5/31/20 John 15:26-16:15 “Let’s Enjoy God!”

29 May 5/31/20 John 15:26-16:15 “Let’s Enjoy God!”

5/31/20    John 15:26-16:15    “Let’s Enjoy God!”

Last week I mentioned something about the mystery of the Trinity and how I wasn’t going to try to explain it.  I’m still not going to try to explain it except to say that if we didn’t have the Holy Spirit in the Trinity; it would be like a stool with only two legs.  Things just wouldn’t work.  Today is Pentecost Sunday, probably the third or fourth most important Christian holiday that we celebrate.  This is the time when we received the Holy Spirit here on earth.  And I realize that it is hard to celebrate this event.  After all, when we celebrate Christmas, we celebrate the birth of a baby and we can all pretty much relate to a baby.  When we celebrate Easter, we can visualize, through the readings, a man dying and being raised from the dead.  On Ascension Sunday, we can even visualize Jesus being raised up into heaven. But on Pentecost, we have a tough time because we have never seen the Holy Spirit and it is hard to celebrate that which we cannot even visualize.  So today, let’s see if we can learn a little bit more about this wonderful aspect of God that we cannot even imagine.  And let’s also find out just how important He is.

How many of us remember seeing the movie ‘Crocodile Dundee?’  Glenn Newton reminds us that this movie has been on TV many times and you can still find it on the streaming services.  There is a favorite scene of his in which Dundee is walking down the street in New York City with his girlfriend.  If you remember Crocodile Dundee was this fellow from the outback of Australia who has never been to New York before.  As they are walking, some guys jump out to rob them and one of them pulls a knife and says, “Give me your money.”  Dundee’s girl screams out, “Oh, he has a knife.”  But Crocodile Dundee isn’t very impressed with the knife and he says, “That’s not a knife.”  He then reaches around behind him a pulls out this huge knife from his belt.  He says, “This is a knife.”  The thieves look at this huge knife and they turn and run away.

A situation that would normally bring fear doesn’t bring fear to Dundee because he had something bigger and better working on his side.  As Christians we have something very similar to this.  We have a knife far bigger than Dundee’s.  We have the Holy Spirit.

I begin with a confession I have to make today.  I use the names God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit somewhat interchangeably.  I am not right in doing this.  I should be more careful.  These are three separate entities but they are also one at the same time.  Today, we are celebrating the coming of the Holy Spirit to us and it is called Pentecost.  Once again, we are in John’s writing of the last supper.  This is right before Jesus is arrested and He is giving the disciples some last directions and comfort.

We begin with Jesus telling the disciples that He is leaving them, but He will send the Counselor in his place.  This counselor is from God and is part of God.  I believe that we have once again as we did last week, the disciples who do not understand what Jesus is telling them.  I can just hear the disciples’ minds working.  “Who is the Counselor?  Is Jesus sending another man to us?  Where is Jesus going and when is He coming back?”  These are all good and logical questions.  They don’t understand.  If we were in their sandals, we wouldn’t understand either.

I am going to skip over some of this and get to finding out just who this Counselor is.  The Counselor is someone who can be with everyone at all times.  It is good that Jesus is leaving them and us.  I don’t know if any of you have ever thought about this but Jesus had one very serious limitation when He was in the form of a man.  That limitation was that He could only be in one place at a time.

I think that we have all wished that we could be a little like the Holy Spirit in that we could be in two or three places at the same time.  This especially happens when we have children who are in different events in different places.  It might even happen on a farm where we could be planting two fields at the same time.  But we are limited in what we can do because we can only be in one place at a time.  This is the same problem that Jesus had when He was here.

But now things will change and this change will be good for all of us.  Jesus is leaving so that the Holy Spirit will come to us and be with all of us at the same time in different places.  So, this is the first thing that He does.  He will always be with us no matter what.

Jesus is also telling them that when the Holy Spirit comes, He will convict the world of sin and righteousness and judgment.  Let’s begin with sin.  I am a firm believer that the sin of these ancient times was just as great as it is today.  There were places that had hundreds of different gods.  There were religions based on what we would call prostitution.  It was not uncommon to have human sacrifice.  The killing of children who were less than perfect was also found.

In the leadership roles of the day, just about everyone was corrupt.  They would murder their own families for power.  They would sell their families to other powerful families to give themselves even more power.  This even happened in the Jewish leadership and I am thinking of the Sadducees.           They would do anything for the Romans to keep their power.  Now the Holy Spirit is here to convict these people of their sins.

The same is true today.  We have talked of many sins we have in the past and today I would like to point out a couple that are the result of power.  People are trying to take over countries all over the world for their own gratification.  We can take a look in our own elections.  I think that it has gotten so bad that we cannot trust anyone in our Congress on anything that they say.  They lie so much that they cannot be trusted with anything.  The press is no better.  And it is all because of the power they get from these positions.  The same can probably be said of our state government.  Then we see this happen and our children see this happen and suddenly we think that we don’t have to tell the truth either.  So, then we raise another generation of people who will try to lie more than the one before.  This is a terrible cycle we have and there is only one way out of it.  Faith in Jesus Christ is the way out.  The Holy Spirit is with us as we try to help the Spirit convict people of their wrongful ways.

The second thought here is that the Holy Spirit convicts people of righteousness.  Many people including myself have a little difficulty understanding this as it is written.  I think that this is what Jesus means here.  The people who were about to kill Jesus felt that only unrighteous people could be hung on the cross.  However, after the resurrection and ascension of Jesus, He showed everyone that He was the only righteous person.  So, what happens here is that the Holy Spirit will come and convict every one of their false views of Jesus.

