The Truth About the Holy Spirit: Biblical Teaching vs. False Doctrines | John 14:16 | Full Sermon

[0:00] All right, we're going to go to the Word of God now. It's the Word of God now. And John 14 is we're going to kick it off from John 14. But it is really a topical message tonight about the Holy Spirit.

[0:14] The Holy Spirit. And what does the Bible teach us about the Holy Spirit? And so we're going to pick it up there from John 14 from verse 16. So most of the scriptures are on screen so you can follow along.

[0:31] John 14 from verse 16. And the Lord Jesus says, And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another comforter, that he may abide with you forever, even the Spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive.

[0:47] Because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him. But ye know him, for he dwelleth with you and shall be in you. I will not leave you comfortless.

[0:58] I will come to you. And so we see our Lord's promise of the Holy Spirit. What can we learn of the ministry of the Holy Spirit? It's important that we understand what is the ministry of the Holy Spirit.

[1:11] There's so much talk about the Holy Spirit. Some churches are always going on about the Holy Spirit. But sadly, there's much confusion and false teachings out there. And there's particular preachers and false teachers that are bringing much confusion on the subject of the Holy Spirit.

[1:33] There's so much false teachings and sensationalism. Sadly, it's often the ones that are the most prominent TV preachers are guilty of this, where the sensationalism abounds.

[1:47] Rather, God's truth must be our anchor. And the Holy Spirit is not some force to be manipulated. He's not some genie granting earthly desires.

[1:58] Some would treat the Holy Spirit as some performer of chaotic spectacles. But the Holy Spirit is God himself. He is our comforter. He is our guide, our enabler.

[2:09] And brother, sister here tonight, we can't know the truth about the Holy Spirit. So we are going to spend a little bit of time talking about the contrary spirit, the contrary teachings.

[2:20] And then what does the Bible actually teach us about the Holy Spirit? What are biblical teachings? And we see there, what are biblical teachings? The Holy Spirit indwells every believer. He seals us unto the day of redemption.

[2:32] And he's conforming us to the image of Christ. So forgive me for laboring a little on the false, but then we'll get to the truth. It's good to counter the error with the truth.

[2:44] Because the Bible talks about a spirit of error and a spirit of truth. The spirit of truth. And so we are going to confront some things, some errors of false movements here tonight.

[2:54] But we're also going to magnify the glorious ongoing work of the Spirit in his church, in every born again believer. We don't shy away from the Holy Spirit. Sometimes we get challenged and people say, well, do you believe in the gifts?

[3:08] Do you have the gifts of the Holy Spirit in your church? Or, you know, in particular tongues, you know. And they make much of some minute part of the Word of God and magnify that and amplify that and say, well, you're not a spirit-filled church.

[3:24] Which is a lie from hell. We are a spirit-filled church. We're a biblical, spirit-filled church. We practice biblical Christianity. And we want to magnify that, the work of the Spirit in his church, all right?

[3:38] So firstly, facing error. Our Lord warns about these winds of false doctrine. And they blow fiercely in our day. And we must stand firm against them. Ephesians 4 talks about these contrary winds blowing here and there.

[3:53] People getting tossed to and fro with every wind of doctrine. And there's so many modern teachings now that distort the person and work of the Holy Spirit. They've taken away from who the Holy Spirit is.

[4:05] And many are being led astray because of this. What are some of these teachings? One is called the prosperity gospel. It's a false gospel. It's a false promise of wealth and health.

[4:18] And the prosperity gospel falsely claims that God's will is always for believers to be rich, healthy and free from suffering. That's what they claim.

[4:29] In other words, you're not in God's will if you've got anything going wrong. You're not healthy, wealthy and free from suffering. But that's not true. All right.

[4:41] These ones would present the Holy Spirit as some guarantor of worldly wealth and physical healing, reducing him to some kind of cosmic genie. You know, the children's stories of genies that you just summon them and they come and fix everything.

[4:58] The Holy Spirit is not some kind of cosmic genie. What does the word of God tell us about the reality of living the Christian life? Paul tells Timothy, yay.

