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Father, we do thank you for your word to us. We do pray that this morning you would.

Give peace to troubled hearts by your spirit, that we would hear your intention for us this morning from your word. Amen. Well, I wonder, if you think back, can you remember the first time in life that you got properly lost, that you ever got really, really lost? For me, it's very, very obvious, the supermarket. I wonder if that's true for anybody else.

It's just a good place to get lost, isn't it, when you're a child going down aisles and as a child, of course, they feel like they're 20ft high, don't they? You think, why are there so many toilet rolls? I don't know, there's just so much. It's scary. It's scary getting lost in the supermarket, isn't it?

Because you turn around and one minute you think you're asking your mum to buy some Kit Kats, the next minute she's not there and you wonder if you're ever going to see her again. Search down those aisles. I don't know if you've done this, you know, you're flicking your head like this down every aisle. You can't see two little laps, three laps. You know, you think, I'm just going to live in Tesco for the rest of my life.

That seems terrible now. I think about that and I think that will be great from a snack perspective, but it was terrifying at the time. I wonder if you can remember that feeling where you thought you could never get lost and then suddenly there it is, you feel abandoned. You know, your heart goes, doesn't it? And your palms sort of sweaty.

Well, that sort of feeling doesn't just occur when we're children, does it? We have that sort of anxiety as to what's to come next throughout our life in all sorts of situations. Those fears it might be. We have fears of what life is going to be like once our children have left home. It might be fears of what life is going to be like after a bereavement.

What will it be like without my spouse? You know, that anxiety of what is life going to be like? This is the feeling the disciples had. You see, they were with Jesus. Jesus knew he was going to die and he told them he was going to leave.

And they were like, but what will be next? They're anxious.

They have this feeling, as verse 18 puts it, of being orphans. This is why Jesus says to them, I will not leave you as orphans. That's their fear. And what Jesus tells them is that you're not going to be abandoned. I will not leave you alone, he says, because of the Holy Spirit.

And so he teaches us all about the Holy Spirit and how he brings us comfort. And so that's what we're thinking about this morning. And he says that, look, the Holy Spirit is with you, and you're not alone because he is God. You're not alone because he unites you with Christ. And you're not alone because he comforts and he teaches.

And we're going to see all of these things in this passage. So the first thing we're going to see is that the Holy Spirit is God. We've already said that. The disciples are anxious. They're fearing abandonment and.

And Jesus is seeking to comfort them. So let's read again. Verse 18. I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you.

He's not going to leave them alone. And how is it that he's not going to leave them alone? Well, he says in verse 16, this is earlier, if you look up slightly, Jesus says, I will ask the Father and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever. Well, just think about that. I will send you another advocate.

I mean, thinking about that, the first thing you think is another advocate. So who's the first advocate? There must be a first one, mustn't there? That first one is Jesus. Jesus is the mediator between God and man, isn't he?

He is the advocate we have with the Father. We read that in 1 John 2. He stands on our behalf when we sin. But there is another advocate, the Holy Spirit.

So they are both. Jesus is our advocate. The Holy Spirit is our advocate. Two different persons. If they were the same person, the Holy Spirit wouldn't be another advocate, would he?

If Jesus was like, I'm going to turn into a spirit, and that would just be me in a different form. He wouldn't be another one. Would he be the exact same one? He would just say, I'm coming back as a spirit. Two different persons.

And yet the Holy Spirit does exactly what God does, and he brings the presence of God. So if the presence of the Holy Spirit with you means God is with you, who is the Holy Spirit? He must be God, right? He must be God. Otherwise he wouldn't be bringing the presence of God, would he?

This is a theme that goes through this chapter. Earlier, in chapter 14, Jesus had said, how can you say, show us the Father? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? Here Jesus was teaching his disciples that if you look at him, you see the Father. He is not the Father because he's the Son, but you see the Father.

