The Helper

Transcript

The word of God reads, but now I’m going to him who sent me. None of you asks me, where are you going? But because I’ve said these things to you, sorrow has filled your heart. Nevertheless, I tell you the truth. It is to your advantage that I go away. For if I do not go away, the helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you. When he comes, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment. Concerning sin because they do not believe in me. Concerning righteousness because I go to the father and you will see me no longer. Concerning judgment because the ruler of this world is judged. I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth.

— John 16

(ESV)

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. He will glorify me for he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the father has is mine. Therefore, I said that he will take care of what is mine and declare it to you. This is the word of the Lord Saints.

— John 16

(ESV)

Thanks be to God. Please be seated. Would you pray with me?

Our great God, would you still our busy, anxious, fretful minds. Would you tune our ears and our hearts to hear from you and to marvel at you. Our great God, father, son, and Holy Spirit. Amen. Jesus here makes quite the promise to his disciples. He says that he will send them a helper who is the spirit of truth. He will send them a helper who will bear witness about him. He will send them a helper who will convict the world of sin, who will guide the people of God in all truth and who will glorify Jesus. Quite the helper indeed. So wonderful is he that Jesus says, not only is it good that he comes, but it’s actually better that Jesus goes away so that the helper can come to stay. Understandably, this would be a hard thing for the disciples to hear. It would be a hard pill to swallow to hear.

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The Promise of Help

It’s better for you that I go away. All of this is said in the broader context of persecution, of suffering, of the hatred of the world. He’s promising them very, very difficult times ahead. He’s promising them pain and loss and uncertainty. And in the context of that, he says, it’s good for you that I leave while you experience that, while you go through that, while you feel the things that you don’t want to feel, experience and things that you don’t want to experience and while your lives, as you know them, are disassembled. Things will get rough, says Jesus, but don’t worry, don’t grieve. This is what’s supposed to happen and it’s about to get really, really good. If you’ve been here for the last several Sundays, you’ll know that we’ve jumped around quite a bit in our sermon series. So let me catch us up real quick just to give us

the context of where we find ourselves this morning. Last week, Pastor Thomas preached on the first half of John 15. And he looked at this beautiful truth of Jesus as the true vine. Jesus as the one who calls his people to himself, the only one who can save us, the only way to eternal life. And this comes from his love for us. This comes from an overwhelming display of love and care and compassion and mercy. And this is the love that our Jesus calls us into. A sacrificial selfless love by which we are then to be known because of what we’ve experienced from him. Then through December, prior to last week’s sermon, what we actually walked through is we took a break from the Gospel of John and we walked through our Advent series where we looked at the promised king who would come to save his people from their sins.

And just before that, just before we started the Advent series, the last Sunday of November, we had a guest preacher named Drew Cunningham who preached from John chapter 15 verses 18 through 16

. And this morning, and that Sunday morning, our brother looked at the theme of persecution and how for the Christian, this is actually to be expected. In fact, so much so is this to be expected. That Jesus says that the greatest danger for us is not persecution, it’s not suffering, it’s not a loss of comfort, it’s not a loss of social standing, and it’s not even the loss of our very lives. Our greatest danger is falling away. Our greatest danger is to be found not in him. To lose not only our lives but our souls. And so we’ve jumped around a little bit, but now we find ourselves back in the Gospel of John

and we’re back on track now. So we’ve gone kind of to the, back into the end of chapter 15 and then back into the beginning of chapter 15 and now we’re into chapter 16. And what we’re back to, contextually, is to Jesus’ final hours before he goes to the cross. This is the end, just a few more hours and he’s headed to die in the place of sinners. Back to our Lord spending his last evening with his disciples, teaching them, pouring into them, serving them, washing their feet, feeding them, loving them. Mere hours before his betrayal by one of his own, mere hours before he’s murdered, and more importantly, before he willingly gives up his life for his people as an act of sacrifice, as an act of love, an act of friendship, and an act that, most importantly, only he can do. And what does he choose to talk to them about here?

