Holy Spirit Series 2000
The Spirit of TRUTH
John 14:16-21; 15:26-27; 16:7-16
Dr. Roger W. Thomas, Preaching Minister
First Christian Church, Vandalia, MO
Review: We are considering seven different names or descriptive terms for the Holy Spirit in the New Testament. So far we have examined three of the seven.
(1) The term Spirit of God reminds us that we do not worship three Gods, but one Holy God who reveals himself as Father-Son-Holy Spirit. He is not an abstract force. He is the very personal and real God who loves and sustains us.
(2) The name Spirit of Jesus calls attention to the fact that the primary task of the Spirit is to lead people to the Gospel of Jesus and lead them back to obedience to the teachings of Jesus. For this reason some Bible scholars have called the Spirit the “shy” member of the trinity because he seldom causes people to talk about himself, instead he turns the spotlight on Jesus. This factor is important because some wrongly equate “spirituality” with how much a person or a church talks about the Holy Spirit. The Bible teaches us that true spirituality always causes us to talk about Jesus.
(3) The phrase the HOLY Spirit reminds us that the Spirit of God is unique and distinctive. We are not just taking about spirituality in some generic sense as if all spirit-talk and spiritual talk were the same. This term also forces us to recognize that a main task of the Spirit is to make us holy; to set us a part for life lived for God. The proof of the Holy Spirit’s presence is not primarily mighty works and supernatural wonders, but transformed lives that increasingly demonstrate the righteousness, integrity, and character of Jesus. Unholy living and Spirit-filled living are totally incompatible.
Today we look at a fourth term. This was Jesus’ term and therefore it ought to be of utmost importance to all followers of Jesus. The world may have little interest in it. Those who have never tasted the beauty of the Lord’s grace and never been born again may find it more puzzling than compelling. But Jesus’ people must camp here and drink deep at the fountain of the ‘Spirit of Truth.”
The title or name for the Spirit that we will examine today is the phrase “The Spirit of Truth.” I want to accomplish two tasks today. First, I will spend quite a bit of time making the case that the lessons of this title are extremely important in the times in which we live.
Next, I will briefly outline what the Bible teaches about the ministry of the Spirit of truth in the life of every believer. First, consider the words of Jesus delivered to his apostles on the night before the cross:
Truth Matters.
If the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Truth, then one thing is certain-- TRUTH matters. We live in a world that no longer believes this. Rather we live in a world where Pilate’s attitude more often prevails. At his trial before the Roman Governor Pilate, Jesus insisted that he had come into the world to testify to the truth. “Everyone on the side of truth listens to me,” the savior said. Pilate’s response was telling. “What is truth?” he asked and then walked out (John 18:37-38).
Do you wonder why your head begins to spin when you hear people talking about politics, morality, or religion? Everyone has an opinion. The discussion gets heated, and no body seems to agree on anything, except the notion that every one has an opinion and all opinions are equally valid because personal opinion is all there is. We live in a time when a large proportion of the population has bought, hook, line and sinker, the belief that truth is only personal opinion or taste. Anyone who insists on truth or right and wrong is being judgmental and narrow.
If there is no such thing as truth, what do you do with Jesus? He said he came to testify to the truth. He said, he was the way, the truth, and the life (John 14:6). The Bible says that those who know God know the truth and walk in the truth (1 John 2:20; 2 John 1-6).
According to George Barna, a California pollster who specializes in American spiritual and religious attitudes, seventy-two percent of Americans agree, “There is no such thing as absolute truth; two people could define truth in totally conflicting ways, but both could still be correct” (Virtual America, pp. 83, 283). Seventy-one percent of Americans believe that there are no absolute standards that apply to everybody in all situations (pp. 85, 230).
Harry Blamires (The Christian Mind: How Should a Christian Think, 1963, p. 107), prophetically observed almost forty years: “Ours is an age in which ‘conclusions’ are arrived at by distributing questionnaires to a cross-section of the population or by holding a microphone before the lips of casually selected passers-by in the street. . . . In the sphere of religious and moral thinking we are rapidly heading for a state of intellectual anarchy in which the difference between truth and falsehood will no longer be recognized. Indeed, it would seem possible that the words true and false will eventually (and logically) be replaced by the words likable and dislikeable.”
