One of the main tasks of the Holy Spirit in our lives is to be a messenger between us and God. And in so doing, he guides us through our lives on the path God wants for us. Looking through scripture we see that the 4 main messages the Holy Spirit communicates are: (1) convict the world, (2) guide us to truth, (3) teach us wisdom, and (4) intercede on our behalf.
The Message
Today is Mother’s Day! Do you know what makes moms so special? They take care of us and support us from the time we are born. They take us through childhood and teen years and “mother us” even long after we leave the nest and start families of our own. Many kids – especially teenagers – probably wouldn’t live to adulthood without moms to set limits, correct, and point toward better uses of energies.
Why am I talking about mothers today when our sermon series “Fresh Fire” is about the Holy Spirit? It’s because this week someone told me, “The Holy Spirit is like your mama.” He was joking, but I can see the similarities; both act as guides in our lives.
Today, as we continue to answer the question “What does the Holy Spirit do?” I’ll show you how He communicates between us and God and guides us to lives that please God.
Holy Spirit Messages
A primary task of the Holy Spirit is to act as a messenger between God and us, His children. The Spirit guides us via communication from God. He points us to Jesus and shows us God’s will. When we talk of the “still small voice” of the Spirit, we are talking about the messages the Spirit speaks quietly to us. It’s not an audible voice, but usually a clear thought or idea that comes to your mind. If that thought sounds like God and lines up with the Bible, you can be pretty sure it isn’t just some random idea you came up with on your own! It’s a message from the Holy Spirit. (It’s a lot like thinking you can hear your mother saying something to you when she’s not present in the room. You just know it!)
As I looked through the Biblical references to the Holy Spirit, I found that the Spirit’s messages fall into four categories.
The Holy Spirit Convicts the World
John 16:8 – When He comes, He will prove the world to be in the wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment.
This verse has a lot more going on that I ever realized. The old NIV version said He will “convict the world of sin.” The King James Version says “reprove.” The different wordings are used because while it makes sense for the Spirit to convict the world of sin, how does He convict the world of righteousness and judgment? (Honestly, I used to just gloss over these words.)
The best solution I found for this verse was that it refers to conviction of the self-righteous religious elites Jesus had been in conflict with, and conviction of the upside-down judgment He knew they would seek. He knew they would find the Son of God guilty rather than the Father of Lies and Accuser, Satan.
Interestingly, in researching this verse, I found a comment by one pastor that the Holy Spirit will never convict a believer of sin, but only of righteousness and of God’s view that His child is perfect and set free from judgment.
Confusion about this verse results when you don’t have clarity about two important words: Conviction and Condemnation.
Conviction comes from the Holy Spirit. It points us to Jesus, causes us to repent, and makes us take the forgiveness of God seriously.
Condemnation comes from the enemy. It typically causes us to hide our sin and makes us feel guilty, ashamed and worthless.
Here’s an important verse to help us understand the difference:
Romans 8:1-2 – Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death.
Paul makes it clear here that condemnation is not the same as conviction and that it has no place in the life of a follower of Jesus. The law of the Spirit sets us free from the law of sin and death. In that sense, the pastor whose comment I read was correct: the Holy Spirit will never condemn us. Yet, the Spirit does have the job of convicting us and pointing us to Jesus for grace, mercy and forgiveness. Otherwise we would have nothing to guide us away from the sin that so damages our lives.
The Holy Spirit Guides into Truth
John 16:13 – But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on His own; He will speak only what He hears, and He will tell you what is yet to come.
Society has a problem with truth nowadays! News broadcasts put their own political twists on everything and make us feel like we live in a world with varying sets of “facts.” It’s stressful! How can we ever find common ground when so-called “truth” is like a shifting of the tide?
The only solid rock we have anymore – the only truth we know we can trust – is what we have from God through His Holy Spirit and His Holy Word. That’s it. We know God cannot lie. We know the Spirit speaks only what He hears from God. So, finally, we have something we can trust more than news broadcasts or the gossip around town.
Continuing in the passage, Jesus made it abundantly clear to His disciples that the Spirit will not give them a message different from the one He has taught them. He tells them the Spirit will never say anything Jesus Himself does not tell Him to say.
John 16:14 – He will glorify Me because it is from Me that He will receive what He will make known to you.
Side note: The Holy Spirit always points to Jesus. Since the Spirit is a member of the Trinity, we would expect the Bible to show examples of people worshipping Him. It never happens. Instead, we always see that the Spirit glorifies the Son.
The Holy Spirit Teaches Wisdom
John 14:26 – But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.
Jesus had much to teach His disciples, but only so much time. He covered everything He needed them to know, but they didn’t pick it all up the first time. That’s where the Holy Spirit came in. As the disciples’ understanding of Jesus grew, the Spirit reminded them of things Jesus had said.