[5:09] And all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution. That's the norm. That's the normal Christian life is suffering persecution.

[5:20] So there's no getting out clause. It's actually we are in the thick of it as believers. And our Lord himself had not where to lay his head. He didn't have some mansion on a hilltop.

[5:32] He had not where to lay his head. He was virtually a homeless man. And Paul was one filled with the spirit. Yet he endured a thorn in the flesh like we've looked at lately. Shipwrecks, imprisonments, much suffering.

[5:45] So being a Christian, there's no get out of suffering clause in it. There is no guarantee that we're not going to have some suffering, some difficulty.

[5:57] And God's will, it's not earthly prosperity, but it's our sanctification. In other words, our holiness, our walk with God. God's will is that we walk with him in holiness, that we be conformed to the image of his son.

[6:10] It's not about earthly prosperity. God might grant us some measure of that, but that's not at all what it's about. Whereas these false teachers, the prosperity gospel, they make it all about this idea of earthly gain.

[6:25] But the pursuit of riches, the Bible says, is a snare. And it tells us for the love of money is the root of all evil. 1 Timothy 6 there.

[6:36] And that true gain is godliness with contentment. That's what matters. That's what counts. If you've got godliness and you're content, then you're truly wealthy in God's terms.

[6:50] So we see the prosperity gospel. It's a false promise. Then we see the error of mandatory healing. So what these folk teach, in effect, they would say that it is always God's will for you to be healed.

[7:08] Now that is manifestly false. A manifestly false idea. Job, the most just man on all the earth, he had much suffering and trouble and loss.

[7:22] And he didn't get healed. Not for some long time. And so this claim that it is always God's will to heal physically. And that a lack of healing stems from weak faith.

[7:34] That's a false doctrine. It burdens the suffering with this false guilt. And it misrepresents God. He is sovereign. He is in control. He is Lord.

[7:45] And he will choose whether it might be his will for you to have some suffering. Now that's the reality. It may be God's will that we have some measure of difficulty. We have some measure of sickness.

[7:57] And ultimately we'll get sick and we'll die. That is the will of God. At times it can be. Of course we can ask God to heal us.

[8:08] We can trust God to heal us. But it is certainly not always God's will to heal. Sometimes you've just got to submit. Hey, I've got to have this season where I'm not going to get healed. But these guys, this false crowd, they put this burden on the suffering.

[8:24] So, oh, you're not healed. You've not got enough faith. That's not what it is. It's not that. That's not our God. God allows us at times those seasons of sickness and suffering.

[8:37] And that is our human lot. That is this fallen world that we're living in. That is the reality for some at times. And so while God can and he does heal according to his purpose, it's not always his will that he heals.

[8:55] But the ultimate healing is that one that will come when we see his face. Amen. When we see the Savior, we'll be fully healed. All of our earthly afflictions and limitations, all of our aches and pains, we'll leave them behind.

[9:08] Amen. We'll have a new body and we will not have any hurting or lack of healing when we see our Lord. Because this corruptible, which means, you know, the body that's going to wear away and die, this corruptible is going to put on incorruption.

[9:27] And we'll have that body that is immortal. In Paul's case, we see there was occasion, as we talked recently, how he had a thorn, some affliction.

[9:39] He prayed three times, but God chose not to take it away, but said, my grace is sufficient for thee. And so there's that acceptance of his will. That we need to have that willingness to accept God's best may not be what we want.

[9:54] And there's other occasions, for example, where Timothy, he suffered some infirmities. He was a man of God. If it's always God's will to heal, why was Timothy sick?

[10:05] Why was Trophimus sick? Even James and Stephen faced martyrdom without miraculous deliverance. So, again, obviously it was God's will that Stephen and James were martyred and numbers of the other disciples, many of the early church.

[10:27] And church through history, martyrs of God through history, they were saints of God. They suffered and died. So it's not against God's will that we have such things happen.

[10:39] Rather, God sustains us in trials. And we must submit to his will. Brother, sister, don't have this idea that God is some cosmic genie, that he's always going to save you from sickness.

