No Longer Orphans: The Promised Holy Spirit — John 14:15-31 (09.13.2026)

Please remain standing for the reading of God's Word. Today's passage is John

14, 15 through 31, and when I finish reading, I will say, this is the Word of

the Lord, if you'll respond by saying, thanks be to God.

If you love me, you will keep my commandments. I will ask the Father,

and He will give you another helper that He may be with you forever.

That is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive because it does not

see Him or know Him, but you know Him because He abides with you and will be in you.

I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you.

After a little while, the world will no longer see me, but you will see me because

I live, you will live also.

In that day, you will know that I am in the Father and you in me and I in you.

He who has my commandments and keeps them is the one who loves me.

And he who loves me will be loved by my Father and I will love him and will disclose myself to him.

Judas, not Iscariot, said to him, Lord, What then has happened that you are

going to disclose yourself to us and not to the world?

Jesus answered and said to him, If anyone loves me, he will keep my word,

and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our abode with him.

He who does not love me does not keep my words, and the word which you hear

is not mine, but the Father's who sent me.

These things I have spoken to you while abiding with you, 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 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.

Do not let your hearts be troubled, nor let it be fearful. You heard that I

said to you, I go away and I will come to you.

If you loved me, you would have rejoiced because I go to the Father,

for the Father is greater than I.

Now I have told you before it happens, so that when it happens, you may believe.

I will not speak much more with you, for the ruler of the world is coming and he has nothing in me.

But so that the world may know that I love the Father, I do exactly as the Father commanded me.

Get up, let us go from here. This is the word of the Lord.

Morning, everybody. If you have not already done so, go ahead and be turning

in your Bible to John chapter 14. If you don't have a Bible with you, that's all right.

John 14 · chapter mention

You may have gotten an insert in your bulletin when you came in.

The scripture's on that. It'll also be on the screen.

One way or another, I want you to be able to follow along as we work through

this passage today. Let me pray for us as you're finding your way to John 14.

Father, again, we just come to you in prayer, asking that you would do the things

that only you can do, that you would please open up our hearts to hear as you speak to us.

We ask that you would work in each of our lives in the ways that we desperately

need you to work in our lives.

And we ask that you would get all the glory for what you do. In Jesus' name, amen.

Well, I grew up in church. So

as a young kid, I was going to church every Sunday, every Wednesday night.

And I prayed to ask Jesus into my heart multiple times.

And nothing wrong with that prayer, but I don't think that it connected really and truly to my heart.

So I went about my life. By the time I hit my teenage years,

I was very, very much in rebellion.

And so in college, I started to feel misery in my sin.

I started to feel like something was definitely wrong.

And by God's grace, I began to read the word of God to try and find answers

and to figure out what I needed to do.

And it was as I was studying the gospel of John that the light bulbs began to really turn on for me.

In John chapter three, in verse 36, there's this verse that says,

whoever believes in the son has eternal life.

That I pretty much got, you know, as a kid in Sunday school,

whoever believes in the son has eternal life. It was the next line that hit

so hard and that started to get me searching deeper into the word.

Whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.

Whoever believes has eternal life.

You'd expect the next line to say,

whoever does not believe will not have eternal life, will not see life.

But it doesn't say that. Whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life.

And what I learned as I began to dig into Scripture is that throughout the New Testament,

The assumption is that whoever is not obeying Christ doesn't know him,

doesn't love him, doesn't truly believe in him.

I, in those years in college, I didn't obey the son.

And so rightly, I was afflicted with conviction. And I turned to him one night

alone in my apartment and I got on my knees and I cried out to him and I said, I want to know you.

I want to follow you. And that's when everything began to change in my life.

So we find ourself in this passage, this amazing passage in the upper room,

the upper room discourse, where we are just hours away from the crucifixion.

We are just a couple of hours away from Jesus being arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane.

And so here he is, he's in the upper room, he's with his disciples, he's imparting,

instruction to them some of his most important teaching to them,

knowing that what he says this night will be burned, etched into their memories.

He is giving them some crucial teaching. He's finished the Passover meal.

Judas has gone out into the night to betray the Lord.

And the beginning of this chapter in John chapter 14, Jesus has said to his

John 14 · chapter mention

disciples after telling them that he's going away and they are confused and

they are feeling fearful, he says, let not your hearts be troubled.

He says that at the beginning of this and the rest of the whole chapter follows that theme.

And he's going to say it again in this passage that we're in today.

These are words of comfort.

They're words of comfort to his disciples who are fearful, who are about to

enter into their darkest night of the soul.

He's trying to prepare them for that. He's trying to help them not be afraid.

