What Does the Holy Spirit Do, and How Does He Do It?

Hanging Out With Jesus:

7 Things Jesus Said About the Holy Spirit

Unedited Transcript

John 14:16-27

Good morning, men! Last week I was on a little vacation, taking care of a couple of grandkids. You know, I only did one thing wrong the entire time that the parents were gone on their vacation, and don’t you know within ten seconds of them being home, my granddaughter outs me! She didn’t say a word about it herself the entire time that we were together, but as soon as her parents came around, she let them know what I had done wrong! I made one mistake the whole time! No inheritance for that granddaughter! Of course, there’s no inheritance to give so that makes no difference anyway! But it’s good to be back!

We are doing a series called Hanging Out With Jesus. Each week we do a shout out to a group doing the Video Bible Study with us. Sometimes they’re new groups, sometimes they’re not. This morning we have a shout out going to a group that’s been meeting for a couple of years. They are doing the Video Bible Study, and they are called Mighty Kings Men of Pasadena Church in Pasadena, CA. The leader is Charles Stringer and they are a group of 4 meeting every other week on Thursday evenings. Notice a new feature. From now on, when we have one of these groups that’s meeting in a region where we have an Area Director we’re going to make mention of the Area Director. In this case, we do have one, Eric Blackwell, and his region is the North Los Angeles and Valley area. So I wonder if you would join me in giving Charles and Mighty Kings Men a very warm welcome to the Video Bible Study. One, two, three, hoorah! Welcome guys, we’re glad to have you with us!

So why do you come here? It’s so interesting, because my experience is that a lot of times, people who are putting on Bible Studies assume they need to tell men what they’re doing wrong. But my approach is a little different. I figured that a hundred, a hundred and fifty, whatever number we have; that many men out of a population of two million who would be willing to get up on a Friday morning and come to a Bible Study are probably guys who are trying to figure out how to get it right, not what they are doing wrong. They already know what they’re doing wrong! You come here because you need some encouragement, you want some inspiration, and you want to be brought back into contact with the living God. You want to able to walk in through those doors and know that you’re coming to a place where you will be experiencing the presence and the power of the almighty. You’re looking for a touch from the Holy Ghost. You know from your own experience that this is harder than it looks, and it’s taking longer than you expected, but Jesus knows that. So Jesus has made a provision for each of us, and that provision is what we’re going to look at in today’s text. The title of the message today: 7 Things Jesus Said About the Holy Spirit.

What is the problem the Holy Spirit solves?

First up, let’s talk about what is the problem that the Holy Spirit is solving in this text. Here’s the problem; Jesus has now been with his disciples, he has been building his life, his character into them. He is their leader, and he is a forceful and powerful man’s man leader. He’s a dirty, gritty, dirt under his fingernails type leader. Just think about all the walking around they did and the physical condition he had to be in. All of the trials, adversities, and persecutions he went through; he was stone faced strong in the face of all this. The disciples were weak men like us, but when they looked into the face of their leader, they took courage!

In this miniseries we’re doing called Hanging Out With Jesus, that portion that takes place in the upper room, Jesus is on death row. This is his last meal. If you’ve ever watched the movie and seen the prisoner take his last meal, you know how upset he is and the family comes and how upset they are. That’s what’s going on here, it’s the last meal. It was just before the Passover feast, and Jesus knew that the time had come for him to leave this world and go to the father. Having loved his own who were in the world, the disciples, he now showed them the full extent of his love. That’s what Jesus is doing in these texts that we’re looking at, showing his disciples (and by extension, us) the full extent of how much he loves us. These disciples are able to look to Jesus and find their courage, their strength. But now he is telling them that he is going away. That’s how this passage begins, but in chapter 13:33, he says my children, I will be with you only a little while longer. You will look for me, and just as I told the Jews, so I tell you now. Where I am going, you cannot come. So, they’re sad. He’s going away.