[10:50] He's not always going to save us from sickness. But he'll sustain us in the trial. He'll help us get through it. And we can submit to his will, whether healing comes or we're called to endure. It's just having that, really that submission to his ultimate will.

[11:06] That, hey, we're in his hands. And he knows what's best for us. So we see another false idea there of this false teaching about the Holy Spirit. And another matter is the signs and wonders movement.

[11:20] So you've got this man here, William Branham, was one of the key figures back in the 1950s. And one of the pioneers of the Pentecostal movement. And like, really, the host of them, there was false doctrine there right from the beginning.

[11:35] Right from Azusa Street, 1901. Right through the whole Pentecostal movement. It's been a departure from Bible truth. As much as there's been some elements of good doctrine amongst it, the mishmash of false doctrine just perverts it and corrupts it and makes it fail.

[11:53] Miserably fail. And so we see these teachings of the Pentecostal charismatic movements. Apostolic gifts, saying that there's apostles, prophets available today.

[12:04] This idea of tongues, these prophecies of miraculous signs as if they're normative for the church today. And I can speak from experience having been in it for a time.

[12:17] And these so-called tongues that they have, it's not biblical tongues. In the Bible, it's languages. I mean, I speak in tongues. I speak in the English tongue.

[12:28] It's a language. Right? Sometimes I speak in the German tongue. It's a language. They're known natural human languages. So that's the truth of it. And this gibberish, this gobbledygook, it's not biblical tongues.

[12:41] That's the point of it. But that's a whole other subject. These ones, they claim new revelations and fresh words from God. And there's these chaotic displays of barking, laughing, being slain in the spirit.

[12:54] So it's customary at times in some of these settings that people have an altar call and then they fall backwards on the floor. And yeah, it's not in the Bible.

[13:05] That's the problem. It's not biblical. And all of these ridiculous antics, it's a stray from the word of God. It's very, very sad that some people think.

[13:16] But they need new revelations and visions and such words from extra biblical words of prophecies, which are actually just manufactured by men.

[13:28] It's not God in it. It's a sad deception. And then we see these miraculous sign gifts. So they would think of it as tongues, healings, prophecies.

[13:40] The Bible tells of such things, but they were for a season and for a reason to reach the unsaved Israel. They were a witness to the unbelieving Israel.

[13:52] And they were temporary to authenticate the apostles' ministry and for establishing the early church, the foundation of the prophets and apostles.

[14:03] That's been laid. We don't need apostles and prophets now. And of course, now with the completion of the canon as well, as in the 66 books, the full word of God, the 66 books, and that's it, that we have what is perfect.

[14:17] It has come. That which is perfect has come. It's the Bible. And the Bible says when that which is perfect has come, we don't need the other stuff, the prophecies, the tongues. They shall cease.

[14:28] They shall fail. And tongues have ceased. History tells us that they did cease and they have ceased. And it's got the sense in the Greek, apparently, that they're going to cease full stop. There's no sense of it ceasing and then somehow getting reactivated.

[14:44] And the Holy Spirit now, he works primarily through the word of God, the preaching of it, the complete word of God. It's the more sure word of prophecy. We don't need extra biblical teachings.

[14:56] We need biblical teachings. That's what we need. This is the authority, the word of God. And it's very important that we understand that. And so these claims of near revelation, they really contradict the sufficiency of Scripture.

[15:08] So there's this doctrine of the sufficiency of Scripture. In other words, what we have here between the covers of our Bible, this is sufficient. This is the full direction of God.

[15:21] This is the full prophetic word of God. It's in our hands, in our Bible. And yet these new revelations, they contradict that. And the Holy Spirit also, he does not promote confusion, but order in the church.

[15:40] So let's move on to the true ministry of the Holy Spirit. I know we've laboured for a time the false, but I'd rather labour the true.

[15:51] What does the Bible tell us about the Holy Spirit? Again, we are a church that believes in the Holy Spirit. We don't deny the Holy Spirit. We don't deny the gifts of the Holy Spirit as they are fulfilled according to this season that we're in.

