Grace,
mercy and peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ.
The sermon
text for today was inspired by the Holy Spirit through the apostle St John, who
was one of the 12 who was present with Jesus at the Last Supper, when Jesus
spoke the words from our gospel reading today, which we read earlier, John
14:15-21. And we read:
I will ask
the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even
the Spirit of truth.
Prayer: May
the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O
Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
In our
Gospel reading last week, Jesus said: I am the way, and the truth, and the life.
No one comes to the Father except through me. He also says: If you ask
me anything in my name, I will do it.
What amazing
encouragement Jesus gives to us! Here is Jesus on the final night before his
death encouraging and strengthening his disciples with such precious
encouragement!
Our reading
today follows on from where we left off last week. And today Jesus teaches us
about two things: the presence of the Holy Spirit, and the presence of Himself.
I.
Firstly, he teaches us about the Holy
Spirit.
Jesus begins by saying: If you
love me, you will keep my commandments.
Jesus has just said to his
disciples: If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it. He wants to
give his disciples boldness and confidence to come to him and put their needs
before him. Don’t hold back, Jesus says! Be bold! But Jesus doesn’t just
require boldness; he also requires love. He says now: If you love
me, you will keep my commandments.
Jesus knows that when he has
ascended into heaven, there are going to be plenty of people who come along in
his name who are bold. They will teach people to ask Jesus anything that they
want: money, power, success, a nice home, a nice car—you name it! And there
have been many people throughout history who have taught people to be bold in
prayer, but that doesn’t mean that they love Jesus. Jesus says: If…
If you love me, you will keep my commandments.
There will be many prophets who
will set up their own commandments, and they will do it all in the name
of Jesus. They will invent their own new nifty ideas, they will profess to love
Jesus and they will ask Jesus for anything they want in his name. But Jesus
doesn’t want them to guard and keep their own homemade, homespun, home-knitted
commandments. He wants them to show their love for him by keeping, not their
own commandments, but his. If you love me, you will keep my
commandments.
When Jesus ascends into heaven, he says to his disciples: Go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them…and teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you… everything I have commanded you. This is Jesus’ commandments. Now, since Jesus is truly God, we believe that Jesus was there giving the 10 commandments to Moses on the top of Mt Sinai all those many years ago. The 10 commandments are actually the commandments that Jesus gave. But Jesus has also commanded some things that are new, that have never been commanded before—he wants the disciples to go out and preach the gospel, to preach his death and his resurrection, he wants them to baptise people, and to share the Lord’s Supper together. When the disciples hear Jesus’ word and receive his Sacraments, they are being worked on by him. Preaching, baptising and celebrating theLord’s Supper aren’t human works, these are Jesus’ works. And he commands his church to guard and keep these things, to make sure they continue and are done.
So when Jesus says: you will
keep my commandments, he is wanting them to preach about him and listen
to this preaching, to guard the word and the sacrament, to show affection to
each other and promote harmony among one another, and to patiently bear whatever
cross that Jesus sends. This is the way Jesus works in own lives, through these
things. When we replace his commandments with our commandments,
we are simply replacing his works with our own works.
Now, when Jesus sends his
apostles into the world, he knows that the devil, the world and sinful human
flesh are going to do everything possible to fight against that pure love that
comes from Jesus, the love which we have for Jesus, and the love which we have
for each other. Remember how Jesus said: By this all people will know that
you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. Can’t you see how
the devil will fight his best to make sure that no one will know that we are
his disciples, and to stir up a little fight over there, a little storm in a
teacup over there, a little battle of wills over there?
Jesus knows we’re sinners and that
it’s going to be hard for us to keep his commandments. And even though he
requires our love, he also doesn’t want us to trust in our love. He
wants to show us that the love that will save the world doesn’t come from us,
but it comes from him. So Jesus says: If you love me, you will keep my
commandments. And so for the next 2000 years, all the disciples of Jesus
will doubt themselves and say: do I really love Jesus? Do I love him as I
should? Do I love him in that perfect way that he requires of me? Jesus wants
us to doubt our own love, because he is the only Saviour. Jesus knows that
Peter denied him three times. And so he goes to him and he says to him: Peter,
do you love me? We read: Peter was grieved because he said to him the
third time, “Do you love me?” How many times has Jesus asked us if we love
him? How many times have we denied him? And yet, here we come at the end of the
week, showing Jesus our dirty feet, with all the dust and dirt of the world clinging
to them, and he gets down on his hands and knees and lovingly washes them clean
again.
And so he says to them, “Nothing depends
on you, your love, and your prayers. Everything depends on me, my love, and my
prayers.” So Jesus says: And I will ask the Father, and he will give you
another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the
world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him.
Yes, Jesus wants to show that
everything depends on his prayers. He says: I will ask the Father. Even
before when he was teaching the disciples to pray, he said: If you ask
anything in my name. He doesn’t want the disciples to pray in their
name, but in his name. We have many things we want to ask Jesus, but we
should ask that everything we desire would be to the glory of his name. We
might want this or that, if it would glorify his name. And if he chooses not to
grant what we want, then let us ask for the patience and endurance under the
cross, to the glory of his name. Jesus teaches us to pray: Our Father. It’s
not “my Father”, but we always pray to our Father together with Jesus, because
everything depends on him.
