Welcome to this message from the teaching ministry of University Presbyterian Church in Orlando, Florida under the leadership of senior pastor Mike Osborne. Let's turn in our Bibles now to John chapter 14. Look in your Bible at John 14. Our text this morning is John 14, 15 through 27. If you don't have a Bible this morning, we have Bibles underneath the chair in the rack below you. And if you'll use that Bible, you can turn to page 1668. We continue this morning our study of the Holy Spirit. We began this a few weeks ago. And for the next seven or eight weeks or so, we're going to be looking at various things about the Holy Spirit. And this morning is what we're going to find here in John chapter 14 about the Holy Spirit being our counselor as it says in my version. Let me read then beginning at verse 15. If you love me, you will obey what I command and I will ask the Father and He will give you another counselor to be with you forever. The Spirit of truth, the world cannot accept Him because it neither sees Him nor knows Him. But you know Him for He lives with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you. Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me because I live, you also will live. On that day, you will realize that I am in the Father and you are in me and I am in you. Whoever has my commands and obeys them, He is the one who loves me. He who loves me will be loved by my Father and I too will love Him and show myself to Him. Then Judas, not Judas Iscariot said, but Lord, why do you intend to show yourself to us and not to the world? Jesus replied, if anyone loves me, He will obey my teaching. My Father will love Him and we will come to Him and make our home with Him. He who does not love me will not obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own. They belong to the Father who sent me. All this I have spoken while still with you, but the counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you. Peace I leave with you, my peace I give you, I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid. The Word of the Lord. Will you pray with me before we dive in? Spirit of the living God, follow fresh on us, break us, melt us, mold us and fill us. Holy Spirit of the living God, follow fresh on us today. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. For those of you who are new to this series, new to our church perhaps, let me review what we've learned so far over the last couple of weeks about the Holy Spirit. We learned first of all that He is a divine person. He's the third member of the Godhead. He is God. He is not a mere emanation from the Father. He is not simply a force but a distinct sovereign person within the Trinity. Equal in power, equal in glory with God, the Father and God the Son. What is His job? I like to call the job of the Holy Spirit as being the life creator. He creates life within the Trinity. He brings dead things to life. He does this by applying the redemptive work of Christ to human hearts. He is regenerating people. We talked about this last week. We said that He is the agent of the new birth. If you're born again and if you're a Christian you are born again. You're born again because of the Holy Spirit who brought your dead heart to life and united you with Christ. He is breathing spiritual life into the church, the church around the world. He is transforming us from the inside out. And so as we progress through this series we're going to be fleshing these things out more and learning every single week a little new angle about the biblical teaching about the Holy Spirit. Now one of the questions that often comes up when we are talking about the Holy Spirit is what about in the Old Testament? In the Old Testament time under the Old Covenant was the Holy Spirit there then? Was he at work then? And the answer is a very definite yes. The Holy Spirit definitely was at work in the Old Testament time. There are at least 88 references to the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament. He appears in over half of the books in the Old Testament. But besides that just think logically for a minute. Think about it, how could anybody become a child of God? How could anybody be a follower of God without the Holy Spirit? I mean all of the people, all of the saints in the Old Testament. David, Moses, Noah, Daniel, Deborah, Ruth, all of those people who loved and followed after God, they were recipients of the same Holy Spirit that you and I are because it's the Holy Spirit who brings us out of darkness and into the light. Any time that somebody loves and follows after God you know it's because of the Holy Spirit. So yes, never fear, the Holy Spirit was definitely at work in people in the Old Testament. But an honest reading of the New Testament leads you to understand that the work of the Holy Spirit took a giant leap forward under the New Covenant that Jesus Christ inaugurated in a very real sense. I think he can be said that the Holy Spirit's person and work were somewhat hidden under the Old Covenant. Do you remember what Jesus told his disciples in Acts 1? They were gathered in Jerusalem. This was shortly before Jesus ascended to heaven. And Jesus said to the disciples, wait, wait here in Jerusalem until the power of the Holy Spirit comes upon you. And then you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. It was then at the day of Pentecost in Acts 2 that the Holy Spirit descended in fullness and in power upon the church. And since that time we have been living in what many people call and I think rightly so, the age of the Spirit. The coming of the Spirit after Christ's