Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript
## John 14:25-26 — The Advent of the Strengthening Teacher

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Or in the 19th century in our country. I think the man that wrote the lyrics, Longfellow, probably was not very orthodox, but like so many songs that we sing at this season, God has used these songs to speak forth the truth of his word. That while the eyes of sight behold conflict in the world, we are assured that peace on earth, good will to men, is the progression of our history, that the earth does indeed revolve from night to day.

What a wondrous time of year it is to sing forth those truths to be assured at the bottom of our being that the Lord Jesus Christ has come and everything has changed in the world and that will be reflected as history progresses. Today’s sermon text is John 14:25 and 26. Our topic is the advent of the strengthening teacher.

John 14:25 and 26. Please stand for the reading of God’s word.

“These things I have spoken to you while being present with you. But the helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name. He will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you.”

Let’s pray. Mighty God, open once more the heavens. Send forth your renewing Holy Spirit. Speak to us this day so that we might hear and respond in joy as we worship your son Jesus Christ. Baptize us as it were with your delight that we might know that we belong to you. Fling open the shutters of our souls with your holy spirit so the radiance of your scriptures may shine into our hearts with the illuminating knowledge of your glory in Christ’s presence. Hear us. Guide us as we pray in Jesus’ powerful name. Amen.

Please be seated.

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Well, we have been looking in John 14 at the last words of our savior as he gives to his disciples as he moves toward the cross. His last words are assurance of a continuing advent to them, that he will be coming to them. Certainly on Resurrection Sunday, what we call Easter, he’ll manifest himself to his disciples for 40 days and then he’ll go to heaven, but the spirit will be sent. The spirit will in our text today continue to manifest the savior to the hearts, souls and minds of his disciples.

So John 14, taken as a unit—and it is such—can be seen as a series of promises of the advent of the Lord Jesus Christ. And this season is one in which we prepare for the advent of Jesus. We think back on the preparation of the world for 4,000 years and the manifestation of the Lord Jesus Christ, assuring us that history has definitively changed. Seeking an advent in our day and age for the coming of Christ and the power of the spirit upon us that we might be his messengers and disciples.

John 14 is all about that.

John 14, as I said, it’s taken—it’s really a unit. If you look down past our text in verse 27, next week we’ll talk about the advent of peace. But then the last thing that happens in this John 14, at the end of verse 31, he says, “Arise and let us go from here.” Now, he doesn’t—I mean the text doesn’t then say they arise and go. Chapter 15 starts up by talking about how he’s the vine and we are the branches. So the discourse continues, but we don’t know. We can speculate. We may talk about that in another week or two about why it does that.

But the important thing to see right now is that it delineates chapter 14 as a unit to us, right? Peter’s been assured he’s going to sin. Jesus has given him comfort at the beginning of 14. He’s given this great long discourse, and at the end he says, “Arise and let us go.” It’s a unit. It’s a unit.

And treating it as a unit, we will come to the climax of this unit next week when we see the Lord Jesus Christ saying that he gives us peace.

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So this thing builds up beginning with the great comfort given to us of our eternal home, what he comforts Peter with. Remember: I go away. I go to prepare a place, be a mansion for you. My Father’s house has many dwelling places in heaven—the eternal home. We talked about that at Thanksgiving, right? Our homes, our families, are what we think about this time of year. It’s always a bittersweet kind of a thing, is it not?

Because our homes are certainly pictures of blessing and peace, but they’re also pictures of not really as much blessing and peace, not as much of the word of God, not as much love, not as much warmth, not as much light as we’d hope there to be. But we’re assured by God that our destination, our eternal destination, is that home in heaven. That’s the underlined foundation for what he then unpacks or unfolds in the rest of this chapter that we’ve been dealing with.

So the foundational comfort is given to us of this eternal home in glory, that everything else that happens to us—wonderful blessings from Jesus—draw our attention to this. Everything’s all right at its most basic level for the Christian, no matter what’s happening. Heart attacks, difficult births, traveling to a weird foreign country where you have to take your own toilet paper and that sort of thing, whatever happens—sicknesses, problems, flu, throwing up—you know, our eternal home is of the Lord Jesus Christ and the glory of glories. In spite of whatever shortcomings we manifest to one another, our sins don’t prevent the love of God that can’t remove us from his hand. And so we have this tremendous foundational comfort of this eternal home.

And then our savior moved from that. It doesn’t end there. That’s kind of the beginning place. And then he said that he was going to strengthen them—not just so they’d get by here, but he would strengthen them to do the work he’d assigned them to do by sending them the Holy Spirit.

So the advent of Jesus comes to us by means of the Holy Spirit. His disciples would receive that advent, and they would be strengthened to do a particular task.

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Remember, we said that the word comforter is fine, but comforter means “with strength for us”—not just consolation, “Oh it’s okay anyway.” We’re strengthened. See, we become strong men and women. I was talking to one of the deacon candidates, and you know, it’s—I hope nobody minds me saying this—but you know, the officers’ wives in this church, including the candidates’ wives, the wise of the candidate—these are strong women, you know. Blazing with conviction. You know, these are strong. That’s good.

See, we want strong men in this church, and we want strong women. We want strong young people. See, their model is to be strengthened by the Holy Spirit, not to just get by, okay? That ought to be a strong presence in the world. You know, Proverbs—that Proverbs woman—the word that’s used about her is she’s described as a mighty warrior, the same kind of term that’s used in the Hebrew of the mighty men of valor. This is the Proverb for strong women. This is a good thing. The Holy Spirit comes to strengthen us.

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And then we looked at after the advent of the spirit is described—then we looked at last week the advent of the savior. He comes back to us. What does he bring specifically? He brings life and love, right? Jesus is life. Apart from Jesus, there is no life. There’s an old Jimi Hendrix song—kind of a weird thing—and I think at the end of it there’s “no life, there ain’t no life, nowhere.” Well, apart from the Lord Jesus Christ, that is accurate. All there is death.

And we have this belief. We trick ourselves into thinking that this or that is life. We go for the glimmer and glamour of the world. This time of year, particularly, people are going for the lights, you know, and they want Rudolph. They don’t want—they want the spirit of Christmas to be Rudolph. They don’t want the spirit of Christmas to be the Lord Jesus Christ, whose advent always brings with it judgment, of course, strengthening to the task of repentance. So they kind of want that kind of thing, but—there’s no life in any of that. It’s all a facade. It’s all glimmer and glamour. You know, there’s no substance to it.

