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Father,Thank you that you have spoken – by sending your Son in the person of Jesus,and by giving us the apostles’ witness to him in the Bible. Please help us this morning to understand why we also need the work of your Spirit to hear what you’ve spoken. In Jesus’ name, Amen

Every Sunday there’s a mix of people here; those who’d say ‘I already believe in Jesus’, and those who’d say ‘I’m still just thinking’. Which is how it should be: people all along the line from just finding out about Jesus, to wanting to tell others about Jesus. And if you’re in the already believe category, let me give you a moment to think back over how you’ve tried to tell others about Jesus, and, on a scale of 1 to 10, put a number on how you feel it’s gone – where 1 is very discouraged and 10 is very encouraged. I’d probably say between 1 and 3. Because with family: Dad was strongly atheist, and 33 years of my Christian witness didn’t seem to affect that. My brother and I had a big conversation about Jesus after granny’s funeral – at the end of which he said he didn’t want God interfering in his life, and would think about it later (which hasn’t come). The only encouragement (which was huge) was Mum coming to faith in her last year. Then with friends: well, some come to our Sports Quiz every year. And I’m praying they’ll say ‘Tell us more about Jesus’. But all they actually say is ‘So, this time again, next year?’ And then there are all the Christianity Explored groups I’ve run. I only know of two people who’ve come to faith through them. But I always remember the woman who, after the session on ‘Sin’, said to me ‘You know, the more I hear about Jesus, the less I like it’ and she never came back. But that’s all mild compared to what other Christians face. So a man I know of came to Jesus from a Jewish background, and in response his family held a funeral for him. As far as they were concerned, they wanted no further relationship at all.

It’s discouraging when you want to tell others about Jesus, but find they don’t want to be told. And you can end up defeated and thinking ‘No-one’s going believe in Jesus through me’. And that’s why we need God’s Spirit to work – because for anyone to believe in Jesus, it takes God, by his Spirit, to overcome their natural resistance to him. And that’s what today’s part of this series on the Spirit is about.

So would you turn in the Bible to John 14-15. And let me remind you, this is John’s record of what Jesus taught the apostles on the Thursday night before Good Friday. And at this point, the apostles didn’t understand a thing. They knew Jesus was talking about ‘going away’ – but they didn’t get why, or what they were then meant to do. Whereas Jesus knew he was going to die on the cross for our forgiveness, rise from the dead, and return to heaven – and that through the apostles’ witness, he would then offer his forgiveness and a new start with him to the whole world. And Jesus made five promises about the Holy Spirit’s help in that. So let’s revise the two we’ve done so far. Look down to John 14.15-17, where Jesus said to the apostles:

If you love me, you will keep my commandments [which include his command to tell the world about him]. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you for ever, even the Spirit of truth…

So Jesus promised there that God, by his Spirit, would help the apostles, and then us, to witness to him when naturally we’d be discouraged and defeated. Then look on to John 14.25-26 which, remember, is only to the apostles:

These things I have spoken to you while I am still with you. But the Helper, 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.

So Jesus promised there that God, by his Spirit, would help the apostles to remember and undertand all he’d said, and ultimately to put it in writing for all time in the New Testament. The question then is: will anyone believe it? And Jesus’ says: apart from the work of God’s Spirit, no they won’t. So, two points for the rest of our time:

1. Why we need the Spirit’s work (John 15.18-25)

Look on to John 15.18. Now last time, I reminded us that the words in the Bible were not written or spoken directly to us, but to others, for us. And we saw that that second promise about the Spirit was only to the apostles. So what about this week’s passage? Because again, it was all said originally to the apostles. But the first part of it clearly applies to us as well. So, John 15.18-19 Jesus said:

If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.

Now in John’s Gospel and letters, when it says the world, it generally doesn’t just mean the planet. It means, human beings in rebellion against God, living as if God wasn’t there. And John would say: you either belong to the world in that sense, or to Jesus. As Jesus himself said (Matthew 12.30):

Whoever is not with me is against me

There’s no neutrality. And you might be happy to say “Well, I know I don’t believe in Jesus yet – so in John’s terms, yes, I belong to ‘the world’”. But you might also want to say, “But I don’t see myself as hating Christians or Jesus. You might say that about the Jewish family who held that funeral for their son, or the regime in North Korea, or Boko Haram in Nigeria. But it’s completely over the top to say that about me.” Well, John wrote in black and white categories to make things clear that we don’t always like made clear. And he says: when it comes to Jesus, you either love him or hate him.