[16:07] We absolutely believe the entire word of God. And what the Bible tells us about the Holy Spirit as it is rightly divided in the word of God, as we understand the place and time that we're in and where the Holy Spirit works today.

[16:21] He is our comforter. He's our sanctifier. He makes us holy. And he's our enabler too. So we need to turn from the error to the glorious truth of the word of God. And the Holy Spirit, far from being some performer of spectacles or this grantor of worldly gain, he is the abiding presence of God Almighty, actively working every single believer, every one of us who knows him in his church.

[16:45] And his ministry is profound. It's transformative. And it's grounded in the word of God. So let's look at some of these truths. Who is the Holy Spirit? He is our comforter. Our Lord promised another comforter who would abide with us forever.

[17:00] That's the Holy Spirit. So we've got that sense of his comfort, his presence, his activating, his working. And this word comforter in the Greek is parakletos, which means one called alongside to help, to strengthen, to console.

[17:14] So he's our helper. He comes alongside us through those seasons, those storms of life, of grief, of persecution. The Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit of God is the abiding presence of God.

[17:26] And he's working in us, strengthening us, helping us, coming to our aid as our ever-present help. And the Holy Spirit does not promise to remove every trial, but to strengthen us, to endure.

[17:40] And he gives us promises such as, Fear thou not, for I am with thee. And his comfort brings peace, peace that passeth all understanding. Brother, sister, we have his comforting.

[17:52] The comfort of the scriptures is the comfort of the Spirit. And he does not promise to remove every trial, but he will guide us through.

[18:03] And his peace is not infleeting emotions, but the steadfast promises of his word. And when we're burdened, it tells how he intercedes for us.

[18:15] He helps us pray with groanings which cannot be uttered. Now some are thinking, well, that's tongues. No, it's not. The Bible doesn't talk about tongues being some prayer language. Tongues is not any kind of prayer language at all.

[18:27] It's nothing to do with it. But he does guide our prayers to align them with God's will. And when you have those times where it's a dark night of sorrow, we can know his presence.

[18:40] He's with us. And he's assuring us. He's giving us that assurance that we are children of God. Another aspect about the Holy Spirit is the Holy Spirit is a teacher and a guide for us.

[18:51] Our Lord says, when he, the spirit of truth, has come, he will guide you into all truth. And the Holy Spirit, he illuminates the scriptures. He helps us to understand them.

[19:02] Of course, when we pray for God to illuminate his word, it's a good thing when we go to the word to study it, to seek God's will. Well, ask the Holy Spirit to guide you into all truth, to help you understand.

[19:15] Because there's things hard to be understood, it talks about. Stuff in here, we're not going to know the depth of it till glory. But we can ask God to guide us. And it's a good thing to ask the Holy Spirit to illuminate his word to you.

[19:29] And he does not speak of himself, but he points to the Lord, the living word. And so as we pray, open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law.

[19:40] He'll answer that prayer. And he'll make the simple wise. For the time, let's beware of those who claim new revelations or private words from God.

[19:51] Now, we've been in church settings where they have that. They routinely prophesy over people. There's a lot of danger in that. It's fanciful. And how dare we say, thus saith the Lord, when we say something to someone.

[20:05] Hey, unless it's in here. Give me chapter and verse for it. It's not about what we say. It's about what the word of God says. And that's the sufficiency of it, as we talked about.

[20:17] And the ministry of the Holy Spirit teaches us to guard against deception and leads us into holiness. So we see the Holy Spirit, our teacher and our guide. Another aspect is the Holy Spirit as our sanctifier.

[20:31] After all, he is the Holy Spirit. And so the Holy Spirit, he works to make us more like Christ. We see the fruit of the Spirit, talked about in Galatians 5, including, for example, love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance.

[20:48] The Spirit's fruit. And this is not the product of our own effort. He makes it happen. And his sanctifying work, again, it's the evidence of his indwelling.

[21:00] He's making us more like Christ. It's not human effort there. That's why we need the Holy Spirit. We don't discount the Holy Spirit. We want the Holy Spirit.