My brother Mike once said that, you know, sometimes what we think is life is the phosphorescence of decay. It’s not true light. It’s not true life. It’s death, and it’s trying to pretend like it’s life.

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So we saw that Jesus comes—last week—and he brings to us life and love in the context of his commandments. And we saw that he also brings the advent of the glory and glories of the Father himself to us, right? And this week we look at the Holy Spirit again. We’re back to the spirit now.

And now Jesus says, “This strengthener is a teacher who’ll bring to remembrance what Jesus has said. He’ll teach us the things of Jesus.” And then next week he says—as a kind of a postscript almost, as kind of the concluding section—”Peace I give to you.” It’s his bequest, right? You’re going to die. You bring everybody together. This is what you get. This is what you get. The bequest of our savior is peace, not the peace of the world. We’ll see that next week. God’s peace, which is life and love and all that stuff.

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I was thinking of this structure when I was looking at these Advent candles here. And what we can think of in terms of John 14—the foundation, the stand for the wonderful things that Jesus unpacks in John 14—is that great eternal home in heaven that we’re assured of. That’s where the comfort begins, right?

But then the comfort comes from knowing that the Holy Spirit comes to strengthen us. Then in addition to that, we’re given the assurance of Christ’s advent to us, bringing life and love and union and communion—not just with him but with the Father. And so we’ve gone through these. We can sort of think of this as—you know, Thanksgiving was the undergirding of all this stuff. And we talked about before Thanksgiving, on our Thanksgiving Sunday, the foundation for all of this is the great comfort, the assurance of our eternal home.

And then we talked about the advent of the spirit—candle one—who’s a strengthener to obedience and to do great things, right? Do greater things than Jesus. He says, “Ask in prayers for the glory of the Father and see them answered, for the spirit strengthens us.”

Second candle saw the advent of the Lord Jesus Christ, who brings life and love and the Father to us.

Today is the third Sunday in Advent. And this third advent message is about what this spirit is going to do. How is he going to strengthen us? He strengthens us through teaching us the word of the savior, bringing it to our mind and building us up in it.

And then next week we’ll light this fourth candle, and that’ll be peace. The whole section of John 14 will be finished then as a unit. Arise, let us go from this place. And we go next Sunday with the assurance of knowing that we have been brought to peace.

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Notice the comfort through all of this. The comfort of the beginning—this whole point of how John 14 started. You know, “Let not your heart be troubled. Eternal home in heaven.” And then last week, the middle here, he says again, “I will not leave you desolate, fatherless, orphan.” Comfort is what he brings to us with his advent.

And then at the end, the great comfort is that we have the peace of God at the conclusion of this entire masterpiece of John 14. So it’s been a delightful text to work our way through, thinking about the advent of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now it’s a unit, you see what I’m saying? It’s a unit. And when we look at that next week, we can think of the unit of John 14—the pericope, the section, the comprehensive teaching, right? The discourse will go on in chapters 15 and 16. But there’s a sense in which this discourse is now complete because he puts a stamp of conclusion to it: “Arise and let us go forth from this place.”

And we can think of that unit as we look at it: the foundational comfort and hope, the eternal home; the giving of the spirit; the giving of Christ and the Father; the giving of the spirit; and then last, peace. You see how that works? The comfort of the eternal home. The spirit’s going to be sent to you. The son will be sent, bringing life and love. And even the Father will make his dwelling with you.

And then he says again, the spirit will come to you. Gives us more information about the spirit. And matching the first statement of comfort—that we have this eternal home—is that while we’re on this earth, we also have the peace, which is the presence of God amongst his people, God’s order in the world. You see the nice way that flows, right?

Comfort of our eternal home, coming of the strengthening spirit, coming of the Lord Jesus Christ himself that brings life and love at the center of it. And obedience is what love is all about. And Jesus assures us that his coming is the coming of the Father himself to dwell with us.

And then he goes back to the topic of the advent of the spirit. And he concludes by taking this eternal hope, this eternal comfort and making it ours now in this place. God is dwelling in his people and brings us peace.

So this is a unit of scripture, and it has tremendous comfort for us as well as great truth that we should meditate upon.

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Now, this is really introduction, and I’ve got more of it yet, for the very simple points we’re going to make about the Holy Spirit being the strengthening teacher today. I mean, it’s quite simple—the implications of that. But, but see, you’ve got to see it in its context, right? We don’t want to abstract this from its context and not understand its significance to this flow of what our savior is telling us.

And so, you know, what we’re going to do is just talk a little bit about its immediate context. What’s up now to this second statement of the advent of the Lord Jesus Christ. And as we said, this comes after our savior has again brought comfort—that he will not leave us desolate, right?

Zephaniah 3:17—I think I read this last week: “The Lord your God in your midst, the mighty one will save. He will rejoice over you with gladness. He will quiet you with his love. He will rejoice over you with singing.” Wonderful picture of the advent of the God of his people, the coming of Jesus historically 2,000 years ago.

But then the result of that is Jesus assures us that he is continually coming to us and the Father by means of the Holy Spirit, this strengthening spirit of instruction, the spirit who instructs us rather—the strengthening teacher. The end result of that is this assurance that we’re not left desolate. And indeed, not just are we left with that void filled—the void we feel for a Father in heaven—but indeed after that we have the peace, the order of our world, because of the presence of God. It can be no other way.

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You know, it was interesting. Last Sunday, after I went home late Sunday evening, I watched a movie. It’s called “Life as a House.” The title intrigued me, and it’s very much what the scriptures assert. Our life is the house of God. That’s who we are. Just the presence of the Father is what makes life for us. And again, it was one of those Father-son—and even the grandfather gets brought into the thing at the end of the movie, you know, reconciliation. There’s alienation, reconciliation between father and son. And then changing another father in the movie, see? That’s a theme that’s so often repeated.

You know, if you watch many movies, as I do, you see this theme repeated over and over and over. And we need to be told over and over again that the advent of Christ—this worship service when he comes to be with us—he brings the Father. You know, there’s a sense in which that entire section last week about the advent of Christ climaxed in this tremendous statement: that we will come and make our abode with you, right? Eternal home, mansion here with the Father coming.

This is the great movement of the advent of Christ: to bring us to reconcile us to the Father. We are called to live and not die. He told them, you know, they’re getting ready to die. He’s getting ready to die. They’re ready to die for him. And he says, no, I don’t want you to die for me. I want you to live for me. And when my spirit comes, if you’re called on to die physically, he’ll strengthen you to that task. But your job is to live for me, right?