He can talk about anything. He can cover any array of topics. What does he talk to them about? The Holy Spirit. And more broadly, he’s teaching them a Trinitarian theology. He’s talking to them about the Trinity, God being triune. Beloved, it’s very important for us not to forget the fact that the doctrine of the Trinity is absolutely central to the Christian faith. It’s in every Christian confession and creed, and is regularly, all throughout church history, elevated to a prominent place for the believer.

It’s not by accident we’re called Trinity Church of Portland. We serve a God who is triune. All throughout the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, what we see when we see the work of God is a Trinitarian work being done. And to miss this, to not have an understanding of who God is, it actually changes our worship. It changes our relationship with him. It changes what we proclaim about him. If we miss who he is, the essence of who he is and what he’s like, we tell of a God who’s not real. We tell of a part of him. We tell something about him, but not the whole of who he is. One God, eternally existing in three distinct persons.

God the Son

And so, we look to where Jesus directs our attention. We listen to what it is that he has to say. Because the world will hate us, because we can expect to face persecution, because life will be hard, and we will face loss and pain and suffering, our God has graciously provided to help us. This help will come from our loving Heavenly Father in a variety of ways, and if you’re a Christian, you know this comes from other believers. This comes through different circumstances that God sends your way. But what we see in this text, what Jesus desired for his disciples to know as he was about to leave them is the fact that the Helper, capital H, is on his way. So let’s look a little bit more closely at these verses where in verses five through six, we’ll consider God the Son, and in verses seven through 15,

we’ll look at the gift of God the Spirit. First, God the Son. Why are the disciples sorrowful when Jesus tells them that he’s going away? This may seem like a silly question, it may seem obvious. But shouldn’t they know by now that he’s accomplishing something, that he’s doing something, that he’s here for a purpose? He’s doing what he came to do? He’s been telling them that this would happen, so why are they surprised? Well, Jesus is their rabbi, their teacher. He’s the one who stands up for him. These outcasts in society that have no social standing, that have nowhere else to go, that don’t quite fit in,

he teaches them, he helps them. He gave them a purpose, he loves them, he serves them. He brings them into this work which is far beyond what they could have ever imagined for themselves. And beyond that, they believed him when he tells them who he is, they believed him when they said that he is God. Many of them even made this clear proclamation, even though they may not fully understand it yet. You see, we read this through the lens of having the whole picture, we read this through the lens of knowing how the story ends, but they were walking in faith in this one who seems to do everything in a way that sort of defies expectations. They had certain ideas about the Messiah, they had certain ideas about themselves and what it meant to be a religious Jew in that time. They had certain ideas about their own people

and Jesus does everything differently. He sort of turns all of those preconceived notions, he turns all of those expectations on their heads. Everything he did, everything he said showed them a different part of the picture. It was highlighting something, it was coloring something in, it was showing a certain shadow, it was kind of changing the way that the picture looks as a whole the more that he revealed it. And they were likely waiting for just a little bit more clarity because there’s still a lingering confusion in everything that he’s doing. They’re likely waiting for just a little bit more understanding and so in their minds, if this picture is gonna come to be clear, if we’re gonna understand exactly how all of this unfolds, exactly who he is in the fullest, truest sense, exactly how this plan is fulfilled, he would probably need to be around to help them see it.

Because everything they have, everything they’ve seen so far is only because he has showed it to them, he has explained it to them. And so when he tells them, I’m going away, and the picture’s not yet complete, the story’s not yet full, in their minds, they’re about to lose everything. Everything that they trust and love and hold on to, they lose the one who heals, they lose the one who forgives sins, they lose the one who changes lives, they lose the one who gave them a purpose and who made sense of all of the promises of scripture that they’d heard growing up. They lose the one who’s been tying the story together for them. They lose the one who prays with them, who prays for them, who intercedes on their behalf to the Heavenly Father, sometimes right before their eyes, allowing them to hear his intercessory prayer.