Now, what happens to movements where there is no succession plan? What happens to the family business when there’s no succession plan? It falls apart! What’s obviously taking place in this passage we’re about to read is that Jesus is revealing his succession plan. Look at John 14, we’re going to begin at verse 16. Jesus says:

¹⁶ And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate (counselor, or paraclete) to help you and be with you forever— ¹⁷ the Spirit of truth…

I’ve told you before the difference between a poor message, a good message, and a great message. A poor message takes the obvious and makes it obscure. A good message takes the obscure and makes it obvious, but a great message takes the obvious and makes it obvious! What’s obvious about this text is that Jesus is revealing the succession plan of his family business. God is a relationship, father, son, Holy Spirit, and they have a family business; it’s called building the kingdom! It’s a family business, and Jesus has been the leader. He’s going away, and his successor has been appointed. In this text, what’s happening is that Jesus is revealing this successor. That’s what’s obvious about this text, he’s revealing the successor and we’re going to discover why here as well. I will ask the Father, and he will give you another counselor to be with you forever, the Spirit of Truth. So the history of the Holy Spirit, Genesis 1:2 the Spirit of God was hovering over the void. In Joel 2:28, eight hundred years before Jesus, I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh. At Pentecost, the actual inauguration of the ministry, the succession of the Holy Spirit. Acts 1:8 and you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you. So today with all believers, part of becoming a follower of Jesus is that you instantly receive the Spirit of Christ. The Holy Spirit is Jesus, Jesus is the Holy Spirit, Jesus is the Father, the Father is the Son, the Father and the Son are one. He who has seen me has seen the Father. You have this trinity. The Holy Spirit is an individual person, but he’s also the Spirit of Christ. So the succession plan that Jesus outlines here, or the problem that’s being solved rather, is that there needs to be a succession plan.

What happens when there’s not a succession plan? Well, we know from Acts 5 when some disciples were brought up before the Sanhedrin, it was Gamaliel who said don’t be rash with these men. We’ve had this happen before. Once there was a man named Theudas and he gathered about four hundred followers, but he was killed and his followers dispersed. He said there was another man named Judas who attracted many followers to him, but then when he was gone, his followers dispersed. Then he says this, he said let them go. Don’t worry about these men, leave them alone, for if their purpose or activity is of human origin, it will fail. But if it is from God, you will not be able to stop these men, you will only find yourselves fighting against God. Here we are two thousand years later with this movement that covers the whole world, and is embraced by a third of it. But! Without a successor, without a succession plan for the family business, we wouldn’t be here, because the disciples would have dispersed. So the problem the Holy Spirit solves is that we now have another paraclete, and notice that Jesus is calling himself a paraclete. A paraclete is like an advocate. A long time ago, I think in England, a paraclete is what they called an attorney, an advocate, someone who represented people. Jesus has represented us, he’s been the advocate and now he is appointing a new advocate.

Here’s the thing. Keep your finger there but turn to John 17:20. Jesus is going through this discourse on this evening. He’s giving this lecture, this teaching this evening and then he prays and in John 17:20 he says my prayer is not for these disciples alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message. So this is for us, too! Back to John 14. I’ll ask the Father, he will give you another paraclete to be with you forever, the spirit of truth. Reading on:

The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him (we’ll talk about that seeing him in a minute). But you know him, for he lives with you and will be^[c] in you. ¹⁸ I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you (I have a succession plan).

Drop over to verse 26:

²⁶ 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.

Pretty amazing! So here’s the Big Idea for the day. This Holy Spirit who has succeeded Jesus in this world; where’s the person of Jesus? Can you physically point anywhere in the world to the person of Jesus? No, because he has ascended and sits at the right hand of the Father. But the spirit of Jesus who is the Holy Spirit is here with us, and Jesus said you’re going to do greater things, and the reason he said that is because he knew that he would be sending another paraclete who would empower us to do even greater things than the things that Jesus had done. All you have to do is look around! I have more converts than Jesus did! All converts are Jesus’ converts, but I personally have had more people become Christians through me than he. Jerry Vespe back here leads somebody to Jesus virtually every day! When you add all that up and Jesus had a hundred and twenty followers at the resurrection, you see how this works? Peter on his first sermon had three thousand new believers, which is what, twenty-five times as many as Jesus on the day of the resurrection? So that’s what Jesus means!

Here’s the Big Idea: The Holy Spirit is doing even more for us now than Jesus did for the disciples then. As much as Jesus did for his disciples then, the Holy Spirit is doing even more for us now! He’s doing greater things, he’s not only reminding us of everything Jesus taught, but he’s teaching us all things.

