Introducing the Holy Spirit

One rather ancient lexicon, defined empirically this way, one who pleads a cause before a judge. Some have wrongly suggested from Romans chapter 8 that Paul is referring to some special language that we pray whereby we really get into the presence of God. Now the point of Romans 8 is that you don't even know how to pray, period.

You're not even saying anything. The Spirit of God comes alongside. He knows your life, your heart, your will, your desires, and He takes your case for you, and He has a talk with the Father. There's quite a bit of mystery surrounding the Holy Spirit. In fact, you might wish that the Bible taught a little bit more about the Holy Spirit than it does.

But we know that God has told us what He wants us to know, and what He's told us is very encouraging. In the New Testament Gospels, before the Spirit came in Acts, Jesus introduced His disciples to the Holy Spirit. He taught them some things that the Holy Spirit would do. Today on Wisdom for the Heart, Stephen Davey looks at what Jesus said in the Gospel of John. Stephen is calling this lesson, Introducing the Holy Spirit. The process where we left the disciples last Lord's Day in our study in a very troubled state, and they are in the process of being encouraged.

Let's go back, and this is our discussion today as we wrap up this series in chapter 14, that there is the encouragement of a constant companion through life. Now let's pick our study back up where we left off with verse 15. Jesus said, If you love Me, you will, in the original tense, keep on keeping My commandments. Jesus is telling a disciple that if they are on their way to the Father's house in heaven, and they are experiencing this relationship of prayer while they're on earth, they will be a disciple who is striving toward obedience. That is, authentic disciples are revealed by active obedience.

But wait a second. Can you imagine anything more discouraging on the eve of Jesus Christ's departure, of Him looking at you and saying, If you love Me, keep on keeping My commandments. Knowing that within 24 hours, everyone but one of these disciples will respond to this panic by deserting Jesus Christ, not by obeying Him. In fact, we know from the record of Scripture that it was only the Apostle John that walked up that hill with weeping Mary on his arm and stood there.

All of the others had headed for the hills. Now we would probably like to think that we would be the Apostle John. I think we would probably be more like the Apostle Peter, who made a promise that he didn't keep, swung a sword, and he missed that too.

And then he, in panic, ran for the hills. We would probably be a little bit more like Thomas, who after this had all happened, and he had seen the anguish of Gethsemane, he had seen the events of Calvary, and then he says, I have to have more facts before I'm willing to sign my name to this again. I think that would be our response. So Jesus tells them something that on their own they would never be able to do. You love me? Keep my commandments. Put into action everything that I have taught you. Become what I want you to become.

Absolutely impossible. That's why the closing comments of his encouraging words have great meaning to us, because there is hope. Look at verse 16. And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever, that is, the Spirit of Truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not behold Him or know Him, but you know Him, because He abides with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans.

I will come to you. After a little while, the world will behold me no more, but you will behold me, because I live, you shall live also. In that day you shall know that I am in the Father, and you in me, and I in you. He who has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me, and he who loves me shall be loved by my Father, and I will love him and will disclose myself to him. Judas, not Iscariot, said to him, Lord, what then has happened that you are going to disclose yourself to us and not to the world? In other words, why aren't you going to set up your kingdom now and reveal that you are the sovereign Messiah?

Do it now! Jesus answered and said to him, verse 23, If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our abode with him. What kind of answer is that? Well, it's interesting that the same word abode is here and also in verse 2. In my Father's house are many abodes, monae, are many mansions or dwelling places, as it were. In other words, Jesus is answering them by saying this, While there will come a day when the kingdom will be visibly present, in the meantime, I will be invisibly setting up my kingdom in your life. I will make your body my palace. There will one day come a present physical kingdom, but in the meantime, he will make his invisible rule in you.

In other words, your body will be his mansion. Verse 25, These things I have spoken to you while abiding with you, but the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you. Now, if you're like most people, if you're like me, the Holy Spirit is either neglected or misunderstood or perhaps just plain old ignored. Like Arthur Pink, who once wrote this, It isn't that we have the wrong thoughts about the Holy Spirit. It's just that we never think of him at all. And I would add, when we do think of him, we are probably a little confused about this mysterious third person of the Godhead, aren't we? So what I want to do this morning is simply reintroduce to all of us the Holy Spirit. Because according to the words of Jesus, without this proper understanding, our hearts would be troubled. Before I begin, I want to give you one truth that you might want to make room in your notes for. I don't think it's in there if you're following along. It's this axiomatic truth that will help clear up a lot of confusion.

And I want to spend a few minutes on it. It's this. The Holy Spirit.

