Lean on Me
There was once a teacher who was teaching
first grade in a large elementary school. One
morning all of the teachers were called to the
staff room for an emergency meeting, and
they hurried over, leaving their classes
unsupervised. All of the
teachers were worried,
but none more so than
this particular teacher,
because her class was
especially mischievous
and unruly.
When they got to the staff room, the teacher
decided to listen in and find out what was
going on in her classroom. She turned on the
intercom, and sure enough her room was in
chaos. Children were yelling, jumping and
throwing things.
But one little voice stood out above the others.
The teacher recognized the voice. She picked
up the intercom and in her sternest voice
said, “Elizabeth, sit down!!!!!!!!”
Immediately, the room fell silent. After a few
seconds, a small
humble voice
answered meekly,
“Okay, God”
Christ has sent us a Counselor. Can you
hear Him? Are you heeding his voice?
Did you hear about the 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 illfitting 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..."
We all need some help!
John 15:26-27
26 I will send a great Helper to you from the
Father, one known as the Spirit of truth. He
comes from the Father and will point to the
truth as it concerns Me. 27 But you will also
point others to the truth about My identity,
because you have journeyed with Me since
this all began.
How long have you been a follower of
Christ? Does your life point others to the
truth of His identity?
Setting
It is still the last night before the crucifixion
and death of Christ. He is spending that last
night with His eleven disciples, Judas had
been dismissed to carry out his betrayal.
Jesus is giving
them the
instruction they
will need to face
the world without
Him.
16 1-4 “I’ve told you these things to prepare
you for rough times ahead. They are going
to throw you out of the meeting places.
There will even come a time when anyone
who kills you will think he’s doing God a
favor. They will do these things because
they never really understood the Father.
I’ve told you these things so that when the
time comes and they start in on you, you’ll
be well-warned and ready for them.
I didn’t tell you this earlier because I was
with you every day. (The Message)
The King James Version states, 1"These
things have I spoken unto you that you
should not be offended." What are these
things? He was speaking about the hatred
of the world (John 15:18-25) Jesus is saying I
told you about the
hatred of the
world because
I don't want you
to be surprised
(offended) when
it is turned on
you.
The word "offended" in Greek is skandalizo from
which we get our word "scandalize." A long way
from the evolution of the word “skandalon”
which means a stick. A special stick that held up a
trap. You'd set a trap and you'd put a stick there
with bait on it and when an animal
hit the bait, the stick
went down, and then
the trap came down.
The skandalon then
was a trigger that
pulled the whole trap
down.
So, Jesus is saying to these disciples, "Men, there
is a trap set for you and I don't want you to get
trapped without knowing about it. The world is
going to be after you. They're going to hate you
and persecute you because they did it to Me
and the servant
is not greater
than his lord.
Don't get trapped
unaware, men,
you got the
information, you
know it's coming."
Jesus said to them, "You don't need to be
offended. I'm going to give you everything...all the
promises, all the warnings, all the information you
need to go into the world and not be trapped
unaware." And yet in Matthew 26, He says you will
be offended, because Christ knows everything. But
man has his own
personal will as to
whether or not he
applies the truth and
the promises of God.
God gives man the
information he
needs to live his life,
and man can either
take it or leave it.
The disciples had sufficient warning and
sufficient information. Yet when it came to the
hour, they rejected what they knew to be true and
in fear they ran away. We aren't much
different. The Bible tells us we have all
knowledge. We have all the wisdom that we could
possibly ask for. We have all the resources that
He could possibly
give us, we
are complete in
Him,
(Colossians 2:10)
We have the Holy
Spirit who is the
power to conquer
everything.
And yet when we run into a problem we're afraid
and begin to doubt our salvation. We fall into
sin. We stumble. Instead of calling on our
resources, we fall back on our human
fears. Christ had done all that He could do. The
disciples knew what they needed to know. They
had everything. So do we. We have the Holy
Spirit to overcome. It boils down to whether or
not we want to
claim the power,
the love, the
strength, and the
wisdom that He's
put at our disposal
or whether we want
to cower in fear.
During China’s Boxer Rebellion of 1900, insurgents
captured a mission station, blocked all the gates but one,
and in front of that gate placed a cross flat on the ground.
Then the word was passed to the one hundred people
inside that any who trampled the cross underfoot would be
permitted their freedom and life. Any refusing to do so
would be shot. Terribly frightened, the first seven students
stepped on the cross and were permitted to go free. The
eighth student, a young girl, refused
to do so. Kneeling beside the cross in
prayer for strength, she arose and
moved carefully around it, and went
out to face the firing squad.
Emboldened by her example
every one of the remaining
ninety-two students follower her
to the firing squad.
