Another Helper

00:01 Now for just a few minutes this morning, for the time that remains, I'd like for you to turn in your Bibles to John chapter 14. I noticed that one of Wayne's prayer requests was for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. And we want to think about, again this morning, about the Holy Spirit. And think about it in relationship to the New Year here. 00:23 Jesus, before He left us, said, "I'm going to go away, and then I'm going to come again." And I'm surprised that He didn't come again in this past year because at the beginning of every year I say, "I think this might be the year. I'm looking for it." And then if it doesn't happen, well, I'll just keep looking. 00:43 And I'm looking for Him in 2019. And don't know. Don't know. Don't set dates. But one of these years it's going to happen. And so we look forward to that. But Jesus said in relationship to Him leaving that He would not leave us without resources. 01:03 And He would not leave us as orphans. And He would not leave us without help. He would send a helper. And that's what John chapter 14, verse 15 says, "If you love Me, keep My commandments, and I will pray the Father, and He will give you another helper, that He may abide with you forever." Another helper. 01:25 Notice, I want you to notice that this message here on the Holy Spirit in verses 15 through 18 is in the context of keeping His commandments. Just notice that. And then He says, "The Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him, 01:44 but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you. I will not leave you orphans. I will come to you." And over in verse 25, "These things I have spoken to you while being present with you. 01:58 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 things that I said to you. Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you, not as the world gives, do I give to you. 02:14 Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid." I want to give you three things this morning that the Comforter, or the Helper, or the Holy Spirit does for us from this passage. Number one, He empowers us because we are not able to keep God's commandments on our own. 02:34 We do not have spiritual strength on our own. And so when He says, "If you love Me, keep My commandments, and I will pray the Father, and He will send you a helper." Then He also gives us comfort in our sorrow. And in verse 18, the sorrow of being an orphan, 02:54 the sorrow of being homeless, the sorrow of being without peace, the sorrow of losing loved ones, the sorrow that goes through our lives. And He talks in verse 27 about the peace. He gives us comfort in our sorrow. 03:08 And the third thing you see in verse 17, and again in verse 26, that He gives us instruction in our ignorance. Instruction in our ignorance. So let's look at these things. The first thing I want you to notice is that He said, "I'll pray the Father, and He will give you another helper, another Comforter." We all know that Jesus was a helper, right? 03:29 Jesus is a Comforter. And so one of the things that they were distraught about is that He's going to leave. And we can no longer just ask our questions to Jesus. We can no longer just come alongside of Him as we're walking along the way and talk with Jesus. So what are we going to do without Jesus? 03:50 And Jesus said, "You won't be without Me. I will send you another Comforter." And the word "another" here is an interesting word. It is different than other "another" words that are used in other places. This means someone of the same sort. 04:11 Different, but of the same sort. Now, so He's going to be a Comforter of the same sort as Jesus. Now, that's opposed to what the Scripture uses, the word "another" in some places, like when it talks about another Pharaoh was raised up that didn't know Joseph. 04:31 That is another of a different sort. Or when Paul talks about another gospel in Galatians, he says, "They're preaching another gospel, which is not another." So you have the word in two, the same English word in both occasions. He says, "They're preaching another gospel, which is of a different sort, 04:52 which is not another of the same sort." So you have another that's of a different kind, and you have another that's of the same kind. And what Jesus here is saying, when He prays the Father to send the Holy Spirit, He's not sending another of a different kind. He's sending another of the same kind. 05:12 He's sending another Comforter, another Helper, just like Jesus, but another person. We know Him as the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit. You can put that slide up. 05:27 And our confession of faith is very distinct when it says, "We believe the supreme ministry of the Holy Spirit is to convict of sin and lead to salvation through Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit transforms believers into the spiritual image of Jesus Christ as they yield to Him and obey His word. 05:46 The Spirit enables believers to persevere in faith and holiness, empowers them to be effective witnesses to Christ, fills their hearts with love for all men, and leads them in Christian discipleship. The indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit is God's seal of His ownership on the believer." This is not a different kind of Comforter, 06:09 a different kind of Helper. It's a same kind of Helper and Comforter. By the way, the word here in the Greek is the word "paraklitos," which means one called alongside. The Holy Spirit is one called alongside of us to help us in our weaknesses. So there's three things that are mentioned here this morning. 06:29 Where we're weak. Number one, in verse 15, we are weak in relation to spiritual strength. We cannot keep the commandments of the Lord in our own power and in our own strength. Brother Wayne referred to that. All you have without the power of the Holy Spirit is a dead works religion. And even those who had known God in the past, 06:51 and God had touched their movements and their history and given them the Scriptures and everything, without the Holy Spirit regenerating the human heart, without the Holy Spirit equipping and empowering our personality and our mind and our will and our emotions and giving us life spiritually, 07:12 we are dead and unable to walk with God. Unable to keep His commandments. And so He says, "If you love Me, you keep My commandments, and I will give you a Helper to do that. One called alongside to help you in your weakness." Talk about loving your neighbor. How are you going to do that in the flesh? 07:30 You can't. Talk about loving your enemy. How are you going to do that in the flesh? You can't. Talk about keeping yourself pure in the middle of an impure world. How can you do that? You can't without the Holy Spirit. We try. We try. 07:46 How do you overcome the flesh and the impulses and the cravings and the lusts of the flesh without the Holy Spirit? You can't. There must be a born-again experience where the heart is regenerated, and then there must be the power of the Holy Spirit to equip us and empower us because we are weak. 08:07 Jesus said it like this, "Without Me, you can do what? Nothing." You can't do something. You can't do many things. You can do nothing. That's what the Lord said. 08:21 But then He comes along in the writings of Paul, and Paul says, "I can do all things through Christ." What changes between the nothing and the all things? Jesus and the power that He gives us in the Holy Spirit, through the Holy Spirit, by the Holy Spirit. 