7 things the Spirit is doing for us now

Let’s go on and talk about seven things the Holy Spirit is doing for us now. Jesus said these seven things about the Holy Spirit. Number one, he will give you another counselor, another paraclete. I don’t know if you’ve ever had a paraclete, but I’m guessing you’ve probably had a number of them, a number of advocates for you. Your mother was a paraclete, your father hopefully was a paraclete, somebody who advocated for you. No matter what you did, they believed in you! I have an advocate right now in the ministry. He used to be in the Board of Directors and then he rotated off and I thought well I guess I lost him, because he was a great board member. But you know what? He still believes in the mission so much, he just got tired of the idea of governance, that’s not really his gifting, but he loves the mission and he is the biggest advocate we have! More than 50% of all the dollars raised in our ministry over the last couple of years came through this one advocate, this one paraclete! You know what a joy it is to have a paraclete, and as much as you enjoy Jesus, Jesus is in heaven. But he gave us this other paraclete, and you can this same kind of intimacy, friendship, and relationship with the Holy Spirit that you have with a human paraclete, the ones that helped you. In other words, there’s something even greater that you can have with the Holy Spirit than what you can have with Jesus, although the Holy Spirit is Jesus. So you’re really having it with him, too!

The first thing that Jesus said about the Holy Spirit is that he is a paraclete like me. The second thing, in verse 17, he says he’s the Spirit of Truth. Jesus has just said I am the way, the truth, and the life, but now he says that the Spirit is truth. We know that God is Spirit and those who want to worship him must worship him in Spirit and truth. I’ve been going back and forth, but I think we’re going to talk about the Holy Spirit again because in John 16 there’s a description of the work of the Holy Spirit, but a great portion of that work of the Holy Spirit is to guide us into all truth.

The third thing that Jesus says about the Holy Spirit in verse 17, but you know him for he lives with you and will be with you. He is with you now. He is with you always. Jesus said in Matthew 28:20 I will be with you always. I will always be with you, even to the end of the age. So as the Spirit of Jesus, the Holy Spirit is how that happens. He is with you right now! The way that Jesus is in your heart is by the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus. There’s not a little man running around in your heart that’s been miniaturized. Or up in your brain. God is Spirit. He is with you and he will be with always.

Verse 18, the fourth thing we see, I will not leave you as orphans. Another thing Jesus said about the Holy Spirit is that he’s not going to leave you as an orphan, instead we have the Spirit of adoption by which we cry abba, Father. The Spirit testifies with our spirit that we are sons of God.

The fifth thing, verse 26. The counselor or Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in my name. The next thing he tells us is the Father will send the Spirit in my name, as my representative, as my envoy. We previously read, when we were talking about prayer a few weeks ago, that I tell you the truth, if you have faith in me you will be doing what I have done, and if you ask anything in my name, as my representative, it’s 100% that Jesus will give you anything you ask for when you’re doing what he wants done. When you’re doing it in his name. Because that’s true, you can be 100% certain that in his name you have the Holy Spirit, because he sent the Holy Spirit.

Sixth thing, verse 26 still, and you have got to love this! He will teach you all things. There isn’t anything that you need to know that he will not teach you, either mediately or immediately. He will teach you directly through his word or by speaking to your heart in such a profound way that you know that God has done that, he testifies with your spirit. Or he will do it through a mediator, he will do it through a friend, he’ll speak to you through someone and teach you what you need to know.

The seventh thing that Jesus tells us about the Holy Spirit, still in verse 26, and he will remind you of everything I have said to you. Now Jesus said in John 15:15 I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you my friends because I have told you everything the Father told me. Jesus didn’t hold anything back, and the Holy Spirit is going to make sure that all of these things that Jesus didn’t hold back, everything the Father told Jesus, he will let us know. The Holy Spirit is going to remind you of every one of those things. How? It’s going to pop into your mind! If you memorize scriptures, this is a fantastic way to have the Spirit prompt your mind. I got connected to memorizing scriptures through a navigator’s Bible Study that our church is doing that emphasized it, so I love memorizing scripture. I realize not everybody does, but you ought to at least give it a try as an act of discipline. Substitute discipline for a lack of natural interest, because the Holy Spirit then brings these scriptures to mind and reminds you of the things that the word of God, Jesus, has said. All of the word of God is Jesus, he is the logos, and he will remind you of all of this.

