Listen to the promises given through Isaiah again. He will be gracious to you at the sound of
your cry. He will answer as soon as He
hears it. Your Teacher will not hide
Himself anymore, with your eyes you will see Him. With your ears you will hear, “This is the
way, walk in it,” when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left. That is what it should mean to have the
Spirit within you. We should be at one
with Him, seeing Him, hearing Him and not only that, knowing that He sees us
and He hears us, He directs our steps.
Does that mean we will have no difficulty? Absolutely not, if He didn't spare His son
but instead immersed Himself in the suffering of the world should we expect
anything different. The promise is that
He will be with us in all our suffering and can we ask more in the broken,
busted world we have made for ourselves?
Jesus promises the very thing Isaiah wrote about but Jesus
gives more insight into how this can work.
The first two verses tell us something important, "If you love me,
you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he
will give you another Helper…" The
use of the word "Helper" should tell us that the purpose of the
Spirit is to assist us as we love Jesus and keep His commandments. Obedience to the commandments to love God and
love our neighbor is the predicate for the Spirit actively helping us. Our love for Jesus has a tangible quality,
"Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me." The result of that tangible love is that the
Father loves us. Life is an active
thing, not a passive one and the Spirit has been given that we might be
empowered to live an active life of service and love. Are we?
The people of God did not recognize their own Messiah. If
you ever want an object lesson in total depravity this is certainly that
lesson. God exalted Him, made Him Christ
and Lord, and we, who are created in His image, didn't even recognize the God
in whose image we are created. The
really amazing thing is that those who had His Word didn't recognize the God of
the Word. They didn't recognize the
enfleshing, the living out of the very Word they held dear. At least the Spirit was moving on them for
conviction, they believed that what Peter said was true and asked what shall we
do. Can you imagine coming to the realization
that you killed God's chosen Messiah and you were in the crowd shouting,
"Crucify Him", that you cheered and jeered as He was mocked,
tortured, crucified and died? Surely it
would impel you to love Him remembering His prayer for you, "Father,
forgive them…" Life and love are
truly active and we have no better example of that than the active life and
love of Jesus for us.
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