And this is true for us as well, that our Lord wants us to be comforted by his words.

Our Lord, we may not see him with our eyes, but we learn in this passage that he dwells with us.

He gives to us. He sends to us his spirit to indwell us.

And this is true for everyone who has believed in, believed on the Son of God.

And the Spirit of God has regenerated your heart and made you alive in Christ.

And you have the Holy Spirit.

That is true for everyone.

And yet we do not all experience his presence, his love to the same degree at all times.

And that's what we're gonna see in this passage. One person who's zealous in

their pursuit of the Lord and going after God and loving him with all their

heart is going to experience the love of God and the comfort of God.

And he's going to be manifested to them in unique ways that a person who's drifted

in their walk with God, not pursuing Him, not loving Him, that person's not

going to experience that to the same degree or at all.

And we sometimes miss that there is a distinction between God's eternal justifying

love that's true for every believer at all times and our experience of his love and presence,

in our lives.

And that's some of the tension found in this passage. Jesus wants to comfort

his anxious disciples in this world where they're going to have trouble and

they're about to experience that in a great way.

But he wants to let them know that there's something that they need to do as

well. There's a part that they have to play in order to experience that comfort.

They need to maintain a loving relationship with their Lord. If you belong to Jesus.

You have the Holy Spirit, and you can expect to increasingly know and love and

enjoy the fellowship of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit in your life.

So, let's dig into the passage. Point number one, if you're a note-taker,

Christ comforts us through the indwelling Spirit.

A good bit of this section of Jesus' teaching is focused on the fact that the

Father is going to send, he says, another, another meaning like him,

to his disciples to be their helper after Jesus is gone.

And depending on your translation, verse 16 may say the Father is going to send

another helper, or it may say comforter, or it may say advocate or counselor.

And based on what that Greek word is, those are all good translations.

But personally, I like helper the best because it's sort of summarizes all of

these things that the Holy Spirit is for us.

He is one who comes alongside of us to comfort us, to help us, to encourage us.

In verse 17, Jesus calls him the spirit of truth, spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive.

That's another theme in this passage, you're going to see Jesus distinguishing

between the world and his disciples and there is comfort.

There are things that his disciples and only his disciples get to experience

and that the world cannot have, cannot experience because the world does not know God.

So Jesus intentionally shows this separation between his followers and the world

to help comfort them, to help them to see how blessed they are.

Jesus states in verse 30 that this world is ruled by Satan.

He is ruling this world, deceiving this world.

He's the liar, the father of lies. These are all things that we've already come

in contact with, all these truths in the book of John in chapter 8.

And so don't forget this church, that this world isn't as it should be,

that there is deception out there. If you forget it, you'll fall prey to it.

And so I just want to remind us, right?

Not to make us feel doom and gloom, but just to remind us, hey,

we got to be on the lookout. We've got to be sharp.

The news that we watch is going to be laced with untruth.

The Disney movies that our kids have memorized, it's going to be laced with

lies. We've got to be aware of this. The podcast that we listen to is going

to have some lies in there.

The conversations at the water cooler at work.

I mean, everywhere we turn, even just the spirit of this world that is pulling

us to believe that the good life is to be found in our possessions or in our

success and our careers,

all of it, it's trickling down from the ruler of this world,

the father of lies, Satan.

And to help us in the midst of this broken world that is definitely deceiving at all times,

Jesus tells his disciples, he tells us that we're given the spirit of truth,

to help us to discern, to help us to be able to know what is the will of God,

what is good and true, what's beautiful.

And so we can, because we have his spirit, the spirit of truth,

we can see through the smoke and the mirrors.

In the second half of verse 17, Jesus tells his disciples that they've come

to know the spirit because the spirit has been with them.

And the whole time that they've been with Jesus, they've experienced the Holy

Spirit in incredible ways.

And so they know the Holy Spirit. He's been with them.

And he says, because he's going to the Father, the Spirit will be sent to them

and will dwell inside them to be with them forever.

This is astonishing. And whether the disciples realized it in that moment or

in hindsight, looking back, they would have figured out Jesus is talking about

the fulfillment of the prophecies that were given.

We read one of the incredible ones in Ezekiel 36 this morning in our call to worship.

From hundreds of years prior. The prophet Ezekiel prophesies about the new covenant.

He says, I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you.

And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of

flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, cause you to walk in my statutes

and be careful to obey my rules.

This is the promise of the new covenant, that you will have the spirit of God

indwelling you, causing you, causing you,

it says, to walk in his statutes, to be careful to obey his rules.

This is incredible. New covenant promises being fulfilled through Christ,

through the blood that he's about to shed on the cross in just a matter of hours.