It is almost incomprehensible that Barna also discovered that fifty-three of those who claim there is no such thing as absolute truth identify themselves as born-again Christians (p. 83). Forty-two percent of those who identify themselves as evangelical Christians agree that there is no such thing as absolute truth (p. 83). Add this fact to widespread lack of Biblical knowledge on the part of many Christians and you begin to glimpse how huge an issue this truly is.
In July of 2000, George Barna’s research group released a revealing study on what American Christians believe. Barna summarized his study, “We found that almost nine out of ten adults believe they know all of the basic teachings of Christianity very well. But when you explore what they think the Bible actually teaches, as we did in this study, many theological inconsistencies and inaccuracies emerge. Unfortunately, correcting people’s mistaken assumptions about Bible content is made nearly impossible by their self-assurance about their beliefs. Even if they are exposed to good Bible teaching they typically fail to absorb that input because they think they already know it all. Changing the errant theological positions of millions of Americans is a very tough assignment."
My concern today is not so much the lack of Bible knowledge that many church people have (we in this church, of course, are exceptions) but the tendency even of Christians to reject the very concept of Truth. If there is no, Truth, how can there be a Spirit of Truth? How can we believe the truth, know the truth, walk in the truth, and love the truth?
I am reminded of the old story about a monastery perched high on a cliff several hundred feet in the air. The only way to reach it was in a basket which was pulled to the top by several monks. They would pull and tug visitors to the top. It was obviously a terrifying trip for new comers.
One tourist became very nervous about half-way up. He looked up at the old, very frayed rope by which the basket was suspended. He looked down hundreds of feet to the sharp rocks below. With a trembling voice, he asked the monk who was riding with him in the basket how often they changed the rope.
The monk thought for a moment and then answered casually, “Whenever it breaks.”
In our day, the rope of truth is frayed. If we look the other way until it breaks, the results will be deadly.
That we live in a day where fewer and fewer people believe that there is such a thing as truth or real right and wrong is unquestionable. It has largely been replaced by a concern for what is popular, what is trendy, with a belief in the authority of personal preferences and tastes. Two thousand years ago, one politician asked, “What is truth?” Today almost everyone would ask the same skeptical question.
How did we get this point? Without belaboring the point or giving a lecture in the history of philosophy, let me briefly note where we have come from. Once upon a time people tended to determine truth based on what an authority said or what had been traditionally believed. If the king said it or a bishop said it that settled it. Historians call this the pre-modern view.
A few hundred years ago with the rise of modern science and exploration of the new world, another perspective gained ground. Historians call this view modernism. Modernism contends that you can’t trust authorities or traditions, you must think for yourself and use the principles of science, observation, investigation and experiments to find out what is true. If you can’t prove something in this way, modernism says, then you can’t claim it is true. Such thinking caused a lot of problems for religions and morals. Skeptics asked, how can you scientifically prove the existence of God or the accuracy of Scripture or the rightness or wrongness of a given behavior?
But modernism proved quite unsatisfying. If you limit what is real and true, to only those things you can investigate in a science lab, you leave out whole ranges of very important things--such things as love, beauty, happiness, freedom, and hope. A science lab can help you develop a bomb to kill millions, but it can’t help you decide whether to use it or not. Modernism may help contribute to prosperity, but had little to contribute to happiness. To result was that modernism (the only things that exists are those you can prove scientifically) led to despair.
Forty and fifty years ago many began to give up on modernism. This led many intellectuals of the sixties to make the strange argument that the only thing that made sense was senselessness. Some even said that the only worthwhile choice was suicide. The experimentation with drugs, the rebellion, and even anarchy of the sixties were also a result of the bad taste that modernism was leaving in the mouths of many.
Obviously most people are not going to choose suicide as the best alternative. Many will not try drugs for life’s purpose. What’s left when you have abandoned pre-modernism (or the voice of authority), tried scientific modernism and found it wanting? This takes us to where we are today. Maybe not you, but most of your friends and neighbors, and sad to say some of you in the pew have bought the alternative. The current alternative is what historians call post-modernism, or what is left after you give upon scientific modernism.
In its simplest form, this mindset says trying to figure out right from wrong, truth from deception is just too hard. It’s not worth the effort. So let’s just say, every man for himself. Different strokes for different folks. You do what you want, believe what you want, just leave me alone and I will leave you alone. But with this you can’t have meaningful communities, just factions occupying their own space. You really can’t have morality that you can teach your young. Morality is just your opinion. What if your children have a different opinion? In a post-modern world, the young are often left to fend for themselves without parents or grandparents who have anything to offer them except personal opinions.
