Sermon Transcript
Bible Reading
John 14:15-27
Morning Church. Today's reading is from John chapter 14, verses 15 to 27. Jesus promises the Holy Spirit.
If you love me, keep my commands and I will ask the Father and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever, the spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him for he lives with you and will be in you.
I will not leave you as orphans, I will come to you. Before long the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. On that day you will realize that I am in my Father and you are in me and I am in you. Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me. The one who loves me will be loved by my Father and I too will love them and show myself to them.
Then Judas, not Judas Iscariot, said, but Lord, why do you intend to show yourself to us and not to the world? Jesus replied, anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them and we will come to them and make our home with them. Anyone who does not love me will not obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own. They belong to the Father who sent me.
All this I have spoken while still with you, but the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you. Peace I leave with you, my peace I give you. I do not give you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.
This is the word of the Lord.
Opening Prayer
Thank you. We're immersing ourselves in the work and person of the Holy Spirit and today we come to the Advocate, the Comforter, the Counsellor. Let's pray.
Father, for your gracious provision for us individually and as a Church, we thank you. For this promise made to the disciples in a time when they were feeling bereft, we thank you. For its fullness in our lives and experience, for the promise that is in these words and for the hope we have in Jesus, we thank you. And ask now, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, that we would come near you, open ourselves to you, be filled by you and so changed. For Christ's sake. Amen.
What Are You Like With Change?
The Comforter. Well, at this point in John's Gospel, there's a lot going on. It's the last night Jesus has on earth. The last night is with his disciples.
He's about to go to the Garden of Gethsemane and get arrested. He's been telling them he's going away. So it's about change.
It's happening and he's trying to carry them through, give them the equipment they need.
Change. What are you like with change? What am I like with change?
I'm not that good with change. I'm the guy who finds a dish he likes at a restaurant and every time he goes to that restaurant, orders that dish.
In fact, I've got a series of restaurants around near where I live where I like what they make and I go to each restaurant depending on what I feel like eating. I don't do the menu. I just go and do my thing. Sad, huh?
But I live with Rosanne and Rosanne does everything for the first time. And you can see that when it's time to put things away and you open the pantry doors or the fridge and the deal is if there's a gap in it, it goes.
But we all know that things have a place, don't we? Yeah, okay then. All right. I'm with my people. So that's all right. I love her anyway.
So what are you like with change? There's been so much change around here, right? Like so much change, particularly in the staff team. And there will be more, okay? Like that's the way change works because unless you're dead, you're changing.
So I've got a picture of my backyard here and you'll notice something about my backyard. They're box hedges. I know they don't look like box hedges because they should be all trimmed and neat and terrific but it's spring, right? So they're all kind of doing this.
So when I get home from church today, guess what I'm going to be doing, right? Clippers out, okay. So they're clearly alive because look, they're changing. And we notice that particularly at spring, right?
But think of everything actually that is alive, including you, you're changing. So change is like one of these constants.
And we've come to a series on the Holy Spirit and in particular to his role as comforter or advocate or counsellor. All those words are the same words.
As Jesus speaks to the disciples in the upper room on his last night on earth, he's trying to tell them he is leaving but they just can't understand how they will live without him. And if you know, you know your Matthew, Mark, Luke and John very well, you'll know that, you know, he tries time and time and time again.
He says, he tells it words of one syllable. I am going away. They will crucify me. And the disciples are going, what? What's he talking about? I just don't get it.
John does it slightly differently but it's the same thing. Just listen up.
The page you're on is 1675 in your red Bible, 1675. And you'll see at the end of chapter 13 in verse 33, these words.
John 13:33
My children, I will be with you only a little longer. You will look for me. And just as I told the Jews, so now I tell you where I'm going, you cannot come.
A little bit further on, verse 36.
John 13:36
So Simon Peter asks him, Lord, where are you going? Jesus replied, where I'm going, you cannot follow now, but you will follow later.
In our own chapter, verse four, you know the way to the place where I am going, to which Thomas says, Lord, we don't know where you're going. How can we know the way?
And Jesus memorable answer, I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the father except through me.
And then in our own chapter, if you love me, you will obey what I command. And I will ask the father and he will give you another counselor to be with you forever.
Okay, so there's the kind of movement in the text. Jesus is going. He's trying to explain that to them. And they're asking questions.
Can you hear the questions in their voices? How will we manage without you? Where are you going? Can we come to? You know, it's like total confusion.
John 14:1-4
Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God. Trust also in me. In my Father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I'm going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me, that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going.