Remember this if you forget everything else. The Holy Spirit is not a power. He is a person. If you have the idea that he is a power, then your thoughts will be, How can I get more of him?

And we have this idea of a gas tank, and we've got three quarters full of the Holy Spirit, and we're praying that we'll get all of him, or we'll get more of it, or we'll have more of it. Power. Something.

Whatever. He is not a power. He is a person. Part of the problem is we've misinterpreted the passages of scripture that use the words, be filled with the Spirit. That gives our English minds this idea of the fact that our bodies are kind of like a gas tank, and we try to get more and more and more of him. What Paul meant was not that you can get a little bit of the Holy Spirit or a lot of the Holy Spirit. The word filled, playruths, they literally means be dominated by the Holy Spirit. Be totally controlled by the Holy Spirit.

Allow him to have your life. See, the question is not, How much of the Holy Spirit do you have? The question is, How much of you does the Holy Spirit have? Now, back to the truth. How do we know that God the Holy Spirit is a person, just as God the Father is a distinct person or personality and God the Son within this triune Godhead?

Well, let me give you a couple of reasons. Number one, because you can sin against the Holy Spirit. Paul commanded grieve, not the Holy Spirit.

You can't hurt, you can't disappoint some invisible power, but you can a person. Secondly, he is the one whose role includes the selection and distribution of spiritual gifts. He does that. That's his specific function, one of them. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 12, There are a variety of gifts, but one in the same spirit, and he distributes to everyone these gifts as he wills, that is, as he decides. Now, remember that the Holy Spirit imparts empowerment to take those spiritual gifts within us and put them into use, but never mistake him for the power. He is not some impersonal force.

He is a person. A third reason, divine attributes are ascribed to the Spirit. Look at John 14 verse 26.

John calls him what? The Holy Spirit. The primary attribute of every one of the three persons of the Godhead is holiness. He is a holy spirit. He is pure.

He is true. You go through the New Testament and you'll discover in 1 Corinthians chapter 2 that he's referred to as omniscient. In Luke chapter 1 as omnipotent. In Psalm 139 as omnipresent. The Holy Spirit then is no less divine than Christ or the Father. The Holy Spirit is equally God. The Holy Spirit, furthermore, intercedes on our behalf.

Another function. In Romans chapter 8, listen to what he says, Likewise, the Spirit, capital S, also helps our weaknesses, for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words, and he who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is. A power does not have a mind.

A person does. And the Holy Spirit, with what he knows and being well-knowing, speaks on our behalf. Let me give you one other thought. We are promised that the Spirit would literally descend, just as Jesus promised that he would literally ascend. Hold your finger here and turn over to chapter 16, verse 5. Jesus says, But now I am going to him who sent me, and none of you asks me, Where are you going?

Verse 6, But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your heart. But I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away. For if I do not go away, the Helper shall not come to you. But if I go, I will send him, not it. No, he says, I will send him. Just as I am going up, he is going to come down. Now, he said an amazing thing here in verse 7 to some very troubled disciples.

Stay there for just a moment to look, but I tell you the truth. It is to your advantage, Jesus said, that I go away. Has it ever occurred to you that it would be advantageous that Jesus Christ would no longer be visibly present so that the Spirit could be invisibly present? That doesn't sound like an advantage to me.

I'll admit that right up front. In fact, I spent all week trying to figure out why that would be an advantage. Jesus will tell them in the latter part of chapter 14, as we study it together, why it would be advantageous that he physically leave, visibly leave, and the Spirit invisibly come.

Let me give it to you in the form of advantages. Advantage number one, back in chapter 14, the Holy Spirit will be our encouraging, ever-present Helper. Look at verse 16. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, that he may be with you forever, that your version may read Comforter. I will send another Comforter. And in our minds, we have the picture of this warm, soft blanket that we wrap around ourselves on a cold winter night.

That isn't really the idea. Nor is it the idea of Linus who's trailing his blanket along behind him, for security's sake, although the Spirit of God gives us, indeed, security. Our English translation, Comforter, comes from two Latin words, cum fortis. Cum meaning with, fortis meaning to fortify, to put strength into, to straighten up.

It isn't this warm blanket idea. It is someone who indwells us to make us stand, who fortifies us with supernatural strength. The Greek word you probably well know is the word paraclete, which means called to one side, called alongside one. The word has a challenging idea, but that is where we get the idea of encouragement and this uplifting side of what the Holy Spirit does. You see, we've just been told to accomplish mission impossible. We are told to utilize our spiritual gifts. We are told to reach our world. We're told to make disciples. We are told to serve them. We are told to keep his commandments. We can't do it. Left alone, we would hide in the hills as these disciples did.

