You Need the Holy Spirit

Do you hear the Holy Spirit?
Do you talk to the Holy Spirit?
Can the Holy Spirit hear you?
Does the Holy Spirit speak to you?
What does He say?

Our teaching will come from John 16 and Jesus’ promise describing the work of the Holy Spirit.Let’s see what He has to say.

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John 15-16

If you’re here this morning and you don’t have a Bible with you, slip up your hand, and I want to put a Bible in your hand, and I want you to open that up to John, chapter 15. I entitled this You Need the Holy Spirit because here’s what happens here in John 15, and actually it goes back to 14. He starts talking about the Holy Spirit is going to come, and if you were here with us last week, we talked a lot about John, chapter 15, particularly the first 17 verses, and the controlling narrative. The big image he wants us to have in our head when we read this is not…

If you look at the way people learn, the large majority of people are visual learners. I mean hands down, the largest number of people are visual learners, and the Bible is filled with visual images. So many times we miss those big visual images, because the Bible paints these word pictures that He wants us to hold onto. “Now that’s a gardener kind of image. That’s a cultivation. That’s a farming image.” And there’s a change of imagery that takes place, beginning in verse 18 of John, chapter 15, and it goes through all the way to chapter 16, verse 33.

The last few years I found myself deeply drawn to reading and meditating on whole passages of Scripture, and even entire books, as opposed to verses, especially random verses, and I don’t mean at all that we should abandon memorizing verses, but if we do that apart from the context of those verses, we put ourselves in danger of imposing our ideas, and interjecting our cultural ideas, into the reality of Scripture. When we do that, we burglarize the Bible instead of allowing the Bible to speak for itself.

I’ve actually become convicted of dissecting the Bible as if it’s some kind of legal document, because it runs the risk of really distorting the mega-message of the Bible. I remember back when I was in college hearing this phrase: “A text (that’s a passage) divorced from its context becomes a pretext.” That’s important to understand, because somebody can quote Bible verses to you, but if you don’t understand the context, and you don’t look into the context… There’s another phrase that says, “Context is king. The framework and the background define the message.”

I think sometimes when we read the Bible we’re like children listening at the door of snippets of their parents’ conversations, and then we run off in our arrogance and announce the sentences apart from the structure. Now I say that because we have become a culture that really doesn’t value depth. We don’t. Depth is not one of our big values. We almost… We have stores. I’ve never even been in this store. It may be a great store. If you own the store, or work in the store, God bless you. Forever 21. What is that about? Forever 21. You might as well just put up there “Forever Stupid.”

Now you can be smart for a 21-year-old. You know? I mean for a 21-year-old you may… Wait a minute. I’m mature! I’m a mature 21-year-old. But let me tell you something. If you’re 21 when you’re 41 you’re stu…you’re not bright. Something is going on there. Now we aren’t a culture that values that kind of thing, and we want our food fast, and we want our spiritual food fast. We hunger for our food, and even our spiritual food, pre-processed, and we’ve become flabby and addicted to quick snacks. What we need to do is deny our artificially developed appetites for synthetic, spiritual, bumper-sticker shallowness.

I see this, and I know it’s not true universally. I see a growing, increasing movement, and a downright rejection of bumper sticker, Bible nugget, pre-processed, pop psychology, pathology that has been popularized in the last decade. How do you like that? I had to write it down. I talked to a young man after the second service, a bright young man, and he had his little phone with him, his smart phone, and he had read the sermon on the text, and he also had downloaded a couple of other apps, Vine’s and Strong’s.

He comes up to me after the service, and he says, “You know what that word in the Greek for abide is?” I said, “Yeah. It’s meno.” He goes, “Wow! I think that that word is incredibly important, and I was looking at what Aristotle thought of it.” And man I was going, Yes! This is what we want. We want people who think deeply, and root deeply, and understand deeply, these mega-narratives. And that’s what Jesus is doing in John 15. He’s saying, “Listen, if you’re going to have any depth in your life, you can’t settle for just shallowness. You’re going to have to break in and it’s going to take time.”

