This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of “The Holy Spirit” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, January 14, 1996.
Tonight we are reading from John’s Gospel, Chapter 14. We are beginning at verse 8. This is John, Chapter 14, verse 8. Give your attention to God’s holy word. Philip said to him, Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us. Jesus said to him, Have I been so long with you, and yet you have not come to know me, Philip? He who has seen me has seen the Father. How do you say, Show us the Father? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own initiative, but the Father abiding in me does his works. Believe in me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me.
Otherwise, believe on account of the works themselves. Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in me, the works that I do shall he do also, and greater works than these shall he do, because I go to the Father. And whatever you ask in My name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask Me anything in My name, I will do it. If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.
And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever. That is, the Spirit of Truth, whom the world cannot receive because it does not behold Him or know Him. but you know him because he abides in you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you. After a little while, the world will behold me no more, but you will behold me. Because I live, you shall live also. In that day you shall know that I am in my Father, and you in me, as I in you.
He who has my commandments and keeps them He it is who loves me, and he who loves me shall be loved by my Father, and I will love him and will disclose myself to him.” Judas, not Iscariot, said to him, “‘Lord, what then has happened that you are going to disclose yourself to us and not to the world?’ Jesus answered and said to him, “‘If anyone loves me, he will keep my word. and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our abode with him. He who does not love me does not keep my words. The word which you hear is not mine, but the Father’s who sent me.
These things I have spoken to you while abiding 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 that I said to you. Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives, do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, nor let it be afraid. You heard that I said to you, I go away and I will come to you. If you loved me, you would have rejoiced, because I go to the Father, for the Father is greater than I. And now I have told you before it comes to pass, that when it comes to pass, you may I will not speak much more with you, for the ruler of the world is coming, and he has nothing in me. But that the world may know that I love the Father, and as the Father gave me commandment, even so I do. Arise, let us go from here.”
As we abide in your Son, O God, we are taught that we abide in you, and thus it is that your word is precious to us. Truly, your word, which you gave to your Son to deliver, is precious to him. and we, confessing our love of him, must also confess our love for your word. Truly, O God, as your Son pursues your word in obedience, may we, by the power of the Son, pursue that same word, and may we obey even from our hearts. Help us, Lord, in our hearing that our hearing would be proper hearing, that is, obeying. We ask this through Christ. Amen. We have finished our messages on Jesus’ public proclamation of the Holy Spirit in John’s Gospel, and we are now moving on to consider his promise of the Holy Spirit to his disciples.
This places us, therefore, in the second main section of John’s Gospel. specifically chapters 13 through 20 of this gospel, the section which Raymond Brown, the great John scholar, has described as the book of glory. The book of glory. Brown had called the previous section of this gospel chapters 1-12, excluding the prologue, the Book of Signs. For here, Jesus performed public ministry through signs and the Word, showing himself to be the incarnate God, that is, the Word made flesh, to his own people, only to be rejected. As verse 11 of the first chapter in John says, a text out of the prologue, to his own he came, but his own did not receive him.
And how well this analysis fits our previous messages about the Holy Spirit in John. For these earlier chapters included, you may recall, John the Baptist’s public witness about the relationship of the Holy Spirit to Jesus. Jesus receives the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit. He receives the Holy Spirit without measure, and he shall baptize in the Holy Spirit. These early chapters also contain Jesus’ public proclamation of the Spirit, by which Jesus challenges his hearers with the fact that the Spirit opens up for the people of God an entirely new order of existence, specifically a heavenly order, which is that true order, the order to which humanity was to be brought from the beginning.
By God’s grace, we must be born of the Spirit, says Jesus. Chapter 3, verse 5. By God’s grace, we must worship God, who is Spirit, in Spirit. Chapter 4, verse 24. By God’s grace, We must receive life from the Spirit through Christ’s word, John 6, verse 63. By God’s grace, we must become in ourselves fountains of the power and presence of the Holy Spirit, John 7, verses 38 and 39.
The hour comes, and now is, when the new world, the ultimate, the glorious final and eternal world of the Spirit, has climactically and conclusively asserted itself upon the plane of this creation, and we belong to this new world. This is no occasional visit to a spigot. for some tap water. This is an immersion in a vast wonder water world of glory.
In the Book of Signs, the first part of John’s Gospel, Jesus, who came from that other world, the world of glory, and shall soon return to it, by his signs, points us in the direction of that world and to the effusions of God’s Spirit from it. But now, in the second half of the gospel, the book of glory so-called, the focus changes. We move from the general population and Jesus’ proclamation to that general proclamation, we move from that consideration and that audience to the close-knit fellowship of Jesus’ disciples and his specific service to them. From the wide audience and Jesus’ proclamation to that wide audience, now focusing upon the close-knit fellowship of Jesus’ own disciples, and specifically His service to and for them. Now look, if you will, at the beginning of this section of John’s Gospel, chapter 13, verse 1. There it is set out for us precisely what the intention is with regard to this so-called Book of Glory.