Can you imagine that? Can you imagine sitting next to Jesus as he prays for you? And then he says, I’m going away. No more of that. While Jesus was with his disciples, they felt a certain safety net. And that’s certainly understandable, but now he says he’s going away, and they’re dreading feeling his absence. This is happening, by the way, while he’s telling them, things are about to get really bad for you guys. Things are about to get really hard. Beloved, as we consider what it must have been like to watch and hear and touch and learn from Jesus, may we never stop marveling at God the Son. We can read these stories so many times that it just becomes kind of a theology for us, or a biblical exercise, or a study, a deeper Christology, a better apologetic, tools for evangelism, all good things. Amen and amen.

Grow those things, marvel at those things, become a better evangelist, a better apologist, all of these things. But may we never stop marveling at the person, Jesus, God, the Son. May we regularly think of him, contemplate his person, his attributes. As we read of him in his word, may we continue to see his beauty and infinite worth, his majesty. The thing is, all that the disciples thought that they were losing, when they heard him, when they heard from him that he was going away, we actually have all these things.

He is all these things for us. Savior, Messiah, King. He understands us, he cares for us, he loves us, he serves us. When we think about all the things that Jesus is for the believer, the list gets so overwhelmingly long, so very quickly, that we have to ask the question, what is he not for us?

Are you still in awe of him, Christian? Do you still marvel at this one? Who changed the world, who changed your life? If it’s so good to have him near, to have him, to see him clearly, why is it so important for Jesus to go to the Father? Why is it so important for him to leave? Because by this act, he proves that he is who he said he was. He said he was from the Father, and that’s where he’s going. But also, why would he need to go away? To be at the Father’s right hand, to intercede for us, our great high priest. In Romans 8.34, we read that no one can condemn us, so long as he intercedes for us from God’s right hand. Jesus says, it’s to your advantage. It may not feel like it, it may not sound like it, but it’s better this way.

It’s better for them that he does this. It’s better for us. Better than having him by our side, praying with us, praying for us, is the completion of his plan. For him to complete his redemptive work, for him to go to the Father’s right hand and intercede on our behalf. Better that the helper comes. As we consider all that Jesus is, all that he does, the question must eventually be asked by every single one of us at some point in our lives, why did he even come in the first place to have to leave at some point? Because, dear friends, every single one of us, at one point in our lives, maybe that point is right now, every single one of us, we’re opposed to God. We are not at peace with our creator, and so he sent his son to bring that peace to us.

To come be with us. To live the perfect life that we could never live. To die the death that we could never die. To be that substitution so that in him we might have the righteousness necessary to be back with our God. He came to do what we couldn’t. He came to be what we couldn’t. And now he intercedes for us, and he’s coming back. Our high priest sympathizes with our weaknesses because he’s experienced them. He was fully human, experiencing all that entails, and yet fully God, and so the only one who could save us. The redemptive work of Jesus is accomplished for us by him and him alone, yes and amen, but it is applied to us, how? By the Holy Spirit. Yes, Jesus’ work is sufficient, but until that work is applied to us, it is completed, sufficient work in the abstract, but when the Spirit who comes to dwell in believers

God the Spirit

gives us that new identity, makes us who we are in him, Jesus’ sacrifice gives us what we need to be with him once it’s applied by God the Spirit, which brings us to our second point. God the Spirit, let’s actually reread these verses. This is a fascinating portion of scripture. Nevertheless, I tell you the truth. It is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the helper will not come to you, but if I go, I will send him to you, and when he comes, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment, concerning sin because they do not believe in me, concerning righteousness because I go to the Father and you will see me no longer, concerning judgment because the ruler of this world is judged. I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.

When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all 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. He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine, therefore, I said he will take what is mine and declare it to you. What we’re told by our Lord is that it’s better to have the Spirit in us than to have Jesus with us. How wonderful the Spirit of God must be, if that’s the case. As if it weren’t sufficient reason beyond his intercession for us and beyond the act of proving that he is the Son of God, why is it better to have the Spirit with us and to have Jesus leave?

