Or, Getting a Hold on What We Can Handle
Scripture: John 16:12-15
Date: December 8, 2013
Speaker: Sean Higgins
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We sit in seats of privilege, seats of advantage. Oh, the things we know. We have more truth to take for granted than many disciples throughout church history could have imagined. What they did know they passed on to us as a great heritage. What a great life we have. What a great Spirit we have. What a great God we have!
As the disciples listened to Jesus late on His last Thursday evening, they did not know how much they needed to know. They did not even know what questions they should be asking (John 16:5). They believed, but the capacity of their believing bucket was not very big. Jesus encouraged them (again) that things were about to change, things that would change both for the harder and the better.
Jesus prepares the disciples for His departure by declaring the Spirit’s arrival. His leaving means the Helper’s coming and the Helper was their advantage (verse 7). As they faced a world of self-righteous, unbelieving haters, the effectiveness of the disciples’ witness would not depend on their strength of argument but on the Spirit. God Himself, in the Third Person of the Trinity, will come and convict and overcome and take up the redeeming work. The Spirit is not a sketch of a hammer, He is a hammer and He always hits the nail on the head.
Jesus describes two-parts of the Spirit’s work here in the beginning of John 16. As we considered in verses 7-11, the Spirit convicts the world about their sinful unbelieving, about their inadequate righteousness, and about their fallacious judgement. We are not left by ourselves to persuade men who call faith a crutch, who think their good deeds are good enough, and who think they know which way the wind blows.
We are also not left alone as disciples to determine the right direction. The Spirit convicts the world and, secondly, the Spirit guides believers into truth. The Spirit helps us to see all that Christ is and all that is ours in Christ.
Though I said “we,” we should know that these verses and the promises found in them, are not to us though they are for us. They apply to us even though they were not aimed at us. They were aimed at the eleven disciples who weren’t ready for them.
It may seem as if this final night’s conversation was comprehensive, but Jesus tells them He’s far from finished.
I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. (John 16:12, ESV)
He’s been telling them a lot of things, things about joyification (15:1-11), things about sacrificing love (15:12-17), things about the world of hate (15:18-16:4a), and things about their advantage in the Helper (16:4b-11). But Jesus has many things left to say. They were in no condition to hear more; you cannot bear them now, “you can’t handle further truth.”
They barely got what He had already said, if they had gotten any of it at all. They misunderstood the foot-washing (13:6-9), they were uncertain about Jesus prediction of betrayal (13:28), they questioned where He was going (13:36) and why they couldn’t go with Him (13:37), they complained that they didn’t know the way (14:5), and they acted ignorant about His Father (14:8). Mercifully, for their sake, John stopped recording any of their responses from 14:9 through this point and the next time we hear from them, it isn’t better (16:17-18).
Jesus already told them that He would send the Helper and that “He will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you” (14:26). They are almost exceeding maximum capacity, so Jesus doesn’t pile on; the load was already falling over the side, like so many logs littering the road.
Just as the disciples wouldn’t convict the world by themselves, so also they wouldn’t guide themselves into truth.
When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you. (John 16:13–14, ESV)
When the Spirit of truth comes, and I’m sending Him after my departure, he will guide you into all truth. Guide is the key verb, used infrequently in the New Testament, a form of ὁδηγέω meaning “to assist in reaching a desired destination.” This work of the Spirit isn’t much different than what Jesus had already told the disciples in 14:26, but it does emphasis the Spirit’s personal involvement.
It is the difference between the shopkeeper who sells maps of the wilderness and the person who goes with you into it, risking the dangers, helping to cook the meals, and sharing the weather. (Peterson, Working the Angles, 128)
Guiding is also described by the verbs “speak” and “declare.” The Spirit will reveal the things that the disciples weren’t ready to bear. He will build out the borders of their grasp.
All truth is also explained by phrases in this context: all truth is “whatever he hears,” “the things that are to come,” and “what is mine.”
So the Spirit will not necessarily reveal anything new even if it is new to the disciples’ understanding. The preposition used, ἐν τῇ ἀληθείᾳ πάσῃ, stresses guidance “in all truth” rather than “into all truth” (which would be the preposition εἰς) as if they had been outside of it and needing to enter (so Carson and Lenski). The Spirit leads the way into understanding and then shines light on it. The Spirit interprets the Word, He helps men see the Light. The Spirit fleshes out the Son who took on flesh.
He doesn’t make a play of His own, nor does He add to what Jesus said. He will not speak on his own authority. He doesn’t append revelation. Whatever he hears he speaks. He hears the Father and Son speak, not because He’s eavesdropping, but because they are talking for Him to hear.
