Day 24: Heaven's best

Jesus promised us a Helper, the Holy Spirit, would teach us all things. In John 16:13-14 Jesus says:

“But when He, the Spirit of truth comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come. ‘He shall glorify Me; for He shall take of Mine, and shall disclose it to you.’” (NAS)

Notice that Jesus emphasizes that the Holy Spirit is a person, not just an influence. He calls Him "He," not "it."

In these verses Jesus indicates three more ministries of the Holy Spirit that He will fulfil in our lives when He comes as our Helper. He will guide us into all the truth and into the entire knowledge of all that God has for us in Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit is our guide. He's like the one who leads us into a land through which we otherwise could not find our way, the land of God's promises! The land of our inheritance!

And then again, Jesus says, "He will disclose to you what is to come." He will take away the veil that covers the future and reveal to us those things in the future that we need to know.

I believe we are living, as the Bible indicates, in perilous times when tremendous dangers are going to sweep across the face of this earth and we are going to be confronted with challenges and oppositions that are beyond anything the previous generations have seen on the face of the earth.

And I believe our safety is going to depend on the Holy Spirit revealing to us what we need to know about the future, so that we can avoid Satan's danger and pitfalls and snares and come safely through the experiences that lie ahead of us. I don't believe that's a luxury; I believe it's a necessity that the Holy Spirit will be able to reveal to us the things that are to come.

Jesus says, "He shall glorify Me." Remember, the Holy Spirit never comes to glorify Himself or to talk about Himself, but He glorifies Jesus and He reveals what He Himself has heard in heaven, He speaks to us on earth.

And then He says, "He shall take of Mine, and shall disclose it to you." In other words, the Holy Spirit takes all that is rightfully belonging to Jesus, which is our inheritance, and discloses it to us. So through the Holy Spirit, we come to know our inheritance in Christ.

We may sum this up in one key word that is used elsewhere in the New Testament in 1 John 2:1. The same word that's translated "Helper" in John 14 is translated "Advocate" and it is applied to Jesus. The point I wish to make is that the Holy Spirit comes as our advocate. Now that's a legal word. It is the same as attorney. So the Holy Spirit is heaven's best lawyer, sent to us so that we shall not be orphans, but able to interpret to us our inheritance in Christ and to show us the conditions that we have to fulfil to enter into that inheritance. He's our Advocate, our Attorney. That's what He comes to do for us.

In the next days we will be exploring more fully the part the Holy Spirit plays in helping us to claim our inheritance.