08:41 And so, my friend, if we are experiencing weakness in our Christian life, what we need to do is come to God and ask Him for that fresh infilling of His Spirit. Is come to God and recognize our weakness and say, "God, I need You. I cannot do this on my own." And when we are weak, 09:02 Paul said in 2 Corinthians 12, "Then we are strong." The second thing that we see in this passage this morning that He will do for us is to comfort us in our sorrow. Boy, is there sorrow in life. There's just a lot of sorrow. There's so much sorrow. There's brokenness. There's pain. 09:21 There's affliction. There's sorrow in people outside of Christ. There's even sorrow in the life of a Christian. There's sorrow, the loss of loved ones. There's sorrow when relationships aren't what we wish that they would be. There's sorrow and disappointments in life when people don't respond to us in the way that we wish they would respond. 09:40 And when we find our own weaknesses in those relationships, there's just sorrow. And sometimes there's loneliness. Talked with Brother Chad this week. I don't think he would mind me saying this, but he says, "I think of life without Carmen, and I think of loneliness. I'm going to be alone. No one to come home to, 10:02 as it were." But you know what? That's at that time when the Holy Spirit shows up and says, "You are not alone." That's different. Yes, it's not a person with skin on it that we can hug and walk together with, 10:22 but the presence of Jesus is real. It is real. 10:27 And when we experience those times, whether it be in our time of personal devotions or whether it be in our time of sorrow around a casket of a loved one or a grave, or whether it be a time of sorrow when people disappoint us, 10:45 or whether it be a time of feeling alone late at night when everyone else is in bed and sleeping and you're struggling and wrestling, we take this comfort. "I will not leave you orphans. I will come to you." And since Pentecost, that has been fulfilled. 11:05 We could say, "I have come to you." What does He bring when He comes? Verse 27, "Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you." How do you get it? How does it come? 11:20 How does it get all the way from the throne of God down here to the altar or to the place of sorrow, the hospital room? How does it get there? It gets there by the Holy Spirit. We sing that song on the wings of a dove. On the wings of a snow-white dove, He sends His pure, 11:39 sweet love, a sign from above on the wings of a dove. It's the songwriter's way of trying to explain that the resources of heaven, the peace, the grace, the strength, the comfort, the counsel comes to us from God the Father and Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit. 12:00 How can Jesus be all places at all times? How can He be in your hospital room and someone else's hospital room and in your bedroom and in your prayer closet and in your job site? How can He be all those places at one time by the Holy Spirit, that Comforter of the same sort? 12:20 And then one more thing He gives to us here in this passage of Scripture this morning is instruction. He gives us instruction. The Spirit of truth. The Spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive. You see, they don't know the truth. They don't experience the truth. Then He goes on in verse 26, 12:40 "This Helper, this Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you and bring to you remembrance of the things that I taught you." And by the way, this is a reference and implies that the apostles were in a special position to write down the Scriptures, 13:00 to pin those Scriptures as the Word of God, the Holy Spirit bringing to remembrance the things that Jesus had taught them and superintending over them as they wrote the words of Scripture. But it also has the idea of teaching us as well. Teaching us the Scriptures, teaching us what we need for life, 13:20 teaching us in our ignorance because I guarantee us, without the Holy Spirit today, isn't one of us that knows anything the way we ought to know it. Amen? It's a little weak. Without the Holy Spirit, there isn't one of us that knows anything the way that we ought to know it. But with the Holy Spirit, He teaches us. 13:40 He takes the Word of God, and He opens it, and He says, "This is what it means. This is what it says. This is what it means. And this is how it applies to this area of life and this area of life and this area of life and this area of life." And He gives us that heavenly heartburn. You remember as the disciples were walking with Jesus along the road to Emmaus, 14:01 and they experienced some heartburn there, some spiritual heartburn. They said, "Did not our heart burn with us while He talked with us and opened to us the Scriptures?" That is the ministry of the Holy Spirit for us today. As He talks with us, as we read and we ask for understanding, and He gives understanding. 14:22 And that doesn't mean we don't have to study. It doesn't mean that we don't have to learn from others. It doesn't mean that we don't have to listen. It doesn't mean that we don't have to dig. But He is the teacher. As we dig, He teaches. As we study, He reveals. As we hear and listen, He opens up new understanding. 14:40 It's all part of the work and ministry of the Holy Spirit instructing us in our ignorance. And so this morning, oh, that God would help us to recognize. 14:53 I almost said, "If you're weak," I'm going to change that to say, "If you recognize your weakness," because we are weak. "If we recognize our weakness, oh, that we might come to Christ and to the Holy Spirit for strength. If you are discouraged, downhearted, 15:14 lonely, that we would come to Christ. If we are sorrowful, that we would ask Christ by His Holy Spirit to comfort us and help us in our sorrow. And oh, that we would come to Him and recognize our ignorance." Even Paul said, 15:34 "Not one of us knows we know nothing as we ought to know," he said. "And that we would bring our ignorance to Him and say, 'Holy Spirit, teach me. Teach me. Teach me through Your Word. Teach me through others' study of Your Word. 15:49 Illuminate my understanding and apply this to my life.'" This is the ministry of the Helper, one of the same sort, speaking the same message, representing the same God as Jesus Christ. 16:11 Let's pray. Thank You, Lord, for the ministry and the person of the Holy Spirit. Lord, we are weak today. We are sorrowful. We are ignorant. We ask that the Holy Spirit would help us, console us, 16:31 counsel us, strengthen us, and instruct us to God's glory through Christ. Amen.