The Holy Spirit Magnifies Jesus
John 16:14-15
June 16, 2013
To begin this morning, I want you to turn with me back to John 14.
You know we are studying the Holy Spirit
You know we are presently doing so by hearing
What Jesus had to say about Him in the upper room.
You will remember that Jesus has told the disciples that He is leaving.
John 13:33 “Little children, I am with you a little while longer. You will seek Me; and as I said to the Jews, now I also say to you, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come.’”
And the result of this has been sorrow on the part of the disciples.
John 16:5-6 “But now I am going to Him who sent Me; and none of you asks Me, ‘Where are You going?’ “But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your heart.”
For the disciples Jesus has been their everything for the last three years.
He was literally their ace in the hole.
He was “God with us”
Emmanuel
And so the thought of them leaving not only struck an emotional cord,
I’m sure there was some legitimate
“what will do without You” fear involved.
Jesus knew they were greatly troubled about His coming departure.
And that is the sorrow which is revealed in John 14.
READ (1-3)
Jesus is very clear there.
• I am going, but it is for a purpose.
• I am going to prepare a place for you.
And believe Me, I’m not going to put all that work into preparing a place for you and then forget to come get you.
I’m coming for you.
Beyond that, Jesus says in verse 4:
“And you know the way where I am going.”
That is to say, If something should go bad (Like you die before I return) you know how to get where I am.
Now, this only upped the anxiety in the hearts of the disciples.
In fact, at this point the real pessimist of the group spoke up.
(5) “Thomas said to Him, “lord, we do not know where You are going, how do we know the way?”
There is classic Thomas.
“You’re leaving, we’ll get lost, we’ll never find You, we’re doomed!”
To which Jesus gives that great statement.
(6) “Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.”
Thomas, I’m going to the Father, that’s where I am.
And you get there through Me.
Now, we understand that statement better than they did.
• We understand that through the death of Christ, He satisfied God’s wrath on our behalf and fully atoned for our sin.
• Through faith in Christ, we die with Him, and are raised with Him, and thus gain our access to the Father.
We understand that, but at the moment the disciples did not.
They were still confused as to how they were going to get to the Father,
If Jesus took longer returning than expected.
And Jesus knows this, and then adds:
(7) “If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; from now on you know Him, and have seen Him.”
Now what was Jesus saying there?
He was saying, “I am God”
“I am the Father”
If you come to Me, you come to the Father.
But as I said, the disciples just could not seem to make this connection.
(8) “Philip said to Him, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.”
What are you talking about?
Did He not here what Jesus just said?
READ (9-11)
And you get the point of what I am talking about.
The disciples didn’t really know who Jesus was.
• They knew He spoke with authority
• They knew He was from God
• They knew He had power
• They knew they loved Him and had chosen to follow Him
But they still didn’t really know who He was.
And now He is about to leave.
• Their goes their source of power…
• Their goes their teacher…
• Their goes their leader…
And that is why Jesus promised down in verse 16 “another Helper”
And it is that “Helper” we are learning about in chapter 16.
Now we have already talked about Him quite a bit.
We talked about the PROMISE OF THE SPIRIT,
That He is someone to be anticipated.
We talked about the PERSON OF THE SPIRIT,
That He is a Helper like Jesus.
And recently we have started talking about THE PURPOSE OF THE SPIRIT.
And looking at John 16 we are looking at,
What I have called, His fingerprints, or the box He dwells in.
This is how we know it is the Holy Spirit.
This is how we recognize Him, and this is what He helps us do.
First we saw: CONVICTION OF SIN
John 16:8 “And He, when He comes, will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment;”
He helps us in our ministry by piercing the hearts of those we preach to.
He digs deep
He confronts the secret sins
He convicts
And because we know this about Him,
We can also know if we have some type of experience, or leading, or whatever from Him, but sin isn’t addressed, then it wasn’t Him.
The Holy Spirit does not leave sin alone.
He is, after all, the HOLY Spirit.
Next we saw His: ILLUMINATION OF SCRIPTURE
John 16:12-13 “I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. “But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come.”
And that is such an important statement about the Holy Spirit.
• He is not a rogue member of the Trinity.
• He is not a rebel (He is pictured by a dove remember)
And He guides men into the truth.
He gave ALL the truth the apostles
(which they recorded as Scripture)
And He won’t speak contrary to that.
