“When the Spirit Comes” (John 16:4b-15)

For the next few minutes I want you to imagine that you are in the upper room with Jesus and his followers. (I am tempted to suggest that you close your eyes, but I don’t want you to fall asleep!)

It is the fateful night before Jesus’ crucifixion. They have gathered for the Passover supper, observed for more than a thousand years, since the time of Moses. It was intended as a festive occasion, celebrating the liberation of God’s people from centuries of slavery under the cruel hands of the Egyptians. Yet I can only imagine that on this particular occasion the air must have been fraught with apprehension and foreboding.

The disciples could not have known exactly what lay ahead. But Jesus did. And almost certainly they must have picked up on the mounting hostility that had been surrounding him since their coming to Jerusalem only a few days before. And if that weren’t enough, Jesus had already taken the unleavened Passover bread and broken it with the ominous words, “This is my body, broken for you…” And then the cup of wine, saying, “This is my blood, shed for you…”

Perhaps you have noticed already, however, that, unlike the other three gospel writers, John makes almost no mention of the Last Supper. He gives it barely a mention—just a single word in passing. And there is a reason, for John’s focus is on something else: on Jesus’ words of comfort and assurance to his followers, words that John would carry with him for the remainder of his life.

It is clear that Jesus knows what lies ahead of him. And this is his last opportunity to prepare these, his closest companions, for the sequence of events that would lead to his crucifixion—not to mention all that would be happening to them after that!

In the dozen verses that make up our passage for this morning Jesus assures his followers that, even though his time with them is coming to its end, they will not be left alone. In chapter 14 he has already promised them that he would not leave them as orphans—that he would be giving them another Helper, the Spirit of truth, who would be with them not just for a few short years but forever. Now, as we come to chapter 16, Jesus unwraps that promise for them, to give them some more extended teaching on who the Holy Spirit is and what he will do.

The word that Jesus uses for the Holy Spirit both in chapter 14 and in our passage this morning in our English Standard Version Bibles is “Helper”. If you look at other translations, you will find that it is rendered “Advocate”, “Comforter”, “Counsellor” and “Friend”.

The challenge for translators is that very often a word in one language has no exact equivalent in another. The original word that in our Bibles is translated “Helper” literally means a legal advisor—that is, someone who is called in to assist another person in court, whether as an advocate, a witness, or a representative.[1] For this reason my own preference would be to go for “Counsellor” or “Advocate”.

But we don’t need to sweat over words, because in our passage this morning Jesus himself sets out for us exactly what the Holy Spirit’s role will be—in relation to the world, in relation to his followers (which includes you and me today) and in relation to himself.

He will convict the world (4b-11)

First, then, in relation to the world: Jesus tells us that the Holy Spirit “will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgement”. So let’s take a moment to try to unwrap what Jesus means when he tells us that the Holy Spirit will convict the world.

Other translations render that phrase “expose the error of the world” or “prove the world wrong”. The word literally means to cross-examine, to put to shame, to treat with contempt, to accuse, to bring to the test, to refute…[2] I had a little fun this past week and asked the internet to give me some other synonyms and here are a few of the alternatives that it came up with:

invalidate; discredit; give the lie to; debunk; show in its true light; knock the props out from under; shoot full of holes; blow out of the water; blow sky high…

I suspect you get the drift!

So often the world’s idea of what is right or good is diametrically opposed to what God himself has set forth and commanded. You may remember way back in chapter 3 of John’s gospel, when Jesus warned Nicodemus, “This is the judgement: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.” (John 3:19)

Centuries before Jesus, the prophet Isaiah had mourned,

All of us have become like one who is unclean,
   and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags;
we all shrivel up like a leaf,
   and like the wind our sins sweep us away. (Isaiah 64:6)

And in the New Testament the apostle Paul echoes that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).

We live in a world and in a society that is morally and spiritually spinning out of control. Gender confusion is considered healthy behaviour. So-called abortion rights are protected by the courts, no matter the precious lives of the helpless ones within their mothers’ wombs. Assisted suicide is upheld by legislation as a morally acceptable, even desirable, way for life to end. And in the nation to the south of us there is a man who likely will be convicted of criminal offences and who clearly has no moral judgement, who could easily be elected president.

It is clear to me that, left to our own devices, we human beings cannot be relied upon to choose good over evil, truth over falsehood, right over wrong. Yes, there have been and there are many noble exceptions. And there are times when truth and righteousness have prevailed. Yet there is also a sad trail of wreckage that goes all the way back to when our first forebears spurned the wisdom of God for a fruit that they found pleasing to the eyes and naïvely thought would bring them wisdom.

It is the Holy Spirit who is able to unmask the lies that the world would have us believe and to lead us into the truth. That is not to say that Christians have not taken the wrong path and do not continue to do so—and sometimes with cruel and calamitous results. But it happens when we close our eyes and shut our ears to the Holy Spirit. As the psalmist pleads, “Today, if only you would hear his voice, ‘Do not harden your hearts…’” (Psalm 95:7-8).

He will guide you (12-14)

If the first role of the Holy Spirit, then, is to expose sinful thoughts and attitudes, the second is to be our guide into what is true and right and just and good.