He's going to ratify this covenant and cleanse his people through his blood

so that his spirit, his Holy Spirit can indwell these sinful bodies. It's amazing.

In verse 18, Jesus assures them that even though he's going away,

they're not going to be left as orphans.

They're not going to be alone in the world. The spirit of God and dwelling believers,

according to Romans 8, is the spirit of adoption.

You can't be adopted and be an orphan.

God adopts, he gives us his spirit as a down payment, as a promise for the life that is to come.

We're going to be with him in his presence forever.

So are you worried or fearful about something that you're facing right now?

Take heart. Believer, you're not alone. You're not an orphan.

Yes, in this world, you will have trouble, Jesus said, but take heart.

I have overcome the world.

And you're not an orphan in it. No matter what you're facing,

you might be facing something financial. You may be facing something with your

health. You may be facing something in your family.

You may be facing an incredible amount of stress at work. Whatever you are up

against right now, you're not up against it alone.

You have the Spirit of God, believer, to carry you through, to help you. He indwells you.

He's there to give you comfort. He's there to give you counsel.

He's there to lead you. He's there to teach you, to help you see what's really

true in the world of deception.

He is your advocate before the Father, and He will give you everything you need.

If you love Jesus, if you follow Him, then this is true for you.

But your experience of his presence in your life and the comfort that he gives,

won't be the same for every person or for every season because there is a role that we have to play.

And that brings us to our second point. Christ comforts us through our loving obedience.

All right, I want you to look at several of these verses that are all connected

together. We have them all on one slide.

All right, look at this.

John 14, 15, if you love me, you will keep my commands.

Whoever has my commandments, John 14, 21, and keeps them, he it is who loves me.

John 14, 23, if anyone loves me, he will keep my word.

John 15, 10, if you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love.

John 15, 14, you are my friends if you do what I command you.

When you see the Lord repeating something like this again and again,

then you need to know it is very, very important.

It's really important for us to understand what he's talking about here.

First of all, what we need to know about these verses, about what he's saying.

Is that he is not suddenly teaching salvation by works.

He's not suddenly flipping the script and saying that that we earn our salvation,

that we earn God's love by our loving him.

That's not what Jesus is doing here.

He isn't saying that God loves us because we first loved him.

That's exactly the opposite of what the scriptures teach.

The Bible teaches that God's love for us precedes our love for him.

And it is clear teaching in scripture.

We got to remember, we are 14 chapters into the book of John.

And I mean, for 13 chapters, the focus has been showing us how much Christ loves us.

John 3, 16, for God so loved the world that he gave his only son,

that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.

Romans 5, 10 says that while we were his enemies, while we were his enemies,

God reconciled us to himself through the death of his son.

1 John 4.19 very clearly says, we love because he first loved us.

So what is Jesus saying if that's not it?

Jesus is saying very clearly that everyone who has genuine saving faith will love him.

This was the truth that hit me

like a Mack truck as a 19-year-old college student alone in my apartment.

If you have genuine faith in Jesus Christ, you will have love for him.

That is clear. It will, that love will result in obedience to his commands.

And I'm not saying that if you believe in him, you will have a perfect love

for him or that you will have perfect obedience.

But Jesus is making it very plain.

In John 16, 27, just one, two chapters over, says that the father himself loves

you because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God.

Love and belief are together.

They're together. The Bible knows

nothing of a true believer in Jesus who doesn't love him and follow him.

That is what it is to be a Christian. It's to follow him. A disciple is someone

who follows their teacher.

So to be a Christian is to be a follower.

That's why Jesus can say, you are my friends if you do what I command you.

We read that. That's John 15, 14.

That's why John 3, 36 can say, whoever believes in the Son has eternal life,

but who does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.

These things are like synonyms in the New Testament.

To believe him is to trust him, is to love him, is to obey him.

In the book, What Jesus Demands from the World, John Piper says that Jesus's

commands cannot be separated from his person.

That's a really helpful way of looking at this. Jesus, remember,

is the word of God made flesh.

He is the incarnate word of God. You cannot separate Jesus from his commands today.

And so what that means is you can't love Jesus, but hate his words.

You can't love Jesus, but be indifferent to what he says.

Try that in your marriage and see how that works, right?

You can't say, honey, I love you. I just don't care what you say.

That's not going to work. You can't separate Jesus from his words.

And so to love him is to yield to him, is to submit to him, is to revere his

wisdom concerning this life and the life to come.

And so what is the point that Jesus is making? We need to pay close attention.

He is saying that love for him is what produces obedience to his commands.

And so if there is a problem in the obedience area of our lives,

there is a problem in the relationship with him.