Another reason yet is that people all over the world can then hear of Christ and have access to him. All different points in time, all different portions of the globe. He doesn’t have to be in proximity to you in order for you to know him. The Spirit, our text tells us, and our Lord tells us, will reveal Christ. He will open eyes. He will convict of sin. He will point to the truth. What a gift from God to all humanity. So who is this Spirit? Who is God the Spirit? Is the Holy Spirit merely a force? Is the Holy Spirit merely a presence? Is it something vague and mysterious?

Is it something that’s difficult to describe? Kind of a nebulous power? Or is he a person? Is he knowable? Is he relational? How does he work? What does he do? The Spirit, dear friends, is a person. The Spirit is God, fully God, the third person of the Trinity. The Spirit relates to the Father and the Son. The Spirit does what a person does. He grieves, he encourages.

He is present. He is active. He is eternally God and he works in a number of unique ways and we see this throughout the Scriptures. Throughout the Old Testament, we see God the Spirit indwelling people. And it’s important to note that before the new covenant was established in the blood of Jesus, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit was a temporary indwelling for specific purposes that God was enacting through his people. And so this wasn’t a permanent indwelling and we see this when the Spirit comes upon Joshua in Numbers 27, 18. We see this with David in 1 Samuel 16, 12 and 13. We see this with Saul in 1 Samuel 10, 10 and so on. This would have been a temporary indwelling. But in the New Testament, we see that this indwelling is permanent in passages like 1 Corinthians 3, 16. Do you not know that you are God’s temple

and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? We see in Ephesians 1, 13 and 14 where we’re told that he is the guarantee of our inheritance. This is a permanent indwelling. This is something that the people of the old covenant could have never imagined that God would dwell in them, revealing truth to them, giving them the whole picture, giving them the whole of who God is. This is a phenomenal gift. This is overwhelmingly good and gracious of God to do. Other than indwelling, the Spirit is also involved in the work of regeneration. The Spirit is involved in the process of the new birth. We see that God does this by circumcising the heart. And this is something that we see in the old and in the New Testament. This means that God brings dead people back to life. This is a theme that repeats itself over and over.

Faith is seen as the fruit of the Spirit’s work in regeneration in Ephesians 2, 8. And it’s something that’s done to you. It’s something that’s done for you. It’s something you can’t do yourself. It’s almost like something has to come into you from outside of you and change you to open your eyes so that you can see the beauty of the Son. This is the work of the Spirit. Ephesians 2 tells us, for by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing. It’s a gift of God. Moreover, the Spirit works to restrain sin, which we see in Genesis 6, 3. We see it in 2 Thessalonians 2, 3 through 8. The Spirit also works to equip saints for service. And we see this even in the Old Testament. We see this even in the Old Testament.

In Exodus 31, 2 through 5, where Bezalel was gifted to create art for the tabernacle. God gave him the gift of creativity to make the tabernacle a beautiful thing. We see this all throughout the New Testament epistles where the Spirit gives unique gifts to his people so that they can better serve the people around them, so that the church can be full and vibrant and active in a testimony of God’s goodness to her. The list goes on and on with his involvement in the creation of the world. He gives life, he comforts, he offers hope, he performs miracles, and so on. He’s amazing. Why? He’s God. God, the Spirit. And Jesus wants us to know him personally. Jesus is excited for us to know him personally. Jesus wants us to experience this power. Jesus wants us to have this clarity, to have this vision that we can’t have apart from him.

He will be a helper to us. And this word that’s translated as helper is the Greek word from which we get this word paraclete, and it’s kind of a theological term, but paraclete basically can be understood as advocate or mediator or intercessor. It’s one who comes to your aid. It’s one who comes to defend you, to stand up for you, to not leave you on your own, to not leave you to fend for yourself. He’s here for you. He’ll stand up for you. He’ll stand with you. He’ll walk with you.

More than being our helper, however, when the Spirit comes, Jesus says he will awaken. The Holy Spirit doesn’t just fill in the absence of the Son. He completes his presence in our lives. The work of the Spirit is like a light. He exposes what’s in the dark while showing the Son, putting him on display, spotlighting him. The darkness is revealed. Yes, he reveals it. He shows it for what it is and all of its ugliness, but more importantly than showing the darkness, he shows the solution to the darkness.

