The Spirit of Truth

[0:00] The following message was given at a Sunday celebration at Trinity Grace Church in Athens.! For more information about Trinity Grace, please visit us at TrinityGraceAthens.com.

[0:12] ! And we're going to be in verses 5 through 15.

[0:42] This is the Word of God. But now I am going to Him who sent me. And none of you asked me, where are you going?

[0:55] But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your heart. Nevertheless, I tell you the truth.

[1:08] It is to your advantage that I go away. For if I did not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send Him to you.

[1:21] And when He comes, He will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment. Concerning sin because they do not believe in me.

[1:34] Concerning righteousness because I go to the Father and you will see me no longer. Concerning judgment because the ruler of this world is judged.

[1:45] I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, He will guide you into all the truth.

[1:58] For He will not speak on His own authority. But whatever He hears, He will speak. And He will declare to you the things that are to come.

[2:10] He will glorify me. For He will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine.

[2:22] Therefore I said that He will take what is mine and declare it to you. This is the word of the Lord. I could take it or leave it.

[2:38] What comes to your mind when you think of the phrase, Eh, I could take it or leave it. The first thing I thought of was, oddly enough, paprika on a deviled egg.

[2:56] Right? Am I right? I love a good deviled egg. But I'm just not honestly sure what paprika has anything to do in that mix. It has a very nice color. A little red dust on the yellow and white.

[3:08] Bright contrast. Very, very lovely. But really, I'm just not convinced that it contributes anything of value to the actual flavor of the egg. And maybe, maybe you're sitting over there, Paul, looking at me.

[3:21] Maybe I just haven't had the right kind of paprika. But I've had a lot of deviled eggs in my day. I've been to a lot of Baptist potlucks. And so far, if I had my eyes closed, I'm not sure I would miss paprika if I ate one without it.

[3:36] It's not that I dislike it. I just don't know if it really makes a difference. As far as I'm concerned, not much would change. I could take it or leave it.

[3:48] Now, some of you are very disturbed by my posture towards paprika. I understand that. I saw you squirming. This may be where I lose you. Well, don't worry.

[3:58] We can talk about it after the service if you want to. But I'd like for us to take some time thinking about our posture towards something far more significant than paprika on an egg.

[4:10] I want us to consider the significance of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Do we have a take-it-or-leave-it posture toward the Holy Spirit?

[4:25] Well, as we continue to look at Jesus' final words to his disciples before going to the cross, his teaching reveals right here a radically different posture towards the Holy Spirit.

[4:38] He doesn't just say the Spirit is the next best thing that he can think of. He doesn't view the Spirit as a consolation prize. Jesus says that the Spirit coming is to their and our advantage.

[4:53] Advantage. The way that Jesus talks about the Spirit is not at all a take-it-or-leave-it posture. Instead, it's a can't-live-without-it posture.

[5:05] It's not long after this episode that we're looking at that Jesus is going to tell his disciples to stay put until the Holy Spirit comes upon them.

[5:16] Don't even move! The Spirit is so essential, so vital to their mission in life, that to go forward apart from the Spirit would be unimaginable to Jesus.

[5:28] One author summed up the teaching saying, The Spirit inside us is better than Jesus beside us. The Spirit inside us is better than Jesus beside us.

[5:45] That is a staggering claim. What about our lives? What's our posture towards the Spirit? Does the Spirit impact our experience of the Christian life in any discernible way?

[6:03] Let me ask you this. If the Holy Spirit was extracted from your life this past week, would you even notice a difference? Wherever you may be this morning, I believe that the Lord wants to deepen our understanding of, our love for, our dependence on the Holy Spirit.

[6:26] That we might not have this take-it-or-leave-it posture, but a I-can't-live-without-him posture. So I believe the main point for us this morning is to live for Christ's glory through the Spirit's work.

[6:41] Live for Christ's glory through the Spirit's work. We're going to look at this in three sections that I believe come from the text. The Spirit's unexpected advantage.

[6:52] The Spirit's convicting work. And the Spirit's revealing work. So we'll look first at the Spirit's unexpected advantage. You look at verse 5.

[7:04] It says, Well, earlier in chapter 14, Jesus said, Where I'm going, you cannot follow.

