The Spirits Role | John 16:1-15

July 28, 2024

Book: John

INTRODUCTION

John 13-17 is called the upper room discourse. This covers one night of Jesus’ discourse. Jesus has these final words to give to his close followers. This is the night before his arrest, crucifixion and trial. Jesus is telling them that he is leaving. He is going away from them. After his ascension, the way that Jesus is going to be with his disciples is going to change. Jesus is going to be with them through the Holy Spirit.

John 13:33

Little children, I am still with you a little longer. You will look for Me; and just as I said to the Jews, now I also say to you: ‘Where I am going, you cannot come.’

Little Children. It is a term of affection to refer to the disciples. They are really troubled by this and they ask Him all many questions and Jesus makes a promise to them.

John 14:16-17

¹⁶And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever— ¹⁷ the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you.

John 14:18

“I will not leave you as orphans; I am coming to you.

John 14:23

Jesus replied, “Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them

John 14:25-26

²⁵“All this I have spoken while still with you. ²⁶But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.

He will give you another Advocate.

Greek – Paraclete – Paraclete in John is a teacher, a witness to Jesus.

KJV – Comforter

NASB – Helper

Message – Friend

AMP – Counselor

The Holy Spirit is God and the Holy Spirit is someone who comes alongside another person to help and to guide them.

It is like someone helping an old person to cross the street.

Jesus is saying there’s a new character (a character who as with me from eternity past, the Holy Spirit who was already there) is coming into the story. Jesus can be in one place in one time. He’s in the room with them twelve. They can all hear Him, but He, if the Jesus Movement is going to spread and if Jesus is going to become a personal reality and presence to every one of His followers, He has to go and He has to come and be with them in a different way than He has been up to this point.

John 16:1-15

¹“All this I have told you so that you will not fall away. ²They will put you out of the synagogue; in fact, the time is coming when anyone who kills you will think they are offering a service to God. ³They will do such things because they have not known the Father or me. ⁴I have told you this, so that when their time comes you will remember that I warned you about them. I did not tell you this from the beginning because I was with you, ⁵but now I am going to him who sent me. None of you asks me, ‘Where are you going?’ ⁶Rather, you are filled with grief because I have said these things.(Warning about persecution. The Holy Spirit will guide you during persecution.) ⁷But very truly I tell you, it is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. ⁸When he comes, he will prove the world to be in the wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment: ⁹about sin, because people do not believe in me; ¹⁰about righteousness, because I am going to the Father, where you can see me no longer; ¹¹and about judgment, because the prince of this world now stands condemned.

¹²“I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. ¹³But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the 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 glorify me because it is from me that he will receive what he will make known to you. ¹⁵All that belongs to the Father is mine. That is why I said the Spirit will receive from me what he will make known to you.”

John 15:18-25: The World’s Hatred.

John 15:26-27: The Spirit’s and Disciple’s Testimony

John 16:1-6; 33: Warning about persecution. Reality of Persecution.

John 16:7-15: The Spirit’s Ministry after Jesus’ Departure

Convicting the world; 16:8-10

Guiding the disciples; 16:11-15

The Holy Spirit is the one who will enable the disciples to deal with the opposition.

Spirit is a common English word and when we hear the word ‘spirit,’ we all have our stories and backgrounds of what the spirit is or what that means based on our upbringing.

We as a church is striving to be a community that continues to ground ourselves in the scriptural understanding of who the Spirit is alongside the experience of the Spirit.

The Holy Spirit in the Bible is called:

The Spirit; Rom. 8;16.

The Spirit of God, Rom. 8:9

The Spirit of Christ; Rom. 8:9

Spirit of Jesus; Acts. 16;7

The Spirit of Truth, Jn. 14:16-17

Holy Spirit; Ps. 51:11, Mt. 1:18

Some translations say Holy Ghost; Mt. 1;18

Spirit from the Hebrew Scriptures

When Jesus says Spirit, He has a whole back story based on the Hebrew Scriptures. Genesis 1.

Genesis 1:1

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

Who is the author, the originator behind the origins? Who creates everything? God.

