Midweek Lenten Theme: "On the Night When He Was Betrayed ... Jesus Promised the Helper to His Disciples" (based on John 15:26-16:15, 32-33)

Friends in Jesus,

A beloved Psalm, Psalm 121, asks the question, “I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come?” It’s a timeless question. Where does our help come from? As we survey all the problems in this world, and all the problems we’re facing or our loved ones are facing, how can we not admit, “We need help!”  Psalm 121 answers its own question. It declares, “My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.”  And what a comfort that answer is!

Jesus also promised His disciples help from the Lord on that Thursday night when He was betrayed. He did so several times in His conversations with the disciples in the final hours before His arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane.

Tonight, we heard Jesus’ words in John 15:26, “When the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, He will bear witness about Me.”  Last Wednesday, our service focused on Jesus’ words of comfort, and His promise to send the Helper is yet another Gift for our comfort!

The Greek word that Jesus uses to refer to the Holy Spirit is paraclete. There are a few different ways that paraclete can be translated.  “Helper” is one of them.  But this word could also refer to the Spirit as the “Counselor”,  the “Comforter”,  the “Encourager”,  or the “Advocate.” These translations all point to different aspects of the sort of “Helper” God the Holy Spirit is to us.

The basic meaning of a paraclete is “someone called to a person’s side to help.”  Think about that … Someone at your side.  That we can understand!  We all have times when we need someone at our side.  We need someone there with us as we’re going through our medical ups and downs.  We need someone at our side when we’ve landed in some trouble, or when we need someone to put in a good word for us.  We need someone there to walk with us in this Christian faith and to encourage us along the way. 

Christ Jesus promises that His Holy Spirit is the One at your side, even when our earthly helpers fall through.  The Holy Spirit, the Helper, is the lasting gift whom Christ leaves with His Christians.  Not only is His Spirit with you, but even better than that, Jesus said in John 14:17, “He will be in you.”  Jesus has not left us alone!  He sends the Helper to be with us and in us …

This Lent we’ve been returning to the words of John 13:1 which tell us that Jesus loves “to the end.” Jesus loved us all the way to the cross,  to His empty tomb,  and to the end of His earthly ministry at His Ascension.  But He didn’t stop!   So maybe we should say that Jesus is the One who loves us “to the end – and beyond!” because Jesus continues to pour His love into our hearts and lives through His Holy Spirit. 

As we heard earlier in Psalm 139, no matter where we are, no matter what’s going on, God’s Spirit is there with us.  You can’t outrun Him. The Helper is here.  He’s by your side …

But it’s also worth asking, what exactly does the Holy Spirit do for us?  He’s our “Helper”, as Jesus has said, but other than being with us, how is the Spirit helping us?  Sometimes people expect the Holy Spirit to work in “splashy”, exciting ways.  After all, the Holy Spirit came to the very first Christians on Pentecost Sunday with flames and the sound of rushing wind and enabled them to declare the mighty works of God in other languages. 

That was exciting!  The Holy Spirit definitely got people’s attention!  His coming on Pentecost was a real miracle and one that Jesus had promised would happen, but it’s not the Holy Spirit’s usual way of working …

Another issue is that people have so many different ideas and feelings about “spirituality.”  It’s popular these days to be a “spiritual person”, but not in the sense that Jesus is talking about.  When people talk about being “spiritual” they could mean any number of things, like feeling the presence of their ancestors, or looking to crystals for healing the soul,  or believing in some generic “god” or “higher power” and an automatic afterlife. 

The other thing that happens a lot is a “mix and match spirituality” – combining some elements of Christianity with your own ideas about God and maybe with some practices from other world religions …

But when we speak of “spirituality” as Christians, we’re talking about the one, true spirituality – the presence and work of God the Holy Spirit!   And we turn to Jesus’ own words to understand this spirituality and what His Spirit does for us.

In John 15:26, Jesus calls Him “the Spirit of Truth.”  He isn’t the Spirit of emotions or the Spirit of any and all so-called “spiritual” things.  The Holy Spirit bears witness only to the Truth revealed to Him by the Father and the Son. Remember in chapter 14 how Jesus said, “I Am … the Truth”?  Clearly, the Truth that the Holy Spirit comes to reveal is that of our Savior Jesus!