ascension to heaven inaugurated this new eschatological reality that had never been witnessed before in all of history. And we're living in that age. So let's dive in understanding then that Jesus is talking to the disciples about something amazing that was soon going to happen, namely the coming of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost in power. Let's talk about the context of this passage. Jesus is in the upper room. We usually call that the upper room if you're new to Christianity. It's this upper room where Jesus was gathered with his disciples shortly before he was arrested and condemned to die and nailed to the cross the following day on Good Friday. But right now it's Thursday evening of Holy Week, the last week of Jesus' earthly ministry. Judas Iscariot is not in the room. He has left already to go and call the authorities to find Jesus. And now Jesus is talking to his 11 disciples is a very, very intimate moment, a very surreal moment, I'm sure in which he's telling his disciples about things that were soon going to happen. And one of those things that are soon going to happen is the coming of the Holy Spirit. In verses 15 through 17, Jesus says to them, if you love me, you will obey what I command and I will ask the Father and he will give you another counselor to be with you forever, the spirit of truth. So what I'd like to do today is go one step further in our study of the Holy Spirit and talk about his ministry as our counselor. That's the word used here in my version. The counseling ministry, the Holy Spirit, let me answer three questions this morning. The first question, what is that ministry? What is it all about? The second one is by what means does the Holy Spirit do that ministry? And then the third question is how can you and I respond to this ministry of the Holy Spirit that we're talking about? So let's begin with the most obvious question. What is this ministry of the Holy Spirit that Jesus refers to there in verse 16 and he talks about it also in verse 26. In both those verses, Jesus calls the Holy Spirit our counselor, at least in the new international version, your version may have helper or some of the older versions have comforter. That's why I called this sermon the comforter, the King James version on which I was raised and maybe you as well, that's what it says that the Holy Spirit would be our comforter. And back in the 1600s when the King James version was written, the word comfort meant something a little different from how you and I usually think of comfort. Like today, when I think of comfort, it almost feels like a blanket around somebody, you're padding her back and you're singing her a lullaby. And that's not exactly a great way to look at the comforter or the comforting ministry, the Holy Spirit. Back when the King James version was written, it meant something different. They looked at it as merely com plus fort with strength. That's what it meant back then with strength, whereas today it's kind of lost that strong feeling to it, but helper is not a bad translation counselor. These words make you think of the Holy Spirit as that person in the Trinity who encourages you or consoles you or guides you and that's okay. But the Greek word that we're looking at there is paracletos. Paracletos, maybe you've heard of paraclete. Many times it's called paraclete for us, English people. Par-a means alongside, call-o means to call, so it's one called alongside, one called upon for support or one called in for assistance. But you know what the very best translation of the word paraclete is? Legal advocate, legal advocate and some of your translations might say that. A legal advocate, what is that? Who is that? A legal advocate, somebody who speaks up or who argues a case on behalf of the accused. A legal advocate is someone who represents you, who speaks up in your defense, right? Who comes alongside and stands at your side to plead your case. He's sort of like a defense attorney, if you will. We even say that word, counsel, when we're speaking of a legal attorney. We say, I need legal counsel. And so that's how counselor fits in with this whole idea of a legal advocate. And notice something real important. Verse 16 says that the Holy Spirit is another legal advocate. He is another paracletos. Now that word, another, is pretty important. Sometimes it's the little words that mean the most in the Bible. There are two Greek words that are translated as another. One Greek word means another of a different kind. Like if I were to say to you, I don't like my car, I want another car. That would not only be a true statement, but what I mean is I need, I want any car. It doesn't matter. I just want another car. It can be a car of a different kind. But I could also say I want another slice of pie. That's a different Greek word. That's a Greek word that means another of the same kind. I want another slice of pecan pie, if you will. That's the word used here. When Jesus says I'm going to give you another counselor or another paraclete, it's another of the same kind. So what does he mean? He means that he's going to send a paraclete like him. A paraclete like him of the same kind as Jesus. See, Jesus was about to leave the disciples. If you know what's going on here in the upper room, you know that Jesus had said earlier in this chapter that he was going to go away. He was going to leave them. And in verse 12, he says that he was going to the Father. And when the disciples heard about Jesus leaving them, it troubled them terribly. Here's this man who had meant the world to them for three years. He was their