“Another Helper”

Could you imagine going through some of the highest and lowest points of your life… alone… completely alone?  With no one to share your thoughts, your joys.  No one is there to hold your hand when things get really tough.

A scientific experiment was conducted using primates, monkeys, and a newborn was taken and provided mere sustenance of food and water but there was no cuddling, no touch, no soothing sounds to fill the life of that new-born. It was a sterile and lonely environment, in fact, it was hostile, and the outcome was that the creature died. To have the necessities but no nurturing was fatal.

The thing is that God in His divine providence has seen to it that we are born into the world in connection to a family, a community.  We are not independent bodies and souls just left to scratch out our existence in a harsh and uncaring world.  We have mothers who loved us… fathers who provided for us, they taught us and, yes, nurtured us.  We have, over the years connected with friends and colleagues, who have ended up many times being a support group to hear of our victories and provide a shoulder to cry on if necessary.

The history of faith since the time of our first parents, and after the fall into sin, required that there be provided a helper who would direct us to where godly light shines.  Those who came to faith in Old or New Testament times were brought to the Lord they had otherwise abandoned through the Word of the Apostles or the Prophets and the Holy Spirit granting our hearts a trust of God’s Word so that we might believe it and be saved.

The Holy Spirit was also found to work extraordinary works to verify the Lord’s hand operating in the world.  Our heavenly Father moved the prophets of old to speak His word through the working of the Holy Spirit.  King David prays for the gift of the Spirit in order to preserve him in his pilgrimage to the kingdom of heaven to be with the Lord.  The works of Elijah and Elisha were preeminently works of the Spirit that the people of God might be directed by God toward His path and design rather than their own.

God has had a hand in directing our paths, preserving our faith, and testifying of Christ that we might be saved in the end.  The Lord promised that he would not leave us as orphans and how important that was for the Apostles to meditate on as the Christian Church made its first strides out of Jerusalem to the ends of the earth.  The task ahead would be unbearable and impossible were it left in the hands of these formerly uneducated fisherman, government officials, and tradesmen.

What we have here in the Gospel of John was Christ’s promise of a Comforter… a Helper.  This was necessary with all the talk from Jesus’ own lips that he was headed for the cross and in the hands of sinful men He would be put to death.  It doesn’t sound all that successful in the estimation of His disciples, in fact, it sounded like it was all doomed for certain failure, but Jesus is geared for establishing, by His own blood, a religion that would reach the hearts, souls, and minds of the whole world, even to us today.

So, with the eminent departure of Jesus, by crucifixion, through resurrection, and then on to His Ascension, the disciples were prepped for being without the physical presence of the Lord.  Hard days, times, and circumstances were coming their way.  The Spirit of Truth would help them endure those days in the continuing love of the Father and the Son.  Stick around in Jerusalem, His closest friends are told, until the Spirit is granted to them to equip them for their sending and mission for the sake of the Gospel that is still going on in our generation.

What was promised and given two thousand years ago is exactly what we need now. You need help and assistance as you trek through this world and its day-to-day tasks amidst all the obstacles that the world, the devil, and our own flesh throw in our way to trip us up. We need just such an Advocate, Comforter, and Helper as Jesus has determined to send us in the name of His Father and Him.  We need an on-going witness to the Truth in the face of the world’s inability to recognize any truth other than what our feeble minds can devise, which is no truth at all!

You and I need exactly what He is offering and giving!  When we examine ourselves by God’s standard then we must agree with the Holy Scriptures that there is none who seek after God.  There is none that easily and naturally do good and refrain from sinning.

Have we obeyed His Word in every part, as “the Truth revealed,” that we might live in keeping it?  Have we loved as Jesus commanded us?  Have we kept His commandments in season and out of season, whether it was convenient, or easy, or not?  To the slightest degree that we have not kept His commandments, and have not loved God or neighbor, we have failed and are deserving of (as we confess) present and eternal punishment!  Have we given God first place in our lives?  Or have we found discipleship inconvenient and something that would take up too much of our time?

