John 16:12-15
12 “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. 13 When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. 14 He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. 15 All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.
Recently I went with my father to an oncologist at the Hackensack University Hospital, to find out the reason for my father’s prolong anemia. Several doctors have previously tried to diagnose it but couldn’t find out the reason for his low white blood cell count. The concern was that being low in white blood cell count is usually a sign of leukemia, or blood cancer.
This time Dr. Pascal, the director of the oncology unit, gave him a series of test and he still couldn’t find the cause. So he scheduled my father for a bone marrow test. We went there on the scheduled day and I watched Dr. Pascal drilled my father’s spine in order to extract some bone marrow samples. The doctor and nurse asked me to turn my head away worrying that I might faint. But, I peeked over anyway. I had to be in the room to translate for my father. After they took several samples of his bone marrows from different depths of his spine, the nurse labeled them and sent them out for biopsy. Dr. Pascal said that he would call us the next week to tell us the result, and that if he didn’t call us, we should call him.
He didn’t call us so I called him and left a message to remind him that we need to know the result. A couple of days later he called my father and made an appointment for him to come in. We became worried because I thought he must have found something serious that he didn’t want to tell us on the phone and wanted to talk to us face to face.
We went in and he told us the result. The good news was that he didn’t have leukemia. The bad news was that they didn’t have a clue why the white blood cell count was so low. So the doctor called us in to give him a Procrit shot to try to increase his red blood cell count to boost his energy. The doctor said he would just leave the white blood cell problem alone for the time being because he couldn’t fine the cause and there was no medicine to boost white blood cell count.
Some of you might know Dr. Pascal, that he is among the best of the best in the country when it comes to oncology. If he doesn’t know, there is very unlikely that we will find someone that knows better.
That makes me think of our historic human problem. There are so many things that we don’t know among all the things that we want to know. With the explosion of knowledge and science today, sometimes we assume that we have left no stone unturned and few things we don’t know. In fact, all the top scientists today acknowledge that the more we know, the more we know that we don’t know.
One of the major human frustrations is that we don’t know everything and yet we desire to know everything, at least everything that we need to know, such as our future, or our children’s future. Human beings of all culture and races throughout history tried to figure out how to know what we want to know.
There is a religion that was built entirely on wanting to know everything. It’s called Buddhism. The goal of a Buddhist is to be enlightened, which meaning to gain the wisdom of all-knowing. If you go to Southeast Asia, you will see thousands and thousands of pagodas in many places. Some of them are as old as the first century. In Burma, there is a city called Pagan that used to have more than 13,000 pagodas, and today there are about 2000 left. 2000 is still a lot for a city of 25 square miles.
You might asked, “Why were those pagodas built.” They were mostly built by the rich people in the ancient time, some of them were kings, princes, and princesses. The purpose was mainly to serve as a monument for prayer. The person who built the pagoda would usually through a big feeding party for the poor and invite everyone in town to come to eat. Feeding the poor is regarded as a good deed and they hope that their good deeds would bring good karma, or good fortune. After they fed the poor, they would pray a prayer and many of those prayers were carved on stone tablets.
When I was in Mandalay and later Rangoon University, I studied many of those most ancient stone tablets. Many of the prayers have a lot in common. A typical prayer would be like this: “The good deed I do today will bring good fortune to me, and may the good fortune be equally shared among all people. Because of this sincerely truth, I may receive the Sabbanuta Wisdom—the wisdom of all-knowing and the opportunity to worship the Arimittaya Buddha—the God of love.”
The wisdom of all-knowing! Don’t you want that? The true Buddhists are not theists. They worship a wisdom but not a god. There was a Buddhist monk who became a Christian and wrote a book. He gave the reason why he became a Christian. He said that he had been worshiping the “wisdom of all knowing” for all his life and one day it dawn to him that wisdom could not exist by itself. Wisdom must have an owner. So then he studies other religions and found out that the Jesus Christ is the Owner of the Wisdom of All-knowing. So he converted himself to worship the owner of the wisdom rather than the wisdom itself, because all other founders of religion said that “this is the truth, and that is the truth,” but only Jesus was the only one that claim that “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”
I think that makes a lot of sense because it is impossible for human beings to know all. Let’s assume that the Gautama Buddha really attained the wisdom of all knowing, the Buddhist scripture recorded that he attained the Buddha status by practicing Thila, which is equivalent of the Ten Commandments—but they have thirteen—for five-hundred lives. You want knowledge and wisdom the Buddhist way? You need to practice the laws for 500 lives. If you don’t believe in incarnation, you still must practice the thirteen commandments for at least this entire life. Some of those laws include not to drink, not to enjoy in sensual stuff—including music, and not to tell lie. I think all of you have already failed. Only if you believe in incarnation, you can comfort yourself by saying, “Well, I will try it again in my next life.” But who wants to come back to this fallen world that the Buddhists call “the sea of suffering.” Who wants to comeback to this life and do it again. Tom said he wants to come back here next life as an Italian. I hope we have that kind of choice. In fact, according to Buddhism, you might end up coming back as a cockroach. There is no guarantee. You better get on board with Jesus Christ and take the direct train to the destination of eternity.
