John 14: 25-27 “All this I have spoken to you while I am still with you. But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have told you. Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled; do not be afraid.”

John 16: 7-8 “But I tell you the truth, it is for your benefit that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you. And when He comes, He will convict the world in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment: in regard to sin, because they do not believe in Me.”

Over the past two weeks as we headed into the Christmas time, we spoke about God the Father and then about Jesus, the perfect Christmas gift. Today I want to talk about the Holy Spirit. I grew up in a very conservative church and still pastor a very conservative church. And at times, in response to the abuse of the person of the Holy Spirit in other churches, I find that we conservatives, maybe not all of us but many of us, can become so protective that we almost stop talking about the Holy Spirit. Over the years I have been able, along with the work and study of other pastors, as well as with lectures in my current course of study, to come to learn and now to lean more on the Holy Spirit than ever before.

First of all, if you are saved, if you have accepted the free gift of salvation that Jesus paid for in His own blood, then you have the Holy Spirit living in you.

1 Corinthians 6:19-20 “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore, honor God with your bodies.”

This is one of the great mysteries of the New Testament believer that is a genuine treasure.

In the Old Testament, the Holy Spirit came and went on the believers. One of the only people that He stayed with for his entire life was King David. We see this in 1 Samuel 16:13. But we have the Holy Spirit in us, sealing us and securing us in Jesus until the Rapture or death will unite us face to face with Jesus.

When we consider the two sets of verses from John’s gospel that we quoted above, we will see that there are some great benefits to having the Holy Spirit here with us all the time. Let us look at these things together. This is very important.

One of the biggest issues of the last days is deception. Jesus told us in Matthew 24 that false christs will come. He warns us over and over not to be deceived. So, what John has to say to us about the Holy Spirit is relevant to us today, and especially we that are eagerly awaiting our Lord’s return, those of us that are looking and listening for the trump and the shout. We need to have the Holy Spirit in us to temper our enthusiasm and focus us on the right things.

In John 14, Jesus is having a conversation with His disciples, sparked from a question in verse 8 by Philip, asking to see the Father. Jesus promises them a Comforter, the Holy Spirit, and He is tasked with several jobs on our behalf:

The Holy Spirit is our Advocate. In his commentary on John 14, David Guzik offers this: “He will give you another Helper. Helper translates the ancient Greek word parakletos. This means a person summoned to one’s aid, and may refer to an adviser, a legal defender, a mediator, or an intercessor.”

The Holy Spirit is One who is beside us all the time. He is God’s presence with us, helping us. And make no mistake; He is God. The word for another in Greek is allen, meaning another of the same kind. Thus, the Holy Spirit is another just like Jesus; He, like Jesus, is God. Remember one of Jesus’ names at birth was Emmanuel which is translated God with us. When Jesus was leaving to go back home to Heaven, He left us the Holy Spirit to be with us, our Helper our Advocate who never leaves us, ever.

The Holy Spirit is our Teacher. If you want to know the answer, God will show you the answer. The Holy Spirit is there to teach us the truth. Notice, He will teach us all things. There is no area of life that stumps the Holy Spirit. He is never dumbfounded nor caught off guard. Open your Bible and ask God to show you. Seek and you will find God; you will find the answers; you will find what you need to do to change and to grow in the Lord and become more like Jesus. The Holy Spirit, if you listen to Him, will help you be a better man, woman, wife, husband, sibling, church member, pastor, servant, worker, and on we can go. He is here to teach us. Since God cannot lie and the Holy Spirit is God, He will only teach us the truth; thus, we are armed to spot counterfeit teachings, armed to recognizes lies and false teachers.

The Holy Spirit is our Reminder. When our kids leave the house to go out, my wife usually sends them off with “remember whose you are.” This is exactly what the Holy Spirit does for us; He reminds us whose we are when we are down, when we are tempted, when we are doubting, and when we fail.

Remember He is our Helper. The Holy Spirit also reminds us of what we have learned. All those verses that you read but you think they don’t stick, or all the sermons that you have heard but you think they were a blur, or all the devotions that you have done but you are not sure that you got it – the Holy Spirit is there to recall these things for you, to make you understand what that verse meant and how to apply it. But, remember He helps you recall; you have to be an active participant and read, study, attend church and lessons, and you have to listen to the Holy Spirit when He is speaking.

