“I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth …” —John 14:16-17
This morning’s service will place particular emphasis on the work of the Holy Spirit as our helper and teacher. Take a look through the bulletin, and notice how many times in our hymns we ask for help. We’ll ask for help to sing (“tune my heart to sing Thy grace”—Come, Thou Fount Of Every Blessing). We will ask the Lord to defend us from our enemies (Blest Be The Lord, My Rock, My Might—Psalm 144). We ask for patience and virtue, that we might “only pursue holy peace” in the body (Come, O Creator Spirit Blest), and an “obedient mind” (Teach Me, O Lord, Thy Holy Way), recalling the Spirit’s role in guiding our understanding. We ask God to send the Spirit to “change our hearts” (There Is No Greater Portrait) and to help us endure (Breathe On Me Breath Of God). We ask these things, and the Lord is faithful to answer. Since the Scriptures promise that Christians will be “led by the Spirit of God” (Romans 8:14) and “taught by the Spirit” (1 Corinthians 2:13), how else can we respond but with gratitude? “Thank You, O my Father for giving us Your Son, and leaving Your Spirit till the work on earth is done.” —Henry C. Haffner
Key Words: Spirit, Power, Depths, Comprehends, Understand, Impart, Natural, Spiritual
Keystone Verse: Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. (1 Corinthians 2:12)
1 Corinthians 2:1-16
And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. 2 For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. 3 And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, 4 and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, 5 so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God. 6 Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away. 7 But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. 8 None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. 9 But, as it is written, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love Him”— 10 these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. 11 For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.12 Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. 13 And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. 14 The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. 15 The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. 16 “For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.