John 14:15-31 The comfort of the Holy Spirit

Morning everyone. Our reading today is taken from John chapter 14 verses 15 to 31 and it's on page 1082.

! If you love me, keep my commands and I will ask the Father and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever.

The Spirit of Truth. The world cannot accept him because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him for he lives with you and will be in you.

I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you. Before long, the world will not see me anymore. But you will see me because I live. You also will live.

On that day, you will realize that I am in the Father and you are in me and I am in you. Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me. The one who loves me will be loved by my Father and I too will love them and show myself to them.

Then Judas, not Judas Iscariot said, but Lord, why do you intend to show yourself to us and not to the world?

Jesus replied, anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them and will come to them and make our home with them.

Anyone who does not love me will obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own. They belong to the Father who sent me.

All this I have spoken while 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 said to you.

Peace I leave with you. My peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.

Peace I leave with you. I do not give to you as the Lord.

Thank you. Thank you so much, Sharon, for reading for us. If you have forgotten already, my name is Nathan. I'm the training pastor of West Kilburn here.

It is my delight and my joy to get to preach on this piece of scripture to you. I've said this pretty much every time before I preach.

I think it's critical to me. There is a group of people, while Paul is preaching in the New Testament, that are commended, and they are commended for looking at the word and testing everything that he said against the scripture in front of them.

So in that vein, could I encourage you, keep your Bibles open in front of you. I'm going to be referring back to the scripture, test all that I say against the scripture here, because we want to be staying true to what God's word is saying.

With that, let me pray for us, and then we'll get into this passage. Lord, we are so thankful for who you are. We're thankful for the fact that we get this time to come to your word.

Lord, we thank you that he is still alive and speaking, and Lord, we pray that you would speak to us. Would your Holy Spirit be moving in our hearts? That we may know more of you, love you more. In Jesus' name I pray.

Amen. Amen. Great, why don't I start with a question. The question for you is, how do you best receive comfort? How do you best receive comfort?

Or maybe, actually, how do you feel best comforted when you're going through a tough scene? Right? If you are going through a tough time, you've lost your job, you can barely pay your rent, and you go up to a friend and say, and pour your heart out, how do you best receive comfort?

I'd like to wager that there are two ways that you can receive comfort, and two preferences, I guess. One is that you get a solution from that person. You tell them, hey, I've lost my job, my rent is barely paid, and they go, oh, great, I've got a job, actually, at the place that I work, I can tell you about it, I can put the connections in, you can get a new job.

Actually, you don't need to pay your rent, you can stay with me for a couple of days. Problem solved. Right? That's the comfort sometimes we like, a solution. They have solved your problem, they've helped you out, they've given you a solution to your problems.

The other, the solution one is kind of dangerous. Not everybody wants a solution to their problems. Right? If somebody comes to you, sometimes what they want is just for you to sit there, to listen, to care for them, to just give them a hug and say, hey, I'm here for you.

And that's often sometimes what we want. How do you best receive comfort? Are you solution-oriented? Do you want somebody to help you? Do you want just somebody to be there with you?

I think that's the focus of this passage we've got here. Jesus is trying to comfort his disciples. That's what he's trying to do. That's the focus of the passage. And that's what we're going to look at today. Before we get into this passage, let me just set the scene for where we are in the Gospel of John.

John, the Gospel of John can kind of neatly be fit into sort of two different halves. In the first half, you see what people like to call the Book of Signs.

Jesus is proclaiming that he is the Son of God and the Messiah through many miraculous signs. They are all signs that have been prophesied about.

In the Old Testament, they said the Messiah will do this, and Jesus is doing exactly that. He is fulfilling those signs. That's the sort of first half of the book. We're in the second half. The second half is sort of from 12 onwards.

And in chapter 12, Jesus says, The hour has come for me to be glorified. The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. And so, Jesus begins his walk towards his glory.

What's his glory? Well, Jesus is glorified when he dies on the cross and rises again. So, when he says, My hour has come for me to be glorified, He's about to start his slow walk towards the cross to die for us.

And that's what the second half of the book is about. From the time that Jesus tells the disciples that, My hour has come, all the way through to 14, where we intersect, The disciples have been told, Hey, I'm going to die.

I'm going to go to the cross. Jesus is trying to prepare them best for life without him when he leaves. And they are freaking out. They have lost it. They are troubled in heart.