I heard a very famous preacher talk about being in an elevator once with two attractive young ladies who began hitting on him, and how the Holy Spirit helped him to recall verses about purity, faithfulness, and whose he was in Jesus. The Holy Spirit reminded him and equipped him to make the right decision.

The Holy Spirit is our Peace. The whole world wants peace, but they don’t want Jesus. Well, He is the very author of Peace. And, in His absence, He has sent us a Peacemaker just like Him to calm us in this hectic world. Notice Jesus says to the disciples “My peace.” It is His to give, and we have it in the Person of the Holy Spirit. The first kind of peace we have is security. In Ephesians 4:30, we are told that we are sealed until the day of redemption, referring to either the Rapture if we are living or the grave if we die before the Rapture. We are sealed by God with the Holy Spirit. Ephesians 1:13-14 tells us this,

“And in Him, having heard and believed the word of truth—the gospel of your salvation—you were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the pledge of our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession, to the praise of His glory.”

The Holy Spirit is the pledge, the down payment on our salvation. He is the Guarantee of our salvation. We are called God’s possession in verse 14 above. There is peace in knowing we are God’s no matter what; we are in Jesus, and the Holy Spirit is in us.

John concludes in John 14:27, don’t let your hearts be troubled; be calm, don’t be anxious, be at peace; God has you. In Romans 15:13, He is not just our peace but also our joy. May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is God’s Power here. In the second set of verses we highlighted at the beginning, we are told that it is the Holy Spirit that convicts the world. We are not called to convince the people around us about the Lord, about salvation, or about Heaven or Hell. We are simply told to tell the whole world about Jesus. It is the Holy Spirit that does all the other work. What a burden is taken off of us. We are simply watchmen, responsible for making the alarm and warning the people. God will make sure, via the Holy Spirit, that they know about righteousness, judgement and sin.

The Holy Spirit prays for us. He prays for us and intercedes for us before the Lord.

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. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God.”

Have you ever just called out the name of the Lord but you are at a loss for words? The Holy Spirit is there praying on your behalf. He takes your mumbled thoughts and turns them into words. He takes your hurt and translates them into words. He always prays for us within God’s will for us. Oh, what a prayer warrior we have in the Holy Spirit! We have not been left to our limited minds and finite vocabularies; no, no, no. We have God the Holy Spirit in His infinite wisdom praying for us.

Jesus promised that He would not leave us alone and friendless. No; rather, He has given us the Holy Spirit, God with us, to comfort, carry, encourage and correct us when needed. The Holy Spirit preserves us, prays for us and offers us God’s peace. We are constantly in the presence of God if you are saved. The Holy Spirit never leaves you, never abandons His post, never forsakes His calling, and never gives up on us.

We/I should discipline ourselves to listen more intently, obey quicker and be in constant gratitude that God would be mindful of us. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit: all One, all God, all Powerful, all here for us all the time.

I pray that as you and I enter this New Year, 2020, we will seek the power and leadership of the Holy Spirit in our lives, that we will bask in His peace no matter what the circumstances of life, and that we will our life in Him. He will never lead us astray and always lead us to truth and obedience.

God bless you,

Pastor Sean Gooding

Mississauga Missionary Baptist Church

missionarybaptistchurch76@yahoo.ca

John 3:16-17: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.”

Many people are scrambling in these last few hours to find the perfect gift for that special someone. Maybe the perfect toy for a son or daughter, the perfect set of earrings for a wife, a fiancé or a mom or the perfect phone or electronics for the teenager in your home. I work in the car sales business, and people get new cars or newer cars for Christmas often. Every commercial is about the perfect gift in this or that, depending on the target audience. Well, no matter who you are, no matter where you live, no matter how much money you have, the only Perfect Gift is Jesus. Unlike most gifts, He never gets old, He never breaks, and He is the gift that keeps on giving.

Let us explore a bit about how perfect Jesus is.

First, we must answer, who is Jesus? His Person directly identifies His perfection. In John 5:16-18 we are met by a stark statement from Jesus’ enemies. He is having one of His many discussions with the Jewish leaders; this particular one is sparked by Jesus healing someone on the Sabbath, and this is the chat they have:

“For this reason, the Jews persecuted Jesus and sought to kill Him because He had done these things on the Sabbath. But Jesus answered them, ‘My Father has been working until now, and I have been working.’ Therefore the Jews sought all the more to kill Him because He not only broke the Sabbath but also said that God was His Father, making Himself equal with God.”