That's what he's saying. He, he's saying, you know,

if you are not obeying me, then the, then the fix is not to focus more on what

you're doing, doing, doing the, the fix is to go back to the relationship,

fix the love relationship and,

everything else will come into place.

If you love me, you will obey my commands.

We know this in parenting, right? The best parenting books out there talk about

parenting, shepherding their hearts, parenting their hearts.

If you have their hearts, you have their obedience.

The same is true in our relationship with God.

Our tendency though, we may know that, but our tendency is to focus on behaviors.

And so we try and fix the behaviors. We try and focus there.

I had, so in our, in our yard in Vermont, we had an acre yard and it was mostly

grass and I tried to get it looking like all grass, you know, and, but,

but dandelions loved my yard.

And there was this one side, this one section that they just,

for what, I don't know what it was, but they loved that section.

And I would, and I hated to like pull into my driveway and see those little

yellow flowers or to see those little things sticking up with all the seeds

and you see the wind blow and it's like oh no no there they go and we bought,

this tool that was like designed if you've ever pulled the dandelion,

you have to that those things have a root that looks like a carrot underneath

them right and you got to get that whole thing out what what happens if you

go to a dandelion and you just pull the flower off,

and think that that's going to do something,

all that does is make it mad, right?

It just comes back stronger with friends.

You have to get it up by the root.

And when we just try and fix our problems with obeying Jesus by focusing on

the behavior itself, it's like that.

It's like all we're doing is making it worse because the root problem is our

relationship with Jesus isn't right.

We're not loving him like we ought to.

We've got to go there in order to see lasting change. That's what Jesus is saying.

So how does this fit in the context?

Like if this is a passage about comfort, if this is Jesus trying to comfort

his disciples and to prepare them for what's next, how does it fit in this context?

The answer is that this teaching, I think, has at least two layers to it.

One is what we've already hit on, that every true Christian will love Jesus and obey him.

Now, how is that comforting to us? Well, like I said, we all know,

we all feel how weak our love can be, how imperfect it can be.

You and I know we don't love him with all of our heart, all of our soul,

all of our strength, all of our mind, not on our best day.

And so sometimes we have a tendency to look at that and we'd say,

oh, do I really even love him?

And here's the comfort from this. He says, if you love me, you will obey my commands.

If you can look at your life and you can see that there is a heart to obey him,

that you have been striving to obey, to observe all that he's commanded us.

If you can see that in your life, then you can say, okay, yeah,

Lord, I see you. I do, I do, I love you.

I do, that's one way this is a comfort.

And then there's a next layer to it. And in order to see it,

you need to see the promises that are connected each of these statements about

loving and obeying Jesus. Look at verse 21.

Jesus says, whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me

and he who loves me will be loved by my father and I will love him and manifest myself to him.

And then look at verse 23. Jesus says, if anyone loves me, he will keep my word

and my father will love him and we will come to him and make our home with him.

Every commentary that I consulted on this, four or five commentaries all said the same thing.

Jesus is telling us that while every believer has the Holy Spirit inside of us.

We are not all going to experience his presence to the same degree.

J.C. Ryle puts it this way in his commentary. We learn from these verses,

there are special comforts laid up for those who love Christ and prove it by keeping his words.

He says, there is more of heaven on earth to be obtained than most Christians are aware of.

When we follow Jesus closely, we experience his presence more tangibly.

He manifests himself to us. He doesn't appear in our bedroom,

but you know what it's like for him to work in a powerful and a tangible way in your life.

You're reading the Bible and the words leap off the page and give you the comfort

or the wisdom or the guidance that you need in that very moment.

This is the second layer to what Jesus is saying. This is why this is so comfort.

Comforting. He wants his disciples to know, hey, I'm sending you the helper.

You have everything you need, but there's a role you need to play.

And that is that you need to love me and you need to obey my commands.

As Piper says about these verses, those manifestations of the preciousness and

sweetness and power and reality and presence and beauty and worth of Jesus will be forfeited,

when we are loving other things more than Jesus and not keeping his word.

So let's just like bring this home to our own lives. Are you forfeiting the

incredible experience of Christ's presence with you because you've been neglecting

the relationship with him?

Have you lost your joy in the Lord? His promise that he will come to you,

make his home with you, and you'll experience his presence is still stands.

His desire to do that in your life is still 100%.

It hasn't changed. He doesn't change. What he promises here, he offers to all of us.

If we will return to him, if we will look to him, if we will follow him,

if we will love him and obey his commands, we will experience the blessing of

comfort and his presence in our lives.

And it won't be a burden to do that, to obey his commands.

1 John 5, 3, this is the love of

God that we keep his commandments and his commandments are not burdensome.