Some years ago Karen and I spent a day in the village of Ghadames, an ancient Berber settlement in the Sahara desert, near the border of Libya, Algeria and Tunisia. Its history can be traced back six thousand years. No doubt we would have found it interesting just wandering through its curving whitewashed passageways and admiring its palm-shaded oasis. Had we known more than a word or two of Arabic, it might have been even better! But what made all the difference was that we had a guide. And Tahar took us into places we never would have known about or even imagined were there. He explained its history and traditions and introduced us to some of its people. In a word, he was able to bring it all to life—to make sense out of what otherwise would have been a mystery to us. And we would have left Ghadames never knowing what we had missed.

So it is with the Holy Spirit. Jesus promises that he will be our guide, to lead us into all the truth. Now I don’t believe that the truth Jesus is referring to in these verses is what we might call scientific truth. More than once people have gone wrong by thinking they can treat the Bible as a kind of scientific manual.

No, the truth that Jesus is talking about here is that the God he came to reveal is a God who is sovereign over all creation. Yet he does not dwell in blissful isolation on some remote throne in the heavens. No, he is personal and accessible to every human being. What is more, he loves you and me. And we’re not just talking about some wishy-washy feel-good love but a costly love—indeed a love that shouldered the ultimate cost, borne in the pain and shed blood of his own Son on the cross for your sins and mine.

The truth that Jesus was talking about is discovering “the wisdom from above”—the wisdom that in the Bible’s words is “pure, peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere” (James 1:17).

The Bible warns us that this kind of truth, the truth into which the Holy Spirit guides us, is something that the world by and large just does not “get”. The apostle Paul described it as “a wisdom not of this age or the rulers of this age” but “the secret and hidden wisdom of God” (1 Corinthians 2:6-7). Yet, as Jesus himself has promised, this is the truth that sets us free, free to become the women and men that God has created us, that Jesus has redeemed us, and that the Holy Spirit empowers us, to be (John 8:31-32).  

He will glorify me (14-15)

So the Holy Spirit comes to convict the world of sin, righteousness and judgement. He comes to lead us into the truth—and specifically the truth that is in Jesus. And all of this brings us to a third point that Jesus left with his disciples. And it is a point that really flows from the first two. That is, the Holy Spirit comes to glorify Jesus.

Indeed without the Holy Spirit we would never be able to claim Jesus as Lord in the first place. For it is the Holy Spirit who enables us to recognize Jesus for who he is. The Holy Spirit does not come to point us to himself. He comes to point us to Jesus. He does not stand at the centre of the stage, for he does his work in the background and for the most part silently and unseen. It is for that reason he has sometimes been called the shy member of the Trinity.

Yes, there were the big events like Pentecost and the conversion of the Gentiles in Cornelius’ house. But those are the exceptions, the high points, the events that made the headlines—while all along, quietly in the background there were those faithful souls in their thousands, who “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers … with glad and generous hearts and having favour with all the people” (Acts 2:42,46-47).

This past week, as I was preparing for this morning, I came across these very helpful words from a Pentecostal website:

The Spirit does not reveal himself. The Spirit reveals Christ. The fullness of the Spirit is the fullness that he gives as we gaze on Christ. The power of the Spirit is the power we feel in the presence of Christ. The joy of the Spirit is the joy we feel from the promises of Christ.[3]

And so it is the Holy Spirit who enables us to proclaim from our hearts with true conviction, “Jesus is Lord!” It is the Spirit who empowers us to worship God in joyful adoration. It is the Spirit who makes it possible for us to bear witness to Jesus with genuineness and authenticity.

In the next moments we will pause to do what Jesus did with his disciples on that last evening before his crucifixion. With them we will hear his words, “This is my body, given for you…” “This is my blood, shed for you…” As we take the bread into our hands and bring the cup to our lips, may we also take the opportunity to open our hearts afresh to the Holy Spirit, to the Spirit of Jesus, that he may be glorified in our lives.

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[1]     See D.A. Carson, The Gospel According To John, Pillar New Testament Commentary, p. 499

[2]     See Carson, p. 534

[3]     https://thecophq.org/holy-spirit-the-shy-member-of-the-trinity%EF%BF%BC

“The Wind Blows Where It Wills” (Acts 2:1-4)

 

It’s probably been a long time since you were in a room with a hundred and twenty people. But I want you to do your best to imagine it anyway. You might even need to close your eyes for a moment—as long as you promise not to fall asleep!

The scene I want you to form in your minds is, of course, the upper room in Jerusalem. There Jesus’ followers had been gathering ever since the day he had been taken up into heaven. You may recall that he had left them with the command to wait for the gift the Father had promised, when the Holy Spirit would come upon them.

Luke tells us that they had faithfully followed Jesus’ instruction, joining together constantly in prayer. Ten days had now elapsed. It was the festival of Pentecost, seven weeks after the celebration of Passover. And next to Passover it was the biggest holiday of the year, marking the beginning of the barley harvest. You might think of it as a little bit like Thanksgiving, with people travelling from all over the empire to celebrate.

The big difference was, though, that instead of going back to their family homes, everybody came to Jerusalem. So the city was chock-a-block with people. And as a result the upper room must have seemed like something of an oasis—even with a hundred and twenty people packed into it!

Then something strange began to happen. Suddenly from out of nowhere the quiet murmur of prayer was overwhelmed by the roar of a violent wind. We’re not talking about a gentle spring breeze here or even a howling gale. Think Dorian. Think Juan. Now start multiplying. This was a wind that tumbles down trees. This was a wind that churns up waves that tower over the masts of ships. And Luke tells us that the roar of it filled every corner of the house where the hundred and twenty were assembled.