They have put everything in the name of Jesus and the person of Jesus. They have left their houses, their family, their jobs. I mean, some of them were cast straight from a fishing boat to follow Jesus, right?

They have left everything for the last three years to follow Jesus. And he says, I'm going to die. I'm going to leave. They're freaking out. They don't know what they're going to do without him.

They are confused and concerned. And so, that is why chapter 14 starts with the words, Do not let your hearts be troubled. Do not let your hearts be troubled.

The verses we've read today, verse 27, repeats that line. It says, Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid. This is the heartbeat of the passage.

Do not let your hearts be troubled. Jesus comes to this passage with a longing to comfort his troubled disciples. That's what we're going to see. And I believe that comfort is offered to us as well.

And so, why don't I start with our first point. Here's our first point. Jesus sends the Spirit that we may continue in his works and obey his commands.

Jesus sends the Spirit that we may continue in his works and obey his commands. Let's start by reading verse 16. It says, Verse 16, one of the really poignant words in there is the word another.

Another implies there's already been one advocate. Jesus is saying, I've been with you. I've been helping you and being your advocate. I have been your help for these last three years.

And I'm going to provide you another just like me. The Holy Spirit is the third person of the Trinity. And Jesus says, I'm going to give him to you another just like me.

And he is going to be with you and help you forever. Jesus is saying, I will not just say words like, Do not let your hearts be troubled. No, I'm going to do something about it.

I'm going to send the Holy Spirit to you. Do not be troubled is not just an empty phrase of comfort from Jesus. But it comes with the promise of the presence of the Holy Spirit.

But if the Spirit is going to help us, if that is what verse 16 says, it is right to ask, what is he going to help us to do?

Verse 12, which we didn't read today. And verse 15, I think, summarized what the answer to that is. What is he going to help us to do? Well, verse 12, let me read it for us. It says, Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I've been doing, and they will do even greater things than these.

Because I am going to the Father. Jesus says, What is the Holy Spirit going to help you to do? By verse 16, he's going to help you to do the works I've been doing, and even greater things than these.

So that's one part of it. The second part of it, that he is going to help us to love and obey his commands. That's going to be the main focus for us today, as verse 15 kicks off with, If you love me, keep my commands, and I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate.

He says, If you love me, keep my commands, I will help you to do that by the Holy Spirit. So what's the purpose of sending the Holy Spirit to us? It is that he is going to help us to do the works of Christ, and to love and keep the commands.

Verse 12 is not in the scope of what we're, what we're preaching on today, and what we're reading today, but it is right to say that Jesus, in and through the Spirit, gives the church the gifts of the Spirit, that we may continue in his works.

So when it comes to preaching the gospel, or healing the sick, or prophesying, or giving words of wisdom and knowledge, that is what the Spirit seems to be giving the power to his church, to continue the works of Christ.

But verse 15 says, If you love me, keep my commands. The Spirit is given to us to love Jesus and keep his commands. And this is not just obedience for obedience sake, right?

Like, Jesus is just trying to get us to do exactly what he says. No, he is the creator of us. He has made us. He knows what is right for us to do, and what is the best way for us to live. And so he says, Obey my words, my dear disciples.

Obey them. So with that, why don't I go to our second point. Here's the second point. Obedience and love are connected. Obedience and love are connected.

It's actually hard to read this passage and not see this unbreakable link between obedience, and obedience to God, and love for him. We see it in verse 15, right? We've just read that.

If you love me, keep my commands. We see it again then in verse 21. Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me. And then again in verse 23. Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching.

And in case you haven't quite got it by then, verse 24 puts it in reverse for you. Anyone who does not love me will not obey my teaching. The message is clear. Our love for Jesus should result in our obedience to him and his commands.

Now, this connection between love and obedience is incredibly important to understand, to kind of get a grip of this passage, but it is also important that we understand it in the right way.

Jesus is not saying that somehow, if you obey me enough, I will love you, and then I'll send the Spirit to you. It is not a condition that we need to be obedient enough, and then God will love us. No, it is out of our love for him, our obedience flows, seems to be the point that Jesus is making.

That's why our love for Jesus flows, a desire to obey what he says to us. Obedience comes from love, not the other way around. It's easy to read verse 21, as if God is saying, or asking us to keep his commandments, that we may somehow prove our love for him, and as a result, he rewards us with this presence.

I don't believe that is what's going on by Jesus' constant connection between love and obedience. Here's what I believe is going on. What I believe Jesus is saying here is that nobody can say, I love Jesus, but I have in me no desire to keep his commandments.