Like that old movie—and other movie, Patton—you know, your job out there, Patton says, is not to die for your country. Make the other guy die for his country because our country’s right in this cause of justice. Well, that’s what it is for us.

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We’re going to see this Friday night as we think about the Old Testament winter feast approved by God. Hanukkah is not. Purim is the true Old Testament winter feast established in the book of Esther. Hanukkah was by a bunch of guys who really were pretty much in rebellion against God—the Maccabees and their followers. There’s things in them to admire, but they didn’t do what was good.

We’re going to celebrate this Friday the true Old Testament winter feast that was the precursor to what we do in our culture at Christmas. There’s giving of gifts and eating of food and having a good time at the end of that book, just like we do at Christmas. And the whole point is victory over the enemies of God. You cannot read the Psalms more than a couple—one or two Psalms—without coming across the assurance that God will destroy the enemies of his people, give us victory.

Jesus enables us to live for him, not to die for him. And when we read about the coming of the strengthening instructor, the teacher, this is the purpose. Yeah, we want to die a good death and all that, but mostly what God wants us to do, you know, for the next, you know, however many days and moments and hours you have left in this life—most of those are spent living for the savior, right? Preparing for the moment of death in your body, but living for the savior.

And God says he brings us life that we might have life in our love and communion with him, to strengthen us.

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He says that in that day—Jesus said, and we talked about this last week, but understand the significance here—the day was promised for 4,000 years, and the day had now arrived. And the day has not ended. The day has begun. Jesus comes. In the beginning, John’s gospel says, with the advent of Jesus Christ 2,000 years ago, the day began. The world moved from—today, lunar festivals in the Old Testament are no longer in the New. We’re in perpetual daylight from one perspective. There’s a new creation.

The day has come and does not stop. That’s why we can sing in our worship services about Jesus being born this day and worshiping him and worshiping the child—because the significance of the Lord Jesus Christ’s advent is that was the day that we are still in historically. The day has started. The day will not end. It will simply come to culmination in the Savior’s final second advent, the return of the Lord Jesus Christ, happens and then all things are changed.

But in the meantime, we are now in the new creation time. This day has an uninterrupted course, as it were, of a single day from the time when Christ exerted the power of the spirit until the last resurrection. Jesus says this is one day. This is the day of the Lord. And that’s why we call this service “Lord’s day”—same in the Greek as the day of the Lord. We’re in that day perpetually.

And that’s what Jesus talked about in our text from last week. And so that strengthening spirit who instructs us comes in the context of the dawning of this day, the more and more light coming as history progresses.

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You know, for us on this side of the equator, this particular season is one that we’re reminded of all this. Next Lord’s day will be the beginning of winter, the demarcation line between fall and winter, and the days start lengthening, right? And so the days are lengthening now as of well, this coming Saturday.

So in our particular celebration of Christmas—and it’s not true in the other half of the world, but for us at least—God has given us a picture, a little symbol of what we’re talking about in John 14, this beautiful unit. The day is dawning. And when Jesus comes December 25th, it was tied by the church to the advent of light and the coming of light that would fill now the whole world. And so that’s a picture for us there.

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So we live now in the context of this day. This is a day in which men are alive or dead in relationship to the presence of the Holy Spirit who brings Jesus and the Father in life and love to them. But this is a day that is still governed by laws. And so the love that we talked about last week is seen in relationship to laws.

You know, I made the point last week that we are not going to be left orphaned. Two places—the term “orphaned” is used both in John 14 and then in James where it says, “The true religion, undefiled, is to visit widows and orphans in their distress.” Now see, as soon as you realize there are two verses—and only two—that use that particular Greek word. And this one says, “Without God the Father coming to you, you’re orphaned. But I will come.” And this one says, “Visit the fatherless.” The implications are clear.

We are those who have the advent of God the Father to us, and we are then to be the advent of God the Father to the fatherless, right? And so the benevolent actions of the church flow out of a proper understanding of the grace of God.

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Only Calvinists can be truly benevolent because we recognize our complete barrenness of spirit. It wasn’t our choice to be saved. If it was our choice, but we kept saying no. Everything in us says no to Christ unless his spirit regenerates us, brings us that life. And then we end up certainly making choices for Jesus. And because we know that without that grace of God we have no help in this world, that’s why we extend grace to others.

If we don’t extend grace to the fatherless, to the widows, trying to help people who are symbols of the bereftness of all mankind, then we’re saying we are not recipients of grace—we pulled ourselves up by our own bootstraps, and so can they. Forget them, okay?

However, the other side of that ditch that we can fall in—the other ditch we can fall into—is to think that our love and our demonstration of that grace is lawless. It’s just good sentimental feelings.

I mentioned this last week, but I’ll actually read the quote from Calvin. “There is nothing to which we are more prone than to slide into a carnal affection, so as to love something else than Christ under the name of Christ. Nothing more we’re more prone to than to slide into a carnal affection. We love Jesus and that’s why we do this and that. But,” he says, “the point is that Jesus says if you love me, you’ll keep my commandments. If you keep my commandments, then I’ll love you. It works both ways. The point is the unity of love and commandment keeping.”

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And what that means is that our benevolences have to be instructed in this new day in which God’s grace is going out through his people to visit the fatherless and the widows in their distress. It’s a day when that visitation is true love in terms of understanding the commands of Jesus and bringing us to a recognition of the application of those commands.

In the New Testament, it still says: If a man won’t work, neither shall he eat. You see, we—it is a sin against Jesus to slide into a carnal affection with the distribution of graces at this time of the year that don’t have understanding. The definition of how to love the poor properly is found in God’s law and his commandments.

So this new day in which the spirit teaches us—he brings us those commandments so that our life and our love that Jesus has come to bring us is indeed seen in relationship to the commands of the Lord Jesus Christ.

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It’s interesting. I read a—I think this was from John Barrett, or maybe it was from Jeff Meyers, I don’t know—but they pointed out something interesting in Galatians 5:14. Can you turn there, please?

Galatians 5:14: read there that the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” okay? So, I don’t know what your particular translation says, but that the whole law is fulfilled in one word: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

And it’s interesting that the Greek word used for law here is nomos. You know, theonomic, antinomianism—law. The whole nomos is fulfilled in one word. And the Greek word for word here usually is law. So the whole nomos is fulfilled in one logos—you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

Now Jesus comes as the logos. That’s what John 1 tells us, right? “In the beginning was the logos. The word was with God and the word was God.” So now the logos comes, and he comes after, you know, a revelation of God through law. We usually think of Mosaic law, but as I’ve said before, Mosaic law is a codification of much of what had gone on before. Abraham obeyed the statutes, judgments, and commandments before they were written down to Moses. So he had them somehow.

