SERMON: “Taught by the Holy Spirit” (John 14:25–26)
“Taught by the Holy Spirit” (John 14:25–26)
Series: “John:
Life in Christ’s Name” Text:
John
14:25–26
By: Shaun
Marksbury Date:
May
12, 2024
Venue: Living
Water Baptist Church Occasion:
AM Service
I.
Introduction
You
might be confused by what the Holy Spirit does in our lives. I remember reading about one young lady who
was certainly mixed up: “A girl at Philadelphia Bible College miserably flunked
an exam. The professor called her in and
asked why. She said, ‘I read the verse
that says the Spirit will give you in that day what you shall say, and so I did
not feel I needed to study.’ ”[1]
Perhaps you would see that as a misunderstanding of passages like what
we just read, but some people do struggle with the meaning here.
As
we return now to John 14, we’re considering the comforts Christ gives to His
disciples as He goes away from them.
These are comforts we continue to enjoy today, to varying degrees. One of these comforts is the Holy Spirit, who
our Lord began discussing in vv. 16–17: “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 see Him or know Him, but
you know Him because He abides with you and will be in you.” The Holy Spirit would be there for the
disciples forever, providing divine comfort and support while Jesus goes to the
Father, interceding there for His saints.
Today,
we’ll see three truths about the Holy Spirit.
He comes to all Christ’s disciples, He teaches all Christ’s disciples,
and He repeats all Christ’s teaching to Christ’s disciples. For the first point, let’s begin in the first
part of v. 26.
II.
First, the Holy Spirit Comes to All Christ’s Disciples
(v. 26a)
But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the
Father will send in My name,
Jesus
is abundantly clear here. The Greek word
He uses is paracletos, and we noted back in v. 16 how many ways this is
translated. In this translation, the
term is rendered “Helper” (also ESV & NKJV); it’s also translated “Advocate”
(LSB & NIV), “Counselor” (HCSB & NIV84), and “Comforter” (KJV). Some people just transliterate this
“Paraclete.” However we translate the
term, Jesus repeats here that this is the Holy Spirit.
One
issue that continues to arise in connection to the doctrine of the Holy Spirit
is that of sex and gender. Gender is
historically a category in language, not in persons, describing how words can
be masculine, feminine, or neuter (which exists in Greek and Spanish and
practically every language except English).
When we refer to people as male or female, we’ve historically used the
term “sex” to refer to these two categories (and there are only two!). Yet, since we are here referring to the Holy
Spirit, the term sex doesn’t apply, leaving some to debate which pronouns are
appropriate for the Holy Spirit.
We
see this debate in various theological traditions. For instance, as you may have heard, the
conference for the United Methodist Church just voted to affirm the ordination
of homosexual clergy, and there were references to God in that conference with
feminine pronouns. Others see the Holy
Spirit as an impersonal force, and they’d have no compunction about using the
pronoun “it.” Do we get to choose our
own preferred pronouns for the third person of the Godhead?
Okay,
but why does Jesus spend so much time on the Holy Spirit? We must remember that the Old Testament spoke
quite a bit about the Holy Spirit. We
see Him in the first chapter of Scripture — “the Spirit of God was moving over
the surface of the waters” (Gen. 1:2). One
of the promises God gives for the Messianic Age is “I will put My Spirit within
you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My
ordinances” (Ezek. 36:27). So, thinking
about the Holy Spirit wasn’t unknown to the disciples.
Jesus
is transitioning them to that coming dispensation. As one commentary notes, this “verse
obviously indicates that that time was drawing to a close and that a new era
was about to begin — the era of the Spirit/Paraclete.”[2] As
Jesus is about to leave them for the cross later that evening, they needed to
see not only comforts, but the great Comforter who awaited them.
We’ve
noted the shift from the Old Testament sense of the Holy Spirit to this new
dispensation. In 1 Samuel 16:12–16, we
read that the Spirit came on David for a time but departed from King Saul. Later, in Psalm 51:11, David fears this loss,
saying, “Do not cast me away from Your presence and do not take Your Holy
Spirit from me.” In this new age, the
Helper would not depart; Jesus promises in v. 16 that He’ll “be with you
forever,” and in v. 17, “He abides with you and will be in you.” Christians, on their worst day, do not need
to share David’s fear (though we don’t deserve the Holy Spirit’s presence on
our best day!).
He
is meant to be with Christ’s disciples.