I mentioned that big conversation my brother and I had, and how Niall said at the end that he didn’t want God interfering in his life. And when I said, ‘why not?’ he said ‘I just feel a real antipathy towards him.’ Which isn’t your average Niall word. I might expect him to use it in Scrabble for a triple word score, but he used it very deliberately. And it’s actually a brilliant word for the attitude to God that the Bible calls sin. And look up ‘antipathy’ in a dictionary, and it says: hostility, animosity, opposition…and hatred.

I was on a packed train the other day and very glad I’d booked a seat. And I got to D47, found someone in it and said ‘I’m sorry, I think that’s my seat.’ And, clearly displeased, he asked to look at my ticket. And as he got up, I could see the thought bubble above his head – which is not repeatable in a sermon. And that’s a tiny picture of what happens when Jesus comes along, finds us sitting on the throne of our own lives, and says through the apostle’s message ‘That’s actually my seat. And you need me to forgive you for taking it. And you need to get off it and give me my rightful place as your Lord and God.’ And for all of us, the natural thought bubble to that is, ‘I don’t want that. I feel antipathy to that.’ And John 15 says: let’s just be blunt and use the word ‘hate’. So look at John 15.18-19 again:

If the world hates you [if it responds negatively to your witness to me], know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world [if you still believed its beliefs, lived by its values and championed its causes], the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.

And the negative response might be polite and brotherly (like Niall), or it might be violent and deadly (like North Korea or Boko Haram), but either way, it’s because we’ve reminded people of the rightful Lord and God who they don’t want to think about. Read on, John 15.20:

Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ [So:] If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you.

And they did persecute Jesus, didn’t they? Which is sobering. Because we sometimes think, ‘If only I was more Christlike, and knew all the answers, I’d be a better witness and see more people come to faith.’ But Jesus was the perfect witness. And they crucified him. But read on, end of John 15.20:

If they kept my word, they will also keep yours.

So negative response isn’t the only response we’ll get. It is the natural response of sinful human hearts. But that can be overcome, by God’s Spirit – as we’ll see. And what Jesus does next is to show us just how sinful human hearts really are. Look on to John 15.22. He’s speaking about those who actually heard his teaching and saw his miracles. And he says:

If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have been guilty of sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin.

And John 15.24:

If I had not done among them the works that no one else did, they would not be guilty of sin, but now they have seen and hated both me and my Father.

Which can’t mean that if Jesus hadn’t come, those people would have been sinless. No, the sin Jesus was talking about is the sin of actually hearing and seeing him in the flesh – the clearest possible revelation of God – and yet rejecting him. Because that’s the sin that shows just how sinful human hearts really are. Look how Jesus sums it up in John 15.25:

But the word that is written in their Law must be fulfilled: [and he quotes a Psalm] ‘They hated me without a cause.’

In other words, there was no justifiable cause in Jesus which led them to reject him. The cause was in them – in sinful human hearts that said, ‘I don’t want God interfering in my life.’ So people sometimes say, ‘If only I’d been there and seen and heard the evidence for myself, I’d have believed.’ But the people who were there, and rejected Jesus, show that it’s not evidence that’s the problem; it’s the human heart. Now you might be thinking, ‘You haven’t said much about the Spirit yet.’ But Jesus said all this to show why we need the Spirit’s work – why we needed his work for us to come to faith, if we’re believers; and why we need his work if anyone’s going to come to faith through us. Because without his work, given the sinful human heart, our witness would be hopeless. And that’s the context for Jesus’ third promise about the Holy Spirit. So the other point is:

2. What the Spirit has to do (John 15.26-27)

Look down to John 15.26-27:

But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me. And you also will bear witness, because you have been with me from the beginning.