Jesus, by calling Himself the Son of God, made himself equal to God. This is a significant statement by His enemies. Jesus is God; equal to God. Now we can explore His perfection in many categories.

Jesus is the Perfect Man, Luke 23:4, 14-15. Pilate came to the conclusion after examining Jesus and His accusers that he could ‘find no fault’ in this Man. Later in the same chapter, Jesus is examined by Herod, one of the 4 leaders of the area under Caesar; and again, He was found to have no faults. Jesus was the perfect Man. The scriptures tell us this in Hebrews 9:12-14:

“And not through the blood of goats and calves, but through His own blood, He entered the holy place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption. For if the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling those who have been defiled sanctify for the cleansing of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?”

He offered Himself, without blemish – this is Perfection. Jesus, the Perfect Man.

Jesus is the Perfect Son. I have 4 brothers and a sister. I cannot imagine what it was like to live in Jesus’ household and have Him as an older brother. The Bible summarizes His life growing up from the age of 12-30 this way in Luke 2:51-52:

“Then He went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was subject to them, but His mother kept all these things in her heart. And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men.”

This was the account of Jesus and his family travelling to Jerusalem to observe the Passover; and once the feast was ended, Jesus stayed behind, being some 12 years old and was found debating with the Rabbis in the Temple. But then He went home with His parents, and these two verses give us a glimpse of 18 years of His life. Jesus submitted to His earthly parents, He grew in wisdom, He grew physically and He grew in character; in favor with God and man. He was the Perfect Son, both in the sense that He is the Son of God; but also, He perfectly fulfilled the 5th Commandment with regard to His earthly parents.

Jesus is the Perfect Friend. In John 13: 26-30 we see this account of the night Jesus was betrayed by Judas:

“Jesus answered, ‘It is he to whom I shall give a piece of bread when I have dipped it.’ And having dipped the bread, He gave it to Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon. Now after the piece of bread, Satan entered him. Then Jesus said to him, ‘What you do, do quickly.’ But no one at the table knew for what reason He said this to him. For some thought, because Judas had the money box, that Jesus had said to him, ‘Buy those things we need for the feast,’ or that he should give something to the poor. Having received the piece of bread, he then went out immediately. And it was night.”

Judas did not sneak up on Jesus and catch Him off-guard. Jesus knew who Judas was when He chose him as an apostle. There are some lessons to be learned here for us, and I don’t want to belabor them, but being Judas who had the best teacher, he was an eyewitness to miracles that simply defy understanding; he may have even performed miracles himself on the 2 missionary journeys that he was sent on by Jesus.

But none of this is a substitute for being saved. One must trust Jesus as Savior personally and not as part of a group to be saved. No one gets grouped in. But on that very night when Judas would betray Him, Jesus washed His feet, Jesus fed him and did not out him to the group. He was the Perfect Friend right to the very end. Jesus was gracious to His enemy and faithful to His betrayer. He did good to the one who had plotted to hurt Him. Jesus, the Perfect Friend. What a Friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and griefs to bear.

Jesus, the Perfect Servant. In the last section, we briefly touched on Jesus washing Judas’ feet. I saw a post on Facebook from a brother in the Lord. He, speaking about this very event, lamented that when contemplating what he would do on his last night of life, washing someone’s feet would not be high on his list.

Yet, here in John 13:1-17, “Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that His hour had come that He should depart from this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end. And supper being ended, the devil having already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, to betray Him, Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands and that He had come from God and was going to God, rose from supper and laid aside His garments, took a towel and girded Himself. After that, He poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet, and to wipe them with the towel with which He was girded.

“Then He came to Simon Peter. And Peter said to Him, ‘Lord, are You washing my feet?’ Jesus answered and said to him, ‘What I am doing you do not understand now, but you will know after this.’ Peter said to Him, ‘You shall never wash my feet!’ Jesus answered him, ‘If I do not wash you, you have no part with Me.’ Simon Peter said to Him, ‘Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head!’ Jesus said to him, ‘He who is bathed needs only to wash his feet but is completely clean; and you are clean, but not all of you.’ For He knew who would betray Him; therefore He said, ‘You are not all clean.’

