Mark Twain was well known for his use of profanity. After many years of marriage, his wife decided that she was going to help her husband quit using foul language. Thus, one morning while she was helping her husband tie his tie, she started using every profane word that she had heard her husband utter. She did this in hopes that hearing these words from her lips, Mark would realize how awful such language really was. When she finished, Twain, without missing a beat, said to his wife, “Dear, you got the words, but you ain’t got the music!”
I think, when it comes to Christianity, many people have the words, but they don’t have the music. What I mean is this: many professing Christians walk through this life seemingly believing all the right things, saying the right things, even doing the right things, but there is no vital relationship between them and God. In short, there is no music in their lives and perhaps never has been. Is that, perhaps, true of you or me?
I would suggest to you this morning that the Holy Spirit is the one who can put the music of Christian faith back into our lives again, or for the first time. It is when the Holy Spirit comes to live inside of us, in a personal way, that the words of Christianity, the words of Scripture, turn from being just words, to being a powerful melody.
Let’s look together at what Jesus taught his disciples about the Spirit on the eve of his death. Listen for God’s word to you from John 14:12-21…
Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father. I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it.
“If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you.
“I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live. On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.”
Jesus teaches us at least five essential things in this passage about the Holy Spirit. First, this passage suggests that the Holy Spirit is divine.
Notice the close association in this passage between the Father, the Son Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. Jesus says that he will ask the Father and that the Father will give you another advocate to be with you forever—the Spirit of truth. This passage encapsulates the same doctrine that Christians confess in the Nicene Creed: that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. The Son asks the Father and the Father gives the Holy Spirit.
Furthermore, Jesus tells us that the Holy Spirit is another counselor. The Greek word that is used in this passage suggests that the Holy Spirit is another counselorjust as Jesus is a counselor. In 1 John 2:1 we read, “My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have one who speaks to the Father in our defense—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One.” This verse specifically calls Jesus a “paraclete”, one who speaks to the Father in our defense. That is the same word that Jesus uses to describe the Holy Spirit’s work in John 14:16. Therefore, we can say that if Jesus is divine (and he clearly presents himself as divine in this passage), and Jesus is a paraclete, and the Holy Spirit is another paraclete just like Jesus, then the Holy Spirit is divine as well.
Notice that Jesus “asks” the Father. Jesus doesn’t “beg” the Father; he asks on terms of equality for the Father to give the Holy Spirit to his people. John uses the Greek verb “erotao” to refer to Jesus asking. However, when he speaks about ourpraying to the Father, he uses the word “aiteo” which means to entreat or beg.
Numerous other passages throughout Scripture speak of the divinity of the Holy Spirit.
To mention just one: think of Jesus’ Great Commission in Matthew 28:19 where he says, “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” Notice that Jesus doesn’t say the names of the Father, Son and Spirit, but rather, the name, singular. Father, Son and Spirit are three persons but one God.
Why do I belabor this point? If we do not recognize the divinity of the Holy Spirit then we will be led to rely on our own work, our own power, our own strength to initiate and to keep our relationship with God going. However, if we recognize the divinity of the Spirit then we will be led to rely on his power, not our own.
There was a man who had worked for a lumber company for many years. Over the years, this man stole a lot of lumber from his employer—a few logs at a time. Eventually, the man felt so guilty about this that he went to his priest to confess his sin. When he got into the confessional both, he hemmed and hawed, unable to get up the courage to make a full confession. Finally, the priest realized the man’s problem and said, “You need to make a retreat.” The man replied, “Father, if you have the plans, I have the lumber!”
Unfortunately, that is often the way we approach God. We say something to the affect of: “If you have the plan for my life, then I have the power to carry it out. Just tell me what to do and I will do it.” The Lord’s reply to that is, “No, it’s going to be my plans and my lumber, my power. That is the only way it will work.”[1]
A second thing we learn about the Holy Spirit in this passage is that the Spirit is personal. Many of us have difficulty really believing this.
A woman came up to a speaker at a Bible conference after he completed a series of messages on the Holy Spirit. She said, “Before your messages I never thought of itas a person.” Obviously, she was still thinking of the Holy Spirit as an “it”.
Admittedly, in John 14:16-18 the neuter pronoun is used to refer to the Spirit. So even John calls the Spirit: “it”. However, this is a little misleading because in Greek the gender of the pronoun must agree with the gender of the noun as in French. We don’t have anything quite like this in English. Furthermore, there are other passages that refer to the Holy Spirit as “he”. In John 16:7 Jesus says, “Unless I go away, the counselor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.” In addition, Paul urges us in Ephesians 4:30 not to grieve the Holy Spirit. You can’t grieve a force. You can only grieve a person.
However, even in John 14 we can see that the Spirit is personal. If the Holy Spirit is another counselor like Jesus, and if Jesus is a person, then it follows that the Holy Spirit is a person as well. You can’t receive counsel from a computer. Information yes, but counsel: no.
