is capitalized. The translators of the NIV, thus determining that what we have here is none other than the third person of the Spirit, there as the agent of creation.
The word in Hebrew for spirit is ruach. Which is the word for breath. The Greek word is pneuma. Which gives us pneumatology, the study of the spirit. And the phrase here in Genesis 1:2 describes the Ruach Elohim.
That the breath of God, The breath of the Almighty. Not as an immaterial substance. But as an energy, as a forceful power, as a creative agent. was hovering over the waters. And it is here.
If you understand Genesis 1:2, that you then have an explanation for Genesis 1. Uh one twenty-six. Because one of the other great questions of Genesis 1 is, what does it mean and to whom is it referring when it when in Genesis 1:26, then God said, Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea, and so on.
Well, you see, if Genesis 1, 2 Is God the Holy Spirit? Then that gives us any missing link in relationship to Genesis 1:26. And the reference point is to the work of a spirit as the agent of creation in setting the world in space.
Now Uh I think that We will leave it there only with this comment. The old uh choice word of Augustine. Where he reminded the people of his day. that when you read your Bibles That the old is in the new revealed And the new is in the old Concealed.
So that when you read The New Testament You discover that the old begins to make sense in a way that perhaps we couldn't conceive of it when we were reading only the Old Testament. And then, when we read actually into the Old Testament, we discover that so much of the new is actually there, if you like, in embryonic form.
Well, we didn't get off on that. Fourthly, the Spirit of God is the agent of God's new creation. He is the one who created the world, and He is the world who creates. Christians. And that's the significance of the discussion that takes place in John chapter 3.
Where, as Jesus says to Nicodemus, you must be born again. And Nicodemus says, How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter again into his mother's womb and be born a second time? And Jesus says, No, I'm not speaking about that. I'm talking about spiritual birth, and the one who is the author of spiritual birth is none other than God the Holy Spirit.
He is the one who opens people's eyes. Fifthly, He is not only the author of creation and of new creation, he is also the author of the scriptures. He's the author of the Scriptures. That's the explanation that we have for our Bible. That the scriptures in 2 Timothy 3:16 are said to be breathed out, they are theopneustus, that God has breathed out His Word.
That the breath of the Almighty of God in the person of the Spirit is the one who creates Scripture itself. And indeed, when Peter writes about this, he says the prophets have written all these things in the past, and they were men who were carried along by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Now they were in control of their senses. They were not automatons. But as they themselves gave voice to what they said, as they themselves had written down what they proclaimed, they were to discover what was said of God concerning Jeremiah, where he says to Jeremiah, I have put my words in your mouth. How can God put his words in the mouth of his prophet? By his Holy Spirit.
Now In moving on, let me just say this. That when Jesus speaks here, Concerning another counselor who will come, I will send you another counselor. He is not using the word heteros for another of a different kind. But he is using the word allos, which is another of the same kind. And the one, says Jesus, who is going to come alongside you, Paracaleo, the paraclete.
The one who is going to come alongside you is just like me. And indeed, he will reinforce for you. All the things that I've been telling you. Yeah. You're listening to Alastair Begg on Truth for Life, and we'll hear more from Alistair on Monday.
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Thanks for joining us this week. Hope you have a great weekend. On Monday, we'll consider the Holy Spirit's activity and learn how to determine if He is at work in us. The Bible teaching of Alastair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life. Where the Learning is for Living.