[21:10] We want to yield to his working in us. And his sanctifying work is conforming us to the image of Christ. And this is the true miracle, really, isn't it? It's not fleeting signs.

[21:22] It's not some feel-good kind of buzz thing. Tingly feelings or some emotional experience. It's that Christ is indwelling us in the person of his Spirit.

[21:33] And he's transforming our hearts. Another truth is that the Holy Spirit is our enabler. So the Holy Spirit enables you, brother, sister, to live the Christian life.

[21:43] We need to live it out in his strength, not our own, by the power of the Spirit. As he promises, he tells us, You shall receive power after the Holy Ghost has come upon you to be witnesses unto me.

[21:57] Acts 1, verse 8. And so this power of the Holy Spirit, it's not for display. As some would make the Holy Spirit, as they would call these showy displays of some kind of manifestations, of some kind of showy spectacles.

[22:13] It's not that. The power that we need is the power to be his witnesses. It's that we would be powerfully enabled to declare, to boldly declare, to proclaim the gospel.

[22:24] And that faithful service that he calls us to in a crooked and perverse generation. So the Holy Spirit, he equips the church. He enables us. And we must rely upon him to fulfill the Great Commission, to take the message of the gospel.

[22:38] He gives us gifts of teaching, of evangelism, of helps, of administration, for the edification, the building up of his body. So when we feel weak, we can remember scriptures such as this one, that it's not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts.

[22:58] We can rely, we can rest on, we can be empowered by his Spirit to live out his will. Another truth about the Holy Spirit is that he is our seal and assurance.

[23:13] I know we touched on that just this morning, where the Holy Spirit, he seals every believer unto the day of redemption. There's this sense of he's marking us as his own.

[23:24] And he's the earnest of our inheritance. So he assures us of our eternal security. Like, you know, as pictured there, of a stamp, as a seal on a letter.

[23:35] He seals us. He marks us as his own. And then you could think, again, of this picture of wedding rings as a symbol of a pledge. And the Holy Spirit, he's talked about as the earnest of our inheritance.

[23:47] It talks about a pledge, a down payment, guaranteeing our future glory. So, again, it's a picture of God's commitment for us to complete the work of salvation. So the presence of the Holy Spirit in us, it's not dependent on emotions or signs.

[24:03] You know, we might not feel very emotional or have some powerful signs. It's kind of sad how in some of these churches, in these quarters, and I've seen some exposés about how they, that there's conjecture that in some settings that they actually put sparkly glitter in the air con systems and shower it down on people.

[24:27] And then people think it's the glory cloud. It's some manifestation of God. Whereas, really, it's just plastic glitter, gold-coloured glitter that they're raining on people. And, likewise, feathers coming down.

[24:39] It's all manufactured. It's nothing. It's not even biblical. And this is the wacko stuff that's going on. It's actually totally mind-boggling for me how far away from the Bible the Pentecostal movement has got.

[24:52] It's just this whole focus that's the wrong focus on emotions and displays, on these manufactured signs. Most of them are not even biblical in any skerrick.

[25:04] But it's not that. It's that constant reality for you that believe that the Holy Spirit, He dwells in you. And, of course, it tells us that without the Holy Spirit, we're not of His.

[25:15] So, again, in these kind of Pentecostal circles, they almost say there's a first-class and a second-class Christian. Okay? You're just a second-class Christian if you don't speak in tongues or whatever it be.

[25:29] They have some manifestations. But, no, the Bible says that every believer has the Holy Spirit. We're baptised by the Spirit into the body. So every believer has the Holy Spirit when they're saved.

[25:41] If you've not got the Holy Spirit, it says you're not of His. That's Romans 8, verse 9. So we've got to go with what the Bible actually says. The Holy Spirit, He is our constant reality. And we've got that assurance also that greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world.

[25:58] Another aspect is the Holy Spirit's work in the church. And He works in the individual, in each one of us, one by one, and also collectively, corporately, in His church.

[26:10] He empowered the early church to witness. Acts 1, verse 8. He guided its decisions such that the apostles wrote, It seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us.

