WWUTT 952 The Spirit Will Teach You All Things?

Jesus said to his disciples that he was going to the Father, but he would send the Holy Spirit to them, who will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you, as the

Holy Spirit still does for us when we understand the text. You're listening to When We Understand The Text, committed to sound teaching of the

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and don't forget our website www .tt .com. Here's our host, Pastor Gabe.

Thank you, Becky. We come back to our study of the Gospel of John, the 14th chapter, and I'll begin reading in verse 25 through verse 31.

Jesus said to his disciples, These words I have spoken to you while I am still 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 have 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 hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.

You have heard me say to you, I am going away, and I will come to you. If you loved me, you would have rejoiced, because I am going to the

Father, for the Father is greater than I. And now I have told you before it takes place, so that when it does take place, you may believe.

I will no longer talk much with you, for the Ruler of this world is coming. He has no claim on me, but I do as the

Father has commanded me, so that the world may know that I love the Father. Rise, let us go from here.

So again, verse 25, Jesus says, These things I have spoken to you while I am still with you.

And this is the love and affection that he has for his disciples, that he would make known to them the will of the

Father. Remember what we finished with yesterday in verse 24, the word that you hear is not mine, but the

Father's who sent me. Coming up in chapter 15, verse 14, Jesus said to his disciples,

You are my friends if you do what I command you. Remember that we've been talking this week and kind of the latter part of last week,

Jesus saying to his disciples, If you love me, you will keep my commandments. If anyone loves me, he will keep my word.

That was verse 23. And my Father will love him, and we will come to him, and we will make our home with him.

And then in chapter 15, verse 14, You are my friends if you do what

I command you. So this love and affection that Jesus has for his disciples, he has shown his love for them.

He has come to them. He has called them. He will die for them. He will commission them. All of these ways that God has demonstrated his love for his disciples.

How is it that we show our love for God, but by keeping his commandments? And understand, this is how we show our love for God.

It's not necessarily the way that we show love for each other. The way we show love to one another is not the same way that we're going to demonstrate love for God.

Say for example, you work for a boss that you don't particularly like, but you obey his instructions.

And it's not because you love your boss. It's because, well, maybe you love your job or your family whom you are providing for.

And if you don't obey your boss, then you're going to lose your job. So you see that obedience doesn't necessarily translate to love for each other.

We don't keep our friendships by obeying one another. And the love that you demonstrate for your spouse is not really demonstrated in obedience for your spouse.

So it may be demonstrated in obedience to God that you are to, like husbands, to love your wife as Christ loved the church, laying your life down for her, or wives submitting to your husbands as the church is to submit to Christ, as a demonstration of the way that the church is to be in obedience to Christ.

So in that sense, your obedience to God could translate as love for your spouse.

But it's not the way that we show love to our spouse by obeying our spouse. Now kids are instructed to obey their parents.

But some kids will obey their parents because they don't want to get in trouble. So their obedience has self -interest in mind.

I don't want to get a spanking or I don't want to get grounded or have some privilege taken away from me.

So that's why I'm obeying my parents. It's not really because I love them, though that should be what they're learning, what they're growing in.

They should mature in an understanding of honoring their father and their mother. And honor means that they love their parents and they obey their parents.

But sometimes the kids are just going to obey out of self -interest. Not really because they have that love and reverence for their parents that they're supposed to have.

Maybe it's a heat of the moment sort of a thing. In this particular moment, I don't love you so much, but I know that I have to obey.

Okay, so all of that just to say giving those examples to show that the way we show love to one another is not necessarily a demonstration of obedience.

But the way that we show love for God is going to be obedience because we love

God for who he is. He is God. He is Lord over all. He is sovereign.

He is savior. He is judge. He is king. And so as king, as ruler who sits enthroned over all creation, if we love

God for who he is, we will obey his commandments because we know that his commandments are right and good.

Think of Romans 12 too. Whenever we quote Romans 12 too, we focus on the part that says, do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind.

That's kind of the part that we focus on, to encourage somebody not to conform to the world, but instead to conform to Christ.

But consider the rest of the verse that by testing, you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

And if we love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, we trust in God.

We have placed our faith in him. We know that he is good. We will know that his will is perfect and there is no one else's will, including your own, that could possibly guide you in right steps.

And so loving God means knowing that his way is good and acceptable and perfect.

And that, that faith that you have in God, believing this of God, this is his character.

Then you will demonstrate that faith through obedience, knowing that his way is good and acceptable and perfect.

You will obey it because there's no other way that could be right. Only God's way is right.

Your way doesn't even compare. It's foolish. It leads to death. In fact, according to Proverbs, there is a way that seems right to a man, but its way is the end of death, whereas God's way leads to life.

And so Jesus saying to his disciples here, I have told you these things while I am still with you, because it's a demonstration of his love for them.

I have let you in on the will of the father. You know it because I have shared it with you.

Then in verse 26, he says, and this is further along the lines of how Jesus is going to show his love for his disciples.

Remember that he has said, verse 18, I will not leave you as orphans.

I will come to you. And so he mentions again the helper who was going to be sent to them, verse 26.

