We Believe: The Holy Spirit (Andrew Meher)

Andrew Meher: you Would you open up with me to John chapter 14? We're gonna read verses 15 to 20 in ⁓ a few moments. As Megan mentioned earlier when we prayed ⁓ that prayer, the Apostles Creed, we're in a sermon series right now where we are learning about the basics of the Christian life and we're using ⁓ this ⁓ creed, this prayer called the Apostles Creed. as sort of our lens for understanding the basics of the Christian life. The things that we pray and recite in the Creed are things that all Christians in all places have always believed for the last 2,000 years across the globe. And so these are the very basics of our Christian faith. Some of us might have grown up in traditions where we recite that Creed regularly. Some of us maybe you've never. ⁓ recited or prayed a prayer like that before. Maybe written prayers feel very inauthentic for you. ⁓ But this is actually what the Psalms are. The Psalms are written prayers and they would be used regularly by the people of Israel. Jesus would have grown up saying these prayers. The early church used the Psalms as their prayer book and many church traditions still use it to this day. And so the apostles create sort of functions in that way. It's a way for us to pray what we believe. It's a way to remind us of the good news of the life that Jesus has made available to us through his death and resurrection. And so we're gonna be continuing looking through the Apostles' Creed today and we're talking about the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit. And so let's read together from John chapter 14. I'm gonna read verses 15 through 20. And then we're gonna jump around actually a little bit between chapter 14 and chapter 16 of John, but this will be our starting point. So let's read this and then pray and then we'll begin. Jesus says this, 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, 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 live. And on that day, you will realize that I am in the Father and you are in me and I am in you. Let's pray. As we've been singing this morning, Holy Spirit, would you come? God, would you be present to us and open our eyes to see, our ears to hear, and our hearts to receive, our minds to understand what it is that the Spirit is saying to us through the scriptures today. We pray, Lord, that we would draw near to you and receive your life. as Jesus says is made available to us. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. ⁓ When my kids are playing in their rooms a lot, especially kind of a rainy day like yesterday, inevitably when there's a lot of inside play, ⁓ the room's gonna get a little cluttered. Let's just put it that way. Let's putting it mildly. ⁓ Their room will be an absolute dumpster fire, quite honestly. There'll be stuff everywhere and especially they get into craft projects and there's sticky things and there's glue and There's toys and there's little tiny pieces strewn everywhere and like Polly pockets that are like this big and like all these things. There's just stuff everywhere and and inevitably what's gonna happen is when I say hey Kate time to clean up They usually get kind of overwhelmed They're still kind of young, it's understandable, there's no criticism here. But we are trying to teach them to take responsibility for their things and clean up and so we remind them, okay, it's time to start putting your toys away. And often because they're overwhelmed, we'll get the, can you help us? Sometimes, how many of you know? Can you help us is code for, can you just do it for me? ⁓ man. But you know, I'll give them credit. Like sometimes they say, can you help us? And what I find is they don't even need me to do anything. They just want me in the Sometimes I find that that is the thing that they need more than anything. You know, I'm noticing these days with my kids that one of the things I get asked a lot by them is, will you be with me? Especially when they have to like do a task or do a job. Will you come with me? Will you be with me? They don't actually want me to do it sometimes. They just want me to be with them. And they're provided all they need just by my presence with them. Other times, they need my help. They need my help. Like they might ask, you know, where does this go? Or maybe I have to kind of prompt them and be like, hey, do you need help? Doesn't look like you know how to put that away. And they're struggling to fit something in a box or they can't reach something on the shelf they were able to pull it down from, whatever it might be. Hey, do you need help? And they might say, no, no thanks. I got it. And they just struggle. and they start screaming and slamming things. Do you want help? No. And it just goes on and on, right? Other times, they stop cleaning up completely and I have to gently prompt them while I'm in the room. Hey, can you, let's keep going or maybe they get distracted by another game. Come on guys, let's clean this up. And then when I do that, I had the audacity to remind them to start cleaning