Now John 15, beginning in verse 18, again all the way through to chapter 16, verse 33, should be considered an intact, undivided whole, and the ideas conveyed are integral to one another, and when we break it apart, we do to our own detriment of losing the mega-theme. So here if you’re looking at your notes, start with the end in mind. So let’s go down to the bottom of the passage and see what it says. Look at verse 33, John 16. “I’ve told you all this so that…” That’s important. “All this so that you may have…” Look at this. “…peace in Me.” (John 16:33)

This is a theme that He talks about over and over again. “Peace I leave with you. Fear not. Fret not. Don’t worry.” This is over and over and over again. He says, “Listen I am telling you this in advance so you don’t need to be a person who is worried, and fretful, and just divided.” The word that is used there, peace in the Old Testament it’s rooted down into that whole idea of shalom, of wholeness. “I’m giving you this so you can have this shalom in every day of your life.”

Now sometimes I talk to people and they say to me when it comes to this issue of peace, they’ll say something like, “My problem is I’m just…you know my temperament. My temperament. It’s just not peaceful. You know I’m fearful.” Or “I grew up in a family where, you know, peace wasn’t really valued, and I’m just…you know, I know that I should have peace, but you know it’s kind of my…” The old word was, “It’s my besetting sin.” You know, “It’s just my temperament.”

There are actual sins in the Bible that are called sins, talked about a lot, that I’m just going to call socially acceptable sins. Do you know what I mean? You can confess them and nobody will go, “Whoa, you need to stop that. Whoa, that’s a sin. You need to confess that, and you need to stop that.” Can you imagine if maybe you have this friend, and your friend is sexually immoral, and he’s been cheating on his wife year, after year, after year. And he keeps coming to you, and he says to you, “You know, it happened again last week. I was out of town. Man, we were out…you know I got into the plane, I’m sitting there, and this girl she was just kind of hot and man, we were going to the same place. Next thing you know we’re in a bar, and I had an affair. It doesn’t really mean anything to me.”

And you go, “Ho, ho, ho! Wait a minute! You’ve done this over, and over, and over, and over again. This is wrong.”

“I know. But you know it’s kind of the way I was raised. Our family, we just had a problem with sexuality, and you know what, I’m just by temperament not monogamous.” 
You would go, “You know what? You may not be by temperament monogamous, but you have…you know the Bible says this is wrong, so you’d better stop it.” Can you say “amen” to that? “In Me you might have peace. You have peace. Fear not.” Fear not. You understand that’s not a suggestion? That’s not God saying, “You know what? It’d be a good idea if you people weren’t fearful.” Fear not is the most repeated command in the Scriptures. Fear not, fear not, fear not. But here we are, we find ourselves in this whole worry kind of mindset, and we excuse it.

Here it says, “Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows.” (John 16:33) Do you understand that? That is a promise of God. I don’t know anybody I’ve ever talked to that says, “I’ve been claiming God’s promises about sorrow and trials.” Look at this. “But take heart, cheer up, change your temperament, because…” And look at this. “…I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33) Circle that word, underline that word, dig into that word, because it is one of John’s favorite words to use. Overcome. I have overcome. “I have overcome the world.” The word that is used, overcome, you’ll recognize it because some of you have it on your shoes. It’s nike.

It literally is a military metaphor for when someone defeats someone else. “I have defeated the world.” And what you find is in the Bible there’s this meta-narrative, and we’ve talked about it over and over here, is this idea that we look at the world through this lens, and we look at the Bible through a lens, and that lens is cosmic conflict. And he says, “Listen, understand that there is this kingdom, and that kingdom was evidenced in Genesis, chapter 1, where the world was in harmony, God was in harmony with man, man was in harmony with God, mankind was in harmony with the planet, and it was man’s treason that caused the fall and the mess that we’re in.”