As persecution intensifies, and our witness for
Christ takes us into uncharted and dangerous
territory, should we succumb to the pressures
applied by the world to silence us?
Jesus spoke of two ways in which his
followers would be persecuted.
First, they would be excommunicated from
the synagogue. This for a Jew would be a very
hard fate. The synagogue, the House of God,
had a very special place in Jewish life. Some
of the Rabbis
even said that
prayer was not
effective unless it
was offered in the
synagogue.
But there was more to it than that. To be a
part of the synagogue in a Jewish situation
was to be a part of the entire culture. All the
social life, all the economic life, and all the
religious life surrounded the life of the
synagogue.
That was
everything. If you
got unsynagogued,
you became a
moral outlaw.
The Jewish law said you were worse than a pagan
Gentile. Do you remember the parents of the blind
man that Jesus healed? John 9:22, “ The man’s
parents were a bit evasive because they were afraid
of the Jewish leaders. It had been rumored that
anyone who spoke of Jesus as the Anointed One
would be expelled from the synagogue.”
They didn't want to get put out of the synagogue.
They didn't want to
get lost from all the
things that were part
of their life and their
culture. They didn't
want to be cut off
from their families.
They didn't want to
lose their jobs.
Jesus is telling His disciples, "Men, you're going
to get cut off from the life of your nation. You're
going to get cut off from your people. They're
going to throw you out of their world."
The Jewish leaders would focus the hatred they
had for Christ on those who were Christ's. And
the followers of Jesus would little by little be
excommunicated from the life of Israel...social
and religious and economic life. They would
become castoffs. They would be viewed in the
most despicable terms as traitors to Israel, and
would go so far as to kill them. Look again at
verse 2,
“There will even come a time when anyone who
kills you will think he’s doing God a favor.”
One of the tragedies of religion has been that men
have so often thought that they were serving God by
persecuting those whom they believed to be heretics.
No man ever more truly thought that he was serving
God than Paul did, when he was trying to eliminate
the name of Jesus and to wipe out the Church (Acts
26:9-11).
Paul wrote that he was "a Hebrew born of Hebrews”
a Pharisee, and one who
advanced in Judaism beyond
many of his peers. His initial
reaction to the newly formed
Christian movement was to
zealously persecute its early
followers and to violently
attempt to destroy
the movement.
The Spanish Inquisition
Spanish Inquisition--Initially the Spanish thought they were
serving God by torturing heretics into accepting what they
considered to be the true faith. Then in the late 1470s, King
Ferdinand and Queen Isabella wanted to do away with many of
their political adversaries--former Jews and Muslims who had
been forced to convert to Christianity but had managed to rise
through the Spanish political and business ranks.
Threatened by their growing power, the King and Queen
concocted a plan to purge these competitors from their positions
in government and business. But because they were upstanding
citizens they had to enlist the aid of the Cathoilc Church to lend
some religious credibility to their planned attack.
The royal couple created an Inquisition, the purpose of which
would be to identify false converts (fake conversos) within the
Spanish Empire. Initially, the Pope rejected the request. But after
the King and Queen threatened to withdraw Spain's troops from
defending the Vatican and leaving Christianity undefended
against the growing threat of the Muslim Ottoman Empire, the
Pope caved in.
The Crusades
The Crusades, lasted almost 200 years. It began
in 1095 with the stated goal of restoring Christian
access to the holy places in and near Jerusalem.
Christian military and religious expeditions were
launched both against rival religions (primarily
Islam). Both Islam and Christianity were involved
with mass murder over religion, holy sites, and
religious beliefs. For example, the First Crusade
resulted in the massacre of 8,000 Jews. It also
resulted in the slaughter of a purported 70,000
citizens in the fall of Jerusalem. Jews were
slaughtered all across Europe. And it was all
done in the name of Jesus Christ.
Is it any wonder the Jew has not much
concern about the name of Jesus
Christ? People have done things like that
all throughout history in the name of Christ
as service to God.
Persecution still goes on in places in our
world, and although you may not die for
Christ literally in our country, it's still true
what Paul said, "All that live godly shall
suffer persecution." The
world does not like Jesus
now any better than they did
then. And a man who stands
up and really defends the
name of Jesus Christ is going
to get it.
American Christians don’t experience anything even close
to what our Brothers and Sisters in other countries endure, but
they are experiencing persecution.
•Children are being prohibited from writing Merry Christmas to
the soldiers
•A federal judge threatened “incarceration” to a high school
valedictorian unless she removed references to Jesus from her
graduation speech.
•City officials prohibited senior citizens from praying over their
meals, listening to religious messages or singing gospel songs at a
senior activities center.
•A public school official physically lifted an elementary school
student from his seat and reprimanded him in front of his
classmates for praying over his lunch.
