The background for today’s sermon is the Lord’s devastating announcement that he is going away.
The disciples are not to be alarmed. Another comforter is coming. The comforter is promised.
The Greek word for comforter is (Parakleton) and is rendered “advocate” in 1 John 2:1.
The word means “one called alongside” for protection or counsel.
A story in Leadership magazine illustrates this phrase: “Jackie Robinson was the first black to play major league baseball. Breaking baseball’s color barrier, he faced jeering crowds in every stadium. While playing one day in his home stadium in Brooklyn, he committed an error. The fans began to ridicule him. He stood at second base, humiliated, while the fans jeered. Then, shortstop Pee Wee Reese came over and stood next to him. He put his arm around Jackie Robinson and faced the crowd. The fans grew quiet. Robinson later said that arm around his shoulder saved his career.” —Daily Bread
The word “another” is allon (meaning “another of the same kind”) rather than heteros (another of a different kind). Jesus was one comforter. The Holy spirit was another comforter, another of the same kind.
I. The Holy Spirit Indwells Believers, (John 14:16, 17, 20)
The Holy Spirit is Invisible to the world but Indwells Believers.
John 14:16 And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever;
Earthly fellowship with the Lord Jesus was about to be terminated. The Holy Spirit (“the Lord’s other self,” as he has been described) would come to abide with us forever..
John 14:17 Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.
The philosophy of the world is “seeing is believing.” This materialist philosophy makes it impossible for unregenerate individuals either to know or to receive the Spirit of God. He is real, but he is invisible.
16, 17, 20. 17b. Indwelling. “. . . for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.”
The Holy Spirit comes to take up permanent residence in a believer’s heart and life. Thus the body of the believer becomes the temple of the Holy Spirit, a truth of immense importance.
1 Corinthians 3: 16, “Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?”
1 Corinthians 6:19, 20, “What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?
20 For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.”
Romans 8:9, “ But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.”
II. The Holy Spirit In-fills Believers
Explain the difference between filling and indwelling.
“The filling . . . does not mean the believer gets more of the Holy Spirit, but rather the Holy Spirit gets more of the believer.” —Willmington
How does the Holy Spirit fill a believer? Compare Eph. 5 with Col. 3. “be filled with the Spirit” (Ephesians 5:18 ff.) = “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly” (Colossians 3:16 ff.). Compare the passages! So to be filled with the Spirit is to be obedient to the Word!”
The Christian life is a supernatural life. It is the life of Christ lived out in every believer by means of the indwelling Holy Spirit.
John14:18 I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you.
John14:19 Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more; but ye see me: because I live, ye shall live also.
The word for “comfortless” is orphanous. The news that the Lord was going away devastated the disciples. They felt orphaned. They felt helpless and hopeless, bewildered, frightened, lost. “I will not leave you orphans,” Jesus said. “I will come to you.” Here is “a promise of his coming which is contemporaneous with his absence.” Yes, He was departing from them physically but he would be with them spiritually in a new way.
“ye see me.” The use of the present tense indicates a continuing vision.
“I live.” He used the dateless, timeless present tense, indicating undying life. Although he stood a stone’s throw of the cross, in divine confidence he assured his own that they were about to partake of the very life that he lived. We live because He lives. We shall live as long as he lives. We live the life that he lives.
III. The Holy Spirit Insures and Assures the Believer
John14:20 At that day (“that day” I believe is Pentecost) ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you.
This mystical relationship was made good on the day of Pentecost. The disciples were unable to comprehend the dimensions of all this, when the words were spoken in the upper room. The reality burst on them at Pentecost; later the apostle Paul began to unfold its mysteries in his epistles, notably Ephesians.
The Lord Jesus is in his Father; we are in him; he is in us. This marvelous interlock of persons and personalities absolutely guarantees the eternal security of the believer, as well as the transformation of our lives in him by the transmission of his life through us.
John14:21 He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him.”
The Holy Spirit Insures the Believer. Several New Testament passages teach that the Holy Spirit is the “earnest” of our salvation. If we could lose out Salvation the Godhead would have to forfeit its down payment of the Holy Spirit. In addition to that according to verse 20 we are all wrapped up together in this.
This insurance package provides us with the assurance of our salvation.
Romans 6:16 “The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God:”
IV. The Holy Spirit Enables the Believer
I believe the enabling of the Spirit is the way that He manifests Himself to us and gives us our assurance.
John14:21 He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him.” John 14:22 Judas saith unto him, not Iscariot, Lord, how is it that thou wilt manifest thyself unto us, and not unto the world?
1 John 3:24, “And he that keepeth his commandments dwelleth in him, and he in him. And hereby we know that he abideth in us, by the Spirit which he hath given us.”
John 14:23 Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.
Notice: This teaches the doctrine of the Trinity. The three persons of the God-head are equal and if you have one you have them all. If you are indwelt by the Spirit you are indwelt by the Father and the Son as well.
