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The Divine Teacher

Delivered June 6, 2004
by Pastor Werner De Jong

Text: John 16:12-15

Main Idea: Jesus has sent the Holy Spirit to be the ongoing teacher in the life of the church.

Purpose: To encourage the listeners that Jesus is active in the world and eager to teach them today. To challenge the listeners always to seek to be guided and instructed by the Holy Spirit.

Introduction: During the Second World War many British parents sent their children to Canada in order to keep them safe from the enemy bombs which were falling like rain from the sky. As adults it is not difficult for us to imagine the anguish of the parents as they tried to speak final words of comfort and instruction to their children, not knowing when they would be reunited. They had the terrible frustration of knowing they couldn't possibly give their children enough instruction to prepare them for all the unknown circumstances which lay ahead. But try also to put yourself in place of those children. Imagine how frightening it would be to lose all the love and security you ever knew, as you set sail for a strange land, clung to the railing, and watched your parents fade away in the distance. Those partings must have been heart-wrenching, as small children begged: "Why can't I stay with you? Or why can't you come with me? Why? When will I ever see you again?" All their parents could do was reassure them of their love.

Today's Text and its Context: Jesus' farewell speech: At one time Jesus and his disciples found themselves in a similar situation. It was the evening of Jesus' betrayal and arrest, and Jesus had just told his disciples that he was going away, that he must return to his Father, and that they couldn't come with him now. And Peter had said to him, "Lord, why can't I come with you? I'll lay down my life for you." Peter and Jesus' disciples had grown to love their Lord deeply. For three years he had warmed their hearts with his love, and amazed their minds by teaching them about life with God, about God's will, about their place in God's plan, and about the things they must suffer on God's behalf, in order to bring about the peace and healing that God desired and promised for humanity and all creation. As long as Jesus was with them they could believe that God had a plan and that they could help fulfill it, even if it meant suffering. But now Jesus said that his time on earth was almost over. He was going to leave them. How could they carry on without him? How could they fulfill their calling with no one to guide and instruct them?

      Have you ever felt that way as a Christian? Have you ever felt confused or sensed a lack of guidance regarding the future? Have we ever felt that way as a church? Have we ever sensed God's call and wondered how we as ordinary people could live up to it? If Jesus were here with us that would be one thing, but who are we to know the way forward? How much easier it would be if Jesus were still present.

      Jesus addressed precisely such concerns in his goodbye speech to his disciples. As they ate the Passover meal together in the upstairs room, and as the cross loomed very large in Jesus' mind, he must have had some feelings like those of parents who know they won't see their children for a long time. Then he spoke genuine words of comfort to them, saying: "Don't be afraid. I am not going to leave you as orphans. It is actually to your advantage that I am going away. For if I do not go, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you. And the Helper, the Holy Spirit, will be your teacher and your guide. Then you will be able to know me even better than you do now, then you will know me from the inside out, for I will live within you." That is what today's text is all about, it focuses on the role of the Holy Spirit as the ongoing teacher in the life of the church. Jesus may be physically absent, but he is still present. He lives within his body, the church, and within the body of each believer. This is why Paul sometimes refers to the Holy Spirit as the "Spirit of Christ" (cf. Romans 8:9). The Spirit is Jesus living in us and among us.

      Last Sunday was Pentecost Sunday, and we primarily considered how God's Spirit can help us meet the great challenge of living the Christian life. On our own we cannot climb Mount Everest, we cannot scale the mountains of challenge over which God calls us to journey. On our own we cannot love our enemies, or forgive those who hurt us, or serve one another, or resist temptation, or work as peacemakers, or boldly proclaim the good news of Jesus' death and resurrection. But we are not alone, for the Holy Spirit is sent by God to accompany us on this journey and to empower us for Christian living. That is a sure truth which God wants us to lean upon.