You have God in the first sentence and then Spirit in the second sentence of the Bible.

Genesis 1:2

And the earth was a formless and desolate emptiness, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters.

Does darkness, formless and void sound like a nice place to have life? No It’s chaotic. It’s wasteland. It’s a place that can’t sustain life. So who is there in the midst of very dark chaotic environments to bring life, beauty and order? God and the Spirit of God.

The Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of waters.

Hovering – This word ‘hovering’ is used one another place in Deuteronomy.

Deuteronomy 32:11

As an eagle stirs up its nest,

And hovers over its young,

He spread His wings, He caught them,

He carried them on His pinions.

It is YAHWEH God, depicted as bird hovering over its nest, over its young, which is Israel. This means God is going to rescue Israel from slavery in Egypt.

So you have God creating. Then you have the Spirit of God hovering (According to Deuteronomy it is God) hovering over dark chaos.

Understanding: It seems as if the God that is being introduced in this story, has some kind of inner complexity, inner distinction, some kind of inner plurality, because there’s God and there’s also Spirit of God. Then the Bible also speaks about a third person, the Son of God. They’re distinct. It is the one true God of Israel in scriptures, but in 3 personalities.

Spirit in Hebrew and Greek:

Hebrew – Ruakh, breath.

Greek – Pneuma

In Hebrew, the word that’s being translated as Spirit right here is the word Ruach in Old Testament. In the New Testament, which is written in Greek, the word translated Spirit is pneuma.

Illustration: You see the birds flying, the fish swimming, the fox running, and ants moving, and the worm wriggling? Why is it moving? The answer is the Spirit according to the Old Testament.

Have you seen the leaves moving? We call it wind. In Hebrew, this Ruach, it’s the same word. It is invisible, but it’s real. And it’s in you and it animates you. It’s what makes you tick and what, and what makes you go.

If someone faints what is the first thing you do? You check their pulse, then you check if they are breathing. You’re trying to sense whether there’s any Ruach in this person. So, Ruach is breath. If it is a cold day, you can see your breath vapour, right?

So what do we learn about the Spirit, Ruach?

Ruach is life. If there’s no Ruach, no life.
Ruach is invisible, but it’s real.
It’s this animating life energy.
It is what sustains you and makes you alive. You are animated by your Ruach.
Every creature has Ruach. Every human has Ruach.

What is the Biblical understanding of the Spirit?

God’s Spirit is God’s breath. It is God’s inner life. The Spirit God’s personal presence of his inner life and the primary thing the Spirit does is bring life. Brings light out of darkness. Brings order and beauty out of chaos. That is God’s Spirit in the Bible.

Genesis 1:2

And the earth was a formless and desolate emptiness, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters.

You see in verse two, it’s dark. It’s chaotic. But the Ruach, God’s personal life presence, God’s animating life presence is there hovering, poised and ready in the midst of these dark, chaotic circumstances. And how does God’s Ruach get released out into the chaos and begin to bring light and order and beauty? By the word of God.

Genesis 1:3

Then God said: Let there be light, and there was light.

Creation in Genesis 1 is given as a 7-day structure, but also 10 acts of God speaking.

The creation:

God’s Ruach who is hovering there.
God’s word releases the Ruach out to bring its creative order, bringing life.
So, there is God, God’s Ruach, and God’s Word; all working together to bring order and beauty out of the void.

God’s word carries his animating life energy out of God into the world. And when God releases his Ruach through his word, life happens. And that’s how the story begins. You with me?

The poets of the Hebrew Scriptures paid attention to these stories.

Psalm 33:4-6

⁴For the word of the Lord is right,

And all His work is done in faithfulness.

⁵He loves righteousness and justice;

The earth is full of the goodness of the Lord.

⁶By the word of the Lord the heavens were made,

And by the breath (Ruach) of His mouth all their lights.

So it raises a question that all living beings including humans have Ruach. Where did it come from?

Genesis 2:7

Then the Lord God formed (used in the Bible to describe someone who works with clay to make pots, a potter forming a pot from clay) the man (Adam means humanity) of dust from the ground {Word for ground or soil is Adama; Latin Human from Humus (dirt)}, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living person. (We come from the dirt but we are not simply dirt, we are dirt and divine Ruach).

