Sermons

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Never Alone
April 9, 2000
Sermon Series on the Gospel of John
Pastor Dan Baumgartner

John 14-16

Everyone knows that every good sermon has exactly three points. But apparently the gospel writer John didn’t understand that, because this morning we are going to look at five different “mini” passages from John 14, 15 and 16. I’d invite you to put your finger in your Bible at John 14:15 as we begin.

Around the year 1620, John Donne wrote a famous sonnet which opened with these words:

“Batter my heart, three-personed God; for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
O three-personed God.”

Donne addressed his sonnet in the orthodox Christian conviction that the Christian God was a trinity. One God in three expressions, three persons yet one being. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This idea of trinity is something that the early church wrestled with a great deal as they struggled to interpret what God had done in Jesus Christ. It wasn’t really until a summit meeting in the 5th century that the idea was declared the orthodox explanation. Thus far in our study of the gospel of John, we have seen a great deal of God the Father, and of God the Son, Jesus. We have only seen a few glimpses of God the Holy Spirit. This morning, John is going to correct that.

Now, I don’t know what you think of when the subject of the Holy Spirit comes up. Some of you may think of just a theological idea that has no practicality. Some of you may think of a sort of ghostly apparition floating around in space. Some of you may immediately think of worship, and the gifts of the Spirit sometimes shared with the community, like speaking in tongues, or prophecy. Some of you are comfortable with these things, some of you get nervous. You may think of how different churches can be in their thinking of the Holy Spirit’s role in worship.

I have worshipped with congregations that are habitually stoic, some would say frozen, and who read quickly through those passages which mention the Holy Spirit. I have worshipped with those who sense the strong and impassioned presence of the Spirit, where worship times get downright crazy and spontaneous and you’re never sure what is going to happen next! Can I get an “Amen?”! I don’t know what you think when you hear “Holy Spirit.” But I do know that the writer John is very interested in telling us exactly what Jesus had to say about the Spirit.

Many years ago, I got so tired of preachers looking at the New Testament, and saying “In the Greek, what this really means is…” …so tired that, after studying a little Greek I vowed to myself I would never do that. But I want to break that rule a little this morning, because the language really helps us here.

We’re going to look at these five very brief passages from John 14, 15 & 16. In these chapters, and ONLY in these chapters, John uses a very particular word in referring to the Holy Spirit. It is PARACLETE. Anywhere else John mentions the Holy Spirit, it is with other words. In fact, the only other place “paraclete” appears in all of the New Testament is once in I John. Paraclete quite literally means “one called alongside,” with the connotation of “called alongside to help.” It’s translated Counselor in these passages in your NIV pew Bible, though it is a very hard word to translate directly. It can mean counselor, comforter, companion, helper, intercessor.

Remember if you will that this section of John contains Jesus’ final instructions to his disciples, his close followers. Jesus knows he has only days to live. When we read this, we get to listen in on what Jesus felt like was particularly important for his followers to understand before he left. What did he want them to know? What does he want us to know?

John 14:15-18 If you love me, you will obey what I command. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor (Paraclete) to be with you forever—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.

The disciples were feeling afraid, and abandoned. What could God have been thinking? Here they had left behind their lives, jobs, savings accounts, families to follow Jesus…spontaneously. And it had seemed so right, so good. And as they were with Jesus, it was so right. Jesus did miracles, he stumped the Religious Establishment, he even healed people. Surely HE was from God, they were even increasingly convinced that He was God’s Messiah, the Savior. Surely they were doing the right thing, surely they would be well-rewarded for giving their lives away, surely there would be some glory for them. But suddenly, Jesus is preparing them for his departure…he’s going to leave them! What’s going to happen to them? Why would He abandon them? What could God be thinking?

I’m not sure that there is any worse feeling than feeling abandoned, left hanging, all alone. I remember vividly a key time in my own life when I felt as though everything I valued had been stripped away, and God seemed a long way off. In fact, God seemed absent. It was a terrible feeling, and a sense of despair set in. I think the disciples must have felt something like that, only worse. As long as Jesus was with them in body, things were okay. But if Jesus left? All the air goes out of the balloon, and only questions remain. And despair. In fact, in chapter 16 Jesus says,

"Your hearts are filled with grief, but I tell you the truth: It is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Counselor (Paraclete) will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.”