Think again about that term Paraclete or Helper. He is God’s advocate or representative with
us just as Jesus is our advocate or representative before the Father. As one study explains,
The
Greek term used here, paraklētos,
refers to a legal assistant in a court who pleads someone’s case before the
judge (compare 1 John 2:1). The judge is God, and people are judged based on
whether they follow Jesus’ command to believe that eternal life comes through
His death and resurrection (John 12:48–50). When on earth, Jesus was the means
for believers to interact with God the Father since their sin prevented them
from doing so directly. The Spirit is sent to do the same work. This is one of His many tasks. Paraklētos
is used throughout Greek literature in a legal context (e.g., Dionysius of
Halicarnassus, Antiquitates Romanae,
11.37.1; Demosthenes, De falsa legatione,
1). Jewish writer Philo uses the legal
term in a religious context, referring to a sinner pleading their case (e.g.,
Philo, Antiquitates Romanae, 166).[3]
So,
as Jesus says here, the Father will send this Advocate or Helper. Jesus said in v. 16 that He’ll ask the Father
to do so for “y’all” (plural). Jesus also
says after His resurrection that He will send this promised Spirit from the
Father (15:26; cf. Luke 24:49). He
received the promise from the Father and poured the Spirit forth on Pentecost
(Acts 2:33). There was actually a large
church controversy as to who sends the Holy Spirit, but Scripture says that
both Father and Son send the Holy Spirit to the disciples.
This
means that the Spirit “is given not ‘gotten’ ”[4] to all Christ’s disciples. This fits with what we’ve already considered
about the Spirit always being with us. In
1 Corinthians 2:12, Paul affirms that “we have received… the Spirit who is from
God.” No where are Christians told to
stand with arms uplifted, asking for the Holy Spirit to fall on them. Rather, when Christians believe, they already
receive the Holy Spirit in fullness.
The
Lord sends His Spirit to all His disciples.
This means we each have the Holy Spirit through every trial and
temptation, which changes how we approach the troubles of our lives. Of course, this promise started with those
first disciples, so let’s consider how this promise affected them.
III.
Second, the Holy Spirit Teaches all Christ’s Disciples
(v. 26b)
He will teach you all things
Throughout
each of the Spirit passages in this farewell discourse, there’s a sense in
which the disciples will continue their discipleship with the Spirit. In v. 16, He’s “another Helper,” which means
“another of the same kind of Helper.”
The Holy Spirit is the “Spirit of truth” (v. 17; 15:26), meaning that He
will communicate truths for the disciples to receive.
The
disciples did not always fully understand, as John 12:16 says. This was, of course, a common malady. For instance, Mark 9:32 says, “But they did
not understand this statement, and
they were afraid to ask Him.” As natural
men, they shared the same, limited, political view of the Messiah as their
kinsmen, viewing much of the teaching of Jesus through the lens of their
traditions. It would take the death and
resurrection of the Lord to shake them of this, and the comforting reminders
the Holy Spirit would later give them.
In John 2:22, we read, “So when He was raised from the dead, His
disciples remembered that He said this; and they believed the Scripture and the
word which Jesus had spoken.” Only after
the outpouring of the Spirit would they remember and process all that
happened.
Jesus
will say in 16:12, “I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.” He says that in connection with the promise
of the Holy Spirit who will brings His teachings to their remembrance. He says in the next verse, “But when He, the
Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth” (v. 13). The Holy Spirit would open their spiritual
eyes to understand how all these prophecies about Jesus’s death and
resurrection were necessary for their salvation.
Some
of this would be predictive. In 16:13,
Jesus continues on to say that the Holy Spirit “will disclose to you what is to
come.” This is a prophetic Word that the
disciples will need to build the early church.
As Ephesians 2:20 says, the church is “built on the foundation of the
apostles and prophets,” and 4:11–12 says that He “gave some as apostles, and some as prophets… for the equipping of the
saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ.” The Holy Spirit worked through prophets and
apostles in the New Testament era, giving them the necessary revelatory truth
to form the foundation for the church age.
Now,
of course, this doesn’t only apply to the first century disciples. Some have abused these passages to claim that
they have a special anointing from God, and that we should listen to them. Some even claim to be modern-day apostles!
John
later says we don’t need special teachers; we each have our own anointing from
God. In 1 John 2:20–21, he says, “But
you have an anointing from the Holy One, and you all know. I have not written to you because you do not
know the truth, but because you do know it, and because no lie is of the
truth.” In other words, Christ (the
anointed one) has shared His anointing with us through the Holy Spirit, meaning
that we don’t need to follow self-appointed apostles and prophets. We can know the truth of God ourselves
through the Holy Spirit.
I
remember not caring much about God as an adolescent, until God got ahold of my
heart through His Spirit and made me suddenly realize I needed Jesus. I also remember then being amazed as a
younger believer how there was a new sense of right and wrong within me, that I
could sometimes discern what God wanted, and then reading Scripture to verify
that. That’s not necessarily new
prophecy, because I was sometimes wrong, and my own sin often got in the
way. However, there was a sense in which
the Holy Spirit was helping my thinking to mature.