When Jesus comes on the scene, the message of Jesus is: “The time is at hand. The kingdom of God has broken in.” That word that is used, you’ll remember when we went through Mark, is the euangelion. It is the word that the Roman government used when the Roman empire rolled up to a city with all its forces. They said the kingdom, the euangelion, the kingdom of God is right here. And Jesus announces the liberation of planet Earth, and it ends up in the book of Revelation, chapter 21, where the heavens come in, and literally reign and reclaim all of the planet, every inch of it, every square inch of it. That’s the big narrative.

The word that John uses most often is not the euangelion, it’s the overcomers, the kingdom of God, the nike, the victory. And if you’re taking notes, this is a kingdom warfare term. It’s the word that is used in Mathew, chapter 11, verse 12, and Luke, chapter 11, verse 19-21. It’s the same word that is used if there’s a strong man, and he goes in and he has to be bound, he has to be overcome, it’s the same idea. This is the week that we celebrate Palm Sunday. I love it. And the word that we use for this Palm Sunday when they were out there celebrating was hosanna.

Now that’s not a word we use out there very often, because in our world that’s a church word. But the word that was used, hosanna, was not a temple term. It was a political term. It was the term that was used by the Maccabeans. It’s the term that was used in Psalms… It would be actually probably better translated, a regime change. Some of you were raised in the ’60s. You remember what it was like on some of the campuses where people were going, “Listen this is not acceptable anymore. Things have to change.”

When you hear that word hosanna, think of what happened in Cairo in Egypt, and what happened in Tunisia, and what’s happening today in Libya. Now put aside the politics of who’s going to be in charge, the Muslim Brotherhood, or whether the person who replaces Gaddafi is going to be worse, but think about somebody who has lived their life under an absolute, total tyrant. And you don’t understand what a tyrant is. A tyrant is more than a dictator. A tyrant is more than a king. A tyrant is somebody who tells you not only what you have to do, but how you have to think. In a totalitarian environment, what you have to do, what you have to think, what you have to be, everything. It’s totalitarian. It’s a tyrant.

Now these people are looking to Jesus and they’re saying, “You could change the regime. You could make things different. You could change things as they are.” And they’re crying out, “Hosanna! Regime change. Save us now.” It’s a term that John uses over, and over, and over. I put some of the references there, but I think one of the most forgotten, and abandoned, encompassing epic, is this narrative of the cosmic conflict; this idea that we are in this battle, this fight, this war, this offensive.

1 John, chapter 4, verses 4-6: “But you belong to God, my dear children. You have already won…” And here it is: “You have already overcome. You’ve won the victory. Because the Spirit lives in you…” And listen to this. “Because the Spirit who lives in you is greater than the spirit who lives in the world. Those people who belong to this world, they speak from the world’s viewpoint.” (1 John 4:4-5) We’re different than that. 1 John 5:4: “For every child of God overcomes, defeats this evil world, and we will achieve this overcoming victory through our faith.” (1 John 5:4)

When you read through the book of Revelation, this overcoming idea is repeated over and over. It’s spoken into every single church in the seven churches in the book of Revelation. Every single church. He says, “And to every church that prevails, that overcomes. To the church at Ephesus…” Which was probably one of the greatest churches that ever existed. It was founded by Paul. It was pastored by John. In the first 300 years of the church, the church at Ephesus was undoubtedly the most influential church that existed. The church councils happen there.