[26:20] So they were having that submissive heart to what is God's will and would be led by the Spirit in our decision-making as a church. And today we see God's Spirit. He fosters unity.

[26:32] And He distributes gifts for service. The Holy Spirit brings order, not confusion. In some of these circles, it's all some chaotic, fleshly kind of display of chaotic scenes.

[26:53] It's very sad to see people following that kind of idea. Rather than, actually the Bible talks about order. Things are done decently and in order. And the church of God is not some collection of people chasing personal experiences.

[27:10] But it's a united body by His Spirit, functioning in harmony. And the work of the Holy Spirit continues in the life of every believer.

[27:20] So every believer has the Holy Spirit. There's not some first and second class believer. If you are saved, you have the Holy Spirit. Maybe He doesn't always have the sway that He wants to in us.

[27:32] Sometimes the flesh fights the Spirit. You know, there's that battle. But rather let's have a heart that, let God have His way. Let the Holy Spirit have His way in you.

[27:44] And it moves on really to think about really the walking in the Spirit. That every believer, we have the Spirit. We're called to walk in the Spirit.

[27:55] If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit. There's this call to us to have that mindset when we're going through our daily living, our daily walking, that we'll be led by the Spirit in the way to walk.

[28:10] To walk in the Spirit is to yield daily to His guidance, to obey His promptings through His Word, to rely upon His power. And it's a moment-by-moment dependence. So, brother, sister, you can walk by the Spirit this week ahead, Monday morning.

[28:24] Walk by the Spirit. Not some mind of sensational experiences, but rather that steady, biblical walking with God, conscious of God's leading, led by His Word.

[28:38] It's the voice of the Spirit, the Word of God. And so what are some things we ought to do? We're to be filled with the Spirit, surrendering to His control, such that the Holy Spirit fills us and overflows, that we're surrendering to His control.

[28:52] We're saturating our lives with His Word. We're studying the Scriptures. It's through them that the Spirit speaks to us. And we're praying without ceasing, trusting His interceding for us.

[29:06] And we're fellowshipping in the body, where God's Spirit cultivates that unity and love of the Spirit. And what's more, we're bearing fruit too, that Christ's character will be manifested in our lives, the Galatians 5, fruit of the Spirit.

[29:22] We're witnessing and declaring the Gospel. I know some would say, well, the sign of receiving the Holy Spirit is this, that, or the other. The sign is going to be His witnesses.

[29:33] You know, you actually want to tell somebody what Jesus has done for you. That's the sign, is that you want to tell people about Jesus. And so let's reject the false substitutes that are out there.

[29:45] Be very conscious. Brother, sister, be discerning. I know there's times on occasion, I've had occasion to interchange with people, and they say, oh, we tune into this one or that one, Joyce Myers or whoever it is.

[29:58] Brother, sister, we've got to be very, very careful. What we touch, what we have any association with, what we might tune into, these people are not teaching the truth. And there's a counterfeit there.

[30:10] This prosperity Gospel is absolutely not biblical. This focus on emotional highs, on signs, on new revelations, is entirely unbiblical.

[30:22] Rather, let's trust the Spirit's work. And be minded by the Bible, that the Bible is the guide, it's the plumb line. It's that which we say, hey, that's straight up and down.

[30:34] It's the Bible. It's called a plumb line. And it's the picture of the Word of God as being straight up and down, straight and true. And so the Holy Spirit's work is not to dazzle, but to sanctify. It's not to enrich us, but to empower us.

[30:47] Not to entertain with some spectacles and signs, but His work is to comfort, is the comforter. It's interesting, Spurgeon put it like this, the Spirit's highest gift is to make us holy.

[31:01] I think that's missing. That's missing. That, especially in these churches that focus on the sensations and the sensual, feeling-centered kind of Christianity, they're missing the whole point.

[31:18] The Holy Spirit, He is holy. He's come to make us a holy people. And the Holy Spirit, He's our divine comforter. He abides with us. He's not some sideshow, some ticket to worldly gain, as if, you know, somehow, if you do what they say, these faith movement prosperity teachers, that you can, you know, have some kind of return for what you give in some fashion where you get prosperity.