They're so closely bound up with one another, they're both God. You see the Son, you've seen the Father. Seeing Jesus is to see God. Well, in the same way, he says, worry, I will not leave you. The Holy Spirit will be with you.

And if the Holy Spirit isn't God, that doesn't help at all, does it? Because. Because if the Holy Spirit is not God, then then we've just been sent some other created being, and that's. That's not Jesus being with us, is it? We want Jesus with us.

I was thinking about how to illustrate this, and Mary Poppins came to mind, you know, because there's that anxiety at the end of the film, isn't there? Jane and Michael Banks are at the end of Mary Poppins, and Mary's gonna leave, isn't she? The wind comes and she'll fly away on her umbrella. And they're anxious. They've had such a laugh with her, you know, they've jumped into the pavement and gone to all sorts of magical worlds.

It's just not gonna be the same without her. Now, if Mary Poppins had said to Jane and Michael at that point, look, I'm not going to leave you. I'm going to come to be with you. I've got Katie Nannar, the old one, back, you know, the nanny from the beginning. The children would be like, but that's lovely.

But we want you. We want you. We want to be Mary Poppins. You can't just send someone else in your place. Well, it's a bit like that.

If Jesus was saying to them, look, I'm going to send. I'm going to send the Holy Spirit now. He's going to come, and so I'll be with you. But he wasn't really Jesus. That's not going to help, is it?

Does that make sense? He's got to be God, hasn't he, if he's going to bring God's presence? And so the Holy Spirit is going to come to them, and he is God. And sometimes we don't even think of the Holy Spirit as a person, do we? Sometimes we think of the Holy Spirit as some sort of force.

But that would be even worse, wouldn't it? That will bring no comfort if we're anxious about not. Not being with Jesus anymore. And he says, I'm going to send some vague force to be with you. There's no comfort there at all, no help at all.

The Holy Spirit is a person. He is God and he is with us.

This is why Jesus can say in a couple of chapters, time, in chapter 16, it is to your advantage that I go away. For if I do not go away, the helper, that is the Holy Spirit will not come to you. He says, it's better that I'm risen and ascended in heaven because you've got the Holy Spirit with you. That is better than when Jesus was walking around in his physical body. You think to yourself, how can that possibly be the case?

I mean, if you could choose, in some ways you think, well, I would so choose just to see Jesus face to face. But Jesus says it's better that the Holy Spirit is here. Why? Because he is God with us. Jesus in his humanity was walking around in specific times and places.

But the Holy Spirit is with each one of us, fully God at all times. Not the second best. It's first best also. That's the first thing. The first means of comfort is that the Holy Spirit is God.

And the second thing is that the Spirit of God unites us to Christ. Verse 19, we read this. Before long, says Jesus, before long the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me because I live. You also will live. Okay, we need to pay attention just for a few minutes here because we're going to have to get into some of these verses in some detail.

When is Jesus talking about. When is Jesus talking about in this verse? This is the question I'm asking. It could be that Jesus is talking about after his resurrection, before he ascended into heaven. He died and on the third day rose again.

And after that he hung out with his friends. He had barbecues and things like this on the beach, didn't he, before he ascended? Could he be talking about then, you know, you will see me. They obviously did see him then, didn't they?

I don't think it can be then because that doesn't really account for what verse 20 says. On that day says Jesus, you will realise that I'm in the Father and you're in Me and I'm in you. It's not really clear how seeing Jesus before his ascension would mean that they realised he was in the Father and the Father was in Him. So it can't mean that, period. So we might think, okay, well, they're going to see him when Jesus comes back, because Jesus is going to come back at the end of time to judge the living and the dead.

Maybe they're talking about Then they will see him. Then. Well, again, it can't be referring to Jesus second coming, because Jesus has said in verse 19, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. And when Jesus comes back, every eye will see him. Revelation 1 says this.

Every eye will see Jesus come back. So it doesn't mean that either. So what is Jesus talking about? Well, when he says on that day, he's talking about the coming of the Holy Spirit, Pentecost, which we're going to celebrate next week, and make sure that's in your diary, to be here next week celebrating Pentecost.

