Promise of the Spirit

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign. [00:00:24] Speaker B: Hello, I'm Josh. [00:00:25] Speaker A: And I'm Gabriel. [00:00:26] Speaker B: And today on reading the Gospel, we are studying the event, the promise of the Holy Spirit. This is found in John 14, 15, 31. Follow along with us in your Bibles as we read. [00:00:43] Speaker A: If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another helper to be with you forever. 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 will be in you. I will not leave you as orphan. I will come to you yet a little while, and the world will see me no more. But you will see me because I live. You also will live. In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in Me. And I in you. Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father. And I will love him and manifest myself to Him. [00:01:45] Speaker B: Judas, not Iscariot, said to him, lord, how is it that you will manifest yourself to us and not to the world? Jesus answered him, if anyone loves me, he will keep my word. And my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words. And the word that you hear is not mine, but the Father who sent me these things I have spoken to you while I am still 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 have said to you. Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. You heard me say to you, I I am going away and I will come to you. If you loved me, you would have rejoiced because I am going to the Father. For the Father is greater than I. And now I have told you before it takes place, so that when it does take place, you may believe I will no longer talk much with you. For the ruler of this world is coming. He has no claim on me, but I do as the Father has commanded me, so that the world may know that I love the Father. Rise. Let us go from here. So we've just finished the previous episode talking about how Jesus and the Father are one. I am the Way, the Truth, and the life. And now we're brought into the third part of the Godhead. The helper or the comforter? The Holy Spirit. Jesus is talking about the Holy Spirit in lines with Keeping my Commandments because he says, if you love me, you'll keep my commandments and I'm going to send you the helper. [00:03:51] Speaker A: I really like how Jesus Christ introduced the promise of the Spirit is in the context of his unity with the Father, of our unity with him through obedience. Right. Dwelling in each other. And also it is in the context of Jesus Christ living but not leaving us orphans. [00:04:13] Speaker B: Yeah. And the Holy Spirit, the helper, this, I think, out of the Godhead. This is the person of the Godhead that we have the least amount of information for. And it's easy to speculate on areas. What does the Holy Spirit look like? Is the Holy Spirit a human like us? There's lots of questions, but I feel the best counsel is don't speculate on information we've not been given. We know what the Holy Spirit does. Right here we have some descriptions of what the Holy Spirit does. And then later on in John, in a few more episodes, we'll get into some more jobs that the Holy Spirit does. And I think these need to be our focus on what does the Holy Spirit do? And so he's our helper when it comes to keeping the Commandments of God. We don't have to try to do this on our own. In fact, if we try to keep the commandments of God on our own, we're going to fail. We might rigidly be able to keep the Ten Commandments to a very Letter of the Law type thing, but Jesus in his Sermon on the Mount, expanded and said, no, it's not just the rigid. I tell you the truth, if you hate your brother, you've committed murder. If you lust after another woman, you've committed adultery. It's more than just the rigid letter that God is talking about. And it's the Holy Spirit who's the one who helps us. So what does the Holy Spirit give us? What does he give us to help us keep the Commandments? [00:05:59] Speaker A: So I like to just focus for a minute on this word that is translated helper. In English Standard Version, it is translated differently in different versions. By the way, it's the same Greek word parakletos. In King James, An American Standard Version is translated as comforter. In New King James English Standard Version, New American Standard Bible is helper. In New International Version, New Revised Standard Version, New American Bible Advocate In Christian Standard Bible, Christian Holman Standard Bible is translated as counselor. It is also translated as intercessor or friend, message. And there is one version that they couldn't find an English word and they Englishized the Greek word and said paraclete. Yeah, so the word parakletos can mean all of this? Yeah, it is that answer that is all of the above. But helper, it's kind of covering, it's like an umbrella covering all of them. The Holy Spirit is another helper because Jesus Christ was the first. The Holy Spirit is another counselor because Jesus was the first. And it was even prophesied in Isaiah chapter 9, verse 6 that he will be a counselor. The Holy Spirit is a friend because Jesus was the first. Jesus said, I don't call you servants, I call it friends. We are friends. And in the same way the Holy Spirit is an advocate because Jesus Christ is the first one as it is described in the book of Hebrews. As you said, we don't know too much about him and this is why you cannot pinpoint exactly what his ministry is. And translators are using different English words to describe the invisible but