But with the Spirit's enabling, we'll be able to pull it off. Let me give you another side of this word, paraclete, one rather ancient lexicon to find paraclete this way. Listen, one who pleads a cause before a judge, a counsel for the defense. Someone who studies the case hears the testimony and then expresses it in court on our behalf.

Sound familiar? Well, we just read earlier or I read to you Romans Chapter 8, where the Spirit of God intercedes on our behalf in languages that we cannot understand with groanings, as it were, too deep for us to understand. Now, some have wrongly suggested from Romans Chapter 8 that Paul is referring to some special language that we pray, whereby we really get into the presence of God. Now, the point of Romans 8 is that you don't even know how to pray, period.

You're not even saying anything. The Spirit of God comes alongside. He knows your life, your heart, your will, your desires, and he takes your case for you, and he has a talk with the Father on your behalf. Bill Yates, I could illustrate it this way. As a pastor in North Carolina, his father was the chief of police in this little bitty country town, and it was the job of the policeman on duty to answer the telephone for the fire department.

In fact, the two offices were sort of combined there. And if there was a fire, he would ring the bell that would bring all of the volunteers running. One particular day, when Yates' father had just clocked in, the telephone rang, and he answered it, as he normally did, fire department, and the woman on the other end of the line just simply shouted, send the fire truck, and then hung up, and he kind of stood there stunned, not sure what to do, and he was trying to figure it all out, and then the telephone rang again a few minutes later, and he answered it, fire department, and the woman on the other end of the line said, where is the fire truck? Please, send the fire truck, and then slammed the phone down.

He knew that somebody's house was at stake here, and maybe even worse, so he ran outside, and he was sort of scanning the horizon of that little town to see if he could discover smoke anywhere, and he'd send the volunteers running in that direction. And while he was out there, he came up with a scheme to keep this lady on the phone. And sure enough, the phone rang again. This time he ran back in, and instead of saying, fire department, he simply answered by saying, where's the fire? And she responded by yelling, it's in the kitchen!

And she hung up. See, when I think of Romans chapter 8, I think of that lady. Because you and I, the apostle says, get into times and situations and panics and fears and trials when we don't know really what to say to God.

All we can get out is just send help. The Spirit of God knows the address because he lives inside of it, and he intercedes for us. And by the way, that is a wonderful advantage. Advantage number two, the Holy Spirit will be our living constant companion. Look at verse 17 of chapter 14. That is the Spirit truth whom the world cannot receive because it does not behold him or know him, but you know him because he abides with you and future tense will be in you. It isn't simply that the Holy Spirit is close to us. It's that he's actually inside of us.

The distortion is that we must have some kind of experience to get more of him. Ladies and gentlemen, the theological truth is that right now as a believer, right at this moment, you have the Spirit of God within you in totality. It's interesting that we can make a biblical case of all three persons of the Godhead indwelling us.

Did you know that? The Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. In fact, notice the interchange in verse 18 between Christ and the Spirit. He says, I will not leave you as orphans.

I will come to you. Notice the interchange of Christ there with the Spirit. Verse 19, after a little while, the world will behold me no more, but you will behold me because I live and you shall live also. In that day, notice this, you shall know that I am in the Father and you in me and I in you. The amazing truth of God's condescension is that he has chosen to take up residency in you and in me.

We often overlook that wonderful advantage, don't we? Now, that's not only encouraging, that's convicted. Because that means wherever we go, he goes.

Whatever we do, we put him through it. See, one of the primary motivations for purity in life is the very fact that God lives within us. In fact, hold your finger here and I want you to turn over to 1 Corinthians chapter 6. 1 Corinthians chapter 6.

This is the very point that Paul is making. Verse 18, he says, Flee immorality. Specific reference to sexual impurity. You can broaden immorality as the Bible does to include anything against the character of God. He says, in effect, you get on your shoes, you tie them up real tight, and you run from sin.

Why? Verse 19 is the motivation. Don't you know, he says, that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God. You no longer belong to yourself, that is, you are not your own, for you have been bought with a price that is the death of Christ.

Therefore, glorify God in your body. You ought to get your pencils and underline or circle the little word temple. It's a very unique word. There could be a Greek word that refers to the outer courtyard of the Old Testament tabernacle or temple. And there's another Greek word that refers to the inner shrine that is the very holy of holies where God resided, as it were.

His power and his presence. That was the Ark of the Covenant. That's the word that Paul uses here. He says, your body is the holy of holies. That is, God in the Old Testament in past time resided in the holy of holies. Now, in this dispensation, in this church age, guess where he lives? You're sitting right there. And he's within you. In other words, God has chosen to make your body his palace.