To that church Jesus writes, and he says, “I know how hard you work. You’re really good workers.” He says, “But I have to tell you, this is troubling to me. You’ve lost your first love.” You remember first love? My goodness. I remember so vividly when I… I remember the first time I ever laid eyes on Jody, I really wouldn’t admit to anybody or myself my heart was captivated, but it was. And you know what Jesus says? “I remember when your heart was just captivated. You just loved Me.” He says, “Can you remember? You need to return to that first love.” And He says, “If you’ll go back to that first love.” He says, “To him who overcomes I’ll give to him to eat of the Tree of Life in the paradise of God.” (Revelation 2:7)

You know what he’s talking about? He’s talking about intimacy, what we lost in Eden. “I’ll give it back to you!” To the church at Laodicea… Every single one of those churches He talks about the importance of seeing this military motive, the idea of warfare, of taking back the house, and He says, “And if you will go out and take back, and you’ll claim that spiritual territory, here’s what I’ll do for you.” Even the church at Laodicea that was the worst church of the lot, He says, “Behold I’m standing at the door and knocking,” and what a horrendous picture of Jesus being on the outside of the church.

Even to that church He says, “If you’ll open the door, I’ll come in, and I’ll eat with you.” You understand what He’s talking about? He’s talking about intimacy. “I’ll come in, and I’ll be with you. I will walk with you.” In Revelation you see that John just keeps using this military metaphor, this idea of warfare. And he says, “And they overcame him by the power of the blood, and the power of their testimonies.” (Revelation 12:11) I think sometimes we don’t get that idea of spiritual warfare.

We’ve had a bunch of birthdays in my family this week. My dad had his birthday, my son had his birthday, my grandson had his birthday, my granddaughter is coming this next week, it’s her birthday…I need money. But it was Jeremiah’s birthday this past week and he wanted to go to the Waffle House with D-Dad. How do you turn that down? It was wonderful, you know, we went down there. He likes his waffle (and I invented this by the way) cut pizza-style. That’s cut like pizza, and then you pour the syrup in the middle and you can dip it. I don’t know if you’ve ever thought about waffles as finger food, but it works.

And he wanted to go to Medieval Times. Now I’d never been to Medieval Times. How many of you have been to Medieval Times? Oh my goodness! I’m way out of the culture. I’ve never had the desire to go to Medieval Times. I think there are actually some people who work there who come here to church. God bless you. I think you do valuable work.

But he wanted to go to Medieval Times. So we got some tickets, we went to Medieval Times. For you that are like me, I have no idea. It’s this great big narrative they pull you into. There are kingdoms, and conflict, and the king decides he wants peace, so he sends his son over to offer terms of peace, and the evil kingdom grabs his son, and captures his son, and there’s this knight, and there’s jousting, and during all this jousting and this narrative that’s going on, they’re offering you food that you eat with your fingers, which I actually like.

Now you’re supposed to root for your knight. We had the black and white knight. And you know, I have Hoffman kids there, and we have this Hoffman tradition going back to my grandfather, that when you go to a game you get into the game. You understand what I mean? Any of you like this? You know, you yell. You yell at the umps and the refs, and you jeer the team you hate, you know. This is part of the game, which causes levels of conflict for me when you go to kids’ games, because you can’t cheer a 15-year-old striking out. That’s wrong. But it’s a different thing when it’s professionals. They get plenty of money. You can tell them they’re lousy.

Don Balfour, who I think is here somewhere, we used to split up these season tickets when the Braves were bad. Really, really bad. I mean you could not get people to go to the games with you. There was a statement that if you left four tickets to the Braves under your windshield wiper, you would come back and find four more. I mean you couldn’t beg people to go to watch the… But you know Don, I know he tries to act like he’s kind of sophisticated and stuff, but he isn’t. You go to a ball game with him. He knows how to jeer, heckle, you know. And I’m from… My Dad does it, my granddad did it, I do it. I feel responsibility to teach my kids how to do it.

So we’re at the Medieval Times you know, and when we used to go with Don and Ginny and Jody, Ginny and Jody would just sit there like, We don’t know them. We don’t know them. But we’re sitting there at the Medieval Times, and they tell you, “Cheer for your knight.” So I have the kids there. “Yeah, black knight! Yeah, black knight!” The evil knight is the green knight. So you know…”We hate the green knight!” And I get this note down from Marcy, “We’re trying to teach the kids not to say hate.”