For instance, in John 2 Jesus has a confrontation with the religious elite and tells them, “Destroy this temple; I will raise it in three days.” Then, at the end of this account, John records that after Jesus’s resurrection “His disciples recalled what He had said.” I doubt that this happened on Easter Sunday. But some years later, as they were recalling their Jesus moments, the Holy Spirit tapped one of them on the shoulder and reminded them of how Jesus’s teaching had pointed to His resurrection.
The Apostle Paul gives us one of the longer writings on how the Spirit teaches us wisdom we can never gain from all the education of the world:
1 Corinthians 2:10-16 – The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. For who knows a person’s thoughts except their own spirit within them? In the same way, no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words. The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit. The person with the Spirit makes judgments, for who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct Him? But we have the mind of Christ.
There’s so much we don’t know about spirituality when we become Christians! We need to learn how to live moment by moment; and while going to church is a good start, the pastor isn’t with us every day of our lives. Therefore the Spirit teaches us to judge what is good and what is bad – which paths and choices will lead to life and which will lead to pain. The Spirit helps us make decisions that conform to the will of God.
A person who doesn’t have the Holy Spirit (and who therefore doesn’t have spiritual discernment) will never understand why Christians do what they do. A Christian’s life doesn’t make sense to someone who is guided by a different set of “truths.” I think that’s why the chasm between Christians and the world seems to grow larger and larger. It’s hard to bridge the gap when their beliefs and ours lead to such different conclusions.
Christ is the perfect example of a person who has received the wisdom of the Holy Spirit. This is what the prophet Isaiah said about the coming Messiah:
Isaiah 11:1-4 – A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit. The Spirit of the Lord will rest upon Him – the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of might, the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the Lord – and He will delight in the fear of the Lord. He will not judge by what He sees with His eyes, or decide by what He hears with His ears; but with righteousness He will judge the needy, with justice He will give decisions for the poor of the earth.
Jesus is unique because He was the first person to have the Spirit of God reside in Him full time. He demonstrated what it looks like to have wisdom from above. It does not look like spiritual snobbery, as it unfortunately does with some Christians. Instead it leads to righteous judgment for the needy and the poor. His discernment caused Him to reject the Pharisees (who thought they had it all figured out), and He embraced the down and out, those God loved and wanted to invite into His family.
With that same Spirit in us, we have access to the same godly wisdom to guide and direct our lives. We can see the world as God sees it and act as God wants us to act.
The Holy Spirit Intercedes for Us
So far we’ve looked at the Holy Spirit’s communication from God to us. The Spirit also speaks from us to God.
Romans 8:26-27 – In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us through wordless groans . . . He intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God.
We all have times when we don’t know how or what to pray. We don’t know the solution to the mess! In those moments the Spirit prays to God for us – in accordance with God’s will – the perfect prayer. I find incredible comfort in knowing that when I am at my end and don’t know up from down, God is still helping me.
Some of you may know I’m starting to become a real farmer. I now have my first animals: chickens. A few weeks ago we received a few laying hens from friends, and just this week we picked up 20 baby chicks to raise. These brand-new babies are cute and soft and adorable. And they need help! We had to dip their beaks in water to show them how to drink and set them by their food so they knew where to find it. The heat source we bought is different from what they were accustomed to; so we had to move them under the heater too. So cute! And yet so helpless!
That’s probably how God sees us – as beings of great value, the apple of His eye, deserving of the inheritance of His riches. Yet we are so naïve, so easily led astray, so quickly stuck in a mess we created for ourselves.
Jesus uses this same analogy as people being like helpless chicks in Matthew 23:37 when He says,
Jerusalem, Jerusalem you who kill the prophets and stone those who sent you, how often have I longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing.
The picture of “mama” appears again here; the mother hen wants to protect and lead her chicks. And we “chicks” need that protection and help! Some people accept the message of Jesus and receive this daily guidance. Others are like the Jews who killed Jesus. They reject the message He brought and thereby reject the offer of the Holy Spirit in their lives to give them the mind of Christ and wisdom from above.
Additionally, in Matthew 9 Jesus says the people are “like sheep without a shepherd.” He clearly knew we were going to need some hands-on mothering and attention. We needed more than three short years of Jesus walking the earth teaching. Each of us needed our own guide to remind us what we have heard and to help us apply it in our lives. We need to learn how to follow Jesus and make choices based on God’s will. Rather than condemn us for falling short, Jesus sends us a helper, an advocate, a teacher, a guide! One who leads us every day toward the life God created us for.
The question is: Will you follow?
We’ll talk about that another day.
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