The word formed. This word is used to describe the potter at a potter’s wheel, spinning and molding the clay, as the wet clay takes shape. And so God, it’s God molding a human.

Then God has this pile of dirt. So what does God do with the dirt? He breathes. Here’s a verb, action word. He Ruachs into the nostrils of this pile of dirt, the breath of life. And the human is alive.

It’s very similar to Genesis 1. You have lifelessness and God breathes into lifelessness and darkness and makes life. And here, this is a statement about human nature that we are dust and divine breath. We are dirt and divine Ruach. Our origins are tied to the material world. From it, we come back to it, we go. But our life is a gift. Our breath, Ruach is from God’s own Ruach.

When children are born, their lungs are filled with fluid and they are not inflated to breath. It takes around 5-10 seconds and thy take their first inhale of Ruach, it is God who gifts the life.

Human existence is a gift, right? From our inception to the birth, all through our life we are sustained by the personal presence of the Creator every moment. Every moment I’m inhaling life and it is not mine. Well, it’s borrowed Ruach. Each of us is existing on borrowed Ruach

The book of Job puts it this way:

Job 33:4

The Spirit (Ruach) of God has made me,

And the breath of the Almighty gives me life.

Job 34:14-15

¹⁴ If it were his intention

and he withdrew his Spirit and breath,

¹⁵all humanity would perish together

and mankind would return to the dust.

All mankind are sustained by God’s Ruach, God’s breath. Every time we breath in, it is God’s gift to me.

Are human beings the only ones with the spirit? No.

Psalm 104:24-28

²⁴How many are your works, (creative works) Lord!

In wisdom you made them all;

the earth is full of your creatures.

²⁵There is the sea, vast and spacious,

teeming with creatures beyond number—

living things both large and small.

²⁶There the ships go to and fro,

and Leviathan, (multiheaded sea monster symbolizing forces hostile to God, created by God) which you formed to frolic there.

²⁷All creatures look to you

to give them their food at the proper time.

²⁸When you give it to them,

they gather it up;

when you open your hand,

they are satisfied with good things.

(You see Jesus’s teaching emerging from here. The flowers of the field are provided for, the birds in the air are fed by our heavenly Father. God is intimately involved and generous to the world.)

²⁹When you hide your face,

they are terrified;

when you take away their breath,

they die and return to the dust.

³⁰When you send your Spirit

they are created,

and you renew the face of the ground.

What is death? V29 It is losing your breath, losing your Ruach, returns back to God.

What is birth? V30 Humans and everything living being receiving God’s Spirit.

So who is in control over my life? God.

When a child is born or a when an animal is born, it is God sending his Spirit. God is continually involved in sending his Ruach in the birth of every creature. It is act of God’s creation and the process of God renewing the earth. God is continually involved in bringing new life and it is all connected to God’s Ruach.

Apostle Paul talks about God’s breath:

In the NT, Apostle Paul goes to Athens, Greece and he talks to the philosophers. See how he talks to them:

Acts 17:24-25

²⁴“The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. ²⁵And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath (Pneuma) and everything else.

So, the Spirit of God is about life.

The Spirit of God is God’s personal presence whose mission in the world is to mediate his life-giving love and energy to his creation.

Now there are many world views in our culture about the earth and its inhabitants exists and has its life. On one extreme is Atheism – Nonexistence of God and on the other extreme is Pantheism – Pan means everything, theism means God. Pantheism is everything is God, universe as a manifestation of God. God is in the rock, in the tree, in the animals and is everywhere. It gets is energy or spirit from the impersonal spirit.

Christianity is very different. What makes Christian understanding of God different from Pantheism. In Pantheism the divine is an energy, it is an impersonal force and it is either generated or emanated in all living things. Which means all have the divine energy emanating from you. So you end up worshipping different things.

In a Christian Theist worldview, there is a divine Spirit that energizes and vitalizes everything around us. It is not an impersonal force. We believe that the Spirit, is the generous loving gift of a person, a person being, and that personal being is knowable. That person is the Lord Jesus Christ.