Jesus said, “He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak”
• The Holy Spirit is not in the business of new revelation.
• The Holy Spirit is in the business of illumination.
• He speaks the truth of Scripture.
After all, WHAT IS THE SWORD OF THE SPIRIT?
Ephesians 6:17 “And take THE HELMET OF SALVATION, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.”
Furthermore being filled with the Spirit is the same equivalent
As “letting the word of Christ richly dwell within you”
He speaks Scripture
And this understanding of truth
Is certainly a help in proclaiming the truth to the world.
• We saw last week that the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God and reveals them to us and Paul said these are the things we also speak.
We proclaim these revealed truths to men.
AND SO HE IS DEFINITELY THE HELPER.
Well, this morning I want to show you the 3rd thing Jesus revealed about the Holy Spirit and that is that HE MAGNIFIES JESUS
It really doesn’t get any clearer than the statement Jesus makes
In verse 14, “He will glorify Me”
“glorify” translates DOXAZO
It literally means “to praise, extol, magnify”
And that is what the Holy Spirit does, He magnifies Jesus.
He extols Jesus, He praises Jesus.
Well, there are three things I want you to see here.
#1 HIS MINISTRY
John 16:14a
“He will glorify Me”
And that is simple enough.
He comes to extol, praise, and magnify Jesus.
That is, first and foremost, His fingerprint.
If Jesus wasn’t glorified, it wasn’t the Holy Spirit.
1 Corinthians 12:3 “Therefore I make known to you that no one speaking by the Spirit of God says, “Jesus is accursed”; and no one can say, “Jesus is Lord,” except by the Holy Spirit.”
1 John 4:1-3 “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God; and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God; this is the spirit of the antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming, and now it is already in the world.”
Anyone that comes and blasphemes Christ or belittles Christ
Or disregards Christ, is certainly not doing so
Under the leadership of the Holy Spirit.
His purpose is to glorify Christ.
And, incidentally this is a foundational attribute of His.
Even in the Old Testament, before Christ came,
The Holy Spirit was passionate about prophetically revealing Him.
Listen to what Peter said:
1 Peter 1:10-12 “As to this salvation, the prophets who prophesied of the grace that would come to you made careful searches and inquiries, seeking to know what person or time the Spirit of Christ within them was indicating as He predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories to follow. It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves, but you, in these things which now have been announced to you through those who preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven — things into which angels long to look.”
Even in the Old Testament prophets, it was the Holy Spirit who was showing them as much about Christ as they could understand.
He was glorifying Jesus, before Jesus even came.
That was true in the PAST, it is also true in the FUTURE.
Zechariah spoke of the day when Israel would finally see Jesus,
Repent, and run to Him.
DO YOU KNOW WHY THEY WILL DO IT?
Zechariah 12:10 “I will pour out on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the Spirit of grace and of supplication, so that they will look on Me whom they have pierced; and they will mourn for Him, as one mourns for an only son, and they will weep bitterly over Him like the bitter weeping over a firstborn.”
When the Holy Spirit is poured upon them, the first thing they will do is
Run to Jesus, because that is what the Holy Spirit does.
He magnifies Jesus
He extols Jesus
He praises Jesus
And that is so foundational, and yet so important.
We live in this world of false prophets and deception.
Listen, if what the preacher says draws you to the preacher,
It wasn’t the Holy Spirit.
If it glorifies the man, it wasn’t the Holy Spirit.
I’ve seen the TV shows just like you have, with men claiming all this special anointing, and special powers, and doing so to draw in massive crowds.
THAT IS NOT THE HOLY SPIRIT
He constantly points to Jesus
Paul spoke of preachers like that:
Philippians 1:15-17 “Some, to be sure, are preaching Christ even from envy and strife, but some also from good will; the latter do it out of love, knowing that I am appointed for the defense of the gospel; the former proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition rather than from pure motives, thinking to cause me distress in my imprisonment.”
There are those even today who preach Christ
Only out of selfish ambition.
Let’s face it: Jesus sells books, Jesus draws crowds,
People will pay good money for an encounter with Jesus.
These men seek to use Jesus or the Holy Spirit as their trump card,
To draw you to them.
That is not the Holy Spirit.
He doesn’t glorify men, He glorifies Jesus.
