The Spirit of Truth
John 16:12-15
Turn in your Bibles, if you would please, to John 16 verses 12 through 15. Let me read this passage to you first of all, beginning in verse 12. Jesus still speaking to His disciples, of course it's still the night before His death, says, "I have yet many things to say unto you but you cannot bear them now.
Nevertheless, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth for He shall not speak of Himself but whatever He shall hear that shall He speak. And He will show you things to come. He shall glorify Me for He shall receive of Mine and shall show it unto you. All things that the Father hath are Mine, therefore said I that He shall take of Mine and shall show it unto you."
A little introduction before we look specifically at our text. The text deals with the promise that Jesus Christ gave that the Holy Spirit would come and lead them into all truth.
The all truth that He is talking about is now recorded for us in the pages of the New Testament. In fact, the Bible repeatedly makes the claim that it is no ordinary book but that it is in fact the very Word of God. The Bible claims repeatedly to have the authority and power of the Spirit of God Himself, in fact it claims that it was written by the Holy Spirit. Even though there were human authors, the words from their own vocabularies were selected divinely by the sovereign Spirit, organized in the manner that God wanted them organized and placed back through the mind of the writer to record exactly what God wanted said to the very word.
And thus did we read earlier that the Bible says for itself that the Word of God is quick or living and powerful, sharper than any two‑edged sword and that it can drive into a man's very being piercing the depths of his soul. Now if all of this is true that the Bible is in fact the very Word of God as it claims for itself, if it is as it claims divinely inspired, even to the words, not just the thoughts but the very words themselves, if that is true then we better listen to it. Then every word of it becomes critically important to us because it is all spoken by God. We better believe it and we better obey it. If in fact the Bible is not true and the claim that it makes is a lie and there are some words that are to be rejected, then we must reject the entire book because we're in no position to determine what's in and what's out. And so rather than preach the Bible, we better get up and announce to the world that it is a fraud and we better expose it lest more people be led astray.
The Bible claims for itself that it is the Word of God. If that is true then it is to be believed, it is to be separated from every other writing in the world, it is to be isolated in its total purity and truth. It is a self commentary, it needs nothing else, it is God's Word, final and complete. You can't tamper with it. And yet how interesting it is that although we only have the choice of totally accepting it or totally rejecting it, many try to do a little of both. The liberal says, "Well, somewhere in there is the Word of God. You've got to look around to find it." Then another breed of liberal says, "Whatever speaks to you is the Word of God. If it happens to talk to you, it's God's Word. If it doesn't say anything to you, it doesn't mean anything to you, then it isn't God's Word." In other words, you determine whether it's inspired or not, not God.
Then there are false sects and there are various cults and religious groups that think that they have to put additions on to the Word of God, they've got to add more revelation. For example, those who follow the teachings of Mormonism must add to the Bible a new revelation, supposedly revealed to Joseph Smith by an angel named Maroni. It's always the Bible plus new revelation. Those who follow Christian Science accept the Bible but they add to it what proports to be revelation from God received by Mary Baker Eddy Patterson Glover Frye. The Bible in the hands of Seven Day Adventism must also have the revelations received by Ellen G. White. The Bible in the hands of Theosophy must be incomplete until the revelations added to it which were given to Helen Patrova(?). The Jehovah Witnesses supplement the scriptures with the writings of Charles Taze Russell and Judge J.
Rutherford, etc., etc.
The Word of God claims that it is final and complete. Now there are commentaries on the Bible and there are study books on the Bible but there is no new revelation. And all of these supposed revelations are not revelation at all because when God finally closed out the book of Revelation, He said if you add anything to it or take anything away from it, shall be added unto you the plagues that are written in it. Many, many systems of religion, many many groups begin with the Bible and then they gradually relegate the Bible to a place of secondary authority while the writings of men and in most cases women are made the basis of understanding and interpretation of that which is contained in the Word of God.
Now how do we really know that they are inaccurate? How do we really know that in fact the Bible is God's revelation full, final, total, complete, all we need without anything added to it?
And the only really legitimate books are those which comment on the Scripture, not from a revelation standpoint, but from the standpoint of teaching what it has to say. How do we know that God is the author? How do we know that the Bible is word for word inspired?