Now you have been with me from the beginning can only describe the apostles. And only the apostles could bear witness to Jesus as eyewitnesses, from what they actually saw and heard. And the book of Acts tells how they did that. But Jesus knew that we who believe in him today would also bear witness to him – only not from what we’ve seen and heard (because we weren’t there), but from what the apostles saw and heard. So we bear witness to Jesus by telling people the apostles’ message from the New Testament. So the promise of John 15.26 applies to the apostles and then to us. John 15.26-27 again:

But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me. And you also will bear witness…

Now where do you find witnesses and people bearing witness? It’s the language of legal proceedings. So here’s the picture. We’re in a planet-sized courtroom. The world (in John’s sense of those who don’t believe in Jesus) is judge and jury. Jesus is on trial – although not physically there in the dock. And at first, the apostles were in the witness stand. But now we are – with the Bible, containing the apostle’s witness, in our hands. And if all we had was John 15.18-25, we should be feeling completely hopeless about convincing the judge and jury. John 15.26 again:

But [here’s the gamechanger] when the Helper comes…

And I haven’t mentioned this yet, but the Greek word translated Helper literally means ‘one called alongside’. And it’s the word they used back then of a friend who would go with you to court to support you and back you up and argue your case. So some Bibles translate it ‘the Advocate’. So the picture is that God by his Spirit is with us in the courtroom. And as we bear witness to Jesus (John 15.27), he does too (John 15.26). Or a better way to put it would be that as we speak about the Jesus of the Bible, he can take what we say home to peoples’ hearts, with the power to overcome their natural resistance to Jesus, in a way that we can’t. You see, if we’re Christians, all we can do is to get the apostles’ message about Jesus as far as peoples’ ear drums or retinas. That’s it. Beyond that lies the sinful human heart, which doesn’t want God interfering in its life, and isn’t going to let the truth in at any cost. And if you’re a Christian (unless you can’t remember a time when you didn’t know Jesus) that’s what you were like. It’s what we’re all like by nature. And only God, by his Spirit, can take the message about Jesus past the ear drum or the retina, and into the heart, and convince it that the truth isn’t just true, but desirable. As the Bible puts it elsewhere, if we’re Christians it’s because (Romans 5.5):

God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit

And the Spirit does that as we hear about Jesus’ death on the cross, and he opens our hearts to realise he did that out of love for us, for our forgiveness and when that happens, we realise we don’t want to hold out against him any more. So the Spirit, through the message about Jesus, changes what we want. Without him, our job in the courtroom would be hopeless. But with him, any heart can be changed, just like yours has been, if you’re a Christian. And next week, our next passage in John 16 will say more of how the Spirit does that. But let’s re-visit John 15.27, to end with. So the Spirit will bear witness to peoples’ hearts. But he doesn’t do that by zapping them, Harry Potter style, independent of our witness. He does it by taking our witness beyond their ear drums and retinas. So, John 15.27:

And you also will bear witness…

So, as individual Christians and as a church, our job in the witness stand is to talk about the Jesus of the Bible. And if we don’t, the Holy Spirit has nothing to work with, nothing to take home to peoples’ hearts. It’s both, and – him and us, or to put it better: him through us. And there’s definitely a place for telling people about our own experience of coming to faith, and being a Christian – ‘giving our testimony’ to use the jargon. And actually, those testimonies will always point to the Jesus of the Bible – and the ones we heard recently at the baptism and confirmation service did that brilliantly. But above all, our job is to bear witness to Jesus through the Bible. So that’s why we’ll be introducing something called The Word One To One, which is a great way of reading John’s Gospel with someone just thinking through what they believe. That’s why we use Christianity Explored – because of the various courses for finding out about Jesus, it’s based on Mark’s Gospel and takes people straight to the original witnesses. And it’s why, in one way or another, all our invitation and outreach events need to bear witness to the Jesus of the Bible.

But if we really believe what we’ve heard this morning (about why we need the Spirit’s work, and what the Spirit has to do), there’s one thing that will always go hand in hand with our witness. And that’s prayer, because the heart of prayer is to say to God ‘I can’t; you can; please will you?’ In this case, ‘I can’t convince anyone about Jesus; you can by your Spirit; so as I witness to Jesus, please will you?’ And in my discouragement about witness, I have to confess that prayer is usually what I’ve given up first – even if I’ve plodded on inviting people to things and talking about Jesus when I can. And when it comes to bearing witness to Jesus, I guess that’s where I, and maybe many of us, most need to start again.