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 have said to you.

Now we mentioned the helper previously, back in verse 16, and I will ask the father and he will give you another helper to be with you forever.

And here in this verse, he clarifies that helper, capital H in your Bible, is probably the way that you have translated is specifically the

Holy Spirit. And what is the Holy Spirit going to do for them? The father will send you the

Holy Spirit in my name. So if you have the Holy Spirit dwelling within you and as a follower of Christ, you do.

The Holy Spirit is your connection to Christ and your connection to the father. Your relationship with God is a

Trinitarian relationship, and it is the Holy Spirit that is sent in the name of Christ that connects you to the father to understand his will.

And you have the very presence of God within you. You are already seated in the heavenly places with Christ.

And when Christ, who is your life, appears, then you will appear with him in glory, as Paul says in Colossians chapter three, verse four.

So knowing that our treasure is stored up with God in heaven.

Then we have that relationship with the triune God. Even now, the

Holy Spirit that is our seal for that day. According to Ephesians chapter one, we have been sealed for the day of redemption by the

Holy Spirit of God. The father has sent the spirit in the name of Christ that we have dwelling within us.

This triune or the relationship that we have with the triune God specifically stating it that way.

And the Holy Spirit, Jesus says, will teach you all things and will bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.

Now teaching you all things doesn't mean every bit of knowledge in the world will be yours. You will know everything because not even

Jesus in his humanity knew everything. There were certain claims as God that he set aside when he took on human flesh.

He emptied himself, according to Philippians chapter two. So you think of qualities of God being omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent.

And Jesus set all those things aside when he put on flesh and dwelt among us.

Omnipotent. He was not all powerful. There were certain things that Jesus would not do.

Now he was omnipotent as God, but he set that aside. He did not exercise that quality as God in his humanity, his omniscience, his all -knowingness.

Certain things that he set aside even as a God in human flesh.

He said that only the father knows the day that Christ will return. He has set these things, set these dates by his own authority, but not even the son knows this because the son in his humanity has submitted himself to the will of the father and he doesn't know, according to the father's will, when

Christ's return is going to be. And then you think about his omnipresence. Well, of course, in Jesus' physical form, he could not be anywhere all the time.

And that is one of the reasons why Jesus says to his disciples, when I go back to the father, you should rejoice.

This means that Jesus will be omnipresent again, since he is ascending back to his father and will be seated at his right hand.

Jesus can be anywhere, whereas in the meantime, in his human form, he can only be where he is right then with his disciples.

Physically, he can only be where his physical body is. Again, Jesus set aside certain claims that he had as God when he took on human flesh.

Now, the father retained everything as the father, still sovereign, still all -knowing, still all -powerful, still present in all places, all the time, and the

Holy Spirit as well. But the Holy Spirit in submission to Christ, who is in submission to the father.

So once again, Jesus saying that the coming of the Holy Spirit will teach you all things.

He will teach you all things. Doesn't mean that you know everything, all knowledge in the world, but simply that which the father means for you to know according to the father's will.

And I believe that there were certain things the disciples knew that we don't know. Not everything that was shown to the disciples, shown to the apostles in particular, by the

Holy Spirit of God was revealed to us. Not every single thing that was shown to them was written down in the scriptures.

Say, for example, you go to 2 Corinthians 12, where the apostle

Paul says that he was caught up into the third heaven. Well, he's speaking of himself in the third person. He says,

I know a man who was caught up into the third heaven and he saw things that no eye can see nor ear can hear.

He had been privileged to witness something that he could not communicate. The Lord would not allow him to share with anyone else.

So that just kind of gives you a hint or an idea of how God had shown certain things to the apostles that we don't all get to see.

We don't all get to know exactly what it was they were told or what they what they saw, what they heard.

Now, I have said before that I believe that vision in 2 Corinthians chapter 12 is actually the same vision that John had for the book of Revelation.

But God would not allow Paul to write that down. That was going to be for the apostle John to write down, which

I also believe that he did after 70 AD. And Paul died before the destruction of the temple.

He was martyred in Rome. Anyway, that's a discussion for another time. But I'm just kind of sharing with an example of how there were probably certain things to the apostles where certain things were made known to the apostles that we don't get to know.

But for the purpose of God, with his disciples, with the apostles, with the

Holy Spirit going out into the world to preach the gospel, it was the Holy Spirit of God that will teach them the things that Jesus had not yet taught them.

And the Holy Spirit will bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you. Now remember back in chapter 13, when we started this discourse in the upper room,

Jesus washed his disciples feet. And what he said to his disciples was, what I am doing for you now, you don't understand, but soon you will understand.

These things would come back to their minds again. They would understand what it is that Jesus had done because the

Holy Spirit would bring it to their remembrance. If you ever encounter a skeptic who talks about like the dating of the gospels,

Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and says they were dated so late, 30 years after Jesus was crucified and resurrected, you can forget a lot in 30 years.

So therefore we can't rely upon the gospels as accurate since they were written down so far after these events were witnessed.