[7:20] And this was followed by kind of a frenzy of questions from the disciples. They were shocked by Jesus announcing his departure. They were asking questions, but in part, they seemed to be scrambling to make sense of why Jesus is leaving.

[7:36] It'd be kind of similar to a little boy, disappointed that his dad is suddenly called away for an emergency meeting, when both the boy and his dad were expecting to go fishing together.

[7:47] You can imagine the little boy saying, Oh, dad, where are you going? He doesn't really care about learning where dad is going and what he's going to be doing.

[7:58] They're really the questions, more of an indirect way of asking, Why are you leaving me? That's what he's getting at. So the disciples have been asking several questions like that.

[8:09] They haven't really been asking thoughtful questions about where Jesus is going and what it means for them. Why? Well, like that little boy, they've been absorbed in their own loss.

[8:23] This is what Jesus is drawing out here. They were asking questions, but now no one is asking any more questions. Sorrow has filled their heart.

[8:36] They're too busy thinking about their own loss, which means they are not thinking about what Jesus is going to accomplish.

[8:48] Look at what Jesus says next in verse 7. Nevertheless, I tell you the truth. It is to your advantage that I go away.

[9:01] For if I do not go away, the helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you. If you consider their situation, you'll understand why this comment is so shocking.

[9:16] Their leader, their teacher, their Messiah, the one they've thrown all their chips in with, is going. And persecution, suffering, and martyrdom are coming.

[9:31] So is this really the plan? Jesus, is this really what we would call an advantage? Jesus is saying this is to their advantage.

[9:47] Your future will not be worse, but better because I leave. Jesus is leaving, and the Spirit is coming.

[9:58] Something new is about to happen here. And even though the Spirit was at work prior to this, Jesus is implying that He would be poured out in larger measure.

[10:11] What was a dew that kind of rested on the grass in the morning will soon be a torrential shower that drenches everything. After Jesus completes His work, and He sends back to the Father, the Spirit will begin His work in earnest, being poured out in larger measure to draw attention to what Christ has done.

[10:35] So if you look in verse 14, it says to glorify Christ. That is the goal of the Spirit. We'll look at that more in a little bit. So how? How is Jesus going an advantage?

[10:49] One advantage is that Jesus could not be bodily in more than one place at one time. But the presence and the power of the Spirit knows no geographical boundaries.

[11:06] The Spirit is present in God's people everywhere and at all times. Everywhere and at all times. The good news of Jesus Christ is about to explode across the world.

[11:24] Crossing cultural and linguistic boundaries. When Jesus says in Matthew 28, 19-20, Go and make disciples of all nations. Behold, I am with you until the end of the age.

[11:40] This is how He's doing it. This is how He's doing it. The Spirit coming will allow Him to be present with God's people everywhere and at all times.

[11:52] Just think for a moment with me of the work of the Spirit everywhere and at all times at just one point in any given day. In one given moment, the Spirit could be at work in a wedding, for instance.

[12:09] joining two into one in order to display Christ's relationship to the church. At the same time, the Spirit could be at the graveside, mourning with the brokenhearted and comforting those who hope in the resurrection.

[12:27] And at the same time, the Spirit could be on the football field, convicting young men to play with honor and respect, to respond to trash talk with hustle that brings glory to their God rather than build up their own pride.

[12:43] The Spirit, at the same time, could be in the hospital while you are getting chemo and radiation, helping you to hold fast in the midst of uncertainty, enjoying a peace that is foreign to this world in the middle of such circumstances.

[13:03] And at the same time, the Spirit could be at work as you're sitting in a restaurant and all of a sudden you're provoked to pray for a waitress who you can tell has been beat down by life.

[13:18] And at the same time, the Spirit could be in the living room prompting you to send a text of encouragement to a struggling friend. And at the same time, the Spirit can be right here in the gathering of this church where we're being transformed by the proclamation of the Word through praying and singing and preaching.

[13:43] And at the same time, the Spirit could be at work in the people in Korea, Kenya, Kazakhstan, miles and languages apart, hearts being regenerated by a sinless Savior laying down His life as a satisfactory substitute.

[14:03] The Spirit is coming to work in and through God's people with the cumulative force of millions all the time in all places across the globe.