He
worked, though, not through vague feelings and impressions. I had already memorized Scripture as a child,
and because of the Holy Spirit, I was getting back into the Word of God. Much more of it made sense, and truths seemed
to quickly come to mind. That continues
today; there are times when I might personally wonder how I might answer an
unbeliever, or help a believer, but as long as I pray and rest upon the Holy
Spirit, some truth comes to mind, even if it’s that I should probably be quiet
about something!
Another
way of considering this is that the Holy Spirit is bringing truth into
remembrance. That is the final point
for today:
IV.
Third, the Holy Spirit Repeats all Christ’s Teaching
to Christ’s disciples (vv. 25, 26c)
These things I have spoken to you while
abiding with you… and (He’ll) bring to your remembrance all that I said to you.
Some
of you have red-letter editions of the Bible to highlight the words of
Jesus. I once had a child ask me that,
if all the red letters are Jesus’s words, does that make all the black letters
the narrator? I found that to be an
amusing and thoughtful question. Yet,
this highlights a potential problem with red-letter editions — they cause us to
think that Jesus’s teaching is only limited to these pages.
There
are even groups of professed believers who call themselves Red-Letter
Christians. You’ll know when you
encounter one. If you say that the Lord
condemns gay marriage, for instance, they’ll ask where in the Gospels Jesus
said anything about homosexuality. If
you say only men should be pastors based on 1 Timothy 2–3, they’ll reply that
this is only Paul speaking, not Jesus.
They tend to think that Jesus only spoke for three years on earth,
making the black letters less important than the red.
Jesus
spoke much to the disciples that they didn’t understand, but He sent the Holy
Spirit to them not as a different teacher, but as another one bearing
the same divine message. For instance, in
John 2:22, we read, “So when He was raised from the dead, His disciples
remembered that He said this; and they believed the Scripture and the word
which Jesus had spoken.” As we noted,
Jesus will say in 16:12, “I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot
bear them now.” He says that in connection with the promise
of the Holy Spirit who will bring His teachings to their remembrance and
disclose more truth to them (v. 13). He
goes on to say, “He will glorify Me, for He will take of Mine and will disclose
it to you. All things that the Father has are Mine;
therefore I said that He takes of Mine and will disclose it to you” (v. 14–15).
It's
not that the Holy Spirit is dictating to them what to write. There’s a mystery to that, as each prophet
and apostle retains his distinct tone and style, bringing unique vocabulary and
prose to the text. Yet, someone they
understood the Spirit moving in them.
Jude provides us an example when, in Jude 3, he writes, “Beloved, while
I was making every effort to write you about our common salvation, I felt the
necessity to write to you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith
which was once for all handed down to the saints.” The message of each book of Scripture comes
ultimately from the Spirit of Christ working through His people.
Some
wonder if they made mistakes. There are
two theological terms to describe the finished product on the desks of the
apostles and prophets — infallible and inerrant. The text is infallible in that it accurately
communicates the truths about God and salvation. The text is also inerrant in that it doesn’t
contain error in incidental facts (place names, years, etc.). This also allows for the unique flourishes
which wouldn’t meet the standards of today’s English critic, but prove to be
natural in human reckoning.[5]
There’s much to say about that subject, and if you want to know more, I
can recommend some books for you after the service.
Of
course, all disciples of Christ benefit from the inspired writings of these
disciples. Moreover, believers can trust
that the Holy Spirit will guide them through the Bible, bringing relevant
verses and passages to our minds when we need them. The Holy Spirit has given us this Word, and
He works in our lives with it and through it.
V.
Conclusion
That means that, if we want the Holy Spirit to reveal the
word of Christ to us, we should read the Bible.
Some folks want to audibly hear from the Holy Spirit, so the best thing
for them is to read the Bible aloud.
There’s nothing in this Spirit-inspired Word about trying to listen for
voices within our heads or impressions in our hearts. If we want to be taught by the Spirit, then
we should read and obey His Word.
[1] Syllabus from a Hermeneutics class at the Master’s
Seminary, Dr. Rosscup, p. 29
[2] Gerald L. Borchert, John 12–21, The New American Commentary, (Nashville: Broadman &
Holman Publishers, 2002), 25B:131–132.
[3] John D. Barry, Douglas Mangum, Derek R. Brown, Michael
S. Heiser, Miles Custis, Elliot Ritzema, Matthew M. Whitehead, Michael R.
Grigoni, and David Bomar, Faithlife Study
Bible, (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2012, 2016), Jn 14:26.
[4] Borchert, 25B:132–133.
[5] Paul P. Enns, The
Moody Handbook of Theology, (Chicago, IL: Moody Press, 1989), 168.