If you ever encounter a skeptic who says something like that, well, a good defense for that is this verse,

John 14, 26, the Holy Spirit will teach you all things and will bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.

So how is it that the disciples were able to remember what Jesus said with such great detail that they were able to write it down in the gospels because the

Holy Spirit brought it to their remembrance? Now, from the very beginning of the apostolic ministry, what the apostles were teaching was what we have written down in the gospels.

It didn't change over 30 years if it was indeed that long until the gospels were written.

I don't really think the dating goes quite that far, but it certainly wasn't written like the next day.

It wasn't like the disciples got down, OK, we better start writing these things down. But from the very first sermon that was preached at Pentecost, what

Peter preached was what we have in the gospels. Now you might be thinking, well, wait, I can go to Acts chapter two, and that's exclusive to Acts two.

It doesn't it doesn't have those exact words anywhere in the gospels. Yes. But consider what it says in Acts 240.

So after Peter had preached, the people were convicted. They were getting baptized, it says in Acts 240.

And with many other words, he bore witness and continued to exhort them.

Peter bore witness how? By preaching to them the gospel. Matthew is

Matthew's gospel. Mark is the gospel the way that Peter preached it. Luke is the gospel the way that Paul preached it.

And none of those things are in contradiction with one another. They may just have various points that they're highlighting more so than the other, or they may put those things in a certain chronological order that the other person wasn't putting in a particular order.

Like, for example, in Mark, you have the mark and appendix, which is kind of like Mark's version of a rabbit trail or recalling some other previous event sandwiched right in the middle of the of the story that he's doing.

Anyway, all of that just to say that what the apostles were preaching from the beginning was the gospels, the way that we have the gospels.

And it's because the Holy Spirit was bringing these things to their remembrance. They were not relying upon any kind of faulty memory, but they were being carried along by the

Holy Spirit of God. Second Peter, chapter one in verse 16, I'll start in verse 16, just because this paragraph is so wonderful.

Peter says, for we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our

Lord Jesus Christ. But we were eyewitnesses of his majesty.

For when he received honor and glory from God the Father, and the voice was born to him by the majestic glory, this is my beloved son with whom

I am well pleased. We ourselves heard this very voice born from heaven, for we were with him on the holy mountain.

And we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts, knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of scripture comes from someone's own interpretation.

For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the

Holy Spirit. So the apostles and the work that they did, what they were commissioned to do by Christ, it was with the power of the

Holy Spirit of God that was upon them to be able to recall the things that Jesus said with such accurate detail.

Now the events, of course, they knew those things because they were eyewitnesses to those things, just as Peter was illustrating there, including the

Mount of Transfiguration, which is the example that he used, hearing the voice of God from heaven say, this is my beloved son with whom

I am well pleased. So they were eyewitnesses to those things, of course, but many of the discourses that Jesus shared, how was it that the disciples were able to remember the things that Jesus taught in just the three years that they were with him?

Because the Holy Spirit brought it to their remembrance, even in situations of great duress.

In Luke chapter 12, Jesus was warning his disciples about the persecution that they would face. And he says in verses 11 and 12, when they bring you before the synagogues and the rulers and the authorities, do not be anxious about how you should defend yourself or what you should say.

For the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say.

The Holy Spirit of God teaches us how to discern the word of Christ. We can read this and we can know that it is the word of God and what he desires of us, because the

Holy Spirit helps us to understand those things. I come back again to 1 Corinthians 2 .14,

where it says, the naturally minded man can't discern the spiritual things of God, for they are spiritually discerned.

And we have that Holy Spirit so that we may discern the word of God and understand what his will is for us.

And we must store these things up in our heart. We must commit these things to memory so that we would live by them and not stumble by the way and give in to the passions of our flesh, whether those passions are sexual temptation or it's bitterness and rage and anger or confusion or laziness or any of these things that we might have a tendency to fall into as a result of our fleshly desires or lack of motivation or any of those things, because the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.

Amen. As Jesus said to his own disciples in the garden of Gethsemane. So we must store up the word of Christ and be transformed in our thinking by this word, knowing that God's will is good and pleasing and perfect.

His will has been laid out for us in scripture so that we might do the thing that is pleasing unto our

Lord and the perfect will of God, which is far better than anything that we could ever ask or imagine.

All of this has been given to us in the word of Christ. So let us love his word and walk in fellowship with him according to what he has said.

And we know this promise that God has given to us. He will be with us.

Let us pray. Our heavenly father, we thank you again for what a great privilege this is to open up the word of God and read it.

And may we never take this for granted, but with it so available to us, we remember the people who laid down their lives so that we might have the word of God in a language that is our own and be able to read it with great fondness and affection for our

Lord God any day, any hour that we so choose. We love your word and desire to write it upon our hearts and walk according to it.

Give us your Holy Spirit that we may have the will to do so that we may have the strength to be able to do it.

And when the day of trouble comes, that these things would be brought to our remembrance so that we would rely upon the hope and promises that have been given to us in Christ Jesus for that great day that we will be united with you in glory.

We ask these things in Jesus name, amen. You've been listening to When We Understand The Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes.

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