So I’m trying to come up with… I’m a pastor. I write stuff down. I’m trying to think of something I can do age-appropriate with the green knight. So I’m thinking and said, “Green knight you’re a goober! Green knight you’re a maggot! Green knight you look from the front like your horse does from the back!” But it’s my job! It’s a Hoffman tradition. You’re going to be there, you get involved. Our guy, black knight, he wasn’t actually the most handsome or coordinated knight, but he’s our knight. And I know how to… If you’re a Chicago Cub fan you know how to brute for the losers. That’s okay. So I’m like, “Yeah black knight! Bad green knight!”

So Josiah leans over to me and says, “D-Daddy, D-Daddy?”

“Yes?”

“The green knight loses. Don’t worry. I’ve been here before. He loses every time.”

Now let me tell you something. Satan loses. You understand? And he loses every single time. Every single time. We’re coming up on Holy Week, and we’re going to read through those horrendous crucifixion narratives, but read Colossians, chapter 2 and Colossians, chapter 3. Satan was so absolutely… He didn’t even know what he was doing. It says this very clearly. “If the princes and the powers of this world knew what they were doing when they crucified the Lord of Glory, they would have never done it.” This whole epic, this narrative, this story, it’s a consuming, amazing, powerful story that we are invited to live into.

You need to ask yourself…Is the story that you’re living worthy of your life? And this one is. It’s absolutely amazing. So I’m going to read through there. Let’s just start. But think about cosmic conflict, warfare. Look at verse 18, chapter 15. “If the world hates you, remember that it hated me first. The world would love you as one of its own if you belonged to it, but you are no longer part of the world. I chose you to come out of the world.” (John 15:18-19) That word that is used there is kosmos. It’s the world order. It’s the world as abuser. It’s the world as oppressor. It’s the world as just being oppressed, caught under the snare of Satan.

“Do you remember what I told you? ‘A slave is not greater than the master.’ Since they persecuted Me, naturally they’re going to persecute you. And if they had listened to Me, they would listen to you. They will do all this because of Me. They rejected the One who sent me. They would not be guilty if I had not come and spoken to them. But they have no excuse for their sin. Anyone who hates Me hates my Father. If I hadn’t done such miraculous signs among them that no one else could do, they would not be guilty. But as it is, they have seen everything I did, and they still hate Me and My Father. This fulfills what is written in the Scriptures: ‘They hated me without a cause.'” (John 15:20-25)

Now this is where the whole narrative changes. He talks about this animosity, this inability to live in peaceful co-existence with a system that doesn’t even fit. There’s no compatibility. But here’s the promise: “I will send you the Advocate.” (John 15:26) You know who the Advocate is? That’s the Holy Spirit. Have you ever been in serious need of an advocate? Yep. Where you were in way over your head. Where you needed somebody to step in, who would be your advocate, who could speak the language, who could deal with the situation.

“I’m going to send you the Advocate. I’m going to send you one that is the Spirit of authenticity.” That’s literally what that word is used there. It’s althea. It’s to be absolutely true. “He will come to you from the Father and He will testify about Me, and you must also testify about Me, because you have been with Me from the beginning. I’ve told you these things…” Notice. “…so that you won’t abandon your faith.” (John 15:26-16:1) What’s He talking about? “So you won’t go AWOL. When things seem like they’re completely out of control, remember there’s an Advocate.”

“You’ll be expelled from the synagogues, and the time is coming that those who will kill you will think they’re doing a holy service for God.” (John 16:2) Wow! What a mess this is going to be. He’s already talking to them. Look back through church history and see the slaughter that has been done under the name of God. I remember a number of years ago I was down in a museum in Peru where they had set up a museum to what happened in the Inquisition. It’s literally what would happen down in the bottom of this cathedral.

They had this whole big, dark, wooden desk, and these guys dressed officially as church leaders, and they would bring these poor, ignorant, uninformed people in there. They would accuse them of heresy, sometimes for no other reason than they wanted their land. They had a big cross on the side of this inquisition room, and all these torture instruments in the back, and this big, life-size depiction of Jesus hanging on the cross.

