Is The Holy Spirit The Sequel To Jesus?

Sequels are supposed to continue the story, but they also expose what we really loved about the original. We kick things off by arguing about the best movie sequels, then pivot to a bigger claim: the Holy Spirit is the “sequel” to Jesus, promised in John 14 as “another advocate” who stays with us forever. That word matters. Advocate means we are not alone, not abandoned, and not trying to live faithfully on sheer willpower. 

From there, we get honest about the Trinity. If you’ve ever wondered how Christians can talk about Father, Son, and Holy Spirit while still believing in one God, you’re not the only one. We trace a quick, practical history of how early Christians described their experience of God, why church councils argued so fiercely about language, and why mystery is not a weakness of faith but part of its reality. Theology can feed spiritual growth, but it can also distract us if it becomes the main event. 

The heart of the message lands on the verse right before the Spirit is promised: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” We talk about what that looks like in everyday life: sharing love, fighting for justice, bringing comfort, and becoming the kind of people through whom God feels real to others. The world is heavy right now, and that’s exactly why an Advocate matters and why our choices matter too. If this encouraged you, subscribe, share the episode, leave a review, and tell us: where do you feel called to be the sequel?

Transcript

The Great Sequel Debate

Pastor Darren 0:00

Well, today I'm talking about sequels. Sequels, one of the best cultural conversations we can have. What are the best movie sequels? Right? Do we wrestle over this or is that just me? Name a few. What's your favorite movie sequel? Do you got any? Godfather 2, the classic. What else?

unknown 0:30

Empire Strikes Back.

Pastor Darren 0:31

Empire Strikes Back. Amen to that one. Yeah. What say it again?

unknown 0:36

Jurassic Park.