Why is it important to recognize the Holy Spirit as a person? It’s important because if the Spirit is merely a power (“May the force be with you!”) then we will always be asking, “How can I get more of it?” However, if the Spirit is a person then we will be asking the right question: “How can he get more of me?”
I remember a time many years ago when I was wrestling deeply with this whole area of the person and work of the Holy Spirit. I was afraid if I really let the Holy Spirit have control of my life, then he might ask me to do something crazy. On the other hand, I was at that time seeing the Spirit at work in the life of another man in the ministry and my reaction was to say, “God, I want what that man has.” I prayed that prayer on a Sunday night. As I went to bed, I told the Lord of my fears. I sensed the still, small voice of the Father saying to me: “You have trusted me, and you have trusted my Son, now why can’t you trust the Holy Spirit? He is personal; he is the same as we are. You can trust him.”
The Holy Spirit is a person. He is a person you can trust. We each need to surrender our lives to the fullness of God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Then he will fill us with his fullness.
A third thing we see here about the Holy Spirit, which we have already touched on, is that the Spirit is another counselor.
Paraclete in Greek literally means: “someone called alongside”. The word can refer to a lawyer or an assistant in a legal question, a person who provides encouragement, counsel and strength. The Holy Spirit is like our defense attorney. The word can be translated as helper, supporter, advocate, encourager, counselor or comforter. Just as Jesus is our paraclete who pleads our case before God in heaven (Hebrews 7:25), so also the Holy Spirit is another paraclete, who pleads God’s case with us here on earth. Paul says in Romans 8:26, “In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express.”
In 1066, the Norman army invaded England under the leadership of William the Conqueror. This event was commemorated in a work of art called the Bayeux Tapestry. In one part of the tapestry, a column of Norman soldiers is pictured on horseback. At the end of the column, the Bishop of Bayeux is pictured poking the last soldier in line with a stick. The caption reads: “Bishop Odo comforts the soldiers.”
Now, we may not think of that picture as portraying our idea of comfort. However, sometimes the comfort of the Holy Spirit is like that. Sometimes he comes to us like a warm blanket in the winter. Other times he is the one who comes alongside of us to prod us and to urge us on to greater things for Christ and his kingdom.
A fourth thing we need to see in this passage is that the Holy Spirit is the spirit of truth.
In John 8:32 we read these words of Jesus: “You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.”
We long for freedom. We long to know the truth so that we can be free. Jesus promises to give us the Holy Spirit so that we can discern truth from error.
Most of the time, the Holy Spirit leads us into truth utilizing Scripture. The Spirit helps us to understand and to apply Scripture to our lives. That is perhaps why Paul refers to the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, our one offensive weapon in spiritual warfare (Ephesians 6).
Don Lyon has said, “If you have the Spirit without the Word, you blow up. If you have the Word without the Spirit, you dry up. If you have both the Word and the Spirit, you grow up.”[2] That’s good!
A fifth thing we learn from Jesus is that the Holy Spirit lives in believers. Jesus says, “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.”
Jesus promised his first disciples, and us, that though he was going to leave them for a time (implying, his death, resurrection and ascension) he would not leave them or us alone forever. Jesus promised to come to his disciples through the Holy Spirit. He did that on Pentecost and he continues to do it every day.
He says, “On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you.” Here we have the indwelling Holy Spirit. That’s how Jesus lives in us—through his Spirit. Furthermore, he says, “He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love him and show myself to him.” Jesus continues to reveal himself to us through the power of the Spirit.
This means that we can know the Spirit in a personal way. “You know him for he lives with you and will be in you.”
When does the Holy Spirit begin to live in us? Paul says, “Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit.” (Ephesians 1:13) The moment we believe, Jesus marks us and seals us with his Spirit.
Clark Tanner has written,
When my mother used to make jam, I would watch her pour wax over the top of the preserves until it was at the brim of the jar. She would then carefully wipe some wax around the rim itself and place the rubber lined lid on tight. The wax and the vacuum caused by the cooling preserves would seal that jar so tight that it could have sat on a basement shelf for years, and the jam would have been good when finally opened. Sealed, preserved, protected. In our house, the dust didn’t have time to gather on those jars; but they could have lasted a long time if necessary. Paul, under the inspiration of this same Holy Spirit of God, has written to us that after listening to the message of truth, the good news of our salvation - HAVING ALSO BELIEVED, we were sealed in Him (Christ) by the Holy Spirit of promise. A seal of God’s ownership was placed over our lives, and unlike Pilate’s seal, no power in Heaven or earth can break that seal...a seal that DOES mean a great deal to God. He shut us up tightly. We are set aside for His use...for His eternal fellowship. Preserved, protected until the day of the redemption of our bodies (or glorification).
What a beautiful picture, having believed we have been sealed with the Spirit who lives in us. However, we have not been sealed and protected just to be set on a shelf and go unused. The Holy Spirit of God wants to use us in powerful ways.
That’s why Jesus says,
I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.
I wonder: what great work would you or I attempt for God, beginning today, if we knew we could not fail?
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