I was reminded that of our two families, both have taken swimming lessons with the grandkids, and one teacher was obviously very good, and the other teacher wasn’ t that good. So two of our grandkids really swim well, and two of them have work to do in order to be able to swim well after one summer’s worth of instruction. You all have had this happen where you are listening to a favorite radio station and you’re on a trip. You’re driving out of town, and you get fifty miles out and the static starts to come over the radio. You drive another ten or fifteen miles and then voices from other stations begin to bleed onto your station. Having a relationship with the Holy Spirit is a lot like making sure you stay in range to a home station. If you start getting too far away from the Spirit, you’ll start to hear the static. If you get even further away from home base, you’re going to hear the voices of the world begin to bleed over and begin to drown out the voice of the Holy Spirit. So Jesus, his mission was to call, equip, and send disciples who would then in turn call, equip and send other disciples, and the Holy Spirit is his successor to do that work in an even greater way. The Big Idea: The Holy Spirit is doing even more for us now than Jesus did for the disciples then. This must be why there’s not more talk about the Holy Spirit. You know, you would think with the greatness, power, beauty, and holiness of the Holy Spirit, you would think there would be more discussion of the Holy Spirit among Christians by accident! The only possible explanation that makes sense to me, though I’m not saying it’s the right one, is that there must be a conspiracy! There must be a spiritual warfare taking place that doesn’t want you to know that the Holy Spirit is doing more for you right now than he ever did for the disciples of Jesus, if you will let him. There must be! There’s something going on that this truth of Christianity is not better known!

How to experience more of the Holy Spirit

Final thing, how to experience more of the Holy Spirit. Four things. Number one, decide to believe this. Decide to believe these seven things that Jesus says about the Holy Spirit. You do know him, he does live in you. You are going to do greater things, you are a vessel, and your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. By the way, since your body is a vessel, do a little temple maintenance from time to time on it. I don’t think the church is saying enough about this. I don’t think that people are saying enough about people abusing their bodies. All this voluntary diabetes where people know they’re going to get diabetes and yet they just keep eating themselves into a stupor until they get there. I’m sorry if that’s you, I don’t mean to offend you, but you know you need to be able to say something about this. The church is being very politically correct about people not taking care of themselves, not taking care of the temple. Anyway, that’s another subject. So just decide to believe this about the Holy Spirit because belief determines behavior.

Number two, stop living like an orphan. Stop living like you don’t have a paraclete! Stop living like you don’t have a parent, an advocate, the Father, Jesus, the Holy Spirit who wants to be your mentor, who wants to give you power, who wants to guide you. We’ll talk about the work more later.

Third way to experience more of the Holy Spirit, spend time with him. Spend time with the Holy Spirit, spend time getting to know him.

Picture a little one foot cube right in front of you. You know right now that all of the day’s news is contained in this one foot cube. You know that. You know that because if you go on your smart phone and get an internet connection, you can read USA Today and you can read all the blogs. If you have a radio, you can tune it and get any station. You also know that you can make a phone call through your phone or the internet, all these things do exist in front of you in this one foot cube. But in order to hear any of those things, you have to stop, you have to focus, and you have to take time to hear what’s being said. It’s the same way with the Holy Spirit. He’s inside you, he’s everywhere, he’s omnipresent, so he’s right here, too! And he can communicate with you just as readily as your radio. The Holy Spirit can communicate with you just as readily as your cell phone. The Holy Spirit can communicate with you just as readily as your iPad, if you take the time to do it.

Fourth thing, if you have been touched by the Holy Spirit, would you please notify your face? I tell you, I am just amazed at how many grumpy Christian men there are! So if you have been touched by the Holy Spirit, would you please notify your face? Because the Holy Spirit is doing even more for you than Jesus did for the disciples then! Notify your face! Let’s pray!

Closing Prayer

Heavenly Father, our dearest Father, we come to you. We thank you for the ministry of this other paraclete, the Holy Spirit. Lord, we don’t know why the Holy Spirit is not more prominent in our current Christian culture, but Lord we want him to be more present in our lives, and for us to really believe that you Holy Spirit are in us. That we know you, and that your spirit is testifying with our spirit, that we are sons of God. We don’t want to live as orphans, and we do want to spend time with you, and we do want other people to notice that we do have the Holy Spirit. Would you help us to experience more of you today, Holy Spirit? In Jesus’ name we pray, amen!

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