So we have law in the Old Testament. But the whole law—or nomos—is fulfilled in Jesus Christ, the logos, the one peculiar unique word of God who comes to earth to fulfill that law. And then the summation of what Jesus is: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. This grace that he shows to us in grace, we’re to manifest to one another.

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In Galatians, Paul is telling the Christian church: Don’t let those Judaizers think that they have the law and you’re lawless. And don’t slip into thinking that way—that because Jesus has come, we can slide to carnal affection, to grace without law. He says, “No, the whole law is fulfilled in Jesus Christ.”

What does it mean? It means that when we look at the Gospels, when we meditate upon the work of the Lord Jesus Christ in the Gospels, we are taught what the fulfillment of the law was as Jesus came to earth and brought it all together.

So the Gospels are a necessary filter, so to speak. The life of the Lord Jesus Christ, recorded in the Gospels, is a necessary thing that we might properly receive what is ours—these commands of Christ from one end of the scriptures to the other—and know how to correctly apply them. That’s the job of the Holy Spirit.

This is how he strengthens us to do greater things than Jesus. This is how he strengthens us to pray to the glory of the Father. He strengthens us by bringing us the word of Christ, that we might obey Christ, that our commands might be linked to our love for him and vice versa. Our love for him is demonstrated in commands.

But the spirit takes those things of the law, helps us to see their fulfillment in the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, and then how we should apply them in the context of our own life. And so this new creation we live in is not grace versus law. It’s grace working through law. It’s law manifesting itself in the faithfulness of Christ, in the faithfulness of his people who love God and have a desire.

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The best way we please Jesus is by doing what he tells us to do. How many parents have told their children: “You love me? Clean your room. You love me, do the dishes.” And you know, maybe when we’re young, some parents probably say that selfishly. But at least the older I’ve gotten, the more I’ve tried to get them to see this relationship of love and obedience is central to the Christian faith.

And it informs what strengthening spirit who comes to us does. He instructs us. He brings us to remembrance. Children, obey your parents—you love me. The spirit says that verse comes to mind: “Obey me. Obey my authorities. Obey me by obeying your parents.”

So we have this new creation, this day that’s dawning, being one of life and love and one that continues to work in the context of instruction and commandments.

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Now, the other thing that’s important that leads up to the two verses we read today is that Jesus said that he would come and bring life and love, and that if we obey his commandments, he will manifest himself to us, right? And again, last week I made this point, but see, it’s vital for understanding this advent of the spirit because our savior has just promised that as we obey him, he will manifest himself to us.

So he defines here the purpose of our calling. The purpose of the comfort is to grow in grace through the application of Christ’s word to us.

Read a couple of quotes from Calvin here that I mentioned but didn’t read last week. He says that Jesus Christ, his meaning is this: “I will grant to those who purely observe my doctrine that they shall make progress from day to day in faith. That is, I will cause them to approach more nearly and more familiarly to me. Hence infer that the fruit of piety is progress in the knowledge of Christ.”

The fruit of piety—true piety, a commitment to obeying God and the power of the spirit. The fruit of that is further growth in an understanding of the doctrines of Christ and who he is.

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Again, Calvin says: “His design was to exhort his disciples to the earnest study of godliness that they might make greater progress in the Christian faith, right? Obey my commandments, make great efforts and commitment to do this that you might progress. I will manifest myself to you, continue to manifest myself in deepening ways to you as you grow in grace through obedience to my commandments by loving me.”

And again, Calvin says this: “He writes that believers may be fully convinced that the obedience which they render to the gospel is pleasing to God. My commandments—this is pleasing to me, even though it’s never perfect obedience, but it’s pleasing to God. And that they may continually expect from him fresh additions of gifts.”

Not only is our works of obedience to God pleasing to the Father, and he smiles upon us, but indeed he promises us that as we do that, he will give us more and more grace, further and further manifestations of who Jesus Christ is. Every day, we receive additions to the gift of God in Christ to us.

And this is what the text is telling us.

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And now when the spirit comes—the strengthener is talked about again—who will bring to mind the word of Christ and teach it to us. We see what the purpose is. The only way we attain that growth in grace is through the indwelling Holy Spirit who is the strengthening instructor of his people.

So we become more dependent upon love. Love is dependent upon obedience. The more we obey God, the more we understand him. The man who walks in his way inevitably walks with him. If we walk in the way of God, the Torah, the commandments, we’re walking with God and we understand and know him more and more.

Now, this is entering into the intertrinitarian life of the Godhead. And again, I mentioned this last week, but here’s a quote from R.J. Rushdoony on this section in John 14. He says: “The promise is made in threefold form. A: the promise of the coming of the Spirit, who is the gift of the Father, who abides in Jesus and will abide in the disciples, coming of the strengthening spirit. B: the promise of the coming of Jesus, who abides in the Father as the disciples will abide in him and he in them. He’s coming—we looked at that last week. And then finally Rushdoony says the promise that both the Father and Jesus will abide with the disciples. The spirit will come and make his residence with you. I will come. And when I come, it’ll be we—me and the Father. We enter into the full trinitarian life of the Godhead.”

Augustine wrote this: “The holy spirit also makes a dwelling with the Father and the Son. He is at home in every way like God in his temple.” The God of the Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, come to us when we come to them.

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So this manifestation of that Jesus talked about—that grows—is placed in the context of the coming of Father and Son to dwell and make a home with us. And he’s already promised the spirit. So we enter into this trinitarian, intertrinitarian relationship of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And that’s all about life. It’s all about love, and it’s all about a structure of the law that defines what those things are.

And that’s the life that the spirit comes to instruct us in and strengthen us and call us to mature. As a result of the advent, then, of the coming of Christ, right, in its broader context—apart from John 14—when we think of Advent, we think of preparation for this coming. And if we understand that this coming—this perpetual coming of God, the further manifestation—is the coming of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, that means some things for us.

It means we need this strengthening Holy Spirit.

We read in Psalm 101. Turn there, please.

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Psalm 101. We—this is a psalm of preparation for Advent. Richard, I think, preached on this several years back. Excellent sermon. It’s a wonderful text. We’ve not memorized it as a family, but boy, this would be a great one for family memorization.

