The Holy Spirit's job description

There was a teacher who was helping one of her kindergarten students put his boots on? He asked for help and she could see why. With her pulling and him pushing, the boots still didn’t want to go on. When the second boot was on, she had worked up a sweat. She almost whimpered when the little boy said, "Teacher, they’re on the wrong feet." She looked, and sure enough, they were. It wasn’t any easier pulling the boots off than it was putting them on. She managed to keep her cool as together they worked to get the boots back on – this time on the right feet. He then announced, "These aren’t my boots." She bit her tongue rather than get right in his face and scream, "Why didn’t you say so?" like she wanted to. Once again she struggled to help him pull the ill-fitting boots off. He then said, "They’re my brother’s boots. My Mom made me wear them." She didn’t know if she should laugh or cry. She mustered up the grace to wrestle the boots on his feet again. She said, "Now, where are your mittens?" He said,” I stuffed them in the toes of my boots..." Sometimes, we just need help. 1. Jesus is giving His final teaching before the cross. He knows there is a painful parting ahead. He is leaving them. And it is going to be difficult. Yet, in the big picture of things it will be better. These next chapters are very much like those conversations that start out with what do you want first the bad news or the good news? 2. It is going to be better when He leaves. Jesus, in fact, says that it is necessary. No doubt, this announcement that He was leaving seemed disastrous to them. In three years, they had learned to depend on Him for their very lives. The thought of being separated had to strain them emotionally and mentally. Have you ever thought that it would be so good just to be with Jesus, like the disciples, just to sit and talk and ask questions? Well Jesus is telling us right here that as awesome as we may think that would have been, the Holy Spirit is way more valuable to us in the here and now. This being so, I want us to realize today this simple truth, that… 3. THE HOLY SPIRIT IS OUR FRIEND. The Greek word that is used by John here you may have heard before. It is paraclete “to be called to one’s side.” And many good words are used to translate it -Comforter -Helper -Advocate -Intercessor, and even -Companion. These translations are powerful descriptions of the Holy Spirit’s ministry to us. How does the Holy Spirit act as our friend? 4. We will find in our study of John 16.5-15 three responsibilities taken up by the Holy Spirit that shows us He is our friend. A few weeks back we talked a lot about God as the Gardener and the job description involved in Jesus being the vine and God being the gardener. Well today let’s look at the job description or responsibilities of the Holy Spirit. OUR STUDY: I. The first responsibility is CONVICTION. At this point, the Holy Spirit acts as our prosecutor. We all have friends that tell us what we want to hear. Hopefully we have friends who tell us what we need to hear even if it means hurting our feelings. We need people like that who care enough to tell it like it is, and the Holy Spirit does that. Those moments of guilt we get when we do something we shouldn’t, when we skip our quiet times, or skip church or don’t do the things we should as believers. That guilt, that gut feeling is from none other than the Holy Spirit. 1. The greatest sin is unbelief. The greatest fight each one of us has is to get rid of our self as center. It is the Holy Spirit that brings this conviction. 2. We have no righteous standing before God without Jesus. The Spirit opens our eyes to our need for a Savior. We need the perfection of Jesus, and we cannot attain that. Therefore the Spirit helps point out anything in our lives that is inconsistent with aiming for that. Football teams film everything nowadays. I mean, games and practices and the purpose is to show the players any mistakes that they are making that keep them from executing perfectly. The Holy Spirit is like that, it comes and lives inside of us and slides a little gut check in every now and then when we are not being consistent with what God wants for us. Before Jesus came, God spoke through Ezekiel saying that help was coming (36.26-27)… The final act of conviction the Holy Spirit gives is that… 3. Justice will have its place. There is judgment. God wants that right relationship so badly that he sent his son to die for you and me. II. The second responsibility is DIRECTION. 1. We are given a source of truth. 2. We have a guide for our lives. ILL Holy Spirit (S) You may remember Jim Lovell as one of the astronauts of Apollo 13. He was portrayed by Tom Hanks in the movie, Apollo 13. Before the Apollo 13 mission he was asked by an interviewer if he had ever had a close call while he was a pilot, and this was the story he shared. “I remember this one time I’m in a banshee at night in combat conditions, so there’s no running lights on the carrier. It was the Shangri-La and we were in the Sea of Japan. My radar had jammed and my homing signal was gone because somebody in Japan was actually using the same frequency. So it was leading me away from where I was supposed to be, and I am looking down at a big black ocean. “So I flip on my map light, then suddenly, zap, everything shorts out right there in my cockpit. All my instruments are gone, my lights are gone, and I can’t tell even what my altitude is. I know I am running out of fuel, so I am thinking about ditching in the ocean. "I look down, and then in the darkness, there’s this green trail. It’s like a long carpet that’s just laid out beneath me. It was the algae — it was that phosphorescent stuff that gets churned up in the wake of a big ship. It was leading me home. “If my cockpit lights hadn’t shorted out there’s no way I would have been able to see that. You never know what events good or bad may occur to get you home.” The Holy Spirit works like that algae that led Jim Lovell back to his carrier. He leads us in uncertainty. It says in Psalm 23:3: “He guides in paths of righteousness for His name’s sake.” The Spirit leads us deeper and deeper into the truth. He takes the words of Jesus and places them in our hearts and helps us apply them to our lives. We are not alone in our decision making. Our Friend is our helper. III. The third responsibility is REVELATION. The key is Jesus. The Holy Spirit draws our attention to Christ. He makes Jesus a reality to us. The more we pray and the more time we spend in prayer the more that the Holy Spirit is able to reveal to us. At the close of the sermon I held out a glass of water. It was half filled glass and I asked how I could get the air out of the glass. After some time we decided that the only way we could get the air out of the glass was to add more water, and if we added water until it overflowed we would push all of the air out. That is precisely how the Holy Spirt works. God knew that the only way he could continue to work in our lives and to push the sin out of our lives was to fill us with more of Him. The only way to do that was through the Holy Spirit. Thanks for reading and have a great day!