Intro to John 15:26-27)

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 1/2/2017 10:07 AM

My Worship Time                                                                            Focus:  Intro to John 15:26-27

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                 Reference:  John 15:26-27

            Message of the verses:  “26 "When the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, that is the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify about Me, 27  and you will testify also, because you have been with Me from the beginning.”

            We are beginning to look at the last two verses in the fifteenth chapter of John a chapter that we began on December 11, 2016 and this to me has been a wonderful study from John’s gospel.

            As we began to look at these last few chapters of John’s gospel beginning with chapter 13 we saw a change in what was happening in the lives of Jesus and His disciples.  Gone were the days of ministering to others, of the healings and other miracles that had been going on for over three years, and now comes the most difficult time in the life of Jesus Christ as in a few hours from the beginning of chapter thirteen Jesus would be hanging on a cross to pay for the sins of the world, to pay for my sin and for yours.  I cannot help but think about all that suffering that Jesus was about to go through, and the fact that He knew He was going to go through it for this was the reason that He came to earth, and yet His concern at this time was for the eleven disciples that were left after Judas went to betray Jesus, which will happen not long from the things we are reading about now in chapter fifteen.  Jesus still had some things to teach his remaining disciples, things that they would need to know even though fear had settled in on all of them a fear that Jesus was going to calm as He always did with His Words.  However they would not realize it until after He arose from the dead and after the coming of the Holy Spirit which Christ is talking about in these two verses, and will go on talking about in chapter sixteen.

            Jesus tells His disciples that they would all run away from Him and Peter said as a spokesmen for the rest that He was ready to die with Him, and yet this was not the plan for them at this time, for indeed all of them would die for the cause of Christ with the exception of John and possibility of Matthew. 

            As we think about the Holy Spirit and His ministry it seems to me that there are some believers that He is all they talk about and then there are some who never seem to talk about and both of these are wrong.  When one reads through the book of Acts there are some who call it the book of the acts of the apostles, and some who would call it the book of the acts of the Holy Spirit and I suppose both would be correct as the apostles records are seen in the book of Acts doing things from the very beginning in the power of the Holy Spirit.  I believe that it is true that the Holy Spirit is the most uniformed Person of the Trinity, and yet it is the Spirit of God who is involved with everything that goes on during the Church age as He indwells every believer, and fills believers to do His will to bring glory to Jesus Christ. 

            John MacArthur writes “But the disciples would not have to face the world’s opposition in their own strength.  In these two verses Jesus reiterated His earlier promise (14:16-17,26) that He would send the Holy Spirit to indwell and empower them.  The Spirit’s coming made certain that all of Jesus’ promises would be fulfilled.  The rest of the New Testament echoes this same truth, that the promises Christ made to His disciples (and by extension to all of His followers) would be ensured and enabled through the ministry of the Holy Spirit.”

            There are many promises that Jesus had given to His disciples, and as MacArthur writes are an “extension to all of His followers” in chapters 13-16, and then in chapter seventeen He prays to the Father that all of these promises will be fulfilled, and they will be through the power of the Holy Spirit as we have mentioned.  Here is an example of one of the comforting promises that we studied from John 14:18-23 “18 "I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. 19  "After a little while the world will no longer see Me, but you will see Me; because I live, you will live also. 20 “In that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you. 21 "He who has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me; and he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and will disclose Myself to him." 22  Judas (not Iscariot) said to Him, "Lord, what then has happened that You are going to disclose Yourself to us and not to the world?" 23 Jesus answered and said to him, "If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our abode with him.”  There are other promises that He has given and will continue to give as we continue looking at the end of chapter fifteen and then look at chapter sixteen.  That promise we just looked at was fulfilled by the coming of the Holy Spirit, who, Jesus told the disciples, ‘abides with you and will be in you’ (John 14:17). 

            John MacArthur concludes this introduction with the following two paragraphs as in the last one gives us a guide as to what we are going to look at.

            “The legacy Christ gave the Church also includes the power to evangelize the world.  That, too, comes from the Spirit.  As noted earlier, just before He ascended into heaven, Jesus promised the disciples, ‘You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth’ (Acts 1:8).  There can be no Christian witness apart from the Spirit; it is His ministry to convict the world of sin (John 16:8) and present Jesus Christ to it (John 15:26).  No one can be saved without confessing Jesus as Lord (Rom. 10:9-10) and no one can do that without the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 12:3).

            “It is the Holy Spirit’s empowering of Christian witness to a lost world that is in view in this passage.  Four important truths regarding the nature of Christian witness emerge from these two verses:  it is to the world, about the Son, from the Father, and through believers.”

            Spiritual meaning for my life today:  I am thankful for the world and the ministry of the Holy Spirit in my life, and pray that my life will be continually used by Him for the cause of Christ.

My Steps of Faith for Today:  Keep my life ready to be used by the Spirit of God.

Memory verse for the week:  (Romans 6:11) “Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.”

Answer to yesterday’s Bible question:  “Sodom and Gomorrah” (Genesis 19:24).

Today’s Bible question:  “For whose sake was John the Baptist put in prison?”

Answer in our next SD.

1/2/2017 10:51 AM