1. Please pray with me. May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be pleasing in Your sight, O Lord, our Rock, and our Redeemer. Amen. The message from God’s Word, as we celebrate the Day of Pentecost, is taken from John 14:23-31, it’s entitled, “The World’s Best Counselor,” dear brothers and sisters in Christ.
2. In a book called, “God’s Empowering Presence” (Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 1994), New Testament scholar Gordon Fee shares a remark that one of his students once made to him about the Holy Spirit: “God the Father makes perfectly good sense to me, and God the Son I can quite understand; but the Holy Spirit is a gray, oblong blur.” Why “gray & oblong,” I don’t know. But that’s what the student said, and I think most of us can probably relate to that remark. We believe in the Holy Spirit. We know that he lives in us through faith in Jesus Christ. We confess that he is with us right now as we gather together around Word and Sacrament. But it’s pretty hard to picture or describe this divine being whom we also sometimes call, “the Holy Ghost.” How are we supposed to picture a “ghost,” much less a “Holy Ghost”?
3. I’ve always found it ironic that the longest season in the Church Year is the Pentecost season. For almost 30 weeks we focus on various aspects of the person and work of the Holy Spirit. And yet most of us would probably admit that of the three persons of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit remains the fuzziest when it comes to our understanding of who he is and what he does. To be honest, the Bible doesn’t give us much help in picturing the Holy Spirit. Or maybe, it gives us too much help. There are so many different pictures of the Spirit in the Scriptures. The Spirit appears as a dove; then as tongues of fire; then again, as a loud, rushing wind; in other places as a quiet whisper. It’s enough to make you say: Will the real Holy Spirit please stand up?
4. But, the Bible does provide some very helpful information about who the Holy Spirit is and what he does for us as Christians. Again and again in the Gospel of John, and here in our text from John 14, Jesus uses a very unique word to describe the person and work of the Holy Spirit. The Greek word is paraklētos, which literally means, “one who is called to and stands by one’s side.” This word can be translated as: “Helper,” “Advocate,” “Comforter,” or “Counselor.” “These things I have spoken to you while I am still with you,” says Jesus. “But the Helper [the Comforter, the Counselor], the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you” (John 14:25–26). I’m going away, says Jesus, but don’t be afraid. I’m leaving behind for you a Helper, a Comforter, a free-of-charge Counselor, the Holy Spirit, and The Holy Spirit Is, “The World’s Best Counselor.”
5. What does this Counselor, the Holy Spirit, do for us—and how does he do it? According to Jesus in John 16, one of the most important things the Holy Spirit does as our Counselor is an unpleasant thing. He counsels us by convicting us of our sin (Jn 16:8). He uses God’s Word to confront us with those secret or not-so-secret areas of our lives that aren’t pleasing to our heavenly Father, that are tearing down rather than building up our brothers and sisters in Christ, that are damaging our witness for Christ, and that are preventing us from enjoying the blessings that come through joyful obedience to God’s commandments. This isn’t an easy job that the Holy Spirit has to do. What’s hard about it is that the Spirit has to deal constantly with stubborn people like us, who have a very hard time acknowledging our guilt and our sin.
6. Eldon Weisheit was a longtime LCMS pastor and author who wrote some great books for kids, including several volumes of children’s sermons used by many pastors. In one of those books, Pastor Weisheit tells the story of one of the first children’s sermons he ever attempted as a pastor. With the children gathered around him, he held up pieces of paper with various words written on them and asked the children to raise their hands if they thought the words applied to them. He held up words like “short,” “tall,” “smart,” “strong,” “popular,” “handsome,” “pretty,” and so on, and each time at least some of the children raised their hands. Then he held up the word “sinner” and waited . . . and waited . . . , until finally one youngster in the front row took hold of his little brother’s hand and lifted it high into the air.
7. We can’t help but laugh at that cute little story, but our laughter probably has a “nervous” edge to it, because we know full well that it’s not just children who are anxious to point a finger at somebody else. The best counselors in my life have been people who’ve cared so much about me that they’ve dared to speak the truth in love, even when they knew the truth would probably hurt, even when they knew that they might suffer and be hurt as a result of speaking the truth. That’s the kind of Counselor the Holy Spirit is. Always loving, always compassionate, always looking out for our best interests—but excruciatingly honest, never afraid to tell us the truth, too concerned about our welfare to hide from us the sin that’s harming us.