What could it all mean? I can only imagine that those first believers were utterly mystified. I know if I had been there I would have been shaking right to the marrow of my bones!

At the beginning of creation (Genesis 1:2)

But let’s stand back for a moment and from the safe distance of nearly two thousand years and let’s try to gain an understanding of what was happening on that Pentecost morning. Because what those first believers were experiencing was in fact just part of a much larger story. So over the next few minutes I want us to try to capture a view of that broader picture—and that will begin by going all the way back to the opening verses of the Bible.

There we are confronted by a remarkable picture. It is one that our human minds really aren’t capable of conceiving: absolute nothingness. The author of these verses uses the words “formless and void”—utter, impenetrable darkness. Yet over it all we find the Spirit of God. The words in Hebrew are Ruach Elohim.

Now that word ruach can mean not only “spirit”, but also “breath” or “wind”. So it is that one translation of this verse runs, “The wind of God swept over the face of the waters.”

Now if you’re a gardener like me, wind is not always a welcome phenomenon. In fact, it can be downright annoying. It’s the wind that blows the snow into three-foot drifts that I have to plow to get my car onto the street in the winter. It’s the wind that blows down the leaves from the trees in the fall and playfully scatters them all over the lawn so that I have to spend hours raking them up.

But the wind of God—Ruach Elohim—is just the opposite. As the ruach sweeps powerfully over the waters, order appears out of chaos. From the swirling formless plasma there begin to appear earth and sky; land and seas; trees and plants; sun, moon and stars; fish and birds and land animals. Then finally, bearing God’s own image, human beings. And like an artist standing back and looking at his work, the Bible tells us that “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good”.

So it is that a primary work of the Holy Spirit is to bring order out of chaos, beauty out of confusion. And that was exactly what was happening in the upper room on the Day of Pentecost.

Just try to put yourself into the minds of the disciples for a moment. Their lives had been a roller coaster. Just eight weeks before, they had been surrounded by a cheering crowd waving palm branches and shouting “Hosanna to the king!” as they made their way into Jerusalem. Five days later they had stood by helpless as they watched the one they had come to believe was their saviour hang dying on a cross as a convicted criminal. Then on the third day after that they had had to get their minds around the fact that the same man they had seen put to death was alive. And yet, while little doubt may have remained on one level, what were they to make of it? What did it all mean?

Enter the Holy Spirit, to bring order out of chaos, to make sense out of what in the eyes of the world would have been (and for many still is!) nonsense.

On the shore of the Red Sea (Exodus 14:10-22)

On to another scene now, this time with the Hebrew people on the banks of the Red Sea. It had been a dramatic time for them. They had lived through the long series of plagues that had afflicted the kingdom of Egypt. And then the worst had struck, taking in its wake the firstborn son in every Egyptian family. But it was this final tragedy that had led to the fulfilment of what had seemed an impossible dream. It was what allowed them to escape from their life of slavery in Egypt and find a land that they could call their own.

They had set up camp near the shore of the Red Sea, when word came to them that the Egyptian army was just over the horizon. Needless to say, they were panic-stricken. “What have you done to us?” they shouted at Moses. “Better to have been slaves than to be slaughtered like animals!” As the sun set, a powerful wind began to blow from the east. It blew all night, so that when daylight returned, the sea had dried up and the Hebrews were able to cross over into safety. As we all know, the Egyptian armies were not as lucky. Their horses and chariots bogged down in the soft ground and before they could escape, the sea had rushed back into its place.

And here we have a picture of a second work of the Holy Spirit: to bring hope into an atmosphere of despair, victory in the face of defeat. That too must have been the experience of Jesus’ followers in the upper room. Yes, they knew that Jesus had been raised from the dead. But realistically what was going to happen to them? Would they remain a tiny cluster of devotees who clung together around some fond memories? It wouldn’t surprise me to find that they were still locking the doors for fear of being found out by the authorities.

But now there was no longer any need for fear (or indeed any possibility of secrecy), as the Holy Spirit caused the sound of their joy-filled praises to flood out onto the street below.

In the Valley of Dry Bones (Ezekiel 37:1-14)

There is a third scene that I want to share, that underlies the events of Pentecost. It comes in what to me is one of the most arresting passages in all of Scripture—in a vision that God gave to the prophet Ezekiel.

Ezekiel tells us that he is led by the Spirit of the Lord (and once again it is that same word, ruach—breath, wind) to find himself standing in the middle of a valley—a valley full of bones. Countless numbers of parched and whitened bones surround him in every direction that he cares to look. As he gazes around at this scene of desolation, God puts the question to him, “Can these bones live?” Then God instructs him to command the bones, “Dry bones, this is what the Sovereign Lord says… ‘I will make breath enter you (and here again it is that same word, ruach), and you will come to life…’ ”

Hardly have the words left Ezekiel’s mouth than he begins to hear a rattling sound as the bones come together. Soon they are being covered with tendons and flesh and skin. But Ezekiel observes that there was no breath, no ruach, in them. Again God tells Ezekiel to prophesy, “Come, breath, from the four winds and breathe into these slain, that they may live.” As he does so, they raise themselves to their feet. And God gives Ezekiel the promise, “I will put my Spirit in you and you will live…”

Thus we see a third work of the Holy Spirit: to bring life where there is death. History tells us that, of the eleven apostles in that upper room, all but one would suffer a martyr’s death. But they would go to their deaths in the firm conviction that there was nothing that could separate them from God’s love in Christ. In the words of their future co-worker Paul, “He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you.” (Romans 8:11)

As a result, they would go to their deaths in the comfort of the Spirit-implanted conviction that nothing could separate them from Jesus’ love. In Eugene Peterson’s rendering of Paul’s words, “The Spirit of God whets our appetite by giving us a taste of what’s ahead. He puts a little of heaven in our hearts so that we’ll never settle for less” (2 Corinthians 5:5).