powerful ministry of the Holy Spirit as a continuation of the work of Jesus Christ. [00:08:13] Speaker B: And yes, we don't know a lot about the physical, but we know about the work and what it comes down to. The Holy Spirit gives us the fruit, the fruit that we need. And this is the fruit of the Spirit. And the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, faithfulness, gentleness and self control. And when we have these in our life, when we live with those attributes, we become someone who is not selfish, but other centered. We become someone who is able to keep the commandments not because of who we are, but because the Holy Spirit is helping us and living within us. And so this is a beautiful gift that God has given us. And it's a gift that we should be asking for and seeking continually. [00:09:08] Speaker A: I like what you said, that Even if verse 15 says if you love me, you'll keep my commandments and I will ask the Father. There is a dual directionality, a two way relationship between obedience to the commandments of Christ on one side and receiving the promise of the Holy Spirit on one side. As you said, we need the indwelling power of the Spirit to obey God. On the other side, we are called to obey God and Jesus will ask someone to come to help us keep that obedience based relationship with Christ that is always love based relationship. Because if we love God, we will keep his commandments and the Holy Spirit will come to blend those two, love and obedience, truth and grace, into one and only relationship with Jesus Christ and the Father. And this time now with the Holy Spirit. [00:10:19] Speaker B: And we've talked about this in the past, that the keeping of God's commandments is really an expression of agape love. That if you truly love others and love God as we are loved, then these are just the things that you do. We're given another job that the Holy Spirit does. And this comes in verse 26. It says, 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 have said to you. This reading the Gospel, one of the reasons why we're doing this is so that you, the listener, can connect with God. And we've said this before, you know, this journey that we're on. When we come to the Bible, we ask for the Holy Spirit to give us wisdom, knowledge and understanding to help us. And this is what changes the Bible from any other book in the world is the Bible is living and active. It can speak to us where we're at. It can speak to us on a daily basis because the Holy Spirit is speaking to us. [00:11:32] Speaker A: Very interesting. The Holy Spirit as teacher. We generally apply this title and this job to Jesus Christ and we say he's the greatest teacher ever. But he said the Holy Spirit is a teacher also, so he is another teacher. Both of them are the greatest teachers ever. One spoke the words and the other one will imprint them in the heart, will remind them, only need them. One was visible and we have people's records of those words. The other one is invisible. And only each individual knows what the Spirit teaches. [00:12:17] Speaker B: Yeah, you touched on this. I want to dwell with it just a little bit longer. The bring to your remembrance all that I've said to you. I can't tell you how many times I've seen this play out in my life. My memory is not the greatest. I do not have photographic memory. There are things, you know. My wife will tell me to do something and I'll forget it 30 seconds later. And what did you say? Ask her again. But there are times where we'll sit down to study the Bible with someone and they will ask a question and all of a sudden a verse pops in my head and I've not thought about that verse in, I don't know, a year or two. It's not really come to mind. It's not something that I was dwelling on and that verse will come to mind and I'm you to answer the question. And making it able to answer a question with thus saith the Lord and is clearly the work of the Holy Spirit. And I can't tell you how many times I've seen that happen where he brings to memory something that I had studied in the past. I don't know if you've had the same experience many times. [00:13:29] Speaker A: Many times. And I feel the presence of God. Jesus Christ tells us not to worry when we have to give an answer to those who ask for it, even in the time of persecution, because the Holy Spirit will remind us. He will bring to our memory or bring to the conversation the verses that we really need. [00:13:55] Speaker B: Yeah, I kind of wonder. In verse 27, Jesus says, Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you. Could it be that peace is another gift of the Spirit? [00:14:06] Speaker A: Yes. [00:14:07] Speaker B: And that when we have the Holy Spirit dwelling in our lives, we're surrounded by peace. That even in chaos, even if we're losing our job or losing our family, losing a loved one, even in disaster, there's peace. [00:14:21] Speaker A: Yes, it does. [00:14:22] Speaker B: Let us pray. Father God, we are thankful that when Jesus went back to heaven, we were sent the comforter, the helper, the advocate, the Holy Spirit. And I pray that you will guide us to truth each and every day. That you will bring to our remembrance your word and you, but that you will also help us to keep the commandments and to love one another as you have loved us. [00:14:51] Speaker A: Amen. [00:14:52] Speaker B: I pray, Father, that there will be evidence of the fruit of the Spirit in our lives. [00:14:57] Speaker A: Amen. [00:14:58] Speaker B: In Jesus name, amen. [00:15:00] Speaker A: Amen.