guide. He was their mentor. He illumined them. He's changed their lives. And now he's saying, I'm going to leave you. I'm going to go away where they didn't know they didn't understand what it meant to go to the Father that meant very little if anything to the disciples. But Jesus tells them in this text that even though he was leaving them, he was not really leaving them. He said, I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you. And in verse 20, I am in my Father. You are in me and I am in you. So what gives Jesus make up your mind? Are you leaving? Are you not leaving? What's going on is that Jesus was going to give to his disciples the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit would take over where Jesus left off. He would continue the ministry of Christ in the world. He would be the living presence of Jesus in the hearts of the disciples. He would continue to shepherd and protect the people through the person and work of the Holy Spirit. So yes, he's leaving, but he's not leaving. So in a very real sense, to have the Holy Spirit, listen to this, to have the Holy Spirit is just as good as having Jesus. Think about this. If Jesus were to walk in this room today in the flesh and walk up here and you could see him, you could see how tall he is. You could see how tall he is. You could see the color of his hair, the shade of his skin. You could hear the tone of his voice. Or you can have the Holy Spirit living within you, living and abiding in you. Which would you choose? If you could have your pick, which would you want? I think everybody, me include, well, Jesus, we've seen that song. Give me Jesus. Give me Jesus. You can have all this world. Just give me Jesus. But actually, Jesus is saying it's just as qualitatively the same to have the Holy Spirit as to have me. In fact, if you know some of the rest of the upper room discourse, you know that Jesus is going to say to the disciples that it's better for him to leave. It's actually to their advantage that Jesus go away so that they could have the Holy Spirit. They're actually gaining if they have the Holy Spirit without Jesus being physically present. Because the Holy Spirit is going to enable them to enlarge the ministry that was localized through Christ when he was here earthly. But beside that, here's the point that I'm making right now. Jesus is our advocate, our paraclete, and the Holy Spirit is an advocate or a paraclete just like him. So, if we're going to understand this counseling ministry, this legal advocacy of the Holy Spirit, we need to ask the first question, which is, well, then tell me, how is Jesus our advocate? And if we can know how Jesus is our advocate, that will help us to understand how the Holy Spirit is another advocate. How is Jesus your advocate? He represents you in heaven before the bar of God. Right now, if you're a child of God, Jesus Christ, your Savior, is representing you at the bar of God in heaven every moment. He says, in 1 John chapter 2, John is writing the same John that wrote this book here. He says, my little children, I'm writing these things to you so that if anyone sins, we have an advocate with the Father, even Jesus Christ the righteous. What does that mean? You know, I think I used to have the wrong idea about this. I thought that Jesus Christ was in heaven, sort of on his knees pleading to the Father for me. There he goes again, Father, I know, I know. We've forgiven him for that so many times, but Father, if you could, please find it within yourself to let Mike Osborne off the hook. One more time, please, please, like that, sort of that kind of pleading, but that's not it at all. Jesus is beside the throne of God, the Father, with the blood that he shed on the cross, and he is saying, I mean, I'm speculating here, but he would be saying something like this, when I blow it again, he is saying, Father, he blew it again, but he never will have to pay for that sin or any other sin yet to come because I have fully paid for it in my own sacrificial death on the cross. So that it would be unjust of you, Father, to hold him accountable for another of his sins. I have fully paid the debt. It would be unjust. It would be the just thing for you to forgive Osborne of his sin. That's the kind of pleading, that's the kind of advocacy. It's the strong advocacy, being my legal defender, my legal advocate at the bar of heaven. That's how he does it. So how is the Holy Spirit, our advocate in what way is it alike or different from that? Here is what it is. The Holy Spirit speaks in your defense to the fears and the doubts that are in your heart. Jesus is your advocate in heaven. The Holy Spirit is your advocate within your own heart. Why is that important? It's important because so often your heart condemns you. It says that in fact in the book of 1 John, your heart often will condemn you. You've just failed. You've just made another sin or another mistake. What happens? So often your flesh will pile on. You will condemn yourself. You will rip yourself apart because you are not where you know you should be spiritually. The other thing that happens is that our enemy, the devil will pile on. He will accuse you. He will throw his lightning bolts of condemnation at you. He will accuse you of all sorts of evils. And so what are we learning here that the Holy Spirit comes along? He is your very best friend. He is the one who defends you when you are attacked. He is the one who stands up to your enemy, the devil, when he hurls those accusations at you. Sometimes what the Holy Spirit does is he argues with you against your idols. The idols that you have