So God’s mission in the Bible is to send Jesus, who is God’s own second person to come among us to be the human being that none of us can be of our own merit. He is the King and he established a new Kingdom, Kingdom of God.

The Story of the Birth of Jesus:

Luke 1:26-35

²⁶In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, ²⁷to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. ²⁸The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.”

²⁹Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. ³⁰But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. ³¹You will conceive (a new life is about to be generated within you) and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. ³²He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, ³³and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.”

³⁴“How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?” (How can a new life be created out of an environment that is not yet ready to bring life out yet. This is a womb that is not prepared to bring life out. How can life be created out condition where you would never think life could come out of it?)

³⁵The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, (it does not say God or Jesus, it is the Spirit. The Spirit enters into places where life cannot flourish in bringing life.) and the power of the Most High will overshadow (hover) you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God.

Humanity that exists because of God’s breath. But humans are spiritually dead from the garden because of our rejection of our creator. So God enters the story in the person of Jesus. The Father sends the Son to become a human being and the Son enters the human race through the power and the hovering life-giving presence of the Spirit.

Jesus’ Life and Ministry in the Spirit:

Luke 3:21-22

²¹When all the people were being baptized, Jesus was baptized too. And as he was praying, heaven was opened ²²and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.”

Again you have the Holy Spirit coming down and hovering over the waters of Jordan and over Jesus. Who is the one the Holy Spirit is hovering over, Jesus, the one who is going to bring about new creation for all humanity.

You have the Father communicating his love for the Son, and the one who communicates and mediates that personal love and presence of the Father to the Son is God’s Pneuma, the Holy Spirit. Father, Son, Spirit.

Genealogy in Luke:

Luke 3:23

Now Jesus himself was about thirty years old when he began his ministry. He was the son, so it was thought, of Joseph,

Look at the last person in the genealogy. V38 The son of Adam, the son of God.

Jesus comes as a new Adam. How was Adam created, dust and divine breath. How did Jesus, God’s Son enter into this world, divine breath.

Luke 4:1

Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, left the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness..

Jesus is this human who is so full of God’s Spirit. We were designed to be full of the Spirit to bring pleasure to God and rule this earth on God’s behalf. We lost it because of sin. Now is Jesus who is full of the Holy Spirit, a new human and the Father and Jesus sending us the Spirit enables us to be full of the Spirit to live out a new creation lifestyle.

Luke 4:14-19

¹⁴Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about him spread through the whole countryside. ¹⁵He was teaching in their synagogues, and everyone praised him.

¹⁶He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. He stood up to read, ¹⁷and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written:

¹⁸“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,

because he has anointed me

to proclaim good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners

and recovery of sight for the blind,

to set the oppressed free,

¹⁹to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Jesus is God become human in the power and life-giving power of the Spirit to be the kind of human being for us that we cannot be for ourselves. His whole mission is to announce the good news that God wants to give us life. That is going to require for him to die so that he can give us forgiveness and life. Now he is returning to His Father and sending his personal presence, the Holy Spirit.

The Spirit will always lead us back to Jesus.

John 14:25-26

²⁵“These things I have spoken to you while remaining with you. ²⁶But the Helper, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in My name, (What is the Spirit here to do?) He will teach you all things, and remind you of all that I said to you.

The Spirit’s role is not to draw attention to itself. The Spirit draws attention to the Word that God has spoken through the Son.

In John 16, the author emphasizes three things that the Holy Spirit can do that you and I cannot do.

The Holy Spirit will Convict the World of Guilt in regard to Sin, Righteousness and Judgment.

John 16:8-11

⁸When he comes, he will prove the world to be in the wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment: ⁹about sin, because people do not believe in me; ¹⁰about righteousness, because I am going to the Father, where you can see me no longer; ¹¹and about judgment, because the prince of this world now stands condemned.

The Holy Spirit Convicts the World of Sin:

We hate our sin only because we hate getting caught. But real repentance is hating your sin because you love God. Every sin has as its victim, Jesus Christ of Nazareth who had to die on the cross because of your sin. Your sin and my sin nailed him to the tree. Every sin as it were being another hammer blow into the Saviour’s hands that bore the nail prints because of our offense against God.