One night in Jerusalem (John 3:1-8)

Let’s shift now to one further scene. It’s a starry night in Jerusalem. Two figures can be seen in deep discussion. “Rabbi,” says one, “we know that you are a teacher who has come from God…” To which he receives the enigmatic reply, “No one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.”

“But how is this possible?” Nicodemus asks. “How can someone be born when they are old?” And Jesus replies, “The wind blows where it wills. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”

On this festival of Pentecost we remind ourselves that the Holy Spirit continues at work today—in the midst of a confused and increasingly confusing world, in the midst of military wars and culture wars, in the midst of a growing environmental crisis, in the midst of a global pandemic—to bring the assurance that there is a God who reigns over all and whose good and perfect purposes will come to fruition—and that Jesus Christ has won the victory over sin and evil and death.

But it remains to you and to me to catch the wind—to allow God’s Holy Spirit to blow in us and through us. It will be unsettling. And no doubt he will rearrange your life a little. Perhaps more than a little! But the adventure will be worth it…

“The Real Miracle of Pentecost” (Acts 2:42-47)

I wonder how many people had their TV sets switched on yesterday morning at 5 o’clock. That’s when the CBC coverage of the royal wedding began and for the next five hours I can only imagine that millions of viewers were glued to their screens, trying to catch a glimpse of this or that celebrity among the six hundred who were invited to the event.

Long before it took place, countless hours of television time had already gone into the anticipation of the wedding—and for the publicists it was all big money. While the costs of the wedding are estimated to top $36 million, it was expected to generate over $860 million in revenue. If it is anything to go by, memorabilia sales alone for the marriage of Prince William and Kate Middleton seven years ago amounted to more than $380 million.

By this time you may already have been asking yourself, “What is this preacher fellow getting at—and what does all of this business about royal weddings have to do with the Bible anyway?” Well, for Christians today is the anniversary of another big event, when three thousand souls were added to the fledgling group of Jesus’ followers who had come together that morning to pray.

Little could they have imagined when they gathered in the upper room that they would be swept off their feet (spiritually if not physically) by a “rushing mighty wind”, touched by fire, and speaking in languages never before heard from their lips! So completely strange was what happened to them that it is little wonder that it all began to attract a crowd of people who were no less amazed and perplexed than they were. “We hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!”

So today, while the rest of the world is recovering from the royal wedding or preparing for Game Five in the playoffs between Vegas and the Jets, we Christians quietly celebrate the Feast of Pentecost. And quite rightly our attention is fixed on the miraculous events that occurred that morning: the mysterious whistling of the wind, the flames of fire that divided and settled on each of the believers, and the praises of God in all the varied languages of the known world.

It was a remarkable event—and I don’t know how many times I have preached on it over the past forty-plus years. Yet this year as I began my preparations, it dawned upon me that my attention has always been focused on the events in the opening verses of Acts, chapter 2. At the same time it began to occur to me that maybe what Luke wrote in the closing verses of that same chapter has even more to teach us about the real meaning of Pentecost and about the work that the Holy Spirit yearns to do in you and in me. So allow me to read them to you.

They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favour of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

Devotion

There are three aspects of this brief summary of the first days of the church I would like us to focus on. The first of them can be summarized by the word “devotion”. Luke begins, “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.”

My Greek lexicon tells me that those words “devoted themselves” can be translated in a whole variety of ways: “persist in”, “attach oneself to”, “be faithful to”, “be busily engaged in”, “hold fast to”, “persevere in”, “spend much time in”. By now probably you get the idea. Those first believers were not prepared to allow anything to stand in the way of learning from the apostles or from coming together regularly for fellowship, worship and prayer.

Early in my own walk with Christ many years ago, my pastor encouraged me to begin memorizing Scripture. The first verses I ever committed to memory were Psalm 119:9 and 11, and I quote them as I learned them in the old King James Version:

Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way?
By taking heed thereto according to thy word…
Thy word have I hid in mine heart,
that I might not sin against thee.

It seems to me that those early believers did exactly what Psalm 119 counsels us to do: they were taking God’s word to heart with an unshakeable commitment to the apostles’ teaching. Now of course they had no New Testament and they wouldn’t for a couple of generations. But they had the apostles themselves and they spent time learning from them, drinking in their words—and we’re not just talking about a weekly twenty-minute sermon or even a forty-minute one. Acts 20 tells us of an evening when the apostle Paul went on talking till midnight—to the point where one young man drifted into sleep and fell out the window!

But the point was that they could never hear enough. Like the two companions who met with Jesus along the road to Emmaus on that first resurrection day, I can only imagine that their hearts burned within them as they learned from the apostles and opened the Scriptures together.