stored up within your hearts. He argues against those. I love how Tim Keller described this. He said that sometimes the Holy Spirit is against you in order to be for you. You might have an addiction in your life or a sin that you constantly go back to and it's hard hurting you and it's harming you. And you have a very good friend who knows all about that and who is willing in the middle of the night to come knocking on your door and saying stop that. Be strong, be courageous. Let's go together against that sin. He almost does an intervention with you, right? That's what the Holy Spirit does. He rushes to your defense when he sees temptation coming your way or when he hears condemnations coming down on your head or when you yourself are ripping your heart out, hating yourself in self contempt because you have failed one more time. It's the Holy Spirit who loves you so much that he doesn't want you to do that. He'll intervene and he'll come alongside you and speak up in defense of you and of the gospel. And I just love how that ministry is is in my life and I hope you feel that way as well. I love sometimes movie illustrations help me to think about this a little bit more. You've seen the Avengers. Everybody's favorite scene in the Avengers is near the end where Loki is there and he thinks that he's got it made. He thinks he's going to win and the incredible Hulk comes bouncing through. He runs through or flies through the window. He crashes through and Loki is, you know, self confident and he says something like you are all of you beneath me. I am a God, little G, of course, you dull creature. And I will not be bullied. And in the middle of that sentence, the Hulk grabs Loki and goes back and forth, banging him against the floor. Until all he can do is just whimper and wine and Hulk says puny God, little G. That's how I, that's how I love to picture the Holy Spirit rushing to my defense, rushing to our defense when our flesh, when the world, when the devil wants to take our hearts and rip it apart because he hates us so much, you know, he wants to take you out of the battle is what it is. He wants you out of the fight. He knows you've been called as we have all been called on mission to make disciples of all nations to live to enjoy and glorify God forever. And the devil hates all that. So what will he do? He will try to wear you down and wear you out with all kinds of temptations and condemnation and accusation. And that's the Holy Spirit. He gets his wrinkles up. He is the Hulk. He comes and he bashes through and he defends us against those people. Maybe you can think too of another of my favorite movies, Forest Gump, where Forest runs through the forest to save his friend Bubba from he runs through enemy fire, you know, in the Vietnam War, he runs through the enemy fire grabs Bubba, puts him on his shoulders and runs tries to get him out of danger. That again is a good picture of what we see here. The Holy Spirit as our advocate and advocate like Jesus, but he's doing it in slightly a different context. So the next question that I wanted to answer, not only what is this ministry of the Holy Spirit, but what are the means that he uses to do it? That is how does the Holy Spirit carry out this ministry being our counselor, our legal advocate, our defense attorney, primarily by the word of God. His primary weapon or tool in his ministry of being our advocate is the Word of God. Notice verse 17 of our text today, the Holy Spirit is called there, the Spirit of truth, the Spirit of truth. And throughout this passage, you see a close connection between the Holy Spirit and the Word of God. Like in verse 23, Jesus says, if anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. And in verse 26, he says the counselor, the Holy Spirit from whom the Father will send in my name will teach you all things and remind you of everything I have said to you. So you cannot and you must not separate the activity of the Holy Spirit from the Word of God. In fact, as we know, the Holy Spirit inspired the Word of God. The Holy Spirit is the author of the Word through the various human authors that wrote the Bible. The Holy Spirit loves the Word of God. He loves the commands of God, the truth of God. And so when your heart condemns you, when Satan attacks you, your advocate, the Holy Spirit reminds you of God's Word. And he enables you to believe the gospel promises that are in his Word. What is Paul called the Word of God in Ephesians 6, that famous chapter about spiritual warfare, he calls it the sword of the spirit. The Holy Spirit he uses the Word of God as a sword. I was talking to the kids about that to bring strength and solution and deliverance from the problems that we face. I love pilgrim's progress. I hope if you've never read that book, you will read it by John Bunion. And in pilgrim's progress, Christian is on the way to the celestial city. And in this particular part, he is with hopeful, his friend hopeful. And they take a shortcut, which is usually a bad thing for them to do. And they take a shortcut and they're captured by giant despair and thrown into doubting castle. So there are Christian and hopeful, wiling away their moments down in the dungeon of doubting castle. And every so often, giant despair comes down into the dungeon and takes Christian and hopeful and just beats them to a pulp over and over again. So they're bruised and bloodied and broken. And this happens day after day after day. And the giant's wife suggests that the best thing they should do is just take their lives and be done with it. And Christian is tempted to do so, but hopeful