      This week we will look at another aspect of the Holy Spirit's ministry to the church. We will look at Jesus' teaching that the Holy Spirit is our ongoing teacher and guide as we journey God's challenging pathways together. Not only does the Holy Spirit give us strength and power to climb the mountains, the Spirit also guides us through them, over some and around others, and all the while the Spirit teaches us along the way. In our text Jesus makes three important affirmations regarding this aspect of the Spirit's ministry.

Jesus didn't teach his disciples everything: First of all, Jesus spoke to his disciples about the necessity of having the Spirit accompany them as teacher: "I still have many things to say to you," he said, "but you cannot bear them now" (v. 12). In other words, Jesus' teaching to his disciples had not been exhaustive. He had taught them many things during his three years with them, he had provided a rock solid foundation of teaching on which to base their lives, but he had not taught them everything. There were still things they needed to learn, but they weren't yet ready to hear about them.

      This is a reminder that learning is a lifelong process; there are times when people are able to receive teaching on a subject, and there are times when people are not ready for it. Some things the disciples were ready to hear; other things Jesus knew they could not handle. Every public school teacher or university professor or Sunday school teacher or pastor knows this–you may repeat the same teaching over and over in different ways, and at different times, and suddenly a student will have a "eureka moment," and say to you, "What a neat concept, I've never heard that before!" A new teacher may scratch her head and wonder, but an experienced teacher will simply nod her head and say to herself, "That's why I teach by repetition."

      There is a great example in the Bible of this very thing. When Jesus was with his disciples, he demonstrated by his actions that the gentiles were not outside of God's plan. He healed some gentiles, and he taught that people would come from far and wide, from east and west, to join God's kingdom. But the disciples were not yet able to receive the teaching that was there. They heard it, but it didn't sink in. It wasn't until after Jesus had left them, and sent the Holy Spirit, that they learned the invaluable lesson that the Gentiles are just as welcome in God's kingdom as the Jews. The book of Acts tells this story, beginning with Peter's vision of a sheet descending from heaven full of non-kosher food. A voice from heaven told Peter to get up and eat, but Peter refused saying, "Unclean food has never touched my lips." But the voice said to him, "What God has made clean, you must not call unclean." This happened three times, (note the repetition once again!), and then the Holy Spirit said to Peter, "Three men are outside standing by the gate; go with them without hesitation, for I have sent them." To make a long story short, these men were messengers sent by the Roman centurion Cornelius. When Peter arrived he preached the gospel to Cornelius and his family, and they all became believers, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit. But when the apostles and believers in Judea heard about it, they were upset with Peter, saying, "Why did you go to these uncircumcised men?" But Peter replied, "The Spirit told me to go with them and not to make a distinction between them and us." That is a clear example of the need to have an ongoing Teacher in the life of the church.

      When Jesus said, "I still have many things to say to you...," he alerted the church that we always need to be in a learning mode. Jesus still has many things he wants to teach us. Because Jesus wants to teach us, we must maintain an open, teachable spirit, and never assume that we have arrived at a full knowledge of God's truth and will. Our Lord still wants to talk to us today, to instruct us and to guide us, as we journey through life. There are some people who are somewhat troubled by this teaching. They are the ones who prefer to have their religion all figured out. They want to believe they know all the answers to all the questions. That is so much easier than taking seriously the call to be still before God and to listen for guidance and instruction. For all practical purposes, for these people Jesus is just a figure in a book. They can talk about him, they can quote his teaching, they can list his accomplishments. But that is all meaningless if it doesn't lead to a deeper relationship with him. For Jesus is not just a figure in a book. He has risen from the dead, he is alive and just as active in our day as he was two thousand years ago. He continues to build his kingdom. He continues to heal and to offer hope and salvation. He is a living person, and he still wants to speak to his body the church. Only when we realize this will it prevent us from making the fatal error of exchanging a living, ongoing relationship with our God for an historical intellectualism. The Bible is not simply an ancient document that we study and dissect; the purpose of the Bible is to lead us into a living relationship with Jesus today. And Jesus has said to us, "I still have many things to say to you." Are we listening? The act of listening marks the difference between a mere historic faith and an alive walk with God.

