Sermon Text: John 15:26-16:11
Date: May 19, 2024
Event: The Day of Pentecost, Year B
John 15:26-16:11 (EHV)
“When the Counselor comes, whom I will send to you from the Father—the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father—he will testify about me. 27And you also are going to testify, because you have been with me from the beginning.”
16:1“I have told you these things so that you will not fall away. 2They will put you out of the synagogues. In fact, a time is coming when anyone who murders you will think he is offering a service to God. 3They will do these things because they have not known the Father or me. 4But I have told you these things so that when their time comes, you may remember that I told them to you. I did not tell you these things from the beginning, because I was with you.
5“But now I am going away to him who sent me, and not one of you asks me, ‘Where are you going?’ 6Yet because I have told you these things, sorrow has filled your heart. 7Nevertheless, I am telling you the truth: It is good for you that I go away. For if I do not go away, the Counselor will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you. 8When he comes, he will convict the world about sin, about righteousness, and about judgment: 9about sin, because they do not believe in me; 10about righteousness, because I am going to the Father and you will no longer see me; 11about judgment, because the ruler of this world has been condemned.
“I Will Send Him to You”
Last week, we addressed some of the difficulties of being a Christian in this world: We believe, but we do not see. It is difficult to have that child-like faith to trust what we cannot see! Jesus said to Thomas the week after he rose from the dead that those who believed yet did not see were blessed! But how often aren’t we like Thomas, just longing for proof and evidence that God does love us? “Lord, please, just a moment… let me touch those nail marks in your hands…”
Jesus promised his disciples some proof that he had not left them: he would send the Holy Spirit, the Counselor, to them. Jesus said that the order of things was that he had to go, and then the Holy Spirit would come to them. Elsewhere, Jesus describes it as being clothed with power from on high. The Holy Spirit was going to do some remarkable things.
And we saw some of those things in our Second Reading this morning—the sound of the rushing wind, the flames of fire over the disciples’ heads, and the ability to speak in earthly languages they had never studied. It was a clear, public sending of the Spirit’s power. One could hardly miss it if you were there. That first Christian Pentecost Day was, in part, Jesus making good on his promise, “I will send him to you.” The Spirit’s power was the proof that Jesus was faithful to his promises and continued to be with them even if they couldn’t see him.
However, the Pentecost arrival of the Holy Spirit is only one small sliver of the Spirit’s work. And even if we have never experienced the outward gifts that the disciples did on that first Christian Pentecost Day, the promise of the Holy Spirit still applies to us because Jesus was not speaking only of this one day when he promised the Spirit to his disciples: he promised a lifetime of blessings as the Spirit did his convicting and convincing work through the disciples’ message. And this is a promise that spans generations, even to us today.
Unlike on that first Christian Pentecost, though, sometimes the work of the Spirit is about as difficult to see as Jesus himself. The Holy Spirit works quietly in the background, generally through unimpressive means. And so, we can feel a bit alone, as if God is not with us, as if Jesus’ promises perhaps do not apply to us. This morning, let’s take a few moments to unpack what Jesus said the work of the Holy Spirit is and see if we can see that work being done among us today.
Jesus centers and grounds the Holy Spirit’s work in testifying and witnessing, “When the Counselor comes… he will testify about me…. When he comes, he will convict the world about sin, about righteousness, and about judgment.” The Holy Spirit’s primary work is not in flashy signs or miracles, though he can certainly do that. The Spirit’s primary work is testifying and witnessing about Jesus, bringing both God’s law and gospel to the world.
So, the Holy Spirit’s arrival on Pentecost wasn’t the first time the disciples experienced the Spirit’s work within them. The Spirit was at work in their hearts before they ever met Jesus, as they were faithful Jewish believers looking forward to God fulfilling his promises. The Holy Spirit was responsible for that forward-looking, “Old Testament” faith. On that first Christian Pentecost Day, the Spirit’s work was most importantly demonstrated not in tounges of fire or language gifts but in the boldness he gave to the disciples to speak and in the faith he brought to life in the hearts of 3,000 people who listened to Peter and the others proclaim the wonders of God.