The disciples were overwhelmed, but Jesus says, “Listen! Yes, I’m going to leave. But I will send you another, the Paraclete, to come alongside you…in fact, to live inside you. I will not abandon you…you will NOT be alone. And in fact, hard though this may to be believe…it will be better.” Why?

Annie Dillard, in her book "For the Time Being," says that “only a deeply grounded and fully paradoxical view of God can make sense of the notion that God knows and loves each of the 5.9 billion of us.” How could God touch that many people at one time? In his physical body, Jesus could only have opportunity to impact a fairly small number of people. But when He sends the Paraclete, the Spirit to come alongside the believers, no, to actually live inside of them…it is like the one sun that shines on billions of people each day. And so to this day, a follower of Jesus does not just REMEMBER a historical person or event from 2000 years ago. No, we also EXPERIENCE a living, active God in the now…through the Holy Spirit which Jesus provided.

John 14:26 But the Counselor (Paraclete), the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and remind you of everything I have said to you.

Do you think God knows us well? Do you think he knew the disciples well? Is it only me that thinks we humans have the shortest-term memory of all living things? I have a hard time remembering how I like my coffee in the morning! In the Old Testament, God would do something amazing like send manna from heaven. But darned if it wasn’t like the next day that the people were complaining and saying “What have you done for us lately?”!

When I got out of seminary in 1996, and we looked at different opportunities, Anne and I felt that the Lord led us in a very remarkable, very specific way to Minneapolis, that God said, “This is exactly where I want you.” And we hadn’t been there long at all…and suddenly it was minus 10 degrees, and some of the things I thought were important to do at the church weren’t coming together quickly, and my first thought…my first thought was “God, what were you thinking? Why am I here?” I needed to be reminded…again…that God had said, “This is exactly where I want you.”

Jesus knew that the very guys he had spent three years with would very quickly forget the things he had taught them. And so when Jesus left, he sent the Paraclete, the one who would not only teach the believers, but would teach and remind them of the things that Jesus said.

Today, we can read some of the words which Jesus said. But we need the Holy Spirit to not only remind, but also to teach us. There’s a men’s group which has met on Saturday mornings here in the library the last six weeks. Last week, a woman who said she and her husband lived in their car came by the library. She said she felt like God had told her to seek help from a church up on Queen Anne, and she had driven here. Now, frankly, people in financial need, or in need of food stop by Bethany all the time. As I heard this story, it didn’t strike me as at all remarkable…except I don’t know if anyone has ever told me they felt like God told them to come. But here is the remarkable part of the story. The group was sitting in the library, focused on their study, the last of the six times they would meet together when they were interrupted. Now, what do you suppose they were studying? They were discussing Jesus’ call to be generous. Discussing generosity of time, of attention, of money. That’s when the knock came on the door. And a person in need…of time, attention and money. The Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, will remind us and teach us…about Jesus.

John 15:26-27 When the Counselor (Paraclete) comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father, he will testify about me. And you also will testify, for you have been with me from the beginning.

In this section of John, there is a great deal of courtroom language. Indeed, John looks ahead to Jesus’ trial which will happen shortly. And here Jesus gives a third role of the Holy Spirit…the Spirit will TESTIFY about Jesus, or WITNESS concerning Him. This Spirit, the Spirit of Truth, will speak the truth about Jesus. The role of a witness, of course, is to give clarity, to illuminate. It is to point at some situation, or some person, and say, “This is the truth…this is what I know…this is what really happened.” The truth will be spoken.

At the beginning of my favorite Broadway show, "Les Miserables," the hero Jean ValJean has an opportunity to have his name cleared forever of a criminal record. A man is arrested who looks remarkably like Jean ValJean, and who is assumed to be him… and the authorities prepare to throw the book at him. If Jean ValJean allows it, the man will go to prison, and he himself will never again need to fear his own arrest. But as he wrestles with this dilemma, he decides that the truth must be told, at all costs. And so he steps forward and identifies himself, and allows the other man to go free. He witnesses, he testifies and points, and says, “that man is innocent.” He convinces the jury that this is so.

