How the Holy Spirit Works

Main Idea:

How do I see Jesus:

ME

The first time I was planning to go to Haiti I went to meet with the man across town that was closely related to our church, he had been to haiti, and across the world doing many different things in missions work. He loves being the hands and feet of Jesus to the world and going to the places that some cannot make it to. And it was difficult first meeting, because before I left the house Josiah had told me he wanted to go, and I had made excuses and told him he wouldn’t be able to do much when it came to building houses because it was too heavy for him to do some of the things. Really just trying to find a way to keep him from the experience. I was afraid it was too much for him to bear at his age.

While we were in the meeting Jennifer sent me a text and said Josiah had told her he was going to practice carrying cinder blocks so he could go with me, and in that moment I knew that his heart was in a place where he wanted to help so I wanted to do all I could to make sure he could get to go. So I asked the guy we were meeting with if he could go and I would help him and get him ready and he wouldnt get in the way, but he let me know the missions organization wouldn’t allow you to go unless you were at least 15 years old. Which meant he was too young to go with me for a few years. And it kind of broke my heart, but I understood, the organization didn’t want to put too much on kids they didn’t think they could handle, its a heavy burden when you see some of those things, but I think it can make a positive impact as well.

And today we are going to look at a similar story, there is going to be a whole lot that he still has to tell them but in the moment he isn’t sure they can bear what he is about to tell them. And he is making sure they realize the only time they will finally be able to bear and grasp the truth he needs them to have is when the Holy Spirit comes to them and gives them the knowledge after he is gone.

And today what we are going to see is Jesus telling us what the work of the Holy Sprit will be in his church. The Holy Spirit actively works in and through believers to reveal truth, provide comfort, and call individuals to witness for Christ.

WE

EXPOSITION

The Counselor's Comfort: Understanding the Role of the Holy Spirit

1. Spirit's Gentle Guidance

John 16:12 ESV

12 “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.

I remember when I was in 3 or 4th grade and there was a teacher from the middle school who offered to come a couple days a week to teach us how to play violin, the cost was really steep, it would cost us 2 recesses a week… oh and the price to rent the instrument. But I wanted to learn, I loved music, I still do, and I wanted the ability to be able to play and do what would make a joyful noise. Did I know anything about classical music? Of course not, but I really wanted to learn to be able to play and I figured at the time I may be able to use the skills to be able to turn my violin into a fiddle and play along with Garth or some of his buddies.

So I talked my parents into shelling out the money to rent the violin and talked myself into missing lots and lots of recess and we signed up. And I will never forget, we spent the first few lessons learning how to read music, or at least learning notes when we looked at sheet music, I wouldn’t be able to do that well enough to play anything now, but I go the idea. Then the next week we learned that we were really going to begin the knowledge that would make everything possible… we learned how to hold the bow! And when I say we learned how to hold the bow I mean he gave us a pencil to practice using as our bow and we held it and he positioned our fingers and showed us how to use the pencil perfectly. I got that down pretty quickly. I had it that first week, and it was much to my chagrin the next week when we used the whole week to practice holding our bows again. By this point I am starting to get frustrated… well three more weeks later we are still learning to hold the pencil.. I mean bow… and I had about had enough… My parents as well… I was more frustrated I had missed so many recesses and not even touched my instrument… my parents were frustrated we had spent all the money for two and a half months to rent an instrument we hadn’t even touched yet. And so I did what any 4th grader would do… I quit…

And looking back I realize there is some things that I was needing to learn that everything we would learn after would come at the cost of holding that bow and if we didn’t get that down correctly then the rest would fall apart as he taught us how to play. Now did I really need that long to learn how to hold the bow? Who knows, but what we can realize is there are some things we have to learn gradually as we are growing in Christ Jesus… And we cannot just learn everything Jesus has for us over night it is a gradual process much like playing the violin..

We talked about this a few weeks ago when we were talking about abiding in the vine and how we must be growing fruit and how often times we expect new Christians to act like christians overnight but Jesus clearly shows us there are some things in our Christian walk we need the holy spirit to walk us through. We are not going to be exactly like him overnight. It will take time for us to grow and be more sancrtified and more like Jesus.

And remember this is not a license to say you can’t have any fruit in your life and Jesus is just working on you forever as an excuse to stay away from him, we have to continue to strive to do better, but this can also be a comfort for us.

I would say when we come to christ the life he is calling us to live can be overwhelming because it is contrary to the world around us and how it lives and acts. And when we feel the weight of that it can almost make us not want to move forward at all because there is so much, but I think what this is showing us is the Holy Spirit doesn’t leave us as orphans and he will walk us through it one step at a time if we follow him. He will spend two months showing you how to hold the bow until you get it if thats what he thinks you need and you can take comfort knowing that he is with you and not leaving you alone to do it all by yourself.

