Deo Gloria
Sermon for June 5, 2022
Pastor Martin Bentz
Text: John 14:23-27
Theme: Take Comfort in the Counselor!
- He comes to teach you.
- He comes to give you peace.
It happened a few years ago now, but perhaps some of you remember the story. A couple from San Ramon, CA left their two boys home alone while they went away on vacation to Las Vegas. Now it would be one thing if their children had been teenagers, say 17 or 18 years old; but they weren’t. The older boy was 10 and the younger one was 5. And the thing is they did get a dog-sitter for their puppies. Can you imagine? I mean, as parents you and I might dream about doing something like that just to get a break, especially after a particularly frustrating day with our children. Or we might even threaten to leave them home as punishment for their misbehavior; but to actually do it? To leave your young children home alone to take care of themselves while you go away on vacation–I can’t imagine!
Jesus couldn’t either. Jesus couldn’t imagine leaving his children, his disciples, alone in the world to fend for themselves while he was gone. So he didn’t. Ten days after he ascended into heaven he sent someone to be with his disciples and help them until the time he would return. Jesus sent the Counselor to them, the Holy Spirit.
That’s what Pentecost is all about. Pentecost celebrates the coming of the Holy Spirit, the one who was sent to help the disciples, to assist them and empower them as they carried out the work Jesus had given them: to go and make disciples of all nations. The disciples could take great comfort in the Counselor. And so can we. We too can take comfort in the Counselor, the one who comes to teach us and who comes to give us peace.
The setting for these verses is the Upper Room on Maundy Thursday. This was Jesus’ last night with his disciples, his last opportunity to spend time with them and to teach them before he suffered and died on the cross. As you can imagine, Jesus had a lot to say to them that evening, a lot of instructions to give them. In fact, in the Bible the words Jesus spoke to them make up the better part of five chapters. They begin back in ch. 13 and continue all the way to the end of ch. 17. And yet, the point here is not so much the amount of instruction, but that Jesus had been the one instructing them. Jesus refers to this in v. 25. “All this I have spoken while still with you,” he said. However, as Jesus also made clear that evening, it wasn’t going to be that way very much longer. Soon he would be leaving them and returning to the Father.
And with Jesus talking about leaving, I’m sure the thought must have crossed the disciples’ minds, “How are we ever going to remember everything Jesus told us?” Could you? I mean if I took the time right now to read to you John chapters 13, 14, 15, 16 and 17, could you go home and write it all down from memory? What about a week from now or a month from now—would you still remember Jesus’ words?
And yet, this wasn’t all that Jesus had taught them. Jesus had been with them almost three years now. The entire time Jesus had been teaching them, sharing with them precious truths about the kingdom of God and practical guidance for every day life. There were so many lessons, so many parables, so many miracles. How could they possibly remember them all? How could they keep it all straight? It would be like taking a class in college for three years and at the end of the class for the final exam the professor gives you 100 sheets of blank paper with a single directive at the top of the first page: “On the following pages write down everything I taught you for the past three years.” Could you do it? I couldn’t. The disciples couldn’t either. They needed some help.
And they got it in the form of the Counselor. The Counselor, the Holy Spirit, would serve sort of like a substitute teacher. While their teacher was gone on sabbatical, the Holy Spirit would fill in. As Jesus says in v. 26, he “will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.”
And that’s exactly what he did. The Holy Spirit helped the disciples remember the things that Jesus had taught them. And he helped them share what he had said with others. As time went by and it became more and more evident that Jesus’ words and actions needed to be written down in order to be preserved for future generations, again the Holy Spirit helped them. He helped them remember the events in the life and ministry of Jesus as if they had just happened yesterday, so that you and I today might know the things that Jesus said and did.
That means that what we have recorded in John’s Gospel, for example, or in Matthew’s Gospel are not just their impressions of what Jesus said and did during his lifetime. Nor are they merely the best they could do from memory without the benefit of a tape recorder. The words we have recorded in John’s Gospel are 100% accurate and reliable. They are the very words of Jesus. That’s what we mean when we say that the Scriptures are inspired. We mean that the Holy Spirit guided and helped the men who wrote the Bible in writing what they did. In many cases he gave them the very words to say, so that what they wrote down was 100% true and correct. So when it comes to the Kingdom of God and how you get into the Kingdom of God, when it comes to eternal truth and timeless principles by which we can live our lives, we don’t have to take John’s word for it. We can take Jesus’ word for it, because we have Jesus’ word, recorded for us by John with the help of the Holy Spirit.
In addition to helping the disciples remember what Jesus had taught them, the Counselor also helped them understand it. Often we read in the Gospels that the disciples did not understand what Jesus was saying. A typical example occurs in John ch. 2. There Jesus said, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days”(v. 19). At the time the disciples didn’t understand what Jesus meant. But later on they did, after Jesus rose on the third day, after Jesus opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures. In Jesus’ absence the Counselor would do the same for them. He would open their minds so they could understand all that Jesus had taught them.
The Holy Spirit does the same for us, for Jesus’ modern-day disciples. You and I can take comfort in the Counselor because he helps us remember the words and works of Jesus. He helps you remember, for instance, when some kids at school make fun of you because of your Christian faith and you might be tempted to retaliate or get even—he helps you remember what Jesus said in Matthew ch. 5: “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven”(vv. 44+45).