“So when He had washed their feet, taken His garments, and sat down again, He said to them, ‘Do you know what I have done to you? You call Me Teacher and Lord, and you say well, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that you should do as I have done to you. Most assuredly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master; nor is he who is sent greater than he who sent him. If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them.'”

Jesus instructs us to do as He did in the above verses. The principle we learn is the Leader must be the chief servant. Whether as a husband at home, a pastor at church, a small-group worker, a Sunday School teacher, and on I can do. The Leader is the head servant, and if you are not, then you are not following Jesus’ example. Jesus is still washing feet today; we find that, in 1 John 1:8-9, we are saved but as we travel through the world and life, we get stained with sin; and when we confess our sin, He faithfully washes our feet and keeps us clean. The Lord’s churches, the Lord’s families and the Lord’s Kingdom, in general, need more faithful servants.

Jesus is the Perfect Healer. As a child growing up in church, I often heard about the Lord’s miracles. Feeding the 5,000, 4,000, walking on water, making the blind to see and the lepers clean. But when you read the scriptures for yourself, you will find that Jesus healed thousands, entire cities and their surrounding areas brought the sick and lame to Him, and he healed them all.

Look at Matthew 4:23-25: “And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all kinds of sickness and all kinds of disease among the people. Then His fame went throughout all Syria; and they brought to Him all sick people who were afflicted with various diseases and torments, and those who were demon-possessed, epileptics, and paralytics; and He healed them. Great multitudes followed Him—from Galilee, and from Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea, and beyond the Jordan.”

John the apostle writes in John 21:25 that the world did not have enough books to contain all the things that Jesus did. Jesus never got tired of healing people. He took their pains away. One of my favorite accounts is that of Him touching a leper. In Matthew 8:3, Jesus heals a leper and, in the process, touched him. How long had it been since that man had felt the human touch? How long had it been since he had felt loved? Jesus did not just heal His body; He healed His soul. He, Jesus, is the Perfect Healer. So many today need the healing touch of Jesus. You and I are to be His hands and feet to the hurting world around us.

Jesus is the Perfect Intercessor. In John 17 we have an account of the Lord praying on the night He would be betrayed. John gives us a detailed chapter of His prayer. In John 17: 20-21, Jesus prays for you and me.

“I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word; that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me.”

Look at verse 20. He prayed for all those who will believe. That is us. Today, Jesus is still interceding for us each and every day. Are we interceding for each other? I know I can do more praying and a lot less criticizing.

Jesus is our Perfect Sacrifice. In 1 Peter 1:18-19 we see these lovely words that describe our Lord Jesus:

“Knowing that you were not redeemed with corruptible things, like silver or gold, from your aimless conduct received by tradition from your fathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot.”

Jesus is our Perfect Sacrifice, one without spot. He never sinned though He was tempted and tested by Satan. Hebrews 4:14-18 tells us this:

“Seeing then that we have a great High Priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us, therefore, come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”

 Jesus was ‘without sin.’ He never, not once sinned. As such, He did not deserve death, but He took our death so we could have His life. He is our Perfect Sacrifice.

Jesus is our Perfect King. One day soon He will return to set up the Millennial Kingdom. And in the book of Isaiah we are told this about His reign as King, Isaiah 2: 1-4:

“The word that Isaiah the son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem. Now it shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established on the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; And all nations shall flow to it. Many people shall come and say, ‘Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; He will teach us His ways, and we shall walk in His paths.’ For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. He shall judge between the nations, and rebuke many people; They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.”

Wow! No one will learn war for 1,000 years. Jesus will settle all disputes between nations, and He will teach them the ways of Holiness; His ways. Jesus, our Perfect King; He will do for the world what the UN thinks they can do without Jesus. Only Jesus is the Perfect Prince of Peace.

Jesus is the Perfect Gift. He was given to us by God the Father as an offering for our sins. A gift to bring us eternal life and to give us real and tangible hope.

Give someone the gift of Jesus today by telling them the true story of how a Baby in a little town in Bethlehem some 2,000 years ago came to pay for our freedom. Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved. Believe that He, the Perfect, sinless Son of God paid for your sin debt to God, and in His resurrection provides us with the chance to be saved forever.

Have you humbled yourself before the Perfect Saviour? He loves you and has offered Himself for you, a ransom, redeeming you from your sin and death to holiness and life.

Merry Christmas.

Sean Gooding, Pastor

Mississauga Missionary Baptist Church