2. Spirit's Truthful Direction

John 16:13 ESV

13 When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.

I’ll never forget when I was able to go on the cable news to share about our upcoming egg hunt while we were in Oklahoma and how cool the whole experience was. You had the little ear piece in so you could hear the director or producers, I don’t know the difference, and I was up after they were running this prerecorded story and I was sitting at the desk with the anchor and all of a sudden you hear in your ear… Live in 30 seconds…. Live in 15 seconds…. and he starts to countdown from 10… and it was this guy giving you direction and letting you know what was coming up and what to expect and where to look and how to be ready for what was next.

And this is what we see Jesus telling us here about the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives… he is telling us the Holy Spirit guides us into truth in the same way. Instead of giving us cues on time before the camera comes live the Spirit gives us clues on living a Christ centered life in a world full of chaos and confusion. The Holy spirit directs and guides us to better living. Most of us as Christians would hear this voice and equate it to our conscience, those moments before we enter things and we know we shouldn’t and we know the spirit is trying to get us to not go into a place before it happens.

However, the spirit will also guides us in prayer when we seek him to show us the way we SHOULD go even before we can get ourselves into a position we need him to save us from. We just need to stop and seek God in all decisions and listen for the voice in our lives to tell us what we are supposed to do next.

And what Jesus is telling us here is that all that message that everything the Holy Spirit is declaring for us to do is from the mouth of God the Father, the HS isn’t speaking on just its own power but telling us what the Father wants us to know.

3. Spirit's Glorifying Presence

John 16:14 ESV

14 He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you.

And here Jesus is giving us some clear insight into the work of the Holy Spirit, the HS is working not to glorify himself, but to glorify Christ. All of the work of the Holy Spirit is never for us to see what the HS is doing and think about how great the HS is, but instead it is for us to see the work the HS is doing in the world and our lives and look at Jesus.

Here, the Spirit glorifies Christ by declaring what is His. You might suggest that understanding this role of the Holy Spirit helps believers focus on Christ's magnificence and mission. Perhaps encourage the congregation to see how the Spirit's work is Christ-exalting, calling us to live in ways that honor Him and reflect His glory.

I love what JI Packer says about this

“When flood lighting is done well, the floodlights are so placed that you do not see them; you are not in fact supposed to see where the light is coming from; what you are meant to see is the building on which the floodlights are focused. The intended effect is to make it visible when otherwise it would not be seen for darkness…It is as if the Spirit stands behind us, throwing light over our shoulder, on Jesus, who stands facing us. The Spirit’s message to us is never ‘Look at Me; listen to Me; come to Me; get to know Me.’ But always ‘Look at Him, see His glory; listen to Him, hear His Word, got to Him and have life, get to know Him and taste His gift of joy and peace.’”

And we can see in this illustration its not the floodlights that are important but what the flood lights are shining upon, and the same is true with the Holy Spirit, his work is just to point us to Christ. And this is true any time we see the HS working, just as the Sons work was to glorify the father the HS work is to glorify Jesus.

4. Spirit's Divine Declaration

John 16:15 ESV

15 All that the Father has is mine; therefore I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.

And as the disciples heard this, they may not have understood in the moment what he was telling them, just by nature of the words he is speaking here we can see that is probably true. But here after all the time of sitting in the upper room and telling them they wouldn’t be able to understand all of what he has told them, here he come in with a promise, all the truths I have tried to share with you, all the things you have been confused about, the HS will enlighten that to you and make sure you understand. He will declare the same truth to you that I already have. And if in that moment they had ben able to understand what he was saying clearly I can only think it must have been comforting to them in that moment, to know all their confusion would be gone. Imagine that, the one he called the comforter would comfort them.

And this promise is still true to us today, the holy spirit will point us to Jesus and will declare the truths of his word and help us to understand what we read and what we hear. The greatness of all of this is we see when we follow the leading of the HS we are getting the full council of God, he is pointing us to Jesus, who is speaking directly what he has heard from the father.

And as I say this there are some of you who are struggling with this concept because you know there are things you have read and don’t understand, and you think well I thought the HS was supposed to help us to understand all of this, so why don’t I. And what we have to realize is the HS walks us through truth as we have talked about over the past few weeks we aren’t just going to understand it all overnight, it will take some time for us to grow, but as we seek Jesus through the HS we will begin to understand the truth of his Word and what he is calling us to.

WE

Are you letting the HS guide you? Do you need the HS to fill your life?