Some years ago we had the privilege of hosting Ernest Gordon, who had been held captive in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp in Burma along what was known as the railway of death. Although he was not a believer at the time, he and some of his men began reading the New Testament together. It did not take long before they found that they could not put it down, for they had the amazing experience that the same Jesus whom they found on its pages was there among them.

Yet much of this seems so far from the experience of the church in our part of the world today. A recent study revealed that only forty-five percent of those who regularly attend church read the Bible more than once a week. Almost twenty percent say they never read the Bible—and that is about the same percentage as those who read it on a daily basis. [1] That seems a far cry from our early forebears who lived in the shadow of Pentecost, who could not get enough the apostles’ teaching. Would that the Holy Spirit would stir the same thirst in us today!

Awe

Those first believers showed a devotion to the apostles’ teaching. But Luke also tells us in verse 43 that “everyone was filled with awe”. Again, if you read that verse in the old King James Version, it would sound like this: “And fear came upon every soul.” The word in the original in fact is phobos. We find it in words like “claustrophobia”, the fear of small spaces, “acrophobia”, the fear of heights, and “arachnophobia”, the fear of spiders.

There was a German philosopher of a century ago called Rudolf Otto, who came up with the phrase mysterium tremendum—the sense of something so mysterious that it causes you to tremble. This, he said, is what happens to us when we come into the presence of the living God.

We see it in Moses as he tended his flocks in the wilderness and approached that strange bush that burned but was not consumed. The book of Exodus tells us that when Moses began to realize in whose presence he stood, “he hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God” (Exodus 3:6). Or think of Isaiah in the temple, as he gazed at the six-winged seraphs and heard their cry, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty…” and felt the stone floor shuddering beneath him. “Woe to me!” was all he could think to utter, “For I am a man of unclean lips and I dwell among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty” (Isaiah 6:3-4).

Or we can turn to the New Testament, to the story of the centurion who came to Jesus on behalf of his servant. “Lord,” he said to him, “I do not deserve you to come under my roof…” (Matthew 8:5-9) Think too of the occasion when Peter and his companions had just hauled in an enormous load of fish because Jesus had told them to let down their nets in spite of there being no fish. He fell down before Jesus and wailed, “Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!” (Luke 5:1-10)

Our forebears in the faith had that same sense of awe as they gathered to learn from the apostles, to break bread and to pray together. The letter to Hebrews tells us,

You have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. You have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly, to the church of the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven. You have come to God, the Judge of all, to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. (Hebrews 12:22-24)

How we need to ask God to inspire in us that same sense of awe—each time we gather to take time to come before him consciously and deliberately and ask him to open our hearts afresh to the unfathomable mystery of his love and power. I have no doubt that we would know more of the Holy Spirit’s presence if we did.

Community

A devotion to the apostles’ teaching, awe in the presence of the living God—and a third characteristic of those first Christians I would like to emphasize comes in a word for which there is really no adequate English equivalent. It is the word koinonia. Most often it is rendered “fellowship” as we see it in this morning’s passage. But if you think of fellowship (as I suspect most of us do) as what happens over a cup of coffee after the worship service, then we have fallen woefully short of what the New Testament means when it uses the word koinonia.

What it really means is having something in common on a profound level—and Luke gives us a picture of how that works out in practical terms in those last verses of Acts 2. Let me read them to you once again:

All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts…

Now for us who have been immersed from infancy in the independent-minded, freedom-loving principles western society, that is a strange and even frightening picture. It may relieve you to know I am not advocating that we seek to replicate detail for detail all the practices of the early church.

What I am saying is that there was a genuine sense of caring and sharing among those first believers that you would not have found outside the church. I remember some years ago a pastor friend telling me of a member of his church who was part of a small group that met for Bible study and prayer. The man happened to work for a tobacco company. Over time he became convinced that as a Christian he could not in good conscience continue to do this and he shared it with the group. To his surprise, they all agreed that if he felt that this was the direction in which God was leading him, they would give him any financial support he might need in order to make the change—and they ended up caring for him and his family for the better part of a year until he found a new job.

Those people knew the meaning of the word koinonia. It was our Lord Jesus himself who said, “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:35). And so I don’t believe it was by coincidence that Luke concludes the day of Pentecost with these words: “And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.”

As we look back on the mighty, rushing wind and on the tongues of fire that came upon those first believers, may we pray not for them to happen again, but for what they led to: to a wholehearted devotion to the apostles’ teaching, to a life-changing awe as we gather in the presence of the living God, and to a sense of community that is costly and real. In a word, may the Holy Spirit lead us to being the authentic body of Jesus in the world today.

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[1]     Ed Stetzer, “The Epidemic of Bible Illiteracy in Our Churches”, Christianity Today, July 2015

Sermon – “If you love me” (John 14:15-27)

For the past five weeks (since Easter) we have been reading from the First Letter of Peter in our Sunday morning services. Peter writes to Christian believers who are suffering for the sake of the gospel. He is writing from Rome, more or less mid-way through the reign of the Emperor Nero. While the first great persecution following the fire of Rome has not broken out yet, pockets of persecution against Christians are breaking out in parts of the empire, particularly on its fringes.