Jesus also said that the Spirit “will guide you into all the Truth” (16:13).  Jesus isn’t promising that the Holy Spirit will help us discover our “own truth.”  Again, God’s Spirit comes to lead us to know and believe Jesus!

Jesus said plainly that the Spirit “will bear witness about Me, and you also will bear witness” (15:26).  In other words, just as the Holy Spirit points us to Jesus, He points others to Jesus through our witness!  Are we capable of this witnessing?  Not when we rely on ourselves.  But when we trust the presence and power of the Holy Spirit, we can bear witness to Jesus as the Truth.  Jesus also said that the Spirit “will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you” (14:26).

We know from this that the Holy Spirit works through God’s Word. He uses God’s Word to convict us, and to encourage us, and to keep pointing us back to Jesus. The Holy Spirit also brings God’s Word to mind for us, just as He inspired John and the Apostles to record Jesus’ words and deeds for us in the Gospels and letters of the New Testament. 

If we’re looking for true spiritual “inspiration”, then we need to turn where Jesus’ promises that His Spirit will inspire us:  in His Holy Word!

But the Holy Spirit doesn’t play “fun and games” when He addresses people through God’s Word. Jesus says that the Spirit “will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment” (16:8).  This is another thing the Spirit must do for us.  We need to be shown the truth about our sin. Otherwise, we wouldn’t know what it means to have a “Savior” in Jesus, or why we even need salvation!

So once again, what does the Spirit of Truth do for us?  It’s simple … He shows us the truth.  Through God’s Law, He shows us that we are lost without Jesus.  And, through the Gospel message, He shows us the One who is “the Way and the Truth and the Life” (14:6).

The Spirit helps us believe in Jesus, that He is the One and Only Way and Truth and Life upon which our faith and hope can be built. We could not believe in Jesus apart from the Holy Spirit. And we cannot continue to believe without the Spirit. Through Jesus’ Word and through His Means of Grace in our Baptism and in Holy Communion, the Holy Spirit is keeping us in this one, truth Christian faith.

That’s what God the Holy Spirit does to help us. And maybe the Spirit’s work doesn’t sound all that exciting or inspiring, but this is the truth about the “Spirit of Truth” that Jesus has revealed to us!

One last question:  how can we know that something is or isn’t the work of the Holy Spirit?  Let’s go back to what Jesus said in John 16:14.  He tells us that the Spirit of Truth “will glorify Me, for He will take what is Mine and declare it to you.”  For anything to truly be “spiritual”, it must glorify Jesus.  It must agree with His Word.  It must point us to the Savior who suffered and bled for us.

That’s how the Holy Spirit helped John and the other Apostles – to proclaim the message of Christ’s cross for our sake…  On His cross, Jesus lifted up His eyes to the hills, but no help came for Him. He was forsaken not only by His own friends but by God the Father.  He hung there for us with the weight of this sinful world bearing down on Him.

But Christ and His cross are our life and salvation!  Because He endured our punishment, because He took away our sins, and because He rose in victory over sin’s “wages” of death and the grave, we now have new life and forgiveness and eternal salvation!  And that’s the faith that the Holy Spirit has led you to, and He is by your side, helping you continue to trust the Truth!

We began with a question from the Psalms, “From where does my help come?”  

Jesus answers.  He sends us help!  He sends us the Helper, His Holy Spirit.  Turn to the Helper.  Seek and pray for the help of God the Holy Spirit as you continue to fight the good fight of faith in Jesus Christ! 

In His name, Amen. 

The sermon on March 10 was delivered in three parts based on the three Scripture readings: Numbers 21:4-9 ("Look to Live"), Ephesians 2:1-10 ("Death to Life"), and John 3:14-21 ("Sent to Save").

Midweek Lenten Theme: "On the Night When He Was Betrayed ... Jesus Comforted His Disciples" (based on John chapter 14)