In today’s scripture lesson, Jesus talked to the disciples and said that, “I have a lot to tell you, but I know that you cannot handle it.” There are knowledge out there waiting to enter our mind, but Jesus said that sometimes we cannot bear it. Sometimes it is because we are not mature enough to bear the knowledge, sometimes we are just not ready to bear the knowledge, and sometimes we simply are not equipped with the capacity to bear the knowledge.
But the good news is that Jesus, being the Owner of the wisdom of all-knowing, made an arrangement for us to go through life with a Counselor or an Advocate known as the Holy Spirit. From today’s scripture lesson we can learn three attitudes towards the Holy Spirit.
1 – Keep Myself Hungary for the Truth
Jesus said, “You will know the truth and the truth will set you free.” Now he said, that that the Holy Spirit will guide you in all the truth, not just some. It means God is willing to provide us as much truth as we can bear. So we much keep ourselves hungry for the truth.
There was a story about a proud and dispassionate young man that wanted knowledge and came to the Greek philosopher Socrates and casually said, “O great Socrates, I come to you for knowledge.”
The philosopher took the young man across the town, down to the sea, waded in with him, and then pushed his strong hand on the man’s shoulder and dunked him under the water for about thirty seconds. When he let the young man up, Socrates asked him to repeat what he wanted. “Knowledge, O great one,” he sputtered.
Then he pushed the young man down again, only this time a little longer. When he let him up, Socrates asked, “What do you want?” “Wisdom, O wise one.” Then he pushed him down again for a longer time, and let him up and ask, “What do you want?” “Knowledge, oh great one.” Again he pushed him down. 40 second 50 second passed by and he let him up. “What do you want?” asked Socrates. “Air, I want air!” “Good. If you want knowledge as much as you want air, you shell have it.”
The disciples kept themselves humble and hungry for the truth. They were able to write down what they received from the Holy Spirit and now it is in our hands as our Bible. That’s why we say the Bible is breathed, or inspire, by the Holy Spirit. In the same way we need to seek the truth with passion and hunger, so that the Holy Spirit will reveal to us the truth as we read the scripture. Jesus said, “he will guide you into all the truth;” (v. 13a)
2 – Face the Future through the Holy Spirit
“He will declare to you the things that are to come.” (v.13b) This is one of the best news for us. Even though we don’t have the capacity to see the future, Jesus has sent us the Holy Spirit to tell us what is ahead. The word for declare is from the Greek “anangello” which literally means to report like an angel. The Holy Spirit sometimes functions like an angel for you to report to you what is to come.
Some of you have a GPS in your car that gives you direction on your road. When I have a reliable GPS, I don’t have to worry about getting lost. It will report to me what is to come, “Exit right in .2 miles. Then turn left.” All we need is to keep ourselves tuned to the Holy Spirit and follow his guidance.
3 – Focus on Jesus Christ
Jesus said, “He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you.” (v.14) As Reformed Presbyterians, we are Christocentric, meaning Christ-centered because there is no way to know God without knowing Jesus Christ. Only in Jesus Christ, we understand what God is like. In the same way, we have no way to know the Holy Spirit except through Jesus.
Most importantly, the goal of the Holy Spirit is to point us to Christ. Let’s say this pulpit represents Jesus Christ, and I am the Holy Spirit. I stand behind this pulpit and point my finger to Christ and ask you to focus on him. This also gives you a method to determine whether you are in touch with the Holy Spirit or some other unholy spirit. The difference is that the Holy Spirit reveals to you more about Christ and glorifies Christ. But other spirits will only glorify themselves.
We live in an age of confusion. We know so much and the more we know the more we know that we don’t know. Jesus knows this reality and that’s why he sent us a Counselor, in this case, I like the term Navigator to guide us into a fruitful future. May God bless you, Amen!