Psalm 101: We talked about this in our junior high Sunday school class today. It’s kind of the complement of Psalm 95. Psalm 95 calls us to worship, warns us: if we don’t worship, what’ll get you, you know, he’ll not enter into his rest. Psalm 101 tells us that once having worshiped it changes—we come to God’s house, our house changes.

Psalm 101 says: “I will sing of mercy and justice to you, oh Lord. I will sing praises. I will behave myself. I will behave wisely in a perfect way.” So this is the answer to Psalm 95. I will come before you in the corporate worship. And then he says, “Oh, when will you come to me?” So he’s thinking of the advent of God. And certainly that’s true in terms of the corporate worship of his people. But he goes on to talk about the manifestation of preparation for this in his house:

“I will walk in my house with a perfect heart. I will set nothing wicked before my eyes. I hate the work of those who fall away. It shall not cling to me. Perverse heart shall depart from me. I will not know it, wickedness. Whoever sleekly slanders his neighbor, I will destroy him. The one who has a haughty look, a proud heart, him I will not endure.”

While I should be unfaithful to the world, et cetera, et cetera. You see, if we understand this advent of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit to us, and we know that he comes in particular manifestations at Lord’s day, but then in our houses as well, we’re going to take the line of David here.

How do we prepare for this advent? We come with a renewed commitment to have the holiness, consecration, and commitment to the triune God that result in a changed house during the week. We come here and are admonished rather to understand that Jesus comes to us at a day when we know not when—nobody knows the hour of our death.

For instance, you know, Brian thought it was coming to him probably Friday night. Lord God spared him. We don’t know which one of us will die this week. Maybe the older we get, the more we’re going to be. How do we prepare? And there’s a sense in which that is the definitive coming of Christ to take us home. And God wants to prepare for the advent of the Lord Jesus Christ, the renewed commitment.

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Now, we can only do this—we can only clean our house, so to speak—through the work of the advent of the strengthening instructor, which is what our text tells us.

Then, our text, understanding that all this stuff is true—these advents of the triune God, life and love, he brings, and this happens in the context of a new day that’s dawning. Our growth in grace is part of that. The world revolving from night to day is part of that. For 2,000 years, the new creation single day has moved forward right and progression has been made in the nations being discipled to the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, and it goes on today. It goes on through people from this congregation, of course, in India. It goes on all over the world. The gospel is being preached, and the world is revolving from night to day.

But in order for this task to be accomplished, we are reminded once more that the only way this can happen is through the indwelling Holy Spirit who strengthens us to this task of lives of commitment and dedication to the Lord Jesus Christ.

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And so our text today tells us quite simply then that for all this to come about, don’t worry again. He says, “I’m not going to leave you alone here. I’m going to send the spirit, and I’m going to explain a little bit more about who he is to you.”

So in the text before us, Jesus says that he will send the spirit of God.

“These things I have spoken to you being present with you. But the helper, the strengthener, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things, bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you.”

Now, we can talk a little bit about this and think about it, but we have two examples in John’s gospel that he’s already prepared us to understand what this verse means, at least in its first application.

Turn, if you will, to John 12:14.

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And here’s one of those instances that Jesus is alluding back to in this upper room discourse. This is the triumphal entry. And in verse 14, Jesus, when he had found a young donkey, sat on it as it is written: “Fear not, daughter of Zion. Behold, your king is coming, sitting on a donkey’s colt.” His disciples did not understand these things at first.

But when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things were written about him and that they had done these things to him.

Okay, so here’s an example in John. The glorification of Christ, his death and then resurrection—this is the basis for the coming of the spirit to his people, right? Jesus dies on the cross and gives up the ghost, gives up the spirit as a sense in which we can see, at least by way of analogy there, the spirit flows into the world in a new creating sort of sense as the accompaniment to the death and resurrection of Christ.

So when Christ is glorified, now these disciples have this gift of the spirit sent to them, this strengthening instructor, and he brings back to their mind specific events in the life of Christ recorded for us here in John’s gospel.

So this is what the text means. The spirit will come, and you’ll understand things better. And here it says, well, they didn’t really know what this Palm Sunday thing was all about all that well. But when the spirit comes, then they remember these things that were written about him and that they had done these things to him. The spirit causes them to remember certain things about Christ, his word, his life, and then they kind of come to a fuller understanding of the implications of what he had taught them.

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Turn to John 2 for another example of this.

John 2 is interesting because it really kind of gives us this in kind of a twofold pattern. And you’ll remember, well, maybe you won’t, back and we talked about the cleansing of the temple. Verse 16, John 2:16, he said to those who sold doves, “Take these things away. Do not make my Father’s house a house of merchandise.”

Then his disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house has eaten me up.”

So the Jews answered and said to him, “What sign do you show to us since you do these things?” Jesus answered and said to them, “Destroy this temple and in three days I’ll raise it up.”

Then the Jews said, “It has taken 46 years to build the temple. Will you raise it up in three days?” But he was speaking of the temple of his body. Therefore, when he had risen from the dead—glorification—his disciples remembered that he had said this to them, and they believed the scripture and the word which Jesus had said.

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See, so this last part, you know, we could think of this by looking at this text: Oh yeah, they just remembered the events because of the things that had happened. But no, Jesus wants us to connect their understanding of the temple of his body and its resurrection and its relationship to the other temple. The Bible wants us to see that this remembering is specifically going to happen as a result of the advent of the strengthening teacher.

You see, Jesus says he’ll come. He’ll come after I’m dead and resurrected, after I’m raised up, I’m going to send the spirit to you and manifest myself to you in that way. And this spirit will cause you to remember things, and he will teach you things.

And here it is. It’s after his resurrection that they remembered what Jesus had said. The spirit of God brings this word to their mind, and the spirit of God then teaches them, brings it to a deeper level of understanding of what it was all about.

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Now, I said John 2 is interesting because there’s already—it’s not as if the spirit has never been at work before. Because we read just before this, when Jesus said that to cleanse the temple, then his disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house has eaten me up.” So this remembering only happens a couple of times in John. They’re all kind of linked together. The spirit’s going to come to bring things to remembrance and bring that truth deeper. But it’s not as if that wasn’t already at work in the world. The spirit was here.

It’s just now there’s a new power, a new strength, and now there’s a focal point on Jesus Christ in that instruction. But the spirit was already bringing things to their mind from the scriptures.