[14:15] So in spite of the disorienting sorrow the disciples are experiencing right here, this is in part the unexpected advantage of Jesus going and the Spirit coming.

[14:32] But how? How will the Spirit work? Point number two, the Spirit's convicting work. Verse eight says, Notice the when He comes.

[15:03] It's talking about the work of the Spirit in the world. But how does the convicting work of the Spirit happen? This is not a disembodied spirit.

[15:16] floating around like you'd see in Ghostbusters or something like that. This instead is the Spirit's work happening through human instruments.

[15:27] Through human instruments. Jesus here is accentuating the Spirit. He's coming to do this work. He's accentuating the Spirit rather than the instruments. This should give us great hope.

[15:39] It should give us great hope because even the great saints great saints like Peter, John, Paul, they were considered servants of Christ for His cause through the work of the Spirit.

[15:53] Just think of it like fibers in the sail of a boat as the wind carries it along. The sail is made of a composite of all these individual fibers and they're being used together for the ship to go forward.

[16:12] Well, in a similar way, you and I are a part of something bigger than ourselves. This is bigger than your individual fiber strand.

[16:24] When the Spirit comes, He is blowing through the collective fibers of the sail of God's people. He's moving the mission forward and bringing conviction through His people to the world and He's using people like you and like me.

[16:44] It says that when the Spirit comes, He will convict the world. Well, keep in mind that even though this is future language we're looking at, in some ways it's already past.

[16:59] We must remember that the original audience hearing these words were the disciples. And from their moment in history, they were just a few weeks away from Pentecost, the day when the Holy Spirit was first poured out in this new measure.

[17:15] And that event was a virtual phrase-by-phrase fulfillment of Jesus' promises that we're looking at right here.

[17:27] So we're going to kind of look at two streams of fulfillment, if you will. A near fulfillment for the disciples, the immediate recipients, and then we'll look at how these words come to bear on our lives millennia down the road.

[17:41] So when John uses the word world, he's typically referring to the unbelievers, mainly the Gentiles. So in a near fulfillment sense, we see on the day of Pentecost, Jesus' words coming to bear on those gathered in Jerusalem.

[17:57] Look at Acts 2, it says this, and they were all filled, talking about the disciples who were listening to these words, they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.

[18:10] Now they were dwelling in Jerusalem, Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven. Now they give a list of the nations, and it's not literally every nation under heaven.

[18:21] They're using it figuratively, and it says, we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God. So it's beginning right here.

[18:32] It's already happening at Pentecost. And even though this is the first context where the world would be engaged by the work of the Spirit, it certainly didn't end there.

[18:46] Currently, there are nearly 8 billion people in the world. 8 billion.

[18:57] There are around 7,000 different living languages in the world. 23 of those 7,000 languages account for more than half the world's population, languages they speak.

[19:16] There are either portions of the Bible or entire translations of the Bible in over 3,000 of those languages. And as of this year, there are an estimated 3.1 billion adherents to Christianity worldwide.

[19:33] 3.1 billion. So I just think it's worth marveling at the reality that this massive global movement is rooted in these truths Jesus is teaching right here.

[19:47] how does this disoriented ragtag bunch of disciples from this despised offshoot of Judaism, how is it that they become the catalyst for the most numerous and the most ethnically and linguistically diverse faith in the entire world right now?

[20:12] The Spirit's work, the Spirit's work beginning at Pentecost and continuing to this day, thousands of years and thousands of miles away in the Athens YMCA gymnasium.

[20:25] The Spirit is at work. The Spirit, what is the Spirit doing? Jesus describes the initial work of the Spirit in the world as convicting.

[20:38] Convicting can mean to convince by proof of a fault or an error. It's to refute an error. So it's as if the Spirit's job here is to put the world on the stand and to confront it like a prosecuting attorney.

[20:58] So the Spirit's work in the unbelieving world in part is to refute error in regard to three things, sin, righteousness, and judgment.

[21:12] Verse 9, if you look at it, concerning sin, because they do not believe in me. Because they do not believe in me.

[21:27] The primary sin the Spirit will convict is the sin of unbelief. That might seem kind of weird to you at first. It did to me when I started looking at this.