What's the message? Right now, we need to trust him. That's the message. Right now, we need to trust him.
That was true for the disciples in the upper room. Okay, the world was falling apart. And it's true for us in a period of transition. Right now, we need to trust him.
I Am Going, I Am Coming
But of course, he knows we need help to do that. And so he says, I will not leave you as orphans.
I was at a dinner last night, probably about 10, 12 people, my vintage. I'm 65 this year. That's a lot of chocolate, by the way.
And they said, okay, hands up, who's got parents? Like at all? I've still got both. No one else had a parent. And so their response was, oh, we are orphans.
Jesus says, I will not leave you as orphans, verse 18. Yes, I'm going, but I'm also coming.
So can we do that? Can you repeat after me? This is important. This is the hinge for the whole sermon. So let's get it right. After me. I am going. I am coming. Good. You understand that? Great. Okay, I can sit down. That's what he says. I am going. I am coming. Hmm. Yeah.
So once you used to worship God the Father in the temple, can you remember that? You know, those of you who are old enough, can you remember stomping up the hills in Jerusalem towards the temple and how splendid it was? That's where you went to worship God. Can you remember that? Come on, those who are really old, I'm going to get no nods. No, that's how it was. Okay. You went up the hill to the temple to worship God the Father.
Then you walked beside God the Son in the dusty streets of Palestine. Can you remember that? That's how it went. Once upon a time, you used to go to the temple to worship the Father, but then you walked beside the Son in the dusty streets of Palestine, but now you will have God the Spirit living inside you. That's the change. That's the change.
The One Who Comes
The counsellor, the advocate, the comforter, this word occurs four times in the passage we had read. Now I've got a slide for that too. It's parakletos. That's the Greek.
So the word parakletos is like two words put together. Para is the first bit, right, and kletos is the second bit. And it means one who comes or one who is called.
And so when you're reading this, let me read 14 and 16 for you. And I will ask the Father and he will give you another counsellor. The give you another counsellor is the parakletos word, okay, the one who comes.
So the word isn't just like, you know, a name, Kevin, okay, Susan. No, it's a description. It's the Kevin who is here, the Susan who is here. It's about presence.
Parakletos, the word for comforter and advocate and counsellor, means present. It's a present word. The idea is a simple one. I go, he comes.
Can we do that too? I go, he comes. Oh, okay. I can understand that. That's better.
But we worship a God who is three persons, the Trinity, and, you know, John's gospel, God bless him, he just mixes this thing right up, okay?
So here's what it says, next slide. I will give you a counsellor, another counsellor, another advocate to be with you forever, okay? So that's, I go, he comes. I will come to you. Uh-uh, getting a bit screwy. Okay, that's, I go, I come. We will come to you and make our home with you. That's, I go, we come. And they're all the same.
He's laughing, all right? He doesn't want my job. But there it is. Clear? Great.
Verse 26 bundles them all together. The counsellor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name. There they are, all three persons in the Trinity. The counsellor, the Holy Spirit, who the Father will send in my name.
So that's God at work, friends. It's, I go, I come. It's, I go, he comes. It's, I go, we come.
What is he saying? What is he saying? You are sad because I said, I am going away.
But, 16 verse 7, we'll see more about this next week.
John 16:7
I tell you the truth, it is for your good that I'm going away. Unless I go away, the Counsellor, the Advocate, will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you.
It's better for you that I go away.
And, you know, used to go to the temple to worship the Father, used to walk beside the Son, but now the Spirit is going to be within you. That's better. I'm going, he will come.
The thing I want us to notice today is that Jesus is not talking about what the Holy Spirit is coming to do. Okay, can you hear that? He's not saying he's coming to pour out, you know, gifts. He's not coming to make you wise. He's not coming to, you know, transform your insides.
He's not saying anything about what the Holy Spirit is coming to do. Actually, there's nothing about what the Holy Spirit is coming to do here. What is this about? He's coming. His presence. That's all this is about.
I go, he comes. That's the message. It is presence that is important. Presence. The ministry of presence.
The Power of Presence
Okay. If ever you want to be ordained, your chief kind of characteristic that you need to make this thing fly is to be a non-anxious presence. If you can do that, if you can do anything in this job, presence.
We've just had a whole week with grandchildren living in our house with us. They came down from Echuca and ate all our food. There's another slide for this. Here I am with a house full of grandchildren.
The little boy is four. His name's Huey. They've come from home and they're in our house and the children are kind of down one end of the house and all the adults are at the other end and there's a door in between.