David realises that his sin is not about just to another person but primarily it’s against God.

Psalms 51:1-4

¹Have mercy on me, O God,

according to your unfailing love;

according to your great compassion

blot out my transgressions.

²Wash away all my iniquity

and cleanse me from my sin.

³For I know my transgressions,

and my sin is always before me.

⁴Against you, you only, have I sinned

and done what is evil in your sight;

so you are right in your verdict

and justified when you judge.

David has committed adultery with Bathsheba and wrecked the marriage of Uriah and Bathsheba. He has certainly sinned against both of them. He has sinned against his own body, the temple of the Holy Spirit. But now David says that, “Lord, I have sinned against you, you only.”

Ultimately all sin against God and only secondarily against anyone else.

Paul realized that when he thought he was being religious by persecuting the church, he was sinning against Jesus.

Acts 9:4-6

⁴He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” ⁵“Who are you, Lord?” Saul asked. “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,” he replied.

Yes, he was sinning against human beings, but he was really sinning against Jesus.

The Holy Spirit will Convict the World of righteousness.

Christ is our righteousness.

1 Corinthians 1:30

It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption.

Jesus’s resurrection is the vindication that that’s what righteousness is, that Jesus is the standard for our lives. So if he loved his enemies, we must, and prayed for those who persecuted him, we must. If he tried to overcome evil with good, that’s the rule. If he actually loved his enemies rather than just giving them a wide berth and avoiding them like you think you might do, and that’s good enough, not good enough. His is the standard by which our lives will be measured, he is the standard of righteousness and only the Holy Spirit can open our eyes to that.

The Holy Spirit will Convict the World of Judgement.

Hebrews 9:27-28

²⁷Just as people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment, ²⁸so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him.

2 Timothy 4:1

In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I give you this charge:

The Holy Spirit remind us of the cross of Christ and recognizing that is the punishment my sin deserves. Jesus was judged on my behalf.

The Holy Spirit also reminds us that we will all one day stand before the judgement seat of Christ and have to answer for our lives. Those who do not have Jesus will be Judged. Believers will also be judged even though our sins are forgiven. We will have to give an account of our live and grace we have received and there will be rewards meted out according to our faithfulness.

John 15:12-15

The Work of the Spirit is the Open Our Eyes to See Jesus.

Paul says in 1 Corinthians, “The coming of the Lord brings the wisdom of God to us.”

Spirit in John: John 3:5-8; John 3:34; John 7:38-39; John 20:22

CONCLUSION

Jesus has promised the Holy Spirit and we have the Holy Spirt of God in us. It is a life-giving Spirit that reveals the love of the Father and leads us to Jesus.

We live in a very unpredictable world with so much pain. There is death, loss, sickness. There’s so much darkness and void in our world. And Jesus is committed to being personally present with us through the Holy Spirit. He actually has power to speak life into the chaos of your life. He actually has the power to bring order out of the chaos.

Jesus is absolutely committed to you. And He’s committed to being personally present with you to bring order and goodness to the chaos that’s in your lives.

This is a real person that we’re gathered here. And Jesus said that when we gather, He’s uniquely available and present with us in a special way through the Holy Spirit.

I don’t know your stories. Jesus knows your story. He’s present with you. Open yourself to the Spirit and allow the Spirit to give you insight into your life. Jesus knows about it. The Spirit knows about it. Let’s just invite the personal presence of Jesus to bring hope and to bring healing, forgiveness, to bring beauty out of the chaos. Let’s invite the Spirit to speak new life into our lives that we feel depleted and anxious and tired. Amen.

LIFE APPLICATION POINTS

Embrace the Presence of the Holy Spirit
Allow the Holy Spirit to Transform Your Character
Trust in the Conviction of the Holy Spirit
Share the Good News with the Empowerment of the Holy Spirit
Allow the Holy Spirit to Bring Order to Your Chaos

City Harvest AG Church

The Spirits Role | John 16:1-15