Peter writes to give those scattered believers encouragement in the face of suffering. “Conduct yourselves honorably among the Gentiles, so that, although they malign you as evildoers, they may see your honorable deeds and glorify God…” “If you endure when you do right and suffer for it, you have God’s approval … because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you and example.” And in this morning’s passage: “Even if you do suffer for doing what is right, you are blessed. Do not fear what they fear, and do not be intimidated, but in your hearts sanctify Christ as Lord.”

One of the most painful and awkward scenes to my mind in all of Scripture is the exchange between Jesus and Peter that takes place at the very end of John’s gospel. Many of you know the scene. It was some time after Jesus’ resurrection. Peter and six others of Jesus’ followers had headed back up north from Jerusalem to their home territory of Galilee. They had spent all night out on the water fishing but entirely without success. The sun was just peeking over the horizon when they heard a voice calling to them from the shore. “Fellows, you don’t have anything to eat, do you?” “No,” they shouted back. “Try letting down your net on the right side of your boat and you’ll catch some.” To their surprise they had scarcely dropped their net into the water before it was bursting with fish.

John was the first to realize what was happening. “It’s the Lord!” he exclaimed. Within an instant Peter was pulling on some clothes and diving into the water. It was after they had broiled some of the fish and had eaten them that the hard conversation began. Jesus turned to Peter and said, “Simon, son of John…” Jesus was addressing Peter by his formal name—the name he had before he had become one of Jesus’ followers—not by the name Jesus had given him: Peter, the Rock. “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” “Yes, Lord,” Peter replied, “you know that I love you.” Then Jesus asked a second time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” “Yes, Lord,” Peter replied once again, “you know that I love you.” “Simon, Son of John, do you love me?” This time the question really stung, because all that Peter could think of was his cowardice of only a few days before—how three times he had denied even knowing Jesus. “Lord, you know everything. You know that I love you.”

To me the scene is a foreshadowing of that day when I will stand before Jesus and he will ask me, “John, do you love me?” And I ask myself, how many times have I denied Jesus? How many times have I shrunk back from living out my faith? How many times have I allowed the fear or selfishness or rebellion or the thousand-and-one other lesser motivations that battle inside me to stand ahead of my love for Jesus? “John, do you love me?” “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” Yet within my heart I know that my love is often weak and cold.

Keeping the commands of Jesus

Weeks before Peter’s painful encounter on the shores of Galilee, he had been with Jesus and the other disciples in the upper room. There he had heard Jesus say the words that opened our Gospel reading this morning: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” And so loving Jesus is more than having nice thoughts or warm feelings about Jesus, more than loving the idea of Jesus. Fundamentally, our love for Jesus is going to be measured by our actions.

The Greek of the New Testament has two words for “obey”. One of them (peitho) has to do with an enforced obedience. James uses it when he writes about putting bits into the mouths of horses to force them to obey us. The other (hupakouo) is a more responsive, willing obedience. Thus by faith Abraham obeyed God’s call to go to a land he had never known. Children are encouraged to obey their parents, not because they will be punished, but because “this is right”. The wind and the sea obeyed Jesus because in him they recognized their creator.

However, neither of those is the word that we find in this passage. When Jesus speaks to his followers, he tells them not that they are to obey his commandments, but that they are to “keep” them. The difference may seem subtle at first, but it is an important one. And perhaps to drive the point home, Jesus repeats what he says twice more over the course of the next few verses: “They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me” (verse 21). And, “Those who love me will keep my word” (verse 23). We find the same word in Jesus’ final words to his disciples at the end of Matthew’s gospel in the Great Commission: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to keep everything that I have commanded you.” (Matthew 28:19,20).

What, then, does the Bible mean when it uses the word “keep”? Literally it means to guard, to protect, to preserve. When Jesus turned water into wine at the wedding celebration in Cana, the steward expressed his surprise because, he said, “you have kept the good wine until now” (John 2:10). And so we keep things because we recognize their value. This is what underlies the wisdom offered to young people in the Book of Proverbs:

My child, if you accept my words

and treasure up my commandments within you,

making your ear attentive to wisdom

and inclining your heart to understanding; 

if you indeed cry out for insight, 

and raise your voice for understanding; 

if you seek it like silver,

and search for it as for hidden treasures—
then you will understand the fear of the Lord

and find the knowledge of God. (Proverbs 2:1-5)

In the Psalms we read of the surpassing value of God’s word:

The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul;
the decrees of the Lord are sure, making wise the simple;
the precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart;
the commandment of the Lord is clear, enlightening the eyes…;
the ordinances of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.
More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold;
sweeter also than honey, and drippings of the honeycomb. (Psalm 19:7-10)

So it was that from their earliest days as a nation the people of Israel were reminded,

Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. (Deuteronomy 6:6-9)

“With my whole heart I seek you;” sang the psalmist, “do not let me stray from your commandments. I treasure your word in my heart, so that I may not sin against you” (Psalm 119:10,11).