Love is proven by Life.  A young couple embracing and kissing might be expressing true love and then, in the midst of sinning, it could be mere lust.  A child who loves an attentive parent would not mistreat or abuse them. A husband who loves his wife would not ignore her.  No person in their right mind who was the recipient of the charitable acts of others would commit an act of violence against them in response to their desperate need being met.

Even so, if our love of God consists in offering a few moments of devotion (and not every moment), or to speak of Him on occasion (yet not always), or to show no reliance in a God who has unceasingly committed Himself to us, then our love is not only lacking toward the One who made us, sustains us, saved us, and loves us without limits but we ungrateful creatures are deserving of eternal fire and perpetual anguish and everlasting separation from Him.  And still He would come at us with even more mercy!

This is our life to a tee!  And this is proof that we need the help Jesus is offering!  Especially, as time and human history continues on a downward spiral and the Lord delays His final return.

The Spirit points to the Truth as He testifies of the Christ Jesus as our hope, as the Way, th e Light, the Resurrection, and the Life!  It is the Spirit who works in us what we could not accomplish by our own reason or strength.

The world would leave us as orphans… it feels no responsibility to love us, or to nurture us or to offer comfort in our need.  Human love falls far short of our Father’s love.  Even in our compassion we hesitate to reach out to those who are different from us.  How complicated it is when the world reaches out to the unaware and the unthinking, who fail to count the cost of their allegiances and alliances with the powers of darkness who rule this world, and whose hope is temporary and fleeting.  In the world, celebrities have friends so long as they have wealth and fame.  The prodigal son had fellow partiers so long as he could afford the food and drink who petered out on him when he was left to tend the hogs so that he had no one.

Real friends and family love regardless of whether or not amenities are freely made available in return for such loyalties.  Love seeks not it own, it is not puffed up, love does not fail!

The world is fickle, but God is not!  Though abandoned by His closest friends, He still went the way of the cross for the world that for the most part would still reject Him.

Through the promised and giving Spirit we have insight not gotten anywhere else.  Our life of sin is revealed in the agony that permeates down to bone and marrow.  But the Gospel reveals Jesus as He really is and by what He is willing to do for the likes of us!  The truth leads us to despair of ourselves and seek our healing from the Great Physician.  The Spirit testifies of Jesus and points us to our only Savior.  The Spirit did miracles to show the power and affect of the Gospel among both Jew and Gentile.  Those miracles were not done just to show power but to point to Christ and the salvation He earned for each of us!  The Spirit has made us (sinners though we might be) to stand as saints in the Father’s loving and merciful sight for Jesus’ sake.

In the absence of the visible presence of our Lord, we behold Him with spiritual eyes empowered by the mighty Word and the Spirit of our God.  We now know that we need not face trials, temptations, and troubles alone, but with our Triune God right there with us to the end! Jesus has risen from the grave (and who would believe that apart from the Spirit).  The Spirit has taken up residence in our hearts to keep our eyes on Jesus, His cross, and empty tomb!  The Word of pardon is the Spirit’s work to comfort us despite what we have been and what we yet could be.  In Christian pulpits, the Spirit is at work!  As we read our Bibles, the Spirit is at work with one goal, namely, our salvation for Christ’s sake.  The Spirit is using Baptism and the Supper to expand the kingdom in our presence.

We have a living relationship; it is not stagnant and could never be where the Spirit is on the move.  This is all because when Jesus prepared to ascend to heaven, He promised the Comforter.

In a Spirit-empowered life we see that to live by His commands is best! Our reason may be limited, and faulty, even misguided compassion can cause harm, for instance, where a mother’s love can become smothering and debilitating… or a lack of discipline can lead to corruption as it did among Aaron’s and Eli’s sons.

Love is sometimes sacrificial, sometimes tough, but true and proper love is still the greatest command God has given.  And our love ought to be first and foremost directed toward the Father, Son, and Spirit, who first loved us, and who loves us with an unbounded love, which no one ought to live without.  We need our God, especially as He has promised to meet us in this life, in our need, through His Son, and confirmed by the testimony of His sent Comforter and Helper, the Spirit, without whom eternal life would be beyond our reach! To this God alone goes all the glory and we have life, and we are loved!  We are His children!

Amen!