The Holy Spirit As The Sequel

Trinity Questions And Church History

Keep The Commandments First

The Advocate Who Affirms You

Becoming The Sequel The World Needs

Pastor Darren 0:37

Jurassic Park? Yeah, they did a pretty good job, although number one was pretty darn good. Right, right, right. Others? Shrek? Oh my goodness. All right. Rotten Tomatoes. They're top three. Are you ready for this? Kind of uh tainted or coated by being a little bit of a newer uh uh um website. Number one, Toy Story Two. Not bad. Not right. Number two, Wallace and Gromit, Vengeance Most Foul. Yeah? All right, we got some fans out there. Then uh more of a uh dramatic uh film from France, Three Colors, uh Red. I don't know. Have any of you watched that? That series of three in the colors of the French flag, blue, white, and red. Anyway, too artsy for us, I guess. Too artsy for me, clearly. Uh all right, IMDB, a little newer website, kind of a little more in the industry, Godfather 2, right, which we named. Are you ready for this one? Rocky 2. You know, he wins that one. Spoiler alert. Yeah. If you haven't seen that, that's on you. All right, here, and here's one I was a little surprised: The Lord of the Rings, the Two Towers. Oh, good one? Right? It's sort of weird. When you go look it up on the internet, uh uh you find you you'll be reminded of ones you're like, oh yeah, sure. Uh the only one, uh, Rolling Stone did a little survey and they listed as one of theirs Terminator 2. Right? We like Arnie as a good guy. Maybe just me. Maybe the rest of y'all are like, let him be the bad guy. All right. Well, I'm sure he'll be back. There you go. So pretty provocative uh endeavor, the sequel, right? Because you you've got this built-in audience of people, presumably a movie people liked, or otherwise you wouldn't be making a sequel. So you got this built-in audience. You think, all right, we make this, we know we're gonna make the money we need to make to be able to make more. On the other hand, you've got very high, or should I say narrow, expectations. It better be this movie right here, or I will shun it publicly. Am I right? If it doesn't live up to the first one, we are very, very critical, at least a lot of us are. Uh so I bring this up because the Holy Spirit is kind of a sequel, right? What we have in John 14 is the promise of the sequel to Jesus' life, which is the presence of God, not as Jesus, but as the Holy Spirit that will arrive. Right? Verse 16, and I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to be with you forever. The advocate, though, that's the Holy Spirit right there. This is what we live out in our Christian calendar. Forty days of Lent, not including Sabbath, right? Lands us on Good Friday, and then as at Easter, 50 days waiting for the Holy Spirit on Pentecost. That's the season we're in right now. Two more weeks, and then we celebrate Pentecost with the arrival of the Holy Spirit. But the bottom line is we have a sequel to Jesus. We have the Holy Spirit going to be with us. You know, in the Bible study this week, we actually sometimes this happens. We landed on the the same passage as I'm preaching on, and uh, we got into a conversation about the Trinity, right? God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and and how that all works. Have you have you had that conversation slash debate? Right? Have you wrestled with trying to understand how all of that works? Right? The God, the God Jesus thing or the fully human, fully divine thing, that alone is tough, right? Because being God kind of means not human, right? Humans, we know mortality, we know limitations, and God doesn't know those things, right? And so it's just how does that all work? And now we're talking about the Holy Spirit showing up. How does that work? And then are we not monotheistic anymore? Now do we have multiple gods? Have you had this debate before? Have you wrestled with it? Or is it just me and Stephen? Okay. I guess it's you and me, brother. That's it. Nobody else is like uh motivated here. No, when uh Christianity first became a nationalized religion, the leaders were tasked with solving this dilemma, I guess, this question of how that all works. So you know it was a meaningful question to them. Super quick history of it is early Christianity, like first and second century uh CE after after Christ was uh uh um on walking this world, uh, there was talk about how we experienced this active presence of God, but not really distinctly described as a divine person. Then in the third century, uh some some of the uh early church fathers started talking about the Holy Spirit and describing uh having three different entities in this one uh uh God understanding. And then the Council of Nicaea, mostly it was about defining Jesus, but it set the stage for the Council of Constantinople in 381, where they solidified this uh divinity of the Holy Spirit, but it was not without its arguments. It was not without uh a little bit of uh debate and even gnashing of teeth, largely because it comes down to belief. There's this mystery about all of it. We can't know a hundred percent how that all works. That's kind of why we call it faith. Now, there are some really good metaphors and understandings of all of this that will be helpful to you if you really want to dig in and if that will feed your faith and your journey. But I did think it was worth mentioning a bit of a concern. We don't really want to get lost in those questions and in those debates. Right? Take a look at the verse right before it. Uh, the right before the verse where he talks about the advocate on his way, it's verse 15. If you love me, you will keep my commandments. If you love me, you will keep my commandments. Maybe you can see how that phrase is important, but also could get lost in the debate of this verse that comes right after it. Right? We're talking about what we need to do, keep the commandments, but all of a sudden we're arguing, debating, trying to find verse 16. There is room and encouragement to do the work of theology, to try to figure out what the Holy Spirit means to you, especially if it will strengthen your faith. But if it comes at the expense of the verse before it, to get lost, right, in in what will always be a bit of a faith mystery, we're in danger of maybe missing the larger point. If you love me, you will keep my commandments. In today's words, do the things I've told you to do, bring the comfort, fight for the justice for all of God's children. Share the love you've been given to share. You can enjoy the stretching that comes with wrestling with these questions, but don't get stuck on verse 16 and how it all works at the expense of verse 15. Look at verse 21 again. They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me, and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them. Reveal myself to them. I would probably write it a little bit differently than our gospel writer John did. But what we see here is that God's revealing comes to us when we live the life. Right? That intimacy that we're seeking. I want to know the creator of all that is, I want to know the strength, I want to know the comfort, I want to know that there's something bigger than me that I can live into if we are wanting at that. The revealing comes by living the life, by doing the things that Jesus taught us to do, by being in service to this creation and to the inhabitants. You know, instead of this inner and outer debating on the essence or the authority of the Holy Spirit, we ought to be looking at the role of the Holy Spirit. What is the Holy Spirit doing other than being the presence of God amongst us, letting us know we're not alone as we're trying to bring wholeness and justice and comfort and peace to the world? We aren't doing that alone. And then Jesus uses this word advocate for the Holy Spirit. Isn't that good news? That we have an advocate, right? Somebody who is arguing for us is on our side. Who doesn't need somebody on their side, especially someone from on high in tap with all the blessings and the joy and the love that is amidst this world? Who doesn't need a reminder that they're worthy in God's eyes? Here on Mother's Day, I think of that idyllic image of motherhood, loving our children unconditionally, even when they're a little unlovable. There I said it. All right? Only those of you who've ever been children of someone are allowed to be mad at me on that one. Now keep in mind, we're just human. We've never really mastered this whole loving our even our children unconditionally. In fact, some mothers and fathers have really struggled with it. We are just mere humans, but as Christians, our belief is that the Holy Spirit, being part of God, is fully that affirmation, fully that unconditional love, that guidance, that strength, that peace, that comfort, that love. This is how we understand the Holy Spirit's presence amongst us. We can debate the essence, but let's not confuse the role that the Holy Spirit is playing in our lives, that role of reminding us that we are children of God and worthy of that love. And the beauty and joy of that is we get to be the ones that are sharing it, sharing that message in our words and in our deeds. Maybe we should be recognizing something right now. This the series theme is stories that matter. They matter because they are stories here in the season of Easter that are helping us to understand the resurrection that we celebrate at Easter. Helps us to understand what that resurrection might mean. There's stories of how Jesus was explaining his impending absence, which for us today helps us understand that absence that is uh real for us. What we should start to recognize is that that story would always have a sequel. He was always going to be crucified. That sequel that follows Jesus is the Holy Spirit. But isn't it also us? Wasn't it always supposed to be us? The Holy Spirit has the role, the presence of God that we can experience here. But we should see our role too. To follow the commandments, to love God, to love neighbor. And in doing so, we become the presence of God as well. Do we not? We become God's love for other people. When we love others as God loves them, are we not offering that experience of God and God's love? We are the sequel. And let's face it, we've uh we've made our world uh a lot to handle. We've given ourselves a lot to wrestle with. Our world can use a sequel with our rising cost of living, our increasing isolation through technology, wars for money and control, weird relationships with the truth, lack of action to help our climate. People really need this sequel. So let's give it to them. Amen. Amen.