up and continue cleaning up and then they get mad and annoyed at me. And then it's all my fault. I'm sure you guys don't know what I'm talking about, any of you who had little kids, but this is my struggle I'm bringing to you today. Now, of course, as a good parent that wants to teach my children how to be responsible, I'm not gonna do everything for them. But I will partner with them. There are things I'm willing to come alongside them and do. Sometimes they just are really needing a little bit of encouragement, a little bit of, we put that away. Let's focus on this. Don't worry about anything else. Let's just do this next thing. Or sometimes I'll just encourage them, you did it, you did it, you're doing great. Okay, now let's put this away and just keep them moving on from one thing to the next. Sometimes they're just a little overwhelmed and they just come to me and they need a little hug in the middle of feeling overwhelmed, but they're cleaning up their room. And then they go back to it. I think just like my kids, we all have rooms full of messes in our lives. Anybody say amen to that? It's the old life that is dying to sin. It's the old life that we talked about last week. It was broken and is unraveling because of its disconnection from the life of God. But we've received this new life in Jesus Christ. But all the pieces are kind of like laid out and we're sitting there trying to put this life back together and make sense of how the pieces of this new life work. And I think sometimes the Holy Spirit wants to help us to shape and mold the pieces, if you will, back together, just like when I'm trying to help my kids clean the room. But sometimes, if you're anything like me, I don't like making room for the Holy Spirit sometimes. I want to just figure this out on my own. I prefer sometimes not to invite the Holy Spirit. And I just sit there in the middle of my life, assuming that the way the pieces are is I guess as good as it's gonna get. Because I don't know what to do. Any of you feel like, well, I guess I'm a Christian, I'm following Jesus or I was baptized, and I guess this is good as it's gonna get. The pieces are just strewn about and maybe like I've got a little bit that makes sense over here. and this over here, but I don't really know what to do with all this. It's because we're like my children who can't really see how to take these individual things apart and put them where they need to go. Are you all following me? And then the spirit might be there, maybe for some of us, we've invited the spirit in, but the spirit doesn't really get room in our lives. The spirit gets like a little corner. And we say, stand there, Holy Spirit, while I figure this out. And then the spirit might prompt us, hey, I think you should pay attention to this. I think this in your life needs some attention. I don't think you should be doing this. And then we get annoyed and irritable. Because the Spirit is trying to speak to us. Anyone get irritable? I know, maybe it's just me. I know you don't get irritable, but I get irritable sometimes. When the Spirit's trying to speak and prompt me and guide me, and when we're getting annoyed and irritable and we're resistant to the Spirit being in our lives, in the room, if you will, we can't hear the Spirit's encouragement. We can't hear the Spirit wanting to empower us, to comfort us, to direct us, to guide us. And the question that we need to ask ourselves as followers of Jesus, the question we need to ask ourselves as those who say in the creed, we believe in the Holy Spirit, is this. We need to ask ourselves, will we make room for the Spirit? Will you make room for the Holy Spirit? Will your life be about you trying to go day to day, putting the pieces together, or will you say, Holy Spirit, come? Holy Spirit, guide. Holy Spirit, help. Holy Spirit, what do I do in this situation? Holy Spirit, how do we as the church work out our relational challenges? Holy Spirit, what do we do with the needs in our community? Holy Spirit, what do we do with this gap? that we are seeing in what we know about how to follow you faithfully. All of these questions are questions the Holy Spirit, like any good parent, ⁓ can guide us in, but often we just do not give room to the Spirit. And so if we're a people who are going to say, will make room for the Holy Spirit, we need to know who the Spirit is and what the Spirit is doing so that we can make room for the Spirit and experience the life of the Spirit in our lives. So let me just say a couple things. Who is the Holy Spirit? The Holy Spirit's depicted in Jesus' baptism as coming like a dove and resting on Jesus. There are so many descriptions of the Holy Spirit throughout the Scriptures, but let me just say a couple of things right off the bat about who the Holy Spirit is not. ⁓ The Holy Spirit is not a ⁓ force like Star Wars. The Holy Spirit is not some impersonal energy field that we can manipulate or feel when we need something done. The Holy Spirit is also not an it. The Holy Spirit is not some kind of impersonal lesser being