Well, there are many ways to know. There are many ways. We could, for example, talk about the Bible's unity. The Scripture is written over 1500 years, 66 different books, 40 different authors yet not one single point of disagreement...complete unity...complete agreement, no contradictions. And lest you think there are some contradictions in the Bible, look back several years ago in the courts of New York, Dr. Henry Rimmer(?)
offered a thousand dollars to anybody who could find one contradiction in the Bible and that thing stood for years and years and years. One man tried to claim it and his case was thrown out of court. There are no contradictions in the Bible.
There is a unity that's unbelievable when you think of the span of 1500 years and 40 different authors.
Not only its unity but its historical accuracy indicates that it is in fact the Word of God. It makes no errors historically. People often used to laugh at the Bible when it said the walls of Jericho fell down. And then somebody found the walls of Jericho and there they were, all fallen down. And last summer I stood on that sight and I listened to the explanation of the guide who was being quizzed by my wife rather pointedly, and he was explaining how that when the children of Israel went around the walls of Jericho, they were blowing their horns and distracting the attention of the people in the city while they had secret people up under the wall digging it out. And so that eventually they dug it out and it fell out. My wife said, "Oh come on, you don't really believe that?" And he didn't have any other explanation. Everything they discover archaeologically vindicates the Bible.
The extent of Scripture is a proof that God wrote it. It reveals facts about God which no man could ever know. It reveals facts about man that which no man would ever admit. It reveals facts about heaven and hell. It reveals facts about the past, the present and the future and they keep coming true. Some mathematician alone figured out that if you took the prophecies concerning just the first coming of Christ, just His Bethlehem coming, the first time He came, there is one chance in 87 with 93 zeroes after it that those prophecies could ever come true by chance. The extent of the Bible authenticates it is God's revelation. Its subject matter deals with that which is not obvious to men, which is hidden from men.
Even when the Bible talks about science, it's way ahead of its time. William Harvey finally discovered that the life...that blood is what kept you alive. And the oldest book in the Bible said the life of the flesh is in the blood. Men thought that the earth was on the back of elephants in some parts of the world.
Others thought it was on a great big mass of whatever...a particular Eastern religion thought that it was on layers of honey and butter. And Job, the oldest book in the Bible, says, "He hangeth the world on nothing." Men thought the world was flat. They thought it was square. They thought it was a triangle. They thought all kinds of strange things. The Bible says that the world is a sphere...chuwg, the Hebrew word for sphere, it talks about the circle of the earth.
The Bible said that the stars sang and people laughed. And now science has discovered that stars send off an emanation that can be picked up as a sound wave. The Bible says things scientifically that no man could ever know apart from divine revelation from God, astounding scientific facts. It leads men out of ignorance into truth. It leads men to God and no man could discover God unless God gave him the pathway. There are many reasons to believe that the Bible is the Word of God. And I'll tell you something, if men wrote the Bible it would be a lot different than it is. There would be a lot less condemnation of sin. There would be the elimination of the paradoxes. And there would be perhaps the elimination of judgment.
With all of that evidence though that isn't really why I believe the Bible. That's good but that's not why I believe the Bible. I believe the Bible because of this...number one, because the Bible claims that it is written by God. That's why I believe the Bible. And secondly, because Jesus believed it. The Bible says for itself that it is God's Word. But beyond that, Jesus Christ claimed that it was. And I appeal to the teachings of Jesus as the highest court of appeal. If Jesus believed that the Bible was the word for word inspired message from God, then that's evidence enough for me. And if you accept the teaching of Jesus Christ and you accept the person of Christ, then you accept what He said about Scripture. All of this baloney about people who say they believe in Jesus Christ and don't believe the Bible is inspired is ridiculous. Jesus Christ believed the Bible was inspired to the very words. Jesus Christ taught lessons in His day using the tense of the verb out of the Old Testament. He even believed in verbal inspiration obviously. He picked out words. The use, for example, of the word "Lord" repeated twice in one verse was evidence for His own deity and He used it right out of the Psalms. He appealed the very tense of the verb and the very word itself to teach great doctrine. He believed in verbal inspiration. You can't accept Jesus Christ and His authority and not accept verbal inspiration. Every word was written by God. When you accept Christ you accept the whole Bible for Jesus set His stamp of authority on the whole thing.