Nobody can say that, is what Jesus is saying. I love Jesus, but I have no desire to keep his commandments. He says, no, your love for me and your desire to keep my commands is attached. It is the defining feature of each true Christian, it is the defining feature of each true disciple, that if you love Jesus, you will keep his commands.

We cannot divorce or separate this idea of our love for Jesus and our obedience to his commands. They go hand in hand. You cannot say you love Jesus and not obey him.

Let me try and unpack that a little bit. The first point to unpack is you cannot love Jesus and not obey him. See, the reality of the world we live in is that many will say, at the very least, that Jesus is kind of a nice guy, right?

Many will actually even proclaim to love him, right? The Muslim will say to you, I love Jesus, he's a great prophet, why wouldn't I love him? You know, the Hindu will say, oh, I love Jesus, he's a great guru and a teacher of how we must live peaceably.

Mahatma Gandhi, who is a really famous Hindu and a peace activist, says, I love your Christ. He says, I love Jesus. He does also say, I don't like your Christians, but we'll skip past that for a second.

But his point is like, I love your Christ. I love the fact that he's a guru and a great guy. The atheist and the agnostic, if you watch some podcasts nowadays, they'll actually go, oh, I love Christ for the morals and the ethics that he has brought to the Western world.

That seems to be a kind of constant thing. There are many people who say, I love Christ, but they fail to obey his commands. Jesus says, I'm to be worshipped as God, as the Son of God, as the Messiah.

And the Muslim says, I don't believe that. I don't obey that part of what he says. Jesus says, I'm the only way, the truth and the life. And the Hindu says, no, I don't believe there's any way, only one way, and truth and life.

The atheist says, I like the morality stuff, but I want Jesus to have no authority over me. And Jesus here says, if you love me, obey my commands. Many say and even shout of their love for Jesus.

Yeah, he makes it very clear in this passage. If you love him, you will obey him. It is the outflowing of our love for him. Our love for him will cause us to obey him.

But it would also be true to kind of reverse that statement a little bit and say you cannot obey Jesus and not love him. You cannot obey Jesus and not love him. So the first point was, you cannot love him and not obey him. Second is, you cannot obey him and not love him.

Let me try and explain that a little bit. See, we often misdiagnose our sin. We often look at our sin and go, oh, I think I just need a little bit more of trying hard, putting some more effort in.

I need some more discipline, some more accountability, and all of those sorts of things. I need to try better to kill my sin. It's often where we go. Hear me loud and clear.

Those are great things. If we see our sin before us, we should deal with it aggressively in trying to kill it. Discipline, accountability, all of those are great things. But if those are the only things that we focus on, we are often misdiagnosing our problem of sin.

Our problem of sin often isn't just a problem of discipline, but also it is a love problem. It is a love problem. Our problem in obeying what Jesus says, our obedience to him, is that we love something more than we love Jesus and his ways.

See, our lack of generosity when it comes to something like money is not that we just aren't disciplined enough with giving it away and being generous as Jesus calls us to, but it is the fact that we love the comfort that it brings more than we love the Jesus that commands us to be generous with it.

Our problem is when it comes to maybe angry conversations and wanting to win arguments in our relationship is not just a discipline issue of not saying enough nice things in those conversations, but it is that we love the idea of us winning the conversation and winning the argument more than we love Jesus in the way he calls us to lay ourselves down and to be humble and to use our words well.

Our problems of lust or too much food or laziness or bitterness, anything really that concerns itself with our pleasure is the fact that we love our pleasure way more than we love Jesus and what he says is pleasurable and what he says is right.

See, if we desire to be obedient to Christ, if we sit here going, I want to be more like Christ and obey him more, it stands to reason that we need to love him more.

We need to love him more that we may obey him more. Let me try and put it in this way. I've had, I mean, Daisy will let me know about this at least once a month, but I've had about a gym membership for a good long while.

I think we've worked out that I paid that one month's gym membership for one session a month. That's about the rate at which it works out. I'm way overpaying on that gym membership.

But it is, it's not, my problem with getting to the gym is not that I kind of just don't have enough discipline, which is obviously true, but it is also that I love my comfy bed and a bit more time to sleep way more than I love the idea of me being fit and healthy next summer.

Do you know what I mean? Like I love that idea of I can just stay comfy in bed rather than oh, I'll be fit and healthy next summer. I'm just like, oh, I'll see some body positivity stuff. Tell me why I'm fine as I am rather than getting up out of bed early.