This includes the things that are to come. And where are these things? They are written on the pages we refer to as the New Testament. The Spirit moved men to write it down (2 Peter 1:21). John may have been especially glad to mention this promise since he explicitly writes in Revelation, the revelation of those things that are soon to take place (Revelation 1:1, 19).
In all this, He will glorify me. The Spirit loves to point to the Son; the Son is His favorite subject, which you might have noticed reading the Bible. He will take what is mine and declare it to you. That’s how the Spirit lifts up the Son. “Do you see all that is Christ’s? The whole world is His! The name above all names! Honor and glory and power and strength! Kings and kingdoms. Eternal life. He won glory by dying (cf. John 12). He’s a big deal!”
When believers are guided by the Spirit they will not be Pneumocentric, and not necessarily only Christocentric, but God-centered (see Borchert, comments on John 16:15). All Three Persons The Spirit guides disciples in divine glory.
Jesus adds one more key reminder and then repeats the sounding joy.
All that the Father has is mine; therefore I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you. (John 16:15, ESV)
What sort of ownership are we talking about? Everything He’s made, and by Him was not anything that was made made (John 1:3).
The therefore gives the disciples opportunity not to miss the staggering reality. “Guys, the Spirit will declare that I am Lord and the cattle on a thousand hills, the clapping hands from every tree, the breaths from every living creature are Mine.”
The aim of this paragraph demands a question: Why did Jesus tell them all this now? What good was it for Him to tell His disciples about things He knew they couldn’t bear?
It’s safe to say that Jesus knew their capacity; He told them they couldn’t handle any more at the moment. He knew their coming advantage better than they. He knew the future and He knew that so many things would make sense after Sunday morning. He knew, even more than that, that in about 40 days the mighty rushing wind would fill their witnessing sails to the end of the earth. Why would He bother now? Why not take a few hours between the resurrection and ascension? Or, how about one little visit after they were filled with the Spirit?
God is not filling truth-tubes, He builds believers. That is the object of John’s Gospel (John 20:31) and that is the object of the Spirit. Truly knowing God means trusting God when we don’t understand. God loves suspense. He created foreshadowing. He saves those with faith, not those with facts. God loves when we get it later, when we wear the glasses of hindsight.
He only confuses those who think they know it all, confounding their self-proclaimed wisdom. For His disciples, times of darkness aren’t a punishment as much as they are a call to depend. Jesus knew His disciples’ limited capacity to know and taught them that some knowledge only belongs to believers.
A second question, why does Jesus tell us this now? What good is it to consider these things that applied to disciples before Pentecost? There are at least three reasons.
First, we must appreciate our advantage, not only like the disciples in that we have the Spirit, but as those who depend on the disciples. Do we have a hold on how much we’ve been made capable to handle? We know the gospel, the word of truth, and we carry printed copies of the things to come, things that angels have on hold at the library. We know the hypostatic union, the completed canon, the solas, the -ologies, the history of the church, the fruitfulness of generations of sacrificial lives planted in service.
We’ve truly forgotten more things than the disciples could have asked or imagined on Maundy-Thursday. Dissecting sermons and books and ministries is necessary, but it is not an entitlement. It is an advantage that God gives by grace.
Second, we must attack suspense armed with better believing. More than more truth, we need more trust. That does not apply to every person; many men need truth desperately. It does apply to our flock. A pocketknife gets carried in the pocket, but it doesn’t do any good stuck in the pocket. We’re collecting pocketknives and starving to death because we aren’t opening the cans of peaches. Truth isn’t best left on the page, it’s meant to be walked on.
Third, we must pay attention to what is ours in Christ. He gave us what is His, and that’s everything.
Suppose a man was going to New York to take possession of a large estate, and his [carriage] should break down a mile before he got to the city, which obliged him to walk the rest of the way; what a fool we should think him, if we saw him ringing his hands, and blubbering out all the remaining mile, “My [carriage] is broken! My [carriage] is broken!” (Cited in John Piper, “John Newton: The Tough Roots of His Habitual Tenderness,” in The Roots of Endurance: Invincible Perseverance in the Lives of John Newton, Charles Simeon, and William Wilberforce, 68)
We don’t need new revelations, we do need to own the revelation we own. “All things are yours…and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s” (see 1 Corinthians 3:21-23).
So Spirit, come, put strength in ev’ry stride,
Give grace for ev’ry hurdle,
That we may run with faith to win the prize
Of a servant good and faithful.
As saints of old still line the way,
Retelling triumphs of His grace,
We hear their calls and hunger for the day
When, with Christ, we stand in glory.
(“O Church, Arise” by Keith and Kristyn Getty)