In such a world, the gospel of Jesus and the message of salvation from sin through faith in Christ and repentance toward God are too exclusive, too narrow, and too judgmental. This is where we are at.
Where will it take us. Not too happiness. Not to satisfaction. Ultimately it can only take to a complete break down of society into groups that don’t like one another but tolerate one another because that’s all they have left.
What do followers of Jesus have to say to such a world? Unfortunately, not much! Since so many Christians have bought the same shell game, they remain silent, clutching their faith, but only as their personal opinion, not as the hope of the world based on the one who said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life, no one comes to the Father but by me” (John 14:6).
Many have substituted other gospels for the Gospel of the Spirit of Truth. Some churches offer a feel good gospel. Rather than repentance from sin, they offer “self esteem” in sin. Remember the dominant mindset of our day is the Gospel according to Oprah. If it makes you feel good or good about yourself, it must be right.
Others opt for an old pre-modern authoritarianism. Because we say so or the bishop says so, it is truth. Still others call for signs and wonders as the proof of truth. As tempting as this may be, we are left with the haunting warning of scripture that signs and wonders can and will be counterfeited by the enemy, especially in the last days (Matthew 24:10-11, 24; 2 Thess. 2:9). Nowhere does the Bible teach that signs and wonders by themselves prove anything. Spirit powers must be tested and discerned.
Similarly some measure truth by the level of enthusiasm or emotion that a teacher or leader churns up. In a post-modern world, the only way to distinguish one opinion from another is the intensity of emotion with which it is presented. Of course, this is nothing new. The political Hitlers of the world as well as religious cult leaders have always depended on such naïve thinking to control their followers.
Some act like the truth can be discovered through polls or surveys designed to find out what most people believe, as if popularity determined what is true or right and wrong. Jesus of course warned that wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, not truth. And many there be that find it (Matt. 7:13-14).
But unfortunately one of the most popular alternatives is to just mirror what the world says and thinks. So many Christians simply retreat and say with their neighbors, different strokes for different folks. The only problem is—this puts us on the other side of the issue from Jesus who said, “Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.” Even some well-intended calls for prayer are really just efforts to emphasize talking to God about our neighbors so we won’t have to talk to our neighbors about God. Of course, praying is always good, but not if we do it because we have abandoned the Word of Truth and therefore have nothing left to witness to the world about.
What the Spirit of Truth does.
This is the challenge we face in our day, even in our church no doubt. How does the Spirit of Truth speak to this? The Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth, provides three very much-needed ministries in times like these:
First, the Holy Spirit is the author of Scripture. Paul teaches us that Scripture is God-breathed (2 Tim. 3:16), a play on words that really means that it is God-spirited. Peter makes it even clearer when he insists that the prophets and writers of Scripture didn’t come up with their own ideas but “spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter 1:21).
Do you remember what Jesus said about the Spirit of Truth? . “When he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. 14He will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you. 15All that belongs to the Father is mine. That is why I said the Spirit will take from what is mine and make it known to you. 16“In a little while you will see me no more, and then after a little while you will see me.” (Jn 16:13-16)
The Holy Spirit’s task would be to guide the Apostles in preserving the teachings of Jesus. He wouldn’t really create a new message, as much as spotlight the message of Jesus.
For the early believers, the standard of truth was the Apostle’s Doctrine (Acts 2:42) because it was the teachings of Jesus. Over and over again, this same standard would be raised up as the truth. It was never what Paul said, or Peter said, or the majority said, but what Jesus had said.
3If anyone teaches false doctrines and does not agree to the sound instruction of our Lord Jesus Christ and to godly teaching, 4he is conceited and understands nothing. He has an unhealthy interest in controversies and quarrels about words that result in envy, strife, malicious talk, evil suspicions 5and constant friction between men of corrupt mind, who have been robbed of the truth and who think that godliness is a means to financial gain. (1 Timothy 6:3-5).
7Many deceivers, who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh, have gone out into the world. Any such person is the deceiver and the antichrist. 8Watch out that you do not lose what you have worked for, but that you may be rewarded fully. 9Anyone who runs ahead and does not continue in the teaching of Christ does not have God; whoever continues in the teaching has both the Father and the Son. (2 John 7-9).