That is the problem I have with the gym membership. It's not that I simply lack discipline, which is true, but it's that I love something more than I love actually the image of what I can get if I go to the gym.

That seems to be the thing of our love must grow that we may obey Jesus more. Our love for Jesus must grow in comparison to everything else that we may obey him more. So the question lands, how do we love Jesus more?

Right, if our obedience is driven out of our love for Jesus, how do we love him more that we may be more obedient? How do we fix the love issue? And I think 1 John 4.19 has the answer for us.

1 John 4.19 says this, we love because he first loved us. We love because he first loved us. So how do we increase our love for him?

Well, we remind ourselves of what he's done for you. We remind ourselves of what he's done for you. We love because he first loved us. See, since the beginning of mankind, since sin entered the world, God has planned to redeem mankind.

His plan is Jesus, to bring Jesus about for him to live a perfect life. As he speaks to the disciples, he has left the throne of heaven and made himself a human being here.

He's shown sign after sign that he is the son of God. He is who he says he is. And he has lived an innocent life and soon he will head to the cross. He will lay himself out on that cross.

He will go take the punishment for all of our sins. He will rise again three days later. He will have defeated death and he will have victory over the devil.

He will have opened the door for all of us to be, all of us that believe, to have life in him to the full now and eternally in life to come. And he has done all of this because he loves you.

Because he loves you. He has loved us. He made the first move. He loves us. And that is why we love him. And so what do we do?

We remind ourselves of him. It's why we're encouraged to read God's word. It's why we meet together each week. Right? It's that we might remind ourselves of what we have been loved, how much we have been loved.

Let me bring back that gym analogy for you. The people that I went to university with that were the best at making their way to the gym were people that kept reminding themselves of what they wanted. As vain and weird as it might be, every one of the guys that I went to the gym with that went consistently had their Instagram reels full of bodybuilders.

Right? Every day is a reminder of what they want to be. And they would head to the gym each day because of it. If we continue to remind ourselves, not in a sort of vain way of what we might become, but in a way of that Christ has loved us, that is what we do each week at church.

It's not that I'm saying something new to you. It is that I'm reminding you that Jesus loves you and he died for you. That is what we do here each week. And it is the Holy Spirit that continues to do that work in us of reminding us.

Look at verse 26 with me. It says, Part of the work of the Holy Spirit is to remind us of what Christ has already said and done.

He is continuing to remind us of his love for us and it is out of that love for him that we grow in our obedience to his commands. And so here's my next point.

We are not alone. We are not alone. See, love and obedience are definitely connected in this passage, but so is the promise of the Holy Spirit with us and in us. See, I know for a lot of this I've talked about the connection between love and obedience and it is definitely there and it is a crucial part of this passage, but it would be wrong if that is the only thing we leave with.

Remember at the start I said that the disciples are troubled and Jesus is trying to comfort them. I believe that he is trying to do that for us today as well. See, the promise of this passage is that you have the Holy Spirit to help you.

The amazing way that this passage sets out is every time Jesus talks about the fact that we need to love and obey him, he follows it up with a promise of his presence with us.

We've already looked at verse 15, but when it says if you love and keep my commands it is followed by the fact that it says and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever. Verse 21 which says whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me is followed by saying the one who loves me will be loved by my father and I too will show myself to them.

Another promise of his presence with us. And lastly verse 23 when he says anyone who loves me will obey my teaching he is followed by saying my father will love them and he will come to them and make our home within them.

23 is followed by a promise that the Holy Spirit is going to come and in some beautiful mysterious way the triune God of this world is going to make our home within our hearts.

I mean the disciples would probably have been floored by this right? There is a huge reverence among the Jews of the time for who God is rightly so in some ways right? He is the he is called Yahweh but they maybe don't even mention that all that often.

They'll say things like the blessed one because Yahweh to say that is a massive thing. Calling God your father is a massive deal and the fact that Jesus says here that the God with all holiness and all power and all reverence is deserved to him but he is going to have a personal relationship with you and come and make his home within you would have been wild to them.

But the promise is this that Jesus does not leave us on our own. He does not leave us orphans. We are not vulnerable and struggling to make it to the end. See the truth I find in myself far too often and in a lot of us as disciples of Christ is that we might not say it but often times we act as if Jesus saved us on the cross but now we need to sustain ourselves until the end.