So if your experience didn’t draw you closer to Jesus,
It wasn’t the Holy Spirit.
This is one of the biggest problems I have with
Much of what is supposedly the Holy Spirit today.
People claim all these deep, personal, super spiritual revelations, that includes everything from seeing Jesus, to going to heaven, to whatever,
And then when it is over, they still love the world, not Jesus.
There is something drastically wrong with that.
When He has been there, your sin will be exposed,
The truth will be explained
And your heart will be enamored with Jesus.
And incidentally this is a tremendous help to us in ministry.
• We can’t show men their sin – but the Holy Spirit can
• We can’t know the truth of God – but the Holy Spirit can reveal it to us
• And we can’t cause people to love Jesus – but the Holy Spirit can
He has a way of drawing men to Jesus that you and I cannot do
• I don’t care how emotional you get…
• I don’t care how motivational you are…
• I don’t care how gifted a story teller…
You can’t possibly glorify Jesus like the Holy Spirit can.
That is what He does.
He pushes men to Christ – and that is why we need Him.
Christ is the only Savior.
Christ is the only way to the Father.
Christ is the mediator between God and men.
We need help magnifying Him to the world.
The Holy Spirit does this.
That is His ministry.
Now let me show you HOW He does it.
(This is also a tremendous clue as to how we do it)
#2 HIS METHOD
John 16:14b
“for He will take of Mine and will disclose it to you.”
In other words, the way He will glorify Me,
Is simply by revealing Me to you.
Listen friend you can’t glorify Jesus to someone else
When you don’t even really know who He is.
How do you praise someone when you don’t even really know Him?
And didn’t we just see that the disciples didn’t really know who He was?
Remember that conversation back in John 14?
John 14:9 “Jesus said to him, “Have I been so long with you, and yet you have not come to know Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; how can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?”
These guys couldn’t glorify Jesus, because they still didn’t know Him.
And this is precisely what the Holy Spirit comes to do.
He reveals Jesus, which is to glorify Jesus.
In other words, to know Him is to love Him.
The reason the world doesn’t love Jesus right now?
They don’t really know Him.
Paul said the reason the world crucified Jesus
Is because they did not fully understand the truth.
1 Corinthians 2:8 “the wisdom which none of the rulers of this age has understood; for if they had understood it they would not have crucified the Lord of glory;”
And that is why a sinful world is still hostile to Christ.
They don’t really understand the truth about Him.
The Holy Spirit comes to reveal the truth of Jesus.
“He will take of Mine” – (truths about Me)
“and will disclose it to you.”
John 15:26 “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,”
1 John 4:13-14 “By this we know that we abide in Him and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit. We have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son to be the Savior of the world.”
How was John able to see and testify that Jesus was God’s Son?
“because He has given us of His Spirit”
In the upper room John had no idea that Jesus was God.
But when the Holy Spirit came, John learned exactly who He was.
We even get a foreshadow of this in the gospels.
Remember the day when Jesus asked the disciples who the world thought He was?
There were all sorts of answers given.
And then Jesus asked, “Who do you say that I am?”
And Peter just blurted out the answer:
Matthew 16:15-16 “He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
I really just get this image of Peter blurting that out and then all the other disciples looking at him as if to say, “What did you say?”
And Peter kind of giving this look back like “I don’t know”
Where in the world did Peter get an idea like that?
Matthew 16:17 “And Jesus said to him, “Blessed are you, Simon Barjona, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but My Father who is in heaven.”
I’ll tell you where Peter didn’t get that type of information.
• He didn’t get it from man.
• Man never thought of that.
He learned that from God.
And that is still true today.
Man doesn’t naturally see who Jesus is,
But the Holy Spirit reveals Him to people
And that is naturally to glorify Jesus.
• So His MINISTRY is to glorify Jesus
• His METHOD of glorifying Jesus is revealing Him
#3 HIS MOTIVE
John 14:15
The reason the Holy Spirit is so passionate about glorifying Jesus
By revealing Him is because of who Jesus really is.
“All things that the Father has are Mine;”
WHAT IS JESUS SAYING THERE?
I am the Father.
I am God.
And He’s been saying it:
John 5:18 “For this reason therefore the Jews were seeking all the more to kill Him, because He not only was breaking the Sabbath, but also was calling God His own Father, making Himself equal with God.”