that sort of does the will of God and can carry on or message to us about what God is doing. The Holy Spirit is fully and completely This is why Jesus says in verse 16 that we read, will ask the Father and he was sent from God. The Spirit is God's very life, God's very presence sent to us. And God's Spirit, Jesus says, is the Spirit of truth. And Jesus calls the Holy Spirit here in John 14, a counselor. Or some translations use the word an advocate. An advocate. This Holy Spirit is an advocate. The Spirit is not ⁓ just some impersonal being. The Holy Spirit is God's very presence in our lives advocating for us as God. When I say advocate, what I mean is one who helps by consoling, encouraging, or mediating on behalf of a helper, an encourager, a mediator. Just think about who the Holy Spirit is described as here. A helper, an encourager, a mediator. How many of you feel like you need a helper in your life? How many of you feel like you need an encourager in your life? How many of you feel like you need a mediator, one that's gonna help you make sense of what God wants to do in your life and figure out what is God's will for my life? I have no idea. The Holy Spirit. is the one to help, to encourage, to mediate, to comfort, to console all of these things. And the helper, this counselor, this advocate, is going to help guide us into everything about who God is. Verse 26 in chapter 14 says that the counselor, Jesus says, 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. That's pretty incredible. You actually, if you're following Jesus, the very spirit of the living God wants to help advocate and make sense of your life, to take all the little pieces, the messes, the things that are all over the place and wants to help you shape the life of Jesus in you and direct you towards that. You do not have to do this on your own. In fact, you're not meant to do it on your own because you and I don't know how to do it. But if you're like me or like my daughters sometimes get when I'm trying to give them direction cleaning our rooms, we want to put baby in the corner. Not really. It's the Holy Spirit, but you get what I'm saying. And there's a resistance like, ⁓ I don't need help. And so I guess I ⁓ want to say this. ⁓ If you feel like you're here today, I'm just gonna be candid and honest and you're like, I'm good, I don't really need any help. I have nothing to say to you this morning. I have no good news for you because the spirit is specifically here to help. And by definition, that means we need help. It means we need someone encouraging us because we're discouraged. We need someone that is cheering us on and mediating because we have no clue where to go. And this is who the Spirit is. The New Testament scholar Leon Morris talking about and commentating on the life of the Spirit here says this. Says, the Spirit is not a guide and a helper for those on a straight way, perfectly able to manage on their own. The Spirit comes to assist people caught up in the thick of battle and tried beyond their strength. Jesus makes it quite plain that the way before His followers is a hard, and difficult way. So for those of us who are here today saying I need help, for those of us who are here today who are feeling like my kids overwhelmed by all of the pieces that need to get put back together, I want you to know there is good news because the Father has sent an advocate, a helper to you and to me, to the church to help us follow Jesus, to encourage us. to strengthen us, to uplift us. And my question this morning to us is, will you make room? Will you make room? And so I just want us to consider for a moment how we need to make room for the Holy Spirit by exploring a couple of things that Jesus says, both in John chapter 14 and John chapter 16 briefly. First, and I just want to say this, this is the big picture here, because when we make room for the Holy Spirit, Here's what happens. The Spirit will bring truth. The Spirit will bring conviction. And the Spirit will bring life. This is what will happen when we make room for the Spirit. And I believe that's good news for all of us who are struggling this morning. Let's look at this first way that the Spirit works when we make room. The Spirit brings truth. In both verse 17 that we read and later in 16, 13, The Spirit is described as the Spirit of truth. But when, in chapter 16 verse 13, Jesus says, but when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth. Now, what is truth here? Typically, we think of truth in our day and days, sometimes in very philosophical ways. It's like a little ambiguous. Like, what is truth? And we're kind of searching for some ultimate meaning. The biblical writers and authors were always super concrete. Here's how this word, aletheia in the Greek is ⁓ used, and this is what it means. The word truth here means what actually happened. It's based on concrete facts. just knock on, it's hard facts. That's what this means. Literally, it is the visible and verifiable reality demonstrated by facts, actual events, or proven character. So when