Right? Jesus saved us on the cross but now by our own effort we need to keep on going. By our own strength we need to live for Christ run the race and continue going. Beloved Christian that idea is completely rebuked by this passage.

The passage says that the Holy Spirit is in you to help you that you've been united to God all of the his strength is within you the wholeness of the Trinity has come to dwell within you.

There is no heavy weight on your shoulder the Holy Spirit does not help you carry. He is there to help you and guide you in your loving obedience to him.

The disciples would have known that in saying this Jesus is talking about the power of God the Holy Power that created the earth the Holy Power that has done everything amazing in the lifetime of Israel and the Holy Power that will come to raise Jesus from the dead again.

He is saying all that is in you all of that power that you have known to be great is in you and the question then becomes why would we be troubled if that is the power within us?

to the power that rose Christ from the grave and brought salvation is the same power that lives in you as a Christian and it will sustain you to the end you do not need to do this on your own the Spirit is right there with you and what the Spirit promises us in this passage is a sense of peace that's our next point there is a promise of peace look with me at verse 27 Jesus says peace I leave with you my peace I give you I do not give to you as the world gives do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid if you know me you'll know that I've had the privilege of and it truly is the privilege of living in India for about a decade and living here for about a decade you get to meet a ton of different people in that with me and my family have dotted around different areas of the world different parts of London and England and all of those sorts of things so you end up just meeting people that have all the money in the world more money than you could possibly imagine and you meet people that are working four to five jobs just to make sure that their families keep eating each night and meeting everything in between can I tell you that the common thread between all of those people is a desire for peace it's a desire for peace whether you have nothing and that keeps you up at night the stress of having to provide whether you have everything you've realised your dreams in life and that still hasn't satisfied you everybody seems to have this desire to peace we started off today with the idea of remembrance that Simeon led us in right there is wars among us there is a desire for peace all along our world and in ourselves personally as well and Jesus says that he can provide that peace that he is leaving his peace with us but see there's something interesting about what he says he says my peace

I leave with you my peace I give you I do not give as the world gives so what does he mean when he says I do not give as the world gives well I think there's two things firstly peace I leave with you or shalom be with you in sort of Jewish circles would be shalom would be the word for peace right so peace I leave with you would not be that that would be quite a common phrase it would almost be our goodbye right peace be with you would be kind of the exiting phrase before you then left it's quite a common phrase it's the same as goodbye I actually found out that goodbye is apparently that word comes from God be with ye it's an old English phrase that got shortened which I thought was pretty cool apart from that really amazing fact it's a pretty common phrase right it's as common as our goodbye but what Jesus says is I don't give to you just as common as just like a goodbye no I'm leaving my peace with you so he says peace I leave with you peace I give you he is leaving the Holy Spirit with us that we may have a peace we may have peace that knows that goes beyond our understanding as Philippians 4 says it is an inexpressible peace that we cannot fully grasp and Jesus promises us that the second part of why he says this peace is not like the world gives you I believe is because he is not giving us a peace that is reliant on our circumstances being perfect it is not an absence of bad things happening that is the peace that Jesus gives us in just next couple of chapters he's going to tell the disciples hey the synagogue is going to kick you out those Jewish leaders that you love the religion that you love the temple that you worship and they're going to kick you out everybody that hates Jesus

Jesus says will now also hate you and there were a few people that hated Jesus at the time so they are not being signed up for a cushy life and that's the peace that Jesus gives them now the peace that Jesus gives them is that you will have a Holy Spirit within you that through every one of those storms is the sovereign power of God that reigns over it and he is in you that is the peace that the Christian has it's not knowing that everything will be great and dandy but knowing that the God that lives in you is so much greater than the problems in front of you that is the peace that Jesus offers it is not like the world gives if you're sitting there going I don't really know what this guy is talking about in terms of like the Holy Spirit and a bunch of other stuff like that and I understand that if you aren't a believer here that might be quite a weird thing for us to be talking about but I know that inside all of us is a desire for peace and if you go oh I really desire some of this peace I don't know everything that I need to know can I say to you this offer for peace is open to everybody that chooses to love Jesus that chooses to believe in who he is as Lord and Saviour and so if you're going hey I'd love some of that peace