The Holy Spirit, you see, unites believers to Christ so that just as the Father and Son are one, we are one Christ.

And so we see him because we're with him, we're united with Him.

We've already seen that the Father and Son are so close that when you've seen the Son, you've seen the Father. And Jesus uses the same language of his people's relationship with Him. They're in one another. He says, what belongs to the Son belongs to us because of the Holy Spirit. This happens by the Spirit.

The Spirit of God unites us, makes us in one another. The Holy Spirit draws us, if you will, into the life of God. This is eternal life, to know God, to share his life. And so this is why he can say in verse 19, Because I live, you also will live. This is how that's explained.

Simple words. But when you think about that, it's not something that would normally be true, is it? That the logic doesn't seem to work because someone else lives. I live. That's not how it works, is it?

I can't go around saying, oh, I know, because that person lives, I'm alive. That doesn't work, does it? But because by the Spirit, we're united with Christ because He lives, we too will live. And this is so important at this point, because this is the difference. If all of that's passed you by, this is the important point.

This is the difference between knowing Jesus as a figure of history and knowing him as a risen Lord, as God alive today. Because, yes, we, we know that Jesus is a true figure of history. We. We can show from history that Jesus walked, that he taught, that he did what he said. You know, we can dig artefacts out the ground to show he was where he said he was and we can, you know, you can do all of that historical work and, yes, prove that Jesus is real, but then that doesn't make him mine, does it?

That just means he's some bloke that lived in the past that we know something about. Well, anybody can teach you that. We know that's true. That fact is obvious. Our interest is in him being mine, let's say, spend a bit more time on this point.

If we were interested in an historical figure, we could learn something about them. You might have an interest in architecture, say, and you love Sir Christopher Wren. You know, you go to London and wherever he built buildings and you look at them and you read books and you find out all about him. You become an absolute expert on it. But no matter how much you know about him, however much an expert you become, you don't have a personal interest in him.

He's still just a figure in history, isn't he? You see, what makes the follower of Christ different from a fan of Christopher Wren or any other historical figure is that Jesus is alive today. That Jesus is present by His Spirit today, uniting us to Christ. So that Jesus isn't just someone who's interesting in the past. He is someone interesting in the past.

But he's more than that. He's someone who's alive for me today, but he is mine today. And so this statement of Jesus can be true because he lives, we too can live. Because he is in the Father, I'm in the Father. We're drawn into that life of God.

And so because of all of this, because of who he is, the Spirit brings comfort and he teaches.

We've seen these things so far. He is God, the Holy Spirit is God. And that the Holy Spirit unites us to Christ finally. He comforts and he teaches. Let's go Back to verse 16.

Read this again. I will ask the Father and He will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever. The esv, which is another excellent Bible translation, says, I will ask the Father and He will give you another helper. You may know this if you've read your King James. The Old Version says, I will pray the Father and he shall give you another comforter, doesn't he?

The comforter? Maybe that's what's known to you. When great Bible translations differ. You can be sure that it's not the easiest thing to translate, can't you? And that indeed is the case.

But you know, we don't need to worry about Greek words and all those sorts of things because the context tells us what this means. This we've already seen that Jesus disciples are anxious. They're afraid of being abandoned by him. And he wants to bring them comfort. And he says, be Comforted, Because I'm going to bring the Holy Spirit to you.

Let me give you the Holy Spirit. So who is the Holy Spirit? He's the comforter. And I think the King James has it best. He's the comforter.

He's sent to comfort us, brought us into the life of God ourselves. So he's going to bring comfort. We also see in verse 25 that the Holy Spirit will remind the disciples of all that Jesus has said. All this I've spoken whilst you're with you. Verse 26.

But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I've said to you. It's good news, isn't it? You might wonder, how did the disciples remember all that Jesus did? How did they remember all that Jesus taught? It was such a long time ago and all this sort of thing.

