Transcript
Stephen:
Following the ascension of Christ, there’s this period of waiting. They’re just waiting for something. The Lord Jesus said to them at the end of Luke’s gospel that they were to wait in Jerusalem, and they were waiting for the promise of the Father. They’re waiting for the coming of the Spirit.
We want to talk about that today because it’s the key to understanding how the Lord Jesus is with us and is working with us as Christians today.
Joel:
Absolutely. It’s an astonishing thing. You find out a lot about this in John chapter 14 through to 17 in what we normally call the upper room ministry.
There the Lord Jesus is preparing his disciples for the fact that he is going, but he’s not going to leave them as orphans or comfortless. He’s going to send what he calls another comforter to be with them. The Holy Spirit is going to come, and that’s what happens in Acts chapter 2.
What we understand from that section of the word of God is this: now the follower of Christ, the believer in the Lord Jesus, is indwelt by a divine person. The Holy Spirit comes in, takes up his permanent residence in them, and because of that we are more privileged than those disciples were as they sat around the upper room breaking bread with him, listening to him teaching, and seeing his miracles.
It’s a wonderful thing, but we are actually more privileged than they were.
It’s really clear at the beginning of the upper room ministry that the disciples just didn’t get who Jesus was. They didn’t understand his person or his purpose.
How is that going to be possible? How do we actually understand this man? It’s through the Holy Spirit. He comes in, takes up his residence in us, and enlightens our hearts to Christ. He makes us see who he truly is.
By doing that, he can really change us. We can begin to find our true identity. We can become the people that God wants us to be.
Stephen:
Certainly in the upper room ministry he speaks about how the Spirit is going to testify, reveal, and make clear the Lord Jesus.
Or even in 1 Corinthians chapter 2, it talks about the Spirit revealing the deep things of God. No one can know the mind of God except the Spirit of God.
Again, you have that idea that the key to us knowing Christ is the Spirit. There’s literally no other way that we can understand our God who has revealed himself to us in Christ.
It’s a really incredible truth.
How is he with us? In what way are we to understand this idea that the comforter is with us, that the Spirit of God is with us?
Joel:
In a very real way. Not a physical way, but in a spiritual way which is every bit as real, if not more real, than the physical sense. He abides with us. That’s what the Lord Jesus said.
He actually said that if the Spirit comes and abides with you, I and the Father will come and abide with you. That’s how we get to know God.
It’s important to understand who the Holy Spirit is. He’s not some kind of nebulous divine energy. He’s not a force.
When the Lord Jesus speaks about him, he always uses the personal pronoun “he.” In the upper room ministry in John’s gospel, he says, “I’m leaving, but I will send you another comforter,” or another of the same kind.
So the Spirit that is coming is of the same nature as the Christ who is about to go. If the Christ who is about to go is God, then the Spirit who is coming is God as well. He’s a divine person, the third person of the Trinity.
It’s really interesting, that word “comforter.” We spoke about this in our first episode in the Acts series. The Lord Jesus is our advocate with the Father. He’s our representative in the presence of God. It’s actually the same word in Greek as “comforter” in John 14, 15, and 16.
So we have an advocate, a comforter with the Father, and we also have one with us. That’s how the presence of Christ, through this acute awareness of his presence, transforms the life of a Christian.
I’m aware that you’re here because you’re physically sitting there, but spiritually the Holy Spirit is with us, within us. Becoming acutely aware of that is what enables transformation in the life of a Christian.
Stephen:
When we speak about the Spirit as our comforter, it’s a really rich word. When you read through your New Testament, that word is translated sometimes as encourage, sometimes as comfort, sometimes even as charge.
It’s a really rich word, and the Spirit is not just there patting us on the head saying, “There, there, you’re going to be okay.”
Help us understand: if I’m a new Christian, and I’m depending on the Spirit’s presence in my life to help me become all that God wants me to become, what should I be expecting the Spirit to be doing in me?
Joel:
Absolutely.
We should say that we’re using the word “comforter,” which is the word in the King James Version. If you read ten different translations of the Bible, you’ll probably get ten different words because it’s a very rich and nuanced expression.
As you say, there’s different aspects to it. There’s comfort, sympathy, drawing alongside, standing with us. There’s a work of representation, standing in our shoes almost. But there’s also the work of exhortation, calling, directing, pushing us in a certain direction.
So he’s there to change us.
How does that happen? How is change enabled?
It’s when we appreciate Christ for who he truly is.
There’s a lot of confusion about the work of the Holy Spirit in Christendom generally. I think it helps us when we see that the work of the Holy Spirit primarily is to draw our hearts to Christ.
I think it was John Stott who first described the work of the Holy Spirit as like a floodlight at a building at night. The floodlight is not there to draw attention to itself. It’s there to draw attention to the building. It lights it up and makes it look beautiful and grand and spectacular.
Without the floodlight, because of our limitations, we wouldn’t even be able to see it.
That’s the idea of the work of the Holy Spirit. He enlightens our hearts to Christ. He makes us understand his character, his person, his promises, and appreciate them and take them to ourselves.
On that objective basis that has now been revealed to us through the Spirit, we can move forward. We can have confidence. We can face grief and suffering and challenge. We can be comforted in that.
But we can also be challenged to eradicate sin from our lives, to work for good and work for God.
Without the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and his work to reveal Christ to us, to teach us about him, to remind us about him, that’s simply not possible.
Stephen:
Just to pull out some examples from the book of Acts, we have that word “comfort” again in the King James Version in Acts chapter 9, where it speaks about the period after Paul had been persecuting the church. He’s marvelously saved and delivered, and the persecution ends for a little while.
We read about how they were walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Ghost or the Holy Spirit.
Take Paul again as an example when he starts to go out into his missionary work. We see how the Spirit is guiding him and directing him. He’s wanting to share the gospel, and he’s going this way and then that way. It speaks about how the Spirit stays him, holds him back, and leads him eventually to Macedonia.
He gets to Athens, and we read about how he’s stirred in the Spirit. Another time it speaks about how he’s pressed in the Spirit.
You see how the Spirit is working and is present in these early Christians’ lives.
The truth is it’s still the same. When the Lord Jesus at the end of his time on earth said to his disciples, “Lo, I am with you always until the end of the age,” he is with us through the Spirit.
What the disciples in the book of Acts enjoyed in terms of the presence of the Spirit, we still enjoy that same presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives.
Joel:
Absolutely.