John 5:23 “so that all will honor the Son even as they honor the Father. He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent Him.”
John 10:30 “I and the Father are one.”
Jesus has been saying for some time now that He is God,
That He and the Father are one.
But no one has been understanding it,
In fact the Pharisees wanted to kill Him for such statements.
So Jesus says, this is why the Holy Spirit
Is passionate about telling you who I am.
“All things that the Father has are Mine; therefore I said that He takes of Mine and will disclose it to you.”
He wants you to glorify Me
He wants you to know that I am God so that you will glorify Me
And the point is, if Jesus wasn’t God, then why bother?
If Jesus wasn’t God, then the Holy Spirit most certainly
Would not spend all His time glorifying Him.
BUT HE IS.
And the Holy Spirit wants to make sure you see that.
2 Corinthians 3:18 “But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.”
It is the Spirit who is showing us, through the Scriptures,
The glory of the Lord.
The main motive behind all that He does
Is to reveal the glorious nature of Christ.
He did it in the Old Testament
He does it in the New Testament
• He is not there for you to glorify the preacher…
• He is not there for you to glorify the song leader…
• He is not there for you to glorify the band…
Those people may all be good at what they do,
But none of them are God,
And so the Holy Spirit doesn’t point to them.
He comes to glorify Jesus.
And so are you better understanding who the Holy Spirit is?
• He is not some mystical force who glorifies you by giving you some cryptic power that others do not have…
• He is not some ecstatic experience by which you can brag about how close you came to heaven…
• He is not some circus producer who passes out weirdness to be observed by others…
He is the Helper.
He Helps you do what God has called you to do.
• He Helps you in your ministry by convicting the world of sin…
• He Helps you in your ministry by guiding you into the truth…
• He Helps you in your ministry by glorifying Jesus…
And friend so long as all you want is for people
To turn from sin, know the truth about Christ, and worship Him
I can assure you that the Holy Spirit will be your Helper too.
But the second ministry becomes about you, He is gone.
• He doesn’t support preachers who try to stay popular or relevant by letting people remain in their sin…
• He doesn’t support missionaries who are not concerned about proclaiming the truth…
• He doesn’t support ministries that seek only to grow and gain popularity but leave Jesus in the shadows…
But when sin is confronted…
When truth is explained…
And when you leave with no one but Jesus on your mind…
Rest assured the Holy Spirit has been there,
And He will help you in just the same way.
I’m reminded of a story about Charles Spurgeon,
A great preacher in England in the late 1800’s.
He preached at the Metropolitan Tabernacle and because the place filled to capacity each time, you had to have a ticket to attend. You didn’t have to purchase it, but you had to have it.
One young man reportedly wanted his friend to hear Charles Spurgeon so badly that he gave his ticked to his friend and waited outside. When his friend exited the service the man who had surrendered his ticket asked: “So what did you think of my preacher?”
To which the friend answered: “Preacher? What preacher? I saw no preacher. I saw only Jesus.”
That was the Holy Spirit.
He glorifies Jesus.
In fact, look at times when He did.
Acts 2:32-37 “This Jesus God raised up again, to which we are all witnesses. “Therefore having been exalted to the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, He has poured forth this which you both see and hear. “For it was not David who ascended into heaven, but he himself says: ‘THE LORD SAID TO MY LORD, “SIT AT MY RIGHT HAND, UNTIL I MAKE YOUR ENEMIES A FOOTSTOOL FOR YOUR FEET.”‘ “Therefore let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made Him both Lord and Christ — this Jesus whom you crucified.” Now when they heard this, they were pierced to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Brethren, what shall we do?”
The Holy Spirit arrived and people were aware of their sin,
They understood the truth, and they wanted Jesus.
That’s what He does.
Again, don’t fear Him, don’t avoid Him, don’t neglect Him.
He is God in us.
And He is our advantage in every way.
Trust Him, follow Him, and let Him work through you.
• That is when sinners are convicted…
• That is when the truth is made clear…
• That is when Jesus is truly glorified…
John 16:7-15 “But I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you. “And He, when He comes, will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment; concerning sin, because they do not believe in Me; and concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father and you no longer see Me; and concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world has been judged. “I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. “But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come. “He will glorify Me, for He will take of Mine and will disclose it to you. “All things that the Father has are Mine; therefore I said that He takes of Mine and will disclose it to you.”