The Holy Spirit testifies to the truth. The Holy Spirit testifies to the truth inside of us as well. We are to testify to the truth…to Jesus. I think of this particularly as we encounter people in discussions of faith. Sometimes I fall into thinking it is our responsibility to convert, to convince, to save. No, it is my responsibility, our responsibility, to witness. To testify to what we know, to speak whatever truth we do have...our job is to point other people to Jesus, and allow the Holy Spirit to do its work.

John 16:8 When the (Paraclete) comes, he will convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment: in regard to sin, because men do not believe in me; in regard to righteousness, because I am going to the Father, where you can see me no longer; and in regard to judgment, because the prince of this world now stands condemned.

John gives us here a fourth role of the Paraclete: it speaks convicting truth. A few more days into this narrative, and Jesus will be subjected to a totally illegal and unjust trial, libelously slandered, and executed as an unrighteous criminal. This is how the world operates. But the Spirit puts things in right perspective. Right is called right, wrong is called wrong. The world is mixed up, and needs the Spirit’s voice of clarity. It is the world which rightly stands on trial, not Jesus. The Spirit convicts, or PROVES WRONG or EXPOSES what’s going on.

The crime which the Spirit cries out against, first of all, is the disbelief in God’s Son. The World says there is no god. The Spirit says God created the world. The World says that if there is a god, he is powerless. The Spirit says that in Jesus, God shows a power that is far different than the world ever dreamed of. The World says that if there is a god, it is impersonal. The Spirit says that in Jesus, God even came to earth so that he might be known. But the world’s major sin, and our sin, is refusing to believe in what God has done in Jesus Christ. The Paraclete convicts another way, too. It speaks the truth about righteousness, or justice. While the courts of humanity declare Jesus unrighteous and guilty, Jesus will stand before the father, vindicated and lifted up. Real right-standing is not the Pharisees.

Real right-standing is not a human construct or achievement. Right-standing is right-standing before God, and in fact it is Jesus who will stand there, and invite those who know him to be with Him. And the Paraclete proves the World wrong about judgment. There is one who is rightly judged. But it is not Jesus. It is the ruler of this earth, Satan. And even as Jesus dies, it is Satan’s domination which begins to crumble.

We live in a world where right and wrong are constantly confused. Right is called wrong, wrong is called right. We live in a time where truth is relative, and whatever anyone wants to say is to be not only respected, but declared “truth for them.” We live in a country where people often go to court not to find what is right, but to see how much you can get. We find ourselves in situations where mercy, grace and love for neighbor appear wrong…and maintaining my rights, getting what I deserve are touted as correct. But the Spirit ultimately calls the World on the carpet. There is a right and a wrong, and they are called such by a Spirit who speaks, whether or not it is listened to.

John 16:12 I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. But 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. He will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you. All 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.

Finally, the Spirit is a guide into the future. The Spirit will reflect not his own words, he is not in competition. There is one message, the one which Jesus brought…but which must be re-appropriated in each life and in each community. The Spirit will reflect the Word of Christ to the Church for the needs of the day. Each day is different, each part of the faith community unique. I think of this in relation to us here at Bethany. What are we to be about in the year 2000? In the book of Revelation, the Spirit speaks to the different churches, a different Word for each. What would the Spirit say to us today?

It’s very different from 1960…or '70 or '80, or even '90. We suddenly find ourselves in the midst of a rapidly growing, international and exceedingly prosperous city, and an even more financially prosperous neighborhood. The number of people around us who do not accept God’s love shown in Christ is extremely high. How will we do more than just cope or survive? How will we be kingdom people? What would the Spirit say to the church…to this church?

What in the world is God doing? When the disciples asked the question, they had no idea what would happen after Jesus left. And Jesus told them he would send the Paraclete, one who would live inside them, would teach and remind, would point them to Jesus, would show the world right and wrong, would guide them into the future. To a band of followers who were already grieving over their loss, but also to us who have never seen the physical, Jesus sent his Spirit, the Paraclete, the one who comes alongside… so that we could know…we are NEVER ALONE. We are NEVER alone.