Because Jesus is the object of the Spirit’s ministry, his teachings and his ministry are the standard by which everything in the faith is measured. The Spirit never leads to or teaches something that is contrary to Jesus. He never really adds to or goes beyond Jesus. For the reason, the faith we believe, teach, and live can be described as “once and for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3).
This is important because a dangerous heresy has been quite common at different times in the church, even today. The false teaching implies that Jesus is only the starting point and the gospel of the cross is good beginner stuff, but if you really want to be spiritual you must go beyond that and get into the things of the Spirit. Any teaching that seeks to create a division between the work of Christ and the work of the Spirit must be rejected. Any notion that only baby Christians are concerned about the Gospel of the cross, while truly spiritual people are wrapped up in the Spirit, is absolutely, categorically false.
Because the Spirit of Truth is the originator of Scripture, the Bible is totally trustworthy. It can be read, studied, and obeyed with confidence. More-over, any alleged spiritual claims, visions, or prophecies must never be accepted at face value, but always squared with the teachings of written Scripture and the teachings of Jesus (cf. 1 John 2:18-27; 2 Thess. 5:19-21; 1 Timothy 4:1-16; 1 Cor. 14:36-38). The Spirit of Truth never contradicts himself.
The Spirit of Truth has another work. He also helps us understand the things of God and the teachings of Scripture. He begins by creating a hunger for the Word of God. A truly Spirit filled person never gets enough of the Word of God. The Spirit of Truth works with the Word of Truth. For this reason, the Bible has a power unlike any other book. Imagine reading Shakespeare, a formidable assignment for most of us. But imagine how different it would be if you had Shakespeare as your tutor. With the Bible, the Holy Spirit tutors, guides, or illuminates (as the theologians say) as we read. As Paul puts it, “We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us” (1 Corinthians 2:12).
The Spirit of Truth authored the Word of Truth. He enlightens us as we read the Word of Truth, and he empowers us as we share the Word of Truth. This empowerment for witness is the third ministry of the Spirit of Truth.
Everyone who is a follower of Jesus is ordered by the master to testify to what he knows. Our task is to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about Jesus. This is not a preacher job, a pastor task, or an elder responsibility. It is a mission of anyone who has something to say about Jesus.
The hope that our testimony to Christ can change lives does not come from our smarts, or expertise, but the promise that the Spirit of Truth uses our words to transform minds and hearts. Jesus promised his followers, “You will be witnesses when the Spirit comes” (Acts 1:8). He promised his disciples that their task of spreading the Gospel was connected to his authority and his presence (Matt. 28:18-20). We are bold to speak of Jesus because with the Gospel comes the power of the Holy Spirit (2 Cor. 3:12-18). This is why we can dare to speak of Jesus to friends and neighbors. We are not on our own. The Spirit of Truth is present and working.
Here again, we need the reminder that the Gospel that changes lives is all about Jesus. “When the Spirit of Truth comes,” Jesus said, “he will convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment: 9in regard to sin, because men do not believe in me; 10in regard to righteousness, because I am going to the Father, where you can see me no longer; 11and in regard to judgment, because the prince of this world now stands condemned” (John 16:8-10). It is all about Jesus. Lives will come under conviction, souls will be saved, and the church enlarged when we talk about Jesus and what he did and who he is. Our message is not about the Spirit’s work, but the Savior’s work. The Gospel is not some abstract spiritual message about feeling better and experiencing some indescribable internal surge. The Gospel is the message of what an historic person did, on a specific cross, on a real hill, outside a real city, in real time. The Gospel is about how that event and a personal faith in that real Person change everything.
Summary: The Spirit of the Living God is the Spirit of Jesus who is the Holy Spirit who is the Spirit of Truth. We live in Truth starved world that needs the confidence and assurance that Truth Matters, Truth Exists, and is available in Jesus Christ.
Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:31-32).
Are you free? The Spirit of Truth can make that happen when He turns your attention to Jesus.
***Dr. Roger W. Thomas is the preaching minister at First Christian Church, 205 W. Park St., Vandalia, MO 63382 and an adjunct professor of Bible and Preaching at Central Christian College, 911 E. Urbandale, Moberly, MO. He is a graduate of Lincoln Christian College (BA) and Lincoln Christian Seminary (MA, MDiv), and Northern Baptist Theological Seminary (DMin).