Who will they abide with? With the person that loves Jesus. They don’t abide with the rich and the powerful but with those who love Jesus.
∙ The word “abode” is the same word translated “mansions” in verse 2. God gladly vacates them all, those glorious mansions in the sky, those ivory palaces beyond the reach of time and space, to take up our dwellings as his dwelling, to convert our cottages into his place of residence and thus turn our places into his palace.
John14:24 He that loveth me not keepeth not my sayings: and the word which ye hear is not mine, but the Father’s which sent me.
Note the contrast: No love, no obedience.
∙Love is the only power that can draw a person to keep the Lord’s commands; they are too foreign to fallen human nature for it to be otherwise.
∙Further, disobedience to the Lord is rebellion against God. Jesus said, “The word which ye hear is not mine but the Father’s.” Therefore, not to do what Jesus says is not to do what the Father says.
∙That rules out all the world’s Christ-rejecting religions as false. If they do not love our Lord Jesus, whose voice was the voice of God, they are a deception and a lie.
∙Love is the only power that can draw a person to keep the Lord’s commands; they are too foreign to fallen human nature for it to be otherwise.
As a youngster I read the book, The Call of the Wild. It was a story about a dog that was brought to Alaska to be used during the winters while there was a gold rush. At one time Buck, the dog, was sold to a couple of men, Hal and Charley, that knew nothing about dog’s and sleds, but were determined to try anyway. To make things worse, they started out in the Spring as the rivers and lakes were beginning to thaw. In their ignorance, they started out with 14 dogs with an overloaded sled and very little food. Each day they got a late start getting out on the trail, and at night they took way too long to set up camp.
Bad went to worse and soon the dogs began to die off until there was only Buck and 4 huskies left. To get them to go after every stop took a lot of whipping and clubbing. Every time the men stopped the sled, the dogs would immediately fall down. To get them to get back up and start pulling the sled, the men would have to beat the dogs, only then would the dogs stagger to their feet and give a half hearted effort to pull the sled. They were in this shape as they staggered in to John Thompson’s camp at the mouth of the White River. John Thompson told the men not to continue because the ice was melting and the bottom was about to drop out of the trail. But Charley and Hal would not heed the warning, since they had made it this far without the ice breaking under them, they could make it, they thought.
Hal got out his whip, “Get up there, Buck! Hi! Get up there! Mush on!” One by one the dogs staggered to their feet as the men mercilessly beat the dogs. All the dogs finally got up except one, Buck. This drove Hal into a rage. The whip was exchanged for the club, as he began hitting Buck again and again. Finally John Thompson could take it no longer. In a screaming rage he intervened, knocking the man off his feet. “If you strike that dog again I’ll kill you!”
Hal drew out his hunting knife and came at Thompson, who hit his knuckles with an axe handle, knocking the knife to the ground, and again he wrapped the knuckles as Hal tried to pick the knife back up. Then he stooped, picked the knife up himself, and cut Buck out of the harness.
Realizing that the dog was worthless to them, the men left without him. About a quarter of a mile down the trail they was the back end of the sled jerk into the air throwing Hal into the air. They saw Charley turn and take a step to run, and then a big chunk of ice broke off and the men and their dogs disappeared. The bottom had dropped out of the trail.
For days, Buck would not even let John Thompson out of his sight. Everywhere he went Buck would follow. At night he would lay down by the fire at his master’s feet, just content to be with his master. He would do anything for his master after what his master had done for him.
Twice Buck saved Thompson’s life and once he pulled a sled loaded down with 1,000 lbs. of flour in 50 lb. sacks to help Thompson win a bet. Before he started to pull, his master whispered in his ear, “As you love me, Buck. As you love me.”
And here it says, “I beseech you therefore brethren by the mercies of God that ye present your bodies . . .”
“As you love Him, Christian, as you love Him.”
Enabling of the Spirit:
Ephesians 3:16, “That he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man;”
One evening Lord Radstock was speaking at a meeting in Woolwich, and afterwards nearly missed his train home. He had just time to jump in as the guard blew his whistle. But a young army officer had followed him to the platform and running up to the carriage window, said to Lord Radstock, “Sir, I heard you speak tonight, but tell me, how can a fellow keep straight?”
The train began to move. Lord Radstock pulled a pencil from his pocket and laid it on the palm of his hand. “Can that pencil stand upright?”
“No,” said the young officer.
Lord Radstock grasped the pencil in his hand, and held it up in an upright position. “Ah!” said the young fellow, moving beside the train, “but you are holding it now.”
“Yes,” said Lord Radstock,” and your life is like this pencil, helpless, but Christ is the hand that can hold you.” As the train rounded the curve and was lost to sight, the last thing the young officer saw was Lord Radstock’s outstretched hand holding that pencil upright.
Twenty-five years later the same officer met Lord Radstock in India, and told him that all those many years ago, on that railway platform, he had trusted his life to Christ, who had upheld him and kept him ever since.
—Pioneer Camper