So this is the spirit’s job. It’s given to us by way of instruction here in our text today. It’s also given to us by way of example from two different texts—John 2 and John 12—that tell us what happens after Christ’s resurrection. The spirit now—the strengthening spirit who brings this triune life of God, life and love, obedience to his law, to his word, understanding it through the filter of Christ’s life—all this stuff comes to pass now, and this is what Jesus is saying in terms of his disciples.

But of course it has relevance for us as well.

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But this is the basic explanation of what this text says: that the only way all this will happen is the spirit of God will manifest himself, and he will bring things of the Lord Jesus Christ to us.

You know, you’ve probably had this experience. This isn’t unusual for you, probably. For instance, you might be tempted to a particular sin. Maybe a child is tempted to be disobedient to their parents or disrespectful, and you’ll just remember, you know, the fifth commandment: “Children obey your parents in the Lord because this is right.” The fifth commandment this side of the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ may be blessed in all the earth—not just the land, the holy land of the Old Testament. Now the whole world is affected by the coming of Christ.

So maybe you remember that text. Maybe you, man, are tempted to look at something that isn’t right, and maybe you’ll—maybe some of you—maybe Richard has memorized: Psalm 101 says, “You know, I won’t put no wicked thing in front of my eyes.” My wife—I don’t know where it happened to him—she used to have a plaque about, I think it was from the verse from Job: “You know, I made a covenant with my eyes not to look upon a maid.” Put that on top of my television.

See, spirit of God takes those verses, brings them to mind, causes us to remember them, and then teaches them to us, saying, “Here’s the application. Don’t watch that particular movie. Don’t watch that ad. Turn your head away. Don’t think you’re too grown up to turn your head away by turning your eyes from that thing. Job was a righteous man. He did it. You do it, too.”

This is what the spirit of God does. This is the way this revolving from night to day in our own lives occurs as we are sensitive to the work of the Holy Spirit, memorizing portions of scripture, finding ourselves in the scripture that he causes us to remember.

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You know, it’s interesting. He doesn’t teach us new things. He causes us to remember certain things we’ve already heard about or known. The implication is that your job in terms of giving the spirit the fuel of that is to have something he can bring back to your remembrance. Now, he’s not limited in that way, but this is the way he works.

This means that you must attend to the word, right? You’re going to have to learn more of the word. That’s what the spirit does. He’s a strengthening teacher. But the clear implication by stressing that he’s going to do this by causing you to remember is that we’re to have these scriptures memorized, that the spirit brings back to us and ministers to us—to push us away from temptation, to cause us to be generous to the widows, the fatherless, the strangers, whatever it is.

And so the spirit comes to us. We see some examples, specifically. The spirit comes to us by way of causing us to come into remembrance of his word, and then going to a deeper level of instructing us in terms of applying that word to our particular life.

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Now notice then one of the implications of this—a very important implication that the Reformed church has always stressed quite a bit. The spirit speaks by means of the word, by means of logos, the Lord Jesus Christ and his word to us.

I mean, you know, in our day and age, it’s not that different really. Let me read you something from Calvin here, and you’ll see that really it’s the same of us today.

Let’s see. Calvin says this: “Hence, it follows that he—the Holy Spirit, the strengthening teacher—will not be a builder of new revelations. By this single word, we may refute all the inventions which Satan has brought into the church from the beginning under the pretense of the spirit. Muhammad and the pope agree in holding this as a principle of their religion: that scripture does not contain a perfection of doctrine, but that something loftier has been revealed by the spirit.”

So whether it’s, you know, the Muslims or in Calvin’s day the Catholic Church—this Pope could speak by way of revelation, the spirit would bring new revelations, you see, new doctrine other than the Lord Jesus Christ. And we have cults in our day and age today.

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Calvin says the same for the same point: “The Anabaptists and libertines in our own time have drawn their absurd notions.” But the spirit that introduces any doctrine or invention apart from the gospel is a deceiving spirit, not the spirit of Christ.

You know, in Luther’s day, there were these guys called enthusiasts, much like, you know, more radical charismatics today. And the enthusiasts, you know, the spirit was seen not as tied to the word and to the basic doctrine of the gospel. The spirit was a second blessing that would reveal new truths that weren’t known before, really. And these things are cool stuff and neat new stuff.

And they came to Martin Luther at some point in his life, and a bunch of them were yelling, “The spirit, the spirit.” And Luther said, “I slap your spirit on the snout.” Because see, he knew what Calvin knew: that if Muhammad, if Muslims come to you and say, “Yeah, Jesus was great, but now the spirit is revealed—that this is salvation, this is the savior”—then we want to say that spirit that prompts those sorts of words in contradiction to the gospel that are not built upon the word of God—that spirit is not the spirit of God, no matter what you may call it. That is a deceiving spirit from the pit of hell.

And we do slap that spirit on the snout. We are strong men and women of the Lord Jesus Christ. We don’t need to be fearful of these things, but we rebuke them.

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You see, this is a great truth. We’ve seen many things about the spirit in the last six months. And here in this section of scripture in which the Holy Spirit is referred to eight different times, he’s teaching us what the spirit is. The spirit is a strengthener, not some sort of guy that just gets us by until we die for Christ. He strengthens us to live for Christ. The spirit strengthens us to obey the commandments of Christ. The spirit comes along and instructs us not in some kind of newer novel revelation—he instructs us in the things of Jesus.

You see, so the spirit of God ministers the word of God to us.

If we want to get to that fourth candle, if you want your life to be full light of the four candles burning bright, if we want to get to the peace that Jesus will give as a bequest to his disciples next week in next week’s text, we get there only through means of the spirit of God who comes to us as a strengthening teacher to bring us not new revelation, so to speak, or new revelations, but rather who takes and makes deeper to our hearts the things of Christ which we already know from the scriptures.

The spirit speaks in relationship to the word. And so the word of Jesus Christ—now this is affirmed here too.

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Jesus says the Father will send the spirit in my name, by my authority. In other words, in my stead. And he’s already told us this: that the spirit comes to bring himself to us. And here he wants us to be sure we understand that the spirit comes in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ to minister Christ’s words to us.

Now remember, Christ’s words are the Father’s words, right? I didn’t say anything to you, he said, but I didn’t hear from my Father. The spirit’s words are Christ’s words. Spirit’s not going to say anything to you that isn’t the word, the logos, found in the scriptures. And that logos is dependent upon the Father.