Conviction and Comfort

The Spirit opens people’s eyes to see that the darkness is death and life is only available in the Son. What does it mean then that the Spirit convicts the world of sin? This is an interesting phrase. This is an interesting thing that Jesus is saying. Now, friends, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but people generally don’t wanna look super closely and super carefully at the sin in their hearts. People generally aren’t very excited to dig into conduct that can really only be described as wrong or offensive or wicked. They don’t wanna see themselves in that way. They don’t wanna consider the fact that their thoughts and their motives are depraved and selfish. They don’t wanna look at themselves in that kind of mirror. They want a little bit of distortion to soften the blow. This is why we use language like mistake, falling short.

And sin is a mistake and it is falling short of God’s perfect standard, but it’s also much more. There’s a wickedness in each of our hearts. There’s a darkness in each of our hearts that needs to be shown a spotlight on so that we could know that this way is leading us nowhere but to destruction. And yet, even though we are this way in his kindness, God the Spirit comes to open our eyes to that very reality and then to show us the beauty of God the Son who offers salvation. In writing on this section and his commentary on the Gospel of John, R.C. Sproul writes the following, and I’ll just read this section. I found this to be incredibly helpful. Real conversion is an experience of repentance and forgiveness before God. It is not merely praying a prayer, joining a Christian church, or receiving a sacrament.

It is being brought to our knees by the conviction of God the Holy Spirit. The Spirit then convinces us of what true righteousness is and shows us we do not have it so that we understand we need an alien dikaiosune (a Greek word I will probably mispronounce), which is a righteousness that is not our own, an alien righteousness. The Spirit exposes us. He strips us of our self-righteousness. He shows us the utter inadequacy of our own behavior to satisfy the demands of God and drives us to the redemption that was accomplished by Jesus. Then he brings us to a state of judgment, the state of judgment which then shows us that we have no excuse. We have no escape. We stand before a holy God, and once we’ve seen our sin, once we’ve understood how we stand before that God, that reality is terrifying.

It’s enough to make the strongest of men completely fall apart, but the one who convicts the world of sin, dear saints, is also called the comforter. How is that? How is it that we’re brought into this state of judgment? How is it that we’re brought into this place where everything is falling apart? I’m doomed. I’m dead. I’m undone.

The one who convicts the world of sin is the comforter that the repentant sinner needs. I’m gonna quote another saint here, our brother Charles Spurgeon. One comforting thought is that he who alone can pierce sinners’ hearts is named the comforter. The spirit who convicts us is also the spirit who consoles. The same divine spirit is both wounder and healer.

Thanks be to God, amen? He doesn’t just leave us to sit in the lostness and the hopelessness of the reality that I’m undone, that I’ve sinned against a holy God, that I’m unclean. Nothing I do is right. Nothing I can do is sufficient. In that same moment, this gracious healer, this helper, this comforter is lifting you up out of the puddle into which you’ve collapsed, and he holds you up so that you can see the son.

As he reveals the son, as he convicts the sinner, as he comforts his people, he does this by pointing to the truth, by leading us to the truth, by showing us the reality of how dead men are brought back to life, by how sinners are saved. And the spirit is actually responsible for the truths that we have, for the scriptures that we hold in our hands. He filled the disciples. He gave them a boldness and a clarity and a conviction to preach Christ, to gave them the inspiration to write the words of scripture so that those words can be passed down for millennia, so that we, 2,000 years removed in Portland, Oregon, on a Sunday morning can hold God’s words in our hands.

Are you still amazed at the fact that you have God’s words? In your hands, he spoke and he gave you his word. He gave you his spirit. He filled the people that would write this book. He preserved it against all odds. Do you understand what a miracle it is to preserve an ancient text for 2,000 years across continents, across languages, through persecution, through hatred, through emperors and empires and kingdoms, trying to topple this thing, these obnoxious Christians who just are a thorn in the flesh of everybody who’s not one of them, and he preserved it, and you’re hearing it in a weird, non-Queens English. Do you understand the miracle that is? And what do we do with this miracle? Toss it on the shelf, forget about it, too busy, not enough time, not engaging enough. This is a miracle that we hold in our hands.