The Holy Spirit is the Church's Teacher and Guide: This leads into the next point. How does Jesus teach the church today? The answer is clear, and we've already noted it: through the Holy Spirit. Listen again to our Lord's teaching: "When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but he will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come" (v. 13). The very title Jesus gives the Spirit in this verse is significant: "The Spirit of truth"–who better to teach us than the one who is truth?

      Jesus promises that the Spirit of truth will be our guide. The word he uses for guide suggests a figure who introduces travellers into an unknown country (Fritz Rienecker and Cleon Rogers, Linguistic Key to the Greek New Testament, p. 254). As Christians we are often called to leave the comfortable and familiar behind, and like Abraham, to set out to a land that God will show us in his time. "You don't know what lies ahead," Jesus says to us, "and I can't physically be with you on your journey. However I am calling you to new challenges and new experiences. But you don't have to be afraid of the unknown, you don't have to worry about getting lost or perishing in the mountains and valleys that lie ahead, for you will have a permanent guide with you, the Spirit of truth." Is it possible for a traveller to have a more reassuring truth than that? God is with us on our journey, we never walk alone.

      Anyone who has ever travelled internationally knows how valuable guides can be. When Caleb and I went to Haiti we would have been absolutely lost if Margaret had not been our guide. At the very least, if we were on our own we would have been ripped off repeatedly, from the very moment we entered the airport at Port-au-Prince. At the worst, we may have stumbled into life-threatening situations. But we were quite safe in Margaret's hands, for having lived in Haiti ten years she knew the country, the customs and the language. She knew the time of day it was safe to travel, and the time of day to rest. She knew the dangerous streets and neighbourhoods, the areas to avoid. As good a guide as Margaret is, and as impressed as I am with her, the Holy Spirit is a better guide still! The Spirit of truth is a perfect guide, for the Spirit of truth is Jesus living in us. We can dare set our sails for adventure when Jesus is with us, as the disciples learned on the stormy sea. We can confidently go wherever Jesus calls us to go, and fearlessly do whatever Jesus calls us to do, for the Holy Spirit is our sure guide and teacher along the way.

      Jesus has promised that the Holy Spirit will guide us into all truth. The "truth" which our Holy Guide will reveal to us is more than an intellectual appreciation of right and wrong. That is certainly part of the Spirit's role, to help us discern what is pleasing to God, and what is not. We see that in Acts 15 when the church is debating whether or not the gentiles must be circumcised in order to receive salvation. This was a heated debate among the early church leaders, but in the end they were able to say with one mind, in a letter to the gentile churches: "It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to impose this burden on you." That is a clear example of the Holy Spirit's role in helping the church discern right from wrong. We need to be open to such guidance from the Spirit today. But in John's gospel the word truth has a deeper meaning. It ultimately means having an encounter with Jesus, who is the truth. The Spirit of truth doesn't only lead us to right doctrine, but to a right way of life through a living relationship with our Lord. The Spirit leads us to Jesus.

      Having said that, we must admit that Jesus' promise to guide us into "all the truth," and to declare to us "the things that are to come," is in some ways a frightening promise. Jesus' promise is frightening because, as Fred Craddock has written, "it can be quoted to bless every new notion and to footnote with authority all manner of behaviour as well as prophesies as to the fate of the world, the time of the Eschaton (ie., end), and the certain will of God in every crisis" (Preaching through the Christian Year: Year C, p. 283). Throughout church history various individuals and groups have claimed the Holy Spirit's guidance for all manner of teachings and ideas, some of which have been very harmful. We see this in our own Anabaptist history, when in 1534 Melchior Hoffman had an apocalyptic vision and claimed the end was near. He led a group of Anabaptists to take total control over the town of Munster in Northwest Germany. Hoffman taught that Jesus would soon return to Munster to set up his kingdom. In preparation for the expected return of Christ, they instituted a violent, polygamous society. All this was justified by the fact that the Holy Spirit was guiding the church. The "Anabaptist Kingdom of Munster" lasted for almost a year and a half before it fell. The fallen "Munsterites" were then executed with unspeakable cruelty.