[31:46] It's not biblical. But the Holy Spirit's work, we want to have the truthful work of the Holy Spirit. What is that? As we've talked about, He regenerates the believer, He indwells the believer, He seals the believer, He marks you, God's property, He comforts the believer, He teaches the believer, He sanctifies the believer, it's His work that makes us holy, and He empowers the believer.

[32:12] Amen? All of those things. So, brethren, we're not alone. We've got the Holy Spirit who is our comforter. Let's not grieve the Holy Spirit through disobedience. Of course, we are told not to grieve the Holy Spirit, not to quench Him, not to neglect Him, but be filled with His power, walking in His truth till we see our Saviour face to face.

[32:34] Brother, sister, here tonight, may we be that kind of church, that Bible-believing church, that Spirit-filled church that rejoices in the Spirit's ministry in each one of you that believe.

[32:46] You are filled with the Holy Spirit. You've been baptised by the Spirit into the body of Christ. And we can rejoice in the Spirit's ministry. We can hold fast to the sufficiency of Scripture.

[32:57] We don't need some extra-biblical signs and wonders and visions and dreams and prophecies, so-called. It's all here. The complete package is right here. Now, that's not to say God can still give us impressions and leadings that may not be entirely biblical, but they will certainly not be contrary to the Bible.

[33:17] Anything that's contradictory to the Bible is not of God. And that's how we test things. We've got to test everything. Hold fast to that which is good, the sufficiency of the Scriptures. And then live lives that honour your Saviour.

[33:30] Live lives that honour Him. Walk by the Spirit. Walk with the Spirit. Walk with God. So, brother, sister, hopefully you've got a bit of a picture here tonight of that which to avoid, the kind of false idea about the Holy Spirit, and rather have that biblical idea of the biblical ministry of the Holy Spirit.

[33:49] Let's pray, let's study, let's witness, let's worship with His strength, His empowerment. He's filled you with His Spirit. He's empowered you such that you'll be His witnesses.

[34:00] And the same Spirit who raised Christ from the dead dwells in you. And we've got that securing of our salvation, that seal of His Spirit. Be encouraged here tonight to trust in God's spiritual work, discerning that which is false and trusting that which is true.

[34:20] Let us pray. Lord, we thank You for the gift of Your Holy Spirit who is our comforter, our enabler, our sanctifier, our helper. Lord, we thank You that You fill us with Your Word to help us discern error from truth.

[34:37] And Lord, that You help us to walk with Your Spirit, to not grieve Your Holy Spirit by disobeying You, to not quench Your Spirit when You're impressing us with Your truth.

[34:50] Lord, that rather we'd be led by Your Spirit. We'd be a Spirit-filled people. Pray here tonight for any that may have some doubt or question that they will know that they are saved by faith in Christ because of Your grace.

[35:07] Lord, because of the cross where You bled and died and took and paid for our sin in full. And we can know forgiveness from our sins by virtue of that trust. Lord, we thank You that each one then as saved people are filled with Your Spirit.

[35:24] We don't need some extra manifestation. We don't need any phenomena to prove it. We know that Your Word tells us that we are filled with Your Spirit as we trust You that You come and indwell us just like You dwelt as it were in the tabernacle.

[35:45] You fill our earthly tabernacle, these bodies, these human bodies with Your Spirit. Help us to be conscious of that and Lord, to test everything so when we have to make a judgment is something of Your Spirit or not of Your Spirit we'll use that plumb line of Your Word, Lord, to discern truth from error.

[36:06] Give us that spiritual wisdom, Lord, from Your Word, we pray. And encourage every heart, Lord. Help us when trials come that we have the comforter, that we have Your comfort, we have Your very presence with us through every day.

[36:22] Even if it be at times a time of testing, of trial, even a time of suffering, of sickness, that You never leave us nor forsake us and we can have that trust that Your will is the best for us.

[36:35] We pray, Lord, empower us by Your Spirit to live lives to Your glory. We ask in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.