Well, the Holy Spirit was with them, reminded. This is how we know the Scriptures are certain because it's not just a book written by a human being at some point with mistakes in it. No, the Holy Spirit himself authored them. Again, we can make good arguments to show the Bible's reliable. We can prove its reliability from archaeology and other historical books of the period and all this sort of thing.

But that's not really how we know for sure. We know for sure because God has spoken it, because the Holy Spirit spoke these words. And actually there's even more for us today because it's not just that the Holy Spirit inspired the Scriptures in the first place. As you've already seen, he's with us today, which means that when we read the Bible, it's the Holy Spirit is there with us, interpreting us and interpreting it for us, helping us understand what God is saying. See, we're not left alone picking this up, thinking this is an ancient document that we don't know everything we'd like to know.

And I'm not sure how I'm going to find out what it means or whatever it is, you know, that's the case. If you've ever read old ancient documents, if you ever read Homer or something like this. There's all sorts of lines. We're not really sure, this sort of thing. But we know because the Holy Spirit's with us, helping us to understand.

You know what? He doesn't doubt about what it means. He knows exactly what it means. He wrote it and he's with us, helping us to understand it. He has no doubts.

He's not a sceptic. Now, this doesn't mean that we know absolutely everything that we would like to know. Sure. There are things that we're not sure about. We might like to know what Jesus was like as a teenager or you know, whether his carpentry was perfect straight away.

I don't know. There's all sorts of things you might want to know, aren't there?

But what the message is, the message of salvation in Christ is absolutely clear, absolutely certain. You might think about it like this. Imagine a, you know, a child wakes up in the night with, with thunder and lightning going outside and they run into their parents bedroom, jump into their bed and they're like, oh, I'm scared. Okay. And you obviously give them a cuddle.

The parent says, don't worry, you're safe here, I've got you, it'll be all right. You don't, as a parent at that point say, I'm going to explain to you why it's all right and begin a disquisition on meteorology, do you? Not only because I would be totally unprepared to do that for my own children, but because that's not what's important to that the child knows they're safe. That's all they need to know. Well, we know all that we need to know.

The scriptures bring certain knowledge of God. Knowledge that is sure, not sure, not knowledge of everything. No human being knows everything anyway. We're never going to know everything. When we see Christ face to face in heaven, we're going to be with him.

And after an eternity we're still going to be learning things. And after the second eternity, there'll be still more to know. Well, we're never going to know everything, but we know enough. And what we know is sure. We know that Jesus is God Himself, come to us.

We know that he died in our place to cleanse us from sin. We know that he rose from the grave. We know he ascended to heaven. We know that we too, like him, will go through the grave, be with our Heavenly Father. These things are certain.

Well, next week the church celebrates Pentecost, the day that the promise of this passage breaks into reality. The day the Spirit came. Not coming as an idea, as you said, but a presence, not just a symbol. But he's coming in power. God Himself dwelling with his people.

And that means for us today that the comfort that Jesus offers his disciples he offers you today. The Spirit of God is with you. The Spirit unites you, if you're his, to Christ, so that his life becomes your life. The Spirit teaches and reminds of the words Jesus spoke so that we're not abandoned or forgotten, not left to navigate life by ourselves. Our Christian life is now no longer.

It's not a lonely climb, it's spirit filled journey. Christ in you, you in Christ, the Father's love surrounding you, the Spirit's presence sustaining you. So as we approach Pentecost, hear Jesus promise again not as a word from history, but spoken to you today. I will not leave you as orphans. I will not leave you as orphans, says Jesus.

He's given you his spirit, he's given you himself. And because he lives, you also will live. Let's pray.

Father God, we thank you that you've sent your Holy Spirit to be with us. We thank you that we're not left abandoned to navigate life by ourselves. I pray that you would grant us comfort, grant us that peace and certain knowledge that Christ is for us. In Jesus name, amen.