It’s amazing: Jesus is true God
and has absolutely no need to pray to his Father. He says: If you ask
anything in my name, I will do it. But then as true man, he shows us
his total, perfect humility, and completely depends on his Father. He
says: I will ask the Father. The one who doesn’t need to pray, prays
more than any of us put together!
And so, as Jesus constantly takes
us with him and prays for us, He is our Comforter, our Counsellor, our Helper,
our Advocate. St John says: We have an advocate with the Father, Jesus
Christ the righteous.
This word “advocate” means
someone who comes along side: a comforter, a counsellor, a helper, an advocate.
And now Jesus says: I will ask the Father and he will send you another
Helper, to be with you forever.
Why do we need another helper?
Because when Jesus has ascended into heaven, the devil will do everything to
convince us that Jesus is dead, that he’s not alive, not here, not with us. We
will get indifferent, fidgety, bored. We will start to think that everything we
need to know about Jesus, we’ve already heard before.
And so Jesus asks the Father to
send us another Helper, to be with you forever. There will not be one
moment in the history of the church where the Holy Spirit will not be with us,
pointing us to Jesus.
And Jesus tells us who this Helper
is—he calls him the Spirit of truth. The devil is the father of lies,
but the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth. St John writes: Do not
believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God,
for many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the
Spirit of God: every Spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the
flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from
God. So here the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God, is called the Spirit
of truth.
And Jesus says about the Holy
Spirit: The world cannot receive him, because it neither sees him nor knows
him. The world doesn’t recognise the Holy Spirit. Remember on the day of
Pentecost, where some people thought that the disciples were drunk. And Peter
begins his sermon by saying: These men are not drunk, as you suppose, for it
is only 9 o’clock in the morning. So you see, the world neither sees
the Holy Spirit nor knows the Holy Spirit.
And Jesus says: You know him,
for he dwells with you and will be in you.
Jesus is saying that we Christians
are called out of the world, and are dead to the world. He says: You know
him, but the world cannot receive him. We disciples of Jesus know
the Holy Spirit, for he dwells in us and will be in us. The Holy Spirit is
constantly among us as we preach and learn the words of Jesus, and Jesus
promises that he will be in us.
What wonderful teaching Jesus
gives to us about the presence of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth, who
will be with us forever, helping us, comforting us, dwelling with us, and even
living in us!
II.
So the first part of our reading
is where Jesus teaches the presence of the Holy Spirit. But in the second part
of the reading, Jesus teaches us about his own presence.
He says: I will not leave you
as orphans; I will come to you. When Jesus dies, he does not orphan his
disciples, but will live with them as a living parent. Many people think Jesus
is talking about the Holy Spirit, when he talks about leaving them as orphans.
He’s saying: Orphans have to live without their parents, but you Christians
will have me and the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is not your foster parent in
the absence of me, but he will help you, with me and the Father. Jesus says: Where
two or three are gathered in my name, I am in the midst of them. And also: Behold,
I am with you always to the end of the age. So Jesus says: I will not
leave you as orphans; I will come to you.
He says: Yet a little while
and the world will see me no more, but you will see me.
In a little while, Jesus is going
to the cross, and those who don’t believe in him will not recognise him as
risen from the dead. The world will not see him anymore, but his disciples will
see him. Also, Jesus is ascending into heaven, and those who don’t believe in
him will not recognise him any more as ruling and guiding the world through his
word in the church. The world thinks: those Christians are worshipping a dead
man! And look at their church, it’s dead too!
And Jesus knows that the world
will say this about us. So he says: Because I live, you also will live.
The world will think that we are
dead, because they think Christ is dead, but here’s our comfort in the face of
this opposition: Jesus is alive! He’s risen from the dead. And as long as Jesus
lives, Christians live! As long as Jesus lives, there will be people who
believe in him! As long as Jesus lives, the church will be alive! And even
though we will die, we know that just as Christ died and that death was not
able to hold him, we also will not be able to be held by death, and we will
also live with him.
Jesus says: In that day you
will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. What a
wonderful promise Jesus gives to us here! What a wonderful mystery he speaks to
us: I am in the Father, and you in me, and I in you.
And he says: Whoever has my
commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. Since we believe in
Jesus, and trust in him to save us, and trust in him to pray for us and look
after us, and to keep our eyes fixed on him, let’s also ask him to let that
faith also blossom into love. We’re not saved by our own love, but by his
love—but if we know Jesus, how can we not possibly love him, who has done so
much for us, and still asks the Father to send to each of us his Spirit?
And Jesus says: He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.
What a wonderful Saviour we have
here in Jesus! What a wonderful living teacher he is! What a wonderful thing it
is to be loved by Jesus! What a precious thing it is to be a person for whom
Jesus personally died and for whom Jesus was personally raised!
Amen.
Lord Jesus, we trust in you, and we
ask that you would continually ask the Father to send us the Holy Spirit, the
Spirit of truth, to be with us forever. Teach us to know the Holy Spirit! But
also, let your Spirit teach us to love you, since you come to us, and you are
alive. Come, Lord Jesus, and love us with your perfect love and manifest
yourself to us. Amen.
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