Jesus says that the spirit of truth is going to guide you into all truth, what Jesus is saying here is the spirit is the very essence, the entire being of what is verifiably true. It's not that the spirit will just tell you what's true, it's that the spirit is true. And the Spirit, when the Spirit is at work in your life, the Spirit begins to give witness to a good God that created heaven and earth. That we've already talked about a few weeks ago. The Spirit begins to give witness in your life of the reality that the Word became flesh, became human in Jesus, defeated death on the cross and sin, died and destroyed death, was raised to life in his... now ascended and seated at the right hand of the Father is ruling and reigning. His kingdom is coming and one day Jesus will return to make all things new. This is what the Spirit is trying to proclaim to us every single day. So when we ask the Spirit to guide us into all truth, this is what the Spirit is laser focused on. Will you receive the life of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, the truth that God has acted in history in Jesus and is making all things new? that it is a real fact, a real event that has really happened. This is what the Spirit is giving witness to. Now why does this matter to you and I? We live in one of the most complex times, everyone says this about their own time in history. We live though in one of the most complex times in human history. The amount of AI content, if you're just scrolling social media or on the news, you can't tell what videos are real and fake anymore. We can't tell based on basic news reports ⁓ what is true and what is an accurate reflection of facts on the ground. I love using ground news because they just like to, instead of reporting their own headline, they show you a whole bunch of headlines from very left leaning to centrist to right leaning headlines about the exact same news story and it is wild. You think they're talking about different things. So the reality is we are not going to find truth. or find some sense of reality out in the world. As we learned last week, because of sin, everything is unraveling and all of us, because of sin, are bound and susceptible to deception. Here's the powerful thing about deception, you don't know it's happening. I don't know it's happening. But the spirit of truth comes to invade and disrupt all of our perceptions and say, here is what is truth and guiding you into all truth. that God has come in history in Jesus Christ and is making all things new. And that core seed begins to grow and take root as we make room for Jesus and we make room for the Spirit and as we make room for the Spirit, the Spirit brings truth. But secondly, we see this. The Spirit also brings conviction of sin. In chapter 16 verse 8, Jesus says, when the Spirit comes, He will convict What does that mean? Let me just make a ⁓ differentiation here between condemnation and conviction. The world and the devil condemn us. The spirit convicts, Jesus says. Now what's the difference? ⁓ Condemnation will say something like this. are a mess. Condemnation will say you can't get your life together. Condemnation will make very vague general statements about what a terrible person you are and how you will never meet the standard, how you will never measure up, how you will never be enough. Condemnation does not give us a way out, it just wants to condemn us. Look at your past, how could you even think about following Jesus? This is what condemnation does. But thank God, what the apostle Paul says in Romans 8, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. That's pretty good news. If you have accepted the new life of Jesus, you have permission to never listen to a condemning thought again. But you do have a responsibility to heed the voice of the Spirit when He convicts. Conviction is very different. Conviction doesn't go like condemnation does and says you're a mess. Conviction says you can give this mess to God and you don't have to walk in this anymore. Conviction says do you see this specific issue in your life? Let's take care of that right now. Here's what you're gonna do. Conviction is very specific and precise. Condemnation is general and vague and just leaves us feeling terrible. Conviction says you are not living in the fullness of the life that's prepared for you. Let's get rid of this so you can live in that. How much better does that seem to you? The Spirit really is like an advocate, almost like a coach saying, I think this is blocking you from the fullness of life that God's made available. Let's heal this. Let's confess the sin. Let's walk away. ⁓ We have these windows that look out over Greenwood Lake in the front of the house that we live in. And ⁓ I fight every year with birds that like to make nests, like under the eaves right in front of it. So every year I clean them, and they're pristine. I have to clean them a couple times a year. And then the birds poop on them. God is using those birds for my sanctification, guys, to transform my life and make me humble. I