Empowered by the Spirit of Jesus

Loving Jesus, then, means having his word etched into our very hearts, finding in it our delight, our very life. Yet for how many of us is this true? Archbishop William Temple was a man of profound faith. At the same time he confessed, “Our love is cold. It is there, but it is feeble. It does not carry us to real obedience. Is there anything that I can do?” he asks. And here is his answer: “No; there never is, except to hold myself in his presence… But the Lord, who knows both the reality and the poverty of our love, will supply our need.”[1]

Jesus knows better than we do that, as much as we might want to, as hard as we might try, we cannot live the life of discipleship in our own power. And so he promises his disciples “another Advocate”, one who will be with them forever. Now if you look at that word “Advocate” in verse 16, you will see that it is accompanied by a footnote, which suggests that the word may also be translated “Helper”. And if you look at other versions of the Bible you will find that the same word is rendered “Counselor” or “Friend”. Indeed there are some translators who have simply thrown up their hands and used the word “Paraclete”, which is nothing more than an Anglicization of the original Greek word in the New Testament. My own preference is for “Helper”, as the word literally means someone who comes alongside you, to support and assist, to encourage and to guide.

So it is the Holy Spirit who takes Jesus’ words and makes them live for us. It is the Holy Spirit who gives us the will and the power to keep them on a daily basis. It is the Holy Spirit who makes the life of discipleship a possibility—and more than that, a joy and an adventure to which nothing else can compare.

Trusting in the love of Jesus

I have spoken about what it means to love Jesus: to keep his word, to be indwelt by the Holy Spirit. As we love Jesus in this way, we find ourselves being led more deeply into the mystery and the wonder of his love for us. “Those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them … and we will come to them and make our home with them.”

Karl Barth is regarded by many as the greatest theologian of the twentieth century. Perhaps you are familiar with the story of when he was at Rockefeller Chapel on the campus of the University of Chicago during his lecture tour of the U.S. in 1962. After his lecture, during the Q & A time, a student asked Barth if he could summarize his whole life’s work in theology in a sentence. Here is what Barth said: “Yes, I can: ‘Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.’ ”

As important as our love for Jesus may be, we need to put it into its far greater context—and that is the love of both the Father and the Son for you and for me. And that love is not limited. Nor is it conditional. It does not depend on our love for him. There will be times when we fail—even spectacularly—to keep Jesus’ words. There will be occasions when we grieve the Holy Spirit. Yet there will never be a time when God’s heart does not burn with love for us. As he was there for Peter on the shore of Lake Galilee, Jesus will be there with us; and, as he said to Peter, he says to you and to me once again, “Follow me.”

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[1]     Readings in St John’s Gospel, 238,239

Sermon – “How are we to believe?” (John 14:1-14)

In the opening words of the Acts of the Apostles, Luke informs us that Jesus “presented himself alive to [the disciples] by many convincing proofs”. We read about half a dozen such incidents in the gospels: Mary Magdalene outside the empty tomb; Cleopas and his fellow traveler along the road to Emmaus; the eleven disciples and later Thomas in the upper room; Peter, John and five others on the lakeside in Galilee… To these Paul adds an occasion when Jesus appeared to more than five hundred of his followers.

My suspicion is that Jesus’ relationship with the disciples following his resurrection was quite different from what it had been before. When you think of it, how could it have been otherwise? While they had once admired and followed him, now they could only worship and adore him. The one in their midst was no longer just the carpenter from Galilee. He was their crucified and risen Lord.

Besides that, I picture Jesus’ presence with the disciples not as a continuous experience as it had been previously, but rather as a series of fleeting, often unexpected, interchanges. In between those appearances there were periods, perhaps of days, when they had time to contemplate all that they had experienced over the previous three years. I imagine too that in those weeks between Easter and Pentecost they must have gathered numerous times. And on those occasions they must have spent much of their time bringing to mind Jesus’ words, discussing them, puzzling over them and relating them to their experience as they awaited “the promise of the Father”. Among those words, spoken perhaps in the very room where they were now gathering, were the ones which formed our Gospel reading this morning: “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places…”

In many ways what we are embarking upon in these verses is John’s equivalent of the Sermon on the Mount. Over the next three chapters Jesus gives his disciples some concentrated teaching as he prepares them for his death and resurrection. It was only in the days following the resurrection, however, that the disciples would have had either the opportunity or the coolness of mind to go over what Jesus had said—and I imagine that that was what they spent much of their time doing, again and again and again.

Jesus begins with an invitation—an invitation to trust him. Have you ever noticed that John’s gospel never uses the noun “faith”? For John believing is always a verb, always an action word. In the New Testament the word denotes believing in someone, trusting someone, relying on someone, entrusting yourself to someone. In the verse before us, the action is especially clear because, translated literally, Jesus is saying, not just, “Trust me,” but, “Trust into me.” There is that sense of casting ourselves into his arms, of giving ourselves totally and utterly over to him. On the eve of the crucifixion that would have been a hard sell. But now, after the resurrection, it all began to make a little more sense. And in the verses that follow, Jesus begins to tell them a little bit about what that faith looks like and where it leads.

A place for the homeless

I think that for most of us a sense of place, of having a place where we belong, is an important part of who we are. I am told that the average American moves 11.7 times over the course of his or her lifetime. (I’m not sure what it means to move .7 times!) In my own case I remember as a child moving every two to four years. There can be benefits to that, but it can also lead to a sense of rootlessness, of not having anywhere that you can really call home.

Years ago, when I worked as a student intern in a psychiatric hospital, a number of the patients were Hungarians who had left their country as refugees nearly a generation before. They had not parted with their homeland willingly or voluntarily. They had been forcibly uprooted, and ever since there had lurked deep within them a sense of homelessness. I can only imagine that the same must be true of many of our Karen refugees, who have had to leave everything behind to begin a new life in a strange land, in a foreign language, amid an alien culture and in a forbidding climate. It is a formidable challenge and it reaches right into the core of who we are as persons.