8. According to the Bible, we can actually help the Holy Spirit with his job as Convicter. Let me be clear: we can’t and didn’t in any way help the Holy Spirit bring us to faith in Christ. The Bible clearly says that, “we were dead in our trespasses” before the Holy Spirit,“made us alive” through Word and Sacrament (Eph 2:5). But now that the Spirit has brought us to life and has come to live in us, we can strive to “walk by the Spirit” (Gal 5:16). How? Let me suggest several ways: (1) By seeking to remain open at all times to the Spirit’s loving rebuke and counsel; (2) By opening up the Scriptures daily so that he can speak to us through the Word and show where and how we need to repent and amend our sinful ways; (3) By coming faithfully to God’s house to hear the preaching of God’s holy Word; (4) By refusing to argue with him when he clearly shows us where we need to confess and amend our sinful lives; (5) By remembering that before we can help get the splinter out of somebody else’s eye, we must (as Jesus said) get that log out of our own eye. Most of us are pretty good at spotting other people’s sins. It’s our own sins we have trouble seeing and confronting.
9. And, convicting us of our sins isn’t the Holy Spirit’s only job as our Counselor. In fact, it’s not even his most important job. Even the devil knows how to accuse people of being sinners—the name Satan actually means “The Accuser.” That’s why, in Lutheran theology, this convicting or accusing role of the Spirit is known as his “strange” or “alien” work. The Spirit’s proper work isn’t to convict us but to comfort us with the Good News of our forgiveness in Christ—which is something the devil would never do.
10. The Spirit convicts us to lead us to true repentance, to prepare our hearts to hear and believe the comforting assurance of our forgiveness because of what our Savior, Jesus, has done for us. Some versions of the Bible translate this word “Counselor” as “Comforter.” That’s a scripturally meaningful translation as well, because that’s the Holy Spirit’s ultimate goal: to convince us and to keep on reminding us that although we’re poor, miserable sinners, God still loves us more than we can imagine and delights to claim us as his dear children in Christ Jesus.
11. The Holy Spirit carries out his role as Comforter in some very powerful ways. He speaks to us through the Scriptures and tells us that, because of what Jesus has done for us by dying on the cross, our sins have been removed from us as far as the east is from the west, that though our sins are like scarlet, we’ve been made as white as snow through the precious blood of Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit also speaks through the words of the pastor, who has been called by God to say to those who stand before God with humble and repentant hearts: “I forgive you all your sins,” not by my power or authority, not by any special holiness in me, but in the stead and by the command of my Lord Jesus Christ whom I serve on your behalf. The Holy Spirit also comforts us daily as we claim the promises God made to us at our Baptism in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and he comforts us by feeding us with the true body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, given and shed for us for the forgiveness of our sins.
12. The Spirit also comforts us through one another, as we speak to each other the words of forgiveness that Christ has spoken to us. Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 1: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God” (2 Cor 1:3–4). There’s something special about receiving assurance of that forgiveness through the lips of another human being, especially someone close to us: through the lips of a wife or husband, father or mother, son or daughter, brother or sister or Christian friend.
13. So much more could be said about the counseling ministry of the Holy Spirit. But, what I’d like to emphasize today, is that all of the other works of the Holy Spirit grow out of the Spirit’s dual work as Convicter and as Comforter. If we forget that we are sinners, we might as well forget everything else we’ve learned about God and about the Christian faith, because, as John says in his first letter, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1 Jn 1:8). But, if we poor, miserable sinners ever stop believing that we are forgiven, we might as well stop believing everything else, because if God’s message of forgiveness is a lie, then how can we believe anything else he tells us in his Word? If we can’t be sure that we’re forgiven, what does it matter what we do? Why should we pray? Why should we serve? Why should we witness? What would there be to witness about?
14. The Holy Spirit’s job is to make sure that we never forget that we are sinners, and secondly, to make sure that we never stop believing that we are God’s precious, holy, forgiven children through the life and death and resurrection of our Savior, Jesus Christ. Everything else that he does for us and in us and through us depends on his work as Convicter and as Comforter. And as he convicts and comforts us day by day, he promises to work powerfully in our lives in many other ways as well, as we allow him to, as we invite him to, as we work with our divine Counselor to be and become the holy people that the Holy Spirit calls and empowers us to be. Amen. Now the peace of God that passes all understanding, guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus until life everlasting. Amen.
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