hate those birds so much for how much, and then the straw gets down from their nest. It's a hole, it's gross. So I clean them and they make them beautiful. I'm like, ⁓ my gosh, these windows are incredible. They look so beautiful. And then the morning sun rises up, because the house kind of faces to the east, and the beautiful light comes in. Look at that sunrise. And then I start seeing. all of these spots and streaks that I couldn't see when I cleaned them and I'm like, are you kidding me right now? But this is what the Spirit does when the Spirit convicts us of sin. We go, I am washed in Jesus, thank you. I'm free, I'm living a new life. And then the life of the Spirit begins to shine on us. ⁓ I didn't see that. We cannot be surprised when the Spirit begins to reveal that there's sins we've never noticed before. Until the new heavens and the new earth, folks, we can't be surprised that there's still sin in our lives. To say there's no sin or we're never going to sin is to say that we are God and that we don't need Jesus in the cross. We continually need Jesus in the work of the cross every single day. And so when the light of the Spirit begins to shine on us, we begin to see, ⁓ there's another spot. It's an invitation to clean. It's an invitation to confess sin. It's an invitation to step into the new life. As ⁓ Saint Basil the Great said, the Spirit comes to us when we have withdrawn ourselves from evil passions which have crept into the soul through its friendship with the flesh, alienating us from a close relationship with God. When the Spirit shines, it's an opportunity to say, wow, there are things that are keeping me. from the fullness of the life of God. And these are things where I've withdrawn, I've kept the spirit in the corner of the room in different ways, and as the spirit begins to shine the light, I begin to say, wow, I can remove this from my life and the spirit begins to shine even brighter. Wow, I can clean this and the spirit begins to shine even brighter. This is often, by the way, why we do not... sense the nearness of the Spirit's presence. If there is unconfessed sin in our lives, it is keeping us from experiencing the fullness of the life of the Advocate. When there is unconfessed sin, where there are things being shown on the windows of our lives, and we do not clean them, we are resisting the conviction of the Spirit. And when we resist the conviction of the Spirit, we are slowly tuning out the voice of the Spirit. And so the invitation for all of us is to receive the conviction of the Spirit, not as a guilt trip or condemnation, but as a joyful opportunity to let the Son of the life of God shine in even more. And so when we make room for the Spirit, the Spirit brings conviction of sin. And finally, I want to say this, that when we make room for the Spirit, the Spirit brings the life of God. The Spirit brings the life of God. We begin to be guided into truth. We begin to confess sin as the Spirit is pointing it out, drawing us further into the life of the Spirit. And then I love this in chapter 14, verse 23, Jesus says about the Spirit coming to his disciples, Jesus says this odd phrase, we will come to them and make our home with them. Who's this we that Jesus is suddenly talking about? And then in chapter 16 verse 15, Spirit will take from what is mine and make it known to you. I want you to strengthen triune God that we've been talking about come to you in its fullness when you receive the Spirit. And that what is Jesus's is now yours because the Spirit has come into your life. Just think about what belongs to Jesus. All power, all authority, he sits on the throne, he's going to return to just the living and the dead, he's defeated sin and death, and Jesus says when the Spirit lives in you, the Spirit is gonna bring everything that's mine, he's gonna give it to you. could stop. The Spirit is going to give you and I everything that is part of the life of God. The very life of God fills you and fills me and fills the church with the fullness of God's power, of God's gifting, of God's holiness, of God's unity. All of it gets received fully and completely into the life of the believer. Just think about this, there's so many different ⁓ points in the New Testament where we begin to see the Spirit bringing the full life of God. Let me just point out a few. We see the power of God given through the Spirit in Acts 1-8 where Jesus says, I'm returning to the Father, but listen, you're gonna go tell the world about what I've done, but don't do it until you receive power from the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit actually gives us the life of God, the power of God to proclaim the good news about Jesus. When you and I try and proclaim the good news about Jesus by ourselves, it's like, pfft. But when we do it through the life of the Spirit, the life of God, we have power to be his witnesses. But also, the Spirit comes, as we see in 1 Corinthians 12, we get gifts from God, or sometimes it talks about manifestations of the Spirit. that the life of God begins to