He will note that John tells us here, Jesus was aware, chapter 13, verse 1, Jesus was aware that the hour had come for him to pass from this world to the Father. Having loved his own who were in this world, he now showed his love for them to the end. He loved them to the end, as the new American standard has it.
The declaration here by John with regard to Jesus is that the anticipated hour has indeed come, that hour in which Jesus would be lifted up to his Father and glorified so that he might give the Spirit to those who believe in him in beginning them as the children of God. Just as the prologue, chapter 1 verse 12, says that all those who did accept him or receive him, to them he gave the power or the authority as or to become the children of God.
It is now into this setting that Jesus renews his teaching about the Holy Spirit, shifting from proclamation to a general audience to promise to the specific audience of his disciples. Whereas in the first part of the Gospel, Jesus had preached the Spirit in a much Like missionary manner, he now promises the Spirit in the second part of this gospel in the enduring pastoral approach and his continuing presence. This pastoral approach, you must understand, fully comprehends the outworking of God’s purposes in his Son, and is defined by Let me say that again. The pastoral approach taken by Jesus here, in these latter chapters of John, fully comprehends the outworking of God’s purpose in his Son, and is defined by that purpose. That means that Jesus, in his pastoral approach to his disciples, assumes the completeness of his work.
He assumes those immediate events, those imminent events of his death, resurrection, and ascension. He therefore offers his care to his disciples in light of his upcoming suffering, and departure from this world. What interview is a time in which he will be no longer present physically?
But this being the case, Jesus’ intention is not simply to shepherd his little flock during that little time frame which he has remaining for him on this earth, but to shepherd them even given his departure, even given his physical absence from them. But of course, Jesus’ assumptions regarding the situation are even more far-reaching than that. For surely Jesus does not envision a ministry to his disciples alone. But as soon as we admit this, As soon as we admit that the ministry cannot be restricted to the disciples alone, we are forced to consider that ministry’s extension beyond even the generation of the disciples, to consider those served by Christ not restricted either to one place or one time.
In view, then, as Jesus ministers to his disciples, here is in view, truly, a ministry that is promised to Christ’s own through his death, resurrection, and ascension, through the entirety of the apostolic period, through the entirety of the Church Age to the end of the world. That is the extensiveness and the comprehensiveness of what is in gear. You read these chapters here in the later section of John’s Gospel, particularly as Jesus is intent to minister to his own, and you see a ministry set before you that is intended to endure to the close of the age.
Now, in this regard, it is good for us to return once more to chapter 13, verse 1. and to this theme verse for the Book of Glory. Now, if you have an NIV with you tonight, I ask you to note what the NIV has at this point, how the NIV translates this verse. The New International Version may well be missing the profundity of this text when it translates the latter part of it, quote, having loved his own who were in the world, he now showed them the full extent of his love, unquote. But in light of what we have just said, what we have just considered with regard to the extensiveness of the ministry of Christ in you.
Jesus means something far more comprehensive by that ministry, and John speaks of that comprehensiveness here at the beginning of this section. Jesus does indeed love his own to the full extent of his love, as the NIV says. But this way of stating the case invariably restricts the demonstration of his love by binding it to that little band of disciples gathered to him, and by binding it—that is, his love, or the demonstration of it—to the crucifixion specifically.
But that’s not what John means, even though it may well be included. What John actually means bursts such restrictions. He says that Jesus’ intention, by his ministering love, so expressed over the course of the final days of his earthly sojourn, was to show his love not just to his disciples, but to his own, that is, to his elect, not just to those who live proximate to the crucifixion, but to all the elect to the end of the age. Thus it is that the New American Standard and the King James translate properly.
Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. The word end used by John here, therefore, is deliberately ambiguous. It has reference, of course, to Jesus’ own end in his crucifixion, but it also powerfully preaches to us the reality of the coming end of the world and the fact that Jesus’ love is enduring even to that point. In other words, the service, the ministry, the pastoral care Jesus extends to his disciples before the crucifixion That is, before he rises from the dead in his body, speaks to us of the pastoral care, ministry, and service he extends to his elect before they rise from the dead in their physical bodies.