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The Greatest Miracle

He made sure the son would be made known, and he made sure that people would have access to him. The spirit, dear friends, was sent to give us truth, to comfort us, and he came to speak for Jesus. God the spirit reveals God the son. He teaches us about the son. He tells us what the son wants us to know. Perhaps the most important work of the Holy Spirit is the fact that he points us to Jesus. When you ask any number of evangelical Christians, Protestant Christians, what’s the greatest thing the spirit does, you’ll hear a whole number of things. You’ll hear a lot of things about gifting and about miracles, and these things have their place. These are phenomenal, these are beautiful, but perhaps the most incredible thing, the most beautiful thing the spirit does is he points us to Jesus. He helps us see our need of the son,

and then he clarifies it so we see him clearly. We need this help, saints. We need to see Jesus clearly. We need for the obstacles to be removed so that we can treasure him as we ought. When we are drawn to Christ, it’s because of the spirit’s work in our lives. The son makes the father known, and the spirit glorifies the son. Our text tells us he will glorify me for he will take what is mine and declare it to you. At the end of what our Lord says here to his disciples, what do we get? How does he tie up this whole picture? It’s the whole trinity. We see the triune God in verse 15. Look at it again, look at it with me. All that the father has is mine, the son. Therefore, I said that he, the spirit, will take what is mine and declare it to you.

Friend, do you thank God for the gift of the Holy Spirit, for the kindness shown to you in this incredible gift of God dwelling in you, comforting you, leading you to the truth, showing you Jesus? Fickle as we all often are, we miss just how incredible this promise is and how incredible this reality is in our lives. See, in Jesus’ time, the people demanded miracles and signs repeatedly. They would come and they would demand these things from him for him to prove, for him to show. Even though they had the son of God in their midst, they wanted miracles. In our times, we often see much of the same demands and expectations in order to be convinced or to have assurance, to do away with doubts. We need miracles. Even though we have the word of God and the testimony of Jesus faithfully passed down

for 2,000 years, people want signs, people want miracles, the extraordinary, the extravagant, missing all the while the reality that in Jesus, we being dead men and women are raised to life and life everlasting, missing all the while the miracle that God offers life to all who would believe in Jesus, missing the reality that when the Holy Spirit opened our eyes and changed our hearts and led us to Christ and revealed God’s truth to us, we now get to come and hear the word of God and understand it. We understand the word of the living God. We get to watch formerly dead people baptized and professing God’s miraculous salvation. We have the opportunity every single Sunday to come to the table and remember that our Jesus gave his body to be broken for us and shed his blood to save us. We get to pray and sing to God

and know that he hears us and cares. And yet much like Israel, what do we want? We want more than manna. We want more than a pillar by day and fire by night. God in his love for us, in his infinite wisdom said, the best thing for you, my child, the best thing for you is for my spirit to come and to dwell in you forever. What a miracle, what a miracle that is. Jesus only does good for his people. As he prepares to go away from his disciples, as he prepares to go and die for them, he knows he will be back. And the way he will come back is that God will raise him from the dead. He knows what’s best for those that he loves most. And that is, as we read in Romans 8.11, that the spirit who raised Jesus from the dead

would dwell in them. Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Praise him, all creatures here below. Praise him above ye heavenly hosts. Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen. Would you pray with me, saints? Our great God, we stand amazed at you. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, what mercy, what grace, what kindness and love

that you would condescend not only God the Son to be among us as a man, to die for us, but that you, God the Spirit, would dwell in us. Thank you for your kindness. Thank you for your love, for your faithfulness, for not abandoning us, though we deserve it. And thank you for the fact that we get to see you as you are, our great God. Help us to live lives that are worthy of you. It’s only possible with your indwelling power. Amen.