What an advantage that is. Advantage number three, the Holy Spirit will be our amazing, illuminating teacher. We'll look at the passage in a moment, but remember that Jesus Christ, on the eve of his departure, knew that he had a lot more to say to his disciples than he had already said. In fact, the disciples weren't really ready for it. In fact, judging from the interruptions of chapter 14 from Thomas and Philip and Peter and Judas, the thrust of what Jesus has already taught them, they weren't anticipating the resurrection, were they? No. They didn't know anything about the nature of the New Testament church, did they? No. They didn't understand their worldwide commission, did they?

No, absolutely not. In fact, they are, in my thinking, like first graders who have been given an assignment that you would give to a college graduate. They are not ready. They are not prepared. In fact, through their entire lifetime, they will never be able to say, I'm here, I am really thoroughly prepared, and I'm totally ready.

So something has to happen, and that is this. Jesus says that I'm going to go up, the Spirit is going to come down, he's going to inspire men to write this record of scripture, and then he is going to teach through illuminating this scripture to our own lives. While Jesus taught his disciples physically, visibly, the Spirit of God will teach us invisibly, inaudibly, through the teachings of Jesus Christ.

Now, that doesn't really sound like an advantage, does it? Jesus was physically present with them, the Spirit is invisibly present with us. I'd vote for that the other way, would you? But if Jesus Christ were physically present with us, he could not be physically present with a church in Raleigh or Charlotte.

Or China, or Hungary. And there would be no teaching at all. In fact, if he were teaching in room 102 over here, that class would be excited beyond words, but room 105 would be upset. It is to our advantage that we have the indwelling Spirit who can speak through the record of what Christ taught them, so that no one is left out. He would bring to their minds the apostles, the words and works of Jesus Christ, and they would write them down by what we call inspiration. And then he would take what was written and he promises to teach us every day of our lives, no matter where we are, no matter what time of day, at any time, at any location, he will teach us, and no one is left out. So Paul could write in 2 Timothy 3, all scripture is given by inspiration of God. Not what some scholar thinks that he can cut out, but all scripture is inspired of God. And all scripture then is profitable, he says, for teaching, that tells you what to believe, for reproof, that tells you where you are wrong, for correction, that tells you what is right, and for instruction, for preparation, that tells you how to do what is right. That the disciple, Paul adds, may be entirely equipped for every good service. You see, the Holy Spirit, who inspired the scriptures through them and through this book, now clarifies the scriptures in every one of us who believe in Jesus Christ, so that you can learn any time of the day, and you can be taught by the Holy Spirit through this book.

And that's an advantage, and no one's left out. By his teaching then, we can know what to believe, and we can know how to behave. What's the net result of all of this that he's given them in chapter 14? We'll call it supernatural peace.

Would you turn and look again at verse 27 of John 14, and notice how Jesus comes full circle. This is the back cover of this book on encouragement. Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you, not as the world gives do I give you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid or fearful. Peace. Now to us, the word peace here would bring to our minds just the absence of war or the absence of trouble. That's what peace would mean to our world. But in the Bible, the biblical idea of peace is not that. The biblical idea of peace is wholeness. It is completeness. It is security.

It is relationship, not resource. In the world, peace is something that you hope for. Peace is something that you work for. Peace is something that you long for. Jesus says here that it is a gift.

Look again. Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you. And it's unlike anything the world could give you because it doesn't give you anything. But I give you the gift of peace. Does this mean that troubling circumstances are over? No. Does this mean that painful trials are a thing of the past?

No. But we have peace in and through. We have an ongoing, present relationship with the Father through prayer. And we have an ever-present companion and teacher in the Holy Spirit.

And that will give peace. And Jesus says this supernatural peace, this gift, is intended to bring healing to our troubled heart. I hope you find comfort and encouragement in this lesson today. Take comfort and find hope in the truth that God is always with you. God listens and hears when you cry out to Him.

And as Christians, the Holy Spirit lives in us to comfort and guide us. This is Wisdom for the Heart with Stephen Davey. Stephen pastors the Shepherd's Church in Cary, North Carolina. Today's lesson is the last in a four-part series called Healing for Troubled Hearts. If you missed any of the lessons and want to listen, they're available free of charge on our website, wisdomonline.org. Another resource we have is a book on this series. The book is also called Healing for Troubled Hearts. And I think it would make a great addition to your library. Stephen begins a brand new series next time, so join us for that here on Wisdom for the Heart. .