And it is in this context that Jesus then promises the Holy Spirit. Now, let me list for you here the verses in this section of John’s Gospel which speak of the Holy Spirit. We have read a couple of them this evening. We have John 14, verses 17 and 26. We have John 15, verse 26, and we have John 16, verse 13. you should add other references, those references that speak of the Comforter or the Paraclete. Again, these verses are John 14, 16, and 26, John 15, 26, and John 16, 7, some of these texts the same as those that speak specifically of Holy Spirit.
Now, we are not going to get into the exposition of these verses this evening. This is an introductory message to these texts, and we are providing here entrance into them, an overview for them, the context in which they arise. But now, in conclusion, let me offer to you a couple of observations which we should keep in mind as we make our way through these references.
For one thing, what Jesus has to say here has particular relevance to the whole matter of ministry. Who is truly the minister of this church? Now, I know what it says on the front of the board. And I know that because you believe that I am the minister, you pay me, and I like that. And the word prescribes that, so I don’t feel as if I’m robbing you. But you see, there is, in a very true sense, this reality, that Jesus Christ himself is the minister to you and for you.
There is a great deal that we could say with regard to this one point, and I say this particularly to seminarians, because invariably you seminarians will be deluged with books about ministry. And tragically, you will never be taken to these texts. And you will never be made, as it were, constrained by your professors, sadly, to consider the paradigm of the ministry of Christ out of texts like this.
Here it is. pattern and paradigm for ministry to the close of the age. Now we’re talking about obedience here. What does it mean to minister? But secondly, What Jesus has to say here about the Holy Spirit is paradigmatic for the Holy Spirit and his ministry for the entirety of the Church Age.
You’re saying to yourself, well, that’s hardly fair, we haven’t gotten into the epistles. If someone was of charismatic conviction, they would say, that’s hardly fair, we haven’t even gotten to Acts 2 yet. We haven’t gotten into 1 Corinthians 12-14. John is telling you that the power of the continuing ministry of the Holy Spirit is found here. Here is the abiding, continuing ministry of the Holy Spirit. This sets the tone. Here are the limits.
This is what you must understand, regardless of what took place in Acts 2, regardless of what is spoken of in 1 Corinthians 12 through 14. Jesus, as he faces death and as he faces his departure from this Church, lays before his Church not just what is essential and most important to the Holy Spirit’s ministry, but what is characteristic of the Holy Spirit’s ministry, what is typical of the Holy Spirit’s ministry. So if you want to zero in on what the Holy Spirit is all about in this age, I ask you, will you please concentrate on these chapters? Now, I’m not going to go further with that matter. But I do intend to speak about it further in time. As you can tell, I feel very strongly about it.
And I dare say that it is my own conviction that the Church is being racked and ruined by the assault of charismatic misinterpretation and misappropriation of Scripture. I have said this to you before, the gospel of John is the manifestly anti-charismatic gospel. It’s almost as if John is writing to answer the charismatics of his day. Well my, my, what a relevance the Bible has. It’s right up to date. Therefore, I ask you to compare what Jesus has to say in these texts with the claims of the Charismatic Movement.
Finally for tonight, as we look at these texts in the coming weeks, keep in mind the way in which they render double service. the way in which they render double service. On the one hand, they will minister to you the Holy Spirit, whose presence means that the long-awaited hour has arrived, it has come, and that the blessing in and through the Holy Spirit, the very blessings of eternity have become yours now.” Now, that’s the one side of service which the Holy Spirit renders for us in this age.
On the other hand, these same texts so marvelously deep and rich remind us that we are still living in this world. We are living in this world and in need of the ministry of the Holy Spirit, such ministry as is appropriate to our situation as we look toward the day when Christ will raise us up when Christ will raise us up in the resurrection. In other words, and here is the dynamic of the thing, the Holy Spirit in his person and in his ministry is the already in the not-yet of our lives. He, in his person and in his ministry, is the already of the not-yet of our Christian lives. In the coming weeks, hopefully we will learn more about Christ’s promise. of the Holy Spirit and his ministry to us, according to the witness of this sublime servant of our Savior.
Our Father, with the full extent of Christ’s ministry to us, may the Holy Spirit have his proper place before our eyes and in our estimation. And Lord, as you have worked upon us by the grace of the Spirit, may we receive the Holy Spirit truly and wonderfully in that way in which he has been presented to us in the Word. We ask, Father, therefore, that we would realize again the wonders of the Spirit as he brings to us the realities of the heavenly world, and these for our provision while we are pilgrims here sojourning unto the day when Jesus shall return. And in the power of the Spirit, O God, then, and by your grace, may we hear the word, keep the word, hear Christ’s commandments, and keep them. We pray this in Jesus’ name, and in the power of the Spirit. Amen.
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