In Matthew 7:13 Jesus calls the law of Moses which is the Pentateuch, He calls that the Word of God specifically. In Matthew, for example, that most most important statement, Matthew chapter 5 verse 17, "Think not that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets, I am come not to destroy but to fulfill, for verily I say unto you, till heaven and earth pass, one jot, one yod or one tittle shall in no way pass from the law till all be fulfilled." Jesus said you can't even mess with the dots on the "i"s. This is God's Word.
In John 10:35 Jesus said the Scripture cannot be broken. In Matthew 22:31 and 32 we have that classic illustration that I mentioned to you, of where He used the tense of the verb. And also in Matthew 22 where He appeals to Psalm 10...Psalm 110 and the use of the word "Lord" is repeated twice to indicate the importance of His own deity.
Now you can look at this problem of Jesus' attitude toward Scripture as only three ways. Some people say there are errors in the Scripture, that it all isn't written by God. I was taught that the thoughts in my college education, that the thoughts were inspired and not the words. Now you tell me how you convey a thought apart from words? But nevertheless that the thoughts were inspired and the guys put it in their own words. That would be there were errors in the Bible. And this professor agreed that there were errors.
He...he said, "Well, of course, God's basic truth gets across but there are errors." That leaves three options...number one, Jesus was aware of errors but didn't want to tell us. You know what that means? That means He hid the truth from us.
Secondly, He was unaware of errors. If He was unaware of errors then He's not God. Thirdly, there are no errors. Psalm 118:89 says, "Forever, O Lord, Thy word is settled in heaven." There aren't any errors in the Bible. If there are any errors in the Bible, either Jesus didn't know and if He didn't know He's not God or He didn't tell us and if He didn't tell us then He didn't give us the truth...He lied to us. The authority of Jesus Christ settles the issue of whether the Bible is true with me.
Now Christ's authentication of the Bible, and particularly the Old Testament, brings us to our text. We come right up to verse 12 and this is exactly what this text is all about.
Because...here is the key, now watch this...how is it that God got this revelation, this Bible right here, how is it that He communicated it to us? Through what vehicle did He bring us this inspired word? And the answer is through the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the author of Scripture. He moved upon the minds of men to write the very words that He Himself gave them to write, words taken out of their own vocabulary. And that distinguishes the difference between the various writers. Each writer's idiosyncrasies appear in his own volumes because God chose to use his own attitudes, his own illustrations, his own words, rearrange them in a divine order and put them back through and say exactly what God wanted him to say. But the author of all of it is the Holy Spirit. That brings us right up to verse 12 where Jesus begins to explain to the disciples the tremendous ministry of the Holy Spirit in revelation...in revelation.
Now let me give you the background. In this section, Jesus is promised that the Holy Spirit will come. And that when He comes He will dwell within all believers. He has told His disciples that they will have all these promises and they will have all this power that He's been promising them activated by the Holy Spirit when He comes on the day of Pentecost. He also told them that the Holy Spirit would witness to Christ through them. He told them, and we saw this the last week, that the Holy Spirit would convince and convict of sin to bring men to Christ.
So He's been detailing what the Holy Spirit will do when He gets here. And now He climaxes all of it by giving the work of the Holy Spirit in revelation, revealing divine truth first of all to the disciples. And that's the primary meaning of this passage.
The primary application of verse 13 is not to you and me as Christians, it's to the disciples as Scripture authors. But in a broader sense it can apply to us, and we'll see that as we go.
But the promise here is that the Spirit will lead them into truth, accurate truth. That's the ministry of the Spirit to reveal God's truth. And really what it is, friends, what you have in this passage is the promise of the New Testament...the promise that the New Testament will be written, inspired by God through the Holy Spirit.
Scoffield calls this "Christ's preauthentication of the New Testament scriptures," this is Christ authenticating the New Testament before it was ever written.
Now let's look at it and see the Spirit's ministry here.
And I want to show you four things...the reason for revelation, the person for revelation, the purpose for revelation and the pattern for revelation. This is the Holy Spirit's work in revelation. Now keep in mind that the primary reference of the passage is to the disciples who will be the authors basically of the new Testament. And only in a secondary sense does it apply to us. We don't receive revelation anymore, we receive illumination, instruction and teaching...and there's a great difference.