Then these people purporting to be in the name of God would start interrogating these people, and then they would look at one another and say, “Do you think he’s actually a heretic?” Then they would say, “Yes.” And then they would turn over to this life-size manikin of Jesus hanging on the cross and say, “Jesus, do you think he’s guilty of heresy? What should we do? Should we condemn him?” And they had a lever they would push, and that lever was connected, and the head of Jesus would swing up and down.

And these poor people, caught in their suspicion, were then taken back and tortured in the name of God. You could repeat that story over and over again, with the Serbs who marched through Kosovo carving the cross in people’s backs, and raping children, and raising their three fingers when they would slaughter people, in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost. One of the most absolutely perverse statements that is uttered in our lifetime is the idea of blowing someone up as you scream out, “Allah Akbar! God is great.” Anything that perverts itself to kill somebody in the name of God is perverse beyond imagination. And He says, “They’re going to do it. Remember my warning.”

Look at verse 5. “But I am going away to the One who sent Me, and not one of you is asking where I’m going. Instead you grieve because of what I’ve told you.” But look at this. “In fact, it is best…” The Holy Spirit advantage is what is described here. “…that I go away, because if I don’t the Advocate won’t come. And if I go, then I will send Him to you. And when He comes…” And here is where you find the five works that are described by Jesus of the Holy Spirit. “When He comes, He will convict the world of its sin, and of God’s righteousness, and the coming judgment.” (John 16:5-8)

Those are the three things there. Then He explains those three things. “The world’s sin is that it refuses to believe in Me.” (John 16:9) So the number one work of the Holy Spirit is to convict the world, and I hope you get this, not just of sin, but of treason, because it refused to believe. It’s a rejection of the King and the kingdom. “The world’s sin is that it refuses to believe in Me. And He will convict the world of its sin and God’s righteousness.”

Now listen to that. That’s important. That’s the second work of the Holy Spirit. And what He describes there of convict of righteousness is in verse 10. “Righteousness is available because I go to the Father.” (John 16:10) What’s He talking about there? He’s talking about the intercessory work of Jesus upon the cross, that “He ever lives to make intercession for us.” (Hebrews 7:25) Don’t mistake what the Holy Spirit does. The Holy Spirit convicts the world of their treason. He convicts those who have trusted Christ as their Savior of their righteousness.

When Jesus stands before the Father, He is interceding on our behalf. We are as pure and as righteous as Jesus Himself. Now that may be hard for you to get your arms around, and your ideas around, about grace, but I don’t know if you’ve ever sat down and thought to yourself, I feel so convicted of my righteousness. I feel so convicted of my purity. I feel so exposed of how God has worked within me, and given and imputed His righteousness to me. And the third work is of the judgment of Satan because the ruler of this world has been judged.

Verse 13: “When the Spirit of truth comes, He will guide you.” (John 16:13) That’s the work of the guidance of the Holy Spirit, the internal guidance factor that He places in you. And the work number five is, “He will bring glory by telling you whatever He receives from Me.” (John 16:14) That He glorifies Jesus. “He will bring glory to Me.” It’s interesting what He says here. He says, “There’s so much more I want to tell you, but you’re not really able to absorb it right now.” (John 16:12)

Let’s pray: Lord, thank You for You. Lord, thank You for what kind of amazing God You are. Lord, thank You for giving us knowledge, and confidence that this spiritual war that we’re engaged in, this kingdom narrative, this kingdom reality, this promise that You are going to take back the whole house, this promise of overcoming, this promise of victory, is ours. Lord, there are probably some people here this morning that need to be convicted of their treason. Lord, there are probably some people here this morning that need to be convicted of their righteousness in You. Lord, there are undoubtedly every one of us that need Your guidance. Lord, I think You’ve called us to be active participants in this. Lord, we thank You for that. In Your name we pray, amen.