I'm grandpa, so I'm on the porridge machine. My kind of goal is to try and give his parents some sleep. I'll pick a time, 6 a.m. something. This guy appears. Here he is. He stops at the door.
I'm all personality at 6 o'clock in the morning. Hey, Huey, great to see you. I'm making porridge. Do you want to help come and grandpa make porridge? We're going to cook the toast now. It's going to be great.
You know what sort of response I got? Mummy. Not feeling great as a grandparent at that point. He didn't want me. He didn't want porridge. You can stick your porridge. He wanted his mummy. Presence.
You've recently farewelled a bunch of staff. That's tough. Would you be okay without them? Presence.
We even have language for this, don't we? When people are under pressure, what do we say? We will stand by you. Don't we?
There's a couple of good songs about that. It's what we actually say. I'll stand with you. Presence.
I mentioned earlier that I've been to Pakistan. I went twice. We had people from our parish over there serving as CMS missionaries, so I went to visit them. It was a long way for a cup of tea, but it was worth it.
You get to the persecuted church in Pakistan, and it is the persecuted church. You know what mattered? It wasn't that I was Kevin or that I was Australian. I was actually playing Pakistan in a cricket test match at the time, so I made sure I wore my Australian cricket top everywhere I went.
It wasn't that I was Australian or that we beat them in the cricket. It wasn't that I went to preach or that I brought gifts. It was nothing, actually, that I contributed at all.
Do you know what really mattered to them? I came. I came. Because in Pakistan, you spit on Christians, but I came all the way from Australia just to visit them. Presence. The power of presence.
Have you ever had a grief or suffered a loss and had someone just come and sit with you?
My bestie's first child was stillborn. I was in Bendigo, so I got in the car, and I drove down, and I sat there. I didn't have anything to contribute, but I knew I wanted to be with him.
I think about my Rosanne. She's so special, and we had lots of things and have fun together and so on, but in the end, we got married, and the reason I asked it was I just wanted to be with her. Presence.
The important thing for us to learn today about the Holy Spirit is that He comes and never leaves again. He comes and He stays. Anything He does is a bonus, right?
The big thing about the Holy Spirit is He comes. The word parakletos means the one who comes. He comes.
So often we come to God because we want something, okay? We kind of know that. That's okay as a starting point, but if the only time you ever spoke to your mum or your husband or to your friend was when you wanted something, you'd have to say the relationship was in pretty deep trouble, okay?
What It Means to Have the Spirit Inside You
What does it mean to have the Holy Spirit living inside of us? Verses 12 to 14.
John 14:12-14
I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. They 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.
That is an open invitation. That is carte blanche. Whatever. So what does that mean?
That means that Jesus continues His miraculous work in the world through us, through you, through us as a church. Jesus continues His miraculous work in the world through us. You just have to ask. That is what it says.
Verses 25 and 26.
John 14:25-26
All this I have spoken while still with you, but the Counsellor, the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.
The Holy Spirit takes the Word of God and makes it come alive in us.
Have you ever had an experience where perhaps a line in a song or a verse from the Psalms or something you have read in the Bible or you have heard somebody say from the Scriptures goes boom? Have you ever had that happen to you? The Holy Spirit brings the Word of God alive in our hearts.
Verse 21.
John 14:21
Those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love him and show myself to him.
The Holy Spirit comes so that we can see Jesus. Like see Him.
Perhaps see Him at work in the world or I don't know, you might get a vision or a dream. I don't know. That's what it says. So we can see Him.
It happens to Thomas, doesn't it, at the end of the Gospel. This good Jew kneels down before his friend and says, my Lord and my God. Something he should never do as a good Jew. He could see God in Jesus.
Verse 27.
John 14:27
Peace I leave with you, my peace I give you. I do not give you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.
So that tops and tails the passage. Do not be afraid. Do not let your hearts be troubled. Verse 1, verse 27, peace.
Peace above our circumstances. Peace in all circumstances. The peace of God that passes all understanding.
That's what it means to have this Holy Spirit in you. You can know His peace and nobody and nothing can take that away from you.
What's it like having the Holy Spirit living inside of you? Next slide. This is the Greek text of the passage that we are reading today. Sorry, I did highlight the word parakletos but it isn't being highlighted now. Can I point it out to you? Maybe. I'm not a very good Greek student. It's up there somewhere, right? Okay, good. That's my problem.
I'm crap at Greek and so to get ordained you have to pass a BTH and there was like a Greek exam at the end of that and that's cool because you can remember a lot of Greek, I mean the English and pretend you speak Greek, except for the unseen passage. So a quarter of the mark was a passage you haven't seen before from the New Testament just to test whether you're faking it or making it, right? So I'm dead at this point.