[21:39] Why not something more grand like murder? Why doesn't he convict about those things and bring world peace or something like that? The reason is that all sin has its root in the soil of unbelief in the heart.

[22:03] All sin. Just look at Psalm 14. 1. The fool says in his heart, there is no God.

[22:15] It's the soil of unbelief. They are corrupt and they do abominable deeds. There is none who does good.

[22:26] God is rejected as the foundation. A new tree will grow from a different soil.

[22:39] New branches will come up of what is morality, what is success, what is love. All these things, new branches will form, but godless trees will bear bitter fruit.

[22:54] just think of the communist movements of the last century. Karl Marx himself said, communism begins where atheism begins.

[23:06] Direct quote. So in this godless soil of unbelief, new branches of morality, success, and love form. What was the fruit of communism that we saw?

[23:18] Around 100 million people were slaughtered in 100 years of revolution. And even though we may not be facing communism as an explicit threat, the more subtle enemy for us is a hyper individualism that is all around us.

[23:41] The god of this individualism is not the state like in communism, but the self. It says, my feelings are supreme.

[23:54] There are no boundaries. There is no design. There is no authority. There is no restraint. And often, there's kind of a vague spirituality that's popular that tends to go with this.

[24:09] But it's very interesting to me that this higher power never confronts and always affirms whatever the person's feeling.

[24:19] isn't that interesting? That looks less like a god and more like a mirror to me. We have displaced god in our culture and deified our feelings.

[24:35] And what is the fruit of deified feelings? the warping of manhood, womanhood, the nuclear family, authority, and society itself.

[24:53] The most aggravated form of unbelief is the rejection of the Son of God. That's what Jesus is teaching here.

[25:04] Jesus is the supreme good, and to reject him therefore is the supreme evil. It's not because he's trying to be mean.

[25:17] Darkness reigns when we are separated from light. Death reigns when we are cut off from that which brings life. Sin is ultimately rebellion against God and the primary sin the spirit will convict is the sin of unbelief in Jesus Christ.

[25:40] So if you're not a Christian this morning, I'd like for you to consider the person of Jesus Christ. Why is it that he was hung from the cross?

[25:54] It couldn't be that he was just a nice moral teacher. He was teaching that he was the way, the truth, and the life, and that no one comes to him except through him.

[26:10] I'd like to invite the spirit to bring Jesus to the forefront of your thoughts this morning. Do you believe he is the savior? And more importantly, do you believe he is your savior?

[26:22] He can be this morning. He can. We also see in verse 10 that the spirit will convict the world concerning righteousness.

[26:34] Because I go to the father and you will see me no longer. What Jesus is saying is that the world's standard for righteousness will be confronted when he completes his work and he goes back to the father.

[26:48] So after rising from the dead, Jesus will ascend back to the father. Very important. The ascension essentially puts the exclamation point on the fact that he is the son of God.

[27:02] He is God the son. He's returning back to the place from which he began. By going back to the father, he's showing that God will put his stamp of approval on his work.

[27:14] He will be vindicated. He will be proved right. So the spirit works to reveal the world's false idea of righteousness, which is most clearly displayed in the fact that they thought it was right to crucify the Lord of glory.

[27:32] The only person to ever live a sinless life is the one who is pushed through trial after trial, wrongly accused, convicted, and sentenced to death by both Jews and Gentiles.

[27:45] A sin-filled world placed the sinless one on the cross. Look at what the spirit prompts Peter to preach on the day of Pentecost.

[27:57] This is what he says in Acts 2, 23. This Jesus delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.

[28:13] And God raised him up, loosing the pains of death because it was not possible for him to be held by it. Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.

[28:33] Vindication. When God raises him from the dead and Jesus goes back to his father, he proves that he was right. And the world's standard for righteousness was in error.

[28:47] I remember when the movie The Passion of the Christ was being filmed, director Mel Gibson insisted that his hands be the ones filmed nailing Jesus to the cross.

[29:04] It was this vivid way to capture the ongoing work of the Spirit's conviction for all of us in here who place our trust in Christ, we must first see it was our unrighteousness that placed Christ on the cross.