shine in us as a church community for the common good. In 1 Corinthians 12, there are a whole list of what's called spiritual gifts that the Holy Spirit gives to the church. So it says that some of us get gifts of healing to be able to pray for people to be healed when they're sick. People get words of knowledge to know things that they should not know except that the Spirit of God has told them. And that other people get gifts of administration and leadership and preaching and hospitality and generosity. They just love to give of their life. And these are spirit empowered gifts, not personality traits that come. It's from the life of God's very self, the father, the son, and the spirit given to us through the Holy Spirit. And it means that you and I get these giftings for the encouragement of the church. It means that you can know something about someone sitting next to you or across from you that you shouldn't know, and it is the Spirit prompting you to go over and just give them a word of encouragement. It means that you have the ability to be generous with your brothers and sisters who have less than you, are struggling to make ends meet, or don't know where their next meal is coming from. It means that some of you have a particular gift of hospitality to welcome those into your home and into your lives who are strangers. But also the Spirit gives us the life of God by making us holy. We take on the very life of God. This is what it says in Galatians 5, the fruit of the Spirit. The Spirit gives us the fruit of love and joy and peace and patience and kindness and goodness and faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. We get to let our lives reflect that. That's the work of the Spirit when people are beginning to embody those characteristics. It also says in 2 Thessalonians that the Spirit sanctifies us. That's a fancy theological word, sanctification. It means that you and I are being made holy just like God is holy. Have you ever thought about becoming like God? We think about it in the sense of Adam and Eve were tempted in the garden, right? You know, you'll be like God knowing good and evil and then you can do whatever you want. You see, there's our own way to try and be like God. But I want you to know that this isn't weird theology, this is totally orthodox theology, just for some of you who are like, what's he saying? You've never heard this before, because it doesn't get talked about a lot. Jesus wants us to become like him. The Spirit sanctifies us, is making us holy to be like God, so we can be with God and with his people forever. But that only comes as we're made holy. Because outside of that, and our brokenness and our selfishness, there will always be things that get in the way. And that leads to the final thing that the life of God brings, it's unity. spirit that everyone gets. When the spirit fills our life, it is the same spirit that everyone gets. It's like a sunbeam shining down on us. Are you all getting a different sunbeam of light shining on your face? No, you're all getting the same beam of light, but you get it as if it was only shining on you, but yet it's shining on everyone. This is what the unity of the spirit is like. Now this is good news because it means that There's brothers and sisters maybe that you have a hard time reconciling with or getting along with. And the good news is that as we obey and submit to the Spirit more and more, we're actually being drawn into unity together. Now some of you are like, I don't want to be in unity with them. I understand, but that's not what Jesus told us to do. And it means that God is drawing us into this life that's not by our power or our skill, but by the life of the Spirit, we are able to have unity with God. The full life of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit become ours. And this means, as the Apostle Paul said, because we make room for the Spirit and receive the life of God, you have everything you need for life and godliness. Everything you need. It means that every bit of reconciliation, every bit of unity that's needed to happen, every opportunity to declare the good news, every opportunity to live a holy life, to confess sin, all of these different things, you have everything you need to do those things because the Spirit of God, the same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead lives in you. when we make room. For the Spirit, the Spirit brings truth, conviction, and life. This is the good news that is ours when we claim and proclaim that we believe in the Holy Spirit. The good news that we are not alone. This is the life of God, the Holy Spirit that's made available to you and I. The question for us is, will we make room for the Spirit? It is a daily question of dying to the life of the flesh and our sinful old life and receiving and stepping into daily the new life of the Spirit that's awaiting us. Will you make room for that life today? Would you stand with me?

John 14 · chapter mention John 14 · chapter mention John 14 · chapter mention John 16 · chapter mention