Holy Spirit – Teacher of All Things

Since Pentecost Sunday, we’ve studied about the Holy Spirit, His Personal attributes, operation and manifestation in and through believers in Jesus.  Let’s pick up where we left off last week and begin with John 14:19-31.

Obedience to God is the offspring of love for Jesus Christ.  Obedience is the proof of love.  Obedience is also the signature, or proof, that love exists.  It is of the utmost importance that we passionately pursue a love for Jesus that has obedience to His leading as its highest goal rather than pursuing personal attainments.  The Apostle Paul spoke of his personal experience of this in Phil. 3:1-11.

I appreciate Welsh counselor Selwyn Hughes’s comments on John 14:26. He states, “Well, it is true that Christianity is fixed [on absolutes and dogmas], but it also provides for a continuing revelation:  “The Holy Spirit…will teach you all things.”  Jesus is God’s final and complete revelation, but because of the limitations in us, this revelation must be gradually unfolding.  Notice, however, that the teaching of the [Holy] Spirit is according to a fixed pattern:  “[He] will…remind you of everything I have told you” (v. 26).  He will teach us more than Jesus taught but not other than [what] Jesus taught.  Someone said of this approach that it is both conservative and radical because it conserves all that Jesus taught and because it applies to new areas of life the universal aspect of Jesus.”

Notice in v. 28 that Jesus details what love should do when Jesus departed from the disciples presence – love wouldn’t weep, moan and carry on out of the instinct of self-preservation.  Love for Christ “would rejoice” because He was going to the Father who was greater that Himself.  That was a very good thing for Jesus and love would want what’s best for Him!!  When we abandon self-preservation, then we’ll get Christ-revelation because we’ll be thinking like Him.

Four things that prevent us so often from obeying the Lord?

1) A lack of love produced by fear that comes from an un-renewed mind;

2) doubts about God’s willingness to keep His promises because of our self-centered feelings of unworthiness or sinfulness;

3) unbelief due to our lack of understanding of Scripture/doctrine (14:29).

Page 2, “Holy Spirit – Teacher of All Things”, June 13, 2010

(What prevents us so often from obeying the Lord?)

4) a closed ear (Isa. 6:9, 10) or a rebellious heart (Isa. 50:5), which come from a proud, unteachable spirit that is unwilling to trust Father God’s strategies. Jesus trusted in the Garden (Matt. 26:39). Here’s where faith is required, which works by love (Gal. 5:6).

Notice in John 14:30 that the “ruler of this world…has nothing in [Jesus]”. The ruler of this world also has nothing in those who are in Christ Jesus and walk in love. We are not to have the ruler of this world in us through unrenewed minds, disobedient/unbelieving hearts, selfish fear-based motivations or double-minded thinking. We are to have Jesus manifested (v. 21; “shining in order to appear to the sight of another; the self-revelation of Jesus to believers”) to us [Holy Spirit upon us] and the Godhead living in us (v. 23).  Kat Kerr spoke to us of how ultimately important her obedience to the Lord is to her relationship with God.  No wonder she’s been privileged to go to heaven over 200 times!

Let’s purpose right now to be abandoned lovers of the Lord and also purpose that nothing He asks will be too great for us to obey.  Let’s abandon carnal sins of the flesh that Jesus might manifest Himself to us more clearly and through us more powerfully.  By faith let’s take God at His Word and allow the Truth to penetrate our hearts & minds and radically change our thinking and behavior.  Let’s submit to the leading of the Holy Spirit under the Lordship of Jesus Christ through the love of the Father, shall we?