Yet when we read the Bible we discover that at a much deeper level we are all refugees. The cherubim still stand at the gate of Eden brandishing their flaming swords. Generations after Adam and Eve, God promised to Abraham and his descendants a home in the Promised Land. More than three thousand years later Jews still claim Israel as their home. Yet Israel is only a temporary home; and Jerusalem but a type of that city whose architect and builder is God.

If they didn’t know it already, the disciples would soon come to discover their own homelessness in a very blunt and physical sense, as they were driven from the familiar surroundings of Jerusalem and Galilee into the far corners of the Roman world. So it is that Jesus assures them, “In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places… I am going there to prepare a place for you.”

Faith begins, therefore, with the recognition of our own homelessness in any ultimate sense—and the parallel recognition that at the same time that we have an eternal, unshakeable home that no one can take from us in Jesus Christ and in our relationship with him. That does not mean that we need to become ascetics or that we sever all attachments to this world. But rather, amid the transitoriness and even the outright evil that we experience in this world, it gives us an anchor, a guiding star, that rock of which we will sing later in the course of this morning’s worship, on which to base our lives.

A way for the lost

Jesus gives us the promise of a home, permanent, safe and secure—and Thomas’s question that follows it is a natural one. “But Lord, how can we know the way?” To which Jesus replies with one of the most quoted verses in all of Scripture: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

I am afraid that more often than not Christians (myself included) have used these words of Jesus as a kind of club to beat down the followers of other religions. We concentrate on the second half of what Jesus said and give too little attention to the first. As I read them today, it seems to me that Jesus is offering a wonderful, exciting invitation here and we have turned that invitation into a message of “You’re not welcome.”

Now please don’t get me wrong. I am not saying that there are other ways to the Father, or that we can find ultimate truth or genuine life outside of Jesus. What I am saying is that so often we have concentrated on telling other people that their ways won’t work, that they are dead ends, and somehow in the midst of it all we have neglected to focus on the one way that does bring us to God. The result is that Christian faith ends up looking from the outside as exclusionary. To many we appear to be more interested in shutting people out than in inviting them in—and in many cases we are doing a very good job of it, too!

No doubt there are times when we need to alert the world to the fact that it is on a collision course with destruction, that there is indeed a way that seems right to a person, but its end is the way to death (Proverbs 14:12). The apostle Paul wrote about warning everyone. Yet that is not the focus of our message. The focus is on Jesus in all his transcendent beauty and majesty. I think Graham Kendrick puts it well in the words of his song:

Knowing you, Jesus, knowing you,
there is no greater thing.
You’re my all, you’re the best,
you’re my joy, my righteousness,
and I love you, Lord.

When Isaiah stood in the temple and had his great vision of the Lord seated on his throne in all his heavenly glory, no one needed to tell him he was a sinner. He simply cried aloud, “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips and I dwell among a people of unclean lips” (Isaiah 6:1-5). When Peter pulled in his miraculous haul of fish after Jesus had told him to let down his nets on the other side of the boat, he didn’t need anyone to tell him how sinful he was. He fell to his knees before Jesus and exclaimed, “Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!” (Luke 5:4-8)

I do believe that the great majority of people in their heart of hearts and if the truth be told, know that their lives are not right. And I believe that if we, as individual believers and as the community of Christ’s followers were living and proclaiming him in power, they would come to him as the way, the truth and the life.

A power for the faint-hearted

This brings us to a third and perhaps the most puzzling of Jesus’ statements in this morning’s passage: “Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father.” It seems impossible to believe. After all this was the man who cleansed lepers, gave sight to the blind, gave paralyzed limbs the power to walk again—who even raised the dead. What did Jesus mean?

People have put all kinds of interpretations on these words. Some point to the foundation of hospitals and other charitable institutions by faithful Christians that have brought Christ’s healing and love to millions all over the world. Others point to the miracles that continue to happen in our own time, well-documented accounts of remarkable healings and even people being raised from the dead. New Testament scholar Leon Morris thought of Jesus’ words in a numerical and geographical sense. He wrote,

During his lifetime the Son of God was confined in his influence to a comparatively small sector of Palestine. After his departure his followers were able to work in widely scattered places and influence much larger numbers. But … they were in no sense acting independently of him. On the contrary in doing their ‘greater works’ they were but his agents.[1]

I believe that all these interpretations are valid, and no doubt there are other ways in which we might understand Jesus’ words as well. But underlying them all is the power of the Holy Spirit.

So often as Christians we allow our vision to be limited by our resources. We look at the world around us and we compare ourselves with the vast wealth of governments or multinational corporations and we sigh and say, “We could never do that.” Yet we forget that our God is the one who (in the words of the psalm) owns the cattle on a thousand hills, whose resources are limitless and whose power is infinite. It was not that long before those first Christians who sat in the upper room musing over Jesus’ words were being accused of turning the world upside down—and I suspect that no one was more surprised than they were.

Today, as we continue to rejoice in our risen Lord, may we rest in the assurance of an eternal home, may we show him to be the way, and may we know his power, which is able to do immeasurably more than we can ask or imagine, at work within us.

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[1]     The Gospel According to John (New International Commentary on the New Testament), 646