So what do you get? You get the same thing we talked about last week: the indwelling Trinity. The one word of all three members of the Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—indwells you, and you’re taught that one word.

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Now, as I said, the implications of this is that we must be continually learning. We must be committed to a study of the scriptures, the word of God, that the spirit will use to bring to our remembrance and make application in our lives.

A clear implication of the spirit as a strengthening teacher is that if we really want to walk spirit-filled lives, it doesn’t mean blowing our brains out. It doesn’t mean giving way to emotionalism. It doesn’t mean giving way to wild manifestations of worship. What it means to walk in the spirit is to walk in the words of the Lord Jesus Christ and to commit ourselves anew to learning that word, to studying that word, and asking the spirit of God to teach us that particular word.

We must be students of the word to have the peace, the life, and the love—to have the advent of all those things to us. We must be those who are drawn to a desire to study God’s word, to read it, that the spirit may apply it into the context of our lives.

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Notice too what kind of learner we have to be. Very important for some of you—I know all of us to some degree. But notice that this scripture tells us that Christ has told them things, and they don’t get it, okay? But the spirit will come, and then they’ll understand these things.

Now the implication is not that soon as the spirit comes then they know everything immediately. Jesus has just told us that as we walk in obedience, he’ll manifest himself to us more and more. He’ll do that by means of the spirit. So we have to be learners of the word.

But what it means is we’re not going to understand a lot of things we read, you see? We’re going to have to be patient learners because the way it works is we study the scriptures. We expose ourselves to preaching, to Bible studies, to talk amongst one another, to reading the Bible in our homes. But the spirit of God is the only way any of that is taught to us truly.

If the spirit doesn’t accompany my preaching, then there’s no power, effectiveness in it. The spirit’s job, him and him alone, is to teach Christ’s word to us, to call to remembrance, to cause it to us to understand how to apply it, how to walk in obedience to the commands of Christ.

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And as I said, this means that the spirit’s timing is not our time. There’s no automatic. The word is taught to you, you read your Bible, and the spirit applies it. Uh-uh. In fact, Jesus implies just the reverse. You’re going to grow in the manifestation of Christ to you. The spirit will come later to his disciples by way of pattern—later to us—to bring that word to remembrance and apply it and teach us the implications of it in terms of application to our lives.

You see, I know you know people come here, people go to Bible studies, people listen to the radio, they read their Bibles, they, I just don’t know what it is. You know, I thought of this song by Bruce Cobain. It’s an old blues song that he did a remake of. It’s called “Soul of a Man.” And one lyric in it is: “I read the Bible often. I try to read it right. As far as I can understand, it’s nothing but a burning light.”

It’s sung a lot better than it’s recited. But it’s quite a powerful statement. And you know, I—that’s come back to me many a time, that the scriptures sometimes appear nothing but a burning light. We know it’s the truth. We know it’s the only illumination source possible. But as to what it means, sometimes we don’t have the slightest idea.

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Sometimes you read the scripture, and what is that all about? What is it saying up there? I don’t get it. I just don’t get it. You know, what was that Bible study about? I do not understand it.

Well, that’s not unexpected in the Christian life, is my point. This is to be expected. What happens is the word is planted, but it takes time to grow and to manifest and mature itself. That’s the job of the indwelling spirit. It takes time. But praise God, he’s given you the personal instructor, so to speak, the strengthening teacher, to take that stuff that’s sewn in the preaching of the word, in your reading of the word, in Bible studies, and to cause you to come at length to an understanding of it.

So we must be students of the word, but we must be patient learners of the word.

Jesus gives them good courage here, does he not? He said a lot of things they don’t get. And they’re going to spend the rest of their lives, whether it’s long or short, learning and growing in the grace of Christ. But he gives them good comfort in that. Says, “I know you didn’t understand a lot of things I said to you. I know you didn’t understand that triumphal entry thing. I know you didn’t understand the temple being raised up after three days. Take good courage. Over time, my spirit will take that word, will instruct you in it, and establish you, and will continue to manifest me to you.”

That’s why this day that has begun with the advent of Christ is a day filled, you know, a series of days filled with further manifestations of who Jesus is to us. He gives them good courage to us.

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Matthew Henry said, “This admonition is highly useful to all. For if we do not immediately understand what Christ teaches, we begin to grow weary and grudge to bestow unprofitable labor on what is obscure. We’re likely to give up. I don’t know what the point of reading the Bible is. I never understand what I read anyway.”

But Jesus says, “That’s okay. You keep putting that fuel in the fire. The spirit’s embers will come up. He’ll bring these scriptures to remembrance at the proper time, and he’ll instruct you in them.”

We must have an eager desire to receive this instruction, and then we must patiently wait for the spirit to manifest himself.

Again, Henry says: “We must lend our ears and give attention if we desire to make due proficiency in the school of God. And especially we need patience until the Holy Spirit enables us to understand what we thought that we had so often heard to know purpose. Patience and good comfort.”

Jesus gives us here by telling us that his spirit will indeed cause his light to come upon us.

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And so Jesus says that this strengthening spirit is how this manifestation happens. And it means we are patient servants, patient learners of the word, students of the word, desiring for the Holy Spirit to transmit these thoughts to us in his proper time.

Notice as well that the implication of this is that not only are we proper servants or students of the word, but we’re to be instructors of the word as well. Jesus in John 7 says that same spirit will flow out of us. So we didn’t know in John 7 necessarily what that meant, but in the upper room discourse, he tells us that the spirit flows out of us in what way? Well, it means that as the spirit ministers Christ to us, we’re to speak forth and teach Christ’s word to one another.

And in that way, the spirit flows out of the belly, from the innermost part of the being of all his people.

Jesus here at the end of his days says, “I’ve told you this before. He has done due diligence in bringing them instruction throughout the course of his life. And may we, when we are on our deathbed, tell our children, ‘Now I’ve told you lots of things. Spirit of God will bring those to a deeper understanding to you.’”

May we not be at the place on our deathbeds of saying, “Well, I wish I would have taught you more.” We’re all going to want that. But may we be diligent as fathers in our homes to fulfill our requirement as dispensers of the spirit by instructing our children in the application of the word to them.

And may you teens be great students, and may you young people be great students of your parents, your mother and your father—those strong Christian men and women God has put in your life—to attend to their teaching while they’re with you. They’ll all too soon be gone from you.

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So we are to be teachers as well in the context of our family. And then one final point.