By nature, without God’s Word, you knew some things about God. You looked around and could reason that this world did not come out of nowhere. Some strong power and organizational force must have put it together. You knew the difference between right and wrong, not as a social construct, but as an inward and innate knowledge. The guilt that could grip you testifies to the fact that you have not kept right and wrong in your life as you should and that there would undoubtedly be bad ramifications for those failures, probably at the hand of whoever or whatever put this world together. And so, by nature, we are at war with God. We are as spiritually dead as those dusty bones Ezekiel saw in the desert.
But that’s not all there is to know about God. Nature and your conscience testify in part, but the Holy Spirit testifies in whole. Yes, God reinforces the concepts of objective, universal morality through his Word. But much more than that, the Holy Spirit testifies to what we could not know on our own: God's love and forgiveness.
In his Word, the Holy Spirit takes us back to the cross and points to Jesus crucified there for the world's sins. The Spirit declares what we could not see or understand even if we had been there that day. “This,” the Spirit says, “is for you. You are forgiven because Jesus paid the price, your debt, and suffered your hell.” You believe that Jesus is your Savior, not because you decided to believe or put so much effort into it, but because the Holy Spirit created that faith in your heart. You and I, who were spiritually dead, are raised to life in the faith God gives.
The message of the gospel doesn’t really make any sense. Why would God, whom we sinned against, take on human flesh to suffer and die for those sins that we committed against him? This is not something that we could have come up with on our own, and even if someone had, it would be viewed as laughable fiction. But it is not fiction! When we had no one to save us, Jesus died for us and paid for every sin!
That means we are forgiven for all we’ve ever done wrong. Jesus took that load of guilt and the punishment of hell on himself. He promised his disciples a gift in the Holy Spirit, but the gift of his life was just as important. When he died, he defeated sin for us. When we rose from the dead, he proved that sin has been put away forever.
That means that you and I stand forgiven. For every doubt, for every time we’ve not made God our priority, for every sin against his holy law, those sins are all gone. And the Holy Spirit brings this comfort in ways that don’t seem particularly impressive. A splash of water and God’s name being spoken over a person. The promises of God spoken aloud or read off a page. A fleck of bread and a sip of wine that carries with it Jesus’ actual body and blood for the forgiveness of our sins. None of these things would make anyone ooh and aah. But they are the simple ways that God does his extraordinary work.
So simple are these means that Jesus is clear that the disciples would be the ones to bring them to others. Jesus would not be with them permanently—he was going away just as planned. Angels would not come to preach to the masses. And even the Holy Spirit would not clearly, directly intervene in the lives of the people of the world. No, the Spirit will work quietly, content to bring his perfect message through flawed messengers. Flawed messengers like Peter and the other disciples, like you and me.
So, the real work of bringing people to faith is God’s alone. But just because God works through his messengers and the Holy Spirit works through his gospel message, it does not mean that this work will be easy or pleasant for us who share his Word. I have told you these things so that you will not fall away. They will put you out of the synagogues. In fact, a time is coming when anyone who murders you will think he is offering a service to God. That sounds… very bad. Very troubling. Very difficult.
Despite the gospel's message being immensely good news, it will not be universally well received. People will ignore it, make fun of it, and even violently fight against it. But despite all those hardships and troubles, the Holy Spirit is still working. Maybe he doesn’t bring 3,000 to faith as he did on that first Christian Pentecost Day. Maybe it’s just one; maybe at a given time, it’s actually none. But where God’s Word is, where the gospel is proclaimed, there is the Holy Spirit. And wherever we Christians go, the Holy Spirit is also there with us. Why? Because Jesus promised he would send him. And so he has.
Take heart, my fellow temples of the Holy Spirit. Jesus has been faithful, bringing you from spiritual death to spiritual life. He sent us the Holy Spirit as he promised. Let us go and be the Spirit’s mouthpieces in the world! Amen.
