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Hoekstra: The Lord Promised His Spirit to Teach Us

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20130801_holyspirit

The following blog post is taken from Bob Hoekstra’s popular devotional Day By Day By Grace. For previous posts in this series, click here.

“The Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things…When He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all the truth.”
(John 14:26 and 16:13)

“When He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all the truth…He will glorify Me, for He will take of what is Mine and declare it toyou“…Now we have received…the Spirit who is from God, that we mightknow the things that have been freely given to us by God. (John 16:13-14and 1 Corinthians 2:12)

We have been meditating upon the Lord’s promise to build His church. “I will build My church” (Matthew 16:18). One aspect of this promise is the qualitative development of the spiritual life of God’s people. To properly develop spiritually, the Lord’s people need to learn the truths of His word. The Holy Spirit is promised to us to fulfill that need.

The Spirit’s coming was a promise

The coming of the Spirit (in His ministry as Helper to the church) was a matter of promise: “The Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name.” When the Father would fulfill this promise (on the day of Pentecost), one of the primary purposes would be the teaching ministry of the Holy Spirit. “He will teach you all things.” This teaching work of the Spirit leads us into all the truths of the word of God. “He will guide you into all the truth.” This role harmonizes with one of the titles of the Spirit: “When He, the Spirit of truth, has come.”

We must have the teaching ministry of the Spirit in our lives.

We cannot learn the truths of God on our own intellectual capabilities. “‘For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,’ says the LORD. ‘For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts'” (Isaiah 55:8). The thoughts and ways of God are as far above our thoughts and ways as the heavens are above the earth. Jesus gave similar insight concerning the heavenly kingdom that He invited people to enter. “My kingdom is not of this world…My kingdom is not from here” (John 18:36). Consequently, we need the Holy Spirit to be our teacher concerning this kingdom.

God loves us beyond measure. The death of His Son demonstrates that without question. “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). For all who will come by faith and, thereby, love Him in return, He offers blessings far beyond what human minds can grasp. “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love Him” (1 Corinthians 2:9). Yet, these wonders can be known. “But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit” (1 Corinthians 2:10). These spiritual treasures in the word of God are to be unfolded to us by the Spirit of God.

The Spirit glorifies Jesus

As the Spirit fulfills this promise, He especially wants to unfold God’s truth in ways that will glorify the Lord Jesus Christ. “He will glorify Me, for He will take of what is Mine and declare it to you.” The desire of the Holy Spirit is to bring glory and honor, not to Himself, but to the Lord Jesus Christ. “But when the Helper comes, whom I shall send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify of Me” (John 15:26).

The Spirit reveals all that we have in Jesus

One basic way the Spirit glorifies Jesus is by revealing to us (and bringing into our growing experiential knowledge) the free heavenly riches that are ours in Christ. “Now we have received…the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God.” This is the language of grace: “freely given to us.” The wonders of God’s grace are poured out freely: “being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus…to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed upon us in the Beloved” (Romans 3:24 and Ephesians 1:6, NASB). What man deserves (and has earned by his own sin and offenses) is judgment. However, Christ supplies at His cost (His death for us) the free remedy of eternal life. “But the free gift is not like the offense. For if by the one man’s offense many died, much more the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ, abounded to many…For the wages of sin is death, but the [free] gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 5:15; 6:23).

These freely given things of everlasting life include far more than the precious gift of forgiveness. “He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?” (Romans 8:32). We are to freely drink from a river of blessings (including, peace, hope, fruit, gifts, victory, etc.) throughout time-and even for all eternity. “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. I will give of the fountain of the water of life freely to him who thirsts… and let him who thirsts come. And whoever desires, let him take the water of life freely” (Revelation 21:6; 22:17).

Lord God of great promises, thank You for sending Your Holy Spirit. I need Your Spirit to teach me the wondrous realities of Your kingdom. As I humbly approach Your word, guide me into all the truths You want me to know and to live. Please teach me to freely drink of these riches yet more and more, through humble dependence upon You, Amen.

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Comments

  2. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. Revelation 21:6

    Hallelujah, for the Spirit of Truth, He who teaches what the world cannot see.

    When my wife took me from her country Japan for 3 weeks in 2007, to my home country New Zealand it was I had thought a chance to flee the evil that I encountered in Japan, an evil that pursued me upon bowing me knee to Jesus Christ repenting of my sin and turning completely from the dark martial art (kobudo), that I had practiced.

    Having opened God’s word and begun pouring through the scriptures while crying out to God as a now dysfunctional person, dysfunctional in that my life as I had known it was now no more, what continually pursued me was that I was a devil. Night after sleepless night in May 2007 this horrid thought assailed me and would not let me go.

    I still remember it clearly, one night while many voices from the pit were about me, again the accusation that I was a devil assailed me. I could endure it no longer. But the cross of Christ was given for me and at the end of what I thought was my hope before God, if I was a devil I had no reason to live, the thought that Jesus is before me, He is the Beginning, if He made me a devil so be it, because what could I a man do, but In Him being the Beginning and knowledgeable of all, it gave me hope. That night I slept able to endure Satan’s accusations.

    Early this year I read a book by Charles S Price titled “Made Alive”.

    Pastor Price wrote we are now living in the end times, the time of the Omega. Hallelujah. Jesus Christ the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. Revelation 21:6.

    Though in a time of for me a horrid trial, and hardly knowledgeable of God’s holy scriptures at that time, the Lord Jesus would not let me be snatched from His hand. The Spirit of Truth had brought a simple word to me that kept me from the evil one.

    God’s words are faithful and true, but only when having drunk from the fountain of life, can one comprehend them. And this is by He whom the world does not know nor do they see, the Holy Spirit whom Jesus the Alpha and the Omega gives all freely. Revelation 21:5-6

    I who was once dead in trespasses and sins, am now made alive by God’s Christ. Ephesians 2:1

    Thank you Father that Your God Jesus Christ overcame, by dying on the cross for me and by His resurrection. By Your Son Jesus Christ I have more than overcome. Revelation 21:6

    In love of Him
    Mark H NZ

  3. Scripture interprets scripture. That is what the “Ruach HaKodesh” helps us with.
    J.