All right, first of all, let's notice the reason for revelation. Why does Jesus say I'm going to send the Holy Spirit to do this? Why do you need anymore revelation? Why haven't you had enough? Why in fact doesn't Jesus just give it all to them?
Why didn't Jesus write it all out and say, "Here, guys, there it is?"
Look at verse 12, here's the reason for revelation. "I have yet many things to say unto you...here comes the point...but ye cannot...what?...bear them now." Jesus says I am not going to tell you anymore because you couldn't handle it, it would be wasted effort at this point. You're too involved in sorrow and in ignorance to get anymore than you've gotten.
Now remember that the disciples were just babes. They were just babes in understanding. They knew what a spiritual babe knows and barely that much without the ministry of the Spirit within them for these years and the teaching and the problem of trying to figure out what Jesus was saying all the time in their Jewish context, you see, because their Messiah was always sort of a political person and their Messiah was always going to stay on earth and set up a Kingdom, and trying to reverse all of that attitude and figure out what Jesus kept talking about in His death and so forth, they were extremely ignorant. They were doing the best they could with what they had but they didn't have very much and they were confused about many, many things. The only thing they weren't too confused about was that they loved Jesus with all their hearts and they wanted to be with Him, and that's why they were so messed up when He told them He was going to go.
And so, they had this problem of ignorance. They were babes in understanding. They couldn't handle any strong doctrine.
There wasn't any way they could handle that. Repeatedly as you study the gospel of John, beginning in chapter 2 and running all the way through the thing, you have the statement repeated, "the disciples understood not what He said." And the disciples didn't understand this until later on and they remembered what He had said and they knew what He meant. They just didn't get it. They were weak. They were proud. They were quibbling over who was going to be in the chief seats in the Kingdom. They were selfish. And very soon they'd be offended. And when Jesus went to the cross, they scattered and fled, you know, the shepherd was smitten and the flock was scattered. And so they had given plenty of evidence that they couldn't handle even what they'd gotten already. They were having a terrible time with what they had already learned, or not learned. And they were lost in their own sorrow. They were lost in their own loneliness. They were fearful of the hostile world about which Jesus had spoken. And so Jesus looks at them and He says, "Guys, I'd really like to tell you a lot of other things, but you could not handle it...you couldn't handle it."
And so, the great physician of souls knows how frail and how carnal they really are. And He knew and understood their immaturity. But there's a beautiful thing here that I think I need to point out to you. Jesus here is very understanding of their immaturity, very understanding, because He knows what they have to deal with. And He knows the problem and He understands the limited ability to respond. And He understands the frame of reference. And so rather than rebuke them, He just tenderly loves them. And He doesn't ball them out and say, "You dodos,"
you know, "I mean, three years I've been telling you guys this stuff and you still..." and He doesn't say that, He doesn't even treat them with that kind of an attitude. He treats them in tender love. And He says, "Guys, I have so much to say but you're not ready for it."
Unfortunately this pattern which was excusable in the disciples becomes inexcusable today among Christians. It is inexcusable for a Christian today to be trapped in this kind of ignorance if He has been with Jesus to the extent that these men had been. Because, you see, we have the ingredient they didn't have, the indwelling Holy Spirit. And that's why when the New Testament talks about a spiritual babe, it is very concerned. In 1 Corinthians chapter 3, Paul says, "Brethren, I couldn't speak unto you as unto spiritual but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ." There was no excuse for this. They had been saved far too long to be babes. "I have to feed you with milk, not with solid food, you're not able to bear it." And he goes on to say that you're carnal because you're always fighting and hassling each other, you're divided, you're struggling against each other, division, strife, that's a good sign of a baby. You put eight babies in a room and one bowl of ice cream, and babies aren't really concerned about each other. It's characteristic of a spiritual babe that he has no care for somebody else, he only wants to fulfill his own desire. That was a Corinthian problem.
And then, of course, you have the other problem, of course, in Hebrews chapter 5 where the writer of Hebrews tremendously reprimands the Christians there because he says, "You should be teachers but instead of being teachers you have need that somebody teach you all over again the principles...the basics."