•A public school official prevented a student from handing out
flyers inviting her classmates to an event at her church.
•A public university’s law school banned a Christian organization
because it required its officers to adhere to a statement of faith
that the university disagreed with.
•The U.S. Department of Justice argued before the Supreme
Court that the federal government can tell churches and
synagogues which pastors and rabbis it can hire and fire.
•The State of Texas sought to approve and regulate what religious
seminaries can teach.
•The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs banned the mention of
God from veterans’ funerals, overriding the wishes of the
deceased’s families.
•A federal judge held that prayers before a state House of
Representatives could be to Allah but not to Jesus.
Now why is it that men persecute and think
they're doing God favors? What kind of a
God do they worship?
They worship the God they make up, their
own fictitious deity. Notice in verse 3 what
Jesus says, 3They will do these things because
they never really understood the Father.
Jesus tells the disciples there's going to be
hostility and persecution. And it's going to
be confusing, people won’t understand
because they're going to do it in the name of
God. One of the ways Satan discredits God
is to do things in
the name of God
that are obvious
atrocities.
Adolf Hitler: “My feeling as a Christian points me to
my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the
man who once in loneliness, surrounded only by a
few followers, recognized these Jews for what they
were and summoned men to fight against them and
who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but
as a fighter. In boundless love as
a Christian and as a man I
read through the passage
which tells us how
the Lord at last rose in His
might and seized the scourge
to drive out of the Temple the
brood of vipers and adders.
How terrific was his fight
against the Jewish poison.
Today, after two thousand years, with
deepest emotion I recognize more
profoundly than ever before the fact that it
was for this that He had
to shed his blood upon the
Cross.”
4aI’ve
told you these things so that when the
time comes and they start in on you, you’ll be
well-warned and ready for them.
When the Spaniards were conquering
South America, the famous Spaniard
Pizarro presented his men with a choice. They were about
to move south into Peru and he drew a
line with his sword on the sand and he
said, "Gentlemen, on that side are toil,
hunger, nakedness, storm, desertion,
death and the adventure of Peru. On the
other side, the safety and poverty of
Panama. And yours is the choice. For my part, I go
south." There was a silence and
hesitation and then an old soldier led 12
other soldiers to step across the line to
Pizarro's side. It was these 14 men that
opened the way to Peru.
Jesus offers, not the way of ease, but
the way of glory. He wants men who are
prepared with open eyes.
4bI
didn’t tell you this earlier because I was with
you every day.
As long as Jesus was there, Jesus always absorbed
the brunt of the attack. But He says, "Now,
gentlemen, there is about to be a fundamental
change in your life style. The world is not going
to be able to get at Me and they're
going to get at the closest thing to
Me which is you."
Now we know that Satan's set
against Christ. And if Satan can't
get at Christ, he's going to get at
those who are His.
Revelation 12:4 talks about Satan like a dragon,
“He (Satan) stood in front of the woman (Israel)
as she was about to give birth, ready to devour
her baby (Jesus) as soon as it was born.” 17 “And
the dragon was angry at the woman and declared
war against the rest of her children—all who keep
God’s commandments and maintain their
testimony for Jesus.” Satan tried to devour Christ
for 33 years. Tried to devour Him in
Herod's decree when He was a
baby. Tried to devour Him at the
temptation when he tried to get
Him to follow...to fall down and
worship Satan. Tried to devour
Him on the cross. He couldn't do it.
You think he gave up? No. Verse 13: And when the
dragon saw that he was cast unto the earth, he
persecuted the woman which brought forth the man
child. Satan couldn't get Christ so he goes after the
nation that brought forth Christ. And if that's not
bad enough verse 17 says: As a result, the dragon was
enraged at the woman and went away to make war
on the rest of her children—those who keep the
commandments of God and hold fast to the
testimony of Jesus. He didn't just
stop at Israel, he went after
everybody that had the testimony of
Jesus and kept the commandments of
God. Satan couldn't get at Christ so
he took off after everybody that had
anything to do with Jesus Christ.
If Satan can't get at Christ, he'll get at those who
are Christ's to destroy His kingdom and His
power.
When James says that Satan goes around like a
roaring lion seeking whom he may devour, he's not
talking about unbelievers, he's already devoured
them, he's talking about Christians.
He wants to wipe out your
testimony--you've got a battle
on your hands.
Ephesians 6:11 Put on the full
armor of God to protect
yourselves from the devil and his
evil schemes.
5 But
now, I am going to the One who has
sent Me, and none of you ask Me, “Where
are You going?”
6 I know that hearing news like this is
overwhelming and sad. 7 But the truth is
that My departure will be a gift that will
serve you well, because if I don’t leave, the
great Helper will not come to your aid.
When I leave, I will send Him to you.