[29:21] We have to see that first. The third way that the Spirit convicts the world is in verse 11 concerning judgment because the ruler of this world is judged.

[29:36] Notice that this takes aim not at the people but at the ruler of this world. It's kind of interesting. For those who believe in him for the forgiveness of their sins, Christ's work on the cross provides the definitive blow to both the power and the penalty of sin.

[29:54] And although there is remaining sin to be battled in the life of a believer, sin no longer has dominion and the penalty has been decisively paid for by the blood of Jesus, the perfect blood.

[30:08] So there is hope for those in the world to be saved from judgment. None of us, very important to remember, none of us will be sitting in here apart from God's gracious intervention in our lives.

[30:26] But those who side with the ruler of this world will be judged along with the ruler. It reminds me of a condemned building.

[30:37] It's already been marked for demolition. The signs are up, the declaration has been made, condemned! The proper response to that sign should be, I should not live here.

[30:53] Right? If you made your bed inside the condemned house on the day of demolition, you will be swallowed up with the house in its condemnation.

[31:05] So the Spirit is actively convicting the world. Do not align yourself with the ruler of this world.

[31:17] The sign is firmly planted, condemned. Do not live in that house. That's what the Spirit is saying. Brothers and sisters, we were all once slaves living in that house, Satan's house.

[31:30] He ruled over our hearts. We lived in wretched filth awaiting demolition. But Christ came to snatch us from Satan's chains.

[31:43] He brought us out of the house of slavery in order to bring us into a new house with God as our Father. Jesus has gone to prepare a place for us in the presence of our Father.

[31:57] He sent His Spirit to bring us out of the old house, to convict us of the squalor that we used to say, it's all good. Do you remember that?

[32:09] That's fine. It's good. No, it's not. It's condemned. And He's come to bring us out. Can you look back and thank the Lord? Thank the Lord.

[32:19] He snatched you out of the chains of the old house. Praise God for that. This is the Spirit's convicting work in the world.

[32:29] third point, the Spirit's revealing work. The Spirit's revealing work.

[32:45] If you look at verse 12, He says, I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. Jesus had more to share, more to reveal, but He knows His disciples.

[33:03] He knows their capacities and their limits. So instead of revealing what they cannot bear, Jesus promises that the Holy Spirit will come to do a revealing work.

[33:19] In verse 13, He says, the Spirit of truth will guide you. Literally, He will show you the road into all truth.

[33:32] The Holy Spirit is represented as kind of a leader or guide, conducting a traveler into this unknown country. And that country He's leading you into is called truth.

[33:46] When He says all truth, this is not all truth that exists in the world, like what happened to the dinosaurs or what good is paprika on an egg, those types of things.

[34:03] That's not the truth, it's not all truth, but all truth bearing on faith and practice, the glory of God and the salvation of man. That's what He's talking about.

[34:14] He's revealing, the Spirit is revealing whatever He hears. And it's not His own authority. Look at verse 14, He is only giving what comes from Jesus.

[34:27] So throughout John we see that Jesus is subject to the words given to Him by the Father. Just take a look at John 12 verse 49, for I have not spoken on my own authority, but the Father who sent me has Himself given me a commandment, what to say and what to speak.

[34:47] It's all throughout John. Well in the same way, the Holy Spirit is subject to the words given Him by the Father and the Son. Whatever He hears implies that He's an insider with the Father and the Son.

[35:03] He knows their conversation. He has access and He will take that access and He will instruct the disciples in the days, years to come.

[35:14] This is vital to see because it verifies that the Holy Spirit is not just some kind of independent actor. He is in divine line with both the Father and the Son, not revealing something that's whack off the wall or different.

[35:28] So taking into account both the near and the far fulfillments of this promise, we understand that the Spirit of Truth came initially at Pentecost to the Apostles.

[35:41] This promise found particular expression later as these Apostles personally wrote or oversaw the writing of the books of the New Testament.

[35:52] This is what we call the inspiration of Scripture. Inspire, kind of the same idea as perspire. It has this idea that God breathed into the biblical writers.

[36:06] He did this by His Spirit. That's what He's saying here. Spirit and breath are the same word in Greek. So when God breathed into the writers of Scripture in this way, God was ensuring that what they wrote was what He intended to say.