Okay, so we first saw that Christ comforts us by sending his spirit to indwell us.

And we saw that he comforts us by exhorting us to love and obey him.

And finally, verses 25 through 31, we're gonna go through really quickly.

Jesus comforts us with his peace and victory.

And in these last six verses, Jesus is preparing his apostles for what's next.

The apostles, right? What we have in the room here with Jesus are 11 men who

are disciples, but also apostles.

You understand what I mean? They are responsible with carrying this body of

truth that Jesus has given to them and giving that to the world.

It's a massive responsibility. Some of them will write New Testament scripture,

but all of them will have an important role to play in establishing the New Testament church.

In order to fulfill that responsibility, they need to remember large volumes of teaching.

So in verses 25 and 26, Jesus tells his apostles that though he's going away,

the Holy Spirit will continue to teach them and to empower them to be able to

remember everything that he said to them.

That promise is very specific to the apostles. And it's one of the ways that

we can have confidence and assurance in the scripture that we hold in our hands,

that it is the word of God, that it is Christ's word to us.

When we read what the apostles wrote,

But the Holy Spirit still does this for us today as well. He still reminds us

of things that we've been taught.

He still teaches us. In fact, do you know that any time that you've ever truly

learned anything of truth in God's word and applied it to your life,

it has been because the Holy Spirit is at work helping you?

Do you realize that when you are talking to someone about something and suddenly

something that you read comes back to mind or something that you've learned

suddenly comes to mind and you're able to give that,

as a comfort or help to someone else?

Do you realize that was the Holy Spirit in your life?

We experience the Holy Spirit far more regularly than we realize.

In verse 27, Jesus leaves his disciples with something every one of us desperately

need. He leaves them with his peace.

He doesn't tell them to conjure up peace from their own hearts.

He offers them his peace. It's a peace that cannot be shaken no matter what

they face because its origins are in the Prince of Peace himself.

And it's from that place that he says to them,

not to let their hearts be troubled.

Let not your hearts be troubled. Neither let them be afraid.

We have a role to play in this.

You've been given the peace of God, but we have a role to play.

We have to fight against anxiety. We have to fight against fear.

We can't just take the position of a victim to our anxieties.

That's a worldly teaching. The world says you can't help what anxiety you experience. Not the Bible.

The Bible says you have the peace of Christ.

And so you have to not let your heart be troubled or afraid.

It's a battle for all of us, but he gives us what we need.

And then he says that they should rejoice because he's going to heaven.

In other words, if you love me, he says, this should be a great source of joy

to you. I'm going to sit on the throne. I'm going to reign with my father over his kingdom forever.

And then in light of what he's saying there, verse 30 feels almost shocking.

He tells them that the ruler of this world is coming.

The ruler of this world, Satan, is coming. Remember, Satan entered into Judas,

to convince him to go and betray Jesus.

So what do we take from this?

First of all, it's like I said earlier, it's a reminder that Satan is real.

He does have real power in this world. He does have real schemes.

He is trying to do things in the world. He has plans to kill, steal, and destroy.

And we need to remember that. Peter tells us we can't live as though he wasn't

real. We need to be watchful. Satan prowls around like a lion seeking someone

to devour. We need to be sober-minded.

So that's the first thing. But here's the second thing.

We should note that Satan is on a very short leash because what is Satan?

Satan's coming to do what? What?

To get Jesus crucified. And what has been the plan from the beginning?

What has been God's plan to destroy Satan?

It was that his own son would die to redeem us.

Satan's best laid plans end up serving God in the end.

This isn't just true for the cross or the crucifixion. This is true in your life, believer.

Satan's best laid plans for you will be turned around for your good and God's glory.

So we can have peace in every circumstance. We don't have to be afraid.

Jesus says, don't, don't, it's okay.

He's coming, but he has no claim on me. And guess what, believer?

In verses 19 and 20, Jesus says, because I live, you also will live in that

day. You will know that I am in my father and you in me and I in you.

Satan has no claim on Jesus. And because you're in Jesus, he has no claim on you.

And then he goes on to say, I do as the father has commanded me so that the

world may know I love the Father.

Jesus, he loved the Father so much that he did everything the Father commanded, even unto death.

And because of that, believer, you have been given the Holy Spirit to be your helper.

Because Jesus died in your place, you have the Spirit indwelling you.

You have the privilege of a loving relationship with God.

Focus on the love relationship and the obedience will follow.

And you have the peace of Christ.

Let the peace of Christ rule in your heart, no matter what you face,

because Jesus has overcome the world and he's seated at the right hand of God.

He's on the throne. Let's pray.