says no, no, no. He says pluck up your heart like a man. And so they continue to just try to tolerate the beating up that giant despair gives them. And then finally, they decide to pray, you know, like we often, we wait to pray the last thing. And so they decide to pray and they pray all night long. And the next morning, Christian wakes up and he suddenly has an idea. He says, oh, no, I've totally forgot. In my breast pocket is a key. A key called promise. And so he walks over to the dungeon gate and turns the key and sure enough, it flies open and Christian and hopeful, leave the dungeon. And of course, you get the analogy that it's the gospel promises in the word of God that are the key that unlock the dungeon of doubting castle. The Holy Spirit is the one who comes along and reminds us of these wonderful promises in the word of God. Haven't you had this experience? Haven't you been like me down in the depths of despair? Maybe really feeling the guilt and the shame of my sin? And then suddenly, I will remember the key. The Holy Spirit will remind me of, oh, yes, Romans 8.1 says there is therefore now no condemnation. Or he might use 2 Corinthians 5.21. Oh, yes, God made him who had no sin to be sinned for me that in him, I might become the righteousness of God. Or the Holy Spirit might remind me of Zephaniah 317. I know that is a precious verse to so many. The Lord your God is with you. He is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you. He will quiet you with his love. He will rejoice over you with singing. And on and on the list of these promises can go that the Holy Spirit can bring to your mind. Are there other ways that the Holy Spirit defends you as your advocate? Yes. For example, he prays for you. Are you aware that as your advocate, the Holy Spirit is praying to the Father just like Jesus is. It says in Romans 8 that the Spirit helps us in our weaknesses. We don't know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans too deep for words. A second way that the Spirit is our advocate besides these others is that he reminds us of our adoption as sons and daughters. It says in Romans 8, for you didn't receive a Spirit of fear that makes you again to fear rather, but you receive the Spirit of sonship. And by him that by the Holy Spirit we cry, Abba, Father, the Spirit himself testifies with our Spirit that we are God's children. And then a third way I would add that the Holy Spirit is often our defender is that he speaks to us through our brothers and sisters in Christ. God uses the body of Christ to bring us to our senses and to help us to remember the gospel, but in all of these ways the Holy Spirit and the Word of God are intimately tied together. He is the Spirit of truth. The last question I want to leave with you is simply how should you respond to this? Now that you see what the Holy Spirit's ministry is and how or the means by which he does that ministry, how should you and I respond? And I'd like to leave you with three takeaways. One is to be a student of the Word of God. Read the Bible regularly. I know we say that a lot around here, but it can't be underestimated. When you come across something in the Bible that speaks to your heart, read it again, read it again, write it down, put it up on the wall, memorize it, and come back to it again and again, let it minister to you. Because what that is is that it's the Holy Spirit being your legal advocate, reminding you of the truth. Second thing I would ask you to do is if you're not already doing it, begin praying to the Holy Spirit. Nothing more helpful to me sometimes than to call out to the Holy Spirit to be my legal advocate. Spirit of God, help me. Help me get this. Help me believe the truth. Thank you, Spirit of God, that I am loved. Thank you that I'm adopted. Thank you that you are working in my life to bring about the purposes of God. Develop a conversation with the Spirit of God. You can do that. And the third thing I would ask you to do is to ask other people to pray for you too. You know, it is not simply me in Jesus, it's us in Jesus. You got to be in relational community. If you're going to grow in your understanding of God and in the life that he intends for you to have, the Holy Spirit loves the church and he will work through the church to deal with you and your heart. So please ask for the help of your brothers and sisters in Christ. You know, there's a pretty well-known defense attorney in town. He has this byline for the people. Every time you hear that from now on, let's turn around, let's think of the Holy Spirit saying, I'm for you. I'm for God's people. The world cannot accept him said Jesus because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him for he lives in you and will be with you. Call out to the Holy Spirit. Let him be your legal advocate. Let's pray. Father, I want to pray the words of Ephesians three for us this morning. I pray that you will strengthen us with power through your Holy Spirit in our inner being so that Christ may dwell in our hearts through faith. And so that we being rooted and established in love may have power to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ. And to know this love that surpasses knowledge, that we may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. We pray that in Jesus' name. Amen. We at University Presbyterian Church thank you for listening to this message. Our mission is to help people know God, grow together and serve others. To learn more about the church or how to have a vital relationship with God, visit our website at www.uPC-orlando.com or call our offices at 407-384-3300.