[36:27] Just look at 2 Timothy 3, 16. Very importantly, the first few words. All Scripture is breathed out by God.

[36:38] All Scripture is breathed out by God. Remember, only a couple chapters earlier, Jesus told these disciples to look forward to the coming of the Holy Spirit.

[36:53] In John 14, verse 26, He said, But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, He will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.

[37:12] So Jesus here is reiterating the promise of His revealing work to the disciples who were with Him. Right there. There is a uniqueness to His promise bound up in the eyewitness accounts of these disciples.

[37:30] They were there with Him. Eyewitness accounts. Through the Spirit, they would be reminded of things they witnessed and be taught their intended meaning.

[37:44] There's a lot of moments in there where they're like, I don't know what's going on. Do you know what's going on? And they're looking at each other. Well, they're looking back later through the Holy Spirit learning, being taught the intended meaning of those events.

[38:04] So this revealing work of the Holy Spirit, we would say, is limited to the disciples who would write and oversee the writing of the New Testament.

[38:15] Years later, Peter himself, who was there in the upper room, would write to remind a new generation of the persecuted church, to remind them of the Spirit's essential work and the inspiration of Scripture.

[38:30] And this is what he said, this is what he wrote, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone's own interpretation. for no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

[38:51] He's linking that with Scripture, the inscripturation, the writing. So when we consider what Jesus said to these disciples in both chapters 14 and 16, we see that the Holy Spirit will bring things to their remembrance, memory.

[39:06] So as a result, the New Testament consists partly of narratives, recounting events that have happened. And then the Holy Spirit will guide them into all truth and teach them all things.

[39:23] So we see that the New Testament consists! consists partly of teaching. So we have narrative, we have teaching, and the Holy Spirit will teach them things to come. So the New Testament consists partly of prophecy that looks forward to events to come.

[39:39] Narrative, teaching, prophecy, accounts for the entirety of the New Testament documents. This accounts for the near fulfillment of the New Testament being written for and received by the early churches.

[39:55] But the promise of Jesus also had a broader application beyond the apostles. The Holy Spirit also guides us into the revealed truth of Jesus.

[40:09] In fact, the apostle John, one of the original recipients of this promise and the author of the very gospel we're looking at right now, John shows the purpose of his gospel.

[40:20] Why did he write this gospel? John 20 says this, Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book, but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

[40:44] So you see, the Spirit inspired the New Testament writers to write, but the intended effect was for the Spirit to continue guiding new generations of believers, and us included, into this revealed truth about Jesus in the scriptures again and again and again.

[41:06] So in fact, this very truth is what motivated Peter to write to this next generation of believers who had never seen Jesus. This is what he writes to them. Though you have not seen him, you love him.

[41:21] Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and you rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory.

[41:33] This is the intended effect of the Holy Spirit's revealing work, that we may love him even though we've never seen him. That we may believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible.

[41:50] This is what the Holy Spirit is doing when he points us to Christ in scripture. God is for you. That's what it's there for.

[42:01] He's pointing us back again and again. Look at this magnificent story. Look at the culmination of all history. God, in spite of all of our rebellion against him, he has pursued us.

[42:14] What? Our sin carved this impossible canyon between him and us. And instead of leaving us on one side, God sent his son to span this canyon, making a bridge back to God for all who would trust in him.

[42:31] If you've never crossed that bridge, the Spirit is calling you now to look to Christ and to come. And for all of us who've crossed that bridge, look back at Christ again and again and again and ask the Spirit to stir your heart afresh.

[42:48] Stir your heart with right love and adoration and affection. May you be stirred to belief and love and joy inexpressible. That's what he's doing.

[43:00] The goal of the Spirit is given in verse 14. If you look at it with me. He will glorify me. For he will take what is mine and declare it to you.

[43:16] The glory of Christ is the goal. The glory of Christ is the goal. The whole design of the Holy Spirit in the revelation of truth is nothing else but the glorifying of Christ in the hearts of the apostles and then through them the hearts of all of us.

[43:34] All believers for all time. What exactly does it mean to glorify Christ? It's one of those churchy words. To glorify is to honor, to praise, to celebrate, to point out as excellent and worthy of our affection and attention.