So the best I can get for my exam is 75 and I turn up and you kind of do the questions you know and I leave it to the end because there's no hope anyway and I open up the passage and I'm looking at it I'm thinking what words do I know, right? It's that bad. Sorry Phil, just close your ears mate.
And so I'm looking through and it says Father, Father, Father, Father, Son, Father, Son, and I'm going, this is a bit like, you know, hey I've heard that song before right? I preached on it last Sunday. Yeah, I know this passage.
So I go, you know, mate, 25 free marks. So, oh yeah, this is from 2 Corinthians chapter 4. Sure, I didn't actually put in brackets that I preached it last week and that's why I know this, you idiot, but I'm home.
That's what it means to have the Holy Spirit inside you.
All right, we've already talked about hearing his voice. Okay, Kevin, don't eat that chicken roll. All right, we've all known about knowing his will or knowing his rebuke or having a check in your spirit.
Again, this is language we use, okay, like, you know, a double take. That's what it means to have the Holy Spirit inside you. He's kind of going, no, don't you dare or overhear or have you noticed that or, you know, don't forget your car keys. I don't know, right?
He's speaking, we worship a speaking God. I'm experiencing his physical protection. I told you my, you know, early morning cycle story in the car, you know, weaving all around Centre Road, like, you know, you know when God has protected you from yourself, usually, but sometimes from others.
What about being healed? I've been healed, hands up if you've been healed, all right. Body, soul or spirit, they all count. Okay, that's what it means to have the Holy Spirit inside you, but the big idea this morning is that we always have the Holy Spirit with us and in us and that means we are always with God and that he is, who he is and all he has are ours.
That's what that means. That means you are with God. Actually, he is with you all the time, everywhere.
Next slide, I'd like you just to notice the future language. Remember, Jesus is yet to be crucified, so he's talking to the disciples in the upper room. Can you see these words will here?
Okay, but we live after Pentecost. Okay, you probably noticed that. So the language for us here is not will, is it? It's have. That's the language for us.
I have asked the Father and he has given you another counsellor to help you and we'll be with you forever. That's the way we should read that. I have come to you. We have come to you and made our home with you.
Well, we have have language, not not future language.
So I hope you're hearing that God could not love you more, he could not give you more, he could not be closer to you than he is by his Holy Spirit, that it's even better than having Jesus right here standing beside you.
And I hope you can hear that this will change you. I mean, Paul says that, doesn't it? Watch who you hang out with. Did you hear Paul say that? Okay, be careful with the company you keep. Why? Because the company you keep changes you.
So what does it mean if you have God in you? What does that mean? That means it is going to change you, like he's gonna rub up against you. His ministry of presence becomes like being apprenticed by someone or coached or trained by someone whose biggest influence on you is not the skills they impart or the information they impart, but simply the power of their presence.
I feel safe, I feel strong, I feel loved, presence when I'm with you. And if you've ever experienced this, you'll know how it rubs off on you and you start to become like that. You don't just kind of believe it because, you know, somebody yells it at you often enough. You start to kind of become it.
And that's why, you know, the other kind of thread through this passage, and we're coming to the end now, is that obedience thread. Did you notice that? That's how it starts. If you love me, you will obey what I command.
All right, okay, but that's important because you can't do that unless you've got the Holy Spirit inside you. You can't do that. The whole Old Testament is about how God's people can't do that. So why would he even say that unless something was about to change?
Jesus is not, do this, don't do that. That's okay for a little child. I was watching little children play all week and they're big on rules. They understand rules. That's good, that's a good place to start.
But unless you move beyond the rules to wanting to please the person or become like the person well the relationship, as I said before, is in serious trouble. Thank God that he comes to live within everyone who believes, to change us from the inside out so that we want what he wants. Love what he loves. That's deep change.
It means a lot of death in the natural but it's so worth it. Do what he does just like Jesus. If you go through John's Gospel and you pick up all the time he talks about why he does what he does. He says things like, I never say anything but what I hear the Father saying. I never do anything but what I see the Father doing. This is Jesus' self-description in John's Gospel. It's the same for us.
You've got the Holy Spirit inside you. You will learn what God loves and you will love it too. You will learn what God does. You will do it. He'll help you. That's the whole point. Not do, do, don't, don't. But being transformed.
So let's finish where we started. What are you like with change? All the changes that God brings about in your life are for your good. Trust in God. Trust also in me, says Jesus.