He helps us remember when we’re struggling financially and we’re not sure how we’re going to make it. He reminds us of Jesus’ words in Matthew ch. 6:
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?” (vv. 25+26)
When our hearts are heavy because of our sins, when we wonder whether or not God could really forgive us for what we said or did, he reminds us of those comforting words found in the book of Psalms: “As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us”(103:12). Yes, we can take great comfort in the Holy Spirit, that he helps us remember God’s Word.
And that he also helps us understand it. Just as the Holy Spirit helped the disciples understand what Jesus taught them, so he also helps us understand what Jesus teaches us in his Word. In fact, without his help, we wouldn’t understand any of what the Scriptures say. This is the point Paul makes in 1 Corinthians ch. 2: “The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned”(v. 14).
If you have difficulty understanding the Scriptures at times, let me offer you a few suggestions. First of all, pray. Pray that God would send you the Holy Spirit to help you understand his Word. I do that every time I sit down to study God’s Word for a sermon or for Bible Class. Start with prayer. Secondly, submit your heart and mind to the Spirit’s instruction from the Word. In other words, accept what it says even if it doesn’t happen to make sense to you, even if you don’t like what it says—accept it because it is God’s Word. And thirdly, keep on studying. The more you study God’s Word, the more the Holy Spirit will help you understand what it says. I can’t tell you how many times that has happened to me. One time I’ll be studying a portion of God’s Word and I’ll really be struggling to understand one particular phrase or sentence. And then I’ll come back to the passage a month or two later or maybe a year later and that phrase or sentence I had trouble understanding before now is perfectly clear. The Holy Spirit helped me grow in my wisdom and understanding of God’s Word. He’ll do the same for you. That’s one of the ways the Counselor helps us and one of the reasons we can take comfort in him.
A second reason is that he gives us peace. Notice that this peace is not a worldly kind of peace. Jesus makes that clear in what he says: “I do not give to you as the world gives”(v. 27). In other words, it is not a peace among nations, the kind of peace for which the United Nations strives. Nor is it a financial security kind of peace, the so-called “peace of mind” that comes from having lots of money in your bank account and plenty put away for retirement. Likewise it is not a physical security kind of peace, the kind that comes from having dead-bolt locks on all your doors and a German shepherd for a watch dog. This is the kind of peace the world offers and the world looks for. It’s not the kind of peace Jesus offers.
The peace the world gives can be shaken. Worldly peace can be shattered by evil tyrants and power hungry leaders. Worldly peace can be shaken by a down turn in the economy or by a sudden medical illness. Worldly peace can be shaken by the news that the house just down the street was broken into over the weekend while the owners were gone. But not the peace that Jesus gives. The peace that Jesus gives cannot be shaken because it’s a different kind of peace. It’s a peace that involves our relationship with God.
By nature you and I are not at peace with God. By nature we are anxious and uneasy about our relationship with God, and rightly so. God is holy. God is righteous. We are not. God expects perfection, and we are anything but. God expects obedience, and we are disobedient. God expects a life of love and thankfulness and praise. And all too often we are thankless and greedy and hateful. Instead of being in a right relationship with God, we are separated from him, separated from him because of our sins.
And there is nothing we can do to fix it. There is nothing we can do to make things better again. We can’t cover up our sins and pretend they didn’t happen, because God knows better. We can’t pay for our sins with our own good deeds and our own good works, so that our conscience doesn’t bother us anymore or so that God will accept us into heaven. So we don’t have peace. We’re afraid, afraid of dying and having to stand before the almighty Judge of heaven and earth because we know we don’t measure up. We know we have fallen short. We know we will be condemned.
But what we could not do, our Savior Jesus did. By his perfect life and his sacrificial death on the cross, Jesus paid the penalty for all our sins. He took our sins away and brought us back into a right relationship with God. He secured for us what we, and our world, are so desperately searching for: peace, peace with God.
Yes, the peace that Jesus gives is an inner peace, a peace of heart and soul. It’s a peace that comes from knowing that nothing can ever separate us from God and his love. It’s a peace that comes from knowing that the Almighty God of heaven is not our angry Judge, but our loving Father, and that we are his dear children. It’s a peace that comes from knowing that when we close our eyes in death, the next time we open them we’ll see Jesus’ smiling face. It’s a peace that lets us rest at night even after a day when hardly anything went right, because in faith we can turn to our Savior and say: “Jesus Savior, wash away all that has been wrong today.” It’s a peace that enables a person facing major surgery to say and to mean it from the bottom of her heart: “I know everything will be all right, pastor. Jesus will be with me.” This is another reason we can take comfort in the Counselor, because through God’s Word he keeps our eyes of faith focused on our Savior Jesus. And by doing so, he gives us peace.
Would Jesus go away on vacation and leave his children alone to fend for themselves? Absolutely not! Though Jesus did return to heaven after successfully completing his work here on earth, he has by no means left us alone. He has sent someone to help us, his Holy Spirit, to teach us his Word and to give us his peace. Take comfort in the Counselor! Amen.