[43:55] So the Spirit is coming to glorify Christ. J.I. Packer explained it wonderfully this way with this image. When floodlighting is well done, the floodlights are so placed that you do not see them.

[44:13] You are not, in fact, supposed to see where the light is coming from. What you're meant to see is just the building on which the floodlights are trained. The intended effect is to make it visible when otherwise it would not be seen for the darkness and to maximize its dignity by throwing all its details into relief so that you see it properly.

[44:36] It is as if the Spirit stands behind us, throwing light over our shoulder on Jesus who stands facing us. The Spirit's message is never look at me, listen to me, come to me, get to know me, but always look at Him and see His glory.

[44:54] Listen to Him and hear His word. Go to Him and have life. Get to know Him and taste His gift of joy and peace. The Spirit, we might say, is the matchmaker, the celestial marriage broker whose role it is to bring us and Christ together and ensure that we stay together.

[45:15] So the Spirit glorifies Christ by revealing Him to us, by standing over our shoulder and shining His light in such a way that we behold Him more and more and more.

[45:27] We love Him more and more and more. What would life be like without Him? Oh, we desperately need the Spirit to awaken us to the hopelessness of life apart from Christ and to the joy and peace and hope of life in Christ.

[45:44] We need His help to guide us now. How do we live in response to Christ now? Oh, we need Him to enable us to live a life of faith going forward.

[45:57] We bring glory to Christ by depending on Christ through the Spirit. Charles Ross wonderfully said, Oh, how this tends to the glorifying of Christ when the soul in conscious emptiness is kept constantly hanging on divine fullness.

[46:18] What a wonderful way to say it. We glorify Christ when our conscious emptiness is kept hanging on divine fullness. Oh, God.

[46:29] Oh, God. We need you to open the eyes of our hearts to behold wondrous things in your word. We need you to protect and enliven our marriages for the sake of the gospel.

[46:40] We need you as we raise our children so that they love you and they live for you. We need you to protect us from selfish ambition in our dreams. We need you to teach us contentment in all circumstances.

[46:53] We need you to capture our attention, our time, and our resources for the spread of the gospel. We need to know how much we need you. These are the kinds of prayers that bring glory to Christ.

[47:06] Not only does the Spirit work this way in us, but He also works through us to shine a light on Christ before a watching world.

[47:19] What would the cumulative effect be this room full of God's people live for the glory of Christ through the power of the Spirit? We can join millions across the globe indwelt by the Spirit, flooding this dark world with the light of the glory of Christ through our words and our actions.

[47:42] The Spirit has worked. He is working to convict the world and to reveal the glory of Christ through you. So unlike paprika, we cannot have a take it or leave it posture toward the Holy Spirit.

[47:59] If we belong to Christ, we are spirit people, living in conscious emptiness, constantly hanging on divine fullness. So with God's help, let's live for Christ's glory through the Spirit's work.

[48:12] May God help us. Lord, we come to you thankful hearts brimming with hope and joy and life and love because of the revealing work, the convicting work of the Holy Spirit.

[48:29] So Lord, we praise you, Father, Son, and Spirit, for the gift that's been given. Help us to live in response to these things as we flood out of this place.

[48:44] May we flood McMinn County and beyond with the glory of Christ. We pray these things in the name of Jesus. Amen. You've been listening to a message at a Sunday celebration at Trinity Grace Church in Athens.

[49:01] For more information about Trinity Grace, please visit us at and visit us at ребятum ребятum ребятum ребятum ребятum ребятum ребятum ребятum ребятum ребятum ребятum ребятum ребятum ребятum ребятum ребятum ребятum ребятum ребятum ребятum ребятum ребятum ребятum ребятum ребятum ребятum ребятum ребятum ребятum ребятum ребятum ребятum ребятum ребятum ребятum ребятum ребятum ребятum ребятum ребятum ребятum ребятum ребятum ребятum ребятum ребятum ребятum ребятum ребятum ребятum ребятum ребятum ребятum ребятum ребятum ребятum ребятum ребятum ребятum ребятum ребятum ребятum ребятum ребятum ребятum ребятum ребятum ребятum ребятum ребятum ребятum ребятum реб