In those days, everyone had a religion.  They were very religious people.  However, they all had different religions.  And they didn’t practice political correctness or inclusiveness.  The Holy Spirit came along to convict all of these people of their errors.

And again, it is the same today.  We have countries in the world where they only allow one religion or else.  We have other countries like our own where we are like the ancient Greeks and allow every kind of religion imaginable.  And all of these religions are wrong.  I will tell you why I know this.  Jesus Christ was the only righteous person who ever lived.  Those who follow Jesus are following in the path of righteousness.  Others are on the wrong path and it is the Holy Spirit who will convict these people.  With our help the Holy Spirit will try to bring all of these people into the fold of Jesus.

And the last thing that the Holy Spirit does in these regards is to convict people with judgment.  Once again this leads us back to the cross and resurrection.  It was through these events that Satan was defeated.  I would like to repeat that.  Satan has been defeated and he can have no power over you if you don’t want him.  The judgment of God is final and Satan is defeated.  The Holy Spirit comes along to help people to realize that there will be judgment and there will also be salvation.  Everyone in the world can be saved through salvation.

We have a tough time in this country with the word judgment.  It is not politically correct to judge people.  I don’t feel that it is right to judge people.  And yet we pay judges to do this.  We see judgment against Christians in Muslim countries, Buddhist countries and Hindu countries.  But we are not supposed to do the same.  And I agree that we shouldn’t judge but not because it isn’t politically correct.  But rather it is because God has already done the judgment for these things.  It’s a done deal.

We as Christians are constantly being accused of judging others.  This is true many times and I am just as guilty as anyone else.  It is part of our sin nature as human beings to do this and also to commit other sins like greed, deceit and coveting.  But I try not to judge other religions.  I try not to judge other life styles.  I try not to because God has already done these things for us.  The Bible tells us that certain behaviors are wrong so these behaviors have already been judged.  Therefore, we don’t have to judge, but rather we have to love these people and let the Holy Spirit do his work.

The Holy Spirit will prepare people by helping them to identify sin, to know of righteousness and judgment.  He prepares the hearts of non believers so that they in turn can accept Jesus as their Savior.  He uses us in this process also.  We are to be prayerful, do good works and demonstrate the love we have for everyone.  All the things that we show and do as Christians will help the Holy Spirit to convict non believers of their wrongful ways.  You don’t have to have all the answers or have to be a fluent speaker.  You only have to demonstrate your Christianity in the ways that you are gifted.  If there is someone listening today who has no peace in their life, or you have no direction in your life, or if you are stuck in a sin rut, then ask the Holy Spirit into your heart.  The Holy Spirit will help you every step of the way and the great thing about accepting the Spirit into your heart is that He will never leave you.  Even though you will still do wrong things and often times, many wrong things, He will love you and never abandon you.  That is a promise from God and God doesn’t break promises.

All of this so far has been good news for us.  Finally, Jesus is saying that He would tell us much more but we wouldn’t be able to understand it.  He is also telling us that the Holy Spirit is part of God and part of Jesus and that they are all the same.  The Holy Spirit will bring glory to God just like Jesus did.  The Holy Spirit will know all that God knows and will be His representative.  And the Holy Spirit will make things known to us by His timing.

This is another area where we/I struggle.  God’s timing is always perfect.  It is our timing which needs a little work.  I am sure that the people, who prayed for me when I was young, got a little exasperated by my continuing to ignore God, until finally He got my attention.  I wouldn’t be here except for the timing of God.  The Holy Spirit is always right.  I don’t know how many people I have touched in my life but the Spirit does and that is all that counts.

This also happens in the area of health.  Sometimes we have to be sick or lame to reach other people.  A good example of this is the Apostle Paul.  He had some affliction that God would not take away.  This was for the good of Paul and the kingdom because maybe someone was looking up to Paul.

This even applies as we read our Bibles.  Many people like to read the prophecies and then try to decide what has been fulfilled, what is to be fulfilled and what is now being fulfilled.  We need to remember that God will reveal all of this information when the time is right.

The moral of all of this is to join in and enjoy God.  Enjoy the Holy Spirit.  Enjoy reading and studying the Bible.  Enjoy the fellowship we have with our fellow Christians.  And most of all enjoy showing non-believers what Christians are really about: we are about love.

Dennis Selfridge tells this story of a final exam in a freshman chemistry class.  The students filed in to take the exam.  The instructor had told them beforehand that they could bring a sheet of paper to the exam with as much information as they could fit on it.  Some came with sheets with small writing, some with formulas and others with outlines.  But one student appeared with a sheet of paper with nothing on it.  As they got ready to take the exam, he placed this sheet of paper on the floor.  Then he motioned for someone outside the door to come in.  A graduate student walked in and over to the paper and stood on it.  He was on the paper and was going to give all the answers the freshman needed.

The Holy Spirit can and wants to be your graduate student on the paper.  He will help you in all things of your life.  Just because we cannot see Him, doesn’t mean that He is not there.  Try to make it a goal this week to ask Him for help twice a day as a minimum.  See if you can notice a difference in your life and attitude.  Take some time out for God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit.  Jesus sent us the Spirit so that we could live.  So, let’s use the Spirit to make our lives even better.  This is how much God loves you.  He will give you everything if you just ask for it.  Thank you, Jesus, for this great life of abundance of your love.  And thank you for first loving us.  Let’s pray.