He knows there is a painful parting ahead, and
it is going to be difficult. Yet, in the big picture
of things…It is going to be better when He
leaves.
When Jesus was in the body, he could not be
everywhere with them. Jesus could only be in
one place, constrained by time and
space. But whom He was sending,
the Spirit, could be everywhere,
and always available.
The role of the Holy Spirit:
Scripture John 16:8:11
8-9 When He arrives, He will uncover the sins of
the world, expose unbelief as sin, and allow all
to see their sins in the light of righteousness for
the first time. 10 This new awareness of
righteousness is important because I am going
to the Father and will no longer be present with
you. 11 The Spirit will also carry My judgment
because the one who rules in this world has
already been defeated.
The first responsibility is CONVICT men of sin.
The Holy Spirit acts as our prosecutor, one that
cross-examines and refutes an opponent.
Interestingly, He does this as
our friend! He shows us who we
really are rather than what we
pretend to be. “For everyone has
sinned; we all fall short of God’s
glorious standard.” Romans 3:23
Good friends are the ones that
can tell us bad news.
When the Jews crucified Jesus, they did not
believe that they were sinning; they believed
that they were serving God. But when the
story of that crucifixion was later preached,
they were pricked in their heart (Acts 2:37).
They suddenly
had the terrible
conviction that
the crucifixion
was the greatest
crime in history
and that their
sin had caused it.
The second responsibility of the Holy Spirit is
CONVINCE men of righteousness.
We have no righteous standing before God without
Jesus. The Spirit opens our eyes to our need for a
Savior. We need the righteousness of Jesus and His
perfect sacrifice. Because we simply are not good
enough. We
can’t just try a
little harder and
it will be okay.
Perfection is the
standard. God’s
perfection. The Holy
Spirit shows us our
need, and then gives
it to us.
The third responsibility of the Holy Spirit is
CONVINCE men of judgment.
It is the Holy Spirit who gives us the inner
and unshakable conviction that we shall all
stand before the judgment seat of God.
When we are convicted of our own sin, when
we are convinced of Christ’s righteousness,
when we are convinced of judgment to come,
what gives us the certainty that in the Cross
of Christ is our salvation and that with Christ
we are forgiven, and saved from judgment?
The Holy Spirit. He convicts us of our sin and
convinces us of our Savior.
12 I
have so much more to say, but you
cannot absorb it right now. 13-15 The Spirit
of truth will come and guide you in all
truth. He will not speak His own words to
you; He will speak what He hears, revealing
to you the things to come and bringing
glory to Me. The Spirit has unlimited access
to Me, to all that I possess and know, just as
everything the Father has is Mine. That is
the reason I am confident He will care for
My own and reveal the path to you.
The fourth responsibility of the Holy Spirit
is to provide DIRECTION.
We are given a resource of truth, a guide
for our lives. The true truth is not about
political correctness or about tolerance. The
true truth is what God has revealed to us.
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 that
transpire to get you home.”
The Holy Spirit works like that algae that led Jim
Lovell back to his carrier. He leads us in
uncertainty. He illuminates the path before us.
He leads us to follow in the footsteps. He leads us
home.
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.
The final responsibility of the Holy Spirit is
REVELATION.
The Holy Spirit draws our attention to
Christ. He makes Jesus a reality to us.
James Packer shares the story of how he was meditating on the
Holy Spirit one night before a message:
“I remember walking to church one winter evening to preach on
the words, “He will glorify me” (John 16:14), seeing the building
floodlit as I turned a corner, and realizing that this was exactly
the illustration my message needed. When floodlighting is well
done, the floodlights are placed so that you do not see them; in
fact, you are not supposed to see where the light is coming from;
what you are meant to see is just the building on which the
floodlights are trained.
"The intended effect is to make it
visible when otherwise it would not be
seen for the darkness, and to
Maximize its dignity by throwing
all its details into relief so that you
can see it properly. This perfectly
illustrated the Spirit’s new covenant
role. He is, so to speak, the hidden
floodlight shining on the Savior.”
Over a hundred years ago, a committee of ministers
in a certain city was discussing the possibility of
having D. L. Moody to serve as the evangelist during
a city-wide evangelistic campaign. Finally, one young
minister who did not want to invite Moody
stood up and said: “Why
Moody? Does he have a
monopoly of the Holy Spirit?”
There was silence. Then an
old, godly minister spoke up:
“No, he does not have a
monopoly of the Holy Spirit;
but the Holy Spirit has a
monopoly of D. L. Moody.”
Does the Holy Spirit have a monopoly on
your life?
Is the Holy Spirit controlling you?
Are you filled with His
presence?
Resources:
John MacArthur: The Holy Spirit Convicts
the World
William Barclay Commentaries: John
Paul Decker: A Wonderful Trade-Off