I'd love to see what I can do to get some of that peace that I need in my life we'd love to talk to you would you please say hi to one of us I'd love to speak to you and pray with you but let me try and kind of land this plane as we end a little bit let me go to the next point that we have which is the example of Christ the example of Christ let me read verse 28 and onwards verse 28 says you heard me see I'm going away and I'm coming back to you if you loved me you would be glad that I'm going to the Father for the Father is greater than I I've told you now before it happens so that when it does happen you will believe I will not say much more to you for the Prince of this world is coming he has no hold over me but he comes so that the world may learn I love the Father and do exactly what my Father has commanded me come now let us leave there's a limit in my time but

I just want to address verse 28 verse 28 is often where people will come to how well how can Jesus be how can the Father be greater than Jesus I thought they were equal there are so many things that we could say about this but based on the verses preceding that I truly think that what he is talking about is the position of the Father in heaven being greater than his position here on earth the fact that the Father is in heaven is a place that Jesus desires to go back to the whole passage so far Jesus has been talking about the great the great delights of the disciples that he will go and the Holy Spirit will come to them and now he is saying actually be happy for me too because I get to go back to the Father the Father is greater than I because he is in heaven his position is in heaven and I am going to go back to that position that is what I believe verse 28 is saying if you have any questions please there is so much more to say about that so please do come chat to me I would love nothing more than to chew your ear off about all the thoughts

I've had this week but there is a beauty in the last few verses that I want us to see and not want us to miss as we land this plane and I want to use Michael Jordan to make that point as a basketball fan oh gosh as a basketball fan I think it's slightly criminal if people don't know who Michael Jordan is but he's basically the greatest basketball player that's ever lived okay that's all you kind of really need to know and a while ago a documentary came out about him called The Last Dance this was about his sort of career and the last season he had when he won that championship with the Chicago Bulls and basically what comes out in this documentary is Michael Jordan is a pretty harsh teammate right he holds everybody to a perfect standard he would make sure that you run a certain amount he would make sure that your conditioning was one point that you were in the gym when he thought you should be he would make sure that on the court you were doing everything right by him and he would let you know if you weren't

Michael Jordan was a really harsh teammate and he got criticized throughout the documentary for all of that from some of his teammates from somebody else and in a piece to camera this is the quote that he says to the camera he says you ask all my teammates the one thing Michael Jordan was is he would say he never asked me to do something that he didn't do Michael Jordan would say yeah I might have been a harsh teammate but he never asked me Michael Jordan never asked me to do something that he wouldn't do himself if we ran a mile he'd run a mile too he wouldn't stop an inch shy and that is the sort of thing that he holds onto even through the harshness and that's a pretty cold line and I think Jesus embodies that not in the sort of harsh style of leadership but in the sense that he doesn't ask us to do something he isn't willing to do himself Jesus has been calling us to love and obey him out of our love to be obedient to him by the power of the spirit and Jesus in these last few verses says the prince of the world the devil is coming but I'm going to go to the cross and die and why does he say that he says why am I doing that because I love the father and do exactly what the father has commanded me

Jesus asks us to love and obey God and he says I love and obey God it's why I'm going to the cross for you out of my love for the father I obey him and I do as he has commanded me to do my friends Jesus doesn't call us to do something he wasn't willing to do he doesn't call us to do it alone either without the spirit he obeys the father because he loves him so in this passage Jesus has called us to obey him and do the work he's called us to motivated by love we can't detach our love for him from our obedience for him yet even with this responsibility the way is light because of the spirit's help it's not our own efforts that we count on he is the one that comforts and sustains us he promises us peace in all of life's stormiest moments so what do we do we praise him we praise him we praise him for being the example that we have to follow that he hasn't asked us to do what he won't do himself he has perfectly obeyed the commands of God and he asks us to join him in that we praise him for giving us the Holy Spirit that he is helping us in all that we do and even when we don't need a solution and nothing can change the solution he says

I am with you forever at the start we talked about the comfort idea right he is both here to solve the problem when it is needed and be with us forever when it's not Jesus and so we praise him yeah we praise him for all that he has done for us and all that he continues to do for us as we stand here as we listen to God's word as we do all of that the spirit is working within us sustaining us each day if you believe and love Jesus and so we praise the Lord for all that he has done and we praise the Lord for the gift of the spirit within us amen let me pray for us Lord we are so thankful for all that you are to us we thank you that you have not left us on our own we thank you that in the worst moments of our life that you say that you have provided the Holy Spirit to help us and be with us let us hold on to that promise and know the power that resides in us to help us do your will in Jesus name

I pray amen amen