This Holy Spirit, this strengthener, this strengthening instructor, is identified here—and here alone—as the Holy Spirit. He’s called the strengthener four times. He’s called the spirit of truth three times in the upper room discourse and Holy Spirit here—and here alone. This is, however, vitally important for us.

This is a great place for us to have this because it tells us once more what we said last week: that instruction is ethical, primarily, not intellectual. The purpose of the strengthening spirit, the purpose of the further growth we have in the knowledge of Christ, is personal holiness. It’s that we might understand that it is the Holy Spirit—set apart, consecrated, dedicated totally to the person of the triune God. This is the spirit that indwells us. And he indwells us to strengthen us to personal holiness.

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You see, the Holy Spirit comes to strengthen us to personal holiness.

I heard a story this morning on the radio about the coming of a soldier. Soldier and this girl were going to get married. It was in England, World War II. The war came. He had to go off to war, and so they decided to postpone the marriage until after the war was over. And so long time passes—no word from him. He’s missing in action. Finally, they declare, they let the girl who lives with her mother know that they’re considering the man dead in action. He’s been killed in action. So she’s mourning over this, and I don’t know how long a period of time goes by.

But one day, she goes up to her room, and she reads all the letters that she had written to him, and I think she had gotten some back, and she’s reading over these letters. And she decides to put on that wedding dress that had been hanging there in her room waiting for his return, when they would get married. So she gets, you know, all dressed up in the wedding dress.

And at that time, the story goes—I don’t know if it’s true or not, I think it is and reported is true—at that time, the man comes to the door. George comes home. This man they thought was dead. She’s upstairs in her wedding dress. He knocks at the door, and the mother nearly falls over. “What are you doing here? We heard you were dead.”

“Oh, I’m feeling pretty good,” he says. “Can I come in and see your daughter? Sure, go on upstairs, you know.”

So he goes upstairs, and she’s shocked, you know. “Oh, I can’t believe it.” And he said, “You know, this is your letter that I carried around.” And he brings out this tattered piece of paper. “This is—she’d written many, but this was the one he carried throughout all the battles. And she said there, ‘I love you. I love you. I’ll be ready for you when you return.’”

He said, “I didn’t know you’d be that ready.”

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Now, Advent has to point us to the final coming of Jesus, whether it’s our death or his final coming, the second coming of our savior. Our groom is going to return. Our groom comes to us today to meet us at this table.

Young men and women, do you have white dresses on? Parents, you have lives of personal holiness as the spirit of God and the strengthening instructor—not so you can be Reformed and know more than anybody else, but has he brought you personal holiness and a commitment in terms of the aspects of your life? A consecration to Christ?

Have you been careful what your eyes looked at this last week? Have you been careful what your ears heard? You know, did you abide in the counsel of the ungodly? We want to engage our culture, but oh, we want to do so in a way that is so committed to the Holy Spirit’s holiness, being what he instructs us in.

May we, as we come to this table, recognize the dress—we’ve got wine spilled on it. Christ’s blood atones for all of that. But boy, may we never lose a desire to have the Holy Spirit mature us in a manifestation of Christ to personal holiness before him.

This is what God calls us to do.

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Ultimately, you know what we’re talking about here—what we always talk about in the scriptures—is entering into, as I said earlier, this inner trinitarian life of the Godhead. Isaiah 59:21 says this:

“As for me, says the Lord, this is my covenant with them. What’s covenant theology? I don’t know. I’ve heard a lot of different definitions. What is this covenant? Well, he’s going to tell us here what the covenant is. ‘As for me, says the Lord, this is my covenant with them: My spirit who is upon you, my words which I have put in your mouth shall not depart from your mouth, nor from the mouth of your descendants, nor from the mouth of your descendants,’ says the Lord, ‘from this time and forever.’”

This is what covenant life is. This is the peace that we’ll get to next week—of having covenant relationship with Christ. The covenant is the Holy Spirit of God coming to us with the words of our savior and the Father’s words. With our savior’s words, the Father’s words, we enter into that inner trinitarian life, the relationship of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—a relationship of life, a relationship of love, a relationship of law and structure.

We enter into that with the advent of the Holy Spirit to us.

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We come to the mountaintop every Lord’s day, and we’re reminded of the mountaintop that Jesus brought his disciples to as he was going to make his final departure. Now the advent of the spirit would come more fully. Now things would happen. What did he say? It says in Matthew 28 that the 11 disciples went away into Galilee to the mountain which Jesus had appointed for them. And when they saw him, they worshiped him. Some doubted.

Jesus came and spoke to them on this mountaintop. On the mountaintop today, he comes to us today. And he tells us, “All authority has been given me in heaven and in earth. Go therefore, make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you, and I am with you forever more.”

The inner trinitarian life of the spirit is what the day that we live in is all about. The work of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Father and the Spirit is going out into all the world.

Those 12 people that went forth from this congregation are in India now ministering this very day—are a picture of the mission of the Father. The intertrinitarian life that we enter into is a life with mission and purpose to affect the manifestation of this new creation around the entire globe of this world.

And this life of mission is one that is informed by the spirit who brings us the word of the Lord Jesus Christ. Sola scriptura, right—the scriptures alone—is what the spirit uses to speak to us, preparing us for this mission.

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The mission is not just to bring people to Christ in terms of salvation, but it’s to disciple them, that they may be indwelt by the spirit, to the end that they might obey the commands of the Lord Jesus Christ. And Jesus says that to that end he is with us forevermore.

“Lo, I am with you always.”

The advent of Christ is for the purpose of mission and discipleship and the rejoicing life of this world that has been attained by the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. God says that the advent of Jesus has created this new day dawning, and this new day is a day of instruction unto holiness through the strengthening Holy Spirit who has been given to us on the basis of Christ’s work.

Let’s pray.

Father, we thank you for these wonderful blessings of John 14. We thank you for the movement of this text. We look forward next week, Lord God, to hearing from your word about the peace, the final bequest of our savior. But we thank you, Lord God, for the path we tread to that peace.

Help us this week as your people. Strengthen us, Lord God, as we come forward offering all that we are and have to you. Strengthen us by your spirit. Assurance of the forgiveness of our sins and the empowerment of the strengthening teacher to bring to remembrance the things of Christ. Help us to look for that this week. Help us to be sensitive to your Holy Spirit, bringing to mind things of the Savior, modifying our conduct, growing in holiness and consecration to Christ, growing in mission and purpose, and in life and joy—knowing that this is the life you have brought us into through the work of the Savior.

In Christ’s name we ask you. Amen.