      Subjective interpretation of the Holy Spirit's teaching and guidance is a real danger which the church faces in every generation. But this danger notwithstanding, the fact that the Holy Spirit "continues to guide and enlighten the church is a conviction not to abandon. To do so would be to deny that the present is as surely God's time as was the first or any other century" (Craddock, p. 283). To ignore the Holy Spirit out of fear that we may not hear correctly is just as harmful to the church as misinterpreting the Spirit's voice. To ignore the Holy Spirit is to disobey and ignore Jesus. The church that ignores the Spirit is as powerless and hopeless to advance God's good purposes as the twelve disciples would have been if they ignored Jesus. How then can we know if the Holy Spirit is truly speaking to us, or if we are listening to our own ideas or some other spirit? The early church wrestled with that very question, which is why John wrote to them saying, "Dear friends, do not believe everyone who claims to speak by the Spirit. You must test them to see if the Spirit they have comes from God" (1 John 4:1). But the very fact that John even had to write such instruction only underlines how serious the early church was about seeking to receive teaching and guidance from the Holy Spirit. They needed the Holy Spirit's guidance, and they knew it; however, they also realized that false guidance was possible. What should they do? Notice how John instructed them not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Don't allow fear of false teaching prevent you from seeking the Spirit's guidance, but test the spirits. That is the teaching. But it also raises the question: How can we test whether or not what we are hearing is truly from the Spirit of God?

The Holy Spirit does not speak or act independently, and only seeks to glorify Jesus: The answer to that question brings us to Jesus' third point in our text from John 16. First of all he said, "I still have much to say to you." Secondly he said, "Therefore, I am sending you the Holy Spirit. And thirdly, we now read that he left his followers with something of a test when he said: "The Spirit will not be presenting his own ideas; he will be telling you what he has heard....He will bring me glory by revealing to you whatever he receives from me." In other words, anything that does not cohere with what Jesus taught and did does not come from the Spirit of truth. Whenever we think we have heard from the Spirit we must ask, "Are these actions and words in accordance with what we know of Jesus?" If this simple test had been applied at Munster, it would have been obvious that those Anabaptists were not listening to the Spirit of truth. For Jesus clearly taught that we must love our enemies, he taught that we should not resort to violence to solve our problems, and yet "the Munsterites" put to death those in the town who didn't agree with them. This test isn't always easy to apply, but it does provide the church with a measure of defence against false prophets. And it also gives the church a measure of confidence to affirm the leading of the Holy Spirit in new and changing circumstances.

      It is precisely because the church faces new circumstances and challenges in every generation that we need the guidance of God's Spirit. The Holy Spirit doesn't so much provide us with new revelations as with new eyes, better focussed eyes to interpret the teaching of Jesus and the Scriptures and to apply it to our unique circumstances. The Spirit provides a deep understanding of what Jesus means for one's own time. The implications of the teaching of Jesus, and of his death and resurrection must be worked out by his followers in each generation.

Application and Conclusion: If we take it all together, we see that Jesus' teaching on the Spirit places an obligation on us, an obligation to depend on the Spirit to guide us and to teach us what Jesus still wants us to learn, and then, of course, to obey. As Paul wrote to the Galatians, "Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit" (5:25). That is the challenge, to allow ourselves to be guided by the Spirit. As we said last Sunday, following the Holy Spirit's leading will mean taking time to listen for his voice. The Spirit speaks to us when we pray, when we meditate on Scripture, when we listen to God's word being proclaimed, when we take time out for solitude and silence, when we enjoy God's presence in creation.

      As we journey through the Christian life, up mountains and down into valleys, we are not alone. We are not alone as individual Christians, nor are we alone as a church. For we have a sure, reliable guide to teach and instruct us. Jesus is alive and active in the world today, and as we lean on the Spirit we will know his sure love and support. Praise God!

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