“I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper
to be with you forever, even the Spirit of Truth”
John 14:16-17a
This morning’s message will be a little different than normal. My usual approach to a morning message is to be as expositional as possible. By that, I mean taking a single passage of Scripture and “expositing” or “drawing out” from that passage the truth God has put there for us. That doesn’t mean we don’t look at other passage as well. Indeed we must. For Scripture itself is the best commentary on the meaning of Scripture.
But sometimes it is helpful to back up and consider in a broader way what the whole of Scripture has to say about a given topic. In that case, the sermon will not focus on a single passage, but will seek to bring in God’s truth from a variety of passages. But even then, the preacher must be careful to remain faithful to what each passage actually says and not “abuse” Scripture by proof-texting (which means lining Scripture passages side by side that really have nothing to do with one another, and yet treating them as if they do!)
This morning we will be looking at the larger topic of the “personhood” or “personal nature” of the Holy Spirit. Is the Holy Spirit a person like the Father is a person and the Son is a person? In other words, is He a Someone we can relate to and know and share fellowship with? Or is He a something we use and experience and draw power from? This is a very important question with important implications for how we live our lives as Christians. And since Jesus introduced us to the Holy Spirit in John 14, I thought it would be important to consider this topic of Who He is before we move on to John 15.
Until then, we’ve got a busy month ahead of us. Grace Bible Conference begins this Friday evening. Easter is the following Sunday (4/17). And I will be out of the pulpit the week after that (4/24). So we’ll start John 15 on Sunday May 1
.
May we learn to walk by the Spirit as He leads us to Christ.
Pastor Scott